“Coffee and toast,” Joe said. Nodded at Elliot’s cup and plate as he himself finished eating and brushed his hands together to shed the crumbs.
“How long did I sleep?” Elliot replied as he picked up a slice of toast and sipped the coffee. The toast was good and the coffee better.
“A few hours. You looked like you needed the rest,” Joe said and lit a cigarette.
“While you were out, I checked all the shutters and curtains. Moved the car as well. It’s right outside the front door now. I thought about the garage but I wanted to make as little noise as possible. I’ve lit a few lights. Enough to see by but not visible from outside. Least, I don’t think they are, who knows what kind of eyesight those bastard things have. They could have x-ray fucking vision for all I know.”
Elliot nodded and chewed toast.
“I tried the phone and internet but they’re both down. There’s still electricity but I think it might be running off the solar panels,” Joe continued.
The tip of the cigarette flared briefly in the gloom and he blew a ghostly plume of smoke into the shadows.
“The roof’s covered in them, solar panels. Andy had some sort of energy neutral set up, or something like that, where he sold back any excess to the power company. Some sort of conservation crapola anyway. He had this place built. Proper architect designed job. Called it Rever House because it was his dream made real. Exquisite taste but he could be a pretentious old twat.”
Joe paused, struggled to speak for a little while, and then went on.
“Sorry, sorry. This whole thing is so ...fucking mad. It just creeps up on me sometimes. Anyway, I’ll show you the shower and there’s plenty of gear to choose from. May not fit but it’ll be better than what you’re wearing now.”
“Okay, thanks. Was that Andy outside? Earlier? ”
Elliot wasn’t sure he should have asked the question but it was spoken before he’d taken the chance to consider it.
The answer was slow in coming but it wasn’t grudging. Just sad and deliberate.
“I think so. It’s hard to be sure but yeah, I think so. I hope so in a way. If it was, at least he’s at peace now.”
Joe looked Elliot in the eyes.
“Thank you for ...doing what you did. Thank you from me and thanks on behalf of Andy. He wouldn’t have wanted to exist like that. I’m sorry I wasn’t any help. I ...lost it. It won’t happen again.”
Elliot shrugged and shook his head and Joe continued.
“You handled yourself well back there. More than that. You were bastard amazing. What is that, hong-kong-phooey chop or the ninja quickstep?”
“Mixed martial arts. Mostly karate, I’m second dan in that. We’ve been doing karate since we were kids but I started experimenting with other disciplines as well.”
Elliot flexed his hands and winced slightly. Joe noticed that his knuckles were bruised and ugly.
“I’ll be honest, it’s not much use against those things. Like kicking and punching a brick wall. You’re better off with a weapon.”
He looked at the older man and asked a question to which he didn’t expect a satisfactory answer but had to ask anyway.
“What are they Joe? Do you know? I mean I know they’re people that changed but what in God’s name are they? What changed them?”
Joe shook his head.
“Kid, I haven’t got a fucking clue. Whatever it is, I don’t think it has much to do with the old beardy bollocks upstairs. If it’s supernatural, it’ll be down to the bloke with horns and the hot pitchfork.”
Joe seemed to catch himself.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to be offensive if you’re religious or anything like that. I have a tendency to forget not everyone is a godless old cynic like myself.”
Elliot smiled and shook his head.
“Nah, you’re okay. I’m an atheist. Or possibly an agnostic now. Who knows what I am these days.”
Joe smiled back and continued talking.
“I was ...pretty out of it when this all kicked off. Not ill ...partying. With an old pal. By the time I knew there was a problem, everything had gone totally fucking twilight zone. Who knows what caused it. Something viral maybe? And I don’t mean the latest internet sensation.
The government screwed up one of their secret experiments? Wouldn’t be the first time. Alien fucking invasion? Dawn of the would-be-better-off-dead?”
Joe shrugged and carefully ground the cigarette into an antique glass ashtray.
“I haven’t had a whole lot of time to ponder it. Too busy trying not to be eaten. Or bitten.”
“What are you going to do? I mean ...do you have somewhere you have to go? Family? Anywhere specific in mind?” Elliot asked him.
“I live in Manchester but there’s nothing there for me. It’s pretty built up, dense population. Be like a fox moving in with the hounds. My wife, ex-wife, and a son are in the States. I haven’t been able to contact them ...but...”
Joe trailed off, struggling again with what he wanted to say.
“Let’s face it. Even if I could somehow magic myself to America, the odds aren’t that great are they? Even if they didn’t get the illness, the chances are that they’re surrounded by millions of fucking monsters.”
Joe paused as he lit another cigarette.
“So no. I don’t have any great plan. I hadn’t thought much beyond getting here and just doing that has been tougher than I thought. Much tougher. The oh-so-short road trip from hell.”
He squinted at Elliot through the smoke.
“How about you? You must have family.”
“My family’s in the midlands. I mean, that’s where I live. I was here visiting my godparents. A few days break in my exams so I thought a trip down here would be a good way of relaxing.”
Elliot laughed without humour.
“Got here and everything went crazy. My godparents came down with the illness and collapsed. My parents got it too. I had no idea what to do. I wanted to try and get home but it didn’t seem right to leave my godparents.”
He stopped talking and looked away gritting his teeth. Joe could see the shine of incipient tears in his eyes.
“How old are you Elliot?”
Elliot cleared his throat and swallowed. Rubbed the back of his hand across his face.
“Seventeen ...the last time I spoke to my mom ...she said to stay put and do what I could for Jane and Jason, that’s my godparents. She said that my dad had collapsed and she thought she was pretty close to it herself.”
Elliot sat without speaking for some time. When he did resume his voice carried a heavy dead tone.
“Jane woke up first. I got lucky really. I’d seen the ...changes with both of them. It was horrible. The way they didn’t look like themselves anymore. Didn’t really look human anymore. The hair dropping out ...all of that stuff.
Anyway, I got lucky. I was pretty scared just being near them. When Jane, what used to be Jane, woke up, I managed to get away before she could do anything to me. Before she could attack.
I wouldn’t have been able to ...fight her, you know? Defend myself. And then she was gone, outside with more of them, I watched them from an upstairs bedroom. Watched what they did ...did to a woman on the street. The woman, she was like me. Unchanged. She didn’t stand a chance. They were savage.”
Elliot paused and sipped the last of his cooling coffee.
“I don’t think there can be many people, unchanged people, left now. Most people got the disease and if you got that, you came back different. If you weren’t infected, your chances of survival will be pretty low. I think a hell of a lot of them ...us ...won’t have made it past the first few hours after the collapsed people got up again.”
Joe nodded.
“I think you’re right kid. Most of us that were immune to the infection, whatever the Christ that is, won’t have been prepared for what followed.”
Joe sighed and shrugged.
“I guess the best plan at the moment is to make this place
as secure as we can and keep our heads down. Try to figure out what to do next. I can’t believe that there isn’t something official left somewhere, some sort of government bunker or something. Maybe somewhere that’s free of the infection?”
Elliot looked at him fixedly and shook his head.
“I guess it’s possible. I don’t know, but I can’t stay here. I have a younger brother. He wasn’t infected and he’s still alive. I’ve been trying to get back home to him since they all got up but it’s been ...difficult so far. I ran into some problems.”
The image of the guy in the Land Rover popped into his head. Thinning fair hair and little rimless spectacles and the smile that it taken him too long to understand was insane. The man had said his name was Thomas Beme and Elliot had no reason to disbelieve it. With the inglorious benefit of hindsight, he also now believed that Thomas Beme might have been as crazy as a shithouse rat long before the collapse.
If not, he’d certainly been within fond stroking distance of it.
Joe was staring at him in surprise. Elliot thought there might be some scepticism in there as well.
“Are you ...sure? Sure that he’s alive?” Joe asked him.
“Yeah, he’s alive. I managed to get him on his mobile. After it had all started getting crazy and those things were running round. Our parents had turned. He told me that. George ... George is resourceful. Probably more resourceful than me. He’s only twelve but he’s tough and clever. He gets upset and cries sometimes, he’s still just a kid. But he doesn’t give in and he isn’t stupid.
We arranged a place to meet. Not far from our house. That’s where I’m going.”
Elliot gazed steadily back at Joe. There was an implacability in that gaze that was impossible to miss or misconstrue.
“You think he’ll have survived?” Joe asked uncomfortably.
“I don’t want to sound brutal but there’s no easy way of asking. You know how tough it is out there. You think he’ll ...still be there?”
Elliot stared at him steadily. Little or no expression on his face. Eventually, he diverted his gaze and sat back on the sofa.
“Yes. I believe he’ll be there.”
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back before opening them again to gaze up into the shadows.
“I do believe it but it doesn’t matter really whether I believe or not. I don’t have any choice. I have to go to him because he’s all I have left. He’s my brother and there’s a chance he might be alive.”
Elliot lowered his head and offered Joe the phantom of a smile.
Explanation, apology, acquiescence to the inescapable.
“I have to go to him because I heard his voice and he needed me. There is no choice ...and I wouldn’t choose different if there was.”
Joe simply nodded. He wondered how he would feel if he’d heard his son’s voice. Heard that sweet sing-along voice and known, had even the slightest inkling, of the menace that circled it like a shiver of shark. The thought conjured creeping panic and the desire for a drink. One drink and then another and another until the inchoate rage was released and oblivion blurred useless frustration to headachy memory. He lit another cigarette and got bottled water for them both.
They sat in silence for a long time. Joe eventually spoke again.
“Whatever we do, it’s not going to be done tonight. Excuse me for being blunt, but you look like you’re asleep with your eyes still open even though you only just woke up. And I feel like an old dog that’s been kicked round a junkyard and left out in the rain. How about I show you where to get a shower and some clothes and you take your pick of the bedrooms?”
Elliot agreed with a nod and then followed Joe upstairs. The upper levels of the house were as clean, modern and comfortable as those below. After Joe had shown him the essentials, they drifted towards a gallery that overlooked the lounge below on one side and presented an unobstructed view of the countryside on the other. A sizeable expanse of glass that was doubtless constructed to provide a spectacular scene in daylight. The darkness limited the view to an occasional star glimpsed through cloud, and the glow of burning. Nearer and to the left a dull luminosity hinted at what remained of Marlborough. In the distance off to the right, two separate fires burned with fresher intensity.
Despair settled over Elliot with the weight of unfair expectation. He was drained and overused. He’d shake it off, that exhaustion, and battle on, but at that precise moment, he wasn’t sure just how he’d do it.
As determined as he might have appeared on the surface, the uncertainties and insecurities of youth sat inside him like stones. Made heavier by a situation beyond comprehension, an event of unparalleled magnitude. The loss of his mother and father, the loss of family and friends, those things numbed him with a grief that was too fundamental to grasp. The fact that his wasn’t an individual sorrow, that his unhappy story was akin to a single grain in a vast sea of sand, that fact served only to confound him further.
He didn’t know if the sheer scale, the enormity, of the calamity made it easier or harder to deal with on a personal level. His emotions had achieved the quality of an unreliable rubber band that was being distorted by some unseen force. At times he felt a despondency too big to voice, a weight that was about to settle and crumble him like chalk under a boot heel. At others, he felt completely disconnected. Empty of feeling, his emotions somewhere beyond his reach, a theoretical concept, unproven and irrelevant.
He knew only one thing for certain. He had to try to find his brother. He had very little idea of what he’d do next if he did, and even less if he didn’t. He didn’t know if Joe would help him or not.
Help him more than he had already, he silently reminded himself. He hoped the man would because he liked Joe. Liked him instinctively. There was no way to know what to expect from him on such brief acquaintance but Elliot sensed that the guy was decent. Decent at his core.
“Those fires are just gonna burn aren’t they? Burn until they burn themselves out. There’s nobody’s to try and stop them anymore,” he said to Joe as they stood side by side gazing into the darkness.
“Yeah, I think that’s about the sum of it fella. London’s drowning and I live by the river. Guess we all live by the river now.”
Elliot looked at him quizzically.
Joe shrugged and shook his head as he lit another cigarette, shielding the flame with his hand and then concealing the burning tip in his palm like some chavvy guy about to score a good deal.
“Forget it, just me twisting the lyric from an old song that popped into my head. More importantly, how do you intend getting there?”
The question had hung awkward and unspoken since Elliot had declared his intentions.
He glanced at Joe, his face intent and serious, and turned back to the dark window.
“I was thinking of hitching,” he said.
Joe studied him for long seconds before bursting out laughing.
“Ahh, Jesus God. Dear Lord, save us from the youth of today.”
Joe’s amusement trailed off as he made a decision that was as inevitable as it was fateful.
“We’ll get some rest tonight and we’ll go together. And if he’s there, we’ll find him. And we’ll cross whatever bridges are put before us when we get to them, and not before, as my old man used to say ...if he was still sober enough to talk anything but bollocks.”
Elliot looked him in the eye and nodded.
“And don’t take this the wrong way kid, but I hope there’s still water running for a shower because you smell worse than some fucking tramps I’ve accidentally stepped in.”
<><><>
When Joe woke he didn’t know where he was. Or when he was for that matter.
The old where and when question, rearing its ugly fucking head once more. The old bastard that it was. That grizzled, fuzzy question was like a recurring nightmare, one that was fractionally less irritating than the voice. The where and when could be a real pisser, often had controversial consequences, but it was nev
er vindictive and cruel like the voice.
Joe didn’t care for either of them. Not at all. Not in the slightest. Fecking bastards both. And he’d kill the voice if it ever left a gap wide enough.
There was a dull ache between his temples. Not a Grand Tour headache. More of a come down without a sweetener and a shit load of stress shovelled in there for good measure headache.
Sitting up, he realised he was at Andy Pell’s place. Sunlight expanse of glass and coolly comforting expensive duvet.
Andy Pells. Ahhh, yes. The man you killed yesterday. That ridiculous old homosexual who you loved like an older brother but didn’t love enough to face that final kindness. After all he’d put up with from you. After all the shite he’d swallowed from you. Still been okay about it. Still a friend.
And it hit him like the proverbial hammer. He was in his normal Rever-dream-house bedroom because the kid had chosen another room ...and he’d been secretly relieved about that hadn’t he? Glad that he’d been able to lay his shower-fresh head in a familiar space. Somewhere he was accustomed to.
The rest of it tumbled in then. His old pal Adi Croger and the London apartment, the journeys. Seb and Miriam and Stephen. Pink Lemonade and the ever-happy Trooper, Mr Kenright just hanging around and the burning stampede ...the collapsing world.
And his wife.
Don’t forget her Joe.
His ex-wife.
His son.
His friends and family, colleagues and acquaintances. Everything collapsing, a blackly savage star sucking the universe into itself.
And he was in his favourite bedroom in Andy Pells house. It was a beautiful room. Bright and warm.
He lit a cigarette and tried to let the fear float away with a stream of smoke blown at the ceiling. Tried to think past the muffled pounding of his head.
The kid, Elliot.
The kid was alright.
Kid? He wasn’t a kid, not really. He was a young man and a bit more besides. Joe had a feeling that Elliot was a special kind of young fella. Smart and polite and considerate. But with an edge that was sharp and unpredictable. You could needle him, wind him up, irritate him and belly laugh at your own cleverness and he’d be fine and dandy.
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