The man with the pipe pulled at the trolley, which travelled sideways on a bad wheel until he braced a foot against the frame and dragged it straight, leaving just enough of the doorway clear to let them through.
"One through. Then the other."
Owen stepped over the threshold, leaving Vic in the cold while the man checked the walkway behind him and the space beneath the nearest van. Someone inside was coughing so hard that he felt the effort in his own ribs.
"Come on. Mind the blade."
Vic edged through with the sword close to his right leg. Behind him the thumb lock clicked, and a woman in a ferry fleece bent to hold the troublesome wheel clear while the man pushed the trolley back across the door.
"Anyone following?" she asked.
"Not that we saw," Owen said. "There was one at the fishmarket. We shut the gate on it."
She looked at his sleeve. "Is that yours?"
"Yes."
"Sit down."
"I'm looking for my son. Dan Marsh."
"I heard. He's round the back. Sit down and I'll get him."
Owen made no move to sit, so the woman called through the open doorway behind her for someone named Kit. The young man who appeared was carrying an armful of foil blankets; he listened, repeated Dan's name and went back the way he had come.
"And the four at the fishmarket," Owen said. "Upstairs. They let us through their yard."
"Four more?"
"Four there. I told your man outside."
"That's me," said the man with the pipe. "I've not written them yet."
At the clipboard on the wall, the woman pointed out a line for him to use. Vic could see names beside numbers, crossed out or joined by arrows as the list ran down towards a wet corner curling off its backing.
"Len," Vic said. "One's called Len."
The man wrote that down. When Owen described the gate, he drew a small square beside the name and put a cross through it.
"Closed," he said. "Not dead. That's closed."
He rubbed the square out and wrote the word instead.
Even with the bag on the floor, Vic could still feel the knot in its handles digging into his shoulder. He rubbed at it while he looked through the inner doorway, trying to make out the waiting room beyond the battery lantern on the ticket counter. People sat at the edges of its light. Further back, someone had propped a phone in a drinking glass so that its beam pointed straight up, illuminating a circle of ceiling while the people beneath it sat in the dark with their belongings gathered round their feet.
He had passed through here twice on holiday, half awake and annoyed by the price of coffee, and remembered these rows of moulded seats facing the departures board. With the board dark he had trouble placing the way through them. He recognised the coin-operated massage chair, though: someone had fitted a foil blanket into it and fallen asleep with their mouth open, shoes carefully together beneath the footrest.
Owen started towards the waiting room and nearly caught his spearhead on the door closer.
"Leave that here," the woman said.
"I'd rather keep it."
"Then keep the point where I can see it. There are people lying down."
With the spear lowered along Owen's right side, they followed her past the counter, Vic keeping his own blade close to his thigh. A man lying on a padded bench lifted his head to watch them pass. His left trouser leg had been cut to the knee, and the woman beside him held an empty bowl ready against her lap. Vic tried to look away before the man noticed.
"Slipped getting off a bus," he said. "All this, and I fall down a step."
"We came past one across the crossing," Vic said.
"That's the one."
Vic wanted to tell him about the fishmarket route, to offer something useful before they moved on, but the woman shook her head as the man lay back. He needed to rest.
A draught smelling of yeast and wet cardboard reached them from a door at the back of the hall, where a broad man in a grey sweatshirt had come in carrying two folded blankets. He stopped when he saw Owen.
Vic recognised Dan's mouth before the rest of him. In the photographs Owen held too close to Vic's face he was usually beside a boat or a barbecue, with time to arrange himself for the camera. Now his hair stood up where he had rubbed it, and one sock had slipped below the heel of his trainer.
"Dad."
Owen had barely set the spear against the counter before Dan dropped the blankets onto a chair and put both arms round him. Owen gripped the back of his son's sweatshirt with his right hand, his left trapped between them until Dan felt the awkwardness and drew away.
"What happened?"
"Got bitten."
Dan looked down. "By what?"
"One of the things. Where's Ruth?"
"Upstairs. She's fine. I sent you—"
"I know. Mine didn't go either."
Dan had both hands on Owen's shoulders. He looked at the dressing again, then at Vic, who was still holding a sword beside a bag of first-aid supplies and had no suitable introduction ready.
"This is Vic," Owen said. "From work."
"The armour. Right." Dan offered a hand, noticed the sword and took it back. "Ruth thought you'd stay there."
"I said I'd come."
"Yes. That's what I told her."
Gathering up the blankets, Dan gave one to the ferry woman and tucked the other under his arm. "Come round. She's been getting people out of the stairs."
Dan led them towards the rear door without asking about the bandage again. Vic lifted the bag while Owen retrieved his spear, and they followed him out.
They had to pass close to a parked delivery van in the narrow court between the terminal and the backs of the shops. To the east, two adults with torches stood talking at an open gate onto the street. Vic looked the other way for a route back towards the harbour path, but the court ended at a brick wall, with bread trays stacked beneath a little corrugated roof. Dan pointed it out to Owen as they crossed.
"We use the terminal to get out that side. Don't go looking behind the bins. People keep trying."
Through the bakery's open stair door, a battery lamp lit a woman tying a strip of cloth round the handrail on the first landing. She tested the loose end with a pull before moving down to the next turn.
"Ruth," Dan said.
She looked over the rail. "Oh, thank God." Her gaze travelled down to the spear.
"Please don't bring that up the stairs."
Owen stopped with one foot on the bottom step and looked along the ash shaft as though he had forgotten he was holding it. Dan relieved him of it, laying it against the court wall with the head towards the closed end, and stayed there while his father climbed.
Vic left the sword and bag beside Dan. Freed of the sword grip, his fingers stung as he flexed them, each small cut making itself felt on the way up the stairs.
Ruth met them on the landing, still in a bakery polo shirt under her quilted waistcoat, with flour across one shoulder and a pencil holding up her dark hair. She touched Owen's good arm and said his name so softly that Vic barely heard it before she took him through the open flat door.
The warmth in the front room made Vic's face ache. He lingered inside the door while Ruth found a place for Owen among the adults gathered round a camping lantern on the table, beneath the shade of a ceiling light that would not be coming on. Three sat in dining chairs; two shared a folded duvet on the sofa under the closed curtains. One woman still had her rain bonnet on, its ties loose against her collar, and there were mugs on every surface Vic could see. He began to want one.
Ruth moved a pile of towels from an armchair. "Here."
The chair gave a wooden complaint as Owen sank into it. For several seconds he looked across at the cold electric fire and the photograph beside it of Dan and Ruth on a stony beach, his right fingertips resting on the bandage before he drew them away.
"We had your dinner," Ruth said. "I'm sorry. Mrs Bell hadn't eaten."
"I told you to," said the woman in the rain bonnet. "You make it sound as if I took it."
"She said we should divide it before it got cold. There's bread."
"Bread's good," Owen said.
Ruth crouched beside his chair. She tried to see beneath the rolled edge of his sleeve without touching the dressing. "Has anyone looked at this?"
"Vic put a pad on."
"I'll get Tess. She's downstairs."
"She's got worse than me down there."
"Then she'll tell you that."
Vic moved aside to let Ruth pass and heard a knife scraping a board in the little kitchen. An older man emerged with half a loaf and, after checking neither of them had a food allergy, gave them each a slice thick enough to hold without bending. The bread was cold, its crust hard along the ridge where it had risen against the tin. Chewing took some effort, but halfway through the first mouthful Vic was already looking at the loaf for another slice.
The man introduced himself as Colin and explained that he and Mrs Bell both lived on the floor above. They had brought blankets and the contents of a biscuit tin, along with a kettle of water that had still been hot when they arrived. Empty now, he said, tipping it towards Vic as though there might be something he could do about that.
"We have one at work," Vic said, and stopped.
"So do we all," Colin said.
Owen looked up at Vic with a small movement at the corner of his mouth. Vic occupied himself with the rest of the bread, listening as Mrs Bell resumed an argument about whether the landing door should be closed. He had expected their arrival to change the room more than it had. At the far end of the sofa a woman was already back to her list on the reverse of a calendar, while someone called down to Dan about a missing green shopping bag.
They had had an hour to decide where to sit and what to bring, to find a bucket for the food wrappers and mark the turns of the stairs with strips of bedsheet so people could use them without a torch. A man in his socks waited outside the occupied bathroom. Vic looked round for somewhere to put himself, with no useful contribution to any of it and his sword downstairs where it could do no harm. Owen knew where his son was now. He could sit down.
He chose a low stool by the wall, then had to ease himself upright again as his back objected to the bend.
"That gate," Owen said.
"Yes."
"Can you walk?"
"Yes. I don't want to lift another one."
"Good. We won't ask you."
Owen settled his head against the chair, his eyes staying open as Dan's voice carried up from the court below.
Tess arrived carrying a red medical bag and Vic's canvas one. Ruth followed with the battery lamp from the stair door, leaving Dan at the bottom to light the steps with his phone.
"Which of you emptied a first-aid cabinet?" Tess asked.
Vic raised his hand.
"Thank you. May I use it?"
"Of course."
"I've had people say the other thing."
As she set the bags on the table and crouched in front of Owen, Ruth lowered the lamp to light his arm. Its beam caught a reflective strip on Tess's trouser pocket and the badly folded collar of her green work shirt; above it, dark curls were cut close against her neck.
"Tess Ward. I'm a paramedic. Tell me what did this."
Owen began with the bite, but soon lost his way among her questions about when it had happened, whether he had fallen and where else he hurt. When he tried to answer the third by going back to the first, Tess waited him out. Vic recognised the expression: Owen used it on delivery drivers who said the alarm had already been going when they arrived.
Vic rose to help Ruth pull the table nearer, only to have Tess stop him with a glance at his hands.
"Stay there a moment. Are those bites too?"
"No. Cuts. From a gate, I think."
"You think?"
"I noticed them at the gate. I had glass on my clothes before that."
She had him turn his palms towards the lamp, then sent him to wash while she finished with Owen. He waited outside the bathroom, listening to Mrs Bell explain that the tap still ran but did not run very well.
By the time he came back, Owen's coat was draped over the chair and Tess had bagged the old dressing at her feet. His forearm lay on a folded towel in the hard white light, its punctures and torn skin exposed above the bruising underneath. Vic's attention slipped to the clean pad waiting beside it. He made himself look back at the arm.
"Can you move these for me?" she asked Owen.
She watched him move his fingers, then touched his hand in several places, asking what he could feel before arranging her supplies within reach. While she explained what she needed to do, Owen tightened his right hand on the chair arm and Ruth came to stand by his shoulder. Vic took the lamp, holding it in both hands so that the small tremor in his fingers would not travel into the light.
He lost track of how long the cleaning took. Whenever Tess reached for another packet he hoped she was finished, until Owen asked her to give him a minute and her hands came to rest. In the space that left, Vic could hear the people on the sofa discussing their front-door keys. Colin had found one in the bread bag, and nobody seemed sure whose it was; the conversation went on while Owen sat with his jaw clamped shut.
"Ready?" Tess asked.
"Yes."
Vic raised the lamp a little to help her see. Opened packets were accumulating beside the basin, and each time she changed her gloves or reached for more liquid, he glanced at what remained on the table. He had brought the canvas bag here pleased with how much he had taken from the cabinet. Now he could begin to see where it would run out.
"Will it heal quicker?" Owen asked.
Tess glanced up. "With what?"
"The numbers. Vitality."
"Have you changed yours?"
"Not yet."
"Then I can't tell you. And I couldn't tell you much if you had. I've been doing this for twenty years. I've had these words in my head since before midnight."
She opened another packet.
"If it helps, I'll be pleased. I still need to clean your arm."
As Owen nodded, Vic remembered watching his own Health rise with his wrist still hurting, and how eagerly he had waited for the pain to follow the number.
Once Tess had finished the dressing, she eased Owen's arm into a sling from her bag, hiding most of the white bandage inside the dark cloth. His attempt to settle his elbow ended in a wince, and he let Ruth adjust the fabric for him.
"I want this reviewed properly," Tess said. "I can't tell you what those animals carry. I can tell you I don't like a bite that deep."
"Hospital?"
"As soon as we have a route. The bridge report isn't good. Until then, you stay where someone can check you. If anything changes, you tell me."
"I'm not leaving him," Ruth said.
"Good. He looks inclined to leave himself."
When Tess turned to Vic's hands, he was ready for a question about why he had been unable to keep Owen from being bitten. Instead she wanted to know where the glass had come from. He told her about the display case as she dressed the two cuts that opened when he bent his fingers, then submitted to having his sleeves checked and being turned round under the lamp.
"No other blood?"
"No. My back's sore. I tried to lift a sliding gate."
"By yourself?"
"It had a guide at the top. It couldn't lift."
He waited through her look, almost wanting the lecture, but she only asked him to show her where it hurt.
While Ruth carried the basin away, Tess sorted through the canvas bag and asked to keep the remaining supplies for the terminal. Vic agreed, watching three wrapped pads, a little over half a roll of tape and a crepe bandage go into her red bag. His own came back with only the two water bottles inside. He put the fuller one on the table for Owen and kept the other, while Ruth tried to get Tess to accept a glass of water. It went untouched until she put it directly into Tess's hand.
"How many are you looking after?" Vic asked.
"Here? Everyone who can find me."
He waited while she drank.
"Three downstairs I don't want walking about. Your friend makes four people I want to keep an eye on. There are others with cuts, cold, things they normally take tablets for. I need everyone in one place."
"There's room in the waiting hall."
"There's floor in the waiting hall. Come and see it."
Owen had trapped the water bottle between his knees and was trying to unscrew it one-handed. Vic stopped to loosen the cap for him before following Tess.
From the stairs Vic could see Dan still beside their weapons, wrapped in the spare blanket and keeping his torch on the gateway while one of its two watchers went inside. Tess took the lamp back from Ruth as they reached the bottom.
"I'm taking Vic round," she told Dan. "Your dad's staying in that chair."
"I've got Ruth on it."
"Good luck to him, then."
Vic slung the bag over his shoulder and picked up the sword, allowing for a blade that seemed much longer in this cramped court than it had on the road. Dan put two fingers against the flat to guide it clear of the van, then withdrew them when he saw Vic looking.
"Sorry."
"It's fine. Don't run your hand along it."
"Wasn't planning to."
Tess led him behind the café counter, where a ferry worker was crating up cups to make space for blankets on a bench seat. There was even a sink. Vic had begun to think the arrangement looked quite workable when Tess opened the tap and, after a few dry seconds, closed it again without surprise.
"Tank-fed," she said. "Staff think the pump's stopped. We've water in the flats. Carrying every bowl through that court isn't going to work for long."
She went to speak to the man from the bus and the people on the two benches beyond him, one screened by a coat hung over a luggage rack. Left at the counter, Vic looked past them towards the front wall. Nearly all of it was glass, each pane taller than Owen, with only narrow aluminium uprights between them and three lashed luggage trolleys protecting the farthest pane to less than half its height.
There was a pale star in that one, down near his knee. Tess's lamp reflected above it, obscuring the damage until he moved far enough along the counter to bring a long crack into view, running from the star to the lower corner.
The ferry woman came over. She said her name was June and asked whether Owen had found everyone.
"Yes. Thank you."
"Good. We can cross something off."
Vic pointed with his empty hand. "Was that here before?"
"No. One hit it while we were bringing a man in. At the other doors. It followed us along the front."
"Did it get through?"
"You're looking at the glass."
He brought his attention back to her.
"Sorry. I meant, did it go away afterwards?"
"Last saw it by the ramp. We shut the curtains on this side so it couldn't keep watching people. Then somebody wanted the curtains for blankets."
Her glance took him down the hall to the removed curtain, now covering two people on the floor. June rubbed along her eyebrow with one finger, holding it there while she looked at them.
"I've six staff. Two went west again with torches to warn those four you told us about. Four here, including me. Doors front and back. We can't keep doing both."
"Can't you shut one?"
"The back gets us to water and the flats. The front gets us to the quay, and people keep coming off the road. Which would you pick?"
At the service entrance the man with the pipe was back in his seat behind the trolley, his head resting against the wall. His eyes kept returning to the glass even as people passed him on their way through the hall.
"How far did your people get on the road?"
June showed him the account pencilled onto the clipboard by the pair who had brought in the man from the bus. They had reached the inland turning and seen a lorry blocking the bridge; on the northern street behind the flats they had found a hound at the upper end. Vic checked the times beside the entries, but nobody had tried either route since.
"What about boats?"
"The late ferry's out there." She pointed through the black glass, beyond any light he could see. "They signalled us with a lamp. Staying off the berth. We've people on the vehicle ramp, and I can't promise them a clear landing."
"So they know."
"They know we're here. That's what I've got."
Tess rejoined them. She had left the red bag behind the counter, where another woman was taking notes beside the patients. June asked whether they could move the man with the injured leg to the flats.
"Up those stairs? Not with what we've got," Tess said. "And I won't put him somewhere we can't get him down again."
Vic tried to picture them carrying the man up past Ruth's strips of cloth, and got no further than the first turn before running out of space. They had left a spear in the court to avoid that stair. Looking at Tess's bag, he thought of the benches back at work, all that room to lay things out.
"There's space at the Arsenal," he said.
June's pen stopped.
"Stone walls. Proper doors. We locked them when we left."
"How do we get in?"
"Owen has the key."
With Tess waiting to hear more, Vic began to describe the workshop, its clear bench surfaces and sinks, the first-aid cabinet and the door she could lock. He was picturing where she would put her bag as he spoke, mentally shifting a box of fittings to give her more room.
"Which floor?" she asked.
"Upstairs. But the stair's broad."
"Vic."
He followed her look towards the man on the bench and stopped.
"The hall," he said. "There's a cloakroom off it. Ground floor."
"Can we lie someone down in there?"
He tried to fit someone between the cloakroom's counter and the two folding tables they used for group visits. There ought to be room if the tables were put away, though one had boxes underneath it whose contents he could not remember. Until now he had scarcely looked beyond the numbered hooks where visitors left their coats.
"If we clear it."
"Water? A toilet? Another way out?"
The staff facilities were easy enough to find, though he had not tried a tap since the lights failed. As for another way out, he began tracing the route to the loading bay and came up against the armoury stairs, the broken glass and dead beasts he would have to take them past.
"We'd have to check," he said.
June wrote Arsenal on a clean sheet, leaving the rest of the line empty.
"I won't send injured people on a walk because there's probably a room at the other end," Tess said.
"We could go ahead. Clear it. Bring word back."
"You and your man with one arm?"
His bandaged fingers had begun to ache around the sword grip. He lowered the point beside his boot, careful of June's leg, and tried to work out what he had been proposing Owen should carry with one usable hand.
"We'd need help."
"Yes," she said. "We would."
June brought her clipboard and the new sheet back to the flat with them. On the stairs, Vic helped Dan bring the spear up through the open centre, guiding its point from above until they could lay it along the landing wall where nobody had to step over it. He left his sword beside it and carried the canvas bag in to put beneath his stool.
Owen's bottle was a little emptier, but he was occupied with something just above his knees that Vic could not see. A raised finger kept Vic waiting in silence beside him.
"Taken it," Owen said at last. "Watchman."
"How is it?"
"Common. Raw. Same wait till five for a skill."
He turned his right hand palm up, studying it for a moment before looking towards the closed curtains. Colin was asking June about the ferry; Owen let them finish before going on.
"Vitality, Perception, Will. That's where its points go. Put my three in Vitality as well."
"Arm?"
Owen shifted it in the sling and stopped. "Still hurts."
Settling onto the stool, Vic tried to let go of the idea that Owen only needed to make the right choice. A larger pool of Health would help, presumably, but he had still been unable to shift his arm in the sling.
"What do the others give?"
"More for fighting. I'd sooner notice something before it's on top of me." He looked past Vic. "What's June doing up here?"
Vic began explaining the cloakroom proposal, encouraged by Owen's attention until he reached the water supply and Owen shook his head.
"That tap's behind the counter. No sink under it. We fill the mop bucket off it."
"It is water."
"If it's running. I'm telling you what it is."
Tess set her lamp on the table and they drew their chairs round it, leaving Owen in the armchair where he could rest his arm. On the back of another calendar sheet, with a pencil Ruth found for him, Vic began drawing their route. He made the quay too straight on his first attempt. With Owen correcting the bend at the fishmarket, he tried again, then passed it to June to add the northern turning and the time her staff had last seen it. She ringed the blocked bridge.
"There's no point going west with a trolley," Dan said. "You said there's a narrow bit by the pump house."
"It would go through the fishmarket's main gate," Vic said.
"If they open it."
"There's something outside it," Owen said. "They shouldn't."
Vic pressed hard enough to groove the paper as he crossed out the line. All that space in the yard had stayed clear in his head, while the animal waiting at its entrance had somehow dropped out of the picture.
Tess looked at the stairs drawn beside the Arsenal. "And this end?"
"Broad steps from the shore road to the plaza," Owen said. "Two of us walked abreast. A chair can go up. A trolley can't."
"The road climbs round the other side," Vic said. "Delivery vans use it."
"Have you been along it tonight?"
"No."
June put a question mark beside the line, adding to a sheet Vic was beginning to have trouble reading through its corrections.
Ruth rested her forearms on the table. "Then the first people walking there aren't taking patients. They're taking bedding and finding out whether the door opens. We can do that."
"Who's we?" Dan asked.
"Me, if there's someone here to keep the flat."
Mrs Bell took the pencil from beside her. "What needs keeping?"
"The water. Names. People coming in."
"I've lived here thirty-one years. I can find the tap."
Mrs Bell took the list Ruth handed her and turned it towards the lantern, asking about two names she could not read. While Ruth explained them, Dan sat back from the table and looked at his father.
"I'd go," he said. "But someone needs to stay on that gate."
"Stay," Owen said. "We need a way back if it's no good."
Vic glanced at him over the map. We, he had said, and Ruth was already turning to him.
"You're supposed to be sitting down."
"I am. When we move, I can walk. I have the keys and I know the building."
Tess studied him. "No carrying. No using that spear with your bad arm. And if you can't keep walking, we stop where there's cover. You tell us before we get there."
"Agreed."
"Then I go," she said.
June shook her head. "I need you here."
"You need somewhere I can work. I need to see it before we move anyone who can't get back under their own steam."
Colin put the kettle down, giving up any pretence of doing something other than listening. June kept her eyes on Tess, her thumb working over a patch of worn veneer at the top of the clipboard.
"Helen can stay with them," Tess said. "She's been helping me since the start. I leave supplies, instructions, and she sends for me if anything changes. I take the small kit. No one moves until I've been back."
"How long?"
Looking down at the paper, Vic counted back over the journey that had taken them nearly an hour, allowing for the dressing and the stop at the gate. Perhaps they could be faster on the return, if the route was clearer. His pencil hovered over the bend he had drawn twice before he put it down, leaving the estimate to Owen.
"Allow an hour each way," Owen said. "If we can't get through, we don't keep trying till morning. We come back."
June drew a box around that. "Tess comes back. Even if the room's good. I want that understood."
"Understood," Tess said.
"And who's watching your front door while you're busy inside?"
Owen pulled June's sheet towards him with his right hand. "I'll set up a watch. Two awake, relieved before they're dropping. Inside the door, with somewhere to sit. We need more than this lot to keep it going."
"You aren't the whole watch," Ruth said.
"I just said two."
"You said you'd set it up. That's how you end up doing everyone else's turn."
After a moment he pushed the sheet back towards the middle of the table, within her reach.
"Names, then. Who's willing?"
Vic added his name beneath Ruth's while Colin explained that he could sit awake and recognise trouble as well as anyone, provided nobody expected him to run. They pencilled him in for later, if the room and the route proved usable. June would ask the staff coming off the doors, but for now the space beneath their names stayed blank.
"And if the cloakroom won't work?" Tess asked Vic.
"We come back."
She kept looking at him.
"Without fetching the armour," he said.
He kept his eyes on Tess as he said it, unable to look at Owen, who had made no mention of the armour at all.
Ruth glanced between them, then asked what they could use for a seat with carrying handles. They went downstairs to look at the terminal's evacuation chair.
June unlocked the chair's cabinet beside the staff passage with a small key from her belt. Folded flat, with its straps tucked inside the frame, it was light enough for Dan to lift out alone and set on the floor for Tess to check. Once he had opened it, she asked for another person at the back.
Vic left his sword and bag against the wall to take the rear handles, with June at the front and Dan sitting in the chair. Ruth held the doors for them through the passage and round the turn into the waiting hall. They had nobody in distress to worry about, and time to judge each opening, but at the threshold into the court a wheel caught hard on the sill.
"Back," Tess said.
Vic followed June's call to step back, taking the load as his lower back tightened.
"My back," he said. "I need to put this down."
Tess had them lower it before Ruth took his place. Vic took the lamp and moved aside to give them room to turn the chair, listening as they agreed that June would call the lifts from the front. His face felt hot. Ruth was shorter than him and, so far as he knew, had spent no points on Strength, but when she lifted on June's count the chair cleared the sill.
He lit the threshold for their return while Ruth asked Dan to keep his feet in. They brought him into the hall without catching the wheel again, and he got out brushing blanket fluff from his trousers.
"I'm not doing that up the plaza steps in the dark without seeing them," Ruth said.
"Neither am I," Tess said. "This stays here for now. We've proved it fits these doors. That's all."
With the empty cabinet locked, June tied its key to the folded chair and noted where they were leaving it on her clipboard. Vic retrieved his sword and bag as Ruth and Dan went upstairs for Owen.
The man with the pipe raised a hand from the service entrance, where lights were moving beyond the glass. He called June over and waited to hear the two workers outside identify themselves before getting up to move the trolley.
They came in with their trousers wet to the knee, one carrying a torch with a broad cracked lens, the other holding a heavy rubber torch under his arm. Neither went further than the space they needed to let the door close behind them.
"Four, as you said," the first told June. "Len and the others. We called through from this side. They came to the upstairs window."
"Coming here?"
"Staying put. They've water, lights, a door at the top of the stairs. Wanted to know if boats were running. We said we couldn't promise."
"The animal?" Owen asked from behind Vic.
Vic turned to find Ruth helping Owen settle his coat over the arm held close in its sling. Dan followed with the spear gripped just below the head to keep it clear of the ceiling, while Ruth passed over Owen's water bottle for Vic to put back in the bag.
"Couldn't see one at the gate. Heard something on the road side. We didn't go round to look." The worker pointed back the way he had come. "Path this side's clear as far as the wicket. Right then, anyway."
Vic borrowed the pencil after June had written down the time, adding it to their copy of the route sheet. He left the mark at the main gate where it was.
Owen asked the workers whether they would take a turn on a door at the Arsenal if the first room could be made usable. The one with the cracked torch said he needed sleep before agreeing to anything. His colleague, a narrow man named Perry, asked where it was and listened to the answer.
"I'll come look," Perry said. "But I'm not taking everyone up there because it's got a bigger door."
"Neither are we," Tess said.
Perry's name brought the list for the first walk to five, with Vic, Owen, Ruth and Tess already on it. As June checked the arrangements with Dan for holding the court, Tess went behind the café counter to sort out supplies with Helen. The neighbours upstairs had their list too.
With nothing left to add, Vic looked through the service-door glass towards the covered walkway, trying to see beyond his own reflection. He could make out the loose tape on his jacket and the lumpy bag hanging beside the sword more clearly than anything outside. The stopped headlights were hidden from here.
He peeled the phone off his breast pocket to turn the torch off and check the screen: thirty-nine per cent at 03:10, with both messages still waiting to send. Perry's torch and Tess's lamp would give them light to start with. For now he could save the battery, so he zipped the phone inside his pocket and folded the old tape onto itself in case he needed it again.
Ruth brought a bread bag in from the court and handed it to Owen, holding the top open while he took it in his right hand.
"Your supper," she said. "What's left."
He looked inside at the bread and the little parcel of cheese in greaseproof paper, then lowered himself onto the bench beside the service door. Dan laid the spear along the wall behind it and sat down next to him.
"Half an hour," Tess said as she passed. "Eat. Sit. Then I look at you again before we go."
Owen spread the paper on his knee and tried to divide the cheese with one hand, breaking it unevenly. He offered Dan the larger piece, only for Dan to put it back on the paper.
Vic left the sword beside the spear and eased himself onto the end of the bench. With the bag between his feet he worked at its knotted handles, picking them apart as well as he could with the dressings on his fingers. By the time he had them loose, Ruth had brought him bread too.
"Butter's upstairs," she said. "I'm not going back for it."
"This is fine."
While Vic ate, Perry pulled a chair up beside the barrier and listened to the man with the pipe explain which wheel stuck. Once Perry was settled, the man got up to find somewhere to sleep.
