The Last Day

by Andrew Hunter Murray

  Her thoughts were interrupted as she approached one of the main roads that lay between her and the river. There weren’t too many security cameras around, as far as she could see—still more than enough to spot her, of course, but the widespread rumor was that they weren’t monitored anymore, and stayed on the streets simply to intimidate, sightless eyes long cut off from an atrophied brain. She would find out now.

  The road was deserted. No engines disturbed the air as Hopper crossed. In the middle, she slowed to a stop, looked up and down, held her arms out, for a moment giddy with the sheer space around her. Even on the rig, even up on the deck in the dead of night, there were soldiers in the lookout towers. Not here. She could be the last woman alive.

  She lowered her arms, self-consciousness reasserting itself, and walked back into the warren of side streets, thinking of Harv and of Warwick and of David and of Thorne, and around her the world lay dead and silent, dazed by the curfew and by the sun.

  The landscape was opening out now, broadening as she came to the jumble of low buildings and larger roads that marked the river’s edge. She must have walked two miles, and her foot was starting to protest above the painkillers. She swallowed more, and kept going.

  Vauxhall Bridge loomed before her, its narrow barriers hemmed in further by concrete devices. It was exposed, of course, but all the bridges would be exposed. Traveling farther down would take her into the path of the old Parliament buildings; crossing farther upriver solved no problems. She would go through into Pimlico, west onto the main roads, which had plenty of side roads to duck into and where you could hear a car coming a mile off, then eventually north. Just once she was over the river.

  She started to cross.

  Below her, the banks of the Thames were thicker than ever. Viewed from above, it must look almost artistic: two plateaus of white-flecked brown sandwiching the turgid waters.

  The shores were steeped in detritus—old shopping trolleys half-exposed like the skeletons of miniature dragons. Gulls hopped around, pecking at the eyeless worms they found amid the debris. At the water’s edge a dining chair sat upright, its cushions torn, the carved spiraling wood of the legs almost completely hidden beneath a thick layer of river scum. This is the world we have made, she thought: and the image of Fisher’s corpse, one eye smashed, rose unbidden to the surface of her mind, like a monstrous creature slowly becoming clear through the deep.

  She was almost halfway across. The smell of river mud was thickest here. The barges anchored in the middle of the water were filthy, rusty, but still occupied: she could see frayed curtains lining the inside of the boats, closed against the sun. Again she thought of the boat now at the bottom of the Atlantic, and the pitiful bodies inside.

  She paused. Carried to her on the motionless air, she heard a little sound behind her. Then nothing. She resumed walking. There it was again. An engine. She did not look around but stayed moving briskly, pretending everything was normal, moderating her limp as best she could. It could be another vehicle trying to avoid detection.

  But then, as the sound swelled, she risked a look back, and saw it turning onto the bridge: one of the police pickup vans. That was it, then. There was no use running now. She turned and watched it approach. It halted twenty feet ahead of her, and a man opened the passenger door and got out.

  THIRTY-THREE

  He was bulky, his shirt tight over his frame; a body overdeveloped through exercise and too much food. Hopper could see thick patches of sweat inside his armpits, turning the shirt from beige to a sickly mahogany. Like the policeman outside Thorne’s house, he was young, could not have been more than twenty-three. Unlike the policeman, he wore a look of pleasure and disdain, his little eyes creasing with the expectation of sport. “Good evening, madam.”

  “Good evening.”

  “You’re out late.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I’m sorry. What a weak thing to say. “I was visiting a boyfriend; we had a terrible argument, and I had to leave. For my safety.” She had been preparing this line, implausible as it was.

  “Even knowing the penalty?” The penalty was transportation.

  “I know.” She attempted a smile. “I tried to tell him that, and he said he didn’t care. How’s that for charming?” She held up her hands to him, showing the red of her palms, her ripped sleeve. “See?”

  “Well, you’ll have to go in the van. We’ll take you to the station, get you checked in. If your story’s true, you should be out by tomorrow night.”

  “Please. I’m just trying to get home. That’s all I want.”

  “ID card?”

  She shook her head. “They’re still at his house. My wallet, everything, it’s all with him.”

  “Why don’t we go back, then? He won’t bother you if we’re there.”

  “I can’t. I just want to go home. Please.” She wondered about the cudgel in her bag. If she moved fast, if he faced away from her, if his attention dropped for a moment . . . assuming it was just him in the van. She started moving her hand toward the zip of the bag, trying to picture where the pool cue was, how to swing it properly as she pulled it out.

  She stopped as the other door of the van opened and closed, and she heard footsteps moving around—slow, halting. The man who appeared beside the hood of the van was older, larger, dressed in the same beige shirt as his colleague. He had a lopsided, unshaven face, a doughy complexion with his eyes studded in too far down. He leaned on the van as he looked at her.

  “Who’s this then?”

  The younger man spoke. “Says she had a fight with her boyfriend and he kicked her out. Doesn’t want to go back to his place.” He turned to her and smiled unpleasantly, unseen by his colleague. “No ID card either.”

  “What’s your name, miss?”

  “Jackie.” Hopper could feel herself beginning to shake. Maybe if she went with them she’d get lost in the system; maybe Warwick wouldn’t track her to whatever police station she was held in. Fat chance, her brain whispered.

  The older man looked at her again. From inside the van, there was a muffled thump against one of the walls, then another.

  “We should take her in to the station,” the younger one said.

  “Go and check on the others.” The thudding was insistent now.

  “But she’s clearly—”

  “Shut up, Eric. Just do it.”

  The younger man strutted to the back of the van and squeezed himself through a little door. A few seconds later, the thudding stopped. The second man looked at Hopper again, still leaning on the hood. She could run, she thought, but her ankle was starting to ache again, and she wouldn’t make it to the end of the bridge before they caught up. And then he would definitely take her in.

  “Why are you really out?”

  “I already told your colleague. My boyfriend. If I hadn’t got out tonight he’d have killed me.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “A few clothes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. A stick. In case he followed me.”

  “I should arrest you.” But Hopper noticed he did not look pleased about the prospect.

  “Look. I can’t go back. And if he picks me up from the police station, he’ll kill me. He said he would. I need your help.” She was doing her utmost to seem vulnerable, fragile, but beneath the surface she felt as hard as concrete.

  He sighed again. “All right, Jackie. I’m clearly going soft. Where do you need to get to?”

  She tried to hide her excitement. “Queensway. I have a cousin there.” He looked at his watch, and made a face. “Or anywhere. But not back to Brixton.”

  “No, that’s all right. Queensway it is. We should be there in about fifteen minutes, I’d say, unless we see anyone else on the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Not at all. Nice to have someone calm to talk to. Get
in.”

  She moved to the passenger side, boosted her bag up before her. He pressed a button. “We’re moving off, Eric. Stay tight for the moment.” He flicked a switch, and Eric’s voice shrank into a tiny, high-pitched burble, and then to nothing.

  Hopper jerked her head backward. “Who’s in tonight?”

  “Nobody exciting. Few drunks. Kid with a knife. Probably just needs a talking-to. But my colleague is very assiduous.”

  She was surprised. She’d heard the night wagons and the men who drove them were uncompromising, brutal. It was disorienting to be chatted to like this. “Why didn’t you arrest me?”

  “You’re sober, you’re not acting erratically—just stupidly, being out here. And I believe your story.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Or at least, I believe that whatever lie you’re telling me, it’s probably not a cover for something worse.”

  She wondered what he would think if she told him the truth: Actually, I’m trying to trace a body of evidence that could collapse the government. The engine groaned as he switched up a gear. They were moving faster now, the bridge disappearing from the mirrors as he swung west. His little eyes surveyed the road, and occasionally he glanced sideways at her.

  “What’s your line anyway?”

  “My line?” Oh Christ. He knew she was lying.

  “Of work.”

  “Oh.” She suddenly wanted to tell him the truth, or at least something as close to the truth as she could manage. “I work on one of the rigs. Government ones.”

  “What do you do out there?”

  “Study the ocean. Work out which way it’s going. See how many fish are left. Which way they’re going. That sort of thing.”

  “Scientist, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you can tell me then.” He kept his eyes on the road, talking as casually as if he were discussing a football match. “How long do we have?”

  “Until what?”

  “Until the air runs out.”

  “You mean the oxygen?”

  “Whatever. Till we can’t breathe.”

  “A few hundred years. Or just one hundred. Or maybe never.”

  “Why never?”

  “It depends. There might be more algae in the ocean than there used to be; they make half the oxygen. So it may not matter if there aren’t as many trees producing oxygen.”

  “What do you think?”

  Hopper sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I think it’ll decline. Even if it doesn’t, I think this country won’t last much longer. Not in its current form. There are too many . . .” She couldn’t find the word. “It’s like a machine that’s jerking itself to pieces.”

  “And yet, look at them all.” He gestured toward the building site lining the road. A billboard outside declared: NEW HOMES FOR FAMILIES. COMING SOON. “They keep going. Why do they do it?”

  “Ask a priest,” Hopper said, and the driver laughed shortly. “Why do you do it?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. She heard a muffled shout from the back of the van as they turned a corner sharply, and then he spoke. “I keep having the same dream, over and over again. It’s night. I’m with my wife. We’re away, somewhere. I can’t work out where. Somewhere in Europe. And we’re on a little terrace, overlooking the sea. It’s not even a dream, really. It’s like a snapshot. We’re both just there, happy with each other. I think I keep going so I keep having that dream.”

  Hopper didn’t want to ask what had happened to his wife.

  “You have kids?”

  She shook her head.

  “Lot of people thinking like you, it seems.” He pointed through the windshield. “We’re nearly there.” The streets here were familiar, reminding her of the past, of moving in here with David in a van about this size.

  They drove in silence until they were interrupted by a burst of static from the radio: “Vehicle 19, please report.”

  The driver briefly pressed his finger to his lips before flicking a switch. “Just making my way to Queensway. One of the people we picked up reported a gathering round there earlier tonight.”

  “Cancel that. Move to Hammersmith. Resident’s phoned in a report of movement in the streets. Coordinates coming to your ticker.”

  “Right you are.” He flicked the switch again. “Better drop you here then. That OK with you?”

  “More than. Won’t your colleague report you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Last month I caught him nicking a ration book off a dead man. I imagine he’ll want to keep that quiet.” He looked at her shrewdly. “Good luck getting home, or wherever you said you were going. Obviously, stay off the main roads.”

  Within seconds, Hopper was on the sunlit street again, her bag heavy at her side as the van moved off. She was just a short walk away from her old home. David’s current home. She turned down a side road, her footsteps unnaturally loud in her ears. It was just before two in the morning.

  She could not approach David’s house yet. If she knocked on the door mid-curfew, his neighbors might spot her and report him. So she had to spend three hours out here, in the sleeping, sunlit world.

  There was one place she knew she’d be safe, a little park a few streets over. She turned toward it. As she rounded the corner, she recoiled. Facing away from her near the park’s entrance was a guard. Her heart tightened. They knew she was here. She should hand herself in now, plead ignorance, hope for clemency.

  After a few seconds of panic, she calmed down. Lots of places were guarded at night. Curfew was designed to stop people gathering in precisely these sorts of spots. Of course there was a guard.

  He stood, unaware of her presence, shifting his weight a little from one foot to the other. Around the back of his head she saw wisps of smoke curling upward. She decided to take the risk, moving quietly between the cars lining the road outside the park, then crossing, following the curve of the road out of his sightline to a point halfway between two gates.

  She hauled herself over the railings and fell to the ground on the other side—remembering too late the last time she had landed on her ankle. Pain shot through her leg, and despite herself, a small cry escaped her lips. She grabbed her bag and crawled between two hedges, shaded by an oak, waiting, trembling.

  After a couple of minutes, she guessed nobody had heard her, and wondered whether to move to somewhere safer. But the hedges were full and rich and muffled the outside world. Her thoughts slid and overlapped and were nowhere, barring one jagged thought, an important one, which made her want to wake. But it was too late for that.

  Unheard by her, the air stirred the leaves, and the songbirds chirruped softly as they rooted in the soil. All that was visible of her was a single trainer poking through the undergrowth.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  It was almost half past five when she woke. Just a few more minutes until the world began again. Her face was pressed to the soft dirt, the rest of her body twisted around behind her. Her foot felt worse, and her ribs too. She did not want to risk taking her shoe off, worrying it might not fit back on, but the top of her ankle looked reddened and furious. She prayed she hadn’t broken anything.

  She limped toward the gate, concealed under the shade of the trees, and looked for the guard. He had left his post; the gate was open.

  It was time to get to David’s, if she wanted to catch him soon after the end of curfew. She started walking, gingerly, keeping the weight off her ankle.

  The noise hit her as she walked. She heard the klaxons approaching from a distance, blossoming one after another into a slow, miserable sound, a heaped and confused dirge, one block out of time with another and then a third overlaid on that until the entire area was a bank of murky noise, lapping and overlapping and pushing against the ears.

  She kept walking, briskly,
for a full minute while the sound swirled around her like dirty water in a bath. And just as suddenly, it was over, the sound receding in the opposite direction. Had she been observed? She did not risk a look to either side. A few doors ahead of her, a door opened, and a suited man stepped out, case in hand. An insomniac, perhaps, or a workaholic. As he passed her, his eyes slid onto her for a second before moving away again, cool and expressionless.

  It didn’t matter. She was almost there now. She turned right onto the road, marking the differences since she’d been away. The garden that had held ranks of hollyhocks was now bare. The paint marking the center of the road had been redone. The abandoned house halfway along—its windows boarded up with plywood daubed with apocalyptic signs—had been refurbished, was now fresh-painted and shuttered. Shame.

  And here was the house she and David had shared. Fearing a loss of nerve, Hopper forced herself to walk up the drive, and knocked on the door.

  He probably wasn’t up yet. A house call at this hour would alarm him, especially given yesterday’s events, but there was no other way. After half a minute she knocked again, and peered through the frosted glass to see a shape descending the stairs. He opened the door slowly, his expression wary, and when he saw it was her, his face sagged in relief.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Yes, but . . . yes. Of course.”

  The hall was completely different. The tiles on the floor had been covered by a thick rug. The table had changed, the art, everything. There was a grandfather clock taking up far too much of the available space, crammed in at the bottom of the stairs, and ticking aggravatingly slowly.

  David was unshaven, in a dressing gown, his hair at odd angles, his eyes crusted and reddened behind his glasses.

  She gestured. “Is this still the living room?”

  “Yes.”

  She moved around him, avoided the ridiculous clock, and stepped into the front room. This was unexpected too: unwelcome new furniture. How absurd to be thinking about the decor at a time like this.