All she knows of him is that he’s one of the people who used to tie her up in that chair all the time, and wheel her in and out of the classroom. Gallagher can’t remember now if he’s ever spoken to her before this. Consequently, the words come out a little skewed, a little self-conscious. He’s not even all that sure why he says it.
“You want me to read this to you?”
A moment’s silence. A moment more of that big-eyed stare.
“No,” the kid says.
“Oh.” That’s his entire conversational strategy, shot to shit. He doesn’t have a Plan B. He heads for the door again, and the lighted room beyond. He’s swung the chair out of the way and he’s about to close the door behind him when she blurts it out.
“Can you look on the shelves?”
He turns and steps back inside, replacing the chair. “What?”
There’s a long silence. Like she’s sorry she spoke, and she’s not sure she wants to say it again. He waits her out.
“Can you look on the shelves? Miss Justineau gave me a book, but I had to leave it behind. If the same book is here…”
“Yeah?”
“Then… you could read me that.”
Gallagher hadn’t noticed the bookcase before. He follows the girl’s gaze now, sees it against the wall next to the door. “Okay,” he says. “What was the book called?”
“Tales the Muses Told.” There’s a quickening of excitement in the girl’s voice. “By Roger Lancelyn Green. It’s Greek myths.”
Gallagher goes over to the bookcase, clicks on his torch and plays it over the shelves. Most of these are picture books for little kids, with stapled spines rather than square ones, so he has to pull them out to see what they’re called. There are a few real books, though, and he works his way through them painstakingly.
No Greek myths.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s not here. You don’t want to try something new?”
“No.”
“There’s Postman Pat here. And his black and white cat.” He holds up a book to show her. The hungry kid gives it a cold stare, then looks away.
Gallagher rejoins her, pulls up a chair at what he considers a safe distance. “My name’s Kieran,” he tells her. This elicits no response at all. “Is there one story in particular that’s your favourite?”
But she doesn’t want to talk to him, and he can understand that. Why the hell would she?
“I’m gonna read this one,” he says. He holds up a book called I Wish I Could Show You. It’s got the same kind of pictures in it as The Cat in the Hat, which is why he chose it. He used to love that story about the cat and the fish and the kids and the two Things called 1 and 2. He liked to imagine his own house getting trashed like that, and then getting put right again just a second before his dad walked in. For Gallagher, aged about seven, that was a huge, illicit thrill.
“I’m gonna sit here and read this one,” he tells the girl again.
She shrugs like that’s his business, not hers.
Gallagher opens the book. The pages are damp, so they stick to each other a little, but he’s able to pull them apart without tearing them.
“When I was out walking one day in the street,” he recites, “I met a young man with red boots on his feet. His belt had a buckle, his hat had a feather. His shirt was of silk and his pants were of leather, and he could not stand still for two seconds together.”
The kid pretends not to listen, but Gallagher isn’t taken in. It’s pretty obvious that she’s tilting her head so she can see the pictures.
39
Parks shares out some more of the brandy. It’s going fast. Justineau drinks, although she’s just reached the stage where she knows it’s a bad idea. She’ll wake up feeling like shit.
She fans her face, which is uncomfortably hot. Booze always does this to her, even in medicinal amounts. “Jesus,” she says. “I’ve got to get some air.”
But there isn’t much air to be had. The window is safety-locked and opens all of five inches. “We could go up to the roof,” Parks suggests. “There’s a fire door at the end of the corridor that leads up there.”
“Anything to say the roof is safe?” Justineau asks, and the sergeant nods. Yeah, of course, he would have checked it. Love him or hate him, he’s the kind of man who’s built his identity around the blessed sacrament of getting the job done. She saw that out on the green, when he saved all their lives by reacting pretty nearly as fast as the hungries did.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s see what the roof is like.”
And the roof is just fine. About ten degrees cooler than the day room, with a good, stiff wind blowing in their faces. Well, good is maybe overstating it, because the wind smells of rot–like there’s a big mountain of spoiled meat right next to them, invisible in the dark, and they’re inhaling its taint. Justineau clamps her glass over the lower half of her face like an oxygen mask and breathes brandy breath instead.
“Any idea what that is?” she asks Parks, her voice muffled and distorted by the glass.
“Nope, but it’s stronger over here,” Parks says, “so I suggest we go over there.”
He leads the way to the south-east corner of the building. They’re facing London and distant Beacon–the home that flung them out and is now reeling them back in. Justineau lets absence work its usual magic, even though she knows damn well that Beacon is a shit-hole. A big refugee camp governed by real terror and artificially pumped-up optimism–like the bastard child of Butlins and Colditz. It was already well on the way to totalitarianism when she lucked her way out of there, and she’s not looking forward to finding out what it’s become in the three years that have passed since.
But where else is there?
“The Doc’s a real character, isn’t she?” Parks muses, leaning over the parapet wall and staring out into the darkness. Moonlight paints the town in woodcut black and white like a picture from a book. Black predominates, turning the streets into unfathomable riverbeds of rushing air.
“That’s one word for what she is,” Justineau says.
Parks laughs, jokingly raises the glass–like they’re toasting their shared opinion of Caroline Caldwell. “Truth is,” he says, “in a way I’m glad the whole thing is over. The base, I mean, and the mission. Not glad we’re on the run, obviously, and I’m praying we’re not the only ones who got away. But I’m glad I don’t have to do that any more.”
“Do what?”
Parks makes a gesture. In the near dark, Justineau can’t see what gesture it is. “Keep a lid on the madhouse. Keep the whole place ticking over, month after month, on string and good intentions. Christ, it’s amazing we lasted as long as we did. Not enough men, not enough supplies, no fucking communications, no proper chain of command…”
He seems to stop very suddenly, which makes Justineau go back over his words to figure out which ones he wishes he hadn’t said. “When did communications stop?” she asks him.
He doesn’t answer. So she asks again.
“Last message from Beacon was about five months back,” Parks admits. “Normal signalling wavelengths have been empty ever since.”
“Shit!” Justineau is deeply shaken. “So we don’t even know if… Shit!”
“Most likely it just means they relocated the tower,” Parks says. “Wouldn’t even have to be far. The goosed-together crap we’re using for radios, they don’t work unless they’re pointed right at the signal source. It’s like trying to shoot a basketball into a hoop across sixty bloody miles.”
They fall silent, contemplating this. The night seems wider now, and colder.
“My God,” Justineau says at last. “We might be the last. The four of us.”
“We’re not the last.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do. The junkers are doing fine.”
“The junkers…” Justineau’s tone is sour. She’s heard stories, and now she’s seen them for herself. Survivalists who’ve forgotten how to do anything else besides survive. Parasites and scavengers almost as inhuman in their own way as Ophiocordyceps. They don’t build, or preserve. They just stay alive. And their ruthlessly patriarchal structures reduce women to pack animals or breeding stock.
If that’s humanity’s last, best hope, then despair might actually be preferable.
“There’ve been dark ages before,” Parks says, reading her a lot better than she likes. “Things fall down, and people build them up again. There’s probably never been a time when life was just… steady state. There’s always some crisis.
“And then there’s the rest of the world, you know? Beacon was in touch with survivor communities in France, Spain, America, all kinds of places. The cities were hit worst–any place where there was a whole bunch of people crammed in together–and a lot of infrastructure fell with the cities. In less developed areas, the contagion didn’t spread so fast. There could be some places it never even reached at all.”
Parks fills her glass.
“I wanted to ask you something,” he says.
“Go on.”