I just thought he was a prick, but he always threw a good party.
I took another draw on my spliff and put down the beer. I decided to make my way back out to the kitchen to liberate a bottle of wine from the fridge. I passed through the large open-plan space that incorporated the living room and dining area, nodding to a couple of people I knew and smiling at a couple of women who glanced my way. One of them looked away, the other smiled back, and I promised to come back to her once I had a drink.
In the corridor between the main room and kitchen I suddenly decided I needed a piss. I tried one door, which was locked, and when I opened the next door—bathroom, I was right—I stood back and smiled. Rufus was sitting on the edge of the bath being orally amused by two young ladies.
"Shut the fucking door!" he shouted. I nodded, took one more peek at the naked rumps facing my way, and clicked the door shut.
Obviously being a cunt had fringe benefits.
I stumbled back into the open-plan room, frowned, remembered that I'd been heading to the kitchen for a bottle of wine, and then I saw the woman I was going to marry.
That was it, right there. There are times in everyone's life when things change suddenly and irrevocably, and that was one of my main moments. She was standing close to the fireplace and smiling indulgently as a tall, seedy-looking man tried to impress her. She was holding an empty wine glass in her left hand, running her right index finger around its rim, and I swore I could hear the subtle hum coming off the glass. Above the loud music, shouts, laughter and banter, she was drawing me in.
I let her. I crossed the room, looking down as I stepped over splayed limbs and almost knocked over a drink, and when I looked up again she was staring right at me. I froze, and that was another moment. Our gazes locked and for a while we could not let go. The guy with her turned to stare at me, and perhaps he sensed something of what had happened because he swore and walked away. I finished making my way over to the fireplace, and realised I didn't have a clue of what to say.
"I'm going to marry you," I said.
She raised her left eyebrow and pursed her lips, and a wave of sensual excitement pricked at every inch of my skin. She took the spliff from my hand and stubbed it out in an ashtray. "Don't need drugs," she said.
"Me neither."
"What's your name?"
"A secret."
She raised that eyebrow again. Lifted her wine glass. "Refill?"
"I was just thinking the same thing."
We walked together, and when I touched her elbow it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
In the kitchen, everyone else around us now gone, all talk subdued, our own world expanding and begging to be filled with words and experience and history, I leaned in close and whispered my name in her ear.
"His name's Danny!" I sit up quickly, look back, and the Range Rover driven by the Irishman is buried in the hedge a few hundred yards behind us.
"Who?" Jessica asks.
"The Irishman's name is Danny," I say, and already I know that it's too late to stop.
Jessica slams on the brakes. Turns, looks over my shoulder at the crashed Range Rover. Cordell hefts the shotgun.
"Whatever his name, he's slipped from the road. Doesn't look too bad. If I reverse up and—"
"He's already dead," I say.
Jessica glares at me. "How can you know?"
Because I just had one of his memories
, I think. But of course, I can't say that. Not at all. "I just do."
Something slaps against the vehicle's roof, then its wing, and the gunfire starts again. Jessica falls back into her seat and we skid away, slewing across the road before she brings us under control. "I wonder if they have transport," she says.
I wonder if they need it
, I think.
"We can't just leave him," Cordell says. "We have to go back, get him out."
"No use," I say. "No point. I think he was shot during those first few seconds." His name was Danny, and he met the woman he was going to marry at a party thrown by a corrupt record producer. How could I know that? Why did it feel so much like a memory of my own, when it patently was not? I shake my head and shout as another bullet stars the side window.
"How can you be
sure?"
Jessica shouts.
"I saw him," I say, and though that really says nothing at all, she seems satisfied. She skids around the next corner and the shooting stops again.
The engine is making a rattling, low roar, and Jessica seems keen to get as far away as she can before it fails altogether. Then, I suppose we'll be on foot.
"How many cartridges do we have left?"
"A handful," Cordell says. He passes me the air rifle from between his feet, along with a tin of pellets.
"Might as well fart at them."
"It's better than nothing," he says.
I pump the air rifle and load it.
Something breaks, the vehicle judders, and Jessica just manages to coast to the top of a hill before the engine gives out with a bellow of smoke. She slips into neutral and we start rolling, and in the distance, between the slopes of two hills, I can see the sea.
"I think maybe we're almost there," I say.
"Up there! What the hell? What the
fuck?"
Cordell is pointing to our left. For a second I can't see what he's pointing at. An open field, the beginnings of a forest, nothing that seems to be a threat.
"What? Where?"
"In the trees!" He props the shotgun on the side door sill and fires. Even though I saw it coming the shot shocks me, and I close my eyes against the explosion. When I open them again I look up, through the haze of smoke being wafted quickly through the vehicle, and see what he has seen.
There are things in the trees. Between them, among them, and high in their canopies, all of them moving parallel to us, moving
strangely
.
"What
is
that?"
One of the figures flashes and a bullet hits the Range Rover a few inches below my face.
Cordell fires again. I knock out my pocked side window and fire as well, though with the power of this air rifle and the distance involved, I may as well blow kisses.
"They're people," he says, breaking and reloading the shotgun. "But . . ."
"Changed," I say. I remember the red-faced woman and the roots curved around her hand, up her throat. There must have been much more hidden away beneath her clothing.
"How many of them?" Jessica asks.
I try to count, but it's difficult. "Lots. Why?"
"Because we'll be at the bottom of this hill in seconds." She tries bump-starting the Range Rover, but another cough of smoke from the engine says everything.
"Bar None must be around here somewhere."
"Why must it?"
"Because of them!" I point my gun from the window, shooting blind. "They're here because of it, trying to stop people from getting there. I don't know. They're the factions he told us about, the ones that don't agree. It just has to be, because if it isn't then we'll never reach it, and that's not the way this should end."
"What, you're talking fairness?" Cordell laughs.
I look up and see that the shapes have left the trees. They're running downhill toward us, closing in quickly, and they're moving faster than anyone I've ever seen before. I'm not quite sure exactly what I'm seeing—my brain has difficulty translating the images. There are faces and mouths, leaves and twigs, blooming flowers and bulbous tubers, and other things linking, entering or entwining everything else. Some of them pace, some of them roll. Others seem to float. More gunshots. The bullets go wide, and I think,
Surely they don't even need the guns anymore?
"Holy shit," Jessica says.
"Yeah." I aim and fire the air rifle again. I'm sure I shot straight, but the thing I aimed at keeps on coming. He, she or it carries a shotgun, and they pepper the side of the Range Rover as they leap the tattered fence beside the road.
"Cordell!" I shout. He fires and the thing's shoulder explodes in a shower of feathered seedlings.
"No, I mean
holy shit!"
Jessica says. "Look.
Look!"
As the vehicle drifts to a halt, the front grille nudges against a stone wall. Beyond the wall, a garden. Facing the garden, a couple of hundred metres away, is a large stone building.
"Do you think . . . ?" I say.
"See him? Sitting on a garden bench?"
And I
can
see him, Michael, nursing a pint of beer and shielding his eyes from the sun as he watches us. He waves, then gestures us to him.
"Through the windscreen!" Cordell says. He fires the shotgun one more time then climbs from his seat, sliding across the bonnet and rolling over the head of the wall. When he stands and turns, a grin of amazement lights his face. He's looking straight at me, but through me as well. He drops the shotgun just as one of the strange people strikes the side of the vehicle, reaching in with bare barked fists to clasp my wrists. I prise them away, kick out at the thing's face, and Jessica helps me over the front seats. We exit the windscreen together. I feel the hot metal of the bonnet, then the cool stone wall, then the caress of soft grass as I drop to the ground.
Then I stand up, and look back, and see what Cordell saw.
"Welcome to Bar None," Michael says.
I'm so full of questions that I cannot speak. Cordell and Jessica are similarly stunned, by what we have come through and what we have seen; the deaths of Jacqueline and the Irishman, and our arrival at a place we thought might never exist. So many questions, so much left to know, and Michael smiling at us from the wooden bench, a half-full pint in his hand.
"Thanks," Jessica says.
I nod at Michael, then look up at the large building behind him. It's everyone's idea of a quaint country pub. There's ivy climbing toward the eaves, leaded windows, bare, random stone walls, a tiled roof with a chimney breathing smoke, and a sign hanging above the door with "Bar None" painted in extravagant white lettering. The picture below the name shows an approximation of the building set against a wide green background. It doesn't look quite right. Nothing about this place does, even though it's a cliché brought to life. Not quite right.
"What's inside?" I ask.
Michael laughs. "A pub, of course. But it's bigger than it looks. There are plenty of rooms, and many bars. Lots of places to sit and chat. And when you're ready, just follow the stairs up to your rooms."
"It doesn't look that big," Cordell says. Michael raises his glass and takes a drink.
"How did you get here before us?" Jessica asks.
"What were those people? Where have they gone?"
"Why were they trying to stop us coming in?"
The questions flood out, Cordell, Jessica and I stumbling over each other to ask what is on our minds. Michael lets us blabber on for a moment, then raises his free hand until we quieten.
"Please," he says, "there really is plenty of time. Go inside. Get yourself a drink and something to eat. It's on the house." He says no more, and when I go to ask another question he raises the glass to his lips and looks away.
I look at Cordell and Jessica, shrug, and I am the first one through the door.
The bar we enter is small and surprisingly bare. But it feels familiar, with a fire roaring in the fireplace, empty picture frames hanging haphazardly on the stone walls, and built-in benches and tables polished smooth by decades, perhaps centuries of custom. Some of the chairs have threadbare cushions, and few of them match. It smells of spilled beer and cooking, and all the sounds I associate with a good pub are here. All of them. Even the voices.
There are a dozen people sitting around the large room. A few of them are alone, drinking in contemplative silence. Others sit in pairs, chatting, laughing, seemingly without a care in the world. Eyes turn toward us then away again, unconcerned at our arrival. The oldest person must be in his nineties. The youngest, barely out of her teens.
"What can I get you?" The barman is a big man, with a bushy beard and strong hands resting atop his bar. He rearranges bar towels without looking, smiling at us as he awaits our order.
"How long have you—" Cordell begins, but I cut in.
"I'll have a Reverend James," I say. "And can we see your menu? Michael told us it's on the house."
The barman laughs as he takes down a pint glass from a hook above his head. "On the house! It is, that's true. Everything's on the house." He looks at Cordell and Jessica as he pours my pint. I can smell it, hear it flowing into the glass, and I wonder what memories will come to me tonight. I hope they will be my own.
Jessica and Cordell order drinks, we select some food, and the barman says he will bring it out to us. He assumes we are going back outside.
Michael is waiting for us, his glass now almost empty.
"Can I get you a refill?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "I think you'll all be listening, and I'll be talking, so perhaps after we're done. But thanks."
We sit down, and within minutes the barman appears with our food. It must have been ready on the plate for him to have brought it so quickly. I sniff my steak and ale pie suspiciously, but when I cut into it, watch the gravy ooze, feel the springy welcome of a mushroom beneath my knife, inhale the aroma. ..I know it will be heavenly.
"Heavenly," I say, and I begin to eat.
"Not quite," Michael says. "But let me explain. Then I'll let you all decide."
"I suspect you're wondering about the view. It's real, or as real as can be. It's the world as it will be when it's moved on. As it is now it's . . . clumsy. And sometimes messy. I think you saw that on the way here, and met some of the mess outside the grounds of Bar None. That's only temporary. It's a confusion of things, but they'll work themselves out."
"Into that?" I ask, pointing out beyond the wall.
"Into that."
Hungry as I am, I put down my fork and stare beyond the stone wall again. I have seen many images on TV and in books of how prehistory might have looked. Towering trees, exotic undergrowth, palms and ferns the size of a jetliner's wing, vines as thick as a man's leg, flowers blooming in innocent splendour and cacti the likes of which few could imagine. But these had only been images, painted or computer-generated. They had never been the real thing. This time I can really see, and hear the swish of a breeze through the high canopy, and smell the freshness of plants untouched by pollution and unsullied by humankind's thoughts of arrangement. I am looking at true, unimagined wilderness.