by Sam Kates
From time to time as he drove, he cast a glance at the assault rifles. When he had picked up the first one, he had almost immediately dropped it as if it was hot. The dark days of his early twenties had jolted to the forefront of his mind and he’d had to struggle to quell the memories. And worse: the weapon felt good in his hands, natural, as though it somehow completed him. He didn’t like that thought. He didn’t want to be that person, that youthful dealer of death, and had fought for over forty years to escape him. So he almost decided not to bring any assault rifles. Almost. They were insurance policies, he told himself. He would take them along in hope that he would never need to use them; he was unlikely to encounter a situation that he couldn’t handle with the pistol, shotgun or hunting rifle.
Zach still didn’t know whether he was the last surviving person. He had noticed no evidence of ongoing human life during his two-day drive to the cape south of Portland: no sound of engines or gunshots, no sight of smoke or moving vehicles, no smell of cooking. He didn’t know how he would react if he did come across another living person; probably by avoiding them if at all possible, but he wasn’t completely decided. It wasn’t that he had developed a craving for human company, only that he could not help but feel a creeping curiosity as to why he and any others had survived when clearly they were greatly in the minority. Perhaps speaking to another survivor would reveal an answer.
He shrugged. Unless and until he actually saw someone else, it was a moot point.
His stomach rumbled. The back of his pick-up contained a variety of canned goods, but he hadn’t travelled to the ocean to eat from cans. A dozen or so tiny buoys bobbing in a sheltered cove had caught his eye. He was no seaman but reckoned he could manage to row one of the small boats that were pulled up on the sand out to the buoys with little difficulty. A lobster restaurant on the main drag had already been explored and a range of cooking pots discovered. All he needed was to build a fire of driftwood and he would be eating lobster for dinner.
As Zach strolled towards the cove, he started to whistle.
* * * * *
Reputed to be the oldest public house in England, a distinction claimed by around twenty other pubs, Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, or The Trip as it became known locally, was partly built into caves formed from sandstone at the foot of Castle Rock in Nottingham. The air temperature was winter-low; the stone kept it cooler still, acting like a refrigerator, discouraging flies. The process of putrefaction had struggled to gain a firm foothold and, at a glance, the dozen or so men arranged around the cave appeared to be sleeping, an idea reinforced by the pint glasses standing on the tables before them, most still holding brown or amber liquid.
Bri gasped and came to a halt. Will tucked into her side.
“Are they dead?” he whispered.
“I think. . . .”
The fading afternoon light struggled to make itself felt through the small window set high in the rocky wall and the men were cast in gloom. If one or more was still alive, Bri and Will would not necessarily be able to see the rise and fall of a chest or the flutter of eyelids.
Bri took a deep breath and detected it. She hadn’t noticed it immediately due to the shock of coming across the bodies, but it was there, faint and familiar.
“Can’t you smell them?” she said. “They’re dead.”
She stepped forward and grabbed hold of the nearest table. It consisted of a wooden top attached to a cast-iron frame and legs. It took all of her strength to drag it backwards into the doorway so that it blocked the opening. The scraping of iron on stone was shockingly loud and echoed in the cavernous ceiling space.
“Well,” said Bri with a nervous giggle, “if they weren’t dead, that would have woken them.”
“Bri,” said Will in a small voice. “I don’t want to stay here.”
“Neither do I. And we won’t stay in this room. But I think we need to stay somewhere in this pub. Peter, whoever he is, is coming to help us. At least, that’s what the Voice said.”
The Voice, as Bri had come to think of it, had not spoken to her since. Neither had she felt any further attempt at invasion of her mind. She had done as the Voice suggested; enveloped both her and Will’s psyches in a dense, yellow fog, like a three-dimensional blanket. Each evening before closing her eyes to sleep, she renewed the protection. At a cost. Each time the headache returned, stronger and more insistent. She would soon need to think about obtaining a fresh supply of painkillers.
Bri shrugged off her backpack and took out the large torch she had acquired in a small town on their way north. Biggleswade. Will had found the name amusing. Bri’s backpack had grown heavy again with the weight of the spare batteries. Will’s pack contained another torch and more batteries. They were determined not to be without light when they needed it.
Darkness fell. The rest of the pub they explored by the powerful beam of Bri’s torch. They found no more bodies, although could detect the odour of decay coming from the cracks of a locked wooden door behind one of the bars. Bri suspected that the door led to living space, but did not attempt to investigate further.
They decided to make beds for the night in an eating area at the furthest end of the pub from where they had found the bodies of the men. This part of the building felt more modern, though still many centuries old. A blackened stone fireplace occupied a third of one wall. Bri unceremoniously kicked a chair until the legs snapped and piled the wood in the hearth. While Will tore up an old newspaper and stuffed crumpled wads into the gaps between the wood, Bri rummaged around behind the bar until she found a box of matches. Soon, the crackle and spit of flames, and the oaky scent of charring wood, filled the room.
Bri went outside to where they had left their bikes and wheeled them both inside. She shut and bolted the pub door behind her. Except for the sound of a distant engine that had come from the west as they crept northwards through the black streets of Lambeth, they had heard no sound of pursuit, but Bri did not want to take any chances. The thought that the Voice had lied, had directed them into a trap, occurred to her, but she dismissed the notion. Why send them all the way to Nottingham when they could more easily have been captured in London? And the Voice had not felt deceitful.
When she returned to the far end of the building where they would spend the night, Will had smashed another chair against the floor and was feeding more wood onto the fire. As she walked in, closing the bar door behind her, he pointed to a bronze scuttle standing to one side of the hearth that she had not noticed before.
“Coal,” he said. He grinned.
“Excellent! Chuck some on.”
Bri dragged two long, high-backed benches in front of the fire. They had padded seats and would do for beds.
Flames licked up the ancient stone chimney and threw blazing heat into the room. With the fire banked with coal, it should give out heat for most of the night. They both stripped down to their underwear, but kept their clothes nearby. As the fire died, they would want to add more layers.
“Bri?” said Will.
“Yes?”
“My bum’s sore.”
She chuckled. “So’s mine.”
They had pushed the bikes from the cycle shop and through the streets of Lambeth. It had been too dark to risk riding them. The thought of gashing skin or breaking bones made Bri shudder; even a shallow cut like the one to Will’s calf would be no joke in this doctorless new world if it became infected.
Will led them unerringly north through dark streets and across the river by way of Blackfriars Bridge. For an hour they had kept going until exhaustion forced them to grab a few hours’ sleep in the lobby of a block of flats in Islington.
At first light, they crept out of the building and mounted their bikes. Bri had delayed long enough in the cycle shop to make sure they each had a well-fitting helmet, but had abandoned her plan to kit out the bikes with lamps; they would have to pick some up along the way.
Balancing body weights with the additional burden of backpacks took some getting used
to, but ungainliness was soon overcome by the joy of cycling on traffic-free roads. And what bicycles! Bri’s Italian model handled every bit as well as she had hoped. Judging from Will’s ecstatic expression and the easy way he managed the bike, his did, too.
They rode north along the A1, having to deviate around the occasional knot of abandoned vehicles, but otherwise making good time. They turned west for Nottingham when they reached Grantham in the afternoon of the second day. Will suggested they follow the M1 that would have taken them almost directly to their destination, but Bri felt a certain reluctance.
“If they realise we’ve come north instead of south,” she said, “they’re more likely to think we’ve gone on the motorway. It might be safer to avoid it.”
Will didn’t argue; just looked at her with wide-eyed trust that gave her another twinge of discomfort.
They reached Nottingham late that afternoon. The castle was well signposted and they had found Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem with a few minutes of daylight remaining.
“Bri?” came Will’s voice again, now heavy with drowsiness.
“Hmm?”
“Who’s Peter?”
“I don’t know. But I think he’s a friend.”
“Bri?” Little more than a whisper.
“What?”
“Will you always look after me?”
“Of course I will.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. She was only sixteen and unsure whether she would be able to look after herself. “Go to sleep now.”
“G’night.”
“Goodnight.”
Bri closed her eyes. She renewed the yellow fog, imagining it settling over them both like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. Grimacing at the fresh pain coursing through her head, she dry-swallowed two painkillers.
She lay in the semi-darkness, warm in the glow of the fire, waiting for the pain to recede and sleep to claim her.
Chapter Twelve
Milandra wrestled with her conscience. It had been forty-eight hours since she and the Deputies had located the girl. Two days during which she had at turns berated and congratulated herself for sidestepping the girl’s impressively robust defences.
Tomorrow the salt trucks would be leaving for Salisbury. The next day, the buses and coaches would be loaded with drones and a thousand people, and would follow the trucks. Grant had all the arrangements in hand. There was little for her to do.
She could afford to be introspective; could take time to ponder upon the girl.
Milandra was deeply intrigued. If there had been any doubts in her mind after listening to Luke’s tale and viewing his memories, they were banished at once upon entering the girl’s psyche. She marvelled at how the girl had detected their presence immediately and how deftly she had ejected the Deputies. Never had Milandra witnessed such abilities in a human.
Her name was Brianne, Milandra had seen, but she preferred to be called Bri: like the cheese but without the e. Milandra had kept that knowledge to herself and had not tried to contact Bri since, but felt it safe to assume that the girl had followed her suggestion to flee London to the north. Certainly, the small hunting party of Wallace, Lavinia and Luke had discovered no trace of her or the boy, apart from some empty food cans at the back of the cycle store.
The Chosen had become petulant when she returned from Ruislip to find out that she hadn’t been included in the search for the girl.
“Why didn’t they wait for me?” she asked, her mouth turning down at the corners.
“Well,” said Grant, “they wanted to leave immediately and you weren’t here.”
“They could have sent for me.”
“They could have,” agreed Milandra, barely managing to conceal her enjoyment at Simone’s annoyance. “But you chose to chase rats instead of involving yourself in our discussions about this girl. You excluded yourself. Don’t try blaming anyone else.”
Simone’s eyes narrowed and Milandra set her jaw firm, ready for conflict if that’s what the girl wanted. For a few charged moments, they stared at each other.
“Er. . . .” Grant cleared his throat. “Ladies?”
Simone held Milandra’s gaze for a moment longer before looking away. She tittered. “Getting rid of rats is fun. Snap, crackle and pop!”
The Chosen flounced from the room, twittering something about coming back in time for the trip to Salisbury. Milandra was glad to see her go. She didn’t want Simone mooching about the place, forcing her to be guarded at a time when she needed to be pensive without anyone watching her. Regarding her. Measuring her.
Milandra put Simone from her mind. For now. If there was a time for reckoning between them, it would be later.
Now she had other concerns. Such as whether she had put in motion a chain of events that would generate their own momentum, like the first drop of water squeezing from a breached dam.
She felt no guilt about contacting the girl. Bri was an enigma, right enough, and Milandra was as keen as anyone to know more about how she had acquired her undoubted abilities, but she saw no reason why Bri should be studied against her will. Helping the girl evade capture did not make Milandra a traitor to her own people, or so she told herself. But contacting Ronstadt . . . hmm, that might be a different matter.
* * * * *
Peter held up his hands to quell the barrage of questions.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “If you let me speak, I’ll tell you.” He paused, considering for a moment. Ceri and Tom were regarding him with a mixture of hope and apprehension; Diane with suspicion. “It’s not that surprising that Milandra has contacted me. After all, she warned me during the Commune that someone would be coming after me.”
“She did?” said Diane.
Peter nodded.
“But why would she do that? They consider you a traitor.”
Peter smiled tightly. “If refusing to take part in a pogrom makes me a traitor, then I guess that’s what I am. But Milandra clearly doesn’t see it that way.”
“She lied about you. Said you intended heading south from Cardiff, not north. But the Chosen saw the truth and told Bishop.”
“That’s how you found us so quickly. I did wonder. Anyway, two nights ago I was about to go to sleep—”
“You sleep?” Diane sounded incredulous.
“Yes. It’s something I taught myself to do. I quite enjoy it.”
“But—”
“Diane! Hisht!” said Ceri. “Let him tell us what Milandra said.” For a moment the two women glared at each other. Then Ceri turned back to him. “Carry on, Peter. Please.”
“Okay,” said Peter. “I was about to go to sleep when Milandra came.” He looked at Tom and Ceri. “It’s difficult to explain. It’s a little like hearing a voice in your head, but it’s more than that. It’s as though the other person—their complete personality—has taken up temporary residence.” He glanced at Diane for confirmation.
“Yes, I suppose that’s as good a way to describe it as any,” she said. “But—” she shot Ceri a pointed glance “—this needs to be asked—how did she get past your barrier?”
“That’s the first thing I asked her,” said Peter. “She replied that being the Keeper has some compensations. The ability to communicate with any of our number within reasonable distance, no matter how strong the barrier they’ve erected, is one of them. She said that she can’t delve into the psyches of an unwilling subject, only communicate. I believed her.”
“So what did she want?” said Tom, an impatient edge to his voice.
“She asked after Diane. Whether she had recovered from her injuries.” He turned to Tom and Ceri. “Then she asked about you two. How you were coping with your grief.”
Ceri snorted. “Bloody hell! Of all the hypocritical. . . .” A flush of high colour blazed in her cheeks.
“For what it’s worth,” said Peter, “I believe she is genuinely concerned. I was guarded in my responses, but truthful.”
“That’s all well and good,” said Tom, “but she did
n’t contact you to enquire about our health. Seriously, Peter, get to the point.”
“I’m trying to. As you know, apart from you two the survivors of mainland Britain were called to London where they were subjected to some sort of electrical treatment—”
“Mutilation,” Tom interjected.
“I won’t argue,” said Peter. “The survivors have been mutilated to make them more pliable. They have been put to work clearing and burning corpses. They are also going around London switching off electrical appliances in readiness for the city being reconnected to the Grid.”
Ceri uttered a small gasp.
“But Tom and Ceri aren’t the only survivors outside the control of our people. There are two others: a young boy and a teenage girl.”
This time, Ceri’s gasp was louder and was joined by one from Tom.
“The boy had been under control. Had undergone electrical mutilation. But somehow—Milandra doesn’t know how—the girl has healed him.”
Peter looked around. Diane wore a puzzled frown. Tom and Ceri were sitting forward in their seats, eyes shining.
“There’s more,” continued Peter. “The girl’s mind was attacked by a combined force of three of our people. She kept them out easily. The people were able to control the boy but she ejected them. She protected the boy so that they couldn’t get back in. Much like I protected your minds during the Commune, and since. Somehow—and Milandra is making out she is clueless as to why—this girl has developed the ability to do many of the things we can.”
“What do you mean that Milandra is ‘making out’?” asked Diane.
“Well, I think she has a suspicion, but won’t reveal it.”
“What does this mean?” asked Ceri. “Could. . . . ? No.” She shook her head fiercely as though to dispel a false hope.
“I don’t know what it means,” said Peter.