Valérie shook his head. ‘Scavengers mostly. Just a few of them, maybe twenty. They were growing a few things, but not growing them very well.’
‘Surely there were others you came across?’
‘I just saw some signs of other people. The horse droppings . . . I saw a horse-drawn cart far away, I think. I saw a woman on a bicycle on a motorway bridge. She did not stop to talk to me.’
‘But you never saw any lights on at night?’
Valérie nodded. ‘Once or twice, you know, perhaps candlelight, a campfire maybe.’
‘But no electric lights?’
Valérie hesitated. It was long enough that both Nathan and Jacob sensed he was holding something back from them.
‘Hang on,’ said Nathan, quickly ducking down to sit on the step. ‘You saw something, right?’
‘Did you see street lights?’ asked Jacob.
Valérie’s jaw set, reluctant to say any more. ‘It is nothing. Your mother is right. This is the best place to—’
‘Come on, what did you see?’ urged Nathan.
‘Please,’ said Jacob. ‘We need to know.’
Valérie studied their faces with a long considered silence. ‘Very well. I think . . . I maybe saw electric lights . . . once. Perhaps.’
Both boys’ eyes widened. ‘Where?’
‘It was very faint. Very far.’
‘Where?’
Valérie bit his lip. ‘Your mother would not be happy with me. It is still a very dangerous place on the land. I know she does not want—’
‘Where?’ asked Jacob. He leaned closer. ‘Please!’
Valérie looked up at the party going on across the deck. Some of them were dancing in a circle, singing along and clapping to the accompaniment of the guitar and fiddle. The babble of merry voices, the incessant rumble of the sea below, more than enough going on that nobody but the two boys sitting beside him would hear their conversation.
‘I was crossing the River Thames at a place near your Big Ben. I saw a glow of lights in the east.’
‘Shit!’ uttered Nathan, ‘you mean the City of London, don’t you? East? That’s the Bank and trading bit.’
‘Yes. That part.’
Jacob slapped his hands together. ‘Shit! I knew it.’
‘Government, like,’ said Nathan. ‘Westminster and stuff.’
Jacob nodded. ‘Keeping it quiet. I fucking well knew it would start there!’
Valérie reached out and grabbed Jacob’s arm. ‘It was just lights. That is all. It could mean nothing.’
‘But you saw it from far off?’ asked Nathan.
‘I only saw some light shining up on the clouds,’ he said warily. ‘That is all.’
‘Shit!’ Jacob’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’
The young men looked at each other. ‘That could be like a floodlight? ’
Nathan nodded. ‘It would need to be powerful, right? To bounce off the clouds.’
Valérie looked uncomfortable at their growing excitement. ‘I should not have told you this! Your mother will throw me off!’
Nathan patted his arm, his face widening with a grin. ‘We won’t tell, Mr Latoc.’
Valérie looked at them both, his mouth drawn with worry. ‘It is still very dangerous ashore. You are better to stay here where it is safe. Look, I have made a mistake to tell—’
Jacob shook his head. ‘No. We needed to know. My mum shouldn’t keep this kind of thing from us. It’s only fair that—’
‘Please,’ begged Valérie. ‘Forget that I told you this. The lights . . . perhaps I—’
Nathan rested a hand on the man’s arm. ‘You didn’t tell us nothing, all right? Nothing we didn’t already suspect. S’right innit, Jay?’
Jacob nodded. ‘S’right.’
‘It’s been ten years,’ said Nathan. ‘Never believed we’d be the first to make some ‘lectric again.’
‘We won’t tell Mum, Mr Latoc, okay?’
Valérie looked at them both. ‘You are planning to leave here, aren’t you?’
Nathan and Jacob shared a glance.
‘I see it, you are. You should know it is very dangerous still,’ he repeated.
‘We’ll be careful,’ said Nathan. ‘And we’ll take a gun.’
Jacob looked out across the deck at a knot of people dancing. He saw Walter bopping around with Hannah bouncing on his shoulders; she was giggling. He could see Leona spinning, arm-locked hokey-cokey circles with Rebecca. He could see Mum laughing as she waltzed energetically with Martha.
Mum laughing . . . she rarely seemed to do that these days.
‘We have to go and see,’ said Jacob. He looked at Valérie. ‘You understand? See for ourselves. I can’t just stay here for ever not knowing. You know?’
Valérie nodded slowly. ‘Of course, I understand.’
‘Please don’t tell my mum.’
‘Seriously . . . don’t,’ added Nathan. ‘She’ll stop us going ashore again.’
‘She would blame me when you leave.’
‘Why? You haven’t mentioned about the lights to anyone else have you?’
He shook his head.
‘Then we won’t mention it to anyone, will we, Nate?’
‘Nope. Our secret.’
Chapter 16
Crash Day + 2 4.45 a.m.
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
Adam Brooks looked out across the spools of razor wire stretched across the pedestrian approach and the acres of open coach-parking tarmac in front of the Millennium Dome. Beyond the glinting coils of wire he could see thousands of them. Tens of thousands of people filling up the open tarmac and spilling back past the football academy towards the front of a boarded-up and abandoned dockside factory - still patiently awaiting its time to be knocked down and turned into expensive dockside flats - and down the car-free Blackwall Tunnel Approach towards the low rows of terraced houses and south London beyond.
Their spools of razor wire were stretched thinly across a quarter of a mile of urban landscape from one part of the Thames to the other as it looped round, sealing the tip of the Greenwich peninsula from the rest of south London. A quarter of a mile of wire and just two sections of gunners and half a dozen police officers to hold in check thirty, perhaps forty, thousand people, all of them desperate, thirsty, hungry and frightened.
The wire was shaking and rattling here and there - the press of people from behind forcing those at the front into it. The people, frustrated and angry, were beginning to break up the tan-coloured tarmac and hurl chunks of it over the barricade. Adam could see absolute terror on the faces of many of them, and absolute rage on the rest. They all wanted in, many desperate for something clean and safe to drink, to escape the violent, feral chaos ripping through London.
Adam could see a mother directly in front of him waving her crying baby above the glinting coils of wire, screaming that she needed formula milk, or anything, for it.
Jesus.
He looked sideways at Sergeant Walfield. Normally the grizzly-faced bastard was a rock that Adam relied on. But right now, he was glancing at Adam with a face that said what-the-shitting-hell-do-we-do?
Several more bricks and clumps of dislodged tarmac arced over the top of the wire and clattered noisily on their side of the barrier. The wire loops bulged further along.
Bollocks . . . we’re going to have to let them in.
There were standing orders from Safety Zone 4’s supervisor, Alan Maxwell, that the growing crowd was to be processed in an orderly manner; no more than twenty at a time, details to be taken down, a medical check, sleeping cots assigned before another batch was allowed through. He’d been very specific about that; he wasn’t going to allow a stampede to happen.
But this . . . batches of twenty, it was taking far too long.
The number of people outside had swollen drastically this morning after last night’s riots. Adam had been walking the wire perimeter since yesterday evening. He’d witnessed the flickering glow of countless fires, heard the crash and
tinkle of glass breaking, the distant whooping of delight from gangs of youths making the most of their new playground, sporadic screams here and there amongst the far-off terraced houses, and the occasional unmistakable crack of a gun.
Adam imagined that, to those poor bastards out there, it must have been like the night after Baghdad had fallen; British and American soldiers standing behind compound walls watching bedlam unfold before their eyes, under orders to do nothing. Just watching as the city tore itself to pieces through the hot and stifling night.
He glanced back at the dome, a drab whale’s hump of canvas in the lifeless grey light of pre-dawn. The very tips of the support spars, arranged like a thorn crown at the top, glowed as they caught the very first vanilla rays of light from the early morning sun breaching the urban, smoke-smudged horizon.
Just outside the entrance he could see orange-jacketed emergency workers processing the recently admitted civilians. He could see several hundred more civilians inside the entrance atrium, many exhausted, stretched out on crash mats and cots, set out in orderly lines across the floor. He could see workers moving amongst them handing out bottled water, first aiders working on cuts and burns, wrapping grey blankets around those in shock.
But he couldn’t see any bloody sign at all of Maxwell.
We’ve got to let them in. Now.
They needed to throw aside the barrier and worry about getting names and National Insurance numbers later. After all, that’s what they were here for; food and water and safety for these people. Surely the damned paperwork could come later.
‘Sir!’ shouted Sergeant Walfield. ‘Look!’
A hundred yards to his right Adam saw the wire coils beginning to bulge and flatten out.
‘Bastards are trying to get over!’
A group of men, fed up with hurling tarmac over the top, had found a large panel of chipboard and hefted it across the wire. One of them stepped onto the board, his weight pushing down the wire coils, twenty yards either side, almost flat beneath it.
Shit.
Forty yards of breached perimeter; the coils of razor wire were compressed enough that it was possible to cautiously pick a way through.
‘Get that fucking board off!’ bellowed Sergeant Walfield, his voice carrying above the rising roar of encouragement from the crowd.
The nearest of the men temporarily under Adam’s command, half a dozen sequestered constables from the Metropolitan Police, jogged over towards the board, their guns aimed at the man standing astride it.
The man ignored their barked orders to get the fuck off; instead he was beckoning others to follow him up and over. He stood alone for a moment, deaf to the police and soldiers shouting at him to get off immediately. Then he was joined by two or three others clambering up on the board, their combined weight pushing the coils flatter across an even wider span.
Shit, shit, shit.
Adam racked his assault rifle and fired three shots in quick succession up into the air. It had the effect he wanted. The first half a dozen ranks of people beyond the wire ducked and froze and a hush descended for the briefest moment.
Adam finally found his voice.
‘YOU!’ It rang out across the tarmac in the moment’s silence. ‘Yes, YOU! Get the fuck off that board right now!’
For a moment Adam was convinced the man was going to comply. But the brief moment of hush his three shots had won them was already beginning to wane. The man stepped forward, the board tilted downwards as the wire twanged and rattled beneath his weight. He leapt down onto the tarmac, on their side.
You stupid fucking idiot.
A Berlin wall moment - the first man safely across inspiring all the others to surge forward in his wake.
A dozen others - men who on any other day would look unremarkable waiting outside a school playground to pick up their kids, or buying a sandwich and a coffee for lunch, grabbing a newspaper and some milk from a corner shop - encouraged enough by the first stupid bastard, barged and wrestled with each other to clamber onto the chipboard ramp.
It was one of the policemen who opened fire first. The shot punched a ragged hole in the first man’s face and took off a section of the back of his head. His legs instantly crumpled beneath him and he flopped backwards over the end of the board and onto the compressed loops of wire, where his still body dangled untidily from the barbs.
For a fleeting moment Adam thought that would have been enough of a demonstration to the others that any further feckless stupidity like this was going to be met with more of the same.
He hadn’t given an order to fire. The policeman didn’t have the discipline of his gunners - wasn’t waiting for the order; instead the copper had gone off-piste, popping like a poorly made firework. Still, it had bought them a second or two; a pause for thought from those nearest the splayed body. But that’s all it bought. Now there were people tiptoeing through the flattened coils either side of the board, some of them flapping their hands in front of their faces, frantically waving at the young soldiers, screaming at them not to shoot.
Sergeant Walfield turned to look at him. ‘Sir, what do we do now?’
Oh, Christ.
There were a dozen over the wire now, more snagged on the razor sharp blades and tugging their clothes clear, being pushed forward by a growing momentum from behind.
Adam swallowed anxiously. Walfield again looking back at him.
More of them were stepping over, and more behind them. The policeman who’d fired the shot was struggling with his weapon; the thing had jammed or he’d slipped the safety catch on in panic. Then suddenly he was down, clutching at his head. Someone had thrown a brick at his face. And more projectiles were arcing over the top.
If this barrier folds these people will flood into SZ4. We will have lost control and they’ll strip us clean - Maxwell’s briefing from several hours ago as the crowd outside had started to swell in the darkness. Do you understand? If you have to shoot, do it.
‘Open fire!’ Adam heard himself utter to Sergeant Walfield.
Walfield bellowed the order again a dozen times louder.
The crackle of gunfire oddly reminded Adam of bubble wrap being twisted tightly. The gunners in his platoon fired single and double taps, the policemen emptied their magazines. A dozen people, probably more, flopped like pathetic rag dolls amidst the wire; England football strips, FCUK tops, sensible Primark shirts . . . exploding in unison, spraying curious Rorschach splatter patterns and question marks of dark crimson onto the tarmac, leaving dust motes of polyester and cotton fibres to float lazily to the ground like cherry blossom.
Behind the downed civilians the crowd ducked as one, an instinctive acres-wide herd response. Then they broke and ran, tangling with each other, falling over those behind who reacted with less urgency. The coach-parking area cleared rapidly from the front, rolling back like a receding Mexican wave, leaving behind a mess of items dropped in the panic; and those wounded and twisting in pain on the ground, or who’d stumbled in the rush and were now scrambling away on twisted ankles.
Most of his men ceased fire. One or two of the coppers - unforgivably in Adam’s mind - fired further opportunistic shots at the backs of the parting crowd.
‘For Christ’s sake, STOP FIRING!’ he shouted.
Walfield bellowed the order and the popping of gunfire halted.
The backs of a sea of bobbing heads receded into the distance, still running, swerving around the football academy, streaming down a sloping grass bank towards the Blackwall Tunnel Approach. Adam could hear the awful chorus of screams and slapping feet diminish leaving them now with an unsettling quiet punctuated by soft moans of agony coming from the prone bodies in front of them.
He realised his hands were trembling violently, the muzzle of his assault rifle wavering erratically. Not a good thing for his men to see. He clicked the safety on then lowered it until it was pointing harmlessly at the ground.
In front of him, just a dozen yards away, the mother he’d spotted earlier was roc
king backwards and forwards on her knees, lacerated and encaged amidst the shaking coils of wire, expanding again now no one was weighing the board down. She seemed to be unaware that she had a gunshot wound to her arm, instead she stared dumbfounded at the ragged and inert remains of her baby.
Adam dropped down to a squat, feeling a wave of nausea roll up from his cramping stomach. He dry-heaved, not giving a thought to how it looked to his men.
He straightened up after a while and felt the first warm rays of the morning sun on his face.
Oh, Jesus, what the fuck have we done?
Chapter 17
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
‘I don’t know, Walter. I haven’t made up my mind about him yet.’
Jenny hunkered down amongst the troughs of compost lining the walkway along the front of the second tier of the accommodation module. Clear plastic sheeting, attached to the safety rail and stretched up to the overhanging ceiling of the tier above, protected the newly sprouting plants from the occasional drops of salt spray. The sheets flapped and rustled noisily in the breeze like the slack sails of a yacht luffing close to windward.
Walter shot a glance over Jenny’s shoulder at several ladies carefully watering the onion sprouts further along the walkway.
‘You know,’ he lowered his voice, ‘he’s been on his own for a long, long time.’ He squatted down beside her. ‘He’s exactly the type, you know? The type you worry about. The type you don’t normally allow to join us.’
‘Walter,’ she looked up at him, ‘I said I haven’t decided yet.’
He recoiled ever so slightly. He looked wounded.
She immediately felt guilty and reached out for his arm. ‘Look, it’s not entirely up to me. It’s how everyone else feels about a newcomer as well. From what little I’ve seen of him, I . . .’ She shook her head, searching for words. ‘He doesn’t seem the troubled kind. I’ve given him another month’s probation, and we’ll see how he gets on.’
Walter’s jaw worked silently.