Conrad Williams - One

18. RAGCHEW

In the early morning the tiger broke down the library door and killed two men who tried to stop it from cantering up the stairs. Jane saw it happen. He'd been coming down to use the toilet and to check that Aidan had made it back from the river. The tiger swung its great spoiling head his way as Jane pushed his own scent down the stairs before him. There was a frozen moment, almost as if the air pressure they each produced had caused them to be still as it collided. Jane backed off; the tiger approached. Blood from the broken men in the foyer had created large fans across the floor. It appeared solid; you might lift up an edge and it would all follow, like a confection set to dry on baking parchment.

The tiger moved more circumspectly now that its quarry was in sight. Its bluster was spent; perhaps it was exhausted after expending so much energy on the door and the men. Perhaps it was wary of Jane, who had bested it once already. He heard movement behind him and Becky's voice: 'Oh.' She kept the door open for him and it was only as they were pulling down filing cabinets to block the entrance that the tiger charged. It hit the swing doors and half a dozen squares of glass punched out of their frames onto Jane and Becky's backs as they shouldered more furniture in front of the door. A paw came through, stinking of shit and rot, and almost swiped off Jane's face; he felt the wind from it move the hair of his beard. The other sleepers were up now, and hurriedly grabbing the things they valued most: food in the main, but also thick winter coats, old stained albums of photographs. They made their way silently to the stairs, veterans of any number of emergency evacuations in the past. Nobody screamed any more. Too tired. Too knowing.

'I shouldn't have come here,' Jane said. 'I put everybody at risk.'

'Shush,' Becky said. 'We can do all that later.'

They hurried to the small lift at the back of the room. During the years it had worked it had taken three people at most, and clanked as if about to disintegrate into a welter of hinges and screws. Jane had used it once, then stuck to the stairs. Now it had been hollowed out; a rope ladder hanging from the defunct overhead sheave. They descended it quickly in darkness, Becky going first. At the bottom they had to lever open the doors with a crowbar that was hanging by wire on the wall. They burst out through the fire doors into Salisbury Place and did not stop running until they were out of breath, leaning on each other. Spit dangled from Jane's throat, quicksilver mined from the pits of his lungs. It was so cold he felt as though he was running on the stumps of his shin bones.

'We should find Aidan,' Becky said at last.

'Maybe he'll be at Plessey's. It's worth a look. I can't think where else he might be.'

It was rare to see women on the streets, unless they were part of some captured chain being led off to the Western Avenue. Rumours filtered through that they kept the women in Wembley Stadium, but nobody had ever travelled that way to check. There were some zones that were off-limits because of the sheer weight of numbers. Any reconnaissance party or rescue squad would be decimated before they reached Willesden. Jane remembered, though, around three or four years ago, a woman who came limping down the A40, naked, her skin torn like strips of errant wallpaper on a well-sized wall. She had been struck dumb by shock. It was in the silver colour of her hair and the owlish protrusion of her eyes, as if she'd seen something of a magnitude too great for her brain to process. Her mouth had been messed around with: there were strange scars pitted in the cheeks, chin and jawline. Most of her fingernails had been torn off; people wondered if that was torture, or something that had happened during her bid to escape. People tried to talk to her. Some of the Shaded wrapped her in blankets and gave her what food was available, and in such a state as to be easily digested. You didn't want to be thinking of chewing your food when shock was threatening to put a brake on your heart. She ate some soup and was getting warmer by the minute, but she didn't say a word. Not then, not for the next five days, after which she died in her sleep.

Jane looked around. He didn't recognise these streets. No signs. No buses bearing destination boards. A row of skulls in rags leered at him from the melted plastic bench under a bus shelter like a comedy audience in between laughs, waiting for the next gag. The buildings had lost any detail that might have pointed to an era or an architect. Blunted, edgeless edifices. Polished office blocks of steel and glass were now riddled dark monoliths, floors bowing with rain.

They moved quickly, hesitantly, dashing to doorways in a bid to find some plaque that would tell them where they were, or a forgotten piece of post behind the door bearing an address. Jane hated the way they scurried around, like mice knowing there was a predator on the wing.

Behind one door was a lipless drop into a benighted chasm that Jane almost toppled over. Becky's hand on his belt saved him a fall that might have lasted minutes. It was like staring in on his own nightmares.

Eventually they hit a series of junctions that pulled at Jane's memory. He took a turning, then another, came back, stared and thought and went another way. With each step he felt knowledge return. It gave him the same sense of relief as an accident missed by inches.

'This way,' he said.

'Where are we?'

'Good news, I think,' Jane said. 'I thought we might be heading towards the Tower, and trouble. But we're further north than that. I think Liverpool Street Station is up here. Which means we're close.'

The shattered forecourt of the station announced itself moments later. They bypassed it on their left, mindful of the baleful stare of figures hunched into the glittering cave of an old coffee shop where coals burned cherry red and something indistinct turned on a makeshift spit. They crossed the road and turned right. A web of ginnels and alleys where small restaurants and wine bars had once enjoyed brisk business at the weekends when the old Spitalfields Market had traded were now host to slouching gangs drinking red biddy or wrestling in the icy mud on the cobblestones. There were others, still and emaciated, sitting on kerbs at the very end of life, blood leaking from their eyes or smeared across their faces as it seeped from noses and gums. They were paper, these people, all but ready to be blown entirely away by the tireless winds. You could see the grooves and notches on their bones through the skin. The recessions and tugs in throat and stomach at each drawn breath was so pronounced that it seemed they must implode. You could hear the suck of it over the muted roar of weather, like something being rescued from thin mud. Becky and Jane moved silently through them, eyes averted whenever possible, knowing that this was them in time.

'Where do we find Plessey?'

'He's inside,' Jane said, gesturing with his chin at the sacked remnants of the old market. Much of the façade was caved in; the ironwork frame remained, albeit malformed by fire, along with dozens of roasted trestles, warehouse trolleys, roll-cage containers and lampblack scaffolds. 'Or he should be. I've only ever seen him here. Aidan likes his shop. Lots of stuff to look at.'

They moved through the wreckage like vacationers at the beach searching for rock pools. In a far corner of the great hall was a shop with its windows boarded over, reinforced with sandbags and razor wire. Faded gold lettering on a purple awning heralded HOUSE OF CLASS.

Jane threw a fallen bracket from the scaffolding at the board. There was a dull clang. They heard a voice call out. Jane said, 'It's me, Richard Jane. Have you seen Aidan?'

There was the sound of bolts shooting back, fully half a dozen before the door cracked open and a small crushed face looked out from a ring of shadow. Plessey ignored the two of them and ranged his gaze over the rest of the marketplace. 'We weren't followed,' Jane assured him.