NUMBERS 3
INFINITY
RACHEL WARD
This is for my parents, Shirley and David, and grandparents and those who went before … and for Ali and Pete and whoever follows afterwards. And for Ozzy, of course.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter 1: February 2029
Chapter 2: Adam
Chapter 3: Sarah
Chapter 4: Adam
Chapter 5: Sarah
Chapter 6: Adam
Chapter 7: Sarah
Chapter 8: Adam
Chapter 9: Sarah
Chapter 10: Adam
Chapter 11: Sarah
Chapter 12: Adam
Chapter 13: Sarah
Chapter 14: Adam
Chapter 15: Sarah
Chapter 16: Adam
Chapter 17: Sarah
Chapter 18: Adam
Chapter 19: Sarah
Chapter 20: Adam
Chapter 21: Sarah
Chapter 22: Adam
Chapter 23: Sarah
Chapter 24: Adam
Chapter 25: Sarah
Chapter 26: Adam
Chapter 27: Sarah
Chapter 28: Adam
Chapter 29: Sarah
Chapter 30: Adam
Chapter 31: Sarah
Chapter 32: Adam
Chapter 33: Sarah
Chapter 34: Adam
Chapter 35: Sarah
Chapter 36: Adam
Chapter 37: Sarah
Chapter 38: Adam
Chapter 39: Sarah
Chapter 40: Adam
Chapter 41: Sarah
Chapter 42: Adam
Chapter 43: Sarah
Chapter 44: Adam
Chapter 45: Sarah
Chapter 46: Adam
Chapter 47: Sarah
Chapter 48: Adam
Chapter 49: Sarah
Chapter 50: Adam
Chapter 51: Sarah
Epilogue – 2033
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Copyright
Chapter 1: February 2029
The little girl sits in the dirt. She’s been exploring the forest, but now her legs are tired and she doesn’t want to walk any more. Anyway, it’s nice here. With all the stones and leaves and twigs around her she could make a nest for birds, or a house for mice. Her fingers are busy – picking things up, putting them down, arranging them – and her mind’s busy, too. She makes marks in the dirt with a stick – lines and circles – and her mouth moves as she sings herself the song that goes with her dust-pictures.
She hears the motorbikes before she sees them, a background whine that becomes a drone that turns into a roar. She holds her hands over her ears. She’s never seen a motorbike before and now there are three, big and black and fast, belching out trails of dark smoke. The girl glimpses metal and rubber and leather between the trees.
‘Dragons,’ she whispers, and the pupils in her blue eyes grow wide.
The motorbikes slow down. They stop. They’re growling softly now, not roaring, but they’re too near. The girl sits very still. She can see them. Can they see her? The dragon at the front takes off part of its head. There’s a man inside. He scans the trees either side of the road that cuts through the forest. For a moment their eyes meet.
The man’s face is pale, but his colours are dark, like his clothes and his dragon. A swirl of grey and purple and black. The girl doesn’t like the colours. She’s never seen people-colours like these before. And she doesn’t like him looking at her. His eyes are dark, almost black, and they are hurting her.
She closes her own eyes quickly, and buries her face in her knees.
‘Seen something, boss?’
‘Just a kid. Let’s go.’ His voice is hard and low.
The dragons’ growl turns into a roar again, and then they’re gone.
The girl squints through her eyelashes. There’s nothing to show the dragons were ever there apart from a cloud of dust, which hangs in the air and then settles. Slowly she unwinds and leans forward, gathering in an armful of twigs and leaves, destroying her dust-pictures. If there are dragons here, she will need to build a big nest to keep the birds and the mice safe. Better make it big enough to keep her safe, too. She piles more and more stuff around her, snuggles in and closes her eyes. Then she waits for the dreams to come – the colours and pictures that will send her to sleep.
She wakes when she hears someone shouting her name.
‘Mia! Mii-aa! Where are you? Mii-aa!’
She doesn’t move. She wants to see if her nest is a good one, if she can be found. She loves playing hide-and-seek.
‘Mia! Mii-aa! Where are you? Where are you?’
The voice is getting closer. The girl curls in a tight little ball and buries her face in her knees again. It’s fun, this game.
She hears footsteps crunching through the undergrowth. Closer, closer, closer …
‘Mia! Here you are!’
There are feet right next to the nest. Mia turns her head a little and peeks upwards. The woman looks cross. The skin is creased between her blue eyes. Mia doesn’t like it. She wants her to be smiling and laughing. But her colours are the same as always, a haze of blue and lilac around her, colours that mean one thing – Mummy.
Mia turns her head into her knees again. She doesn’t want Mummy to shout at her.
Sarah bends down and grabs her daughter under her armpits. She lifts her up, still curled tightly in a ball, and holds her close.
‘Mia,’ she says, ‘you must stay where I can see you. Are you listening?’
Mia puts her thumb in her mouth.
‘I was just worried. I thought … I thought I’d lost you. I’m not cross.’
Mia takes her thumb out of her mouth and looks up. Then she reaches forward to wrap her arms round her mummy. Everything’s okay – there won’t be shouting and tears this time.
‘Dragons,’ she says. ‘Me see dragons.’
Sarah looks towards the road. She heard bikes a few minutes ago. ‘Do you mean motorbikes?’ she says, hugging her daughter close. She starts walking away from the road and back into the forest.
‘Dragons,’ says Mia. ‘Noisy.’
‘Did you see wolves and bears as well?’ Sarah says, smiling.
Mia shakes her head.
‘Dragons,’ she says again, firmly this time.
‘Better get back to the camp, then. The dragons won’t come near our fire. We’ll be safe there.’
But Mia doesn’t feel safe, even now, holding on to Mummy.
The dragons she saw made smoke themselves. A fire wouldn’t frighten them away, she thinks. They’d like a fire.
Better to hide. Better to make a nest and hide from the man with the dark colours all around him.
Chapter 2: Adam
‘I know you.’
I’ve watched the guy moving closer, picking his way through the ragged group of tents and shelters.
Here we go again, I think. It’s the same everywhere. That’s why I try and keep away from people. But that’s dangerous, too, ’cause you’re vulnerable on your own. We ain’t got nothing valuable, but people’ll still rob you, take what little you got – food, clothes, even firewood. It’s happened too many times now. We have to stay near others. Safety in numbers, Sarah says.
Ignore him and he might go away.
I keep my head down, bashing the tent peg into the hard ground with a rock.
Less than a metre away, he crouches down beside me, leaning forward to get a look at my face.
‘I know you,’ he says again. ‘You’re Adam Dawson.’
I twist away. My fingers tighten round the rock.
He reaches across and touches my sleeve. He’s too close. I can see the dirt under his fingernails, the
bits of sawdust in his straggly beard.
‘Adam,’ he says, smiling. He’s tipping his face, trying to get me to make eye contact. ‘Adam, you saved my life.’
My heart’s thudding in my chest. I can’t deal with this. I want him to go away.
‘No, mate,’ I say, and my voice goes all croaky. ‘You got the wrong bloke.’
‘No, I’ve seen you. I’ll never forget you, your … face.’
He means my scars, my burned skin.
‘You saved me, Adam. I was in London. My flat was in the basement, right by the river. I saw you on the telly and I got out. So did millions of others. You’re a hero.’
Same story. I’ve heard it over and over.
I was only on the telly once, but it was the last TV most people saw. There are no TVs or computers in England now, no screens or phones. The networks and transmitters never got put back after the quake, at the beginning of the Chaos. And so I’m stuck in everyone’s memories as that mad-eyed, scar-faced boy, staring into a TV camera and shouting the odds about the end of the world. And they remember me because I was right. The world did come to an end – the world as we knew it, anyway.
Now everyone I talk to treats me like some sort of celebrity, some sort of saviour. I don’t want it.
‘We’ve got some meat,’ the man continues, when it’s clear I’m not going to talk. ‘Venison. Someone shot a deer, a big one. Come and join us. Come and eat with us.’
I stop bashing the tent peg. Meat … Can’t remember the last time we ate meat. It’s gotta be better than the nettle soup we were going to have. I look over towards Sarah and Mia, to Sarah’s brothers. Marty and Luke are scuffing the leaves on the ground, looking for dry twigs, anything that would do for kindling. Mia’s sitting in our hand-barrow, watching as Sarah unrolls the mats we use for beds. She’s tiny for a child who’s two. Her arms and legs are as thin and brown as the twigs the boys are looking for. She’s almost like a little doll, with that mass of tight blonde curls, full lips and eyes that don’t miss a thing.
Sarah’s pretending to be busy, but I know she’s watching me out of the corner of her eye, waiting for my reaction. I know she’s heard every word. She don’t say nothing. She don’t need to. She’s hungry; we all are. My mouth floods with saliva at the thought of a square meal. But I know what’s gonna come with it – the fuss, the back-slapping, the questions.
I can’t stand people looking at me, and I can’t stand looking at them, seeing their numbers …
Everyone, everywhere has a number – the day they’re gonna die. I hate that I can see these numbers. I hate the feelings that come with them. Sometimes I could grab a flaming stick out of the middle of the fire and plunge it into my own eyes to stop me seeing. Stop me feeling the suffering and pain that’s waiting for every single person I meet. I’ve been scarred by fire, it’s nearly killed me twice, but maybe it would take away the thing that hurts me most.
The only thing stopping me is Sarah. I can’t do that to her. I’m difficult enough as it is, moody, restless. I couldn’t expect her to stay with me if I was blind as well.
She looks straight at me, then, with those blue eyes of hers, and her number speaks to me, brings me the comfort and the warmth it always does – an ending full of light and love. 2572075. The promise that we’ll be together, me and her, fifty years from now, when she passes from this life, easy as if she was slipping into a warm bath.
Sarah.
I turn back to the stranger crouching next to me, and I force myself to nod at him and smile.
‘We will join you. Thanks,’ I say. The words sound like someone else’s.
His face lights up. ‘Great. Cool. Come over any time. We’re in the bender furthest from the path.’ He points to a tunnel-shaped tent, pitched between two tree trunks. ‘I’m Daniel, by the way. It’s good to meet you, Adam. I’ve waited a long time for this.’ As he strides off, I hear him calling, ‘Carrie, he’s here. He’s really here …’
There’s anxiety bubbling up inside me. It was a mistake to say yes. I’m already regretting it. I raise my arm up and smash the rock down on the hook of the tent peg so heavily that the peg bends and I scrape my knuckles on the ground.
‘Aargh! Fff … ow!’ I’m trying not to swear in front of the kids. It’s fucking difficult sometimes. I drop the rock, brush the worst of the dirt off my fingers and put them in my mouth, sucking hard to take the pain away. It don’t work. And it don’t take the anxiety away neither, or the anger. Nothing does.
Sarah comes nearer. ‘Thank you,’ she says.
I shrug, still sucking at my knuckles. I’m glad I’ve got my mouth full. It stops me saying what I want to say. I don’t want to be around people, Sarah. They’re all the same. I can’t handle it.
‘Hurt, did it?’ she says.
I take my hand away from my mouth and inspect it.
‘Be all right in a minute. Just took the skin off.’
She digs in one of our bags on the barrow and pulls out a tube of antiseptic cream. The end’s been turned over and over, to squeeze every last bit out. There’s not much left.
‘Don’t waste it on me.’
‘Ssh.’
She puts a tiny bit on the end of her finger and dots it onto my scrapes, then gently rubs it in. It’s so intimate – her fingertip touching my skin lightly, only a few cells making contact. I feel my body relaxing, the anger dying away.
Me and her. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Even after everything we’ve been through – the quake, the Chaos, the fire, the gypsy life, looking after Mia and Marty and Luke – we’re still together. I stare at her finger. And at this moment I’d give anything for the rest of the world to go away. I want to be alone with her, my arms around her and our faces close.
I hold her hands in both of mine. ‘Sarah, let’s go,’ I beg. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’ I hate myself for sounding so desperate.
She presses her lips together, pulls her hands away. The moment’s gone.
‘We’ve just got here, Adam. We’re staying.’
And so we stay.
We sit on logs around Daniel’s fire. His venison stew’s pretty watery, but it’s so long since we had something like this that it’s almost overwhelming.
Marty and Luke wolf it down so the gravy dribbles down their chins. They wipe at it and lick their fingers, laughing. No one tells them off. It’s good to see them filling their bellies, their faces glowing with the warmth of it. They’re top boys. The fire that killed my nan took their mum and dad, too. They were so quiet at first, with a haunted look in their eyes all the time. They hated being outside, didn’t know what to do with theirselves, cut off from their X-boxes and flat-screen TVs. But we’ve learnt stuff together: how to set a trap for a rabbit, how to make a fire. I’ve never had brothers or sisters before.
Mia sits on Sarah’s lap, her wide eyes looking at all the faces lit up by the fire, Daniel, his partner Carrie, their neighbours. It’s like she’s trying to remember them.
I eat slowly, savouring each mouthful, trying to concentrate on the food, not the conversation. The back-slapping and the fuss is over, and I’m waiting for the questions. The others are talking about the things people always talk about these days; food, water, fuel, cold, hunger, illness. Especially illness. It bothers me, can’t pretend it don’t. We struggle to find food, to keep warm, and we manage. But if one of us gets ill, what do we do?
The boys have both got good numbers – 21112088 and 392092 – but numbers can change. Mia showed me that, the night of the fire, the night of the quake. She’s got Nan’s number now. It freaks me out when I catch it in her eyes. She’s got a smoker’s death, gasping for breath. It fitted right with Nan – it seems cruel now it belongs to Mia.
I don’t know the rules any more. Numbers, even good ones, are no comfort to me.
‘It’s not so bad here,’ someone says. ‘Dan’s a doctor.’
I look at Daniel. Dirty beard, long hair tied back in a ponytail, yellow fingernails. He don’t look l
ike a doctor.
‘Used to be,’ he shrugs. ‘I worked in a hospital in London, before it was trashed by looters after the Chaos.’ He shakes his head. ‘You’d have thought people would respect hospitals, wouldn’t you? But we became targets, raided for drugs, supplies, metal to melt down. I left after the Battle of St Thomas’s in March 2028. Four hundred people killed, most of my friends gone. The police, the army, the government – they all abandoned us. Where were they? Where the hell were they?’ He pauses for a moment. His hands are clenched in his lap, the sinews taut like wires from his fingers to his wrists. Then he takes a deep breath. ‘So what brings you here?’ he says, turning it back to me.
First question. Everyone’s quiet, waiting for my answer.
‘We’re just keeping our heads down, moving around,’ I say, looking at the floor.
‘You heading somewhere in particular?’
‘Just away. From London, from the big cities. Too many people, too dangerous.’
‘There are people looking for you, you know. They’ve been here, asking.’
I stop chewing and look up. ‘People? Who?’
Daniel shakes his head. ‘They didn’t give names. Three of them, on motorbikes. The sort of people you don’t grass to.’
He puts a hand on my shoulder. He’s trying to be reassuring, but contact like that makes me edgy. Besides, the only people who can still get petrol are the so-called government, or the gangs that have taken over the cities.
I was under arrest when the quake struck, charged with a murder I never done. The government had it in for me, tried to silence me. I hoped my criminal record would have been wiped in the Chaos. But maybe not. The thought makes my blood run cold.
If it’s the government looking, I definitely don’t want to be found. I got nothing to say to them or their spooks, and I won’t be banged up in a cell again. I can’t be. I don’t want nothing to do with gangs neither, the armed thugs who own the cities now. Another reason to clear out, stay in the country.
‘When?’ My throat’s gone dry. It’s all I can do to get the word out.
‘This morning. We had a drone up here, too.’ He grins. ‘Shot it out of the sky.’
‘I heard bikes this afternoon when I was looking for Mia,’ Sarah says to me, quietly.