The Power of Five Oblivion

them – or to mock each other. The buildings were extraordinary, the visions of architects with all the money in the world and the desire only to outdo each other. There were constructions that curved and rippled and shone silver or white. They were shaped like knives, like rockets, like the sail of a ship. And at their very centre, soaring above all of them, stood the Burj Dubai, which had briefly been the tallest building in the world and which appeared like a futuristic steel syringe, desperately trying to puncture the upper atmosphere. They were all empty. Scarlett wasn’t sure quite why she could be so certain. But they had the same sort of lifelessness as a group of statues in a museum that has closed for the night. They faced each other, solid and unmoving. Dead. There wasn’t a flicker of movement anywhere. And the very motion of the car as they rolled slowly forward seemed alien and unwanted.
    “It’s quiet,” Richard said, as much to hear the sound of his voice as to say anything that mattered.
    “There’s no one here.”
    “But there hasn’t been any fighting. There are no smashed windows. Look at these cars! They could have been parked overnight.”
    It was true. All the parked cars were clean and polished and looked as if they would start at the turn of a key. There was no litter blowing in the street, no rubbish waiting to be collected. It was as if the city had woken up one morning and the people simply hadn’t been there.
    “Richard … what are we going to do?”
    “We could find a five-star hotel.”
    “I don’t think I want to stay here.”
    “Then let’s see if there’s a way out.”
    They drove past a Shell garage and Scarlett wondered if they would be able to refill the Land Cruiser. After they had buried Rémy, they had filled their tanks, using the last of their fuel. The pumps all looked in working order and clearly the electricity supply hadn’t failed, at least in this part of the city. The forecourt was spotless. But if they were going to continue driving, where exactly could they go? Scarlett vaguely remembered old geography lessons. Dubai was on the northern coast of the United Arab Emirates. Oman was next door. Or there was always Iran just opposite, on the other side of the Persian Gulf. It was completely hopeless. They could drive for weeks or months and even assuming they could find more fuel on the way, they wouldn’t necessarily arrive anywhere they wanted to be. Scarlett wondered about Mecca, another sixteen hundred kilometres to the west. They needed a door like the one that had brought them to Cairo. The doors were supposed to be in religious places. Surely they would find one there?
    But Richard had other ideas.
    He had been following a six-lane motorway towards a roundabout with a slightly more antique-looking monument, two giant pincers supporting a clock that had, perhaps ominously, stopped at one minute to midnight. They drove past it, curving around some very ordinary blocks of flats, and there was the airport ahead of them – a great swathe of empty concrete almost the size of a small city itself, with a few low-rise buildings and a single control tower, vague and indistinct on the other side of the heat haze. Scarlett’s heart sank. She hadn’t expected any signs of activity here, not after what she had seen so far. There would be no passengers, no airport workers, no ground crew. But Rémy had told them there were planes here and as far as she could see, there wasn’t so much as a glider. If she and Richard were going to find their way out, then flying wasn’t going to be an option.
    “Don’t worry. The airport’s huge,” Richard said, echoing her thoughts. “There might be a plane somewhere.”
    They drove through the main entrance, past a security barrier that was raised and a control post that was empty. Both of them felt as if they were entering another desert … this one made of concrete. There was no point even looking for a car park. It wasn’t as if someone was going to leap out and give them a parking ticket. They left the car between a silver Aston Martin and a Rolls Royce – both of them could have been driven here direct from the sales room. They didn’t have to worry about the Land Cruiser being stolen either. If there was a thief in the area, he would have a hundred much more luxurious cars to choose from.
    They walked into the main terminal, glad to be out of the car. Ahead of them, on the other side of a gleaming marble