He planted his hands abreast the pulpit banister and leaned over the rail. “Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here?
“I admit that the list of questions has some…new additions. But we face the same problems as our forebears, we make the same daily struggle, we fight the same fight.”
He paused to pick out Norman and Lucian from the crowd. They sat with the elders up front—the thickness of their hair and the colour in their cheeks set them in sharp contrast to the shrivelled relics of the Old World around them, but nobody questioned their presence there.
Only Norman looked uncomfortable.
Alex suppressed a pang of annoyance. The Anniversary was no time for stage fright or self-doubt. But no matter. Norman would find his feet, in time. Alex was certain of it. He pressed on, “This year, we’ve fought for more than just ideals or politics. This year, without doubt, we have struggled with every breath merely to feed ourselves. Even now, we are yet to leave the darkness behind, and the harvest has only served to remind us of just how far we have to go.”
The crowd shifted restlessly, but Alex kept his hand raised until they settled, determined to finish. “The road ahead looks daunting, even for those of us who built this place. But remembering why we’re here, and what we’re trying to do, is more important than ever.
“Leadership is…difficult. It’s not a duty that any of us envy. But we have to face the fact that our elders are,” he allowed himself a wry smile, “getting old. Soon, our children will have to fight our fight without us. They’ll be carrying the torch for a world they’ve never seen with their own eyes.” He raised a finger. “But there is hope. There are those among us whom I believe in—whom we can all believe in. Now, before I bore the lot of you into the dirt—”
A ripple of laughter trickled through the cathedral.
“—if I may, I’d like to call a toast.” Alexander stopped pacing and faced Norman. “To our champion,” he said, and raised a glass of precious cider.
The room gave a single, raucous cheer. Norman’s shoulders constricted, but nobody seemed to notice, and his grimace went unnoticed by the crowd. Alexander nodded to him, flashed his most encouraging smile, and addressed the crowd a final time, “If this is our second chance, we can’t wallow in mourning for what we’ve lost, we have to celebrate what we have. Now eat up!”
A last cheer filled the nave with an echoing rumble. The smell of food was thick in the air, and every face twisted with hunger. The congregation fragmented as Alex backed away from the railing, and the droves about-faced with ravenous eyes.
Piles of steaming food lay at the rear of the room: venison, pork and chicken; a mountain of roast potatoes; eggs and loaves of bread—which were even free of sawdust; a pile of ancient pre-End food tins; mushrooms and seeds of every kind; fruit and vegetables; bowls of stuffing; a table of heaving pies; and, most sacred of all, several barrels of golden cider.
Plates and chairs enough for everyone were laid out across the nave. Before each seat was the best china and crystal the ruins of England had to offer. The crowd blustered past the rich appointments in passing, oblivious to the luxury. The promise of the first full meal they’d eaten in almost a year occupied the entirety of their attention. They each swept up a plate and hurried off towards the food. Some were close to breaking into a run.
Alex blinked in surprise when he saw that a few had remained sitting beneath the pulpit, their eyes still fixed on him. Among them were the same founding elders who lingered every year—Lucian and vacant-eyed Agatha at their heart—but this year youth peppered their ranks.
Norman, John DeGray, Richard Maxwell, Robert Strong, Sarah Clarke and even Allison Rutherford stood together in the aisle. They watched and waited beside one another, without impatience or any sense of grudging duty.
Alexander felt his chest flutter at the sight of their unity. They reminded him of another group of young people, who had stood together and faced a broken world just as they did now, long ago.
Perhaps there wasn’t so far to go after all, he thought.
He walked towards the pulpit steps.
*
“Nice speech,” Norman said. His cheeks still burned from being toasted by the crowd.
Alex, sitting across from him, smiled. “Not too much?”
They sat at the end of one of the central tables, eating amidst the heart of the celebration. They had drawn a short distance from their neighbours, almost yelling to be heard over the raucous, echoing din.
“Wouldn’t have mattered. If you told these people you could walk on water, they’d believe it.”
A strange expression crossed Alexander’s face, but before he could respond they were both being clapped on the back by a passing group of men upon whom the cider had done its work. A chorus of slurred sentiments—We’ll have your speech yet, Mr Creek! I’ll sleep safe another night with you both at the helm. Three cheers for the Chosen ones!—made Norman’s stomach shrivel. He bowed his head until they had staggered back to their tables, resisting the urge to hide his face in his hands.
“How do you do it?” he muttered.
“Do what?”
“Handle all the attention. Look so…so…in control all the time.”
Alex took a bite of pie, furrowing his brow in sweet satisfaction. “Practise. Years of practise. A lot of them.”
Norman sighed. “I know you’re relying on me to step up just as much as they are…” He hesitated, shook his head, and blurted the rest, “But I’ll never be like you. Most treat you like a god. There are people who live in caves a hundred miles from here who know your name. I’ll never have that…command, over people.”
Alexander steepled his fingers. “Don’t be fooled by pomp and circumstance. It’s all smoke, all fluff, all part of the fiction. The stories, they’re just that: stories. They have been even since before you came along, and everybody knows it—they know I’m nothing special. I’m just another man. But people need a figurehead, somebody to pin their hopes on. And I got the short straw.” He leant forwards. “I know it must look like you drew the same straw, but I believe you can do it, and so does everybody else. And”—he crammed the rest of the pie into his mouth—“at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.”
Norman traced his finger along the pristine china before him. “That’s just what I mean. If everybody’s following you, it’s all on your head when you fail.” He gestured to the joyful, satiated faces around them. “If it had been down to me, I’d have called tonight off. Our stores can’t take the hit, and we all know it. But…look at them. Look at how much stronger they all look.” He shook his head. “If I’d been in charge, they’d have had just another hungry night.”
To his surprise, Alexander’s face brightened. “The very fact that you’d think of everyone else, even now, when you’re surrounded by all this, means that you’re exactly the man they need.”
Norman drummed his fingers on the tabletop a few moments longer, trying to think of a better way to articulate his disquiet. Failing, he reached for the nearest pie, frowning against a strange feeling—a not-quite-unpleasant one—welling up from his stomach. “Screw it. You win. For now.” With enormous effort, he forced a smile. “Let’s eat.”
Alexander beamed and sat back to observe his rejoicing flock.
Most were laughing exuberantly. Some were dancing, parading about their tables as they ate to the tunes of old Mr Hadley’s band, which had taken to the pulpit for its acoustics. Others silently played cards, with mountains of coloured chips laid out beside their empty plates, their food having been demolished in minutes.
A few lined the nave’s shadows, leaning against the walls, eating spiced meat and watching the celebrations as though from above, basking in the laughter and good cheer.
All were smiling.
Elders danced, children giggled and frolicked between the columns. Some were disappearing into the cloister through the iron gates at the back, while others slipped through rusted side doors to laug
h and be foolish outside.
Light, humid summer breezes whistled in through the main entrance, rustling the hair of a group of men gathered around the cider barrels, chugging the amber liquid with zeal and cheering each other on. One of them lay on the floor at the others’ feet, clutching a chair leg and staring up at the ceiling with inebriated glee.
Lucian sat beside Norman, leaning over Agatha with a tenderness that he’d always reserved for the likes of her, for she had been among the city’s founders—though Norman suspected it was more than that. He treated her almost as a mother, spooning her morsels of pastry.
Across from them, Sarah lay in Robert’s arms with a book open in her lap, tracing her fingers along the defined contours of his bulging arms. He, in turn, remained motionless, gazing down at her in an eternal stare.
Richard and John had taken the adjacent table, bent over their chessboard. Their faces were set and emotionless, but about them was a static that betrayed their underlying joy—even as John lifted Richard’s king from the board. “Checkmate.”
“Son of a bitch,” Richard muttered.
John turned to his foot-high mound of stuffing with the smallest of smiles upon his face, pausing to grip Richard’s shoulder. “You’ll get it,” he said.
Richard muttered under his breath and got to work on his own plate, but Norman couldn’t help but notice the smirk playing upon his own lips, all too similar to the Master’s.
Amidst flickering candlelight, Norman ate and watched the celebrations. He was glad that the foraging had been worth it, but still his stomach churned at the sight of their glee. For each face that he saw before him, smiling and satiated, he saw a skull in his mind’s eye, half-buried in the wilted grasslands beyond the city.
At some point he heard Alexander’s voice, far away. “Are you alright?”
He didn’t respond immediately. “Yes.”
The potato was delicious, the best he had tasted for what seemed like decades. He hadn’t seen butter since November, and there had been no chance of churning any even for the feast, but something had been mixed into the mash to make it creamy and smooth. The pork had been braised with a sauce rich in notes of apple and cinnamon—the latter of which he suspected had been acquired through many hours of sifting through buried Old World spice racks.
Though his taste buds squirmed with delight and his distended stomach throbbed with bliss, he found it ever more difficult to swallow. He was finding the celebration harder and harder to watch.
It was too much, too absurd. To be so indulgent was almost an act of bravado. Those around him would forget their worries for a few hours, but the cost of such a reprieve was surely that of many lives. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, had most probably seen their last day and faded from hunger so that they could dance, drink and be merry.
He was on the verge of finally rounding on Alexander when Heather appeared in their midst, a tall woman in her early forties, sporting an equine face and waist-length, wispy hair. She was the closest thing the city had to a real doctor, the disciple of Clara Fields, a legendary oncologist who had survived the End and travelled the land treating the sick in exchange for bed and board, known across southern England during the Early Years, until she’d met her own end at the hands of squabbling highway bandits.
Instead of recreational attire, Heather was clad in a long white coat and medical gloves, both of which had been marked by streaks of red. Beneath them blue scrubs were visible, stained by perspiration at the collar.
She stopped in the middle of the hall, her eyes darting among the partygoers. A few people stopped dancing to stare, and a couple of wizened old men looked up from their cards, frowning.
Then Heather spotted Norman, Alexander and Lucian sitting at the table and made a beeline for them, taking long strides that betrayed great urgency.
Alexander turned to her, whirling from his seat. “What is it?” he said.
She didn’t speak until she was upon them, leaning close. “Come with me,” she murmured.
XI
The sun had long since set. The noise of the feast dissipated as they trudged away from the cathedral onto the deserted cobbles of Main Street. Their footsteps boomed in echo, and sodium-vapour streetlights threw an amber glow over their shoulders, draping tall shadows out ahead of them.
Heather’s face was drawn tight over her skull. She’d refused to explain until they got to wherever they were going, and led the way at a near run.
Norman quickened his pace until he was beside her. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“I need you to see this. I’m out of my depth.” She said no more.
Norman frowned, but remained quiet thereon. Alex and Lucian showed no sign of confusion, but he wasn’t sure whether that meant they shared his bemusement or not.
They walked in silence for almost five minutes before they came to the infirmary. It was a squat building, nestled between an accountant’s office and the boarded-up ruins of a gastropub, all whitewashed walls and wilted public-health notices.
Through the reception window Norman could see piles of machines, instruments and medical journals jammed against the walls. Most of it had long ago been pillaged—or rescued, as Alexander would have said—from hospitals, and hadn’t seen a flicker of life for decades. But there it sat nonetheless, waiting.
They pushed their way into the darkened reception. Most of the diverging hallways were littered with pamphlets on hygiene and textbooks on biology, browning and decayed, their pages bloated.
Without pausing, they passed from the reception into one of the few clear corridors. Open doors led off into the ghosts of GP offices on all sides. Boxes lay within, some piled on the desks and others obscuring curled posters of human anatomy on the walls.
They raced along until they came to a much larger space at the rear of the building, what had once been the clinic’s storage room. It was now their infirmary.
Polka-dot cubical curtains hung from rails upon wheels, each surrounding one of a dozen beds lining the far wall. Each curtain was open, each bed empty and neatly made—with the exception of the one directly before them. A liberal splattering of thick mud lay on the floor around it, overlaid by a pile of discarded clothing, torn and bloodied.
Lying upon the bed, groaning and gasping, was an ashen-faced old man. His eyes were shrunken and wary in his skull, giving him the appearance of a ghost clad in a paper gown. Only his eyes moved as they approached, swivelling in black-blue sockets to watch them approach.
A nurse tended to him in the gloom. She kept a small sponge moving over his head, such that small trickles of water constantly ran across his cheeks. He didn’t seem to notice.
They gathered around him in subdued silence as Heather crouched beside him. “How are you?” she whispered.
The man only stared back at her, slack-jawed and broken. Even when she repeated herself, he didn’t seem to hear her. His gnarled fingers clung to the tops of the sheets, trying to shield his withered body. His face was caked with the same thick mud as the clothes on the floor, beneath which lay a mask of crusted blood, faded and rustic in hue. It didn’t look like it had come from any particular injury. Instead, it seemed as though he’d merely been basted in it.
“He’s been beaten very badly,” the nurse said, mousy and nervous in Alexander’s presence and, Norman thought, perhaps, his as well.
“We can see that,” Lucian said.
She shook her head. “It’s not just that, Mr McKay, sir. He has lacerations all over his abdomen, like he was attacked by an animal.”
“Have you stopped the bleeding?”
“For the most part, but we can’t guarantee that he hasn’t got an internal bleed. His stomach is blotchy, but it’s hard to see past the bruising.”
Heather waved for her to be quiet and turned to the old man. “Are you in pain? We can give you some more medication to help,” she said.
The man only sighed. His shoulders slumped by a fraction.
Heather tried again, “Were
you alone? If you have family, we can try to find them for you.” She waited a moment and then added, “We won’t hurt you.”
Again, the old man lay still. After several moments he turned his head away from her. “Not now,” he whispered, his breath rasping in his throat. “Leave me, please.”
His accent was odd. Lilted in a way that Norman had never heard.
Alex and Lucian started.
Norman turned to them. “What?”
“He’s Irish,” Alex muttered. He blinked, his mouth slightly ajar.
“You came across the sea?” Lucian cried, taking a step forwards. “There are still people there? Are there others?” His breath whistled in his throat. “Is the world still out there?”
Heather reached forward to catch Lucian’s arm. “In time,” she said.
“But he’s—”
“In time. Let him rest.” She turned to Alex. “This isn’t the kind of injury we see from a squabble over food,” she muttered. “His injuries are too severe, too widespread. Somebody tried to beat him to death.”
As she spoke, the nurse reached across the old man and removed his blanket, soothing him when he struggled.
Norman almost uttered a gasp as a mottled, skeletal body was revealed, blemished with scurvy sores, misaligned bones and a thousand purpling bruises. Without a trace of muscular tone, striated with tracts of dried blood, the man’s body was enough to unsettle his stomach—and to dredge up memories of Margate’s starving locals, reaching for him.
Reaching…
He shivered and cleared his throat.
“We’ve no idea who he is. He won’t tell us his name or where he’s from. He hasn’t said much of anything, for that matter,” Heather said.
“What has he said?” Lucian asked.
Heather looked away as the old man groaned in pain, and then turned back to them. “When he was brought in he was shouting for someone—Billy, I think—but he stopped talking as soon as we got him to the bed.”
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