It was another hour before he spotted movement, a naked figure shifting past the window. He could not tell if it was male or female. Twenty minutes later the door opened and the two red jackets emerged. He saw faces this time. Pale. Pinched. One of them heavy with a beard. They did not seem enthusiastic about moving far from the building. The man sat on the edge of an ornamental cart, which must once have been brimming with flowers and grasses. The woman hovered and dithered nearby, like a nervous dog on a short leash. Jane wondered if they had breakfasted; they seemed jittery. Every so often the man would raise both his arms in a monumental shrug, or an expression of pleading. They were at the end of their tether.
Jane raised his hand to his face and heard the rasp of his own beard. He ought to clean himself before making himself known to them. He didn't want to scare them, although they must surely expect others to look the same. But it didn't work that way. It had shocked him a little to see such a haunted, thickly bearded face, enough for him to put down the glasses without a more sedulous inspection. He had missed whether they were carrying weapons, but the pensive aspect to their movements suggested that they were empty-handed. He couldn't say for sure, but he felt very strongly that they were foreigners. And as frightened to death as he was.
He pulled his rucksack close and delved carefully in one of the compartments for his razor. There was a tube of cream and a badger-bristled brush. On his knees, watching the house, he splashed his face and rubbed the cream in, working it into a stiff lather with the brush. He hacked at the beard, having to use his fingers to find purchase as he did not have a mirror to help. He kept his eyes on the couple – red, indistinct blobs at this distance. He was grateful for his stone-coloured tent, the muted cement shade of his jacket.
When the beard was down to a close stubble he took more care with the razor, rinsing it regularly, moving it tentatively over the contours of his face as if for the first time. He unbuttoned his shirt; poured water over his head and chest, tried to subdue the sour odours of fear-sweat. What he'd give for a hot, deep bath.
He pulled the shirt back on and finger-combed the knotty tangle of his hair. He no doubt looked filthy, hunted and mad. But at least he was cleanly shaven. Suddenly he thought that might make him look worse. What maniac took time to shave when sanctuary was to be sought? He pulled out the bottle of Bladnoch and took a few big swallows. Better. He started extracting tent pegs but then paused, thought about it. He left the tent where it was and stowed his rucksack in a corner, filling his pockets with dried fruit strips and canned hams. He would go to them as denuded of threat as it was possible to be. At the last, he picked up the whisky and shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans.
He began to trudge over the solid furrowed field, trying not to stumble, trying not to look like some shambling terror hot-footing it over for a first warm meal in weeks.
He slowed as he approached the cottage. They still hadn't spotted him, or they were doing a good job of bluffing if they had. He heard her voice first, scratchy, raised, Australian: 'But what the fuck, Chris? I mean, what the fuck?'
'There's no need to swear.' Big shrug: throwing imaginary confetti into the air. 'There's no need to fucking swear.'
Their bickering carried on a little longer, then they fell silent and Jane knew they had seen him. They didn't say anything; he sensed a withdrawal. Perhaps they were trying to shrink into the shadows to improve their own chances of not being spotted. He almost looked up, but he felt it would be better if they believed they had made contact first. It was a stupid game – he knew that they knew that any stranger would want to check out the cottage for inhabitants, or food – but he didn't want to scare them away. All of the doubt that had squirmed through him had been misplaced, or misread: he desperately wanted company.
He carried on trudging, head down, as if he was lost in the ruined patterns of the earth. When it seemed he had left it too long and must own up to his charade, the girl saved his face.
'Hey,' she called out. Her voice was no longer the spunky come-on she'd been provoking her man with earlier. It was all breath, almost a whisper. When he turned to face them he knew he would be all right. There was no threat here. He was staring at ghosts. They were watching him, plate-eyed, waiting for a reaction. You couldn't pretend to ignore strangers any more, or at best offer them a lukewarm 'Good morning'. Every person warranted scrutiny.
'I'm Richard,' he said, and his own voice sounded so alien that he almost turned around to see who had spoken.
'Chris,' said the man. 'And this is my girlfriend, Nance.'
'Short for Nancy?'
She nodded. She glanced at Chris, then back to Jane. 'Do you have any food?'
They were five weeks into a six-month tour of Europe. They'd flown Korean Air from Sydney to Madrid, spent a fortune on tickets, but all they had was a couple of packs and a tent. They'd spent the first month exploring Spain but had decided to spend December in the UK before moving on to France, Germany, the Czech Republic. Chris had been keen to climb Europe's spine, up along the Baltic States to Finland, a place he had always wanted to see. Nance had favoured turning south after Prague, heading down to some beaches and some heat, maybe as far as Greece. They meant to hitch where they could, but they had some money for the train and weren't averse to putting in some hours behind a bar to make a little extra.
'Then back to Sydney,' said Chris. 'Get a job. Get married. Have kids. Lock down.'
Nance seemed less enamoured of this idea, although Jane realised she could just be tired. She was pale and glassy-eyed, twitching whenever the wind pressed its face against the windows of the living room. He supposed it was difficult to contribute anything to a conversation, even a sceptical expression, when your mind was filled with
What the fuck?
She possessed a fragile beauty, the kind that didn't cope well with sleeplessness and stress. She seemed a person for whom the word 'wan' had been invented. Everything about her was pale: her watery grey eyes, her sandy blonde hair, the colourless arc of her mouth. Even her clothes were wanting for colour, as if leeched by her neutrality. That red coat would end up a washed-out pink before long, he thought.
From here, Jane could just make out the shape of his tent in the trees, but you would have to really know what you were looking for. Chris and Nance were sitting almost primly on the edges of wing-back chairs, chewing dates and trading glances as if they were prisoners trying to swap silent messages of encouragement. A layer of pink dust had settled on everything except the bed, which was a knot of duvet and pillows. A novel was spreadeagled on the bedside table next to a shrivelled banana skin.
'We were wondering about the air,' Chris said. 'If it was safe to breathe.' He wore an expectant look; he seemed to be seeking approval all the time, as if he needed to break out in a huge smile but could not because of some unspoken code of conduct. He was heavy-jawed, the beard only serving to emphasise the spade-like aspect of his head. His eyes were a dark, almost dirty green, and they did not stay still.
'I was using a mask for a while, but unless you've got a proper filtration unit strapped to your back it doesn't matter. What's out here is in us now. If it kills us, well, it just means we were a little late getting to the party.'
Chris nodded, looked at Nance as if for confirmation. She wasn't offering any.
'What did you see?' Jane asked.
Nance put down her food and stood up. She brushed the crumbs from her jeans and walked past Jane to the bedroom. She closed the door.
'She can't ... she's not ready to . . . process what happened,' Chris said.
'Are you?'
'How about you first? What's your story?'
Jane told him about his experience on the seabed and the violent deaths that had followed. 'I don't know what happened. I wasn't around to see it. But you . . . you were on the surface. How did you survive it? Did you even see what it was?'
'I don't know. We were walking out in the fields. Long walk. We were tired, and we were looking for a place to sit and have something to eat. We found these tunnels, concrete tubes just coming out of the hillside. I don't think they were meant to be open, but the grille on them was all broken and rusted to hell. There was a sign, burnt white, rusted. Could hardly read it but you could just make out NO TRESPASSING. I don't think the tunnels had been used much recently . . . whatever it was they were for.'
'Maybe a decommissioned lead mine,' Jane said. 'We're in the right part of the country for them.' 'Lead. OK. Whatever. So anyway, we went in. We had a torch with us. It looked like it might rain so we had our packed lunch inside. When we'd finished we felt better, you know, so we were shining the torch deep into the tunnel, asking each other how far it reached. We were always going to have a look, but we were dicking about, daring each other.'
'You went in? Deep?'
'We walked for about twenty minutes. Straight in. It went on for miles. It got colder. At one point I turned the torch off, having a laugh with Nance, pretending the batteries had gone flat. It was so dark you couldn't see . . . you know the colour of your own blood behind your eyelids? None of that. Nothing. Nance freaked out. I freaked out. Torch back on. We decided we'd pretty much had enough after that. There was that worry – what if the batteries
did
fail? What if I dropped the torch and smashed the bulb . . . so we were just heading back when this enormous tremor hit us.'
Jane waited. He had held his breath. He let it out now in a steady quiet stream, not wanting to interrupt Chris's flow. Chris was looking at his hands; his too were tigered with thin, sore-looking weals, as if they had been stung with a whip. He picked at the dry flaking skin around the marks.
'It put us on our arses. I thought the tunnel was going to collapse on top of us. We were both screaming, and I think that put us in more of a panic than what was going on. After it had stopped we were still screaming. It took a while to realise it was over. We weren't hurt. Maybe a bruise or two. And then we felt this enormous heat. It just came charging down the tunnel. Where it had been cool, cold even. Damp. Now it was roasting. It was like being in a sauna. Steam everywhere. We started running. We just wanted to get out.'
'What did you see when you got outside?' Jane's voice had become a narrow choked thing. He kept thinking of Stanley. Maybe he had been on the balcony when the tremor hit. Five flights up. Maybe he had fallen. Maybe not. Maybe he had been burnt to a crisp up there. His lungs turned to leather.
'What you see now,' Chris said. 'Only there were fires in the woods. The sky was on fire too. Sheep were still standing in the fields, but they were burning. The whole place was burning. I thought we'd bought it. We hid at the tunnel entrance, trying to breathe. After a while – I don't know how long . . . hours maybe, maybe only minutes – there was a difference. There was rain. Horrible, burning stuff. Like acid. Oily and orange. But the fire in the sky went out. There was just this disgusting coloured smog. It got everywhere, coated the back of your throat like lard. Nance was sick.'
Chris picked up his penknife and fiddled with the hinge. He did not look at Jane. 'We came back here. We buried a farmer we found in the car park. He was . . . Jesus. He was . . .'
'Yes,' Jane said. 'I know. It's OK.'
'It's
not
OK, though, is it?' Chris asked gently. 'Nothing's OK. I mean, how big is this? I tried using my phone to call 999. To call home. No signal. Nothing is working. No TV. No radio. I mean, how fucking huge is this thing?'
'I'm revising my estimates almost every day. Upwards.'
They sat in silence for a while. Eventually Nance came out of the bedroom, pausing at the threshold as if to check on the content of their conversation.
'Did you see any other survivors?' Jane asked.
Chris shook his head. 'I thought we should head for Newcastle, but Nance . . . she isn't ready yet.'
'It's a good idea. Newcastle. Hospitals. Someone must have survived there. From what you described, it seems that exposure was the danger up here. In Newcastle there's more shelter.'
Chris seemed infected by his enthusiasm. 'If it even reached that far,' he said. He got to his feet. 'It's got to be localised. Some awful offshore fuck-up. A nuclear sub. Those things carry heaps of warheads, don't they? Hiroshima times ten or something. We're just wrong place wrong time.'
'I don't think so,' Jane said, quietly, shooting a look at Nance. Her attention volleyed moistly from one man to the other. 'It doesn't matter,' he added.
'I can handle it,' Nance said. 'You'd rather I was standing here giggling?'
'It's just . . . well, there'd be help by now,' Jane went on. 'It's been a week. Over a week. This place should be crawling with Hazmat suits and outside broadcast units from the BBC.'
Chris sat back down. 'Yeah, you're right. My God.'
Nance said, 'So what now?'
Jane spread his hands. 'I'm headed for London,' he said.
'Why?'
'My little boy is there. I have to find him.'