see from the set of their faces that that was just what they needed to hear; that it would be someone else’s call; blood - rightful blood - on the Lord’s hands, not theirs.
‘So then,’ he continued. ‘Let us pray.’
Chapter 68
10 years AC
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
Time.
She quietly eased herself up off her mattress. It was almost completely dark inside the dome. Some light spilled up against the canvas roof from the arena; there were still floods on in there that provided just enough ambient light for her to make her way through the maze of partitioned clusters of beds.
The quietness around was filled with the steady metronome of deep breathing, the murmurs of uneasy dreams and distant echoing noises coming from the dome’s centre, of young male voices and the clatter of activity.
They’re still at work.
She made her way into the piazza, across the open floor and past the infirmary, a hundred yards down the curved boulevard towards the east entrance and waited for a while amidst a jam of parked-up flat-bed trolleys and wheelbarrows to check the whereabouts of tonight’s guards.
There were usually three pairs of them; one pair always meant to be on the front gate, the other two pairs at different stages of walking a lap around the entire perimeter of the Zone. Adam had told her the boys were quite often guilty of shirking off. Either all six of them clustered around the gate and neglected to bother walking the perimeter at all, or only one pair would go for a perfunctory wander every now and then. Ironically, he said, it was that lack of consistency that made sneaking out that much harder; there was no knowing for sure how many would be on the gate. She sat and waited in silence for a moment, listening for the light scuff of trainers, the soft murmurs of conversation, watching for the bobbing glow of their cigarette tips.
She was travelling light; nothing more than a couple of scuffed old one-litre plastic bottles with screw caps. Water they could find as they went, but food . . . well, if they were lucky it was only going to take a few days to make their way back home.
No sign of any jackets nearby. Quietly, she slipped out of the dome through the main entrance.
She cursed the silver-blue light of an almost full moon, shining boldly down on the plantation. To her left, a hundred and fifty yards away, was the quayside and the Thames glittering beautifully. She could see the long low outline of the family-sized paddling pool over there, but no sign yet of Adam and the others waiting for her.
It’s right out in the open.
Adam couldn’t have picked a worse place for them to rally. There was no shade from the moonlight to hide in; anyone looking eastwards, across the plantation towards the river, was surely going to see their dark huddled forms beside the pool. Leona had been hoping there’d be clutter around it: shopping trolleys, wheelbarrows, buckets, watering cans . . . items they might have hidden amongst.
She looked towards the area of the plantation where she’d been working this afternoon; the tall rows of beans and peas, tall enough that she could hide down one of the leafy alleys. From cover there she could keep an eye on the pool and wait for the others to turn up.
She scooted low and quick across the open ground from the entrance, reaching the nearest grow troughs of kale and spinach leaves and hunkering down amongst them. These were barely three feet high and she was flat on her face to stay hidden amongst them.
She raised her head, chancing a hasty glance towards the front gate. It was almost impossible to pick anything out; there wasn’t the glistening reflective backdrop like the Thames to silhouette against, instead, all she could make out was the long line of the encircling barricade and where the gate was, the low hump of the garden shed the boys sometimes played cards in.
Then she saw the faint tip of a cigarette move upwards and glow brightly for a moment. She followed the tip as it moved down again and then remained still. She thought she could hear the soft murmur of voices coming from there.
So there’s at least two by the gate.
She crept along the aisles of kale and spinach, heading towards the taller aisles of peas and beans. Bent double, almost on her hands and knees, she loped