the corridor outside.
‘You are going to lose these people to me, Jennifer . . . and to God. Then you will be alone. Just you and Walter.’
She turned round. ‘There’s four hundred and fifty people here. How many come to listen to you? A hundred?’
‘More each day,’ he replied almost apologetically. ‘Soon it will be all.’
Jenny felt rage bubbling up and out of control. She knew it was going to come out as a shrill bark before she’d even opened her mouth. ‘Right! That’s it!! I want you off this rig, NOW!!’
He said nothing.
‘I WANT YOU TO FUCKING LEAVE, NOW!!’ Her voice rang off the metal walls beside her, down the passageway and out into the space of the compression module’s gutted main chamber.
His reply was measured and quiet. ‘No. I have work to do here.’
She turned and headed down the passage and out onto a walkway that overlooked the cavernous interior of the module. She saw pale oval faces peering out from a jungle of hammocks and bunks, between washing lines strewn from one side to the other, from the floor, up three storeys to the ceiling. Eyes followed her as she followed the railed walkway to a door that led outside onto an external staircase.
They all heard that. Heard me lose control. Shit.
Chapter 56
10 years AC
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
Snoop sat down at Maxwell’s beckon; the leather sofa creaking softly. Through the thick double doors of his quarters they could hear some of the boys whooping with delight as they scored a goal. They were kicking a football around on the arena’s main floor. A game usually ended with a punch-up. So far, it seemed, they’d managed without it turning into a fight.
He could see there was something on the old man’s mind. ‘What’s this about, Chief?’
Maxwell offered him a thin smile and steepled his fingers thoughtfully. ‘The future, Edward. The future.’
Something flipped uncomfortably inside him. The last time he’d seen the old bastard looking like this was last year, when he’d awoken in the middle of the night and wandered into his quarters at the top of the arena, away from the boys. He’d ordered Snoop’s girl to dress and leave immediately. Once alone, he’d casually wondered what Snoop’s opinion on some sort of a collective suicide might be. Something potent stirred into the evening meal; no one need know.
He’d been drinking heavily that night. And it had been the first time Snoop’s confidence in Maxwell had been shaken.
The old fucker had passed out shortly afterwards and he’d had the boys take him back down and put him to bed. Next morning, it was like the conversation had never happened.
‘What you got in mind?’ Snoop asked warily.
Maxwell looked across the coffee table at him. ‘We’re moving.’
‘Moving?’
He nodded. ‘You heard me right, Edward.’
‘But . . . we got our shit sorted here, right, Chief?’
Maxwell shook his head. ‘No, our shit here, I’m afraid, is not sorted.’ He smiled. ‘You know that, Edward. Come on. You’re a smart lad, you know that just as well as me.’
‘We growin’ all types of shit out front and stuff.’ Even as he blurted that, Snoop knew it was empty bluster. What they were growing was nowhere near enough to feed them all. It padded out the tasteless gunk that was served up each day; it was definitely slowing down the rate at which they were eating their way through the countless pallets of tinned and dried food packs, stored down on the mezzanine floor. But it wasn’t enough to feed them.
‘Edward, I did another stock take a fortnight ago. It’s not good. We’ll have to start evicting people soon.’
Snoop was silent for a moment. ‘S’really that bad, man?’
Maxwell sighed. ‘Edward, you’ve been downstairs with me. You know what it’s like.’
Snoop nodded. A growing sea of empty wooden pallets, flattened cardboard boxes, tossed aside sheets of plastic wrapping. He hated going down there. He always emerged with a queasy sense of unease in his gut; as if the world’s future was measured by how much of the floor was still occupied by squat towers of untapped polythene-wrapped supplies. He let the Chief do the number-crunching, the worrying. The man had a plan, right?
‘We have about enough food to last into next year. Then we’ll be left with whatever’s being grown outside.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yes, shit. But that can’t be such a big surprise for you, Edward?’
He stroked his chin. ‘Didn’t think it was that bad, tha’s all.’
‘It’s not just the food; the fuel for