The Drift, page 13
Meg stared at the headstone. The dates were wrong, she thought. It couldn’t have been seven years since Lily died. How was that possible? Lily couldn’t have been dead for longer than she had been alive. Just six years. Six precious, short years. A blink. A cipher. A prologue. The rest of her story forever unwritten. How could time be so fucking relentless? Can’t stop. Must hurry on. Much to trample, crush and destroy. Leaving Meg behind with nothing but memories. And even those were flawed and false.
When the world started to end, not with a whimper or a bang but with a slow, whistling sigh, Meg didn’t care. She had watched the news from a numb cocoon of grief and medication. As the infections spread and society crumbled, at first slowly and then like a cliff edge giving way and falling to the sea, she had barely raised an eyebrow. Her world had already been destroyed. Everyone else was just catching up.
She felt tired, so she lay down on the bench. She often used to sleep in the Garden of Remembrance, breaking in by climbing over the fence and drinking vodka until she passed out. She would close her eyes and imagine she could feel her daughter’s warm body next to hers. She held it tight and promised that this time she would never let her go …
The bench tipped. A lurch. Meg rolled. Her eyes shot open.
Where was she?
Somewhere cold. Dark. Cramped.
And then she remembered. They were lying on the floor of the cable car, trying to sleep. Huddled up together to share body warmth. She had curled herself into Sarah’s back. Another body, who she thought was Max, lay the other side, snoring gently.
It probably wasn’t that late. They had no watches and no real concept of time. But darkness had fallen and, like animals, they found themselves yawning as the daylight ebbed away, exhaustion felling them. Perhaps that wasn’t all. They probably had traces of sedative in their systems still, and there was another possibility. Oxygen deprivation. The cable car wasn’t completely hermetically sealed, and they could open the hatch, obviously. But it was still a small space and the air at this height was thinner anyway. It was something to bear in mind.
Now Meg was awake, she could feel the cold creeping in again, could see her breath in the air. Without heating, the temperature had fallen rapidly. It was almost pitch black too, just a faint glimmer of moonlight between the clouds revealing vague shapes. That was when she realized something. Sean wasn’t curled up asleep with them. She turned.
He sat on the bench in the far corner of the car, staring out of the snow-caked window. As Meg moved to stand, he glanced over.
‘Hi,’ he said in a half-whisper.
‘Hi.’
She walked over and sat down next to him, wrapping her arms around herself.
‘Couldn’t sleep?’ he asked.
‘Not the best of circumstances.’
‘No.’
He studied her more intently. ‘You’re crying.’
‘Oh.’ She rubbed at her watery eyes and sniffed. ‘Just a crappy dream.’
‘What about?’
She hesitated and then said, ‘My daughter, Lily.’
‘You have a daughter? How old?’
‘She was six when she died.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Virus?’
‘Partly. Partly lack of care, facilities, staff. She should have survived.’
He nodded. ‘The masses suffer and die while the elite pay for private care and survive.’
‘Same as it’s ever been,’ she said bitterly. ‘They say you can’t put a price on life, but they do, all the time. I used to beat myself up, thinking if only Lily had been born to someone wealthy, she would still be here.’
‘Yeah.’ He paused. ‘I know how you feel.’
‘You lost someone?’
‘Not a child but … someone I cared about. A lot.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I always swore I would protect her, but I couldn’t. She was all I had.’
Meg nodded. ‘Lily was my only child.’
‘No dad on the scene?’
‘He died in a motorbike accident.’
‘Right.’
‘There was someone else, for a while – but it didn’t work out. My daughter always came first. She was my world.’ She swallowed. ‘And then my world ended.’
‘I guess the apocalypse doesn’t mean so much to you.’
‘Not really.’
‘I can’t imagine losing a child. You must be strong to keep going.’
Meg smiled bitterly ‘No. I’m selfish.’
‘Selfish?’
‘Why should I keep living while Lily is dead? Why should I wake up to see the sun shining when she can’t? And she’s alone. I always swore that I would never leave her –’ She paused, a lump rising in her throat. ‘That’s why I tried to kill myself. More than once.’
‘I don’t blame you.’
She barked out a short laugh. ‘Thanks. Normally people tell me there’s so much to live for.’
‘Really?’
‘I know. Have they looked outside?’
They both smiled. He understood, Meg thought. The deeper the wounds, the darker the humour.
‘I thought about killing myself,’ Sean said. ‘But I couldn’t go through with it.’
‘Why?’
‘Without me, there’s no one to remember how special she was. Or to get justice for her.’
‘Justice?’ She glanced at him in surprise. ‘Did someone kill her?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘And when I find them, I’m going to make them pay.’
Even in the darkness, Meg thought she could see a shadow cross his face.
‘And will that make you feel better?’ she asked.
He smiled thinly. ‘I’ll let you know when the time comes.’
They fell into silence for a moment, staring out at the patches of starry sky through the snow.
‘The storm looks like it’s easing,’ Meg said.
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you think we’ll get out of here?’
‘We have to,’ he replied, voice suddenly tight. ‘I haven’t come this far to die up here.’
‘Maybe it’s what we deserve,’ Meg said. ‘Like it or not, we covered up one murder and aided and abetted a second. The fact that neither of those things seems to be bothering anyone probably says something about all of us.’
‘They were strangers,’ Sean replied. ‘We’ve all got so used to death it’s hard to find the energy to care about people we don’t know any more.’
Except she had known Paul. Once. In all senses of the word. So what did that say about her?
‘Do you think Karl killed the security guy?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘I saw Sarah push him.’
‘Maybe you did. But she’ll never admit it, not even to herself.’
He was right, Meg thought. The biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves.
‘I don’t like her,’ she confessed.
‘No kidding. But I agree – she is an odd one.’
‘She’s a teacher.’
‘Well, that’s her story.’
‘You don’t believe her?’
‘I believe her as much as I believe any of you.’
‘Great. Thanks.’
‘I mean, we’re all hiding stuff. That’s okay. It’s what people do. But Sarah –’ He shook his head. ‘There’s something more. The twitchiness, the mood swings. You notice the cross?’
‘Hard not to. She’s always fucking playing with it.’
‘Not a fan of religion.’
‘God let my daughter die. He can get fucked.’
‘Fair point. Maybe Sarah is just religious. But I know a lot of people find God when they lose the bottle.’
‘AA?’
‘Yeah.’ He paused. ‘But a lot of people relapse and have to climb back on the wagon.’
He was right. And that might explain a lot. Christ. Was the damn woman in some kind of withdrawal?
‘We should keep an eye on her,’ she said.
‘Agreed.’
Meg considered. ‘And what does your Spidey sense tell you about Max?’
‘I think he’s a lawyer. I think he’s been in prison. Probably more than he says. You don’t tend to get jail time for a first offence any more – and not a soft one at that. I wouldn’t trust him to represent me. But I think he’s mostly been honest with us.’
‘And me?’
‘You? Well, you’re a tough nut. You’ve had to be, and I see why. You’re definitely ex-police …’ He regarded her intently. ‘But I think you’re one of the good guys.’
‘Thanks.’ She regarded him more closely. ‘And what about you? Are you one of the good guys?’
‘I used to think so.’ He shrugged. ‘But people change.’
A pause.
‘I think the killer is still on board,’ Meg said, surprising herself by voicing the thought out loud.
Sean nodded. ‘I think you’re right.’
They looked at each other.
‘What are we going to do about that?’ he asked.
She turned away. ‘I’ll let you know when the time comes.’
Carter
He has saved her a hundred times.
And lost her a hundred more.
The end result is always the same.
He wakes crying.
And then he hears the baby.
The corridor is dark. He stumbles along it, slipping and sliding. The floor is covered in ice. Snow blows in from windows somewhere high above him. A storm howls outside.
The newborn wails inside.
He moves towards the sound, trying to hurry, but his feet keep sliding out from under him. He can’t seem to get any closer, no matter how hard he tries.
Deep down, he realizes this is a dream. The baby is safe. She is no longer a baby. She is grown. A teenager. And she is the reason he has been stealing the plasma and medicines and sending them to an address in a small suburban town, where he pictures her catching a yellow bus to school and swinging on a tyre in the backyard of her white picket-fence house.
He’s never seen her house. He doesn’t even know if his parcels are reaching her. But still, he tries. Because he can’t lose her. Not her as well.
His feet finally find a grip. He is moving along the corridor and emerging into a room.
It’s small and it feels like it’s moving, swaying from side to side.
At the end is a crib. It’s rocking with the room.
Rock-a-bye baby.
And then it tips. The baby spills out, face first on to the floor. The wailing grows louder. He tries to run forward, but the motion of the room throws him off balance and he staggers.
As he does, he realizes the cries have changed. No longer the full-throated cry of a baby. A different sound. Gasping, wheezing … The baby is crawling towards him. And she is pale, so pale. And every time she breathes, she makes a sound. Whistling.
Instead of running towards her, he starts to back away. But the door has gone. He’s trapped, backed up against a glass wall as the storm lashes its fury outside.
The baby looks up.
He screams … the glass breaks and he’s falling into blackness.
Fuck. The same. Every time.
Carter sat up. For a moment, disorientated.
He was in his room, in bed. Lying on top of the covers. It wasn’t fully dark outside but, after the events of the day, he had needed some rest.
His room was at the far end of the Retreat. Rather than panoramic views out over the slopes, it faced back towards the sheer face of the mountain behind them. Whiteout. Carter was good with that. He didn’t need a view. He didn’t need a reminder that the rest of the world was out there. On life support. But still breathing.
They had stored the dead bodies in the basement. It was coolest down there. And although no one was saying it: out of sight, out of mind. In the morning, Welland would take them, one by one, to the incinerator. No ceremony. No prayers. No final goodbyes.
None of them was religious, but sometimes Carter felt the stripping away of those things; those small acts of ceremony that we clung to, to kid ourselves that we were more than overgrown apes who had learned to tie shoelaces. These days death had been laid bare for what it really was. An ending. Often brutal, seldom fair, rarely kind.
Carter and his sister had lost their parents young. Although, to be honest, their dad wasn’t really a loss. He was a charmless drunk who floated in and out of their lives until one day he floated away for good, in a river after an altercation outside a bar. Their mother struggled to cope with his death and a year later hanged herself in their bedroom. Carter found her body. He was nine.
After that, Carter and his sister went to live with their grandparents. They were poor, hard-working and unsentimental. They hadn’t expected to be looking after children at their age and made it clear that they were doing it out of duty rather than love. They expected the siblings to help in the shop they ran, complete weekly chores, stay out of the way when their friends came around to play poker, and generally not be a burden.
While Carter soon rebelled, his sister sought to appease. If she could just work harder, smile more brightly, be kinder and more helpful, then she would earn the love she was certain that their grandparents had somewhere deep inside them.
She was wrong. But that was his sister. She wanted to see the best in people. She thought love could change them. While he braced for thunderclouds, she waited for the rainbow.
And now she was dead too. Brutally, unfairly, unkindly.
Carter swung his legs out of bed and sat, taking in his surroundings. It didn’t take long. Even these rooms, the former staff rooms, were small and impersonal. Shades of grey and white. Really, there wasn’t so much difference between the living quarters and the isolation chambers. They were all prisoners here in a way.
The only difference in his room/cell was the small dog bed tucked in one corner. Dexter eyed him from it sleepily. His stubby tail wagged a couple of times as Carter stood and stretched, then he yawned a wide, doggy yawn, closed his eyes and rolled over. Dexter had belonged to one of the staff. Carter didn’t know who. Now, the dog regarded Carter as his owner. Dogs are nowhere near as loyal as we pretend. Really, humans are all just furless blobs to them.
Carter walked up and down, working off some of the cramp that had settled into his muscles after the trek back up the mountain. That seemed like days ago, rather than hours. Despite the lack of light in the living area, things were at least stable again. The generator was working. For now. But if they didn’t get a fix on the power outages, then that situation wouldn’t last. Welland reckoned they had fuel for about a month, ‘give or take’. Give or take what? was the question.
In the meantime, Carter had other things on his mind. Things he didn’t want on his mind. Things he wished would get the fuck off his mind. Julia, for a start. And the knife, or lack of one. It still bothered him. It wasn’t in the pool. Or the Retreat. Or on 01. So, if it wasn’t him, who had stabbed her? And more to the point, why hadn’t Carter mentioned it to Miles?
Miles was the one in charge. Their self-appointed leader. But Miles was a man with secrets of his own. Carter knew him better than the others, but that still didn’t amount to much. Things he did know: Miles had a medical/scientific background. He was capable of extreme violence without remorse. And he liked to be in control. In his previous life, he could have been anything from a serial killer to a world leader.
Carter didn’t really think Miles had killed Julia. Too sloppy for him. On the other hand, he couldn’t think of anyone else who could have killed her. So, confessing his suspicions about her death to Miles seemed like a bad move.
And then there was Jackson.
Carter had barely given the guy any thought in the three years he had been living here. But suddenly, Jackson was squatting in his head.
Carter knew he hadn’t been the one stealing the plasma.
So why the hell had he left the Retreat? Why was he running?
There had to be another reason.
Normally, Carter resided in the murky area between caring very little about anyone else and not giving a shit about anyone else.
But that was when things didn’t affect his own status quo. Miles discovering the theft and Jackson’s death gave him a problem. A big one. Not stealing the plasma was not an option. But nor was being discovered.
Miles’s insistence on a trek out to the cable-car station – just the two of them – was only exacerbating Carter’s growing unease. And that was before you got to Miles’s plan to acquire fresh supplies. Suddenly, in less than twenty-four hours, everything was spiralling out of control. What Carter wouldn’t give to be as bored as fuck right now.
He walked into the small bathroom, used the toilet and splashed his face with water. Then he turned and walked through his room, out into the corridor. He heard the tip-tap of tiny claws behind him. Dexter stood at his heels, looking expectant. Carter paused. He could go downstairs, get some food, start on the beer. Or … he turned and looked down the corridor towards the other bedrooms. Jackson’s was No 6.
He debated with himself. People always think they want to know stuff. Secrets. Answers. Actually, there was plenty of stuff we were better off not knowing. If humans weren’t so intent on a quest for knowledge, they probably wouldn’t be in such a fucked-up position right now. Not all knowledge was good. And even the stuff that was good didn’t always fall into the right hands. Give the wrong idiot a shitload of knowledge and that was when the world imploded.
Nevertheless, proving again how adept he was at not following his own reasoning, he walked down the corridor towards Jackson’s room. Dexter followed. At the door, Carter turned. ‘Stay, Dexter.’
Normally, Dexter had an impressive ability to ignore most known commands. Carter used to wonder if he had been trained in another language but then decided that he was just a stubborn little fuck. Either way, for once Dexter sat and waited, looking at Carter curiously.
