‘How d’you mean? In what way?’
‘Well, it’s random, isn’t it? Really? Who lives and who dies.’
‘Is it?’ Ed checked to make sure there was no way that Greg could listen in on their conversation and sat down next to Jack.
‘Of course it is,’ said Jack. ‘It’s luck, that’s all. Makes no difference one way or the other what skills you’ve got, what training you’ve had, what school you went to. It’s like in the First World War, when the soldiers were ordered to go over the top and march towards the German trenches – what difference did their training make? Would a professional soldier with ten years’ experience be any less likely to be shot than someone whose first day it was at the front? No. It was pure chance whether you got killed or not. When a bomb goes off, it doesn’t choose who it blows up. Do you think any of the survivors thought, yeah, look at me, I’m great, I’ve survived because I was better than the man standing next to me? I don’t know, some of them probably thought God had played a part in it, but from what I’ve read in history most of the soldiers felt terrible; they felt they didn’t deserve to live while so many of their friends had died.’
‘That’s how I feel,’ said Ed. ‘Guilty.’
Jack turned away. ‘I didn’t mean anything by what I was saying, Ed.’
‘I know you think I’ve been a coward, and maybe I have but …’
‘I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I didn’t mean it.’
‘Yes, you did. And I understand why you said it. But … I can’t fight, Jack. I can do everything else but I can’t fight. In a way Greg’s right. Nothing in my life has made me ready for all this.’
‘But that’s exactly what I’m saying.’ Jack was trying not to raise his voice. ‘Nothing you did could have prepared you for this. You could have left school at sixteen like Greg did and trained as an, I don’t know, a plumber, or an electrician, what difference would it have made? Look at the Sullivan brothers – they were big tough guys. They were both boxers. They both did a shed-load of sports and now they’re both dead. But two little wimps like Wiki and Jibber-jabber both made it through. What skills do they have that the Sullivans didn’t? None. They were just luckier. That’s all.’
At the front of the bus Greg was struggling into his coat. He zipped it up, pulled a torch from the pocket and went over to Liam, who was sitting with the Brains Trust.
‘I’m just going outside to have a fag and give the bus a once-over. Check the tyres and that.’
‘Dad …’
‘It’s all right, Liam.’ Greg smiled. ‘Nothing’s gonna happen.’
He winked at Liam and climbed down off the bus into the rain.
‘He’s wrong, you know,’ Justin the nerd said to Liam and the other younger kids when Greg was gone. He’d obviously come to the same conclusion as Jack. ‘It’s not all about trapping rabbits and skinning cats. You don’t just need fighters. You need people like us, people who know things, people who know about chemistry and biology and all that kind of thing, people who can make machines work.’
‘But we do still need fighters,’ said Froggie.
‘Yes, of course we do,’ Justin went on. ‘But you can’t just have a society of warriors. What are they going to eat? Where are they going to live? What clothes are they going to wear? You need some fighters for protection, yes, but it’ll be like any functioning society, you’ll also need farmers to grow food, scientists and engineers and doctors to make things and to keep you healthy, you’re going to need artists, musicians and actors to entertain people.’
‘Jugglers,’ said Jibber-jabber.
‘Jugglers? We won’t need jugglers.’
‘But they’re entertaining. I like jugglers.’
‘Well, learn to juggle, then,’ said Justin, ‘and you can entertain us all.’
‘Maybe I will.’
‘What about clowns?’ said Froggie. ‘Will we need clowns?’
‘We’ll certainly need people to make us laugh,’ said Justin. ‘Now more than ever. But the thing is, we need lots of different people with lots of different skills. That’s how we can survive, and why we’ll defeat the sickos, because we’re cleverer than they are, and we can build a society, but they can’t. They will eventually die out. They must, because they can never be anything more than dumb animals. That’s mankind’s greatest weapon – our brains. There are cannibal tribes – there were cannibal tribes – that believed that if you ate the brains of your enemy you’d gain their wisdom and power.’
‘Lots of cannibals in Papua New Guinea were wiped out by eating human brains,’ said Wiki. ‘They all caught mad cow disease, well, the human form, CJD.’
Liam was staring at Wiki with wide eyes. ‘Is it safe to eat other bits of humans?’ he asked quietly.
‘Well, it’s not a very good idea,’ said Wiki. ‘We’re full of diseases. Most farm animals are given injections and drugs and they’re specially bred to be healthy. Most humans are really unhealthy. We’re walking bags of disease and germs. Compared to the average cow, anyway.’
‘But could you die if you ate someone?’
‘Probably not. I don’t really know. You’d have to avoid the brains to be sure.’
‘The sickos eat people,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘And look at them. They’re in a terrible state.’
‘But they were in a terrible state already,’ said Justin. ‘They were already sick, that’s why they eat people, not the other way round.’
‘Why are you so interested, anyway?’ Jibber-jabber asked Liam. ‘Are you thinking of eating someone?’
‘No. I never would. That’s why …’
‘That’s why what?’
‘Nothing. But, Dad, you see … I don’t know for sure … But the smoked meat …’
‘Are you trying to say your dad’s eaten someone?’ said Jibber-jabber in a whisper. ‘That’s gross.’
‘No. I don’t know. I hope not. But … The adults and the older kids, on the farm, they all got sick … but Little Paul, he …’
Liam stopped as Greg got back on to the bus and took off his soggy coat. They could feel heat radiating off him, and he smelt ripe and meaty. They none of them smelt great, but Greg was the worst. He put the coat on the back of his seat and joined the boys. He seemed to fill all the space around them, a featureless black shape.
‘You lot need to settle down and go to sleep,’ he said. ‘Stop your yacking. You’re disturbing everyone else.’
‘Sorry,’ said Wiki.
‘And, Liam?’
‘Yes, Dad?’
‘You come and sit with me, son, back here. You need to get a proper night’s rest. You was always the same when you had a sleepover. The other kids’d keep you up and you’d be useless the next day.’
Liam didn’t like to point out that his dad had only ever let him have one sleepover.
‘OK,’ he said, and got up out of his seat.
The others all said goodnight and he went with his dad to a quieter section of the coach where they snuggled down next to each other. Greg tucked a blanket round Liam and slipped an arm across his shoulders, giving him a squeeze.
‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ he said, and started to cough, bent over, his whole body shaking, still holding Liam tight.
‘Are you all right, Dad?’
‘Course I’m all right. It’s the dry air on this bus. I wish we didn’t have to have the heater on all the time. It dries me throat out, but if I turn it down the girls get cold. No, I’m fine.’
‘Good. I don’t want you to get ill, Dad.’
‘Hey, hey, hey, that’s enough of that. I’m the one supposed to be looking after you, remember. Not the other way round. Now, that’s enough chat. You just need to get some sleep.’
‘I don’t know if I can, Dad. I’m scared.’
‘Don’t be scared. Nothing’s gonna happen to you so long as I’m around.’ Greg coughed again and Liam heard him swallow a mouthful of phlegm.
‘But what’s going to happen to us, Dad?
When we get to Islington? I’ve always just been thinking “let’s get home”, but what then? What are we going to do?’
Greg was about to say something when he was gripped by another attack of coughing. Afterwards he held Liam even tighter. His body felt hot and damp and he was sweating buckets.
Greg had always told him that there wasn’t a god, but Liam prayed now.
Please let him be all right …
At the back of the bus Courtney and Aleisha were asleep, but Brooke was wide awake. Staring out at a London that lay black and mysterious under the starless sky. She felt like she’d been on this coach forever, and she never wanted to leave it. She could live on here quite happily till the end of her life, eating crisps and sweets. Safe. They had a loo. They had water. They could be like gypsies.
Except they’d grow fat and stinky, the water would run out, the loo would overflow, they’d fight over the last packet of crisps …
Stop it, Brooke. Don’t think like that.
She wished she could sleep. She didn’t like it when she was left alone like this. She needed the constant noise and distraction of her friends. She didn’t want to think about anything.
She loved her friends. As long as they were all together they were invincible. Too invincible sometimes. When she felt untouchable, she often went too far. She wished she didn’t say such harsh things all over the place. But she didn’t like anyone to get too close. She kept intruders out with sarcasm and insults and ragging. She wished she didn’t do it, didn’t try to own everyone she met. She did it without thinking, without really meaning to, even if she liked someone. Like the boys they’d picked up. Some of them seemed OK. All right, they were a bit posh, but you couldn’t be too picky these days. Ed was nice, fit-looking, Jack was OK – if he didn’t have that butters red thing on his face she could have quite fancied him. For sure he was a bit moody, but she quite liked that in a boy. Sometimes the easy happy ones could be well boring. Maybe Ed was boring? She didn’t know; she’d kept him away with her big mouth. She’d kept them both away.
As usual.
Well done, Brooke.
She told herself she’d make an effort tomorrow. Especially as it now looked like they were all going to be staying together. She’d never held out much hope for Willesden. She didn’t really care if she never saw the dump again. There was nothing for her there, after all.
She looked across at the sleeping bodies of her friends, slumped against each other. Not a care in the world. What did they know about anything? Brooke had had to get used to sickness and death long before they ever did.
There it was. Every night she came back to this place. Thinking about her mum.
Missing her mum.
She’d been sixteen when she’d had Brooke. She was still at school, though she left soon after. Brooke had never met her dad, and Mum never talked about him, just referred to him as ‘the tosser’. Brooke and her mum had been very close, sharing everything, having a laugh, the two of them against the world. She was more of a sister than a mother. She’d been very pretty, always a new boyfriend on the go, with a flashier car than the last one, more money to throw around. They couldn’t ever believe that Brooke was her daughter. One had even tried it on with her, but Brooke had told her mum and she’d never seen him again.
Mum was like that. She looked after Brooke, always took her side, always believed her. Not like some of her friends’ mums. They could be right cows. Mum had been tough and funny and kind and clever, all the things a mum should be, but what difference had any of that made when she’d got the cancer in one of her breasts?
People said she was very brave. But it didn’t help. She had surgery and every kind of treatment the National Health could throw at her.
And eight months later she was dead.
Nothing had been right since then.
What use was all that love when the person wasn’t there no more? It just went bad. Brooke had turned hard and mean and nasty, not caring what she said to anyone. Not caring what anyone thought of her. Except her friends. They were a kind of family now, the three of them. Brooke was the dad. Aleisha the mum, always fussing over them, too nice for her own good. And Courtney was the grumpy teenager, moody and moaning about everything.
She didn’t love them the way she’d loved her mum, though. She didn’t think she’d ever love anyone ever again, not like that. She was never going to let anyone get that close to her, because people died, and there was nothing you could do to bring them back.
She missed her mum so bad. All that Brooke really wanted in the world was for someone to wrap her up inside their love. She’d cried when she saw Greg settle down with Liam.
Some people were just luckier than others, she supposed.
Greg was still holding Liam tight, and murmuring into his ear, his voice low and soft, the voice he used to tell Liam bedtime stories. He always made them up himself, didn’t really like story books. He was good at it; he made the stories really exciting, doing all the voices and sound effects. A lot of the stories were based on the war films they’d watched together, but he also told Liam about history: Nelson and Wellington, the British Empire, the Charge of the Light Brigade, battles won and lost, about brave soldiers, about Iraq and Afghanistan and somewhere called Wootton Bassett. Liam didn’t care what the stories were about; it was just nice being alone with his dad in the cosy darkness, and having him all to himself.
Greg wasn’t telling a story tonight, though. He was trying to make Liam feel safe and unafraid. Dad would have made a good soldier, a brave captain or a general, looking after his men.
It felt good, hearing his voice, the same as all those nights for as long as he could remember. ‘I love you, Liam,’ he was saying. ‘I wouldn’t never let anyone hurt you. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘You’re mine, see? My boy. And out there. Out in the world, there are people who want to hurt you. But they can’t as long as you’re with me. Nothing can ever hurt you. I’m your dad, Liam. That means a lot – a boy and his dad. Haven’t I always done well for you, looked out for you? Haven’t we always had a laugh together, eh? Going to the Arsenal, sitting side by side. Wish I could have taken you back when it was standing. What a crowd that was!’
‘I’d like to have seen that, Dad.’
‘Yeah. I remember going with my dad. The two of us, squashed in, but I always knew I’d be OK, ’cause he was with me, watching over me. That’s where a son should be, Liam, by his dad’s side. That’s why you had to stay with me when your mum walked out on us. She would never have known how to look after you, bring you up proper, bring you up to be a proper man like your dad.’
‘No.’
‘Only dads know how to bring up boys.’
Greg coughed, and as he did so his arm tightened about Liam’s neck.
‘It’s my job as a dad,’ he said when he’d recovered, ‘to make sure that nobody can ever hurt you.’
‘Yeah … actually, Dad, you’re hurting me a bit now.’ Liam gave a little laugh. But he was serious. Dad’s arm was choking him.
‘Nah. I ain’t hurting you, Liam, you silly sod,’ Greg said, and he too chuckled. ‘I’m holding you. That’s all.’
‘Yeah …’
‘Everything’s all right. See? I’m just holding you by my side. Where you belong. You’ll always be by my side. A boy and his dad. You and me, eh, Liam?’
Greg groaned and dropped his head between his knees. He was shivering, although he felt almost too hot to touch. Liam was sweating himself where his dad’s body was pressed against him.
‘Are you sure you’re all right, Dad?’ Liam asked quietly, the words falling heavily.
‘I’ve got a real bastard of a headache, son. Feels like my head’s splitting open. Makes it hard to think what’s the right thing to do, but I’m OK. I always do the right thing, don’t I? Always do the right thing. Always look after you. My little whassname … whassname … God. Forgot your name for a moment there, son. Silly ol
d fart. Losing my memory in my old age. Losing my marbles. Cuh, there’s words in there, son, slippery as eels. I’m just trying to catch them. Eel Pie Island. Yeah …’
Greg fell silent and Liam didn’t know what to say. Dad was acting strangely, not making sense. His arm felt heavy as lead across his shoulders. For a long while Greg said nothing and didn’t move, just sat there, breathing heavily. Liam wondered if he’d fallen asleep.
He tried to move his dad’s arm away.
‘Leave it,’ Dad mumbled. ‘I’m protecting you, Liam … See! I know your name. Lee Am. I need to keep my arm round you, so’s you’re safe. Nobody is ever going to hurt you as long as I’ve got a breath in my body. The world was always a bad place and it ain’t getting any better, but at least it’s getting simpler. There’s not so much to understand, just kill or be killed, survival of the fittest, eat or die. Meat Is Life. You know that, don’t you? It’s written on the front of my, whassname, ship.’
‘Your shop?’
‘Yeah. We don’t have to worry no more about taxes and laws and the congestion charge and Newsnight and Question Time, you won’t never have to learn French at school or maths – I’ve always been good at maths; you have to be if you’re a shopkeeper – and inflation, that don’t exist no more, or the credit crunch or sub-prime mortgages or nucular war. You don’t have to worry about books and instructions and how to upgrade your phone and all that rubbish, none of it means nothing no more, just be strong and eat to live. I’ll be strong for you, Liam. I know you find it hard to be tough, to be a little man, and maybe if we’d kept up with the footie training you’d have got good at it, but none of that matters no more now. All that matters is … What’s the matter? What’s the, er … Yeah, what matters is that you can’t be hurt no more, you can’t be scared no more. You can just lie there asleep in my arms, Liam, where you’ll always be safe …’
‘Please, Dad, I can’t breathe, you’re hurting me, you’re squashing my neck.’
‘Shh, shh, don’t talk no more. Just go to sleep, Liam. As long as you’re asleep nothing can hurt you …’
‘Dad …’
Young Bond, The Dead Page 13
