‘Then?’
‘Then we run like Hell.’
‘But the rats…’ She looked back at me. ‘They’ll swim after us, won’t they?’
‘Kate, they’ll strip us down to the bone if we stay here.’
‘OK, go for it.’
‘Right, Kate, on the count of three!’
‘Rick…here they come.’
‘One, two—what the Hell’s that?’
They appeared from nowhere.
‘Dogs!’ Kate cried in disbelief. ‘Dogs. They’re attacking the rats!’
My astonishment turned to relief—a huge surging relief.
‘Look at them all,’ Kate sounded delighted. ‘How many are there?’
‘Twenty—thirty?’
The dogs, all of them small muscle-packed terriers, pounced on the rats. They didn’t bite them to death. The terriers simply picked up the rats by their heads then, with a brutally efficient shake of their own heads, snapped their necks. Then each dog would drop the twitching rat before moving on to the next.
Then the next, and the next.
The rats tried to turn on the dogs. But their teeth couldn’t penetrate the terriers’ natural-grown armour of wiry fur. The dogs snarled, darted, pounced and shook rats, their powerful neck and shoulder muscles snapping scrawny rat necks with ease.
Thank God,’ I murmured, putting an arm around Kate. ‘Here comes the canine cavalry.’
As the terriers slaughtered the rats around our feet I looked up to see Jesus standing watching us, his arms folded. He was grinning. The whole situation had amused him. At his side stood the tall beanpole man, his face expressionless. Alongside him slouched Tesco, his nose still sore and raw-looking from the punch I’d laid across his face. He grinned maliciously. I didn’t doubt for a second that Tesco would have creamed himself with joy if the rats had torn us apart. They stood there, silently watching us, the coloured strips of silk fluttering from their arms and legs.
A moment later the beanpole man walked slowly towards us. He held a tube as long as himself with a bell-shaped attachment at one end. Strapped to his back was something resembling a diver’s aqualung tank. He pointed the business end of the tube at the ground almost as if he was going to hoover it. Instantly a yellow flame as long as your forearm spurted out.
He walked forward slowly, swinging the device from left to right, burning a path through the rats. At the drain, where the rats still poured out, he blasted the flame at the grating. Rats, now balls of fire, still ran madly across the dirt to die at the water’s edge.
Beanpole Man pulled a bottle from his jacket pocket. Then, in that casual unhurried way of his, he poured its contents down through the grating into the drain. He stood back. Pointed the tube at the drain, thumbed a button. Flame darted into the grate. There was a VUFF and an oily yellow flame surged out of the grating.
This time no more rats emerged from the grate. They were cooking down there.
‘I think they’ve won,’ Kate said, nodding at the dogs.
I looked. The surviving remnants of the rats were streaming into the lake to make their escape. The dogs stood there cockily wagging their tails, tongues hanging out as they panted.
Beanpole Man whistled. The dogs ran back to him, tails still wagging, noses lifted into the air to be patted.
Kate and I walked up to where Jesus stood beneath the trees. I felt stupid. All we’d done was take an early walk. Within five minutes we’d nearly ended up as a rats’ breakfast.
‘Thanks,’ I said to Jesus (maybe I should have said ‘Thanks, Jesus,’ but I still found it hard to call the man by his name).
He smiled. ‘Don’t mention it.’
Tesco sneered. ‘You want to watch where you’re walking. You nearly ended up in the shit, Kennedy.’
‘Tesco. Speak nicely to the man.’ Jesus spoke in a soft voice. ‘He and Miss Robinson are our welcome guests.’
Tesco pulled his lips into a grin. Close up, the split in his nose caused by my fist looked even more like raw meat. He wasn’t going to forget, or forgive, that in a hurry. ‘Why don’t the pair of you toddle along to the hotel?’ he said, still forcing the smile. ‘Breakfast is at eight sharp.’
‘Thank you,’ Kate said diplomatically. She’d seen a potential fight brewing between me and Tesco. ‘Come on, Rick.’ She took my arm.
‘Oh, by the way, you two.’ Jesus spoke as if remembering some insignificant detail. ‘You weren’t thinking of leaving this morning?’
‘Without saying goodbye,’ added Tesco, the sneer returning.
‘No,’ Kate said. ‘We thought we’d just take a walk.’
Jesus nodded as if accepting the explanation completely. Then he said lightly, ‘It’s just that Tesco noticed you were looking at the canoes just through those trees there.’
I glared at Tesco. He glared back.
‘We were just interested to see how you live here,’ Kate said, careful to sound casual. ‘You seem very well organized.’
‘Oh, we are,’ Jesus said, still maintaining the benign smile. ‘If it wasn’t for the Greys we’d have a sweet life here. We’ve enough supplies to last three years or more.’ He smiled more broadly. ‘You two go ahead, enjoy your breakfasts. I hope the rats haven’t spoilt your appetite.’
We started to walk back in the direction of the hotel.
‘Oh, one more thing,’ Jesus said. ‘Don’t ever try and run out on us. One: you’d die out there on the lake without our help. And two: you’ll only bring out my bad side if I think you’re going to try and leave us in the shit. OK?’
What could we do?
We nodded.
Then we returned to the hotel.
Chapter 72
Breakfast was good. In fact, it was delicious. Delicious enough to make me forget the rats.
‘Orange juice?’ Kate sounded astonished. ‘Orange juice. I haven’t tasted orange juice in weeks.’
‘Bacon. Mmmm…’ I breathed in. ‘Fried bacon. And, Hell, just look at that. Sausages? Real sausages.’
‘Rick?’
‘Yes?’
‘You know when you saw those canoes this morning. What was going through your mind?’
‘The truth?’
She nodded. I looked round the dining room. It was empty. In the kitchen I could hear Beanpole Man, whisking something in a bowl.
‘The truth is,’ I whispered, ‘I don’t trust this Jesus guy as far as I could throw him.’
‘You think he’s planning something?’
I nodded. ‘I’m not sure what. But I think he’s got something up his sleeve once he gets his people up to Fountains Moor.’
‘You believe there is a ship?’
‘I think there is. Only I don’t believe he wants us to be on it when he heads off for the South Seas.’
‘So you thought we might use the canoes?’
‘It’s an option.’
‘But you heard what he said, Rick. That lake’s a dangerous place. Remember the rats?’
‘I remember,’ I said with feeling. ‘I also remember what they were planning to do to us on that island. I’m going to sound repetitive, Kate, but I do not trust the guy.’
‘Do you think—’
‘Shh…here comes Matchstick Man.’
We sat back while the man served us. I had plenty to mentally chew over. I didn’t trust Jesus in the long term. And in the short term I certainly didn’t trust Tesco. The man had a mean streak. I guessed it wouldn’t be long before he attempted to pay me back for the punch I’d given him.
That morning on Paradise Island sticks in my mind. Kate and I walked around its centre after breakfast (making sure we kept to the populated areas, well away from the rat-infested drain). It sticks in my mind because that morning was the first time I made love to Kate Robinson.
Fear, intense fear—so the experts say—often gives way to an equally intense desire for sex.
I admit it, the episode with the rats just a couple of hours earlier had scared me more than I cou
ld say. Now I was with Kate. We stood in what passed for the main street talking about this and that—would Howard Sparkman fly down to the island again, would the rat population dwindle once the food supply gave out, where did these people get all the hens from?—and so on. But I felt so incredibly charged with sex—Hell, let’s be nakedly honest—charged with fucking lust. My skin, my whole insides burned with this incredible desire.
And there was Kate, looking so much like I’d seen her at Ben Cavellero’s party. God, that seemed half, no three-quarters of a lifetime ago. When she stood there in the garden beneath the soft lamplight, a glass in one hand, so tall and so incredibly, wonderfully beautiful.
Now those delicious green eyes watched as a little fair-haired boy was towed along the street by a puppy tied to a length of hairy string. ‘No, Jonty. Other way,’ he was pleading. ‘Back other way, Jonty. It’s your bloody dinner time…Jonty…Jonty.’
Kate watched with that characteristic look of amusement, smiling, the fingernail of her index finger resting against her front teeth. Jonty pulled the boy, still beseeching it to return home for dinner, away down the street.
‘You know,’ she said, her eyes bright, ‘these aren’t bad people.’
‘Probably no worse than anyone else. We’re all trying to survive the disaster as best we can. It just means we have to think and act differently. And not let the realization that we may be acting contrary to our old, so-called civilized behaviour get in the way. Perhaps if the only way to survive is to turn cannibal, or ritually murder strangers from outside the community, then…’ I shrugged.
‘But surely survival doesn’t require you to revert to complete savagery?’ she said.
‘Hopefully not. But it makes you wonder what we’ll be doing—and what we’ll be eating—in a couple of years, doesn’t it?’
I paused as a small man with masses of curly hair walked up. He was dressed in a schoolboy’s blazer which he held open.
Kate read the inscription printed on the T-shirt. ‘Hallo. My name’s Angel.’ She smiled. ‘Hallo, Angel.’
I smiled too, warming to the little man’s cheerful smile.
‘Hallo, Angel.’
The man looked up at us both, shielding his eyes as if looking up at a very tall building. He feigned astonishment.
‘You’re so…’ He lifted his hands up high as if to indicate our height.
‘Tall?’ Kate turned and laughed at me. ‘I suppose we are. That makes us an odd couple, doesn’t it?’
‘But you’re so…wow,’ the man said, awed.
For a moment I saw Kate through his eyes. Her body, long, slender; again I felt lust blast through me. Christ, yes, she was gorgeous.
‘You know I…’ began the man. ‘Odd, isn’t it?’
‘What’s odd?’ Kate asked gently.
‘You being so…’ He up-stretched his arms again. ‘Like that. Up. Clouds there.’ He frowned. I realized the man had difficulty in connecting words together into a meaningful sentence. And I felt a sudden irritation at Jesus. I didn’t trust him. I almost wouldn’t have minded if he behaved cruelly in an obviously despotic way, like a comic-strip villain. But he’d collected together the people that society had dumped on the streets. Carefully Jesus looked after them, clothed them, nurtured them, gave them pride and happiness.
The man smiled, but there was a sadness in his eyes. ‘Funny, really…I don’t know, you know? I don’t know what that…’ He sighed, understanding that words escaped him. I sensed his sadness grow inside. His eyes watered. Then suddenly he took Kate’s hand.
She flashed a look of alarm at me.
Then the man took hold of my hand in his other hand, then he placed both our hands on top of his head. I still remember the crisp feel of his curly hair, and the heat from his scalp.
He sighed again. ‘Strange,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I am. I just don’t know…someone must know how to help me.’ He looked up at us, still holding our hands on his head in a childlike attempt to find comfort. ‘What’s happened to me?’ He sighed again. A sad sigh. ‘What did happen to me? Why am I lost? I’m lost all the time. Why am I…’
It was impossible not to feel touched. Perhaps more than anything it was the empathy. A year ago if this had happened to me in a street, of course I’d have experienced a touch of sadness. At a man who felt lost because of his mental illness.
But now we were all lost. The world had become alien and frightening. We didn’t know how it had happened. We didn’t know how we could return home. Or at least we didn’t know how to return to that equilibrium of normality, and to the safety we’d once taken for granted.
Sadness pealed through me like the long, slow tolling of a funeral bell.
The man sighed again. Smiled sadly at us. Then walked away.
And I knew then what words I’d say to Kate. She might slap my face. She might storm off and never speak to me again. But I knew I had to come right out and say it.
‘Kate. This sounds a pretty blunt question, but…’ I took a deep breath and went for it, ‘but I’d like…I want to make love to you.’
She looked at me. Her green eyes widened. Then she pushed her hair back from her face. ‘Rick Kennedy.’ Her face relaxed into a smile. ‘I thought you’d never make a move.’ She turned and began to walk back to the hotel.
I stood there, too astonished to realize what I must do next.
Kate looked back at me, smiled, then held out her hand. ‘Rick Kennedy. What are you waiting for?’ Her smile broadened. ‘It’ll be more fun with two, you know?’
I took her hand. Together we walked back to the hotel.
Chapter 73
Curtains closed. The view from that sixth-floor hotel room was gone. No more high-rise office blocks, no more church steeples or dead tree tops, lampposts, house roofs poking up above the flood waters. The wind blew. Autumn leaves hissed, making the same sound as surf surging in across a beach.
Inside we were alone. In that shadowy half-light of midday with closed curtains. Kate lay face down on the bed. She was completely naked. Her long hair spilled down her back in curling waves. And I couldn’t help marvelling at her legs, as long as a dancer’s, stretching out.
She lifted her head and rested her chin in both hands, her elbows supported by the bed.
When she smiled, suddenly the world seemed all right. I felt all right.
God…I could make believe the future would be all right.
‘Come here,’ she said in that soft, sweet voice. ‘I want you to hold me tight again.’
I smiled. ‘I want to kiss you again.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘We’ll trade. My kiss for your hug.’
I put my arms around her, ran my fingers lightly down her spine. She shivered; her skin goose-fleshed.
‘Oh,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t believe the effect your touch has on me. You make me so hot. Feel.’
She rolled over onto her back and, taking my hand, pressed it to her chest just above her breasts.
I kissed her lips, chin, throat, then her breasts. They were taut and larger than I’d imagined, with nipples that were dark and round. I only had to touch them, then the skin on her breasts tightened and the nipples firmed into hard buttons.
‘Oh, God,’ she moaned. ‘I’m not letting you out of here. Not for a long time yet.’
That was it. The machine had started. I let it take me over. I bunched her magnificent hair into my fists, kissed her on the mouth—again and again.
She breathed in deeply. Her hands stroked down my back, then gripped my buttocks, pulling down hard.
She breathed in deeply again, letting it out in a long sigh as I pushed myself into her.
Christ, this was good—this was fucking good.
The sensation of her vagina holding my penis as firmly as a cuff; her beautiful breasts against my chest, her hard nipples pressed into my skin like fingertips.
I loved the look of her eyes widening with a look of near surprise as I speared
myself deep into her.
‘Oh, Rick…that’s beautiful.’
I ground my hips, crushing her pubic hair so that it mingled with mine. I drew breath sharply, losing myself in the silky sensations of my most intimate skin surfaces caressing hers.
She lifted her legs high, letting me in further. I moved faster, hearing the light smack of my pubic bone against hers. She breathed harder, all the time murmuring in my ear.
‘Oh, that’s wonderful…kiss me…don’t stop now, oh never stop…beautiful…Christ, the touch of your skin…you’ve got amazing…amazing skin…I love it.’
‘I’ve always wanted you,’ I panted. ‘I’ve always wanted you. Do you know that? Ah…ah. That feels out of this world.’
‘Oh, Rick…Rick…on your back. Mmm…wonderful…smooth…smooth…no, Rick. Lie back…mmm—mermmm…Lie back, I want to do this…I want, oh, you taste so wonderful…mmm…mmm, zatt good, zatt nice…’ she purred, licking.
Christ…I was floating, lost in that maze of pleasure. She was hitting buttons in my brain that I’d never known existed before. I couldn’t speak. I could only lie there on my back. If I looked down I saw her with her head down, turning this way and that, her long hair stroking sensually across my stomach. Her bottom was raised, somehow replicating the shape of her shoulder blades—the same two high mounds—the same deep cleft between. She glistened with perspiration. You could sense the erotic excitement—animal—like in its intensity, running like electric shocks in tremors through her body; her skin flushed deep pink.
She shifted her position so she could straddle one of my legs and rub herself against me as she worked at my cock with her tirelessly questing tongue.
‘Oh, God,’ she panted, ‘I want you inside me. I want you inside…I can’t stop it now. Oh!’
In one moment I was on top of her. Then in. Thrusting hard. That internal reflex regulating the force and the rhythm of my thrusts. She groaned. Her fingernails stabbed into my back. Her eyes screwed shut, as just for a second her whole being seemed to rush deep inside her, to bunch up tight inside her very core.
I didn’t stop.
Couldn’t stop.