“Well, there’s a lot of fuel,” he starts off positively. “It’ll see us through the winter. And cables to—”
“But was there any food?” Kate’s fists, smeared with the blood of the tiny animal she has been preparing, are clenched before he has finished inhaling. “We have to get out of here, Tom. We’re not going to survive!”
“Of course we are—”
“No, Tom. We can’t grow anything. Open your eyes!”
“Kate,” Tom says, trying to hush her voice. He feels his thoughts troubling his mind again, uncontrolled as his pulse rises. His mouth is unwieldy as he hears himself gabble. “With the fuel we can run the plow. With the cables we can—”
“I don’t care. I want to go.”
“We can’t abandon everyone.”
“Yes, we can.”
“Kate—”
“We have to fight for our family, Tom. We agreed! You, me, and Bea, we’re the number ones.”
Kate stops her words with puckered lips. Her fingers flare in frustration as, again, Tom goes silent, but his mind is overwhelmed. There is too much to process here: his love for Kate, his relief at being home, his anger, his fear, his massive love for Bea, the animal drive to protect her, them, to look after Guy and Ben. All these emotions cannot coexist with the absolute necessity of what he did on that hill, the renewed frazzling fear unleashed by what he had to do to Guy, and his thoughts collapse under the weight of it all.
“Look . . .” he starts, closing the distance between them. He takes a deep breath and tries to reset this. He’s pleased with the surprise he had found her; that had been how he’d wanted this to start. “Kate. Listen. Please slow down. I know it’s not much, but . . .” He extracts the apple from his pocket. Without the Feed, he doesn’t know her thoughts, however hard he scrutinizes her face. Does she remember? Of course she does—it’s one of their secret questions. “Katherine Hatfield,” he murmurs.
“Shh,” she concedes. She wipes her hands before clasping his and the apple they hold. She looks into his eyes. “Someone might hear.”
“Katherine Brown, then.” He kisses the top of her head. The smell of her hair is a comfort. “I can’t find you diamonds, but I can still get you apples. Right?”
Kate thumbs her engagement ring and rubs the apple’s surface, indents it with her thumbnail. Many things move in her eyes. “I still want to go, Tom.”
“I promise you I’ll protect us.”
She shakes her head. “We’re going to starve. I’m sorry.”
“Give it another six months. It’s so dangerous to move.” His mouth goes dry. “What would happen to Bea if one of us was taken?”
Kate bites her lip. There is heat in her eyes. “Things aren’t fine just because you think they are, blindly hoping away!” She pulls away in exasperation. “Where’s Guy? Have you both eaten?”
Guy’s choking face flickers through Tom’s mind. It’s etched there now, with Ben’s, it seems, undeletable. He blinks them both away. He sees the dark room, this small kitchen, but can still feel them, rotting inside his brain. “He was taken, Kate.” He hadn’t wanted to do it. He hadn’t even wanted to say it. He doesn’t want to scare her. He doesn’t want to be scared anymore. He shrugs slowly and looks away. He won’t cry. He buries it all within. “There was nothing I could do.”
Kate takes his hands, her voice tight. He can hear the fear there—he’s not stupid. They’re still trapped, like fish in a pond. “We . . . need to get out of here, Tom.”
“But that didn’t stop him from being taken. That wouldn’t protect us, would it? There is no protection!” His voice is quivering. “Kate, all we have is the hope it won’t happen to us.”
Left alone in the dusty silence of the kitchen, Tom drops the transistor on the tabletop. He slumps against a chair. Closes his eyes. Then, after a few moments’ rest, he heaves water from the rain tanks across the lawn and up an unsteady ladder to fill the shower. Bottles nestled in the curves of corrugated sheets hold mildly warmed water, which he pours in too. From up high, looking over the moldy plywood wall of the shower stall, he surveys their patchy vegetable plots and disintegrating barn. Everything was so much easier when it was full of supplies. But food aside, they had thought they were safe.
He sees Graham stoop out of a hut, the one he shares with Jane. Wearing his habitual loose trousers and sole-flapping sandals, the old man eases himself into the chair on his porch, draws his hair into a soft gray wave, and folds open a dog-eared book, pen in hand. Tom climbs back down into the cubicle before he is seen and undresses. He’ll have to tell the camp about Guy. Shatter their fragile peace. Slapping his feet on the soggy ground, he unleashes a cascade of near-freezing water. He rubs it into his eyes, rubs his scalp through his gritty hair, the water blocking and unblocking his ears. He washes his hands and arms. Washes them and washes them, flexing his fingers and getting into the flesh between the thumb and the palm.
While he’s dressing, dried off and nearly done, he hears breathing—slivers of sound on the other side of the shower-stall wall. Whispers scuffing the breezy air. He buttons his trousers and grips the latch slowly. As he sweeps open the door, the freckle-spattered children freeze in their sewn-up clothes, eyes widened with their discovery.
“Bea . . . What are you up to, Jack?”
“Nothing!” the boy blurts out too quickly, a bundle of wires gripped in his hands and pressed into his stomach to hide it. Bea doesn’t say anything, but shrugs and won’t meet his eye.
“Come on, you two. Old tech is dangerous.” Tom flicks the towel over his shoulder and holds out a hand. “Give it over, Jack. Where’s your dad?”
Jack’s voice is a birdlike trill as his grip tightens on the wires. “But what’s it for, Tom?”
So much has gone from the world, Tom thinks, yet a child’s stubbornness remains. Bea, beside the boy, peers up through her matted hair with inquisitive eyes—another instinctive trait, it seems, that somehow survived the Collapse.
“I thought you were supposed to know everything, Tom,” Jack whispers. He sidles closer to grasp Tom’s hand. “Daddy says you can read people’s minds.”
“Go on, get away,” Tom snaps, shaking the boy off. He glowers as Jack runs to the farmhouse and takes Bea’s hand. Who tells the children these things? Who even talks about reading people’s minds—where has Jack gotten the words for this, let alone the concept?
“Where have you been, Daddy?”
His eyes still on Jack’s retreating form, his thoughts locked, he mutters, “I was at work.” It sounds strange even as it leaves his mouth, some old phrase rising from the unknown, dredged up on the tide of his returning memories of Ben.
Bea scrunches her nose at the unfamiliar word. “At . . . work,” she pronounces, and grips his forearms in such a way that he’s lifted her up before he’s even thought about it. “Will you take me too next time, Daddy?”
“Probably not, no.”
“Why?” She’s fiddling with his hair, trying to look inside his ear.
“Why do you think?” he asks, shaking her fingers away, glancing toward the farmhouse again. Kate is in the doorway, arms folded, watching them across the lawn, Jack crying behind her legs.
“Hmm. Because the fairies might catch me?”
“Exactly.”
“Oh! Let’s plant something, Daddy!” Bea cries, and wriggles to be let out of his arms.
He chases her across the grass and uses his towel to capture her, wrap her up, and lift her again, kidnapped, kicking and shrieking, into the air.
“But what’s the point in going back if Guy’s gone?”
They are squeezed around the heavy kitchen table, their plates licked clean after breakfast. It’s not the biggest table, but they’re not the biggest group anymore. The insipid smell of rotten vegetables lingers, and another scent too: the acrid tang of argument.
“Hey?” Sean grunts when no one answers him. His skin is pocked and patchy, the shadows beneath his eyes very deep. His hands and
forearms are laced with strands of scars, the story behind them still raw in his exhausted eyes but imprisoned there, untold. A policeman before the Collapse, Sean had brought his son, Jack, and little else to the camp, other than a determined instinct to protect. It had calmed Tom at first, being swept along in the wake of Sean’s fervent plans to secure the camp, but over time they had all realized the eviscerating truth: that the threat was not solely from outside; it was lurking inside them all. And what could they do to defend against that?
“Without Guy’s knowledge,” Sean continues, “we can’t connect the windmills, so what’s the point? We can’t risk people finding us. We’ll be attacked!”
“More importantly,” Graham states, “Guy was taken.”
Everyone eyes the transistor, the inert electrical insect squatting on the table. Kate has taken the children foraging to give the rest this space to talk. Old Graham and his wife, Jane; Sean hunched opposite them; Danny leaning by the sink, his face screwed up in thought. Tom knows they must be thinking about their survival right now—but are they contemplating the day-to-day mechanics of the challenge or the bigger thing: What happened to Guy, and its implications for themselves?
“The point is, Sean,” Tom says in the end, trying to sound patient, “that if we can’t get the windmills to work, we’ll need fuel more than ever. We need to power the plow if we want to grow food. It doesn’t matter if people find us when we’ve died of starvation!”
“So you’re happy to lead more people to their deaths,” Sean declares.
Tom thumps the table. “Guy was—”
“Tom, Sean—please!” Jane’s skin is paper-wrinkled, her voice softened by age. She lowers her shaking hands as if to part the waters of this argument. “Tom has told us all there is to tell. Guy was taken.” She shakes her head. “Who knows what that will mean for us? But there is fuel that we now desperately need. Any food?” Tom shakes his head. “Well. It sounds like an opportunity too good to miss, and a miracle if others have. If we don’t get fuel, we’ll die. We need light, we need heat. We need to be able to cook. So I vote yes. Going back is worth the risk.”
Graham doesn’t need to say he seconds his wife; he nods his slim forehead at the table, his gray fringe falling in front of his eyes. He swipes it back and gently takes Jane’s hand. Tom stares at them. The ease of their age. Their silent understanding of each other. It’s beautiful.
“Still, we can’t rely on fuel forever.” Danny pushes himself away from the sink, his scowl, now that he’s worked out what he thinks, determined. His skin, which flushes at the least provocation, is dappled. He has a quickcode, almost unnoticeable, tattooed into his hairline, round like some Celtic symbol, and the frays of his sweater wave as he gesticulates. “Now I can’t mem everything—”
“Remember,” Graham quietly corrects.
“Yeah, I can’t remember Guy’s skills about wiring, I’m no Electrician, but what good are those windmills on the roof if we don’t try to hook them up? They could save us. We need cables so that transmuter can work—”
“Transistor,” Jane amends.
“Whatever. I’ll give it a go. But we need those cables from the facility. Guy’s put the windmills in the right loc, at least.”
“Location,” Graham corrects. “Or place.”
“Exactly.” Danny nods. “Yes vote from me.”
“Maybe you led people back here, Tom,” Sean states, his thoughts clearly still stuck elsewhere. His bloodshot eyes flicker and catch. His hands drum the tabletop, his feet, the floor. The energy is of exhaustion: a chronic lack of sleep. “If you’ve exposed the camp, we’re dead—”
“There’s no one else,” Tom replies sharply. “Danny, you up for the journey?”
“You betcha!”
“Good.” Tom nods and taps the table. “We’ll go the day after tomorrow. We’ll get the fuel. We’ll get the cables. We’ll get those windmills working. We’ll be safe.”
“Tom . . .” Jane’s slow voice rises through the silence. She crumples a smile at the transistor. “We should talk about Guy. This hasn’t happened for years. We’re all in considerable danger . . .”
Tom breathes. Sean drums the table. Graham and Jane clasp hands. Danny wraps his arms around himself and looks physically sick with fear. They must talk about this thing that no one wants to admit. Danny is staring at Tom, his wide green eyes pleading for some comfort.
“So tell us, Tom,” Jane says, her voice hardening. “How was he taken?”
Tom flexes his thumbs, clasping his hands in his lap. Won’t meet their eyes. Some memory in his head is bursting to be let out. “The usual signs. You know. I did what we were told to do.”
He had once told Bea that pumpkins creak as they grow, and that if you listen hard at night, you can hear them groaning in their sleep. This information has been reshaped in her mind, and before any work can be started on the vegetables, a systematic procedure must take place.
“Miriam’s okay too,” she calls, kneeling by the penultimate pumpkin in the patch, which is deflated like the rest of them. “It’s cold at night and she nearly got eaten by a bird, but she likes it here and she’s friends with the carrots.”
Tom nods solemnly, shading his eyes. “Thank you, Bea, you’re doing a very good job.”
“Daddy, Miriam also wants to know, did you leave Guy at work?”
Tom purses his lips. A dry breeze lifts the leaves of the browning rhubarb and shivers them. It’s a good memory that this girl has.
“Will he come home later?” Bea persists. “He said he’d show me fish!”
When Tom still doesn’t answer, confusion darkens her face. He’ll have to tell her something, he sees, but the truth? No way. Not yet. Please. “Bea, you know those fairies?” he asks, and the girl nods sternly. She knows them well. “Well, they took him. So . . .” He shrugs and retreats over the corduroy earth. He doesn’t know what else to say, or how to put it into words, but he knows she mustn’t see his face. Bea and Jack, born after the Collapse, who never knew of the Feed, are the most instinctive people-readers of them all. Not only is her memory good; Bea knows when she’s being lied to.
“Hello!”
Jane is trudging up the hill with an easel in one hand and a canvas in the other, and Tom turns gratefully from his daughter. He jogs over to take the canvas. “Another painting?”
“Why not? Except we’re running out of space.” Out of breath and hot, she sets up the easel and waves cheerily at Bea, who turns abruptly back to the pumpkins. “But Graham lost that battle long ago. He knows it makes me happy.”
“You’re good at it.”
“Well.” Jane’s eyes often gleam at a joke that no one else has heard. “You are kind, Tom, but my days of painting for others are over. One good thing about this almighty mess is who has time for critics anymore?” She wipes her brushes on a rag. “Which is lucky, because I’m low on russet, I’ve already lost my favorite yellow, and I’ll soon be painting endless studies in brown.”
“Can we make you up some more?”
“I don’t know. Can you? All this stuff we took for granted . . .” Jane sighs and stares away. “So, I had a funny dream while you were gone,” she says evenly after a while.
“A comedy dream?”
“Oh, you.” She elbows him, staring at the sunbaked hills with unerring intent. “No, it was scary . . .” She trails off while opening a tube of white, and when she turns back to her painting, a smile is veneered across her eyes. “Time was this would have been worth a lot of money. I enjoy it much more again now.” Her smile softens.
“Tell me about that dream.”
She pauses. “Is there any knowledge Graham or I can help you with for the facility?”
“There were instructions written on the fuel tanks. They looked complicated. What about—”
“Did you copy them down?”
Tom shakes his head and frowns. “Look, Jane. Thanks for your support earlier.”
“Sean’s threatened by you, th
at’s all. Before you came along, he was the alpha.”
“The . . . ?”
Jane paints a curve on her canvas, a stylized fish. “The main man,” she explains. “You’re not complicated, you men. You were the psychotherapist. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“That was years ago. He’ll tear the camp apart!”
“Oh, a fight needs two, Tom. He’s just scared. We all deal with it in different ways.”
“Well, we need to get him to sleep properly. Enough already. He’s paranoid!”
“If only he were . . .” She turns from him and starts on the sky, patches of blue spreading into form. She works the canvas with seemingly unplanned swipes, but the chunks of color take surprising shape. A cloud covers the sun and its rough edges gleam. A flock of birds circles afar, above the dark forest. Bea’s head bobs, disappears, and occasionally reemerges amid the straggly browning plants.
That afternoon, he sits in the consulting hut. Sean won’t come to talk, despite it being their rules, one of the ways they have learned and agreed to process the fear, taking advantage of Tom’s knowledge, his talking cure, and there are so many better things he could be doing with his time. Checking the filtration tanks down by the stream that they’ve just about worked out how to use. Preparing provisions for the journey to the facility. Talking the route through with Danny, discussing the dangers, the details, so he is prepared enough that Feed reflexes won’t kick in. Of them all, Danny is still the most prone to them. He had been young when it happened, a student. Enabled in the womb, he had spent his entire life in the infinite web of the Feed’s connections, from before he was even born. His natural brain had been barely wired when everything had collapsed, and Tom’s proud of the work they’ve done since.
The distance from the storage facility sits tight in Tom’s thighs, and the night’s scant rest in the tree aches his back. Bea’s insistent probing about Guy plays on his mind. Her inquisitiveness endangers her. How long until she’ll have to be told the truth? He closes his eyes and falls toward sleep, though he knows he shouldn’t; no one’s watching him, but he does it anyway. A fragmented dream of heat and darkness and a child that’s his but not. Animals prowling through ruins. Guy too, grinning, and he realizes Guy’s face somehow survives; he can remember him clearly, and he grasps this dreamily, with pleasant surprise. Ben’s face too. It’s there, in his head. Watching him sleep that fateful night. The memories flood unstoppable. It had happened before Tom’s eyes. Ben had convulsed and grimaced as something found its way in. Tom had seen that. He was sure of it. He’d shouted for their parents, he’d shouted for Kate, but he had known Ben was dead already. He’d seen the vid on loop, showing them the signs. So he’d choked his brother to death—
The Feed Page 3