Bar None

by Tim Lebbon

  I go to the window and look out. My view is of the huge garden to the rear of Bar None, a place I have not seen before now. It's much like the front, except more expansive. Dozens of tables and chairs form octagonal shadows across the grass, planted seating areas are scattered here and there, and in the distance I can make out the skeleton of a children's playground. Haven't seen any children, I think, but that does not mean there are none. Those long corridors behind me, those hundreds of doors, stairs and ramps and hidden routes up and down . . . all far too large to be contained within such a building. Impossible. And yet, like last night, I don't find it difficult to accept.

  Beyond the garden I see the shadow of mountainous undergrowth. I wonder if it's really there, or whether it's still just an image of what will be. Perhaps I should go and see. But it's dark out there, and I know it's dangerous. And my bed is calling me back.

  Climbing beneath the covers I try to step back, disassociate myself from where I am so that I can take an objective view. But however fantastic and impossible Bar None is becoming, none of it feels like a surprise.

  I think of Michael out there on guard duty, hoping that I never have to see what he's guarding against.

  I drift off. Memories come in, and this time none of them are my own.

  I watched my mother fading away from cancer. She was nowhere near the woman she used to be. She had lost weight, become vague, looking like a sad, distorted echo of her old self. She knew what was happening, and that was worse. She knew everything. Even as I sat there crying, she reached out a skeletal hand to calm me down.

  "Come on, Son," she said. "Don't be so sad. You're a good boy. Don't be sad."

  "But I don't want you to go," I said.

  "Everyone has to go. This is my time. And I think maybe I'm having an easier escape than you." She meant the plagues, of course, and the troubles as countries across the world tried to take what they could from their dying neighbours. Living in the Outback we were somewhat removed, but even here the end was drawing near.

  "Perhaps," I said. I did not tell her about the sores that had broken out across my chest. I had maybe a couple of weeks, she had a day or two. She did not need to know.

  I held her hand, and we talked about old times.

  * * *

  Daddy put me on his shoulders. He always did that. He'd tickle my legs and pull my toes, and I always thought I was going to fall, but I never did, because Daddy was holding me and he'd never let me fall.

  We walked along the canal to the wharf. We saw: a heron, a kingfisher, three ducks, two swans, about a million cows, a sparrow hawk, someone's old bike thrown in the canal, and a man running with a rucksack on his back. Daddy walked, said he couldn't run with me on his back because I was getting to be such a big girl. I know I was heavy, because his head got wet and sweaty. But he carried me all the way, just like he said he would.

  When we got to the wharf Daddy sat by the canal and gave me two pounds to go to the shop and get a drink and some chocolate. I waited in the queue for a while and bought some water, and some chocolate biscuits which the lady said she'd baked that day. Daddy and me sat on a bench and watched the barges go by, and we ate our stuff and drank the water. We didn't speak much. I liked the quiet, and watching the water swirl and bubble behind the boats. Daddy stared across the water and through the trees, like he was trying to see his way back home.

  "What's wrong?" I asked him.

  "Nothing, sweetheart." He stroked my hair and tickled me under the chin.

  "Is it what you saw on telly?" There'd been lots of people talking, and pictures of dead people piled up in the backs of lorries.

  "That's a long way away," he said.

  "It doesn't happen here?"

  "No, it doesn't happen here."

  "Like tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes. They don't happen here."

  "No sweetie, they don't."

  I drank some more water and watched a family of ducks waddle past us to the canal. "Wouldn't matter if they did," I said. "You'd look after me."

  Daddy didn't say anything else. He just looked across the canal again, past the trees.

  We were hunting deep in the woods, three days out from our village, when the explosion came. It shook the world. We fell, knocked down by the shockwave, shaken from our feet, down was up and up was down and we lost consciousness for a long time.

  When we woke up the world had changed. Our clothes had been scorched from our bodies, out hair frazzled by fire. Trees had fallen all around us. Some of them were snapped off close to the ground, their trunks—thick as my waist—splintered like a twig in a child's hands. Others had been uprooted, literally torn from the ground. All around us was clear of fallen leaves, because they had all been blown away.

  Leonid started to whisper. "Did you see? Did you see?"

  I shook my head, unable to speak. I had seen something. I had heard something. But it was so far beyond my comprehension that I could barely speak of it. Years later, when the world began to take interest in what had happened, I tried. But not then.

  "I saw," Leonid said.

  In the distance a column of fire connected heaven and earth. Leonid and I huddled together, agreeing that it was still the middle of the night, and we watched to see what would happen next.

  * * *

  I stood there, even though I knew they would take me. I kept the bag in my hand. I waved. Perhaps they would drive on, but I thought not, I hoped not. They were a hundred tonnes of metal and I was me, but sometimes you just have to make a stand.

  "Really," he said, "do you think he won't know?"

  "He won't know. The bomb is in the document case. I'll slide it under the table, then leave, and soon it will all be over."

  "Do you think this will work? Do you think it'll change anything?"

  I shrugged, because doubt had already planted its tendrils in my mind. "Somebody has to try."

  I wake up with the thoughts of people, places and times I don't know buzzing through my mind. They begin to fade as I wash and dress. As I draw the curtains and look out upon Bar None's back garden once again, I can barely recall who I was, or where, or when.

  I open the door to my room and close it behind me. There's no key. I try to remember which way I had come last night. I look left and right. The views are almost the same: corridor, doors.

  I hear the sound of someone crying. It comes from far away, and I have to tilt my head to catch it again. I wait until there's another sob and then follow, turning right, heading down a staircase that curls around a column of carved stone, along a long corridor, turning left, and finding myself back in the bar we had been in the previous evening.

  It has the early morning feel of any pub. There are still a few empty glasses around, and the smell of stale cigarettes, and the bar top is clean and polished. The crying has gone, and the room is now spookily silent, like any quiet place that should be bustling. No sign of the barman or anyone else. The front door is closed, curtains drawn over the windows on either side, and for some reason I feel that I should wait for permission before opening them.

  The crying comes again, seemingly further away than before. I frown. It's an intensely personal sound; someone sobbing through their grief.

  Trying to shut the crying out, I pour myself a glass of orange juice from an open container on the bar. It still tastes good and fresh, and I wonder where Bar None gets its stock from. Nowhere, I think. It's just here. Strange.

  Above the fireplace hang several picture frames. All but one are empty, framing only rectangles of bare wall. The one that is not empty contains a photograph of six people standing in front of the pub. It's obviously an old picture, I can tell that from their clothing, but the pub looks no different. If anything, it looks a little older. The sky is uniform, depthless and bland, but the plants and flowers visible in the picture are beautiful. Even though it's black and white, I can appreciate their lushness.

  I look closer at the faces, certain that I will see myself. But they are all
strangers to me.

  I walk slowly around the bar, taking everything in and trying to make sense of things. There's a doorway I hadn't seen the night before, and the crying comes again, louder, issuing from this new opening. I put down my glass and enter, emerging into a long, narrow corridor that twists its way through a cave of roughly plastered walls. The sobbing is coming from ahead of me, interspersed with someone trying to catch their breath, and it's heartfelt and uncontrollable. There's something in the sobs that I recognise, some tone of voice, and I walk faster.

  The corridor emerges into another bar. As I step through the crying stops, though there's an expectant feel to the place. Am I intruding? I wonder. Should I just turn around and leave? But something holds me here, a sense that I belong. And I want to help.

  This bar is much larger than the first, consisting of an island unit made of oak and polished brass, and dozens of low tables set at random around the room. There are three fireplaces, all of them still exuding heat from dead fires. It appears empty of people, but there are glasses and dirty plates on many of the low tables. Leather sofas, wooden bar stools, and dozens of picture frames hang at random all around the bar. Most of them are empty, but one or two hold images I suddenly need to see. I hurry across the room, dodging between tables, and as I approach one picture I know that I will not recognise it. It's a photograph of three people on Prince's Street in Edinburgh. One of them is in a wheelchair, arms raised and face bright with her smile.

  Someone else's memory.

  I look around for the crying person. "Hello?" I say, but there's no answer. I feel so alone.

  The other frame contains a picture that is familiar: an unknown man sitting beside a canal, a little girl by his side. She's holding a buttercup beneath his chin, laughing. The man cannot bring himself to smile.

  That's not me, but I know the scene. I've never been there, but I recognise the ivy-clad building behind them, the line of boats parked along the canal, the old stone boat sheds built into the hillside.

  It's so familiar, yet painfully distant, like a dream I will never again recall.

  The crying bursts in again, contained and now released, and I jump in surprise. Around the other side of the bar I see an old leather sofa, and Jessica is sitting there, holding a picture frame in her lap. On the wall behind her is a lighter patch from where the picture has been removed.

  "Jessica?"

  She looks at me and tries to smile, but the tears won't let her. Neither can she talk. She just cries, and looks down at the picture.

  I go to her, ready to turn around and leave if that's what she wants. But she lets me sit beside her, slides the frame across to me, and buries her face in her hands.

  The frame contains a photograph of a tall, handsome man standing with his hand on the shoulder of a young boy. They're in a long line of people, queuing in front of a hospital. The man has an ugly plague welt on his face. The boy is no more than four, but his eyes are instantly familiar.

  "I never . . . wanted to believe," Jessica says. "Even now, even here, I thought . . . there'd be a chance. They were in France, with his mother. My husband. My child. I refused to believe. I drove grief down. Beat at it. Never allowed it in. It was just too terrible . . ."

  I put the picture down between us. "But someone has remembered it for you," I say.

  Jessica looks up at me, and I can see what this is doing to her. I've suffered for many months, ever since Ashley died. Jessica is suffering that much grief in one go.

  "Jess," I say, but she holds out her hand as if to ward me back.

  "My fault," she says. "You gave me the chance . . . so many times. Now I have to go through this. ..on my own."

  "No," I say. "Not on your own."

  She almost smiles, but the tears start flowing again. "To begin with, I do," she says.

  I nod, stand and walk away. There are other doorways leading from here, other rooms, other bars, and I know that soon I will get to know them all. But for now I need something familiar.

  Back in the first bar I replenish my orange juice, sit in a window seat and wait.

  There's a bang at the front door, another, and then it bursts open and Michael falls in. He's wounded. Blood flows from several injuries on his face and scalp, and he's holding his left arm awkwardly across his chest.

  "What happened?" I ask.

  He looks at me, and for an instant his eyes go wide, frightened. Then he shuts the door behind him and relaxes against it. "You're not supposed to be up yet."

  "Who says?"

  "No one. It's just . . . well, things are still changing, obviously."

  "Are you all right? What happened?"

  "Bit of a rumble at the wall." He winces as he pushes himself from the door and approaches the bar.

  "The factions that don't want change?"

  Michael looks at me for a long time. I become increasingly uncomfortable beneath his examination, yet I do not look away. Answers, I think. He owes me some, and he knows it. Maybe now, with me down here alone, him injured . . .

  "There have been talks," he says. "The change is accepted. Really, it always was. It's the way of things. What some factions can't accept is you and your friends."

  "Us? What have we done?"

  "You remember." He leans over the bar and grabs a couple of pint glasses.

  "Bit early, isn't it?" I ask, but I am remembering the dying mother, the happy child disturbed by her unsettled father. People I do not know in places I have never been. All mine.

  Michael pours the beers—First Gold—and hands me a glass. "Sit down," he says. "We need to talk."

  We choose a place by the fireplace. It still radiates warmth, and there's something about an empty pub that always feels cool, however warm it really is. The beer tastes good. No, not good. Perfect.

  "You remember things," he says.

  "Yes. Ashley, and what happened to us."

  "And other things."

  I nod. "Stuff I shouldn't know."

  "It's a story, a living history rather than one written in books. There's you, your two friends, and many others who have been brought here. But there are certain groups that believe the progression should be total, with no allowance for history. I can't believe that. I never have, and I never will."

  "Progression?"

  "The world moving on. Humanity will be wiped clean, but why should it be forgotten? It's part of the planet's story, after all. An important part, both good and bad. Why should it be forgotten?" He speaks as though he's trying to persuade me of things, when in reality I hardly understand.

  "So what is Bar None?" I ask. "It's no place normal."

  "As I've told you, it's the last bar on Earth. It's a real place, just . . . changed. The last bar, the last place, and you . . ."

  "We're the last people."

  "Soon enough."

  I take a drink, close my eyes to savour the taste. The last people.

  "We're humanity's memory."

  Michael nods. "Does that make you scared?"

  "Yes. My own memories are painful enough."

  "You'll be safe here. You'll be protected, and you can do what you want within these grounds."

  "And the things—the factions—that don't want us here? They want us wiped out, right? Want humanity to be gone, with no memory?"

  "You'll be protected from them."

  I look at his arm, the blood still dripping from the cuts on his face. "For how long?"

  "Always. But I have to ask you one thing. I have to ask you to decide."

  "To stay or leave."

  "Free will. I can't force you to stay here."

  "Like a vampire, right? You need my permission to come into my head?"

  Michael looks away.

  "Free will. That's what God supposedly gave us."

  He drinks.

  I stand, finish my beer and place the glass gently on the table. "The door's open now?"

  Michael nods hesitantly. He looks surprised. I like that, because it means he can't read me q
uite as well as he thinks. I may be human and he may be something else, but I still own myself.

  Without looking at him again I open the door and go out into the front garden. I close the door behind me and breathe in the fresh air.

  It's beautiful here. Plants I recognise, birds I know, the perfect garden of a perfect pub where all of humanity can be discussed and remembered over pints of perfect beer. Really, what more could I ask for right now?

  I look beyond the garden at the wall of vegetation I cannot possibly know. There are things moving up there, maybe alive, maybe some part of the new species of plants. This is how things will soon be, Michael said, but there must come a point where what actually exists beyond the wall, and what I now see, are the same.

  I decide to take a walk.

  Eleven: First Gold

  I reach the wall where we fell into the garden the previous day. Past the wall I see only a jungle of new plants, with unknown shadows shifting here and there inside. For some reason I feel safe, even though this new place exudes a deadly malevolence. This is how things will be, not how they are. But really, what does that change? It's only a matter of time.

  I climb onto the wall and step forward.

  I land beside the Range Rover. It's a wreck, rusted and holed, as though it has been here forever.

  The view before me changes instantly, back to something I can almost recognise. It's not normal by any means, but the road is still vaguely visible, and I can see stone walls dividing fields, hedgerows planted by hopeful farmers, gates and fences that are already smothered with rampant growth.

  And ahead of me, a few dozen footsteps away, the things that had run at us from the hillside, shooting and killing Danny the Irishman in the process. They have taken root. They were once people, perhaps, but now their arms and legs have stretched, thickening into gnarled branches and fresh shoots. They scream when they see me. I scream back, shock and terror pushing me back against the stone.