Bar None by Tim Lebbon Read Free Book Online

from the water. "Like life. That's confusing too."
    "This is getting way too fucking deep for me," I said, and as I stood Ashley glanced up at me without smiling. I carried that look with me into the pub, stood with it at the bar and brought it back out, turning it over in my mind and trying to identify exactly what I had seen in her eyes. Impatience? Frustration?
    Hatred?
    I hurried back with her drink and sat down so that our arms were touching. I was almost afraid to speak.
    "Cheers," she said, tapping my glass with her own.
    "Bottoms up," I said.
    "Later, if you're lucky." She grinned, leaned in close, and everything felt fine.
     
    We agree to leave the next day. Michael had a power over us, that is evident in the others' faces as we sit around the huge dining room table. There is discussion and dissent, but mostly it is half-hearted. We all know that we will be going, because Michael made it so. He was not here for long. He came one afternoon and left that night, but in the space of twelve hours he forced us to make more real decisions than we had in six months.
    Jessica cooks some food and brings it in. I still have oil on my hands from tinkering with the motorbike, but I am suddenly ravenous, and I eat with gusto. Some of us have only recently had breakfast yet our hunger is vast. Strange. I watch everyone else eating and try to see behind their expressions, hear what Michael said to them, feel the weight his gaze had on their eyes as well as my own.
    "Who was he?" I say at last. I'm sure the others have been thinking it—the air is thick with the question—but I'm glad that I'm the one to verbalise it at last.
    "Just a visitor," Cordell says. "He's travelled, while we've stayed put. He knows more of what's been going on. So he decided to tell us, help us."
    "What a load of bollocks," the Irishman says. "'A visitor'? He rode up from the city. What was he doing there? What about those things we sometimes see above the city? See, but never talk about, because they don't fit in with our comfortable little plan of 'stay put and fuck the rest'? And he left his fuckin' bike running outside the gates. What was that all about?"
    "That's the same way he found it," Jessica says.
    "Yeah, so he says."
    "But we've all agreed that we're going," I say. "We all believe in this Bar None place he told us about?"
    We eat in silence for a few seconds, none of us wishing to meet another's eyes.
    "No reason not to believe," Jessica says quietly. "And it's something to do."
    "Well then, tomorrow," Cordell says. "We go tomorrow. And in the meantime, other than packing a few bags with what little we have, I suggest we take a drink." He stands and walks from the room, aiming for the stairs and the door to the basement below. None of us calls him back. It is not even midday, but society is dead. Who gives a shit?
    "Bottoms up," I say. The others smile and nod, and I know that today won't last for very long.
     
    I go to help Cordell bring up the last of the bottles. There are more than we think, and it takes us several trips. Jessica and the Irishman arrange the bottles on the table in the living room, and by the time we make our final trip there is quite an array on offer.
    "Forty-two," Jessica says. "What a day."
    I pull a bottle opener from my pocket and flip the lid on a bottle of Golden Glory. I raise it and salute everyone else in the room. Then I take a long drink. Peach, melon and malts on the nose, a hoppy, fruity bite, and a long-lasting sweet aftertaste. I smack my lips and sigh. "I love beer," I say. Even on my own, I always honour such a good brew.
    The others select their bottles and give their own toasts.
    "Good health," Cordell says.
    "I name this shit The End," Jessica says.
    "Drink is the feast of reason and the flow of soul."
    "A mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer."
    "Here's to home," the Irishman says. "I'll never see her again." He turns away to take his first drink, and I stare into the neck of my own