Nina turned up just as we had nearly finished and gazed in disbelief at our haul.
“What happened to the list, people?”
Charlie explained.
“But … you could have just gone to the next item! Tinned food, if I remember rightly.”
“We did get some.”
“This was more fun, though,” I said.
“Fun? You’re not here to have fun! We need to divide goods systematically like we decided, else it’s not fair.”
“We’re all happy with what we’ve got, Nina,” said Paul, reasonably. Morgan leant back against the wall, not getting involved, watching, arms crossed and expression sardonic.
Nina took a closer look at the nearest box and tutted. “Greg’s got a child’s tent!”
“It’s a Tardis,” Greg said. “I know it’s not the real one.”
“What good is it? You can’t use it for anything. If you were going to go off the list you should have stocked up with clothes, then maybe you could change them more often.”
I hate it when Nina gets bossy with Greg. She makes him lose confidence. He stared at his feet, visibly deflated. I said, “Lighten up, Nina. We don’t have to be deadly serious the whole time. If you like, I’ll nip down and get you some solar tulips like mine.”
Nina turned on me. “Solar tulips? That’s typical of you, if you don’t mind me saying, Tori. You never take anything seriously, everything’s just a laugh to you. Maybe one day you’ll grow up a bit and realize life isn’t just a long series of jokes.”
I was tired, I wanted to get home, I could do without Nina snapping at my ankles like a demented Chihuahua. “Whatever. I’m off. You coming, Greg?” Greg nodded and picked up his trailer rope. Morgan slouched over to us. “Bye, everyone.” I grabbed my rope and the three of us headed east together. At the roundabout Greg said goodbye and peeled off towards his home.
When we reached the flat I turned. The sun was setting, burnishing the skyscraper windows; the snow glowed gold and blue, breathtakingly lovely. I opened the door – the beastly stove had gone out. While Morgan lifted the boxes over the balcony railing I riddled the ashes, tore pages out of a Mills & Boon and scrunched them, added firewood and got it going again. (Two and a half million Mills & Boon paperbacks were mixed with the M6’s tarmac to absorb sound, so they are resigned to abuse.) The stove takes a while to heat; supper would have to wait. It was too cold to take off my jacket or even lower its hood. My breath steamed in the icy air. God, I HATE the cold. I tidied away my solar lights, except for the tulips. I ripped off the packaging and stuck them in a jar on the windowsill where they would get plenty of light. Without being told, Morgan turned the trailer upside down so it wouldn’t fill with snow and started to bring the boxes inside. I let him get on with it. I fetched two glasses and a bottle of Bollinger – one of the few advantages to the end of civilization is the survivors get to drink classier wine – removed the cork and curled up on the sofa.
I raised my glass and whispered, “Happy birthday, David.”
Without warning my eyes swam with tears.
Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian
CHAPTER 6
Morgan’s past – or part of it
Morgan finished stacking boxes inside, shut the door and came to see what I was doing. I offered him a glass of champagne, and he joined me on the sofa. He kept his jacket on, but put his hood down. Snow crystals sparkled in his beard.
“Celebrating? Cheers.” He had a swig, took a closer look at my face and frowned. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said, my eyes filling again. I sniffed. “I think I’m getting a cold.”
“No you’re not. No one gets colds any more.” There was a silence while I mopped my eyes and he stared at the flames in the stove’s window and drank. He hesitated then said, “You can tell me about it if you like, but I should warn you I’m pretty useless at this sort of thing. I’ll probably say something insensitive and you’ll get furious with me, but that might be good because it would take your mind off whatever’s upset you. So go ahead. If you want to, that is.”
That made me smile in spite of my dejection. “Oh, it’s nothing really. I know I’m lucky. So many people have died and I’m alive. It’s just, sometimes it gets to me, being stuck here and snow day after day, and it’s always freezing, and no trees or birds or animals apart from rats, and no eggs or bacon or bread or proper milk in tea or fresh fruit or hot baths, and having to work hard just to survive, and no prospect of anything getting better ever.”
Morgan picked up the bottle and refilled my glass. I was tempted to tell him about David, and paused to decide whether I’d regret it. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger about personal matters. Morgan was passing through, he didn’t know me, plus he didn’t strike me as the type to really appreciate how awful it was, which if he did, would make it worse. And I might feel better if I told someone.
“The other thing is, today is my boyfriend’s birthday, and I think he’s dead but I’ll never find out. David, he was called.” Tears slopped out of my eyes and down my face and I wiped them away. “ And the bloody stove went out.”
There was an awkward pause. “At least you’ve got the stove going again,” he offered. “Told you I was crap at this.”
I laughed wryly through my tears. “You did. You were right. Let’s have some food.”
I was too hungry to wait to eat, so I fetched the camping gas cooker which I save for emergencies so as not to use up all the gas canisters, opened two tins of curry and a tin of sweet corn and got out rice. While the curry heated up over the rice, I opened a tin of peaches and doled the contents into two dishes for dessert. I put the tubs of vitamins out. Say what you like about our monotonous diet, it’s certainly quick to prepare; but I do miss fresh meat and vegetables. It was better when we had frozen food, but frozen food doesn’t stay good forever, and in a world without hospitals, food poisoning is best avoided.
I laid the counter with cutlery, glasses and paper napkins, and lit a candle. It looked quite festive. On the window ledge my solar tulips were already glowing faintly. I still had a lump in my chest, but felt better, less desolate. That would be the alcohol. Morgan brought the champagne over and filled our glasses while I dished up.
We were both ravenous, and hardly spoke until we’d finished. I made coffee and poured brandy, and moved to the sofa. The stove was roaring away and the room was finally a little warmer; not warm enough to take off my jacket, though. I put my feet up, pleasantly mellow. Morgan stared out of the window, let the curtain fall and came and joined me. He seemed more approachable tonight, less forbidding. I felt suddenly curious about him, quite apart from my intention to take Charlie’s advice and ask him whether he was a serial killer. He was so different from everyone else I know; tougher and meaner, as if he came from a harsher world where people were not to be trusted. Of course the world we live in is harsh for everybody these days, but my little group retained on the whole the manners you’d find at an Islington dinner party in the old days. I tried a dinner party-type opener.
“You never said what you were doing when I found you.”
“Trying to find shelter.”
“Yes, well, I kind of assumed that. I didn’t imagine you were on your way to post a letter. Where did you come from, where are you heading?”
He gave me one of his long looks, and I thought he was going to tell me to mind my own business. But in the end he said, “I was with a group north of here. Not a people’s republic like yours. Run by a man called Mike. Eight of us. We … we had a disagreement, and parted company. The journey was harder than I expected. I’d just about had it when you found me.”
This raised more questions than it answered. “What were you and the group doing?”
“Looting, basically. When the government decided to evacuate the country, Mike came up with this idea: we’d stay behind a bit, then make our own way south, but stop on the way and collect valuable stuff, from jewellers and museums. Whe
n we got somewhere civilized we’d be rich, because gold only gets more valuable in a crisis. He reckoned what was left of the world would go back on the gold standard.”
“Who is Mike? Did you work for him?”
“He used to run FreeFight before the snow, that’s how I knew him. MMA.”
“MMA?”
“Mixed Martial Arts. Cage fighting.”
“You were a cage fighter?”
“Yeah. Mike had a finger in lots of pies. Didn’t know he was a psycho back then, though. He got hold of the Semtex.”
“Semtex?”
“Plastic explosive. For blowing up safes.”
“I know what Semtex is!” A thought struck me. “So is it gold in your backpack?”
“Gold and diamonds. Krugerrands, other coins like Britannias and sovereigns, bit of museum gold, and 18 carat jewellery.”
“No wonder it’s heavy. Was that your share of the loot? Wow.”
He gave me a dark look, as if there was more he could have said, but had decided not to. I wondered what he was concealing. He stared into his glass, drained it and changed the subject. “So what about you? What are you doing here with this bunch of losers?”
I thought this rather unkind, and said so. “I wouldn’t call them that. They’re just ordinary people, coping with an extraordinary situation they didn’t bargain for.”
He laughed. “They’re going to be dead in five years, and they’re squabbling over solar tulips.”
“They won’t necessarily be dead in five years. They haven’t done too badly so far.”
“Their skill sets are about equal to running a charity car boot sale. In nearly a year none of you have set up a generator. You could have electricity, the petrol’s there for the taking – all those underground car parks full of cars. Why haven’t you got solar panels for melting snow and heating water? Look around a bit and you’ll find them. Set up a greenhouse, you could grow fresh vegetables. Another thing, what happens if a more enterprising neighbourhood gang decide to drop in and co-opt your supplies, all neatly stacked up waiting for them, huh? Got any defence plans? Weapons? I thought not. Two men with baseball bats could walk all over you.”
Call me naïve, but this had genuinely not occurred to me. It’s so isolated here in the middle of London, I’d never thought of people who might harm us turning up. I’d sometimes reflected how nice it was, not to bother with locking the flat when I was out – so different from the old London, where lock it or lose it was the rule. My balcony door only locks from the inside, anyway. When I’m out anyone can walk in. Obviously Morgan was right; there was no law left in England, nothing to protect the weak from the strong; it could happen. The thought of raiders beating me up and taking my food and firewood was scary. I could at least have hidden my reserves in different places, not kept them all together in my flat and the flat next door. I started to ask him how his gang interacted with people they came across as they moved around; but he hadn’t finished.
“And what strategy have you got for when it gets worse? From what I’ve seen, you lot are working your butts off just to maintain the status quo. You’re none of you risk-takers – maybe with the exception of you, Tori.” He eyed me speculatively. “My guess is under those nice middle-class manners you’re a carnivore like me, even if you don’t know it, and that lot are herbivores.”
“That’s an insulting way of saying they’re kind.”
“No, just soft. In my experience, no one does anyone any favours. Everyone’s out for himself.”
“Possibly you’ve been mixing with the wrong crowd. Anyway, I’m not sure I like being called a carnivore.”
“What I meant is, they’re not gamblers, they’re risk-averse. To get lucky you have to take a risk and maybe fail. It’s fear of failure that’ll kill them. Yes, they’re managing now, but in the end the ice will get them because they’re living off finite resources. What will you do when you’ve chopped up the last scaffolding plank or office desk for fuel, burnt the last book? What will Paul’s kids do? There’s no future in this country, not till the climate changes again.”
“I know.”
“If you know, what are you doing here? You seem smarter than the others. The only future’s in the south. I want to get there and have a life again, live instead of just surviving, feel the sun on my skin. This whole country is like some Arctic research unit, but with no supplies in and no helicopters out and no long-term future. What’s your five year plan, Tori? Where do you see yourself in ten years, twenty years? Before the power went down, you couldn’t turn on the TV or the radio without hearing people arguing over whether this was a Little Ice Age or the real thing, or just something weird and transitory to do with global warming. Whatever it is, it’s not going to get easier here; it’s going to get a lot harder.”
I wasn’t going to tell him about my project. I didn’t entirely trust him not to steal my powerkite, though that I have got hidden in a safe spot – after all, like me he wanted to go south, and needed transport. I decided not to practise for a day or two in case he saw me, and focus on finding materials for the sledge. On the other hand, if as I sometimes suspected it was a dumb idea, I didn’t want him to mock me.
“I’ll work something out. What’s your plan, then? You’re no better placed than me. That gold won’t help you.”
He smiled to himself. “Like you, I’ll work something out.”
I eyed him. He’d got something in mind he wasn’t telling me. Perhaps he’d got a powerkite concealed somewhere too. I sipped my brandy, and started to think about weapons. I quite forgot to ask him if he was a serial killer.
Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian
CHAPTER 7
Ceilidh
Morgan left early the next day without saying where he was going – the gym, maybe, or running in the snow. While washing up I thought over what he had told me about himself the night before. He was the first cage fighter I’d ever met. I don’t mix in the right milieu for cage fighters, whatever that may be, nor do I see the appeal of watching two men beat hell out of each other. On the other hand, with no police force or justice system, civilized behaviour was optional and if it came to it, might was right; martial arts experts had an advantage over the rest of us. Morgan had made me appreciate how defenceless we were, and I decided I must do something about that, however small. It was my day for sweeping the rooftop help sign clear of snow, and once I’d finished I made a lone trip to Argos.
It’s seriously creepy down there on your own. The darkness, the maze-like quality of the abandoned aisles in the storeroom, the rats’ faint scuffles; the disagreeable dank odour, like an ice rink but with the added smell of decay and rat droppings. The light from my torch illuminated only a small circle at a time, making it slow work to find what I’d chosen from the catalogue. I kicked myself for not bringing a lantern. But I found them in the end; Sabatier twelve-piece knife block sets. I opened two boxes and took the knives, leaving the wooden blocks, and put the knives in my backpack. I found the quality pair of Olympus binoculars I’d selected, compact but powerful. The baseball bats were right at the back in a far corner, and I’d just reached them when my torch began to dim and flicker – foolishly I’d forgotten to bring a spare. I grabbed two boxes and headed for the exit, afraid of having to find my way out in the dark. When I got to the top and examined them, the bats were junior ones, only twenty-six inches long; considered as a weapon, they didn’t look all that fearsome. I took them anyway.
Back home a thought struck me as I unpacked the bats to hide them beneath my bed. I went to rummage in the kitchen bin and retrieve the empty champagne bottle from the night before. Early champagne bottles tended to explode, so the manufacturers kept making their glass thicker to contain the pressure caused by secondary fermentation – 90psi, three times what you get inside a car tyre. This makes them heavy. I swung the Bollinger bottle experimentally. Given a choice, I’d opt to be hit with a junior baseball bat rather than a champagne bottle. I put it to hand under the be
d as well as the bats.
The knives I laid out on the kitchen counter. They were razor sharp and well made, with triple-riveted handles; a good weight and balance in the hand. I chose a medium size knife and made a sheath for it with cardboard and black duct tape, cutting the card to the shape of the blade, then winding duct tape round. It took me three goes to do it to my satisfaction, so that the fit was close but not too tight for me to be able to withdraw the knife quickly. On my third effort I incorporated a neat loop for it to hang by. I threaded my belt through and re-buckled it so the sheath was on my left hip, and practised whisking the knife out in front of the mirror in the bathroom, trying to look menacing, a person not to be messed with. Alas, my acting lacked conviction; I was about as scary as one of Doctor Who’s female assistants. I once read that soldiers have to be trained to overcome their reluctance to harm a fellow human, information I found heart-warming. I could not imagine sticking the knife in anyone; could only hope that in dire necessity I would find the necessary courage.
The next day I split between scavenging and cutting up wood. I made a rewarding if not terribly useful find; a flat with a wardrobe full of new designer clothes in my size. I stood in the cream-carpeted bedroom by the mirrored doors and gasped over the labels: Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Emporio Armani. Even the shoes fitted: Manolo Blahniks, Jimmy Choos and Christian Louboutins. There was some fabulous costume jewellery, too. The owner must have been a rich woman with good taste and a packed social life. I took a selection home, wishing I had the occasions to wear them to.
Ice Diaries Page 5