The scene at the front of the house was chaotic. The rain was coming down even harder than it had been when they arrived. The armored lorry Hopper had seen from inside was on its side in the middle of the road, a gaping hole in the side that faced upward, the cab full of flames and the windshield smashed in. What kind of firepower could have pushed a lorry that size over?
Several soldiers were lying immobile on the ground. Others were finding shelter behind the upturned lorry, hauling ammunition cases open, firing out into the woods, reloading with shaking fingers. One was pulling himself behind the vehicle, his leg broken, until a shot found him and he slumped. Another, crouched behind the gate, fell backward, wounded by some missile from the tree line. She saw then what was happening. The men of the woods had returned.
Four huge iron plates were sitting on the ground inside the tree line, repurposed riot barriers she remembered seeing in London. The fronts had been spray-painted with obscenities, cartoons, colors far brighter than the surrounding woodland. One by one the plates were being hauled up and shoved forward, a few feet at a time, each receiving a volley of shots as they did so. But they were gradually advancing, and as they moved, unseen assailants from the other side fired inward.
Lots of the woodsmen didn’t care whether they lived or not, Hopper had once heard. They simply charged, taking the bullets they received as a blessing, as their permission to die. It must have been either a mistake or a lie, for there was no sign of that here. The men behind the shields clearly wanted to live, to harvest the soldiers’ equipment, their ammunition, their food. Beyond the plates she thought she recognized one of the men who had attacked their car earlier, the one who had run off. He was clutching a large tube he must have fired at the lorry, and shouting directions.
There were perhaps a dozen soldiers left upright, and ten more scattered around the ground, both crawling and still. But David’s car looked unscathed. Thank Christ they had parked along the street. If they could cross the garden, and get over the low wall, they would be at it. To its right was the soldiers’ lorry, the troops huddled behind it.
“There’s no way we can get to the car,” she said.
“Yes, there is.” Mark had grabbed the rifle from the soldier slumped inside the doorway.
“Wait. We can’t go yet.” She ran back into the house, into the little study. Blake and Warwick were still on the floor, not moving. Blake sat half-upright, his back against the wall; Warwick was facing downward, blood oozing slowly from the wound on the back of her head. Hopper stepped over her, pulled the bottom drawer of the desk open, found the brick of paperwork inside, and pushed it tight inside her jacket, swaddling it against her front.
As she turned to go, she looked over at Blake. He was still breathing, just about, with bubbles at the corner of his mouth and his shirt almost black with blood. His eyes rested on her, half-conscious, until another bang shook the windows in their panes and she ran out, along the corridor and back to the front door, where David and Mark were waiting.
Even in the minute since she had left the scene, the troops’ situation had deteriorated. A soldier who had been sheltering in the lorry’s smashed cab pushed open the door at the top and tried to haul himself out over the hot metal, then fell back as a bullet found him. And still the metal shields pressed inward. The closest was nearly at the lorry.
“I’m going to get to the garden wall,” Mark said, pointing. “When I start firing, run to the wall nearest the car. Once you’re there, stop. When I start firing again, get into the car. You have the keys?”
“Mark, this is stupid. Let’s go together.”
“I’ll leave through the back once you’re clear. But none of us will get out with the three of us running like chickens. Wait for me to say go.” He pulled at the door, grunting with the effort as it pushed against the soldier’s body, and slipped onto the stone porch and across the garden.
Hopper turned to David. He looked gray and half-vacant, flinching at every new round of gunfire, and she remembered how shocked he’d been after he’d killed the woodsman. She grabbed his jaw, focused his eyes on her.
“David. We have to leave. We’re going to get to the wall. Do you have the keys?” He fished in his pocket, pulled them out as though he’d never seen them before. She spoke again. “When Mark says to go, we have to move.” He nodded.
There were just eight or nine soldiers left behind the lorry now. They were gathering to the vehicle’s right-hand side, perhaps to outflank the woodsmen. From where they were, the men behind the shields could not see them. Half the soldiers began to run, the others leaning out from the lorry and firing to cover them, and at that point Mark opened up with the rifle, the bullets clanging off the shield closest to the car. Hopper grabbed David and pulled him across the garden, the short ten meters to the wall.
She glanced across at Mark. Come with us, she thought she shouted, but she could not tell for sure whether she said it, or if he could even hear her above the gunfire. He did not acknowledge her, just chopped his hand through the air, telling them to leave, and started firing again. They jumped the low wall as his bullets clanged on the nearest shield, and after another ten meters of slow, slow open ground, every step agony on her ankle, David pulled the car door open and fell in first, scrambling over so she could get in beside him.
The back left window of the car exploded, and she could not work out how the woodsmen had hit it from the wrong side. She turned, slowly, and saw Warwick stumbling from the house with a pistol in her hand—she must have taken it from Blake—and firing it at Mark, still facing the other way. Her first shot missed and hit the wall he was sheltering behind, and Mark began to swivel around toward her, too slowly.
Warwick fired once more and Mark’s body arced and fell. She fired again, hitting him where he lay. Then she turned to her right and fired two more rounds, which clanged harmlessly off the metal shield closest to her, and no more, for by that time the men of the woods had moved from either side and descended on her.
And with that, the scene disappeared from view as David shifted up through the gears and accelerated away as fast as he could.
FORTY-TWO
After ten minutes, nobody had appeared behind them, and David started driving a little slower along the battered road. Hopper had been looking back all that time.
David spoke first. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. What about you?”
“My shoulder hurts.” He gestured with his head.
There was a rent at the top of his jacket and a puddle of dark wetness inside it, smaller than a fist. She reached back, grabbed a shirt from her bag, and pressed it as hard as she could onto the wound. He winced, and the car veered, but he pulled it back into the center of the decaying road.
“It’s all right. It’s very small. We can get this treated somewhere.”
“What happened to Mark?” He glanced at her, and she shook her head.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Mark, dead. It didn’t feel real. Her last family, her last connection to this old world. She thought of Laura, and the children, now fatherless, not knowing it yet. She felt a pang of grief, painful and unexpected, for her brother.
Tentatively, despite the shock, despite Mark, she smiled at David, and he caught a glimpse of her expression and smiled—just a little—himself. They were approaching a turning.
“Which way?”
She thought for a second. This road would eventually lead onto the one that would take them to London. “Go right when you can. We won’t go back into London.”
“Where are we heading?” He had said it not quite to ask for information, not quite for confirmation of what he already knew, but somewhere in between, an idea that both of them saw growing slowly distinct. Like a mountain looming in the distance, or the slow approach of dawn.
“Southwest. American Zone.”
“It’s not
a sanctuary there, you know. We don’t even know who we’re looking for.”
Hopper remembered the man on the radio in Fisher’s bookshop.
“That’s not quite true, David. I know who we’re looking for.”
“There might be more roadblocks,” David said. “They’ll know before long that their plan hasn’t worked out. We need to tell someone as soon as possible.”
Hopper twisted around in her seat, reached back for her bag, and heaved it toward her. She rummaged through it and took out the transmitter. “Pull over. Anywhere that looks quiet.”
They crunched to a stop in the mouth of a little lane, so shaded by trees and overhanging bushes that anyone not looking closely would think the car had been abandoned. They got out. Hopper assembled the radio, erected the aerial, and found the notch on the front, the bandwidth Fisher had been transmitting to.
She sent a few pulses to wake up whoever might be receiving. There was no answer. Had they said they were shutting this loop down? Were they even monitoring this wavelength anymore? She sent three more pulses, then three more, her fingers shaking, willing the signals onward, hoping there was someone at the other end to hear.
For ten agonizing seconds, the radio made no response. Then there was a crackle, and they heard the same voice she had heard in the bookshop: warm, rich, American. “Hello?”
Hopper sagged in relief. “It’s me again. Ellen. From Fisher’s place. I kept his radio.”
“I remember.” The voice was wary.
“I have a message for you. Something important. I think it’s what Fisher was trying to get hold of. Are you ready to take this down?”
“Wait a second . . . OK. I’m receiving you.”
She spoke for ten minutes, passing the pages over to David when she had read each one. After she finished, there was a long pause.
“I can’t believe this.” The voice cracked. “I can’t believe it.”
“It’s all here. Proof.” The word sounded luxurious in her ears. Proof. She had it, at last. “And the satellite is still up there, and still working. You have receivers, don’t you?”
“All sorts.”
“Then as long as you can find the signal, this is how you can access it.” She read out the satellite’s frequency, then the long string of digits at the front of the document, the decryption key that would allow them to access its data. She read it twice, to be sure. And as she finished the second time, she felt something else passing over the waves, something intangible and precious. It felt like hope.
The voice spoke again. “OK, I’ve got that copied. We’ll check it out today.”
“There’s one other thing,” Hopper said. “We can’t stay on this side of the border. Not now.”
“No,” the voice said. “I’m inclined to agree. I think you’d better come and see us. There’s a place where we can get people across without anyone noticing.” He gave directions, which Hopper wrote down. Then she packed up the radio, and they clambered slowly back into the car. David turned the key, and they crunched out onto the road.
“What about after we get to the American Zone?”
“I’m going to go on.”
He laughed. “What? To actual America?”
“Yes.”
“You’re mad.”
“We can do it, David.”
“I’m not saying we can’t.” He paused. “What will we do there?”
“Whatever we decide.”
“Well then.” He gunned the engine a little, and shifted up a gear. “Southwest it is.”
“Give me your hand,” she said. He freed one hand from the wheel and Hopper took it in her own, her other still pressing on his injured shoulder.
He smiled at her again, more broadly. “Do you think we can do this?”
“I do.”
“Still sure about the future?”
“I’d say it’s a little more open than it used to be.” And she smiled back at him.
They drove under a lightening sky until the rain was behind them. Up ahead were patches of blue, the clouds scudding lightly across. Above the car, they heard birds that had made their homes in unfamiliar branches, parrots and cockatiels and mynahs, and the trees coming through the lower reaches of the forest floor were thicker and wilder, displacing the older trunks to take their place in the light of the sun.
The car turned west at the next junction, and began to make its way, driving once again careful and slow, toward the American Zone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A lot of people have helped this book see the light of day.
The scientific advisers: Rob Blake, Matt Loxham, and Harry Bryden gave their time and provided knowledgeable direction about the state of the heavens and the oceans; and Josephine Peterson’s advice on the astrophysics side of things was vital to helping drag the Earth to a halt.
My literary agent, Peter Straus, has been an extremely patient and encouraging guide ever since I wandered into his office and told him an unlikely-sounding premise for a book. Once it was ready (or once I thought it was), he knew just who might like to read it. Sincere thanks to him and to all his colleagues at RCW.
At Penguin Random House, I have been very lucky to work with Selina Walker, a superb editor who has helped shape and improve the book beyond measure. Jane Selley’s proofreading spotted numerous blunders before they made it to print. Thanks, too, to Susan Sandon, for taking a punt on a story like this in the first place. The team at PRH have made the process of my first novel far less daunting and far more enjoyable than I anticipated. In the USA, Lindsey Rose at Dutton has also been an expert Sherpa on the slopes of this first novel.
First readers Palomi Kotecha, Caroline Lord, and Heather McRobie generously lent their time and gave excellent advice. The first reader of all, Maisie Glazebrook, gave tremendous feedback on the very earliest version. And Katherine Rundell saw potential in the idea in the first place and gently suggested I keep going when I was seriously considering giving up.
Personal thanks are due to my colleagues at QI and Private Eye magazine, who have listened to a lot of my planning and encouraged me over the past three years. And to my parents, who spent my entire childhood letting me read and not once insisting I put down my book, even at meals.
My final thanks go to Molly Lyne, whose patient, generous encouragement has been unfailing throughout. A lifetime spent facing you will be no hardship.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Hunter Murray is a writer and comedian. He is one of the writers and researchers behind the BBC show QI, and also co-hosts the spinoff podcast No Such Thing As a Fish, which since 2014 has released 250 episodes, been downloaded 200 million times, and toured the world. It’s also spawned two bestselling books, The Book of the Year and The Book of the Year 2018, as well as a BBC2 series, No Such Thing as the News. Andrew also writes for Private Eye magazine, and hosts the Eye’s in-house podcast, Page 94, interviewing the country’s best investigative journalists about their work. In his spare time he performs in the Jane Austen–themed improvised comedy group Austentatious, which plays in London’s West End and around the UK. The Last Day is his debut novel.
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The Last Day Page 32