The Brink (14 page)

“We haven’t seen a single scavenger since the storm. What makes you think they’re still out there?”

“We’re still here and that means they’ll be too.”

“Perhaps.”

Alan could see him struggling to give in to what he’d shown was just common sense. It was then that he realised the other survivors were watching the conversation as well; they were waiting to see the outcome.

“Okay,” he said as if having lost a great internal struggle. “We’ll do it your way.”

The others began to climb down from the back of the truck and Alan moved to help them. He felt eyes burning into him and he knew that this was the pattern; it always had been since he’d stepped out of Longsteel and maybe it always would be the way of it - people fighting to be in control; power in the gaudy dress of charity, paraded for all to see with nothing but hypocrisy underneath. As Dave led them towards the substation he wished he was wrong and that his gut instinct wasn’t on the money this time.

Moll looked up at him, grinning.

“You know I’m right, don’t you girl?”

The substation had a single entrance - a thick, double panelled door that took some prising open with a long crowbar that’d been in the back of the truck. Both he and Dave worked the lock, swinging back and forth on the bar until it finally gave with a loud snap and swung open. It was dark inside but Annie had a wind-up torch and she shone it into the gloom, passing the beam across the empty chamber to show that it contained only a few grey steel boxes, a pile of cardboard containers and a few steps down into a basement.

“Get everyone inside,” he said to his wife. “Me and Roger will bring the gear from the truck and then hide it round the corner.”

The tall youth, who’d already begun to lose a lot of his long blonde hair, was Dave’s son and he’d been the third person in the cab. Like the others he was hidden beneath layers of clothing but had pulled back his goggles and hat in order to see better in the ever failing light. The marks of radiation sickness were all over his face and his eyes looked sore, but the resemblance was there and it was clear that Dave was his proud father, gifting him with a large frame, a handsome face and the same watery blue eyes. 

They both went back out whilst Alan helped the half-frozen survivors into the furthest corner of the substation, emptying the cardboard boxes of their contents so that the flattened material could be used as some kind of insulation against the cold concrete floor. Besides Rachel and her sister, the others were in poor shape and it was a struggle for them to first get down from the back of the truck and then to make it inside and sit down. Even a young man, perhaps late in his twenties, was tottering on his legs, unable to stop vomiting and at one point caused Alan to suspect that he’d soiled his trousers too.

The room itself stank of must and age but it was noticeably warmer than outside and after performing a quick survey, Alan concluded that the place hadn’t been opened in years, perhaps even before the disaster. All of the fuse boxes and junctions were spotlessly clean and the floor was even cleaner without a single boot print to be found anywhere. There was even a wall chart near the window which must have been some kind of rota for routine maintenance but which hadn’t been filled in since before the eclipse.

He went down into the basement but it was more of the same; untouched electrical supplies, a stack of spare solar panels and not much else. There’d be no reason for keeping food down there or anything else useful that didn’t have some role to play in keeping the power going. He searched regardless, rooting deep into seemingly bottomless boxes or prising open steel lockers that held nothing for him but more fuses, some fuse wire or rolls of electrical tape. The only thing that he considered even remotely handy was a first aid kit mounted on the wall and he carried it back upstairs with him, handing it to Rachel.

“Get into the habit of searching anywhere you are,” he said.

“You’re right,” she replied. “I guess I always had someone else to do it for me. Since the disaster I’ve always been part of a group that kept me safe.”

“You need to learn to keep yourself safe. You and your sister. There won’t always be people to rely upon and some people should
never
be relied upon - they’ll let you down if you allow them to.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “You mean Dave, don’t you?”

He didn’t reply and he was thankful that no one else heard her say it, the rest being too concerned trying to make themselves comfortable on the hard floor. Annie had returned with armfuls of thin blankets, barely any use in the freezing temperatures and when he asked about food and water she had no answer for him.

“You’ve been travelling all this time without supplies?” he asked, stunned.

“We had to move quickly,” she said. “Try to gather as many survivors as we could, there was no time to load up what little we had.”

She looked sideways at the door in the hope that her husband might come to rescue her from the pressure he’d suddenly put her under.

“What are they supposed to eat or drink?”

“We...”

She fell silent and broke away from him, taking a blanket to the oldest member of the group, a man in his late sixties who’d become pale and gaunt and had vomited twice since entering the substation.

Alan stormed outside and saw Dave with his son coming towards them from where they’d hidden the truck.

“Food? Water?” he demanded.

“Excuse me?” said Dave.

“Where are your supplies? Why did you gather these people just to see them starve to death or die of thirst?”

His shoulders slumped and Alan heard him sigh even through the scarf that muffled his mouth. It was that same expression again, the one he’d seen on Teague. The same one that had been on Gary’s face right before the end and no doubt worn by Reb as they both contemplated the blue pill.
Defeat
.
Surrender
.

“Look-” he began, but it was Roger who interrupted him.

“They’re dying! Can’t you see that? Do you want to stretch their deaths out as long as possible or something?”

“Son, please-”

“No Dad, I’m not having this
nobody
turn up from out of nowhere and take over. We started this and I’m not going to let him make us look like dicks in front of the others.”

“That’s not what he’s doing, Rog.”

“He is, Dad, can’t you see?” He turned to Alan and in the twilight he could see the burns, the gaps in his teeth and the clumps of hair, barely able to hold on to his scalp even more clearly. “We’re fucking dead! We’re walking corpses and what good will food and water do?”

Dave looked down at the floor and refused to meet either his son’s or Alan’s gaze. There was a silence then - a long, drawn out silence that couldn’t even be disturbed by what was once the natural noise of the world. There’d been no birds since the storm, no wildlife, nothing, only the howl of the wind or the pattering of rain on the ground. In the back of his mind, Alan could still hear the cackle of the Geiger counter, laughing out its warning of doom and urging him to consider the end.

“Look,” he said, finding the courage to break the silence. “I’m going to see what I can find. There might be something here-”

“What’s the point?” moaned Roger, all his hope gone now with the setting sun.

“Go inside and get a fire going, maybe. Just try to be some kind of comfort to these people. They need hope, not just cold truth. I’ll be back in a bit.”

With that he walked away, through a gate and deeper into the complex of ugly grey buildings without waiting for an answer. If he did, he’d be sorely disappointed.

If the storm hadn’t touched that once thriving industrial centre, then neither had the disaster that came before it. If time had stopped at some point in the past, frozen like a kind of snapshot, a single moment in history, then that was it. The whole place reminded him of the outpost where they’d found the Rhinos, another slice of timelessness, another photo frame of a moment lost forever.

Moll had stayed at the substation so he walked alone down the pavements that ran on both sides of a long private road, flanked by single storey office blocks stamped out of the same machine and identical but for the enormous white numbers fixed on aluminium sheets above each door. Some had company logos too, others just simple white placards or A-frame signs on the street outside. All of them appeared to be untouched, as if closing time had happened a few minutes before and if you crossed the road to the pub on the far side, you’d see them there, laughing, drinking, talking about the productive day they’d just had.

Beyond the smaller units were the great factories - towering prefab structures maybe three or four storeys in height but painted the same monotonous grey as all the others and marked with the same gigantic numbers above galvanised roller-shutter doors. These looked older than the offices, perhaps more weather-worn and from the signs outside it looked like most of them had been emptied before the disaster, either from failed business or simple lack of interest.

The road had turned left at this point to come back on itself in a great square, but here, in the corner and wedged between two fabrication buildings, was a white hut and it was this that Alan made his way over to.

A swift kick opened the place, sending the door slamming into a brewing urn and toppling a delicate stack of white plastic cups so that they tumbled onto the floor at his feet. There was a narrow counter on one side and a sink and cooking station on the other. The stainless steel surfaces were spotless and the fronts of both the metal-effect microwave and the American style fridge had been wiped down, but there were still some traces of grease and grime between the tiles on the wall and in the corners of the room. There was also the faint odour of frying bacon that made Alan’s mouth water.

Most of the stock that would’ve normally been in the butty bar was gone - no doubt kept at home during the night to remove the temptation from thieves. Some of the heavier crates were still there under the counter along with a single box of chocolate bars now 7 years beyond their sell-by-date. There were cans of coke and orange but also some bottles of water and it was these that he dragged out onto the pavement outside and stacked in a pile to be collected later. This done, he carried one of the crates of coke and the box of chocolate back to the substation with him.

When he got there, Roger and Dave were huddled around a steel rubbish bin they’d found and were staring intently into the meagre pile of twigs at the bottom of it. Alan passed them both a can each and smiled as their eyes lit up.

“Where the hell did you find these?” cried Roger, tearing off the ring-pull and almost downing it in one. No sooner had it hit his stomach than he doubled over, retching it straight back up. Dave ran to soothe him.

“You can’t drink it so fast, son,” he said. “Remember, we’re not well.”

When he’d recovered himself, Alan passed him another and he sipped it gently this time, savouring every taste and smiling with delight.

“When you’re ready, try one of these,” he said, handing out a chocolate bar. “Again - small mouthfuls. I wish we could’ve found something more substantial but it’s still a blessing. There are more down the road.”

Alan went into the substation and, kneeling down before each survivor, handed out the cans, the chocolate and the same careful instructions. When he reached Martha and Rachel, he paused, taking out his own bar, one he’d saved for himself, and broke it in half.

“That’s for Moll,” he said to the quiet little girl. “You can give it to her if you want.”

The dog, smelling the delights, came sniffing around Martha’s hands and when she offered the chocolate to the slavering jaws, she swallowed it in one bite. It caused no end of laughter to the little girl but it only served to highlight how ill she was, how pale her skin had become and how much hair she’d lost already. Her sister was no better and as he handed her the can, she took it with trembling, weak hands.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m okay. I’m going to try and sleep now, I’m so tired.”

“It’s been a long day.”

“It has.”

He stood to go but her little hand reached out in its threadbare glove and touched his knee very gently. “You’re never going to leave us, are you?”

“No,” he replied. “Never.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Get some rest and I’ll be back soon.”

He stood there, watching her eyes droop and her head slowly begin to roll to one side as the exhaustion of the day overtook her. It seemed to be the same for the others and, one by one, each slipped into a fitful doze as Alan continued his work of bringing the food and water he found back to where they were. He knew that deep down it was pointless. Roger, in his despairing way, had been right. They were desperately ill and there was no reversing it, no undoing it, no miracle cure for the radiation that was destroying them from the inside-out.

With a heavy heart, he walked back and forth with armfuls of stuff, if only to keep away from that room where Death was counting the day’s tally with the broad smile of a job well done. Not that he was allowed any credit for what’d been done by others somewhere east of there, but he was the kind of person who was more than happy to take credit for the masterful execution of the kinds of things he himself might have done had he the means to do them.