Afterlight (7 page)

‘Out of our fuckin’ way,’ snapped one of them. ‘He’s going to die.’

Walter realised he was trembling; the end of the shotgun’s barrel was jittering around for everyone to see.

‘You just . . . just bloody well stay back!’ shouted Walter, breathing deeply, shakily, the air whistling in and out of his bulbous nose.

One of the men looked up at him and shook his head dismissively. ‘Shut the fuck up, you old fart.’

The man in the stab vest took a quick step forward and lowered his gun at the foreign man on the floor. ‘This is how we deal with dirty fucking Paki wankers.’

The wounded man screwed his eyes shut and uttered the beginnings of a prayer in French.

‘You . . . y-you can’t just . . .
shoot
him,’ cut in Jacob. ‘It’s not right.’

‘Yeah?’ said stab vest. ‘Is that right, son? Am I infringing his fucking human rights?’

Jacob swallowed nervously. He nodded. ‘It’s just not . . . you can’t!’

‘Yeah? You get in my way I’ll do you next, you little prick.’ The man levelled his gun at the Frenchman’s head. ‘Fuckin’ scum like this . . . only way to deal with—’

Walter’s shotgun suddenly boomed, snapping stab-vest’s head back and throwing a long tendril of hair, blood, brains and skull up into the air. The other man looked up, startled, and swung his weapon towards the old man.

Instinctively Nathan squeezed several rounds off from his assault rifle. Only one of his shots landed home, punching the man at the base of his throat. His knees buckled and he dropped to the ground like a sack full of coconuts.

‘Oh, fuck!!’ whispered Walter. ‘Oh, fuck,’ he wheezed, ‘I didn’t bloody mean to. Damn thing just went off in my hand!’

Red tracksuit’s legs scissored on the ground as he gurgled noisily, his hands clasped around his throat as if throttling himself, blood quickly pooling on the gritty concrete beneath him.

‘Walter . . .’ said Kevin from the back of the boat. He stood up, eager to clamber ashore and get a closer look at the mess. ‘You blew his head off!’

‘Dammit! Kevin, sit down and be quiet!’ snapped David.

‘Oh, shit, man!’ said Nathan, his features ashen. ‘He’s dying! What - what the fuck are we gonna do?’

They watched the man squirm on the ground for a moment.

‘We have to do something!’ shouted Jacob. ‘He’s bleeding everywhere! ’

Walter stared, dumbfounded, smoke still curling from the barrel of his shotgun.

‘He’s dying,’ said Bill. ‘We
can’t
help him.’

Walter nodded.

‘We could take him back to Dr Gupta,’ said Jacob bending down to peer at the man convulsing on the ground.

‘Don’t be stupid!’ snapped David. ‘He’s bleedin’ out! He’ll be dead before we get him back.’

The sound of the man’s gurgling, bubbling breath filled the space between them.

‘Then, shit, we ought to . . .’ Nathan started, looking at the others. ‘You know? We can’t leave him like this!’

Walter nodded, finally roused from a state of shock. ‘Yes . . . Christ. Yes, I-I suppose you’re right,’ he said quietly. He placed the shotgun carefully down on the ground and tugged the assault rifle out of Nathan’s rigid hands.

‘Best close your eyes, mate,’ he said to the man on the ground.

The man struggled to say something. Bubbles and strangled air whistled out through the jagged hole in his throat, whilst his mouth flapped uselessly.

‘Look away, boys,’ he said to the others.

Walter aimed, closed his own eyes and fired.

 

 

 

J
enny looked down and watched Dr Tamira Gupta take charge of lifting the wounded man out of the boat. Tamira - ‘Tami’ as she was more commonly known - small and delicate, her dark hair pulled back out of the way into a businesslike bun, bossed the men and boys as they eased the man out of the cockpit.

‘Be very careful,’ she heard the woman bark at Jacob and Nathan as they lifted him into the net swinging just above the rising and falling foredeck. The man groaned weakly as he flopped across the coarse netting. Tami threw a blanket over him to keep him warm then signalled those above manning the davit to start winching him up.

The net rose from the bobbing deck, swinging its catch in the fresh breeze. The sea was beginning to get a little lively, swells slapping against the nearby legs sending up small showers of salty spray.

‘So what the hell happened?’ Jenny asked Walter.

He leant forward on the railing, watching the net slowly rise, and Dr Gupta clambering up the rope ladder onto the spider deck. He breathed deep and swallowed, looking like someone ready to vomit.

‘Walter?’

‘He was being chased like it was some kind of . . . of a bloody fox hunt. The poor sod was already wounded, saw us moored up on the quayside and getting ready to go and made straight towards us. The blokes chasing after him . . .’ Walter took another breath and watched the swinging net slowly rise for a moment.

‘The two blokes chasing him fired shots at him that nearly hit us. In fact, they didn’t seem to give a shit that they nearly hit us. They came over, standing right over him and were about to execute him when . . . when . . . the bloody gun just went off in my hands.’

‘You killed them?’

Walter wavered for a moment, wondering whether he ought to tell Jenny that one of the men had been killed outright, but the other, they’d had to shoot like a wounded animal. ‘Yes, we killed them.’

To his surprise she nodded approvingly. ‘Well, then you did the right thing.’

‘We checked around nearby. Didn’t find anyone else. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t more of them out there.’

Jenny nodded.

‘Seems like they were after this Frenchman for a bit of fun.’

‘French?’

‘He spoke something before he passed out.’ Walter shrugged. ‘Been a long time since I’ve been in school - it sounded like French to me.’

They watched as Tami climbed the last steps of the stairwell onto the cellar deck.

She pushed her way through the crowd gathered around the davit cranes, pulled the netting aside and knelt down beside the man, quickly checking the wound, the man’s pulse.

‘I wonder how far he’s come?’ asked Jenny. ‘From mainland Europe?’

Walter shook his head. ‘Or perhaps further? He’s quite dark. Could be from somewhere Mediterranean, possibly Middle Eastern?’

‘You think that made him a target? You know, being an outsider, a foreigner?’

Walter tugged on the grey-white bristles of his beard, the slightest tremble still in his fingers. ‘By the look of those two men chasing him . . . who knows? Thugs with guns. You know the kind.’

Jenny nodded, biting her lip. ‘I was starting to hope the mainland was a safe place again. I was hoping vicious bastards like that had died out long ago.’

Dr Gupta finished making an initial examination and had him transferred to a stretcher to be taken up to her infirmary. Jenny quickly excused herself to let Walter oversee the unloading of the boat whilst she pushed her way past the onlookers gathered along the railing.

‘Jenny,’ called out one of the women. ‘You going to tell us what happened?’

‘Not now,’ she called over her shoulder. She quickly climbed the steps to the cellar deck and joined Dr Gupta as she packed up her medical bag.

‘Tami, how is he?’

‘He has lost a lot of blood from the wound. I cannot see if there are any broken bones in there, or fragments. I will need to clean him out and take a look. He is also very malnourished by the look of him. In a very sorry way, I am afraid.’

‘Will he live?’

She shrugged. ‘I really don’t know, Jenny. We have got plenty antibiotics to combat any infection and I’ll sedate him right now and take a look inside the wound, make sure there is no internal bleeding. I will see how we go from there.’

‘All right, I’ll let you get on with it.’

Dr Gupta flicked a stiff smile at her then headed after the stretcher, being manoeuvred awkwardly up the next stairwell to the main deck by half a dozen pairs of hands.

‘Careful, Helen!’ she barked out at one of the youngsters she’d drafted to help heft the stretcher. ‘Both hands, please!’

‘I’m doing my best!’ the girl replied haughtily. ‘He’s heavy, though!’

Jenny watched them go, pitying the poor sod being rattled around on the stretcher, moaning with every jar and bump.

Walter puffed up the last of the steps and stood beside her, his red blotchy face dotted with sweat. ‘It all happened so quickly.’

‘I’d like to know where that man came from, and what he’s seen abroad,’ she replied. ‘I wonder if the rest of the world is faring any better.’ She looked down at the sea. Sixty feet below, the net, lowered once more to the boat’s foredeck, rising and dropping on the swells sliding beneath her, was being filled with the goodies they’d found on the shore run.

Walter nodded silently. She could see he was still shaken by what had happened. She decided to direct his mind elsewhere. ‘So, more importantly, how did your shopping run go?’

‘Oh . . . yes, we got most of what was on the list,’ he smiled, ‘and a few little extras for the party.’

Jenny smiled wearily.
Good.

Life was usually made a little easier after a shore run. Most people got something they’d requested and were less likely to bitch and grumble for the next few days at least. And the celebration party . . . well, that couldn’t come soon enough.

They were soon to mark the very first anniversary of getting the generator up and running; Leona’s suggestion - a good one, too. The two or three hours of light every evening, afforded by the noisy chugging thing, made all the difference to their lives. More than a small luxury, it was a significant step up from merely managing to survive. It was a comfort; a reminder of better times; a statement of progress; steady light across the decks and walkways after dark.

Apart from anything else, the party would be a boost for their morale - hopefully shut the whingers and malcontents up for a while.

‘Come on, Walter, what
extras
did you manage to rustle up?’

Walter tapped his ruddy nose and managed a thin smile. ‘Just a few nice things.’

The net was full enough for the first load and Nathan flashed a thumbs-up to the people manning the davit. They worked the manual winch and the laden net swung up off the deck with the creaking of polyvinyl cables and the clinking of chains. As it slowly rose away from the rising and falling boat, Jacob, Nathan and the others worked in practised unison, bringing boxes of supplies from below deck and stacking them in the cockpit ready to fill the empty net again. Mostly medicines. But also items of clothing, woollen jumpers, waterproofs, thick socks and thermal underwear. She spotted a basket full of paperback novels and glossy magazines, cellophane-wrapped packs of cook-in-sauce tins, catering-size bags of salt and sugar and flour . . . amazing how, even now, if one knew where to look, what things could be foraged from the dark corners of warehouses.

Hannah clattered on noisy clogs through the crowd and found them, dragging Leona by the hand after her.

‘Uncle Walter, did you find me anything?’

He hunkered down to her level and winked at her. ‘Oh, let’s just see.’ He reached into the old leather bag slung over his shoulder, made a show of rummaging around inside. ‘I’m sure I must have something in here for you.’ Finally, with a little theatrical flourish, he pulled out a transparent plastic case containing what looked like a row of water-colour tabs and a paintbrush.

‘Little Miss Britney make-up set,’ he said handing it to her.

Her little caterpillar eyebrows shot up to form a double arch of surprise. ‘Wow!’ She threw an arm around his shoulders and planted a wet kiss on his rough cheek. Walter’s face flushed crimson.

‘Bit young for grooming, isn’t she?’ said a woman stepping past - Alice Harton, a miserable-faced bitch who seemed to make a life’s work out of mean-spirited put-downs and caustic remarks.

Walter looked up and shrugged awkwardly. ‘Well . . . I saw it . . . just thought she’d like it.’

‘It’s lovely!’ cooed Hannah brightly.

‘There, see?’ said Leona, handing the woman a dry
now-why-don’t
you-piss-off
smile. Alice Harton brushed on past them, shaking her head disapprovingly as she spoke in hushed tones and backward glances to the women with her.

Jenny squeezed his round shoulder affectionately as he slowly stood up. ‘Don’t listen to that silly cow, Walter. I don’t know what I’d do . . . what
any of
us would do without you.’

He smiled at her and down at Hannah. ‘I’m here for you, Jenny,’ he uttered.

‘And
I
got this for you, Hannah,’ said Jacob.

He produced a Playmobil Princess and Pony set from his sack. It was still in its cardboard and plastic packaging; pristine and not sun-faded. He’d found it at the back of a children’s shop on the high street. Her eyes instantly lit up, as much at the sight of the beautiful pink cardboard presentation box and the unscuffed plastic window than at the two small plastic play figures she could see imprisoned inside.

‘Thank you, Jake,’ she gushed, twining her short arms around his neck and plastering his grimacing face with wet kisses.

The large mess and the hallway outside were crowded with a couple of hundred of the community’s members; those that had put a must-have on the list and turned up in the hope that there was something for them to collect. It was a deafening convergence of overlapping voices raised with pleasure and surprise or groans of disappointment.