“Will you watch it with me?” he asked.
“Of course,” she replied, and they cleared a space on the blanket to watch the television together.
The set was black and white, its small screen placed inside a large wooden cabinet. A pair of heavy headphones led from it to the picnic blanket but a speaker still played the sound. Unlike the island around it, the screen seemed capable of creating greys, but the programme it was showing wasn’t very nice. The wolf was laying waste to Al’s Bar, killing diners and waiting staff indiscriminately, ripping them to shreds, eating some of them alive.
“You know him, don’t you, that monster?” Neon asked, losing her appetite for the cake.
The Pirate Prince nodded, his expression blank.
“He brought you here, didn’t he, to Albion?” Neon persisted. She placed the half- eaten fancy back on the blanket. “He’s the man we shot, isn’t he?”
“Sort of,” the Pirate Prince agreed, his face solemn. “You’re very clever, princess.”
Neon blushed and a black smudge rose in her cheeks. “I always knew it was you,” she said quietly. “You’re the Voice he hears aren’t you?”
The prince looked shocked. “You heard me earlier, out there in the wilderness?”
Neon nodded. “Of course.”
“What about the other Seekers? Your father?”
Neon shook her head proudly. “No, none of the others. Just me.”
Flies were becoming attracted to their food. They began buzzing over them, landing on sandwiches and sweets. “Excuse me!” they squeaked. The couple ignored them.
Neon watched the wolf smashing a man’s head into a jukebox and slicing it off with his claw. It really wasn’t very nice at all, and was beginning to make her feel quite sick.
“Death is like a wandering hand,” she recalled glumly. “It must be dealt...”
“Sooner or later,” the Pirate Prince interrupted. “But we can change that, you and I.” He turned and squeezed her hand. “Do you know why the world ended?” he asked.
Neon shook her head.
“Because people stopped loving. They stopped caring for each other, working together, trying to save the world,” he smiled. “They weren’t like us.”
“It looks like a lot of people have been hurt at the bar, though.” Neon nodded at the screen as a woman was thrown against the DJ stand. “That’s wrong.”
“That’s retribution,” the prince said simply.
“Retribution?”
“A great sin has been committed,” the boy pointed at the television set. “It’s his job to atone for it. And, besides,” he grinned again, “he’s hungry.”
“You, you mean this is revenge for Lord Truth’s murder?” Neon stuttered.
The Pirate Prince peered at the girl with a look of surprise spreading across his freckled face, as if calculating what to say. “Yes,” he said finally. “You could say that.”
“But they didn’t kill him, everyone in that bar, I mean,” the princess argued.
“I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong, my dear,” the Pirate Prince said. “Because in many ways they did, you see. You all did.”
Neon shook her head. “I’m confused.”
And the Pirate Prince stared at her. “Do you know, princess, do you know who killed him?”
Oddly enough, Neon had never really thought about it. “No,” she said simply.
“It doesn’t matter,” the Pirate Prince grinned. “We’ve got far more important things to talk about anyway. Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”
The Pirate Prince switched off the television with a chunky remote controller. The two of them then left the blanket, which was now being invaded by all manner of insects.
“Oi! Out of my way!” they argued.
“Plenty here for everybody!” a beetle squeaked.
“Do you mind,” a fly said. “I was trying to vomit on that!”
The Pirate Prince tickled Neon’s hand as they walked down to the ocean. She smiled. This isn’t like holding hands with my teddy, she thought.
“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly.
The Pirate Prince thought for a moment. “Jack, Jack Bellingham,” he answered.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“That’s hard to tell,” he replied, smiling. “I’m so glad you’ve found me though,” he said. “You’ve no idea how long I’ve been sailing the Other Worlds looking for you. Someone who can save me, that is.”
The boy paused and tickled her hand again. Neon giggled. “Someone who can save all of us,” he continued.
Jack Bellingham, The Pirate Prince, looked as though he was about 13, although Neon was beginning to think he was actually much older than that. She liked him immensely though, even if he did say such funny things and his friend was quite horrible. The prince was mysterious, and handsome. And this is probably, she thought, the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me.
Neon looked into Jack’s eyes, they seemed to glitter like the cosmos. Like space.
“There isn’t much time, Neon,” he smiled. “We have to show everyone this marvellous place. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Neon nodded.
“We can all be free here,” the Pirate Prince continued. “Your people can build new lives, they can start again. Just like you wanted. Look!”
As Neon stared out over the black ocean a white line appeared on the horizon and slowly it spread, stretching as far as she could see. It was like a heartbeat, pulsing in and out of time, until it throbbed at its centre, ballooned, and burst into the sky.
The sunrise pierced the black night, sending white shafts high above them, picking out clouds Neon had not realised were there before. Its radiant light took over everything, turning blacks white and whites black. Positives, Neon thought, were becoming negatives. Or was it the other way around?
“Yes, we can build a new tomorrow here,” Neon said, smiling. “We really can save the world.”
Behind her, the birds were singing a dawn chorus. It was like they were having a party, the whole jungle celebrating the fact she was there.
Neon looked up at her Pirate Prince, watched his Adam’s apple slide up and down as he swallowed, a bead of sweat forming at his brow.
“Yes,” he said. “But you need to bring them here first,” he said. “You need to bring me your friends.”
Chapter Nineteen
GILES stood shaking in the kitchen. The screams from the bar had finally subsided but he found the silence that followed them far worse. In the quiet he could hear the moans of his dying customers. In the quiet he could hear his own guilt, ticking its way south like slowly descending scales of justice. Ticking like a bomb.
This is why the world ends, Giles thought. Because, deep down inside, we’re all cowards.
The cook stared at the photograph of his wife on the windowsill. Its colour had faded in the rusting frame until her face was all but invisible. He could almost forget what she looked like. Almost.
Giles dipped his hands into the washing up bowl, stacks of plates and pans already glistening on the draining board. He cupped some of the filthy suds in his hands and drenched his head, greasy bubbles dripping down his face and soaking into his shirt.
Like a rain storm in Hong Kong, he thought.
Giles closed his eyes and there, in the dark ripples of his mind, the image of his wife was thrown into focus. A focus so sharp it ripped at his heart, and the memories came flooding out.
It was always raining in Hong Kong, at least it was the way Giles remembered it. So much so the sea had broken over the harbour walls and drifted inland. It brought pike and cuttlefish with it, mixing with the koi carp that splashed out of ornamental ponds and spluttered within the salty, polluted water. The ferries that transported tourists from the city’s air-conditioned hub bobbed and bristled in the slating wind, crashing against jetties that once sat metres above sea level. And junk boat traders found they could paddle through the streets
to sell their wares door to door.
Business was booming, and for Giles Haast, a young accounts executive, life was sweet. Every morning he would chomp down a burger on his way to work, tossing its wrapper under a mass of patent leather feet. He moved through a crowded skyway, linking offices to apartment blocks and shopping malls. It was so busy he could barely hear the frantic beeping of his mobile phone in his suit pocket as he pulled it out. And there was Marie beaming back at him.
“Hey tiger, looking good this morning,” the young Chinese woman offered as she regarded her fiancé’s handsome face.
“Thanks,” Giles replied, taking a moment to check his new blue video tie on which two storks were flying in and out.
Marie smiled, her brown eyes wide beneath a jet-black fringe. “So, have you heard the news?”
“Yeah,” Giles replied, licking the last of the burger’s ketchup from his fingers. “The Hong Kong Eagles kicked butt last night, and Lady Justice has just…”
“No, the real news, stupid,” Marie always mocked him when she wanted to talk about something serious. Giles liked that.
“The price of oil has just hit $200 a barrel,” she continued. “And they now think the world’s polar regions have reduced by a fifth.”
“Uh-huh.”
Giles wasn’t too interested in world affairs. He was instead concentrating on getting to work on time, stuck within this throng of people gathered on the giant elevated walkway. Outside the sky was thick and dark with a hint of green. It was springtime. Monsoon weather.
But six months later it was still raining.
Now married, the couple were lying in bed, entwined beneath black satin sheets. Giles’s hand crept over his new wife’s belly. She turned and kissed him on the cheek.
“I can’t believe it’s true,” Giles shook his head.
“It is,” Marie smiled. “You’re going to be a Daddy.”
Her face was lit by the flat-screen TV they’d bought from the mall days earlier. The rain pattered on the window outside. “You know, I can’t help worrying about what kind of world we’re bringing our baby into. Do you think all parents do that?”
Giles shrugged. “Probably.”
“Do you realise it hasn’t stopped raining here in Hong Kong for over a year now?” Marie muttered sleepily.
“Uh-huh.”
“There was another attack on a bank in London today.”
“Riii-ght.” Giles had become distracted by the television programme. It was one of his favourites – The Justice Family.
“Thanks for the burritos. They were fantastic,” Marie grinned, pushing aside the tray of food Giles had prepared in their small kitchen. “You’re quite a cook, Mister Haast. I hope you’re still going to bring me dinner in bed when our little one arrives?”
Giles chuckled. “Maybe if you’re lucky, Missus Haast.”
Giles loved it when Marie complemented his cooking and he held his wife full of wonder for his unborn child. He was the happiest man alive, he thought. He had a good job, a beautiful wife, money, everything he’d ever wanted. And, if he ever tired of his marvellously contented life? Well, there was always Network Albion.
The TV channel was the most ambitious ever created and the couple would watch it avidly. An ancient city in Scotland rebuilt for reality television, producing not just one show but dozens. Practically every inhabitant was on camera all of the time. There was the drama of The Justice Family with its costumed heroes fighting crime, and the soap opera of Market Place, where a cobbler’s son fell in love with a princess. Then there were game shows, quizzes, sports – the city even had its own basketball team – and each day new people would arrive in the city, and each day the audience would vote others off.
But best of all there was Jason King, the world-renowned ruler of late night TV, the man so rich and famous he’d made the whole crazy venture happen. He’d come out onto the stage each night wearing a crown! And just like Giles and Marie, everyone was hooked. At least, they were for a while.
But eventually it stopped raining in Hong Kong.
Giles stood staring out of the window of his boss’s office as the sun’s rays pierced a cloud. The windows reacted by tinting themselves grey, casting a reflection of his face. He looked pale and haggard, his chin masked in stubble with dark rings around his eyes. He swirled a glass of vodka in a hand that was scarred with long cuts, its little finger missing. The blocks of ice in the drink reminded him of huge lumps of concrete splashing into the sea.
“We’re screwed!” his boss’s fist slammed down on a desk behind him, the nearby vodka bottle rocking with the sudden movement.
“C’mon boss, it’s not that bad,” Giles said.
“Not that bad, are you kidding me, man?” Giles’s boss was a large South African with a penchant for westerns. He wore a ten gallon hat and cowboy boots and refilled his own glass, drinking the spirit down under a thick brown moustache. “Geez, the insurance market had already been blown ka-blewy, but this, this is just…”
Giles continued staring out the window of the skyscraper, so tall you could barely see the water below it, swilling against its reinforced base. The sun caught on the windows of similar glass towers surrounding them. “Listen boss, the economy’s been through the ringer before, it’ll recover.”
“Recover? Haast, wake up! I know you’re not one for headlines so let me spell this one out to you. We. Are. All. Screwed. The numbers just don’t add up, man! Vegas couldn’t fill this hole!”
Giles looked round in time to see his boss theatrically throw his arms out wide, spilling vodka as he did so. He looked drunk, and terrified.
“This is going to be it. Financial meltdown,” he said, before wiping his hand on his mouth and pouring another drink. “We’re living on borrowed time because the end is nigh, my friend. These are the last days and they aren’t gonna be pretty.”
“The end of the world?” Giles pondered, shaking his head. “Just how does that happen?”
“How the crap do I know,” his boss returned. “But who’s going to stop it, you?”
In London the rain had never stopped.
That would have been a comfort, if the city hadn’t been so grey and depressing. Giles returned to his birthplace with his young son Tommy in tow. It took all the money they had to reach England, and they pounded its streets, looking for work, until Giles began getting shifts as a short order chef in a grimy café.
Each day the little boy would watch him cook fried breakfasts and endless burgers, Tommy’s little legs dangling over the side of the freezer as he learned to read from the pages of newspapers.
“Fa… Fam… Fami?” he started, his big brown eyes pouring over the print.
“Famine, Tommy, it says famine.”
“Famine hits China. What does that mean, Daddy?”
“It doesn’t matter, Tommy. Move on.”
“Okay, erm. Lords fight back as poli.. politicians try to ban them from p… P… Parliament. The House of Commons was in up… uproar today as…”
“Move on, Tommy.”
“Mass Panic. People across America leave ma… major cities as country marches towards civ..? I don’t get this word, Daddy?”
“Civil.”
“Civil war. Every state of the USA is on high alert tonight after…”
“Move on, Tommy.”
“Angel Boy spotted in London. Hey look, Daddy, they’ve seen him again! The m… mysterious child that’s caught the public’s imag… imagination and d… dubbed Angel Boy has again been spotted in North London. The blue boy who can apparently produce sweets from thin air was seen in…”
“Move on, Tommy.”
“Oh but Daddy…”
Then finally, Tommy had some better news to digest. He was ten years old when his father handed him the letter.
“What’s this Dad?”
“It came in the mail, this morning. I want you to read it.” Giles said, his hair was now greying and his body a lot heavier.
The envel
ope was sealed with the royal crest of Albion and, on the back of it, the sender’s address: “Albion, A Long Way From Anywhere, Scotland.”
Tommy’s eyes widened as he ripped it open.
“Dear Mister Haast, congratulations! Your application for a job in Albion City has been accepted and we have a place waiting for you and your son on the next available bus to Ben Nevis. Please hurry because time’s a-wasting and the folks here are desperate for your bacon sandwiches and home cooking, although I myself am particularly keen to try out your fajitas!”
Tommy stopped. “Is this for real, Dad?”
Giles nodded. “Keep reading it, son.”
“The King and I both loved your audition tape and think you and Tommy will fit right in here – that’s as long as you don’t get voted out by the public first. Just bring lots of warm clothes because it’s totally freezing in Albion at the moment. No, really, colder than that, the storms over the last few years have been really bad. Anyway, I’ll tell the King’s Guards to expect you. Yours sincerely, Queen Marigold.”
Giles looked at his son’s beaming face and he wrapped the boy in his arms. He could feel himself smiling for what seemed like the first time in ages.
A week later, Giles and Tommy were dropped off by a bus in the middle of the Scottish Highlands, and there they waited with their bags for the little train to show up. They were so excited they could barely hear their teeth chattering. And then, once inside the city, they prayed they’d never leave.
But in Albion it never stopped snowing.
Each night, people would cram into the theatre just to keep warm. It had become impossible to book celebrity guests. As conditions worsened the secret roads to the theme park became so secret no one could find them anymore. In fact, the way the network’s ratings were falling people began to wonder if everyone had forgotten “reality’s greatest adventure” was even there at all.
The Last Days Page 15