Страница 94 из 102
I dream of fire. A room of fire. In the middle of it, a table. Anya sips coffee there, putting another cup in front of me.
"Thanks," I say.
"It's alright."
"No, I mean it. Specially with you being dead and all."
She snorts and flaps a hand, the way she always used to when she thought I was being silly. She keeps the left side of her face turned to me. The right side is eyeless and black, charcoal, the skull beneath half-bared. Grins at me whenever she turns without thinking. "Are you alright, Paul?"
"I think so. Relatively speaking."
"Relatively speaking."
"Well, you're dead."
"Don't go on about it."
"And the world's ended."
"Don't be so dramatic. The world's still there. It's just the people that are gone."
"Of course. I forgot."
"Don't worry about it. You've a lot on your plate right now. Just be careful."
"Of what?"
"Of everything, Paul." Her hair catches fire, her clothes. I don't. I remain unscathed, just watching as the flames crawl over her and the rest of her face blackens and her one blue eye melts and trickles down her charcoal cheek like a tear. "Of everything."
I wake up. Jean's gone. Sound nearby.
I rise, looking round. Jean squats nearby, gathering up more coal. The fire's almost dead, smouldering. How can I see down here? The darkness should be total. Then I see dull green patches of luminescence smeared on the rock. "What's that?"
"Fungus of some kind, I should think." She isn't shocked by my sudden whisper. She's almost glacially calm. "Are you alright?"
My joints are a little creaky and I've a banging headache, but otherwise I feel fine. "Just hungry. And thirsty."
"You think that water's safe to drink?"
"We may have to chance it. We could try boiling it."
"Aye." She heaps coal on the embers of the fire, watches it start to smoulder. "Alan probably looks like that now."
"Alan?" I realise she means her husband.
"Aye. He has to be, doesn't he? I mean, no way he could've survived."
I don't know if that's true as yet-he might've got into the cellar, if she had one. I don't know if he did, and it doesn't matter. Things like that she doesn't need or want to hear. "No," I tell her, "no way."
"Anya worked in the city centre, didn't she?"
"Yes. She wouldn't have had a chance either."
"No." She sits beside me, huddles close, takes my hand. Is it just warmth she wants, companionship? I can't see myself having anything else to give, but I seem to-I feel my body stirring in her presence. It never has before today. But we never so narrowly escaped death, losing so much in the process, before.
It might be good for us, or it might not. I can't tell and I won't risk it. Not so soon. I squeeze her hand, and when she puts the other on my knee I gently but firmly remove it, but don't let it go.
Her sigh's a warm breath in my ear. "OK," she says. "For now."
We settle back down to sleep once more.
This time I don't dream.
The next-day?-God knows. There is neither time nor light down here, save the light we make. But I have to call it something. The next day, we explore the cavern.
Big, roomy. Plenty of coal, big chunks of it in the walls. We can hack bits loose with rocks. We won't freeze. We might starve or die of thirst, but we won't freeze.
Thank God, in one of the boats, someone had stored a kettle. I don't know what for. One more piece of luck, like the torches and the Geiger counter and the whole ceiling of the basement not falling in on us. Blind chance, saving us all.
Well, the fifteen of us, anyway.
Me, Jean and Frank Emerson are the only adults. The rest: eight boys, four girls. Most of the kids are the older ones, between fourteen and sixteen years of age. Two ten-year-old boys, one nine-year-old girl. The older kids-stronger, more grown-up, more independent. They were the ones who fought their way out of the basement. The younger ones-scared, huddled, either frozen where they were or ru
And dead. Better a live coward… or is it? Look where it's got me: a hole in the ground. But still alive.
Frank heats water in the kettle, lets the steam collect in the upturned hull of a boat, angled so it trickles down and collects in a corner. There's a tin cup too. A small water ration for everybody.
Food is a more pressing concern, at least until one of the younger boys yells and points at the water-the same one thought he saw a man in the canal yesterday. But he's seen something this time, something big and white and floundering. A fish, a big one. I whack the water hard with an oar-it flops to the surface, stu
"Bream," pronounces Frank, who used to go fishing. It's white and eyeless. "They tend to go for muddy water."
Muddy isn't the word for this water, but I'm grateful nonetheless. It's a big fish, but among fifteen people it doesn't go far. We need more.
"There might be rats," says one of the boys. Jeff Tomlinson. Sporty, practical, goes camping a lot, reads books on wilderness survival. Should've known he'd make it. "We could eat them."
"If we can catch them," says Frank.
"Maybe the rats'll be blind too," says Jeff.
"Have hearing like a bat."
I wonder if there'll be any of those down here too.
"Mr Forrester." It's one of the girls. Jane Routledge. She's at the end of the cavern, pointing.
"Look at this, sir." She's a scarily calm girl. A kind of brittle shock, a shell around her.
At the end of the cavern, the path branches off down cha
I venture a few feet into the nearest cave. Not far. Something about it makes my scalp prickle. I touch the walls. They feel-ribbed. These are not natural. These have been dug.
I say nothing about it, but something about the caves draws the kids.
By what I guess to be the end of the day, they're going into them, but not far, never out of sight of the main cavern, on my instructions. Last thing we need is any of them getting lost.
Also, by the end of the day, the caves have been given a name.
The children call them the narrows.
"Like a big worm's been through them," Jean whispers. "Isn't it?"
I give her hand a squeeze. "Don't."
We're at the far end of the cavern. It's late, as we reckon time now. The children and Frank are asleep around the dying fire. Jean and I… we're warm enough and restless enough to pull away. I shine a torch down one of the narrows. It glances off the ribbed, irregular stone. I can see about ten yards down it, before it bends right and is lost to view.
"They're weird, aren't they," she whispers.
"Yeah." We move to the neighbouring entrance. "The kids seem to like them, though. Gives 'em something to occupy themselves with."
"Aye, well. Just don't let them go playing in it. Bloody easy to get lost or stuck, place like this."
"Mm." I shine the torch again, then frown. "Hang on."
"What?"
"Look." I cross back to the first cave. "See that?"
"Bends right. Aye. So?"
"Look." I step to the right and shine the torch down its neighbour. "See?"