When she saw them coming she stopped, stood up and waved happily at them. Half an hour later they were moving.
11
They made it to London without having to stop again.
Ben spent the long days helping out around the boat, resting his ankle and thinking about what his world was like now. He missed Sanctuary but it didn’t really feel like it was his home anymore; he had seen the ugly underside of the place and even if they went back and armed everyone there they wouldn’t be welcome. Nicholas would need to be dealt with and, even if he had rigged the last election, he still had his supporters.
Then he thought about Mary and about the twins and he started to worry. Nicholas would have worked out by now that he was gone. Previously he wouldn’t have put anything like it past him, but it turned out he didn’t know Nicholas as well as he thought he did.
The days passed and his concern for Mary and the boys grew to the point where he considered abandoning ship, finding some way, any way, he could to get back to Sanctuary and be with them. He knew he was creating most of the drama, that he didn’t know if anything had happened, but once he’d had a thought he found it impossible to shake it. He imagined them imprisoned somewhere, badly treated, or worse yet; dead. It would be made to look like an accident, Nicholas had a public image to preserve, but they would still be dead.
Then he wondered if Cora’s death had really been an accident. What if she had discovered something about her husband and he’d ‘dealt with her’. Anything seemed possible now.
So it was that, by the time they arrived in London, he found it difficult to think about anything else. They were having increasingly frequent meetings about what they were going to do when they got there but he barely took anything in. It was almost a surprise to see the once familiar buildings loom on the horizon.
They arrived at night. The skyline was crowded with giant glass tombstones, dark and lifeless but still standing, despite decades without care. Ben sat on deck with the others taking it all in. He managed to escape from his fears for his family long enough to remember a time when he had been ten years old and fleeing from the city.
It was all such a long time ago now. He could remember shouting and fires and being bundled into a boat with Cora by his mum. It had been his first time on a boat. He remembered hearing the motor start and it seemed that it hadn’t stopped since.
They drank whiskey as they drifted lazily down the river. There were no other boats in sight and the city appeared dead. But it wasn’t. Lurking in the long shadow of night, he knew, there were the creatures of nightmares, vampires. He knocked back a mouthful of whiskey and enjoyed the way it burned his throat and made it easier to forget the longing for his family.
Anthony was back on his feet again, if shakily. Daniel had refused to let him join them the following day. He stood against the side railings with his head tilted up, perhaps remembering his own flight from the capital city. Kris would also be staying aboard, she was standing close to Martin with his arm draped over her shoulder. Mr and Mrs Thresher stood beside one another and the others were scattered around.
It was a beautiful clear night and they got to enjoy it for nearly an hour before the sounds started. Like fighting cats the screeches echoed across the water becoming menacing and unwelcome. They looked uncomfortably at one another.
“I think we’ll call it a night,” said Joel and led Mrs Thresher back inside. The others followed but Ben remained on deck beside Aaron who was on shift at the tiller.
“You ready for this?” said Aaron.
Ben nodded but he wasn’t really sure. They had been over the details of the plan but they swum around in his head and he couldn’t pin them down into any sensible order. “I guess so.”
They stood in silence. The unasked question hung from Ben’s lips. Aaron didn’t seem to notice. He thought again about Mary but pushed the thought away.
“What’s the plan when we get back?” he said.
“To Sanctuary?”
Ben nodded.
Aaron took a long deep breath, paused and then shook his head. “I don’t know Ben, I’m sorry but it’s the truth. I don’t know what Nicholas has told people about where we’ve been. He won’t have been able to keep it quiet.”
“Why not?”
“They tried to kill us. They did kill Sandra and Sol. And he knows that we know it was them. So I guess he’ll tell people we opened fire first, that we lured them into a trap or something, I don’t know. Whatever it is we won’t come out of it as the good guys.”
Ben wondered what Mary would make of it. Would she have faith in him or would she believe whatever the General said? He called it a night shortly after that, took himself inside and lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. He was confused and he couldn’t shake it.
12
Morning came too soon.
Ben was woken by a thump that seemed to reverberate around the whole boat. He felt it as much as heard it. There was no ignoring it and so he rolled out of his bunk, grabbed his jacket and padded across the cabin to find out what was going on. He could hear people snoring and Kris muttered in her sleep, a part of him hoped it would turn out to have been a dream.
There was a gun on the kitchen counter but repeated warnings from Mrs Thresher had made him reluctant to touch anything in the vicinity of the kitchen. He paused by it and decided that on this occasion he could break the taboo. He checked it was loaded and then made his way up the stairs to the deck.
It was still dark out. Wispy clouds scattered the sky and glowed in the light of the moon. Daniel was at the tiller.
“What’s going on?” he said, closing the door behind him and walking across. Aaron was there too, pulling on a rope that hung over the side.
“We’re mooring up,” said Daniel.
“Already? What time is it?”
“An hour before,” said Daniel. “You got a gun?”
Ben held up the pistol he had picked up in the kitchen.
“Good. You can keep watch with us.”
He nodded and stood at the side to watch the riverside approach. A complicated pier stood above them in the water, its grey metal corroded by the air and water, it had turned brown in most places. The struts that held it up were bowed and sagging. Ben was relieved when they passed it.
The muddy bank reminded him of the Back Field where so much of his life had changed over the last few years. There was a patch of trees beyond it that had grown and reached the water in places. He scanned the area for movement but didn’t see anything. It was hardly surprising, vamps had an innate fear of the water and would usually do anything to avoid getting close to large bodies of it. It was a terrible miracle that they had managed to build a dam.
There was a clearing of about one-hundred metres between the first patch of trees and the second. On the other side of it he could see the tower, grey and ancient, reaching for the sky. Between them they got the boat up close and Daniel killed the engine. Everything became silent.
Further along the river a giant bridge jutted out from the land only to end abruptly a couple of hundred metres later. In the twilight Ben could see the metal sagging and wondered how long it would be before the rest of it crumbled and fell into the river. Everything he could see was decaying and falling apart. In no time at all the old world had become senile and wasted.
Aaron jumped off the side into the shallow water and pulled the rope up the muddy beach to the wall. There were mooring posts and he tied it to that. Once he was back on board they sat in silence and scanned the horizon for signs of movement.