by Hall, Thomas
“Hurry up then,” I say.
My daughter appears to be in no hurry, but I am. I can hear people in the street, a thousand footsteps marching in the same direction. We don’t want them to leave us behind. For the last few nights I’ve dreamed about it, like I used to dream about missing school trips when I was a child.
“Don’t worry dad,” she says. “It’s going to be fine.”
I wish I shared her confidence in the system. It seems impossible that there will be enough space for everyone.
She closes the door behind her and I reach for her hand. She resists for a moment but I am firm.
There are thousands of people in the street. As we reach the main road, we join equal sized groups to form a giant super group. It is more people than I saw at the supermarket, more people than I thought were left. There is a sense of hope in the atmosphere and I find myself smiling and squeezing Harriet’s hand.
We slow down and find ourselves in the middle of everything.
I have no idea which direction the coast is, but the collective wisdom of the crowd has taken over. I assume that there is someone at the front of the group who is leading us. Even if there isn’t, this is England: whichever direction we are walking, we will reach the coast eventually.
“Where do you think we’re going?” Harriet says.
I look down at her and see the same sense of hope in her expression. The feeling that everything is going to be alright is infectious.
“I don’t know honey,” I say.
“I hope it’s America. Do you think we might be going to America?”
“Maybe,” I say, but I’m not so sure. The thought of spending months on a boat is unappealing. To then spend weeks longer while we travel to America, sounds like some kind of torture. I’m also not convinced that the current President would be willing to make room for a million refugees. “It could be anywhere.”
“Or France,” she says.
“Harriet…”
“I don’t mean that,” she says. “I know mum…”
The look of hope leaves her face so quickly that I am a little shocked. I squeeze her hand again. Neither of us wants to talk about that painful memory, but it now hangs between us like a nasty smell.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Wherever we go it’ll be safe.”
She smiles, but I can see she isn’t comforted.
“If we go to America,” I say, “we can eat burgers in New York.”
“And catch a yellow cab?” she says.
“And drop a coin off the Empire State building.”
She laughs and I laugh as well. The conversation about her mother averted, we are both able to focus on the job at hand.
CHAPTER 6
“IT’S GOING TO BE LIKE A CRUISE,” SHE says.
“Kind of,” I say. Harriet has never been on a boat before. Cassie didn’t like them, and I haven’t had to opportunity to take her.
“Do you think there will be a swimming pool?” she says.
“I don’t know Harriet,” I say. “Maybe.”
We have been walking for more than an hour and people are starting to get tired. Old people are sitting by the side of the road, recovering their strength before getting up to try again.
“I hope there are other children,” she says.
I’m not sure who is trying to keep who’s spirits up.
“They might have games. I saw a show where they had a boat with water slides and they had singing every night and a buffet.”
I expect that there are some ships like that, but it seems unlikely that we’ll end up on one. The majority of ships are likely to be from the Navy, which means cramped bunks and lots of exposed rivets.
We left our flat at ten o’clock this morning.
It’s starting to get dark now.
I’m not sure how near the coast is, but we haven’t even gotten out of London yet. Harriet is yawning, my stomach is starting to rumble.
I squeeze her hand and she looks up at me.
“Let’s take a break,” I say.
She looks around as if she’s expecting to see a coffee shop or restaurant.
I pull her along after me. The crowd doesn’t give way easily, but we manage to make it through and onto the side of the road.
Other people are sitting on the street, a few of them glance at us, but most of them don’t even look up. I think they are sleeping and wonder if that’s a good idea. Although there are soldiers dotted around, there aren’t any here. It makes me nervous being away from the herd, but we need to eat and Harriet needs to rest.
“Sit down,” I say.
She slumps to the floor and leans against the front of a house. I pull my pack off and sit down beside her.
The rationing stopped after they announced the evacuation. When our supplies started running low, I finally got the guts to break into the flat above. Mr Ellis had been using the it for storage and I’d taken as much as I could carry.
I hand Harriet a chocolate bar.
When we are out of this mess, the first thing I’m going to do is eat a giant salad. It seems like months since I’ve eaten something that isn’t full of sugar and salt.
She eats greedily while I try to be more restrained. I feel the sugar hitting my system immediately, and only wish that I had coffee to wash it down with.
It isn’t until we finish that I realise we are the only one’s eating. Several people are watching us with envious eyes.
“Come on,” I say and grab Harriet’s hand again. I pull her to her feet and she lets out a little scream of surprise. More people are looking at us now and I wonder what they are thinking. Do I look enough like her father for people to understand? Or do they think I’m some kind of maniac who has kidnapped her?
I pull Harriet back into the crowd and we move along with them. I can't shake the feeling the we are being watched, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. In future I will be more careful.
Another hour passes and then another. I don’t know how long we have been walking but it is dark. London without street lights is like a foreign country. The cloudless sky provides enough light for me to see the dark shapes of distant buildings, they don’t seem real. Like ghosts of a world that no longer exists.
I wonder how long it will be before the towers to collapse. Will anyone be here to see them fall? Will they make a sound as they crash to the ground and shower the city with debris?
These maudlin thoughts creep up on me from time to time and I try to stay ahead of them. I remind myself that we won’t be here because we are being rescued. By the time the city falls we will be hundreds, thousands of miles away, in a refugee camp in another country.
I squeeze Harriet’s hand and she squeezes back, but there is little strength in her grip. We need to stop soon or she’s likely to fall asleep on her feet.
There is a bridge ahead. I guess it’s about three hundred metres away. There’s nowhere to stop now as the road has narrowed and the crowd fills it from one side to the other. We slow down as we approach.
“Once we’re over the bridge,” I tell her, “we’ll find somewhere to rest. Okay?”
“Okay,” she says.
If I have to I’ll pick her up and carry her, but that’s not a good solution. We’ve both got heavy bags which I’m not willing to leave behind, and in the last few weeks I’ve had even less to eat than she has. I’ll be lucky to get us to the bridge, if I start to carry her now.
Around us people are silent. I look at their emaciated faces and I can’t see anybody talking. They stare ahead with vacant eyes and might as well be Infected themselves. I could be walking next to my best friend and I wouldn’t know it.
Hours seem to pass before we reach the bridge. I push Harriet ahead of me so I can keep an eye on her. The road is narrow and there are so many people, that I have to walk sideways, holding her hand firmly.
If the bridge collapses under our weight more than a thousand people will drown. I can feel it groaning, but that might be my imagination. The
warmth of so many bodies is stifling. The railings that run the length of the bridge box us in on both sides . It is claustrophobic and, before we are halfway across, the crowd slows down again.
Harriet’s fingers slip through mine as the crowd in front surges forwards a little quicker than me.
“Harriet!” I say, the dehydration masks the terror in my voice and it sounds like a croak.
I hear her reply, but I’m not sure what she says.
My heart starts to race as if I’m running a sprint. “Harriet wait for me on the other side!” I say. Everything is urgent now, everything an exclamation.
I try to move forward, try to pull the crowd along with me. We move but not quick enough. I watch her disappear in front of me until I realise what is happening.
My part of the crowd is moving and the crowd in front is doing the same. We aren’t being separated. Harriet is being pulled forwards by an undertow. I’m now more concerned about her falling and being trampled than I am about losing her.
I keep moving forwards, keep staring at the space where she was standing. I watch the ground to make sure that I don’t step over her. No one would be able to stop if they saw her there, most likely, people wouldn’t even bother to try.
On the other side of the bridge I hear her calling. “Dad! Dad!”
When I turn I see her standing on the side of the road, a little higher than the rest of the crowd. I fight my way towards her and fall at her feet, panting, sweating and exhausted.
“We can stop here,” I say.
There is a small patch of land next to the bridge. It’s dry and far enough away from the road that I doubt anyone else will slow down enough to notice it. Harriet nods.
We remove our packs and drop them on the ground. I fall down beside mine and a moment later Harriet joins me on the ground.
CHAPTER 7
A MAN STANDS ABOVE ME. DESPITE THE WARMTH of the morning he wears a black ski mask with holes for his eyes and mouth.
Harriet is laying beside me. The morning is getting warmer and brighter. I can see the crowd continuing to file past on the road a few metres away. I know that, even if I were to call for help, no one would come. Whatever is about to happen is between me and this man.
“What’s in the bags?” he says. His voice is younger than I expected. I guess he’s not long out of his teens.
“Nothing,” I say. “Some spare clothes and blankets.”
“You’re lying,” he says.
I half expect him to step forwards and hit me, but he doesn’t move.
He nods at the bag to my left. It wouldn’t matter which bag he selected, we split the food between them. This one happens to be the one I was carrying.
“Open it,” he says.
I look at him but don’t move. I’m still sitting on the ground, I feel vulnerable because of his height advantage.
“Open it,” he says, a little louder so that Harriet begins to stir. I pray that she won’t wake up yet.
I move towards the bag, wondering if there’s anything I can do to stop him stealing our food. I suppose I could try to fight him, but I am a copywriter, not a soldier, fighting isn’t in my nature.
Chocolate bars in shiny metallic wrappers spill onto the ground. I see him instinctively move to grab one, but he controls himself and doesn’t take his eyes off me. I wonder what horrors he has seen to believe that I will attack him the moment his attention is elsewhere.
“Put them back in the bag,” he says. “Then slide it over.”
I do as he says because I don’t want him to hit me. I am disappointed with myself. The idea of fighting to protect what is mine doesn't register as a possibility. That’s not the world I grew up in. In my world people don’t steal from one another and, if they do, the police are responsible for dealing with it.
“And the other one?” he says.
“Would you believe me if I said it was only clothes?” I say, trying to be smart because I’m stressed and, if I can make him laugh, maybe he’ll take pity on me. I hate myself a little more.
“Hand it over,” he says.
“It’s everything we’ve got,” I say.
“You don’t have it any more. Hand it over.”
I sigh and reach for Harriet’s bag. It’s by her head and as I lean over I see that she’s awake, her eyes are wide and she’s trying to communicate something to me. Whatever it is I don’t understand, I grab her bag and give it to the man.
He could still hurt us, but it doesn’t seem as if he will. He reaches down and picks up the bags, one in each hand, struggling a little under the weight.
“At least let us keep the clothes,” I say.
But it’s a wasted effort, he turns around and walks away with everything we own in the world. I watch him until he disappears into the crowd on the road.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” Harriet says.
We’re back on our feet, among the crowd, moving a little quicker than we did yesterday. She has been asking me the same question in different ways since we started.
“You could have stopped him,” she says.
“I didn’t though, did I?” I say. Her words reflect my own sense of failure. “I didn’t stop him Harriet and there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“You should have tried,” she says. Her tone tells me that it’s the end of the discussion and there are no excuses she’s willing to listen to.
I want to curl up in a ball and let the crowd destroy me.
Could I have stopped him if I’d tried?
It’s possible. She could be right and I should have tried. But it’s not easy to overcome a lifetime of social conditioning. I was always taught that, if someone tries to mug you, then you let them take whatever they want. It’s only 'stuff'.. Not worth getting hurt over. But that wasn’t only stuff, that was our stuff, our food, not easily replaceable.
“I should have tried,” I say, but even now I’m not sure I would be able to. “I’m sorry.”
She nods and harrumphs but she doesn’t say anything. I feel guilty because she’s going to go hungry and as her father it’s my job to look after her. I’ve failed and I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to make it up.
We walk in silence until the sound of our rumbling stomachs is audible over our footsteps.
CHAPTER 8
IN THE AFTERNOON WE SEE MORE SOLDIERS STANDING on raised verges at the sides of the road. Holding their big machine guns as they watch the crowd. It seems to me that they are looking for someone to shoot, for an excuse to show that they are in charge.
I thought the crowd was quiet before, now a hush falls over everything and the only thing I can hear is our footsteps. Even my burgeoning hunger abates at the sight of the men with big guns.
This feels so foreign, as if we are walking through a war zone. I don’t know how to react to any of it and it concerns me that this is the world Harriet will become an adult in. This isn’t what I wanted for her. This isn’t what either of us wanted for her.
She seems to take it in her stride though, which I suppose is even more concerning. I want her to feel as shocked by it all as I do, but she barely even glances at the soldiers.
We keep walking and I wonder how much longer it will be until we are out of London. Once the roads widen I am sure we will be able to walk more quickly. Hopefully we will reach the evacuation centre before starvation kicks in.
The further we walk the more soldiers appear.
A man a few metres ahead of us slows down and the crowd begins to file around him. We are about to pass him when I hear one of the soldiers shout in a loud baritone voice: “Keep moving!”
This guy is old. He looks like he’s all on his own and most of his slight weight is being carried between two walking sticks. I am amazed that he has been able to make it this far. He doesn’t appear to hear the soldier, or isn’t aware that he is the person being shouted at.
“I said keep moving!” the soldier says.
The old man finally looks up. He’s a
bout ninety years old, white haired and wide eyed. Even I can see that he’s not capable of going any quicker.
“What?” the soldier says. “Are you deaf or something?”
It is possible that the old man is deaf.
The soldier jumps off his perch and the crowd parts to make way for him. He is coming towards the old man, towards me and Harriet, and he has his gun raised as if he’s going to use it as a bat.
“I said keep moving!” the soldier screams at the old man.
“I’m going as fast as I—“
Thwump!
The old man stumbles back as the gun connects with his chest. He staggers. For a moment it seems he’s going to be able to stay upright, but then he falls and the only thing I can do is catch him.
“Keep moving or I’ll pull you out and leave you behind,” the soldier says.
I am shocked and speechless.
The soldier is not a police officer, but he’s the closest thing to one around here. He’s supposed to be protecting us, not abusing the elderly. Has the world changed that much?
The crowd continues to move around us, pretending that this isn’t happening. I am still holding the old man and wonder whether I would do the same as them if I had the opportunity.
“You?” the soldier says. “Is he with you?”
The old man is shaking in my arms. I wonder what kind of internal damage the attack might have done to his frail old bones.
I shake my head.
“Well he is now,” the soldier says. “Keep him moving or I’ll pull you both out and leave you behind.”
I don’t want this. I’ve got enough to think about without having to look after an old man as well. But it doesn’t appear that I have a choice.
“Get moving,” the soldier says. “Get out of my sight.”
He turns away and the crowd parts to let him through again. The old man rights himself and starts to walk forwards.
“Are you okay?” I say.