by Sam Kates
Will shook his head. He bit his lower lip, knowing that he was being a pansy but powerless to be anything else. The memory of the snarling sound as the dogs caught him up was the only complete memory he had of that time before Bri made the fog go away. It was a strong memory, a crippling one.
“Had a puppy,” he managed to say, not taking his eyes from the black dog. “Pongo.”
“What happened to it?”
Will shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He could remember feeding Pongo when his mum and sister were in bed, too ill to do anything except lie in the dark, coughing and wheezing. Pongo had still been there when he had gone to the bedroom that he shared with his sister and climbed into bed, too weak to undress.
Poppy had not been coughing then. She had been silent and still; too still. When he had woken up feeling a little better, his mother was still, too, and there was no sign of the puppy. The door to the flat was ajar, although Will could not recall leaving it open.
“Okay,” said Bri. “Do you remember that I made the bad dogs leave you alone?”
Will nodded.
“The thing is,” she continued, “they weren’t really bad. They were very hungry and had been without their masters for too long. They had turned wild.” She pointed at the black dog. “See him? Dusky, was it?”
“Dusty,” said Will promptly.
“That’s it. Dusty. Well, Dusty isn’t wild. He’s friendly, like Pongo. You don’t need to be afraid of him.”
Bri glanced behind her at Peter who nodded. The younger man—Tom—had come and stood next to Peter. He smiled at Will.
“Brianne’s right,” he said. “Dusty is lovable and soppy. He likes having his tummy tickled.” Tom spoke in the same lilting tones as Ceri. “He’ll help to keep you safe and will never hurt you.” Tom’s smile grew wider and Will tentatively returned it. “Unless you count trying to lick you to death.”
Will grinned.
Tom held out his hand. “Come and meet him?”
Will glanced at Bri. “Will you come, too?”
For answer, she grasped his hand and they stepped forward together. When they reached Tom, Will grabbed his outstretched hand. It was warm and strong and comforting.
Tom whistled to Dusty. The dog’s ears pricked up and he bounded towards them. Will stiffened, but did not try to back away.
Dusty bumped into Tom’s legs, trying to lick his face as Tom reached down with his free hand to pat his side.
“Come here, you big softie,” said Tom affectionately. “There’s someone here you’re going to love.”
Releasing Will’s hand, Tom crouched and placed his arms around the dog’s back, encircling its chest so it could not jump up. He looked up at Will, smiled and nodded.
Still clutching Bri’s hand, Will took a pace forward. He took a deep breath, then another pace. With his free hand, he slowly reached forward and touched the top of the dog’s head. The fur felt smooth and silky. He moved his hand to the dog’s ear and ruffled it gently.
Dusty lifted his head, sniffing at Will’s wrist where the sleeve had pulled up. His tongue came out and licked the exposed skin. Warm, wet and slightly ticklish. Will began to giggle.
He let go of Bri’s hand and crouched next to Tom. Dusty immediately licked his cheek, making him giggle more.
Within thirty seconds, Will had made a new friend.
* * * * *
Milandra and Jason Grant walked briskly to the car park. It was a couple of hours after dawn, but the streets glistened under a coating of frost.
“If it’s like this tomorrow, we’ll be glad those salt trucks went out today,” said Milandra. She spoke a little breathlessly; she wasn’t built for brisk walking.
“Yep,” said Grant. “Especially with novices behind the wheels of the buses. I think Rod Wilson should take charge of the lead bus. All the others have to do is follow him.”
“The roads ought to be clear of stalled vehicles. The ’dozers and crane got through safely?”
“Yep. They’ve offloaded the crane at Stonehenge. They’re making themselves comfortable in the town until we join them.”
They walked in silence for a while. Milandra glanced at Grant now and again. He seemed distracted.
“Jason? What is it?”
“Huh?”
“Come on. I know you. There’s something on your mind.”
“Am I that transparent?” Grant gave a thin smile. “You’re right. There’s something worrying me. Maybe that’s a little strong. Perhaps ‘concerning’ would be a better word.”
“So, give.”
Grant sighed heavily. “Okay,” he said. “We’ve been away from Earth Home for a long time.”
“Almost five millennia,” agreed Milandra.
“During which we’ve been out of touch. Apart from receiving the message to say that they’re on their way, we’ve had no contact with them since we sent the first pulse from Salisbury Plain.”
“Ye-es. You know the distances involved are far too great for communication. To send the message would have taken a vast amount of resources and the combined strength of all seventy thousand of our people.”
“I know. It was agreed before we left that the message to say they were following was the only one that would ever be sent.”
“So. . . . ?”
“Five millennia is a long time. It hasn’t felt so long here. The sun enables our cells to regenerate so fully and efficiently that it sometimes feels like we’re re-emerging from the placenta.”
“And?”
“We enjoy an extraordinarily long life here on Earth Haven. Much longer than we would have on Earth Home.”
Milandra nodded. “We’d probably both have died centuries ago.”
“So will many of those we left behind. New people will, of course, have been produced to replace those gone.”
“Yes. The nurseries are likely to have been fully occupied. Jason, what’s your point?”
“Well, what if the new people, the ones we don’t know, are somehow different? What if there have been fundamental changes?” Grant shrugged. “I don’t know. Ideological changes.”
“Are you forgetting that each new person born on Earth Home will be part of a greater whole?” said Milandra.
“Of course not. But what if they see us as having lived among humans for too long? That we are no longer part of the whole?”
Milandra considered for a moment. “I don’t think that’s worth any time worrying about. When our people enter Earth’s atmosphere, their joint consciousness will join with ours. Any, er, abnormalities in ours will be subsumed into the greater whole and will realign.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Milandra sounded more confident than she felt. Something in Grant’s line of reasoning bothered her. Something that she needed to ponder when she was alone. She filed the thought away for another time.
They had reached the car park. Milandra could hear the steady chug of the engines of the salt trucks waiting for her and Grant to arrive so they could set off. She stopped and grabbed Grant’s arm.
“Have you communicated with Wallace and Lavinia today?”
He nodded. “They’re in a place called Worthing. It’s just along the coast from Brighton. They’ve found no trace of the girl.”
“When we’ve finished here, I’d like you to send them another message. They have until midday—if they’ve not found her by then, they are to come back. Luke can continue the search alone if he wishes, but we need the Deputies back here by this evening.”
“Yeah, sure. I have the feeling they’ve had enough anyway. George is spitting feathers. He can’t understand how two kids have evaded him.”
He favoured Milandra with such a keen glance that she almost blushed.
“Come on,” she said, stepping forward. “Rod’s waiting for us.”
* * * * *
Rum helped the bodies to burn. Colleen wasn’t fond of gin but positively detested rum so that’s what she used. She w
asn’t sure for how long she would be confined to Temple Bar—there were far worse places she could have been when the voice came; a place without any pubs, for instance—and wasn’t about to waste anything she enjoyed drinking.
She had found a box of disposable latex gloves behind the bar of The Quays and a bundle of cleaners’ overalls in a cupboard. She fashioned a rudimentary mask from a towel, and used plastic shopping bags to cover her boots and hair. As protected against swarming flies and any nasty diseases forming on the corpses as she felt she could be, she went to work.
It was heavy, stinking work. The stench easily made it past the makeshift mask until she hit on the idea of soaking it in spirits. Gin, with its perfumed fragrance, worked well. She just had to remember to remove the mask before lighting fires.
Skin and flesh and God-only-knew-what sloughed away and leaked from the first few bodies she dragged into the street. A skip in a side alley yielded a piece of plastic sheeting as large as a rug. By dragging each body onto it, and then dragging the sheet, the work became less messy.
Gradually, over days and weeks, she cleared Temple Bar of its dead. A mound of ashes and scorched bones in the central square attested to her diligence.
The number of corpses in the pubs diminished; so, too, did the compulsion to remain where she was. At first, she had felt unable to walk beyond the end of the road where The Quays was situated. Her legs did not want to carry her any further and her brain didn’t want to force them to. Then, as the constraint loosened, she was able to wander further afield.
She always took the golf club with her and still avoided packs of dogs, once by ducking into the back of a parked car. A thankfully unoccupied parked car. The dogs did not hang about for long. There were probably too many rich pickings elsewhere to be bothered hanging around for prey that may or may not emerge. That might change, she thought, when the corpses had all rotted away, but she spent no time fretting about it. Not much point thinking months ahead when unsure whether you’ll see tomorrow.
The day that she awoke and found that she no longer felt the urge to look for bodies to burn was the day she saw the man. The morning was fine and she decided to take a stroll to O’Connell Bridge. The bridge stood at the limit of where she had been able to wander and she wanted to test whether that limit had faded away like the need to dispose of corpses.
She reached the bridge and spent a moment staring down at the brown waters of the Liffey. Then she raised her head and looked across to the other side.
“Shit!”
Colleen was barely aware she had spoken aloud. She almost took to her heels, but forced herself to stay still. Her knuckles whitened where they gripped the golf club.
The man was standing at the other side of the river. He began to walk across the bridge.
Colleen watched him, poised to run at the first sign that he might present a threat. He drew nearer and she was able to make him out a little better. Not a big man, huddled against the fresh breeze inside a coat that looked two sizes too large. Hair grey and receding. Spectacles.
“Hold it right there!”
She held out the club like a sword. Her hand shook. She could only hope the man didn’t notice.
He took his hands from the pockets of his coat and held them up, palms out, to show her they were empty.
“Please,” he said. “I mean you no harm. You’re the first living person I’ve seen in. . . .” His face creased into a frown. “I don’t know how long.”
“You don’t sound local.”
“I’m from Lincolnshire originally, but I married an Irish girl. My name is Howard.”
He took a step forward and Colleen took one backwards. He stopped.
“Please,” he said. “Won’t you at least tell me your name?”
“Why d’you want to know my name?”
“Isn’t that what strangers do when they meet; tell each other their names? So that they’re not strangers any more?”
Colleen thought furiously. She hadn’t had to do so for quite some time and found her thought processes had slowed. Either that or they had become sluggish through over-indulgence in the uisce beatha.
“I’m Colleen,” she said at last.
“Pleased to meet you, Colleen,” said Howard and smiled.
He had a friendly smile and Colleen found some of the shock at seeing another living person wearing off. She allowed herself to relax, just a little, enough to enable her to lower the club.
“Tell me,” said Howard, still smiling, “have you ever sailed a yacht?”
Chapter Fourteen
As though rejoicing in the absence of people, black guillemots ventured closer to the shore. Zach watched them diving out beyond the shallows of the cove while he listened to the woman talk.
Her name was Amy Kerrigan. The product of a broken marriage, she had not seen her father since he walked out when she was four.
“Papa used to beat on Momma,” she told Zach. “We was better off without the bastard.”
Amy had lived with her mother in a two-bedroom apartment in North Portland. Although she spoke falteringly, her story did not take long to tell. Dropping out of high school, she had gone to work in the same place as her mother, embroidering motifs onto school sweaters and sport wear. When not working they stayed in, watching soaps and old films. Once a year they took a Greyhound to New Jersey to spend two weeks with Amy’s aunt.
“I hate New Jersey,” she said. “Made me sweat some.”
The Millennium Bug had struck them both down at the same time. Amy had awoken; her mother hadn’t.
“I knew she was dead,” Amy said, her bottom lip quivering. “She smelled bad. When I shook her shoulder, my fingers sank in. . . .”
Since then, Amy had been scavenging anything she could eat without cooking, avoiding dogs and vermin, sleeping in the caretaker’s tiny basement apartment.
Later that evening, when they had left the beach and Zach had broken into a ramshackle clapperboard house on the seafront, she resumed her tale.
The voice that Zach had heard compelling him to remain where he was and burn corpses had also come to Amy. Grimacing, she recounted her struggles to drag rotting bodies down narrow staircases and out into the street. She had tried setting them alight but did not know how to make them burn, and had ended up leaving them for the seagulls, rats and dogs.
When the compulsion to stay in one place began to wear off, Amy fled the piled corpses and the stink, making her way slowly through the city.
She heard the engine of Zach’s pick-up from afar and hurried to the cape, twisting her knee in her haste.
“And now here I am,” she said. The flickering candle light gave her grubby face a haunted, demonic look. “Can’t cook. Can’t drive. Can’t use a gun. Can’t do jack shit.”
Zach yawned. “Well, I’m turning in for the night. Heading south at first light.”
She turned pleading eyes to him. “In the morning. . . . Take me with you, mister.”
Zach shook his head. “I travel alone.”
“The President. . . . he said we gotta stick together. Help each other.”
“I never voted for him.”
“Please, mister. If you’re gonna leave me here, may as well put a bullet in my brain for you’ll just as surely be killing me.”
Earlier Zach had shared his lobster supper with the woman. She had eaten greedily, wiping her fingers on her already-filthy clothes. She was difficult to warm to, the sort of person he doubted he’d have liked even before he went to ’Nam and was instilled with the need to be apart from everyone.
He stood and lit a spare candle. She stared up at him, imploring.
“I travel alone,” he repeated.
* * * * *
The Range Rover crested the tip of the headland and came to an abrupt halt.
“We have company,” muttered Peter.
Tom, sitting behind the passenger seat, leaned a little to his right to see through the windscreen between Diane and Peter. His weight pressed agains
t Will, who didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. The boy was sitting forward, pointing excitedly.
“A submarine,” Will said, awe lending gravitas to his unbroken voice.
To Will’s right sat the teenager, Bri, and beyond her, Ceri. They, too, strained forward to see the bay below.
The wind had dropped and the sun shone from a faded sky. The waves had none of their power of the previous days and broke half-heartedly on the sand, losing impetus barely a quarter of the way to the line of storm pebbles.
In the centre of the bay, maybe half a mile from shore, a submarine rode the mild swell. Long and dark and sleek, it lay half-submerged like a heavily-dorseled whale shark. Figures of men clustered on the narrow conning tower and exposed decks. The sunlight glinted and flashed from binocular lenses as the figures turned to look at the Range Rover.
A little way up the beach, just beyond the reach of the waves, three men stood near a bright yellow dinghy. One was pointing up at them while another followed his gaze. The third took off up the beach, sprinting towards the hotel. He looked as if he was shouting.
They had closed the front door of the hotel when they left for Nottingham, but hadn’t bothered locking it. A fourth figure emerged from the doorway. Unlike the three men on the beach, the fourth wasn’t clad in dark clothes but in a full-head and -body environment suit that reminded Tom of the suits the soldiers had been wearing outside the sports centre in his home town. Except that this one wasn’t in drab army khaki but a buttercream shade that would look less incongruous in a sterile laboratory than on a beach in the eastern Highlands of Scotland.
The suited figure paused outside the hotel entrance and turned in their direction. For a moment, he seemed to peer at them with a blank-faced glare before turning and breaking into an ungainly loping run towards the beach.
The man who had been sprinting to the hotel stopped when he saw the suited man’s approach. He turned and ran in the opposite direction, back to the dinghy.
“Quick, Peter!” said Ceri. “Get us down there!”
Peter drove down the road to the hotel. By the time they reached the gravel approach, the suited man had disappeared from sight behind the bank of pebbles.