The Brink (8 page)

He watched Gary operating the roller-shutters through the reinforced glass screens and felt the rumbling engine vibrate up from beneath him.

“Shit happens, eh girl?” he said to Moll who was laid in the foot well. “Guess old Steve isn’t getting a burial today.”

The dog looked up at him, grinning once more with a blood-flecked muzzle. Alan felt tired and drained and he wasn’t sure how he was meant to feel about Steve’s death. He liked Steve and he was trying to get his head around a world without him in it, the finality of it, the word ‘never’ now had a face and it was one he’d never see again.

It began to dawn on him, as he sat there in the poor garage light with the glow from the sinister dashboard making his eyes feel heavy, that he’d seen so much death already, from Longsteel to the present that he’d never stopped to consider what it would be like to lose someone close to him. He hadn’t even realised that Steve was close to him. In the Fort he’d know people for 12 months of darkness and he’d seen them die, but he’d never considered himself close to them. Their deaths, either from starvation or thirst or fighting or suicide, had had their effect upon him, sure, but not like this, not like Steve’s. Was this it, he wondered - would this be his lot in life if he continued to get attached to people who would ultimately die? Would it be worth the price?

“All set?” asked Gary as he appeared at the top of the ladder, bursting in on his morbid thoughts.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Right. Let’s roll out.”

Reb gunned the engine of the Rhino next to them and filled the garage with the stench of ozone and scorched laser before moving slowly forward and lining the nose of the titanic thing with the ramp. Then she was away, speeding towards it and up into the night. Gary followed, perhaps a little slower as he tried to get to grips with the controls, knowing that it’d been Steve’s job to drive in the mission planning stage because he’d had a history with controlling the beasts.

“She’s a tough little bitch,” he said, crunching through the gears. “Not like I’m used to.”

“You’ve never driven one before?” asked Alan.

“Never. Smaller stuff, yeah, but nothing like this. I might as well be wrestling an elephant.”

They drove out of the garage and into a cool, crisp night which they might have felt in their bones if it hadn’t been for the internal heating systems that belched hot air into the cab, trying to slow-cook them in their own juices. Reb led the way, driving towards the breached fencing at a fair pace. Gary turned the wheel a little too sharply, trying to keep up, but succeeded only in sending the three of them sideways where they sat. He cursed before levelling it up again and then relaxed into a straight drive.

“She knows what she’s doing,” said Alan to break the oppressive silence that he considered might only be affecting him.

“She should. This was her job back in the day.”

“What? Driving these things?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. There was a sheen of perspiration on his brow and Alan reached across the controls to turn the heating down. It felt like they’d stumbled into a rainforest in summer and he half expected mosquitos to start buzzing around his ears.

“For the army?”

“Yeah. She was part of 6 Company of the Signals based at what was once Camp Washington back before people started living here again. Took a long time to get things operational after the Panic, you know, and it was her job to lug the great solar collectors to the old nuclear plants and renovate them.”

“So she was here when the Russians were still knocking around?”

“Yeah, maybe the last six months or so. No one thought it could happen again. America. Europe. Then it does, but this time in a big way and for once it doesn’t look like it was our fault. Makes you feel like someone up there has it in for the human race.”

“You’re telling me.”

“You’re not buying this eclipse bullshit are you by any chance?” he said, laughing.

“I don’t know,” he replied and it was the honest truth. He hadn’t been around to see it and once the power went off he hadn’t seen much of anything. “What do you think?”

“Could be fucking aliens for all I care. 70 years ago no one would’ve believed that the Americans had bombed England until it all came out. Terrorists-” here he lifted his hand and framed the word in quotation marks, “released a chemical weapon that made a lot of people depressed so they’d kill themselves. Then it turns out the Americans did that too. I didn’t believe it myself even when they started teaching it in school. My Granddad always claimed it was the Yanks but no one listened to him until the truth came out. Now it’s in your text books so it must have happened. Maybe in another 70 years we’ll be teaching kids about the time aliens came and kicked us in the balls by taking away our sun for a year.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Alan.

“Or it really was just an eclipse. I don’t know science. Maybe it was a freak event or something.”

“I guess we’ll never know.”

The Rhino rumbled along and the view from so high up in the cab impressed Alan, making the ride a little more enjoyable in spite of his thoughts that often drifted back to Steve’s death. Gary lapsed into silence and stared at the back of Reb’s vehicle, taking a look at the display every now and again without really seeing what it said.

After a few minutes he cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry for Steve,” he said. He didn’t look at Alan. His eyes never left the screen in front of him. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to bring his body. I have my reasons.”

“Sure,” he replied.

“We...” he paused, coughed, then blinked several times. “I know it looks like I’m a thoughtless son of a bitch, leaving him there, but there’s no room for that kind of thing now.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean misguided sentimentality. If this were...
peacetime
, so to speak, we’d take him home and give him a good send off. But this isn’t peacetime. Hell, it isn’t even war if you think about it. We’re fighting to survive as an entire species and if we screw it up then there’s no more human race, no more ‘mankind’. The stakes are higher than if we were just fighting each other.”

“I think I understand.”

“Do you? My Granddad was there when the bombs fell. He survived the Yanks’ initial attack because he lived out in Norfolk and I can tell you there isn’t much to bomb out there.”

He laughed and took the bend in the road that Reb had already disappeared around, cutting the corner and felling a lone pine tree with one wheel. It was ripped from the ground and it dragged itself across the side of the cab, clawing at the window with its branches. Gary didn’t seem to notice.

“He told me that it wasn’t the missiles that did the most damage. It was the terror that followed. You see, they had no way of knowing if that was it, if the end was coming, and they didn’t realise it was only Britain under attack. My Granddad said that more people died in the week
after
than died
during
it.”

“From the panic?” said Alan.

“Yeah. My Granddad, he’d fought in Afghanistan and was a retired Royal Marine. He managed to gather some of the people from his village and make his way to the coast. He never told me the details but he said that only half of them made it. I assume they’d been attacked by survivors or something, but he’d never tell me despite me pestering him.”

“It must have been pretty bad,” said Alan.

“I reckon so. One day my Nan took me to one side and said to me, ‘let it go, son’. I asked her why and she said that the man in that chair isn’t your Granddad.”

“What?”

“She said that the man she’d married wasn’t the man in that chair. That her husband had survived the horrors of Afghanistan only to die at home in England and that the person occupying the body wasn’t my Granddad anymore.”

“That sounds horrible,” said Alan. “Did she hate him or something?”

“No. She knew the full story. She’d been abroad in Spain when the Panic had happened so she only heard he’d survived once the humanitarian aid went in and found them. Then she discovered the price he’d paid to survive and that the person who came out of there wasn’t the same man anymore. All she could tell me was that he’d seen so much death and been so open hearted that it’d killed him too, from the inside out, and made a walking corpse of him.”

“So you think that we should supress our feelings? Be cold?”

“I guess so. This isn’t war, it’s
survival
and I don’t think we’ll make it if we-”

The radio came alive and broke into their conversation with such force that they both jumped out of their skin. It was Reb and the streaking tail of an RPG cut through the air close to her cab like a mad firework.

“Contact!”

5

The dawn light found them on a wide, four lane motorway which was where the scavengers had chosen to ambush them, and exactly where Teague had expected them to do it. The sun was in their eyes as the empty road opened up before them like a gauntlet of tarmac and wrecked cars and as the screen dimmed further, Alan looked to see Gary’s reaction in the pale cab light.

“I’ll give them one thing,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“They’re predicable. We planned for this and they didn’t fail us. We’ve got a good few miles ahead of us which gives them plenty of time to either force us to stop or blow the crap out of us.”

“Surely this thing can take a beating?” said Alan.

“Yeah, but if they climb on board they could use whatever they want and given that we didn’t expect to see them toting RPGs around I’m not taking any chances. They could have C4 or anything now.”

“What can I do?” he asked.

“You’re not going to like it,” he said as the rear view screens began to fill with pursuing vehicles, all daubed in badly sprayed colours and fitted with all kinds of strange bits of metal as if the clichéd survivor garb was all the rage in post-apocalyptic Paris right then. Alan began expecting to see someone riding a motorbike wearing only assless-chaps and a Mohawk soon.

“You’re going to open that hatch there.” He pointed to the rectangular door in the roof panel.

“I can see where this is going,” said Alan, readying the XC10. Moll gave him a sideways glance but didn’t stir from the foot well. He shook his head and got up; turning the two handles in the direction the stencilled paintwork told him to and felt a rush of cold air sweep into the cab. Then, using his shoulders to push against it, he shoved the hatch backwards, locking it in place so that it didn’t try to slam shut and take his head off.

The force of the wind outside the vehicle whipped at his face and he could hear nothing else but the roar of the air tearing past him. The Rhino wasn’t going that fast, maybe 40 miles per hour, but through the hatch it felt like they were tearing along the motorway with hell on their heels.

He looked behind him and counted 6 vehicles, all modern solar models and all filled to capacity with those survivors who chose to slip back into the gang lifestyle and be so easily stereotyped as ‘Scavengers’. It’d only taken a few years, if that, for the human race to go running back into the arms of its primitive ancestors and cast off the uncomfortable, unnatural veneer of society like a threadbare garment. Chasing them for reasons only they could really understand, this kind of people left Alan wondering if there was any hope of making it at all.

The nearest vehicle came up on the driver’s side of the Rhino and Alan could see the man behind the wheel, shouting at his passengers to try and board. Gary swerved to try and force them into the barrier that ran between the two directions of the motorway, but the slow, lumbering truck had little effect on the fast car which dropped back and swung round, waiting for another chance to off load its passengers.

Ahead, Reb had slowed down to let Gary catch up with her and together they blocked off most of the three inner lanes leaving only two narrow strips on either side. It meant that the scavengers would have to risk either being crushed by the sides of the Rhinos or attempt to board from behind in plain view of the cameras.

“The road runs straight for a few miles,” said Reb. “It’ll buy us some time to take a few of them out.”

From where he was he could see Reb as she fixed her concentration on the way before her, struggling to keep both vehicles from wandering apart or crashing into each other. The road was pitted and littered with wrecks which they simply drove right through, or over, which meant that holding their position was difficult at best and oftentimes the two sides ground together with a screech and a crash.

The lead car made another attempt to drive up on Gary’s side and someone was already clinging to an open door, ready to leap across. Alan steadied the carbine on the cab with his left arm, took aim, and waited until the motion of the Rhino shifted in his favour. It was as the car swung away to avoid Gary’s second lunge that the moment came and he fired twice, planting both shots into the man’s chest. The scavenger released his hold on the door and fell, hitting the tarmac and rolling under the wheels of the car behind.

“Nice shot,” said Gary.

The lead car pulled back and another took its place, this time with two more hanging from crude handles welded to the sides of a red van. Alan could see their faces, nervous and fuelled by adrenaline but terrified all the same as they drew closer to the Rhino and had probably seen the last guy fall already. He took aim at the windshield and waited, avoiding the stares of the men that were looking up at him. The seconds went by. Then the moment came just as one of them leapt. He fired and cracks formed across the surface of the window like a spider’s web, blinding the driver and causing him to veer off into the barrier where he lost control and slammed into a pillar, crumpling like an empty tin can.

“On your left,” called Gary. “He’s holding on to the side.”

“I’ve got one too,” said Reb.

Alan looked to his right and saw a woman holding onto the narrow ladder to Reb’s cab with an ice pick in her hands, looking to smash the window with its sharp head.

“Hold on.” Gary swerved and the two hulking machines came together just as Alan looked away from the sight. When they parted there was only a bright red streak to mark where the woman had been.

“Ouch,” laughed Reb.

Alan waited in the hatch as Gary observed the guy hanging from his side of the truck.

“He’s a tough nut,” he said. “I think... Damn it, he has something.”

“What?”

“Sorry Harding but you’re going to have to deal with him. He’s trying to plant something near the fuel tanks.”

“I’m on it.”

“There’s a rail on top - clip yourself on to it.”

Alan reached behind him and found the safety line with its carabineer in a pouch on his vest and, climbing onto the roof, attached it to the stout rail that ran around the outer edge of the truck. Then he stood up and it felt like he was surfing the Rhino, fighting not to be thrown from it by the waves of motion that pulsed and throbbed beneath his boots. He couldn’t help but grin with the thrill of it as he made his way over to the driver’s side and saw the scavenger working on a block of C4 that he’d almost finished arming.

Alan shot him square in the top of his skull and he fell backwards, hitting the road and disappearing into the dust behind them as the other vehicles began to fall back. Not without a parting burst of laser fire though which passed close by him as he stood looking down.

“What now?” he asked.

“Does it look armed?” said Gary.

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied, crouching down to get a better look. “What does armed C4 look like?”

“Good point. I’d feel better if it wasn’t there though. Can you climb down and pull it off?”

“I’ll try.”

Alan slung his carbine and fastened it in place behind him, turning around and lowering himself over the edge of the Rhino. The wind seemed more intense now and the cold was creeping into his bones as he clung to the side, holding on to his safety line with freezing fingertips. Behind him he could see one of the cars making its way towards the gap and he expected to see it come up beside him at any minute.

“Keep an eye on that car,” said Gary.

“Yeah, I’ve seen him.”

He got himself down to the lower rail and looked at the block of explosive glued to the channel that was formed into the steel of the truck’s body just above the cylindrical fuel tank. With his free hand, feeling unable to let go of his safety line with the other out of an irrational fear, he tore the thing loose and tossed it away behind him where it must have landed somewhere in the ditch that ran between the barriers.

“Done,” said Alan.

“Nice one. Climb back up - it looks like they’re going to have another try.”

As he reached up to grab the rail he heard the engine of the pursuing car whine as its driver gunned it through the gap between the Rhino and the barrier, knowing that with Alan clinging to the side Gary wouldn’t risk trying to swerve into him.

As he began to pull himself up he felt hands on his vest and a sudden yank backwards caused him to let go and lose his footing. If it hadn’t been for the safety line he’d have plunged downwards into the enormous wheels of the truck and he didn’t want to think what state he would’ve been in when he came out the other end.

Whoever it was clung desperately to him and the pain of the rig and the extra weight cutting into his shoulders was agonising. He reached down for the pistol he wore on his thigh but another hand found it first, tugging at the Velcro fastening that held it in place. The release of pressure on one shoulder meant that he could reach round with his right arm and, feeling for the man, he found his neck and locked it in the crook of his elbow, squeezing hard.

There was a grunt and the pistol fell slack in its holster. A hand grabbed his forearm and tried to free itself from the choke hold but Alan gripped harder, squeezing until he could turn on the safety line and face his attacker.

But it wasn’t a man. It was a young woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, with a painted face and short cropped hair and her eyes burned with a fearsome beauty and fixed upon Alan’s with as much hatred as she could summon. There was fear there too - around the edges maybe, orbiting the anger but never coming too close to be burned by it.

He gripped her harder, watched her strength wane as the air was choked out of her, and then with his free hand drove it into her face, smashing her nose just as the car caught up them. Her body sagged and he let her go, launching her onto the front of the vehicle and watching as it rolled sideways, under the front wheels, never to be seen again.

He didn’t have time for regret. Maybe something of Gary’s words had sunk in but as the car bore down on him, trying to crush his legs or drive them into the spinning wheels, he dragged himself back up onto the roof with a horrible sense of guilt that drove any thought of success far from his mind. He’d never subscribed to the militant feminism of his day, the kind that would let a man fight a woman on equal grounds. He loathed the idea and found it repugnant right down to his core. Maybe he was a dinosaur, maybe he was some forgotten relic, but he saw women as precious and worthy of his protection, not just another predator in a kill or be killed world.

He was silent as he slid back through the hatch, taking up his firing post again, even when he felt Gary’s hand pat his shoulder in a kind of congratulation.

“If we can keep this up for another hour we’ll be at the RV and McNeil can finish the job.”

“They’re not exactly rushing to engage,” said Alan.

“They won’t - they’re not soldiers, they’re just a bunch of normal people trying to do what they saw in a film once. Reality doesn’t work like that, as you already know.”

Alan knew. He’d known it back in the South when he’d first picked up a rifle and tried to help defend the Fort. In video games you aimed and pulled the trigger and people dropped down dead, but he’d seen for himself that it was so much more difficult, so much more painful to do it for real. Even if you managed to hit what you were aiming at, pulling the trigger on someone was hard enough to come to terms with.

The road went on and it started to feel like it’d never end, like the turning they were waiting for would never come and that they were doomed to drive and drive until time itself ended. The scenery never seemed to change either. Concrete walls. Shells of cars and trucks. Barriers. More walls. More cars. More trucks and barriers. Like an endless loop in some old cartoon.

Above, the sky darkened, perhaps the only change that did take place, and the rain clouds brooded overhead  forming angry shapes and faces that glared down upon them. The first drops landed on the cab roof just as the pursuers looked to be readying for another attempt upon the Rhinos.

“Persistent bastards,” said Reb.

“You’re telling me,” Gary replied. “Kind of makes you wish they were running on fuel. They’d have run out a few years ago and we wouldn’t be having this problem, would we? I can’t see them driving around next year anyway. Those things will be knackered soon and the last time I checked there wasn’t a garage anywhere which had any parts left.”

“It’s getting bad, isn’t it?” said Reb.

“It’ll get worse before it gets better. We were so reliant on our tech and made our toys so complicated that they might as well have been made of glass, they broke so easily.”

A blue Vauxhall began to creep up on Reb’s side and Alan watched as the driver barked instructions to his passengers. Of course, he was unable to hear what was being said but from the gestures on his face he could tell that he was losing his temper and wanted these vehicles badly.

“We’ll bounce back,” continued Gary. “We always do. We learned that 70 years ago. Heck, go back a few hundred years to the World Wars and things were bad then, yet here we are, still kicking.”

“You’re an optimistic bastard,” said Reb.

“What else do we have? No point crying about it. We’ve got a couple more years and then all this crap will be gone and we’ll be back to fighting with sticks and swords. It’ll be a respite for the world, I think. It’ll do us some good. Humble us maybe.”