David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

Zimbra leaps up, whining, at the door. Rafiq tells him, “Shush, Zimbra!”

The dog shushes, and — there. A spiky, sickening sequence of bangs. I look at Mo and Mo nods back: “Gunfire.”

We rush out onto Mo’s scrubby, dandelion-dotted lawn. The wind’s still from the east and it buffets our ears but now another burst of automatic fire is quite distinct and not far away. Its echo reaches us a couple of seconds later from Mizen Head across the water.

“Isn’t it coming from Kilcrannog?” asks Lorelei.

Izzy’s voice is shaky. “Dad went into the village.”

“The Cordon can’t have fallen al ready ,” I blurt, wishing I could stuff the words back in, ’cause by saying it, I feel I’ve helped to make it real. Zimbra is snarling towards the town.

“I’d better get back to the farm,” says Izzy.

Mo and I exchange a look. “Maybe, Izzy,” Mo says, “until we know what we’re dealing with, your parents’d prefer you to lie low.”

Then we hear the noise of jeeps, this side of town, driving along the main lane. More than one or two, by the sound of it.

“Must be Stability,” says Rafiq. “Only they have diesel. Right?”

“Speaking as a mum,” I say to Izzy, “I really think you ought—”

“I–I—I’ll stay hidden, I’ll be careful, I promise.” Izzy swallows, and then she’s gone, vanished through a gap in the tall wall of fuchsia.

I hardly have time to dismiss the unpleasant feeling that I’ve just seen Izzy O’Daly for the final time before we notice the timbre of the jeeps has changed, from fast and furious to cautious and growly.

“I think one of the jeeps is coming down our track,” says Lorelei.

Vaguely, I wonder if this blustery autumn day is going to be my last. But not the kids. Not the kids. Mo’s had the same thought: “Lorelei, Rafiq, listen. Just on the off chance this is a militia unit and not Stability, we need you to get Zimbra to safety.”

Rafiq, who still has some cocoa powder in the corner of his lips, is appalled. “But Zim and me are the bodyguards!”

I see Mo’s logic: “If it’s militiamen, they’ll shoot Zim on sight before they even start talking to us. It’s how they work.”

Lorelei’s scared, which she should be. “But what’ll you do, Gran?”

“Mo and I’ll talk to them. We’re tough old birds. But please”—we hear a jeep engine roar in a low gear, sickeningly near—“both of you, go. It’s what your parents would be saying. Go!”

Rafiq’s eyes are still wide, but he nods. We hear brambles scraping against metal sides and small branches being snapped off. Lorelei feels disloyal going, but I mouth “Please” and she nods. “C’mon, Raf, Gran’s counting on us. We can hide him at the sheep bothy above the White Strand. C’mon, Zim. Zimbra. Come on !”

Our spooked, wise dog looks at me, puzzled.

“Go!” I shoo him. “Look after Lol and Raf! Go !”

Reluctantly, Zimbra allows himself to be pulled off and the three are clear of Mo’s garden and over the garden wall behind the polytunnel. We have a wait of about ten seconds before a Stability jeep barges its way through the overgrown track and up onto Mo’s drive, spitting stones. A second jeep appears a few seconds later. The word Stability is stenciled along the side. The forces of law and order. So why do I feel like an injured bird found by a cat?

• • •

YOUNG MEN CLIMB out, four from each vehicle. Even I can tell they’re not Stability; their uniforms are improvised, they carry mismatched handguns, automatic weapons, crossbows, grenades, and knives, and they move like raiders, not trained soldiers. Mo and I stand side by side, but they walk past us as if we’re invisible. One, perhaps the leader, holds back and watches the bungalow as the others approach it, guns out and ready. He’s scrawny, tattooed, maybe thirty, wears a green beret of military origin, a flak jacket, like Ed used to wear in Iraq, and the winged figure off a Rolls-Royce around his neck. “Anyone else at home, old lady?”

Mo asks him, “What’s the story here, young man?”

“If anyone’s hiding in there, they’ll not be coming out alive. That’s the story here.”

“There’s nobody else here,” I tell him. “Put those guns away before somebody gets hurt, f’Chrissakes.”

He reads me. “Old lady says it’s all clear,” he calls to the others. “If she’s lying, shoot to kill. Any blood’s on her hands now.”

Five militiamen go inside, while two others walk around the outside of the bungalow. Lorelei, Rafiq, and Zimbra should be across the neighboring field by now. The strip of hawthorn should hide them from then on. The leader takes a few steps back and examines Mo’s roof. He jumps onto the patio wall to get a better view.

“Will you please tell us,” says Mo, “what you want?”

Inside Mo’s bungalow, a door slams. Below, in their coop, my surviving chickens cluck. Over in O’Daly’s pasture, a cow lows. From the road to the end of Sheep’s Head, more jeeps roar. A militiaman emerges from Mo’s shed, calling out, “Found a ladder in here, Hood. Shall I bring it out?”

“Yep,” says the apparent leader. “It’ll save unloading ours.”

The five men now reemerge from Mo’s bungalow. “All clear inside, Hood,” says a bearded giant. “Blankets and food, but there’s better in the village store.”

I look at Mo: Does this mean they killed people in Kilcrannog?

Militiamen kill. It’s how they carry on being militiamen.

“We’ll just take the panels, then,” says Hood, telling us, “Your lucky day, old ladies. Wyatt, Moog, the honor is yours.”

Panels? Two of the men, one badly scarred by Ratflu, prop the ladder against the end gable of the bungalow. Up they climb, and we see what they want. “No,” says Mo. “You can’t take my solar panels!”

“Easier’n you’d think, old lady,” says the bearded giant, holding the ladder steady. “One pair o’ bolt cutters, lower her down gently, job’s done. We’ve done it a hundred times, like.”

“I need my panels for light,” protests Mo, “and for my tab!”

“Seven days from now,” Hood predicts, “you’ll be praying for darkness. It’ll be your only protection ’gainst the Jackdaws. Look on it as a favor we’re doing you. And you won’t be needing your tabs anymore, neither. No more Net for the Lease Lands. The good old days are good and gone, old lady. Winter’s coming.”

“You call yourself ‘Hood,’ ” Mo tells him, “but it’s ‘Robbing Hood,’ not Robin Hood, from where I’m standing. Would you treat your elderly relatives like this?”

“Number one is to survive,” answers Hood, watching the men on the roof. “They’re all dead, like my parents. They had a better life than I did, mind. So did you. Your power stations, your cars, your creature comforts. Well, you lived too long. The bill’s due. Today,” up on the roof the bolt is cut on the first panel, “you start to pay. Think of us as the bailiffs.”

“But it wasn’t us, personally, who trashed the world,” says Mo. “It was the system. We couldn’t change it.”

“Then it’s not us, personally, taking your panels,” says Hood. “It’s the system. We can’t change it.”

I hear the O’Dalys’ dog barking, three fields away. I pray Izzy’s okay, and that these men with guns don’t molest the girls. “What’ll you do with the panels?” I ask.

“The mayor of Kenmare,” says Hood, as a couple of his men carry the first of Mo’s panels over to the jeep, “he’s building himself quite a fastness. Big walls. A little Cordon of his own, with surveillance cameras, lights. Pays food and diesel for solar panels.” A bolt affixing Mo’s second solar panel is cut. “These and the ones from the house below”—he nods at my cottage—“are going to him.”