Stanley wasn't home. Jane waited outside the door, kidding himself that he could hear Stanley playing with his battery-powered trains and wooden track or pestering Cherry for a beaker of apple juice. He stood at the door, listening. He stood at the foot of the stairs, listening. He stopped at every landing and waited. The building was empty.
He pushed his way into his son's bedroom. Plaster and glass on the floor. Part of the ceiling was bowed and cracked; water created stalactites at its lowest point. The posters on the walls had been bleached to white oblongs; he could not remember what had hung there.
What do you want to be when you grow up, Stanley?
Lying in bed, this tiny boy, the duvet up to his chin. Hand on his soft blond hair, the heat of him rising through his fingers. A smell of soap. Sleepy-eyed. Some toy, some cheap piece of plastic that was his current favourite twisting in his fingers. Warm. Happy.
Umm, I want to be an actor in Star Wars. Because I want a real light saver.
Would you protect your mum and me if you had a light sabre?
It's light saver, Dad. But yeah, I'd cut Darth Vader's head off if he tried to hit you. And then push him off a clift.
A cliff?
No, I said a clift.
Good to know, Stan. Thanks.
He could convince himself that Stanley's pillow bore an impression of his head or that his smell lingered in the room. It was easy to convince yourself of anything if you needed it badly enough. He checked the note on the table. He couldn't distract himself by thinking that if Stanley were still around he'd probably not be able to read it, no matter that he was fifteen now. No schools. No teachers he knew of. Precious few children left to attend classes if there were.
Stanley. I come here every day. If you see this note, wait for me. I'll be with you very soon. I love you. Dad. x
Jane closed his eyes and felt nausea swelling. He staggered out to the hall and was as sick as he could be.
The rest of the flat displayed its unremarkable ghosts to him, as it had every day for the past ten years. There were some who were irked by his behaviour; others who envied his dedication and faith. He knew of people who had lost partners or children and who would not countenance thoughts that they were still alive. They were easily given up, the alternatives too horrifying to tolerate.
He sat by the window and looked out at the dead gardens behind the row of houses in the next street. The houses were losing their shape, brick and stone crumbling, steel rods in reinforced concrete becoming exposed. Edges were rounding everywhere. One day there would be no house to return to. A solid yellow puddle was a plastic football. The frames of cloches burned away covered patches of ground where rhubarb or strawberries might have grown. The flavour of cream itched at his memory, but he couldn't summon it. Nothing growing anywhere now. No dove to release; no green leaf to bring back.
A group had taken off, though, for the Continent shortly after he'd made contact with the capital's survivors, people who had already invented a name – The Shaded – for themselves. Jane remembered two of the expedition team: Hinchcliffe and Henderson, because they had the same names as his accountant and his secondary-school headmaster respectively. He couldn't remember anything of the other ten or twelve. They had set out for Dover, intending to steer a boat across the Channel to bring help back. They were like the Flat Earth Society, refusing to believe all evidence to the contrary, that this affliction had done for the entire planet. Wouldn't help have arrived already if it was the UK alone that was suffering? was a question they refused to consider. Nobody had seen any of them ever again.
Something snagged on Jane's vision, something that didn't move when he did. At first he thought it was a flaw in the glass, or a shadow falling, but when he angled his head he saw the tiny, greasy remains of fingerprints. He stared at the patterns in those pads, drawing closer until he could make out the whorls and curlicues, the signature of his boy, a hello from across the years.
16. SKINNERS
Dawn was always a hurdle. The break of filthy yellow light over the city, like a diseased yolk, heralded a reminder of what lay in wait for anybody who had lasted this long. We are but dust and a shadow, Jane remembered, and some of us aren't even that. London was shored up with bodies. They lay in drifts at the mouths of Tube stations and shop fronts. They foamed from the pits and ginnels of the cluttered interior, thickened the roads like browbeaten demonstrations. It was ceaseless, monotonous, Auschwitzian.
Jane gazed up at the bent and bowed and broken street lamps, the electrical wires, the dissolving architecture, and half expected to see vultures eyeing him, waiting for him to fall. But there weren't any vultures. Everything that had had a heartbeat was lost for ever. You could only goggle at bones, or try to remember. Hunger was causing people to forget. Jane often worried about that. The scrabble for food was erasing every other trait that made them human. How far into the future before it was all scrubbed clean and they were falling upon each other? It had already started, he was sure, among some of the other splinter groups that were dotted around the city. It was galling to think that you had to keep an eye on your neighbour as well as the Skinners.
He plodded towards the base of the Shaded, through the corridors of Regent's Park and the interstices of Somers Town, home to ghosts of diesel oil from the long-defunct termini of Euston, St Pancras and King's Cross. Regent's Park itself was a redzone. Short cuts were becoming a thing of the past. He turned north, along the old Caledonian Road, now marked only with painted black skulls on the walls. He had to wait at the railway bridge. A Skinner was prowling in the shadows. Jane watched it and wondered about its name. Who had come up with it? Olly Easby, was it? Or Lynn Botting? It was childishly simple, yet accurate. They might have stuck with something a little less graphic, that was all. It was unpleasant having to refer to them by way of a noun that also served as the verb for their actions. Although they wore evidence of that too, like jewellery, like trophies; there was no escaping what they did.
It was unusual to see a Skinner up and about at dawn or so soon after feeding, as this one undoubtedly had. The remains of a meal were strewn about its feet like some broken human jigsaw puzzle. Jane cast glances all around; they usually moved in packs of three or four, sometimes more. They weren't fast, but they had some intelligence. They knew how to orchestrate a successful hunt. He hoped this was a rogue specimen. It swung its head from side to side like a distressed elephant in a cage. The ancient, tanned face that masked its own features shook and jiggled as if threatening to slide free. The eyes that sat in those chokers of biltong were nothing of the sort. They were the decoy flashes found on the fins of fishes. They were vestigial: un-eyes. But these animals compensated, he knew that. They were snakes when it came to smell; cats when it came to sound. There was something almost supernatural about their ability to find warm living things, as if they knew the flavour of thought, or the flares that leapt human synapses.
Eventually the Skinner moved off, sloping left up a dusty access road to the trackside where it began to follow the rails west towards Camden. Another city redzone. Jane let his breath out. There was no telling how keen their senses were; breathing – Jesus – blinking might make enough noise for them to begin a dogged pursuit. They didn't give up when they had the scent of you in their nostrils. They would stalk you for weeks, long after you thought you were safe. Shaded advice now was, if you've been chased, consider yourself a hot target and do not touch any bases until you've been scrubbed down by medics.
Jane paused at the railway bridge to watch the hulking figure as it diminished. A final check, and he was through the crumbled perimeter wall of the prison, trotting towards the middle of the radial arms. Part of the wall here was caved in too. Inside he saw Linehan with a sub-machine gun.
'You don't have to point that at me,' Jane said. 'Do I look dangerous?'
'You smell dangerous.'
Jane pushed by him into the corridor. All of the cells were locked. Dead men sat or lay inside them. There were
claw marks on the walls, teeth marks on the bars. Most of these men had starved to death, their cries for help having gone unheard. Still nobody had found the keys to release them, to give them a burial, or cover their faces at least.
Jane's boots rang out on the metal walkways. In the office at the front of the building he found Gerber, Simmonds and Fielding sitting around a table playing cards. Ombre. Gerber versus the others.
'Hi,' Gerber said and lifted a hand. He was a man of around sixty who had once been very large. He kept his hair clipped short and oiled, and did the best he could to keep his facial hair in check.
'I saw a Skinner outside,' Jane said. 'Body, too.'
'Loner?' asked Simmonds. Simmonds was in her forties. She had large eyes that gave her the look of a St Bernard, always sad, expecting admonishment.
'Yes. Just outside here. Just by the railway bridge.'
'Gone now, though, yes?' Fielding still hadn't looked up to acknowledge Jane's presence. He fiddled with the fan of cards, getting them in a neat line under his fingers. Then he'd tap them together and fan them out again.
'Yes.'
'So?'
'So I thought you should know we've got fucking Skinners on the doorstep of the base.'
'Base changes site tomorrow,' Fielding said, handing him an envelope: this week's cipher.
'Time enough to have new holes eaten into your arse,' Jane said. Fielding wound him up like a cheap watch.
'I wouldn't worry,' Fielding said. 'And anyway, we could be sitting pretty before too long.'
His phrases. Jane could hit him sometimes. They were all emaciated; hunger was dragging them down. But Fielding had this optimism that made it all sound as though it was little more than a rainy day. It would blow over soon. It would all come out in the wash.
Jane wanted to eat. He had squirrelled away maybe a week's worth of tins for himself, Becky and Aidan by going without for a whole day, once in a while. It left him perilously close to fainting, and he knew that if he did that he would die – food for the Skinners. Or maybe someone else. He hadn't thought that way at all before, not even in the most desperate moments when he could feel his own famished body feeding off itself. It seemed a taboo too far. He would never do it himself. But then there had been a meeting among the Shaded, or some supposed faction of theirs. Hollow faces sitting around a table. Steepled fingers. Furrowed brows. Chins stroked as they debated whether to enforce euthanasia on those that were draining supplies but not giving anything back to the community. The mentally handicapped. The lame. Babies. There was calm talk of what to do with the bodies. There was mention of recipes.
Jane had not been there for the meeting, and rumour was as slippery as ever, more so now, so he wasn't sure what to believe. But he had to entertain the possibility. You keep the most dangerous option in view and it was one more safety measure, another peeled eye to keep you whole.
'What is it?' Jane asked. He hated having to probe and pry for information. Fielding was no further up the chain of command. There was no chain of command. 'One of the gardens suddenly full of shoots?'
'Would that it was. No, this is unsubstantiated . . .' Jane felt the flare of excitement dimming already. More rumour. '. . . But there have been enough mentions, from disparate sources, to give it credence. Or at last make it a concern that deserves independent exploration.'
It was like listening to a formal speech. He'd never really talked to Fielding about his background but Jane wagered there'd been some ambition towards public office there.
'What is it?' he said again, patiently.
Fielding stopped fanning cards and blinked. In that moment his gaze switched from the suits to Jane's eyes. Very theatrical, Jane thought. Very Fielding. 'Have you ever heard of the raft?'
'The raft? No. What about it?'
Fielding shrugged. 'Conjecture, at the moment. But a picture is building up. Some say it's a military op. Some refer to a ragtag group of engineers, architects, carpenters and metalworkers all pooling resources. But whatever, pretty much every report talks of a floating sanctuary being constructed off the Kentish coast. Self-sufficient. Currently anchored but with a crude propulsion system. Sheltered from the elements. And, um, capable of transporting a hundred people.'
'A hundred?' Jane spluttered. 'On a raft? Get some grub down you, Alex. You're delusional.'
'It's what we've heard.'
'Well, it's what I've heard too, now, and I think it's bollocks.'
'We have a duty to check it out.'
'Right. Is this the same duty we have to follow the rainbow to its end, or put a tail on someone who may or may not be a leprechaun?'
'We've got men on it right now. There's a reconnaissance team on its way to Kent. Another doing the rounds here, collecting evidence.'
'Evidence? Hearsay, you mean.'
'We're trying to ascertain where the rumours are originating.'
'And then what? Punish the kid who's been making this stuff up?'
'It might be true. And even if it isn't, it's a good idea. We've got the manpower and the smarts. We need to be more proactive, Richard. We're getting overrun.'
Gerber and Simmonds had quietly placed their cards on the table and removed themselves from the room. People tended not to chip in when Fielding was in full flow.
'We have options open to us here,' Jane countered. 'We have secure bases all across the capital. We know the zones where the Skinners tend to congregate. Surely, once they discover that this place is not the free buffet they thought it was they'll move on.'
'Secure bases, you say?' Fielding mugged, one eyebrow raising. Jane felt like an opposition politician who has let slip a crucial piece of information. He felt skewered. 'Let me show you something.' He led the way to what had once been the prison governor's office. Any decoration – bookshelves, paintings, framed certificates – had been removed. The floors and walls displayed a series of pale parallelograms where things had once been. There was a map of London spread out on the floor, anchored at each corner by a shoe. Much of the centre of it had been whited out with Tipp-Ex.
'Our main base at Elephant and Castle was attacked last week,' Fielding said. 'We've moved out. Burned it down. Their net is closing, Richard. We're vastly outnumbered.'
'And the answer to that is to play cards?'
Fielding did not look up from the map. He sighed. He was a big man, or had been once. Everyone was a shade now, a blueprint of what once was. 'I just finished a twelve-hour shift burning dead bodies and scouring bad zones in south Tottenham. I watched Alan Poole get trapped in a loop of fire of his own making. Burned right through the oxygen hose on the tank on his back. We pulled him out – he'd been breathing fire for twenty seconds. He's going to die. At the moment Doctor Sinclair is making a decision as to whether to let that happen without painkillers, as we really can't spare them. Go down and have a listen to Poole breathing and then tell me what I should do to take my mind off things instead of playing cards.'
Jane chewed at his resentment. 'I'm sorry,' he said.
'Forget it.' Now Fielding raised his head, and there was spice in his eyes as he regarded Jane. 'What have you been doing?'
Spoken as if he was in charge. The implicit needle: Whatever it is can't be as important as what I've been up to. Jane felt disgust rising. The best part of sixty million people dead and here they were playing office bitches.
He tried to keep the resentment from his voice as he said: 'Recon. We have a vermin problem in Mayfair. No more than anywhere, I suppose. No Skinners that I saw.'
'And how about Maida Vale? Skinners there?'
'Not my patch.'
'No, it isn't. So why were you seen there? Three times in the last week. At least.'
'You know why.'
'We need you elsewhere. We don't have the numbers. The resistance has many weak spots. Only by adhering to the tight disciplines and schedules we've set ourselves can we hope to keep ahead of the Skinners.'
'Spare me the team talk, Alex. I do my job. Anything ou
tside of that I do in my own time.'
'But you have to face up to the facts. It's been ten—'
'Shut up. I'm warning you to shut up. I haven't slept well. I haven't eaten today. I am in no mood for this discussion.'
Fielding gazed at him, his face a serene blank. Jane waited. He could see this inspection was meant to unsettle him. Let Fielding make his silent judgements and evaluations. Let him report back to his stupid committee with its imaginary powers.
'The pills are running out, Richard,' Fielding said. His voice had cracked – it was nothing like as calm and assured as the face that delivered it. 'The booze is running out too. Someone – a Skinner, I hope – ransacked one of the warehouses. There's nothing left: no grain, no barley, no potatoes with which to make any new stuff. There's nobody with the knowledge, or the machinery, to synthesise new prophylactic drugs either. When we run out, we've had it. And I don't intend to hang around long once that happens. Our only chance is to get off this island, find someone, a health team that can cure us, a surgeon who can cut this out of us, I don't know, but staying here is sitting in a waiting room for a GP who isn't coming into work any more.'
The soft tang of footsteps on a distant walkway. Jane thought about the cells. There was dried blood on some of the bars where inmates had tried to squeeze through or tear a way out. He could almost believe that the echoes of their cries were flying around the heights of the prison, like trapped birds.
'How can you stand it in here?' he asked, but he was only filling the silence. Fielding knew that. There was no answer to the question. Anywhere was better and worse than the place where you were. You'd still be trapped inside yourself, with yourself, with what you were likely to become. 'I haven't heard anything of these rumours. You mentioning the raft just now, that's the first I've heard of it.'
'It could just be a rumour, like I said. We have to take it seriously. But if it exists I don't want us sitting on our arses here while people are paddling to safety. We have to hope it's real and we have to hope that anywhere other than here is a safer, better place to be.'
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