Part 26 (1/2)

Greg's face grows so furiously blank it's clear that he was thinking along those lines. ”If you're ready then, Ross,” Connie says and hurries to the exit. As she reaches for the keypad on the door, her fingers falter inches short of it. She can't recall a single digit of the code.

Exhaustion must have driven it out of or too deep into her brain, but the harder she strives to dredge it up, the more her head feels as if it's filling up with some of the fog that's prancing shapelessly beyond the gla.s.s. She has been reduced to fingering the air in front of the keypad in case her hand remembers, the same way it knows the layout of the computer keyboard, when Woody's voice darts out of all the darkest corners at her. ”Gee, am I watching more not work?”

She tries to make light of it as she uses the nearest phone on the counter. ”Just my brain.”

”Uh huh.”

She wouldn't mind a reply that sounds less like agreement, even though he isn't announcing it to the entire shop. ”I can't remember the exit code,” she tells him.

”Right.”

Surely he doesn't mean the situation is. ”Could you remind me?”

”Why are you going to want it now? Doesn't look anything like daylight down there to me, and there's a whole lot of work to finish.”

”We'll get it done faster if we have Anyes to help, and besides, we really need to let her out. We don't know how much air is left in there.”

”In an elevator with just one person in it? Plenty, I'd think.”

She's dismayed to suspect that she could have persuaded him by concentrating on the notion of releasing Agnes to work. ”She's in the dark as well,” Connie nearly Pleads. ”How can we leave her like that?” 322 ”Nigel isn't, is he?”

The prospect of explaining in any detail about Nigel makes her head feel stuffed with worse than dullness. ”It doesn't sound as if he's had much success.”

”Seems like he isn't on his own there.” Before she can decide if that's aimed at her, Woody says ”So it's Ross you figure is expendable, right?”

”He put himself forward.”

”You'd maybe wonder why he's anxious to desert.”

”I don't think he's that at all.”

”He'd tell me the same if I asked him, you think?”

”I'm sure he would.”

”Then I won't bother. The one that wants to go has to be the one we need least. Go ahead if that's your decision.”

Static rushes into the silence Woody leaves behind, and she's afraid he has forgotten or no longer cares what she asked. ”You were going to remind me of the code.”

”Which one was that? Numbers or behaviour?” The static sounds like breathing over his shoulder. ”Okay, see what this does for you,” he says and gabbles digits.

How mocking does he mean his voice to be? He surely wouldn't give her an incorrect code, but is he thinking the right one won't work? She returns to the exit and uses a single finger to ensure she's pus.h.i.+ng just the numbers he helped her recall. She closes her fist around the handle, which feels like the chill of the fog solidified, and tugs.

The door snags on nothing she can see and then swings inwards with a gla.s.sy creak. It seems to invite the dankness and the stale smell of the fog. Although Ross didn't hear Woody's comments she feels bound to encourage him, but can't think of much that would. ”Don't catch cold and don't get lost,” she tries saying, and has to add ”Only teasing. Anyes will be grateful. We all will. Hurry back.”

He's out of the shop before she has finished speaking. She trails after him to watch. As he pa.s.ses the window, almost running, he throws Mad an uneasy sidelong glance. He hasn't reached the end of the building when the fog 323 starts to fray his outline and fade him. It engulfs him and m.u.f.fles his footsteps until they sound as though the pavement is growing soft. She's hearing them dwindle and wondering if she should call out a last rea.s.surance when Woody demands ”Have we lost Connie as well?”

She could imagine the entire shop is doing duty as his mouth. She steps back through the doorway to shake her head at whichever camera is on her. The interior of Texts resembles the night outside more than she likes: the grudging flat discoloured illumination, the clinging insidious chill, even the way the opposite side of the room appears to recede into a greyish dimness more substantial than air. She shuts the door hastily and jabs a finger at the keypad, but has second thoughts. Why is she locking Ross out? Suppose she's unable to let him back in? She can't face an argument with Woody over this. She fingers each digit of the code without any pressure, and then looks up at the cameras as she heads for the drumming of books on shelves. ”Now you got it, Connie,” Woody declares. ”Everyone else check it out. That's what I call a smile.” 324

ROSS.

”Don 'that catch cold and don't get lost,” Connie says and follows it with a giggle so stifled by embarra.s.sment she sounds as if she's producing it in her sleep. ”Only teasing. Anyes will be grateful. We all will. Hurry back.” 'that catch cold and don't get lost,” Connie says and follows it with a giggle so stifled by embarra.s.sment she sounds as if she's producing it in her sleep. ”Only teasing. Anyes will be grateful. We all will. Hurry back.”

Just now Ross would rather not even glance back, because everything about the shop looks like a nightmare he's having. He's out of it--the shop, at least--before Connie has finished talking about Agnes. As he flees past the window he risks a blink at Mad. Her appearance and everyone else's still dismays him: her greyish face and dim eyes balanced on flesh bruised by shadow make her resemble a corpse put to work, and her mechanical actions--stooping to lift yet another book, rising stiffly to find a place for it--don't help. She sends him a quick smile meant to be heartening, and a response tugs like a tic at his lips. Then he's past the window, and has the notion that the fog has hidden him from Connie. She mightn't notice if he makes for his car.

His entire body wavers towards the staff car park, but he 325 won't give in. He doesn't care whether Agnes is grateful or how much of a pain she continues to be; he can't leave her trapped in the dark. At least now he's able to see what he's doing, more or less. The emergency services can surely restore power to the shop, which will give Mad and the rest of them their looks back. He has told everyone he'll help. He can't let them down, especially Mad. He hurries past the alley, averting his gaze.

All the same, he wouldn't have minded some company. If Greg had kept his mouth shut for once, Ross might have had Jake. Still, no doubt Jake would be antic.i.p.ating aloud what may lie ahead. Ross concentrates on walking fast, not giving himself an instant to think of a reason to falter. His footsteps sound isolated and shrunken to childishness by the silence, which is as oppressively pervasive as the fog. Even when he remembers that the motorway is closed, that doesn't make the silence seem any less unnatural, though since the retail park is artificial, isn't black silence closer to its natural state? He feels as if each of his breaths is gathering fog to lie stagnant in his lungs and seep into his brain. Under the floodlights that are fattened like coc.o.o.ns restless with eagerness to hatch, the glaring murk drags itself over the deserted pavement and the tarmac bare of vehicles and peels itself reluctantly away from the shopfronts. Posters in the window of Happy Holidays remind him of a dozen or more places he would rather be, although he thinks several of the handwritten destinations are misspelled, or is he too tired to recognise how they should be spelled, or both? In TV'Id someone has left the televisions on, presumably tuned to a sports channel, since they all show people fighting, figures so blurred and unstable they appear to be sinking or melting into the darkness behind or below them. In Teenstuff the airconditioning must be on; flimsy clothes s.h.i.+ft in the dimness as though at least one intruder is crawling behind them, unless the intruders are too small to need to go on 326 all fours. He even fancies he sees a head, or rather less than one, writhe into view from the neck of a bellying dress on a hanger. He hastens past that and the sight of far too many identical cloth faces staring gla.s.sy-eyed out of Baby Bunting, but his speed does him no good. He's left with the impression that among the dolls he glimpsed a face pressed as flush as the underside of a snail against the pane; he also imagines he saw its flattened grey blobs of eyes move, smearing the gla.s.s, to watch him. When he twists around, of course he can locate nothing of the kind, and surely the glistening vertical trail down the pane must be condensation. Now he's alongside Stay in Touch, where any number of mobile phones on stands blink nervously in the dark. He has no idea what has set them off, but he's a.s.sailed by the notion that they all have the same message for him: perhaps that if he owned a mobile he could have made the call without venturing so far, or might it be information he would welcome even less? Walking faster only brings him to the unoccupied section, where the words scrawled on the boards over the shopfronts have abandoned all resemblance to language; trails of moisture have distorted them and the crude figures that accompany them so much that they suggest first attempts at writing and drawing by a mind too elementary to be called childish. All this is beginning to make him feel as though Fenny Meadows has reverted to a state worse than primitive, an era before there was anything worth describing as intelligence in the world. He finds he's grateful beyond words to hear a voice.

It's down the alley by the nameless properties. It's in the guards' hut, a long white almost featureless box with small smeary windows as grey as the backdrop of fog. Ross is unable to distinguish a word, but that doesn't matter. There must be at least two people in the building; indeed, two sets of muddy footprints lead to the door.

Suppose Nigel's in the hut? What will Ross have to say to him? He's starting to feel awkward and embarra.s.sed, 327 but slowing down even slightly allows the chill to fasten on him. He rubs his arms so hard the chafing m.u.f.fles the voice, which he's beginning to suspect may not belong to anybody in the cabin. If it's on the radio, someone has to be listening. Perhaps there's only one listener, since one trail leads out of the building, the other in.

His shadow smears itself across the whitish door like another example of vandalism as he reaches for the metal handle. Whoever's in the cabin must be asleep to have allowed the radio to drift so far off the station. The misshapen voice sounds as though it's trying to force its words, if there is more than one, through mud. ”h.e.l.lo?” Ross shouts and knocks on the flimsy door.

That seems to rouse a guard to switch off the radio, but not to answer. ”h.e.l.lo,” Ross calls, resting his fingers on the icy handle. At the end of a pause that lets him watch several of his breaths join the fog he realises what is causing him to hesitate. To be so muddy, wouldn't all the smudged footprints need to have started from outside the hut? That simply means they don't belong to whoever is inside. ”I'll come in, shall I?” Ross shouts and pushes the handle down.

The door swings inwards, disclosing that the cabin is lit only from outside. It doesn't contain much to illuminate. A shelf extends along the left side to a metal sink. The shelf is strewn with pages of a basic newspaper and also holds a microwave oven, an electric kettle, an empty mug and one half full of a liquid that must be tea or equally stale coffee, however much it imitates mud. Beside it an ashtray is stuffed with b.u.t.ts, and at first Ross thinks at least one of them is smouldering, but he must have stirred the ash by opening the door; the hint of drifting greyness surely can't be fog. To the right of the sink an open door reveals a toilet with an upright lid, which the dimness turns into an oval mask so primitive it's featureless. Two swivel chairs, one behind the other, face the entrance, but of course they didn't swing to greet his knock, nor did 328 their occupants jump out of them to hide. If that's absurd, is the situation any less so? The cabin is deserted, and he can't see a radio.

There has to be one, which must have wandered off the station as he knocked, though in that case shouldn't he be hearing static? He shoves the door against the wall as he's compelled to step into the cabin to discover what he hasn't understood. The bare floorboards yield underfoot more than he likes, but where in the cramped dimness could anyone be hiding? If he let himself he could think they're behind the door. It isn't as close to the wall as he a.s.sumed; there's an obstruction between them. As he leans hard on the door without wanting to define why, he senses that the soft obstacle is exerting an equal pressure; perhaps it's about to push harder. It isn't an experience he's anxious to prolong. He slams the door after him as he dashes towards the shopfronts.

Even Texts seems like a refuge, but he still has to summon help for Agnes. Once he reaches the spillage of discoloured light along the alley he twists around, but the door of the hut hasn't opened. He's less sure that the thick voice hasn't recommenced mumbling; perhaps the hindrance behind the door was the radio, which he managed to set off again. He hurries out of the alley towards Stack o' Steak.

He's pa.s.sing the supermarket when he falters. Is someone working late? Will they let him phone if he shows them his Texts badge? He advances to the nearest door and squints past the unstaffed checkout desks into the aisle where he thought he glimpsed a figure crouching or kneeling at a shelf. ”Anyone in there?” he shouts and knocks on the gla.s.s door, which tolls like a drowned bell. ”I'm from Texts. We've got a problem.”

Perhaps Frugo has as well. Belatedly he notices that the only illumination in the supermarket comes from the spotlights. Would anyone be working late in that? He has to lift 329 his wrist almost to his face to discern through the condensation inside the plastic on his watch that it's past two in the morning. They must have locked a stray cat or a dog in Frugo by mistake; at the far end of the aisle the indistinct hunched shape is flinging packets off the next to lowest shelf. Ross doesn't linger to watch. He's supposed to be phoning from Stack o' Steak.

The fog mocks his pace by grudging every inch it releases of the supermarket before it yields up any of the diner. The k andaand e of the sign, bright yellow letters embedded in fat orange outlines, look not just dulled but doused by fog. He thinks it has stolen their glow until he sees it has kept none for itself. The sign doesn't matter, but the fog appears to have overcome the light inside the diner too. He plants his hands against the window with a concerted thump he's desperate enough to hope will bring the staff to find out what he wants, and leans his forehead against the cold gla.s.s.

The chill fails to enliven his brain, which feels tired past stupidity, unable to stop insisting like a child denied a treat that the diner is meant to be open twenty-four hours. His breaths swell up and fade from the pane while his hot eyes do their best to persuade him that the interior is lit as it should be. At last he grasps that the light beyond the window is more of the sludgy glow he's standing in, because the kindergarten colours of the furniture and ketchup containers and oversized cruets have all been simplified to shades of grey or black, as though a child too unintelligent to make any use of the items has muddied them instead. He can only a.s.sume the diner is closed because the motorway is, but that needn't mean the staff have gone home. He tramps to the gla.s.s doors and drums his fists on them. Anyone still here?” he shouts. ”I'm from Texts.”

He's about to explain that it's the bookshop in case it has always been as invisible to them as it is now to him when he notices marks on the floor in front of the counter. 330 Footprints oughtn't to be so nearly circular, and what kind of dance has someone been performing? As he grows aware of the photograph of a giant hamburger among the unlit images above the grill behind the counter, he recognises the objects strewn across the linoleum. They're hamburger patties glistening with rawness. There are at least a dozen, and every one has a piece missing. If those are bites, they're all the more disconcerting in their lack of shape.

He doesn't want to interpret the sight. It can't touch him except by letting the chill of the fog overwhelm him. His legs have begun to shake as they once did when he was a child with a fever that felt like a nightmare from which he couldn't waken. All he can do with them is run while he rubs his arms with hands he can barely feel, but which way does he run? To his car to drive to the nearest telephone box, and the route around the stretch of pavement he hasn't already traversed is shorter. Besides, it will take him past the shop so that he can inform Connie of his plan, or perhaps someone else should take over. Ross might prefer to stay with his colleagues, however the suffocated light makes them look. He's beginning to feel as if he has been cast out in the fog for not saving Lorraine.

He can still save Agnes. Though that isn't remotely as serious, it's something he's able to achieve--something Woody can't prevent. Perhaps once Ross has called about Agnes he may allow himself to get so lost in the fog that the only route he knows will lead home. The prospect lends speed to his agitated legs, and so do his surroundings. The building next to the diner is practically completed, but instead of windows it has sheets of whitish plastic that appear to billow stealthily as Ross dashes past, unless he's seeing the antics of his own faint distorted shape. Beyond that shopfront the murk bristles with poles that sprout from a shop-sized rectangle of pallid concrete, as if the metal sketch of a building has been abandoned because n.o.body could think how to finish it. The fog that 331 trickles down the poles reclaims them as he sprints past a foundation surrounded by the lowest courses of its walls, which put him in mind of a ruin or an ancient construction whose purpose has been forgotten. Would the route across the car park be quicker? He's running like a puppet along the pavement while he struggles to decide, and a wall so mud-caked and uneven he can't believe it's newly built has loomed into view ahead, when someone calls him.

At least, he thinks it's his name. It's a whisper that's mostly a hiss, and surely he doesn't recognise the voice. ”Lorraine?” he gasps.

”Ross.”

Growing louder has lowered its pitch, and he's dismayed that he mistook it for Lorraine's. Remember but get on with living, his father advised when he saw what a lump of depression Ross kept turning into at home, as if the man knows anything about failing to save someone rather than just being unable to keep her. ”Nigel?” Ross calls with a good deal more certainty. ”Where are you?”

”Here.”

He's somewhere behind the unfinished buildings. Halting makes Ross begin to s.h.i.+ver like a twig in a storm. As he heads between the abandoned stubby walls he feels as if he's blundering into a land of dwarfs no taller than the topmost bricks. The fog uncovers the wet black road that leads past the retail park to the motorway, and the spiky six-foot hedge along the far side of the road pokes blurred holes in the rotting curtain of murk. ”I can't see you,” Ross complains.