‘The gun emplacements are way off to the north,’ Jesus pointed. ‘But they seem to be shelling a target to the west of London. It’s not regular army. That doesn’t exist anymore. As far as we can tell it’s a bunch of ex-servicemen and civilians who’ve formed a kind of people’s defence force.’
‘Any idea who’s the target?’
‘The target.’ He nodded, then in a matter-of-fact voice said, ‘The Greys.’
‘The Greys?’
‘Not met them yet? You’ll come across them soon enough. They’re overrunning the country.’
Kate looked at me, then looked back at the man these people called Jesus. ‘You mean you’ve seen these Greys?’
‘Sure.’
‘Let’s get this straight,’ I said slowly. ‘These Greys. They are heavily-built men. With grey skins like rhino hide and—’
‘And eyes that are red as blood.’ He nodded. ‘Those monsters are the cause of all this. And they’re overrunning the country.’ He sniffed, looked into his wine glass and looked back up at us. ‘In fact they’re overrunning the entire planet: Africa, New Zealand, Australia. The USA. Those monsters are moving in. And they’re going to push the human race into the sea.’
Chapter 70
Ten minutes later we left the hotel roof and returned to the bar. Kate and Jesus chatted. A wind had sprung up to tug the leaves from the branches of the trees. Even though it was dark I could still see the waves breaking in lines of creamy white against dry land where road met lake.
Through the double-glazed windows the distant artillery, shelling the Greys to the west of London, sounded like nothing more that a soft rumble that was easily drowned by the discreet fizz of the champagne that Jesus poured into our glasses.
This sudden infusion of luxury into my life—clean clothes, hot baths, champagne, pepperoni pizza so delicious I’d packed my stomach to busting point—seemed oddly out of joint with this new world of scavenging and sudden violent death.
Two hundred kilometres or so north of where I sat, glass of champagne in hand, Stephen, Dean, Howard, little Lee and the rest would be zipping their tents against the cold night air. Already weighing on their minds would be the knowledge that their food supplies were dwindling before their eyes. Already they might be feeling the hunger pangs that they’d have to nurse through eight hours of frost and darkness until a breakfast of thin porridge in the morning.
A surge of guilt welled up inside of me. I looked at the crystal champagne glass in my hand, the bubbles streaming up through the pale golden liquid.
Was this right? Was it, Hell. Instead of luxuriating on this little island called Paradise I should be back on Fountains Moor. They needed me. I should be hacking out fresh plans with Stephen to find enough food and adequate shelter to get us through what might be a murderous winter. A winter that promised either to be fiery as the heat seeped up from the Earth’s molten core or intensely cold as the dust and other crap squirted high into the atmosphere from a thousand erupting volcanoes blocked the heat from the sun.
I looked at the champagne and shook my head. This was shit stew all right. The mother of shit stews.
And we were right in it over our stupid heads.
Jesus thought the real problem, the real threat to our survival, would come from the invading Grey Men—whoever they really were, and wherever they were really from. Now Jesus wanted something from us. He needed it badly enough to be charming and hospitable and share his precious wines.
As he poured out more champagne I decided to find out what it was. I asked him straight: ‘OK, so what do you need from us?’
Thoughtfully he slipped the champagne bottle back into the ice bucket, took a deep breath as if reaching a decision he’d been mulling over for hours, then launched right in.
He looked me in the eye. ‘There’s a ship lying at anchor off the coast near Whitby in North Yorkshire.’
‘So? Where do we come in?’
‘You’ve got a plane.’
‘Ah.’ Understanding oozed through me. ‘So, when it comes down to it, it was the plane that saved our lives?’
Kate raised her eyebrows. ‘The plane? Why do you need the plane?’
‘Kate. Rick. The situation is this: we know we have to get out of London before the Greys reach here. The artillery bombardments can only hold them back a few weeks at the most. We have a ship which we plan will take us to a South Seas island. The problem is, the ship is at the other end of the country.’
Kate shook her head. ‘But you’ve got boats. Why don’t you just put everyone on those and head downriver to the Thames Estuary?’
‘Two problems there. One: the Thames downstream from London is a no-go area. Geological disturbances have thrown up a ridge of rock creating a huge dam that’s holding back the river. Two: there are only three people on the ship. And they haven’t got the experience to bring it all the way down the coast.’
‘So, it’s a case of Mohammed to the mountain?’ Kate said.
Jesus nodded. ‘What we have to do is somehow get our community—all fifty-four of us—to Whitby where we can board the ship.’
‘You’ve got experienced sailors here in London?’
‘We have. At least enough to crew the ship as far from here as possible.’
‘Walking to Whitby’s out of the question?’
‘With children and pregnant women? To walk more than two hundred kilometres? Across a country thronging with millions of starving people?’ Jesus let his breath hiss through his front teeth. ‘They’d have the meat picked off our bones inside twenty-four hours.’
‘So, let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You’re hoping we will fly all your people up to Whitby?’
‘All fifty-four.’ He nodded seriously. ‘This really is a matter of life and death, Rick.’
‘But why on Earth should we?’ I shook my head in disbelief. ‘What on Earth is there in it for us?’
Jesus looked at me levelly. ‘A chance to survive.’
Outside the darkness deepened. A couple strolled hand in hand down the street, illuminated only by the lights from the hotel window. In the distance, tiny sparks of silver light that were the artillery shells still rose into the air to fall on some distant target west of London.
Kate looked at me, then at Jesus. ‘Let me get this straight. You’re suggesting we join forces?’
Jesus nodded. ‘Indeed I am. You transport my community to the coast near Whitby using your plane, then you bring yours across. We board the ship, then…’ He shrugged. ‘We sail south. Start a new life.’
‘As simple as that.’ I held out my hands. ‘But you think we’d trust you? What’s to stop you loading your people onto the ship and sailing without us?’
‘OK,’ Jesus said diplomatically. ‘You send some of your people to the ship first. Then we send a party of ours. Maybe alternate the flights between Fountains Moor and London, so neither group can double-cross the other. You agree?’
‘There are problems.’
‘Problems?’
‘Logistical problems,’ I said. ‘We have one four-seater light aircraft. If we can only carry three people back at a time you’re talking eighteen round trips.’
‘And we could only make one round trip per day,’ Kate added. ‘So it would take a minimum of eighteen days.’
‘Eighteen days is fine.’
Kate nodded. ‘And that’s supposing we have eighteen days of fine flying weather, that the plane holds out mechanically.’
I said, ‘And we would need to use some of the trips to transport food back to the camp.’
‘So you are running out of food?’
Damn. I bit my lip. I hadn’t wanted to let Jesus know about our food shortage. It was a weakness he might be able to exploit.
‘It’s low,’ Kate said quickly. ‘But not dangerously low.’
‘And we’re finding new supplies all the time.’ I tried to sound confident but it must have seemed obvious to the man that if we were risking long hazardous night
s to London in search of food then we must be desperately close to starvation.
Jesus smiled. ‘I didn’t say it would be easy to airlift fifty-four people from here—plus however many there are of you—to the Yorkshire coast. But we can do it. If you’re in agreement.’
‘There’s no other way your people can make the journey?’
‘You know there isn’t, Kate. Even if we could move everyone to the dry land to the north, then find vehicles, all the roads would be blocked by armed gangs. And, as I’ve already said, we couldn’t walk all that way across open countryside. We need to fly.’ He looked at each of us in turn. ‘And you know your community will either die of starvation or be overrun by Greys.’
‘So.’ I let out a deep sigh. ‘We need each other to survive.’
‘That’s about the size of it…here, let me top up your glasses. We’ll drink to our new partnership.’
‘Oh…wait a moment,’ I held up my hand. ‘I can’t speak on behalf of my group. And I certainly can’t commit them to something like this without their agreement.’
Jesus considered. ‘OK…but we need to move quickly, once winter closes in we won’t be going anywhere, will we?’
‘You know the island where your people found us?’
Jesus nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘Our plane is due to land there tomorrow morning. We could fly back, discuss your proposal with our group, then—’
‘Then come back and give me your decision?’
‘Right.’
‘Wrong, Mr Kennedy.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ He shook his head, smiling. ‘Now what’s to stop you taking our ship?’
‘We don’t have anyone capable of sailing a ship.’
‘I don’t know that,’ Jesus said, sipping his champagne. ‘You might move your people to the ship and—phut. Farewell, suckers. And we’re left here to rot.’
Kate said, ‘So you want to keep us here as hostages?’
He shook his head. ‘Guests. You’d do the same if you were in my shoes, wouldn’t you?’
I sighed and nodded. ‘So, back to the cellar, is it?’
‘No. You’ll have a room here. You’ll be well fed. Come and go as you please.’
‘So what happens tomorrow when our pilot flies in to find we’ve gone? He’ll return to Fountains Moor, never to return.’
‘You’ll be there to meet your pilot, Rick. Explain the situation to him. And my proposal. That we join forces and sail to the South Seas together.’
I asked the next question bluntly. ‘Jesus. Are you married?’
‘As I mentioned before. I had a wife in Liverpool with—’
‘No. Here. Do you have a wife or girlfriend?’
He nodded. ‘I live with a girl—Kandi. Why?’
‘Then send Kandi back with the plane. She can explain your plan to our group.’
‘And she’ll be an exchange hostage? Smart move, Rick. OK, I’ll talk to Kandi.’ Jesus raised his glass. ‘A toast, then? To us.’
For a moment I hesitated to raise my glass. I glanced at Kate. Our eyes met. I don’t believe in telepathy, but at that moment I read her mind as clearly as you read words on a page. She was thinking that Jesus, sitting there all smiles, glass raised, waiting, had what he’d set out to get from us. He was satisfied all was going according to his plan. I knew then I’d underestimated him with that bumfluff Christ Almighty beard, beady eyes and tattoos—particularly the homely name Gary Topp picked out in blue tattooist’s ink across the backs of his fingers. This man who called himself Jesus had the look of cunning in his eyes. And beneath the Christlike smile I detected something flinty, ruthless. He was the kind of man who got what he wanted.
But I realized this also: Kate and I were in his empire now. We had, for now anyway, to play the game according to his rules.
Chapter 71
‘Rats!’
‘Kate, run to the house!’
The rats poured out of the drain. It was like watching one of those films shown in reverse for comic effect. Imagine brown flood water gushing down a drain. It flows down at such a rate you’d grow dizzy watching it.
Imagine you are seeing that in reverse, the water flowing upwards out of the drain. Thick brown water.
Now imagine that the ‘water’ is, in fact, rats. Thousands of rats gushing upward and outward through the grating. So many rats that you can’t see an individual rat, only that brown flood.
‘Kate, get over the fence…run for the house.’
‘I can’t!’ she shouted. ‘They’re coming out of the ditch as well. There’s hundreds of them.’
‘Here, grab this.’ I handed her a broom handle I’d found at the water’s edge. I kicked aside a mound of driftwood tangled with human bones.
A stick.
A branch.
I needed something to use as a club against the rats now swarming toward us, hungry eyes glinting. No doubt about it. We were their next meal.
I bent down to yank at the mess of string, carrier bags, brushwood, shoes, clothes, drowned pigeons that had been washed up onto the shore.
Damn, nothing.
Nothing to use as a club.
‘Shit…this will have to do.’ I picked up a human thigh-bone. Long, heavy, ideal as a club—pieces of meat still hung from it, looking like strips of pasta. I wished I’d time to wrap a plastic bag round the end. Instead, I had to swallow my distaste and clamp my hand round the bone and those strands of flesh that felt wet and unnaturally cold against my bare palm.
‘Rick…here they come. Damn.’ A rat ran at her. She struck out with the broom handle. Missed.
Struck again.
This time swinging the broom handle like a hockey stick.
The rat squealed. With a thock sound the broom handle batted the rat into the water.
We’d left the hotel just after sunrise to walk round the island and explore what would, at least for a few weeks, be our new home. We’d cut down through a clump of trees, dotted here and there with millionaires’ houses. It was at the water’s edge that I’d first seen the rats.
When they gushed from the iron grating set in the pathway I couldn’t believe my eyes. And still they poured out of the earth in that fluid unbroken stream of brown.
Now they advanced towards us. Darting closer in little stops and starts.
Their thick pink tails flicked into the air like little whips as they ran. We were close enough to see their glinting rat eyes, a flash of pink tongue, as they anticipated the taste of our flesh when their sharp teeth would crunch through our skin.
I looked round frantically. We’d been pushed back to the water. There was nowhere else to run. I couldn’t see anyone who might help us.
We’d have to face this alone.
I looked at Kate. She stood there holding the broom handle in both hands like it was a samurai sword. She shot a look at me, her green eyes bright with fear.
‘We’ve got two choices,’ she said quickly. ‘Either we swim for it. Or we run over the top of them. See if we can make it to the house. What do you think?’
‘There must be thousands. They’ll swarm all over us. Kate, we have to—damn!’
The rats surged forward. I crouched down, using the human thigh bone to beat at the oncoming rats.
Thud, thud, thud. The bone club cracked down.
Crack! A rat skull mashed flat.
Thud, thud…
I pounded at the ground, clubbing at the rats.
‘Rick. Look! On your leg!’
A rat had run up my leg as far as my knee. I could see its clawed feet hooking into the material of my jeans. Its mouth opened wide. I saw yellow teeth, razor-sharp; the whiskers; the hungry eyes; the still wet brown fur stuck down in a glistening mat across its body. I froze.
The rat looked fat, almost bloated. It must have been swimming with bacteria and lethal viruses, ingested as it gorged on rotting human flesh.
Now it had grown so confident that humankind couldn’t hurt it any more th
at it was going to take live victims.
Me.
Then Kate.
We were rat fodder.
All this must have taken only a second.
But I saw it all as if it scrolled before my eyes in slo-mo.
The rat hooked its claws into my jeans. I could feel the prick of those claws through the material. It sniffed higher, its pink nose snuffling the odours exuded by the scent glands in my balls.
Maybe that was what smelt sweetest. That’s where it would sink its razor teeth first. Crunching through skin and gristle to puncture my testicles. Then it would thirstily lap the blood oozing through the jeans at my crotch.
‘Rick! Don’t move.’
I heard the buzz of a stick cutting hard through the air.
My eyes had locked onto the rat. I couldn’t move. No way could I move one centimetre.
I could only see the rat about to bite deep between my legs.
The buzz of the stick cutting through the air buzzed louder.
A pale flash.
Thud.
And the rat had been batted from me.
I blinked, snapped out of it.
The rats had clung to the thigh bone. Half a dozen ran up it towards my hand.
I threw the bone behind me.
Kate thrashed at the rats with the broom handle, but they were unstoppable. It was like trying to knock back an incoming ocean tide. The water lapped at our feet.
‘This is it,’ I told her. ‘We either swim for it. Or we’re dead.’
‘We’ll swim,’ she said, eyes darting from my face to the lake waters that were a poisonous stew of decaying bodies and toxic waste leaking from chemical plants, rotting cars, refuse dumps.
‘Ready?’
‘Stick with me. We’ll keep as close to the shore as possible. When we’re away from the rats, swim back to the shore again.’