She handed me a folded white rag and an unlabelled bottle.
‘The rag for when you reach Eurotowers, the bottle for when you get inside. I happen to know the man likes rum.’
I tucked the rag in my belt and the bottle in my pocket. ‘Thanks.’
‘And take this as well.’ Maggie unfastened a chain from her neck and held it out for me. A crucifix dangled from her fingers.
‘Oh,’ I replied. ‘No, really, I’m not religious.’
She smiled. ‘That makes two of us.’
She pressed the short length of silver at the top of the cross, and a long, thick needle sprang from the base with a click. She turned it, gleaming, for me to see. Then, with another click, the needle returned. She fastened it round my neck.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’m going now.’
As I turned, Richard grabbed my arm.
‘Beth, you don’t have to do this.’
I pulled his fingers gently from my wrist and looked at Josh.
‘You should know better than anyone that’s not true.’
The track was steep and I pushed my crutch hard into the slick dirt to stop myself slipping. As my distance from the Rock grew, so did my sense of its immensity. It loomed over me, swarming with shadows and vegetation that clung like rope-less mountaineers to the merciless crags. A plume of cloud drew out from the jagged tip of its northern face. It seemed to be permanently attached, like a parasite, a slippery aide soothing the brow of its troubled king.
And down one side of this giant wedge was a scar. From north to south, a gouge that exposed the innards of the Rock like freshly sliced flesh. Tunnel segments ran like veins, and caves gaped like open wounds. I thought I saw Maggie’s room high up near the north face, with strips of dull light between the vine curtains.
Thunder rumbled. I walked on, becoming sodden by the rain. It was warm, but not in a pleasant way, not in the way of a sun-baked Mediterranean town, or even in the humid, scent-filled way of a tropical jungle. It was a dense and poisonous heat, as if the mountain behind me was crushing everything beneath it, including the air itself. Isolated, oppressed, claustrophobic – that’s how it felt, and I’ve never believed in ghosts or ghouls or witches, but there was something about the place that made me think about what it meant for a place to be haunted. Something wasn’t right.
Or maybe it was just me.
There was something wrong with my heart, you see. It wasn’t working properly. Where before it had beaten, now it stuttered. Where before I had barely considered this thing in my chest, this muscle that kept me alive without requiring any effort on my part, now I was aware of it all the time. It cried for me like a baby. It fluttered and flopped like a broken bird beneath a window. And it hurt. Real pain too, not the metaphorical kind but a jagged sting. Perhaps my heart really had stopped that evening on the Unity, and hadn’t properly started since.
I was in the town now, or what was left of it. I had only seen glimpses of the devastation left behind after the strike, like when we were rescued from our cellar in Edinburgh, or from the grimy helicopter window on the way to Falmouth. Broken buildings spinning beneath, upended planes smoking in the distance. Always from afar. This was the first time I had ever seen it up close.
Main Street was a slim shopping parade of three-storey, smashed-fronted buildings that still held clues to what they had once been. The charred and empty shelves lining the entrance to a jeweller’s, and the fragments of rings and necklaces now sprayed into dust with the glass that had once housed them. The blue, uptight logo that could only have been a bank’s now hanging skew above a slashed and tattered awning. A dusty stuffed bear straddling a ballerina puppet, the puppet’s jaw dropped in alarm, arms bound by its own strings.
Mist clung to the cobbles like spiderwebs. It reminded me of one morning in my student days in Leeds, when I had woken early and gone out for milk. Nobody was awake, and the terraced street upon which I shared a house was deathly quiet. An eerie fog hung over everything, withholding and compressing the sunlight so it had felt like I was walking through a dream.
Then I had passed a burned-out car, and a second further up. The shop had been shut. I found out later that there had been riots the night before. I had slept through them.
Everything seemed to taper towards the end of Main Street as if the buildings were being driven down into rubble. When finally they disappeared altogether, I saw that the wall Maggie had described was actually the ground which had been torn up. A deep trench lay on the other side of it, stretching from the water’s edge up to the northern face of the Rock.
I followed the wall, picking carefully through the bricks and glass. I was close to water now; I could hear it lapping against rock ahead, and there was something else too. Music. Huge and over-produced, a woman’s voice soaring over synthesisers and sizzling, cavernous drums. A saxophone solo. I was sure I recognised it. It was coming from the harbour where the grey wedge of the cruise ship now appeared through the gloom. There was orange light behind it, the source of the music, I supposed.
I felt something in my torso – not my heart’s struggling pang, but dread, as the reality of what I was about to do finally became apparent.
I am not particularly good at walking into new situations. I get nervous before doctor’s appointments. I do not find sport in argument or take pleasure in negotiation. The truth is I just don’t understand how people work. I am neither driven nor able to make secret assessments of a rival’s weaknesses or recall things I might have against them. I don’t have any rivals. Anyone who opposes me, who wants to get one over on me, who wants to get more of the cheese than me – fine, take it, I don’t mind. Anything to prevent the need for confrontation.
I cry. I actually cry if I have to talk to somebody when I’m even just a wee bit pissed off. The corners of my mouth pull down, my stomach flips and my eyes fill up with tears. I can’t help it.
I’d be the world’s worst hostage negotiator, and if I ever tried to talk someone down from a building then I’d probably end up holding their hand and jumping off with them.
I’m shit at talking to people. Basically, I’m no good at being human.
And yet I had just managed to confront Maggie without a thought. I took some dim comfort in this, because whatever I was about to do had to work. For Alice and Arthur.
As I neared the water’s edge another shape emerged from the mist, a degraded tower block to the left of the ship. I had just realised that this was Eurotowers when I heard a shot and the sea-wet mud before me exploded. I yelped and froze, dropping the bottle, which broke upon a buried breeze block. The treacly contents oozed into the mud.
‘Damn it.’
I stared at the place where the bullet had hit the ground, only a few metres from me. Then I looked up at the tower block. There was movement between the broken windows.
‘Don’t shoot,’ I cried. My voice made dull echoes from the wet stone. I yanked the white rag from my belt and waved it above my head. ‘Don’t shoot! I’m not—’
Another shot, closer this time. I staggered back, nearly falling but steadying myself with my crutch. The music played on from some time and place in which gunshots and mud-soaked rum did not exist.
‘Please!’ I shouted now, waving the rag violently. ‘Don’t shoot! I’m not armed, I just want to talk!’
There was silence. The music had stopped. From somewhere deep in the murk came the cold cry of a gull, then lumbering footsteps on metal.
Silence again. Then a voice.
‘Put that down.’
I turned in its direction. The silhouette of a large man with a gun strapped over his shoulders stood between me and the ship. He seemed to be floating on the water.
I held the rag higher so he could see. ‘I’m not armed. We radioed a message.’
‘Put that down,’ he repeated.
I paused, then tossed the rag in the dirt.
‘Not that,’ he said, his impatience inflated by the rubbery vowels of a Birmingham accen
t. ‘The stick.’
I looked down at my crutch.
‘It’s a crutch. I broke my leg.’
He lifted the tip of his gun, just a little.
‘I said, put it down.’
Letting my good leg take my weight, I dropped the crutch in the mud. There I stood like a heron, my bad leg barely touching the ground.
‘Come on then,’ he said.
‘I–I can’t walk.’
‘’Course you can. There’s a jetty here. Come towards it.’
Scanning the ground, I took a few hops towards the figure. I had already hit water when I saw the wood slats of the jetty in the mud ahead, but on the next hop I accidentally balanced on my bad leg. It was just a touch, but enough to make me collapse with a cry onto the wet wood.
I lay there whimpering and clutching my leg. I heard tuts and mumbled words of irritation from the figure at the other end of the jetty. When the pain had receded sufficiently for me to consider it, I grabbed the wood and pushed myself up till I was standing once again. Then I tested the pain’s biting point by gradually exerting more pressure upon my bad leg.
‘Come on, hurry up, will you?’
After a few more tries I found my leg would take my weight, at least for a moment, and in this way I limped along the ramshackle jetty. The shadow became visible as I reached the end. He was a fat, white man with a bulky nose, a wide, guppy-like mouth and swollen dark-ringed eyes. His tongue seemed to take permanent residence in the space between his lips, giving the impression that he was stuck at all times between thought and speech. He had an enormous chest and shoulders, but it was hard to tell what was what; fat, bone or muscle – there was no clue. He could have been a skeleton swimming in blubber for all I knew.
‘Hello,’ I said, annoyed at the tremble in my voice, the tightness in my throat. I thought of Alice and the pressure relented.
He smiled – not a pleasant experience – and looked me up and down.
‘O’right,’ he replied cheerfully.
I watched him. He watched me back. He was either dim-witted or playing with me. Probably a bit of both.
I thought of Alice again and straightened up. I let both legs take half a body each. Though the pain was intense, I withheld it, and in return it helped me concentrate.
Another roll of thunder arced above us.
‘We sent a message,’ I said. My voice was clearer now. ‘On the radio.’
He blinked.
‘You’re the one who wants to speak with Mr Staines?’
‘Aye.’
‘Are you Scottish?’
I frowned. ‘Aye.’
He seemed pleased with himself.
‘Thought so. Thought I could hear an accent.’
I cocked my head. ‘So?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Can I speak with Tony?’
He looked over his shoulder then back at me, as if trying to reach a decision we both knew he’d already been told the outcome of.
Finally he rolled his eyes.
‘Follow me,’ he said, turning.
I followed him along a series of other jetties to a network of wooden platforms lashed together around the cruise ship. His bulging shoulders swayed as he walked, like a grizzly in the throes of a dart’s sedative.
We passed the bow of the ship. It seemed deserted, though I thought I could see figures moving behind the dark portholes. It was almost dark by the time we reached the other side, and our way was lit by flaming torches lining the walkways. There were wooden railings which I used to take the pressure off my leg. Another song had started, this one a gruff-voiced blues club number. I didn’t recognise the voice, but it made me think of sweaty men with open shirts and pained expressions.
The network of walkways was as long as the ship, and stretched almost the same distance out into the harbour. It formed a series of mooring points for vessels of all kinds – yachts, speedboats, fishing trawlers – each lit by its own torch. They had made a new harbour for themselves behind the cruise ship, but unlike other harbours I had seen, the boats were unkempt and filthy. There were figures on board, drinking and mumbling with each other around stoves. Occasionally there was a cackle or a roar of laughter which stopped at my approach. Heads turned, eyes glinting with menace as they tracked my limp past. At one boat somebody got up and stepped onto the walkway in front of me. He was a wiry man, long-haired, smoking a cigarette with that face that makes it seem like every drag is a source of incredible pain. He positioned himself so that I had to brush past him. More figures followed his lead, putting themselves in my way so I had to negotiate my way through and around them. At one boat I met two girls, hips cocked, and as I passed one held her nose.
‘Phwoah, fucking hell,’ she said, wafting her nose. ‘Smells like something died in her fanny.’
She slammed into my shoulder, and I just managed to catch hold of the side rail before toppling into the water. I stooped over the side, catching my breath as lazy laughter came from the boats around us.
‘Christ, don’t bend over,’ said the girl in her Essex snarl. ‘That’s even worse.’
More laughter. I could feel them all around me. I was scared now.
I thought of Alice, straightened up and hopped around to face her.
‘I’m not looking for trouble,’ I said. The laughter died with disappointment. ‘I just want to talk to Tony.’
Her eyes glinted like scraps of tinfoil. She curled her lip and let me pass.
The walkways led to a central covered platform surrounded by flaming torches. It was the source of the music, and now I heard voices too. My guide waddled on, and as we approached the entrance of the platform two figures – guards, I guessed from their guns – turned. One was female, thin-lipped with hair like Styrofoam, and the other a stocky, broad male with two missing incisors on the last drags of his cigarette.
My chaperone made a clicking sound with his cheek and tongue.
‘O’right?’ he said.
‘This her?’ said the bullish man.
‘Yeah. She’s Scottish.’
The woman looked me up and down. ‘Checked her?’
My guide shrugged. ‘She ’ad a stick. I made her leave it.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Fucking hell, Grot.’
‘What?’ said Grot.
‘Jesus,’ said the other guard, flicking his butt in the water. ‘You were supposed to radio it in, dickhead. That’s why you’ve got a radio.’
Grot gave another shrug. ‘Didn’t see the point. She only ’ad a stick.’
‘Who else was in Eurotowers?’
‘Mark, Stacey and Beans. I’m not a fookin’ idiot, am I?’
‘And what were they doing when you were letting people through the line?’
‘Mark and Stacey were shagging, and Beans was taking a dump. And anyway, I didn’t let her through, I escorted her through. Like a prisoner, you know? There’s a difference.’
‘You’re a dickhead, Grot.’
‘I am not.’
As the pair argued the woman beckoned to me. ‘Come here. Raise your arms.’
I did as she asked and she swung back her gun, patting me down. Ears, neck – her fingers ran over the crucifix but not for long – shoulders, breasts, waist. I held my breath as she checked the rim of my belt, where the transmitter was hidden, but she passed it unnoticed and moved onto my crotch, bum and legs. I flinched as she patted my right leg, and she froze, hands still on the spot. Her eyes flashed up at me.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ A tear escaped. ‘I broke my leg. That’s why I had a crutch.’
She blinked. Still looking at me, she checked the same spot more carefully, kneading her fingers into my flesh with excruciating precision. Every muscle tightened as I bit back the pain. I whimpered as more tears followed the first. When I was just ready to crumple, she finally moved on. Shins, then ankles. She unfastened my boots and put them to one side so I was standing, dripping in my socks.
Satisfied, she stoo
d.
‘Fine, you’re clear.’
Grot and the guard were laughing about something now, sharing a match for a cigarette.
‘Get back to the Eurotowers, Grot,’ said the woman. ‘You know the score.’
Grot tutted and puffed his cigarette.
‘All right, Jules,’ he said. He gave the guard a wink. ‘See youse later.’
With that he waddled off the way he had come.
I was still holding my arms outstretched, right foot raised so only my toes were touching the ground.
The woman gave a bored frown. ‘Put your arms down, girl. You look like a fucking scarecrow. Come on, inside. Stay here, Ollie.’
The guard sniffed and turned back to his sentry, and I followed the woman, limping. Beyond the rough wooden archway was what looked like an outdoor beer garden. Tables and benches lined the slatted floor, through which the sea was visible, slapping the wood with every surge of the tide. Along one end of the platform was a long bar, roughly hammered together with timber and metal. Car bonnets were embedded in the wall behind rows of discoloured bottles and glasses, and what looked like bus seats skewered with spikes formed stools along its front.
The music blared from a mismatched collection of speakers in one corner, from which a series of cables fell like black intestines to a box on the floor. The blues song had faded out, replaced by something tuneless and synthetic. Every table was full of people drinking. At first I only saw men, and mostly of the same kind. The way they were built, the way they talked, their accents, the way they smiled, the colour of their skin – not white at all, but red and swollen with sun and beer.
It’s not right to judge people on appearances. It’s not right to assume a political stereotype just because someone happens to be fat, bald and white, and happens to be drinking a certain kind of beer with a certain swagger, and making a certain kind of expression. Inside every sunburned, shorn scalp I saw that evening there could have been a whole world going on to which I would never would be privy – subtleties of thought and emotional depths that would forever be theirs alone. So it wouldn’t be right for me to snap them to a grid of behaviours in the same way I believed they did to others.
The End of the World Survivors Club Page 10