by Hall, Thomas
“Mind your own business,” the man says, but I can hear from his breathless voice that he is in pain. The soldier might have cracked a rib.
“I don’t mind helping,” I say, a lie but I will help him if he asks.
“I’m perfectly capable,” the old man says.
I nod and watch him, the crowd keeping its distance from me as if I’m infected.
Once I am sure that the old man isn’t going to collapse, I turn to take Harriet’s hand, but she isn’t there.
CHAPTER 9
“HARRIET?” I SHOUT.
THE CROWD SURGES AROUND ME. I push my way through, elbowing people, not caring what they think. I hear a few of them swear at me as I move past, but I am focused on the ground and don’t even glance back at them.
“Harriet where are you?” I shout.
There is no answer. Even if she could hear me, I wouldn’t be able to hear her.
“Harriet!”
I am growing desperate. My heart is racing and a cold sweat has broken down my back.
She isn’t here.
She should be here.
But she isn’t.
“Harriet! Harriet where are you?”
“Stop pushing!” a soldier shouts.
His words are distant and unimportant. They don’t realise what has happened.
“Harriet!” I am screaming now, my throat is hoarse and raw. “Harriet!” There are tears in my eyes and I can't see where I’m going.
“I said stop pushing!” the soldier repeats.
I don’t know where I am, whether I am moving with the stream of people or against it. All I know is that Harriet isn’t with me.
“Stop pushing now!” the soldier says and his words finally get through to me.
I stop.
The crowd buffets against me like water against a rock in the middle of a stream. All I can see is my daughter, but she’s only a memory, the real Harriet is gone.
Nobody stops to ask me if I’m okay.
There are dark fringes at the edge of my vision and I have to remind myself to breathe.
Where is she?
Did something happen to her?
Did somebody take her or did she get swept along by the crowd?
I can see all the way back to the bridge and the road is full of people. There is no way that she could have gone back that way, at least that’s what I tell myself. The truth is that I have no idea.
The same is true in the other direction. I can see fifty metres ahead before the road turns, but there is no sign of her. But I am sure that she must have gone that way. Swept along by the crowd.
She must be frightened.
I don’t know where she is but I can be reasonably sure that she went with the crowd. She might be around the bend in the road, waiting for me to catch up with her.
The one thing I know is that she isn’t here with me. So staying where I am would be a mistake. If she went back then there’s nothing I can do, the soldiers would shoot me before letting me go. If she went forwards then every second I spend standing here is a second I am not catching up with her.
I sigh to myself and try to gather the strength to move. It feels as if I have lost a limb, but I can’t dwell on it. I need to keep my head clear if I am going to find her.
I am going to find her.
The crowd swells around me and this time I don’t fight it. I let them carry me forwards, telling myself that soon I will find Harriet and this will all be over.
She is not around the next corner.
Or the next.
More soldiers line the roadside but there is no sign of Harriet.
Somehow I move from the middle of the road towards the side, and get the attention of one of the soldiers.
“Have you seen a little girl?” I say.
The soldier looks down at me from his perch but he doesn’t reply. I am trying to stand still but the movement of people makes that difficult.
“She’s twelve years old, blond hair, wearing a green coat.”
“Keep moving,” the soldier says.
“Please,” I say. “I’ve lost my daughter. Have you seen her?”
The soldier glances to his left and I follow him, thinking for a moment that he is pointing Harriet out to me. Then I see that he is looking at the next soldier in the line, who isn’t looking back at him. The soldier sees this and then leans down and whispers conspiratorially to me. “I haven’t seen her, sorry.”
“You’re sure?” I say.
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
“She’s only twelve,” I say.
“There’s not a lot of places she could have gone,” he says. “If she’s still in the crowd she’ll get to the evacuation centre.”
I nod and he stands back up, scanning the street as if our illicit conversation hasn’t happened. I know it is useless to ask him again and I allow the motion of the crowd to carry me onwards.
CHAPTER 10
IT TAKES ME TWO MORE DAYS TO REACH the evacuation centre. It is a repurposed warehouse by the river. I am starving and exhausted and too tired to take everything in. It seems impossible that I am here, but it is the fact that she isn’t which makes it hardest.
I cannot take pleasure in what I have achieved, nor relief. As I reach the first of more than a dozen security checks, I am nothing but concerned for my daughter.
Soldiers ask me questions and I answer them robotically. I try to ask them whether Harriet is here, but they usher me along, too busy to share my concern for her.
A doctor takes my pulse and temperature while a nurse takes notes. We are still outside, the warehouse entrance several hundred metres away. If everyone vanished I would be able to see the white lines which denote parking spaces.
I am too tired to take in everything they are saying to me. I nod, I cough, I lift my arms and I turn around. Has Harriet already been through this process?
“My daughter,” I say to the nurse. She is a woman, she will understand. “I’m looking for my daughter.”
The nurse looks at me, her eyes are cold and distant and I realise that she doesn’t care, none of them do. I am nothing but a number on a chart, a thing to process. I might as well be dead already.
I continue towards the front of the building; stop, start, stop, start. Each movement forwards means they have processed another person. Another body in the warehouse awaiting evacuation.
Is Harriet there already? Is she waiting for me inside?
When I reach the final checkpoint a man looks at me. He is younger than many of the other soldiers I’ve seen.
“Name?” he says. He actually looks at me when I tell him.
“I’m looking for my daughter,” I say. I can feel the crowd getting restless behind me. I try to ignore them. I want to ask him if he’s seen her, but the chances are microscopic. Instead I ask him if there’s a way I can find out whether she has already been processed. If they’ve taken everybody’s name, then it must be possible.
“I’m not sure,” he says.
“There must be some way,” I say.
He glances over my head. He isn’t supposed to tell me, but he’s weighing it up against the time not telling me is taking.
“What’s your name?” I ask him.
He looks relieved that I’ve asked him a question he can answer. “Rob Taylor,” he says.
“Do you have children Rob?” I say. He looks too young, but it’s another question he can answer so it’s worth it.
“No sir,” he says.
“My daughter’s twelve years old Rob. We got separated during the evacuation. She’s all on her own. I only want to know if she’s here or not.”
“You’re supposed to go inside,” he says.
I nod. “I know that Rob. And I will. But I need to know if there’s a way I can find my daughter. She might already be in there.”
He swallows loud enough for me to hear.
“Please Rob.”
“There’s a central database,” he says. “It’s all on
paper so it might take a while—“
“I’ve got nothing else to do.”
He nods. “If you go to the stairs at the back of the centre. There’s offices at the top. Ask for a man called Michael Grant.”
“Michael Grant?” I say.
“That’s right.”
He doesn’t ask me to go inside again, I can see the warehouse through the glass doors behind him. There are people pressed up against the walls.
“Thank you,” I say.
He replies with a smile.
I walk past him, through the doors and into the evacuation centre.
The smell isn’t unpleasant but it isn’t human. I don’t know what the warehouse used to store but there is a musty quality to the air. It is different to being outside, the first time I’ve had a roof over my head in almost a week. I have an unexpected sense of claustrophobia.
There aren’t as many people as I expected and the space is vast. All the warehouse paraphernalia is stacked at one end of the room. In the middle there are rows and rows of camping beds.
I push my way through the circle of people that has formed around the outside. Most people look too startled and confused to push back. The few that do are not aggressive and I make it through without incident.
The noise is strange. People are talking. Their voices join a thousand other conversations, filling the space with a unreal jabber. I can’t make out anything other than noise but I’m not trying to.
Michael Grant, I think. “Michael Grant.”
I can see the stairs that Rob told me about. At the top there is a door and there are windows. I can’t see anyone up there, but I suspect it’s where the soldiers rest when they aren’t on duty.
No one tries to stop me going up.
I stand at the top and knock on the door.
A middle aged woman with her hair tied back opens it. She sees me and the door immediately starts to close.
“Wait!” I say, sticking my foot inside so she can’t lock me out.
“You shouldn’t be up here,” she says.
“Please, this is important,” I say.
“Take your foot out,” she says.
I don’t move and she stops trying to close the door.
“You need to leave now,” she says. “Or I will call security.”
“Please,” I say. “I’m looking for my daughter.”
“Well she isn’t up here,” she says with a hardness which doesn’t suit her.
“Is Michael here?” I say. “Michael Grant.”
She knows the name.
“Do you keep a record of everyone who comes here?” I say. “I want to know if my daughter is on it.”
“Who told you that?” she says, but the anger has gone from her voice.
“Please,” I say. I tell her how Harriet and I got separated, now she’s all alone. She listens without obvious emotion and I have no idea whether she is going to help me.
When I’ve finished she sighs. “Wait here.”
I nod but don’t take my foot out of the door and she doesn’t ask me to. She turns around and disappears into the room. I am left to wonder whether she is getting security or the man I’m looking for.
A few minutes later she returns with the man I am looking for.
Michael Grant is overweight. It’s the first time in weeks that I’ve seen anyone who has been able to maintain an unhealthy BMI. For everyone else, the apocalypse has been a crash diet which actually works.
Small miracles I suppose.
He invites me into the command centre. We sit at a table with stacks of lever-arch folders in the middle. The low ceiling room smells of burned coffee but no one offers to make me one.
I look back down at the folders and lists of names. It is more complicated because the names are in order of arrival. I will be able to narrow it down somewhat, but there are thousands of people arriving every day.
“Not everyone stays here,” Michael explains. “We’ve got twenty more, evacuation centres along the river and more on the coast. We’re a processing centre.”
I nod and try not to feel annoyed. This man is trying to help me and I should be grateful. But his words add more than the complication of finding my daughter’s name in a list of hundreds of thousands. Even if she’s in the folder, she could have moved on.
The woman who opened the door is Holly. She offers to make coffee, but isn’t helping me look for Harriet. Instead she sits at a desk in front of the window and looks down at the warehouse.
The coffee is cheap and bitter but it is good. I try not to enjoy it too much. Harriet is still missing, but the caffeine hit is like being slapped across the face.
We search for hours.
We don’t stop until a knock on the door disturbs us and we both watch Holly get up to answer it.
“My shift’s over,” Michael says.
“How much is left?” I say.
He shrugs. “There will be more tomorrow. I’ll be back in the morning,” he says, rising from his chair like a submarine. The air seems to shift around his massive bulk.
“Can I keep going?” I say.
He shakes his head. “Tomorrow.”
I want to keep searching, don’t want to abandon my daughter, but he is firm.
I nod and stand up. The man at the door looks at me suspiciously but I don’t say anything to him. Beneath the caffeine buzz I am still exhausted and don’t have the energy to convince anyone else to let me look for her.
Downstairs the noise tremendous. Michael told me there are ten thousand people sleeping here. Even if they all whisper the noise multiplies.
I find a bed near the stairs. I no longer have my bag, so I take off my coat and lay it on the thin sheets. I am hungry but my weariness takes priority. I lay down and feel as if I will sleep for a week.
When I close my eyes all I can see is her face.
Is Harriet in a bed? Somewhere safe and warm?
I am not sure I want to know the answer, even asking it is making me worry. I am a fraud, if only one of us can be here then it should be her.
What kind of father can sleep while his daughter is missing?
I open my eyes and stare at the corrugated ceiling high above. The lights are still on. I am hungry, tired, lonely. A million different things that I would gladly go on feeling if she was here.
Sleep is a long time coming, but eventually the room fades away and I am alone in the darkness.
I spend all the following day in the office with Michael.
We go through every single folder of names and snatch the new one’s as soon as they arrive.
Harriet’s name isn’t among them.
“Are you sure she wouldn’t have used a different name?” he asks me for the hundredth time.
I nod, of course I’m sure. What reason would she have for using a different name? That would suggest she didn’t want me to find her and I’m not even prepared to consider that possibility.
To be sure, we search under her mother’s name, but that isn’t there either.
“There’s still people arriving,” Michael says.
I nod.
“She could turn up any time.”
I nod again.
“I’ll pull some strings, make sure you aren’t transferred out.”
“Thanks,” I say.
I stare at the piles of folders. We have checked and rechecked each other so that I’ve stared at millions of names. She isn’t in any of the books.
They don’t ask me to leave, but after a while I do. I make my way back down the stairs and stand in the warehouse.
I look at the other people around me, for what seems like the first time. They are all dirty and scared, but there are groups of them together. There are friends and family here and I have no one.
This isn’t what concerns me.
What concerns me is Harriet. I don’t know where she is or what has happened to her. I try to think back to the route we took to the warehouse, whether there was somewhere she could have gotten lo
st.
Nothing occurs to me.
At night I sleep and in the morning I return to the office, hoping that she might have arrived. But she isn’t there. She’s never there.
During the day I walk. I ask people whether they saw a little girl with dirty blond hair, about twelve years old, wearing a green coat. Some of them look at me like I am mad. Most people ignore me. The rest shake their heads and go back to what they were doing before I interrupted.
She’s only a little girl.
Alone in the city.
Even if there wasn’t the Infected, or the evacuation, I would still worry. I would still be terrified.
Days go by and she still doesn’t arrive.
CHAPTER 11
THEY ARE STARTING TO MOVE PEOPLE ON.
THE flow of new arrivals has slowed to a trickle, the warehouse has begun to empty out.
I am like a ghost. People come and people go but I am still here.
The only other constant is the soldiers and some of them I no longer recognise.
They give me food to eat. It is old and stale but I am so hungry that I eat it anyway. I put some of whatever they give me away for Harriet. When she arrives she will be starving.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here when they close the doors. They pull down the shutters and the soldiers come inside. The message is clear; there are no more evacuees.
No one tells us what is going to happen next.
I don’t ask.
I try not to listen to the voices which tell me she is never coming, that she is dead or dying. I have already lost so much, I don’t think I could carry on if I lost her as well.
Rob is standing guard at the back door.
I haven’t spoken to him since I first arrived. He looks up as I approach, but he doesn’t seem to recognise me.
“You’re not supposed to be back here,” he says.
“I need to talk to you,” I say.
I have been awake all night thinking about this, but the words stick in my throat. I didn’t know it was going to be him at the door.
“You need to go back to the warehouse sir,” he says.
“It’s Rob, isn’t it?” I say.
He seems surprised that I know his name. How many people has he processed since the evacuation began? There’s no reason why he should remember me.