“Because,” scoffed Nathaniel, “he thinks he’s bloody King.”
Jack noticed Kit and Nina—even Barnden—looked uncomfortable at him taking the piss.
“I’m a dead man,” Jack told them. “That’s all I am now. But whatever happens to me, you lot go back to Oxford, where there will be people who helped set this up. If I do this, then it’s between me and them. You keep out of it, carry on with your lives.”
Barnden shrugged. “You don’t know if any of the rest of us are in on it.”
“No,” said Jack. “I don’t. So this is the deal. We do the job, whatever it takes. Then you lot get to go home. No more complications.”
The others didn’t argue. Jack had to take his pistol in his left hand and couldn’t quite hold it steady. Singhar smoothed his moustache and smiled pleasantly at Jack, like a kindly uncle. Oh, the little shit was still playing head games.
“It’s not about me,” Jack told him. “It’s not Jaye or any of the rest of them. But we’re in a national crisis and you threatened our mission to put that right. You betrayed your country.”
A flinch; that one struck home. Jack squeezed the trigger and a bullet punched a hole through Singhar’s face. The old man staggered back. Jack fired again and ended it.
No one said anything. Jack handed the gun back to Alice and made his way to the horses. He chose the smaller horse—it would be easier to get on to—and Jane hurried over to help, but he got into the saddle himself. He winced as he shifted his weight in the saddle; it felt like his insides might explode.
Eyes wet with tears, head throbbing from the pain, he looked down on the others. Jack knew he looked ridiculous, with his neck in a brace and his body all bandaged up, his trousers torn and covered in muck, his acne and greasy hair. And yet the looks on their faces—a mixture of surprise and awe at the way he’d just taken charge. For this fleeting moment, he’d got them.
“Let’s go,” he said. They collected their bikes and followed him, leaving the corpse on the road.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JACK KNELT BY the roadside, chucking up his guts. The stench from the steaming pool of sick turned his insides and he vomited again. At last, there was nothing left to come and he lay back on the cold tarmac, catching his breath.
It was a cold night and a half-moon made everything eerily silver. Jack’s wound and throat ached, his whole head was on fire. And yet, for all the shivery awfulness, he felt a blessed relief to be off the horse at last.
“We should check the damage,” said Jane, and Jack didn’t resist as she and Kit began to unpick his bandages. The others were off to one side of the road, setting up camp and sorting out a meal. They moved slowly, wearily, after the day’s long ride.
Barnden cradled the rifle they’d taken from the sniper, which he assured them had a better range than his own gun. He kept watch while the others worked in silence, weary and apprehensive of more trouble to come. They’d chosen a patch of road that had good views all around—though they’d felt the same about the road where Jaye had died.
“Shit,” said Jane as the bandages revealed the mess of Jack’s chest. He couldn’t see what she was looking at.
“No,” said Kit, leaning in for a closer look, a nerdy fascination on his face. “A lot of this is sweat and muck from the journey, but look—the wound is pretty clean.” He smiled down at Jack. “You’ve been lucky, Your Highness.”
“Urf,” said Jack, and with more effort added: “Don’t feel very lucky.”
“We need to put on new dressings,” said Jane. “It’s probably going to hurt.”
“It already hurts.”
“Hey,” said Kit. “We don’t have many dressings left in the bag.”
“We can’t risk leaving him like this,” said Jane, and to prove the point she tore off the dressing in one sudden movement. Jack screamed and kicked out, then fell back, hitting his head on the road.
“Sorry,” said Jane. “Better to get it over with. I’d give you an aspirin, but I don’t think you’d keep it down.”
Jack was in no state to respond. Now the ordeal was over, the evening air whispered round the hole in his chest, cool and soft and soothing. He was so desperately tired.
“He’s not going to make it,” he heard Kit whisper to Jane.
“Of course he will,” snapped Jane. “I’m not letting him go.”
But Jane’s words—and Jane—were fading.
HE FELL THROUGH lucid battles and explosions, warped echoes of those he’d fought, populated by those he had lost. As he dodged the gunfire, he had to apologise for having forgotten everyone’s names...
When Jack woke, he found himself wrapped in sweat-sodden blankets by a campfire, Nathaniel keeping watch as the other slept. Beside Jack, Jane stirred and wearily sat up. She took his temperature, frowned and got him to drink water. It burned his throat and the hacking cough sent needles of pain through his chest. His piteous weeping woke the others, who muttered about the noise as they turned away and tried to get back to sleep.
Jane wedged her bags against Jack so that he could sit up, which seemed to help with the coughing. Then she draped her own blanket on top of his, and snuggled up beside him. He tried, miserably, to express his gratitude, but she hushed him, cooing gently in his ear that it would okay, that he would soon be through this.
As he drifted back to his nightmares, he didn’t know whether she meant that he’d recover or that he’d die.
HE FELT PRETTY much dead the next morning, and the others looked little better. It seemed he’d kept them awake through the night. When he tried to apologise, Alice told him to fuck off.
“Does that make you feel any better?” he asked her
“Yeah,” she said, not backing down. Jane hurried to Jack’s side, ready to defend him. Alice raised her hook in accusation. But Jack grinned.
“Then that’s good,” he said. “Anyone else want to say it?”
The others weren’t sure, until Nathaniel good-naturedly said, “Go fuck yourself, Your Majesty.”
“Yeah, fuck off,” agreed Barnden.
Kit whispered it. Nina laughed at him and took great delight in proclaiming, “Fuck off, King Jack.”
Finally there was Jane. “You’re a fucking nutcase,” she told him.
They settled down to breakfast over the fire. Jack managed some sausage and egg without throwing it up, though it felt like knives inside him and then he had to stumble away to the hedge at the side of the road when his bowels turned to water. His friends—that’s what they were now—grinned ruefully or offered a thumbs-up. He told them to fuck off.
While the others packed up the camp, Jane stripped Jack naked and scrubbed away the shit and crusted blood. He lay there, cold but unembarrassed in front of everyone else. In fact, as Jane worked him over, he managed a bit of an erection.
“Sorry,” he said when she noticed. She only rolled her eyes.
By the time Jane had got Jack dressed again, the others had started to argue. They were all determined to get moving, to lose no more time. But Kit insisted there was no way Jack could get back on the horse and that he should have a day to rest. Jane backed up Kit.
“I mean, look at the state of him,” she said.
“I’m okay, really,” said Jack, as the others appraised him. The argument went round and round until Barnden stormed off and Jack thought they might have lost him. Then he was back, hauling an old two-wheeled trailer he’d liberated from an abandoned car. With ropes, they managed to harness it to the horse, which Nathaniel offered to ride. Jack proved too long to lie in the trailer, so they used their packs to prop him up in a seated position, which would have to do.
Finally the gang set off, the trailer bumping and bucking over every imperfection in the road. It made Jack want to be sick again. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the dizziness. It didn’t seem possible that he would ever be able to sleep. And yet soon enough he did.
THEY MADE STEADY progress south round the M25. Along the way they met peo
ple: fellow travellers or enterprising locals offering items for sale. Some were welcoming, most were wary, especially of Barnden, as Rangers had a bad reputation south of London—more than anything because they were so rarely seen there. Kit and Nina tested Jane on the physics of nuclear reactors from their handwritten notes, Jack half listening as he dozed. In his more lucid moments, he found he knew most of the answers. The words didn’t mean anything, but he could recite them back.
One time he woke to an argument between Jane and Alice about the gibbet cages hanging from the walls of Oxford.
“You’ve got to have discipline,” said Alice, as if it was obvious. “We’ve seen enough of what people are like without the rule of law.”
“I agree we need rules and laws,” said Jane, just holding on to her temper. “But displaying the rotting corpses of those who step out of line?”
“How else do you make people take notice? You can’t go up to some thieving, murdering wretch and say, ‘Please, love, can you not?’”
“So the gibbets aren’t about punishment. They’re about scaring everyone else.”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“So no one else breaks the rules.”
“Yeah!”
“Yet somehow, despite this deterrent, you’ve still got a steady supply of bodies to put on display.”
“Well,” said Alice. “We get a lot of people visiting the city who don’t know how to behave. Look, it’s not like we haven’t had this discussion ourselves. The Council, then the new government, they went over and over all the different angles.”
“Yeah, well,” said Jane. “Forgive me if I don’t exactly take that as an endorsement.”
Alice shrugged. “You think His Majesty would do anything else if he was in charge?”
Jack remained very still, his eyes closed—but the two women didn’t seem interested in what his opinion might be.
“Jack doesn’t want to be a dictator.”
“But where would he stand on the rule of law? Look, we’ve all lived through a pretty shitty time. We’ve seen things—we’ve done things—we can’t get out of our heads. The whole country is still acting batshit crazy. If we’re gonna survive, we need clear boundaries about what is acceptable behaviour. And more than that, we need to know that everyone has to follow the same rules, and what happens if they don’t. It’s the only way.”
Jane didn’t say anything for a time. Then, in a small voice, she said, “Jack won’t agree with you.”
“Well,” said Alice. “We can ask him when he wakes up.”
Jack maintained the pretence of being asleep and the gang carried on in uneasy silence, just the sound of the bikes and the horse and the trailer. Then Kit and Nina started asking Jane about physics and Jack slept. When he next opened his eyes, night had fallen and they were off the M25 and on narrower, less tended, potentially more dangerous roads, and Alice was too busy watching for assassins to ask his views on capital punishment.
When they finally set up camp, Jack felt better for a day of relative rest and made a point of cooking a meal to thank the rest of the gang. It wasn’t much—a stew much like the one from the previous evening—but they appreciated the gesture. Alice passed round a flask of whisky so they could toast the health of their chef.
“A good day,” Jack told Jane later, as they took turns on watch.
“For you, maybe,” she said. “Some of us did a lot of cycling.”
“No one died,” he said, and she sighed.
“No. But tomorrow...” Tomorrow, all being well, they would reach Dungeness. They sat in silence, watching the flickering campfire.
“The worst thing,” said Jane at length, “is being so close. I mean, we’re practically in sight of St Mark’s. We could have popped in.”
“We still can. If you want to.”
She shivered at the thought. “I couldn’t see Lee again, then go on with what we have to do.”
He took her hand. “It’s got to be done. Whatever it takes, we do it.”
“I know.”
“But if there’s a way where you don’t have to go inside...”
She smiled at him. “Let’s have another drink.” She twisted round to reach for the flask of whisky. That sudden movement meant the bullet sang over her shoulder rather than right through her head. It hit the horse instead, who tottered over with a pitiful groan.
The others sprang awake. Jane was already pointing a gun into the darkness, letting off a couple of shots. But with the fire behind them, they could see little out there.
“Fuck!” said Jack. “Now what?”
Barnden suddenly shoved Kit, sending him reeling—and out of the path of another bullet. Jane cracked off a shot in the direction it had come from. Nathaniel pushed her out of the way, crouching forward in her place and clipping something to the front of his glasses. A night-vision attachment.
“Alice,” he said softly. “Two of them. Half past seven and about fifty yards.”
Alice expertly bowled one of the grenades she’d confiscated from the snipers the day before, then had to dive to the ground as a volley of bullets came her way. A moment later, a deafening explosion lit up the night, spattering them with clumps of mud. There was a scream, too, but Nathaniel and Alice were already rushing out into the dark. Barnden looked tempted to follow, then opted to check on the horse.
For a moment, the others crouched in silence, straining to see what had become of their friends. The wind carried the voice of a man—not Nathaniel—begging for mercy, and then screaming. The screaming stopped. After a moment, a single gunshot rang out—horribly close. They turned to find Barnden standing over the horse, his pistol smoking.
Nathaniel and Alice marched out of the darkness, Alice wiping her bloody hook on her sleeve. They made for their blankets, returning straight to bed.
“There might be more of them out there,” Jack protested.
Nathaniel shook his head. “The boy told us everything. Thought they’d scare us off, then help themselves to what we left behind.” He snorted with annoyance. “Just a pair of kids.”
Alice, wrapped in her blankets, reached for the flask of whisky, lying where Jane had dropped it.
NATHANIEL AND ALICE tucked into their breakfasts the next morning, but no one else had much of an appetite. Jack felt hollow and sickly, yet Jane had to admit her amazement at how much he’d improved.
“Another day and I’d have let you back on the horse.”
“We don’t have another day,” he shrugged—then realised what he’d said.
Without the horse, he and Nathaniel had to walk. The others rode slowly and haltingly, while Alice and Barnden disappeared off to scout the road ahead.
“There’s a town,” they reported a little after noon. “Lydd. Last town before Dungeness. Only way in is over a bridge across the old railway. They’ve got barbed wire and machine guns in place. Not exactly encouraging.”
“We could go round,” said Jack, from where he sat exhausted on the roadside, prosthetic on the ground next to him, massaging his aching stump with his one free hand.
“There’s signs saying man-traps,” said Alice. “But that might be a trick.”
“Okay,” said Jack—and found them all watching him expectantly. He tried not to show his surprise. “The sensible thing is to send one or two of us up to the town, see how they get on.”
“You volunteering?” said Barnden.
“Sure.” Jack reached down for his leg. “You going to come, too? Make sure I don’t run away?”
“Don’t think there’s much chance of that,” said Nathaniel. “You can only just about walk.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Suppose they don’t like the look of you,” said Alice.
“Hey,” said Jack. “I’m quite respectable.”
“Suppose there’s trouble?” said Alice. “Like he said: you can’t run, or fight.”
“Then I’ll use my powers of persuasion.”
No one seemed convinced. Instead, Nathani
el and Alice offered to go in his stead.
“You’d better dump some of your weapons first,” said Jane. “Don’t want to give these people the wrong idea.”
Alice didn’t like it, but she and Nathaniel unloaded most of their arsenal into Barnden’s care. Nathaniel gave his night vision attachment to Jane, who was clearly astonished and touched. Alice removed a yellow brick of plastic from her pack.
“Unfolds into the protective suit for the reactor,” she said, offering it to Jack.
“He can’t carry any more,” said Jane.
“Fine,” said Alice, offering it to Jane—who instinctively stepped back as Alice let it go. The pack thudded to the ground. “What are you playing at?” the patrolwoman snapped. Nathaniel grabbed her arm and dragged her away.
“Sorry,” said Jane to no one in particular, staring down at the package at her feet.
Jack took her arm. “Bit soon,” he said. “Bit real.” She nodded.
“I’ll take it,” said Nina, stepping in. “It makes sense anyway, to have it with all the notes.” She beamed at Jane, who smiled back, eyes wet with tears.
“Right,” said Nathaniel. “Then we’ll be off.”
“Be careful,” said Jack. “No chances, no fucking about.”
“’Course not,” said Nathaniel. “I like a quiet life. We’ll be back in an hour.”
“Or we won’t,” said Alice. “Joke.”
She and Nathaniel considered using bikes but opted to walk, looking casual. It was almost comical, watching them head away down the road as if taking a stroll.
“Right,” said Jack. “An hour. I might have a nap.”
FIVE HOURS LATER, there was no sign of Alice or Nathaniel. Barnden and Kit dared to head down the road to within sight of the town, on the off-chance they might spot some clue. There were people on the machine gun at the gate, and the sound of activity from inside the town: voices and movement, the usual bustle of a community.
“Do we even know they’re in there?” said Kit, after he and Barnden had returned to the others. “I mean, they could have just wandered off.”
End of the End Page 6