One Crow Alone (15 page)

An incredible light pulsed from the riot vans. Hands went up to eyes, people turning, blinded by lasers that punched deep shadows among the crowd.

The determined group, prepared, surged forward in their goggles and glasses. A swelling throaty rage rose up. Interspersed with screaming—and the bellowing once more from the soldiers at the end of the street.

“YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO DISPERSE!”

And then they opened fire.

The first volley of shots seemed to strike at random. There was an audible gasp. Bodies fell.

A rattling of shutters. Breaking of glass.

And then again.

A bullet ricocheted against a wall and pinged on the side of the Jeep. Stressed shards of masonry sprayed against the windshield.

Magda released the clutch—her hands like talons on the steering wheel. She would remember the faces, hazy in her blurred vision as she dodged the people, flashing like trees past a train window, leaping out of her way, two men dragging a body to the side of the road, people helpless, stumbling in their blinded panic.

She swung the wheel and swerved from a woman with blood on her face. She saw a narrow side road, people fleeing down it, blood and glass and bricks on the snow. The soldiers raised their guns again. Shouted through the speakers.

“Don't stop,” Ivan shouted.

Magda fixed her eyes on the road ahead. Gear-clutch-accelerate, dog-legging crazily through the snowy streets, the sound of the roaring engine rising above the yells and shouts. She was aware of the snowflakes spitting angrily on the windshield and the mob of running people disappearing from the mirror. Vaguely she felt that her feet were cold on the juddering pedals of the old Jeep, and smelled the smoke in the air.

And they were away.

 

19

A short wiry man with tatty hair the color of straw heard the whistling dip and rise of the police siren and slunk quickly down an alleyway that led behind an abandoned warehouse. Above two metal doors at the back of the building the words
COOL TOWN SQUAT
were painted in fading letters on the dirty gray bricks.

The man's name was Rory Moss.

Rory pulled a key from his pocket and rattled it in the low keyhole, pulling the rolling doors up and over and closing them with a clang behind him.

He peered into the cavernous workshop, eyes adjusting to the dingy light. He slung the rucksack off his back, took out a roll of tools, and threw a siphon hose and a crowbar down on the oily workbench where he had been breaking an engine for parts that morning. In one corner the chimney from a large unlit wood-burner disappeared through a crude hole in the brickwork.

He fumbled in the semidarkness and lit a paraffin lamp, then filled the tank of a generator with the last of the diesel from a jerry can. He pulled the starter cord—the generator thumped into life, and he connected jump leads to a bank of tractor batteries on the floor. Digging around in the pocket of his coat, he pulled out a battered mobile phone, which he plugged into a trailing extension cable.

Turning down the lamp, he tramped up a dusty stairwell at one end of the workshop, with his thin-soled boots scuffing on the dirty concrete steps.

At the top of the landing, he bashed on a door.

“Tom! Open the feckin' door,” he shouted in a faded Irish lilt.

There was a short wait.

“That you, Rory?” came a muffled voice.

“Who the feck do you think it is?”

The door opened and a scruffy-looking man stood in the light. “You find any more diesel?”

“Did you?” Rory pushed past him into a wide corridor, boots clumping on the bare boards.

The scruffy-looking man shot the bolts with a scowl and followed Rory into the kitchen. “I was just asking…”

Rory took off his hat and laid it on the table. A girl sat there smoking a thin tarry roll-up and she looked over and smiled a dirty-toothed smile.

Someone was asleep under a blanket on an old sofa pushed against the wall.

Rory put his rucksack down on the floor. The girl got up, brushed strands of long mousy hair off her face. “You get any food?”

“Yes. In the bag.”

“Shall I make some tea then?” she said, pulling the long fraying ends of her sweater down over her hands.

Rory looked at her. Grubby face, greasy hair, clothes that needed washing, dirty boots like his; the floor was filthy, the bare boards dark and grimy, and the snow had started to fall again behind the window, from the tiny rectangle of gray sky visible between the grim-faced backs of the warehouses. “Jayzus.”

“Where are the others?” he said.

“Asleep,” said Mousy Girl, placing a large kettle on the range.

“Well, they could get their lazy feckin' arses out of bed and help tidy this shitehole up a bit.” He delved into his rucksack and pulled out a stash of food: bread, two eggs, a bag of salt, a sealed plastic bag of milk and a pile of withered parsnips and green potatoes, and a large limp cabbage. He left the two bottles of cheap vodka in the bag.

“Put the radio on,” he said.

Mousy Girl plugged in a small radio and fiddled with the dials.

Krrchk
“—in London last night. And now over to Shana on the M40. Shana—”

They sat silently, listening.

“—we'd seen the worst chaos yesterday, but both lanes are still solid with traffic. The jams must go on for forty miles in each direction.”

“And what are the weather conditions like right now, Shana?”

“Pretty bad. More power lines came down last night. Large stretches of the motorway remain unplowed.”

“And do we have any idea where all these people are going?”

“I spoke to one couple”—rustling of paper—“on the northbound carriageway. They'd come from Oxfordshire. They said they'd been cut off for most of January. But, John, a lot of the vehicles on the motorway have been abandoned. Which is causing more problems for the snowplows when they arrive.”

Sound of distant bullhorn: “
Get back in your cars. Get back in your cars.
”

“We didn't catch that, Shana—”

“People from the countryside report being cut off all winter without power.”

“And do we know where they're going?”

“No. There's no order to it. We've heard of makeshift camps on the outskirts of major cities. There has been talk of enforced billeting if the situation continues.”

“And presumably many of the travelers are heading south. To London.”

“Yes. That's right.”

“And do we know how many people are leaving?”

“No. It's impossible to tell. It's chaos out here. It's not just people leaving the countryside, but others leaving the cities due to the rioting.”

“Do the police and army appear to have the situation under control yet?”

“I'm here with Captain Morley of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He's been overseeing the exodus here in Oxfordshire. Captain Morley—do you think your forces have got the situation under control?”

“Good evening. Yes. Obviously with such unprecedented numbers moving toward the larger towns and cities there have been problems. And of course there are stragglers left behind. But we're advising people to stay put, to wait for—”

A shot. Shana's voice: “Oh my God!” Another shot. Sound of microphone rustling. Long pause. “Sorry. John? Yes. There has been a disturbance on the road just beneath us.”

A man's angry voice over a bullhorn: “
Get back in your vehicles! Get back!
”

“Shana. Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes. But—I've never seen anything like it.” Microphone rustling. “The situation here is terrible—”

“Shana? Shana?… Well, I'm sorry about that. We seem to have lost contact with our reporter on the M40. We'll get back to her as soon as we can.

“Other breaking news: with the deepening energy crisis, Runya Karr, Governor of Germany, admitted today that the Central European government was closing Germany's borders to travel, along with France, Poland, Hungary, Austria and—”

There was a muffled sound—off microphone—whispers.

“—I'm going to have to interrupt this with”—rustling—“a broadcast. From the prime minister.”

There was a clicking and buzzing.

“This is your prime minister speaki—… inform you that the government, under the auspices of the Civil Contingencies Act … a State of Emergency to be reinstated across the United Kingdom with immediate effect.”

“Bloody hell!” said Mousy Girl.

“Shhh!”

“—at eighteen thirty Greenwich Mean Time. I repeat: a State of Emergency has been declared. The police and army are armed.”

The radio message repeated itself and Rory switched it off.

A snowball splatted on the windowpanes.

A muffled shout from the yard outside.

“Let me in, man!”

Rory pushed back his chair, went to the window, and looked down.

“It's me. Biggy. Let me in!”

Rory opened the window, a wedge of snow falling into the yard below. A blast of cold air welled into the room.

“What the feck, Biggy?” he shouted down.

“Just let me in, man. I'm telling you. Let me in. They're coming.”

“Who?”

“Blettin' medevils, man. And soldiers with guns.”

Rory shut the window, slouched down the stairs to the workshop, and hauled up the garage doors. Biggy darted inside, snow on his shoulders.

“Shut the blettin' doors, blud. It's the chungdys from the Woodberry Down Estate. Fighting, man. Started out on Seven Sisters. Medevil bluds doing their nut with the dogboyz. Feckin' soldiers with guns, man. Real feckin' guns! It's mental out there.”

“How did it start?”

“Dunno. Just came round the corner and there's all these bluds in their long shirts doing their nut with the Woodberry posse.”

“Haven't you heard the news?”

“What news, man?”

“State of Emergency. Get away from the doors.” Rory connected two heavy-duty jump leads to the terminals on the tractor batteries, followed the wires to a pair of bare clamps, and attached them to the metal doors of the workshop. They sparked as he made contact. “No feckin' marginul's going to get in here.”

Far off, the sound of trouble began to rumble up through the cold bricks and along the dirty, snow-covered streets.

He could hear it now.

Back upstairs the others were huddled around the window.

“Blow out the light, man, blow out the light,” Biggy whined.

The noise grew louder.

“Look!”

An orange glow. Black smoke. Buildings on fire just streets away.

Downstairs, the metal shutters on the street-side windows clanged. Sticks trailed along the walls.
Tak tak tak tak tak tak
.

The peaking, dipping roar of an angry crowd could be heard now.

A vehicle screeched down the road.

“Look!” Mousy Girl pointed out across the roofs.

A huge mushrooming cloud of black smoke billowed up from the houses behind the warehouse; an orange glow licked over the tiles.

They could smell it now.

There was an explosion that shook the windows.

“We've got to get out.”

“What?”

Rory pulled on his coat, took his bag from the floor. “It's on fire! We'll be next. Get out of here.”

As if to prove his point the flames roared out in spiraling fingers across the yard. Sucking the oxygen with a rushing wind. The air so thick with smoke you could hardly see the next roof.

“You do what you shiting well like. I'm out of here…”

*   *   *

Magda and Ivan were lost in the warren of streets. The engine spluttered. Magda pumped at the accelerator. There was a car coming up fast behind them. Growing closer on the icy road. She changed gear and the exhaust putted ominously. The car behind sounded its horn.

Ivan looked back over the seat. “You need to move over.”

She panicked, ran the vehicle up onto a bank of snow. Their engine died and the passing car—piled high with blankets and boxes and children crammed in seats—reeled by, horn blasting.

She looked in the mirror. A man was walking fast along the side of the road. He had seen them stop and, pulling a rucksack close over his shoulder, he was soon upon them.

“What shall we do?” Magda hissed.

The man rapped on the window. “Hey. Can you give me a lift?”

“What do I tell him, Ivan? He wants a lift.”

“Ask him if he knows the way to Liverpool.”

Magda wound the window down a bit. “We go north,” she said. “To Liverpool. But we have problem with the car.”

*   *   *

“—that's why they're so great. These old Niva Jeeps. Pretty much mend them with a crowbar and a spanner.” Rory Moss rummaged in his rucksack and looked nervously over his shoulder. Pushed a strand of dirty blond hair behind his ear. “But there's trouble on the streets tonight, my friends. So we'd better be quick.”

The hood was propped open. He leaned over the wing, his long fingers blackened with oil, reaching around in the engine. Occasionally he cupped his hands to his mouth and blew into them.

“So you were just driving along and the power died?”

Magda nodded.

“Have you got fuel?”

“About a quarter full, I think.”

“You probably stirred up a load of shite in the fuel line and the filter's blocked.”

He followed the fuel pipe back up from the carburetor and found the filter.

“What does he say?” asked Ivan.

“I'm not sure, something with the fuel.”

“Can he fix it?”

The man turned. “What's that?”

“He ask if you can fix it,” Magda said.

“Yeah,” Rory grunted, turning a spanner on the nut. “Come on, you little—aagh!” The nut released and he undid the bolt. “So what are your names then?”