The Chaos (2 page)

‘There’s a queue,’ he says firmly. ‘We’re British. We know how to queue.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.‘It’s for my nan. She’s hungry and we’ve got to go now.’

I look up into the face of the man holding me. He’s middle-aged, about fifty. Grey hair and a grim face, you can see how tired he is, but that’s not what shocks me – it’s his number. 112027. Only six months to live. I get a flash of his death, too, and it’s brutal, violent, a blow to the head, blood, brains … 

I drop the toast back onto the plate and try to back away.
The man lets go of my wrist, he thinks he’s won, but he must have seen something in me, too, because his face softens and he reaches across, picks up the toast and hands it to me.

‘For your nan,’ he says. ‘Go on, son. Don’t miss your coach.’

‘Thanks,’ I murmur.

I think about cramming the whole lot in there and then, but the man’s watching me and so is Nan, so I carry the toast carefully outside, and when Nan and I are settled on the coach, I give it to her. She tears it in two and gives half back. We don’t speak. I stuff mine in my mouth and it’s gone in two bites, but Nan savours hers, making it last ’til we’re out of town and heading east along the main road. The road’s on a raised-up strip of land with miles and miles of flooded fields all round it. The sun’s come out at last and it’s turned the water into a sheet of silver so bright you can’t look at it.

‘Nan,’ I say. ‘What if the whole world floods? What will we do then?’

She wipes a smudge of butter off her chin with her finger, and licks it.

‘We’ll build an ark, shall we, you and me? And invite all the animals?’ She chuckles and picks up my hand with the one she’s just licked. There are deep red crescents on my skin where I dug my nails in on the boat.

‘What you done there?’ she asks.

‘Nothing.’

She looks at me and frowns. Then she gives my hand a little squeeze.

‘Don’t worry, son. We’ll be all right in London. There’s flood defences there, and everything. They know how to do things properly there. We’ll be fine. Good old London Town.’

She puts her head back, closes her eyes and sighs, happy
to be heading home at last. But I can’t relax. I have to write down the man in the queue’s number before I forget it. It’s shaken me up. You get a feeling for people’s numbers, when you’ve seen them all your life. And his number didn’t seem to match him. I’m feeling edgy. I’ll be better once I write it down.

I get my book out of my pocket, and record all the details I can remember: description (it’s better when I know the names), today’s date, the place, his number, how he’s going to die. I write it carefully, and every letter, every word makes me calmer. It’s all in there now, safe in my book. I can look at it later.

I put my notebook back. Nan’s starting to snore gently. She’s well away. I look at the other passengers. Some of them are trying to sleep, but some are like me – anxious and watchful. From where I’m sitting I can see six or seven people who are still awake. We catch each other’s eyes and then we look away again, without saying anything, like strangers do.

But just one moment of eye contact is all I need to see their numbers, a different number for each one – the different dates that mark the end of their lives.

Except these numbers aren’t that different. Five of them end in 12027 and two are exactly the same: 112027.

My heart’s pounding in my chest now, my breathing’s gone shallow and fast. I reach into my pocket ’til my fingers find my notebook again. My hands are shaking, but I manage to get the book out and open it at the right page.

These people are like the man in the food queue – they’ve only got six months left.

They’re going to die in January next year.

They’re going to die in London.

Chapter 2: Sarah, September 2026

‘Y
ou know why you’re here. It’s not what you’re used to, but we’re running out of options. They won’t tolerate you playing up here – being late, or truanting, or answering back. This is a chance for you to start again, do it right this time, knuckle down. Please, Sarah, don’t let us down. Don’t let yourself down.’

Blah, blah, blah. Same old same old. I let it drift over me, too tired to listen. I hardly slept last night, and when I did I had the nightmare again and I had to wake myself up. I lay awake then, listening to the noises a house makes at night, until it got light.

I don’t say anything back to Him, not even ‘goodbye’ as I get out of the Merc. I slam the car door and in my head I can see Him wince, hear Him curse me, and it makes me feel better, just for a second.

The Merc has turned people’s heads, like it always does. It’s not every day you see a car on the school run, never mind a gas-guzzler like Dad’s. Now people are checking me out.
Great, I’ll be marked out as different before I even start. Still, what do I care?

Someone whistles and purrs, ‘Niiiice,’ long and low at me.

A group of lads have stopped to stare, six or seven of them. They’re looking me up and down, licking their lips like wolves. What am I meant to feel? Intimidated? Flattered? Screw that. I show them the finger and walk in through the gates.

It’s not bad for a state school, I suppose. At least it’s all new, not scruffy like I’ve been expecting. But it’s only new because the previous one was burnt out in the 2022 riots and it’s still got a bit of a reputation, Forest Green: tough regime, tough kids. My heart sank when Mum and Dad said they’d enrolled me, but then I thought,
What the hell. One school’s the same as any other. School, home – they’re all prisons, aren’t they? All there to make you conform.
It doesn’t matter where I am – my mind’s my own, they can’t control that.

And wherever they send me, I don’t plan to stay for long. I’ve got other things on my mind, well, one big thing, or at least a small thing that’s getting bigger. And it means that I have to start thinking for myself, planning, taking control.

I have to get my life back.

I can’t wait much longer.

I have to get away.

Chapter 3: Adam

I
didn’t start it. It wasn’t me.

Nan told me not to get into trouble when I was setting off in the morning, and I wasn’t going to. I was just going to turn up, register, do what I had to do and get back to Nan’s.

I know there’ll be a lot of twenty-sevens there, because there are a lot of twenty-sevens everywhere. All summer, I’ve been clocking them. The entries in my book show the same picture wherever I’ve been.

‘Kilburn High Road. 84.’ 

‘The offie, sherry for Nan. 12.’

There are so many I don’t write down their details any more. I can’t. I only record how many I’ve seen that time. I still keep proper records on people who are different, or if I know their names. And it makes me feel better, well, a bit better. At least it used to. But the longer I stay in London, the more I know we’ve made a mistake. We should never have come here. It’s dangerous. A lot of people are going to die.

So I tell myself that for the time being I’ll go through the motions, keep my head down and keep Nan happy, but only ’til I’ve figured out how to get out of here and where to go. I need to find a place where there are no twenty-sevens. If no one else there is going to die in January 2027, then it stands to reason I’ll have a better chance of surviving, because I don’t know my own number, see. I just don’t know. The only way I’ll find out is if there’s someone else who can see the numbers – and I’m pretty sure I’m the only one.

There’s a bottleneck by the door into Reception. I don’t like crowds, never have – too many people, too many deaths – but I make myself walk through the gates and join the queue. In no time there’s people crowding in behind me, penning me in, and I start to panic. The sweat breaks out under my arms and on my top lip. I look around for a way out. There’s number after number ending in 2027 and suddenly my head is full of it – the noise, the chaos, trapped limbs, broken bones, darkness, despair.

I’ve got to get a grip. My mum taught me what to do.

‘Breathe slowly,’ she’d say. ‘Make yourself do it. In through your nose and out through your mouth. Don’t look at anyone else. Look at the ground. In through your nose – two, three, four – and out through your mouth – two, three, four.’

I make myself look down at the forest of legs and feet and bags. If I don’t see their numbers then this feeling will go away. I’ll be okay. My breath’s uneven and shallow, there’s not enough air getting in my lungs.

In through your nose, and out through your mouth. Come on, I can do this.

It isn’t working. I’m getting worse. I’m going to be sick … I’m going to faint …

Someone behind me shoves into my back. I dig my heels in and stand my ground.

Breathe slowly.
Why isn’t it working?

More pressure. The boy behind me is in my space, trying to push me around. He’ll have me over in a minute. I’ll go down and be trampled, kicked to bits. Perhaps that’s what’s meant to happen, but it’s not how I want to go and I’m not going down without a fight.

That’s it!

I swing round and catch him with my elbow, right in the ribs.

‘Fuck! Watch it!’ He spits the words out, a boy a bit smaller than me, with ratty teeth and a crew cut. I’ve hurt him, and now the look in his eyes says he’s going to hurt me back. I know that look – I’ve seen it too many times before. I ought to be on my toes, alert, ready for the first punch, but his number’s burning into me. It’s different, see, odd. He only has three months to go. 6122026. I’m getting the flash of a blade, the hot metallic smell of blood and I feel sicker than ever. I can’t move – his number, his death, has me in its grip. I shut my eyes to try and get it out of my head, break the spell. I open them again the split second before his knuckles hit my face.

Someone must have jostled him, because he only catches my ear, and not very hard, but it’s hard enough to snap me back to reality. I bunch up both my fists and get him in the stomach. I hurt him, but I can’t have knocked the wind out of him because he comes at me again, one, two, into my ribs. People around us are screaming and cheering, but that don’t matter. It’s me and him that matters.

I hit him back. I want to hurt him now. I want to make him go away. I want to make all of it go away – this boy,
these kids, this school, Nan, London.

‘All right, lads, break it up!’

It’s a security guard, the size of a small mountain. He’s come wading through the crowd and grabbed both of us by the scruff of the neck.

Rat-teeth tries to protest.

‘I didn’t do nothing! He just started laying into me! What was I s’posed to do?’

But all he gets is an extra neck-shaking and a ‘Shut it’.

The crowd parts as we’re hauled to the front. We’re sent through the metal detector one at a time and searched on the other side. Then we’re marched down the corridor to an office, where the Deputy Head is waiting.

‘Based on today’s performance we shouldn’t even be letting you into this school.’ He’s a shirt-and-tie kind of guy, the sort that can’t talk to you without talking down to you. He’s reading us the Riot Act now, but I’m not listening. I’m looking at the dandruff on his shoulders, the way the cuff of his jacket is frayed. ‘It’s a disgrace to be fighting on your first day, a disgrace. What have you got to say for yourselves?’

I guess Rat-teeth, who turns out to be called Junior, has been in offices like this before. He knows the code. We both stand in silence, and after ten seconds or so we mutter, ‘Nothing, sir, sorry, sir’.

‘Whatever it was between you, I want you to leave it in this room. Shake hands, boys.’

We look at each other, and again his number blots out everything else and I’m there with him as the knife goes in. I can feel his surprise, his disbelief, the searing pain.

‘Take my hand, you moron,’ Junior hisses at me.

I come back to myself, back to the room, the teacher and him. He’s holding his hand out towards me. I take it and we
shake. He squeezes so hard my knuckle bones crunch against each other. I don’t show a thing, just squeeze back.

‘Take them back to registration. I don’t want to see either of you boys in here again. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

We’re marched back down the corridor and join the end of the line. I’m in front of Junior. He leans in behind me and mutters close to my ear, ‘You just made the biggest mistake of your life, Shit-brain.’

I move forwards a bit to get further away from him and nudge the girl in front.

‘Sorry,’ I say.

She half turns round, a girl about fifteen centimetres shorter than me with streaky blonde hair. She starts shooting me a dirty look out of the corner of her eye, but then she stops in her tracks and her eyes go wide as two dinner plates.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispers.

I know people think I’m weird, the way I look at them and sometimes keep looking. I try not to stare, I do, but sometimes I get kind of locked in, frozen by their numbers, the way they make me feel, like I did with Junior. But I haven’t been staring at this girl. I’ve only just joined the queue.

‘What?’ I say. ‘What is it?’

She’s turned round properly now, and she hasn’t taken her eyes off me. They’re blue, the bluest blue I’ve ever seen, but there are dark circles underneath, and her cheeks are pale and pinched.

‘You,’ she says, faintly. ‘It’s you.’ She goes even whiter and starts stumbling away from me, out of the queue, keeping her eyes fixed on mine as she walks slowly backwards, and suddenly it’s as if the rest of the world has melted away.

Her number, her death, it totally blows my mind.

More than fifty years in the future, and there she is, slipping out of this life easily, bathed in love and light. I can feel it, all over me, and inside me, in my head. And she’s not alone. I’m there with her – she’s me and I’m her. How??

She turns away suddenly and starts running down the corridor. One of the guards spots her and shouts out, but she don’t stop.

‘Whoah! A runner!’ Junior says behind me. ‘She won’t get far, not without registering,’ and he’s right. None of the doors will open. I watch her rattling one handle after another, desperate. The bugs in the ceiling track her movements. She’s getting into a real state, banging her fist on the glass, kicking out. And then two guards grab her under the arms, one each side, and carry her back towards us, and into a side room, next to the reception desk. She’s struggling and screaming, her face screwed up in a fury, but when she opens her eyes for a second and sees me again, there’s something else, as clear as her number.