head.
‘Tonight, Adam. Can we arrange to go tonight?’
He bit his lip. ‘Jesus. I . . . that’s no time at all to—’
‘They could leave at any time. They could be leaving tonight!’
He raised a hand to hush her down. ‘Shhh! Okay, okay. Look, I’ll see if I can find the lads this afternoon and arrange to meet at the evening meal break.’
‘Please, do that,’ she nodded. And then almost as an afterthought she smiled through the vines at him. ‘And thank you.’
‘Maybe we should be thanking you. The only reason nobody’s yet bothered trying to sneak out of here is . . . well, we thought this place was it; all that was left.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll try and get back to you before the mid-morning whistle goes, okay? With a time and place to meet the lads.’
She nodded but he was already gone. She resumed half-heartedly picking undeveloped pea pods, hardly even petits pois; food that would end up being thrown into whatever was being boiled to a watery pulp for this evening’s meal.
For a moment she wondered where her strength was coming from to be doing this; she ached all over, she ached inside. She couldn’t make sense of the calm detachment she was feeling; Jacob gone, Hannah gone, and she felt nothing.
Her eyes followed the arrogant swagger of two orange jackets patrolling along the perimeter wall, chatting animatedly, excited about something; both sporting matching white baseball caps perched on their heads at a jaunty angle. Their hands and fingers flicked with exaggerated street gestures they could only have picked up from films or from the older boys. Even the crotch-grabbing swagger both boys were attempting to pull off was a poor affectation of something they must have seen on a DVD or a computer game.
No, she did feel something; a determination, an angry determination, that those vicious little bastards weren’t going to get on the platforms and have their fun. She was going to see those child-tyrants die before she allowed herself to shed another tear for Jacob, for Hannah, for Dad. They were no different to the White City gang who’d tried to break into their home and rape her ten years ago. Only some stupid bastard had decided to give this lot guns and tell them they were righteous in all that they did.
Before she shed another tear, she vowed, she was going to see them die, tumbling like lemmings into the North Sea.
Chapter 65
10 years AC
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
Nathan watched them loading up the second barge; a human chain of workers leading out of the dome’s rear service entrance across twenty yards of gravel and weed to the concrete wharf. The barges bumped and scraped impatiently as the Thames stirred softly and a fresh breeze rustled through loose corners of cellophane half wrapped around catering packs of Fray Bentos corned beef and Heinz baked beans.
In his hands he held an army issue assault rifle; an SA80. The very same weapon the old man, Walter, had once allowed him to test fire briefly; a small piece of his old life. Around his waist, beneath the orange staff jacket, webbing dangled, pouches stuffed full of thirty-round clips of ammunition.
A real soldier now, eh?
Not for the first time he could feel the magical power that holding a weapon like this gave you. He remembered watching the news one night before the crash, when he was about eight or nine. Some American kid had ambled into his high school with a similar weapon and proceeded to kill every kid in his class. He’d asked Mum why the kid did it and she’d said it was because he was evil.
He knew why the kid had done it now.
It was that sense of invincibility, of immortality, one felt holding the cold steel weight of a weapon like this. One tiny pull on his trigger and he could mow down those workers like skittles at a bowling alley. It was almost God-like power and all of it contained within the impulsive twitch of one finger.
That’s why, Snoop had quietly confided in him last night, only the older boys carried fully loaded guns on patrol. The younger ones were issued with the same weapons, but with an empty ammo clip.
It’s the moment of pause, bro. That’s what he’d said . . . the moment of pause.
The young ones had ammo in their pouches, of course, but the time it took to eject an empty clip, unbutton the pouch, pull