He says, ‘I’ve done a terrible thing,’ and she says, ‘You saved my life.’
She says, ‘You can’t even believe half the things I’ve done, mate. Bad bad things,’ and he says, ‘And you saved my life.’
In the dark of the night he tells her about Nina and how she published his words and his photographs under her name. And how he knows by that that she was always waiting to take from him everything he had. And she tells him about Darrell and what was taken from her, and in that telling he knows everything; why she carries herself like this and why she’s been hiding all these long weeks and why she thinks she can’t go home and why she hasn’t struck against Darrell at once and with great fury, as a Monke would do. She had half forgotten her own name until he reminded her of it.
One of them says, ‘Why did they do it, Nina and Darrell?’
And the other answers, ‘Because they could.’
That is the only answer there ever is.
She holds his wrist and he is not afraid. She runs her thumb along the palm of his hand.
She says, ‘The way I see it, I’m dead, and so are you. What do dead people do for fun around here?’
They are both injured and hurting. His collarbone, he thinks, is broken. There is a grinding pain in it every time he shifts position. Theoretically, he is stronger than her now, but this makes them both laugh. She is short and stocky like her dad, the same thick bull’s neck, and she has fought more than him, she knows the ways of fighting. When he plays at pushing her back on to the ground, she plays at putting her thumb on the centre of his pain, where the shoulder joins the neck. She presses just enough to make him see stars. He laughs, and she laughs, breathless and foolish in the middle of the storm. Their bodies have been rewritten by suffering. They have no fight left. They cannot, in that moment, tell which of them is supposed to be which. They are ready to begin.
They move slowly. They keep their clothes half on. She traces the line of an old scar at his waist; he took it in Delhi when he first learned fear. He touches his lips to the livid line at her collarbone. They lie side by side. After what they’ve seen, they cannot want it fast or hard now, either of them. They touch one another gently, feeling out the places where they are alike and where they are different. He shows her he is ready, and she is ready, too. They slide together simply, key in a lock. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Yes,’ she says. It’s good; her around him, him inside her. They fit. They move slowly and easily, taking account of each other’s particular pains, smiling and sleepy and for a moment without fear. They come with soft, animal grunts, snuffling into each other’s necks, and fall asleep like that, legs intertwined, underneath a found blanket, in the centre of a war.
Exceptionally complete Cataclysm Era carving, around five thousand years old. Found in western Britain.
The carvings are uniformly found in this condition – something has been deliberately removed from the centre, but it is impossible to ascertain what was lost. Among the theories are: that these stones framed portraits; or lists of local ordinances; or that they were simply a rectangular form of art with nothing in the centre. The chiselling was clearly a protest against whatever was – or was not! – represented by the central portion.
HERE IT COMES
* * *
These things are happening all at once. These things are one thing. They are the inevitable result of all that went before. The power seeks its outlet. These things have happened before; they will happen again. These things are always happening.
The sky, which had seemed blue and bright, clouds over, grey to black. There will be a rainstorm. It has been long in coming, the dust is parched, the soil longs for soaking, teeming dark water. For the earth is filled with violence, and every living thing has lost its way. In the north and the south and the east and the west, the water gathers in the corners of the sky.
In the south, Jocelyn Cleary puts up the hood of her jeep as she takes a concealed exit down a gravel track that looks like it might lead to something interesting. And in the north, Olatunde Edo and Roxanne Monke wake to hear the rain pounding on the iron roof of their shelter. And in the west Mother Eve, who once went by the name of Allie, looks out at the gathering storm and says to herself, Is it time? And her own self says, Well, duh.
There has been an atrocity to the north; rumours of it have come from too many sources now to be denied. It was Tatiana’s own forces, mad with power and maddened by delays and the orders that keep coming in, saying, ‘Any man can betray you, any of them could be working for the North.’ Or was it just that Tatiana has never bothered to control them properly? Maybe she’d always have gone mad, whatever Mother Eve had done to her.
Roxy’s gone. The forces are slipping out of Tatiana’s control. There will be a military coup within weeks if someone doesn’t take charge of this situation. And then North Moldova will march in and take the country, and the stocks of chemical weapons in the southern cities.
Allie sits in her quiet study, looking out at the storm, and counts the cost of business.
The voice says: I’ve always told you that you were meant for great things.
Allie says: Yes, I know.
The voice says: You command respect not only here but everywhere. Women would come here from around the world if you owned the country.
Allie says: I said, I know.
The voice says: So what are you waiting for?
Allie says: The world is trying to go back to its former shape. Everything we’ve done is not enough. There are still men with money and influence who can shape things to their will. Even if we win against the North. What are we starting here?
The voice says: You want the whole world turned upside down.
Allie says: Yes.
The voice says: I feel you, but I don’t know how to be any clearer about this. You can’t get there from here. You’ll have to start again. We’ll have to begin again with the whole thing.
Allie says in her heart: A great flood?
The voice says: I mean that’s one way to handle it. But you’ve got a few options. Look. Think it over. Once you’ve done the thing.
It is late at night. Tatiana sits at her desk, writing. There are orders to be signed to generals. She is going to push forward against the North, and this is going to be a disaster.
Mother Eve comes to stand behind her and places a comforting hand at the back of her neck. They’ve done this many times. Tatiana Moskalev finds the gesture soothing, although she cannot quite say what it is that makes it so.
Tatiana says, ‘I’m doing the right thing, aren’t I?’
Allie says, ‘God will always be with you.’
There are hidden cameras in this room. Another artefact of Tatiana’s paranoia.
A clock strikes. One, two, three. Why then, ’tis time to do it.
Allie reaches out with her particular sense and skill, calming each nerve in Tatiana’s neck and shoulders, skull and cranium. Tatiana’s eyes close. Her head nods.
And, as if it weren’t part of her at all, as if for this moment she couldn’t even detect what it’s doing, Tatiana’s hand creeps across the table to the sharp little letter opener lying on the pile of papers.
Allie feels the muscles and nerves trying to resist, but they’re used to her now, and she to them. Dampen down the reaction here, strengthen the one there. It wouldn’t be so easy if Tatiana hadn’t drunk so much and taken a concoction of Allie’s own manufacture, something Roxy had cooked up for her in the labs. It’s not easy now. But it can be done. Allie places her mind in Tatiana’s hand, holding the letter opener.
There’s a smell, suddenly, in the room. A scent like rotten fruit. But the hidden cameras can’t pick up a smell.
In one swift movement, too fast for Mother Eve to do anything about it – how could she have suspected what was about to happen? – Tatiana Moskalev, maddened by the crumbling of her power, slashes at her own throat with the sharp little knife.
Mother Eve jumps back, screaming, shouting for help.
>
Tatiana Moskalev bleeds out over the papers across her desk, her right hand still twitching as if it were alive.
Darrell
‘They sent me from the office,’ says the lumbering Irina. ‘There is a soldier on one of the paths at the back.’
Shit.
They watch through the closed-circuit TV. The factory’s eight miles down a dirt track from the main road, and the entrance is concealed by hedges and forest. You’d have to know what you were looking for to find it. But there’s a soldier – just one, no sign of a larger party – not far from their perimeter fence. She’s a mile out from the factory proper, all right; she can’t even see it from where she is. But she’s there, walking around the fence, taking photographs on her phone.
The women in the office look at Darrell.
They’re all thinking: what would Roxy do? He can see it on their foreheads like they’ve written it there in marker pen.
Darrell feels the skein in his chest start to throb and twist. He’s been practising with it, after all. There’s a part of Roxy right here and that part knows just what to do. He’s strong. Mightier than the mightiest. He’s not supposed to show any of these girls what he can do – Bernie’s been very clear about that – the cat is not to be let out of the bag. Until he’s ready to be shown off to the highest bidders in London as an example of what they can do … he’s to keep it secret.
The skein whispers to him: She’s only one soldier. Go out there and give her a fright.
Power knows what to do. It has a logic to it.
He says, All of you, watch me. I’m going out.
He talks to the skein as he walks down the long gravel path and opens the gate in the perimeter fence.
He says: Don’t fail me now. I paid good money for you. We can work together on this, you and me.
The skein, obedient now, laid out along Darrell’s collarbone as it had once been in Roxy’s, begins to hum and sizzle. It is a good feeling; that is an aspect of the situation Darrell had suspected but not confirmed until now. Feels a little bit like being drunk, in a good way, in a strong way. Like that feeling you get when you’re drunk that you could take all comers, and in this case you really could.
The skein talks back to him.
It says: I’m ready.
It says: Come on, my son.
It says: Whatever you need, I’ve got it.
Power doesn’t care who uses it. The skein doesn’t rebel against him, doesn’t know that he’s not its rightful mistress. It just says: Yes. Yes, I can. Yes. You’ve got this.
He lets a little arc pass between his finger and his thumb. He’s still not used to that feeling. It buzzes uncomfortably on the surface of the skin, but it feels strong and right inside his chest. He should just let her go, but he can take her, no sweat. That’ll show them.
When he looks back at the factory, the women are crowded around the windows watching him. A few of them are straying out on to the path to keep him in their eye line. They’re muttering to each other behind their hands. One of them makes a long arc between her palms.
They’re sinister fuckers, the way they move together. Roxy’s gone too easy on them all these years, letting them have their weird little ceremonies and use the Glitter in their off hours. They go into the woods together at sunset and don’t come back till dawn, and he can’t fucking say anything, can he, because they turn up bang on time and they get the job done, but something’s going on, he can tell it by the smell of them. They’ve made a little fucking culture here, and he knows they talk about him, and he knows they think he shouldn’t be here.
He crouches low so she won’t see him coming.
Behind Darrell, the tide of women grows.
Roxy says in the morning when she and Tunde are dressed again, ‘I can get you out of the country.’
He had forgotten, really, that there is an ‘out of the country’ to get to. Already this feels more real and more inevitable than anything that has come before.
He pauses halfway through pulling on a sock. He’s left them to dry overnight. They still stink, and their texture is crisp and gravelly.
‘How?’ he says.
She shrugs one shoulder, smiles. ‘I’m Roxy Monke. I know a few people around here. You want to get out?’
Yes, he does. Yes.
He says to her, ‘What about you?’
She says, ‘I’m going to get my thing back. And then I’ll come and find you.’
She’s got something back already. She’s twice her natural size.
He thinks he likes her, but he has no way to know for certain. She has too much to offer him to be a simple proposition right now.
She gives him a dozen ways to find her, as they walk the long miles from here to there. This email inbox will go to her, even though it looks like a shell company. That person will always know how to reach her, eventually.
She says, more than once, ‘You saved my life.’ And he knows what she means.
At a crossroads between fields, next to a shelter for a twice-a-week bus, she uses a payphone to call a number she knows by heart.
When the call’s finished, she talks him through what’s going to happen: a blonde woman in an airline hat will pick him up this evening and drive him across the border.
He’ll have to be in the boot; sorry, but that’s the safest way. It’ll take about eight hours.
‘Waggle your feet,’ she says, ‘or you’ll get a cramp. It hurts and you’re not going to be able to get out.’
‘What about you?’
She laughs. ‘I’m not getting in the boot of a bloody car, am I?’
‘What then?’
‘Don’t worry about me.’
They part just after midnight outside a tiny village whose name she cannot pronounce.
She kisses him once, lightly on the mouth. She says, ‘You’ll be all right.’
He says, ‘You’re not staying?’ But he knows how this goes; the process of his life has taught him the answer. If she were seen taking particular care of a man, it’d make her look soft, in her world. And it’d put him in danger if anyone thought he meant something to her. This way, he could be any kind of cargo.
He says, ‘Go and take it back. Anyone worth knowing will think more of you for surviving this long without it.’
Even as he says it, he knows it’s not true. No one would think anything much of him for surviving this long.
She says, ‘If I don’t try, I’m not myself any more anyway.’
She walks on, taking the road to the south. He puts his hands into his pockets and his head down and strolls into the village, trying to look like a man sent on an errand that he has every right to be about.
He finds the place, just as she described it. There are three shuttered shops; no lights in the windows above them. He thinks he sees a curtain twitch in one of the windows and tells himself he’s imagined it. There’s no one waiting for him here and no one chasing him. When did he get so jumpy? And he knows when. It wasn’t this last thing that made it happen. This fear has been building up in him. The terror put its roots down into his chest years ago and every month and every hour has driven the tendrils a little deeper into the flesh.
He can bear it, somehow, in the moments when the imagined darkness matches the real. He hasn’t felt this dread when he was actually in a cage, or in a tree, or witnessing the worst thing in the world unfold. The dread stalks him on quiet streets or waking alone in a hotel room before dawn. It has been a long time since he’s felt comfort in a night walk.
He checks his watch. He has ten minutes to wait on this empty street corner. He has a package in his bag – all of his camera film, all the footage he’s shot on the road, and his notebooks. He had that envelope ready from the start, stuck with stamps. He had a few; he’d thought if things got dicey he might post his film to Nina. He’s not going to post anything to Nina. If he sees her again, he’ll eat her heart in the marketplace. He has a marker pen. He has the envelope, packed neatly. And on the opposit
e corner of the street there’s a postbox.
How likely is it that the postal service is still working here? He’d heard in the camp that it did still work in the larger villages, the towns and cities. Things have broken down on the border and in the mountains, but they’re miles from the border and the mountains now. The box is open. There’s a time listed for a pick-up tomorrow.
He waits. He thinks. Maybe there will be no car. Maybe there will be a car and instead of a blonde woman with a hat there’ll be three women who’ll bundle him into the back seat. Maybe he’ll end there, thrown out on to the road between one town and the next, used and torn. Maybe there’ll be a blonde woman with a hat who’ll take the money she’s being paid for this and say she’s crossed the border. She’ll let him out of the car to run in the direction she tells him is freedom, but there’ll be no freedom there, only the forest and the chase and the end of it in the soil, one way or another.
It suddenly seems a remarkably stupid thing to have trusted his whole life to Roxanne Monke.
There is a car coming. He sees it from a long way off, its headlights sweeping the dirt road. He has time to write a name on this package, and an address. Not Nina, obviously not. Not Temi or his parents; he can’t let this be his final message to them if he disappears into this dark night. He has an idea. It is a terrible idea. It is a safe idea. If he doesn’t come through this, there is one name and mailing address he could write on this package which would make sure the images would be sent around the world. People should know, he says to himself, what has happened here. To witness is the first responsibility.
He has time. He scribbles quickly, without thinking too hard. He runs for the postbox. He slots the package into the chute and closes the lid again. He is back in position when the car stops at the kerb.