When Pearl had finally been given leave to go, we hastened to rally round. Jim had a cup of coffee ready and waiting for her—which was a pity, because she only drank tea.
“I don’t know whether to be glad or disappointed that they haven’t arrested me,” she said. “I can’t help suspecting that I might be safer in custody, until the Hospital Trust can get through its round of committee meetings and issue a press release declaring me utterly blameless. Even then….”
“We’ve ordered in a stack of pizzas from Domino’s,” Jim told her. “You do eat pizzas, don’t you?” He was still worried about the coffee blunder, which he felt reflected badly on him, given the length of time he’d supposedly known Pearl. I gathered that she’d been keeping him at more than arm’s length.
“We were just discussing applying to the local five-a-side league to enter a team,” I told her. “By the time the season starts for real, we’ll probably be in a position to field a decent five, with a couple of subs on hand.”
“I don’t play football,” she said, shortly, but added: “I do eat pizza, though.”
We ate the pizzas while watching the CID team packing up their stuff, preparing to leave. Purely by coincidence—or so I assumed—it was just coming up to five o’clock: the end of the standard working day. Stan suggested finishing off the rockmobility session that had been interrupted, but he was voted down unanimously.
Marjorie went straight to her workstation as soon as she finished her slice of pizza, and started hammering away on the keyboard. Something told me that she wasn’t catching up on her latest retraining course. I hoped that she’d let me see what she wrote before posting it, and would take more notice of any suggestions I made than she had the last time. She wasn’t the only one busy in that way; even if I’d had the inclination to catch up with my own course-in-progress, I’d have had difficulty getting on to a machine. I didn’t doubt that the newscasters would be monitoring our traffic attentively, and could only hope that the eager typists would be extra careful with the wording of whatever they were pouring into cyberspace. If they were picking up any net-buzz, it wasn’t important enough for them to pass it on.
When the remains of the pizzas had been tidied away and more tea and coffee drunk, there seemed to be nothing to do, for those of us not on the machines, but wait, not knowing what it was that we were waiting for.
“Are you intending to stay here all night?” Marjorie asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “Are you?”
“Damn right. Not exactly going to be comfortable, though, is it? I count twenty-nine of us. There are two bunks in the storeroom, but apart from that there are only the armchairs, and only eight of those. We’ll have to sleep in shifts.”
“I wasn’t really expecting to sleep,” I said. “Stan’s right, of course—tonight is crucial. If we get through it unscathed, the heat will leak out of the situation like helium from a balloon. Tomorrow night, most of us will probably be able go home without risk. At least it’s midsummer. It won’t get dark until half past nine, and it won’t get cold at all.”
“Most riots happen in high summer,” she informed me. “Rain and frost cool drunken ardor—but at this time of year, too many of the living start drinking early, finish late and still feel full of beans in the belated twilight.”
“It’s okay,” I assured her, pointing out of the window—whose external bars, I must confess, I was glad to contemplate for once. “No drunken mob would be able to force their way through the professional paparazzi and the amateur video cowboys—and even if most of those idiots leaning on the lamp-posts are mere gawkers, they aren’t getting drunk while they’re there, are they?”
“They don’t look very dangerous,” she conceded, “But the mere fact that anyone’s there at all suggests that they expect something to kick off. Is that Pearl’s stalker over there on the right, under the tree?”
“I think so,” I said. “Well, at least we can be sure that he’s harmless, even if he does seem to have kitted himself out in camouflage gear from the local Army & Navy Stores. I reckon they whole lot are a bunch of sheep, most of whom couldn’t even be bothered to put on their wolf’s clothing.”
“You really are walking on sunshine today, aren’t you?” she observed.
“Sure,” I said. “I got help from one of the on-line agony aunts. Always maintain an optimistic attitude, and it will make you irresistible to women. If there’s one thing lonely women hate worse than the absence of a gee-ess-oh-aitch, it’s a glass-half-empty kind of guy.”
“Better be careful, Nicky,” she said. “You don’t want to make yourself too irresistible. A pretty boy like you could get into trouble that way.”
“Promises, promises,” I said—and finally won a thin smile.
By nine o’clock, the crowd still hadn’t shown the slightest sign of getting ugly. The authentic paparazzi were looking at their watches, wondering if it might be time to call it a day or go night-club haunting, but they didn’t dare make a move just in case one of the opposition ended up getting something they’d missed. Some of the idlers who’d just stopped by to see what was happening did move on, but they were always replaced. The crowd was still growing, albeit gradually.
“Maybe we ought to take Stan’s blaster out into the street,” Marjorie suggested, “and do a rockmobility session there. It’s give them something to watch—and maybe they’d all join in, like one big happy family.” She was obviously making an effort not to be a glass-half-empty kind of gal, perhaps in the hope of impressing me.
“Nah,” said Stan. “The more it resembles a silent vigil, the better I like it. Don’t want to whip up any excitement.”
“They’re waiting for dusk,” Jim said, obviously not having read any good advice columns lately. “Just waiting for darkness to fall.”
“If I went back home,” Pearl put in, “they’d probably let the rest of you alone.” Nobody even dignified that with an answer.
Jim was right, though as it turned out. “They” really were waiting for dusk.
We didn’t even know who “they” were until they put in their appearance, but as soon as they did, we were left in no doubt.
We heard them before we actually saw them, and what we heard was unmistakable: the sound of marching boots.
They were probably Doc Martens rather than genuine army boots, although the latter were feely available at the local Army & Navy, but it didn’t really matter, as long as they made the right noise.
Tramp, tramp, tramp
, they went, as the boots in Kipling’s poem should have done, although he had made the tag line
boots, boots, boots
—which is, when you think about it, inappropriate, because “boots” is not an onomatopoeic word.
My heart sank as soon as I heard the tramping, but I joined the others at the window anyway, to see exactly what kind of monstrosity it was that was heading our way.
If this story is ever to be submitted to an arbiter in the hope that it might one day see electronic print through commercial channels, I expect that the first thing a prospective editor will recommend is that I take out almost all of the introductory sections to the chapters, especially this one.
“Nobody’s interested in what you think,” he or she will undoubtedly tell me, “especially if all you’re thinking about is trying to find explanations for things nobody cares about. Nobody’s interested in explanations. When they’re reading a story, whether it’s true or not, all people are interested in is
what happens next
. Telling them what you think, and trying to explain things, just gets in the way. What you need, if you’re ever going to interest people in what you’re writing, is much less thinking, no explanations at all, and lots more things
happening
. You have to drum it into your head until it becomes second nature: never mind the thinking,
just get on with the story
.
To which my reflexive reply, ironically enough, might be reckoned unprintable by people of delicate sensibility, even in electronic ink. Rather than merely lose my rag, however, I shall try to explain.
The fundamental point is that this is my autobiography—or a slice of it, at any rate—and it wouldn’t be authentic if it didn’t reflect the real me. It has to be true, not merely to the facts of what happened, but to my point of view.
The simple fact is that I really do spend much of my time thinking, and much of my thinking time hunting for explanations. I can’t claim that I always find them, let alone that I always find the right ones, but the story of my life was, in essence, the story of my idle intellectual questing, and the story of my afterlife has been a straightforward extrapolation of the quests in question, minus the idleness. The things that happen, on the rare occasions when things do, are merely décor: background, not foreground.
Maybe that makes me unusual, even among the present-day afterliving, but that doesn’t matter. Even if it doesn’t exist right now, if I’m right, my ideal audience will eventually materialize. Not that I’m only writing this for my fellow zombies, mind. I think the living can get just as much out of it as the risen dead, if only they’re prepared to make the effort.
I’m sorry about the effort, but not
that
sorry. However true it might be that people who read stories are only interested in what happens next, they oughtn’t to be. When you think about it, what happens next is only the particular unlikely event that chances to fall out of the chaos of unrealized possibility, and if you hadn’t noticed, writers cheat. Million-to-one shots are meat and drink to them. Even so, the implication remains that something else could easily have happened instead, and if time could turned back so that the situation were replayed, it probably would have done. What happens next is, therefore, essentially trivial—but whatever happens, the same questions always remain, the same issues are at stake, the same processes stand in need of explanation. Whatever happens, or doesn’t, it all needs thinking about. If you don’t do it, who will? Me, obviously—but is that really enough, whether from my viewpoint or yours?
I
am
prepared to apologize for interrupting the story, not just now but continually, but I would like you to think about why I’m doing it. Is it just because I’m a zombie, do you suppose? Is it just because I’m possessed of zombie sobriety, as gloriously free from what-happened-next addition as I am from all other unhealthily gluttonous appetites?
Well, perhaps. Who am I to judge?
It really doesn’t matter, though, at the end of the day, exactly what I am. What matters is what I aspire to be, and whether it’s something worthy of aspiration. And what matters when the story is over and done with, however it turns out, is what it makes you think about, and what explanations it invites you to look for. Or, to put it another way, what assistance it gives you, however trivial, to make up
your
mind about what
you
should aspire to be.
Is that pompous, or what?
Stories are only trash, after all.
But it doesn’t really matter what you or your inner editor might think—not to me. It’s not as if I’m alive. I’m dead, if not yet gone—and whatever people might think of them, zombies don’t cry.
* * * * * * *
“It’s the fucking ED,” said Stan, with a theatrical groan. “Why, oh, why, couldn’t it have been a column of Afro-Anglican exorcists, or even a pack of wailing jihadists? At least they rant before they get violent, and usually content themselves with just the ranting. The ED haven’t got the brains for ranting, unfortunately.”
It occurred to me then that I hadn’t seen a single religious nut all day—which would have been odd, if I’d thought about it…except that this was the age of the internet, and crazy people always kept tabs on one another as well as on the sane. We hadn’t known that England’s Defenders had planned some sort of operation, but the Afro-Anglicans probably had, if only because England’s Defenders would have sent them a text warning them to stay clear or get stomped.
Within five seconds, Stan had locked the doors. It would have been nice if he’d hauled a massive beam of wood out of his store-room, and if there had been slots riveted to the wall on either side of the door into which the beam might be slotted, but the Salvation Army had never had the need for that kind of provision and Reading Borough Council had certainly not been about to repair the omission.
The reason that a protective beam of that sort would have been useful is that the ED’s marching stormtroopers were being assisted to keep in step, in spite of never having put in any real drill practice, by the fact that they were carrying a huge battering-ram.
At a guess, it had actually started out its working life as a telegraph pole—it was certainly impressively long as well as worryingly stout—but no one in the Hall could doubt for an instant what the ED intended to do with it. They were not only going to break in, but to make a show out of breaking in, for the benefit of the waiting cameras.
I made a rapid count of our blessings, and came up with a total of four: the number of steps leading up to the front door. I wished that it had been eight, or that they’d at least been a bit steeper. The four steps were going to make charging the door with the ram a little more difficult, but not that much more.
Stan called the police and gave them the news.
The dispatcher promised to get a first response vehicle to us within three minutes, and a fully-staffed riot van within fifteen. “Wankers,” was Stan’s uncompromising judgment. “What do they think the first response unit’s going to achieve against—how many ED thugs are there?”
“Sixteen,” Jim informed him, dolefully. “And some of the other people are taking hold of the battering-ram too. There’s another crowd coming up the hill—must be the drinkers from the Crown and Bells. This is bad.”
“The boozers don’t count,” said Stan. “They’ve just come to watch. Even the bastards who are grabbing a bit of the ram are just in it for the fun. The ram’s not a bad thing, really—it’s obviously theatrical, more symbolic than merely brutal. There’s every chance that they’re just putting on a show, and don’t really intend to hurt anyone. Anyone see any guns or knives?”
“Nothing in plain view,” Marjorie reported. “They’ve mostly got loose fitting combat-jackets on, though, and those stupid jeans with all the zip-pockets. My guess is that some of them will be carrying concealed handguns, but no Kalashnikovs or Uzis.”
“Pity,” Stan said, with a sigh. “If they were waving firearms around, even the Thames Valley Police would feel obliged to scramble a copter and an Armed Response Vehicle.”
“Maybe you should just tell the cops they’ve got guns,” Kevin suggested. “It’s almost certainly true, as Marjorie says.”
“Best not,” Stan said. “If an ARV does turn up, and the ED boys think it incumbent on them to defend themselves, people could get hurt. If it’s just a riot squad, the nutters will probably be content to keep their popguns in their pockets. Even mob violence has its regs.”
The regs in question obviously permitted stone-throwing. As soon as the first tentative stone had hit the window, it turned into a shower, and the shower rapidly became a deluge. A lot of the missiles bounced off the bars or the windows, but three or four came through within a minute, spraying shards of glass across the floor before everyone had had time to take cover.
Then the battering ram hit the door for the first time, and Stan turned into Action Man, bellowing orders. He thought he was in charge—and to be honest, I was as glad as everyone else appeared to be that he did. As requested, I raced to station myself by his side. So did Jim Peel and the most able-bodied of the older males.
“Kev—you and Mike strip the sheets from my bunk and the spare, and try to fix them up over the windows to intercept the flying glass. Grab a broom each, and if anyone reaches through a broken window with a gun, knock it out of his hand. Nicky, Jim, grab that table and wedge it against the doors—then upend the other one, fold up the legs and lay it on of the first. The rest of you, fold up the chairs, and pile them on top—then put a couple of armchairs on top of the stack, for good measure. Quickly—once the barricade’s formed, everybody get behind and brace yourselves. The longer we can prevent the door from breaking, the more chance there is that the riot squad will be able to nip this in the bud. You’ll thank me for working you all so hard if we can keep them out.”
“There are too many of them!” Jim said mournfully, glacing through the as-yet-unobscured window as he lumbered forward to help me with the first of the trestle-tables. “It’s not just the ED—they’re all joining in.”
“No they’re not!” Stan retorted. “And they won’t, if we can just keep things under control. Work together—and
don’t panic!
”
The battering ram hit the door again. It juddered, but didn’t break. The tables and chairs were formed up into an inner barricade now, and a dozen of us put our weight behind it, with Jim in the center. Stan and I were positioned to either side of him, bracing ourselves for the third crash.
“Is Timmy with them?” Pearl asked, trying to peer out of the imperilled window to the left of the door while helping Kevin to secure the sheet from Stan’s bunk.
“No,” Marjorie reported. “He made himself scarce as soon as the ED appeared.”
“That’s good,” said Pearl. “That’s good.” She didn’t specify whether it was because she didn’t want her loyal stalker getting hurt, or because she was simply glad that he hadn’t joined in with the people who were coming to get her—and perhaps to lynch her—because she’d been labeled an angel of death by dodgy rumor-feeds.
The battering-ram hit the door for a third time. The door was beginning to splinter, and the barricade threatened to fly apart. “Hold it together!” Stan commanded—although it wasn’t an order that could be easily obeyed. The rain of stones and other objects hitting the other wall of the building seemed to be very loud—but the whole point of it seemed to be to make a noise. As Stan said, it was theatrical rather than merely brutal. The ED were acting the part of besiegers storming a redoubt.
The theatricality, I knew, might turn out to be more dangerous than any acts of violence they eventually achieved. It would encourage the gawkers to join in, giving them a script for comprising an angry mob—and there were a hundred cameras of every sort jostling for a ringside position
“It’s going out live on three high-profile news-feeds,” Methuselah reported, from the mezzanine, as if to confirm my fears. “As soon as one of the networks starts putting it out, we’ll have millions of eyes on us. The ED aren’t even trying to stop the paparazzi taking pictures.”
“Of course not,” Stan said. “That’s what they want. This is purely a publicity stunt.”
As if to underline his claim, the telegraph pole smashed into the door for a third time. The rammers were building up a rhythm now.
As if to drown out the ominous thunder, Stand started shouting again. “Pearl! Get behind the counter in the kitchenette and
keep your head down
. Jim, if the door gives, go stand in the kitchenette doorway. Just lean on the jamb, as if you were passing the time of day, but
keep it blocked
. Marjorie, Alice—gather all the women in the store-room
now
, lock the door and
don’t bloody argue
. Kevin, if the door gives, go put
Highway to Hell
on the blaster….”
“I don’t…,” I began.
“Shut up, Nicky—it’s for my benefit, not theirs. Everybody else—and that includes you, Son—if the door breaks, get up to the mezzanine or into the corners of the room. Make yourselves as small as you possibly can, and
don’t get involved
. I’ll front it out. I know how to handle these fuckers, and the fewer targets they have ready to hand, the more chance there is of talking instead of brawling. They may be idiots, but they’ve got their headline now—with luck, they’ll let the police clear them away, pretending all the while to be victims of establishment politics.”
The battering ram hit the door again. We leaned into the impact as best we could, but the screws holding the door hinges were already coming away, and the battens were cracking from top to bottom. It was obvious that the door was going to break, and that the barricade made out of tables and chairs would be reduced soon afterwards to flying debris, no matter how hard we tried to hold it together and brace it with our own feeble strength. I couldn’t see a thing through the doors, but I could easily imagine than there must be as many as forty people manning the battering-ram now, treating it as a bit of alcohol-fueled fun, not knowing or caring what would happen after the door caved in.
I could hear police sirens, and knew that the riot van could only be a couple of minutes away—provided that the streets were clear. I had an awful suspicion that they wouldn’t be.
This is serious
, I thought. I had to remind myself, because it all seemed so surreal. But I was quick to rebuild my morale as best I could:
But it’s not the bloody Alamo. This is Merry England, not the Wild West
.