a stack of freight containers had to run out, right? It all runs out eventually; the bottles of alcopops, the cartons of cigarettes, the cans of corned beef and baked beans.
Just like the oil once ran out.
Then what?
He wondered if any of the other boys had bothered to think about that. He wondered if Jay-zee sitting beside him, whooping and clapping his hands as he watched the boys getting their ends away, had ever given that a moment’s thought.
He wondered what Maxwell was going to do once they were on those rigs and running things. Was this going to be their home? A going concern? Or some place to simply strip clean and move on from?
That’s the future then? Pick clean and move on? That’s all we gonna be?
Just like locusts.
Chapter 77
10 years AC
Bracton, Norfolk
Bracton looked unchanged to Leona yet seemed subtly different. As they cycled in silence through the old town, through the modern high street with its fading chain-store signs, towards the docks and gas terminal, she found herself appraising it anew. It contrasted with the choked urban space of London. Here there were overgrown front gardens, parks and greens gone wild, any and all of which could be cultivated far more easily than the cracked concrete spaces in the capital.
Oddly, it no longer seemed the forbidding and desolate shell she remembered; a place from which dangerous and desperate armed men might emerge at any moment. It was just an empty town, largely in fair condition, certainly repairable and habitable if they chose to settle ashore here.
Perhaps it was the sunny weather. Perhaps the warm breeze that stirred the birch trees along the high street and down Runcorn Way towards the docks. Perhaps the reassuring continuity of life: the rabbits, foxes and deer that impassively watched them pass instead of scattering at the sound of their bicycle tyres through drifts of dry leaves. It could’ve been any of those things that led her to believe there was a viable future here.
That was the only purpose left in her life now, she decided. To convince Mum once and for all that the days of hiding were over; that the time had come to move the community off the rigs and back onto the mainland. Just one single, bloody-minded goal that she was going to hang on to. To start over. But that was okay with her. It kept the heartache in a box. It kept it manageable.
Their bikes rolled across the railway sidings between warehouses and parked forklift trucks onto the skittering gravel and crumbling concrete towards the quay. Finally, a dozen yards short of the water’s edge, with a squeak of brakes, she came to a stop and the others followed suit.
‘So there’s the North Sea, then,’ said Bushey, stating the obvious after a few reflective moments. ‘Any idea how we get to your gas rigs?’
‘Over there.’ She pointed to a tugboat tied up on a canal lock alongside the large brick gable wall of an old brewery. Tied up there as it always was after Walter had returned it from a water run. ‘We’ll use that.’
‘We’ll need to scavenge some marine diesel,’ said Adam. ‘Is there any—’
‘Walter normally leaves it topped up,’ she said looking at the others. ‘Always. He’s very reliable. A creature of habit.’
Adam shielded his eyes from the sun as he stared out across the sea. ‘And how far out is it?’
Leona shrugged. ‘Take us a morning if we were sailing,’ she said in answer. ‘Over an hour in the tug though.’
Adam looked back at them. ‘That would be about fifteen miles out?’
She nodded. ‘About that.’
‘On a clear day you can actually see the top of the rig’s com tower from here,’ she added. They all turned to look, squinting for a minute, but it was too hazy a day to pick out anything discernible on the flat horizon.
‘You think we beat those others to it?’ Harry asked.
Leona’s gaze drifted along the perfectly flat sea line. It looked like Maxwell’s boats had had the perfect weather to make it up here - an atypically glass-smooth North Sea. They could only hope something had gone wrong or delayed them.
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I’m sure we’ve beaten them.’
‘They may not even have left yet,’ said Bushey.
Leona nodded thoughtfully. They could hope that. Who knows?
‘You know which way to head, right?’ asked Walfield.
‘Of course,’ she smiled. ‘Straight out, north-eastish. On flat water like that we’ll see something soon enough. I’ve done the trip enough times.’
Walfield laughed. ‘Looks like