Afterlight (29 page)

Jacob nodded towards the quayside rail. ‘Race you, Nate.’

The boys cut across the car-park, finally clattering against the railing on the far side, whooping with delight, claims of victory and counterclaims bouncing back at them from the rear of the ExCel Centre.

She joined them a moment later, gazing out across at the docks. On the far side, a row of antiquated cranes stood tall and aloof; an industrial-age silhouette of spars and counterweights, swaying rigging chains and the vaulted roofs of dock warehouses that cast a long deep shadow across the water towards them.

From where they stood, panting and resting against the railings, they had an uninterrupted view of the skyline of the city, looking east along the curving Thames and west towards the mirror-smooth towers of Canary Wharf, glistening crimson from the glare of the setting sun.

Leona cupped her eyes as she took it all in, suddenly aware she was holding her breath in anticipation as she intently scanned the urban horizon for any signs of life.

London looked beautiful. She realised her heart ached for this place to come alive once more. For quayside street lamps to glisten proudly along the waterfront, for expensive dockside flats to once more cast smug balcony spotlights down onto even more expensive yachts. But instead, the three of them were staring at a darkening, lifeless, horizon.

Not a single light amongst the gathering gloom. Not even a torch beam or a candle or a campfire.

Jacob turned to his right to look at the exhibition centre. ‘Looks just as dead as everywhere else,’ he said, his voice carrying the weight of disappointment they all felt.

‘Perhaps the man lied to you two,’ she replied. ‘Told you what you wanted to hear.’

‘Great,’ grunted Nathan flatly.

The boys continued their vigil in silence. Still looking, still hoping. The reflection of the almost-gone sun glinted off a far away window, teasing them for a moment.

‘I’m sorry,’ she added softly. ‘If the city centre was recovering I’m sure we’d have seen something from here.’

Jacob’s lips clamped angrily. ‘Shit!’ He suddenly screamed, banging the rail with his hands. ‘Shitshitshit!!’ His voice echoed across the car-park.

She put an arm around his lean shoulders; they were shaking, trembling with rage.

‘Why?’ His voice broke as tears rolled down his cheeks. No longer the fresh baritone voice of a young man, but the heartbroken cry of a boy. ‘Why not by
now,
Lee? Why not? It’s been ten years!’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Jake. Maybe there just isn’t anyone left in London now.’

They’d not spotted a single telltale sign of life all day; no rooftop vegetable gardens, no parks turned into allotments that Leona had half expected to find, no smudges of smoke in the sky, no give-away odour of woodsmoke or burning rubber - the kind of smell that can travel for miles and miles.

Nothing.

‘Maybe we could go and take a look inside the ExCel,’ she said, squeezing his shoulder gently. ‘There may be some things we can forage for. Then, we should find someplace for tonight.’

‘What about tomorrow?’ asked Nathan. ‘What we goin’ to do?’

Jacob angrily wiped his cheeks dry and steadied himself with a deep breath. He turned to Nathan and they exchanged a wordless acknowledgment of defeat, their faces both lifeless and spent; the naive energy that had driven them to race each other across the car-park felt stupid now.

‘We head back home, I suppose,’ said Jacob.

Leona nodded and smiled sadly. ‘Yes, home.’

 

 

 

A
long the bottom of the rear wall was a large sliding delivery-bay door that rattled loudly as they pulled it to one side; a delivery entrance that opened onto a storage bay. The dark space inside was filled with crates and boxes.

Leona pulled a wind-up torch out of her rucksack and quickly cranked the dynamo. The others followed suit. Between their glowing and fading bulbs they had enough light to step further into the gloom.

A quick examination of the nearest crate revealed nothing edible, nothing to drink; just a container of plywood and fibreglass display plinths. Leona pulled open another box and found it filled with the components of a lighting rig and endless loops of electrical flex. They pulled open several more crates and cardboard boxes to find a number of PCs, ethernet cards and network connection cables.

They moved through the storage bays, finding nothing of use to them until her torch picked out a door marked ‘main hall entrance’.

‘Let’s try inside. Maybe there was a cafe or restaurant set up.’ She looked at the others and shrugged. ‘We might get lucky.’

Jacob stepped forward and pushed the door gently. It clicked open - a cavernous reverberating click echoed back. ‘The Mines of Moria,’ he whispered.

Nathan’s deep voice chuckled nervously. ‘This isn’t a mine, it’s a tomb.’

It was almost pitch black. The last faint glow of daylight struggled to reach down from several skylight windows in the roof high above. Jacob swung his torch ahead of them, picking out faded corporate-blue cord carpeting on the floor, damp in patches and stained where it appeared to be dry, and the smooth plastic walls of cubicles and display stands coated in a fine layer of dust.

‘Shit,’ whispered Nathan.

‘What?’

‘I remember now.’

‘What?’ Jacob repeated impatiently.

Nathan smiled. ‘Computer and Video Game Expo! I remember it was on in London the week of the crash. I wanted me dad to take me along.’ His quiet whisper bounced and hissed across the enormity of the central hall. ‘They was launching the new Wii controller thing an’ the new games an’ stuff. And the new PlayStation. It was going to be
well-props
! ’ He flicked his wrist and clacked his fingers.

Jacob grinned in the dark. He loved it when Nathan did that finger-flick thing - all hip-hop street and cool. Back on the rigs Martha told him off every time she saw him do that; said his wrist would snap one day and his hand fly off into the sea.

‘It was goin’ to be well solid,’ Nathan continued, muttering to himself. ‘The crash could of waited another fucking week.’

Jacob’s torch suddenly played across large plastic-moulded faces grinning down at them. Side by side, gurning cheerfully, Super Mario and Luigi, both ten feet tall, emerged from the gloom, standing guard either side of a Nintendo display stand.

‘Shit, man! Jay, you recognise?’ Nathan asked.

‘Yeah! Oh crap,’ he replied. ‘Mar-i-i-i-o-o-o!’ he chirruped in a squeaky singsong voice.

‘Lui-i-i-g-i-i-i!’ Nathan’s voice squeaked back.

‘Come on, you morons,’ said Leona, ‘we’re not here to geek out.’

Jacob cast a sidelong glance at his sister, struck by the fact that she seemed to be coming back to them, rejoining them from the dark place she’d been for the past few weeks. The last two days he’d noticed her change. She seemed to be less withdrawn, bossy again just like she used to be. Not that he’d ever tell her this, but the sound of her haughtily issuing orders was a reassuring sound.

‘Right, let’s be quick about this,’ she announced. ‘We’ll also need to find somewhere to camp tonight before it gets too dark.’

He grinned proudly at her; so proud of her strength, her confidence. But glad, too, that it was dark enough that she couldn’t see him and ask why the hell he was smiling like a twit.

She wound her torch again as the bulb began to fade. ‘The time Mum and Dad took me here I remember there were cafés and restaurants off along the sides of the main hall. Let’s try down the left side first, okay?’ Her hushed voice echoed through the cavernous darkness.

Both boys nodded.

Leona led the way, her torch beam picking out the still bright colours of exhibition placards, fantastic-looking characters, spacemen, monsters, aliens, demons. Although some rain and damp had found a way inside and soiled the cord carpet in dark patches, everything else looked almost pristine.

‘I bet you’re loving this, aren’t you, Jake?’ said Leona softly.

He nodded. ‘It would have been good.’

She panned her torch around. ‘I can’t believe how untouched it all looks. As if this was all set up just, like, yesterday.’

‘I remember some of the games,’ he replied. ‘I remember the ads on the TV.’ He looked at her. ‘Did you watch much TV at college?’

‘University.’ She shrugged. ‘A little. I remember it being mostly rubbish.’

Jacob stroked the tuft of bristles on his chin thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, mostly rubbish.’

Their torches picked out different things simultaneously. Jacob’s eyes were drawn to an elaborate and enormous dungeon diorama; ten-foot-high walls of fibreglass stone blocks, dripping with paint-blood, dangling chains and stocks.

‘Nate, look!’

‘Oh, man, cool!’

It reminded Jacob of a picture-book story he’d flipped through. One of the books they kept in the classroom’s modest library back on the rigs; an ogre, a princess and a talk-too-much donkey. He loved that story.

Leona’s torch was pointed the other way, lighting up a coffee and bagel bar.

‘Ahh, maybe there’s some bottled water over there?’

Jacob tapped her arm. ‘Can I go look at that?’ he asked, jabbing a finger at the dungeon diorama across ten yards of carpeted walkway.

She sighed. ‘Fine, don’t wander off, though.’

‘Me, too?’ asked Nathan.

She sighed. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake . . . go on.’

They jogged across, stepping inside through a ‘stone’ archway and into an enclosed area. They panned their torches around. The walls inside were more dripping stone, more blood, more chains. Across the vaulted roof were large plastic wooden beams that stretched from one side to the other from which goofy-looking plastic skeletons dangled with cartoon grins.

Jacob shook his head at the illogicality of it.

There was a smell in here, too, not unlike Walter’s stinky rooms. No, in fact the odour was more like the one that came out of the composters they kept on the tomato deck - rotting food. He nodded with approving admiration at the guys who’d made this set; the stink cleverly added to the spooky atmosphere, the realism of the place.

Here and there set into the dungeon walls were large TV screens that reflected back his torch beam. He smiled. He liked the idea of that - modern-times TVs sunk into an ancient-times stone wall.

‘Fucking super-coolio,’ he whispered admiringly. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘True.’

Not for the first time he wished he’d been just a few years older before the world had decided to go and destroy itself; to have been able to play a few more of these games, to have been more familiar with them, the characters, the worlds.

He panned his torch across the floor of the interior; more of that ubiquitous blue cord carpet, but in here it was scuffed and splattered with dark pools of dried blood, smear, splatter and drag marks across it that fitted so cleverly with the dungeon theme. He smiled at that . . . although it would have been cooler if the floor had been like the walls; made to look like ancient worn flagstones.

Ahead of him, in the middle of the floor, was a realistic pile of bones; a waist-high pyramid of skulls, and long arm and leg bones, with nice detailing, like tattered pink strands of flesh and dark clots of almost black blood in the creases and cracks of bone.

‘Check out the bones,’ he said.

‘Just a sec.’ Nathan was across the room, admiring a life-sized plastic mould of an orc, leering out of the darkness.

Jacob took several steps towards the pile of bones and squatted down in front of it. There were skulls in there that ranged from what he guessed were rat-sized to skulls that could have belonged to a large dog. He noticed a human skull nestled in the pile and nodded with admiration at how realistic the detailing was. He reached out to touch the plastic. His finger traced along the top of the cranium and it shifted with a heavy creak. Dislodged, it rolled down from the pile and clattered on to the floor with a thump.

Heavier than he’d expected.

He leaned over to inspect it more closely. Placing his torch on the floor he picked the skull up with both hands. That smell, the clever realistic smell, was so much stronger. As he drew the skull closer to his face, he realised where the odour was coming from. He could feel tickling tufts of hair on the top. He felt the cool flap of a tatter of skin flop from the lower jaw across his wrist.

His stomach suddenly lurched and a sense of disorienting dizziness enfolded him at the same moment that it occurred to him that he wasn’t holding a plastic prop . . . instead he was holding the real thing.

 

Leona squatted down behind the small counter in what had once aspired to call itself the Quayside Breeze Restaurant. It was little more than a partitioned-off seating area of two dozen tables and bucket chairs, and a long glass counter which presumably had once held pastries and sandwiches. Her torch beam probed an empty refrigeration unit and several empty storage cupboards beneath the counter. Nothing. Not that she’d held out much hope. But since the exhibition hall appeared to be surprisingly untouched, she’d thought perhaps they might find a few sealed bottles of water.

It was then she heard Jacob’s voice calling.

She rushed out from behind the counter, picking her way quickly through the tables and chairs before jogging across the open area towards that dungeon-like display both boys had seemed so taken by.

She heard his voice again, coming from inside.

‘Lee!!’

‘Coming!’

She stepped in through the stone archway and immediately caught sight of him and Nathan standing over the mound in the middle of the floor. ‘What the hell is it?’ she snapped.