Конрад Уильямс - One

They reached the broad curve of the peninsula. The fires along the shore had burned down to embers; they looked like the sullen eyes of great lizards basking in the shingle. Jane thought he saw a swatch of striped fabric, the blue and white of Stanley’s pyjamas in the mad criss-cross of bodies, but he couldn’t be sure. His mind would not banish the illogicality. He wanted to believe anything and everything that his desperation sowed in him. Pain was unfolding in his shoulder now; no matter how still he kept his arm, it was as if he could feel the ball of his humerus being ground into a socket lined with glass splinters. The deep beat of heat around the shrapnel gave the illusion that his heart had shifted location.

He still wasn’t certain he could get onto the raft knowing his boy remained on this soil. He understood that this might mean a lifetime of picking through rubble and entering buildings of shadow that harboured beings that wanted him dead, but all other alternatives possessed no attraction for him. A life free from threat in another country would be hollow; he would barely register what happened from day to day. He would be thinking only of the UK, and his boy squirrelled away in some alley or attic, wishing for his dad, wondering why his dad had not come for him.

The raft was there. It had been hauled to the beach and now drifted in the shallows, anchored with mooring irons, a great white standard whipping around on a mast rising from its centre. People were already on board. The raft seemed to hang a few feet above the ground like a disc of shadow. The people appeared to float in mid-air. It was a disconcerting, disorientating sight. Jane could not be excited by it. Becky too seemed to hang back, despite the howling conflict at her shoulder. He knew that designers and tradesmen had grafted hard over that vehicle for months, but it seemed too flimsy for the water it rested upon. They found themselves approaching it almost against their will; their hearts eager to fling themselves into the void even as their minds threw up all manner of warning signs.

Again Jane was distracted by some subtler movement than that going on across Romney Marsh and the weatherboard cottages along the Dungeness Road. He peered into the shadows and thought he could see the flicker of blue and white stripes; a small body struggling against the tide of inhumanity, a shuttle in some ghastly loom.

‘Stanley?’ he called out.

‘This way, Richard,’ Becky said. Her arm was around him. Suddenly he was aware of how terrible he felt. It was as if the fire and smoke, the sand in his throat and the awful mealy smell of bodies strewn across the beach had taken him out of himself to the point where he was unaware of what he was feeling. Even the agony of his shoulder had gone away to some extent, had some distance about it, as if it was remembered – or imagined.

He had to rest by a coil of chain that rose up from the shingle like some weird snake. To his left, a giant anchor had lost its shape to the creep of oxidant. Machinery emerged from or immersed itself into the beach, metalwork so large it might have some sway over how the world turned. Jane thought he could hear the spit and crackle of static barking from the radios in a fishing-boat wheelhouse but it was his unsteady feet on the chips of stone.

‘Stanley,’ he gasped, trying to focus on Becky’s features. She leant down towards him and the face he had fallen in love with found clarity. It was stippled with sweat that clung like small beads to skin greased with diesel. Her eyes were wide and brimful of concern. She kissed Jane and held him. ‘We’re close,’ she said, but he didn’t know if she meant their relationship, or their proximity to some kind of end. ‘Don’t leave me now.’

‘I saw Stanley,’ he said. The boy’s name was like a living thing on his tongue. It reanimated him. He hurried Becky towards the raft. Someone was blowing a horn. Fighting was breaking out at the water’s edge. People were being dragged off the raft, or pushed on. Human chains clung to it, desperate to be a part of this maiden voyage.

‘They’re going to leave.’ She sounded panicky; relieved.

‘Not without you,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

They splashed through the surf, Jane grimacing inwardly at the warm, viscous beat of the tide against his legs. Someone swung an arm his way; he pushed Becky to one side and ducked. His attacker bowled over into the water and was lost under dozens of thrashing limbs. Jane didn’t see him resurface. They kept being repulsed at moments when it seemed he might get Becky onto the raft. Her boots squealed against its lip – ‘Hook a leg on!’ – but others scrambled over her, causing her to cry out as her knee threatened to bend the wrong way. She tumbled back against him, her head dipping under the waves. He bent to retrieve her and almost lost his footing as more people charged into him. He felt himself crushed against the edge of the raft, and it, drawn by the tide, was dragging up the shingle, rising out of the sea. Screams from the far edge of the raft. He imagined people tipping off the end. The balance was screwed. It was going to come ramming down on his head and that would be that. Something would have to give and Jane saw it would have to be him. He sucked in his breath and ducked underwater. He had not let go of Becky and could feel her thrashing beneath his fist. The raft came back down and jerked to the right. The hull tore into his back and he cried out. Panic leapt around inside him as he sought the surface again, but the raft had slid across his exit routes.

He readjusted his grip on Becky, and on his dread, and struck out deeper, away from shore and the forest of legs blocking his progress. He turned left and kicked. Feeling above him with his free hand for the edge of the raft. He thought it might never come, but it did, and he hauled Becky coughing and spluttering from the water. It filmed his eyes like oil; he could feel it in his mouth like the residue of a pastry saturated with lard. They were both sick as they splashed from the water, around fifteen yards away from the worst of the squabbling. People were dying. Jane shouted at them, an incoherent bellow of anger and frustration.

He wheeled around at the sudden crunch of approaching footsteps, ready to launch his forearm into whatever face came at him, but it was Loke, his nose and mouth bloodied. He looked tired, hunted. Jane supposed they all did.

‘I couldn’t stay,’ he said. ‘It was getting very, very nasty out there.’

‘It’s all right,’ Jane said. ‘Mission accomplished. Becky? Meet Loke.’

They all turned to watch the raft. Another horn blared through the grey nets of retreating dark; Jane couldn’t see the player. It would be dawn in an hour or two. He envied them their place on the raft at the same time that he was secretly thanking whatever invisible guardian had kept him from that insane binding of waterproofed wood and tarpaulin. He heard the ‘ chunk ’ of an axe as it bit through the ropes attaching the raft to land. There was a great cheer, subsumed by an even greater caterwauling of dismay. The raft slid slowly away from the shore.

Becky began to cry.

‘It’s all right,’ Jane said, without conviction. He placed a hand on her belly, imagined it swelling, becoming a curve that arrived almost by stealth but then could not be ignored. He imagined the baby’s hands reaching for them, the knock of its limbs and the faint tremor of its heart.

‘They’ll come back. They’ll come back.’ He kissed her cheek, the top of her head.

He stepped away from Becky, drew Loke in towards her. He touched Loke’s arm. ‘Look after her for a moment,’ he whispered.

He turned towards the headland and the cottages that dogged the coastline for half a mile or so. The figure had moved this way. He crunched towards the flimsy buildings. Many had been turned to so much driftwood by the Event, or the winds that it had created. His ears were pricked, listening out for Becky’s voice. If she called him back, he would go to her. This would stop, if she decided it. But she didn’t call him. He did not look back.