It was bad last night. Very bad. The worst yet. There were too many of them, a family, and all of them crazed. We had to leave empty-handed. Henderson took a knock to the skull. She’s blaming me. Finally, we holed up in a bed and breakfast outside the city. A dark and nasty place it was, with people stumbling up and down the corridors all night long, moaning, lamenting. Difficult to sleep. Blood in the toilet bowl, shit on the walls. All the mirrors, and even the screen of the television, all covered over with black paint. But it was cheap, and safe. No questions asked, even at the three of us wanting to share the one tiny room. And then a late start this morning, and many miles yet to cover. Another job. What good will it bring us? I feel confused, dispirited, after last night. We all do. Nobody’s talking.
We made a stop for lunch. The best we could find was a mobile kitchen parked in a lay-by, a few tables set out around it. The food was OK. Afterwards, we took our medicine. Peacock said that we had to keep it sweet from now on, no matter what might happen. He’s got a thing about rules. Henderson made a face.
A young kid wandered over from the next table. She was six or seven years old, with dirty brown hair, and a slightly dazed look in her eyes. She asked me if I wanted to play with her doll. I pulled the little string, as directed, and the doll spoke to me in a sick, miserable drawl. Not a single word could be heard properly, but the girl was delighted, as though the toy had declared its undying love. She jumped up and down, squealing.
And then, watching the girl laugh, and listening to the broken voice, I felt a pain steal up on me, this sudden cold yearning. My heart closed up against it, but too late, far too late. What can I do?
Where can I go?
Hours of travelling. No real problems, until we saw the roadblock ahead. Police lights whirled and fluttered in the soft twilight. Intrigue, danger, lives lost or being lost. The crying of a siren. Cars were being channelled into a single lane, a uniformed officer giving us hand signals as we passed along.
I looked at him through the side window.
He was young, nervous, his white-gloved hands moved through a series of repeated patterns, one for each vehicle. It should have been simple enough; an order to pull over, to let the ambulance through. Instead, it looked as though some complex ritual was being performed, or else a primitive tribal dance. The officer’s mouth was covered by a surgical mask.
Now his two hands moved tenderly, caressing the air, and turned towards me directly. A lover’s hands. But still, I couldn’t make any sense of the shapes he was making.
I would have to be careful.
Slowly, we moved along the line of cars towards the trouble. A large articulated truck had fallen over onto its side. It must have come from the opposite direction, driven at speed to break through the central barrier, and with enough energy to climb halfway up the steep grassy incline. I imagined the vehicle teetering at this highest point, and then falling, and sliding down to where it now rested, jack-knifed, the long container on the slope of grass, the driver’s cabin blocking a good part of the motorway.
‘Close your window,’ said Peacock.
‘Why?’
‘That’s what they want.’
Police officers moved around the site. The day was only just touched with darkness, but they were already setting up a small floodlight, or trying to. The light was pulsing to a strange rhythm; shining brightly for a second, and then dying, fading, coming bright again, over and over. And then the beam swung upwards suddenly, into the sky. The purple sky, the first of the stars.
Cold blue Venus had only just arisen.
And now, the crashed lorry reared above us; it looked enormous from this close up, like the side of a house. An angry noise started, sparks flew through the air. A fireman was holding the blade of a cutting device against the one exposed door of the cabin. Nearby, the ambulance crew was standing ready with their medical kits and stretcher.
The poor driver trapped inside there, dead or alive. What had gone wrong?
We had ground to a halt in the line, near enough to see that one part of the lorry had spilled its contents onto the road. Wooden boxes lay scattered about, glass sparkled from the tarmac. A cloud of dust hung in the air. My head was swimming with the detail of it all. There was too much to take in, too much information. I felt the noise taking me over.
The beam of light circled around, and the crackle of sparks was caught in its pathway. A cascade flower of violet and gold bloomed behind my eyelids. There was a smell of burning. A dry metallic taste filled my mouth. My ears were buzzing.
The sound of the blade.
‘What the fuck?’
It was Henderson, speaking to me. She had twisted round in the passenger seat. Her face, with its tangled mass of hair, was painted with colour as the floodlight bathed the car.
‘Marlene?’
Her voice was slurred and distant. The light swung away from us, but now the trail of sparks appeared to dance around the car’s interior.
‘Marlene, you OK?’
‘Yeah… yeah. I’m fine.’
I used the technique that Peacock had taught me; not to shut the eyes, but rather to concentrate on just one tiny aspect of the world. I had my notebook in my lap, and I looked down, focusing all my attention on the cover image. For some reason, I felt embarrassed; I mustn’t let them know I’m suffering, not this much. And so I kept my eyes tight on the notebook, closing out all other images, to let the picture form in my head.
Holding it there, holding…
It seemed to work. The feelings passed through me; the sparks, the light, the blade’s fire. And I looked up again as a policeman banged on the side of the car, telling us to move on.
There was a heavy security presence, more than I’d seen in a long while. All of the officers wore white masks. Some of them were armed. I was puzzled by this, until we saw the floodlight sweep over the company logo painted on the lorry’s side.
‘Ah shit,’ said Peacock. ‘Will you look at that.’
‘I’m looking,’ said Henderson.
It was a large open eye, blue, surrounded by a swirl of gold. And I knew then just what the cloud of dust promised. Speckles of the stuff collected on the windows as we drove along, a bright yellow glitter. The police were there to stop us from stealing the fallen load. But I just wanted to climb out of the car right there and then, even as we gathered speed. This crazy urge came over me, to taste the powder fully for once. To run through the particles of it, open-mouthed and breathing the dust in deeply, overdosing.
My name is Marlene Moore. This is my book.
It’s the kind of notebook a teenager might buy, with a picture of a tiger on the cover. A tiger with blue stripes. Inside, the paper is thin, almost translucent; the ink from my pen seeps through. All these lines of writing. Shadows, glances.
This is the story. Events, feelings; everything that’s happened to me in the last few weeks. But now, as I flick through the book, I see only the mess I have made. Words, sentences, paragraphs, whole pages, scoured with black marks. Mistakes. The noise gets in everywhere. Pages are ripped, or torn out completely; some discarded, others taped into new positions. There are smudges of dirt, of food, of blood. The marks where once a pressed flower lay; stains of chlorophyll, pollen, the tiny fragments of a petal.
This is the story.
I’ve decided to make a new start. I will begin again from what I’m sure of, the events of this day, this night just gone. Many times before I have done this, and always each time the confusion takes over. I can bring to mind scattered details, emotions, overall moods; it’s just that something gets lost along the way. The noise is a dark hand, a soft hold, slow poison, sickness, it will not leave me alone. And yet I will have such moments of lucidity, a sudden pain of memory, whole and vibrant; a fleeting glimpse that must be caught hold of immediately, or else be lost forever. I must be strong. I have to keep writing. There is no other escape, especially now that I seem to be getting worse.
This is the book.
I have taken the photograph from its pocket on the inside front cover.
Perhaps the light is flickering. There is a slight fuzziness to the image. The faces are smeared. Only by holding the photograph at one precise angle can I make out clearly the gentle smile.
Angela.
These words…
Moving south, trying to reach the new town by nightfall. We have passed through a cloud of gold. Beyond this, the roads empty out once more. Most of the traffic seems to be avoiding this area, and what vehicles there are move slowly.
There are too many accidents.
Every few miles we see another car abandoned at the roadside. Some of them with evident damage, of a crash or a fire. But mostly the vehicles stand there forlorn, unmarked, as though the driver had simply stepped out for a moment, and then decided to walk away. This is the kind of image that would turn up in the science fiction books I read when I was a teenager.
The abandoned car.
I thought it a supremely romantic image, the symbol of a dying civilization. I suppose that most teenagers have this strange desire, to be alive during the end of days. But now, becoming commonplace, the image has lost its poetic allure. The cars have been vacated, simply because the drivers can no longer trust themselves.
Can there be any other reason?
Peacock and Henderson were talking about the crashed lorry, and the cloud. They were arguing. Peacock had wanted to stop, to watch the containment operation a while longer, maybe even to pick up a few stray supplies. The drug. Our daily salvation, he calls it. But Henderson had said no, we drive on. She’s more or less taken control of the mission.
I’ve travelled around the country with this couple for a little over a week now. Not long. They found me in the public gardens that night, digging at the soil with my bare hands. That was a low point. The black flowers that grew there, with their overpowering scent. I had followed the clues to this place, this small patch of ground, and yet my hands pulled up only dirt, roots, worms, stones. Where was it? Where the fuck was it?
I was on the edge of giving up when I heard Peacock’s voice saying, ‘Now there’s a sight.’ And they helped me then. We pulled the treasure from the earth, the shining treasure. It was odd, them helping me, and I’m still not sure what they’re looking for, beyond a share in the takings. Certainly, I wouldn’t have got this far without them.
Peacock’s a big ugly brute. He wears a brown leather porkpie hat and a suede car coat. I’ve seen him without the hat only a few times, revealing the butchered razor-cut left over from active service. He can turn his hand to most things. He does most of the driving for instance, even when he’s suffering. It’s all a question of using the drugs properly, but I’m getting worried about him. Easy enough to get along with, except that sometimes his face will shut down hard. It’s a wounded face, and the hardness held there like a mask, not to hide the wounds but to show them off. I’ve seen a good few times already the violence of the man. The war, his time overseas, the cold distance that will come into his eyes. But there’s something behind the toughness, I’m sure there is. I want there to be. Something being kept at bay. I don’t know his first name.
He’s got a gun.
Henderson, or Bev, as Peacock calls her in their friendlier moments, is even more of a mystery. In many ways she’s tougher than Peacock, more volatile, I mean. More prone to anger, and sometimes this is useful, and sometimes it isn’t. Dressed in green tracksuit bottoms, a sports top, flashy trainers, she’s always ready to leap into action. She doesn’t drink much, she doesn’t smoke. Every morning she goes through a complex t’ai chi routine. She’s in her mid-twenties, a couple of years younger than Peacock. She’s the least affected of us. I haven’t a clue what she did, before this journey. Just wandering around, I imagine. Because I know it’s not easy finding direction these days; we’re all lost together, all of us, all the people. Along these tangled pathways, briefly meeting, and then to part. Strangers, only strangers…
Sometimes, I can’t help suspecting that Henderson actually enjoys the chaos. The sickness allows her character to be revealed, without need of excuse. And then I think back to what I was doing at her age. Ten years ago? I was just married, pregnant. My career on hold. We had moved to Oxford, a new house. Everything seemed perfect. Well, normal, I suppose. The start of a proper life. But now, all of that feels like a mirage; a story of mist.
The truth is, and despite all the things we’ve been through together this last week, I still can’t bring myself to trust Henderson, nor Peacock, neither of them, not completely.
There is no easy decision.
We have not yet talked about last night, except for a few comments from Henderson about the pain in her head. It wasn’t our first failure, and perhaps we can make it up later on, I don’t know. I feel like I’m coming to the end of something, to the end of what I can give. A few more days perhaps, a few more collections, and then I want to get the case back to Kingsley, and get the money for it. Just to make a living. But it’s not that, it’s not just the money.
I don’t know what it is.
I keep returning to Angela. That last time, that one last time at the hospital. Watching her there through the screens, I wanted to go in, to get in the room with her, to hold her. Even though I knew the dangers, the dangers of contact, of touching, of letting her see me there, of talking to her even, still I wanted to. Maybe I knew already, this would be the last time. I don’t know. And I let the doctors warn me off, as always.
It was shameful, turning away.
My only child…
Perhaps these feelings affected my decision earlier tonight. We were approaching the turnoff that would lead us towards the new town, when Henderson said:
‘Look now. Here’s a sad one.’
It was a hitchhiker, standing by the side of the road. A young woman.
‘Keep driving,’ I said.
‘What does the card say?’ asked Peacock.
I watched the hitcher as we passed. She was holding a piece of card with some letters scrawled on it. It was nearly dark by now, and the woman was shining the beam of a small torch onto the card, but still I couldn’t make out what was written there. She made a rude gesture with her fingers as we drove by.
‘Fucking cheek,’ said Peacock.
‘Wherever,’ said Henderson.
‘What?’
‘That’s what it says, the sign. “Wherever.” Can you believe that?’
We had seen a lot of these hitchhikers, during the last week. All of them seemed young, a lot of them women. Very often they were walking along the motorway shoulder, far from any slip road or service station, as though they had simply dropped from the sky. I don’t know what they were running from, and it was best to just ignore them, I thought. Just keep to the job in hand, no distractions.
I turned to look through the back window; the woman was already lost in the dark air. And then, and for some reason I’m still trying to work out, I said:
‘No, wait. Turn round.’
Last night, when we shared that one room, that dreadful Bed and Breakfast place. There were only two beds, two singles. I was constantly being woken up by people moving along the corridor, but at one point I came awake to realize that the sounds were coming from the room itself, from the other bed.
A soft moaning, tiny cries, gasps of breath.
Of course, I’d realized early on that Henderson and Peacock were an item, even if they hardly showed much affection in public. But still, it was uncomfortable, being there in the same room.
They were surprisingly gentle, given their outward natures. Perhaps they were restraining themselves on my behalf, I don’t know.
What could they be feeling; how would the sickness affect their pleasure? What would it turn into? The noise would surely be overwhelming at such moments; a touch might drag like a blade, or fall like dust blown across the skin.
All those broken messages…
And then I tried to think about the last time I’d made love. When was that? I just couldn’t bring it to mind.
There seems to be no ruling to how my memory works; certain events will stay with me, free as yet from infection, but lately, and more and more, I can feel the past drifting away. Beyond hold. The weeks, the years gone by, one by one, all drawn over by confusion.
Love? Where was love? The last time? Had it really been with my husband? Has there been nobody since then? Oh, but where has the closeness gone to?
Where has it gone?
Henderson was all against it, of course. She was calling me some bad names, and saying how she was in charge. I agreed that she was, but that I had started this, and I would finish it how I pleased. I told her it was my car, and above all I had the key to the suitcase.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Whatever.’
‘It’s only till the next stop,’ said Peacock.
‘Fine.’
The road was completely empty. We did a wide U- turn, and then travelled back until we passed the young woman once more. She wasn’t even looking at us now, but just standing there with her head lowered. The sign had fallen to the ground. And then we made another turn, to bring us round to the proper direction.
‘She’s trouble,’ said Henderson. ‘Look at her.’
I could see that she was even younger than I had first imagined. A teenager. Peacock stopped the car, but the girl made no move towards us. She just stood there, looking at the car. I wound down my side window and asked her where she was going. I thought the girl might give me a smile, at the least. Instead, she just repeated the word on the sign.
‘Wherever.’
So then I told her our destination, and she said, ‘The new town?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘It’s not far enough.’
Henderson spoke to her. ‘Girl. If you want it, get in. Otherwise, we’re out of here.’
The teenager looked down the road, as though another car might appear at any moment. But nothing did, not even the hint of a distant headlight. The moon had followed Venus into the sky. Everything was quite still.
‘OK.’
I opened the door for her, and then moved along the back seat so that she could slide in beside me.
‘You want to move that?’ she said.
It was the suitcase. I pulled it off the seat, down to the floor of the car. And then we set off once more. I introduced the three of us, but the girl made no reply, and we travelled in silence for a while.
‘Well, this is fun,’ said Henderson.
The sodium lamps passed by, some alight, some dark, and I caught repeated glimpses of the new passenger.
She was a neat, serious looking young woman, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old. A girl, really. Her black hair was knotted together at the back of her neck, and she was dressed simply, a well-worn denim jacket, a scarf, a pair of jeans. She kept a large grey bag slung around her body, her only possession. I don’t think she’d been travelling for very long. There was a softness to her face, set off by a smear of purple on her lips, and a cosmetic beauty spot on her right cheek. It was a fashion thing, I remembered, amongst the young. It was the last good fashion in place when the trouble began. The girl had kept it going, for some reason, when all the mirrors had sickened, and been turned aside.
Applied in the dark…
And she looked at me then, with her dark eyes held tight behind a pair of rimmed spectacles.
What did she want? It wasn’t a thing that people did much anymore, maintaining eye contact. It was too much like a bad reflection; unlawful, dangerous even. Peacock, Henderson and myself were forever avoiding each other’s gaze, and yet here was this young woman staring at me, intently. I had to turn away.
‘So then, girl,’ said Peacock. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Tupelo.’
‘Tupelo? What kind of name is that?’
‘It’s a town, in the States.’
‘You’re American?’
‘No.’
‘Where do you come from?’ I asked.
But the girl would not answer, and that was the end of that, and we drove on in silence once again. We had left the motorway now. Peacock started to explain about how the new town would maybe have some kind of security around it. A border zone, walls, gates, maybe a guard or two. ‘We need to be careful,’ he said. ‘After last night. We can’t let Kingsley down.’
‘What are you people up to?’ asked the girl. ‘Who’s Kingsley?’
‘Never you mind,’ said Henderson.
Tupelo picked up my notebook from the seat. I’d been working on it, during the day.
‘Is this yours?’
I told her it was, and she flipped through the pages, here and there. ‘You’re a writer?’
‘A journalist.’
She looked through the book for a while longer. What could be seen there, in the fading light?
‘You’re working on a story now?’
‘Yes.’
‘About the sickness?’
Again, her eyes met mine.
‘About the sickness,’ I answered.
That seemed to satisfy her, and nothing much else was said.
Peacock stopped the car, right there on the roadside. He got out. We all wondered what the problem was. There was a wrenching sound, and a curse, as Peacock pulled at the driver’s wing mirror. Eventually, he raised up one booted foot and kicked the mirror clean away. More cursing then, with Peacock saying how he kept getting glances of himself, whenever he leaned out. The left-hand side mirror, and the rear-view, they went ages ago. Likewise, the dashboard clock; long since broken, the two hands held still behind the cracked glass.
‘No more looking back,’ said Henderson.
We’re losing ourselves. We’re losing all the traces, all the moments of the world, one by one.
I have to keep writing.
A terrible sight. Peacock pulled into a petrol station to get the tank filled up, and to buy some cigarettes, some chocolate. I went with him to the little shop, only to find that a small boy had been taken ill. He was lying on the floor in front of a video game, wailing, his arms reaching out wildly to push away some invisible object. His parents were standing off to one side, helpless, scared, as the garage staff tried to hold the boy still. I felt a cold grey numbness, thinking only of Angela, and her first real attack. And then I stepped forward, bringing Peacock with me. Peacock held the mouth and the tongue in the correct position whilst I broke open three capsules one after the other, releasing the powder direct to the boy’s throat. Within a minute he was calm again. And then… and then we bought our cigarettes and our chocolate bars and paid for our petrol and we left that place behind us.
We moved through a series of complex road junctions and roundabouts. There seemed to be too many signs erected here, too many traffic signals, a glut of billboards and panels where images danced. Neon shapes were flickering, overly bright in all their colours, and each of them demanding my whole attention. But the more I looked, the less I could see.
The noise levels were too high.
Dominating the landscape was a large visual display advertising the Lucidity drug. It was the same eye we had seen painted on the side of the crashed lorry; but this time the logo was constructed from many hundreds of tiny bulbs, which flashed on and off in sequence, to give the impression that the eye was opening and closing.
‘Dear sweet Lucy,’ said Peacock.
‘Fucking bastard company,’ said Henderson, ‘the money they’re making from this.’
The eye was a sharp electric blue, with the golden swirls of dust spiralling outwards from the centre. I felt I was being hypnotized by the effect.
Below this image, a line of words moved across the board. I thought I saw the phrase, ‘If you can read this…’ just briefly, but the letters kept dissolving into each other.
‘What does it say?’ I asked.
‘Can’t you read it?’ said Henderson.
‘No.’
There was a silence then, inside the car. ‘What does it say?’
It was the girl, Tupelo, who finally answered me. ‘If you can read this,’ she said, ‘it means you’re alive.’
We made a stop for lunch. The best we could find was a mobile kitchen parked in a lay-by, a few tables set out around it. The food was OK. Afterwards, we took our medicine. Peacock said that we had to keep it sweet from now on, no matter what might happen. He’s got a thing about rules. Henderson made a face.
A young kid wandered over from the next table. She was six or seven years old, with dirty brown hair, and a slightly dazed look in her eyes. She asked me if I wanted to play with her doll. I pulled the little string, as directed, and the doll spoke to me in a sick, miserable drawl. Not a single word could be heard properly, but the girl was delighted, as though the toy had declared its undying love. She jumped up and down, squealing.
And then, watching the girl laugh, and listening to the broken voice, I felt a pain steal up on me, this sudden cold yearning. My heart closed up against it, but too late, far too late. What can I do?
Where can I go?
Hours of travelling. No real problems, until we saw the roadblock ahead. Police lights whirled and fluttered in the soft twilight. Intrigue, danger, lives lost or being lost. The crying of a siren. Cars were being channelled into a single lane, a uniformed officer giving us hand signals as we passed along.
I looked at him through the side window.
He was young, nervous, his white-gloved hands moved through a series of repeated patterns, one for each vehicle. It should have been simple enough; an order to pull over, to let the ambulance through. Instead, it looked as though some complex ritual was being performed, or else a primitive tribal dance. The officer’s mouth was covered by a surgical mask.
Now his two hands moved tenderly, caressing the air, and turned towards me directly. A lover’s hands. But still, I couldn’t make any sense of the shapes he was making.
I would have to be careful.
Slowly, we moved along the line of cars towards the trouble. A large articulated truck had fallen over onto its side. It must have come from the opposite direction, driven at speed to break through the central barrier, and with enough energy to climb halfway up the steep grassy incline. I imagined the vehicle teetering at this highest point, and then falling, and sliding down to where it now rested, jack-knifed, the long container on the slope of grass, the driver’s cabin blocking a good part of the motorway.
‘Close your window,’ said Peacock.
‘Why?’
‘That’s what they want.’
Police officers moved around the site. The day was only just touched with darkness, but they were already setting up a small floodlight, or trying to. The light was pulsing to a strange rhythm; shining brightly for a second, and then dying, fading, coming bright again, over and over. And then the beam swung upwards suddenly, into the sky. The purple sky, the first of the stars.
Cold blue Venus had only just arisen.
And now, the crashed lorry reared above us; it looked enormous from this close up, like the side of a house. An angry noise started, sparks flew through the air. A fireman was holding the blade of a cutting device against the one exposed door of the cabin. Nearby, the ambulance crew was standing ready with their medical kits and stretcher.
The poor driver trapped inside there, dead or alive. What had gone wrong?
We had ground to a halt in the line, near enough to see that one part of the lorry had spilled its contents onto the road. Wooden boxes lay scattered about, glass sparkled from the tarmac. A cloud of dust hung in the air. My head was swimming with the detail of it all. There was too much to take in, too much information. I felt the noise taking me over.
The beam of light circled around, and the crackle of sparks was caught in its pathway. A cascade flower of violet and gold bloomed behind my eyelids. There was a smell of burning. A dry metallic taste filled my mouth. My ears were buzzing.
The sound of the blade.
‘What the fuck?’
It was Henderson, speaking to me. She had twisted round in the passenger seat. Her face, with its tangled mass of hair, was painted with colour as the floodlight bathed the car.
‘Marlene?’
Her voice was slurred and distant. The light swung away from us, but now the trail of sparks appeared to dance around the car’s interior.
‘Marlene, you OK?’
‘Yeah… yeah. I’m fine.’
I used the technique that Peacock had taught me; not to shut the eyes, but rather to concentrate on just one tiny aspect of the world. I had my notebook in my lap, and I looked down, focusing all my attention on the cover image. For some reason, I felt embarrassed; I mustn’t let them know I’m suffering, not this much. And so I kept my eyes tight on the notebook, closing out all other images, to let the picture form in my head.
Holding it there, holding…
It seemed to work. The feelings passed through me; the sparks, the light, the blade’s fire. And I looked up again as a policeman banged on the side of the car, telling us to move on.
There was a heavy security presence, more than I’d seen in a long while. All of the officers wore white masks. Some of them were armed. I was puzzled by this, until we saw the floodlight sweep over the company logo painted on the lorry’s side.
‘Ah shit,’ said Peacock. ‘Will you look at that.’
‘I’m looking,’ said Henderson.
It was a large open eye, blue, surrounded by a swirl of gold. And I knew then just what the cloud of dust promised. Speckles of the stuff collected on the windows as we drove along, a bright yellow glitter. The police were there to stop us from stealing the fallen load. But I just wanted to climb out of the car right there and then, even as we gathered speed. This crazy urge came over me, to taste the powder fully for once. To run through the particles of it, open-mouthed and breathing the dust in deeply, overdosing.
My name is Marlene Moore. This is my book.
It’s the kind of notebook a teenager might buy, with a picture of a tiger on the cover. A tiger with blue stripes. Inside, the paper is thin, almost translucent; the ink from my pen seeps through. All these lines of writing. Shadows, glances.
This is the story. Events, feelings; everything that’s happened to me in the last few weeks. But now, as I flick through the book, I see only the mess I have made. Words, sentences, paragraphs, whole pages, scoured with black marks. Mistakes. The noise gets in everywhere. Pages are ripped, or torn out completely; some discarded, others taped into new positions. There are smudges of dirt, of food, of blood. The marks where once a pressed flower lay; stains of chlorophyll, pollen, the tiny fragments of a petal.
This is the story.
I’ve decided to make a new start. I will begin again from what I’m sure of, the events of this day, this night just gone. Many times before I have done this, and always each time the confusion takes over. I can bring to mind scattered details, emotions, overall moods; it’s just that something gets lost along the way. The noise is a dark hand, a soft hold, slow poison, sickness, it will not leave me alone. And yet I will have such moments of lucidity, a sudden pain of memory, whole and vibrant; a fleeting glimpse that must be caught hold of immediately, or else be lost forever. I must be strong. I have to keep writing. There is no other escape, especially now that I seem to be getting worse.
This is the book.
I have taken the photograph from its pocket on the inside front cover.
Perhaps the light is flickering. There is a slight fuzziness to the image. The faces are smeared. Only by holding the photograph at one precise angle can I make out clearly the gentle smile.
Angela.
These words…
Moving south, trying to reach the new town by nightfall. We have passed through a cloud of gold. Beyond this, the roads empty out once more. Most of the traffic seems to be avoiding this area, and what vehicles there are move slowly.
There are too many accidents.
Every few miles we see another car abandoned at the roadside. Some of them with evident damage, of a crash or a fire. But mostly the vehicles stand there forlorn, unmarked, as though the driver had simply stepped out for a moment, and then decided to walk away. This is the kind of image that would turn up in the science fiction books I read when I was a teenager.
The abandoned car.
I thought it a supremely romantic image, the symbol of a dying civilization. I suppose that most teenagers have this strange desire, to be alive during the end of days. But now, becoming commonplace, the image has lost its poetic allure. The cars have been vacated, simply because the drivers can no longer trust themselves.
Can there be any other reason?
Peacock and Henderson were talking about the crashed lorry, and the cloud. They were arguing. Peacock had wanted to stop, to watch the containment operation a while longer, maybe even to pick up a few stray supplies. The drug. Our daily salvation, he calls it. But Henderson had said no, we drive on. She’s more or less taken control of the mission.
I’ve travelled around the country with this couple for a little over a week now. Not long. They found me in the public gardens that night, digging at the soil with my bare hands. That was a low point. The black flowers that grew there, with their overpowering scent. I had followed the clues to this place, this small patch of ground, and yet my hands pulled up only dirt, roots, worms, stones. Where was it? Where the fuck was it?
I was on the edge of giving up when I heard Peacock’s voice saying, ‘Now there’s a sight.’ And they helped me then. We pulled the treasure from the earth, the shining treasure. It was odd, them helping me, and I’m still not sure what they’re looking for, beyond a share in the takings. Certainly, I wouldn’t have got this far without them.
Peacock’s a big ugly brute. He wears a brown leather porkpie hat and a suede car coat. I’ve seen him without the hat only a few times, revealing the butchered razor-cut left over from active service. He can turn his hand to most things. He does most of the driving for instance, even when he’s suffering. It’s all a question of using the drugs properly, but I’m getting worried about him. Easy enough to get along with, except that sometimes his face will shut down hard. It’s a wounded face, and the hardness held there like a mask, not to hide the wounds but to show them off. I’ve seen a good few times already the violence of the man. The war, his time overseas, the cold distance that will come into his eyes. But there’s something behind the toughness, I’m sure there is. I want there to be. Something being kept at bay. I don’t know his first name.
He’s got a gun.
Henderson, or Bev, as Peacock calls her in their friendlier moments, is even more of a mystery. In many ways she’s tougher than Peacock, more volatile, I mean. More prone to anger, and sometimes this is useful, and sometimes it isn’t. Dressed in green tracksuit bottoms, a sports top, flashy trainers, she’s always ready to leap into action. She doesn’t drink much, she doesn’t smoke. Every morning she goes through a complex t’ai chi routine. She’s in her mid-twenties, a couple of years younger than Peacock. She’s the least affected of us. I haven’t a clue what she did, before this journey. Just wandering around, I imagine. Because I know it’s not easy finding direction these days; we’re all lost together, all of us, all the people. Along these tangled pathways, briefly meeting, and then to part. Strangers, only strangers…
Sometimes, I can’t help suspecting that Henderson actually enjoys the chaos. The sickness allows her character to be revealed, without need of excuse. And then I think back to what I was doing at her age. Ten years ago? I was just married, pregnant. My career on hold. We had moved to Oxford, a new house. Everything seemed perfect. Well, normal, I suppose. The start of a proper life. But now, all of that feels like a mirage; a story of mist.
The truth is, and despite all the things we’ve been through together this last week, I still can’t bring myself to trust Henderson, nor Peacock, neither of them, not completely.
There is no easy decision.
We have not yet talked about last night, except for a few comments from Henderson about the pain in her head. It wasn’t our first failure, and perhaps we can make it up later on, I don’t know. I feel like I’m coming to the end of something, to the end of what I can give. A few more days perhaps, a few more collections, and then I want to get the case back to Kingsley, and get the money for it. Just to make a living. But it’s not that, it’s not just the money.
I don’t know what it is.
I keep returning to Angela. That last time, that one last time at the hospital. Watching her there through the screens, I wanted to go in, to get in the room with her, to hold her. Even though I knew the dangers, the dangers of contact, of touching, of letting her see me there, of talking to her even, still I wanted to. Maybe I knew already, this would be the last time. I don’t know. And I let the doctors warn me off, as always.
It was shameful, turning away.
My only child…
Perhaps these feelings affected my decision earlier tonight. We were approaching the turnoff that would lead us towards the new town, when Henderson said:
‘Look now. Here’s a sad one.’
It was a hitchhiker, standing by the side of the road. A young woman.
‘Keep driving,’ I said.
‘What does the card say?’ asked Peacock.
I watched the hitcher as we passed. She was holding a piece of card with some letters scrawled on it. It was nearly dark by now, and the woman was shining the beam of a small torch onto the card, but still I couldn’t make out what was written there. She made a rude gesture with her fingers as we drove by.
‘Fucking cheek,’ said Peacock.
‘Wherever,’ said Henderson.
‘What?’
‘That’s what it says, the sign. “Wherever.” Can you believe that?’
We had seen a lot of these hitchhikers, during the last week. All of them seemed young, a lot of them women. Very often they were walking along the motorway shoulder, far from any slip road or service station, as though they had simply dropped from the sky. I don’t know what they were running from, and it was best to just ignore them, I thought. Just keep to the job in hand, no distractions.
I turned to look through the back window; the woman was already lost in the dark air. And then, and for some reason I’m still trying to work out, I said:
‘No, wait. Turn round.’
Last night, when we shared that one room, that dreadful Bed and Breakfast place. There were only two beds, two singles. I was constantly being woken up by people moving along the corridor, but at one point I came awake to realize that the sounds were coming from the room itself, from the other bed.
A soft moaning, tiny cries, gasps of breath.
Of course, I’d realized early on that Henderson and Peacock were an item, even if they hardly showed much affection in public. But still, it was uncomfortable, being there in the same room.
They were surprisingly gentle, given their outward natures. Perhaps they were restraining themselves on my behalf, I don’t know.
What could they be feeling; how would the sickness affect their pleasure? What would it turn into? The noise would surely be overwhelming at such moments; a touch might drag like a blade, or fall like dust blown across the skin.
All those broken messages…
And then I tried to think about the last time I’d made love. When was that? I just couldn’t bring it to mind.
There seems to be no ruling to how my memory works; certain events will stay with me, free as yet from infection, but lately, and more and more, I can feel the past drifting away. Beyond hold. The weeks, the years gone by, one by one, all drawn over by confusion.
Love? Where was love? The last time? Had it really been with my husband? Has there been nobody since then? Oh, but where has the closeness gone to?
Where has it gone?
Henderson was all against it, of course. She was calling me some bad names, and saying how she was in charge. I agreed that she was, but that I had started this, and I would finish it how I pleased. I told her it was my car, and above all I had the key to the suitcase.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Whatever.’
‘It’s only till the next stop,’ said Peacock.
‘Fine.’
The road was completely empty. We did a wide U- turn, and then travelled back until we passed the young woman once more. She wasn’t even looking at us now, but just standing there with her head lowered. The sign had fallen to the ground. And then we made another turn, to bring us round to the proper direction.
‘She’s trouble,’ said Henderson. ‘Look at her.’
I could see that she was even younger than I had first imagined. A teenager. Peacock stopped the car, but the girl made no move towards us. She just stood there, looking at the car. I wound down my side window and asked her where she was going. I thought the girl might give me a smile, at the least. Instead, she just repeated the word on the sign.
‘Wherever.’
So then I told her our destination, and she said, ‘The new town?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘It’s not far enough.’
Henderson spoke to her. ‘Girl. If you want it, get in. Otherwise, we’re out of here.’
The teenager looked down the road, as though another car might appear at any moment. But nothing did, not even the hint of a distant headlight. The moon had followed Venus into the sky. Everything was quite still.
‘OK.’
I opened the door for her, and then moved along the back seat so that she could slide in beside me.
‘You want to move that?’ she said.
It was the suitcase. I pulled it off the seat, down to the floor of the car. And then we set off once more. I introduced the three of us, but the girl made no reply, and we travelled in silence for a while.
‘Well, this is fun,’ said Henderson.
The sodium lamps passed by, some alight, some dark, and I caught repeated glimpses of the new passenger.
She was a neat, serious looking young woman, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old. A girl, really. Her black hair was knotted together at the back of her neck, and she was dressed simply, a well-worn denim jacket, a scarf, a pair of jeans. She kept a large grey bag slung around her body, her only possession. I don’t think she’d been travelling for very long. There was a softness to her face, set off by a smear of purple on her lips, and a cosmetic beauty spot on her right cheek. It was a fashion thing, I remembered, amongst the young. It was the last good fashion in place when the trouble began. The girl had kept it going, for some reason, when all the mirrors had sickened, and been turned aside.
Applied in the dark…
And she looked at me then, with her dark eyes held tight behind a pair of rimmed spectacles.
What did she want? It wasn’t a thing that people did much anymore, maintaining eye contact. It was too much like a bad reflection; unlawful, dangerous even. Peacock, Henderson and myself were forever avoiding each other’s gaze, and yet here was this young woman staring at me, intently. I had to turn away.
‘So then, girl,’ said Peacock. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Tupelo.’
‘Tupelo? What kind of name is that?’
‘It’s a town, in the States.’
‘You’re American?’
‘No.’
‘Where do you come from?’ I asked.
But the girl would not answer, and that was the end of that, and we drove on in silence once again. We had left the motorway now. Peacock started to explain about how the new town would maybe have some kind of security around it. A border zone, walls, gates, maybe a guard or two. ‘We need to be careful,’ he said. ‘After last night. We can’t let Kingsley down.’
‘What are you people up to?’ asked the girl. ‘Who’s Kingsley?’
‘Never you mind,’ said Henderson.
Tupelo picked up my notebook from the seat. I’d been working on it, during the day.
‘Is this yours?’
I told her it was, and she flipped through the pages, here and there. ‘You’re a writer?’
‘A journalist.’
She looked through the book for a while longer. What could be seen there, in the fading light?
‘You’re working on a story now?’
‘Yes.’
‘About the sickness?’
Again, her eyes met mine.
‘About the sickness,’ I answered.
That seemed to satisfy her, and nothing much else was said.
Peacock stopped the car, right there on the roadside. He got out. We all wondered what the problem was. There was a wrenching sound, and a curse, as Peacock pulled at the driver’s wing mirror. Eventually, he raised up one booted foot and kicked the mirror clean away. More cursing then, with Peacock saying how he kept getting glances of himself, whenever he leaned out. The left-hand side mirror, and the rear-view, they went ages ago. Likewise, the dashboard clock; long since broken, the two hands held still behind the cracked glass.
‘No more looking back,’ said Henderson.
We’re losing ourselves. We’re losing all the traces, all the moments of the world, one by one.
I have to keep writing.
A terrible sight. Peacock pulled into a petrol station to get the tank filled up, and to buy some cigarettes, some chocolate. I went with him to the little shop, only to find that a small boy had been taken ill. He was lying on the floor in front of a video game, wailing, his arms reaching out wildly to push away some invisible object. His parents were standing off to one side, helpless, scared, as the garage staff tried to hold the boy still. I felt a cold grey numbness, thinking only of Angela, and her first real attack. And then I stepped forward, bringing Peacock with me. Peacock held the mouth and the tongue in the correct position whilst I broke open three capsules one after the other, releasing the powder direct to the boy’s throat. Within a minute he was calm again. And then… and then we bought our cigarettes and our chocolate bars and paid for our petrol and we left that place behind us.
We moved through a series of complex road junctions and roundabouts. There seemed to be too many signs erected here, too many traffic signals, a glut of billboards and panels where images danced. Neon shapes were flickering, overly bright in all their colours, and each of them demanding my whole attention. But the more I looked, the less I could see.
The noise levels were too high.
Dominating the landscape was a large visual display advertising the Lucidity drug. It was the same eye we had seen painted on the side of the crashed lorry; but this time the logo was constructed from many hundreds of tiny bulbs, which flashed on and off in sequence, to give the impression that the eye was opening and closing.
‘Dear sweet Lucy,’ said Peacock.
‘Fucking bastard company,’ said Henderson, ‘the money they’re making from this.’
The eye was a sharp electric blue, with the golden swirls of dust spiralling outwards from the centre. I felt I was being hypnotized by the effect.
Below this image, a line of words moved across the board. I thought I saw the phrase, ‘If you can read this…’ just briefly, but the letters kept dissolving into each other.
‘What does it say?’ I asked.
‘Can’t you read it?’ said Henderson.
‘No.’
There was a silence then, inside the car. ‘What does it say?’
It was the girl, Tupelo, who finally answered me. ‘If you can read this,’ she said, ‘it means you’re alive.’
