‘Watch out,’ said Dana, reaching for Aisha’s head and ducking down.
‘What?’
There was a sharp crack and a hiss, followed by a thump from above and a sickening groan. A rooftop behind the fence had been hit and now slid like a wedge of snow from a mountain. Guards and prisoners ran for cover as it toppled from the building and crashed into the yard. A cloud of dust billowed out and we covered the children’s faces as it engulfed us.
‘What was that?’ I yelled, coughing.
‘I don’t know,’ said Dana. ‘Big, though. And it came from Ludgate Hill, look.’
Through the cloud of snow and dust, dim lights flashed in the distance. Cracks, rattles and booms resounded along the stone valley.
The dust settled and we stood for a moment in eery silence. As the shapes in the yard regained their detail, I spotted an oblong slice of concrete now lying by the fence.
‘There,’ I said, grabbing Aisha’s hand.
Charlie followed me across and behind the concrete. Dana fell in next to us.
‘Where’s David?’ I said, but as I spoke I saw him and Clifford frozen to the spot. They were halfway across the clearing but a guard had stumbled from the dust cloud to their right. He coughed and wheezed, hands covering his face; he had not yet seen them. But he soon would.
I caught David’s eye and beckoned to him with a hurried hand but he shook his head. The guard was straightening up, huge, and rubbing his eyes free of the dust. He would soon see them, and then …
David scanned the distance between us, and a terrible calculation danced across his face. His expression set firm. His hands loosened their grip on Clifford.
‘No,’ I breathed.
He dropped his head and whispered something in his son’s ear, then laid a kiss upon his forehead. Clifford shook his head and made a grab for his father’s shirt, but David had already shoved him away. The momentum carried him, stumbling towards us with his arms cartwheeling, and as the guard finally focussed, David launched himself upon him.
I pulled Clifford into safety as David released a strangled roar that seemed to rise from some primal part of his being, a place we rarely see. He was hopelessly outmatched against the towering guard, who threw him effortlessly to the ground. His attack had failed, but it had done its job; the guard had not seen Clifford, nor us. I pulled the boy in to smother his cries and protect him from the sight of his father being dragged across the yard. The dust had cleared now and only the blizzard obscured the monstrous scaffold in the distance. People were at the ropes, bound by the wrists, struggling, screaming, straining their necks away from the noose. The guard dragged David up the steps to the last rope, an order was cried, and through the madness of the yard I saw his feet swing.
Magic
LINEKER
We line up and await our orders. As She marches out with Her husky at her side and takes the podium, I can already hear fighting in the distance.
‘Insurgents are attacking the western fence …’
Electricity courses through my spine.
‘Units 1 to 5 – through the northern gate to flank the attack.’
I want to be out there, moving, running, no thought, no feeling.
‘The rest, with me in the yard, to assist with processing.’
No feeling, just the wind and the snow and the smell of blood and oil.
‘Go!’ She cries.
And we go.
REGINALD
The two towers of the cathedral entrance were now makeshift gun turrets, from which two long barrels – cannons of some type – protruded, aiming west. Whatever was outside was aiming for the walls, the derelict buildings that bordered the fence. The structure on the southern edge whose fallen roof we were using for cover had already been pulverised and now bulged dangerously against the wire. With every impact we felt more rubble land above us.
‘We can’t stay here,’ said Dana, as dust showered her hair. ‘This is going to collapse at any moment!’
Clifford had gone limp with shock. I peeled his arm from my shoulder and placed him next to Aisha where he sat, wide-eyed and mute. Charlie crouched beside him, wan with the recent effort. She caught me looking, blinked and nodded in reassurance.
Another thud resounded above us and I peered out at the yard. ‘The statue,’ I said. ‘Part of it has fallen away. Perhaps we can—’
‘Look out!’ said Dana.
There came a deep crack and another groan, and we felt the concrete shift around us.
‘Get out!’ I yelled.
We leaped out, Aisha pulling Charlie behind her just as the wall finally broke through and crushed our makeshift shelter. Bricks, glass and timber rolled behind us as we spilled into the open, and through the frozen haze of snow the statue’s outline beckoned. Just a few more steps and we would be there. Just keep running …
Something hit me square in the head. A blistering crack rang through my skull and I fell, taking Aisha with me and hitting the ground face first. Dazed, ears ringing, I scrabbled to my feet.
‘Aisha, are you all right? Aisha? There you are, come here.’
She was standing, staring at something behind me. I searched for the others. Dana had made it to the statue with Clifford, and Charlie was lifting herself shakily from the ground.
‘Charlie, let me help you …’
‘Reginald.’ Her voice trembled. Old. Fragile. Broken.
‘It’s OK, the statue’s close …’
‘Reginald.’ She nodded in the direction of Aisha’s gaze.
‘What?’
I turned. Two guards stood before us, their guns pointing at our heads. One of them dropped his eyes to Aisha. Instinctively I stepped in front of her, and Charlie joined me at my side.
The guards approached.
Time seemed to slow. I turned to Charlie, her ashen skin dusted with soot and snow. We shared a look and the same thoughts ran between us. In unison we turned our eyes to Aisha, and as the guards drew near we dropped to a crouch and gathered her into our arms, surrounding her in our limbs, heads and torsos, every muscle and bone we had to offer her. We gripped so tight that it felt like a type of magic was at work. I felt the warmth of Aisha beneath us, and the strange new comfort of Charlie’s head against mine, and for that moment the three of us – different, bloodless strangers – were one. Nothing could hope to break this grip.
Such magic does not exist, of course, but still, when that hand gripped my shoulder I believe I put up more brawl than I had in me. I kicked, punched and butted with my fists, elbows, head, knees, boots – every extremity I had. I gnashed my teeth. I made a machine of my limbs, a furious piston engine that battered the flesh of my adversary until, eventually, another pair of hands – the second guard – joined the first.
Their combined force soon quelled my fight and they hauled me away. Dragged by the throat, gargling cries of dissent and still kicking my feet, I watched as Charlie and Aisha disappeared into the blizzard, but it was only when I saw Dana’s outstretched hand beckoning them from the statue that I finally ceased my struggle.
Time
REGINALD
Time does not move. Time is just a lake of moments through which we wade, picking out the ones that matter. The rest dissolve like ink in the water.
Sometimes there are whirlpools; dizzying eddies with such gravity that time almost seems to stop. Like black holes, nothing is spared. They suck in everything and you stand, detached, an observer of your own life.
This is how I stood at the gallows outside St Paul’s Cathedral on that frozen mid-March morning, with snow on my face and my hands bound to my feet before me.
To my left and right were others like me. They screamed, kicked, begged and wet themselves, and yet I remained still. I wondered: Did this feeling come to everyone who faced execution? Perhaps I was screaming too. Who knew?
Everything below me was a haze of snow and smoke. People running for their lives. In some far-off part of my mind, I saw it all as if I was a crow circling
above: an aimless stampede of tears and racing hearts.
I could not see Charlie or Aisha. This was good; they were hidden, and if they could stay that way then maybe they stood a chance of rescue. The rope hair tickled my neck and I felt awash with peace.
My bindings were loose. I studied my executioner as he adjusted them. He was just a young man. His face was creased in panic, his breathing fast and tremulous.
‘You do not have to do this,’ I said.
He glanced at me. ‘Shut up,’ he hissed, renewing his efforts with the rope that tied my hands to my feet.
‘You really don’t,’ I went on. ‘You could stop. You have a choice to stop. You always have a choice.’
He abandoned the rope and stepped away. ‘Shut up!’
‘You could just walk away, you do not have to—’
‘Shut up, shut up, shut—’
A shot rang out and something whistled past my ear. The young man’s mouth and eyes snapped wide open. He did not speak. A trickle of blood appeared on the side of his head, quickly becoming a surge. I watched him topple back, straight as a plank, and land in brain-splattered dust. I blinked and looked into the crowd, searching for the source of the gunshot. Close by I saw Megan standing, revolver trembling in her outstretched hand. She gave me a shaky smile, dropped the gun, and fled.
I looked down at my still-loose bindings and waggled my arm. It was not enough to free me. I faced the sky, closed my eyes and took long deep breaths. Still this peace, still this quiet …
But then, into this peace and quiet, tearing through it like a sabre, came an ear-splitting scream. It was the scream of something that had been afraid, but that would not be afraid any more; of something that had been bound, but that would now be free; of something small that would no longer be held down.
The scream of a child.
My eyes shot open. My pulse exploded. I looked along the line of struggling figures to my right and the chill air caught in my throat. There I saw a woman contorted in a hopeless escape attempt, and behind her two stockinged legs and a curl of black hair blowing on the breeze.
Charlie and Aisha, each in a noose. So that was why I couldn’t see them in the crowd.
I called for them, my voice strangled with horror.
Aisha’s mouth was wide open, raised to the sky in its relentless scream, but at the sound of my voice she stopped.
Charlie looked across. ‘Reginald,’ she wept. ‘Oh, Christ, Reginald.’
There is nothing you can say before or after death that makes any difference or sense. It is an event that repels words. Yet, still I clamoured for them, still I struggled to find the right combination of sounds, some expression of comfort or warmth to combat the horror of our fate.
And as I was distracted in this hopeless task, Aisha, very slowly, began to move.
It was not a useless struggle like the rest, but a slow, concerted walk – one step forward, one step back, two steps forward, two steps back. The guards, embroiled in an argument at the far end of the gallows, seemed oblivious.
‘Aisha,’ I heard Charlie say, ‘what are you doing?’
The floorboards creaked beneath our feet.
Aisha was now at the back of the gallows, her noose at its furthest extension, her eyes fixed ahead.
‘No,’ said Charlie, realising her intent. ‘No, Aisha, wait.’
Aisha ran, jumped and swung. The noose tightened and the gallows groaned. I looked down at the boards. Those joists, I knew they would never hold.
On the backward swing she hit the boards.
‘Aisha!’ shrieked Charlie, trying to catch her as she stumbled past, spluttering. The noose was now tight around her neck, but she regained her footing and retraced her steps to the back of the gallows. Again the floorboards creaked.
‘Swing,’ I said, as it dawned on me. ‘Yes, that’s it, Aisha, swing.’
I tried my hand again. My bindings were loose enough that I could just reach my neck. Slipping two fingers beneath the noose, I followed Aisha’s lead and stepped back.
‘Swing,’ I said to the gentleman next to me.
‘What?’
‘Swing!’ I cried to Charlie. ‘Swing, swing, swing!’
I ran forward, timing my approach with Aisha’s second attempt. In a few steps our feet had left the boards together and for a second we were airborne. As momentum took me, I swung wildly into the crowd. My eyes bulged as the noose tightened. Then my feet found wood again.
‘Swing,’ I croaked, my throat now constricted by the rope and trapped fingers. ‘For heaven’s sake, swing!’ Finally my neighbour understood and copied. Charlie too. I tried again. There were four of us now and one by one along the line the others followed suit until, led by Aisha, twenty human pendulums swung from the gallows, throttling themselves a little more each time. Inch by inch the towering structure rocked forward, creaking as they went, the wood cracking, the blood swelling in my head, the world draining of focus, until, finally, the wood gave in to our weight and the ground rose up to meet us.
I shared a last look of horror with Charlie and Aisha as we swung beneath the falling gallows, the nooses tightening under our weight, but before we hit the dirt the air erupted.
Darkness.
I opened my eyes. I was deaf, lying on my side. All around was tumbling brickwork, fire and snow. The ground was a blackened mess. In a sudden volley of direct hits, the southern rim of buildings had finally collapsed and broken through into the yard. Over the resulting mountain of rubble a hundred men or more in black uniforms now swarmed with gritted teeth and all manner of terrible weaponry – pistols, mortar cannons, grenades and machine guns. And in the hands of one was a tattered black flag upon which flurried an open palm and a bright star.
I could not breathe, could not stand, could not break my wrists free. I was choking. My face bulged, my eyes popped, my chest burned. Somewhere in the distance I saw a small body lying still.
Flashes of things, just like they say.
As a boy, looking up at my mother’s flour-dusted face, the world insanely bright and filled with her smile.
My brother driving me in his first car, rain running in endless patterns down the passenger window, my smiles as he talked and talked and talked.
One summer dawn on an empty street, readying the van, the sun arched over the trees, suddenly gripped by the stillness of it all.
Sandra, the warmth of her fingers and her eyes burrowing into my soul.
A baby girl in my arms.
A dog in a cage.
The sound of a bicycle’s chain on a hot day and the ripple of water beside me.
Does time just slow to a stop when you die? Do all these moments roll into one? Is that the ever after?
I was not to find out just yet. Because as blackness engulfed me, so too a pair of hands engulfed my neck and, after a struggle, freed me from the noose. I burst out, coughing, spluttering, alive. Now my hands were free too.
I rolled over and gasped for breath. Dana’s face blotted the sky.
‘Get up, Reginald!’ she cried.
The roar of thwacking blades filled the compound. Dana helped me to my feet and, grasping my throat, I beheld three black Chinook helicopters hovering in the centre of the yard like great whales suspended in a maelstrom of dust and snow.
‘Aisha!’ I cried. ‘Charlie!’ The words caught in my half-crushed throat and I fell into a coughing fit.
‘They’re over there,’ yelled Dana over the din.
I searched the confusion of snow and limbs and saw them, dazed but now standing, supporting each other, holding their red-welted necks. I ran to them.
‘Young lady,’ I croaked, pulling Aisha close, ‘that was the stupidest, bravest thing I have ever witnessed.’
She held on tight with stuttering breaths.
‘We’re alive,’ said Charlie. ‘And they’re here, Reginald. We’re saved.’
LINEKER
A sharp whistle tears through the air from somewhere beyond the wall. We turn
our heads to see but it’s gone. Then, with a deafening crack, the wall explodes.
The world shudders and fills with dust and men’s screams. I run for cover but my leash pulls tight. My handler wants me to go a different way so I follow, but it pulls tight again. Where does he want me to go? I turn back to see but a stray boot catches me in the jaw. I get up, shaking the dizziness from my head, and hear that whistle again, louder than anything, skewering every thought.
I hear more distant thuds and shots. The turrets on the outer wall are lit with gunfire. Gradually the dust settles and I see why I have not been able to follow my handler; he’s lying crushed beneath a heap of rubble. The only thing I can see of him is his bloodied hand and wrist, around which my chain is tightly looped. I cannot break free.
I limp to his wrist and prepare to gnaw through it, but before I can another hand reaches down and unties the chain. She stands above me, one half of Her face caked with blood. Her husky sits beside Her, panting.
She grips the chain.
‘Come.’
REGINALD
‘What about Clifford and Anna?’ I said, getting to my feet.
Dana pointed at the helicopters and the open doors from which ladders were dangling. A stream of soldiers in flak jackets had dropped to the yard and formed a perimeter around the huge machines, into which they corralled the fleeing prisoners. Anna was holding Clifford’s hand, leading him and her children inside.
Shouts came from one of the towers and the gunners began to turn their barrels slowly inward. Seeing this, a squadron of black uniforms broke from the perimeter and fired up towards the new threat.
‘We don’t have much time,’ I said. ‘They won’t be able to stay long if they get those guns turned. Let’s go.’
I turned to Charlie. ‘Ready?’ I said. ‘Can you run?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But just in case.’
She pulled my head close and gave me a rough kiss on the lips. Then, with Aisha between us, we ran from the scaffold to our freedom.
We kept our heads down, stumbling through the snow and dust whipped up by the whirling blades. Two of the helicopters had already taken off and the soldiers were closing the perimeter at the last. Dana was at its ladder, and I could just make out Anna’s face peering from the window.
The Last Dog on Earth Page 32