Numbers 3: Infinity (2 page)

There’s anxiety bubbling up inside me. It was a mistake to say yes. I’m already regretting it. I raise my arm up and smash the rock down on the hook of the tent peg so heavily that the peg bends and I scrape my knuckles on the ground.

‘Aargh! Fff … ow!’ I’m trying not to swear in front of the kids. It’s fucking difficult sometimes. I drop the rock, brush the worst of the dirt off my fingers and put them in my mouth, sucking hard to take the pain away. It don’t work. And it don’t take the anxiety away neither, or the anger. Nothing does.

Sarah comes nearer. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

I shrug, still sucking at my knuckles. I’m glad I’ve got my mouth full. It stops me saying what I want to say.
I don’t want to be around people, Sarah. They’re all the same. I can’t handle it.

‘Hurt, did it?’ she says.

I take my hand away from my mouth and inspect it.

‘Be all right in a minute. Just took the skin off.’

She digs in one of our bags on the barrow and pulls out a tube of antiseptic cream. The end’s been turned over and
over, to squeeze every last bit out. There’s not much left.

‘Don’t waste it on me.’

‘Ssh.’

She puts a tiny bit on the end of her finger and dots it onto my scrapes, then gently rubs it in. It’s so intimate – her fingertip touching my skin lightly, only a few cells making contact. I feel my body relaxing, the anger dying away.

Me and her. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Even after everything we’ve been through – the quake, the Chaos, the fire, the gypsy life, looking after Mia and Marty and Luke – we’re still together. I stare at her finger. And at this moment I’d give anything for the rest of the world to go away. I want to be alone with her, my arms around her and our faces close.

I hold her hands in both of mine. ‘Sarah, let’s go,’ I beg. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’ I hate myself for sounding so desperate.

She presses her lips together, pulls her hands away. The moment’s gone.

‘We’ve just got here, Adam. We’re staying.’

And so we stay.

We sit on logs around Daniel’s fire. His venison stew’s pretty watery, but it’s so long since we had something like this that it’s almost overwhelming.

Marty and Luke wolf it down so the gravy dribbles down their chins. They wipe at it and lick their fingers, laughing. No one tells them off. It’s good to see them filling their bellies, their faces glowing with the warmth of it. They’re top boys. The fire that killed my nan took their mum and dad, too. They were so quiet at first, with a haunted look in their eyes all the time. They hated being outside, didn’t know what to do with theirselves, cut off from their X-boxes and
flat-screen TVs. But we’ve learnt stuff together: how to set a trap for a rabbit, how to make a fire. I’ve never had brothers or sisters before.

Mia sits on Sarah’s lap, her wide eyes looking at all the faces lit up by the fire, Daniel, his partner Carrie, their neighbours. It’s like she’s trying to remember them.

I eat slowly, savouring each mouthful, trying to concentrate on the food, not the conversation. The back-slapping and the fuss is over, and I’m waiting for the questions. The others are talking about the things people always talk about these days; food, water, fuel, cold, hunger, illness. Especially illness. It bothers me, can’t pretend it don’t. We struggle to find food, to keep warm, and we manage. But if one of us gets ill, what do we do?

The boys have both got good numbers – 21112088 and 392092 – but numbers can change. Mia showed me that, the night of the fire, the night of the quake. She’s got Nan’s number now. It freaks me out when I catch it in her eyes. She’s got a smoker’s death, gasping for breath. It fitted right with Nan – it seems cruel now it belongs to Mia.

I don’t know the rules any more. Numbers, even good ones, are no comfort to me.

‘It’s not so bad here,’ someone says. ‘Dan’s a doctor.’

I look at Daniel. Dirty beard, long hair tied back in a ponytail, yellow fingernails. He don’t look like a doctor.

‘Used to be,’ he shrugs. ‘I worked in a hospital in London, before it was trashed by looters after the Chaos.’ He shakes his head. ‘You’d have thought people would respect hospitals, wouldn’t you? But we became targets, raided for drugs, supplies, metal to melt down. I left after the Battle of St Thomas’s in March 2028. Four hundred people killed, most of my friends gone. The police, the army, the government – they
all abandoned us. Where were they? Where the hell were they?’ He pauses for a moment. His hands are clenched in his lap, the sinews taut like wires from his fingers to his wrists. Then he takes a deep breath. ‘So what brings you here?’ he says, turning it back to me.

First question. Everyone’s quiet, waiting for my answer.

‘We’re just keeping our heads down, moving around,’ I say, looking at the floor.

‘You heading somewhere in particular?’

‘Just away. From London, from the big cities. Too many people, too dangerous.’

‘There are people looking for you, you know. They’ve been here, asking.’

I stop chewing and look up. ‘People? Who?’

Daniel shakes his head. ‘They didn’t give names. Three of them, on motorbikes. The sort of people you don’t grass to.’

He puts a hand on my shoulder. He’s trying to be reassuring, but contact like that makes me edgy. Besides, the only people who can still get petrol are the so-called government, or the gangs that have taken over the cities.

I was under arrest when the quake struck, charged with a murder I never done. The government had it in for me, tried to silence me. I hoped my criminal record would have been wiped in the Chaos. But maybe not. The thought makes my blood run cold.

If it’s the government looking, I definitely don’t want to be found. I got nothing to say to them or their spooks, and I won’t be banged up in a cell again.
I can’t be.
I don’t want nothing to do with gangs neither, the armed thugs who own the cities now. Another reason to clear out, stay in the country.

‘When?’ My throat’s gone dry. It’s all I can do to get the word out.

‘This morning. We had a drone up here, too.’ He grins. ‘Shot it out of the sky.’

‘I heard bikes this afternoon when I was looking for Mia,’ Sarah says to me, quietly.

I jump to my feet. ‘Shit, we gotta get out of here.’

Sarah frowns. ‘Not now, Adam. Not in the dark.’

‘Didn’t you hear what he just said?’

She shakes her head. ‘It’s
dark.
And we’re all tired.’

‘We’re going in the morning then,’ I say. ‘First light.’ I sit down again, slowly, but I can’t eat no more. The stew is sitting in my stomach like a stone. I can’t keep still. My legs are jiggling, ready to run.

The buzz of conversation starts up again. ‘We can’t keep on the move for ever,’ Sarah says, quietly. ‘We’ve been at it for two years, Adam, and I can’t walk miles any more.’

I look at her swelling belly. We don’t know exactly how far gone she is but it must be seven or eight months.

‘And what about my brothers?’ she says. ‘Mia. They need to live somewhere. They need a home. We all do.’

Home.
I had a home once. Seems like years ago, but it stopped being home once Mum died. And I had another one, with Nan, ’cept I never realised what I’d got ’til it had gone and so had she.

‘Home’s not a place, Sarah, it’s people. We got all we need with us.’

‘We need
more
people,’ she says. ‘I’m going to have a baby, if you hadn’t noticed. I had Mia on my own, on a grotty bathroom floor in the squat, and I want this to be different. Daniel’s a doctor. We have to stay here. And we can’t run faster than motorbikes. If they want to find us, they will.’

She don’t get it. Even after all this time, she don’t
understand how bad it is to be handcuffed, thrown in a cell, completely powerless.

‘I’m not going to be found, Sarah. No one’s going to take me away from you and lock me up again. No one.’

I’m shouting now. Everyone around the fire falls silent, looking at me or looking away.

‘All right,’ she says, keeping her voice low. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

I take no notice of her and plough on. ‘Think about what staying means. I’m not being paranoid. There are people after me.’

‘Yeah, after
you.’

So that’s it. Her words sting like a slap on the face.

People begin to gather up their bowls and drift away.

‘Come on, boys,’ Daniel says to Marty and Luke. ‘I’ll take you back to your tent.’

The boys trudge off. The laughter and the warmth of the meal’s gone from their faces. Marty looks worried.

Then it’s just Sarah and me and Mia by the fire. ‘Do you want me to go?’ I say.

Her eyes flick up to mine and then away. ‘We can’t keep running like this, Adam.’

‘Do you want me to leave you here?’ I say.

‘Mummy Daddy cross?’ Mia says, in a little voice. Her eyes are fixed on us, missing nothing.

‘I’m not cross,’ Sarah says quickly. I force a smile at Mia, but I know she’s not buying it.

‘I’m chipped,’ I say, trying to carry on the argument. ‘Mia’s chipped. That drone could’ve picked us up and sent our location back to wherever, whoever, it came from. Even if it didn’t, I’m so bloody recognisable.’ Almost without thinking I put my hand up to my scarred skin. ‘If we stay it’ll
only be days before they find us. Maybe hours. And then what?’

‘We don’t even know what they want, Adam. They might want to shake you by the hand and thank you. Perhaps you saved them, too.’

There’s something about the way she says it, an edge. Like she’s mocking me. I can’t stand it. My hand finds a piece of wood, and I launch it into the fire with such force that sparks fly up. Sarah flinches and Mia jumps, but it don’t stop me. I pick up another log and do the same.

‘I didn’t ask for this, Sarah. I didn’t ask for none of this. I never wanted to see numbers. I never wanted all this death in my head, all this pain.’

Mia’s eyes are filling with tears, and Sarah’s not looking at me. I know I’m ranting, but I can’t stop.

‘I’m eighteen, with a girlfriend and three children to look after, a baby on the way, and no home and no food, and it’s
never gonna get better.
All I know is it’s gonna end one day because I see the end everywhere, in everyone, and I wish I didn’t. And even that isn’t certain because it could all
change.
It could all be over tomorrow or the next day, or the next. Do you think I want this?’

‘Do you think any of us want this?’ she says.

And now my stomach’s churning. If she’s not on my side no more, then I got nothing.

But we have to go. It’s not safe here.

Chapter 3: Sarah

A
dam shakes my shoulder before it’s even light. He’s a dark shape next to me. I can’t see his features. Even inside the tent, the cold air is nipping at my face.

‘Sarah,’ he whispers. ‘It’s time to get up. We have to go.’

I pull my sleeping bag up around my ears and turn my back to him.

‘
Sarah
,’ he hisses. ‘It’s time.’

I take a deep breath in, and then push the air out – slowly, slowly, slowly. I’m scared of what I’m going to do next, but I’m doing it anyway.

‘I’m not leaving.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not leaving.’

‘Yeah, you are. We’re packing up this morning. Moving on.’

I wriggle round so I’m facing him again. My heart’s thumping.

‘I don’t want to go. I want to stay here for the winter.
They’re nice people. There’s a doctor and there’s food. Adam, please.’

‘Sarah—’

‘No. I’m going back to sleep.’

But I don’t. The blood’s beating in my ears, and I lie there listening to Adam’s silence.
Have I done the right thing?
But my swelling ankles tell me it’s right. And my blistered hands tell me it’s right. And the gentle snoring of the kids tells me that we all need a rest. It’s time to stop moving and just be a family for a while. Me, Adam, Marty, Luke, Mia – and the new baby.

It’s a funny sort of family. I can’t ever be the boys’ proper mum – I’ll always be their sister – but I’m the only relative they’ve got left, so I’m the nearest thing to a mum they’re going to have now. And Adam’s not anyone’s father, though Mia calls him Daddy. When she said it to him that first time – ‘Da da da da’ – his face changed. It was like the sun coming out. We were dog-tired, sitting by the side of the road, hadn’t even put a tent up, but Mia was wide awake.

‘Did you hear what she said? Did you hear, Sarah?’

She did it again, ‘Dada’, and reached her arms up towards him. He scooped her up and danced around with her, and it was like he’d forgotten everything else, just for a minute. It reminded me why I loved him.

Love him, I remind myself now. Love, not loved. I love Adam Dawson.

If I say it often enough, think it often enough, perhaps I’ll still believe it.

But it’s difficult if you know that when he looks in your eyes he can see you dying.

I close my eyes and try to empty my head of it all, to let sleep wash over me and blank me out, but everything’s all
mixed up: people, places, words, and numbers.

Always numbers.

Mia’s the last to wake, which is unusual. When she eventually crawls out of the tent, Marty and Luke have already left to forage in the forest. Her eyes are pink and glassy, and her cheeks are flushed.

‘Me poorly,’ she whispers.

I swoop down next to her and put my hand on her forehead. She’s red hot. Her nose is blocked and she’s breathing through her mouth. Her breath is sour and sickly.

‘Adam, she’s burning up.’

‘Shit.’

This is the thing we dread: Mia getting a temperature.

The night of the quake – in the heat of the fire – she had some kind of fit. I can still see her twitching in Adam’s arms, outside the burning house, her legs and arms all stiff. That’s when her number changed. She was meant to die that day – but Adam got her out and Val, his nan, died in the fire instead. Their numbers swapped. Their fates swapped. I don’t know how it happened.

Will it happen now if her temperature gets too high?