At the Edge of the Game Read online

  My strategy is to skirt wide onto the river ice, make my way far back around the way I came, well away from the major trouble area. Good thing too, because now the situation’s gotten worse. Gunfire. Screams. People running. I duck around a corner, peer back from cover to see some lunatics charge the soldiers again. They’re cut down, just like that. Flat dead on the ground.

  What’s to be done, except to go home?

  A filament of rational brain wonders at its own existence as I pass the dead hulk of a red commercial van.

  There’s an empty dustbin lying on its side in the hardened snow. I wrench it free and fling it at our front door. It bounces away, leaving a raw dent.

  Stumbling inside now, falling into a dreadful heap at the bottom of the stairs. Images flash through my head, impossibly detailed. Where does a brain get all the processing power to achieve this infinite clarity?

  The journey here in the cramped car. That man with the weird accent on the radio. Sounded like English was his first language, but whatever the hell he was talking about, we couldn’t follow. He spoke of ‘Japhethy’. Member states would have to coalesce to endure. ‘Let this finally and forever prove the separateness of God and Nature.’ He sang a hymn-like tune.

  ‘It’s a wind-up,’ Heathshade said.

  A wind-up? Who’d be bothered? That was even more ludicrous than the notion that it was in some way real.

  In the village of Fiddown and again in Mooncoin there was evidence of murder. Fires burned across the wide Suir, like someone had soaked the forest in petrol and put a torch to it. Fire set against mud, smoke set against a wet, green sky.

  Back towards Carrick, dendrons of lightning like devils dancing over the ruined town.

  To the north, a cylindrical structure high, high up caught the friendly daylight of other time zones.

  And then… the blessed relief of reaching Waterford safely.

  They made us get out of the car at the railway station. We never saw it again. They took away Heathshade’s gun too.

  Where have you come from?

  Carrick-on-Suir.

  Why didn’t you stay there?

  It’s been destroyed. (They react to this with dubiety.)

  Many more coming behind you?

  Don’t know.

  We can’t take you all, you know.

  (Only way to react to this is to shrug.)

  All right, cross the bridge, make a left, follow the signs.

  And so we did, and with remarkable efficiency Helen and I were assigned our flat in this building, and a new ration card.

  Bad luck: Heathshade was put in the flat upstairs.

  Those were the good old days, when that short-lived spurt of regeneration stimulated feelings of optimism. They had a local radio service up and running for a few days. That’s been stopped again now, replaced by beeping static, long-lost shipping signals from the early 20th Century, bent back to earth somehow.

  Still we tune in every day, hoping to hear something.

  Gradually I have become aware that I am not alone in this unpleasant hallway. I blink my wet eyes clear to see Heathshade’s standing a few steps above, looking down upon me with not the merest hint of empathy.

  I relate to him what I witnessed on the quay. He nods with satisfaction.

  ‘I predicted that.’

  Not to me, you didn’t.

  ‘It was only a matter of when. Good to have expected it, eh? Got some preparation in. That’s the last you’ll see of rations round here. I tell you, George, I ain’t just guessing either. Found a handy piece of equipment up in the flat. A police scanner.’

  ‘What good is that?’

  ‘What do you think? It picks up their radio chatter. I know what they’re at. I know what a fucking shambles they are. Follow me.’

  We climb to the top floor, to his flat. Daisy Carruth and her daughter are there, sitting near the fire, covered by a duvet. The place smells of rubbish.

  He opens a kitchen cabinet. It’s full of food. Cans and packets enough to last weeks.

  ‘Where did you get all that?’

  ‘Let’s do a deal. Help me out, and I’ll cut you in.’

  Mindful as ever that he’s pulling a fast one, I hesitate. He shuts the cabinet doors.

  ‘Of course, if you reckon the soldier boys are going to keep feeding you, that’s fair enough too.’

  ‘I’ll help you.’

  ‘Good. And maybe that fella who lives across the hall from you. Maybe see if he’s up for a nixer.’

  He hands me a tin of sliced pears.

  ‘Gesture of good will.’

  I take the cursed thing and leave.

  Helen’s still asleep in the silent flat. She’s managed to sleep through all the strife outside. Wish I had. On the locker beside the bed I put the pears.

  I move the fire guard from the hearth and place some bits of plank on the diminishing smoky flame. Sporadic engine noise and shouting carry in wisps over the rooftops. The morning progresses, and the heaviness of post-shock sinks my decreasingly animate bones into the old armchair. Even my face feels dragged down.

  The child comes into this, then. This is really the way it’s going to be. Fathered and mothered by bodies no longer completely alive, already preparing to be two of the freeze-dried corpses that will litter this wasteland when it’s all over.

  Dark, low clouds tumbling out of the north. Heavy, dirty cold rain. Splashing into the new flood.

  Yesterday afternoon the river delivered a coup de grace nobody had been expecting. Of all things, another flood. This time, spreading downstream over the already frozen main body of the river. Caused, I am sure, by the bursting banks of the landslip-blocked upriver, the draining of the temporary lake formed over Carrick’s remnants.

  Anyone standing down on the quay would have been washed away. The distribution centre was surely destroyed. Probably the canned food was recovered later, but all the perishables, and the computers, and the paper records – all that was taken away by the destructive waters.

  Half an hour later and the diluvian spasm had exhausted itself, spread further towards the sea, leaving behind it an expanse of wet, debris-strewn ice.

  Someone’s knocking on the door. Better answer it before Helen orders me to. She’s manic today, scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom with rags and cleaning products from under the sink. She won’t listen to me, won’t sit down and relax, won’t stop and face her own thoughts. She often told me, way back when, that I spent too much time brooding. Well maybe, but at least I’ve been able to maintain some sort of psychological equipoise throughout this.

  It’s Ray Smyth at the door, not happy at all.

  ‘That bastard would as soon slit our throats,’ he says.

  Not one for small talk, is Smyth.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Jesus, if it wasn’t for the children I’d have nothing to do with this.’

  ‘But you’ll do it.’

  Better to have an ally, to outnumber Heathshade.

  ‘Yes.’

  The word is bitter.

  ‘We’ll go now,’ I tell Helen.

  She mutters something without looking and keeps on cleaning.

  We trudge up the old stairs to Heathshade’s flat.

  ‘Ready for action, fellas? Give me a couple of minutes. Wait here.’

  He shuts the door, leaving us on the draughty landing with a view out over grey walls, icy rooftops, gloomy murk beyond.

  Smyth lets out a long, unhappy breath. He suffers from fairly advanced tooth decay.

  ‘I said to Donna three years ago, I said we should emigrate. There’s nothing left here for us. But she didn’t agree, so we stayed.’

  The thought of it seems unbearably painful to him. To have seen the danger, and not acted on it, to have come to this pass when it might have been avoided.

  ‘It’s the scum that’ll survive.’

  He agrees vigorously.

  There’s an argument going on inside, a lot of clattering and stomping around
. It ends with a yelp from the woman.

  The door opens. Heathshade’s wearing a greatcoat, carrying a bag over his shoulder.

  We make our way carefully down icy Gracedieu Road.

  ‘Any sign of rations today, lads?’

  No answer.

  ‘I saw you head down there, Smyth. Any sign of life?’

  A long pause.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I told you, didn’t I? You won’t be getting any more help from that quarter.’

  He leads us down to the quay, across the windswept bridge. This vicious cold would kill you if you stood still in it.

  Left at the railway station, further down along the riverside, cliff face on the right. He leads us to the walled water’s edge. There’s a hole in the wall, where it looks like something smashed through.

  ‘Look,’ he says.

  Can’t see anything, except for a narrow hole in the ice, the water inside it rippling and spraying in the turbulent windflow. But now I discern through the barely translucent surface the shape of a truck on its side.

  Heathshade hops down and makes us follow. We stand in against the wall for the tiny amount of shelter it provides. He has no desire for shelter.

  ‘It’s full of canned stuff, lads. I made a good haul last time I was here, but I nearly got fucking killed. Daisy ain’t no help in this, so that’s where you two fellas come in.’

  Hang on a minute -

  ‘No, I’m not asking you to go swimming.’

  ‘What do you want, then?’

  ‘I want you to spot for me.’

  He takes a rolled up length of garden hose from the bag and throws it at our feet. Then he drops a long length of rope on top of it. He talks as he strips off.

  ‘I’m going to tie the rope around me, right? I want one of you to keep it taut at all times. Got it? I’ll be breathing through the hose. Whoever’s not got the rope, make sure the hose doesn’t get twisted or blocked.’

  Finally completely naked except for swimming goggles and the empty bag on his shoulders, hairless skin pallid like a plucked chicken’s, genital apparatus retracted, bare feet shuffling on the hard ice, he balls his clothes up in a big bath towel.

  ‘George, you do the air pipe.’

  He lowers himself into the water, gasping at the coldness of it, but with a kind of grim relish.

  ‘Get it right,’ he says, and goes under, inflicting on us a foul momentary flash of blotched buttock.

  Now he’s wriggling down into the dark cab of the submerged truck. We struggle stupidly to perform our appointed tasks. Smyth lets out the rope, foot by foot. Then for intervals there’s no evidence of activity at all down there. I fancy that he’s been overwhelmed by the profound cold, or otherwise suffered a mishap. What a pity that would be.

  Then he yanks on the air hose, and I deploy a little more of it. Maybe he’ll overreach and drown.

  We could do the world a favour here. If I were just to place my thumb on the end of the hose, or pinch it blocked, or just yank it back up out of the water…

  After all, there’s nothing to stop me. Akin to excising diseased tissue, pulling a bad tooth. The Universe would not come to an end. The human continuum would not be perturbed. No extant law (let’s face it) would be violated. I catch Smyth’s look – the same thing has occurred to him.

  A long moment of possibilities weighed up.

  But possibilities are all they really are. No, we’re not going to do it. He’d do it, but not us. It’s not in us.

  Anyway, I bet he’d manage to swim back to the surface anyway. Then he’d come after us.

  The opportunity passes, not that we were ever going to take it. Heathshade bursts through to the surface and throws a laden bag skimming across the ice. He hauls himself out.

  ‘Towel.’

  He dries himself off against the wall.

  He has a blithe stupidity that insulates him against peril.

  We trudge back over the bridge, eyeing Heathshade’s heavy bag.

  Payment comes on the landing outside our front doors. He hands each of us three wrapperless tin cans.

  ‘Thanks for the help, lads.’

  ‘What’s in these?’

  ‘Pot luck. Same time again tomorrow, eh?’

  Inside, Helen’s spell of hyperactivity has played itself out. She’s sitting on the floor close to the fire, back against the armchair, knees drawn up close to her face.

  I put the cans on the worktop, expecting her to ask me about them, but she doesn’t. She looks at me, though, in a sorrowful way that makes me go to her. I try to rub the tension out of her shoulders. This she accepts, closing her eyes, rocking slightly back and forward. For a while I think I’m doing some good, but now I can see that her face is wet, tears dropping down onto her rounded abdomen.

  ‘It’ll all be okay.’

  I think I sounded halfway convincing.

  It’s important to try to comfort her. All the more so because it would be bad to have the baby’s blood supply awash with depressive endorphins.

  The world is coming to its end. The knowledge of it can no longer be denied or evaded. Fire falls to earth without cease, striking the ground sometimes far away, sometimes close by. Always present in the distance is a deep, loud rumble, like a heavy-artillery barrage, which I suppose is what is actually occurring. But we have been lucky thus far – there has been no impact close enough to us to endanger our lives since the strike that destroyed Hippo Regius.

  The Shapes have spread around the world and prey on those of us still living. Without my force weapon, we would surely be dead by now. Helen and I have trudged further westward along the northern edge of Africa until, at last, we have reached the region of the Pillars. We are at the foot of Mons Abyla itself, weatherworn marker of the Atlantic Falls. Just visible in the haze to the north beyond the raging torrents of the many-staged Falls is Abyla’s sister promontory, Mons Calpe. The ocean water pours past the Pillars, down a steep gully many stadium lengths wide until it reaches the floor of the Salt Desert. There it spreads, merging and mixing in a poison marsh until the daytime heat evaporates it. The sea-salt left behind becomes part of the ancient desert.

  The Pillars - in Sapient legend rent in twain by Hercules - are also sacred to the Neanderthals. Many thousands of them are here now, from all the tribes of Africa, congregated around Mons Abyla. A kind of general council is being held. Through smoke signals they have made contact with their cousins in Europe. A similar council must be taking place at the other side. The African tribes are awaiting permission to return to the ancient homelands; whether in search of refuge or merely to find a better place to die is not clear.

  They have taken us in as guests, perhaps because of our dreadful physical state. After the deaths of Ammatas and his family at Hippo we trudged through the most desolate country, and we have been reduced to a pitiful state. The ribs show through my skin. My limbs are skinny like a child’s. Helen was sustained only because I ensured that she ate all the food we procured along the way here. I have gone hungry so long that now food no longer entices me. A great blessing: the Neanderthals let us share in their communal meals, so that Helen now can eat her fill again. Twice a day they gather in groups of ten or twenty and pass around carved wooden bowls containing pieces of dried meat and fruit, and loaves of a sort of black bread so tough that it is almost impossible to chew it. They drink a mildly alcoholic, hot brew called ezrefir, which looks like milk, gives off a sickly rosewater aroma, and burns the throat. Adults and children alike partake of it out of leather gourds. Helen and I drink when the gourd reaches us, aware of the importance of appreciation and courtesy to these people.

  When they first took us in, the Neanderthal warriors showed great interest in the force weapon. The elders took it away to an ornately decorated tent, outside which I was made to wait with only the entranceway totems for company. An hour later they had me give a demonstration of its use against some shapes drifting close to the edge of the encampment. Impressed with its power, th
ey presented me with a warrior’s metal helmet, which on my head was much too loose. To my great surprise, they allowed me to keep the weapon. It may be a matter of honour among warriors to them – I don’t know. On the other hand, they would not have much use for the weapon, whereas it is critical to my survival and Helen’s. The inexplicable fact is that the Shapes show no more interest in Homo Neanderthalensis than they do any other species apart from Homo Sapiens. The Neanderthals fear the falling stars but not the Shapes.

  A troop of elders climb onto a carriage and address the crowd. Helen and I listen, but understand nothing. Excitement mounts, and when the elders complete their short address, the throng disperses quickly. All are packing up and moving westward. We must go with them along the wide, white flats. But we are so tired. In our tent, I raise my garments and poke at my shrunken abdomen. In my previous life, if I saw someone as thin as I am now, I would have assumed they were about to die. A famine victim is what I am. Something from newspapers and TV reports. But no TV crews have come here to report on the deepening crisis. There is no outside world.

  Our cans contained processed peas. Smyth was no so lucky. He knocked on our door later. His face was red with rage. His hands were trembling. He thrust an open can towards me.

  ‘Dog food,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bastard has us feeding the kids dog food.’

  I swapped that can with him for one of ours. It seemed the honourable thing to do.

  Heated dog food with some of the peas and a few other bits and pieces we had left, conjuring a passable broth then enhanced by seasoning I found in the kitchen. It seemed palatable enough to me, and Helen ate it too, without complaint.

  Can only think a few hours into the future now. That’s what it’s come to. The food will last another day or two. What’ll happen then?

  Not sure if there’ll be any more trips to the van in the river either. We tried that yesterday. Heathshade came calling, rounded us up. But at the bottom of the road we almost got caught in the crossfire between two groups of soldiers, had to retreat back here.

  Now it seems that some military faction has decided to base itself down near that end of the bridge, and undoubtedly will soon spot the bounteous potential of the truck. Haven’t heard from Heathshade since then.