Aftermath

28

Harte hardly slept all night. He’d laid awake on a spare sofa bed in one of the caravans, the trailer next to Jackson’s, where Kieran and Jas slept—along with Ainsworth and Field, who’d both moved in after the “accident” with a wastepaper bin, a bottle of booze, and a box of matches which had caused the fire. He’d seen Donna, Cooper, and Richard go into Jackson’s caravan late last night, and they hadn’t yet come out. His restless night had mostly been spent looking out of windows. He watched the caravan next door for a while, then turned the other way to check on the helicopter in the middle of the courtyard, desperate for it not to leave without him.

After tossing and turning restlessly for hours, he finally fell into a relatively deep sleep around four. Noises outside woke him later and he got up with a start. He was out of bed so fast it made him feel nauseous. He pressed his face against the window and saw that there were people gathered around the helicopter. He ran outside, frantically pulling his clothes on as he went.

“Morning,” Richard said casually as Harte blustered toward him, all arms and legs and panic. “All right, are you?”

“Thought I was going to miss my flight,” he answered breathlessly.

“You are,” Cooper said from behind him, startling him. He spun around. Jackson was there too.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. He turned to look at Jackson. “What’s he on about?”

“We were talking in the caravan after the meeting,” Jackson explained. “Some of the things Jas said last night were right. This is a big decision for people to make, and wMorning,#x2019;t rush them. Cooper here has kindly agreed to give us all a little more time to make up our minds about what we want to do.”

“We’re flying back to Chadwick this morning,” Cooper began. “We’re going to—”

“I’m coming with you,” Harte interrupted. “You said.”

Cooper shook his head. “We need you here. Look, we need to get back to the marina to let Harry and Michael know what’s going on. In the meantime, you and Jackson will be organizing this end of things, finding out who’s going and who’s staying and getting things packed up.”

“But why me? You don’t need me for that. Anyone could do it.”

“You know the area better than most,” he explained. “You’ve spent a couple of weeks scavenging around Chadwick, and you know where to find the boats we’re planning to take. Your man Driver has agreed to transport everyone, but he needs your help to get there. This is important, Harte.”

Harte just looked at him, feeling deflated and unexpectedly angry.

“This is bullshit,” he spat, turning his ire on Cooper. “I agreed to come back here on the condition you’d get me out again.”

“And that’s still going to happen. It’s just that you’ll be leaving here by bus, not helicopter, that’s all. What difference does it make? We’re going to wait for you in Chadwick until midday tomorrow, so come the end of the week you should still be on Cormansey. These people need you, Harte; Jackson and Driver most of all. I think it’s the least you can do after running out on them like that.”

Harte tried to argue with Cooper but he couldn’t. There was no point.

* * *

Just past midday. A clear sky and a cool breeze. Jas was standing on the top of the gatehouse with Kieran. Below them the rotor blades on top of the helicopter had just started to spin. Their noise and speed increased rapidly, blowing clouds of dust across the courtyard and sending people scattering, looking for cover. The aircraft rose majestically, and Jas watched it effortlessly climb.

It was gone in a matter of minutes. All the noise and bluster disappeared in a remarkably short period of time.

“So what do you think?” he said to Kieran. Kieran stared into the distance, looking as far as he could see in the general direction the helicopter had taken.

“I’m guessing fifty-fifty,” he answered. “Maybe more will want to go than stay. The grass is always greener, and all that shite.”

“And that’s all it is,” Jas said, “shite. Most of the people here are just sheep, following the rest of the herd. If you told them to swim the Channel because there’s no dead bodies in France, most of them probably would.”

“They’re not that bad.”

“Some of them are.”

Kieran thought for a moment before asking, “So what are we going to do?”

Jas walked to the other side of the gatehouse roof and looked out between the battlements over the dead world beyond the wall. Kieran followed him. Down below he could see what was left of the dead, still drawing ever closer even after all this time, the noise of the helicopter piquing their unwanted interest this morning. Christ, they were pitiful-looking creatures now. He watched one of them, one leg broken, the other missing, as it lay on its belly and slowly dragged itself across the muddy grass. Another tried to move past one which had expired against the trunk of a tree. In its clumsiness the two rib cages had become entangled, and now the corpse which still moved was dragging the other behind it.

The dead appalled Jas. He didn’t admit as much to anyone else, but they still scared the hell out of him too. How could anyone not be afraid of monsters such as these? Foul and hideous, ungodly beasts which would stop at nothing to reach the living. Detestable fuckers with no consideration for their own physical condition, less anyone or anything else’s. Even today, months after death when their physical bodies had deteriorated to such a repulsive extent, they were still a threat. There was nothing human about them now. They were evil: driven to keep attacking until they could no longer function. He wondered how anything could be filled with such relentless, remorseless hate.

“We can’t let anyone leave,” Jas said, finally responding to Kieran’s question. “Can’t they see what they’re doing? They’re making a huge mistake.”

“We could try talking to them again,” Kieran suggested. “Maybe now they’ve had time to think they’ll see things differently.”

“I doubt it.”

The two men remained looking over the battlements for a while longer. Eventually increasing noises from around the courtyard distracted Kieran.

“I’m going to see what’s going on down there, okay?”

“Okay,” Jas said.

Suddenly alone, Jas leaned against the wall, then sank down to the floor. He held his head in his hands and tried to make sense of the whirlpool of emotions he was feeling. He thought about everything he’d gone through to get to this point—that first morning when he’d lost his family, the time he’d spent with the others at the flats and the circumstances under which they’d been forced to leave, their nightmare incarceration at the besieged hotel …

It was the weeks he’d spent trapped in the hotel which still troubled him most. Just the thought of those dark, endless hours was enough to bring a tidal wave of uncomfortably familiar feelings of helplessness, panic, and dread crashing over him. He’d found it almost impossible to deal with the cruel finality of their imprisonment there—the fact there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to help himself—e prospect of being backed into a corner like that again now terrified him. And despite all the assurances he’d heard over and over, that was how this island seemed. He’d be giving up control if he went there. He’d be trapped unless he could persuade Richard Lawrence to fly him back or find someone who could sail a boat back to the mainland. And travel to and from the island was inevitably going to get harder with time, not easier.

Cheetham Castle wasn’t perfect. It was an ill-equipped, uncomfortable place, but that didn’t matter. It was just a staging point—a stepping stone, a shelter where they could weather the final days of this tumultuous storm—and it had served its purpose adequately. It would soon be time to move on, but not yet. And definitely not to Cormansey.

Without thinking, Jas slipped his hand into his inside pocket and pulled out the wallet he’d carried with him constantly since before his nightmare had begun. In it was the last remaining photograph of his family. It had become increasingly ragged and dog-eared over time, more so recently because he seemed to be looking at it more than ever. He gazed deep into the last image of his wife’s beautiful brown eyes—still sparkling and intense in spite of the wear to the picture—and then, as he did whenever he felt his options were reducing, he asked her what she thought he should do.

Tell me, Harj … do I stay or do I go?