pencils. All my schemes. This phone and me had a lot of fun together in the old days. Pulled a lot of capers. But now it makes me flinch to see it. Keeps me up at night, wondering what’s on the other end of it.
There’s a scream of motors and the table lurches. A pencil rolls away, drops to the floor with a tap.
“Damned speedboats,” says Arrtrad, grabbing the wall for support. Our houseboat sways on the wake. She’s just a little boat, about twelve yards long. Basically a wood-paneled living room floating a yard off the water. For the last couple months, I’ve been sleeping on the bed and Arrtrad on the convertible folding table, with just the potbellied stove to keep us warm.
And watching that phone to keep me busy.
The speedboat whines off farther down the Thames, toward the ocean. It’s probably my imagination, but it feels as if that boat came and went in a panic, fleeing something.
Now I can feel the panic rising in me, too.
“Unmoor us,” I whisper to Arrtrad, wincing as the phone rings again and again.
It won’t stop ringing.
“What?” asks Arrtrad. “We haven’t got much petrol, Lurker. Let’s answer the phone first. See what this is all about.”
I stare at him blankly. He looks back, gulping. I know from experience that there’s nothing in my gray eyes for him to see. No emotion to latch onto. No weakness. It’s the unpredictability that makes him afraid of me.
In a small voice, Arrtrad asks, “Shall I answer it?”
Arrtrad picks up the mobile phone with shaky fingers. Autumn light streams in from the thin-paned windows and his thinning hair floats like a halo on his wrinkled scalp. I can’t allow this weakling to get the upper hand. I’ve got to show my crew who’s boss. Even if it’s a crew of one.
“Give me that,” I mumble, and snatch the phone away. I answer it with one thumb, in a well-practiced motion.
“It’s Lurker,” I growl. “And I’m coming for you, mate—”
I’m interrupted by a recorded message. I hold the phone away from my ear. The tinny computerized female voice is easy to hear over the lapping waves outside.
“Attention, citizen. This is a message from your local emergency alert system. This is not a test. Be advised that due to a chemical spill in central London, all citizens are asked to go inside immediately. Bring your pets with you. Close and lock all doors and windows. Shut off all ventilation systems that circulate air. Please wait for assistance, which will arrive shortly. Note that due to the nature of the accident, unmanned systems may be utilized for your rescue. Until help arrives, please monitor your radio for emergency alert system announcements. Thank you for your cooperation.
“Unmoor us now, Arrtrad.”
“It’s a chem spill, Lurker. We should shut the windows and—”
I scream the words right into Arrtrad’s dim-witted weasel face, painting his forehead with my spittle. Out the window, London looks normal. Then I notice a thin column of smoke. Nothing big, but just hanging there, out of place. Sinister.
When I turn around, Arrtrad is wiping his forehead and muttering, but he is walking toward the flimsy front door of the houseboat as he goddamn well should be. Our shoddy wharf is old and rotten and has been here forever. We’re tied to it tight in three places and if we don’t get untied, we won’t be going anywhere.
And on this particular afternoon, I happen to be in quite a hurry to be off. See, I’m near to fairly certain that this is the end of days. It’s the sodding apocalypse and I’m teamed with the village idiot and shackled tight to a waterlogged pile of rot.
I’ve never even started the houseboat engine before.
The key is dangling in the ignition. I walk to the nav station at the front of the room. I prop open the front window and the smell of muddy water wafts in. For a moment, I rest my sweaty palms on the fake wood of the steering wheel. Then without looking I reach down and turn the key, quick.
The engine turns over and sputters into life. First try. Through the back window, I see a haze of bluish smoke billow up. Arrtrad is crouched on the right side of the boat, alongside the dock, getting the second mooring rope untied. Starboard, I suppose the boating types call it.
I ignore him. In the distance over Arrtrad’s bald spot something has just caught my eye: a silver car.
The car looks normal enough, but somehow it’s moving too steadily for my taste. The car wheels down the road that leads to our wharf as if its steering were locked in place. Is it a coincidence that the car is aimed toward our dock and us at the end of it?
“Faster,” I shout, rattling the window with my fist.
Arrtrad stands up, hands on his hips. His face is red and sweaty. “They’ve been tied a long time, all right? It’s going to take more than a—”
At near full speed, the silver car hops a curb at the end of the street and leaps into the dockside car park. There is a faint crunch of the auto’s undercarriage bottoming out. Something is definitely wrong.
“Just go! GO!”
Finally, the facade has cracked. My panic shines through like radiation. Confused, Arrtrad fairly lopes along the side of the boat. Near the back end, he drops to his knees and starts working on the last decaying mooring rope.
To my left is open river. To my right is a crumbling pile of warped wood and two tons of speeding metal careening toward me at top speed. If I don’t move this boat in the next few seconds, I’m going to have a car parked on top of it.
I watch the auto bounce through the immense car park. My head feels stuffed with cotton. The houseboat motor throbs and my hands have gone numb with the vibration of the wheel. My heart pounds in my chest.
Something occurs to me.
I snatch my mobile phone off the table, crack the SIM card out of it, and chuck the rest into the water. It makes a small plop. I can feel a bull’s-eye slide off my back.
The top of Arrtrad’s head bobs in and out of view as he unwinds the last rope. He doesn’t see the silver auto streaking across the deserted car park, sending trash fluttering into the air. It hasn’t changed direction by an inch. The plastic bumper scrapes concrete and then flies completely off as the car bounces over a curb and onto the wooden dock.
My mobile phone is gone but it’s already too late. The devil has found me.
Now I can hear the thrumming of tires over the last fifty yards of rotten wood. Arrtrad’s head rises up, concerned. He’s hunched on the side of the boat, hands covered in slime from the ancient rope.
“Don’t look, just go!” I shout at Arrtrad.
I grab the clutch lever. With one thumb, I pop the houseboat out of neutral and into reverse. Ready to move. No throttle though. Not yet.
Forty yards.
I could jump off the boat. But where will I go? My food is here. My water. My village idiot.
Thirty yards.
It’s the end of the world, mate.
Twenty yards.
Hell with it. Untied or not, I slam the throttle and we lurch backward. Arrtrad shouts something incoherent. I hear another pencil tap to the ground, followed by dishes and papers and a coffee mug. The neat pile of wood next to the potbellied stove collapses.
Ten yards.
The engines thunder. Sunlight flashes from the scarred silver missile as it catapults off the end of the dock. The auto soars through empty space, missing the front of the houseboat by a few feet. It crashes into the water and sends up a white spray that comes through the open window and slaps me in the bloody face.
It’s over.
