Down Station

5

The East European man had a lighter, a big heavy slab of steel that looked like it had been through a war. It produced a tail of smoky orange flame whenever the flint was struck. He used it to catch alight a pile of dry leaves and twigs, and he’d clearly made fires before: he knew exactly what he was doing, and wasted no effort in telling the others what to do. Despite the exertions and the novelty of the day draining everyone, Stanislav was still working, still breaking fallen branches against his knee, still hauling wood back to the tree line where they’d set up a temporary camp.

Mary didn’t help. She didn’t know how to help. She was a city girl, who knew all sorts of tricks and scams, but none of them seemed useful here, where there were only trees and grass and water and rock and soil and sky.

She knew how to set a fire◦– pour the petrol, throw a match on it◦– but not how to build one out of raw materials, how to nurture it from tiny flame to crackling bonfire, how to feed it and with what. Neither did she know what to do with the fish: it had always come in either batter or breadcrumbs, never glistening and whole, and certainly never at her face.

And neither did the turbaned kid, which was almost gratifying, but Mama did, using a small knife that the kid had. It was blunt, and she’d said so, and he said it was never meant to be used, but she and the Chinese woman◦– Grace◦– went down by the river to ‘clean’ the fish, and by that she had to assume they meant cut them open and scrape their guts out.

That made her queasy, but she was also hungry.

Nothing was making sense to Mary, and the other six survivors seemed to be coping far better than her with what was going on. Even whatever-his-name-was, the kid with the turban, seemed to have shut up about being dead.

So she sat with her back to a tree, like she was in one of the local parks, and watched those around her. That was only good for a while, and she became bored. Little was happening: everyone seemed content just to stare into the fire and feel the warmth of it against their skin. It reminded her too much of the tunnels, and she got up to walk away.

‘Hey. Where are you going?’

Stanislav had the top half of his boilersuit tied around his waist, baring a grey-looking vest spilling muscle and tufts of grey chest hair. To her, it looked grotesque. Old men were supposed to keep everything covered up.

‘You don’t get to tell me what to do,’ she said.

The turbaned kid looked up. ‘I’ll go with her.’ He was still barefoot, but he reached for his socks.

‘Oh, fuck off.’

Stanislav, his stubbly head glistening from work, put the end of the branch he carried on the floor, then pressed his foot against it a third of the way up. It bent, and snapped with a sharp crack. ‘We do not know what is out there. We have seen one monster already, there may be more.’

‘That was in the sea. And I was just going for a walk.’

‘No one will go and look for you when you do not return.’

‘I wouldn’t want them to.’

Stanislav shrugged, reduced the branch further, and threw all three pieces on to the growing pile where they landed in a hollow clatter.

‘As you say, I do not tell you what to do. In return, you cannot expect us to do what you want.’

‘Whatever. Later.’ She walked between the trees, waving her hand over her shoulder.

She’d barely got any distance before she heard footsteps hurrying after her. She didn’t turn around, just kept walking.

‘Haven’t you learned anything from films?’

‘Fuck. Off.’

‘Seriously. We don’t know where we are, we don’t know what’s out there. You can’t just wander off like this.’

There was very little undergrowth: mostly small, thin plants and long looping briars. The leaf litter made every footfall release a deep, earthy scent. The overlapping branches above formed an almost complete canopy, throwing deep shade over everything below. Where a tree had fallen, there was a clearing, bright with sunlight and hazy with insects. They were like islands in a sea of gloom.

She stopped and looked around. She could see tiny flashes of orange boilersuit coming from the tree line, but if she went only a little further, she’d be lost, unable to find her way back.

It wasn’t like a local park at all, with paths and play areas, and a lake with scruffy-looking ducks. This was the wild wood, stretching beyond this point for as far as it pleased. There were no tower blocks on the borders, and the realisation struck her with all the force of a punch to the side of the head.

The turbaned kid had a stout branch in his hands, his fingers digging into the rough bark. It was the best weapon and, unless his little blunt knife counted, the only weapon that they could muster.

She didn’t want to lose face. Neither did she want to carry on any further. She could have gone down towards the river, but hadn’t. Instead, she was in the middle of a forest with a stick-wielding kid in a blue turban and a ridiculous beard.

‘Fuck.’

‘Look. Stanislav’s right: you can do what you want, but it’d be stupid to just wander off after all we’ve been through.’

‘What if there’s someone just over the hill who can help us, and we’ll never know unless we go there.’

‘And there might be someone◦– or something◦– just over the hill that might eat us. We don’t know that either. So being together is always going to be better, right?’

Who was she going to be? Was she going to be the one who came through the fire and survived, or was she the one who was too fucking arsey to be with and eventually abandoned? Because that wasn’t a pattern that had repeated itself throughout her entire life, was it?

Into the forest? Back to the river?

She looked one way, then the other.

‘Fuck it.’

She turned on her heel and stamped back to the tree line, and the turbaned kid trailed after her, still carrying his stick.

‘I’m Dalip,’ he said.

‘Congratulations.’

‘Your—’

‘I’m what? You don’t get to say what I am.’ She whipped around, and he was proffering her discarded bandanna.

‘Bandanna,’ and he held it out to her. ‘You dropped it earlier.’

She could take it, she could snatch it. She stopped and thought about what to do. Then she reached out and held out her hand, palm up. He dropped the cloth, and she caught it.

‘Thanks. Dalip.’

‘That’s okay…’

‘Mary.’

She carried on walking ahead of him, and through the place at the edge of the forest where the fire was. It wasn’t like anything had happened in the last few minutes to make her stay there, so she kept on, out into the sunlight. She went down by the river, to wash her bandanna, and her face.

The river had reversed its flow, and the fish had gone. The water was fresh, and she self-consciously filled her hands with it and tried to pour some into her mouth. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever done that before; judging by the amount that disappeared cold and clear down her neck, she was, at the very least, out of practice.

The sun was going down, sinking behind the ridge of rock that had formed the backdrop to their arrival. The sky was now a deep blue, still with the white, ragged clouds blowing in from the sea, and the seagulls wheeled and cried.

Their cries were answered by a long, high-pitched wail that echoed across the open landscape. She’d never heard anything like it before, but she reacted instantly; she stood bolt upright and scanned the tree line, the river, the grasses, for movement of any kind. Mama and the Chinese woman did the same, a little way off.

Time stretched out, and her beating heart slowed enough to allow her to breathe again. As the sound faded into the wind and the memory, Mama shook her head and knelt at the water’s edge again.

Mary wasn’t so ready to let her guard down. The initial sounds of disaster had been nothing more than distant thunder above ground, a booming growl under it. Yet they’d all ended up running for their lives, and most of them had lost the race. She waited and watched.

And it came again. It sounded like it could have come from a musical instrument, a trumpet or a horn. Except it didn’t quite, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled as they rose. There was no way of telling which direction the sound was coming from: out to sea, from the forest, from the hills, or further away towards the mountains. It just seemed to be.

She tied her damp bandanna around her hair, and went to see Mama, who was gathering up the gutted fish by hooking her fingers through the open gills. Grace did the same, and still there were fish left over.

‘Mary, pick up the rest.’

Mary screwed her face up. ‘They’re dead.’

‘They’re dinner, girl. ’Less you want to go hungry.’

She didn’t, but neither did she want to touch the cold, slimy things with dark, unblinking eyes. She changed the subject. ‘What was that noise just now?’

‘Some kind of animal? I don’t know.’ She looked down at the remaining fish at the river’s edge. ‘I do know that those aren’t going to carry themselves.’

‘But what sort of animal? I mean: there was that big snake in the sea. What if there are more on land?’

‘Dinosaurs,’ said Grace. ‘The boy with the turban was worried about dinosaurs.’

‘So what does a dinosaur sound like?’

‘No one knows. They’ve been dead for millions of years.’ She too stared pointedly at the fish. ‘We don’t need to worry about dinosaurs. Just those.’

Defeated, Mary forced her painted nails one by one into the gills, until she had three heavy fish hanging from each hand. She held them away from her body, as far as she could, disgusted by the touch and the weight.

The animal sound cut through the air again. Mary’s stomach tightened, and she could feel her legs get ready to run. She forced herself to walk, all the way up to the tree line.

‘Seriously,’ she said, as she laid the fish out on the ground and wondered where she was supposed to wipe her fingers. ‘What the fuck is that noise?’

‘Wolves,’ said Stanislav and Dalip at the same time. They shrugged at each other, and Stanislav continued. ‘A wolf. There will be more.’

‘There aren’t any wolves in England,’ she said.

‘Then we are no longer in England,’ Stanislav said. ‘There are wolves in Europe. Perhaps we are there instead.’

‘There are plenty in North America too,’ said Dalip. ‘Though I don’t suppose that’s helpful.’

Mary drew her lips in, and on cue, the wolf◦– if that was what it was◦– howled. It was the scariest thing she’d ever heard, and she’d run in riots with the roar of voices, the barking of fighting dogs and the wail of sirens.

‘Are they dangerous? I mean, they’re wild, right?’

‘They sometimes attack people. The small, the weak, the injured.’ Stanislav crouched down and picked up a long springy twig from a pile he’d made. He poked it through both gills of a fish, and held it up. ‘We need a frame to hold these above the fire.’

Dalip nodded, and started to sort through the wood pile for suitable lumber.

‘Can we keep on talking about the wolves?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Well, what are we going to do about them?’

‘It depends,’ he said, ‘on what they want to do about us. They will stay away from us, and our fire, or they will not. Those are their choices. If they attack us, we will defend ourselves as a group, or they will pick us off one by one. Those are our choices. If we climbed trees, the wolves would still be there when we came down. But it is unlikely that we will have to fight. They are, as you say, wild, and they will either be afraid of us, or they will not see us as food. These fish, however, will bring them to us, and are better off inside us than not.’

He carried on threading them, one after another, on to sticks, while Dalip began to construct a short tripod next to the fire. Stanislav glanced over to check his design, then carried on with his own task.

Mary didn’t know what else to say. There were wolves in the forest, and no one seemed to care.

‘Do not go for a walk,’ he said, without looking up. ‘Night is falling, and we do not know how long it will last.’

She didn’t like being told what to do, but she only went as far as just beyond the tree line, and stood with her hands in her pockets, balling her fists. The sky was darkening, and the sun was now below the ridge behind her, casting a long, dark shadow across the river valley. In the far distance, the light still caught the tops of the mountain range and they glowed like rosy lights in the sky.

It wasn’t a sight she was used to. What she knew was the regular shapes of roofs and walls, spires and masts, reflections from windows and the steady sodium orange of the street lights. And the sounds: the city hummed, a deep bass rumble of traffic and machinery that infested even skin and bone. The only sounds here were the drone from the clouds of insects that misted the air over the river, the hiss of wind in the leaves and the grasses, and the occasional arse-clenching wolf call.

Natural. She wasn’t used to it. Fortunately, she didn’t need to get used to it either. They’d find a way back soon, and everything would return to normal. Of course, she might not have a job anymore, depending on how much damage the Underground had sustained. She might not have a room at the hostel anymore, either. That was for someone else to sort out◦– her probation officer, her social worker◦– not her.

She became aware of a sudden silence, and a white glow just over the horizon. Slowly, slowly, an edge of a circle appeared, pocked like the moon with blue craters and bone-coloured lines. Like the moon but most definitely not, because as she watched, it grew and swelled, inflating like a balloon until it seemed to take up half the sky. It was impossibly massive, full and fat, a huge ball of stone just… floating.

It was just her, and this thing. She knew then. She knew that everything was different and nothing was the same.

‘Fuck.’ She turned, and called out. ‘You have to see this. You have to come.’

They walked towards her, and saw that she was silhouetted against the glow from the moon. She spread her arms out wide, and even then, her reach wasn’t quite wide enough to encompass it all.

It was a terrifying sight, something that big rising above them. It would rise higher, and at some point in the night, be hanging over them. Their moon was so distant, so small, that it could be covered by a thumb at full stretch. This one, this world’s version, wherever they were, couldn’t be blocked out by both hands together.

‘That’s incredible,’ said Dalip, eventually. ‘That’s,’ and words failed him.

The rest of the sky was turning black as the mountain-tops lost their reflected shine. The last rays of the sun against the high cloud faded, descending through pinks into reds. Only the pearly moonglow remained.

‘Where,’ said Stanislav, ‘are the stars?’

Dalip stepped out further, turned his back on the moon and stared upwards, his head tilted back and his mouth falling open. Mary hadn’t noticed the lack of stars, and would never notice them. Her sky was an orange haze, growing thicker or thinner depending on the weather.

The dome of the night was◦– apart from the bright moon, which had now crested the mountains completely◦– utterly dark.

‘There should be stars,’ said Dalip, shivering. ‘There should be thousands of stars.’

And perhaps for the first time, Mary looked up properly.

She knew something about stars◦– the stars formed pictures in the sky, some of which became star signs, and she was a Virgo. There was nothing. She turned her head to face the sea, then to face the mountains, and there was still nothing.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

‘The sky should be on fire. No light pollution, no street lights or houses or cars or factories: you should be able to see everything. Stars, planets, nebulae, the Milky Way. Everything.’

‘Maybe they don’t have them here,’ she said. ‘Maybe this is all there is.’

‘That’s impossible. Even if it takes millions of years for light to cross space, it gets to us eventually.’ He sounded close to panic, and no matter which section of the sky they checked, it always appeared blank. ‘And that, that is not our moon. It’s got none of the right craters, seas, anything. Where are we?’

‘We’ve come further than we thought, that’s all. It’ll be okay.’ She didn’t mean to try and sound reassuring. It just came out, as if it was the right thing to say at that moment.

Dalip stared wide-eyed at her, and she could hear his breathing, fast and shallow at first, slowly subside into something more normal.

Then he nodded, and looked at the ground so he didn’t have to look up. ‘It’s what we do now that counts.’

‘I guess so.’ She took one last look at the moon and started back to their camp under the trees. A wolf called again, and this time she didn’t mind it so much. It was probably the least strange thing, including her own presence, about where she’d ended up.

Dinner, suspended over the fire, was ready, and she was ravenous.