Last Light (31 page)

CHAPTER 63

11.43 p.m. GMT
Beauford Service Station

The truck parked hard up against the front of the pavilion obscured most of what was going on outside. But standing over on the right-hand side, Jenny could see round the front of the truck. There was a bonfire out in the middle of the car-park. They had amassed a pile of rubbish and set it alight. And now it was burning ferociously, bathing the place in a flickering amber glow.

Jenny stared out at it, and the mass of people that had gathered around it. It seemed in the last couple of hours, since . . .

… since I was nearly beaten to a pulp … and Ruth was . . .

…
since then the number of people out there had grown alarmingly. She guessed there must be a couple of hundred of them milling around outside.

Ruth
.

She’d hardly got to know her really. They had spoken a bit this morning, and yesterday walking along the hard shoulder, but she knew very little about her. She’d perhaps learned more about her in those last moments outside, when Ruth had held a mob at bay for a couple of minutes with nothing but the force of her personality.

She was probably not the sort of person Jenny would have mixed with, done lunch with, back in normal times, but right now Jenny would have traded in every last one of her upwardly mobile friends, past and present, to have someone as Bolshie, loudmouthed and downright ballsy as Ruth, by her side.

She looked out at the Dante-esque scene before her. It looked like some sort of satanic cult gathering. She expected to see hooded and robed figures calling things to order, and some young virgin, raised on an inverted crucifix over the fire.

Of course, it was the dancing flames coming from the fire that lent the scene such a disturbing aura. She reminded herself they were normal people, just very frustrated and hungry normal people.

She looked around at Mr Stewart’s staff. She could see they were frightened; staring at the scene outside and exchanging muted comments in Polish, Romanian, Cantonese. She realised that for them - unable to understand a lot of what had been going on over the last few days, and knowing they were so obviously
outsiders
- this must have been even more terrifying.

Paul wandered over to stand beside her. ‘That doesn’t look good,’ said Paul. ‘When you get the mob starting to light fires, it doesn’t take long for buildings to start burning down.’

‘They won’t try and set this place on fire, surely? It would destroy all the food and water they’re after.’

Paul shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Maybe they’re too pissed off to care about that now. Maybe thirst is driving them a bit loopy.’

Yes, they had to be bloody thirsty out there
.

It had been a very warm week since Monday; hot even, at times. And now, there was no longer any running tap-water. She had noticed earlier this afternoon when she’d tried to flush the toilet. They had to be getting thirsty outside, and other than tap-water, cans or bottles, what else could they drink? She’d not noticed any nearby rivers or reservoirs. And anyway, the state of most waterways these days, thick with foam and floating condoms - you’d need to be bloody desperate first.

Meanwhile, inside the pavilion, they had fridge-cold bottled water, hundreds of cans of Pepsi and Fanta glistening with dew-drops of condensation, cartons of fruit juice, even tubs of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream, for crying out loud.

‘Yup,’ said Paul quietly, ‘thirst makes people do a whole load of crazy things.’

Jenny looked at him, wishing he hadn’t said that. She looked back out again, at the milling crowd around the bonfire and then noticed that someone was standing on something, and addressing them. Jenny watched the person gesturing, shouting. Although she couldn’t make out what was being said, she could guess.

She could just make out the raised voice drifting across the crowded car-park towards them. It had that unmistakable, shrill, humourless tone - it was the platinum-blonde woman. That skinny, hard-faced bitch, in her vest top and tracksuit bottoms, those long nails … and those thin lips stretched across those snarling teeth.

Platinum Blonde seemed to have won over the people out there. Not good. She was sure many of those people simply wanted to break in, grab some food and water and go home, that’s all. But the blonde, she’d want to make an example of someone.

Me probably
.

‘They’re going to get in here tonight. Aren’t they?’

Paul looked out at the crowd. ‘Yeah. I don’t think they’re going to be satisfied just throwing a few bricks and stones at this place. They need to get in tonight … they’re getting desperate.’

‘What if we throw some water out to them?’

A wry smile spread across his mouth. ‘Yeah, I’m sure that’ll placate them. And off they’ll trot back home.’

Jenny ignored his sarcasm. ‘So what do you suggest we do?’

He looked furtively over his shoulder before speaking. ‘I suggest we leave before it all kicks off. As in, pretty bloody soon.’

She glanced at the staff, huddled together anxiously in the foyer, talking in hushed, frightened tones. Mr Stewart, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. He had retired to his office a couple of hours earlier. She hadn’t seen him since.

‘What? We can’t abandon them. Look at the state of them.’

‘And? They’re not my responsibility, nor are they yours. I want to get home, and I don’t particularly want to get caught up in this fucking mess.’

‘It was your bloody idea to stay!’

‘Yeah, well, guess what? I got that wrong. This is looking nasty and I suggest we sneak out whilst there’s a chance.’

‘And leave them?’ she nodded towards the others.

‘It sounds pretty shitty, but yeah.’

Jenny shook her head. ‘I’m guessing you’re a bit of a selfish bastard in normal life, aren’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘Call me selfish, but I just don’t want to be lynched by the mob, all right?’ he said. ‘I just know we can’t take on all these poor sods. They have to look after themselves. We have to put ourselves first. That’s how things are now, I’m afraid. Who do you want to save? These strangers, these people who you’ve known for five minutes? Or your family?’

Jenny watched the silhouette of Platinum Blonde as she stirred up the crowd milling around the burning car.

‘It all came undone so quickly. Just a few days,’ she gestured towards those outside, ‘and look at us.’

Paul nodded as he watched the people outside. ‘I suppose, when the rules go, no matter which country you live in, we’re all the same. We’re just a few square meals, a power-cut, a sip of water away from doing things we never dreamed we would, from being a bunch of cavemen.’

Outside something was beginning to happen. Platinum Blonde had finished saying her piece and had stepped down off her box and merged with the milling crowd.

‘Shit, I think they’re about to do whatever it is they’ve been planning,’ muttered Paul. ‘We need to find a way out now.’

The thought of that woman breaking in to the service station and finding her sent a chill through Jenny. Paul was right, they had to think of themselves right now. Guilt, self-reproach, introspection - that could come later when there was time.

‘Find a way out? Where? How?’

He turned away from the perspex wall, looking back at the dimly lit interior of the pavilion. The emergency generators still running the food freezers were also supplying power to a few muted emergency wall lamps towards the back of the area. ‘My guess is there’ll be a trade entrance at the rear somewhere, maybe we’ll get lucky and no one’s thought to watch the back of this place.’

The crowd outside began to approach them. Jenny noticed some were carrying containers; buckets, bottles. She backed away from the perspex wall as they came round the front of the truck and squeezed into the gap between the truck and the wall. They peered through the scuffed surface, shouting angrily as they made their way along the narrow space towards the locked revolving door. The first to get there was holding a two-litre plastic bottle of pop. There was a three or four inch gap between the revolving door’s frame, and the door panel of one of the segments. He pushed his arm through the gap and poured something out of the bottle on to the floor inside.

The smell wafted through almost instantly.

‘Petrol,’ said Paul. ‘They’re going to burn the doorway down. That won’t take long to melt. Let’s stop dicking around and go.’

Jenny looked once more at the frightened huddle of staff. Paul grabbed her arm.

‘No!’ he said quietly. ‘If you tell them we’re going out the back, they’ll all get up and follow us. Those people outside will see that and suss what’s going on.’

He started towards the rear of the pavilion, pulling her arm. ‘Come on.’

She reluctantly followed him, looking back over her shoulder at the doorway. Several more of the crowd had squeezed their arms through the gap and poured the contents of their containers into that segment. The reek of petrol was that much stronger.

Then she saw Platinum Blonde standing at the front of the truck holding a burning stick in one hand, and peering through the scuffed perspex wall, her face pushed up against it.

She’s looking for me
.

Jenny felt an even greater surge of fear take hold of her. For some reason, that woman had focused on her, as if Jenny personified somehow the desperate predicament they were all in.

I really … really, don’t want her to get hold of me
.

She turned back to look at Paul. ‘Okay, okay, let’s go.’

CHAPTER 64

11.46 p.m. GMT
Beauford Service Station

Paul led her back into the dimly lit rear of the pavilion, past the amusement arcade, past the closed door to Mr Stewart’s office. She wondered what he was doing in there. His staff, mostly older women, confused and frightened, needed him out there in the foyer, not hiding away like this.

There was a row of doors ahead of them. Three of them were toilets, the fourth was simply marked up as being for ‘Staff Only’.

Paul pushed the door open to reveal a narrow passageway, lit by a red bulb dangling from a socket in the low ceiling. The passage was only about three or four feet wide and was cluttered with cardboard boxes and crates stacked untidily against the right-hand wall; stock and supplies for the shop and the nonperishables for the fast food counters. No food of course, just the useless crap you’d expect to pick up at a service station;
Rock Classics For The Road
- 48 x CD, ‘Beauford Services Souvenir Mugs’ - pack of 24, ‘Celebrity Head Wobblers’ - assorted characters, 24 units.

Paul led the way down the hallway, struggling in places to squeeze past the stacks of boxes.

‘If this is where they’ve dumped their stock, I’d guess the delivery door is somewhere back here.’

She stopped beside a stack of boxes: Evian - 1 litre x 36. She tore open the top flap of the box and pulled out half-a-dozen bottles.

At the sound of the box being ripped open, Paul stopped and turned round. ‘Yeah, maybe a good idea.’ He left her and carried on down the passage. Jenny cradled the bottles in her arms and followed on.

‘Here we go,’ he said pointing. ‘That looks like a delivery gate.’

The passageway ended with a four-feet wide, floor to ceiling, corrugated metal shutter that looked like it slid from left to right. It was padlocked.

‘Oh, there we go then, locked,’ she muttered.

‘It’s okay,’ replied Paul pulling out a bunch of keys from his trouser pocket. ‘I lifted these off of Mr Stewart’s desk a little earlier.’

‘He didn’t notice?’

‘Not really. He was pissed, finished off that medicinal brandy of his.’

Paul sorted through the keys; inconveniently, none of them was marked or tagged.

Jenny sniffed the air. ‘Oh shit! Can you smell that?’

Paul stopped what he was doing and inhaled. ‘Burning plastic? ’

‘Yes. They’ve started on the front door already. You better hurry.’

‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ he muttered trying key after key in the padlock.

Jenny turned and looked up the narrow, dimly lit passageway, and listened intently to the muted noises that were coming down it. She could hear some of the staff in the main area of the pavilion crying and pleading to be left alone, either in pidgin English or their own tongue. Their voices sounded shrill, taut and wretched with panic and fear. Beyond that she could hear the distant taunting calls and jeers from the people trying to get in.

‘Come on! Which one of you bastards is it?’ Paul hissed with frustration, as he fumbled with the keys.

A thought occurred to Jenny. ‘What if they’re waiting for us just outside this door?’

Paul paused for a moment. ‘Screw it, I don’t know. They probably haven’t thought that far ahead anyway. We’ll just have to hope they’re all around the front.’

Jenny nodded doubtfully; that wasn’t the reassuring answer she’d been hoping for.

The smell of burning plastic was getting stronger and she could now hear some banging; it sounded like someone was kicking at the door panels, testing them to see if the perspex had softened enough to give.

‘Oh Christ, please hurry!’ she cried.

‘I’m going as fast as I can.’

She heard him jangle the keys again and this time after a moment’s frustrated jiggling around, she heard a
click
.

‘That’s it. Got it!’

He removed the padlock and tossed it aside, then reached for the handle of the sliding delivery door.

‘Please open it quietly,’ she whispered.

Paul nodded and then pulled gently on the handle. The door grated noisily, metal casters scraping in the runners along the top and bottom. He slid the door to the side by only an inch and Jenny saw a hairline vertical crack of deep blue light - a clear night’s sky.

He waited a moment, hoping the scraping sound hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention, and then slowly pushed the delivery door a little further to the side.

There was a thud and the corrugated door rattled, and then with a roar from the little metal castors, the door was yanked to the right, clattering noisily against the frame. Silhouetted against the evening sky, and dimly lit by the red emergency light back up the passageway, she saw about a dozen of them standing outside. From what she could make out they were mostly men, a couple of women, some young, some middle-aged; people from the estate.

‘Please … don’t hurt us!’ she pleaded with them, feeling the cold grasp of fear suck the air from her lungs and the strength from her legs.

One of them stepped forward; a young man with a skinhead, his shirt tied around his waist, exposing a lean, taut and muscular torso, decorated down one side with those popular Celtic swirls. Jenny stared at him, his face hot and blotchy, aggressively thrust forward, close to hers. He looked hard, angry, ready to lash out at her.

He pointed at the bottles of water she held in her arms.

‘Could I ’ave a drink of one of those? I’m fuckin’ parched.’

Jenny was taken aback. ‘Yeah … uh … sure,’ she replied handing him a bottle. He took it and nodded.

‘Thanks.’

‘There’s a load more back there,’ said Paul. ‘A stack of boxes on the right, go help yourself.’

The rest of the group of people surged quickly past the lad, some of them muttering a ‘thank you’ as they stepped by.

Jenny watched the lad gulping the Evian. He was desperately thirsty, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he made quick work of it. She turned and jerked her head toward the passageway. ‘You better go after those others and get yourself some of that water before it’s all gone.’

He nodded, handing back the nearly empty plastic bottle and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Yeah. Cheers for that,’ he said and jogged down the narrow walkway after the others, weaving around the stacks of boxes.

Jenny turned to Paul. ‘I thought he was going to tear me to pieces.’

Paul appeared equally surprised. ‘A polite chav,’ he replied shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here while the going’s good.’

They both stepped outside.

The night was warm still. Under different circumstances, it would have been a lovely evening to sit out. Paul looked both ways up and down the back of the building. He saw the dark forms of another group of people jogging along the back of the building towards them, attracted by the red glow of light spilling out from the open delivery entrance.

Paul grabbed her arm and whispered. ‘These ones might not be so polite. Pretend to be one of them.’

As the group approached them, Paul called out, ‘The delivery door’s open, there’s loads of stuff inside.’

‘Cheers mate,’ a voice called out from the dark.

Another asked, ‘Any water in there?’

‘Yeah, but you want to get in there quick,’ Paul replied.

The group passed by without further comment, and picked their pace up to a jog as they neared the delivery entrance.

Paul and Jenny rounded the corner of the pavilion, and from there they could see the car-park and the bonfire still burning, now all but deserted. Jenny assumed everyone who had been milling around it earlier on, must now be piling inside the service station at the front, helping themselves to whatever they could find. She could hear a lot of noise filtering out from inside; shouting, the clatter of goods being spilled and knocked over, but with an almost overwhelming sense of relief, she could hear no screaming - no sounds of violence, no pleas for mercy.

‘What are we going to do now?’ she whispered.

‘That car,’ he replied, ‘it’s Mr Stewart’s. I grabbed his car keys as well.’

‘Oh right. God I hope they haven’t trashed it.’

‘Come on.’

Paul started across the car-park, walking swiftly towards the staff-reserved area on the far side. Jenny set off after him, looking anxiously over her shoulder at the pavilion. The truck across the front was blocking most of the front to the building, but every now and then she could see the flickering beams of torches playing around the inside of the foyer and the amber glow of flames coming from the revolving door. The fire they’d used to weaken the entrance looked like it had begun to take hold and she was certain by morning the service station would be nothing more than a smouldering ruin.

Paul pulled out the bunch of keys from his pocket, and she heard them jangling again as he went through them.

‘Ah, that feels like a car fob,’ she heard him say in the dark, and a second later the car squawked and the hazard lights on it flashed a couple of times. They both headed for it. It looked like the vehicle had been untouched; no dents, scrapes, the tyres weren’t flat. She allowed herself to hope they were going to get out of this mess.

They jumped in, anxious to take possession of the vehicle and be off before anyone else had noticed. Jenny dumped her armful of Evian bottles on the floor inside the car.

‘Be nice if Mr Stewart thought to fill her up,’ said Paul, jamming the key in the ignition. He turned it, and the lights on the dash came on.

‘Thank fuck,’ he sighed. ‘Half a tank, fair enough. Better than nothing.’

‘I thought you said you couldn’t drive?’

Paul smiled sheepishly as he spun the car round. ‘Okay, I lied - so shoot me.’

Jenny twisted in her seat and studied the pavilion anxiously, half-expecting a swarm of people to suddenly emerge from it and charge them down, hell-bent on pulling them out of the car and ripping their throats out.

My God, doesn’t this feel just like that . . . Like one of those crazy zombie movies?

This whole situation was like some post-apocalyptic scenario; the glimmering firelight from the bonfire, the debris and detritus strewn across the tarmac, the flickering torchlight and the frantically scrabbling crowd inside the building, the noise, the chaos.

Paul drove across the car-park towards the exit leading on to the slip-road that led out to the motorway and headed south once more.

She watched the service station in the wing mirror until it disappeared from view.

My God, this is how it is after only four days.