Конрад Уильямс - One

‘Plessey is dead. I mean, he died. Was killed, is what I mean.’

‘An accident?’ Jane asked, knowing full well.

Aidan shook his head. ‘I arrived at the market in the morning. Nobody in the shop, even though I used a secret knock. I didn’t know what to do, so I was going to get over to one of the places you told me to find if I was in trouble or, you know, scared. Not that I was scared, but I was worried about Becky.

‘But then I found him. He hadn’t even made it out of the market. The Skinners had been at him, but his throat had been slit.’ He suddenly grabbed Jane’s arm, appeared unsure. He was fifteen – a wispy beard was a mask under which a man was being formed. But at moments like this, he was still just a boy. You looked hard enough, you could see the baby in him. ‘Skinners… they don’t do that, do they?’

‘No,’ Jane said. ‘It would be kind of nice if they did, compared to their usual MO.’

‘So maybe the same person who caught up with Fielding, you think?’

‘Or someone in league.’ Jane peered into Aidan’s eyes. They were dark brown, so dark it was hard to discern their pupils. The rest of his face was open, fresh. He’d have had an innocent look about him if it weren’t for those eyes and the soft frown above them. He’d seen a lot, Jane supposed. More than he ought. ‘Where have you been, Aidan? You’re your own man, I know, but we care about you. We’re not your mum and dad, but we’re your friends. It doesn’t stop us from worrying.’

Aidan pressed his lips into a flat line. When he spoke again, it was with forced brittleness. Jane saw behind it immediately; he knew him too well by now. His hand at his belly again. Hungry, probably. Jane wished he hadn’t snaffled that wafer.

‘Just… hanging out with friends. Experiments, you know. Down at the river. Checking the air quality. Someone has to.’

‘And how is the air quality?’

‘Epic fail,’ Aidan said. ‘Major no.’

‘Doesn’t look like the HQ’s moving in, does it?’

‘No.’

Jane scratched at his beard. The sound seemed enormous. ‘Fielding gave me the envelope…’

‘An envelope.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Fielding gave you an envelope. It wasn’t the envelope.’

‘You mean I was given false information?’

Aidan didn’t say anything. He couldn’t meet Jane’s gaze.

‘Why are you here, Aidan? You get the same dodgy map?’

‘Something like that,’ he said.

‘Something like that.’

The hand on the belly. A prickle of sweat drawing attention to the frown.

‘You OK, Aid?’ His mind went back to the first time they’d met. Becky’s concern. The thought of his blood conspiring against him.

‘Yeah. Just tired. Just hungry. You promised me a roast dinner once.’

‘Shit. You didn’t forget that, did you?’

‘Can I have it now?’

They had picked through the debris of countless restaurants and bars to no avail. Everything worth eating had been carried off. What remained were the bones of people who had decayed where they’d dropped many years before. No chocolates or fudge in the duty-free boutiques. No snack packs dangled in the vending machines.

‘What about out there?’ Aidan asked.

‘There’s nothing out there,’ Jane said. ‘You mean the houses beyond the perimeter?’

‘No. I mean the planes.’

They found a self-propelled passenger stairway in a maintenance hangar and trundled it out to a Virgin Atlantic 747 that had pushed back from its ramp at the moment the Event hit it, peeling off much of its paint and tearing the tail section clean off the rear of the aircraft. The flap canoe fairings had been snapped away from the underside of the wings like model parts, and the main jet-core shrouds were torn, revealing the intestinal squirm of the machine beneath. A telegraph pole had become a javelin, thrown by 200 mph winds from outside the perimeter fence, puncturing the fuselage above the sagging portside wing. Both wings had given up their yield of fuel; maybe 120 tons had poured out of the cracked tanks and evaporated, leaving a dark stain that reached out almost as far as the main runway. It was a wonder there had not been an explosion. The roof of the cockpit had been crunched in, a hard-boiled egg beneath a spoon, by something that was no longer in evidence. Jane thought he could see a white shirtsleeve, an arm thrown back on the flight deck, above a face that was nothing but shadow.

‘Maybe we should try a different plane,’ Jane said. ‘I mean, this one was just setting off. There’ll be a lot of bodies on it.’

‘Then there’ll be a lot of food too. They wouldn’t have started serving until they got into the sky, would they?’

Aidan was right. A smaller plane taxiing towards the terminal would have had an empty galley. What was the point of protecting him from bodies when they were everywhere you looked? Jane sighed. Just to give him a break, he supposed. It would be nice not to have all that grinning in your face all day, every day.

The doors were sealed; the holes pitting the skin of the jet too small to climb through. They pushed the stairs around to the back of the plane. There was a ragged hole where the empennage had been.

‘Big enough for you?’ Jane asked. Aidan nodded.

Jane raised the stairs to the hole; they rattled in the spanks of wind gusting in from across the wide, open airfield.

‘See if you can open that rear exit for me once you’re in,’ Jane said. ‘Don’t fanny about.’

Aidan skipped up the stairs and hoisted himself into the Jumbo. A few moments later his face appeared at one of the windows. He gave Jane a thumbs-up. He ducked clear of the window and a few seconds later the door folded outwards. Jane withdrew the stairs and repositioned them at the doorway. Inside he drew the door to, not closing it completely. A sudden snapshot in his head: Rae and Carver exploding through the crack in a door. He couldn’t get on with doors any more. Closed, open, they would never stay still in his thoughts.

‘All right?’ Aidan asked.

‘Yes,’ Jane said, a little too stiffly, and looked beyond Aidan’s shoulder to the ranks of dead sitting strapped into their seats. They had died primly, hands clasped in front of them, watching a stewardess at the front of this section of the cabin who had collapsed in the middle of performing her safety procedures. There were children with colouring books and iPods and hand-held game consoles. Everyone was thin in their clothes, dwindled into seats. Oxygen masks hung from the cabin ceiling, octopoid creatures reaching for prey. Punkah louvres in the overhead units had melted and hardened before they could drip to the floor. They resembled waxy stalactites. One of the bulkheads had been split by the telegraph pole that now blocked the portside aisle leading to the front of the plane; part of the vacuum-moulded wall panel had sheared free; insulation was a frozen cloud seeping from behind it. Rainwater had poured in through the fissure, warping fixtures, swelling the bodies it touched.

Jane said, ‘Let’s check the galleys.’

They ransacked the six galleys and found meal-tray trolleys loaded with spoiled food that had rotted away to a crisp film on the plates, like dried algae, over the years. But there were plenty of packets of nuts that, although past their use-by date, seemed fine. The two of them sat on the cabin floor gobbling snacks so quickly that there wasn’t much tasting going on. Minutes later, the floor strewn with empty wrappers, they were too full to speak. Jane picked crumbs from his sweatshirt and fed them to himself. Aidan pressed his hand to his belly and slowly lost his expression of satisfaction as it became one of harrowed concern.