Conrad Williams - One

'Here we go,' Plessey said. 'Bang on schedule.'

Jane had to sit down himself when he heard the voice. It was female. It sounded as though she was from Wales. There was a musical undercurrent to her words. He barely registered what she was saying, he was so tied up in the moment of hearing a voice that wasn't in the immediate vicinity. But she repeated it:

This is Radio Free UK calling all survivors. If you are out there and you can hear this – I know it's a long shot, but what can you do? – then please do not give in. There is a way out of this. There is safety. You will find us off the south-east coast. Coordinates as follows: 50°, 54', 37"N, 0°, 58', 55"E. The raft exists. There is an escape. We are anchored off Dungeness, Kent. We launch in a week. We can take a hundred people. The raft exists.

The sound of footsteps moving off. The sound of the wind across an open doorway.

'They repeat the message every quarter of an hour,' Plessey said, switching off the radio. The disappearance of the sound was a wrench for Jane; he jerked towards the unit as if he was about to try to switch it back on. Plessey didn't notice. 'Sometimes it's the girl you've just heard. Other times there's an older woman, sounds like a newsreader – received pronunciation, you know. And there's also a chap, sounds as though he's from the West Country. They've never said, but I get the impression they've already got a fair-sized group down there.'

'Why?' asked Jane. He was thinking of Stanley, left behind in the city of butchers while everyone escaped.

'A raft,' Plessey said. 'For one hundred? Hardly the work of a carpenter and his gofer, no?'

'It's a trap,' Becky said. 'These people are being forced to lure survivors down there. They'll be waiting for us. With the fucking salt and pepper.'

'I don't think so,' Plessey said. 'They're doing well enough in the city, slowly picking us off. How many of us are left, do you think?'

'It's hard to say.' Jane shrugged. 'Latest estimates put us at around three to four thousand, give or take. The main survival hot spots are at Angel, Victoria and London Zoo.'

'They're running out of food and they know it,' Becky said, her voice becoming edged with panic and indignation. 'They're chasing us to the corners of the country.'

Plessey shook his head. 'Not the case. There's a stiff cordon of Skinners all across the southern city limits, ditto north too, building across the North Circular. They're tightening the noose, preventing escapes. There's no evidence to suggest they're moving out, hunting survivors in other parts of the country. Remember, they don't need to. Wherever we are, they are.'

'We have to make a break for it. As many as possible,' Jane said. 'If they can make one raft, they can build more, or come back for the stragglers.'

Becky was rubbing her hands together hard enough for their rasping to cut through his words. He had noticed this always happening whenever plans were discussed, change considered. She was frightened of any challenge to the status quo, and frightened of the status quo too. She recognised this paradox within herself, but it didn't make it any easier to deal with.

'What about Aidan?' she said. 'I know he likes to do his own thing, but he's been away longer than usual. I worry he's been . . . I think he might . . .'

Plessey shut away the radio in the desk drawer and lightly clapped his hands together.

'Look,' he said, 'would you care to stay here tonight? I insist, really. It's far too late for you to get back to the centre, and anyway, why would you want to? I have some mushroom soup, a large tin I'd like to break into, but much more than I can eat by myself and I wouldn't want it to go to waste.'

Jane woke in the night and he was crying silently. Candles burned in their makeshift bedroom, a small kitchen in which the erstwhile staff could have taken their breaks and eaten lunch. He could hear Becky breathing next to him; she held a swatch of blanket tight in one fist. Plessey's snores carried from the heart of the shop; he seemed to complement the creased, tired things that surrounded him. Jane could imagine him always being here, gradually melding with the furnishings and knick-knacks to the point where he would be camouflaged by them.

He had dreamed of sitting in Plessey's office chair, the crystal radio assembled before him, switched on. It had hummed with potential; even the valves unconnected to the body, strewn across the workbench, had glowed with some arcane intent. He touched the rod to the tightly coiled copper wire and at every contact there exploded from the amplifier a terrible screech, the unselfconscious cry of a child in danger, scared and hurt, a boy with death only seconds away from him.

'Stanley,' Jane called, even though there was no transmitter. 'Stan, it's me. It's Dad. Tell me where you are and I'll come for you. Tell me where you are. Please.'

Stanley kept screaming. The sound of something familiar in the background, a weird, metallic, percussive beat. Each time Stanley paused for choking breath Jane heard it, a spastic, robotic infill. He realised with a euphoric pang that he was with the others at the beach, waiting to board the raft. In two days he could be reunited with his boy. He was dressing hurriedly, trying to pack his bag in poor light, wishing Stanley would stop screaming, calm down, say something, when the nature of the screams changed. If anything, they grew even more frantic. The hammering had stopped, or rather it had lost its metallic beat. Now it had increased its tempo but it was landing on something far less resistant that metal or wood. Jane stopped rushing around and dropped to his knees. He covered his ears but Stanley was behind them and even by the time he had begun to realise it was a dream it wouldn't release him.

He woke up much later. Plessey was gluing pieces of wood together, a box to protect his precious radio. Becky was helping with another batch of batteries, throwing the ones encrusted with salt into a metal waste-paper basket. She was doing it with enough force to suggest she wasn't fully engrossed in the task.

'Oh, I'm sorry,' she said, 'did I wake you? How thoughtless of me.'

'I was awake anyway,' Jane said, levering himself upright. 'You forget that most of my working life I slept through worse noises than that. Once, a friend of mine called Carver was beating sheet metal for two hours not six feet away from my sleeping head. I didn't even change position.'

His voice faltered at the utterance of the word 'beating' and both Becky and Plessey caught it, shooting him a look. But nobody asked any more; everybody had nightmares. Everyone had something that stuck in their craw.

'The others, they'll want a demonstration,' Jane said, 'before we can even think about planning an exodus.' He stood up and began to get dressed.

'I'll nip over to HQ later today,' he said, and Jane thought, Yeah, right. Nip on up to Heathrow. It'll take you the best part of a day.

To Becky, Jane said, 'We should try some of Aidan's haunts. See if we can find out why he's not turned up for so long.'

Becky went back to her batteries. 'If Aidan likes it so much here then I'd rather be around when he turns up. I think I'll stay here for a while, if that's OK with Daniel.'

That Plessey didn't look at her when she said this told Jane it was already a done deal.

'Of course, my dear,' said Plessey.

Becky nodded. 'I've decided.'

'All right,' Jane said. 'And if I find Aidan I'll bring him over here, yes?'

'He's not my son, Richard,' she snapped, and flung a battery more forcibly into the bin. 'I'd prefer it if you stopped trying to compensate for . . . for . . .' She broke off. Her shoulders hunched; she put her head in her hands and began gently to shake.

Jane left her like that, unable to cope with her sudden change of mood. Plessey caught up with him just as he cleared the buffer of razor wire. Something had been in the market the previous night. Clothes and bones and almost an entire human skin were spread across the hall. The signs of a scuffle were drying into the poured-concrete floor, along with human blood, Skinner blood, Jane wasn't sure. It was black, there was a lot of it. A familiar sight, a familiar smell.