2184
by Martin Parish
“What is the ape to the man? A jest or a thing of shame. Then so also shall the man be to the superman: a jest or a thing of shame.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
Copyright 2010 by Martin Parish
All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead or past events is purely coincidental.
Chapter 1
In the middle of the street a tree had grown through a pothole in the tarmac. The tree's first leaves were red because it was springtime.
I paused for a moment to pull on my jacket, a threadbare buffer against the evening chill. I'd been down to Norwood that afternoon and I was impatient to get back. The shortest route I could take ran through the eastern end of London's rotting core – the City, the old financial district. I didn't want to cross iy todark.
There was always another option, though. Instead of trying to make it all the way I could stay south of the river for the night. I could stop by a friend's place, or I could camp out in any of the empty buildings that pockmarked south London. It was tempting. I was knackered after yesterday's overnight shift, my brain charred with fatigue like cinders soldering in my skull. But the small box I carried under one arm reminded me why I had to get home. It doesn't matter, I told myself, you won't regret it once you're there.
Around the corner I turned onto the sidewalk of a high street. A stream of customers and window-shoppers eddied around dingy shops selling food, fabrics, synfuel, gadgets, electrical repair. It was a young crowd, people in their teens, twenties, thirties, enjoying the last of the late afternoon. Above the shops the windows on the second and third stories were shut – at least the ones that were still intact; many of them were boarded up or smashed. Bicycles sped along the vacant lanes, their right to the road undisputed in the absence of cars; one cyclist trundled past us slowly, hauling a two-wheel trailer of scrap metal. A couple seated at a rusty table outside a corner coffee shop watched him with idle curiosity. The decomposing corpse of a pigeon lay in the gutter a yard away from their feet, a bed of trash for its bier, feathers fluttering gently.
Across the road I took a side street bordering a brick-and-plaster terrace, the inhabited houses marked apart from abandoned ones by the solar cells that studded the slate roofs, each cell emerald-green like a beetle's wing when it catches the sun. About a block and a half down the side street I suddenly realized I'd made a mistake. I began to retreat, but it was too late. She'd seen me.
“Mark! It's Mark." I'd been ambushed. I should have taken another route; instead, from force of habit, I'd followed the most familiar path. The voice belonged to a stoop-shouldered black woman made simian by age, her dark hair streaked with grey. Her dull watery eyes seemed out of focus. She'd just emerged from the front gate and stood holding the latch in one hand.
“He-llo, Audrey," I said as she approached me, shuffling like an old bag-lady gone lame.
"You mean to tell me you were going to walk right by and not stop to see us?" She shook her head and smiled.
"I'm in a hurry, can't stop now. I would, but I can't.”
"It's Saturday."
"I've got to get back.”
"I don't know you can get back to Islington tonight."
"Depends on how fast I walk,” I said.
"You must walk like you've got wings," she said. "I could never walk that far in a single afternoon. Not even when I was young I couldn't've done it."
"We all do what we have to."
"Now that's true. But there's something I want to ask," she added; "have you seen Abel today?" Abel was her son.
"No, I haven't.”
"I thought he was with you.”
“No, I haven't seen him,” I said. “I worked the overnight shift yesterday.”
“Then I don't know where he is now. As long as he's back by dark, I suppose.”
"It doesn't matter," I said. "There's no curfew south of the Thames. Not for two and a half years now.”
"That's true. But it's still risky staying out after dark. And I don't always know where he goes to anyway.”
"It doesn't really matter, it's not like it used to be,” I said, my tone taut with irritation. “I stay out after dark all the time. Even north of the river. But I don't like to do it unless I have to. Which is why I've got to go now, so- it's nice seeing you-”
"I don't see why you'd walk all that way unless you have to. Why don't you stay here for the night? We wouldn't mind. You could walk there in the morning."
I wavered for a moment then made up my mind. "No, that's all right, thank you. Listen-”
"But won't you stay just a minute though?" She glanced over her shoulder like a gossip sharing a guilty secret. "We've got some tea,” she whispered. “Real tea.” The words shocked me into paying attention.
"How'd you get it? No one has any," I said. She placed her finger on her lips.
"Abel got it. But don't say anything, just come inside and I'll show you. I can give you some to take back to Becky. She'll like it, won't she.”
“Yes.” Yes, Becky would. I'd bring some back to her; her surprise would be worth the delay. After all, it would only take a few minutes, I told myself. What difference would that make?
I followed her inside. The house was well-maintained but sunk in permanent twilight, since there were no electric lights and Audrey hung curtains across the windows. I liked Audrey and her son Abel was a friend of mine, but I also found her frustrating. She inflicted her generosity on you whether you wanted it or not. When she told me she had tea, though, she'd piqued my curiosity. It had been years since I'd tasted tea and Becky would love it. I remembered it as an exotic melange of subtle flavours, a relic of another age like tobacco cigarettes.
In the kitchen, Audrey opened a cupboard and retrieved a nondescript cardboard box. The inside of it wlined with wax paper and half-full of dark black loose leaf. "Here, smell that." The luxuriant fragrance of bergamot wafted from the open mouth of the box.
"Where'd you get it?"
"It wasn't me that got it, it was Abel," she said.
"But where did he get it then?" She beckoned to me and I drew closer until I could smell the faint scent of the synthetic lavender she used for perfume.
"He got it from the Mods," she said to me in a conspiratorial whisper and nodded significantly.
""Wonder why they had it. You'd think they'd say something like tea was inefficient. Did he steal it?"
"No, he knows one of them."
“He never told me about it," I said.
She raised her eyebrows. "Well, maybe he didn't tell you about it, but it's a fact."
"That's amazing. But how do you heat the water? I didn't know you had electricity.”
"No, I don't have solar panels or a generator or anything. But we buy synfuel, and I light a fire in the fireplace whenever I want to heat anything. I'll give you some to take back to Becky, and I'll make you a cup. It's really good, you've got to try it.”
"Listen, I've got to leave,” I said.
She shook her head. “That's how you young people are now. It'll only take five minutes. What difference can five minutes possibly make?”
“I don't know. I just-”
“It's like you said, the streets are safer now than they've been in years. If you are worried I don't see why you wouldn't stay for the night.”
I sighed inwardly. She was right. It would be pleasant to sit down for five minutes. “All right. But only five minutes. That's it.”
"Look at this, here I'm offering you something
you can't even get any more and you haven't hardly said thank you.”
“All right then, thank you.”
She nodded. “That's better. I'll go and put the fire on. So where did you go today?”
“Down to Norwood.”
“What's that you've got? Is that for Becky?”
“Yes,” I said.
She shuffled out of the kitchen to the fireplace, and I heard her voice through the doorway: "You can take her some of this too, I'll put some in a bag for you. She'll like it. I was going to say - it's a really wonderful thing he got it, too. Abel's so clever I don't know how he does half the things he does. And I haven't had tea in forever, all we have is this God-awful crap -water. I don't know what they put in it."
“I know,” I said, watching sunlight filter through a curtain and draw patterns on the floor. I felt uneasy; impatience nagged me like a wasp. Part of me wanted to leave, immediately, without wasting any more time. Bravado aside, I'd never crossed the whole of Central London by night before. But I was too proud to plead fear as an excuse, and besides, I believed it was irrational. My confidence dismissed the risks as illusions and steeled me to forget them.
"So how's Becky?" she asked. From the echo it sounded as if her head were in the fireplace. I walked through the doorway. She'd lit the fire and it burnt a bright blue, casting complex shadows on the wall.
"Oh, she's doing well, thank you," I answered.
"Is she still sick?"
"No, she got over that. It was just a cold."
“You've both been together, what is it-”
“Two years now,” I said. “Two years in a month from now.”
"So it's almost your anniversary?”
“That's right. It is.”
“You should leave London, the two of you.”
“Why?” I asked.
"If I was your age I'd leave. It's getting worse here all the time."
"It's better here," I said. "I've talked to people who've been other places and it's better here. It's easier to get food, clothes, everything's cheaper-”
“I don't know about that,” Audrey sniffed.
“Besides I've got a good job. No point in losing it,” I added.
"That's how they keep us in our place," Audrey said in an undertone. "They give us cheap crap so we stay quiet. They pay you with their money so you can spend it on their crap, and all they're doing is giving us their leftovers, what they don't want. Look at how it is now with all the schools closed. Now we've got all these children that don't even know how to read, they don't even want to learn any more, they think reading's for old people. What happens if they arrest you? What do you think happens to you then?”
“They only come after you if you break the rules. As long as you don't break the rules you're fine.”
“I don't believe that, not for a second.”
"It's not really even us and them now," I said. “It's not like that.”
She shook her head. “I don't know what's wrong with you young people. No memory, that's what it is. I suppose you've forgotten all about the war by now.”
“No, I remember.” I'd been a child at the time. I remembered peering through the window at bodies like drab bundles in the road, my mother upstairs screaming get away from the door! I remembered the acrid tang of smoke, the fine soot that coated countertops like soft black snow, people talking in hushed voices about terrorists with nuclear weapons obliterating far-off New York and Shanghai. I remembered when the Internet and the mobile phone networks died – only temporarily, or so we thought, but they were never resurrected, and later they were forbidden.
But one image in particular had etched itself into my memory, an image more vivid than the rest. A girl my age choking, coughing up cherry-coloured clots that dribbled down her chin and stained her clothes. And I had watched her, paralysed to act, knowing she was tainted, that she exhaled an invisible enemy like vapour on her breath. Of all the innovations that emerged from the Species War, the bioweapons were the most successful. Some germs devastated crops to cause famine; the other group, the class C bioweapons, were crafted with uncanny precision to target humans themselves.
“I remember,” I repeated. “But it was a long time ago. It's not like it's still happening.”
Audrey breathed in sharply and cast me an accusing look. “I can't believe you'd say a thing like that. To me.”
I sighed. “All right. I'm sorry. Didn't mean it like that.”
"Now if someone had talked to me-" she stabbed her chest with her forefinger for emphasis - "like that and I was your age - But you young people now just do what you're told. Young people aren't what they used to be,” she sighed. I smiled and secretly pitied Abel. "It's like I've said before, Becky's too good for you, she really is. Here, I think it's almost ready."
"That quickly?"
"Well, I heated some up earr, so if you heat it up again it's faster the second time. Here, let me get you a cup."
"You know, this is really kind of you-" I said.
"Nonsense, I couldn't drink it all by myself." She poured the hot water over the tea and the soothing scent flooded my brain. "How do you like that."
"It's wonderful. Thanks again. I'd forgotten what that tastes like. I was worried it'd be like synthetic coffee or something.”
“Synthetic coffee!” She sniffed. “That's not coffee. That's acid and crap in hot water, that's what that is. Now with tea you have to let it sit for two or three minutes. You're always in too much of a hurry. I wonder what's kept Abel so late. He knows he should be back.”
"I don't see why,” I said.
She tutted with impatience. “Because it worries me when he's not back when he's supposed to be, that's why.”
"Oh, don't worry about him, he can manage himself."
"I'm sure he can." She sniffed again. I suspected this scene was re-enacted every other week. And yet in spite of her carping Audrey was so generous it was impossible to dislike her. So generous, in fact, it surprised me she'd survived.
I finally escaped Audrey about half an hour later and headed north towards Tower Bridge. I'd lost a little time, but I'd gained something else. I carried the box under my arm and in my pocket a plastic bag half full of tea. Becky would be surprised. I pictured the look on her face and laughed to myself. I could feel her in my arms already, the touch of her lips, her brown eyes, her hair.
As I approached the bridge I glanced upstream. Past the swarming rooftops a group of crystalline towers pierced the skyline, rising from what had once been Whitehall and Trafalgar Square. Their colour changed to match the light, and at that moment the sunset's dying glow suffused them with fire. Planted amidst the ruins of Westminster they were as incongruous as a skyscraper in a slum. A row of red lights glowered from the top tier of one building and fear prodded me to walk faster.
Across the bridge I plunged into the maze of roads around Fenchurch Hill. If I looked back I could see people dotting the Embankment on the south side of the Thames, but the north bank was desolate as a ruin. I walked even faster than before, keeping to the side streets and narrow alleys, and the echo of my footsteps followed me.
This was the graveyard of Central London; the broken remains of the former capital. The suburbs might still cling to life, but the city centre had been abandoned to decay. Steel skeletons of office complexes brooded over empty banks and warehouses – their customers dead, their furniture gone, their premises strangely lifeless. Broken windows watched me like empty eye sockets as I passed. Dried footprints mar="0"he aisles behind barren storefronts. Some buildings had collapsed completely and spilled their guts into the road, piles of rubble wreathed in shattered glass.
Over the next few minutes the last dregs of daylight vanished, and the buildings faded to a forest of morose silhouettes. By the time I passed City Road the sky was completely dark. I'd crossed Central London many times by daylight before, but there were usually a trickle of other people walking the main streets at those hours. After nightfall it was completely diff
erent. I might have been the only creature alive in that decaying wilderness of brick and steel, I felt conspicuous like a hiker crossing a rifle range. With hindsight I wished I'd detoured farther East – walked down the Thames and taken another bridge. It would have set me back a few hours, but it might have been worth it; the breathless silence made my skin crawl. A rumour had it that there were orzillos loose in the City, and although I didn't really believe it I half-feared I'd see jade or ruby-coloured eyes studying me from the mouth of an abandoned shop.
Stop it, I told myself. Come on, how old are you? In under half an hour I'd reach the inhabited areas again. Close to Becky. And to home. Becky would scold me for staying out so late, but I could legitimately blame it on Audrey. She knew Audrey and Abel well; she'd understand.
Suddenly a shadow fled from my approach into the middle of the street. I froze, startled, my heart pounding. It was only a tabby cat; it stopped and sat dead still, watching me. I laughed unsteadily. My laughter echoed.
"Here, here, putty tat," I said. It licked a paw defiantly.
"Silly cat." And for no apparent reason it turned tail and fled again. It took me a moment before I realized why the cat ran away. Its sharp senses caught the vibrations my duller ears had missed.
In an instant I became aware of a sound that made my blood run cold: a gentle hiss of escaping air. A government patrol, like a bat soaring low over London in search of its prey. On instinct I cowered against the wall. No, wait, I thought. They can see in infra-red. Better go for the alley.
"Mongrel. Stop where you are." The loudspeaker reverberated in the emptiness and an uncanny thrill crept down my spine. "Put your hands up and kneel." I knelt on the ancient tarmac and the craft landed vertically a few yards away from me, in the same way a jump jet lands on a carrier but noiseless. It reminded me of a short-legged insect: a shadow a shade blacker than the night, with a seamless fuselage and an aerodynamic cockpit. Its colour changed to blend with the backdrop, and in the darkness it was almost invisible.
"But I'm not breaking curfew. It's not even ten," I mumbled. Had I violated some other rule? Shock clouded my mind like an icy fog. I couldn't believe it. And I'm already tired. I started to pray silently: an agnostic's prayers, the kind of mechanical prayers you utter when you know no help will come. Then a hatch door on the craft slid open and the co-pilot stepped out, more than six feet seven inches in his flight suit. He removed his helmet to reveal his blond hair and metallic eyes. I felt hatred stir within me.
2184 Page 1