Bar None

by Tim Lebbon

  I see several large birds perched atop the blackened roof members across the river, and from this far away I cannot recognise the species. Too small, I think, but perception is a dangerous thing.

  To begin with, it seems that most people wanted to park their cars properly before they died. Perhaps that sudden final onset of the diseases gave them enough time for a few last moments of lucidity. Going to collapse . . . get off the road . . . last thing I need is a shunt now . . . paperwork, insurance claims, all that time that hassle that expense . . . pull over, pull off . . . everyone else doing it too . . . strange . . .

  Cars sit staggered along the hard shoulder, many of them with noses buried in the rears of those in front of them. Trailers lie on their sides or crushed open from impacts, and suitcases, bags, loose clothing and other personal items are strewn across the road. Most of the clothing is a uniform grey, sun, rain, frost and snow having bleached the material and sucked the colour down into the ground.

  Other cars have been driven or shoved over the edge of the road and down into the ditch, some of them tipping onto their sides or roofs. Here and there they lie two or even three deep, and there are frequent signs of fires having broken out and ignited the fuel tanks.

  I see bodies. I try to look away but cannot. I am the classic road accident rubber-necker, telling myself that I really don't want to see the results of these crashes but looking nonetheless. I thought I'd had my fill of death and suffering in those terrible final weeks of the plagues, but it seems that there is always that deep-set curiosity that can never be assuaged. Many of the cars hold vague shapes behind their windows, but most of the glass is no longer clear. The outside is dusty, and the inside seems to be touched with something as well. I wonder whether the rot of bodies could spread to glass, planting decay in the form of moist moss, greasy fungus, or a film of slickness locked in by windows shut tight.

  Nobody wanted to breathe the air outside. Though it was late summer when the end came, still no one knew for sure how the diseases were carried.

  Other bodies lie in the road and on the verge, splayed alongside open car doors. I see the white of bone through tears in rotten clothing. The smaller the shapes, the more distressing they are.

  Here and there a vehicle has struck the central reservation and ricocheted away, hitting other cars and causing a tangle of wreckage that still sits where it happened. None of them were travelling very fast—the road was packed with people escaping the cities—but damage was exacerbated when vehicles following on behind shoved the shunted cars to the side of the road. They left the occupants trapped inside as they passed by.

  They would have, I think. Can't open those windows, not when there may be germs outside, or infected people inside, disease-carrying flies . . .

  I can barely imagine how bad it must have been. I suppose my own journey had been performed in relative comfort, three days after the end came. Ashley had started to smell badly by then, and I couldn't find the strength of body or mind to bury her. That was way too final. Ashley, my love, could never be below the ground. So I had left, and gone cross-country, and at the end of that first day travelling I had seen Cordell standing at the gates of the Manor.

  I ride the bike slowly along the road, and already I'm trying to calculate how long this trip will take. On a normal day it would be a three hour journey at least, not allowing for any toilet stops or coffee breaks, hold-ups on the Severn Bridge or traffic queues on the perpetually road-worked M5. Now, travelling at thirty instead of eighty miles per hour, it is a day's journey.

  But I know that there would be much more than this to hold us up.

  Five: Old Empire

  When I drink Marston's Old Empire ale—malty, sweet, a gentle bitter finish—I can remember the first time I recognised nature for what it really was. I remember because it was a weekend I spent in a cottage in the Welsh mountains with the two best friends of my teens, Clive and Rob, drinking Old Empire and accepting whatever strange effects so many bottles of that potent brew presented. None of us had ever bothered with drugs, and even at that young age we were true acolytes of brewed hops. Rob had gone through a lager-drinking stage when he was seventeen, suffering much haranguing from me and Clive. But two years later he recognised it for what it really was—the gassy emission from Satan's dick—and he was back with us on the beer.

  Ahh, the Heavens we found in so many pint glasses, in so many pubs. By the time I was thirty it was almost a way of life, but even at nineteen beer had a huge effect on me. Perhaps there's something in it, a chemical we're not quite sure of that reacts with the human mind, building a precious bridge between amber fluid and the psychic solidity of our thoughts. What I've always loved about drinking beer is that there's no real snob value attached to it. Go to a local beer festival and you'll pay the same amount for a new local brew as for that year's Best Beer winning brew. A half-pint glass, a tug on the handle, and a taste explosion that moves you one step closer to God.

  I like wine, but I despise the culture of snobbery and pomposity built around it. A decent five-pound bottle honestly tastes better to me than the three-hundred-pound bottles I've tried, and I have tried them. Talked into it by friends, offered a glass of something special by work colleagues and some of Ashley's family, and while they haw and har and delight in the sheer decadence of a glass of wine worth more than an OAP's weekly cheque, I reach for the Jacob's Creek and have a much finer time.

  So that weekend in Wales, when nature hit me between the eyes for the first time, was informed by the strong taste of one of Marston's finest, allegedly brewed to be shipped to India, though it never made it there. Whether that was simply publicity or fact, I was glad. It was a superb ale, and for the rest of my life I associated its taste with my true coming-of-age.

  On the second day in the cottage, I volunteered to walk to the local farm to buy some eggs. We'd brought sausages, bacon and mushrooms, but a fry-up is naked without fried eggs. I took a pocketful of change and a head full of morning-after with me. Not a hangover, as such, more a woolly feeling that made me more than aware that we'd had a good few bottles each the night before. We'd been talking about future plans, what we wanted to do with our lives, and for an hour or two we'd become frighteningly serious.

  Today would be different. Breakfast, a hike, then hitting the village pub for lunch.

  There was a stile in the corner of the huge garden that led into the neighbouring field. I climbed over and dropped into the corn, walking around the edge so as not to trample too many shoots. I entered another world. I hadn't realised how much the order of the cottage's garden had bothered me until I walked with the hedgerow to my left, thick with brambles, spotted with bloody poppies, holed here and there with rabbit warrens, rustling and whispering with secret nature that, I was sure, was far more vocal away from where I walked. I had the impression that I dragged a bubble of silence with me, a cautionary stillness that accompanied my every footfall, every breath. Perhaps if I sat and remained motionless for long enough the world would start up again around me, but that would make me feel deceitful. Nature fell quiet around me for a reason, and that reason was that I was a human being. I could hardly blame it.

  So I walked, and watched, and listened, and as I reached the gate that led into the next field I saw an auburn blur to my left.

  The fox must have been on the other side of the thick hedge, walking out into the gateway just as I approached. It saw me instantly, and probably heard and smelled me as well, but I've always been certain that until that moment it had been unaware of me. Maybe it had mirrored my route on the other side of the hedge. Perhaps it had paused when I paused to examine a rabbit hole, its own thoughts more basic than mine: food, meat, the chase and the catch. Then when I started again so did the fox, drawing closer to the gate that would reveal us to each other without a fear in its head. Foxes were always cautious, I knew that, especially during the day when there were farmers with shotguns and dogs. But they also had families that needed feeding. And like th
e farmers that despised them so, the foxes worked the land to find that food.

  It felt like several minutes that we stood there staring, daring each other to make a move. I've never felt time distorted to such an extent. Whenever I look back I cannot honestly say how long we remained on either side of the open gate. I saw the fox's fur rise on its back when a breeze sang up the hillside, and a heartbeat later my fringe lifted in sympathy. Its eyes glittered. Its mouth hung open slightly, and I saw the pink tongue in there, moist and shiny as it moved ever so slightly, stretching and contracting with each fast breath. One of its ears twitched and I turned my head slightly, looking down into the fox's field to see whether there was anything else moving in there. Nothing. No cows or sheep, no farmer or hikers, no rabbits or birds. A couple of butterflies danced frantic patterns in the morning sunlight a dozen paces away, and in that moment of utter stillness and clarity of vision I fancied I could hear their delicate wings singing at the air. I saw corn shift as the sky let out its held breath, and I could almost smell it moving, sense the shifting of balance all around me as the landscape—living, breathing, watching and sensing—moved moment to moment.

  I was not holding my breath. My heart pumped faster than usual, and I could hear blood flowing in my ears, but I breathed normally, long calm breaths which I hoped the fox could hear. Stay with me, I thought, desperate for the moment to never end.

  Perhaps I spoke it. Maybe in that moment of epiphany I forgot myself, and muttered to the creature as though it were my own kind. The fox darted away down the field, keeping low and tight to the hedge leading off at right angles from the one I had followed, and within seconds all I could see of it was the occasional twitch of a corn stalk as it passed by. A few seconds more and it was gone, into the next field or the copse of trees two hundred meters down the hillside. I would likely never see it again.

  For a while nature came alive around me. Birds sang, things scurried through the hedgerow, and to my left I saw the grey smudge of several rabbits emerging from their burrows. Then I turned and sighed, and that bubble of cautionary silence fell once again.

  For a moment I had been a part of it all. I never forgot that feeling, and I never once experienced it again.

  Everything changed that day. I became a watcher, able to appreciate what I saw for the stunning miracle it was. That was not just a robin on our bird feeder, it was a living, thinking thing, filled with instinct and blessed with its own personality, more complex and wonderful than anything mankind had ever achieved in its short history on the planet. We may have landed men on the Moon, but the creation of life was way beyond us. We explored space, the continents, the oceans, while the inner-space of our own minds remained largely unknown. For a moment, staring at that fox, I had known my place in things.

  Later that day, drinking yet another bottle of Old Empire with Rob and Clive, I looked out across the fields and experienced a brief shred of total understanding at the way things worked. And though that instant terrified me so much that Clive dropped his beer and asked what was wrong, it also gave me a sense of peace that lasted most of a lifetime.

  I swerve wide around a burnt-out wreck in the middle of the road, see the deer standing on the tarmac a hundred meters away, lean the other way to avoid it, over-compensate, and feel the bike slipping away from me. My hand turns the throttle as I fall and the engine screams, wheels throwing up a haze of smoke as rubber burns. I let go of the handlebars and wrap my arms around my head. In those couple of seconds between losing control and striking the ground, I realise how casual I have already become about what we are doing.

  If I break a leg now, there is no hospital to go to, no doctor to set the bone, no antibiotics readily available. Only pain and suffering. I'll probably die.

  I am travelling at less that fifteen miles per hour, but it's fast enough to kill me if I land wrong.

  I hit the ground on my left side, skid, feel the bike go out from under me and slide on ahead, and then I begin to roll. I go over and over several times, taking the impacts on my elbows and knees, my back and hips. I come to a halt resting against the deflated tyres of a blue car, and I remain motionless. If it hurts when I move, I could be in big trouble.

  I hear the motorbike stall as it scrapes to a halt. I open my eyes and peer between my elbows, and of course the deer is gone.

  The sound of the Range Rovers' engines change and footsteps come toward me. I roll onto my back. Someone groans and I think, Is that them? Are they groaning at what they see of my face? But then I realise that the groan has come from me, and I let my arms drops away to my sides.

  Jacqueline is first by my side, eyes darting left and right as she looks for blood or the white of broken bones. Her face relaxes as she sees neither, and she leans in and touches my face. "Are you hurt?" The others are there then, crowding around with matching looks of concern.

  "Pride badly dented," I say.

  "Gave me a fucking heart attack," the Irishman says. He grins down at me, lights a cigarette and looks around, as though keeping watch.

  I sit up slowly, waiting for pain to kick in from cracked ribs or chipped elbows. But I've been lucky. I can feel the trickle of blood running down my left sleeve, and my trousers are torn at the knees, but I don't think there's any lasting damage. I should feel petrified, but I don't. I'm exhilarated. I'm like a speed junkie who's just had his first fix for a long time.

  Something calls out from the woods to the north, a long, low moan the likes of which I've never heard before. The Irishman frowns, looks down at me, and I shrug.

  "What was that?" Jessica asks.

  "Fox," the Irishman says. "They can sound like babies screaming when they mate."

  "Doesn't sound like a fox to me," Jessica says.

  "Did you see the deer?" I ask. "It was just standing in the middle of the road. Just stood there staring at me as I came toward it, as though it knew I'd fall off."

  "Didn't see a deer," Cordell says. He's gazing off across the fields, waiting for the fox—or whatever it is—to call again.

  Jacqueline looks at me, touching my face, holding my hand as I go to stand.

  "Is the bike okay?" the Irishman asks. It has skidded along the road, leaving white scratched streaks across the tarmac, and I sniff as we approach, expecting petrol. But it seems that the old motorbike is as hardy as me; apart from some bumps and scrapes it's in good working order. I mount it, roll forward a few feet, and smile when it kicks to life first time.

  "So let's go," I say.

  "But carefully," Jessica says. "We can't waste time having to bury you." She turns away without smiling and passes Cordell, where he still stands staring over the fields toward the woods.

  "Didn't sound like a fox to me," Cordell says.

  By the time we all gathered at the Manor there was nothing on TV or radio other than three automatic broadcasts. One radio channel played a warning to "Remain in your house with all doors and windows closed" on a continuous loop that became maddening after thirty seconds. The only TV picture was a blank screen with the words "Hold for a speech from the Prime Minister." We held for a while, then turned it off. The final radio broadcast, which one or the other of us turned on quite often before it suddenly ended three weeks after the plagues, played "Wonderful World" over and over again. Before the end of the world, that song never failed to make me cry. Afterward, Louis Armstrong's grizzled voice and wondrous lyrics inspired melancholy rather than sadness. The thing was, from what I could see from the folly up behind the Manor, it still was a wonderful world, though one where humanity suddenly had so much less involvement.

  From the very beginning, we had all been of one mind. The Manor was stocked with food and, more importantly, a cellar full of wine and beer. We could fight our way across the shattered landscape to here or there, but none of us had knowledge that hinted at anything better elsewhere. So the alternative course of action was to remain in the Manor and see what happened. Eat. Drink. Remember.

  Even Jacqueline, who professed to
hating the taste of real ale, enjoyed several bottles each night after our first week together.

  It was not that we were trying to shut out reality by drowning it in alcohol. That wasn't it at all. It was simply that we had much better things to remember than what was happening to us there and then. The past was a happier place, and beer was a happy way to get there.

  Except for Jessica. Maybe ten years older than me, she never gave a clue about what she had lost, who she had left behind. She never actually told me outright that there was no one, but I gleaned it from her eyes, her casual acceptance, and the fact that she seemed more content than any of us with her lot.

  "It's a fine day when the end of the world comes, and all you have to do is drink beer," the Irishman said one night.

  I agreed with him. "Real ale apocalypse," I said. He started giggling, I laughed, and the two of us stayed up drinking until the early hours, unable to talk through our tears.

  We head off again and this time I drive slower, taking more care, edging past wrecked cars and watching out for debris on the road. And deer. I did see it, I know that, no matter that none of the others saw. It was there, staring me out and willing me to fall, and fall I did. So much must have changed.

  But it's not only newly confident animals that pose a danger. There are plenty of broken branches and leaf slicks from the winter, and here and there something larger blots the way; half a bumper from a crashed car, a Wellington boot, a crash helmet with one side caved in. I pass by a beer barrel standing on its end, one side gashed open. Soon after that there's a full bathroom suite smashed across the road—sink, toilet, bath. It's old—the bath is cast iron—and the scum stains are still visible beneath winter's slime. There are no vans or lorries close by, nothing to explain what this bathroom is doing here. And I realise that this is now a world of mystery. Before the plagues—before the end—something like this could have been investigated. Perhaps the sanitary ware carried manufacturer's codes, or even labels saying where and when it was bought or fitted. Its owners could be tracked down, and an explanation offered as to why it had ended up smashed and strewn across a dual carriageway. Now, with everyone dead, knowledge is rarer than ever before. Mystery is the order of the day. It's a wilder world we lived in, one where there doesn't always have to be a reason.