Afterlight

CHAPTER 84
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea



With no one firing right now, the only light was coming from the moon. Adam squinted to see what was going on on the far end of the walkway.
‘See anything?’ asked Leona, crouched beside him.
‘Those buggers are up to something, no doubt.’
His gaze swept either side of the far end of the walkway. He could see the occasional head popping up from behind cover and ducking down again.
He dropped back, resting against an exhaust bell. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed. ‘Sorry, we screwed up.’
Jenny hunkered down beside him. She pressed her lips together and smiled. ‘Don’t be, you’ve done all you could.’
Leona was still studying the far side. She couldn’t see anything now that the firing had ceased, just flitting silver moonlight across the deck, cabins and pipes. ‘They seem totally fearless,’ she uttered. ‘Afraid of nothing.’
‘They’re boys, it’s all just a big game to them,’ replied Adam.
‘They remind me of the gangs that were partying in London. Were you in London during the week of the crash?’
‘I was. We were manning the dome’s perimeter.’
‘You must have seen your share of the riots?’
‘Oh yeah . . . we saw a lot of that.’
‘I still have nightmares,’ said Leona. ‘Teenage boys stabbing, shooting, raping.’ She nodded. ‘You’re right, it was some sort of a game to them . . . like some bloody computer game.’
‘Young men never change. Two powerful ingredients at work inside them: the arrogance of youth and testosterone. Mix those two with a dose of anarchy, and yeah, they’ll want to party.’
‘Party . . . part-eee,’ Leona whispered and shuddered.
‘Truth is, they’re still just boys,’ he continued. ‘Just boys. If you can get them to shut up and sit still for five minutes and actually listen to you, they quickly become children again.’
Leona made a face. ‘Yeah, right.’
‘Seriously, Leona. They’re just kids. You forget, I know them. I’ve lived with them for years. They’re children. It’s just that that crazy twat Maxwell has indoctrinated them into thinking they’re super-soldiers.’
‘Right,’ said Jenny. ‘Just kids. They just need someone to pull their trousers down and smack their legs.’
Adam laughed. ‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe we should—’
‘SIR!’ it was Bushey. ‘There’s something on the walkway!’
Adam grabbed his gun and poked his head above the locker. He could see movement, something wobbling towards them. He could hear a tinny rattling now, getting louder.
‘Torch! Someone get a torch on it!’
Walfield snapped one on and aimed it down inside the wire cage of the walkway.
‘F*ck!! That’s . . . that’s Harry!!’
Adam squinted. It was. It was Harry, straddling what looked like a shopping trolley. ‘HARRY?’ shouted Bushey. ‘Mate? You all right?’
Rattling closer to them, Adam could see that he wasn’t riding it; he was stuffed onto the shopping trolley like some home-made Guy Fawkes, tied on. Clearly dead. He was perched on top of another body. And another.
‘He’s already dead!’ said Adam.
The trolley was halfway across now, and craning his neck to look down the length of the walkway’s cage he could just about see around the side of the shopping trolley; dozens of legs and bobbing orange jackets crouched stealthily behind it, trailing all the way back to the far side of the walkway.
Oh shit-shit-shit.
‘It’s a shield. They’re right behind it. FIRE!!’
Bushey turned to him. ‘It’s Harry! We can’t—’
‘He’s dead already! FIRE!!’
Walfield opened up on the trolley, his bullets thudding into the stacked corpses. Harry’s body rocked lifelessly as puffs of crimson and shreds of shirt erupted from his chest. From either side of the walkway, those armed with catapults launched their projectiles at the wire caging. Most of their nuts and bolts rattled off the side and disappeared down into the void, but some whizzed through the grilles, some even finding targets.
Adam aimed down the gap between the loaded trolley and the sides of the walkway cage, and fired off three or four single shots. His bullets found a shin, shattering it, causing a boy to shriek and drop down onto all fours.
But the trolley was still coming and they were nearly all the way across.
‘Bushey!’
‘Sir?’
‘Sound the horn!’
Bushey picked up the horn and pressed the trigger. Compressed air made it bark deafeningly, right next to Adam’s ear. Two long blasts.
‘EVERYONE BACK!’ screamed Jenny. ‘BACK TO THE NEXT PLATFORM!! HURRY!!’
They scrambled to their feet, a panicking flood-tide of women and a few old men, streaming back between the Portakabins and obstacles, legs tangling with pipes and each other as they raced towards the next walkway and the temporary safety of the far side.
The night lit up with muzzle flashes once more as the boys yet to file onto the walkway behind the rattling supermarket trolley fired across from the drilling platform.
Adam could see the trolley was nearly at the exit and the boys were going to spill out of the wire cage onto the deck. If they stayed put a moment longer, they were in danger of being overrun.
‘Danny! Bushey!’
Both men turned to look at him.
‘Fallback positions on the far side of the deck, now! We’ll buy Jenny’s people time to clear the walkway then follow them. Got it?’
They nodded.
‘Let’s go!’
They scrambled to their feet, abandoning their positions on the edge of the deck either side of the walkway cage and retreating several dozen yards back until they found new covered positions.
‘F*ck it! Stop here!’ shouted Adam. He dropped down onto one knee behind the fat curve of an exhaust pipe. ‘We can take them as they emerge.’
The other two nodded and dropped to their knees behind cover.
A moment later the shopping trolley, with Harry’s corpse lolling lifelessly on top of it, rattled out of the cage and onto the deck, orange-jacketed praetorians spilling out after it.
Adam, Walfield and Bushey fired targeted double taps that picked off the first four of them emerging from the cage. The rest of them spilled out in their wake, diving for cover and firing back at them; full-clip volleys unaimed, yet in their general direction, which had them ducking down out of sight as showers of sparks cascaded off the metalwork and deck clutter around them.
And even more of them were streaming out of the walkway cage as they cowered.
Shit.
Adam popped up and fired three more shots to slow them down. Returning fire zeroed in on his muzzle flash. Flakes of rusting metal and paint stung his cheeks. He poked his gun over the top and fired the last four rounds in his clip blind. Then the gun was clacking on empty.
One more clip, then I’m down to firing bolts from a bloody bra-cup catapult.
He pulled the last ammo clip out of the thigh pocket of his khakis and rammed it home.
‘Danny, Bushey . . . new position. Far side of the deck where the walkway—’
Walfield was gone; splayed out on the deck several yards from him with a sizeable chunk of his head missing; one foot lazily twitching from side to side as if he was enjoying some tune over an iPod.
Bushey was staring down at him.
‘Come on, we’re going!’
He grabbed the lance corporal’s arm and tugged him to follow. They rounded the main process control cabin, weaving their way through a row of water butts, and stumbling through several rows of bamboo tepees up which a wall of beans had done a good job of climbing. Adam’s legs tangled with something and he went head over heels amongst them.
Bushey pulled him up roughly. On his feet again, they left the clatter of bamboo poles behind them and vaulted over a waist-high junction box, finally reaching open deck. Ahead of them was the walkway; the last few people pushing each other to get into the wire tunnel. He tried to see whether either of the Sutherland women were amongst them, but the moon showed him little more than a press of dark bodies stretched out along the walkway.
‘Here!’ said Adam. ‘Here. We’ll have to slow ’em down again here.’
Bushey nodded, found himself a niche of cover to squeeze into and readied his aim on the way they’d just come, around the right side of the platform’s central building module.
Adam did likewise and set his aim up on the left hand of the module. Already, he could hear the boys coming. He could hear jeering voices, hoots of delight. Getting closer . . . And the flickering glow of several flashlights arcing like light sabres amongst the pipes, gantries, junctions boxes, exhaust stacks.
‘You ready?’
Bushey nodded.
‘Just fire enough to make ’em duck for cover. Then we’ll scarper, too, okay?’
Bushey licked dry lips and pressed out a grim smile. ‘Right-o, sir.’
Adam aimed down the trembling sights of his assault rifle, waiting for the flash of enough orange jackets to appear to make his shots count.
Bollocks, I f*cked this up.
He’d been banking on the boys turning tail and rabbiting at the first exchange of gunfire. Maxwell must have got them totally stoked up somehow, or got them all stoned on coke or something. Or maybe he was right. Maybe the boys really were convinced this was just one big computer game; that a shot landing home wasn’t actually going to hurt them.
‘Sir!’
‘I see ’em. I see ’em!’ replied Adam.
He caught the pale flicker of a baseball cap, a head poking around the corner of the module to check the lie of the land ahead, then ducking back. He saw more heads now, emerging from the maze of buildings, pipes and exhaust bells. Cautious steps forward towards the open area of deck and the walkway.
Bushey fired first. Half a dozen quick shots that appeared to find one of the boys. Adam joined in and all the heads and shoulders dived quickly out of sight.
A moment later return fire sputtered out from a dozen places, several shots whistling up the walkway between them. Adam hoped the others were all out of there now, although he thought he could still hear the distant rattle of feet on the mesh.
‘That’s it, I’m out!’ hissed Bushey.
Adam was on his last clip. ‘All right, f*ck it, we’re done here. Go, Bush. I’ll cover!’
Bushey nodded, scuttling low out of his niche and across the open deck towards the walkway. Adam waited until he saw heads had begun popping up again, and fired another half a dozen shots to keep them down a while longer. Then he, too, was on his feet, a low loping sprint across a few yards of open deck, then his boots clanged all too heavily onto the walkway. He could see Bushey up ahead, jogging to catch up with the last of the civilians.
Adam ran sideways, like a crab, keeping his assault rifle hip-aimed backwards down the wire cage, waiting for one of the boys to be stupid enough to press the pursuit too closely.
Twenty yards along and starting to feel sure he was going to make it over without incident, his foot found something soft and he stumbled.
‘Shit!’ he gasped.
He looked down. It was that relentlessly cheerful black woman who was Jenny’s friend. She seemed to be alive, but whimpering pitifully.
‘You’re wounded? Can you walk?’
The woman moaned. ‘Can’t feel my legs.’
He reached down with his spare hand and grabbed a fistful of damp clothing. He tried dragging her along the walkway, but she shrieked with pain. ‘No! Please! Stop!’
‘Come on, love. You’ve to got help yourself!’
‘I can’t!’ she cried. ‘I can’t!’
He knelt down closer to her. He remembered her name now. ‘You’re Martha?’
She nodded. He looked down at what she was cradling in her hands; a mess of tattered skin around an exit wound and dark coils of soft tissue from inside. ‘Dr Tami can’t fix this sort of mess,’ she whispered. ‘You go.’
‘I can drag you,’ he said, shouldering his weapon and getting his other hand under her armpits.
‘No!’ she spat. ‘Please, no! Hurts!’
‘Just shut up and let me—’
‘I want to die,’ she sobbed. ‘My boy, I know he’s gone . . . I just wanna go an’ see him now.’
He could see her face; damned if there wasn’t something that looked like a smile on there. ‘He’s such a good boy,’ she whispered. ‘Did you hear him? He warned us.’
Adam nodded. He had heard the shout from the tugboat’s foredeck just before everything kicked off. ‘Your boy? That was brave.’
She grinned, grateful it seemed, that someone had noticed.
A shot rattled off the wire cage a dozen yards down, sending sparks onto the walkway.
‘Go!’ hissed Martha. ‘Go now . . . an’ you tell Jenny . . . say “sorry” from me?’
‘Sorry? Yes, okay.’
‘I let her down . . . so badly.’
Another shot rattled against the wire and he could see down the far end the boys were beginning to cluster around the entrance.
‘Martha . . . I better . . .’
She nodded, let go of his hand and shoved his shoulder. ‘Go! Go, go, stupid!’
He stepped away from her as torchlight from the boys’ end flickered down the walkway and onto them both. Adam dropped down quickly on to one knee and aimed a shot at the torch. He heard a cry and the torch spun and dropped, lancing light in all directions. There was a clattering sound as the boys ducked backed behind cover.
‘Yeah!’ Martha cheered weakly. ‘Now go, go,’ she said again, shooing him away with a flapping hand.
‘Sir?’ It was Bushey’s voice calling down from the far end. ‘Better move it!’
‘Take good care of her . . . she needs you,’ whispered Martha still smiling. ‘She likes you . . . now go!’
He turned to abandon her, feeling like the lowest form of life for doing so. Then he stopped. ‘Martha, do you want to . . . to leave now? Right now?’
She looked at him. ‘You mean . . . die?’
He looked up at the far end of the walkway. ‘You don’t want those boys to get hold of you alive.’
She gave it only a heartbeat’s thought, then nodded. ‘Oh, yes, please.’
Don’t f*ck around, Adam. Make it quick for her.
‘Close your eyes, then,’ he said, reaching for her shoulder and squeezing it affectionately. She did as she was told and then clasped her hands together under her chin. ‘Mum’s coming, Nathan,’ she uttered softly. ‘Just hang on for me, baby.’
Adam shouldered the gun, aimed at her forehead and closed his eyes as he fired.
Then he was running; running with the sound of his boots making the walkway ring and rattle in his ears. Sparks chased him and he felt the air on one side of his hunched-over head and shoulders hum as a solitary shot narrowly missed its mark.
He was out of the other end and lying on his back next to Bushey less than ten seconds later, gasping ragged lungfuls of air and looking up at shifting clouds above haloed by the moon. The silhouette of Bushey’s head leaned over him and he was saying something. Adam felt like he was a thousand miles away, watching the moon above, the skimming silver-haloed clouds, the dark outline of head and shoulders and the muffled bellow of a faraway voice. Watching it on a telly; a storefront telly through the plate glass of a window.
‘Sir!’ Bushey’s voice was getting louder, cutting through, pulling him back, reluctantly, from this odd sensation of calm detachment.
‘Sir! Adam!! You okay? You hit?’
Bushey was shaking his shoulder. Adam took in another breath of cool night air and finally managed to sit up. ‘I’m fine,’ he grunted. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I thought the bastards’d got you.’
He turned over, propped himself up on his elbows to look back down the walkway. There was plenty of movement on the far platform. The boys gathering their numbers again. Probably stacking up bodies on yet another supermarket trolley, getting ready to run the same tactic again.
Bushey leaned closer to him so he wasn’t overhead. ‘We’re f*cked now. We’re out of ammo.’
Adam said nothing. If they tried the trolley trick again that was going to be it for them. In fact, even if they just ambled over without any cover at all, that was pretty much it for them. He was down to half a dozen rounds left in his clip.
‘Maxwell will make an example of us,’ said Bushey. ‘I know he will. The bastard’s going to let the boys rip us to pieces.’
‘So let’s make sure we hold back a couple of rounds, all right?’
Bushey pressed out a scaffold-smile. ‘Yuh. Just don’t f*ckin’ fire ’em by accident.’
Adam felt an arm on his shoulder. He turned to see Jenny settling to a crouch beside him. ‘I thought we’d lost you,’ she said.
‘I’m all right.’ He mentioned nothing about Martha. If there was time later, if there was a later, he could pass the message on then.
She bit her lip. ‘My lot want to surrender. They’re all talking about surrendering.’
‘And you?’
‘I . . . I don’t know. Maybe that Maxwell won’t be quite so bad? Maybe—’
‘He’ll do whatever he needs to do,’ said Adam. ‘That means keeping his boys happy.’
She stared at him. ‘You mean—’
‘Whatever those boys want, they’ll have.’ He gestured at those around them, cowering, crying, waiting for the boys to make their way across. ‘All these women? Do you understand?’
She looked back over her shoulder at them; women young and old and children . . . all of them so vulnerable. She couldn’t bring herself to visualise what this place, their home, would become once those boys came across; a charnel house of raped and broken female bodies, and those thugs dancing like wild savages around them. And, yes, there’d be an element of revenge to whatever those boys did to them; revenge for their fallen comrades - in their minds it would justify doing just about anything they wanted to them, wouldn’t it?
She shuddered at the thought. Five, nearly six years of endless grinding effort to build this safe haven, only to have it picked apart by a feral gang of boys . . . just for the fun of it.
No. I’m not having it.
She gritted her teeth and turned to face the people nearby, faces full of hope that she had an answer, a plan. Something up her sleeve.
‘I’m not surrendering,’ she said. Whispers rippled and spread amongst them. She saw them stir, shoulders slump with despair. She decided if her tenure as their community leader was finally at an end, then her last leadership decision wasn’t going to be to surrender her people to whatever entertainment those little bastards had in mind. ‘We can’t let them over here,’ she announced to them. ‘There’ll be raping . . . and worse. We can’t let them over. We have to fight.’
She turned back to Adam. ‘Let’s give them all we’ve got left when they cross.’
Adam nodded. ‘That’s the plan.’

Maxwell could see the boys had had enough. This wasn’t the pushover they’d been promised. To be honest, this wasn’t the pushover he’d hoped for either. He’d expected nothing more than several hundred wobbly-kneed women fool enough to welcome them aboard and offer their complete submission at the first sight of a gun.
He looked at the boys, many of them spattered with blood, some of it their own. A headcount showed about twenty of the praetorians were down; most of them dead, a couple of the wounded probably weren’t going to last the night, their pitiful cries weren’t helping morale at all.
He’d sent Jeff to pilot the tug back to where the barges were moored at Bracton and then to tow them back over to the rigs. There were supplies aboard for the boys. Food and water and a few more crates of that cheap booze to get them back into the mood for the final push.
A top up of vodka and adrenalin . . . that’s what they needed now.
Several hours ago ashore at Bracton he’d had them roaring with excitement, jumping up and down like over-sugared birthday boys on their way to a Laser Quest party; convinced they were invincible and everyone was going to get as much sex as they wanted tonight.
In truth, a break for several hours was no bad idea. Those people across the way weren’t going anywhere, and given enough time to mull over their predicament, they might just decide they’d had enough and wave a white flag.
He gave Snoop orders to set a dozen lads on watch over the walkway, the others could get whatever rest they could. He handed out cigarettes to them all, with a word of encouragement to the youngest lads, and for the older boys, whose eyes betrayed the beginnings of distrust, he reassured them that tomorrow, after they’d tidied up the mess, fixed whatever damage had been done, and the barge with their girlfriends and games consoles had been unloaded, they were going to have one hell of a party; lights, music, games . . . and plenty more ladies to choose from.
Finally, he sat down with his back against one of the deck lockers, suddenly feeling like he’d run a marathon over the last twenty minutes.
Tomorrow morning, dawn . . . as soon as it was light enough, Maxwell decided. If they’d not waved a white flag, he’d better get out there and sort this out himself.
I’ll parley. Talk those bitches into surrendering.
At the very least it was another chance to show his little soldier boys just who was in charge. Not Edward Snoop Tindall, but him, The Chief . . . the fella responsible for feeding them all this time, handing out the booze, the fags, finding the means and ways so they could enjoy their privileges; the fella who kept Safety Zone 4 going ten years after every other one had gone belly-up.
I’ll show them. I’ll sort it.