guns come onto our ark.’
Ark?
‘This is a holy place now, Leona! These people have been waiting for me!’
Adam turned to look at Leona. ‘That guy’s a headcase,’ he muttered.
She nodded.
Without warning, something landed with a heavy thud on the foredeck behind her. She spun round to see the bottom end of a rope ladder snarled in a pile of coiled rope and wooden slats. She looked up to see that it had flopped down from the main deck. At the top of it was Martha.
‘NO!! This isn’t no holy place!!’ Her shrill voice cut across the space above them. She looked down at Leona. ‘You come up, Leona, love!’
Valérie Latoc’s eyes widened. ‘Get that rope up now!’ Several people, not too far along the main deck from where Martha stood, stepped towards her.
‘Oh-my-God-grabbit!’ hissed Leona.
Adam leapt across the deck and got a hand on the rope ladder before it could be yanked up beyond reach. Meanwhile, Martha had turned to fend off the people approaching her. ‘You stay back!!’ she screamed, slapping the face of the nearest woman with the palm of her hand. The others stepped forward and wrestled with her. The scuffle quickly became an undignified tangle of flaying hands; an almost comical bitch fight between her ample form and three others, hair-pulling and face slapping.
Adam turned to Walfield. ‘Danny! A warning shot, please.’
The sergeant shouldered his SA80 and cracked a single shot into the air. The effect was instantaneous; everyone dropped back from the railings and out of sight. Except Martha and the others still slapping, scratching and screaming at each other.
Adam pulled himself up the first few slats of the rope ladder. It swung precariously over the side of the tugboat’s foredeck with his weight, leaving him swinging above the water.
‘Just cover me till I get my leg onto something!!” he bellowed as he swung. Working quickly he pulled himself arm over arm, up the next dozen wooden slats until he was banging his hip against the side of the spider deck’s safety railing. Several pairs of hands snatched at his khaki shirt trying to pull him off the rope ladder. Walfield fired another single shot that whistled close to them and zinged off the underbelly of the deck above. The hands disappeared back out of sight.
Adam swung against the railing again, this time letting go of the rope and grabbing at the rusty metal, hoping it wasn’t so corroded that it was going to snap loose and bend out of shape and come tumbling down into the sea with him. He swung himself over the railing with the clumsiness of a man too exhausted to care how he landed. The spider deck rang with the impact. A moment later he appeared on his feet again, pulling the gun down from his shoulder.
‘All right, everyone get the fuck back!’ he screamed. ‘Please!’ he added as an afterthought.
The nearest of them melted away from him, wide-eyed at the sight of the levelled gun. A deck above them they could hear Valérie Latoc screaming an order for someone - anyone - to go and retrieve the community’s weapons from Walter’s trusty locker room.
Chapter 79
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
‘She’s in here?’ Leona asked incredulously. ‘They shoved her in here?’
Martha nodded tearfully as they made their way down the dark, unlit and narrow passageway towards the battery storage rooms. They were on the same deck as the generator room and connected sludgery. Even though neither had been in use for several months, the stink was everywhere still; ingrained in the very walls of this place now. It was overpowering to Adam, a step or two behind Martha and Leona, and he fought an urge to gag.
‘How could you?’ she demanded, looking at Martha then turning round and glaring at Tami. ‘Mum? Your friend, right?’
Martha sobbed as she led them to the door. She had no answer and instead she shook her head, ashamed, unable even to look Leona in the eye.
‘He had a hold over them,’ Dr Gupta uttered. ‘He . . . we . . . there was nothing I could do . . .’ Her voice broke and faded to nothing as she began to cry as well.
Martha slid the bolt and opened the door to reveal, in the gloom, Jenny perched on the cold hard floor, a bowl of cold uneaten broth at her feet. A toilet bucket in the corner. Leona’s first reaction was a shudder of familiarity.
My God.
Leona pushed