CHAPTER 81
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
‘I missed up here,’ said Leona. They both listened to the rustle of leaves, soothing in the darkness. The moon peeped out at them, painting the helipad a perfect blue momentarily before hiding away again behind a relay race of scudding clouds, all racing each other to reach the distant shore first.
‘How did our old house look?’ asked Jenny.
‘Just as we left it, I suppose. We got weeds growing in the lounge. Oh, and the lawn needs mowing.’
Jenny laughed softly.
‘It’s not our home any more, Mum. It doesn’t feel like that any more. It’s just a place we used to live.’ She plucked at her lips thoughtfully. ‘I thought going back there, I was going home. I thought that’s where I wanted to be. With Hannah gone it seemed pointless struggling on. I just wanted to curl up in my bedroom and, you know . . . ?’
‘I know,’ she replied squeezing her daughter’s hand.
‘But it’s not our home any more.’ Just an empty house with broken windows and damp curls of wallpaper and leaves in the hallway.
‘Is . . . ?’
‘Is Dad still there?’
Jenny nodded.
‘Yes, he is.’
The night was warm, even with the breeze. The sea hissed and splashed nearly one hundred and eighty feet below, bumping gently against the platform legs like some giant turning over in its sleep.
‘Tell me, Lee, how did Jacob die?’
‘Defending me, Mum.’ She could have described her small stifling cell, the smell of shit, the sounds coming through the walls, the night after night of fighting off that scrawny bastard who wanted to tame her, to make her his plaything. All unnecessary details.
‘He was protecting me from another boy.’ She swallowed, pinching at her lips again. ‘He died just like Dad died.’
She felt her mother’s shoulders gently shaking. It might have been easier to change the subject, move on, but Mum needed to hear what she had to say.
‘I think, in some way . . . I think Jake was proud? I dunno, like he figured Dad was watching over us and giving him the thumbs up. I think he died sort of knowing Dad was pleased with him.’ Leona wiped her damp cheek on the back her hand. ‘I don’t know . . . that sounds silly doesn’t it?’
Jenny shook her head. ‘No it doesn’t, Lee. I sometimes think he is there, watching us, somehow.’
‘So maybe they both are now?’
‘Maybe,’ Jenny smiled, ‘maybe . . . all three of them.’
Leona suddenly felt her own fa?ade slipping. Oh, screw it . . . cry if you want, girl.
She did. They both did, for Jacob, for Hannah, for Dad. For quite a while.
Presently, Jenny wiped her nose on her cardigan. ‘Oh, hark at us defenceless wimpy, weepy women.’
‘Mum?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m so proud of you. You’re not some wimpy, weepy woman. You’ve been a wall, protecting me and Jake, and Hannah. A solid wall. For all the others here, too. Even those ungrateful bitches who turned against you. You made this place happen. You kept us safe.’
Jenny said nothing. Not for a while. Finally she sighed. ‘I am so tired, though.’
‘I know. So am I.’ Leona reached out and hugged her mother. ‘You and me, like two peas in a pod.’ Both grieving mothers. She left that unsaid. Didn’t need to be said. Mum knew what she meant.
Jenny cleared her throat, blew her nose. ‘Those men you brought with you seem like decent types.’
Leona watched as the moon cleared a thin skein of a combed-out cloud. ‘Yeah, I think they are.’
‘Particularly Adam?’
Leona snorted. ‘Oh, come on.’
‘What? He seems quite nice now he’s shaved that awful beard off.’
‘And more your age than mine, Mum.’
‘How old is he?’
She thought about it. ‘I think he said he was twenty-nine when the crash happened.’
‘Thirty-nine, then.’ Jenny grinned. ‘Now, if I was ten years younger . . .’
Leona shrugged. ‘Or if I was ten years older . . .’
They both laughed. It felt good; like gulping fridge-cold lemonade on a hot summer’s day. Wasn’t even that funny, but still, it didn’t stop them.
‘It’s much quieter, ain’t it?’
Adam nodded. Even when it wasn’t a party night back at the dome, those boys made a racket arsing about; shrieking, singing tunelessly, cackling like hyenas. He certainly didn’t miss any of that.
‘Nice an’ f*ckin’ peaceful,’ added Walfield.
They gazed out at the moonlit sea; dark swells that bobbed and dropped gently; like a micro mountain range fast-forwarding through geological eras.
The darkness on the rigs was total. It had been Adam’s suggestion; tonight, and every night for the foreseeable future, no oil lamps, no candles, nothing after dark. Nothing that could give them away. No point of light guiding Maxwell and his boys in if they chose to make their approach after dark.
Murmurs of conversation drifted across the restless fidgeting sea from the other platforms. There were people on lookout duty on each platform, looking north, east, south and west. But it was this one at the end - the drilling platform - that was the most vulnerable. Its spider deck was the closest to the water, more often than not catching the tips of larger swells when the sea was in a spirited mood.
Adam silently scanned the sea, looking for the telltale sign of a faint grey skirt of suds amidst the shifting black hillocks. The last twenty-four hours had been busy. There were now little ammunition piles of rusting bolts and nuts and rivets set along the perimeter of the main deck of each platform at regular intervals. A number of women had been busy with needles, threads and scissors making hand-held catapults and slings from lengths of bungee rope, and - believe it or not - the cups of bras. Others had made an array of clubs and spears and cloth-wrapped handles on a number of cutting weapons fashioned from jagged strips of aluminium sheeting. Then there were their eight firearms; the five SA80s they’d taken from the boys and the three remaining assorted guns this community had been relying on for the last five years.
There was a plan of sorts. Adam could only guess that Maxwell would try for the lowest platform first and, with that bridgehead taken, move down the row attempting to take the production platform next, then the secondary compression platform, the accommodation platform, and then off to the left of that, the primary compression platform. Hopefully, if they threw everything they had at them before they could get a toehold on the drilling platform’s spider deck, the boys would think better of the idea, turn tail and sail away. That’s what Adam was hoping; the first sight of one of their own lying dead, they were going to bolt like rabbits. Failing that, though, if they got on, then with each of those hundred-foot-long walkways, there was another chokepoint on which they could hold them back. He doubted whether a single nut or bolt propelled from the cup of one of their bras was actually going to find a target, but with the air around them whistling with projectiles, perhaps Maxwell’s boys might decide these rigs weren’t such a soft target.
There was a football horn used to summon people for their meal sittings. That was going to be their battle horn. One honk meant everyone on the first platform was to retire across the walkway to the second. Two honks was the sign to retreat to the next. Three honks, the next . . . and so on. A simple plan. But simple was always best.
‘Danny?’
‘Yeah?’ replied Walfield.
Adam looked at him, caught the glint of his eyes in the moonlight. ‘Reckon we’re going to be able to hold them off?’
Walfield sucked his teeth like a builder giving an estimate. ‘Dunno, maybe. It’s a bit of a bastard of a place to try an’ take under fire, to be fair. I guess it depends how much those little bastards really want it.’
‘Maxwell won’t go back to the Zone. He knows the Zone hasn’t got a future. He knows he’s got to take this place. That or face a mutiny.’
Walfield shrugged. ‘His boys might not know that. They’re a pretty stupid bunch, the lot of them. Maybe they’re thinking this is just some bloody raiding trip.’
‘If I was in his shoes I’d tell them. Tell them this isn’t just a raid for booty. This is their survival. Take this place or face starving.’
Walfield whistled softly. ‘Them boys’re too f*ckin’ stupid to explain things to. I reckon he won’t have told ’em anything. They’ll just be thinkin’ it’s a lark. A day out.’
They leaned against the railings in silence for a while, savouring the fresh salty breeze. They heard Bushey fart on the other side of the platform and Harry’s dirty Sid James cackle. Pair of bloody idiots.
‘And that’s how you charm the ladies,’ said Adam. ‘They do love a man who can hold a tune.’
They listened to the soft rustle of leaves above and below them, and the thump and wallow of the sea. Adam scanned the dark horizon, a mottled quilt of drifting moonlight and shifting shadows.
‘They’re something, though, aren’t they?’ said Walfield after a while.
‘What?’
‘Mrs and Miss Sutherland. Tough ladies.’
Adam nodded. Jennifer Sutherland with that tomboyish short brown hair, there was something of a GI Jane look to her, what with the khaki pants and the scarring down her cheek and neck. Tough. Very tough. She’d had to be.
Leona, on the other hand, was a puzzle. She seemed both vulnerable and strong. She was fragile like a vase with a handle broken off and glued back on again; never quite as fixed as it once was. But there was something about her, an inner strength she seemed to be finding. He realised both of them, mother and daughter, were women he might find himself putting on a pedestal, idolising even, if he wasn’t mindful of that.
He shook his head. Now really wasn’t the time to start thinking that sort of thing. In the old world, he suspected neither of them would have looked twice at him anyway.
Harry’s voice broke the silence, echoing across the flat deck.
‘Hey!! Shit!! There’s something out there!!!’