CHAPTER 70
10 years AC
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
Maxwell watched the last of the workers being herded aboard the third barge - the end of the daisy chain; if it looked like they were running tight on fuel, or the load was simply burning too much diesel, they could easily just unhook the rearmost barge and let it drift. There were no supplies on that barge to lose, none at all; just a hundred of those malnourished scarecrows standing cheek by jowl in the hold. And if they had to cast them adrift it wouldn’t be the end of the world, they’d be able to recruit more workers from amongst those people living on that rig.
Four hundred-and-something of them living on there, that’s what the dead boy had said, wasn’t it? Depending on how much food was being grown there - if there was only enough to sustain four hundred-and-something, then he’d have to jettison that sorry-looking lot in the third barge anyway.
Better they were all on the last barge anyway - those workers might take it into their heads to try overpowering the dozen or so praetorians he was going to put on there with them. Since the breakout the night before last of a group of them - that officer, Brooks, and his comrades - news had seemed to spread amongst the peasants that Maxwell and his boys were packing up and leaving. The scheduled work routines had broken down. This morning a worried crowd had amassed in the entrance foyer just in front of the turnstiles into the arena. Some of the workers had attempted to make their way around the outside of the dome along the narrow quayside towards the rear to see what was happening back there. His boys had fired their guns into them, leaving several dozen bodies and the rest scattering back the way they’d come.
More of the workers had managed to push their way into the arena and down to the mezzanine floor to help themselves to the last few stacks of supplies; pallets they’d not managed to find space for aboard the second barge.
Well, you’re going to be disappointed, folks. There ain’t a lot left.
It had been something of a hectic morning so far.
The tugboat’s diesel engine chugged noisily, transmitting a thudding vibration that rattled through the small vessel’s deck, through his feet. The tug bobbed on the choppy water like a stir-crazy dog on a leash as the last dozen workers shuffled across the boarding plank and down into the third barge’s hold.
‘That’s it I think, Chief,’ said Snoop.
‘Thank you, Edward.’
The late-afternoon sun burned off the glass and steel sides of the distant office towers of Canary Wharf. He’d so very much wanted to get off at first light this morning without a fuss . . . without having to post cordons of guards, without having to waste valuable rounds of ammo keeping them back. And, of course, to make a day’s travel whilst the weather looked so calm. But wheeling the last of the stacked pallets of food and supplies up from the mezzanine, and the comforts and gadgets and perks the boys enjoyed and expected to bring with them, had taken much, much longer than he’d anticipated.
‘Your little trollops are all on?’
‘Yeah, we got all our girls,’ replied Snoop.
He spotted the last of his boys backing out of the north-east entrance, some personal possessions under their arms. Those that had been guarding the narrow quay around the sides doubled back swiftly, keen not to be left behind.
Snoop cocked an anxious eyebrow. ‘Chief? We ready?’
‘Yes. Let’s not waste another bloody second.’
Snoop rapped the helm with his knuckles. ‘Chief says go, Jeff.’
Jeff had once been a truck driver. Said he could handle boats, too. He’d piloted the tug up the Thames several years ago when Flight Lieutenant Brooks and his merry men had been sent to reconnoitre the river up to Kingston. He’d managed not to wrap the thing around a bridge support or end up stuck on a silt bank. Jeff seemed to know what he was doing.
‘Right, here we go.’ With a hand that was all knuckles, veins and fading tattoos, he eased the throttle forward.
The diesel engine dropped a note and the tug lurched subtly as the engine engaged. At first Maxwell wondered whether they’d overestimated what this small ugly vessel could pull as it seemed to make no headway at all, the weed-tufted concrete quay beside them showing no sign of receding.
The engine chugged laboriously for a moment, but slowly the tug began to move.
‘Shit, thought we were stuck,’ said Snoop.
With several feet of slapping water between them and the quay, Maxwell finally let slip a barely audible sigh of relief, just as several dozen of the more foolhardy workers emerged out of the rear entrance of the dome to stand on the quayside and watch them pull away. A couple of his boys fired off opportunistic shots in their direction and the emerging crowd dived to the ground amidst the weeds.
Maxwell gave Snoop a glance. ‘Tell those f*cking idiots not to waste their ammo.’
Snoop nodded and promptly left the cockpit.
As the tug strained and groaned and the train of one tug and three barges slowly eased away from the quay, Maxwell smiled grimly.
Good bloody riddance.
For the last ten years of his life this drab and increasingly threadbare over-sized circus tent had been his millstone. Many was the night he’d wondered whether the smartest thing he could’ve done was let everyone in on the first night of the crash and let all of those poor bastards get on with it. If they wanted to end up like Wembley Stadium and tearing each other apart for tins of corned beef and bottles of water twelve weeks in, they could be his bloody guests. He could quite easily have delegated the nightmare to Brooks to handle, or one of the Cobra-appointed civilian safety-zone assistants and just walked out the front and gone back home to his South Bank apartment, emptied his drinks cabinet and then emptied his gun. But he’d decided to stay and do the dutiful thing, to be the one to make all the hard decisions these last ten years.
The quayside had sluggishly slipped far enough away for Jeff to spin the wheel and steer the tugboat out towards the middle of the Thames.
Good riddance to all of it.
Those poor bastards left behind probably weren’t going to make it; weakened by months, years, of malnourishment, many of them already falling prey to ailments due to vitamin and protein deficiencies of one kind or another. Anybody with half a wit should have known that the acres of parking tarmac they’d managed to cultivate out at the front was little more than an exercise in window-dressing; smoke and mirrors. What they were growing was just about enough to keep half of them going a while longer - but nothing there that would keep them going through winter.
They were all going to die.
Or maybe they’d end up like those wild children; eating rats, dogs. Eating each other.
He watched the warm afternoon sunlight play across the dome and wondered what moronic government pencil-necks had thought it a bright idea to locate any of the zones in the middle of a city. For that matter, what moronic government pencil-necks had thought the global oil crash would be nothing more than a three-month-long economic crisis that could be more than catered for by setting up a couple of dozen over-sized soup kitchens.
So obvious now . . . Of course, armed with hindsight, he admitted that the old world had been heading towards something like that; an end-of-times event. Not just a twelve-week-f*cking-crisis, but The End. He remembered an economist once calling it ‘Petri dish economics’ - where a bacteria feeds on a growth solution, expanding to fill its grow space and finally, upon consuming the last of the free food, it turns on itself.
Eats itself.
He looked back at the pale faces of the workers, gathering in ever larger numbers on the receding quayside, and realised all he’d achieved these last ten years was to duplicate the old world on a much smaller scale; a twenty-acre Petri dish.
The boat chugged heavily and slowly out into the middle of the Thames. Ahead, across the foredeck and the bobbing, excited heads of his boys, he could see the bend in the river, and in the distance the row of shell-like hoods of the Thames barrier.
Nathan watched London drift slowly past them. It reminded him of a riverboat tour of the Thames he and his cousins, mum and auntie had once been on. A warm day like today, ice-cream dripping onto his fist and pigeons pestering them.
From out here in the middle of the river, London really seemed to look no different to the way it had then. The buildings still stood. The tower blocks of Canary Wharf still glinted and shimmered proudly. This far away from the river’s edge, all the small telltale details of dead London were lost; the weeds, the cracks, the broken windows, the overgrown lawns, the rusting cars, the cluttered streets. From where he stood on the stubby aft of the tugboat, Nathan imagined he was nine years old again as the vessel strained its way past Victoria Docks. London bustling in the distance.
He spotted the roof of the ExCel Centre beyond a row of giant freight cranes and dockside warehouses and shuddered at the memory of what had happened inside. He wondered if Leona actually did manage to escape, or whether - the thought turned his stomach - her bones had been added to that pile.
Coming to London had been a mistake. A huge mistake. But he knew they’d had to do it. Not knowing for sure, one way or the other, would have gnawed away at him and Jacob until they finally couldn’t stand it any more and had to go see.
He shook his head sadly. Both he and Jake had thought the dome was nirvana. The beginning of the future; an epicentre of recovery and hope. But, despite all the lights, the arcade machines, the pounding music of party nights, he realised it wasn’t a beginning, it was an end. It was denial, a last blast party with whatever could be scooped together out of the ruins.
He looked around at the other boys stretched out amongst the coils of diesel-stinking rope; all of them excited at their brand new adventure, smoking their cigarettes, stroking their guns with fingers heavy with gold.
It’s like a game to them. Like a computer game. Like ‘Grand Theft Auto’.
Here they were off to some place they knew absolutely nothing about other than Snoop had promised them it would have endless electricity and lots of women to play with. A new playground for them. A new party to go to. And as long as there was somebody coming along who was going to make sure there’d be booze and smokes they seemed content.
What the f*ck have I done?
They were all heading to a place he’d called home. Where his mum lived. Where other people whom he’d considered extended family lived. And they were going to have a party there. Oh, yes, it was going to be a party. He could imagine any one of these boys, fired up with excitement, pissed or stoned, cornering his mum in some small cabin . . . his mum pleading.
Nathan felt something in his chest flip and turn with guilt, suddenly realised guilt.
The f*ck have I done?
The cold sick feeling spread down into his stomach and started to churn there. He realised Snoop had talked him into believing this was a friendly visit; a pooling of resources, a combining of personnel. And he’d hinted, hadn’t he? Hinted that the rigs would be a new kingdom, under their shared rule. Maxwell ousted and the praetorians in charge with Snoop and him as kings. These boys had been promised someplace even better than the dome . . . and they were going to have it.
‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered under his breath. ‘Oh, shit.’