Snuff Fiction

27

Of course we didn’t die.

We weren’t blown to buggeration.

We were out of that lorry and into the Jolly Gardeners with seconds to spare before the fuel tank exploded.

There was hardly any damage at all done to the pub. The Tudor house took most of the blast. Which was a pity, seeing as how it was so old and well kept and picturesque and everything.

But, as I’ve told you before, I’m very much a Victorian man myself. I could never be having with Tudor architecture.

Norman had no money on him, so I had to pay for the pints.

Not that there were any pints on offer. Not with all the electrics off. The pumps wouldn’t work any more.

‘All the bloody power’s gone,’ declared the landlord. ‘It will be that centennial mouse we’ve been hearing so much about.’

‘Millennium Bug,’ said Norman.

‘Who said that?’ asked the landlord. ‘I can see sod all in this dark.’

Actually it really wasn’t all that dark. The light from the burning Tudor house opposite offered a comfortable glow.

‘Just give us two doubles out of the nearest optic,’ I told the landlord. ‘And don’t trouble yourself with the ice and a slice.’

‘Coming right up.’ And the landlord blundered off.

‘Do you know what this reminds me of?’ said some old bloke in the corner. ‘This reminds me of the war. Why don’t we all have a sing-song, eh? Revive some of that old Blitz spirit, that made the working classes what we were and what we are today.’

‘And what are we?’ I asked.

‘Shufflers,’ said the old bloke. ‘Shufflers and proud of it.’

Well, that was good enough for me, so I sang along with the others. These were my people. I was a part of them and they were a part of me. I was home at last amongst my own. And we sang, our voices raised. A song that we all knew and loved. A song that meant so much to us.

It was a song of hope. An anthem. A song that said, in its way, everything there was to say about us.

There were tears in my eyes as we sang it.

‘Here we go, here we go, here we go.

Here we go, here we go, here we go-oh.

Here we go, here we go, here we go.

Here we go-oh, here we go.’

I forget how the second verse went.

What happened as the clocks struck twelve on that final night of the twentieth century has now passed into history. Oral history, that is. Because there is no other. Oral history, fireside tales, and no two tales the same.

As with the assassination of JKF, everyone remembers where they were on the night the lights went out.

Because, for most of us, they never went on again.

A chain, it is said, is only as strong as its weakest link. We learn that in infants’ school. So what of technology’s chain? All those systems, linked together? All those computer networks, exchanging information, feeding off each other’s data-flows?

Throughout 1999, the British government had worn its bravest face. At most, only one per cent of all systems will be affected, they said. A measly one per cent. Nothing much to worry about.

So only one link in every hundred.

But wouldn’t that mean that the chain would still snap?

As it turned out, of course, they were way off the mark. The agents of the Secret Government had been very thorough.

Nearly forty per cent of all vital systems failed.

Everything went down.

Everything.

Road-traffic signal systems: Gone.

Airport flight-control systems: Gone.

Railway point systems: Gone.

Telecommunications:Gone.

Banking systems: Gone.

Health-care facilities: Gone.

And they would all stay gone. Because all power had gone. The National Grid was dead.

And what about military hardware? What about their radar systems? And missile-tracking systems? And anti-missile-missile-launch systems? Did they fail too?

Oh yes, they failed.

In England everything switched itself off In Russia things were different. The Secret Government hadn’t troubled with Russia. Russia had so many clapped-out old systems that Russia would collapse without ‘help’.

Unfortunately, and evidently unforeseen, the sudden loss of power in Russia had the same effect upon some of the Russian nuclear arsenal as it had upon the Doveston’s dynamite.

Only five missiles went up. Which was pretty good, considering. The other 13,055 stayed on the ground. But once those five were in the air, that was it. You couldn’t bring them back. And you couldn’t telephone anyone to warn them they were on their way and say that you were very sorry and it had all been an accident and not to take it personally.

The West could do nothing to stop them.

And the West didn’t know they were coming, or where they were coming from.

The West was power dead. A great slice of it was in darkness: Auld Lang Syners halted in mid-flow; people searching around for candles and wondering how badly they could behave before the power came back on; pretty much everyone drunk.

And five nukes on the way.

They fell somewhat haphazardly.

The one that should have hit central London hit Penge. Which I’m told was a very nice place, although I feel disinclined to visit it nowadays.

Another hit Dublin. Which was bloody unfair. Because, come on, who have the Irish ever attacked, apart from the English? Nobody, that’s who.

Paris copped one. But bugger Paris.

The one that made it to America came down in the Grand Canyon. Causing no loss of life and no damage to property. Now was that fair, I ask you?

The last one came down upon Brighton. Brighton! Why Brighton! Why not Switzerland, or Holland, or Belgium. Or Germany?

Two on England and one of these on Brighton. That wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t.

Especially as Bramfield is only ten miles north of Brighton.

But ten miles is ten miles. And there were the South Downs in between.

Ten miles from the blast meant only a bit of minor roasting and a few flattened buildings. Ten miles from the blast was a doddle.

I think we were into our eighth or ninth double when the shock wave hit. I recall Norman saying, ‘What’s that funny noise?’ again. And I recall the way the south wall of the pub began to make its way towards the north wall. And I remember telling Norman that I thought we’d better run again. And I remember that Norman agreed.

We ran and once more we survived.

Few people knew exactly what had really happened. And few were ever likely to find out. No electricity means no TVs or radios or newspapers. It means no information.

No electricity means no petrol either. No petrol means you stay put where you are.

Country communities cut themselves off. There were food riots in London. Revolution is only ever three square meals away. The British government was overthrown. The People took control. But what could the People do? Could the People get the power back on? No, the People could not. How can you mend a broken system if you have no way of finding out which part of it is broken? How can you check an electrical system without electricity?

In the country we were luckier. At least we had something to eat. We could live off the land. Like the shufflers of old had done.

Norman and I crept back to Castle Doveston to view the ruins and see what might be salvaged. We went in the daytime and we went with caution for fear of the chimeras.

But all the chimeras were dead.

Those which had not been vaporized in the blast had come to grief in the security ditches I’d had dug. The ones with spikes at the bottoms. The spikes that had been given a coat of Norman’s invisible paint.

We marvelled at the ruins. Everything had gone. From the ground up. But from the ground down, things were different. The cellars had survived intact. The trophy room was untouched and so were all the storage rooms. Norman brought his convenient keys into play and we opened them up. Food, glorious food. Enough to last us for years. Enough to last us. As long as we didn’t share it around. As long as we could hang on to it for ourselves.

Norman opened up the Doveston’s armoury and broke out the mini-guns.

And that’s where we holed up. For eight long dark years. From then, until now.

Which brings me to the present and to how the writing of this book came about. The Doveston’s biography.

I’d had no intention of ever writing it. What would have been the point now? There were no more books and no more bookshops. People didn’t read books any more. Books were for burning. Books were fuel.

It was in the early springtime of this year, 2008, that the man came to visit us. He was alone and unarmed and we let him through our barricades.

The man said that his name was Mr Cradbury and that he was employed by a London publishing house. Things were changing in the big metropolis, he told us. The power was back on there and nearly all the time. There was TV too, but only black and white and only showing public-service broadcasts.

A new government had been installed after the revolution and it was slowly getting things back together. A little at a time. This new government would not be making the same mistakes that the old one had made. We would not be seeing too much in the way of technology. It had brought back conscription and many young men had now joined up with the People’s Cavalry.

Things were changing. There was a new world order.

Norman and I listened to what Mr Cradbury had to say. And then I asked Norman whether he thought that Mr Cradbury would taste better fried than boiled.

‘Definitely fried,’ said Norman.

Mr Cradbury became agitated. He had travelled all the way from London to meet us, he said. He had a proposition he wished to put to me.

‘Where have you hidden your horse?’ Norman asked.

Mr Cradbury wasn’t keen to tell us. He said that he had not even known whether we were alive or dead, or indeed whether, if we were alive, we’d still be living here. But he’d come, all the same, braving the robbers and brigands and highwaymen, because what he had to say to me was important and so could we please not cook him and eat him?

‘We can search for his horse,’ said Norman. ‘I’ll get the fire started.’

Mr Cradbury fainted.

Once revived, Mr Cradbury had a great deal more to say. His publishing house, he said, had been asked by the new ministry of culture to publish a book. It would be the first book to be published this century. It was to inspire the young. It was very very important and only I could write this book. Only I had all the necessary information in my head. Only Iknew the whole truth. And, if I would take on this task, I would be most handsomely rewarded.

‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘What is this book that you want me to write?’

‘The biography of the Doveston,’ said Mr Cradbury.

Mr Cradbury made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I refused this offer and he upped it a bit.

Electrical power would be restored to the village. I would be made mayor of the village. Being mayor would entitle me to certain privileges. I would draw up a list of these. Norman and I would be supplied with food and drink and fags and pretty much anything else that our little hearts desired. And Norman would receive a box of Meccano. A big box. The biggest box.

Mr Cradbury agreed to everything. But then I knew that he would. I knew that I could ask for pretty much anything I wanted, and I knew I’d get it too. Because I’d been expecting the arrival of Mr Cradbury, or someone just like him. I knew that it had only been a matter of time before I was called upon to write the Doveston’s biography. I’d had long enough to reason things out, to understand what had really happened, and why, and who was behind it all. So I didn’t ask any more questions. I just shook Mr Cradbury’s hand.

And so I wrote the book. And that was it. You’ve read it. So why are there still some pages left to go, you may ask. Wouldn’t it just have been better if it had gone out earlier on a chorus of ‘Here we go’? Well, perhaps it would.

If you could examine the original manuscript of this book, which, I am told, is to be stored in the New State Archives, you would see that up until this paragraph, it is all hand written. Yet these final chapters are typed.

They are typed upon a 1945 Remington Model 8 manual typewriter.

The Newgate Prison typewnter.

All statements have to be typed up. It’s one of the rules. It’s the way things are done. There’s not much point in arguing.

I wrote the rest of the book in longhand. It took me months. But I do have a photographic memory. I didn’t need any notes made in Filofaxes, or access to the Doveston Archive. I had it all in my head.

All I had to do was write it down. Tell it the way I saw it. How I remembered it. How it really was.

On the day of my arrest, Norman and I had been fishing. Private access to the trout stream is one of the perks you get, being the mayor.

It was nice to be away from all the noise of the builders I’d had Mr Cradbury bring in to rebuild Castle Doveston. We’d had a splendid afternoon and Norman had caught four large troutish things, which didn’t give off too much of a radioactive glow. We were whistling and grinning and pushing each other into bushes as we shuffled home for tea, and I remember thinking at the time that even after all we’d suffered, we still seemed to have come through smiling.

I’d handed the finished manuscript to Mr Cradbury on Edwin’s Day last. Which was the day before yesterday. Norman and I had long ago renamed the days of the week. There was Edwin’s Day, then Norman’s Day, and then we’d got a bit stuck. So we’d had Edwin’s Day II and Norman’s Day II and so on. But that didn’t work, because there were seven days in the week.

So Norman had said, ‘Well, poo to it. If we’re renaming the days anyway, why bother with a seven-day week? If we had a two-day week instead, it would be far less complicated.

He was right, of course.

The only problem was that certain people, and I will not name them, kept saying it was their day when it wasn’t. When it had, in fact, been their day the day before.

So Norman hit upon another idea.

As we had to take it in turns to empty the latrine and this really did have to be done on a daily basis (as it was only a very small latrine and neither of us wanted to dig a bigger one), Norman said that we would easily be able to remember whose day it was if their day coincided with the day they emptied the latrine.

I asked Norman, Why not the other way round?

Norman said that it was the fact that he’d known in advance that I’d ask that question, which had decided the matter for him.

I have still to figure out just what he meant by that.

So, as I say, we were shuffling home from the fishing, whistling and grinning and pushing and whatnot, and I was saying to Norman that hadn’t he noticed how we always had good fishing on Edwin’s Days? And good hunting and good birds’-nesting? And didn’t it seem just the way that Edwin Days were particularly lucky days for that kind of thing? In fact much nicer and sunnier days all round than certain other days I could mention.

And Norman had asked whether I’d noticed how on Edwin’s Days the latrine never seemed to get emptied properly? And wasn’t that a coincidence? And perhaps we should rename Edwin’s Days

Days.

And I was just telling Norman that even though in my declining years, of failing eyesight and somewhat puffed in the breath department, I could still whip his arse any day. Be it a Norman or an Edwin.

And Norman was singing ‘Come over here if you think you re hard enough’, when we saw the helicopter.

It wasn’t a real helicopter. Not in the way we remember real helicopters to be. Real helicopters used to have engines and lighting-up dashboards and General Electric Mini-guns slung beneath their hulls.

That’s how I remember them, anyway.

So this was not what you’d call a real helicopter.

This was an open-sided, pedal-driven, three-man affair. It was all pine struts and canvas sails of the Leonardo da Vinci persuasion. Old Leonardo. Which meant dead in Brentford rhyming slang, didn’t it?

The helicopter was parked close by the building site. There didn’t seem to be too much in the way of building going on — a lot of down-tooling and chatting with the helicopter’s pedal men, but that was about all.

‘I’ll bet that some high-muck-a-muck from the publishing company’s come to tell them to pack up their gear and go home,’ said Norman.

‘Why would that happen?’ I asked. ‘Mr Cradbury promised to have the house rebuilt if I wrote the book.’

‘Your faith in Mr Cradbury is very touching,’ said Norman. ‘Have you ever thought to ask yourself just why his company is being so generous?’

‘Of course.’

‘And what conclusions have you come to?’

I did not reply to this.

A builder chap came shuffling up.

‘There’s a toff from London to see you, your mayorship. He’s come about that book you’ve been writing. He’s waiting for you in the trophy room.’

‘Well, there you go then,’ said Norman. ‘It was great while it lasted. But if you’d listened to me when I told you to take at least five years wnting that book, at least we’d have had the house finished.’

‘A book only takes as long as it takes,’ I said. ‘I’d better go and speak to this toff.’ I paused and smiled at Norman. ‘We have had some laughs, though, haven’t we?’

‘And then some,’ said the ex-shopkeeper.

‘Its been good to know you, Norman.’

‘Eh?’

‘I’m glad to have called you my friend.’

‘Have you been drinking?’ Norman asked.

I shook my head. ‘I’ll see you when I see you, then.’

‘Er, yes.’

I took Norman’s hand and shook it.

And, leaving him with a puzzled look upon his face, I shuffled away.

He had been my friend and companion for almost fifty years. I would never set eyes on him again.

I shuffled past the builders and the helicopter-pedallers and I shuffled down the worn-down basement steps and along the passageway to the trophy room. And I stood for a moment before I pushed open the door and my hands began to tremble and my eyes began to mist.

Because, you see, I knew.

I knew what was coming.

I’d seen it and I’d felt it and I knew that it had to happen.

I did a couple of those up the nose and out of the mouth breathings, but they didn’t help. So I pushed open the trophy-room door.

The London toff was standing with his back to me. He wore a long black coat with an astrakhan collar, over which fell lank strands of greasy white hair. He turned slowly, almost painfully, and his head nod-nodded towards me.

He was old, his face a mottled wrinlded thing. But beneath two snowy brows a pair of icy blue eyes were all a-twinkle.

His hands seemed crooked wizened claws. In one he held my manuscript. And in the other, a pistol.

He smiled when he saw me.

And I smiled in return.

‘Hello, Edwin,’ he said.

‘Hello, Doveston,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’