But that was the roads she'd travelled. This was the sea.
She didn't want to hug the seven men who remained, but she didn't want to simply walk across the ice to the chopper without something.
Everyone stank. Every face was bearded, now, but for herself and George. George stood beside her. Tears pooled in his eyes, but he was nine. She was an adult.
A killer.
She wished her emotions were as easy and close to hand as George's.
So she went to each in turn with nothing but a kiss to offer. Then, she followed Edgar and Wake across the slick surface of the rig to the chopper, holding George tight and tied to him, too. She would not lose him now.
No one looked back.
The chopper was quieter than the outside world, but not by much. Wake prepared the helicopter, checking everything like he had three times a day for the last week. Each of them wore dry suits, though George and Francis were far smaller than the men on the rig. Their suits were bunched in the arms and legs, their heads and hands the only parts not covered by the suit. Because of the cold, though, they wore gloves, but their faces they left bare so that they could see, move, and don the headphones needed to communicate when the chopper's engines started.
'Are we wrong? John? To leave them behind?'
'We're all dying, Francis. We're carrying one too many as it is. I'd stay, but I can't teach you or Edgar to fly without getting in the air. No, Fran. The right thing. The only thing. They know that, too. They know, they agreed, they accepted it. So should you.'
She remembered this.
Wake reached back and she took his hand for a second, and then he turned back to his gauges and dials, checking levels, checking functions.
'Jackets on. Belts on. Strap in. Be ready.'
They sat, sombre, with their headphones on so that they could talk if they wanted. They did not. Even George did not reach out a hand to touch. His eyes were closed.
All they had to do was stay out of the sea and head west.
Such a simple thing. Such a hard thing.
The rotors ready, steady and fast and unbelievable loud inside the chopper, John flicked a hand and the man waiting outside.
Bors raised his own hand, then he pulled a length of cable attached to two heavy rivets that held the chopper's tin shelter down.
The shelter blew away. They didn't see Bors.
Maybe he made it, thought Francis.
She hoped he did, but the chopper bucked then and rose into the storm and fear swallowed most of all their thoughts.
'Pray if you've got to. Maybe pray if you don't want to, either. Nothing else doing,' said their pilot.
Francis and Edgar nodded. Francis wondered if her face was pale as Edgar's.
Probably.
Only George seemed calm. Francis considered reaching for him, to comfort him. But she thought the gesture would be more selfish than selfless. After all, it was her who needed comfort. She reached, instead, to her right, and Edgar's hand was there for her. They gritted their teeth. Francis prayed, even though God probably thought nothing of her and that was fine - the feeling was mutual.
*
Ice began to build up on the rotor tail - probably elsewhere, too. It made the chopper heavier and harder to handle. No one in their right mind would fly a chopper like this in weather this bad.
Wake wasn't in his right mind. He was desperate, without hope, and when people get to that point, they'll do anything or nothing, just for something to change. This, though...this was worth doing.
Flying to certain death at the end of the world, just to get a boy back to his mother? Nothing more. There would be no reward. No money, no women, no crate of alcohol. Not even to save the world. Just a gesture. Something nice.
And that was fucking awesome.
The thought made him smile, a smile that stayed until they started to lose altitude. He said nothing, but they headed toward the snapping surface of the North Sea. It became a battle Wake couldn't win. The chopper fought him harder than he'd ever known. As a pilot, he was skilled enough to handle bad conditions, but few were mad enough except perhaps army pilots and sea rescue to fly in really heavy weather. This wasn't just heavy weather; ash, snow, sleet, wind - everything the sky had, forcing them toward the water.
The helicopter bounced in the air, listed, righted. George, in the back seat, puked. Edgar's face turned green.
The gauges gave in shortly after.
At that point, the pilot was 100% there was no chance of landing unscathed. Before, he'd only been 99% sure.
Below, the sea was a grey and white quilt, ruffling and the sky ash-grey and off-white snow. Frosting on the windows was patterned, and in places crystalline. The rotors swirled, then smoked spewed somewhere above, a loud cough, rather than a bang.
Wake pulled the pistol from beneath the seat, turned, and fired two shots, one each side. Edgar, Francis and George jumped, panic on their faces.
'No choice. Kick the windows out!'
The rotor slowed and the chopper just a coffin in the sky. It span as it fell. The ice slowed the rotors, the ash killed the engines. A horrible sensation like plunging in a roller coaster for an instant, only. Francis and Edgar grasped onto their harnesses.
The force of the crash smashed through the shocks under Wake's seat, and he felt his legs...go. The glass by his feet, where he would look down to see the landscape, had shattered like they'd hit rock rather than water. His legs were intact, but distant.
Broke my spine, he thought. He wasn't getting out, and if he did they'd die trying to save him and his dead weight in rough waters would drag them all down.
He didn't give them the option.
George. The kids was the reason.
Doesn't matter if I die. I got to fly.
'Wake...' Francis didn't finish.
Would've liked that fuck, I think. He turned so she couldn't see his eyes and put a bullet into his head.
*
The dry suit Francis wore behaved like a balloon when the window smashed and the water rushed in. She didn't know if she was up or down, but somehow the door opened under her panicked grip. George was tied to her, but strapped in. Beneath the water, shocked, she fumbled wildly and blindly to release him.
There wasn't time to fight for Edgar. Edgar knew the same as she did. George was all that mattered.
George came free and the two of them tumbled inside the sinking helicopter, unable to figure how to get through the opening. The cold water hit like a hammer. Their dry suits pushed them upward, buoyant, but at the mercy of the gushing, pounding water.
The sea turned them, and they were out, up, toward the unreliable surface. A breath, snatched, then back under a wave and water in her lungs.
Fuck the shore, she thought, somewhere deep where nature takes over. Get air. Air...
The feeling and strength in her limbs was gone. Her organs taking all her heat and energy. Her grip on George began to slip, and his from hers, too.
They were tethered.
But if the tether broke?
Once more, she found air and gulped it in. Puke tried to rise, but she swallowed it. She couldn't see George, or feel him pulling at the tether between them.
Somewhere, just a glimpse, she thought she saw fire. A wave pulled her under, and under the water George's hand was right there. She snatched it, and that touch gave her hope. One handed and burdened with her other arm beneath George's armpit, she lashed out against the water.
People die in cold water. The people who live are those who don't give in.
Everything was confusing and muddled, but just yards from the shallows the only battle left was with herself.
It was a fight Francis always won.
Always.
Her body shook badly, and her vision wavered, but she fixed that distant flame in her mind, closed her eyes against the bitter sting and pulled.
Fire.
Was it him? Did the man with fire in his eyes wait for them on the shore?
Hope, not fear, made her fight harder, still.
*
A red and black lump came to shore first, pushed and pulled by the sea. Eleanor ran from the fire, into the sea. Each wave pummelled and fought her and pulled the shape - a man, for sure - out of reach. Then he bumped her hard in the legs and she hit the water, the shock nearly stopping her heart once again. She stumbled in the waves, gripped him by the hair, then dragged the man through the frozen sludge at the shoreline, through the spray and the salt, and heaved him from the sea, half in, half on icy sand. His face and lips both were blue.
She could do nothing, though - George was everything.
George! she called out along the path in her mind, but there was nothing there.
He can't be...
Eleanor waded into the surf again.
Was that a hint of colour?
She didn't pause, or wonder longer than that. If she was wrong, her son was dead anyway, and what did she have to live for other than him? That road she'd followed so long lead to George and if he wasn't there her mind would break.
The weather and the sea tried to stop her. The shape she sought became no clearer, but it was red like the man on the shore. She struck out harder until she was swimming, not wading. Through the blinding snow and spray, she caught sight of the shape again.
Two, she thought, not one.
Only one swam, though. The red-swimmer, blinded by the sea, hit Eleanor with a flailing hand. Eleanor found a small hand in hers and it gave her the strength she needed.
George.
On one side, Eleanor, on the other, a woman, and between them was George. Eleanor's knee struck the sand, a moment later, her toes. With their hands under George's arms, and one each side, they dragged him toward the fire on the beach.
*
XXI.
Fire on the Beach
They were all long past shivering. In the light of the fire, Francis, George and Eleanor spat out the sea, or let it run streaming onto the sand from guts or lungs. Panting, blue in their hands and faces and feet.
Edgar didn't stir.
In the time it took for Eleanor and Francis to drag George from the sea, Edgar lay in the freezing wind, his lower half lapped by icy water. He ceased to breath. His heart slowed and then stopped.
Eleanor got her son to the fire first. Francis next, thinking the older man had not been in the water as long. Thinking his chest was still rising and falling as she pulled Francis past him. But his chest wasn't rising. It was the tide, pushing the air in his dry suit up, then retreating so his dry suit would fall back again.
She didn't know. It probably wouldn't have made any difference. By the time she dragged Edgar to the fire and laid him down under her rude shelter by the huge fire, he was dead.
*
Francis' battered consciousness returned, and she burned. Agony engulfed her entire body and her arms curled in, her legs curled up. All she saw was a tower of flame.
Thinking she was burning alive, she tried to roll, to scream, but all that came out was a stream of sea-puke. Convulsions wracked her muscles, spasms cracked her spine. Vomit poured from her, over and over. The fire was huge. There were sparks in there, blackened char and its heat was a furnace against her skin. She was naked...embers flew up, together with snow. Someone pulled a blanket over her, and that too burned her skin. Her head throbbed and pounded, her guts roiled. She looked for whoever had placed the heavy blanket over her, but she was blinded by the fire. Fire was all she could see, the only colour orange.
She passed out again.
*
The next time Francis' eyes opened, the pain had lessened, except for her hands, which were like claws beneath a thick blanket. There was no snow, no embers, though a fire burned. This time the fire was within a stove.
Inside. Somewhere.
She could hardly move and found that she didn't want to.
'You're awake,' said a woman watching over her. The owner of the voice sounded sleepy. Francis heard shuffling, down by her feet.
I'm on a mattress...low down. Someone's front room.
Francis' had trouble focusing on the woman who knelt by her face.
'Thought we'd lose you. You're safe. Drink this. Vodka. Might warm you up. Either way, there's not much else.'
The woman's hair was sparse, thin, and dirty.
Like mine, Francis thought.
Who could have a shower, now? Shampoo, soap...things she could barely remember. Unfrozen water, let alone warm water, would be a push.
The woman tipped a small amount of vodka between Francis' lips, one hand behind her neck to help her lean forward. Francis' didn't complain. She couldn't. She was too damn weak to do much of anything at all, and opening her eyes and taking the small drink drained her.
The alcohol burned her mouth and her throat. It sank lower very slowly, but she relished the feeling. Her skin felt as though it was burned black, but inside, in her guts and her lungs, there was nothing but cold.
'Thank you,' she managed. For a second, her eyes drifted closed. She felt sleep slamming her down, but she fought it and opened her eyes again. The woman was still there, looking down at her.
'How did you know? You pulled us out...built the fire?'
'George,' said the woman, simply enough, but Francis, even tired, felt the pride in the woman's voice.
'You're George's mother.'
The woman nodded. Francis managed a small nod of her own as she drifted down, down below the waves again. But this time, the waves were warmer.
'Good kid,' she muttered, and floated away.
*
She opened her eyes again to find that weak daylight of the apocalypse framing Edgar's hunched form by the window. She tried to move, and found that she wasn't as sore as she thought. She was naked, but that didn't matter. She and Edgar had been through enough together. Fuck, she'd shot his wife in the face. If that didn't make them friends, nothing would.
She grinned at the thought, but wrapped her blanket around her shoulders as she rose from the dented mattress by the stove and walked toward him. No sense in giving the old man a hard on she didn't plan on using.
'Hey,' she said.
'Hey,' he said. He smiled as she stood beside him at the window. They didn't need to say much else for a minute.
Outside, in the meagre light, they stared at what remained of England. They'd wound up in a seaside town. She didn't know which one. To her, they'd always looked much the same. Maybe a pier, fish and chip shops, arcades, ice cream on sale at low counters in the summer. Not much for sale right now.
Everything was white, and there was a subtle fog hanging in the air, too, probably wind picking up ice crystals and snow. She could hear the wind howl around the buildings below. They seemed to be two or maybe three stories higher than most of the small town. Perhaps in a flat, or an expensive house. The kind rich people who lived in London bought and rented to less wealthy holiday makers.
Not costing us anything now, she thought. Shame the view's a bit shit.
There wasn't much to look at. A car had gone half into one of the shop fronts, but that seemed to be it. Mostly, it was just a wasteland. Desolate and dry, a frozen desert now, like the poles, maybe. Water everywhere, but to eat that snow would be to die. Poison, radiation, ash, and cold enough to freeze a person from the inside out.
She'd seen cold before. Places in Russia, frozen houses both inside and out, the people hunched in furs. Pictures on the television, on the internet. But she'd never see this cold in person. A certain kind of beauty, yes, but a frightening beauty to this endless frost.
'Eleanor's a nice woman. Not what I expected.'
She nodded. 'Saved us. We'd be dead.'
Edgar smiled, and looked at Francis. He was hunched, but he still stood above her. She looked back, then understood.
'She didn't, did she? We're dead. This...all this...it's just a dream.'
'It's a dream, yes. But you? She saved you. Looks like I'm done.'
'Edgar?'
/> He ignored her for a moment, but held her hand, with a small smile on his face, staring out at the white expanse before them. The whole country, the world, perhaps, asleep under the chill white blanket.
His hand was cold and light.
'We really fucked it up, didn't we? Everything's dead. No birds, no animals. Nothing.'
She didn't want to cry. By the window it was cold. Her eyes would probably freeze.
As though he knew what she thought, he squeezed her hand a little tighter.
'We didn't kill it, Francis. He did.'
'I know. But the tools were there, weren't they? We're culpable. Humans. You, me.'
Edgar smiled, but carried right on staring at the snow.
'For a while, I really thought I might make it,' said the ghost.
'It was close though, huh?' said Francis, and laid her head against his cool, cool shoulder.
'I'll take it,' he said.
'We lost, I guess.'
Edgar's ghost put his hand around Francis' shoulder and pulled her tight. 'Lost? Are you sure, Francis?'
'You know me better than I do now?'
'Sure I do,' he said, and she felt his stubble brush the top of her head. 'Sarah would have liked you, you know.'
She nestled against the old man's chest. Old, she thought. Fifty?
Not that old at all...fifteen years older?
'I always thought of you as old.'
'I am, Francis. But you're catching up.'
Ghost or not, he smelled comforting.
'And, Francis...you think you don't know how, you think you've lost something. But it's down to you.'
'What is?'
'To teach them. What it meant to be human.'
'Edgar, I don't know how anymore.'
'This, Francis. Remember.'
'Sadness?'
She thought, for a moment, about that feeling in her dream, and thought she understood. Understanding flitted away.
It was just a dream, after all, wasn't it?
'Now, Francis Drew Sutton...what are you really going to do?'
The Dead Boy Page 22