The Brink (23 page)

“What the hell are you doing?”

The other guard stood poised behind his desk, frozen in terror at the scene. A crowd had begun to gather and slowly, the dog lowered her ears and looked down, walking slowly back towards him.

“What the hell is going on?” asked a man in a fitted suit, framing a side door and watching with white hot anger. “What happened here?”

“Mr Stuart - this animal tried to kill me!” cried the guard who Moll had sent crashing to the floor. “I demand it be destroyed!”

Sam Stuart stepped out of his office and into the hallway, eyeing up Alan as he approached. He was a gaunt man but very well dressed and the suit was no off-the-peg number. He wore it like it was the most natural thing in the world to be wearing as society came crashing down around his ears. He had thinning auburn hair which he did his best to comb over to one side and he wore a pair of thin gold-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his nose so that he could look over them at Alan.

“You must be Mr Harding, I presume?” asked Sam Stuart.

“I am,” he replied, still flustered but quickly regaining his composure.

“Is this animal yours?”

“She’s with me,” he corrected. “Yes.”

“My family were once dog breeders. Won a few awards back in our day, back before all this. Would you say that this ‘incident’ was out of character?”

“I would. She’s never done something like this without...”

“Without your command, yes?” Alan nodded. Then, turning to the guard, ordered him back on his feet. Moll eyed the man and stifled another growl. “You - detain him.”

“Eh?” said the man behind the desk. “But he’s-”

“I love dogs and for some reason this one went for him. I’d like to know why, out of all these people, she chose to attack you.”

The second guard, still in a state of shock, managed to drag the first away towards a back room that Alan hadn’t seen yet. When they were out of earshot, Sam Stuart smiled and held out his hand.

“Looks like we’ve got off to a shaky start,” he said. “I’m Sam Stuart. You’ve met my brother already.” They shook. “And who is this?”

“Her name’s Moll,” he replied.

“I’ll let her sniff me out before I stroke her. She’s bigger than any breed I’ve ever seen. Where did you find her?” Noting the expression, Alan chose a lie rather than reveal her true origins.

“She was wandering the woods where I lived. I thought she was a wolf at first but you can tell from her face that there’s more dog in there than anything else.”

“Hmm. Quite a specimen. I’m interested to find out why she chose Richard, the guard you just saw. If you’ll excuse me-”

“Mr Stuart,” he said just as he turned to leave. “If we could have a word later, perhaps?”

“Of course. Drop by my office around eight and we can share a glass of scotch. I’ve been saving this one since the disaster. Good day.”

Sam Stuart walked away in the direction the guard had dragged his friend and Alan, still stunned by what had just happened and the strange encounter with Mr Stuart, walked slowly in the direction Rachel had led Tim.

“What were you playing at?” he whispered to Moll. She looked up, panting, as if to say a thousand more words and decided none were really necessary. “You’d better hope he turns out to be a mass murderer or something or we’ll both be in trouble.”

Across from the bar where he and John had been drinking the previous night there were now long rows of picnic tables, pasting boards and anything else that people could sit at to eat together. It was a busy place with families coming and going, plates and cups clashing together and the loud cries of children playing down the aisles. There was a queue near a serving hatch on the far side, just down from a kid’s play area decorated with yet more effigies of the marvellous cartoon tiger and his friends, and it was here that Tim and Rachel, armed with plastic trays, waited to be served.

“Well that was a bit tense,” said Alan, trying to lessen the shame he felt at having been shown up by Moll.

“Oh dear - what happened?” asked Rachel. “Is the man okay?”

“Yes, just. Sam Stuart appeared and had him carted off. They think that Moll might know something we don’t.”

“Oh my,” she said again.

“Is Moll okay?” asked Tim. “We’re going to have beans and sausages!”

“Are we? Wow,” said Alan. “Yes mate - Moll’s fine. She just gave us a little fright, that’s all.”

“Is that man a bad man?” he asked.

“We don’t know,” said Rachel. “But the people in charge will find out, won’t they Alan?”

“I’m sure they will.”

The line shuffled forward a little more and the aromas of hot food swept down to meet them. Tim licked his lips and Moll, now causing people on either side to leave a bigger than usual gap between them, sniffed the air and slapped her jaws together.

“You don’t deserve any,” hissed Alan to her.

“Don’t be mean,” said Rachel. “She might be a hero by the end of the day.”

“Don’t tell her that - she’ll never let me forget it.”

Rachel shuddered. “Imagine if he is a Scav - Richard’s been here for quite some time, a find like that would upset things around here.”

“How do you mean?” he asked. The line moved forward a little more and he realised that the scents were making his stomach grumble.

“Well, to have one so deeply embedded would make us doubt each other, make us question who is who and any new comers would have a hard time of it.”

“Can you afford to take any more survivors in? I mean, you might have the space - there are plenty of caravans still - but food? Water?”

“The bigger question,” she said, shuffling forward again. “Is can we afford not to? How could we turn someone away at the gate? Leave them to die out there. If we all eat a little less we can cope.”

That mind-set was soon demonstrated when they reached the serving hatch and were spooned out their meagre ration of tinned beans and sausage, half of a small piece of flat bread and a cup of water. Alan looked down at it and attempted a smile and the ever optimistic Tim beamed at the delightful spread.

“Wow!” he said, following Rachel to an empty table. “It’s awesome.”

“What’s your favourite food, Tim?” she asked, sitting opposite him.

“I like all sorts,” he replied. He was ready with his spoon in one hand and the water in the other, like a race had just been declared and he was on the blocks already. Alan felt it was a race that he could win with a single mouthful but he kept quiet, instead leaning over and tipping the small patch of orange goop onto Tim’s plate.

“You’ve got to eat,” protested Rachel as the flatbread flopped onto her own tray.

“I’ll live,” he replied, letting Moll lick it clean. “I guess stocks are running low now.”

“At first we had plenty but our numbers grew. It’s a small price to pay for helping those around us.”

“A price you’ll soon be unable to pay if you don’t start producing your own.”

“Got any ideas?”

“A few,” he replied. “Can I leave Tim with you?”

“I think we’ll go over to the school. Can you collect him later though?”

“Of course,” he said. “I don’t want you to-”

“John explained,” she said with a smile. “I can see you want to help here but might I make a suggestion?”

“Sure,” he replied.

“How can I say this?” she asked herself. “I think you need to learn something that I discovered for myself a few years ago.”

“And what’s that?”

“That you can’t save the entire world.”

“I don’t remember saying that I would,” he said.

“Your eyes told me a different story.”

“You read eyes?”

“I’m good with people. I can see a man trying to keep this world from slipping through his fingers and he’s struggling with everyone he loses. “

“I’m not sure you-” She held up a hand, dismissing him.

“Do what you need to do. Me and Tim will be fine. I’ll walk him back to your caravan at around six this evening.”

“That’d be a great help.”

“I know it will. I know that you want to help us in return. Just remember what I said okay?”

“Will do,” he said with a smile and, turning to Tim, said, “Will you be okay, mate?”

Tim nodded as he chewed enthusiastically at his meal, wiping the tomato sauce from his chin with a paper napkin. “I’ll take Moll with me. Just in case.”

He stood to go and Rachel placed a tender hand on his arm and smiled up at him as he towered over her. He returned the warmth of the gesture, feeling himself strengthened by her simple faith in him, a man she’d only known for such a short time. Then he was gone with Moll at his side, heading out to find John.

15

The infirmary, or what the sign claimed it was in thick block capitals of blue and black ink on a piece of tattered cardboard, was anything but. It was a series of large rooms, maybe once offices, cleared of furniture save for any kind of makeshift bed that could be constructed and some basic items of medical equipment that looked to have been looted from several different hospitals, each one wearing a different ‘DO NOT REMOVE’ sticker with the logo still in place. Every bed was taken and the sick and dying had spilled out into the corridors and empty nooks like vagrants in shop doorways, lying down on anything reasonably flat, waiting to be seen by either Doc or one of his two nurses.

The smells overpowered him almost as much as the moans and wails of the dying and he saw that many of the poor and helpless lay in their own filth, unable to do anything more than writhe on their pallets, waiting for the slow arrival of Death. Doc was nowhere to be seen and only one of the two nurses moved amongst them, offering spoonfuls of water from a jug and a little broken off piece of biscuit if they could manage to keep it down.

Was this what Rachel had meant? He wondered as he waited to get the attention of the nurse in his dirty blue scrubs. Could any of them be saved? Would they all end up like these poor people?

“Can I help you, mate?” asked the man as he neared to where Alan was stood.

“I’m looking for John.”

“He’s not here,” replied the nurse. “Can I help?”

“Why are they not being seen to?” he asked, indicating the people around him. The nurse shrugged.

“No one wants this job, pal. I mean, we get a few volunteers now and again but no one really wants to have to look at them all day. It reminds them, you see, makes them think about what’s going to happen to them.”

“You don’t seem bothered.”

“Everybody dies, mate. It’s just a matter of when, which, thanks to some bright spark on the other side of the world, just got a whole lot sooner.”

“Is all the work done around here on a voluntary basis?” he asked.

“Yup. Not the best idea, if you ask me.”

“I’m asking you. Do you have a better one?”

The nurse scratched the mottled top of his head where clumps of his blonde hair had fallen out. “Make ‘em.”

“Go on.”

“Well, before all this, we worked for a living. No work, no eat, they used to say. For some reason Doc and Mr Stuart come along and wanted to build some ridiculous free society where people can choose to do the jobs they want, or not as the case may be and still get fed. They just offer ‘incentives’ to try and get people to do the hard stuff but there’s no incentive big enough to want to make people clean other people’s arses, is there?”

“I see your point,” said Alan, watching Moll sniff at a nearby patient, if they could be called that, he wondered. “What do you suggest?”

“Leadership. Good, solid leadership that doesn’t want to just let things go their own way because believe me-” He pointed a withered finger directly at him. “Believe me; people will sit on their arses crying about the state of things if you let ‘em and meanwhile they eat you out of house and home. You get me?”

“I get you.”

“We need structure whether we like it or not. We need rules and laws and consequences if we do wrong. People need leaders whose example they can follow; they just don’t realise that until there’s nothing left to eat and then they just go around blaming each other. Silly really.”

“So you don’t feel Doc and Mr Stuart do that?”

The nurse snorted his answer. “Do they bollocks, and I ain’t scared to say so like some people are. The Doc is half-cooked most days and Mr Stuart just hides in his office unless he needs to get something. It’s us on the shop floor who’re keeping this place together, it’s us carrying the most weight whilst everyone else just adds to it.”

The nurse had gone quite red in the face but even this outburst was too much for him to take and he reached out to steady himself on a nearby table.

“Are you okay?” asked Alan, knowing that he wasn’t.

“I’m fine for a bit longer still, I’ve got some life left in me yet and I’ll be damned if any of these go before me. Not on my shift.”

“Were you a nurse before all this?” he asked. The man laughed.

“Was I heck. I was a bin man with a mum who needed nursing in her old age so I learned a bit of the trade, so to speak. She died during the dark when her pacemaker packed up. Couldn’t recharge it, see. The older tech wouldn’t have let that happen and I told her to get the battery one but she wouldn’t listen to me, would she? Cheaper that way. Cheaper, yeah, now that she’s dead.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alan.

“Don’t be. Better dead than-” He didn’t finish but stood up straight again and smiled. “I better get back to work. If you’ll excuse me. Shall I tell John you were looking for him?”

“Please,” said Alan. “Thanks for the chat.”

“No one else to talk to, have I?”

He made his way across to the other side of the complex and after some strange looks from people and a few directions, he and Moll found John in the allotment located just outside the camp in a fenced off compound. It was a small patch, perhaps 15 sections in total, and it looked so familiar to Alan that he couldn’t help but smile when he saw it, remembering better days in the sun, working his own ground at the weekend whenever he could. There were the usual rickety sheds, turned green by the weather and leaning in all directions, the poly-tunnels and the bodged fencing, the features of the familiar allotment landscape, missing only the ripe growth that should have been well on its way by now. Instead, the soil looked hard and unyielding and whatever growth there was appeared to have withered and died, becoming a brown mass of foliage useful to no one.

“Hello Alan,” called John when he saw them enter through the wide gate. “Must be a welcome sight to you, this place.”

“It is but I kind of hoped to see a little more green, maybe a few more people working here. What’s happened?”

“I don’t know. The rads I’m guessing. Maybe just plain old lack of skill. The mushrooms are doing well though! Do you want to see?”

There was a childish kind of excitement in his eyes and Alan nodded, following him down to one of the bigger sheds where the windows had been boarded up to block out the light.

“I’m quite proud of this,” he said, opening the door to let a little of it in. Alan saw the trays and the growth, the little mushrooms poking up out of the peat looking healthy enough. He was happy with what he saw, and he told John as much.

“Are there more?” he asked.

“Yes, back inside the camp in the basements. I started getting complaints about the damp smell but hunger is hunger and we need the little buggers.”

John looked around at the sorry allotment and tried to stay upbeat but Alan could tell he was faltering.

“Is there anything we can do?” he asked softly. “I mean, it can’t be lost to us, surely?”

“Of course,” replied Alan, seeing years of hard work ahead. “We can make it work, pal. Bet you’re glad you came across me when you did now, aren’t you?”

“Too right!” cried John, slapping his broad shoulder with as much joy as he could. “I never should have let you leave in the first place.”

They started walking back towards the gate and John laughed to himself, watching Moll leap and bound over the fences, sniffing down trails and digging in the dry earth.

“I hear she gave Richard a fright,” he said.

“Just a bit of one,” replied Alan. “I’ve never seen her react like that before.”

“Neither have I, so I think we’re going to learn something grim today. She isn’t wrong about him, I know it.”

“I’m glad we both have faith in her.”

“So does Sam Stuart by all accounts. Richard’s caravan got turned over not long after you went. Sam took it very seriously.”

“I’m glad he didn’t rush to have her killed,” said Alan.

“Me too. How did you get on with Rachel?”

Alan explained all about the brief meeting and how well Tim had reacted to her, putting in that if it worked out for him his time in camp would be much better.

“Sounds like you’ve saved another soul today,” laughed John. It made Alan remember what Rachel had said and he looked at him with a puzzled expression on his face.

“I don’t want to save souls,” he said. “I just want to get this place running and-”

“And...?” He shrugged.

“I don’t know. Inject a bit of hope into the place. What I’ve seen so far makes me worry that you won’t see out the year.”

“The rads will do that to us whether you like it or not, my old friend.”

“It’s not just the illness. It’s like-”

“You’ve spent too much time with that woman!” he cried. “She’s got you thinking the virus is back too! Fuck the Ibromavich vaccination, it was all a lie and we’re still depressed.”

“I don’t think we need a virus to cause the depression around here, do we?”

“No,” he admitted. “I guess we don’t. If they could just see things turning around, if they could just get a glimpse of a possible future for us, maybe it might be different.”

“That’s what I’m hoping to do,” said Alan. “I’ve got a meeting with Sam Stuart tonight.”

“Good luck with that,” replied John. “He’s a tough nut.”

“Any tips?”

“Cancel the meeting?” He laughed. “No, he’s a hard man but he’s fair. Hear him out and maybe put some ideas his way. You’re not really going to change anything without his say so.”

“I see. Top dog, eh?”

“Something like that. Less so now. I guess you’ve noticed his style of ‘hands on’ leadership?”

“Hmm.”

“Exactly. His brother isn’t much better I admit. Have you been to the infirmary?”

“Before coming here I dropped in.”

“Was he there?” Alan shook his head. “I didn’t think he would be. He’ll be in some dark corner, drinking himself blind and deaf to the suffering. I can’t really blame him but it doesn’t do much for his patients.”

“I’m beginning to think that the problem lies right there,” said Alan. “With those two.”

“You’re worrying me with that look.”

“What look?”

“The same one you had just before you left. The one that threw the towel in and just walked away in a sulk.”

Alan smiled but he was a little stung by his words. He
had
left in a sulk, not happy with how things were being run and wanting change. Rather than work for it, he’d walked away, taking the easy path.

“People change, John,” he replied. “There’ll be no more walking away. Not now. Not with so much in the balance.”

“Why? What’s different now?” Alan shrugged.

“I don’t know. Maybe I just like a few of you. Maybe I just want the company.”

“Bull shit. You’ve got that daft dog of yours. You’d be happy living alone in the woods, wouldn’t you? You don’t need the rest of the human race, you said as much when we met.”

“Like I said - people change.”

“Do they? I hadn’t noticed. Changed for the worse, maybe, or is that just their real self, stripped of society’s code of conduct and what we’re seeing now is the person deep down?”

“You’re a miserable bastard, you know that?”

“Can you blame me?” said John. “Look at this place. We’re literally on the brink of extinction here and we’re weak, we’re tired and we’re dying. If it doesn’t turn around now we’ll topple over the edge and that’ll be all they wrote about the human race. Our bones will be in the museums of the future, showing some new species what we looked like and guessing we had bright green skin or something.”

“Have a little faith,” replied Alan. “We can turn it around. I’ve not given up on people yet and for what it’s worth - I’m sorry for what happened in the past.”

“Let’s call it rash youth,” he said, laughing. “If you can get anything to grow in this place, I’ll consider putting my trust in you. One human being is enough for now.”

The feeling John had expressed was repeated around the entire camp and as Alan walked among them, getting to know them, he realised that, though it wasn’t a virus as such, something dark had spread amongst them and purging it would have to be his first priority. The kitchens, the patrol teams, the repair men and women - they all expressed their dread of what would happen in the future and the discovery of Richard being a Scav infiltrator only added to their fears.

“We turned over his entire home and found clothing and equipment,” said a guard on patrol that evening when Alan arrived for his meeting with Sam Stuart. “For when he finally opened the gates for them. He was going to swap shifts with Taffy and be on duty when they came.”

“Did he say when?” asked Alan.

“Not yet but we’re sure we can get it out of him.”

“We need to know. If they’re planning an attack we need to be ready. Surely he had some way of communicating with them. A radio?”

“Nothing came up in the search. He had weapons and ammunition but no radio, no computers or anything.”