Page 90 of The Salt King

He shook his head.

“It’s hell. Even if there’s something like a good supply chain—it’s December. We’d be in tents in the desert, and we have nothing with us. If there isn’t a good supply chain . . .” She pushed her hand through her braids, feeling for salt again. No, still nothing. “I was sent out to the States once, when they thought they were about to have a meltdown. They evacuated a town, it was only about sixteen thousand people, but sixteen thousand people out in the Minnesota winter, with no interest from Washington because they cut disaster funding—it was the Purge after three days. I think we’ve got a better chance in Amman.”

“What if the next one is bigger than five miles?”

“What if the next one is sixty miles? They’ll be buggered at the camp too.”

He was watching the lady with the racehorses too. “No, okay. Let’s go to mine.”

“That’s good, because I’m not refugee camp material. I’m an indoors hotel person. If it hasn’t got an adorable little cocktail bar, I’d rather turn to salt, thanks.”

He looked down at her for whole seconds. It was longer than anyone had looked at her for years. Tallis looked back, not sure what was happening now. “How are you not . . . terrified?” he said.

“I don’t think it would help,” Tallis said honestly.

“Are you religious?”

“No. Are you?”

“Of course,” he said, with a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh. “How are you coping so well? I think I have a shot at Heaven, at least, but . . .”

“No, it’s just that nobody would be upset, so I don’t mind. Nobody would even notice except my cactus. My passing will hardly leave scars on the world.” She smiled, aware she sounded glib, but she hadn’t said anything so true for a long time. “I’ll leave it as I found it.”

“That is the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” Sally said.

“No, it isn’t. You’ve seen the American news.”

He let his breath out, voiced, not a laugh or a sigh, just an incredulous catch high in his chest.

“Look . . . I think it will be fine,” Tallis said, more seriously. “The apocalypse is very dull, it’s about being arrested for sitting on a park bench and not being able to get toilet paper. People are panicking now, but it will settle soon. They already know what salt light is and how to detect it: that’s good. It’s going to be fine. Maybe not today or this week, but it will.”

“Without money. Without . . . any mechanism to do anything? How are you going to fly home, how are we going to buy dinner for tonight?” he said, quite softly.

“Probably with some difficulty,” she said. “But we both have doctorates. We should be able to work it out.” She did her best innocent face. “I promise not to sell your favours for food.”

He pushed her, but he was smiling. “You are clearly enjoying this. It’s not normal.”

He was right. She should have been worrying about all the things he was talking about, but instead, she was thinking how good it was to have a chance to spend a few more hours with him. It wasn’t a thing she would ever say aloud, but she was glad. It was a few more hours of this bright feeling she would probably never feel again, even if she lived through all this. People like Sally were rare. She doubted she would come across another.

“You don’t seem worried about your family either,” he said. “You must have a husband and kids, even if you think they wouldn’t notice if . . .”

“No. I’m not married,” she said, understanding now why he had thought it was terrible. “My brother’s in prison because he’s an evil sod who punched his girlfriend, and Mum joined a cult in Bournemouth. She’s probably loving all this.”

“Is it a . . . commit-suicide kind of . . .?”

“No, it’s a live-in-a-commune-and-grow-your-own-corn kind of cult,” she promised. “She goes out to throw paint at politicians sometimes, but that’s all.” She looked up at him and left a gap for him to explain where his parents were.

He met her eyes for a second, as if he were thinking about it, but then they flickered up ahead, his expression going blank in the way it did when something had scared him.

There was a whole group of men coming towards them, and because they were moving in formation, she thought that they must be to do with the military. They weren’t, though; they were wearing ordinary clothes. Most of them were covered in blood. They were carrying swords, and other things. Chains. Knives. Sticks with razor blades fastened to them.

Sally took her elbow and pulled, hurrying them both right to the edge of the road. There was nowhere further away to go because the highway was soaring over a bridge now, but everyone on their side had retreated right to the barrier. Tallis felt all her nerves tensing up, ready to run, and wondering why no one else was running from an armed mob, until one of the men right at the front slashed the sword over his own back.

They were all doing the same thing. The chains whipped and clinked, the razors caught the streetlights with a grotesque sheen, the thunk of swords thudding into rib cages was something she could feel right through the ground, and they were all doing it only to themselves. The silent, bloodied procession lurched by. Some of the men were so injured they could barely walk. At the verges, everyone stared with the exactly the same horrified intensity as her.

The men were carrying torches. The firelight rioted their shadows across the cold road. Not just men. There were plenty of women too, and she hadn’t seen it before from a distance, but now everyone was passing her, she realized lots of the crowd were dressed as if they were going to a festival, with neon bracelets and glow-in-the-dark eyeliner. There were teenagers with them, draped in battery-powered fairy lights so that they looked like walking constellations. The difference between that, and what they were doing, made something vital in Tallis go still.

“Remind yourself of the suffering of the prophets!” a clear-voiced young man was calling. It was one of those half-second flashes that Tallis knew would stay with her forever. He was extraordinarily beautiful, tall, poised, and his expression . . . he thought something wonderful was happening. “Remember, and hold it in your mind at the coming of the end of days!”