by G. B. Hope
‘Is there anything you need, sir?’
It was all becoming a bit old now, the sir business, he thought.
‘No, thank you, Taylor.’
‘Will you be requiring company this evening, sir?’
He looked at Taylor. ‘Sorry? What?’
‘Company, sir. Female companionship.’
He stared aghast at Taylor.
TWENTY FOUR
Liam had never been so glad to leave a place since he once had the misfortune to visit Luton, in Bedfordshire. He and Sabrina hunkered down in each other's arms as the Maria took them out to sea. The Mannings were in their element near the wheel, or ducking and diving under the main sail, while Allison stayed below, trying not to think about another boat trip.
Liam savoured the weather and watched the waves. When a grin appeared on his face, Sabrina nudged him for an explanation.
‘I was just thinking about Mrs Manning there,’ he said close to her ear. ‘Apparently, that’s what you’ll look like in forty years.’
Sabrina sniggered and burrowed further into his shoulder. Liam looked over at the Mannings and felt happiness in seeing their sweet reunion.
‘Mr Manning,’ he called through the breeze. ‘What’s your plan for New York?’
‘By plan, do you mean us getting you to New York and leaving you there? No, my friend, we’ll stay with you until we find your sister.’
To compensate for the movement of the yacht, Liam gave an exaggerated nod of grateful thanks.
Allison staggered up on deck, bracing herself. She already looked pale, and her hair was well on the way to becoming dreadlocked. She looked around.
‘Are we there yet?’ Allison asked, sarcastically, finding a space to sit down.
Sabrina whispered into Liam’s ear. ‘It is a shame we have no time machine. We could jump from place to place.’
Liam laughed. He pretended to type into a console. ‘Destination: Jakarta.’
Sabrina hugged her boyfriend. She definitely thought of him as her boyfriend by then. ‘What was it, I saw in my cabin one day? A film about time travel. Very old film.’
‘It was probably The Time Machine. When the man was sitting in his machine did the sky move very quickly?’
‘Yes!’
‘The Time Machine with Rod Taylor. Where would you go back to if you could? Anywhere in time?’
‘Oh, Liam. How should I know? Ah, maybe when they shot that Mr Kennedy man.’
‘Of course, yes, JFK in Dallas. I’d have liked to be there an hour before he arrived. Watch it all develop. Have a wander up into the Book Depository. Or maybe not, wouldn’t want to make Lee Harvey Oswald look at me and have to change location. And I’d have liked to have been in New York when 9/11 happened. It was terrible, but something that amazing…’
‘Yes, that was awful.’
‘You won’t understand this, but I would have liked to have been near a train track in Buckinghamshire one morning, in 1963, watching The Great Train Robbery take place. No, I didn’t think you’d have heard of that.’
Sabrina giggled. ‘My father has a fascination with D-Day. He used to say it was the biggest invasion known to mankind. I would like to take him back there to watch that.’
‘That’s sweet of you.’
‘Can you think of anything else?’
‘I don’t know. The Battle of Waterloo, maybe. I tell you what, I’d like to go back to December 2005, to Francesca Hart’s parents’ house in Croydon.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I’d like to lose my virginity a bit better.’
Liam laughed, looked at Sabrina, who seemed to be blushing, although it was hard to tell with the sea spray and the cold. She tutted at him and they cuddled even more.
Liam and Sabrina spent a long time in the cabin on that trip and were actually asleep when they arrived in New York. When he was called on deck, Liam, yawning but refreshed, felt he was experiencing what it must have been like to go through 9/11, unable to tell the time of day as the sunshine was blotted out, not by dust, but by smoke.
‘This is Manhattan?’ he asked Mr Manning.
‘Fairly sure it is.’
Right then and there, Atlantic City seemed appealing. For some reason, Liam thought about the Statue of Liberty, and how he would probably never get to see it. Either he would manage to get away from America or get away from New York and never return. He asked Mr Manning about the monument anyway.
‘We just sailed by it. It’s still there.’
They were looking for a place to dock Maria. Allison was on deck, stern-faced and keen to feel solid ground beneath her feet. She was eating Oreo cookies. Mrs Manning went below to throw something together for breakfast. Shapes of tall buildings came to them through the black swirl of smoke, interspersed with the orange glow of flame.
‘Sit down, young man,’ said Mr Manning. ‘Now, tell me the name of this hotel where your sister was staying.’
Liam found the address in his trouser pocket and handed it across.
‘Right,’ continued Mr Manning, ‘I’ve never heard of it, so as soon as we are safely on shore, we need to look it up and get a map. Hopefully we won’t be too far away from it.’
‘Thank you, Mr Manning.’
‘Have you considered your options if you find this hotel and this hotel room, and there’s no clue as to where she is?’
Liam sheepishly shook his head.
‘When we move ashore, I’ll lead, you bring up the rear, keep the women folk in the middle. Now, that looks a good place to tie up. We’ll have some of Zahira’s famous eggs, then move out.’
‘Yes, sir.’
They had found a place to tie up, with buildings nearby, but not a single face looking out at them. Mr Manning checked his shotgun. Everyone was ready to move out. They disembarked and settled into their designated positions as they walked along the centre of the first tree-lined, eerie street that faced them. Mr Manning was looking for an official building or subway station, some way to pin down where they were in conjunction to their target location. A solitary corpse lay on the sidewalk to their left - a middle-aged woman with files scattered all about her. There were, of course, many abandoned vehicles, and several yellow taxis. Mr Manning looked into one of those vehicles, finding their second dead person in the back seat, a male this time, but he also found a city map in the glove compartment. He was assessing that, turning it about in his hands, as they came out on a wide thoroughfare, imposing buildings all around amid the gloom. Allison read a street sign and identified it as West St. More interestingly was the sight of the new World Trade Centre building to their left. They all stood and admired it.
‘Well, I know where we are,’ announced Mr Manning, showing Liam on the map. ‘Now we just have to locate the hotel.’
It made sense to walk north. Smoke billowed mainly from ground floor establishments. They did look at a few but decided they had been thoroughly looted. At one point, Allison suddenly stopped dead, causing everyone to look at her.
‘This is so different to the last city,’ she said, clearly distressed. ‘I don’t know why. It’s just so fucking insane. This is all so crazy. How can New York be like this?’
Liam stepped forward, past the worried face of Sabrina, and touched Allison on an elbow. ‘Let’s push on,’ he told her. ‘Get this done with. Get out of this ghost town. Okay?’
She nodded, sighing, apparently drained of energy.
‘I’m okay,’ she finally said. ‘Let’s keep going.’
While this was taking place, Mr Manning was inspecting an abandoned police car. All the weapons had been taken away, but he found a can of pepper spray. He gave it to Sabrina, then, realising that she didn’t know what it was, he acted out being sprayed in the face and the resulting agony. Sabrina grinned, and put it in her coat.
They pressed on. Liam and Mr Manning discussed the complete lack of people. Not even any soldiers or police. They agreed that it was a big island and that they should stay vigilant. They ca
me upon a hotel. There was blood on the steps but the foyer seemed completely undisturbed, and Mr Manning thought there might be information on other hotels in reception, so they entered through the revolving door. Inside it was cool and silent. People’s luggage lay abandoned on the marble floor. Immediately they saw there was a bar to the left of the foyer, again looking untouched. Mr Manning led them in at the point of the shotgun - might as well have some refreshment before they figured out the next move. They all walked up to the bar, checking about them, feeling secure. Maybe he was in a blind spot, or maybe it was so unexpected that their brains didn’t take it in, but there was a smartly-dressed bartender standing behind the bar polishing a glass. When Mr Manning finally realised what he was looking at he almost collapsed with a heart attack. In fact, his knees did buckle, before he recovered and raised the shotgun. Sabrina had been the female to scream. Liam had started at the shock, too.
‘Good morning,’ said the bartender. ‘What can I get you?’
They stared at him, at this smiling hotel worker with a shotgun aimed at his head.
‘Why are you still here?’ asked Liam.
The bartender swayed on his feet in an exaggerated fashion and looked at the ceiling as he considered the question. That action alone was enough to confirm that the man had clearly lost his mind. Mr Manning didn’t wait for an answer. He sat himself down and indicated for his wife to sit beside him. Liam looked at Sabrina and then Allison, before pulling out stools for the girls.
So, they all sat there and ordered three bottles of beer and two bottles of orange juice. Zahira took it onto herself to talk with the bartender as if everything was normal in the world, about the weather and the tourists. Liam savoured his lukewarm beer and watched the bartender’s eyes as the man spoke; yep, the lights were on but no-one was home.
Bizarrely, as they were playing at normality, there was no kind of charge for the drinks. But Mr Manning threw a five dollar bill on the counter for the barman’s tip, which was picked up and acknowledged gratefully. Mr Manning ushered everyone out, but lingered himself. Liam thought briefly that Mr Manning was planning to kill the bartender, but when he rejoined them in the foyer he explained that he had asked about their target hotel, and the bartender had even drawn them a map on a napkin.
‘Extraordinary,’ said Allison, for all of them.
Relaxed, their wariness removed by meeting the troubled bartender, they strode out of the hotel, and immediately saw a platoon of soldiers patrolling the next street along. It was impossible to tell whether they were regular army or National Guard, but apparently they had not been spotted by them. Mr Manning ducked everyone behind an SUV, until the soldiers had passed on.
The bartender’s scribbled map was quite brief, and they were soon on the right street looking for the building. They moved between a mass of abandoned vehicles, mainly yellow cabs. Liam glanced back, thinking the street looked like something out of Independence Day, where people have evacuated in a panic as the alien spaceship sent down the bolt of fire.
Sabrina spotted the right hotel, set between two others, on a block with several well-known eateries. There were six Stars and Stripes flags protruding from the white granite of the building’s frontage. Liam double-checked the name above the (this time) shattered foyer doors. They stepped gingerly inside, to an even darker reception area, possibly caused by the shadow of tall buildings.
‘Let’s stay alert,’ said Mr Manning. ‘We won’t find a bartender pulling a shift, but there might be people sheltering here, and they might be hostile.’
Just as the word hostile left his lips they were shockingly charged at by a group of figures, all brandishing baseball bats or lumps of wood. Mr Manning cursed the fact that his shotgun was aimed at the floor, but then thought maybe that was a blessing, as the people, a mix of men and women, simply confronted them, rather than cracking their heads wide open. Shooting one or two would surely have made the others attack. Mr Manning deferred to Liam, who had his hands up in submission.
‘It’s okay! It’s okay!’ said Liam. ‘We don’t want anything. We’re not looking for trouble.’
It was a woman who spoke to them. She was, in the most bizarre episode of New York so far, dressed in a pink Onesie. It was as if the apocalypse had disturbed her film and popcorn evening in front of the television.
‘This is our building, you people! You gotta leave.’
‘We will,’ Liam assured her. Then he thought it best to introduce himself. ‘I’m Liam. We just want to know if my sister is here. She was staying here, before all this started.’
‘She’s not here.’
‘But she might be in her room.’
‘What you see is what you get. There ain’t nobody else here.’
Liam looked at Mr Manning. Then the Onesie woman followed his glance and stepped closer with her chair leg raised higher to discourage any thoughts of using the shotgun. But then she looked at a male colleague, because it was clear that a stand-off was going to develop. A man who was looking for his sister, who would show up in an abandoned New York City, was not just going to turn around and leave.
‘What room was she in?’ asked Onesie.
‘The number is in my pocket.’
‘If you and me go and look at the room, will you accept that she’s not here?’
Liam thought about that. Part of him wanted to search every inch of the building, but he decided to agree, just to get upstairs.
‘Yes,’ he answered.
‘Okay, we’ll go up. Everyone else stays exactly like this. No-one gets their knickers in a twist.’
‘Agreed.’
Liam followed Onesie up the stairs. He had considered asking whether she should find a House key, but soon saw that all the rooms were open, as if they had been checked. He told Onesie the room number and she took him straight there - clearly she was a member of staff.
‘Here it is.’
Liam stepped inside. Unless his sister was in the bathroom, she was not there. He didn’t recognise the luggage on the bed, but the general tip of clothes and toiletries made him feel like he was in the right place, as his sister was well-known to be messy. He checked the bathroom, empty. Then he looked for something personal in the luggage. There was no passport, or any item of clothing he recognised to be his sister’s. Just as despair started to tug at him, he spotted a letter. Adrenalin made him scan through it, realising it was to do with her job interview. That was it! He showed the letter to Onesie.
‘My sister was here!’
Onesie examined the letter. ‘The address is on Long Island. You think you’ll go there?’
‘Of course we’ll go there. We’re going to Long Island, right! Where’s Long Island?’
TWENTY FIVE
Settled in, as best she could, at Mr Stickford’s enclave on Long Island, Charlie tried not to let her mind fret for her loved ones, of whom Harry Styles was definitely an important member. A couple of times, while alone at night, she had cried for the normal days when she could simply type in his name on her laptop and see him doing a thousand different, interesting things. Thank God she had her One Direction phone cover always with her.
She liked the people she had found herself marooned with, especially the adorable Mr Grainger, who she thought of as the grandfather she had never got to meet. His Prepper plan was well underway, but he didn’t preach to them at all. More often than not he laughed at himself and at what the world had brought him to, when he was trying to tell them about self-sufficiency in agriculture, and how to collect rainwater, or about the rules for the new latrines.
The rations were agreed on, and loose working roles allocated. Charlie and Ana, the Nicaraguan au pair, would look after the children, which included the young Stickford girls. Mr Grainger already had a vegetable patch in his back yard, and this was to be extended, with the help of Jonathan. All the other adults would take turns with the cooking and general chores. Overall, it was a satisfying way to sit out the crisis.
One of the large
houses in the local vicinity remained unoccupied; the one belonging to the Ryan family who were yet to find their way home. Mr Grainger had his eye on their wide, perfectly manicured front lawn for his potato crop. Charlie thought Mr Grainger a funny sight, in his Wellington boots, green corduroy trousers and ugly jumpers, with a white sun hat on top of his head. He also had an automatic rifle on a tight strap over his back, facing muzzle downwards, looking like a white farmer in Zimbabwe, or a Jewish settler in the Occupied Territory. An unfriendly trespasser had prompted the opening of Mr Grainger’s Prepper gun cabinet, and Mr Stickford was also similarly armed.
Jonathan came out of the Grainger house and wandered across with coffee for them all.
‘Shall we plough it up, then, Jonathan?’ asked Mr Grainger.
‘Definitely, I think we should. If we end up getting sued by the Ryan’s then we’ll know the world has gone back to normal.’
They sipped their coffee. It was a lovely day, weather-wise. Charlie remembered something said the other day by Mr Grainger, who had become tired by all the talk of the reasons behind the crisis: “It’s happened, people. That’s the way it is. Anyone who feels short-changed at not getting a rounded explanation is an idiot”.
Charlie noticed that Jonathan was watching Ana as she skipped from one house to another with the Stickford girls. There was something between admiration and love in his eyes.
‘Careful,’ she whispered to him. He shot her a look, but was happy to take her advice. ‘Crazy times. She might not appreciate the attention.’
She sensed Mr Grainger wanted to talk man to man about gardening, so drifted to where Mrs Grainger had come out to sit on her front porch with a cup of tea and an old magazine, taking a break from preparing the day’s meal. The sweet, diminutive, archetypal little old lady with her grey hair up in a bun was wearing an ankle length skirt and a Christmas sweater with lots of white reindeer galloping about on the red background. She smiled at Charlie and waved her over. The magazine was open on a certain article, which she offered to Charlie. It was a gossip column piece, without any substance, but carried a photograph of Harry Styles, in the company of a lady friend. Charlie squealed in delight and grabbed the magazine, overjoyed to have something of Harry she had never seen before. Her knees briefly crumpled until she decided not to be so melodramatic.