It's so long since I've been in a city that I've almost forgotten what it's like to be surrounded by concrete. Everywhere I look is evidence of The Culling Year. Burnt out cars and buildings, skeletons in the street, a wrecked van, turned on its side. Someone's gone mad with an aerosol too — up and down the high street, in big red letters it reads "whoops apocalypse J" over and over again.
With no council maintenance teams to trim them, the trees are taking over. Tough grass is starting to force its way through the moss-covered tarmac, and foxes stroll blithely down the road eyeing us more with hunger than fear, as if calculating the odds of successfully bring us down and making us their next meal.
As we walk and talk, Caroline notices me watching the foxes. "Keep clear of them and they'll keep clear of you. Otherwise they tend to go for the throat. And if you hear a dog barking, go the other way. Don't let them get your scent. We've managed to trap and eat most of the local packs, but there are still a couple of nasty ones left. We lost a girl to one of them only last week. Seven, she was. Poor love wandered off and tried to play fetch with a Rottweiller."
We cross what would once have been a busy traffic junction and suddenly I realise that we're not alone. I become aware of shadows flitting underneath the overpass, and catch a snatch of raucous laughter somewhere up ahead, echoing through a deserted shopping mall. There are people here, all moving in the same direction as we are. Then we turn a corner and I see our destination: The Hammersmith Apollo. The sign above the entrance still reads "Oct 24/5 Britain's Got Talent Roadshow!"
There's a small market outside, a pathetic collection of scavengers trying to barter remnants and relics for food. But there's precious little of that, just an improvised spit on which rotate a couple of thin looking pigeons. The smell isn't exactly appetising.
Caroline notices my disgust. "I know. You've probably got a big old vegetable garden and a field of sheep, huh?"
I nod.
"I dream about mashed potato," she says wistfully.
"Then why are you still here?"
"Because of him," she says, pointing.
I look up and see a huge mural painted onto the theatre wall. It stretches the entire height of the building and depicts a withered old man in glowing white robes. His balding head is ringed by a red circular halo and his hands are stretched out towards us in a gesture of welcome. Blood drips from his fingers. I suppose it's intended to be beatific, religious, holy. But to me it just looks fucking creepy, because standing around him, gazing up at him in awe and wonder, are a gaggle of children.
"The Abbot," says Caroline. "Come on, it's nearly time for the miracle" She leads me through the market and into the theatre.
Inside is a small wiry man with a little stall selling bags of KP peanuts. I gawp. "I know," says Caroline, registering my amazement. "He's here every time, and no-one knows where he gets them. People have tried following him back to wherever he's got his stockpile, but he's too slippery."
"Hey, thin man," she says cheerily. "Can I get a freebie for my guest here?"
The peanut seller smiles broadly and tosses a packet to me. "Anything for you, sweetheart," he says. Caroline blows him a kiss and we walk through the doors into the auditorium as I pull open the packet and inhale the salty aroma. Yum.
"We rescued his daughter — well, he says she's his daughter — from the snatchers six months back," she offers as explanation.
There's a big screen on the stage and a projector in front of it. A relatively large crowd — fifty or so people — has gathered in front of the stage. I hear the cough and splutter of a generator starting up and settling into its rhythm before the projector comes alive and beams snowstorm static for our amusement.
"So what are we going to see?" I ask through a mouthful of honey roasted heaven.
"Wait and see. It happens at the same time every fortnight," she says, as we take our positions at the edge of the crowd.
The television signal kicks in and we see a graphic of a red circle against a light blue background, and then the show begins. The miracle.
The broadcast is by a group who call themselves the Apostolic Church of the Rediscovered Dawn and they're — wouldn't you know it — American. Their leader is the creepy guy from the mural. An ancient, wizened old vampire who's survived the plague despite being — he claims — AB Positive. He provides a demonstration, mixing his blood with O-Neg taken from two acolytes who sport the dead-eyed grins of happy cultists, then holding it up to the camera as it clumps.
The crowd in the studio Ooh and Aah, gasp and clap, then they start singing some bollocking awful gospel shit. The crowd here, though, aren't quite so sold. I get the impression they're just basking in the glow of the television, reminding themselves of moving pictures and cathode ray tubes. The programme is irrelevant, but watching it evokes families gathered around the national fireplace watching Big Brother or Doctor Who. Happier, simpler times.
When the song has finished, the abbot gives a little sermon. About children. It takes a few minutes for the penny to drop, and then I remember what the snatcher had said back in the school, about saving the children's immortal souls.
"Dear God," I whisper, my peanuts momentarily forgotten. "They're shipping them to America."
Chapter Eight
"America? You have to be shitting me."
"No, honest man. They got planes flying out of Heathrow and everything."
"But why?"
"New beginning. That's what the churchies say. We're rescuing the kids so they can go out to America and find the Promised Land or something. They've got it easy over there, you know."
"Really?"
"Yeah, still got electricity and supermarkets and all that stuff. So I heard."
"And the nukes?"
"Wiped out the political elite. Left a power vacuum that these Neo-Clergy have filled. And they've got everything just fucking sorted, man. Peace, love, charity, all that jazz."
Tariq looked at me over the top of our prisoner's head and rolled his eyes.
"Listen, pal, I don't know where you're getting your information but I know for a fact that America's political elite is alive and kicking."
"Yeah, 'course you do."
"Saw the President himself two years back, on a live… oh. Oh holy shit!"
"What?" asked Dad.
"What his aide said about children. Do you remember Tariq?"
"I was bit busy being shot, old chap."
"He said, now let me get this right… 'spied her rounding up the children'. It was the first thing I heard when I came round in Blythe's office."
"Well, that's our boss, isn't it," said our captive. "Spider. The big man."
"Spider? I thought he was talking about Jane. Spied her. Fuck, I'm an idiot."
"What are you thinking, Lee?"
"Don't you get it? That wasn't the bloody president. That was this Abbot guy pretending to be the President. He had Blythe running round at his beck and call, trying to take control of the UK so he could use the army to round up all the children and ship them out to the States."
"And he must have already had a guy on the ground starting the job," says Tariq. "This Spider bloke."
"Who's assumed control this end now that we've taken the army out of the equation. The President's aide told Blythe there was a bigger picture."