by Tim Lebbon
"We're running out of everything," Cordell says, seemingly tasting the words. He looks up at me and I cannot read his expression.
"Except hope," I say. "I still have hope."
"Do you really?" I'm not sure who says it, but it does not matter.
"Yes. And can any of us say that Michael was just another survivor?"
Cordell is frowning, turning his head this way and that, and finally he holds up his hand and says, "Quiet."
We fall silent. Cordell says nothing. Instead, he walks to the door leading into Jessica's hopeful garden, draws the bolts, turns the heavy key, opens the door and goes outside.
We all follow, and then I hear what caught his attention. The distant, even rattle of an idling motorbike.
Cordell sets off at a run. I follow, and I hear footsteps behind me as well. I hope all of us are running; it seems important to me that all five see what is to be seen. For a while the crunch of feet on gravel drowns out the motor as we race along the driveway toward the wide gates.
The sun is rising almost directly above the gates. It warms my face, spilling through the trees, catching the million hints of sprouting leaves. The plagues may have come and gone, but the world is still alive, continuing as it always has except without the interference of humankind.
Things are going to change, Michael said.
None of us says anything as Cordell passes between the gates. I follow, sparing a glance for the huge wrought iron constructs, wondering where they were made and who worked on them, and how many days someone invested in forming, twisting and welding the metal together. So much creation and love, and now they would stand here until time dragged them from their mounts and covered them with dust.
"Oh, shit," Cordell says. I come to a standstill beside him, our arms touching, and stare at the motionless motorbike.
It rests on its stand a hundred feet up the lane. It has been left at the side of the road, its motor ticking over, wheel turned to prevent it from rolling backward down the slight incline. The hedge beside it is evergreen, tall and full, and Michael knew that none of us would be able to see it from the Manor.
"It's just like he said he found it," I say.
Cordell walks to the bike and looks around: the ditch, the hedge, across the lane at the lower hedge on that side. "We have to look for him," he says. "He may have fallen off."
"And left the bike on its stand?" the Irishman says, lighting a cigarette.
The others are here now, forming a line across the road as though unwilling to move closer. I walk up beside Cordell and help him look, knowing all the while that we'll find nothing. "Help us, then!" I say. The others spread out, climb a gate into the field, walk along the road's scruffy verge, head back downhill in case he has crawled that way, injured or dying.
We search for half an hour. For some reason no one wants to switch off the motor. As the sun clears the trees to the east I turn the key, and the silence is shattering. "He's gone," I say.
"Why did he leave the bike?" Jessica asks. No one answers, because no one knows.
"Let's get it back to the Manor," Cordell says. "It might come in useful."
"When we leave?" Jessica says.
I look around at everyone, see the mixture of fear and confusion. "Let's just get back where we can talk," I say. This is the first time in six months we have all been away from the Manor at the same time, and it feels strange. It's as though by coming out here we have abandoned the place, if only for a few minutes. We all need to get back.
Walking through the gates, seeing the Manor and the folly up on the hill touched by the sun, it suddenly looks like nowhere I have ever been.
I go straight down to the cellar to see what we have left. It's a comfort thing. Everyone understands, and the Irishman accompanies me.
"So what is your damn name?" I ask him.
He runs his fingers along a shelf of bottles, slipping from label to label, name to name. "All I have left."
I remember sitting in The Hanbury's garden in Caermaen drinking Marston's Double Drop, a golden ale with a fruity malt aroma, a bright and yeasty taste with a bitter, caramel finish, cool going down and calm as it dulled my senses, while all around us families ate basket meals and bickered, kids scraped their knees hiding beneath the heavy timber tables, mothers fussed and spread sun cream and fathers ruffled their sons' hair and smiled as their daughters ran off to find other girls, sit in the shadow of the hedge, play with their dolls and pretend to be mothers themselves.
Ashley and I had been talking about starting a family, and I knew from the look on her face what was to come next.
"Does all this noise bother you?" she asked.
Yes, I thought. I like drinking in peace. "'Course not," I said. "Kids having fun. What better noise could there be?"
She stared at me, then the corners of her mouth turned up in that coy Charlize Theron smile. She leaned in close. "You fuckin' wit' my head?"
"Not your head, no."
"Hey, later, we've only just got here."
We sat in silence for a while, the noise breaking around us like a fast-flowing stream parting around stones. Children. In many ways I wanted that, but there was something sad and intimidating about leaving behind everything we had; the freedom, the lack of responsibility. We were fighting against the tide of Ashley's body clock and struggling against the persuasive storm of evolution ringing through our blood. Soon, we would go with the flow.
I looked into Ashley's eyes, and she read me like a book.
"It won't be so bad," she said. She looked at the kids causing chaos around the pub garden, stroked the back of her neck with one hand, hair falling across her eyes. I did not see her again for what felt like hours. When she looked back at me her eyes were moist, but I would never know whether they were tears of sadness or joy.
I did not ask. It was always easier not to, and it was starting out to be a nice day. I always was one for the moment, keen to keep things calm and comfortable and quiet, and there were a million things I should have said and done which remained unsaid and undone because of that particular cowardice.
"It'll be fine," I said. I finished my pint and stood to get another. Ashley offered up her glass and I negotiated my way across the garden, looking down instead of forward so that I did not trip over any kids.
I bought another Double Drop, though the wide selection of ales there was tempting. The Hanbury had long been a favourite haunt of mine, and since we met, Ashley had also fallen in love with the place. She drank halves as I quaffed pints, and though I knew that she was not as obsessed with ales as I was, I appreciated the gesture. There was something about love in that. She didn't really like Japanese movies or sushi either, but she indulged for me, and I ate the curry she liked and watched the occasional episode of ER, and we both knew that compromise was a big part of falling in love and staying in love. So far, we had done very well indeed.
Later that day we moved across the wide river bridge and sat on the opposite bank outside the Veil's Arms. The pub had always intrigued me, and when I finally asked, the landlord told me that the name was something to do with a seventeenth-century highwayman, his love for a local farmer's daughter, and the piece of clothing of hers he wore when he was being hanged. The old oak tree in the pub garden was reputedly the hanging tree, and one of the thick lower branches bore a ring of knotted bark that was allegedly the wound made by the rope. It was a rich, interesting story, and the pub took full advantage of the opportunities afforded by it. You could order a Hangman's Lunch from its varied menu, drink a pint of locally brewed Highwayman's Best Effort, or peruse various etchings and paintings of the events whilst taking a piss. I was glad they had not gone too far; the next step was surely a mannequin hanging from the tree and a photographer charging to have your picture taken holding the rope.
Ashley and I sat on the grassed riverbank and watched the river rise as the tide came in. It was peaceful, warm, and the sound of kids playing drifted across the river from The Hanbury. We talked
inconsequentialities because the important stuff had already been said, and I stuck to the Double Drop, and as the sun started to sink toward the wooded western hills I had a comfortable buzz about me.
"How much of the same water do you think flows back up-river when the tide comes in?" Ashley said.
"Er . . ." I shook my head. The ripples in the muddy water's surface caught the sinking sun, giving the river a clayish texture never seen in the day.
"I mean, all that water flows down from the hills, picking up sediment, carrying leaves and twigs, rolling stones. The odd corpse of a sheep or bird. And it dumps it all into the estuary. Then a few hours later the tide rises, and this part of the river goes up, and some of the water flows back in."
"I'm not quite sure that's exactly what happens," I said. It struck me that I had spent many days of my adult life staring at a river with a pint in my hand, but in truth I had no definite idea of how rivers really worked. This type of revelation often hit me, and it worried me that I could go through life understanding so little. I was afraid I would lose my way.
"You see the same things flowing in and out with the tide, sometimes," Ashley said. "Almost as if the river can't decide whether or not to move on."
"Er . . . do you want another drink?"
"Gin and tonic," she said, never taking her eyes from the water. "Like life. That's confusing too."
"This is getting way too fucking deep for me," I said, and as I stood Ashley glanced up at me without smiling. I carried that look with me into the pub, stood with it at the bar and brought it back out, turning it over in my mind and trying to identify exactly what I had seen in her eyes. Impatience? Frustration?
Hatred?
I hurried back with her drink and sat down so that our arms were touching. I was almost afraid to speak.
"Cheers," she said, tapping my glass with her own.
"Bottoms up," I said.
"Later, if you're lucky." She grinned, leaned in close, and everything felt fine.
We agree to leave the next day. Michael had a power over us, that is evident in the others' faces as we sit around the huge dining room table. There is discussion and dissent, but mostly it is half-hearted. We all know that we will be going, because Michael made it so. He was not here for long. He came one afternoon and left that night, but in the space of twelve hours he forced us to make more real decisions than we had in six months.
Jessica cooks some food and brings it in. I still have oil on my hands from tinkering with the motorbike, but I am suddenly ravenous, and I eat with gusto. Some of us have only recently had breakfast yet our hunger is vast. Strange. I watch everyone else eating and try to see behind their expressions, hear what Michael said to them, feel the weight his gaze had on their eyes as well as my own.
"Who was he?" I say at last. I'm sure the others have been thinking it—the air is thick with the question—but I'm glad that I'm the one to verbalise it at last.
"Just a visitor," Cordell says. "He's travelled, while we've stayed put. He knows more of what's been going on. So he decided to tell us, help us."
"What a load of bollocks," the Irishman says. "'A visitor'? He rode up from the city. What was he doing there? What about those things we sometimes see above the city? See, but never talk about, because they don't fit in with our comfortable little plan of 'stay put and fuck the rest'? And he left his fuckin' bike running outside the gates. What was that all about?"
"That's the same way he found it," Jessica says.
"Yeah, so he says."
"But we've all agreed that we're going," I say. "We all believe in this Bar None place he told us about?"
We eat in silence for a few seconds, none of us wishing to meet another's eyes.
"No reason not to believe," Jessica says quietly. "And it's something to do."
"Well then, tomorrow," Cordell says. "We go tomorrow. And in the meantime, other than packing a few bags with what little we have, I suggest we take a drink." He stands and walks from the room, aiming for the stairs and the door to the basement below. None of us calls him back. It is not even midday, but society is dead. Who gives a shit?
"Bottoms up," I say. The others smile and nod, and I know that today won't last for very long.
I go to help Cordell bring up the last of the bottles. There are more than we think, and it takes us several trips. Jessica and the Irishman arrange the bottles on the table in the living room, and by the time we make our final trip there is quite an array on offer.
"Forty-two," Jessica says. "What a day."
I pull a bottle opener from my pocket and flip the lid on a bottle of Golden Glory. I raise it and salute everyone else in the room. Then I take a long drink. Peach, melon and malts on the nose, a hoppy, fruity bite, and a long-lasting sweet aftertaste. I smack my lips and sigh. "I love beer," I say. Even on my own, I always honour such a good brew.
The others select their bottles and give their own toasts.
"Good health," Cordell says.
"I name this shit The End," Jessica says.
"Drink is the feast of reason and the flow of soul."
"A mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer."
"Here's to home," the Irishman says. "I'll never see her again." He turns away to take his first drink, and I stare into the neck of my own bottle, thinking of Ashley and knowing that everyone has a similar thought. Except maybe Jessica. She's an enigma, and sometimes I think she's lost nothing at all.
We'll never really be all together, I think. Not the way we've been introduced. Maybe we're friends, but we'll never know each other. There's far too much to know. Too much lost, too much forgotten, too much we'd like to forget. Fate has made us full of secrets.
"To Bar None," I say, raising my bottle. The others follow, and again I am struck by our easy belief in a midnight man's story.
We drink throughout that final day at the Manor. Lunchtime comes and goes, the world outside exists without our seeing it or taking part, and we sit mostly in silence and finish the last of the beer. Occasionally someone leaves the room to go and pack their bags, but they are never away for very long. There's not much to pack—clothes, a book, the few personal effects most of us still own—and he or she is always keen to return to the living room. There's something very much like a family about us today.
Cordell falls asleep after several bottles and starts to snore. Jacqueline smiles, hiding the expression behind her hand. She's so delicate and brittle, I can't believe she's survived the end of the world.
"So is this really it?" the Irishman asks, as if hearing my thoughts.
"Well, when I look out there I don't see very much left," Jacqueline says.
"I do." Jessica stands and moves to the window, becoming a part of the view. "I see trees sprouting buds. Daffodils are flowering along the hedge at the front of the garden, and others have sprouted ready to bloom in the flower beds below this window. Snowdrops among the trees over there. Green shoots of bluebells, and we'll see the flowers themselves soon. Birds feeding on insects in the trees, butterflies here and there. The grass is lush and starting to grow again, and I'm glad none of us could be bothered trying to cut it. I've never seen it so green."
"You seem to have forgotten the stinking dead city bulging with two hundred thousand corpses," the Irishman says.
"I didn't forget. That's what's ended. I'm just looking at what's continuing."
"We're continuing," I say.
"This?" Jacqueline says. Her soft voice has turned surprisingly harsh. Drink doesn't agree with her, and I always get on edge when she's starting her fourth or fifth bottle. "This is hardly continuing. We're dead but breathing."
"It's still an existence for me," Jessica says, and her breath mists the glass in the window.
"Yeah, but you're weird." Jacqueline lobs her empty bottle and it smashes in the stone fireplace.
"He said everything's going to change," I say.
We drink, and think, and the room is silent for a long time.
Tha
t evening, the last of the beer gone, bottles smashed in the fireplace, glass spilling across the carpet like dying embers of a cold fire, I open the patio doors and stand on the gravelled garden area with Cordell, Jessica and the Irishman. Jacqueline has gone to her room, and we can hear the sounds of the Manor settling around us as the heat leaves its stone walls. The sun has gone, leaving a bloody smear across the horizon. Some trees catch the light, and a few clouds echo pink and orange.
"It's a long way," Cordell says. "Could be anything out there."
"Anyone," Jessica says.
We're not watching anything in particular, but I see the way the setting sun continues to hang from the branches of trees, dripping from them, clinging on even after the horizon has grown dark.
Things are going to change, I think. I glance at the others and know that they have seen it too.
Four: Golden Glory
When morning comes we're keen to leave. We pack the two Range Rovers we found in the Manor's garages when we first arrived. Cordell checks them over—tyre pressures, oil levels—although I know he has been tending the vehicles regularly for months. It was something to kill the time, but I also think he always knew there would be a time when we needed them. Most of us, me included, rarely thought beyond a few days ahead.
I have volunteered to ride Michael's motorbike. I am the most experienced, and the thought of riding alone appeals to me. The bike is something of a talisman in my mind, a physical proof of Michael's presence. It was only the night before last that he spoke to me—spoke to us all—but already I'm finding it hard to believe that he was ever here. He has caused us to move on, yet I can barely remember his face or voice. If I close my eyes it's almost there, like someone's name on the tip of your tongue, but there's nothing that quite jars the memory and makes it concrete.
But the bike is solid, the bike is there. Its seat is worn, its tyres old and nearing the ends of their lives, and oil has spattered much of the engine and congealed. I took a rag to it earlier in an attempt to clean it off, but succeeded only in smearing the oil onto new places. It's been a long time since I looked after a bike, and this one is older than any I have ever ridden. It almost belongs in a museum. It's worth a fortune, I told Cordell that morning, and I smile yet again at his response. Gets you where you need to go, it's worth your fuckin' life. I have kick-started it several times already, and every time I take comfort in its familiar voice.