Caleb may have had his gun out, but when more and more people started coming out of their homes, no one was killing each other for a piece of bread. None of it was like that at all.
At first, the electricity was on pretty steady. Shaky-steady, but that was normal. Only foreign channels on the TV, but the lights were fine for weeks, actually.
On our way back from Caleb’s, more than anything it felt like everyone on the street was smiling at each other, saying, How you doing? How’s it going for you? Got what you need? Even strangers.
‘Look at them all. They’re nice,’ Davey said, ‘and here you are being all shy on the street. It’s weird.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just I feel bad.’
‘’Cos you said it was good? LandSave and everything?’
I couldn’t look at him.
‘Well, whatever,’ he said. ‘Don’t sweat it, it’s fine. It’s like what Caleb was saying. It’s just a power trick. The Black-Out Round 2. ’Cept this time we still have our fridges on. So it’s winner winner chicken dinner.’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘And how were you to know, anyway? All that matters is we’re here. We’re here aren’t we?’
‘We’re here,’ I said.
‘Ain’t no one going to make us leave.’
But when I got home, I packed a bag. Just for me at first. Underwear, random stuff. Then I repacked a bigger bag for Ma too, and some of Kole’s clothes for Davey. I unfolded little scenes in my head then I folded them back up again. I thought about how you might come. By car, by convoy. I thought about Blue’s face when he saw me again. I practised how I’d be with you. Unsure at first, then, when we were alone…
Even Davey. I was sure I could convince him to come with me in the end.
The only problem was how to say things until you got there. Particularly when Davey asked where Blue was, when we met the next day.
We were up on the train tracks behind the building. Half a boat had washed up there, or been dumped, and it was angled just right to give us shade. I was picking off ivy leaves that had started to grow inside it, seeing how many times I could bend them before they broke.
‘Seriously,’ he asked. ‘If he wasn’t with Viv that time?’
‘Just with a friend, I said. I told you. Friend of my mum’s.’ My chest burned. I was fine at lying. Just terrible at lying to Davey.
Which is why it felt like a relief when suddenly we saw the planes. Heard them rather than saw them. That sucking sound, the way planes pull at the sky. We stopped talking. Then there they were: white, with bits of red on them, high enough and fast enough for us not to be able to read the letters on the side.
‘Bloody hell,’ Davey said. ‘A royal flyover.’
When the planes were nearly above us, their underbellies opened. Two objects the size of cars dropped out. We both stood up. A second later, two parachutes unfolded with a clap. For a second, it looked as if whatever it was would head back into the clouds. Davey’s body jerked as if he’d be able to reach it. Then the weight tugged at the string and the cargo started to fall again, in a diagonal direction towards us. The parachutes were satiny. They swelled up then sank small, like jellyfish, or skirts catching in the wind.
Then, about 100 feet up, some kind of netting burst open to set lots of small individual packages free. They blew apart from each other. I didn’t even know what it was, but I knew I wanted it. We tried to predict where they would land. Davey and I split up. I found mine further down towards the water. Whoever was sending it must have worked out the tide wrong, because I saw a lot of packages bobbing in the sea. Still, both Davey and I got one each. He’d rescued his from someone’s garden. We waited until we had found each other again before we opened them.
Each package was the size of a shoebox, red, edged with plastic popper wrap. ‘So if it lands on your head!’ Davey said, chucking his up in the air between us and almost headering it, before taking out his flick knife and handing it to me. ‘You go first,’ he said, but there was no need for a knife. The box was sealed with Velcro. My hand pushed in past cellophane, past the coolness of plastics and metal – you could tell how high up the plane had been from that.
‘There’s no note,’ I said, and I couldn’t hide the sadness in my voice. It’s so stupid, but in my head, I was sure it had come from you.
‘Why would there be a note?’ Davey said. ‘Give it here.’
He pulled out slices of white bread. Plastic sachets, crunchy to the touch. We broke a piece in half and shared it. There were packets of other things too. Pale raisins in one, mints in another, some sachets of powder which said ADD TO WATER. Two tins of paste-stuff. One had a fish symbol on it, the other had three different animals on it. Sheep, pig, chicken.
‘What’s that say?’ Davey showed me the label.
‘Farm spread,’ I read off the side. ‘Does not contain meat.’ I pulled a question mark face.
We opened them both. Different colours of brown. One of them had a greenish tinge to the surface.
‘Fucking hell. Has it come to this?’ Davey said, but his smile was face-wide. He plunged a finger in, brought it up to his mouth.
I waited until he was about to swallow. ‘Wonderful way to poison people,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’ He pretended to spit. Licked his lips. ‘That is what they’d do though, isn’t it? Make it like a game. Make us fight for it.’ He scooped up the last of the tin. ‘Tasty, though. Not bad for a goodbye present.’
‘It’s not a goodbye,’ I started, but—
‘You missed it,’ he said. ‘Flat to the side.’
He pulled out a piece of paper. I froze. ‘Let me see,’ I said.
But he opened it away from me. He looked at it a while then started shaking his head. ‘Such fuckers,’ he said. ‘It’s not even them. The government, I mean. The LandSave lot. That’s a cross, innit?’ He handed over the paper. ‘More bloody Christians.’
It had a red border. There was a cross, and there was a passage from Psalms in italic in the middle. I read the first bit out loud. ‘For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help… Gross,’ I said. I read the second bit in my head. He will take pity on the weak and the needy and save the needy from death… for precious is their blood in his sight. ‘Yeah, Christians,’ I said.
‘What’s the bit in red?’ he asked.
‘Dios te bendiga. It’s a foreign language. Dunno how to say it.’
‘Foreign where from, though?’
‘I said I don’t know. Italy. Spain. I dunno what that flag at the bottom is.’
‘Fuck, man,’ he laughed. ‘You know it’s bad if Spain is sending help.’
As he said that, a pair of older men walked by. They were ripping each packet open and jamming whatever it was into their mouths. We looked at them, then we looked at each other, and both of us knew what that look meant.
‘We’ve got to get organised,’ he said. And until I could include him in mine, I was glad I was included in his ‘we’.