Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse

CHISLEHURST MESSIAH ^{LAUREN BEUKES}

It wasn’t the blood seas that got to him. Or the dead birds that fell out of the sky and rotted on the lawn in crumpled bundles of feathers. Or the plague of flying ants crusting themselves up against the window panes. Or even Marlowe dying in agony as her organs liquidised inside her and gushed out all over the carpet so Simon had to rip the damn thing out. You’d be surprised how much the smell of spleen will permeate a room. Especially when you can’t open the windows because of the ants.

That was all Very Upsetting, make no mistake. Even though he had been about to divorce the silly bitch and nail her for half her estate and the account in Jersey that she thought he didn’t know about. And even though her death was messy and ugly and awkward—embarrassed, he’d left her to it, going into the den to play that jewel-swapping game on Facebook while she screamed and writhed and spat up black strings of blood—frankly, her dying saved him a lot of time and effort because the dumb cunt hadn’t changed her will yet. Easier to inherit than squeeze a decent alimony out of a shit-hot investment banker with a shit-hot investment banker’s lawyer.

Not that all that cash was any use to him at the moment. That was the supreme fucker of it. The banks were locked up. The bankers were either dead or hiding out in holiday houses in Spain and France, fortified in a hurry, private security guards patrolling the perimeters with automatic weapons. At least, that’s what he’d seen on the news before the news cut out.

He missed television. He missed the stock ticker running along the bottom of the business report. Missed the explosions in dusty Third World deserts and the Women Who Kill and plastic surgery reality shows and especially the scruffy animals being rescued from nasty abusive owners by trained task teams of dedicated volunteers. He felt a bit like one of those pathetically mangy pets himself, trapped in Marlowe’s Chislehurst block of flats all alone, with nothing to eat except cans of foie gras and baked beans. (Marlowe had thrown out anything with “organic” on the label back in the early days when rumours about terrorists targeting the food markets was still the prevailing theory.)

And surely it’d be Only A Matter of Time before the government restored order and his satellite TV and sent an elite unit, CO19 maybe, to the rescue? He just needed to outlast the hoodie scum running rampant in the streets.

At least the building still had electricity. After last year’s riots, the body corporate had passed a motion to install generators in the building. (Couldn’t have warm Stoli!) Simon reckoned there was at least a few weeks’ worth of diesel stashed in the basement.

So far he hadn’t had to leave home for supplies. He went shopping in the neighbouring apartments, with a handkerchief doused in Issey Miyake pressed over his mouth and nose to try to obscure the smell. The bodies left him strangely unmoved. It was all very abstract, like some grotesque modern art exhibition, all black puddled insides and swarms of flies that lifted off the bloated grey corpses in a halo when he stepped into the room.

He was much more interested in snooping around, reaffirming the suspicions he’d long fostered about their friends and neighbours. The Pepoys, for example, had a lifetime supply of prescription uppers in their medicine cabinet, which would explain the delirious cheer Alice had brought to dinner parties. He’d never liked her or her over-eager speculative conversation starters: “If you could go to anywhere on holiday where would it be?” Right where I’ve just been, you stupid bint. That’s the whole point of marrying into money. The only pick-me-up Alice Pepoys needed now was a spatula, he thought, grinning spitefully.

He cleaned out her stash of pharmaceuticals just in case. He didn’t mind feeling a bit sorry for himself with Everything He’d Been Through, but he didn’t want to get stuck in wallowing self-pity. Especially if CO19 got delayed.

The Bennetts were even more pathetic. Four of the five bedrooms were lavishly appointed straight from a bespoke decorator’s catalogue; pinstripe walls and inoffensive abstract prints. The fifth was kitted out with a king size bed with a black rubber sheet and a closet containing a parking attendant’s outfit and a camera rigged in the mirrored door.

He took the tapes home with him, along with four tins of sardines, sun-dried cherry tomatoes imported from Italy, water biscuits, a loaf of rye bread, frozen, and, an even dirtier secret than the half-hearted sex dungeon: three months’ worth of Sainsbury’s microwave meals.

On the way back, he thought he heard a baby screaming from the house a block over. But cats fighting make almost exactly the same noise. And he wasn’t going to risk his life for a bloody cat. It wasn’t that he was a man of no conscience. He’d seen that heart-breaking documentary on the pets left behind after 9/11. It had reduced even that cold bitch Marlowe to a sobbing, snotty bundle tucked under his arm on the couch. Even worse than that dolphin movie. He’d be sure to tell CO19 about poor little kitty when they got here, and they could sort it out.

The Bennetts’ sex videos were tedious. He’d seen way worse on the Internet. Which was the only thing still running. All the major networks were down. No TV. No radio. No mobile phone reception. He’d picked up some radio chatter in the beginning; government broadcasts advising people to stay in their homes: pip, pip, keep calm and carry on, which segued into increasingly panicky emergency services reports asking people to report to local medical centres as soon as possible. Then it petered off into static. Occasionally, bizarrely, he’d pick up heavy metal music, as if some radio engineer had walked out and left Shouty Goth Freaks Greatest Hits Volume 13 playing at full blast.

And yet, somehow, by some mechanism he didn’t understand, probably learned from dodgy Arab protestors, the Internet was still working. And the bloody chavs were in control of it.

He’d been glued to Marlowe’s Powerbook, trawling YouTube, his only link to the outside world. He spent hours bouncing from clip to clip, compulsively shoving cashew nuts into his mouth, washing them down with her Ardbeg. If the footage was anything to go by, the looting was still in full swing.

Occasionally he heard the roar of engine noise in the distance, which inspired him to keep the curtains closed at night. But Marlowe’s neighbours weren’t the type who coveted designer trainers and iPods and the other shit the kids on the clips were still going after. And anyway, why would they bother with the suburbs when the little scum had the whole city as their playground?

He spent the next couple of days mainlining Colombian coffee and Ardbeg and popping Alice Pepoy’s uppers and a course of expired antibiotics, because he’d seen enough zombie movies to know that the only thing worse than rampaging hordes of dead-eyed creatures is dying of something embarrassing like an infected toenail. (And he had stubbed his toe on the doorframe, when he dragged Marlowe’s corpse, wrapped in twelve layers of garbage bags, out onto the front lawn where it wouldn’t be so very much in the way, no doubt exposing himself to all kinds of horrible bacteria in the process.)

Mostly he stayed in bed, the laptop balanced on his stomach, which was admittedly a little more padded than normal. He needed to get to the gym; his abs were turning into jelly. Too much stale bruschetta and salty snack foods. But the one in the building’s basement stank like an abbatoir and the Stairmaster was practically alive with maggots.

He scrolled through the comments sections of the videos. “The yoof shall inherit the earth” was the most common slogan, outnumbering the diehard spam streams ten to one. He clicked on a link titled “Chelsea Deth Rap”, spooning duck pâté into his mouth with his fingers while he waited for it load.

A grainy image of a teenaged moron cruising along in a black BMW SUV, arm lolling out the window, miming along to out-of-sync lyrics, mediocre bass tinny in the backgroud. The yoof shall inherit the earth, all right. Pity they can’t fucking rhyme. Or spell, Simon thought, checking out the mangled language superimposed on the screen: “When the birds is dieng/the peoples is crying/when the rich are fuked/they ain’t got no luck/our time is here/yeah, our time is here/is right fukin now.

Christ.

He clicked the link to another one (“apacolypse now innit”), the Gherkin burning in the background, a kid wearing a balaclava dancing in front of it, a Sprite bottle filled with what had to be petrol in one raised hand. Simon couldn’t hear what the kid was shouting at the camera or iPhone or whatever; the sound of exploding glass and screaming smothered his voice.

Another clip showed a group of kids roaring through Harvey Nichols on dirt bikes, casually swiping perfume and make-up displays off the shelves with golf clubs. Marlowe had practically lived at Harvey Nicks. Her closets heaved with Vivienne Westwood corsets that were decades too young for her.

The only survivors seemed to be the kind of kids you saw shambling around the sink estates. Hollow-eyed yobs with acne-faced girlfriends cluttering up the pavements with pushchairs and streaming-nosed toddlers. “Underprivileged”, my arse, Simon thought, bitterly. Not exactly starving African children. Living off benefits, leeches on society. Breeding like cockroaches and sucking the life out of the country. Human scum, the lot of them. Taking the piss.

Parasites like them were the reason he voted Conservative. That and tax cuts.

He did find some diversity, hidden deep in the results pages: a young Nigerian or Somali girl or something (who can tell, honestly?) with a shaved head and metal shit in her face, demonstrating first aid techniques and basic water filtration in a series of clips. In another video, a gloating young Eastern European lunatic with a husky voice and a ponytail and a grease-stained t-shirt, sitting in his basement, ranting into his webcam in a hilarious accent about “viral Ragnarok” and “zis is vot happens ven you don’t vaccinate your children.”

Simon realised that he hadn’t seen a single person over thirty on any of the recent clips. He hoped this was because people his age couldn’t be arsed. But he was beginning to doubt it.

Feverishly, he clicked on clip after clip, desperate to find someone—anyone—who looked like his sort of person. His age. His type. Nothing. And that’s when he had The Epiphany.

CO19 were never coming.

He, Simon Thomas St. Martinborough, was the last of his kind.

He half-skidded, half-ran to the full-length mirror in the walk-in-closet, taking a moment to admire himself before searching out the truth in his reflection. You’d never say he was 38. (A wannabe silver fox, Marlowe had called him. At 23 years his senior, she could fucking talk.) His scruffy beard was peppered with silver. His hair was dirty and sticking up in places. But his skin glowed with oily pink health and his eyes were wild, full of intensity and fire. He looked like a man who had survived a Terrible Thing. He looked Enlightened. He looked, in short, like The Chosen One.

His reverie was interrupted by roaring engines. Aston Martins, if he was any judge of fine luxury motor vehicles (and he was). He quickly reached for the light to turn it off. No point letting them know he was here. He poured the last slug of whisky into his glass and sat waiting in the dark for the damn yoof to fuck right off. Which is when they lobbed the Molotov through the downstairs window into the study, where it just so happened he’d been storing all the liquor he’d rescued from the neighbouring apartments. It went down, or rather up, like a bomb.

The house filled with churning clouds of hot black smoke faster than he could have imagined was possible. He grabbed the closest thing to hand—one of Marlowe’s trendy terrorist-chic scarves that had been all the rage several years back—and wrapped it round his face and scrambled for the exit.

He launched himself down the stairs, hearing the crack and pop as the glass buckled in the study, feeling the white heat against his skin. He almost got lost in the hallway, disoriented by the smoke and, yes, all right, the whisky too. But all the way through the dreadful choking gauntlet he felt himself buoyed by a sense of invincibility. And yes, even a kind of inner peace.

He fell out the front door, gasping great big lungfuls of the cool night air (mixed in with the sweet stench of Marlowe on the grass half a foot away) and turned to see her 750,000 quid love nest alive with flames. He felt a surge of exhilaration. He was alive. He was It. The Guy. Untouchable! And watching the flat spewing great gobs of greasy smoke out of its faux-Tudor windows, Simon had his second epiphany of the day. There was a Master Plan at work. A Grand Design. Simon had a destiny to fulfill. Just as soon as the sun came up.

Eyes gritty from smoke and lack of sleep, he wandered out into the morning, making for the high street, passing a dead horse from the nearby riding stables lying in the centre of the road, its skin undulating with maggots.

Obviously, it was intended for him to walk. He’d smashed the window of every luxury car for three blocks (the Messiah—yes, Messiah—couldn’t be expected to show up driving a Toyota) but not a single one had the keys in it. He wondered if Miss Nigeria’s instructional YouTube videos included how-to-hot-wire-a-car. Too late now. The Powerbook was long gone, together with his previous life. Besides, the roads were clogged with burned-out buses and overturned cars.

He couldn’t believe Chislehurst High Street was the same place. The storefront windows were jagged dark holes; the delicatessen’s doorway was blocked by fallen debris; the Waitrose a burnt out, stinking shell. An Audi R8 had rammed through the estate agent’s window; he could make out the shadowy figure of the driver crumpled over the wheel. And everywhere, bloated bodies.

He crunched over the still-rotting corpses of a flock of swallows smeared across the road. A designer dog—some kind of chihuahua—covered in sores and burrs, trotted after him for a while, but he shooed it away. He felt for it, of course, but he had More Important Things to do right now. The future of England depended on him.

The people needed him. He could show them how to put society back together again. He would explain why looting was wrong, why a good university education mattered and why having too many children too young was short-sighted and wholly untenable. (Although he realised that they would probably need to start in on repopulating the planet fairly soon and his seed would be an absolute requirement. He’d already resigned himself to having sex with only the most beautiful and promising young chav girls, with their big hair and over-abundance of make-up and their Juicy velour-tracksuited bottoms.)

He headed towards Orpington, then Mottingham—he remembered seeing the high street on one of the clips, and it looked fairly intact. The kids would be tired of looting and rampaging by now. They’d want someone to tell them what to do. Too many years living in a nanny state would mean that eventually they’d welcome a forward-thinking leader to Show Them The Way.

It took him most of the day to make it into Mottingham. He’d had to wrap his shirt around his mouth to block out the stink of burning plastic and putrefying bodies that filled the air in the Bromley town centre. He’d almost made it past the smouldering wreck of Marks & Spencer when he heard the grumble of an engine and the squeal of tyres. He whirled around in time to see a motorbike—a Ducati for fuck’s sake—roaring towards him. He ran into the centre of the street, almost tripping over the seeping body of a policeman in riot gear, and waved his arms over his head. The bike screamed straight past him, its riders turning back briefly. Then he heard the crash of splintering glass. He ducked instinctively, nostrils filled with the reek of petrol, heat crisping the hairs on his arms. Bastard had chucked a petrol bomb at him. But at least he knew he was getting closer. This was it. He gobbled another fistful of Alice Pepoy’s pills, just to take the edge off.

He followed the sound of drum ’n’ bass through a labyrinth of council houses and narrow alleyways, weirdly free of rubbish. Then he saw the first one: a black kid wearing an ill-fitting Armani suit and smoking a cigar, leaning up against the bonnet of a black BMW parked at an angle and blocking the street. Simon heard the sound of children’s laughter. Smelled the delicious odour of some kind of roasting meat. He could hear music pumping out of the nearby houses. It looked like business as usual. He felt his heart soar. Soon he would take his Rightful Place.

“What do you want, man?” the kid said. Behind him, a group of kids emerged from the houses. Some had children slung casually on their hips. Simon felt heat spread through his stomach like a good single malt. His people. His heart went out to them. He thought about how they would look back on this moment, tell the story over and over again. All part of his legend. The Coming of Simon.

A plump girl wearing a white mini-skirt in defiance of the cold stepped up next to the black kid. Her arms dripped with gold jewellery, her blue-white legs were mottled with cellulite. She had a really big gun, drooping casually from her fingers with their luminous orange nail polish. Simon kept up his beatific smile. He should have expected a little resistance. Change is hard.

The girl with the firearm spoke first. “What’s ’e want, then?”

“Dunno. Ask him,” the black kid said.

“I’m here to save you,” Simon said. No one was returning his smile.

“Yeah?” The girl looked unimpressed. A spike of panic pierced Simon’s happy glow. He wasn’t used to feeling out of his depth. He remembered how he’d hooked up with Marlowe. How he’d read the situation the second he saw her. Knew what she needed. It was almost a sixth sense. A skill. And he knew what these kids needed. Someone to Bring Them Out of Darkness. They just didn’t know it yet. He should probably keep it simple.

“I know this is going to be hard for you to understand. But I need you to trust me. I’m the Messiah.”

The black kid rolled his eyes.

“Right,” the girl said. Then she raised the gun at his heart.

“No, really,” Simon stammered. “I can help. I’m—”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence. A bright ball of light exploded in his head. He couldn’t breathe. It felt like a bloody great rhinoceros had ploughed into his chest. He suddenly felt very heavy and woozy, perversely all at the same time. His knees folded up under him like one of those balloon men outside cheap car dealerships.

The girl looked down at him blankly. “Had quite enough of you lot,” she said and turned on her heel, dismissing him. The black kid shook his head. He looked a bit sad. Then he dropped the cigar and walked away after her. The kids in the houses followed suit, vanishing back through the doorways like ghosts. Nothing to see here.

These were the last things Simon St. Martinborough, Messiah, thought before he died. First: This isn’t right. And, then, as the smoke from the still smouldering Hamlet cigar got up his nose: Stupid fucking chavs. Couldn’t even loot a decent brand.