Afterlight

CHAPTER 56
10 years AC
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London



Snoop sat down at Maxwell’s beckon; the leather sofa creaking softly. Through the thick double doors of his quarters they could hear some of the boys whooping with delight as they scored a goal. They were kicking a football around on the arena’s main floor. A game usually ended with a punch-up. So far, it seemed, they’d managed without it turning into a fight.
He could see there was something on the old man’s mind. ‘What’s this about, Chief?’
Maxwell offered him a thin smile and steepled his fingers thoughtfully. ‘The future, Edward. The future.’
Something flipped uncomfortably inside him. The last time he’d seen the old bastard looking like this was last year, when he’d awoken in the middle of the night and wandered into his quarters at the top of the arena, away from the boys. He’d ordered Snoop’s girl to dress and leave immediately. Once alone, he’d casually wondered what Snoop’s opinion on some sort of a collective suicide might be. Something potent stirred into the evening meal; no one need know.
He’d been drinking heavily that night. And it had been the first time Snoop’s confidence in Maxwell had been shaken.
The old f*cker had passed out shortly afterwards and he’d had the boys take him back down and put him to bed. Next morning, it was like the conversation had never happened.
‘What you got in mind?’ Snoop asked warily.
Maxwell looked across the coffee table at him. ‘We’re moving.’
‘Moving?’
He nodded. ‘You heard me right, Edward.’
‘But . . . we got our shit sorted here, right, Chief?’
Maxwell shook his head. ‘No, our shit here, I’m afraid, is not sorted.’ He smiled. ‘You know that, Edward. Come on. You’re a smart lad, you know that just as well as me.’
‘We growin’ all types of shit out front and stuff.’ Even as he blurted that, Snoop knew it was empty bluster. What they were growing was nowhere near enough to feed them all. It padded out the tasteless gunk that was served up each day; it was definitely slowing down the rate at which they were eating their way through the countless pallets of tinned and dried food packs, stored down on the mezzanine floor. But it wasn’t enough to feed them.
‘Edward, I did another stock take a fortnight ago. It’s not good. We’ll have to start evicting people soon.’
Snoop was silent for a moment. ‘S’really that bad, man?’
Maxwell sighed. ‘Edward, you’ve been downstairs with me. You know what it’s like.’
Snoop nodded. A growing sea of empty wooden pallets, flattened cardboard boxes, tossed aside sheets of plastic wrapping. He hated going down there. He always emerged with a queasy sense of unease in his gut; as if the world’s future was measured by how much of the floor was still occupied by squat towers of untapped polythene-wrapped supplies. He let the Chief do the number-crunching, the worrying. The man had a plan, right?
‘We have about enough food to last into next year. Then we’ll be left with whatever’s being grown outside.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yes, shit. But that can’t be such a big surprise for you, Edward?’
He stroked his chin. ‘Didn’t think it was that bad, tha’s all.’
‘It’s not just the food; the fuel for the generators. It’s nearly all gone, Edward. There won’t be too many more party nights for our boys.’
‘But we got fuel in them barges out back, yeah?’
‘No, it’s an entirely different grade of diesel. You can’t pour that in, it’ll clog everything up.’
Snoop folded his arms unhappily. ‘Why the f*ck I learnin’ this shit now, man?’
Maxwell stared sharply at him. ‘Talk to me like that again and you’ll be out, Edward, do you understand?’
Snoop realised he was pushing his luck. He might be able to snap the man’s old wattled neck without any real effort but that would leave him in charge; leave him holding the baby . . .
. . . just when it needs its shit cleaned up.
‘Sorry, Chief.’
Through the double doors the boys roared. Someone must have scored again.
‘Look,’ said Maxwell, ‘we knew this day would eventually come, Edward. We’re lucky to have lasted this long. But here it is. And it will be bad. When the food and the generators run out, the boys will turn on you and I, then probably on each other. The workers will turn on the boys. We will end up like the other safety zones did. It won’t end up particularly well for anyone.’
‘The praetorians will be well angry, Chief. They believe you . . . you said the Zee was going to last for ever.’
‘They’re just f*cking children. What do you expect? They can’t think five minutes ahead, let alone worry about tomorrow, or next year.’
Snoop said nothing for a while. Maxwell was right. The boys were perfectly happy doing what they were told just as long as they had their smokes, their treats; just as long as they had access to the girls in their cattle shed. He tended not to venture down there much these days. It smelled of shit and stale sweat. More than that, he preferred to keep a little distance from the girls - the distance of authority; the cattle-shed girls were for his foot soldiers: the general got his pleasures elsewhere.
‘So you got a plan, Chief?’
Maxwell grinned. ‘Of course I do. When do I not have a plan, Edward?’
‘What?’
‘The new boys - Nathan and Jacob - they’ve come from a community that has access to fuel, Edward. Fuel on tap. They’re living on drilling rigs for f*ck’s sake. Do you understand what that means?’
Snoop nodded. ‘Sure, we can make more power.’
Maxwell smiled dismissively. ‘It’s much more than that. It’s the life blood that flows through a civilised world. When the last of our little stockpile runs out, and the floodlights go dark here . . .’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘We’ll all become cavemen again. It’s that simple. Just like those wild children . . . f*cking savages.’
Snoop didn’t need him to say any more. He’d seen those pale feral wraiths up close enough times. He’d seen the remains of their eating: dogs, cats, rats . . . and on one occasion the tattered remains of a human cadaver.
‘We’re going to the rigs, then?’
Maxwell nodded.
‘When?’
‘As soon as possible,’ replied Maxwell.
‘How soon?’
‘We should start preparing the day after tomorrow.’
Snoop’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. ‘What?’
‘You heard me right, lad. We need to start preparing. I’d say we’ve got another month of reliable summer weather, hopefully, and if we’re going to use those river barges, then we need the best weather we can get.’
‘But . . . ain’t those barge things just for rivers an’ shit?’
‘They’ll float just as well on the North Sea, so long as we’re not dealing with choppy weather. That’s why we need to get a move on. Autumn’s coming. We wait too much longer, then we’ll have to do this next year.’
Snoop considered that for a moment. ‘The boys won’t be happy leavin’ the dome behind. S’all they know.’
‘Those little thugs will do as you tell them. Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I’ll tell them the place we are heading to is tapping oil, that we’ll have power that will last us for ever. And we’ll bring along on the barges all the comforts the boys are used to - their games machines, the girls, the booze. There’ll be space enough for those things. And when we get settled there, they’ll be able to play the games and movies every night, not just once a fortnight.’
‘Yeah? For real?’
Maxwell smiled. ‘Yes, Edward, for real.’
Snoop grinned. ‘My boys’ll like that.’
‘Of course they will. And we’ll also have a smaller, more manageable population; a smaller kingdom, but at least one that doesn’t have a sell-by date printed on the side. Also, with limitless fuel, it means we can forage much further. Up and down the coast. It gives us a lot more scope.’
‘What about them workers, we leavin’ them behind?’
‘We’ll take a few with us, yes. The rest? Well, if the poor buggers can survive here on their flippin’ cabbages and onions, good for them, but they’ll not be my concern any more. The important thing is that we load up and slip away without them finding out, all right?’
‘Right.’
‘We’ll be nice and discreet. Don’t want a panic or a riot on our hands as we leave. So, we’ll load those barges up with the minimum of fuss. We don’t need to take everything, just what we need. We can always come back here later and pick up whatever goodies we left behind.’
‘Okay, Chief.’
‘Maybe you can move some workers into the arena area to help with the loading, and those will be the ones we take along with us. We keep them in the arena until we go.’
‘Y’know where these rigs are?’
‘Yes, I checked it on the map. Just a dozen or so miles offshore from a seaside town called Bracton. Thing is, we know this place is on some rigs, right? I have no bloody idea how big they are, or how tall they are. We may need to forage some ladders and ropes and grappling hooks from a hardware store and—’
‘We attackin’ it?’
Maxwell shrugged. ‘Ideally, we won’t need to. I don’t want us to have to storm these rigs. I don’t want a bloody battle if it can be helped. I don’t want to risk damaging these rigs. I just want us to arrive, say hello, come aboard and then once we’re on, calmly evict those we don’t want around. That’s why those two new boys are so important. They’re going to vouch for us . . . get us on so we don’t have to fight our way on.’
‘You think they’d do that?’
Maxwell shrugged. ‘They might if we treat them good enough. Make a fuss of them. Treat them like celebrities. We’re going to make them praetorians. So let’s give them a great initiation party, give them some booze, give them some blow and make sure they have a good time.’
Snoop grinned.
‘And, I think what we do is, we make them both your number twos. Give them some authority over the other praetorians.’
‘Shit,’ Snoop pulled a face. ‘Some of me boys won’t like that. Dizz-ee will f*ckin’ well throw a shoe, man.’
Maxwell shook his head. ‘Which boy is that - Lawrence Bolland?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The boy’s a big idiot. He’s only your number two because he’s the oldest, right?’
Snoop nodded. ‘F*cking wigger. I can handle him if he gets shitty.’
‘I’m sure you can. What about the rest of the lads?’
Snoop gave it some thought. ‘Nathan they like. They think he’s well-sick. But the other one? Jacob? His face don’t fit so well.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
Snoop shrugged. ‘Way too quiet, man . . . a loner. The other boys think he’s, like, stuck up.’
‘Stuck up how? Too posh? Too nerdy? Too white?’
‘He just don’t fit.’
‘Well, you’ll just have to embrace him, Edward. Give him your official stamp of approval tomorrow night. The boys will follow your lead. Just give those two lads a bloody good time, all right? Make ’em a part of the family.’
‘Sure.’
‘And if you can, make sure they try a bit of junk. You know? Won’t hurt if they start developing a bit of an appetite for that, too.’
‘Right.’
‘Okay, Edward, that’s all for now. I need to do some planning, make a list of what we’re taking along. You can talk to the troops and let them know about Nathan and Jacob. Party night can also be their initiation party. And why not sweeten the deal a bit. Let them know it’s double booze and blow rations for all of them. That should soothe any ruffled feathers.’
Snoop got up and made his way towards the double doors, feeling a growing fizz of excitement in his stomach. The Chief had a f*cking plan. The boys might grumble a bit at being uprooted, but he could keep them in line - even that twat Dizz-ee.
He was outside, walking up the sloping aisle to the arena when he realised already he had questions in his head that he should have asked. Questions like, how could he know there was going to be enough fuel to last them for ever on those rigs? Hadn’t that shit been running out or something? Wasn’t that why the world got totally f*cked in the first place?
He guessed Maxwell had a handle on that. The man certainly wasn’t a fool.