The deaths are violent; broken bones and backs, heads caved in. The sorts of deaths that happen when buildings collapse, or blow up, or get hit by something.
It’s got to be something like that, ’cause if it was an illness – flu or plague or something – the deaths would be spread out, wouldn’t they? It wouldn’t all just be in a few days. And I wouldn’t feel what I feel when I see the numbers – I’d be hot and weak and exhausted. Wouldn’t I?
I get it into my head there’s a pattern, if I could just see it. A pattern in the numbers. They’re trying to tell me something. Then I get to thinking that my notebook is just the start – I could be doing things with this information. I’ve got places. I’ve got dates. I’ve got ways of dying. Maybe I could plot them on a map. I fetch Nan’s A-Z from the lounge. She pokes her head round the kitchen door when she hears me, starts to say something, but I blank her, grab the book and crash back up the stairs.
It’s only small, the A-Z, and it’s difficult to see the middle of the pages. I start with the maps showing the roads round here and tear them out. They don’t come cleanly, so when I put the pages together on my desk there are bits missing in the middle. I get my pencil case out of my bag and start working through my notebook. I start off by doing a dot for each person, but the map’s so small that by the time I’ve put ten dots on it, it’s just a blobby mess. I know it’s rubbish, but I carry on for a bit longer, then I sit back, look at what I’ve done, put both hands on the pages, crumple them up and chuck them across the room. It’s hopeless.
My palm-net’s on the desk. That’s only small too, but I’ve used it in lessons and for homework, and it’s got tons of apps. There must be one that would help me with this. If only Mum had let me have a computer … she didn’t want the internet in the flat, see. She always said it was ‘full of lies.’ Now I realise it must have been ’cause she wanted to keep the truth from me. If I’d known about her and Dad, I could have asked so many questions. Coulda, shoulda, woulda … no point going over it now.
I pick up the palm-net, fire it up, and go and sit on the bed, propped up against my pillows. The front page comes up: ‘Welcome, Adam, to the Forest Green network. You have four assignments outstanding – for details of tasks and deadlines, click here.’ I ignore the message and start exploring the apps. There’s loads of functions, including databases. I’m sure that’s what I need. And the only way to find out is to try.
When you play around with it, it’s pretty easy. To start with, you just make a big list, with different categories. Once you’ve got that you can search or put them in a different order. I start inputting the stuff from my book. And then I stop.
‘Welcome, Adam, to the Forest Green network.’ If I’m on the school network, does that mean that everything I do on here can be seen? I can hear Mum’s voice again. ‘You mustn’t tell. Not anyone. Not ever.’
Shit!
‘Delete all.’
Enter.
‘Are you sure you want to delete this database?’
Yes. Enter.
It’s gone.
I switch the palm-net off and throw it to the end of the bed. Bloody thing. They only want us kids all connected up so they can keep tabs on us. Maybe Mum was right: better to have nothing to do with it. But I was on the right track with a database, I’m sure of it.
There’s a laptop sitting on the desk the other side of the room. Retro-looking, it must have been Dad’s. Would a sixteen-year-old computer still work? I lever myself off the bed and go over to it, wipe my sleeve across the top to get rid of the dust, open it up and press the button.
The last person to press it was Dad. Nan called him Terry. Mum called him Spider. He was fifteen the last time he did this. Had he met Mum by then? Perhaps she was here, with him, in this room.
The screen lights up and music starts blasting out of the speakers either side of it on the desk.
‘You are not alone. I am here with you …’ It’s a high, pure voice that sends a chill through me. Michael Jackson. He died the same year as my dad. Is this what he was listening to, the last time he was here? I thought he was tough, my dad, a bad boy. This is sentimental stuff, it gets to you. I close my eyes and listen to the end of the track. What would my life be like now if he was here? I wish he was here, or Mum, or someone.
I wish I wasn’t in this on my own.
Chapter 14: Sarah
There’s a man in my room. He’s kneeling down by my mattress – he’s got his hand on my shoulder. It’s Him, He’s here. I don’t want this any more.
I lash out and my fist makes contact with his chin.
‘Ouf! Christ, what are you doing?’
It’s not the voice I was expecting. It’s younger, higher pitched. It sounds familiar.
‘Sarah, it’s me. It’s Vinny.’
I can’t be at home because the bed’s on the floor, the window’s in the wrong place. And suddenly I remember Vinny leading me through the back streets and into this place, this squat, and up some stairs to the top of the house. He showed me this room; there was a mattress on the floor, nothing else, and said, ‘This can be yours, if you want it.’ I looked at the empty room – floorboards, sheet pinned up against the window – and in spite of everything, my heart lifted. My room, my space, mine.
‘Vinny,’ I say out loud. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You were shouting out, screaming. I thought you were being murdered in your bed.’
My eyes are getting used to the light now, soft yellow streetlight coming through the gaps at the edge of the window sheet. I sit up. Vinny moves off his knees and sits with his back against the wall next to the bed.
‘You all right, then?’ he asks.
‘Nightmare,’ I say. ‘Sorry I made a noise.’
‘’S all right,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t asleep, but some of the others are. What’s it about, your nightmare?’
‘Fire,’ I say.
‘Fire and brimstone?’
‘I dunno, what’s brimstone?’
‘Not sure, the stuff you find in hell.’
‘That’s about right then, but it’s not hell, it’s here.’
‘Here?’
‘London. The city’s going to burn, and I’m in it, and the baby …’
‘That’s heavy.’
‘Mmm … there’s someone else too. He takes her away from me. He takes her into the fire.’
‘Shit.’
We sit in silence for a minute. I’m still in that zone – half-asleep, half-awake – when your dreams feel real.
‘I’ve met him,’ I say. ‘The devil in my nightmare. He’s real.’
‘Bloody ’ell.’
Vinny shuffles a bit closer and puts his arm round me. Makes me think, Here we go; this is what he really wants. No strings? There are always strings. I must have reacted, frozen up or something, because he moves his arm away again.
‘It’s all right,’ he says, ‘I’m not after anything.’
‘Why are you letting me stay here then? I can’t pay you.’
He sighs then, a long breath out into the soft, quiet air of the room and I wonder if he’s just buying some time, thinking of a good line. But when he speaks, it’s not like that. He doesn’t look at me, just stares ahead.
‘I had a sister, few years ago,’ he says. ‘She got pregnant, like you, left home. She asked for help, went to a doctor, but they turned her away. They turn everyone away now, don’t they? Unless there’s something wrong with the baby. Doesn’t matter if the girl can’t cope. Doesn’t matter if she’s desperate, like Shelley was. So she got an abortion in some back-street dive, died a few days afterwards. We never knew until the hospital rang us.’
His words hang there in the room, with us. I wonder how many people he’s ever told. I wonder if I’m the only one.
‘Vinny, I’m sorry.’
‘Not your fault.’
‘No, but …’
‘It’s not your fault, and it’s not my fault. But I miss her. So you’ve got a pl
ace to stay as long as you like. And when we’ve got food, you’ve got food, and when I’ve got a bit of spare cash, you can have some, for the baby.’
I’m glad it’s so dark in here. He won’t be able to see the tears welling up.
‘Thanks, that’d be … that’d be great.’
‘I might be able to get some stuff, baby things, anyway. If you’re not fussy where it comes from.’
‘Why? What are you talking about?’
‘Better if you don’t know. But that’s what I’m good at, see. Supplying. I’ll get you some things.’
The baby’s awake inside me, moving around, stretching her arms and legs trying to get more space.
‘Do you want to feel her? The baby? Here …’
I take his hand and place it on my stomach. For a couple of seconds there’s nothing and then she kicks.
‘Oh, man … that is awesome.’
‘I know. When it started it was just a little fluttering feeling, but it’s way more than that now.’
‘Is it a boy or a girl? In your nightmare, you said “her”.’
‘Did I?’ It dawns on me then that he’s right. ‘I suppose I did.’
‘So it’s a girl, is it?’
‘I’ve not had any tests, but, yeah, I do know. I do know – it’s a little girl.’ I hold my stomach with both hands, imagine holding her in my arms.
‘That’s it, then. I’ll get pink stuff.’
‘Vinny, that’s so old. Blue for a boy, pink for a girl.’
‘Oh.’ He sounds disappointed, crushed.
‘It’s all right,’ I say, ‘you can get pink. I don’t mind.’
Chapter 15: Adam
There’s no answer in the numbers. They are what they are. The only thing they tell me is a lot of people are going to die in London next January. Something happens on the first that kills people and they keep dying for days afterwards.
I type everything in my book into Dad’s computer when the electricity’s there to let me. The supply in London is shit, seems it’s normal to lose it for a couple of hours and be sitting in the cold and the dark. But all I end up with is a list. It’d take someone a lot cleverer than me to sort this out, a university professor, a teacher. A teacher. Could I go to someone at school? What about a bright kid – there are people who love this stuff, computers, figures, statistics, aren’t there?
The next few days I look round school for someone who could help. But to get them to help, I’d have to tell them what it was all about. I’d have to break the rules: You mustn’t tell. Not anyone. Not ever.
I print out the database, but only the places and the dates, nothing else.
I decide to go where the nerds hang out. I’ve seen on the noticeboard there’s a Maths club in the lunchbreak, so I head there. When I walk in the classroom, it’s like walking into a saloon in the Wild West. They all stop what they’re doing and look up, even the teacher. She’s quite young. She’s got a shirt on and a long, hippyish skirt.
‘Hello?’ she says. She smiles and I smile back without thinking and catch her eye. She’s a twenty-seven. I start to lose my nerve. I must remember not to look at people. This is going to be hard enough.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Are you coming in?’
‘Um … dunno. S’pose.’
‘We’re doing calculus today.’
Calcu-what?
‘Right. Um … come to the wrong place, actually. Sorry.’ I back out of the room. Damn, damn, damn. There was enough brain-power in there to fuel the National Grid.
I go back the next day.
‘Yes?’ the teacher says.
‘I need help with a problem.’ Some of them start to snigger. ‘A problem with Maths.’
‘You should talk to your own Maths teacher,’ she says. ‘Who teaches you?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘it’s not schoolwork, it’s something else.’
I put the printout on a desk.
‘I’ve got lots of dates and places and I want to see them, see where they are.’
Everyone starts to gather round.
‘What are they? The dates.’
I’ve tried to think of a good lie, something they’d believe. ‘It’s birthdays, people’s birthdays. I’ve been collecting them.’
‘Why? Why would you do that?’ a kid with metal-rimmed glasses asks. I’m feeling defensive now, expecting everyone to start doing that thing, you know when you hold a finger up to the side of your head and loop it round. But they don’t.
‘I’m just interested in them, that’s all.’
They seem to accept it, and I twig I’m in a room where collecting things like facts and figures is okay. They probably all do it.
‘Have you got postcodes for them?’ the glasses kid asks. He’s got this nervous twitch on the side of his mouth, keeps going into a sort of half a smile.
I shake my head and hand him my printout.
‘You’ve only got street names, and place names. Ideally we need postcodes. I can get them from the online directory if you can give me house numbers and then it’s really easy to map it. I’d say we use different colours for the different dates instead of numbers. That way any patterns will show up.’
The others are drifting away, but Glasses-boy seems signed up.
‘Is this where people live? Their home addresses?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘it’s where I … saw them.’
‘On the street? You interviewed them?’
‘Yeah … something like that.’
‘Mm, pity you didn’t ask the postcode …’
He’s starting to get on my nerves a bit now. Okay, so I didn’t do it right, so I’m not a market researcher. But I keep a lid on it. I need him, don’t I?
‘So, will you help me?’
‘I will, but I need better data.’
I can feel my heart sinking at the thought of going out there again, watching people. I don’t know if I can do it any more.
‘I could see what I could do with this,’ he flaps the paper at me, ‘if I can take it home.’
‘Course,’ I say. ‘Thanks … er …’
‘Nelson.’
‘Nelson. Thanks. I’m Adam.’
‘That’s okay. I’ll be interested, too.’ I can’t help it, I look at him then, and my heart sinks. His number. 112027. He’ll be mapping his own death.
I want to snatch the paper back from him, take it away. It’s too close to home, but instead I hear myself asking, ‘Where do you live?’
‘Churchill House.’
I look at him again, and I’m falling, the floor’s disappeared and I’m tumbling down and down in the dark. There’s nothing to hold on to and I’m getting battered from all sides – bricks, ceilings, walls, all mixed up.
‘Adam?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you all right? You were … staring at me.’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, I do that sometimes. Can’t seem to help it.’
His half-smile blinks on and off. Twitch, twitch, twitch. He puts his hand up to his face.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ he says, ‘unless you’re staying. It’s still calculus today.’
‘No, that’s okay. See you tomorrow.’ I swing my bag onto my back and go out of the classroom, but there’s part of me, a big part, that wishes I could stay. If I was bright enough, if I could stay and not feel stupid, it’d be good to be somewhere where it’s all right to be different. Just for an hour.
Outside, everyone’s in groups and gangs. Twos and threes having a chat, bigger groups playing football, or basketball. Out here being different don’t cut it.
I find a quieter corner, check no one’s looking and get my notebook out. I write Nelson’s details down. I want it to calm me down, but it don’t. I can feel the panic rising inside me – I can’t stop it. He’s a decent guy, the kind of kid that’s never done anyone any harm. Why should he die so young? It’s not fair. It’s not right. He’s got less than three months to live, that’s all. And maybe I have
too.
When I look at my book it’s like the deaths in there are crying out to me, shouting out to be heard. The future of this city’s there in my hands – a terrible, terrible, violent future. All those feelings, those voices, those last cries of agony, they’re inside me, in my ears, behind my eyes, in my lungs. It’s too much. I’m going to burst. Still clutching my book, I bring my hands up to my head, gripping hard, eyes tight shut. I try and do that breathing thing – in through your nose, and out through your mouth – but my throat’s so tight there’s nothing getting through and the noise in my head is so loud I can’t hear myself think. I can’t hear the words.
‘What are you doing, weirdo?’
I know that voice. I open my eyes, just a bit. There’s four pairs of feet in front of me, four people close up. I don’t need to look up to know who it is. I don’t need to see his number to feel the violence, smell the blood. Junior and his mates.
‘What are you doing here, spaz? What’s in your book?’
Chapter 16: Sarah
I’m living in the past here. This is what it must have been like in the old days, the 1970s, before mobile phones and computers and MP5 players. I’ve still got my phone, and that crappy net-palm thing they give you at school, but I can’t use them because they’re traceable, and I don’t want to be traced.
Vinny and his mates don’t bother with technology, except one antique CD player (CDs?) and an old telly. I don’t even bother with the TV. Whenever you switch it on, it’s always freak shows or re-runs of sad sitcoms which weren’t funny the first time, or the news. And who wants to see the news? Wars all over the world, half the world flooded, the other half dying of thirst. I can’t do anything about any of it, so what’s the point of knowing? Last time I watched, they’d closed the Channel Tunnel, trying to stop all the migrants from Africa. Why would they want to come here? We’ve got problems of our own, floods, power cuts, riots … if they want to come here, let them come, I say. They’ll soon find out it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.