The Chaos (28 page)

Chapter 63: Adam

O
ne side of me is cold and wet. I shiver and sit up. Above me the sky’s exploding; there’s rockets bursting like mortar shells, stars showering over me. I can see the colours reflected in front of me – it feels like I’m surrounded. It sounds like a battleground.
Bonfire Night’s always like this,
I think. But then I look up again.
It’s not the fifth of November. It’s midnight on New Year’s Eve. It’s past midnight. It’s the first of January.

I put my hands on the ground to support me. A metal bracelet slides down my wrist. A bracelet? I don’t wear jewellery, never have. My hands touch slime and I realise it’s mud under my fingers. I’m by a river, with the water a metre or two away from me.

I look around me. Another rocket lights up the sky and in its flash I see a van lying on its side by the wall. The cab’s smashed in, the back door’s open.

I stagger to my feet, wincing at the pain all through me. I take a few steps towards the van. Its siren is quiet now. 

There’s a heap of something on the ground nearby. I crouch down. It’s a person. A body. My guard. The matching half of the handcuffs is still on his wrist, the chain broken on impact.

‘Sorry, mate,’ I say. I can’t find any other words. 

I stumble to the cab. The ground’s soggy. It drags at me, putting me off balance. Two more bodies inside the van. Their airbags inflated okay, but they didn’t save them. 

I turn away. 

Where the hell am I?

I blunder forward and my hands hit something cold, rough, slimy – the river wall. I follow it along, treading on rubbish and God-knows-what washed-up at the side. I reach some steps and collapse onto them, breathing hard, trying to get my head round everything.

The fireworks are easing off now, just a few rockets in the distance, but the water’s shimmering, green and yellow. It’s the weirdest thing. I look up and there’s ribbons of colour glowing and fading in the sky.

‘What the hell …?’ I murmur, and then I hear the loudest bang I’ve ever heard in my life and the ground’s lifting under me and I’m thrown into the air. I land in water, ankle-deep. The sky’s still full of shimmering colours, and now it’s the only light there is. 

Everything else has gone. 

The whole city’s in darkness.

And it’s quiet. No traffic, no sirens, only a few shouts and screams echoing across the river.

The water around me drains away, taking some of the mud from under me. I feel like I’m being drawn into the ground, like I’ll disappear, swallowed up by the bed of the Thames. It’s like the seaside, like Weston, when you
stand at the edge of the beach and the waves come and go, sucking the sand from under your toes, making you wobble.

The water’s gone now, all of it. There’s wet mud there now, not river. I start walking back to where I think the wall is. If we crossed the river, I’ll need to be back the other side to get to Nan’s. But, wait a minute, there’s no water. I could walk across. I don’t need to find a bridge. I turn round and head off the other way, but I’ve only gone a few steps when a little voice in my head takes me back to Weston again. 

The waves come and go.

The water hasn’t just disappeared. There’s no plughole in the Thames. It’s a river, a tidal river. It’s gone now, but it’ll come back.

And suddenly my head is full of the twenty-sevens I’ve seen with watery deaths, lungs filling up, helpless, drowning.

I turn round again and try to run, but the mud’s so sticky it’s like I’m running in slow motion. Off to my left, I can hear a sound, a rumble or a roar.
Come on, come on.
I’m pushing myself on, lifting one foot up then the other. I’ve got to find the steps and get out of here and then climb up somewhere, get higher, out of the way.

But it’s too late. I look over my shoulder. I can’t see it, but I can hear it. There’s tons of water barrelling up the river, a monster raging towards me. I stop in my tracks, take in a lungful of air, but it’s here before I’m ready. It hits me as I’m breathing in and blasts me off my feet. All I can do is shut my mouth and close my eyes as my body’s being tossed around like a rag doll. The water holds me ‘til my chest is bursting. I can’t hold on any longer. I’ve got to breathe. I’ve got to open my mouth.

I can’t.

I have to.

Chapter 64: Sarah

I
 hurt everywhere, not just inside my head. I don’t know where I am. I think I’m lying on my front. I can move my arms but not my legs. There’s stuff in my mouth, hair or fluff or something, catching on my tongue, making me gag. I retch a bit, and try to spit my mouth clean.

Someone’s shouting in the darkness.

‘Adam? Adam?’

It’s Val. She’s alive, and not far away, but I can’t see her.

I try to shout back, but my voice comes out as a whisper.

My legs are caught under something. I twist round and stretch towards them, groping to find out what’s there. I can’t see a thing, but it feels like one of the armchairs, not that heavy, but awkward to shift from this position. I get both hands on it and push. There’s a slight movement and I manage to manoeuvre my legs round so I’m sitting up properly. Another push and there’s a scraping noise and a crash, and my legs are free. Pain shoots up them, as though someone’s sticking foot-long needles into me.

‘Jesus!’ I can’t help crying out, and now my voice is back. 

‘Who’s that?’ Val’s voice is gravelly and wary. 

‘It’s me. Sarah.’

There’s silence. Then, ‘Who are you? What are you doing in my house?’

‘It’s me, Val. Adam’s friend. Sarah. It’s me.’

‘Whoever you are, can you get me up? I feel like a bloody beetle. I’m flat on me back here.’

She sounds like she’s only a couple of metres away. I don’t trust my legs, so I start to crawl towards her. Underneath me, things crunch and move and dig in as I shuffle forward. All Val’s ornaments, thrown about and broken; all her souvenirs and mementos, all the little things that had caught her eye. I try not to think about it as another one shatters under my knee.

Reaching in front of me, my hand touches something soft. 

‘That you, Adam?’

‘It’s me, Sarah.’

‘Sarah.’

She says it deliberately, like she’s feeding it into her brain, trying to remember.

‘Sarah with the baby,’ I say. ‘Sarah who paints.’

‘Sa-rah.’ It sounds like the light’s dawning now. ‘Sarah with the baby.’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Oh my God, I remember … Where’s Adam?’

‘I don’t know, Val. They locked him up, remember?’

‘Oh shit. My boy. My beautiful boy.’

‘Can you move? Are you hurt? We need to get out of here.’

The building is groaning and sighing around us.

‘Val,’ I say, ‘are you hurt?’

‘No. I dunno. Help me up.’

Our hands meet in the dark, hers bony and desperate. They cling onto mine like they’ll never let go. We manage to get to our feet.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I say.

‘Okay, love, where’s the door?’

‘We don’t need a door, Val, we just walk.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The front of the house has gone, Val.’

‘Don’t be silly. We had a bit of a bump, that’s all. We’re still here. The house is still here.’

‘We are, but half your house isn’t. Keep walking.’

Arms linked, we pick our way over the debris. There’s a half-moon above us, giving enough light to show shapes in the gloom, but you can’t see any detail. Someone out on the street is shining a torch around and they flash it our way for a few seconds. And now we can see it: a mound of rubble where the front wall of the house used to be, spilling out into the yard. We have to scramble up and over it to get out, but there’s no other way.

The beam of light moves away from us and we’re walking blind again.

We wobble our way over the last of the stuff that used to be a house. A stretch of garden wall is still standing, so we perch on there, looking back where we have just come from.

The air is full of dust, thick with it, but as the moonlight filters through we can see what’s happened. The front walls of all the houses in our row have gone. It’s like a crazy doll’s house where you can see inside the rooms.

‘We were lucky to get out of there,’ I say.

‘Lucky,’ Val repeats. ‘Lucky.’

Something moves on the ground next to me. I catch the
movement out of the corner of my eye and yelp.

‘What is it?’

I’m expecting to see a hand or an arm or something, but it’s not human. It’s a small, black thing wriggling and squirming. Then it makes a noise, halfway between a grunt and a whine. I get off the wall and crouch down next to it. I put out my hand and touch dust, but there’s soft fur underneath, and warmth. The thing responds, lifting its head, and in the moonlight I can see an empty socket where its eye used to be.

‘It’s a dog, Val.’

‘A dog?’ says Val. ‘Norma’s dog?’

I run my hand down his back. He’s panting hard. There’s something wrong. His back end is flat against the ground, his legs splayed out.

‘Come on,’ I say, ‘Come here.’ I move a little bit away from him and click my fingers. He shuffles towards me using his front legs, like a commando wriggling on his belly. His back legs trail uselessly behind. ‘His legs are no good. They’re not working.’

Val kneels down next to me.

‘Let’s have a look.’ She runs her hands over the dog. 

‘His back’s broken,’ she says. ‘Better tell Norma. Where’s Norma?’

We look towards next door. It’s just a shell. Unlike Val’s house, the ceiling’s fallen in. The whole thing’s gone.

‘Oh, shit,’ she says. I can’t see her face, not the expression on it anyway, but it’s there in her voice. ‘Poor Norma. Adam told us. He told us this was coming. I always believed him, but I never thought it would be like this …’

‘We’ll have to finish him off. We can’t leave him like this. Sarah?’

She wants me to kill him. The hair on the back of my neck stands up.

‘I can’t, Val. I just can’t.’ She leans forward and I hear her scrabbling in the rubble. She’s got something in her hand now.

‘Okay. Okay. Good boy, good boy.’

She moves in the dim light, bringing her hand high above his head. Then she smashes it down. There’s a dull thud, that’s all, a thud. She doesn’t say anything, but scoops up the body and stumbles back towards the houses.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going to bury him where he should be, with Norma.’

I scramble after her and together we pile stones and bricks on top of him. Then we make our way back to the wall and sit down.

‘Thank you,’ Val says. She finds my hand and takes it in hers. We sit in silence for a while. I’m numb. I can’t take in what’s happened. It was quiet to start with, but now the night is filling up with noise; sirens, shouts. There are people in this street shouting, people desperate for help, and I suddenly wonder if the person who’s got Mia is shouting too. Are they trapped somewhere, or are they safe? Is she crying, or could she possibly have slept through it all? Or is she dead already? Her number is imprinted in my mind, the number I read in Adam’s book. 112027. It’s today. It’s here. I might be too late.

‘Val,’ I say, ‘I’ve got to find Mia. It’s the only thing that matters now.’

‘Mia,’ she says. ‘The baby.’

‘Yeah, I’ve got to get to her.’

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘We should go now. It’s just … it’s just …’

‘What?’

‘I don’t want to leave without Cyril’s box.’

Cyril? Cyril’s box? I want to scream. She’s worried about the ashes of someone who died years ago while somewhere in London my baby needs me now.

‘Val, please, leave it. We’ll never find it in that lot. Please, I need to get to Mia.’

‘It’s all I’ve got left of him.’

I think my head’s going to explode.
It doesn’t matter. He’s gone.
But it does matter.

‘Val, I don’t think it’s safe to go back in. You’ll never find it anyway, not in the dark.’

‘It’ll be light soon. We could stay ‘til it gets light.’

I try to stay calm, but my frustration’s building up as each second ticks away.

‘Val, I’ve really got to go.’

‘We won’t get far in the dark, safer to travel in the daytime …’

I look down the road. With the moonlight, it’s not completely pitch black. I take a few steps along the pavement and I step into thin air. The pavement isn’t there. My foot goes down, down, down and I’m clutching wildly for something to get hold of, trying to fling myself backwards. Finally, when I’m up to my thigh in the ground, my foot hits something.

‘Shit!’ I call out.

And suddenly Val’s there. 

‘Sarah? Sarah? What’s happened?’

She finds my shoulder, her bony hand gripping, holding me.

‘I’ve fallen down something.’ 

She helps me to clamber out.

‘Don’t go, Sarah,’ she says. ‘Don’t go ’til it’s light.’

From the other side of the road, someone’s shouting.

‘My wife. She’s in there. Help me. Help me!’

My heart’s pounding in my chest. I know what I’m going to have to do, and it’s killing me.

‘Stay there, Val,’ I sigh. ‘I’ll try to help these people, and the moment it gets lighter, we’ll get Cyril out and we’ll go.’

‘I can help too,’ she says. And so we do stay. We crawl across the road to Val’s neighbours, and help them to move stones and bricks and timber. And between us we manage to pull the woman out of the wreckage of her house. She’s not hurt too badly, but she’s in shock. Her husband sits next to her on the pavement, in his pyjamas and dressing gown, holding her hand.

Our eyes get accustomed to the dim light, so we hardly notice dawn breaking, the sky turning from black to grey. I’ve been leaning forward, my head in my hands but my back’s hurting so I straighten up and look around me.

‘Oh my God, Val. Oh my God.’

‘What is it? Have you found something?’

‘No. Look.’

She, too, straightens up. She puts her hands on her hips and stretches her back. Then she looks down the street, and a noise comes out of her mouth, somewhere between a sigh and a whistle.