Bar None by Tim Lebbon Read Free Book Online Page A

bottle, thinking of Ashley and knowing that everyone has a similar thought. Except maybe Jessica. She's an enigma, and sometimes I think she's lost nothing at all.
    We'll never really be all together , I think. Not the way we've been introduced. Maybe we're friends, but we'll never know each other. There's far too much to know. Too much lost, too much forgotten, too much we'd like to forget . Fate has made us full of secrets.
    "To Bar None," I say, raising my bottle. The others follow, and again I am struck by our easy belief in a midnight man's story.
     
    We drink throughout that final day at the Manor. Lunchtime comes and goes, the world outside exists without our seeing it or taking part, and we sit mostly in silence and finish the last of the beer. Occasionally someone leaves the room to go and pack their bags, but they are never away for very long. There's not much to pack—clothes, a book, the few personal effects most of us still own—and he or she is always keen to return to the living room. There's something very much like a family about us today.
    Cordell falls asleep after several bottles and starts to snore. Jacqueline smiles, hiding the expression behind her hand. She's so delicate and brittle, I can't believe she's survived the end of the world.
    "So is this really it?" the Irishman asks, as if hearing my thoughts.
    "Well, when I look out there I don't see very much left," Jacqueline says.
    "I do." Jessica stands and moves to the window, becoming a part of the view. "I see trees sprouting buds. Daffodils are flowering along the hedge at the front of the garden, and others have sprouted ready to bloom in the flower beds below this window. Snowdrops among the trees over there. Green shoots of bluebells, and we'll see the flowers themselves soon. Birds feeding on insects in the trees, butterflies here and there. The grass is lush and starting to grow again, and I'm glad none of us could be bothered trying to cut it. I've never seen it so green."
    "You seem to have forgotten the stinking dead city bulging with two hundred thousand corpses," the Irishman says.
    "I didn't forget. That's what's ended. I'm just looking at what's continuing."
    "We're continuing," I say.
    "This?" Jacqueline says. Her soft voice has turned surprisingly harsh. Drink doesn't agree with her, and I always get on edge when she's starting her fourth or fifth bottle. "This is hardly continuing. We're dead but breathing."
    "It's still an existence for me," Jessica says, and her breath mists the glass in the window.
    "Yeah, but you're weird." Jacqueline lobs her empty bottle and it smashes in the stone fireplace.
    "He said everything's going to change," I say.
    We drink, and think, and the room is silent for a long time.
     
    That evening, the last of the beer gone, bottles smashed in the fireplace, glass spilling across the carpet like dying embers of a cold fire, I open the patio doors and stand on the gravelled garden area with Cordell, Jessica and the Irishman. Jacqueline has gone to her room, and we can hear the sounds of the Manor settling around us as the heat leaves its stone walls. The sun has gone, leaving a bloody smear across the horizon. Some trees catch the light, and a few clouds echo pink and orange.
    "It's a long way," Cordell says. "Could be anything out there."
    "Anyone," Jessica says.
    We're not watching anything in particular, but I see the way the setting sun continues to hang from the branches of trees, dripping from them, clinging on even after the horizon has grown dark.
    Things are going to change , I think. I glance at the others and know that they have seen it too.
     

Four: Golden Glory
    When morning comes we're keen to leave. We pack the two Range Rovers we found in the Manor's garages when we first arrived. Cordell checks them over—tyre pressures, oil levels—although I know he has been tending the vehicles regularly for months. It was something to kill the time, but I also think he always knew there would be a