Afterlight

CHAPTER 30
10 years AC
Thetford Forest, Norfolk



Without any warning Raymond swung the pick-up truck off the road onto a gravel lay-by and put the brakes on.
‘Why’ve we stopped? asked Jacob.
‘You’ll see,’ Raymond replied, climbing out of the truck and stepping across the gravel towards an overgrown cluster of blackberry bushes spilling out beneath the shadow of a mature oak tree.
‘Maybe he needs a pee?’ said Helen.
They watched him approach the brambles and fumble amongst the foliage. He stepped back and the bushes appeared to come with him.
‘Uh?’ gasped Helen.
‘Oh, that’s cool,’ said Nathan. ‘A disguised entrance.’
Raymond moved aside a six-foot panel of trellis through which the bushes had eagerly grown, twisting through the cross-hatches of plywood. Through the newly made gap they could see a faint track of twin ruts, running deep into the woods, dark beneath the thick summer-laden canopy of oak branches.
He rejoined them in the truck.
‘Props, man,’ grinned Nathan. ‘Like the secret entrance to Batman’s cave.’
Raymond smiled. ‘Yup. Just like that.’
He drove the truck through the gap and got out to replace the trellis, sealing the entrance behind them. Back behind the wheel, they rolled down the track, bouncing uncomfortably where the ruts ran deep and puddles splashed muddy water in their wake.
Leona warily studied the shadowy trail ahead. The farmhouse they’d lived in for several years after the crash had been a bit like this, lost deep in the woods where one hoped never to be found. But, of course, they had been.
‘How much further?’ she asked.
‘Just up here,’ he replied.
She noticed a sliver of sky ahead, a break in the canopy, appearing, disappearing, appearing amidst the thick veil of leaves. Then, rounding a bend, dipping down through deep ruts, splashing droplets of muddy water on the side windows, she saw it.
Oh, God.
‘Home,’ he said casually as he rolled the truck up beside the service entrance to what appeared to be an enormous inflated geodesic dome.
It’s so beautiful.
‘Wow!’ gasped Jacob, with wide-eyed amazement. ‘It’s like a space station!’
Raymond switched off the engine and they sat in silence, looking up at a web of triangular panels of semi-opaque plastic curving above them as the engine softly ticked.
‘My humble castle,’ announced Raymond with a casual twang that had more to do with a faint Scottish burr than any sense of arrogance. ‘It’s called The Emerald Oasis.’
Leona opened the door and stepped out of the truck, marvelling at the domed structure. Through the panels she could see tall dark forms inside.
‘What’s in there?’
He grinned. ‘Paradise.’
He reached into the back of the truck for the Bose speakers he’d foraged from PC World and led the way in, pushing through the side entrance, a row of thick plastic flaps that slapped noisily to one side. ‘Come in,’ he beckoned to Leona, holding open a gap for her.
She led the way and immediately felt the warm moist air on her face. It reminded her of childhood holidays abroad - stepping out of the cool air-conditioned interior of a plane into the warmth of some simmering hot holiday location. Then her eyes registered the tall fronds of a host of exotic plants.
‘My God, it’s like a . . . like a rainforest in here,’ she gasped.
‘Well, actually, that’s exactly what it is.’
The others entered behind her and the calming sound of chirruping insects, the gentle trickle of flowing water, the tap, tap, tap of moisture dripping from one broad waxy leaf down onto another was disturbed by a chorus of their muted voices, respectfully hushed to awed whispers.
‘This place,’ he said, leading them along a wood-chipped walkway, ‘is, or I should say, was,’ he corrected himself, ‘an exclusive holiday spa.’
They passed a cluster of purple gourds above which several brightly coloured butterflies fluttered.
‘Emerald Oasis. It’s a temperature- and humidity-controlled one-acre bubble of tropical rainforest.’ He stopped and turned towards them. ‘Basically it was a bloody expensive version of Center Parcs.’
Leona looked at the others, they were grinning like simpletons. She supposed she would have been as well if, at the back of her mind, she hadn’t also been wishing Hannah could be with them to see this too.
‘It wasn’t quite ready when the crash hit us that summer.’ Raymond shrugged. ‘Bad timing really. It was due to open for Christmas. They had celebrity guests booked in - a whole waiting-list of celebrities actually.’
The woodchip pathway curved past a luxury swimming pool and, beside it, a whirlpool spa.
‘I keep fish in there now.’
He led them through another curtain of plastic flaps into a pinewood cabin. It was cooler here, the same temperature as outside. She could feel the moisture that had settled on her skin walking through Raymond’s paradise begin to chill.
‘There are eight chalets like this one, each sleeping a family of four. You lot can share this one, or spread out and use the others if you want. Up to you.’
Leona smiled. ‘This is good, thank you.’
Raymond shrugged, a self-effacing gesture across his narrow shoulders that reminded her of a comedy actor Mum used to like. Woody someone.
‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘You want to get your stuff out of the back of the truck? Meanwhile . . .’ he grinned at his Bose speakers, ‘I just want to wire up these little fellas to my sound system.’
He turned and left, pushing his way through the flaps.
They turned to each other. Helen ended the wide-eyed silence. ‘I so-o-o-o want to live here.’

The smell of freeze-dried tomato and pasta meals being heated up in the microwave attracted everyone from exploring different corners of the intriguingly landscaped jungle floor. Raymond brought out a large steaming bowl and placed it on a picnic table set out on wooden decking that overlooked the pool and soon they were all seated, hungrily tucking into their dinner.
‘So you’ve got ‘lectric, too?’ said Helen blowing on her spoon.
Nathan shook his head and laughed. ‘Duh . . . you finally noticed then?’ Jacob snorted, and both boys began cackling.
‘Hey, piss off!’ she replied, dismissing them with a flick of her wrist. ‘Children.’
‘Sorry, Bubbles.’
She flicked Nathan her finger. ‘I’m not as stupid and immature as you two.’
When all three of them had been younger and in Leona’s class, Bubbles had been her nickname - short for Bubble-head.
Nathan and Jacob guffawed. Leona noticed Raymond smiling at the exchange, bemused and amused at the same time.
‘You lot, pack it in,’ said Leona. They did, but only after a few more muttered digs at each other.
‘We got ‘lectric, too,’ said Helen, returning to her conversational gambit.
‘Yeah?’ Raymond sipped on a spoon of steaming pasta. ‘What’re you running, turbines or cells?’
Helen made a face, shrugged and looked at the others for help. ‘Poo, I think?’
The boys laughed again.
‘What about you?’ asked Leona.
His bamboo chair creaked as he sat back. ‘The whole spa was set up to be completely carbon neutral and off the grid. The enviro-dome has photovoltaic cells at the top.’ He grinned. ‘See, that’s how this place was marketed. The entire thing was billed as an exclusive luxury destination with an absolute zero carbon footprint. The electricity used to heat the dome completely derived from our own renewable sources. The food served to guests was to be from local farmers. Total carbon-neutral stamp of compliance on everything.’
‘Oh, yes, that’s good,’ said Helen, pretending she was up to speed on what he meant by that.
‘The brochure even claimed to make a carbon-offset donation to cover the journey miles made by customers from their home to here; so they could enjoy their stay totally guilt-free.’ He shook his head. ‘All just a gimmick really. A load of crap. No such thing as a zero footprint. Any case, the cells on the roof were backed up by a diesel generator before the crash. Half of them weren’t even wired in.’
‘You’re still running the diesel generator?’ asked Leona.
‘Shit, no. I’ve kept the diesel for the truck. The power’s mostly coming from half a dozen household wind turbines I pinched from B&Q - the ones they started stocking a couple of summers before the crash, you know, when oil was shooting up?’
She nodded.
‘Pretty good things those. Reliable.’
Jacob leant forward. ‘So did you work here before the crash?’
‘Yeah. I was the technical manager. Basically they poached me from Disneyland to come here and run this place.’
‘Shit! Disneyland! Seriously?’
Leona wasn’t surprised to see Jacob’s mouth drop open. Mum and Dad had taken them both to EuroDisney back in 2008. Jacob had been about five then and was fascinated by the animatronics on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. He must have dragged them from the exit back round to the entrance half a dozen times.
‘Yup. Disneyland in Florida. I was chief oompah-loompah for one of their bigger rides.’
Helen’s fair eyebrows locked together. ‘What the hell’s an oompah-loompah? ’
He grinned. ‘That’s what the “cast” called us backroom nerds. Very funny, or at least they thought so. Mind you, we used to get our own back on them . . .’
Raymond talked all the way through dinner. Leona guessed he hadn’t had any company for quite some time and now, feeling more at ease with them than he had been earlier at the retail park, he seemed to enjoy opening up, giving them a glimpse of his past life in the old world. His pasta must have been cold by the time he finally got round to finishing it. But she enjoyed listening to him, hearing references to the past, to places she would have liked to have seen and places she had seen.
Raymond Campbell; an engineering graduate from Edinburgh University, he’d bummed around in India and Goa for a while before getting work in London. Then, later on, he got to work on some prestigious development projects in Dubai and then Disney in Florida before finally getting the job to run this place.
‘I suppose I’ve always been a bit of a tech-geek. I love fiddling with stuff, optimising systems, you know?’
Helen cocked her head and pursed her lips. ‘Do you mean making things run better?’
Raymond smiled at her. ‘That’s exactly it. There isn’t anything you can’t make run a little better, a little faster, a little smoother, if you take the time to analyse it and component-split the processes,’ he replied, his eyes remaining on the young girl - eye contact that lingered between them for a few charged seconds.
Leona stepped into the moment. ‘So, Raymond, what’s your crash-story? ’
He knew what she meant by that, everyone had their story; how they survived the crash, what the first day, the first week, the first month was like for them, how they managed to get through it.
Helen played at being hausfrau, stacking up the bowls in the gathering darkness as he settled back in his chair again. It creaked in the stillness.
‘We were preparing to open the Oasis back then. Our first guests were already booked in for the middle of December. If I remember right, it was some footballer and his fashion-model wife and their extended family. There were a dozen staff here and a couple of builders finishing up work on the chalets when it all started. Those bombs went off in Saudi, kicking off the Middle-Eastern troubles. The bombs in the big refineries and that tanker exploded in the Gulf blocking the shipping routes, and the Prime Minister came on . . . my God, do you remember that?’
They did. Everyone, except Helen.
‘He stood in that press room, ripped up what he was meant to say, and told us we were all as good as screwed.’
Helen was too young to remember that so clearly, nonetheless, she’d heard the story many times over.
‘So anyway, I was co-managing this place with a lady called Tanya - she was a botanist, in charge of the plants and bugs and stuff. Anyway, we dismissed all the others so they could get home to their families. We stayed, though; someone had to keep things running here.
‘We thought it was a scare that would blow over in a few days. Like everyone else. We just thought the Prime Minister had panicked, had a nervous breakdown on camera or something. We assumed the government had a handle on it. We assumed there were oil reserves, food reserves and some sort of contingency plan for this kind of a crisis. But then, of course, it got out of hand so quickly. We watched on the news as the riots spread right across London. When the BBC stopped broadcasting, I guess we realised at that point that this was worse than we thought. Really bad.’
‘We were in London then,’ said Jacob quietly. ‘Me and Leona, during those riots.’
Raymond looked at him. ‘It must have been frightening.’
‘It was,’ replied Leona. ‘Very.’
‘Go on,’ urged Nathan, ‘you was saying, Ray.’
‘So Tanya and me stayed on here. She continued to look after the tropical ecosystem, I kept the generators going and we sat it out, listening to the radio; FM for the first week or two, then medium wave then finally long wave as British stations stopped broadcasting. We heard about the safe zones in London and elsewhere collapsing a few months after the crash. We heard brief reports on the short wars, Russia and Georgia, India and Pakistan, Israel and Syria, Palestine.’
‘Yeah, we heard about those too,’ said Jacob.
‘I heard a Cuban radio station about three years ago talking about the way things are in America. They had it almost as bad as us here; pretty rough first few years. Federal authority disappeared overnight almost. It collapsed down to state authorities. Some fared a lot better than others. East coast: New York, New Jersey, Delaware, those ones, all ended up like Europe did, totally screwed. But further south, the gulf states like Florida and Texas seemed to do better - they had some oil reserves to play with. Apparently they’ve teamed up and there’s some sort of order there. I think they said something about the President being based there.’
‘Do you think they’ll come over here?’ asked Helen. ‘And you know, help us?’
‘I doubt it. Not for a while. They’ve got their own country to fix.’
‘You not heard any more?’ asked Leona.
Raymond shrugged. ‘The station switched from English to Cuban. You can still pick it up, several Cuban stations actually. I think that country coped a lot better than just about anyone else.
‘Funny though,’ he continued, shaking his head, ‘I never thought that just stopping the oil would f*ck the world up quite so much. I understand now, of course. I understand why so many died, in this country at least. Perhaps if we’d all been given six months’ warning, maybe even just a week’s warning - enough time to learn how to grow some kind of a basic survival crop, buy the seeds and stick ’em in the ground . . . you know? But by the time the Prime Minister—what was his name?’ Raymond looked around at the teenagers at the picnic table.
None of them could actually remember.
‘Well, by the time that idiot blew his whistle it was already too late to do anything.’
He fell silent and the evening was filled with the creaking and chirruping of foreign-sounding insects, and the soft rustle of running water.
‘Was Tanya your girlfriend?’ asked Helen.
Raymond stirred. ‘God, no. We were just colleagues, workmates, that’s all.’
‘What happened to her?’ asked Jacob.
‘She vanished.’
‘Vanished?’
‘A while back. One day we drove the truck into Thetford to forage for essentials. We thought it was safe to split up, we hadn’t seen any drifters for a while.’ He looked down at his hands, twisting the corner of his yellow T-shirt. ‘She never came back to the truck. I called for her, for hours. Looked for her around the town. I returned to the Oasis, then went back the next day and tried again. I never found her. She just vanished.’
‘Oh, God, that’s awful,’ offered Helen.
‘Yeah . . . yes, it was. I figure she was taken by someone. Or perhaps an accident, fallen somewhere, injured or killed.’ He shook his head silently. ‘It nearly pushed me over the edge really. I didn’t realise how close we’d got over the years.’
Leona stirred. ‘How long ago was this?’
He shook his head. ‘Happened, I guess, four years ago?’
Leona looked at him with pity. ‘My God, you’ve been all alone since?’
‘Uh-huh. Minding the trees and the bugs, keeping this place going, keeping myself busy.’
‘Do you miss her?’ asked Helen. Leona detected something in her young voice and the way that Raymond addressed her questions so attentively; there was a little chemistry going on there in the dark. The thought made her grimace ever so slightly. Helen was only fifteen and although Raymond seemed quite boyish, he had to be in his mid-thirties; old enough to be her father.
‘It was just the two of us for six years,’ replied Raymond, ‘just the two of us. So, yeah, of course I miss her.’
Helen began gently quizzing Raymond about Tanya, about his past life. He talked about that, about Disneyland, and the other three listened intently. Helen cooed dotingly, giggled too readily at his anecdotes.
Leona sighed at Helen’s obviousness. She wondered whether her instinctive distaste at the thought of Raymond and Helen as an item was a hangover from the past, from the world before. She remembered curling her lip in disgust at a story in the newspapers: an aging rock star in his sixties bedding a sixteen-year-old Russian bar girl. An old tabloid story from a different world where such a relationship was a horrendous notion. She wondered though, how much those sorts of moral values had changed in this new world.
A different story now, perhaps, she figured. In this new world, a man a decade or more older would have a wider experience and knowledge base, better honed survival skills, better able to care for a younger partner than some sleek young strip of a lad.
All very tribal, very Darwinian. But it made sense.
She looked at the dark outlines of the others around the table; at Jacob, laughing, fidgeting in his bamboo chair, so full of hope that things were on the cusp of getting better, that London was waiting for him. Nathan too. And Helen flirting shamelessly with Raymond, distancing herself from the boys, pretending to be so much more grown up, clearly rather keen to make an impression on Raymond.
We’ve all got our little goals, and none of them involve returning to the North Sea.
She smiled, knowing no one would see her face in the fading light of dusk and ask her what she was thinking. Leona hoped they’d all find what they’d come along for. Most of all, she hoped her little brother would find what he wanted in London. His street lights.