One

The beach described a flat arc from north-east to southwest. It curved before him and it did not appear to incline towards the sea, nor erase itself against a different kind of landscape behind him. The sea seemed to join the beach at a random point, sewn on like a dark hem. It did not seem to have any depth to it. The violence that he had seen in the North Sea was gone here, as if it had spent itself. The sea was flat and black and indolent. Stiff gusts of wind drew some motion from its surface – frail, corpse-grey combers – but it was reluctant, tacked on, almost, like some remembered reconstruction of how oceans ought to behave. The fruits of a decade's worth of slow tides lay on the sand, a scruffy, impromptu market. Orange barrels. Endless lengths of timber. Bleached streamers of plastic. Bodies face down into the sand as if trying to burrow, to escape the embarrassment of scrutiny. Buy one, get one free.

Jane rolled over onto his side, his good side. Despite the flare of pain along his arm, the flesh purpuric and angry, and the dull throb in his savaged thigh, it was comforting to sit in the shingle. He pushed his fingers through the flint pebbles, enjoying the feel of the cool stones against his skin. There was hard work going on all across the headland. The raft itself was a trembling disc of pale blue sitting on the water. It was hard to see, but it seemed to be buoyed by a series of floats lashed to its outer rim. Someone had talked of how it was necessarily open at the centre, so that more floats could be added as a counterbalance to prevent the raft collapsing.

'We're going to sea on a blue Polo mint,' someone had called out, incredulous.

The peninsula was dotted with the remains of fishing boats. Beachcombers sifted through the wreckage, looking for workable pieces of wood. Sometimes Jane looked in a direction where there were no people, no buildings, and it was like viewing a moonscape. The end of the world was desolate and grey. You couldn't see the coast of France. He thought that maybe much of the rest of the world had dissolved into the oceans. It wouldn't take long for the same to happen here.

Jane drew himself up to a sitting position. He was with maybe twenty other wounded. Medical volunteers were slowly tending to the injuries, on a sliding scale of need. A badly burned arm and slashes to the arse were low priorities compared to the man with half his head caved in, or another with an arterial bleed. Jane watched the life puddle out of that one, turning the stones crimson. When he died, nobody cried. There was no sighing or oaths to God. Nobody turned away. The medics covered him up and moved on to the next. Two other men died before they could receive treatment, rattling away into the stones, their faces smoothing as death claimed them. It seemed almost preferable.

Eventually the medics turned their talents to Jane. He had seen one of them before, a wiry man in his forties with a tattoo of an octopus, its tentacles winding around his muscles on his forearm. Edwards, he thought his name was. He and his colleague, a younger man with black skin and alopecia, peeled away Jane's dressings, bathed his wounds and gave him injections. The world drifted away a little. Warmth washed through him. They bandaged his thigh with clean dressings and slathered a cream on his arm that turned it chill. They put a pillow under his head and he lay down on it. Nobody had said a word. There was no need for comfort, or reassurance. You died or you lived. Everyone was beyond the niceties that once accompanied such attention.

Jane slept.

It was growing dark when he revived. The drugs had worn off and he was shivering, his arm laced with pain. Someone had tucked a blanket around him, but it was no good now. The shingle he had enjoyed the feel of earlier was now a relentless sharp digging in his back and buttocks.

'Goes it?'

Jane jerked his head in the direction of the voice. A grainy shape folded into the shingle. Green clothes crusted with black blood.

'I'm all right. A bit stiff, but then I've been feeling like that for years. Edwards, is it?'

''Tis.'

'How long have you been here?'

'Months. Since they began building the fucker. This is the busiest we've been for a while. The worst injuries we had before this were splinters and sprains.' The voice sounded so tired that Jane thought it might simply fade out. He supposed everyone sounded like that now. Tired, strung out. Maybe just giving up the ghost without even realising it.