On Deadly Ground

  Shit. This was bad.

  I couldn’t get my head around it. Shit, shit, shit. People must be dying by the million. What about Mum? I knew she was in Italy. But what was happening there? Was she safe? Dad, too, come to that. I can’t say I felt great affection for him. But what had happened to him? Was he in a refugee camp? Was the gas leaking out of the American landscape, too? Had he coughed up a lung as he lay there in bed with his new twenty-something bride?

  I looked down at the ground, expecting any moment to see it smoulder before bursting into flame. I’d dance there like Fred Astaire on speed, with the flames licking my shins, the intense heat melting my trainers.

  Mouth dry as cinders, I stared down at the grass between my feet as I sat, back to the trunk. A dappled mixture of sunlight and shadow danced around my feet. But any second now I might see smoke, streaming up from the soil as—

  ‘Rick? Rick Kennedy, isn’t it?’

  I looked up at the figure. The sun was behind her head. All I could see was a female shape surrounded by a blazing halo as the sun shone through a light froth of hair.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ the female voice asked.

  ‘Eh, yes…thank you.’ I squinted up at her as I climbed to my feet.

  ‘You remember me, don’t you? I’m—’

  ‘Kate Robinson. Yes, eh…’ I struggled for something to say, then managed a lame, ‘How do you do…?’ Held out a hand for her to shake, then saw it was chocolate brown from Ben’s garden soil. ‘Sorry. I’ve been, eh, digging, the, eh…’

  ‘Fence posts?’ She smiled. ‘Yes. I’ve been watching you.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Frightening, isn’t it? You set out to save our lives; then you have to do all this to stop us from ransacking your homes.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re—’ I stopped, blushing.

  ‘Yes. I’m one of the mob, formerly known as a refugee from Leeds.’

  I blushed harder. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’

  She handed me a bottle of water. ‘I know you didn’t mean it. But that’s the reality, isn’t it? We’re now on different sides.’

  ‘You make it sound as if we’re going to fight a war.’

  ‘That’s exactly what’s going to happen, isn’t it?’ she said, and looked at me with those intense eyes of hers. ‘We’re going to fight each other for the last tin of baked beans.’

  ‘It might not come to that.’ I took a swallow of water. It was sweet, cold and felt oh-so-good drenching my burning throat. ‘Once the authorities get their act together they’ll start bringing supplies.’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded, those intense eyes fixed on mine. ‘They’ll bring in food, and clothes and tents—all strapped onto the backs of specially bred flying pigs.’

  ‘You don’t believe they’ll send help?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  I handed her back the bottle of water. I couldn’t answer that one. There was no anger in her voice, only sadness. She wasn’t there to pick a fight with me. ‘Where are you staying?’ I asked.

  ‘First off it was a patch of grass called King Elmet’s…Acre?’

  ‘King Elmet’s Mile.’

  ‘A wonderful name. But I don’t think much of the room service.’ She began to tell me how she and her flatmates from Leeds had driven up to Fairburn when the gas hit Leeds. They’d planned to stay with her cousin who lived in the village, but they’d found the house locked up. Now she’d have had no qualms breaking in, but then it seemed pretty well anti-social even if the house did belong to your favourite cousin. So they’d had to content themselves with sleeping rough on blankets in the field just a dozen or so steps from my house. As I’d looked from the window on that first morning after the refugee camp had appeared overnight like a spring frost I might have seen her among those thousands of people squatting out there on the grass.

  I’d turned down Caroline’s plea for her and her daughter to move in with me. Would I have refused Kate Robinson? She stood there in front of me, dressed in a short denim skirt and clinging white T-shirt, her slender body curving as she leaned against the tree, her long delicate fingers curled around the bottle. And those legs…I had to make a conscious effort not to stare at a pair of legs, tanned golden brown, that seemed to go on forever.

  More to the point: would I have invited Kate Robinson to stay?

  As I listened to Kate speaking, finding my eyes drawn first to her near-Oriental almond-shaped eyes, then to her full pink lips, then back to her eyes again, I happened to glance over her shoulder in the direction of the house.

  Looking out of the window, her eyes fixed intently on us, I saw Caroline Lucas. I don’t know if Caroline noticed I’d seen her. In any event she still stared.

  I shifted uncomfortably. That damn woman…instantly I regretted thinking of her in that way. She’s gone through torture, Rick, I told myself, she needs a friend.

  Yeah, but does it have to be me, came the other voice that always plays devil’s advocate as soon as my conscience pipes up. It’s not as if you’re a knight in shining armour who charged to the rescue.

  No, chipped in the damn whining voice of conscience again, you left her to be raped, sodomized and Christ knows what else. You were ready to take on that mob who raided your house single-handed, just to stop one of them taking a frigging stupid spaghetti jar, but you left that poor woman to be raped in the woods by a gang of men behaving like fuck-crazed beasts.

  So, continued whining conscience, now you’re going to leave Kate Robinson here in Fairburn? The refugee camp’s going to go ballistic in about three days flat. For weeks you’ve thought of nothing else but getting Kate into bed, now you’re going to leave her to the same fate as Caroline. For Chrissakes, she’ll probably be dead within the week.

  ‘I think they’re ready for you to start digging again.’

  ‘Digging?’ I came out of my tussle with whining conscience.

  She smiled a beautiful smile. Her eyes were clear and gentle and I felt a massive surge of electricity run through me. I could have reached out and held her head in my hands and kissed her. ‘Yes, digging, Rick. Here, have another drink.’ She smiled again, though this time the smile had an underlying sadness. ‘Not that I can blame you for having a lot on your mind. When I think back to you and Stephen doing the This Is Your Life routine at Ben’s party, it all seems as if it happened years ago, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Hell, you can say that again.’

  ‘And how we went out looking for that gang that beat up your friend.’

  ‘Stenno. I still think he’s concussed or something. He’s been acting weird.’

  I recalled that night, too. The face that stared at me from the darkness. Being forced to the ground. That lost hour.

  ‘They should try and get him to the hospital in Bradford; apparently that’s still functioning OK.’

  As I looked into her green eyes again I knew I couldn’t leave her behind tonight. Despite Ben Cavellero’s insistence on keeping this night-time vanishing act secret, I’d have to risk telling Kate and persuading her she should escape with us.

  Chapter 22

  ‘Don’t worry, I know,’ Kate told me as we walked out of the shade of the apple tree and in the direction of Dean who was sweatily digging a hole for another fence post.

  ‘You know?’ I paused.

  ‘Just because I was one of the hated refugees doesn’t mean I’ve become the sworn enemy. When my cousin managed to get home I stayed with her a couple of days, then I got the message to come up here to Ben’s this morning.’

  ‘You were at the meeting?’ I felt a wave of relief flowing from my toes upwards.

  ‘It was a bit of a crush, wasn’t it? I was wedged in at the back so you wouldn’t have seen me.’

  ‘So you think it’s a sensible move?’ I asked her as I picked up the shovel. ‘Leaving Fairburn to go and camp out on the moor?’

  She looked round as if afraid we’d be overheard but the nearest villager was old Fullwood, stamping wet concre
te down around one of the fence posts. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I don’t see that we’ve got any choice. Forty thousand people aren’t going to sit there passively and watch their families starve to death. Drink?’ She handed Dean the bottle. ‘By the way, we’re all getting some basic tuition on using firearms. I’ve just had mine. Ben asked me to let you know your lesson begins at two.’

  With that she left, her hair shining in the sunlight.

  ‘Nice legs,’ Dean said, taking another swallow of water.

  I thought about the world heating up beneath our feet. And the anarchy, murder and mayhem breaking out all around us. And I realized human nature wasn’t licked yet. ‘Yeah.’ I gave a grim smile. ‘Nice legs.’

  Chapter 23

  Nine o’clock; evening. I lay on a mattress in what must have been little more than a broom cupboard in Ben Cavellero’s house. All the rooms, the hallways, the landing were crammed with the people who would leave in five hours’ time. Seeing as we would be walking through the night, it made sense to try and grab some sleep. But it was hard with the July sun still shining against the curtains. I was alone. Restless.

  Ben had circulated faxes and hard-copy e-mail messages from people around the world. He wanted us to know what was happening out there.

  I picked up a wad of A4 sheets from the floor beside me. A fistful of doom and terror that had the power to drive ice waves of sheer fright through my veins.

  I shivered as I flicked through them, letting odd sentences hit me in the eye:

  Paris streets now deep in grey ash. The Seine breaks its banks, choked with ash sludge and the drowned…

  And:

  Melbourne was today filled with a choking gas. It settled low to the ground. Up here on the fourth floor of the student accommodation block we are safe. But there are so many of our fellow students lying dead in the road down there. Soon we will have to find some way of going into the city for food. Our only hope, that the gas disperses soon.

  And transcripts of radio broadcasts:

  All around the ship…the sea is on fire. Inflammable gas is bubbling to the surface. What ignited it I don’t know. But we are sailing into a burning ocean. If we — Message ends abruptly.

  I began to read the reports in full:

  e-mail message. From Endsville, USA. Typed with one finger by a man with no hair but plenty of booze.

  Date: Who cares?

  Time: What does it matter?

  This morning half the world blew to Kingdom Come. At least it felt that way. We’d been on vacation to Orlando. This morning as I stood on the balcony I watched Disneyland make one mighty leap toward Heaven. Epcot Centre, Magic Kingdom, Thunder Mountain. Everything just lifted. Then came the flames, standing halfway to the sky in a curtain of fire. Even poor Mickey’s gone now. No one’s safe. Sue and the kids went yesterday. Just swallowed into the ground over on Rodeo Drive: that old blacktop cracked open easy as pie crust. Lord love them. They’ll be in Heaven playing with Mickey and Donald Duck and Simba now. Jordan loved the Lion King. I keep looking out of the windows at the clouds. Lord, wouldn’t I love to see those clouds swell up into heads and those heads to be Sue, Jordan, Louis and little Tish? Lord help them now. Lord, may He take care of them. Lord, I’m typing slow now. I’m in a high school an hour’s drive from that burning hole in the ground that was once Disneyland. They’ve got a generator and this computer where I can send e-mail out to the world. And I’ve got glass in my face from the explosion. Lord, I’m dripping red on the keyboard again. Don’t worry, e-mail can’t transmit that nasty little bug.

  I imagined a middle-aged man, sitting typing one-fingered at the computer. There’s a bottle of whisky in his hand. He takes a gulp every ten words. Pieces of glass stick like rough diamonds from his face. And there’s a kind of tranquillity about him. The worst that could happen to him has happened. He’d raged and cursed and kicked furniture until he’d roared out all the anger. Strangely I felt a kinship and sympathy with him. And I knew he’d go on serenely transmitting his thoughts and experiences to the world until he finally bled to death.

  Some of the people pitching their reports to the rest of humanity weren’t so serene.

  I picked out another sheet.

  fax message

  The word FAX had been deleted with a slash of a pen. Another word had been scratched in to replace it so it now read:

  fux message

  From: Franco Mendez

  Possibly somewhere in Greenwich Village, New York City; forgive me, please if I sound a mite vague, only the place don’t look like it did when I went to bed last night.

  Let’s cut to the chase. It’s important you know what happened to us.

  Oscar Wilde said: I am not exactly pleased with the Atlantic, it is not so majestic as I expected.’

  Last night I kissed my girlfriend at the door of our apartment as she headed off to patrol these mean streets for the NYPD. Ten minutes later Oscar Wilde’s not-so-majestic Atlantic came to New York. We’d heard about the subterranean gas explosions in the Atlantic seabed and the underwater volcanic eruptions. Well, last night one or the other caused the Atlantic to rise up in her most awful majesty. I heard it coming. Like a train roaring down its track. Then with a godawful thump the tidal wave hit the city; it tore through the apartment blocks, smashing them to shit, spilling screaming men, women and children out of their beds and into the water. Ours is one of the few that remain standing. I look out the window now; I see the ocean lapping at second-floor windows. What’s left of them. There’s a lot of stuff floating in the water. One of those pieces of stuff is, I guess, my girlfriend. And to think I was going to dump the cheating whore anyway.

  I listen to the radio. I know YOU are out there. And it pisses me off so incredibly…so fucking much. Why should God be selective when it comes to the end of the world? I mean has He saved all the fucking niggers? All the fucking lesbos? All the fucking jews? (Yeah, yeah, right! I know, I know, it should be a fucking capital J for ‘Jews’ but what the hell do I fucking care now? This whole block’s about to fall into the majestic fucking Atlantic ocean.) And he must have saved fucking YOU, otherwise YOU wouldn’t be fucking reading this.

  But I’m going to do what I’ve always wanted to do. Carol-Marie kept a spare Colt .45 in her pantyhose drawer so I’m going to take it and blow some fucking heads off. Nigger boy down the hallway’s going to get it first—and his fucking rat boy son in his day-glo orange sneakers. BOOM-BOOM. This’s long, long overdue.

  And if I knew where fucking YOU lived, I’d blow a hole in YOUR fucking face as well.

  Now, from watery mansions, New York City, my final message to you all is:

  YOU TURNED YOUR BACKS ON FUCKING JESUS, YOU BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELVES.

  now: fuck off!!!

  What a miserable Nazi jerk, I thought. But the disturbing thought to hit me was we’d seen it starting to happen to us. This disaster had hit the paranoia button. You wanted to pin the blame for all this shit on someone.

  I picked up another fax message.

  From: Samuel K. Marsh, Birmingham.

  ‘And the sea gave up the dead in it. Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire…if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.’

  This apocalypse that has visited us all is predicted in the Book Of Revelations. Remember what Christ said when—

  ‘Rick?’

  ‘Uh…hello, Caroline. How you feeling?’ Damn. I could have been asking her if she’d recovered from a cold, not from being carried into the woods by the bastards and—‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I’m sorry, what can I say?’

  ‘Hush, hush. I came to thank you for bringing me here.’

  ‘It’s the least I could do…really it was.’ I felt awkward, tongue-tied.

  ‘May I sit down?’

  ‘Of course.’ Quickly I sat up. The only place in the tiny room for her to sit was on the mattress. I was sleeping nude and awkwardly held the sheet across my waist like
a shy schoolgirl.

  Caroline wore a man’s white cotton shirt and leggings. Her feet were bare. ‘Well…’ She smiled. ‘They couldn’t have found a smaller room for you if they’d tried.’

  ‘I don’t mind. At least I’m not sleeping out on the landing.’

  ‘And it won’t be for long.’

  ‘Oh, so you know about—’

  ‘Yes, I’m coming with you.’ The scratches on her face and throat looked less raw now, and she smiled as she spoke in that gentle yet husky voice that reminded me of some late-night female radio jock. A dusky, velvet voice that would pad gently through the radio speakers into a night-dark room.

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ I immediately flushed again, feeling I’d put my foot in it.

  ‘I’ll be fine. Female flesh is far more resilient than you think, you know?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Hush, stop saying sorry.’ Lightly she touched the top of my shoulder. ‘Mmm…hot. A touch of sunburn?’

  ‘It’s not bad. It must have been today when I was digging.’

  ‘Ah, the holes for the fence posts.’

  They’re going to try and make it secure from—’

  ‘People like us? The refugees turned monsters who’ve invaded your village.’ She gave a sad smile, her brown eyes dropping down before slowly lifting up to mine. Somehow I felt even that brown-eyed gaze stroked my bare chest and face.

  ‘Sorry, I—’

  Her brown eyes flashed with sudden humour. In a mock scolding way she whispered, ‘Rick. Stop saying sorry. You’ll be apologizing next for causing this whole rotten world to blow up under our feet.’

  I smiled. ‘I’m s— I just feel…well, I feel so damn guilty about what happened to you.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said firmly. ‘If anything I pounced on you and put you in that awkward position. You couldn’t have invited all of us waifs and strays into your house. Now…’ She smiled in such a friendly way I couldn’t help but smile back. ‘Who was that girl I saw you talking with today? Under the apple tree? Mmm?’