UK2

by Terry Tyler

  We're going to lose people. I can see it. Carla is whispering to Toby, Becky, Clive and Mel; they all seem to be in agreement.

  Barney holds up his hand. "Oh, pardon me, I nearly forgot, what with all this. I might have a bit of good news; I meant to say when we was up at the weekend, 'cause we've been asking round everywhere, but it slipped my mind. Is there a nurse called Abigail Hayes here? Abbie?"

  Abbie stands up, her face white. "Me. I'm Abbie."

  The ape grins. "That's bloody brilliant. I'm glad I've found you, love, cause you'll never guess what—y'sister's waiting for you in Central. Mandy?"

  "Yes—yes! Mandy's there?" She looks overjoyed. Finding someone instead of losing them is indeed a rare occurrence, these days.

  "She most certainly is, love. You was up Darlington when the virus hit, right?"

  "Yes, with my boyfriend—"

  "Yeah, well, Mandy, every time we've gone out she's said to me, can you keep a look out in any of the camps up the North East, see if you can find my sister?" He smiles. "She's alive and waiting for you to join her, babe. And as a nurse, there'll be a good job for you in Central."

  Abbie sits down. She's smiling and crying; Audrey takes her hand, pats it.

  "Mandy," she says. "I can't believe it." She looks up. "Kara, I'm really sorry, but it's my sister. I never thought I'd see her again, I've got to go, you do understand?"

  Kara forces a smile and says that of course she does, but it doesn't take a mind-reader to see what she's thinking; this is another big, big blow.

  "Bit of good news in all the doom and gloom, eh?" Barney is grinning all over his ugly face. He moves towards the door. "Look, come up the coach park and have another chat with us if you're not sure 'bout coming; departure time ain't set in stone, though we'd like to get most of the journey out the way before dark. And I'm really, sincerely gutted for you 'bout your farm."

  One of the goons turns to Kelly. "We're sorry 'bout Lucas, too."

  "Thank you," Kelly gulps, and bursts into a fresh bout of tears, poor kid.

  Lottie stands up.

  She knocks the table in her haste, and a cup crashes to the floor; the noise catches everyone's attention.

  We all turn to look at her.

  "We didn't say his name."

  Silence.

  The smile never falls from Barney's face. "You what, love?"

  I can almost see her heart thudding. "Nobody said his name. Nobody told you the guy who died was called Lucas."

  Silence.

  Clever girl.

  Barney is the first to recover, and starts saying that of course his name was mentioned, or maybe one of the other two on the barricade mentioned it to his man while the big fella was talking about the farm; the goon nods, fervently, saying, "Yeah, yeah, he did, yeah, that's right, yeah," but it's clear he's lying.

  Kara flips.

  She shouts at them to get out, get the hell out of our pub, off our island—which is when Barney turns on her, no longer the smiling friend.

  "That's what the problem is, babe. It ain't your island. Anyone's got the right to come onto it, an' that includes us. The sooner you lot realise that, the sooner you'll understand that you ain't safe here, and you ain't never going to be." He looks around. "We'll be in the car park. Leavin' in one hour."

  They go.

  Eighteen of them.

  We know Barney's gang is responsible for the death of Lucas and the ruination of our farm, but those eighteen had already made their minds up, and they're not going to reconsider, not even when Lottie yells out, "You're going to leave your friends to go off and live with murderers? She points at Barney. "He killed Lucas, it was the government that started the virus in the first place, and Dex is there, too—and he's the worst of the lot! Did you know it was him who got Wedge to kill Heath?"

  She looks triumphant, but her words fall on deaf ears. Heath's death is old news. Those who arrived here after he died don't care; they didn't know him. Toby actually laughs.

  "What you talking about, sweetheart? You're saying Dex ordered a murder?"

  "Yes! It's time everyone knew—him and Wedge, they were as thick as thieves, and Dex bribed him with all sorts so he'd kill Heath, because—um—"

  She falters; I daresay she doesn't want to shout Vicky's private business around the room. Alas, her revelation sounds unlikely, even to my ears.

  Toby shakes his head in amusement. "Got any proof? Dex was a sound bloke, in my book, and he wasn't stupid. This place is cursed; we should've gone back in August, when him and the others got the hell out of here."

  "You're wrong! I do have proof—"

  Vicky holds her back, gently. "Leave it, darling. There's no point."

  Poor Lottie; with her angry eyes, pink cheeks and zombie t-shirt, she looks like nothing more than an over-emotional teenager blurting out wild stories. Not to me, or any of us who know the truth, but I can see the picture she presents to Toby, to Carla, to the other newer arrivals who never knew Heath, never knew Wedge.

  Some of them start making their way home to pack up their belongings.

  Kara looks worn out. "If they neither believe nor care that Barney was responsible for the farm and Lucas, they won't believe us about Dex or the virus, either. They've swallowed the bullshit; let 'em go."

  An hour later we wander up to the coach park, to say goodbye to the people we will probably never see again.

  Tough nut Ruby is distraught because her friends, Ray and Will, have chosen to leave.

  "We love it here," Will says, "and we don't want to leave you. But—Rubes, it sounds bad, but I don't care who killed who. It's winter. The farm's gone. We've got four months of cold, there won't be enough food here, and we're just fed up with the struggle."

  Ruby won't go, because she's in love with Parks, though she insists this is not the reason.

  "I'd rather eat my own spleen than go anywhere with that fat shithead," she declares, staring straight at Barney. "Is that me tied to a post to drown next time you come up, then, arsehole?"

  Abbie's in tears, as are Clay and Zoe, who have been here since long before I arrived.

  Barney doesn't look at us.

  "Well," says Parks, after they've turned the corner, out of sight, "he's wrong about one thing. This is our island. And it's staying that way. Eighteen gone means w' bait should last just fine, too." He puts an arm around Ruby and kisses her, and I envy them; such a good looking couple, in the prime of their lives. "C'mon, let's all go and get mortal, shall we? Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all!"

  So that is what we do, we thirty who are left. We do indeed get 'mortal', some more than others, but by the end of the afternoon there is not a sober head among us. We drink to us, and our future, and to all those who have died, and Luke puts music on, Rowan nips up to the hotel for stale crisps, nuts and olives, and some liqueurs and champagne she was keeping for New Year's Eve. Scott gets his Polaroid camera and we take photos, the only ones we have and probably ever will have of all of us, together. The danger has gone, for now, and someone goes down to fetch Gareth, Jax and Ozzy from the gate, because we can't let them miss out, and for the first time we leave the barricade unmanned, because the law of averages tells us we've had our shit luck for this week. More than once, it occurs to me how strange life is. I'm one of thirty people having a party in a pub on a remote island in a devastated world. If someone had told me, ten years ago, what I would be doing on December 10th, 2026, I'd have told them to keep taking the tablets.

  It's a wonderful afternoon, both memorable and magical, but still I have this feeling of time running out. I know we are in danger, and I don't think it's all over. There will be a way out, if we can find it. Or maybe just if we can recognise it, when it presents itself.

  Later, when it's dark and the raucous partying has calmed down into intense drunken conversations, I find myself sitting at a table by the window, talking to Vicky.

  I say 'find myself'. I actually nipped in as soon as Travis went out to the garden to empty his bladder.r />
  She talks about Heath, and I talk about my wife and son. Gaia and Jarrah were ill for five days before the end came; had they not been about to die, those five days might have been among the best we ever spent together.

  Before, we thought we had all the time in the world, so we wasted too much of it. Like everyone does.

  We were together for thirteen years, and in that time we had some godawful rows. Because that's what happens in even the happiest of marriages. Most of the time you're fine, peaceful and content. Now and again you're off-the-scale happy, but once in a while you hit each other's irritation spots, and yell at each other, stomp about and shout a load of stuff you don't mean; often you know you don't mean it even as you're saying it.

  Gaia once called me a pompous old cunt, and said, immediately afterwards, "I'm sorry, I don't really think you're a pompous old cunt, but you can still go fuck yourself," and stormed out of the house.

  When she was dying, I felt angry with myself for every one of those days, every time I hadn't listened to her, every minute I hadn't been totally reasonable and understanding. I felt sad for every moment she'd wasted yelling at me about a load of crap that didn't matter, too; because I would give anything to have those moments back now.

  When we married, I was forty-five and Gaia was twenty-two. She was the daughter of one of my friends. Thus, it took us a while to admit how we felt about each other. It took her father about a year to speak to her again, about four to be okay with me. So I regret that, too—which is why I get Vicky, in a way that maybe others don't.

  She only had just over two months with Heath, a furtive two months, because (she tells me) she was not brave enough (she describes it as 'too pathetic') to make the break from Dex, over a year before. She blames herself for the wasted time, and for his death.

  She feels bad for everyone who ever cared for him, including Aria, and most of all for Jax.

  I tell her that guilt over stuff you can't change is a pointless emotion. It just holds you back, and stops you enjoying the time that's left.

  Our life is as the flight of the sparrow down the lighted hallway (if I may misquote the Venerable Bede), and that we are alive at all is a miracle (that one sperm, that one egg), and we shouldn't waste a single second of it on negative bollocks, but we all do.

  I understand why Vicky feels as she does, because it's how I felt for a long time, until I managed to accept it. I wonder if I might be falling in love with Vicky, and not just because she reminds me of Gaia.

  Or maybe it's just been a long time since I got my leg over, and she's one of the few vaguely possible candidates.

  I like to think it's not just that, though. We connect.

  If she feels the connection too, there is no reason why it couldn't be.

  I'll wait and see.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  UK Mercia

  Lincolnshire

  When he wakes up he is freezing, though fully dressed and lying under a musty-smelling duvet. He's hungry, too; last night's supper was thin, tinned vegetable soup, the sort Davina used to bring back from Lidl because it was cheap, and would end up in the food bank donations box. The bowl was shoved through his door with a bread roll that was only edible if dipped in the soup to soften it. This meagre repast was accompanied by a solitary, stale bourbon biscuit.

  Paul Lincoln is in the hole.

  He takes a piss in the bucket in the corner, and glugs down the last of his water; the soup was so salty he's been thirsty all night.

  He wants coffee and toast. He wants to be let the hell out of this cell.

  He bangs on the door.

  "Oi! You out there! We've done our five days, you've got no right to keep us locked up! You're not the bloody police, are you?"

  Then he hears his daughter's voice.

  "Don't, Dad. You'll only make it worse."

  She sounds so hopeless, and his eyes fill with tears. He wants to be in her cell with her, taking care of her.

  They're here because he objected to her being pawed by a load of gorillas. Hasn't she been through enough?

  She lost her baby. Thank goodness. Probably a result of the shock, fear and lack of food, when they arrived at UK Mercia and found it was not a free and easy, agricultural community, as implied by Verlander, but a bloody work camp.

  Their apartment is the same size as the rabbit hutch at Central, but the beds are harder, the walls thinner, the TV smaller. The working hours are longer. The pay is less. You slack in your work, arrive five minutes late, do anything that doesn't comply absolutely with the UK Mercia rules, and your account is debited. Paul's earnings on the building site and Avery and Davina's in the vast Grow Zone only provide the basic necessities. For lunch, he eats dry bread and spam, with stale cereal bars and bottles of Lucozade to replace the calories he expends on the building site. Davina goes without lunch to save up, in case the children need expensive medication; she steals produce from the Grow Zone to eat while she's working.

  He remembers how she used to have her nails made long and sparkly once a year, a special treat for Christmas. Diamante on her ring finger. Now, those nails are ragged and permanently blackened with soil, and she uses them to slice open unripe pea pods because she's hungry.

  The thought breaks his heart. He tells her to buy a sandwich in the canteen, but she won't.

  UK Mercia residents are a different breed from those in Central. They're hard, rough. Thugs who stole the vaccine, the odd mouthy activist, ex-army and cops gone rogue. Here he sees the sort of desperation that turns violent; to think he used to whinge about the bikers on Lindisfarne. They were decent blokes, Jez and his mates, he can see that now. He knew it at the time, if he's honest, and he'd give a year of his life to be back there now.

  Five days ago, Paul came home from work to find Davina in a state, because Avery had been selected for work at the bar where the guards drink.

  No fucking way.

  His lovely daughter, who'd already been taken advantage of by that pervert on Lindisfarne, then by some UK Central Jack-the-lad who got her in the family way and left her high and dry.

  Avery was happy to go, apparently.

  "That's what worries me," Davina said. "She said it's better than being on her hands and knees in the Grow Zone."

  No way is Paul having her working in that bar. She's not even old enough—aren't you supposed to be eighteen to serve alcohol?

  He didn't wait to eat his dinner (more spam, this time with beans on toast), but walked the long mile to the guards' recreation huts.

  If his anger subsided on the walk, it resurfaced as soon as he shoved open the door.

  There she was, his Avery, in a hooker dress that barely covered her underwear, cleavage spilling out at the front. She balanced a tray filled with drinks as she tottered over to a table on high heels, and her discomfort, both physical and psychological, was much in evidence. She shook as she set the glasses down; one man placed his grubby mitts on her waist, reaching higher, too high, inviting her to sit on his lap, while the rest of them were laughing, joking, making obscene comments about her painted red mouth, her legs, her figure.

  His Avery. His little girl.

  He couldn't have stopped himself if he tried. He couldn't claim that a red mist came down in front of his eyes, the way some men did when they came out fighting. No, he could see just fine, every sense was clear, sharp, on high alert, and he had no choice. He had to protect his daughter, even if he got hurt in the process. Nothing mattered, except getting his baby girl away from those animals.

  He flew at the man, tearing him off her and onto the floor, kneeling astride him, punching him in the face, over and over, and Avery was shouting, "Dad, stop, you're killing him," and then another man was pulling him off and hitting him in the stomach, hard, which was when Avery piled in, whacking his attacker over the head with her tray, kicking him in the balls with her pointy little shoes, screaming, "Don't you fucking hurt my dad, you fucking arsehole!"

  And even though he winced at he
r language he was so proud of her that tears streamed down his face, with love for her, not pain. But of course it was the guards' drinking hole, so there were CETs there, too, and the tasers came out, and the last thing he knew was some big, grey-haired bastard snarling, "Both of them. In the hole for five days."

  He's done the five days. So has Avery. He doesn't care about himself; he'll do another five, another fifty, if it means keeping Avery away from that bar.

  If they send her back there, he'll protest again. And over and over and over, until they get the fucking message.

  Somehow, he's got to get his family out of there.

  Somehow.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dex

  UK Central

  The shiny new capital city does not run quite as smoothly as advertised, but Dex is not surprised. A few worker bees will always question the system. Now and again a ringleader like Paul Lincoln will emerge, to inspire rebellious bravery. The situation is best handled by removing him: in this case Dex suggested the family's transfer, but he is aware that another might take his place.

  In Central, most complaints are about the credit system. They don't think they're getting enough. Already they've forgotten about the world outside Central's walls, that they used to scavenge whatever they liked, without having to work for it. They've accepted the new order, but still they must be managed with care.

  Verlander liked Dex's idea of giving everyone a credit increase of ten per cent for each week of December.

  "Bearing in mind that if the norm is only just above subsistence level, any increase raises spirits. I know most people don't give a monkey's about Christmas, but it'll spread good cheer, make you look like the hero and keep them quiet for months after."