CHAPTER 80
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
I look at this place and I see something very different to the dome. I don’t see floodlights piercing the night sky. Instead I see candles made from animal fat. I don’t see London’s lifeless horizon of glass tower blocks. Instead I see the North Sea. I don’t hear the thudding beat of a boom-box, I hear the soft murmur of the tide. In the evenings I hear the strumming of a guitar, snatches of conversation from open portholes, the giggle of children’s voices.
And chickens, lots of the stupid little things.
What I see when I look around is a time before the oil age, before the steam age, even. This is what they’ve built out here, a life that I guess wouldn’t look out of place in the middle ages. Minus the ignorance, minus the superstitions, minus the witch burnings.
Who would have thought you could actually turn five rusting gas platforms into a self-sustaining village? They managed it - Jennifer Sutherland and her family and followers.
I used to miss the pre-crash world with its conveniences and distractions. I used to miss a million and one little things during those years we were at the dome. But now I’ve seen this place, I don’t miss that dead world any more. I think this is what the future should look like. Not these ugly rigs, but the plants, the chickens, the animal-fat candles. Life without taking endlessly.
There were a few painful days after we arrived - bridges needed to be rebuilt. These people were so utterly divided by that mad bastard. About a third of them had completely bought into his preaching and another third had joined him, not wanting to be left in the minority. I wonder, if we’d not arrived when we did, whether the first two thirds might eventually have turned on the last - the non-believers.
Mankind has plenty of form with that sort of thing.
There are wounds that are going to take years to heal. A lot of work for Jenny Sutherland. There was also the news that her lad was gone. Truth be told, I think it hasn’t sunk in yet, or maybe she’d come to terms with never seeing either of them again and to have at least one of her children back was a blessing.
There was also news for the big woman, what’s her name? Martha. News that her son is with Maxwell’s little army. That has certainly focused minds to pull together again: the knowledge that something worse than the mad priest is out there and will turn up one day soon.
I look at both the Sutherland women and I’m amazed at their bloody fortitude. Mother and daughter, natural survivors . . . tough buggers, the pair of them. It does make me wonder whether true ‘toughness’, ‘true grit’ isn’t the size of the muscles you can bench-press out of your body, or how many miles you can jog with eighty pounds of field kit strapped to your back, or how big a gun you can hold in your hands.
I think it’s in how much crap you can endure, how much brutality you’re on the receiving end of and yet still keep your humanity.
In a world like this with no laws, no charter of human rights, it’s the women who suffer. It’s the women who learn what it is to be tough, not the men.
Adam Brooks
005
‘. . . because you never listened to anyone,’ said Tami Gupta. ‘That is the truth, my dear. I am sorry to say that.’
The mess erupted with a chorus of voices. Most of them agreeing with the woman. The chairs and tables had been cleared away to allow as many people in as possible. Pretty much everyone was here. Those unable to fit in the mess stood amongst the rows of preparation surfaces in the galley, sat on the serving counter, the large roller-shutter fully retracted to make it more like one large meeting room. There were even people crowded on the gantry outside, and sitting on the steps all the way down to the accommodation module’s first floor; mostly children, more likely to find the ‘town hall meeting’ somewhat boring.
‘You know I’m very fond of you, Jenny. I say this because it needs to be said. In the early days, when there was just the few of us, it was right that we had someone take charge. And I think we would never have managed without you making the decisions. Perhaps we would never have settled here. We needed you.’
Tami, seated in the chair next to Jenny, behind the one table they’d not stacked out of the way, reached a hand out to her friend. ‘I love you like a sister, Jenny, but we now need to have some sort of a democracy. There are too many people with different opinions. Too many people whispering because their voice is not heard.’ Tami glanced pointedly at Alice Harton. ‘That is how that man came between us. Like an infection from a simple cut, he exploited the discontent . . . the whispering.’
Jenny sat still and looked down at her hands. ‘Maybe . . .’ she began, then paused. Her words quietened the hubbub in the mess. They awaited more from her. ‘Maybe it’s time, then.’ She looked up. ‘I am so bloody tired of it.’
Leona, sitting on her other side, nodded. ‘We know, Mum.’
‘I suppose I just never trusted anyone else,’ she continued. ‘I promised Andy to take care of you both and I just couldn’t put us in a situation where someone else was deciding your fate.’ She sucked in a breath, looking up from her twisting hands at the women and men crammed into the room. ‘But things are different now, aren’t they?’
There were murmurs of assent, nodding heads.
‘I’ll stand down then and we’ll vote on someone new.’
A spattering of applause rippled through them. But Adam, sitting at the end of the table, raised his hand. The applause quickly faded away.
‘But maybe not right now, Mrs Sutherland?’
There were a few muted giggles at the man’s formality.
Jenny offered him a smile. ‘Jenny . . . that’s what everyone calls me, Jenny. All right, Flight Lieutenant Brooks?’
‘All right, Jenny.’ Adam tipped his head in acknowledgment. ‘But this election can’t be now. Not until we’re done with Maxwell.’
‘He’s right,’ said Leona. ‘They’ll be on their way. In fact, I’m surprised we beat them back here.’
‘How big is this army?’ someone called through from the galley.
Adam shook his head. ‘Army’s the wrong word for them. They’re not proper soldiers. They’re boys with guns. About a hundred of them.’
A ripple of gasps.
‘You said a hundred?’
‘They all have guns?’
Adam nodded.
The room filled with voices. It was Leona who raised her hands to quieten them this time. ‘But they’re boys,’ she said. ‘No more than that. They’ve never fought in a battle, they’ve never had guns fire back at them. They’re children.’ She looked at Adam. ‘At the first sight of their own blood they’ll run, right?’
He nodded. ‘They’re green, untested. The only warfare they’ve experienced is on their games machines.’
‘What about you?’ asked Bill Laithwaite. ‘Are you green?’
Adam glanced at Walfield and the other two, leaning against the back wall. ‘Danny?’
Walfield grinned. ‘Three f*ckin’ tours back-to-back providing perimeter security in and around Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Mostly on the receiving end of mortar and rocket fire.’ He shrugged. ‘We had a few toe-to-toe stand-offs. The local Pashtuns fired smarter than the Taliban-imports ever did. An’ I’m pretty f*ckin’ sure both will fire much better than those boys will.’
‘We also have the advantage of the defensive position,’ added Adam, looking through the faces for one in particular. He found Martha. ‘If you hadn’t thrown us the rope ladder, miss, we’d have been unable to get on your rig. They may come with ropes and hooks and have to scramble up to those lowest decks . . . what do you call them?’
‘Spider decks,’ said Jenny.
‘If they’ve brought ropes and hooks, then they’ll have to toss and secure ’em under fire. That’s not going to be easy. Not even for experienced soldiers.’
‘But we’ve only got nine guns, sir,’ said Bushey.
Leona cut in. ‘So? We can make other weapons, can’t we? On the chicken deck there are rooms full of iron rivets and bolts, some of them as big as my hand. We can throw those down at them. There are lengths of bungee cable we could make slingshots or catapults from.’
Adam grinned back at Bushey. ‘Hear that? What she said.’
‘Or we could leave now, whilst there’s still time,’ said William. Heads turned towards him. ‘I’m serious,’ he added. ‘I’m . . . I’ve never fired a gun. I’m not really soldier material.’
Leona shrugged. ‘Yes, or we could leave now. But if we did? If we all left now? I don’t think there’s enough food left ashore to forage - not for four hundred and fifty mouths. We’ll go hungry.’
‘And the fact is Maxwell’s boys might attack us ashore anyway,’ said Adam. ‘Maxwell’s made them dangerous, predatory . . . do you understand what I mean by that?’ Not many of them seemed to. ‘You’re mostly women. Those boys have come for that as much as anything else.’
A ripple of whispers across the room.
‘We can’t let them on,’ said Leona.
‘We’ll have much better odds fighting them here,’ said Adam.
‘Perhaps this Maxwell is coming in peace?’ said Rebecca. ‘Is that possible? Could he be coming in peace? Maybe planning to co-operate with us?’
Adam and Leona looked at each other.
Adam shrugged. ‘Maxwell’s a power junky. If he comes he’ll want one thing only; to be in charge. That’s why he created his boys’ army and called them his praetorians. It was all about prolonging his authority at the dome . . . at any cost.’
‘If he did take charge here,’ added Leona, ‘his boys would be in charge. And the women would have to . . . submit.’ The word spelled out more than enough without her having to qualify what she’d meant by it.
‘Abandoning the rigs and running ashore,’ said Tami, ‘does sound like a very bad idea. But after this is done, going ashore is what we will eventually do?’
‘Eventually,’ said Jenny guardedly.
‘We could move now if it wasn’t for Maxwell,’ said Adam.
‘Is it really safe to do this yet?’ asked Sophie Yun. Her sisters nodded at the question being asked.
Leona nodded. ‘Yes, Sophie.’ She turned to her left. ‘It’s finally safe, Mum. It’s not the same place we ran from. Maxwell’s praetorians are the last of the men with guns.’
‘Did you see others ashore?’
‘A few. There’re a few people out there,’ replied Leona. She recalled those people on the motorway; a mute crowd of the hungry. Not menace in their eyes, just lingering hope that someone, somewhere, had an idea how to reboot this world.
‘If we start something ashore, we need to take our time about it, a phased migration. We prepare, plant, grow . . . those people still out there will come. They won’t take it from us, they’ll join us.’
The room was silent.
‘I think - no, I’m certain - we’re probably the largest group left in Britain still managing to make a go of it. Do you see? The community we build ashore, the way we set it up, the rules and values we agree on now, well, those things will set the tone for our future.’ She smiled. It was a hopeful smile, the ghost of which seemed to spread across the mess table to those standing in the room.
‘We’ll be deciding how the future is going to look . . . in a way.’
A soft breeze tickled through the portholes and filled the moment with a portentous whisper.
Jenny nodded. ‘The future.’ She pulled herself wearily out of her chair and met the eyes of those that had deserted her for Latoc as well as the few who had remained loyal. ‘So maybe then, heading ashore . . . this should be the first thing we vote on. What does everyone think?’
Heads nodded silently.
‘All right. This is how it is. We stay here and fight . . . let me see your hands for that.’
One or two at first, then others, encouraged by that, joined. Soon the room’s low ceiling was almost held aloft by a sea of hands. It appeared to be almost unanimous.
‘Afterwards, we make our plans to move back ashore. Hands for that?’
The last few unraised hands appeared.
Leona looked at her mother and thought she saw the clearly defined angle of her shoulders droop ever so slightly beneath her thin cardigan. She knew that gesture so well, she’d seen it so many times before back in the old days; after a long grocery shop when the plastic bags were off-loaded on the kitchen counter and she’d let out a sigh. It wasn’t the sagging shoulders of someone defeated, it was relief.
If that gesture of hers had words it would be this: Job’s done.