inside.
‘Everything okay?’ he asked.
Stayt nodded. Michael walked across to Guest.
‘All right, Pete?’ he asked pointlessly.
Guest looked up with tears pouring down his tired face.
He shook his head and looked down again. In his hands Michael saw that he was holding a small toy. He couldn’t see exactly what it was. A car perhaps? Some kind of spinning top or model spaceship? Whatever it was Guest was staring at it as if it was suddenly the most important thing in the world. He wouldn’t put it down. He wouldn’t let it go.
It wasn’t until almost an hour later that Guest had regained his composure sufficiently to be able to talk to the other survivors again. Even now, as he sat next to Michael on the bonnet of the pickup truck and stared into the mass of burning bodies a short distance away, occasional tears still dribbled down his cheeks.
‘It’s like when you shake a bottle of beer, isn’t it?’ he said suddenly.
‘What is?’ Michael asked, confused.
‘How we’re feeling,’ he explained. ‘I know you feel the same, I can see it in your face. I can see it in everyone’s faces.’
‘Still don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the other man grumbled quietly.
‘I don’t know about you, but there are things that have happened to me that I haven’t been able to deal with. There are things I’ve seen and experienced that I haven’t been able to think about because they hurt too much. Things that are too painful. I’ve wanted to try and sort them out, but I haven’t been able to do it yet.’
‘So where does the bottle of beer come in?’
‘I feel like everything inside me’s been shaken up but my top’s been screwed down tight. Until you take the top off, nothing can get out. Being here today has been like a release. I wasn’t expecting it…’
‘So now you’re feeling…?’
‘Half-empty and flat,’ Guest smiled sadly.
Michael nodded thoughtfully as he considered the man’s unusual, but accurate, analogy. He was beginning to understand what he was saying.
‘What was the business with the toy?’ he asked. He could tell from the sudden change in Guest’s body language that his nerves were still raw.
‘This thing?’ he said, taking the toy from his pocket and staring at it again. Michael nodded. ‘On the first morning,’
he explained, his voice cracking with emotion, ‘I was supposed to go and see my lad Joe at school. It was his first class assembly…’ He stopped talking when the pain became too much. Although he’d thought about him constantly, he hadn’t said his son’s name out loud for more than eight weeks and to suddenly hear it again hurt badly…
‘What happened?’ Michael pressed, sensing that although painful, it would probably help him if he finished what he was saying. ‘Did everything kick off before you could get there?’
Guest shook his head.
‘I wish that was it,’ he sighed, clearing his throat. ‘I wasn’t anywhere near the school. I was on my way to work when it happened. There was a meeting I couldn’t get out of and if I’d missed it I would have…’
‘Would have what?’
‘Would have got the sack.’
‘Was that important?’
‘Obviously not, but I thought it was at the time. We’d been working for weeks to close a deal. My bonus and an almost guaranteed promotion hinged on getting the papers signed at that meeting. I would have lost a hell of a lot of cash if things hadn’t worked out.’
‘But looking back now, was that important? What good would your bonus have been to you now?’
Guest shuffled awkwardly. He knew the answers to Michael’s questions already but the admission was still not an easy one to make.
‘Are you trying to make me suffer here?’ he asked as he sniffed back another tear, his voice little more than a tired whisper. ‘I know now that none of it really mattered. The job, the money, the car, the house - none of it. I should have given the whole fucking lot up months earlier but I thought I was doing the right thing. Saddest thing is I’d probably have done it again too. My priorities were all screwed up. I should have been there when it happened. I should have been there with my wife and my boy when they…’
‘We’ve all got regrets,’ Michael said wistfully. ‘I bet everyone here could tell you at least a hundred things they wish they’d done differently. I don’t think we’ll ever get over it. I just hope that these feelings get easier to live with, that’s all.’
‘I loved Joe, you know. That kid was everything to me.
Just wish I’d told him.’
‘You’d only have embarrassed him,’ Michael smiled.
‘He wouldn’t have understood.’
Guest nodded and wiped his eyes.
‘Okay then, I just wish I’d been with him,’ he said, correcting himself. ‘I just wish I could have held him when it happened.’
The two men stared into the fire again, and for a while the cracking and popping of the flames was all that could be heard.
‘So what was with the toy?’ Michael asked again, remembering that his question hadn’t been properly answered.
‘Oh, that,’ Guest replied. ‘It’s silly really. Joe, Jenny and I went shopping on the Sunday afternoon before it happened. We were walking around town for hours and Joe was getting tired and fed up like kids tend to do. I told him that if he behaved himself and if everything worked out at the office over the next few days then I’d get him a present when we next went out, whatever he wanted. I asked him what he’d like, expecting him to go for the biggest and most expensive thing he could think of. Anyway, he dragged his mum and me into a shop and showed us that toy I found today. It wasn’t much and it wasn’t expensive, but all his mates had one and I was going to get it for him.
That was all he wanted. Fucking hell, Mike, I wish I could see him again. Just once more.’
Progress.
This afternoon it finally feels like we’re starting to get somewhere. Things are finally beginning to move.
Lawrence has made it back with the helicopter and, even more importantly, we’ve managed to get somewhere with the plane. We’re not airborne yet, but at least Keele’s starting to cooperate. I didn’t have to say much to him myself, but I heard that there were a few others who threatened him if he refused to fly them out of here.
We’ve started to move the people and our equipment out of the observation tower. It’ll all have to come down eventually so it makes sense to start shifting it now. We’re using the small office block nearest to the hangar. There are only a few rooms and it’s less comfortable and protected than the tower, but it will do. We should only need to use it for a couple of days, perhaps a week at most.
Keele’s finally managed to get the plane out of the hangar now. Actually getting him behind the controls was the biggest step as far as I’m concerned. Now we know that the plane’s engine still runs and by moving it to the end of the runway he’s got everyone off his back for a while. I can see him sitting in the cockpit from out here. He’s looking round like a little kid lost. I know he’s not had much experience at flying anything like this before but he has to try. We don’t have any choice. As vulnerable and exposed as it leaves us, we’re depending on him. I told him that all he has to do is get the plane in the air, get us over there and then land the damn thing. Doesn’t matter if it’s a complete write-off once we’ve all made it over to Cormansey. He just has to get us there safely. A couple of crossings, three at the most, is all it will probably take. After that he’ll never have to fly again if he doesn’t want to. We won’t ever be coming back here.
The atmosphere here is still surprisingly positive, if a little muted and more apprehensive than before. The appearance of the plane has generated a lot of anticipation and nervous expectation today. People want to get
