‘It’s going to be a cold winter.’ Jesus poured more wine.
‘Unless the ground heats up some more,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll spend the winter in shorts and flip-flops.’
No one smiled. Me included. I’d tried to make a flippant joke, but as soon as I’d spoken I remembered that finger of black pointing at Fountains Moor. The Earth becoming scorched, vegetation dying; cities burning.
Jesus sipped his wine. ‘Is it bad where you come from?’
‘Most of the problems in our area,’ Kate said, ‘could be attributed to the poison gas leaking out through cracks in the ground.’
I tore off a piece of pizza. ‘At first it created a massive refugee problem. Food supplies quickly dried up. You could be beaten to death for an apple in your pocket.’
‘And now people are eating each other.’ Kate gave a fatalistic shrug. ‘People are the only thing that aren’t in short supply.’
I looked at Jesus. ‘I take it you’re not short of food?’
‘No problems yet, Rick. The flood forced people out of London within days. They didn’t have a chance to loot the supermarkets or warehouses. For the time being we’ve got some pretty rich pickings.’
‘How many are there in your group?’
‘Fifty-five. Well, fifty-four now that Mental’s gone.’
‘You’re confident the water won’t rise any more?’ Kate asked.
‘It reached this level about three weeks after the start of the flood. Touch wood—’ smiling, he touched his head, ‘—it won’t rise any more.’
‘You’ve not been attacked by rival groups?’
‘So far we haven’t had much trouble. Those that left London stick to the higher ground to the north. They haven’t risked coming back. They need boats, for one thing.’
‘So, what’s your story?’
Jesus smiled as he stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘As you’ll have guessed from the accent, I’m originally from Liverpool. I couldn’t find work. I was married with three daughters. So I tried my hand in London. For a few months I laboured on building sites. Then got laid off. I killed time drinking in pubs. Then when money got low I’d buy a bottle of whisky and drink it in a park. Soon it reached the point where having a drink was more important than having a roof over my head. So I spent what little money I could get on the booze.’
‘You ended up homeless?’
‘Oh, Rick, I had a home all right. A lovely home. Only it was the inside of a bottle. The most comfortable home you could imagine.’
‘And the rest of your community?’
‘They were all homeless. The people society kicked in the teeth.’
Kate said, ‘But you collected them all together and brought them to this island?’
He nodded appreciatively at Kate. ‘Got it in one, Miss Robinson.’
‘And they called you Jesus?’
He nodded. ‘In the old days society rewarded good deeds with medals and titles. These people gave me the name of Jesus as a mark of gratitude.’
‘You’ve done a good job,’ Kate said. ‘Everyone seems well fed.’
He grinned. ‘And nobody’s homeless anymore, right?’ He leaned forward. ‘You two think whatever happened to this planet is a disaster. For these people it was the best thing that could have happened. It’s saved their lives. It’s given them pride and a sense of purpose.’
‘Every cloud has a silver lining—for some.’ Kate smiled but the words sounded bitter.
‘Look.’ Jesus clasped his hands together. ‘You’ve seen those photographs of two-headed sheep, birds born without feathers, children with webbed hands. I think Nature deliberately produces these mutants, freaks, call them what the jiggery you like. The reason it does this, is because once in a while the environment changes with a catastrophic rapidity—just like it’s done now—then suddenly these freaks discover that their, let us call them unique attributes mean they are better adapted to the new environment than the so-called normal animals. The same happens with humans here.’ He tapped his head. ‘Some of us are born with different software loaded into our brains. We grow up to feel like outsiders. Fish out of water. As if we’re never really part of normal society. We’re the ones who get bullied at school. We might end up drug addicts or alcoholics or in prison, in mental hospitals, or maybe we just can’t go with the flow of ordinary society. We are round pegs that society tries to hammer into square holes. So we fall through the cracks; we end up living out on the streets, or psychiatrists try and cure us—well, they call it a cure. They pump us with drugs—Prozac and amitriptyline for depression; chlorpromazine for schizophrenia.’
‘You’re saying you’ve somehow been chosen by Nature to become a new improved model of homo sapiens?’
‘You’re being flippant again, Mr Kennedy. I’m not saying we’re better, I’m only claiming we are different. The reason why we seem like weirdoes to you is because we’re not allowed to grow and fulfil our genetic destiny. We become damaged, like butterflies forever trapped in a caterpillar phase.’
Kate looked up from her pizza. ‘And now the environment has changed?’
‘And now the environment has changed we have discovered—to our joy, to our boundless joy—that we have come into our own. We feel whole. Happy. This new environment suits us. We can function like human beings; we no longer feel like fish out of water.’
‘So you’re going to inherit the Earth?’
‘I didn’t say that, and you know it, Mr Kennedy,’ Jesus said pleasantly. ‘But we do find this new world more amenable than the old one.’
I drained my glass. The attentive beanpole man hurried forward to refill it. ‘I certainly prefer today’s brand of hospitality to what you were offering yesterday.’
‘I can only apologize again.’
I leaned forward, knitting my fingers together on the table. ‘Obviously the food in the warehouse on the island is yours. So what we need to do is get back home to our community and start searching for another source of supplies.’
‘Your people have enough food in the short term?’
‘We’ll manage.’ It was a lie. In a week the canned foods would be gone. Then my brother Stephen, Dean, little Lee and the rest would be existing on potatoes. Those would be gone soon, too. Then what? Starve? Flip coins to see which one of us went in the pot first?
Kate had told me the island we’d landed on and dubbed Sparky’s Island was a ten-minute boat ride away. I began to mull over ideas of somehow begging a ride back there. Howard would be flying down tomorrow morning. If he didn’t find Kate and me there he might decide we were dead, that the place was too dangerous for him to hang around. He’d take off back to Fountains Moor and (you couldn’t blame him) he wouldn’t come back. We’d be stranded here with Jesus and his merry men.
As Jesus told Kate about life there in Paradise (as they’d called it) I looked out through the window. Children were kicking a football in the street. A little girl, she couldn’t have been much older than Lee, trundled a doll’s buggy past. Brightly coloured clothes hung from washing lines in gardens. From lampposts fluttered strips of orange and yellow material; larger versions of the decorations that Jesus’s tribe adorned themselves with. In the distance I heard the rumble of distant thunder.
Like the man said, they seemed to have got themselves a nice, cosy community on this little island poking out of the waters in what had once been a London residential suburb. But I remembered what I’d seen written on the basement wall. And I remembered what Cowboy, Tesco, Mental and the rest had been so keen to do to us. By rights Kate and me should have been shit-stew by today, probably floating downriver, with the rats nibbling our toes and eyes. Instead we were sitting with Jesus here, chewing on pizza, drinking expensive wines.
What gave?
That’s what I wanted to know. Suspicion prowled my innards like a restless dog that’s sniffed something strange in the shrubbery.
Why the change?
Guard Dog Suspicion sniffed the air and smelt a rat.
This polite talk must be leading up to something. I decided to find out what it was.
‘Jesus, a few hours ago your people were hell-bent on finding the most imaginative way to kill us. Why the change?’
‘Rick…’ Kate flashed me a warning look.
‘No, Kate. I need to know.’
Jesus stroked his beard. ‘These people have been to Hell and back. Any wonder they get crazy now and again?’
‘It seems obvious to me that if someone sets out to torture you to death on the Tuesday and by the Wednesday they’re serving you pizza then they’ve had a fundamental—well, fucking amazing—change of heart.’
‘Rick—’ Kate began.
But I ploughed on. Those scribbled messages on the basement walls from the people that these psychos had killed were like thorns pricking my skin. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight, maybe this line of questioning would get me killed. But by God’s flesh I was going to get answers.
‘Rick,’ Jesus spoke calmly. ‘The world’s a different place now. People are different.’
‘But the fact is you changed your minds. Why? I’ve come to the conclusion that we’ve got something you want. Just what it is I can’t imagine. Certainly not my mother’s recipe for chocolate brownies.’
‘You don’t bottle things up, do you?’ Jesus topped up my glass. ‘You come right out and say what’s on your mind.’
‘Damned right I do.’
‘Rick, cool down, will you?’ Kate implored.
‘Will I Hell. Goddammit, have you seen what’s written on those basement walls? Did you notice the bloodstains? These freaks have been torturing people, dozens of people, maybe hundreds, to death.’
The man they called Jesus said, ‘Do you want me to deny it?’
‘I want to know what you need from us so much that you stopped your pet lunatics out there barbecuing us alive for belly laughs.’
For the first time I saw a flash of anger in Jesus’s brown eyes. ‘OK, OK! You want it straight?’
In the distance thunder rumbled again.
‘Go on, I’m all ears.’
‘Like I said, the world’s different now. It forced us to be different, so we—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’ve had the patronizing sermon already.’
‘No. Let me finish. What makes a marriage work? What keeps a man and woman together?’
‘What’s this got to do with—’
‘It’s got everything to do with what we’ve been doing here. Couples stay together for a whole bunch of reasons. You can list some of those reasons that bind two people into a long-term relationship. For instance: they have good sex; they have children—they love their children, they want to be with them, it keeps the couple together; maybe they share the same hobbies.’
‘But you killed people.’
‘Yeah, and believe me it works, Rick Kennedy. If people go through a powerful emotional experience and share those emotions with others it binds them together closer than love and blood ties. Listen, people who’ve survived air crashes form bonds with fellow crash victims—even though they are total strangers—that last for years. Same thing happens if you’re in the crowd at a concert or a cinema or a football match. Everyone’s experiencing the same emotions. The stronger the emotion shared, the more powerfully it cements individuals together.’
‘But killing innocent people?’
‘But killing innocent people,’ he mimicked, his eyes flashing with a mixture of evangelical zeal and anger. ‘But killing innocent people? Get real, Kennedy. The world has changed. You’ve got to adapt to those changes or die.’
Kate shook her head, shocked. ‘So you’ve made a ritual of killing outsiders?’
‘We did. And it was always strangers from outside our community—never one of our own.’
‘And that binds you closer together as a community?’
Jesus nodded. ‘It has created a close-knit community. We’re fiercely loyal to one another—and the community is fiercely loyal to the individual: any one of us needs help, we all rally round. And that’s what we need to survive: loyalty to this, our new family; a family we’d die for, if need be.’
‘And kill for, too.’
‘Have you?’ he asked, his eyes suddenly sharpened. ‘Have you killed for yours?’
I thought about the three refugees we had caught stealing food. Christ, we were as bad as each other.
Jesus nodded. ‘You have to now. Kill or be killed. And, believe me, you have to activate that software inside your head, the software our ancestors used in prehistoric times. Be ruthless. Be loyal to your own tribe.’
‘OK.’ I nodded. ‘I understand. But I don’t approve.’
‘We don’t need your approval, Rick Kennedy.’
‘OK, you don’t need my approval. But what exactly do you need from us?’
‘The truth?’
I nodded. ‘The truth.’
‘OK, Rick Kennedy. The truth is: if we stay here in London we’re going to die. And do you know something?’
‘What?’
Thunder rumbled continuously now, sounding like enormous barrels being rolled to and fro. ‘You and your community are all going to die if you stay up there on Fountains Moor.’
‘That’s why we need to go back there and start looking for a new food supply.’
‘No.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘Starvation is the least of your problems.’
Kate said, ‘If the ground gets too hot where we’re camped we can simply move on.’
Again Jesus gave that grim smile. ‘You still don’t know what’s really happening, do you? Kate…Rick. Bring your glasses: we can watch the show from the hotel roof.’
‘Show? What show?’
‘I’ll top up your glasses first.’
‘What show?’ I repeated. Was this one of their sadistic shows that they’d originally planned for us? Now some other poor devil was going to be made to dance barefoot on broken glass or whatever they did to get their communal kicks.
‘Follow me. The show started twenty minutes ago.’
Thunder grumbled. An ominous sound like primordial gods muttering threats of destruction and catastrophe.
Chapter 69
Instead of leading us outside, Jesus climbed the thickly carpeted hotel stairs. Exchanging suspicious glances, Kate and I followed.
At Jesus’s invitation I’d picked up a full bottle of wine. By the time we’d reached the first floor I’d decided I’d smash the bottle against the wall and drive the jagged neck of the bottle into his throat. That was if he tried anything weird.
This is where you take off your clothes. This is where I take off mine. Now, Rick, watch me make love to the beautiful Kate Robinson.
That’s what I could imagine him saying. No problem.
But he continued climbing the steps, glass of wine in one hand, his sandals flicking up to smack against his bare soles with a snick-snack sound.
‘Jesus? What show?’ I prompted.
‘Wait and see,’ he said mysteriously. ‘But I think it will convince you that the threat you face isn’t starvation or the ground growing hot.’
On the top floor he opened what looked like a door to a broom cupboard. There were more steps. These were bare concrete. We followed Jesus up them to another door that led onto the roof.
The thunder sounded louder now.
We followed him out onto the flat roof.
Now I could see the extent of Jesus’s island. You could have walked round the shoreline in not much more than ten minutes. From up here it looked thickly wooded; house roofs poked through here and there amongst the branches. The hotel itself stood at a crossroads. From there I could see the roads run down into the lake.
By now it was almost dark. The new lake that covered central London looked strangely beautiful. The moon rose above the waters to cast a shivering strip of light, like some ethereal roadway, across the water towards us.
From the lake rose hundreds of buildings. In the moonlight they looked like tombstones. Silh
ouetted, I saw the massive block of Canary Wharf, the dome of St Paul’s and hundreds of anonymous tower blocks. I shivered.
The flow of water would eventually wash away the foundations. In a year or two even the biggest buildings would begin to deteriorate. I could imagine the thunderous roar they would make as they collapsed with an eerie majesty into the lake. Soon there would be no sign of what was once the mightiest city on Earth. Once it had surpassed Athens, Baghdad, Rome, Constantinople. Soon it would be just a vast shallow lake.
Thunder beat the night air. I looked up at the stars pricking through the darkness.
And again I shivered. The Earth was doing what it did every few thousand years. Mostly it achieved it with an ice age. This time it was a hot age, or a fire age. I knew there and then, as I stood with Jesus at my left hand and Kate at my right, that Planet Earth was wiping out certain forms of life on its surface. Like a teacher who’s mucked up an equation on a blackboard and wipes it clean with a cloth before starting again. Here comes the cloth of fire and flood. We’re wiped out. What new, corrected version of life would follow us?
Kate’s hand found mine and squeezed it. I returned the squeeze, trying to find reassurance. She was thinking the same thing.
Were we doomed?
Was this futile?
Scratting the countryside for cans of food to survive just that little bit longer.
Thunder grumbled more loudly.
Jesus turned to us, his silhouette uncannily Christlike. ‘Do you see the cause of the thunder?’
‘No.’ I shook my head, puzzled.
‘There’s lightning to the west,’ Kate said. She didn’t release the grip on my hand. ‘There. On the horizon.’
‘Look above the flashes of light,’ he said softly. ‘What do you see?’
‘Oh, my God, yes,’ she said, surprised.
‘Do you see them, Rick?’
‘No. Nothing.’ I looked hard. Then my scalp prickled. ‘Hell, yes.’
Kate let out a breath. ‘That’s artillery.’
Jesus said, ‘If you look carefully you can even see the shells.’
For a whole five minutes we stood there on the hotel roof, the glasses of wine in our hands, watching the flashes of light from the muzzles of the big guns. Artillery shells rose almost as if in slow motion into the sky. There they soared, glowing white, like shooting stars, across the sky and into the distance. I couldn’t see where they fell. The sound of exploding shells must have been mixed into the report of the guns to form that constant grumbling thunder we’d heard in the restaurant.