In the thrum of Norfolk traffic, banality confers invisibility. A grey hybrid Nissan with a small pseudo-family inside it, a middle-aged patriarch at the wheel, heeding the speed limit and heading for London via the not-so-scenic route: we could be anyone. Which effectively and reassuringly makes us no one. To our left, a sour, metallic sea; to our right, the dun of ploughed agricultural land, interrupted by a sporadic urban sprawl of industrial zones, caravan parks, office blocks, and food outlets advertising coffee, hot dogs, Coca-Cola and internet access. I’ve programmed the sat-nav to guide us along minor roads to Great Yarmouth, then down the coast past Lowestoft, Aldeburgh and Felixstowe, and west towards Stadium Island parallel to the Thames estuary. With a psychotic teenager to factor into the mix, there’s no telling how our unexpected road trip might play out, but mercifully Bethany has colluded in our escape so far. When Frazer Melville stopped at an anonymous service station for supplies, including the jumbo pack of popcorn she insisted on, she slipped into the toilets with a fistful of make-up and emerged as a darkly whorish Goth. No one gave her, or us, a second glance. So far so good. But I won’t make the mistake of trusting her. Sprawled on the back seat confetti’d with exploded caramel grains, her eyes flitting to and fro, her shaved head now sprouting a ghostly helmet of stubble, she resembles a chained beast awaiting its glory moment. Occasionally she reads out a billboard advertisement in a cracked Marge Simpson voice (’Need a loan? Call 0870-101IOI now for a free consultation. Pagoda Emporium, all-you-can-eat breakfast!’). But otherwise it’s a silent drive. We’re all cocooned in our disparate thoughts.
I’m finding no comfort in mine. When I roll the window down, there is a fetid smell, as though the moon has rotted and exhaled a candid lunar foulness across the ocean. It feeds my unease and reminds me — more than I care to be reminded — that an island is a prison. If we did somehow make it to safety, what kind of safety might that be? How does a paralysed woman go about surviving in an overheated, flood-swamped, ransacked world with wrecked communication, diminished resources, and no readily available supplies of food? Will we be looting supermarkets for bottled water, sugar and canned sardines? Planting cabbages? If we require guns, will we know how to fire them, and at whom? Perhaps, deep down, if I’ve assumed anything, it is that the disaster won’t happen. Or that if it does, we’ll die, quietly and efficiently and without pain, via the application of an inner delete button which permits us to be here one second and gone the next. Until now, the thought of my own demise hasn’t scared me — perhaps because I have already kissed death long and hard enough to feel a sick intimacy. But now, with the spectre of catastrophe massing behind the stacked clouds, I discover I am not ready to kiss it again. Apart from anything else, I have a healthy fear of pain.
‘What kind of people live on these Planetarian settlements?’ I ask Frazer Melville in an undertone. I have been trying to picture such a place, but all I can conjure are the images I have seen in magazines: humped rows of solar-panelled eco-shelters, wind turbines, beet and hemp fields, fish-farms, indoor vines and muddy toddlers in wellington boots. Beyond that, and my acquaintance with Harish Modak’s pessimistic assessment of Homo sapiens’s prospects as a species, I don’t have a clue.
‘Like Harish said. Farmers, doctors, engineers,’ replies Frazer Melville, his eyes fixed on the road. I envy him something to focus on. ‘The people you’d need.’
‘Physicists, palaeontologists, pessimistic old farts, gay climat-ologists, fucked-up shrinks,’ Bethany offers from the back seat. ‘And teenagers. For breeding purposes, right?’
I should probably cry at this point, but I find myself doing the opposite. If a little hysterically.
‘I visited one in Canada once,’ says Frazer Melville. ‘You have to get into a whole new way of thinking.’
‘In a good way or a bad way?’
He shrugs. ‘In the only way.’ He glances at the sat-nav. ‘We’ll be at the stadium in two hours.’ His face is rigid with concentration.
‘Injured at work?’ enquires Marge Simpson. ‘What’s your case worth? Call now and talk to an expert. Office Sense: financial planning redefined.’
Some time ago, Ned called to say they would fetch us by helicopter from the centre of the stadium sometime after the press conference. In the meantime, if need be, we’d stay in touch by phone. We should keep an eye on the news on the dashboard TV. But he warned us to be careful: if a link is made between Bethany and what is about to happen, things will get ugly.
As if they aren’t now.
After I woke from my coma after the crash, the ‘one day at a time’ principle of coping ruled. Though often it was one minute, or even, in times of extreme pain, ten seconds. Drugs helped. The rest was down to self-delusion, a skill I’d previously scorned. Now, with the long-term definitively lost from the radar, and the future stretching no further than the conceivable handful of hours we have left, that principle reigns again. In World War Two, during the Blitz, down in the bomb shelters, men and women shagged like rabbits. In this moment I have an exquisite understanding as to why.
We’ve entered a wilderness of low-cost housing, burger bars and wrecking yards piled with picked-over vehicle carcasses and defunct scaffolding. When I roll the window down again, it isn’t for long. Bethany squawks ‘what the fuck?’ and Frazer Melville coughs in protest. The reek has taken on a putrid, ferrous edge. I close the window swiftly and gulp, fighting back a volcanic sensation of nausea. This is new psychic territory. We should get visitors’ badges. As the kilometres pass, the odour intensifies. At eleven o’clock we switch on the news on the tiny dashboard TV, and discover the reason. Tens of thousands of jellyfish have been washing up and disintegrating on the beaches of Britain, Scandinavia and northern Europe. Pictures from space show vast shoals moving towards the coasts like subsea clouds, while terrestrial images reveal whole armadas bobbing darkly against the shoreline and gathering in concentric ridges, as though a manic giant has garlanded the coastline with bubble wrap. Frazer Melville’s hands tighten on the wheel. ‘They’ve sensed it,’ he says. Moments later, when we skirt the shore again, we see it for ourselves. Illuminated by a fierce shard of sunshine, the beach glitters. For a moment we say nothing, absorbing the freakish dazzle of jelly and mucus. Then Frazer Melville points up at the sky, where a flock of black birds is circling. Soon the air is dark with them.
‘They’re leaving,’ he says.
‘Where to?’ I ask. ‘Where can they possibly go?’
‘Same place we’re going,’ murmurs a cracked voice from the back seat. She laughs dirtily. I glance back at her. The black kohl around her eyes is beginning to smudge. A glue-on metal stud on her upper lip hangs loose, and the sooty lipstick has faded to the unearthly grey favoured by zombies in splatter movies.
The TV news continues with a report about unusual dolphin and bird activity across the entire east coast of Britain, and into the Channel. A map zooms out from the UK to cover the whole North Sea region: a series of animated graphs shows how the disrupted shoaling and flocking is spreading outward from the Norwegian coast. There, marine biologists have speculated on a link with Buried Hope Alpha. Bethany, unimpressed, yawns wide and closes her mouth with a clack. ‘Meanwhile the environmentalist Harish Modak, who has claimed responsibility for this morning’s geo-graffiti, will be holding a press conference at one o’clock to explain why he’s drawing attention to Traxorac’s methane rig in the North Sea.’ I try to envisage Harish, Kristin and Ned confronting the global media in a hotel conference room. The cameras flashing, the bouquets of microphones tilted in their direction. And the aftermath: traffic snarls, road rage, fighting, looting, crude, vicious scramble for safety. At a traffic lights on the outskirts of Lowestoft, I picture a reef of destruction. That woman over there, struggling to heave the plastic shopping bags out of her car boot; the chubby little girl in a violet sweatshirt that says Mean Bitch, her hair divided into a hundred tight braids; the man in the suit carefully removing a blob of chewing gum from the sole of his shoe; the woman in the hairdresser’s window flicking elaborately customised fingernails through the pages of Heat magazine; the entire staff of that SUV dealership offering incredible one-year finance packages. An overweight child from Lowestoft in a T-shirt that says Mean Bitch does not represent the glory of mankind. But nor, in this moment, does she diminish it. She is simply herself. Just as I am me, sitting in a car sipping bottled water and scaring myself sick. The TV news has segued into another weather report. We drive on, out of town. The skies have broken over Scotland, bringing heavy rain. Storms are sweeping rapidly south. Commercials for life insurance and weight-loss clinics kick in, and the rank air darkens, taking on a mineral chill. I feel a wave of claustrophobia, as though we’ve been plunged deep into a reeking hole. ‘Can we stop?’ I say, tightening my grip on Frazer Melville’s thigh. ‘This isn’t very romantic, but I need to throw up.’
There is an age past which a woman should have stopped caring about chattels, objects of sentimental value, bibelots. But clearly I have not reached it yet, because in the rushed departure from the farmhouse, I left my favourite Frida Kahlo book on the table and now that I have vomited out of the opened door and recovered what dignity I can, its absence is gnawing at me. It’s as though I have betrayed someone who matters, and I can never make it up to them. To quell the creeping paranoia, I gaze on what comforts me. The cheekbone I love to bite when we make love. His strong nose. The stubble reappearing, the red of oxidised soil. He wiped my mouth, he gave me water, he hugged me tight and kissed my face even though I had just puked. I put my hand back on his thigh, where it belongs, and he covers it with his own. I feel infinite gratitude. But it doesn’t stop the fear sliding back. If now were a time for escapist fantasies born of sheer blue funk, I would put us on the shore of a river. Let’s say the Severn, somewhere near Bristol. It would be late spring. There would be dragonflies, kayaks, long lazy filaments of weed. The meadow behind us would be dotted with poppies and Michaelmas daisies and buttercups. Perhaps there is enough telepathy between us that unsaid things can be left unsaid.
‘Name the first river that comes into your head.’
He smiles tightly. ‘The Nile.’
Incorrect answer. That means we’ll die. ‘What’s wrong with the Severn?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with the Severn. But I thought of the Nile. Now it’s my turn to be ridiculous. Name a lake.’
‘Titicaca.’
‘No. Lake Powell. Which straddles Utah and Arizona, in case you didn’t know.’
I didn’t. I have never heard of Lake Powell. So that’s it. We will definitely die. ‘This can’t be the first time people have believed Armageddon was approaching.’ My voice sounds fake and chirpy. ‘Think about Carthage. The Great Plague. The Lisbon earthquake in seventeen something-or-other. Hiroshima.’
‘Noah’s flood. The birth of survivalism and an object lesson in the advantages of forward planning.’ His voice sounds fake and chirpy too. Which means he is playing my game. Is that good or bad? ‘Isaac Newton believed the world would end in 2060. But when people say "the world", they really mean our world.’ Yes: he’s concentrating on sounding normal. But like me, he’s failing. ‘The world as we know it. Geologically speaking, it’s just business as usual. One era comes to an abrupt end, the biosphere takes a severe knock, and a new era begins.’
‘The reign of the Antichrist,’ belches Bethany from the back seat. ‘The dominion of the Beast.’
The storm begins with a smatter of rain on the windscreen and a wash of freezing air bearing the dark organic stench of enzymes attacking proteins, of fish innards, of kelp and mud and bladder-wrack. Pewter clouds wheel in from the horizon. The sea has turned restless and choppy, and in the distance a white-yellow flash of lightning breaches the sky, silhouetting radio masts, telegraph poles, and the spectral skeletons of trees. Seconds later comes a gurgle of thunder. We’re now somewhere north of a residential suburb of Felixstowe where the plane trees have been pruned into arthritic fists. We’re still more than a hundred kilometres from London. Raindrops thwack at the windscreen and dribble sideways. Bethany rolls her window down and thrusts her head out to inhale the loaded, stinking air. It punches its way into the car like something alive.
‘I can feel the volts!’ she calls. Then addresses the sky. ‘Hey, bring it on!’
‘Close the window!’ roars Frazer Melville. Ignoring him, Bethany starts rocking on the back seat, humming loud and open-mouthed, the way a baby will test its voice for rowdiness: an experiment in noise-production.
‘Storms agitate her.’ I’m remembering Oxsmith. ‘We need to park somewhere and call her down.’
The stench is so dense I can taste it on my tongue. In the back seat, Bethany’s eyes are glittering darkly, as though she is watching a dangerous stage show beyond an invisible curtain. She leans out of the window and yells into the gusting rain: ‘And there shall come a rushing as of a mighty wind! And there shall come electricity! And the righteous shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air!’
‘Hey, Bethany, shut the window, I’m trying to drive a car here!’ snaps Frazer Melville. A line of sweat is running down the side of his face and into the collar of his shirt. I glance back at Bethany. She is fighting the buckle of her seat belt.
‘Pull over right away. Bethany, it’s OK. You’ll be OK,’ I say.
But she won’t be OK. There was never going to be a time when she would be. She unstraps her belt and flings it off. Then with an ecstatic cry, she has yanked open the door and hurled herself out.
Frazer Melville twists the steering wheel and swerves the car into the pavement where it stalls, skewed half on the road, half off. My mouth is wide open so I must have screamed. Bethany’s door gapes open to the pavement and rain lashes in, darkening the seat. Cars honk furiously as they swerve past. Ahead, there’s no sign of Bethany. Then, in the wing-mirror, I see an outline and something fights in my throat. She’s spread-eagled on the pavement behind us, motionless.
With forensic clarity, I picture her broken spine. Specifically, the smashed vertebrae. The break is at T3 level. Maybe T9. The nightmare springs to violent life. My heart volleys with blood.
But a second later — the relief is disorienting — she has jumped to her feet as though nothing has happened, and she’s running past us and up a side-street across the road to the left, her giant black T-shirt flapping loosely. I wonder vaguely if someone might have called the police. And whether, in this moment, it might even be a blessing if they came. Up ahead, fork lightning divides the sky, followed immediately by a ferocious thunderclap, shockingly close. The storm is right overhead.
‘I,m going after her,’ mutters Frazer Melville, flinging open his door to another blare of horns. In a second, he’s out. I call after him but he is gone, swallowed into the storm’s murk.
The rain is still whipping in through the open back door, flooding the seat. I reach over to the controls and turn on the hazard lights. A young man curses me in Urdu before revving off into the storm. Out of reach of my wheelchair, I am helpless. I can’t even close the back door from where I’m sitting. The wet air seethes like a putrid stew. To my left, I can just make out Bethany’s tiny black silhouette. Frazer Melville is running after her. They’ve taken a side-street flanked with plane trees, where three young children are splashing in the downpour. There’s a blond man, perhaps their father, in the covered driveway, fixing his car. He straightens up to watch the stubble-headed Goth kid rush past at full-tilt, followed by the big man in shirtsleeves, soaked to the skin, shouting wildly.
Then I see where Bethany is headed. There is a horrible logic to it.
On a patch of wilderness beyond the road, the pylon stands tall as an eight-storey building.
I roll down the window and honk the car horn until the blond man turns. He’s in his thirties, wearing an oil-stained sweatshirt with a hood. Chest-hair sprouts out of the top. ‘Please come here, I need your help!’ I yell through the whipping wind. He glares at me accusingly, then glances back at Bethany and Frazer Melville, who are now halfway to the pylon, and shouts at the kids in a language that sounds Slavic. They ignore him. He shouts again, more brutally, and they run inside the house. Another lightning flash splits the sky in two. I try to indicate I can’t move, grinning at him desperately, as animals do when cornered by a predator. Finally, with reluctance, the man ducks his head into the rain and runs over. The next thunderclap resounds with a series of crashes like hurled crockery.
‘You got a problem?’ he shouts over its dying reverb.
‘My wheelchair’s in the boot! I can’t walk! I need your help!’ Coming closer, he peers at my legs with clear scepticism. ‘I’m paralysed,’ I insist. ‘I can’t use them. If I could, I wouldn’t be asking you for help!’ He’s wearing a crucifix round his neck. His eyes are pale and mistrustful. ‘Our daughter just went crazy on us. She’s a drug addict. We’re taking her back to rehab. We thought she was clean for the trip, but she’s taken something and now she’s suicidal.’ The man looks wary. ‘She’s on drugs, do you understand what I’m saying? We nearly had an accident!’ The rain smashes at my face, my arms, my lap.
‘This is a quiet neighbourhood,’ he says. I recognise the accent as Russian. ‘You call the police. They deal with it.’
His shirt is soaked through, showing big, hefty muscles, not the body-building, gym-born variety but the kind farmers and workmen have. Muscles I desperately need to borrow. A flare of sheet lightning turns his face into a flash photograph. Then more thunder, like the slow ripping of canvas.
‘There’s no time! Please, just get in the car and drive. We have to stop her. She’s violent.’ The Russian clamps his mouth closed, locking it with a resolute shift of his jaw. I realise just how tired and hungry I am. And then how furious. ‘Listen to me!’ I’m shouting now, right in his stupid stubborn face.
‘Hey, calm down, lady!’
‘My daughter is about to climb up that pylon over there and electrocute herself! And you’re just standing there! We have to stop her. Come on! Get in the car. The keys are in the ignition. So for Christ’s sake, just drive!’
We reach the base of the pylon just as Bethany has thrown herself at it. The Russian stops the car, and throws himself out, leaving the engine running and the windscreen wipers on. I peer through the misting glass. Bethany grips a section of the huge scaffold leg, then tips her head back to assess the pylon’s height, and starts to scale it, agile as an insect. Frazer Melville is calling at her through the rain, approaching at a run.
‘Help him! Do it!’ I yell to the Russian, who is speeding after him. But my voice is lost.
Nimble and determined, Bethany is now balanced on the lowest rung, four metres up, and is stretching to get a grip on the next. But it’s too far for her to reach. The wind is whirling in all directions, and her feet are slipping on the wet metal.
I curse my useless legs.
Shouting as he goes, Frazer Melville heads for the thick base strut and throws himself at it, grabbing a rung with one hand. He hangs for a moment, dazed. Then, hauling his weight up, he shuffles precariously across to where Bethany is now hunched, a tiny bundle of wet black clothes. Through the rain, I can hear her screaming at him to fuck off. He signals to the Russian to get directly underneath: he must be hoping to dislodge her. The Russian obeys, but when Frazer Melville reaches Bethany to prise her away, she lashes out at his face with her nails, and he yells in pain. Seizing her upper arm he tugs at her, but she has wound her lower limbs around the metal strut and locked them fast.
‘You have to go up there!’ I yell at the Russian. He can’t hear me. I watch as he hesitates. Then, deciding on the other strut, he starts to climb. After slipping a few times he gets the hang of it and approaches Bethany from behind. She doesn’t see him closing in. Frazer Melville, on the other side of her, still has her by the arm but his balance looks precarious. With a forward lunge, the Russian manages to seize hold of Bethany’s right leg. She screams and kicks out at him, knocking the side of his face, but he keeps dogged claim, prising her foot away from the strut. Both men have a grip on her now, one at either end, but I know she’s resisting with all her force. I can hear her banshee screams, and the two men shouting back in fury. It’s Frazer Melville who loses his balance first. But he doesn’t let go of Bethany. And nor does the Russian.
The moment has a horrible, slow-motion inevitability. Clinging to one another in a writhing tangle, still fighting, the three of them tilt and fall, crashing to the ground four metres below.
Bethany has been hyperventilating, but her breathing has finally calmed. There’s an ugly graze on her forehead. Her hands, still bandaged, are a bloody mess. Frazer Melville’s cheek sports a huge scratch, running with dark red blood and smeared with rust. The Russian landed badly. He is limping. They are all wet through and the rain is still hammering down. Both of the back doors are gaping open: The Russian holds Bethany down on the rear seat while Frazer Melville secures her wrists behind her with a scarf from my handbag.
It belonged to my mother, and came from Liberty’s. Somehow, remembering this incongruous fact makes me feel immensely sad, as though she is watching over me with appalled concern.
‘The sea’s going to catch fire,’ Bethany gasps, directing her kohl-smudged eyes on the Russian. But she can’t seem to focus. She’s breathing oddly. ‘Do you get what I’m saying? Everyone’s going to drown. In a giant wave. You too. You’re going to die.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ says Frazer Melville, pressing a wad of cash into the man’s hand.
Nodding in acknowledgment, the Russian inspects the money, then stuffs it in his back pocket. ‘No trouble, man.’ His elbow is bleeding profusely.
‘He’s not my father, you know,’ slurs Bethany, wiping her forehead and inspecting the blood. ‘And she’s not my mum. But they fuck their brains out. True story.’
Repelled by what he has saved, the Russian slams Bethany’s door shut and turns to leave.
‘Listen,’ I say urgently. ‘It’s true about the tsunami. They haven’t announced it yet. But it would be a good idea to leave before the roads get completely jammed. You won’t regret it.’
‘You’ve got a head start,’ confirms Frazer Melville, turning the key in the ignition. ‘Take your family and drive inland. Go for the highest ground you can find. Or if you know anyone with a boat…’
A thousand questions are forming on the Russian’s face but we don’t have time to answer them. Frazer Melville shoves the car into gear, spins the steering wheel round, and propels us on to the road with an abrupt jolt.
Bethany remains defiant about her escapade. She needed some volts, she said. It would take more than a pylon to kill her. She got a buzz just from the air. A yellowish bruise is developing around the graze on her forehead. There’s a first-aid kit in the glove compartment. After attending to the deep scratch down Frazer Melville’s cheek, I persuade Bethany to lean her head forward and, twisting awkwardly in my seat, I get rid of her remaining make-up, wash her wound with more violence than is called for, and smear on some antiseptic. Her wrists are still tied with my mother’s Liberty scarf and no one is about to free her in a hurry.
The storm has receded to a smatter of rain as we approach London. A pale light, brittle as tinfoil, glints off warehouses and office blocks. Now, as though invigorated by the sun, Bethany upgrades her tuneless humming to a full-throated rendition of a repetitive hymn about ‘the love of the lamb’. Aware of my blood pressure, I try to breathe calmly, but the tension is almost choking me. The lamb is becoming a creature I’d happily throttle with my bare hands. Frazer Melville, still fuming after the pylon episode, pleads with her to stop, but as I could have warned him, she is as unreachable as a far-flung galaxy. She laughs and switches to a new hymn. This one’s about ‘power in the blood’.
‘Remind me why we let her come,’ I murmur. We are still at least forty kilometres from the stadium.
‘Some bollocks about ethics. Regretting it?’ Frazer Melville checks his watch. ‘Two o’clock. Let’s catch the news. The story should be out.’
I flick on the BBC to a blare of theme music announcing the bulletin. When the dashboard screen fills with an aerial shot of Buried Hope, Frazer Melville thumps the steering wheel in delight. Scientists warn of a disaster in the North Sea set to strike Europe. The image switches to the press conference, where Harish Modak, Ned Rappaport and Kristin Jons dottir sit on a raised stage in a vast hall packed with journalists. They’re claiming it’s a global crisis on a scale… Now that the news is out, relief pulses through me, as welcome and sweet as a dose of morphine. Bethany, apparently indifferent, continues her off-tune singing. I turn up the volume to concentrate. In the past hour, leading environmentalist Harish Modak has warned of a tsunami in the North Sea which could devastate northern Europe and submerge much of Britain. He says the event has already been triggered by an accident at the North Sea methane rig, Buried Hope Alpha. ‘Would you be free-hee from your passion and pride?’ warbles Bethany. ‘There’s power in the blood, power in the blood. Come for a clea-hensing to Calvary’s tide, there’s wonderful power in the blood!’ Professor Modak, whose team claimed responsibility for the Greenland graffiti that first drew attention to the Traxorac site, says a series of massive sub-sea avalanches… Bethany stops singing abruptly and announces, ‘My head hurts.’ On the TV, another view of Buried Hope Alpha appears, the arm of the yellow haulage crane cocked at a 4s-degree angle. While the North Sea Alliance has strongly refuted the professor’s claims, unusual marine activity has prompted speculation… An animated map shows the North Sea alive with arrows charting the mass movements of marine life. Harish Modak, Kristin and Ned reappear in front of a map of the ocean floor, and what I assume to be the seismic logs of the site. Our friends from the Norfolk farmhouse have cleaned up well. Clad in a suit, Ned is barely recognisable. He has shaved the stubble from his jaw and his wavy curls are gone, replaced by a sober, corporate-lawyer crop. Kristin, her hair in an elegant chignon, is wearing a dark green jacket and cream shirt, while Harish Modak looks sharp, alert and less frail than in the flesh. If Kristin is feeling nervous, she shows no sign of it as she explains the science, illustrated by figures, maps and graphs. She makes a clear, succinct case. Frazer Melville flexes his hands on the steering wheel, re-energised. Ned is next. He, too, has prepared efficiently.
‘In practical terms this means that if you live within ten kilometres of any coast, leave now. Pack food and medical supplies and move to high ground,’ he finishes. ‘Expect a domino effect.’
If the British public is anything like I was, the warning won’t sink in at first, I reflect. They’ll go into denial, or worry about peripherals like toothpaste and dog food. When Harish speaks, it’s with the regretful air of someone forced to disappoint a child. ‘Sudden global warming — with an increase of average global temperatures by four degrees or more — will be the most devastating result of the oncoming catastrophe. It has happened twice before on Earth in the distant past. Now we have every reason to believe it is happening again. We fear it will begin in this part of the world within a matter of hours.’
I think of my father in the nursing home. How fast do chalk cliffs crumble when submerged by a wall of water travelling at the speed of a jumbo jet? How long does it take for an old man’s lungs to fill with liquid?
Harish Modak is speaking again, this time over a wash of agitated voices.
‘Many won’t believe us. And that is their choice. But my associates and I believe in the right to know. Now that people have been warned, they can decide for themselves what to do. And I wish them luck.’
The anchorwoman appears again over running images of the press conference, where reporters continue to bombard the panel with shouted questions. Traxorac has firmly refuted Professor Modak’s claims, denying there’s any unusual activity at Buried Hope Alpha. The government has dismissed the alert as wholly unfounded, insisting that the evidence is not credible, and the public should not panic. But while the Chief Scientist has yet to make a public statement, leading figures in the scientific community — among them Kaspar Blatt, Akira Kamochi, Walid Habibi and Vance Oxek, who have all seen the Traxorac data — are supporting mass evacuation. They say the unusual behaviour of marine life, particularly off the Norwegian coast, is further confirmation that an instability on the sea floor could soon become critical. On the back seat, exhausted by her hymn-induced headache, Bethany is staring blankly out of the window. Ahead of us sprawls the cluttered, uneven skyline of London’s periphery. A second later, her eyelids droop.
On the satellite picture we looked at back at the farmhouse, the geography of south-eastern Britain — the hump of Norfolk and Suffolk, the grey-brown dotting of urban conurbations, the chiselled roads, the snaking gut of the Thames — seemed dream-like, its obliteration a hypothetical scenario you might idly fabricate on a screen if you had the software and the destructive urge. But here at ground level, with the sun’s glint giving the air the translucency of a troubled onion glaze, amid the rearing high-rises and paint-flaking retail outlets and towering cranes, the pornography of disaster springs all too readily into vivid technicolour: the flagellated trees, the crying children, the splintered road-signs, the human bodies, bobbing like swollen tubers. Once upon a time, I think, kings would plant oak forests for wood which could be felled in a hundred years to make ships to attack their enemies. They knew they would never live to see the resulting armadas but it wasn’t about seeing: it was about vision. What has happened to us? How is it that we, the inventors of devices that fly across oceans, hurtle to other planets, burrow underground, and kill from a distance; we, the atom-splitters, the antibiotic-discoverers, the computer-modellers, the artificial-heart-implanters, the creators of GM crops and ski-slopes in duhai, have failed to see five minutes beyond our own lifetimes?
The storm has rinsed the air but there’s still a cloying smell of decay. Has a whiff of rotten eggs crept into the organic reek, or has my imagination been hijacked?
‘In case of the Rapture, this vehicle may be unmanned,’ says Frazer Melville, pointing to the bumper sticker on the car ahead of us. To our left, the Thames has darkened to black, its surface flecked by quills of white foam. He looks pensive. ‘Turn to the God Channel.’ I fling a blanket across Bethany and zap until I hit The Worship Workshop, a studio discussion in which it’s clear from the aggressive way the guests are eyeing each other that a ferocious argument has erupted in response to the news. A thickset man in a well-cut suit is speaking animatedly, waving a Bible at his neighbour, a rangy preacher with sunburnt features and a great outdoors look.
‘The answer is in this book! It’s called the Holy Bible and it’s all in here! So with respect, to refute your argument, Marlon, and I appreciate your sincerity and don’t doubt your love of Jesus, I say this is a time for Bible study, and for a careful reading of the word of the Lord as it is laid down here. Let’s not go making inter- pretations on the hoof, in response to all this! Let’s stick to the basics. Let’s not get swept up in this is-it-or-isn’t-it until we have studied exactly what the scriptures say! And that’s going to take time—’
‘Which is exactly what we don’t have!’ explodes a young black woman, splaying her hands wide. ‘I don’t know what your clock’s doing, but mine’s ticking very loudly right now!’
Another man, older, cuts in. His voice is slow and measured. ‘We’re forgetting something here. There will be no warning. Jesus told us it will come like a thief in the night. That’s the beauty of the Rapture. We do not know when it will happen. We cannot know, Christine. We cannot know!’
‘True words, Jerry,’ agrees the craggy-faced man. He too is clutching a Bible. ‘But what about saving our brothers and sisters? We have a Christian duty to help these people. If what we’ve heard here today on the news is true ‘ We have a Christian duty to help these people. If what we’ve heard here today on the news is true—’
‘And who did we hear it from? Planetarians! Atheists!’ protests Marlon.
‘Their facts are confirmed by other scientists who are not Planetarians. Kaspar Blatt among them, and he is a man of God whom I respect. Frankly, Marlon, I can’t imagine, short of all-out nuclear war, what could be a clearer signal of the End Times being on their way, apart from the other very clear signal we already have, which is the war in the Middle East! This is a wake-up call. We’re not just talking about one tsunami in the North Sea, my friends. We’re talking about sudden global warming of up to four or even six degrees. Let me quote to you Zechariah, chapter fourteen, verse twelve: their flesh will be consumed from their bones, their eyes burned out of their sockets, and their tongues consumed out of their mouths while they stand on their feet. I say we should all be taking action here. Think of your loved ones who have not yet found Jesus! Bring them to the Lord before it’s too late, so they may be raptured too!’
The black woman opens her arms wide, as if embracing the whole studio. ‘Yes! We should be rejoicing! We should be rallying people to celebrate this event in God, because the hour is coming!’ She breaks into a glorious smile, and tears fill her eyes. ‘What’s up with you guys? I mean, I’ve waited all my life for this day! I feel so blessed!’
The panel’s mediator interrupts. ‘Well, there’s one congregation that agrees with that sentiment. We’re going live now to Birmingham, where the Temple of God has already decided on its own reaction.’
The image switches to a young preacher addressing a crowd of worshippers, many still arriving through the doors. A choir in long shiny blue robes is swaying behind the preacher. ‘We’re celebrating, people!’ he roars, thumping the air with his fist. ‘We’re mobilising!’ The crowd roars back its applause. There are wolf-whistles and cheers. ‘We’re celebrating the good news which the elders here have interpreted for us! We’re celebrating the triumph of the Faith Wave and the coming of God’s Rapture! Long have we waited! But now, praise God, the hour is at hand! Now let’s have all you people back home head on down to your neighbourhood church, just like we’ve done here!’ The congregation whoops its support. ‘You know what we’re doing here in God’s name? We’re staying and praying! So join us! Stay and pray! Join the stayers and the prayers, mobilise alongside the righteous!’ He addresses the camera. ‘Bring your loved ones to God today. Tell them it’s not too late to find salvation. Come and get blessed, hand your soul over to Jesus, and be part of the Rapture!’
‘OK,’ says Frazer Melville heavily. ‘I think we get the picture.’ I switch off the TV. The cars ahead of us have slowed to a crawl.
When we stop at traffic lights a few kilometres from Stadium Island, the streets are beginning to vibrate with activity. Animated groups have gathered on corners. Young men predominate. Stores are closing their doors and locking up, and it’s soon apparent why. From our left side comes an abrupt smash, followed by a tinkle of glass, as a youth lobs a brick through a huge windowpane and ducks inside. The looting has begun. On the pavement ahead an overweight middle-aged man in a tracksuit is waving his arms, trying to flag down a car, his features frozen in a grimace of anxiety. We drive past him and on, using the sat-nav to weave through back roads, avoiding the chaos of the high streets as much as we can. The business districts are quiet, almost dead. But in all the commercial and residential zones we pass through, men and boys are heaving laden rucksacks out of stores, or jerkily shoving shopping trolleys piled high with plundered goods — not just food, but plasma TVs, microwave ovens, DVD players, golf clubs. Every now and then we swerve to avoid someone rushing across streets littered with thrown rubble and smashed glass. In a side-alley, two drunken girls in short skirts and impossibly high heels stagger out of TGIF’s, clutching one another and shrieking with laughter. They stumble past an elderly couple struggling to load three battered leather trunks into the boot of a white Renault, and totter into a subway, their hoots reverberating from the stairwell.
On the back seat, Bethany sleeps on, oblivious. The TV news reports that the government has repeated its condemnation of the scare, calling it ‘a cynical hoax designed to disrupt the entire country’. The Home Secretary has appealed for calm. The Prime Minister will address the nation shortly. There’s speculation that a state of emergency will be declared within the hour. The mayor of London has insisted he will ‘stay at my desk and stay sane’. But in Norway, where the alert is being taken seriously by the authorities as well as the population, whole communities have evacuated the coasts and headed into the mountains. Denmark, northern Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Atlantic coast of France are in gridlock. Still heading east into London, we pass squat malls, tattered trees, ransacked food outlets. Everywhere, buildings are emptying. The TV news bursts at us in disjointed fragments. Some of the images mirror what we can see with our own eyes from the car, while others reflect the flow chart of chaos that Ned drew up back at the farmhouse: inundated airports, violent skirmishes and arrests, cities haemorrhaging people, traffic jammed, sailboats hijacked, ferries and aeroplanes changing course. I can feel my breath becoming more shallow and strained. I need all my concentration to keep full-blown panic at bay. But I’m losing the fight, because as we drive on through thickening traffic in the direction of the stadium, a new fear has been massing energy like a geyser about to blow.
‘Are you wondering what I’m wondering?’ I ask Frazer Melville. I’m looking at the cars around us. He nods miserably. His hands are clutched tight on the wheel, his profile pale and strained.
I zap through the channels, then stop and freeze when I see Bethany’s face grinning back at me from the family photograph that I saw in her file at Oxsmith. The cheesy smile, the braces that fill her entire mouth. The image zooms out to show her parents. ‘In a new development, the abducted teenager Bethany Krall has been linked to the disaster alert.’ We exchange a look of dismay. I glance at the back seat: she is still curled up in the blanket, fast asleep. ‘Her father, the Reverend Leonard Krall, and her former therapist Joy McConey say the teenager predicted the catastrophe that Professor Modak says is imminent. They’re urging anyone who sees Bethany to treat her with extreme caution. They’re also asking the public to look out for her two abductors, Dr Frazer Melville, a research physicist, and Gabrielle Fox, a former employee at the high-security facility where Bethany was confined.’ Abruptly our faces — unflattering portraits from ID cards — fill the screen.
‘When it comes to sixteen-year-old Bethany Krall, there are more questions than answers at the moment,’ says a young female reporter. She is standing outside Oxsmith. Sheldon-Gray’s rowing machine, Newton smashing Bethany’s globe, the parched institutional lawn, Mesut’s striped hot-air balloon hanging from the ceiling in the art room: mental snapshots from a lifetime ago. ‘First, could it be that the young killer, until recently an inmate here, is behind a huge global hoax? Some charismatic church leaders have expressed the belief that she predicted the massive global disaster Harish Modak’s team have warned of. Her father, the Reverend Leonard Krall, has even declared he believes his daughter is the embodiment of a satanic force. Bethany’s so-called prophecies have been uncannily accurate in the past, according to her former therapist Joy McConey. But is the teenager really a modern-day Nostradamus? What are her claims based on? As for the girl who stabbed her own mother to death: where is she now?’ Around us, the traffic is slowing down. But it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t make sense. We’re not heading out of the capital, but into it. Then Leonard Krall appears. He’s standing in front of a huge outdoor screen flashing the message Are you Rapture ready?
‘As a Christian, I’m praying for Bethany,’ says the man who tipped me out of my wheelchair and left me helpless in a church car park. ‘I’m a father as well as a believer. I love my child. And I love the Lord too. And when two great loves are not compatible…’ His lip quivers, his eyes shine with passion. But a corner of my mind is preoccupied with something else: why are so many other cars headed in the same direction as us? ‘If our church elders are correct in believing that this is a sign the End Times are here, I am praying that she too will be raptured along with the righteous,’ continues Krall. ‘But I fear that will not happen.’ He shakes his head, as though too upset to continue, then regains his grip. ‘My daughter has chosen another kind of future.’ And why do these cars have no roof racks or trailers? No obvious luggage? Why do the families inside them look thrilled with life, instead of scared out of their wits? ‘If Bethany were here now I would say to her, stop doing the Devil’s work and return to your true family, which is the family of Jesus Christ. I will be praying for her here today, along with many thousands of others, as we await the glory that shall be ours.’
And why do so many of them have Christian bumper stickers?
When the camera pulls out, and we see where Leonard Krall is standing, Frazer Melville says quietly, ‘Oh fuck.’
Which more or less sums things up.
I turn my head away from the screen and blink. It can’t be.
But it is.
The Olympic Stadium has been transformed into a huge, impromptu worship centre.
I whip round. Bethany is still sleeping. Did she know all along that this would happen? Did she engineer it?
‘Leave her. It doesn’t matter. We’ll find another place,’ says Frazer Melville. ‘Quick. Call Ned and tell him.’
I punch at the phone in mounting panic. But there’s no connection. I try again. And again. The line is blocked.
‘If the government’s declared a state of emergency, the phone lines will be down,’ says Frazer Melville. He has seen my panic and probably shares it. But he’s hiding it well.
With cruel efficiency, a plughole opens up inside me and hope drains out.
A tiny brown spider is making its way along the dashboard. Sometimes, as a young child, I’d squash small creatures, from a mixture of boredom, sadism and curiosity. Following its stumbling progress towards the air filter, and contemplating what I could or could not do, at this moment, to radically alter the course of its tiny, unaware life, I realise the extent of my mistake in accepting the grandiose notion that Earth’s plight is man’s punishment. That all we have wished for in modern times, and engendered in the getting, is an affront to some invisible principle of ethics. Nature is neither good nor motherly nor punitive nor vengeful. It neither blesses nor cherishes. It is indifferent. Which makes us as expendable as the dodo or the polar bear.
‘Drive one kilometre to destination,’ says the sat-nav.
‘Did you know your father would be at the stadium?’ I ask as levelly as I can manage when Bethany wakes, her face plastic with sweat. Despite the huge bruise and her tied wrists, she looks oddly serene, as though she has slept for hours rather than minutes. She inhales deeply and breathes out slowly, as though somehow, along the journey, she has studied yoga and it has nourished her.
‘Sure,’ she smiles. Her voice is measured, almost thoughtful. ‘Along with thousands of other people. All expecting the Rapture. I saw it.’
A current of fury sweeps through me. Frazer Melville swings round, his face red. ‘So you led us — deliberately — to the worst place we could possibly go!’ he yells. ‘And we can’t change the plan because we can’t get hold of Ned!’ He thumps the wheel.
‘The helicopter’s landing there,’ I say quietly. My mouth is dry: I have to force the words past my tongue. ‘Right in the middle of it. And there’s nothing we can do but go there. Did you see that, too, Bethany?’
She smiles sweetly. ‘Yup. Into the lion’s den.’
I’m remembering my calamitous meeting with the Reverend Leonard Krall. Paranoia is like a fast-growing crystal. Blink and it has sprouted a whole new section.
You’re being manipulated, Ms Fox, he said. And you can’t even see it.
‘Hey, there it is!’ yells Bethany. She is pointing ahead, her whole face alight with excitement. She looks almost innocent. ‘0 come all ye faithful, for the Lord himself will descend from Heaven with a shout! Halle-fucking-lujah!’
I stare.
It’s like contemplating a mirage.
The colossal ziggurat rears up from its man-made island, the shiny, tilted cliff of its outer wall dwarfing the crowds that swarm across the footbridges and filter inside, sucked through the porous skin of its flank.
We have arrived.
I’d forgotten its epic scale, its amalgam of practicality and grandeur, its seemingly endless capacity for absorption. A stadium is a shell into which human flesh must be poured before it can spring to life. Fathoming that complex, unassailable dynamic was part of what shocked me out of my misery when I watched some of the Para-lympics in rehab with a group of fellow-patients, all of us spinal injured, all in mourning for what we had lost. The neuropathic pain that racked my lower back and my dead limbs was so violent I knew it would tip me over the edge if I didn’t get a grip. That, and the open wound of my grief — for Alex, for Max, and for my legs — was vivid enough to turn every day into an inner conference on suicide. But during the few hours I spent watching other wheelchair-users barrelling along the track in a shining spin of metal, something happened to eject the pain from my consciousness. Afterwards there was a cruel reflux of anguish, and the days returned to their routine. But the experience led to an inner shift. Those athletes had offered some kind of hope, an idea to aspire to, concrete proof that the unimaginable was possible and that life could continue in some wholly different form. That the spirit might thrive. I knew enough to grab it like someone drowning, and cling on.
Somehow, that day changed me.
As for this one—
If I believed in God, I would request his help at this juncture.
As we enter the East car park, thin shafts of sunlight pierce the clouds and glitter on the roofs and bonnets of a thousand vehicles, refracting off them in kaleidoscopic fragments. From the distance, the acoustic thrum of prayer-music emanates from the stadium’s deep cradle, relayed on the giant screens illuminating its exterior walls. Droves of smartly dressed worshippers are surging towards the wide footbridges that cross the waterways encircling the island, their chatter lending the atmosphere the geniality of a friendly sports tournament. There are smiles and winks, whoops and waves, shouted blessings. A pretty woman in a yellow uniform with navy epaulettes directs us to follow a line of cars to a distant bay of the car park, and calls out after us, ‘May Christ be with you!’
We park, and I glance back at the concourse: the screen shows the banked tiers of seats within the stadium are filling steadily while five or six white-clad preachers, working as a team, are engaged in a vigorous warm-up on a raised white stage at one end of the stadium. On another screen nearby, BBC News 24 is running images under the heading Britain in Chaos, scenes which are duplicated in miniature on our car’s dashboard TV. I pass Frazer Melville the bottle of water. He takes a slug and hands it back.
‘If we want the helicopter to reach us, we have to go in,’ I say. The sensation of confinement has been building like a slow torture. If I don’t get out of the car soon, claustrophobia will win. Frazer Melville is still pale. I can see the journey has taken its toll on him too.
‘Our names and faces and crimes have been broadcast to the whole nation. With your wheelchair, and the size of that news screen over there, I don’t imagine we’ll stay unnoticed for long.’
‘So let’s stay here and drown!’ offers Bethany cheerily. ‘We could all die together, like a family!’
I snap open the mobile. ‘I’ll try Ned again. If we can get a connection, we’ll know where they are, at least. And we can tell them we’ve arrived. They’ll have left the press conference by now, right?’ Frazer Melville nods. I dial but can’t get through. All around us, yellow-uniformed ushers are shepherding people towards the footbridge that leads to the wide concourse and the stadium. As I punch at the phone again, the TV shows more images of traffic and air chaos, then rejoins a live link to Buried Hope Alpha. In the pitch darkness of a North Sea afternoon the platform stands in a pool of light, its brightness pulsing outwards into the sky and across the churning ocean. An enchanted stronghold. The site controller, Lars Axelsen, is taking questions from a cluster of anoraked journalists who have flown out for a hastily arranged press briefing. It’s clearly freezing out there. Far below them, the sea shifts blackly. I dial again: still no connection. Axelsen and another Traxorac official say there is no indication of unusual activity on or below the seabed. The questions continue. I turn the volume down and leave the men goldfishing, the phone clamped hard against my ear. I’m failing to connect, but I can’t accept it. Lars Axelsen is showing the sub-sea robot Traxorac used to bring up underwater pictures of the drill-pipe, and indicating that the pictures it took show everything to be normal.
I’m dialling again when there’s a gasp from the back seat. I swing round. Bethany is shuddering, her eyes and nostrils flared wide. ‘It’s started!’ she whispers. ‘I can feel it!’ Her breathing is odd: laboured and ragged. She’s struggling to gulp huge mouthfuls of air.
‘Bethany?’ But she’s elsewhere. She has doubled up sharply as though something has jabbed her in the stomach. Her wrists are still tied together, but she grabs her head in both hands as if to protect it while her body bucks in frantic spasms. ‘Oh God,’ I murmur. ‘Please, Bethany. Not now.’
‘I’ll get her,’ says Frazer Melville. He leaps out. Bethany’s head jack-knifes back and she emits a high unworldly scream, like the hiss of a pressure cooker, her eyes rolling upward to reveal the bloodshot whites. Then she buckles again, rocking the whole car with her convulsions. I’m aware that Frazer Melville has pulled open the back door and is trying to pin her down with his weight. That they’re struggling on the back seat, half in and half out of the car. From the corner of my eye I see one of the ushers noticing the car’s movement. Signalling to his colleague, he points in our direction, then starts making his way over, weaving his narrow body between the parked vehicles. He’s young and big-boned, but as skinny as a colt: his uniform hangs loose. By now Frazer Melville has somehow managed to push Bethany’s feet to the floor and wrench her into a sitting position, then shove himself in next to her and slam the car door so they are trapped together on the back seat.
‘Quick, undo her wrists,’ I urge. The young usher is closing in. Swiftly, Frazer Melville frees them.
Peering into the car, the youth calls anxiously: ‘Everything OK there?’
Bethany’s spasms have now quietened to a tremble. Opening her mouth in a wide 0, she takes a huge gasp of air and swallows it down.
‘Fine,’ I say, rolling the window down a fraction. ‘Just one excited girl!’ But he looks wary. He can see something’s wrong. Maybe he’s recognised us from the news.
Bethany’s lips, which have turned completely grey, start to move. She’s trying to say something. She coughs. ‘I felt it start,’ she chokes. Her voice is so faint and distant it could be a ghost’s.
Frazer Melville is staring past her, at one of the huge TV screens on the stadium’s outer concourse. ‘She’s right,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘Look.’
On Buried Hope Alpha, the journalists are getting to their feet and shouting in alarm. Something has unsettled them. Something we can’t see.
‘I’m Calum. I’m on the stadium team,’ says the young usher. He isn’t giving up. ‘Do you need a doctor?’
‘She’s fine, thanks, Calum. We’re just watching the news,’ I say weakly, pointing at the screen. ‘Something’s happening.’
And it is. Suddenly, the whole picture trembles, as though being vibrated. Lars Axelsen grabs a chair to steady himself, but he’s jolted viciously in the other direction, hurled out of view like a flung cushion. The camera zooms out to a wide-shot, judders epileptically, then somersaults. It must have crashed to the floor. You see inverted feet, running. There are incoherent shouts. Then there’s a thud. Calum’s eyes widen.
‘A pre-shock,’ murmurs Frazer Melville.
A new image, taken from the air, now shows the entire lit-up rig bouncing furiously from left to right. Then it’s motionless again. But a second later, slowly and languorously, the angle of the whole edifice shifts, tilting sideways until it’s at an impossible, gravity-defying pitch. Then with the delicate, almost balletic elegance of a camel getting to its knees, the huge structure begins to sink into the surrounding sea. There’s a fierce flare of orange and then the lights extinguish one by one. After that everything happens almost too rapidly to register. Within the space of two seconds the entire rig has vanished, sucked silently beneath the waves.
Then darkness. It’s as if it had never been.
‘I told you,’ whispers Bethany. ‘I told you. It’s started.’
The link lost, the screen flutters and goes blank. Before I can stop her, Bethany has seen her opportunity. She grabs Calum’s uniformed arm through the window and pulls him close, bringing his ear up to her mouth. He recoils from her grip, but she clings on to his sleeve. ‘Your big day’s arrived!’ she croaks hoarsely. ‘Are you Rapture ready?’ And she breaks into a foul laugh.
In that instant, I can see he has recognised her. Wrenching himself away, the young usher darts off through the parked cars, shouting into his headset.
‘Well, thank you, Bethany,’ sighs Frazer Melville. ‘I guess there is no plan B.’
He’s right. Yellow-clad ushers are appearing from all directions but there’s nowhere to run. Especially for someone who can’t even walk. It isn’t even worth discussing.
‘If that was a pre-shock, how long have we got left?’ I ask him, trying to keep my voice level. The pins and needles seethe in my legs.
‘No telling. But I’d say an hour at most. It will move at the speed of a jumbo jet.’ His voice is so quiet and calm that it’s almost reassuring. ‘From what I’ve seen of the structure of the hydrate layer, and what’s beneath, the next landslide will be catastrophic. A tsunami’s propagation velocity is equal to the square root of the acceleration of gravity times the depth of the water.’
I swallow. My throat is parched. ‘Is that how a physicist says goodbye?’
He shuts his eyes and doesn’t speak. I can feel a long desperate howl welling inside me. Seconds later five ushers have formed a ring around the car. From behind them a woman’s voice calls out, high and shrill as an alarm system, ‘Over there, in the grey Nissan! It’s that girl they’re looking for! Bethany Krall! She’s got the Devil in her, I saw it on TV!’
A throng of people is gathering around us. Most are men, and the expression on their faces covers the full range from fear to disbelief to mistrust to menace to rage. Some are shouting abuse. Swiftly, I clunk the doors locked. Terror makes a clenched fist of my throat: I try to swallow but I can’t. Frazer Melville is staring straight ahead. ‘This way!’ someone yells. More faces peer in, some thrust right up against the front windscreen. Hands hammer on the roof of the car, clamouring for us to open the doors. ‘Over here! The girl’s in the car!’ ‘Bethany Krall.’ ‘Leonard Krall’s daughter. Abducted.’ A tall security guard with a broad handsome face materialises, and signals to the onlookers to stay clear of the car. Reluctantly, they move back. The guard positions himself in the empty parking space next to us, legs apart, arms braced, but makes no eye contact. It seems he’s waiting for backup. He looks confident and professional: a man who enjoys his job because he’s good at it. Not that Bethany’s aware of him. She has netted her fingers over her stubbled head and she’s rocking back and forth like a distraught baby trapped in the prison of its cot, her face and neck sequined with sweat.
Frazer Melville exhales in resignation.
‘It was a pit,’ murmurs Bethany, uncoiling herself but still clutching her head in her hands. Something about the dreaminess of her voice makes me feel alert to what she’s saying. ‘They threw him in and put a stone over and sealed it with wax.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Daniel. They threw him in the pit with the lions. But the next morning he was still alive.’
My heart starts thudding fast. Too fast. Something needs deciphering. I put my hand to my chest to quell it. ‘Why, Bethany? Why didn’t the lions eat him?’
Her smile is almost languid. ‘Because they weren’t hungry for meat.’
Outside, I’m aware of a man parting the crowds. He’s fifty-ish, silver-haired, dark-suited. Some kind of authority. A stadium official, or a preacher, at a guess. He’s flanked by four or five younger men, all black and Asian, in sober suits and bright ties. ‘Why weren’t they hungry for meat, Bethany?’
‘I guess they wanted something else. Something you couldn’t eat.’
I’m still watching the man. A preacher, I’m sure. After a brief exchange with Calum, who points in our direction while conveying his story in a hectic rush, he stalls for a second. Then he strides over to the guard and questions him, gesturing at the car.
I look at Bethany urgently. ‘What was it the lions wanted, then?’
She shrugs. ‘They were all trapped in a pit. Daniel was trapped but the animals were trapped too. What would you want? The lions didn’t eat him. He survived.’ She coughs and blinks.
‘So what are you saying, Bethany? We go into the den, is that it?’
She gives a tiny nod.
‘What’s happening?’ asks Frazer Melville.
‘We’re putting smiles on our faces,’ I say, opening my door. ‘And getting out.’
By the time the preacher has finished talking to the guard and is coming over to confront us, I’ve reclaimed possession of my wheelchair and transferred into it. People stare openly and without shame as I effect the manoeuvre. But I don’t care. What the lions wanted was what I want now. And will do anything for.
I roll forward and greet the man with a smile, offering him my hand. He doesn’t take it. ‘I’m Gabrielle Fox.’ But it’s not me he’s interested in. He wears his revulsion for Bethany on his sleeve, like a badge of honour. His eyes are blue, piercing and oddly triangular. ‘We’ve brought Bethany Krall.’
‘So I see,’ he says. ‘She’s a child we’ve heard a lot about in this community. A child we’ve prayed for.’ Bethany hangs her head, and Frazer Melville puts a fatherly hand on her shoulder.
‘In that case I’m sure you can guess why we’ve brought her here today.’ I keep smiling. He lifts his well-groomed face in question. ‘As you probably know, I’m her therapist. Bethany and I have done a lot of talking. She’s been doing some soul-searching, as you can imagine.’ His appraising glance flits between me, Frazer Melville and Bethany. ‘She knows what she’s done. She isn’t denying her past. But she wants to ask her father’s forgiveness. We heard that Leonard was praying for Bethany here, so we came.’ This seems to throw him. He opens his mouth to speak but thinks better of it. Taking advantage of his confusion I press it further, trying to engage him. ‘She wants to come back to God, don’t you, Bethany?’ She looks blank for a moment. Her pupils are dilated and her eyes unfocused and shuddering, as though the recent convulsions have cauterised the optic nerves. But she nods in affirmation. ‘She wants to be part of the Rapture.’ I lower my voice. ‘She was just telling me the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. That’s how she’s feeling right now. A bit nervous. Aren’t you, Bethany?’ She inclines her head and I force my smile further. ‘Understandable. But she’s a brave kid. She’s ready to face up to what she’s done. I’m proud of her.’
‘Behold, I show you a mystery,’ says Bethany mournfully. ‘We shall not all sleep, but we all shall be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. I want to see my dad.’
The preacher says nothing, but I sense inner machinery working at speed.
‘As a man of God, you can’t deny her this chance,’ I urge loudly. ‘Not today of all days.’
A murmur spreads among the ushers, and seeps back through the hanging crowd.
‘Can you confirm this?’ the preacher asks Frazer Melville. He seems determined not to address Bethany directly, as if any communication with her might infect his soul. I can sense Frazer Melville computing the situation.
Like me, Frazer Melville pitches his voice to reach as far as possible. ‘Yes. So I understand. Bethany and Gabrielle have done a lot of work. Covered quite a bit of ground.’ He has judged his tone well: man-to-man frankness. ‘Emotionally and spiritually.’ He nods, as if judging and then confirming his own words. ‘Yes. I’d definitely say they’d done a lot of spiritual work. Bethany’s genuinely after forgiveness. I mean, why else would we be here?’
We all look at the preacher. He’s hesitating.
It’s Bethany who breaks the silence. She is addressing the crowd as much as the preacher. ‘Let me ask you what you think Matthew meant in chapter six, verses fourteen and fifteen.’ A small shiver passes along my shoulder blades. Her voice is different: persuasive and assured. She is unmistakably Leonard’s daughter. ‘Can I remind you what he said? He said, If ye forgive men their trespasses, so your heavenly Father will also forgive you.’ She pauses. ‘But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’ Her smile is disorienting. It belongs to someone else, someone who is not the Bethany I know, but another Bethany, a sane, sweet, ordinary girl who once shopped for clothes in the high street and went on Facebook and giggled in the cinema over a tub of popcorn and believed what she read in the Bible. ‘Now, what do you think Matthew had in mind there, Reverend?’
They are escorting us out of the car park. It seems we’re heading towards the East footbridge that leads to the stadium. Bethany is a few metres ahead, flanked by two minders. Frazer Melville and I follow, with a bulky, resolutely silent usher assigned to each of us. Frazer Melville’s is almost as tall as him, while mine is female, squat and healthily plain, with the hefty rump of an ox. The sun has disappeared behind roils of grey-black vapour which hover on the horizon, stacked like geological strata. I breathe in deep and exhale. Despite the ominous security presence, it’s a relief to be outdoors again after the claustrophobia of the car, and to have the steel rims of my wheels in my grip. I even feel a small nudge of affection for my chair. I have met others who do not see their wheelchair as a hated symbol, but as a natural extension of their body, an object of love. I never saw myself becoming one of them. But in this moment, I no longer consider them deluded.
As we forge on, it becomes evident that the crowd’s mood has curdled into an uneasy brew of ecstasy, desperation and despair. As the fall of the rig and the phrase ‘high tsunami risk’ is processed in a thousand brains, some sections of the crowd seem coshed by the news of Buried Hope Alpha’s spectacular fall, standing with the dazed expression of abruptly woken sleepwalkers, while others are openly rejoicing, their children laughing and clamouring as they flood across the wide footbridge. Some young police officers are attempting to calm the drivers who want to leave, but are hampered by the incoming flow. It’s a hopeless task: the police are outnumbered and overwhelmed. Beyond the growing pedestrian bottleneck on the bridge, people are fanning out on the concourse in front of the stadium and congregating near the huge pebble-shaped retail booths, exchanging hugs and kisses. Some, bearing the panicked, haunted look of refugees, seem intent on gleaning information. A group of Iraq-veteran types has gathered near a fountain, where they argue and gesticulate vigorously. In the meantime whole families are scaling the giant concession pods and settling on their curved roofs, hauling their belongings with them. Picking up on the simmer of human stress hormones, dogs that have been cooped too long in vehicles bark frenziedly. And through it all, an electronic bell tolls, summoning the faithful. Ahead, at the foot of the stadium’s outer wall, people are filtering through the hanging strips of plastic sheeting which separate the inside of the structure from the outer concourse. The litter bins are overflowing and there’s a smell of fish and chips. All around, families are ingesting food with a concentrated urgency, as though determined to fill their stomachs before whatever journey they envisage embarking on. Next to a rowan tree dotted with clusters of berries, an elderly woman with a blank, soulful face stands hugging herself and swaying rhythmically in a weird, solitary dance. A dark patch of urine stains her skirt. Nearby two square-shaped men are fighting, bashing at each other with monolithic industriousness. On the outer edges of the concourse, next to the waterways, groups of adults and children stand rigid watching the news on the giant screens.
I lose sight of Bethany for a while, but when I see her again I realise she must have tried to make an escape because her two ushers are now on either side of her, gripping her elbows. A blonde teenage girl spits as they bundle her past, darkening the back of her T-shirt with a splat of bubbled saliva. Fury roars through me. Unaware, Bethany keeps going, her gait uneven and puppet-like, as though she is concentrating on keeping her spine straight. When we catch up with the blonde girl, I abandon all pretence of professionalism and grab her arm.
‘How dare you behave like that,’ I hiss. ‘Bethany’s sixteen. She’s a kid. A damaged kid.’
‘But she killed her own mum, right?’ counters the girl. The crucifix around her neck flashes at me. ‘And she made this whole thing happen.’
‘No. That’s wrong. She’s here for good reasons.’
‘No she isn’t,’ says the girl, looking down at me with the kind of scorn that only teenagers have the confidence for.
‘How do you know?’ I snap. My nerves are so frayed I could scream.
‘Because I’m sixteen too. I saw the look on her face. She’s taking the piss.’
‘Come on,’ says Frazer Melville urgently. ‘Let’s not lose her.’
Grabbing the handles of my chair, he gives me a sharp shove forward. Our two ushers are now fully engaged in clearing a way for us in the throng so that we can enter the stadium unimpeded. Frazer Melville’s force is propelling me on through the surge of bodies cascading through the plastic strips that form the structure’s porous wall. It’s like being filtered into the cavernous, chaotic stomach of a whale. I’m aware of the sheer, impossible quantity of flesh and molecules around me, and of my own insignificance in the moiling throng.
‘She’s up ahead,’ Frazer Melville shouts, leaning down so I can hear. ‘I can see her. Let’s just keep going and hope we can catch up.’
Despite the post-Olympic downsizing of the stadium, it seems even more immense in its present form, too large for one set of eyes to absorb. Its far end is unlit, so that the effect is that of entering a dark-throated cave whose mouth is a pool of brightness. At the near end, ringed by the running track, the stage is a white floodlit disc, its centre dominated by a gigantic fountain of blinding white lilies. Where did such a spectacular creation come from? Who organised it at such short notice? Nearby, beyond the microphones, stands a collection of giant white blocks of staggered height, clearly intended for a choir. The warm-up team is still at work, but perhaps to cope with the shift in the emotional current, the preachers have split up, with each now addressing a different section of the lit space from the outer edges of the stage. Our ushers pause for a hurried discussion and I scan the rows of seats looking for Bethany. But there’s no sign of her. On all sides, we are surrounded by people, some sitting, others milling about in the wide aisles. Even before my accident, I felt uncomfortable in crowds, aware of the inherent danger of shoaling masses. A shudder works its way through me and I feel Frazer Melville’s hand pressing on my shoulder. He squeezes. Does he need me as much as I need him? I tip my head back and he leans down and kisses me hard on the mouth. Then he is jostled by someone and pulls away sharply and I am left with just the taste of him.
‘This way,’ says the female usher, directing me towards a row of seating at the front of the stage. ‘Stay there,’ she indicates woodenly. Frazer Melville seats himself at the end of the row and I position myself next to him in the aisle, while she speaks to someone on her headset. I strain to catch what she is saying. ‘Yes, Reverend. As I understand it, sir, yes… She quoted Matthew. Forgiveness…’ Out of the blue, her blunt face is lit by a smile whose beauty surprises me. ‘Just give the signal… we certainly will, sir… God bless you and your family too, sir. We will meet again in God’s Kingdom.’ Frazer Melville’s minder seems to have disappeared during this discussion, but a moment later I see him on the other side of the stadium, directing people up stairways into the rows of seats around the structure’s nearside rim. But it’s at ground level that the biggest crowds are congregating. And it’s here, all around us, that the unease is most palpable. Some people, unashamedly panicking, are barging against the surge of those still entering, forming a hysterical counter-current. Others are on their knees, eyes tight shut, praying intensely. A bottle-blonde woman in a pink bathrobe has climbed on to the top of a huge loudspeaker and is mouthing a prayer, or perhaps an elaborate curse, incoherently and at great speed. She’s holding some kind of package up as though pleading with the grubby cauliflower clouds that are ruching the sky. Her husband is shouting at her to come the fuck down, Trish. But he may as well be speaking Chinese.
‘Where’s Bethany?’ I ask the usher.
‘We’re taking care of her.’
‘She wants to see her father! That’s why we came!’
‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘It’s OK. She’s on her way to him right now.’
Frazer Melville and I exchange a miserable glance. Never have I felt so helpless.
‘Welcome, people!’ A young, energetic preacher, tracked by a moving spotlight, has bounced to the edge of the stage in front of us, hands aloft, white-blond hair backlit. Behind him, beyond the rim of the stage, pure blackness.
‘Hard times — some of the severest times ever seen by man — are about to be witnessed on the shores of our nation.’ His voice is gravelly with reverb. ‘Our elders confirm, and the Bible confirms, that we are now on the threshold of the End Times.’ There are a few thrilled shrieks and some raucous cheering. One of his shoes has a white lily petal stuck to it, and for some reason this makes me want to cry. I picture the huge greenhouses in which those flowers were forced into blossom, the rows of hydroponics, the harsh artificial sunlight, so bright the workers must wear sunglasses. People with livelihoods, passions, cars, tracksuits, allergies, lovers, children, favourite brands of cereal. ‘May they feel a heart-change and come to the Lord! That’s what the Rapture’s all about! Salvation! Redemption! I believe in it. Do you believe in it?’
There’s a surge of assent: whistles, hallelujahs and catcalls. A perverse thought — what if they’re right? — sprouts in my mind. I’m aware of the pink-clad woman on the loudspeaker nearby screaming something, holding up her lumpy bundle to the sky like an offering. When she tilts it at an angle, I realise it’s a baby.
From behind me I overhear the words ‘murdered’, ‘kidnapped’, ‘Devil’ and ‘pre-Trib’.
Like me, Frazer Melville is scanning the stadium for Bethany. But there’s still no sign of her. I squeeze his hand. When our eyes connect, something deep and private is swiftly exchanged. A feeling that cannot be doubted. A knowledge which in other circumstances would cramp my heart with bliss, not pain. Cuan-do te tengo a ti vida, cuanto te quiera.
But we’re circling the drain.
When Kristin Jons dottir and Harish Modak talked me through the various stages of rapid climate catastrophe back in the farmhouse, it seemed too theoretical to be terrifying. But now the knowledge is visceral. Out at sea, the jolt that shook Buried Hope Alpha giving way to further violent spasms. Ships sucked down, sub-sea cables destroyed. The sea floor erupting, caving in on itself, tonnes of sediment avalanching in a second earth-shock. The first giant wave triggered, and then building, and then sweeping in. Then the domino effect. One sub-sea landslide leading to another, each releasing millions of tonnes of trapped hydrates. A vicious chain of tsunamis barrelling through the linked oceans. Everywhere, methane that lay buried for millions of years suddenly freed, roaring to the surface and combusting on contact with the oxygen. The ocean on fire, pulsing gas high into the atmosphere. As the days and weeks pass, the air and water growing ever hotter. The heat dislodging more hydrate fields. Until continent after continent and sea after sea has joined the paroxysm. The vicious cycle creating within only months and years a world where the sun’s glare roasts the planet. Climate warming gone psychotic. Glaciers melting, the warmer oceans expanding to drown coasts and cities and forests, crushed by the pressure of salt water and mineral froth, sunk under a deep blue whose surface bears the poignant relics of human endeavour: hair-curlers, oil drums, condoms, empty Evian bottles, plastic Barbie dolls in sexy outfits.
As if to quell my mounting panic, some gentle music has crept into the hubbub, alluring and narcotic. From all directions, the stage is filling with choir-members in long white robes. Frazer Melville’s big hand rests on my shoulder, and I lay my cheek on it for comfort. On either side of us, huge screens flicker to new life. An image of the stadium seen from above, one end plunged in darkness, the other throbbing with light like a crescent moon. Close-ups of the audience. Wide-shots of the choir from different angles. The beaming faces of the white-clad preachers. Then, as the members of the choir assume their places on the raised blocks, I catch sight of a face I know.
‘Look,’ I say, pointing. Joy McConey is sitting in a row of what look like VIP seats, a hundred metres away from us. She is clad in a robe of flowing white. Her eyes are closed, as though she is deep in meditation or prayer. She’s holding a candle. Her pale red hair, decorated with a single lily flower, glimmers in its light. A frail, fading creature wrapped in a death-shroud. My heart goes out to her. I wonder where her children are. I see no sign of them, or her husband.
On an invisible signal, the five warm-up preachers turn to the choir and start to clap in rhythm. Taking their lead, the audience joins in as the music swells and spills across us like lapping water. Then, humming at first, the choir begins a wordless song, the men’s voices buzzing low, the women’s clear and warm. It’s as soothing and graceful as morphine. On the giant screens, you can see into their eyes and their moving mouths. It’s only when the lyrics start that I recognise the hymn.
Bethany sang it in the car. The elderly woman next to us starts up a high, quavering vibrato and the service at Feniton Acres comes back to me: the sense of belonging, of shared aspiration, of the fellowship of good people: the seduction of belief. The music pours and slides and swills, a pure, organic embrace. People rock and clap and sway about me. I would like to be whisked from the brink too. Or failing that, I would like to believe I will. I look at my watch. Where is Bethany? Where is the helicopter? Believe, I think.
Next to me the old lady stops singing and turns to me abruptly, her eyes brimming with joy. ‘Yes, my darling. Believe! Believe in Him and you shall enter the Kingdom!’
As the music builds to a crescendo and dies off, swallowed in clapping and whoops, I’m aware of a new, more urgent tone entering the clamour. Heads are turning. I almost don’t recognise Leonard Krall when he comes bounding along the aisle nearby and up to the raised stage. Like his fellow-preachers, he’s dressed entirely in white and sporting a discreet microphone headset. There are high-fives and catcalls as he lifts his arms skyward in greeting. His good-looking, honest face is reproduced on the huge screens all around. Ten giant Leonard Kralls, radiating identical energy and faith. If there is power in anyone’s blood today, it’s running in this man’s veins.
‘People, welcome to the Temple of Praise, and welcome to the greatest day of our lives!’ His voice reverberates through the huge space and up into the darkening air. The worshippers cheer and wave their arms in delight. There’s a hectic buzz, a whirr of joyful laughter. I feel the envy again. If only.
‘The Rapture is upon us, the Lord be praised!’ Showmanship is a talent. He has it. The commanding bulk, the confident body language, the electric energy, the unassailable conviction. There is clapping and whistling from the hard core. But I begin to sense a more muted and anxious reaction elsewhere. ‘This day is a day like no other!’ declares Krall. ‘This day is a day of joy, the day all true Christians have been waiting for and praying for. Remember what Jesus promised us: since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the Earth. Revelation. After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in Heaven.’ People are joining in, mouthing the words with him. ‘And the first voice which I heard was as of a trumpet talking with me, which said, Come up hither!’ There’s wild applause. Next to Frazer Melville, a large black woman in a red dress is rocking to and fro. Her companion, a young boy with Down’s syndrome, closes his eyes and hums dreamily. ‘Yes, folks. We shall be caught up and enter into the Kingdom of Heaven! We shall enter that door! I am one of many who’ll be repeating that good news in this temple today.’ Krall pauses and his face shifts. ‘But today is not all about us and our joy. First of all, we grieve for our loved ones, those who have not found God and will be left behind to endure the Tribulation. Yes, we grieve for them. And we ask for strength. Let me tell you something else.’ He looks up, and turns slowly. His expression, caught on the giant screens, is now one of intense thoughtfulness. ‘Today, God has handed us the privilege of an extra task before the time of deliverance unto Him. Yes. Today, God sent a challenge to us.’ He draws in a deep breath, then exhales slowly. ‘And I will confess it to you now, folks. A particular challenge to me.’
There’s a ripple of interest. Catching its wave, Krall stands expectantly, then with a half-smile points to the opposite side of the stadium. Frazer Melville takes my hand and grips it in his.
‘Praise be to the Lord!’ Krall shouts, his smile transforming. It’s the transcendent, replete expression of a man in love.
‘Hallelujah,’ breathes my neighbour.
‘Oh no,’ says Frazer Melville, nodding at the giant screen.
Bethany.
She’s climbing the steps to the platform. I glance about, but can’t place her in the flesh, so I return to the projected image. Her gait is still jerky and stiff, as though she isn’t fully in charge of her body. Her two guards are hanging back, fingers pressing their earpieces, awaiting further instructions. She is tiny, dwarfed by the colossal amphitheatre. Then the shot tightens. Blown up on the screen, her eyes are deep and dark, their pupils dilated wide.
‘It’s Bethany Krall!’ shrieks a woman from somewhere behind me. ‘It’s his daughter! She killed her own mother! She has the Devil in her!’ From elsewhere come similar cries of alarm.
‘At least we know where she is,’ I murmur to Frazer Melville.
‘No!’ yells a voice over to our left. Joy McConey is on her feet, stabbing her fist in the air. ‘Don’t, Len! Don’t! I know her! I know her!’
But Krall appears not to have heard. Or he does not want to listen.
The flower falls from Joy’s wig and she sits down in sudden defeat. She drops her candle and her face crumples.
The choir raises its arms and hums the chords of the hymn we have just sung. There is power, power, power, wonder-working power… The worshippers are pointing Bethany out to one another with a mixture of curiosity, horror and high, coiled panic. From behind me come incoherent shouts, urgent disputes and cries of alarm which mirror Joy’s outburst. Two women in front of me have got to their feet. Swaying in unison, they emit a bubbling cascade of noise — neither language nor song — and raise their arms in the air, as if to ward off evil. Anxiety swarms across the hall. But Leonard Krall stands tall. With an outstretched hand, still smiling, he gestures at the audience to hush.
‘Have no fear, people. Welcome, my darling Bethany. My beloved daughter. My blessed child.’
Bethany smiles back at him, and her smile is so beautiful and unexpected and pure it stalls us all. I didn’t know her to be capable of it. It’s that of a loving daughter. Her voice chokes as she utters simply, ‘Dad.’
There is a brief pause, then a collective exhalation of breath. Then a rush of voices all talking at once.
Krall raises his voice. ‘Yes. This is my daughter, people. My daughter.’ He is beaming.
‘My darling Bethany. We were separated by the evil. But now, to my great joy, she has cast out the Devil and expressed the wish to return to God!’ He lifts his voice to a shout. ‘Praise be!’
Agitated murmurs swill around the amphitheatre like whisky in a glass, releasing new flavours. There are triumphant exclamations but more hostile undercurrents too. Not everyone, it seems, is ready to celebrate the news. But Bethany’s smile widens as she lifts her face upward, as if to Heaven. On the huge screen, she looks unexpectedly and insanely pretty. Her eyes gleam.
‘Tell them, Dad,’ she says. ‘Tell them why I’m here.’
Hushing the crowd with his hand, Krall breathes in deep before he speaks. ‘Folks. Many of you have heard about Bethany’s fight with evil, and with her own demons. Many of you here know what she has done in the past.’ He pauses. ‘And I know it all too well. To my sorrow.’ Heads are nodding. ‘I know some of you will be sceptical. But we all have loved ones who we hope will be saved today, and who we pray may be part of the Rapture.’ At this, there is a heartfelt swell of assent. ‘And today, a father’s wish has come true.’ His smile is genuine. ‘My Bethany has chosen to ask for God’s forgiveness! And our Lord is a Lord who listens!’ Bethany’s hands clasp together in supplication and she falls to her knees, head bowed. On the screens, all that’s visible in the close-up shot is the stubbled top of Bethany’s skull, but then she looks up. Her eyes are glittering with tears. She raises her hands high above her head. Excitement and unease flash through the crowd. ‘I hear disbelief from some of you,’ continues Krall. ‘But let me remind you that the Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even if we rebel against him! My daughter is proof that it’s never too late to banish the Devil. Repent ye therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord! Bethany, do you repent your sins, truly, before God and before us who witness you here today?’ They must have met and talked before they came on stage. But how did she convince him? Was that strange, angelic smile enough to lure him into this bizarre, public folie a deux? ‘There are those here who want to hear it from your mouth. Has the Devil left you? Speak!’ He raises his hands in the air. ‘Tell them, Bethany. And tell the Lord! Tell everyone! Let them hear it for themselves!’
There’s a huge cry of enthusiasm, mixed with yells of warning.
Slowly, Bethany gets to her feet and faces her father. Her eyes are still wet. She speaks quietly.
‘Thank you for letting me speak here today, Dad. I know what I put you through.’ There are noises of sympathy. A girl who killed her mother is asking her father and God for forgiveness: can that be anything but a miracle, fitting for a day such as this? A man standing near me frowns and nudges his wife: they exchange a concerned nod. But other worshippers are beginning to soften: the two women in front of me are whispering to one another gently and holding hands. Bethany spreads her skinny scarred arms wide, pivoting slowly around until she has taken in the entire floodlit crescent. She is her father’s daughter: I can see it now more than ever. She has his gift.
‘It’s true I had something inside me,’ she says. There’s something new in her voice I haven’t heard before. There’s confidence. But there’s also something you could mistake for humility. ‘And it was something terrible.’ She nods vigorously and hangs her head in an aspect of misery. Around us, there is a flurry of whispers. ‘Something so ugly and evil that most of you wouldn’t believe it.’ More chatter: intrigued, doubting, supportive. Bethany begins pacing the stage, glancing about sadly as she speaks. She has their full attention. ‘Mum and Dad kept trying to get rid of it. But it wouldn’t leave me, no matter how much they prayed. They tried over and over again. They did everything. And they tried harder each time. Isn’t that right, Dad?’
Leonard Krall’s face is still luminous, but a shadow crosses it. He nods warily. ‘Yes, my love. We did our best, your mother and I. God rest her beloved soul.’
‘In the end they had to strip my clothes off and tie me to the stairs for three days instead of just a couple of hours.’ The woman next to me catches her breath. ‘Now I can see some of you are shocked, but it was for my own good, wasn’t it, Dad?’ Leonard Krall steps forward, clearly horrified, but she raises a hand to stop him. ‘No, Dad, let me tell them what you had to do to try and save me from myself! Let me tell them what you and Mum did, in the name of the Lord!’
‘Yes, let’s hear it!’ shouts a man’s voice.
Bethany is in her stride now. Her voice is getting firmer and louder, her pacing faster, until she’s skipping about the stage, almost dancing. ‘You had to leave me there for three whole days, shitting and pissing on the floor. You couldn’t let me eat or sleep. That’s how strong your love was, and I admire you for it!’ Krall is gesturing vigorously for a technician to disable her microphone. There is some crackling and then the siren of howl-around but she keeps talking through it. ‘You had to get rid of the Devil in me because the Devil doesn’t believe in the Earth being without form and void and darkness on the face of the deep and all that shit. But the fact is, the Devil believes what she’s told at school because it makes fucking sense, Dad.’ There’s a collective gasp. A man shouts something incoherent, and the security guard next to me clenches his fists. Krall is staring at his daughter, open-mouthed.
‘Bethany, you know it wasn’t like that!’
‘Yes it was, that’s what happened, Dad, you know it is. And ‘ But with an ugly electronic squawk followed by a series of crackles, Bethany’s microphone is cut off. She continues yelling soundlessly for a few seconds, then with a sharp, swift movement she flings herself at her father and yanks his headset off. Too stunned to react, he stands motionless while she dervishes about him, as though on hot coals, shrieking into the headset clutched in her hand.
‘Yes! It was! But it didn’t work, did it?’ Her face is bright with rage. ‘So you and Mum started shaking my head, do you remember that? That’s how you get the Devil out, right? You take turns grabbing your kid’s head. And you shook it so hard it felt like my brains would spill out. But you still couldn’t get rid of the evil thing! It’s still in there, Dad! You know why? Because it’s not the Devil. It’s me! It’s Bethany! I’m Bethany all the way through. There’s no Devil in there and there’s no God. There’s me and that’s all. There’s just fucking me.’
With a loud crumpling sound the microphone is abruptly unplugged. Bethany stops in her tracks, facing her father with rigid defiance. The audience’s lull gives way to welling declarations of outrage, then desperate shouts. Several men in the front rows jump to their feet, then look around questioningly, unsure of what to do because it seems that all of a sudden there is no one in charge. Least of all Leonard Krall. The woman next to me fans herself furiously with her hymn-sheet. Our usher rushes off towards a group of yellow-clad staff. I should have guessed that if faced with the temptation, Bethany would be unable to resist. That she would have done anything to secure this confrontation. But looking at Leonard Krall now as he steps back from her, his face chalky, unable to believe the scale of the betrayal, I realise it wasn’t even that difficult.
She told her father what he wanted to hear.
And in his narcissism, he believed.
No wonder her face has now broken into a grin. Bethany has sensed the size of the audience, and the scope of her power, and it has given her a charge. I can see it. Joy McConey has too, because I hear her scream, ‘No!’
Finally, as though her cry has released them from a spell, the preachers mobilise. Three rush up to Krall and there is a swift, urgent exchange of words as they gesture at the smiling Bethany. On Krall’s shocked nod, two security guards come and grab her by the armpits, hefting her tiny frame with ease. Krall motions to keep her there. But with a sharp movement — so sudden that a woman behind me lets out a cry — Bethany has started to squirm. She escapes the men’s grip and breaks into a run. Then, with no warning, a violent muscle spasm halts her as crudely as the slam of a bullet, throwing her to the ground. She is fitting again. She is on the floor, her body jerking epileptically. As her flailing limbs relax, Krall grabs a microphone, energised.
‘The Devil is still in her!’ he shouts. ‘We must get him out! Pray for her, people, pray for my daughter!’
Instinctively, I reach for my thunder egg. But Frazer Melville grabs my arm. He’s indicating something with an upward jerk of his head. I crane my neck at the sky. I can’t see anything, but I can hear it in the distance, growing louder. The pulsing whirr of a helicopter.
Krall continues to speak, his voice building in volume and control, while Bethany lies spread-eagled on the stage like a tribal sacrifice. The convulsions have stopped but she is still twitching. ‘Do not fear, people! Remember, fear is the Devil’s weapon!’ Krall scans the audience, gauging its new mood. If the expressions of those around me are anything to go by, it is one of confusion, mutiny even. The mistrust and fear have metastasised. He’ll have to work hard. ‘This moment in history which we have the privilege to live through now is God’s judgment on man!’ His tone is doggedly optimistic and upbeat. ‘We here in this stadium today and in churches around the country are blessed that the Lord recognises our devotion and our love and we shall be spared!’ He punches the air. ‘Therefore bath the curse devoured the Earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the Earth are burned, and few men left.’ Bethany lies motionless.
My heart skips a beat. In the furore, the ushers seem to have abandoned us. If we’re going to make it to the helicopter, we have to move now.
‘You go and get her,’ I tell Frazer Melville. ‘It’ll land at the far end of the stadium. I’ll catch up with you.’
He nods. ‘I love you, Gabrielle.’
‘I know. And I—’ But he has disappeared into the crowd.
‘Yes, Earth will be a terrible place for those who remain!’ Krall is insisting. ‘Let us pray for them, as we pray for lily Bethany. Let us rejoice in the eternal Kingdom that we shall so soon be entering!’ Hands aloft, palms outstretched, he raises a scattered cheer. But there are hoots of anger too, and cries of ‘shame!’ ‘We await your rapture, 0 King of Kings, oh mighty one, oh loving God! In the name of Jesus!’ Sensing the shift, he quickly nods to the choir: seconds later comes an ear-splitting blast of music. More preachers pour on to the central platform, followed by a second wave of white-clad choristers, who swell out the harmonies. People get to their feet, dancing and swaying and singing at full pitch, while others barge past them in a human maelstrom, rushing towards the outer edges of the stadium and disappearing through its porous sides like water through a colander.
Grabbing my wheels, I shove my way forward.
Bethany is still sprawled on the floor of the stage near the flower arrangement which shelters her like a huge white parasol. As I come closer, I call at her to get up but it’s pointless. She hasn’t the strength to move and my voice is lost in a cacophony of music, shouting and engine noise. I am at the far side of the stage now. still heading towards the empty end of the stadium where the helicopter is circling to land, its propellers a blurred grey radius. I keep going doggedly towards it, my wheels fighting the turf. Stopping to catch my breath, I glance back to see that Frazer Melville has finally reached Bethany. He’s cradling her in his arms beneath the lilies, scanning the crowd to look for me. I gesture at him: Take her. Go. Now. Has he seen me? I have no idea. He hesitates. ‘Go!’ I yell across. He heaves Bethany up and stabilises himself. Two security guards are racing over. For a second he stands rigid, as though unable to muster movement. Then, with a violent outward kick, he rams his foot into the base of the floral decoration. It sways tantalisingly, then rights itself like a skittle, but he is ready with another kick, higher up, which topples the whole structure. In an instant it has crashed to the stage, smashing colossally apart, spilling blooms and petals in a gushing river of water and debris. The security guards swerve and one of them stumbles; the choir screams and scatters in disarray. Taking advantage of the confusion, Frazer Melville hoicks Bethany higher in his arms and breaks into a heavy, awkward run.
I’m knocking past people as I pick up speed but I don’t care. I scream at them to get the hell out of my way, can’t they see I need some space? With a fierce engine roar and a rush of hot diesel wind, the open-sided helicopter is settling on the turf like a huge, unwieldy dragonfly. To my left, far ahead of me, Frazer Melville is stumbling towards it, weighed down by the comatose Bethany, battling his way through the oncoming rush of air. Lit up like a beacon, the aircraft is the size of a house, its open side revealing a chaos of people and equipment and crates within. Five or six men, two brandishing guns, jump out. I recognise Ned. I scream at him to come and get me. Behind him is Kristin, her face pale and tight. Ned hasn’t seen me in the gathering gloom, but I keep him firmly in view as he seizes Bethany from Frazer Melville’s outstretched arms, then lifts her up to one of the men inside, aided by Kristin. She’s yelling something at him and pointing towards me. I shove at my wheels with all my force but I’m losing the fight. Behind me I can hear the thump of feet as the crowd surges in.
‘Over here!’ My voice is drowned by the engine noise and the sound of shouts and music and screams, but Frazer Melville has seen me and is running towards me, gasping. Propelling myself with all the strength left in my arms, I struggle across the bumpy grass. When he reaches me we collide. There’s no need to speak: we both know what to do. He turns and sinks to his knees, his back facing me, so I can fling my arms around his neck. I grab on tight and he hoists me up and I am hanging on his back with his hands under my rump. Ducking the fierce cyclone that whips our heads, we stumble towards the helicopter.
I’m hauled up bodily by three of the men inside who land me like a sack. I thud to the floor and realise vaguely that I have wet myself.
‘My chair! I need my chair!’ No one seems to hear me. Frazer Melville is lying on the floor of the helicopter, collapsed and panting. He shakes his head. He can’t. ‘Someone, please! I need it!’
I let out a wail of grief because I cannot live without it.
Too late, I know love and need can be the same thing.
The helicopter shudders and through its gaping open side everything comes at me at an angle. From the floodlit end of the stadium people are streaming towards us, waving their arms imploringly. The bottle-blonde woman in the pink robe is there, carrying her baby. Her grime-streaked husband. Flagellated by the propeller-wind, people are shouldering each other aside to climb in. Then I see my wheelchair and I scream for it.
In a single movement, Ned has slung it in. It skids on its side, then slams against a crate and stops. Flattened against the shuddering floor of the aircraft, I watch its wheels spinning and spinning and in that moment, as I weep with relief, I feel I could watch them for ever.
The aircraft shifts and from outside a woman screams: ‘No! Wait for me!’ There’s a wide lurch and then we are rising jerkily, as though pulled roughly from above. I see the woman’s face — plain and round as a ball — and see her terror and her baby and know they are imprinted on me for ever. Then another upward tug and the strangely angled ground is dropping away beneath us. We’ve taken off, but everything is lopsided and the engine is straining. The face of the woman shrinks to nothing, her openmouthed scream inaudible against the snarling rev.
With a surge of vertigo, the stadium and the pebble-shaped concession booths on the outer concourse shift in scale, then spin and tip, tipping as the aircraft executes a sharp turn over the flashing water of the canal and river system below.
Then I see a tauntened rope on the floor and a pair of rough, square hands gripping the open side, scrabbling for purchase. Somehow, someone is hanging from the edge. An elbow appears. Two men sitting near me shout at one another, then shuffle across, grab the arm and the rope, and heave a body in. Exhausted, the man lies sprawled, groaning with the pain of a dislocated arm. Then comes an explosion of yells and shouts: impossibly, there are more hands grappling at the edge. The helicopter is veering off balance. Three more men, all hanging from the same rope, are hauled in. Others lose their grip and fall. There’s a single appalled scream as the last one is lost.
In the belly of the aircraft there are people everywhere: on benches, or squatting on the floor amid sacks and trunks. Kristin is sitting with Bethany’s head in her lap, her face so pale and rigid with concentration she seems cast in wax. Behind them is a tiny, frail figure who I don’t recognise at first. And then with an inner pop of shock, I do. Harish Modak clutches his open jar of ashes, a dribble of grey saliva emerging from the corner of his mouth. He’s making swallowing movements. I try to catch his eye but he doesn’t see me. His whole body is shaking with sobs. Awkwardly, I shunt towards Kristin, heaving my legs behind me. She’s yelling something I can’t hear, eyes wide. The helicopter’s engine is still straining, a wild metallic shriek. A man next to me vomits. Kristin is pointing outside. I freeze. The sky has marbled and darkened.
Then comes a deafening, unworldly boom.
Its sound vibrates across the horizon, spreading in a languid, reverberating crescendo. As if it has all the time in the world. From deep beneath the sea floor, something has spoken. With sudden, colossal force, a series of jolts buffets the helicopter from side to side, then up and down. We’re being rammed from all directions. There are screams as people grab at one another for support. Somehow, the pilot manages to right the aircraft. But the engine is labouring.
I look across to the open mouth of the aircraft. Beyond the lit crescent of the stadium, the sea is pulling back in a ferocious sucking rush of spume, exposing hectares of glittering sand and rock and flipping silver creatures that must be dolphins or whales, stranded by the giant drag of water. Then on the horizon, a wide orange flare flickers and pulsates beneath the dome of the sky. As we struggle to rise higher into the air, the flare swells and changes shape, flattening itself to meet the sea.
At first it looks like a glassy mountain ridge has shot up from the exposed sand of the re-cast shoreline. But it’s a sheer wall of water. It blots out the clouds. Its base is dark, almost black. It’s topped by plumes of dancing, spritzing white.
The giant wave, more beautiful and more terrifying in its grandeur than anything I could dream, is hurtling towards us.
Then all around, there are new shouts and screams. With a lurch I understand why. We’re flying too low. Even if the wave doesn’t reach us, the air currents it will generate will suck us down.
‘Try and get some more height!’ Ned yells to the pilot. The helicopter whines and balks, battered from side to side by the residue of the shock. The pilot yells something back. ‘Tip out one of the crates!’ Ned shouts across the stewing cavern. The word goes round, and ten men — Ned and Frazer Melville among them — stagger to their feet and strain to shove the largest wooden box to the edge. Kristin joins them, leaving Bethany’s head propped on a sack. There’s a wild, animal scuffle as everyone else presses against the walls of the helicopter. I have to get to Bethany. I begin to haul myself in her direction.
Like a giant wheel, the future rolls in with all its murderous force.
I’ve nearly reached Bethany now. She blinks rapidly and musters a pained mouth-twitch of recognition. Shuffling myself up, I rest my head next to hers on the vibrating floor of the helicopter. I can feel her breath hot on my face. It smells faintly of bubblegum. With a jerky movement, she reaches over and places her hand, bony as a bird’s claw, on my belly. As long as I can keep her anger going, that Bethany rage, she will be OK. And so long as she can, I can too. I put my mouth to her ear.
‘I thought we didn’t do touching. Bethany,’ I whisper into it.
‘It’s not you I’m touching, Wheels.’ Her voice is strangled, as if she can barely breathe.
‘What do you mean, not me?’
‘It. I just felt it. Inside you. Our little friend. How’s that for bad timing?’ She laughs and splutters.
I don’t get it. I glance across at Frazer Melville, straining against the crate, his face drained of all colour. And in that moment I realise what Bethany has said. The truth of it. Of course. How could I not know what the things we have done have led to? How could I not?
Oh Christ. Not now. My heart free-falls.
And then, for no good reason on Earth, lifts.
‘You know where you’re going with that baby?’ Bethany whispers hoarsely. I nod. In that tiny glimmer of time, I feel that I have known all along. Her mouth is straining. Behind the distortion of pain, there’s something that you could mistake for ecstasy. She’s looking out into the bleached-bone nothingness of the air outside, a throb of dizzying white.
‘Get back, everyone!’ yells a voice. The men are pushing rhythmically at the crate, inching it closer to the edge, until, with a final concerted heave, the giant rectangle, now shunted halfway out, hesitates, then tips and plummets. Then it’s lost to view and there’s a sickening sideways swing as the helicopter struggles to right itself. It seems to be failing. We’re jolted sideways again. I grip Bethany’s shoulder and close my eyes.
When I open them again, I see Harish, Frazer Melville and Kristin clutching one another and swaying near the far wall of the helicopter in a strange triptych, staring out at the wall of water — filthy, frothing, black, heaving with cars and trees and rubble and human bodies — that’s rushing at us with the speed of a jet-plane. With a vicious mechanical jerk, the helicopter lifts vertically, the pilot slamming at the controls as the wash below ignites. The fire spreads greedily as though devouring pure oil, yellow flames bursting from the crest of the liquid swell, triggering star-burst gas explosions above. With a deep-throated bellow the wave gushes across the landscape, turning buildings and trees to matchwood in an upward rush of spume. As the force catapults us upward, the scene shrinks to brutal eloquence: a vast carpet of glass unrolling, incandescent, with powdery plumes of rubble shooting from its edges, part solid, part liquid, and part gas — a monstrous concoction of elements from the pit of the Earth’s stomach. There’s a gentle pliant crunching and far below buildings buckle, ploughed under, then vanish in the suck. Only a few skyscrapers stand proud of the burning waterscape as the land is relentlessly and efficiently erased. The heat is unbearable, as though the sun itself has plunged into the water and is irradiating us from below. It’s almost impossible to breathe. There’s a stench of burnt wood, melted plastic, of meat and seafood boiled to the bone. Tiny rainbows dance across the open side of the helicopter above the pulsing floodwater. It is the most terrible thing I have ever seen.
‘It’s wonderful,’ says Bethany. She is staring at it, mesmerised. ‘You’ll remember it for ever. You’ll remember me too. I know you will.’ The strange light makes her face look as translucent and ghostly as rice paper.
‘We’ll get out of here, we’ll land somewhere safe, we’ll get you treated,’ I’m saying. But then, as the helicopter begins to arc in a new direction, I realise I have misunderstood her. Utterly and completely and—
‘Bethany, no!’
I slam my arm out to stop her but she has started to roll. It’s an almost languid movement. Balletic and calm. A smooth, considered rotation. Her eyes are wide open. She knows what she is doing.
I scream but no sound comes out. Then I scream again, aloud. But against the shriek of the engine, no one hears me.
Bethany keeps rolling, until she has rolled to the very edge of the world.
And then over it.
The crest of the giant wave has sluiced on, leaving in its wake a sheet of glassy, liquefied flame, bobbing with charred bodies and black detritus, a foul, fizzing stew of water and gas and heat. My eyes trace the arc of the falling girl silhouetted against the blinding brightness below. As its furnace blasts upward, scorching my skin, I see her cartwheel down through the vapour. The motion is slow, almost graceful.
Down and down. First she is a comma and then a speck.
And then a burning shard, gulped into the abyss.
And then nothing.
Then Frazer Melville has seen what’s happened. What I failed to see in time. The granting of the death-wish evident in Bethany from the moment I saw her, whose force I so fatally misjudged: that dark, calculated single-minded mission to end it. He’s shouting to Ned and Kristin. There’s commotion as the word spreads that she has gone. With a lunge, Frazer Melville has shot across and grabbed me. He grips me to his chest so I am trapped in his arms, squeezing a great wail out of me, a cry that will echo across the rest of my life, because I know already there will be no green fields in Bethanyland, no safe place for a child to play. Nothing but hard burnt rock and blasted earth, a struggle for water, for food, for hope. A place where every day will be marked by the rude, clobbering battle for survival and the permanent endurance of regret, among the ruins of all we have created and invented, the busted remains of the marvels and commonplaces we have dreamed and built, strived for and held dear: food, shelter, myth, beauty, art, knowledge, material comfort, stories, gods, music, ideas, ideals, shelter.
And there will be no Bethany.
From the crush of Frazer Melville’s arms, I look out on to the birthday of a new world. A world a child must enter.
A world I want no part of.
A world not ours.