Flare

Paul Grzegorzek

Copyright © 2014 Paul Grzegorzek
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Chapter 1

Sunday the 14th of September, 2014, was unseasonably warm.  As per usual August had been a bust and delivered little but warm rain out of a steel grey sky, but September was doing its utmost to make up for it.

I was working from home that day, one of the joys of being a freelance journalist.  For months now I’d been putting together an article about humanity, society and the glue that holds it together, having gathered material from dozens of interviews with people involved in the riots a few years before in London.  It was, I knew, the piece that was going to get me international recognition, maybe a permanent job with one of the high end magazines and a salary to match.

Pushing my laptop away, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and crossed to the window, trying vainly to open it further.

My tiny square of a back garden below, so lush in the wet August just gone, was beginning to brown like a pie left too long in the oven.  The government had declared a heat wave, unheard of in September, but it seemed that every drop of moisture was being squeezed out of the air by the oppressive heat.

Usually, in England, and especially on the south coast, heat equals humidity.  Even on the driest days there’s enough moisture in the air to make you feel like you’re taking a shower at the slightest movement. 

Not this time.  Already they’d implemented the fastest hosepipe ban I’d ever heard of as worried gardeners pumped gallons of water into their swiftly dying shrubberies and flowerbeds.

Maybe, I mused as I headed downstairs to the fridge and its promise of salvation in the form of the water-chiller, I should do a piece on the weather to get a little money in while I finished off my masterpiece.

I was far from broke, but extra money never hurt and my daughter’s birthday was coming up, seemingly more expensive each time as she rapidly approached her teenage years.

Last year it had been her first mobile phone.  Her mother, Angie, was barely civil when I called to speak to Melody, so despite the cost it had been a relief to have a direct line of communication with my daughter that didn’t involve the minefield of talking to my ex-wife first.

Nine years of difficult marriage and a messy divorce didn’t make for easy small-talk, but now I could speak to Melody every night without the usual recriminations and demands first.

Just thinking of Melody brought a smile to my lips.  Eleven years old going on thirty, and growing more adult every day.  Only last night she’d been telling me about how ‘socially inept’ one of her friends was, and how she had decided to take the girl under her wing so that she didn’t have trouble in middle school.

Some of my friends wouldn’t know how to use the phrase socially inept, and I’d had to struggle not to laugh when she’d said it so matter-of-factly.

When the split had finally and inevitably happened, Angie had taken Melody and moved to Manchester, back to her parents and their reinforcement of her view that I was the devil incarnate, while I’d stayed in Hove on the south coast, still living in the small but comfortable house a stone’s throw from the sea.

I fetched myself a glass of water and liberally topped it off with ice cubes from the freezer, then made my way back to the study and sat at the desk once more.

The laptop was surrounded by notepads, random pieces of paper and post-it notes, all covered in my almost illegible scrawl.  I’d been working on this piece for the best part of a year, travelling all over the country to interview people on both sides of the riots that had come perilously close to consuming the country after a police shooting in London had inflamed the downtrodden masses.

Interestingly, the rioters themselves had been the easiest to talk to.  Using a few of my contacts in the police, I’d been able to track down several people of interest in Croydon and London.  After I’d managed to convince them I wasn’t with the police myself, a little bit of respect and a few quid here and there had provided a wealth of information.

They were kids, mostly, disaffected and angry.  They’d been looking for any excuse to hit back, to get their voices heard, and once the ball started rolling those too scared to say no had joined in until it got out of control.

My phone vibrated on the desk and I had to dig through reams of paper to find it.  The caller ID showed that it was Jerry Cross, an astrophysicist originally from Sussex University, whose wild theories about everything from aliens to other dimensions had earned him the nickname “Crackpot Cross” and had gotten him kicked out of the faculty.  He spent most of his time now writing books on UFOs that no one took seriously.

“Jerry”, I answered, leaning forward to peel my wet back away from the sticky leather of my chair.

“Malc.  Have you seen the news?”  He sounded excited, his voice high and the words tumbling out as if he only had seconds to spare.

“Not today, no, I’ve been working.  Can you give me the highlights?”  I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice, but it was a struggle.  When I’d been young and keen, a couple of Jerry’s less crazy theories had caught my attention and I’d based stories on them, only to be ridiculed by my peers when they didn’t pan out.  It wasn’t an experience I was keen to repeat.

“It’s the story about solar flares, they’ve been running it for a couple of days”.

I sighed.  “I saw it last night, Jerry, it wasn’t anything special”.

The line crackled slightly and I thought I’d lost him for a second, but then his voice came back on.

“What if I told you they were wrong?”

“What, there won’t be a solar flare?”

“No”, he sounded worried, but then he usually did.  To live in a world populated by aliens, spacecraft and world-shaking government conspiracies probably required a great deal of paranoia, not to mention effort.  “I mean they’re wrong about how bad it will be”.

“Jerry, look, I’m kinda busy.  Are you free next week for coffee maybe?”  I genuinely liked the man, for all his craziness, but when he had a bee in his bonnet he was too much and I really needed to get my piece finished and submitted.

“Next week might be too late.  Please Malcolm, this is serious”. 

“When isn’t it?”  I was starting to lose patience now.  The man could spin a conspiracy out of thin air and cotton wool, and I wasn’t going to get drawn in again.

The line was silent for a moment and then Jerry spoke, his voice urgent.

“Fine.  I understand why you wouldn’t want to believe me, I know the stories I gave you weren’t, uh, too well received, but when you realise that I was right I’m going to need your help”.

“Help with what?”

“Telling everyone!  I’ve been trying to contact the government for days, but no one is returning my calls.  They know, they must do, and there’s only one reason that they aren’t doing anything about it.  Please Malcolm, I need…”

The line crackled and faded again and I pressed the cancel button, taking the chance to end the call while I could.  It was low, I knew, but once Jerry got started on the government I could be there all day.

Shaking my head, I turned back to the laptop and a few moments later Jerry and his conspiracies were all but forgotten as I buried myself in my work.

Chapter 2

I’m not sure what woke me.  I’ve never been a particularly heavy sleeper, but that night I came awake with the unsettling feeling that something was wrong.

I lay there for a few moments, blinking in the dim light that made it past the curtains, staring dumbly as it flickered from blue to green then back again.

My first thought was that a police car must be in the road outside, but when I crossed to the window and drew back the curtains, my jaw dropped as I saw the sky.

The horizon was alive with colour.  Blue, green and red snakes of pale, ethereal light writhed and twisted in the air, dancing in front of the stars as I could only watch in wonder.

Throwing on my dressing gown and slippers, I hurried downstairs and out into the street to look up at the sky.  It was so beautiful that I felt a lump in my throat. I’m not sure how long I stood there before I tore my gaze from the sky, but when I did I saw that other people had come out of their houses, all craning their necks to stare in amazement at the light show.  A cool wind blew in gently from the sea. I shivered and was about to head in for some warmer clothes when one of my neighbours, an old lady whose name I thought might be Mildred, hobbled over to where I stood.  She was wearing an overcoat, neatly buttoned up the front, but I could see the hem of her pink nightie poking out the bottom and large, fluffy slippers were on her feet.

“You see that?”  She demanded, pointing her walking stick at the sky.

“How could I miss it?  Have you been out here long?”

She nodded.  “About an hour.  I don’t sleep much nowadays, so I was sitting up listening to the radio when I saw it through the window.  What do you think it is?”

I shrugged.  “It looks like the northern lights, but they’re usually, well, further north”.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in all my days”, she exclaimed, a trace of wonder in her voice, “do you think it can hurt us?”

“No, I don’t think it can”, I said, but as I spoke I suddenly recalled Jerry’s phone call from earlier in the day.  If anything could cause the northern lights to appear this far south, it would be a solar flare, but I’d never heard of it happening in my lifetime.

“Only I saw a film about triffids a few weeks ago”, Mildred continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “and they were looking at lights in the sky and they all went blind”.

I was about to reassure her but I paused before speaking.  I was assuming that the lights were benign but what did I really know?

“I’m sure it will all be fine”, I said lamely, “there’s probably nothing to worry about”.

Mildred sniffed and shrugged, almost knocking her glasses from their precarious position on the end of her nose.  “Not much point worrying at my age anyway”.

Without another word she turned and headed back to her front garden, leaning against the wall to continue watching the swirling lights.

Despite my earlier scorn of Jerry’s panicked conspiracy, now I’d seen the sky I couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

With a final look at the fantastic colours overhead, I went back inside and up to my bedroom, checking my alarm clock and seeing that it was a little after midnight.  Hoping that he wouldn’t resent the intrusion, particularly after my abrupt end to the call yesterday, I picked up my phone and dialled Jerry’s number.

He answered it after two rings, his voice low and serious.

“I told you, didn’t I?”  He said without preamble.

“Yes Jerry, you did.  I take it you’ve seen the sky then?”  The line faded and crackled again, blanking out completely for a second or two.

“…here all night, waiting for it.  I don’t want to be in the city when it hits”.

“Jerry, I lost you.  Where are you?”

“I’m up on the downs behind Shoreham”, he said, referring to the ancient chalk hills that surrounded Brighton, “you should get up here”.

“Actually, I was thinking that maybe we could meet in the morning for coffee?”  I said hopefully, not wanting to have to drag myself into the countryside in the dark.

“You still don’t get it, do you Malc?”  There was anger in his voice now, something I’d rarely heard from him.  “Mornings in Hove with coffee while you check the news on your laptop, it’s all fucked!”

I sighed and closed my eyes for a second.  I was tired, but as I didn’t have to get up early I supposed that a trip to the downs wouldn’t kill me.

“Ok Jerry, you win.    How do I find you?”

He gave me surprisingly straightforward directions to a spot only half a mile or so outside of Shoreham, and I promised him I’d be there as soon as I could.  I was still unsure of the validity of his end of the world rantings, but the photos I’d be able to take of the sky from up on the hill would be worth their weight in gold.

“Oh, and Malc?” 

“Yeah?”  I replied, already getting dressed.

“Bring a flask of coffee, it’s the one thing I forgot and if the world is going to end I’d like to be awake for it”.

Chapter 3

Thirty minutes later I pulled in next to Jerry’s car, a rust-bucket of a VW Golf that was at least twenty years old if not more.  From there Jerry wasn’t hard to spot.

He’d camped up on the brow of the nearest hill, surrounding himself with all manner of strange equipment ranging from a telescope to what appeared to be a portable satellite dish attached to a box of lights, switches and dials.

Climbing the gate into the field, I trudged over to his nest with a flask in one hand and my torch in the other, careful not to trip on the rutted ground.

As I approached, I could just make out Jerry sat on a folding garden chair, his face gently illuminated by the glow of a small screen attached to the box of lights.

The aurora had faded now, at least for the moment, and I carefully pushed my way into the small area near Jerry that wasn’t bristling with equipment.

He stood awkwardly and shook my hand, torch and all.

“Thank you Malc, thank you for coming.  There’s a lot to explain, and I know that despite what’s happened in the past you’ll at least listen to me”.

I looked up at him and searched his face in the dim light, hoping to glean some clue as to how serious he was about all this.  Although, to be fair, he’d been deadly serious last time he told me about the crashed alien spaceship the government were hiding in The Forest of Dean, and I shuddered when I remembered how that had turned out for me.

He stood a couple of inches taller than me at 6’2”, with floppy, almost black hair that fell in front of his eyes on a regular basis, constantly making him flick it back with a small toss of his head.  Round glasses perched high up on his nose, and even though the night was far from cold he had his duffel coat buttoned right up to his chin.

He looked, I thought as he waited for me to speak, a lot like a younger, thinner version of Jeff Goldblum.

“Coffee”, I said, holding up the flask.  “I assume you want some before you tell me what’s going on?”

He nodded eagerly as I unscrewed the flask and poured out two cups.  I’d made it with milk and sugar and he slurped at it greedily as I sipped my own. 

“So”, I said as I looked for somewhere to sit, then gave up and crouched next to his chair, “I take it the lights are being caused by the flare then?”

Jerry nodded and took another gulp of coffee before speaking.

“They are.  There’s only two recorded sightings of the Aurora Borealis, to give it its proper name, this far south.  One was in 1859, during the so-called Carrington event, and the other was way back in about 775AD”.

I took a larger swig of coffee and almost yelped as I burned my tongue.

“Are we in danger?”  I asked, thinking back to my elderly neighbour’s question.

Jerry shrugged.  “Yes, well, no.  Ok, maybe.  I’m not just up here for the view.  There’s a good chance that this is going to make the Carrington event look like a crap fireworks party”.

“The Carrington event?”

He nodded and flicked back his hair.

“It was a flare that hit the United States in 1859.  It was so powerful that it melted telegraph lines and set light to the paper in the telegraph offices.  It also caused the Aurora to be seen as far south as Colombia”.

He paused and checked the screen on his equipment, then muttered something and hit a button.  A small printer at the bottom of the stack began to spew out paper.

I raised an eyebrow but he ignored me as he continued.

“So that was the most advanced technology in the world back then, and the flare all but destroyed it.  Now imagine something as powerful as that flare, then scale it up by about five times and imagine what it will do to every single piece of technology on the planet, and that’s what I think is about to happen”.

He looked at me expectantly, perhaps expecting me to jump up in a panic or show some other sign of amazement that wouldn’t be forthcoming.

“Oh come on, Jerry”, I said, trying to keep the scorn out of my voice and failing, “if it was that bad the government would know, and they would have warned everybody, surely?”

“Oh would they?  And these are the same people who had proof of WMD’s in Iraq, the same people who have spent the last year stocking up the old cold war nuclear bunkers and for the last twelve hours have been completely uncontactable?”

I finished my coffee and suddenly wished for a cigarette.  I’d quit six months before but I still found myself reaching for them at odd moments.  And this definitely counted as an odd moment.

“So you’re saying that the government know and they’re not telling anyone?  Why would they do that?”

He stood and rooted through his pockets, pulling out a battered packet of Marlboro reds and lighting one.  He offered me the packet and it took everything I had not to accept.

“Because”, he said as he blew a plume of smoke into the night sky, the breeze dispersing it almost immediately, “there’s no point in making people panic if there’s nothing they can do.  If this flare is as bad as I think it’s going to be, it’ll knock out the national grid for days, maybe even weeks.  The damage from that will be bad enough, but can you imagine what would happen if you told the general public that they were about to face it?  Riots, panic, fighting in the streets, just to get food and water.  No, far better for the government to squirrel themselves away and come out to pick up the pieces once the infrastructure is back on its feet”.

I shook my head.  “I don’t buy it.  They’ve known about the risk of big flares for a long time, they must have put some money into protecting the grid”.

Jerry barked a laugh.  “For a journalist, you can be very naïve.  The energy companies pay all those billions they make out to their shareholders, and keep the rest for themselves. What little money goes back into the system just replaces parts that are worn out or goes on research for cheaper ways to make the money they already charge.  To protect the grid against something as big as a major flare properly would cost billions, and who’s going to pay that kind of money out for something that might never happen?”

“So what happens if the grid does overload?”  As much as I didn’t want to believe him, for once Jerry was making a kind of sense.  I could well imagine how bad things might get if the grid went down over the winter.  Thousands, perhaps millions of people would die as food, fuel and water delivery ground to a halt, with too few people in the modern world having any idea how to live off the land.

“Well the flare will work like an Electromagnetic Pulse”, Jerry said, waving his cigarette to emphasise his point, “and that will knock out pretty much anything with a chip in it.  The grid will stop regulating itself when the chips in its circuits fry, but the power stations will carry on pumping out electricity, only there’ll be a backwash and the transformers will blow.  In order to get it all up and running again they’ll have to replace every single transformer in every single substation in the country.  And that’s not even the worst of it”.

I opened my mouth to ask the inevitable question, but as I did the sky lit up again, the same blues, greens and reds as earlier but so vibrant that it looked as if a team of giants were standing behind the sky with laser pointers, each trying to outdo the other.

“What the…”  I looked at Jerry but he had crouched by his display again, his fingers flashing over keys and dials as the printer continued to churn out reams of paper.

“If you’ve got anyone to call, I’d do it now”, he called over his shoulder, “I think the cell towers are about to go down”.

There was only one person in the world I wanted to call, and if Jerry was wrong she’d be grumpy with me but I could live with that.  Pulling out my phone, I hit speed-dial and after a moment it began to ring. 

I was about to give up when Melody’s sleepy voice answered the phone.

“Dad, do you know what time it is?”  The line hissed and crackled as she spoke.

“I know sweetheart, I’m sorry.  Listen to me though, and listen carefully.  There’s a very good chance that the electricity will stop working for a while all over the country, and if it does then I’m going to drive up and find you, ok?”

“What, all the electricity?”

“Yes love, all of it”.

“Then how will I charge my phone?”  She asked, still half asleep.

“The phones won’t work either, so if it does happen, you need to tell your mum that I’m coming and make sure that she keeps you safe.  Can you do that?”

“…Dad, you’re scaring…”  The line began to fizz, small popping sounds making her voice almost unreadable.

“Melody, tell your mum to keep you safe, I’m coming, ok?”

“Dad, I ca… hear y…  I’m scare…”

“Melody, it’s ok, you’ll be fine.  Just make sure you tell your mum.  Maybe get her to take you to nan and grandpa’s, eh?”

They lived in the suburbs just outside the city, and still had the wartime mentality of stockpiling food ‘just in case’ that had been drummed into them by their own parents.  I figured they had a far better chance of survival than Angie’s ‘get a takeaway on the way home’ way of thinking.

“…the sky!  Dad, it’s…”  The line gave a final pop and went dead.  The phone felt hot against my ear and I pulled it away to see that the screen was totally blank, the battery pack hot enough to burn my hand.

“Shit.  Jerry, I need to leave, now”.  I dropped my phone on the ground, too hot to hold anymore, and looked around to see him frantically unplugging his equipment, pulling out the batteries and placing them in his bag.

“Jerry”, I called again, “I’m going, now”.

I thought for a moment that he hadn’t heard me, but as I turned he looked up at me.

“Malc, wait!”

I stopped, every fibre of my being telling me to get into the car and drive to Manchester now, but there was a note of pure panic in Jerry’s voice that rooted my feet to the ground.

He pointed south, and as I followed his finger I saw something that would have frozen me to the spot if I wasn’t already.

All across the city and the fields below us, I could see electricity pylons, their metal frames spitting fat blue sparks that crawled out from the substations and on towards the homes they connected to like jagged spiders of pure electricity, scuttling towards the unsuspecting city.

“Oh my god”, I muttered, unable to do more than stare in horror, hoping, praying that the discharge would ground itself before it reached the homes and businesses laid out below us.  Only it didn’t.

And then the world caught fire.

Chapter 4

The city went dark below us, whole streets winking out into darkness in a split second until not a single electric light shone anywhere that I could see.

At the same time, the electrical charges struck in too many places to count.  For a few seconds I thought that they had all grounded safely, losing their charge before doing any damage, but then a roiling explosion lit the night sky, a huge gout of flame and dirty smoke shooting up into the air somewhere in the heart of Brighton.

Other, smaller fires began to follow, and I watched, helpless, as flames began to spread.  The rolling boom of the first explosion hit us, but other than that it was eerily silent up on the hill, nothing but the wind blowing in gently from the sea, bringing with it the tang of salt air even up here on the downs.

I kept expecting to see blue lights, maybe hear the faint echo of sirens as the fire service and ambulances raced to save lives in the carnage below, but the streets stayed quiet and dark, not counting the hundred or so small fires that dotted the landscape from one side of the city to the other.

I turned and looked at Jerry, his face a mask of horror that mirrored my own.

“Jerry, how could this happen?”  I asked, still not quite believing my own eyes.

Another explosion lit the night, this one much closer, somewhere in Shoreham.  The sound hit us much faster this time, a sharp retort that echoed around the hills before fading into silence once more.

“I told you, Malc, I tried to tell everyone but no one would listen”.

There were tears in his eyes, I could see them glistening in the faint light from the moon.

“But it’s night time”, I continued, as if using logic would turn back the clock and stop it all from happening, “how can a flare hit at night?”

“You’re thinking of it as a beam, like a laser”, he said, reaching into his rucksack and rooting around for something within.  “Think of it more like water or a cloud of gas.  If you spray water at a ball bearing, or pump gas at it, it doesn’t just hit one side.  Sure, the worst of it will hit the surface facing the spray, but it envelops the ball bearing.  And it’s not just energy from the flare.  There was a coronal mass ejection too, what we call a CME, superheated plasma spat out from the sun.  If you think this is bad, try and imagine what it’s like on the other side of the world.  It could be that the only reason we’re still alive is because we’re on the opposite side to the sun”.

I turned back to the city, unable to look away as the flames began to spread.  The fires, small pinpricks of wavering light from this distance, were too many to count, and I shuddered as I thought of the hundreds of unsuspecting people waking from their beds to find their world reduced to flame, fear and darkness.

“There must be something we can do, we have to help”, I said, but my feet didn’t move.  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the scene below.

“What, exactly?”  Jerry asked savagely. “Maybe if someone had listened to me then everyone could have been evacuated from the cities, or they could have shut the power off in their houses.  All we can do now is stay out of the way and wait for the fires to go out”.

I shook my head.  “No, I can’t just stand by and not do anything”.

Shoreham was burning now, the town below us glowing brighter as more and more fires spread with no one to douse the flames.  The wind picked up, bringing with it a faint scream and the sound of shattering glass.

The noise galvanized me into action, unsticking my feet and pushing me towards the car.

“I can’t just stand here, Jerry”, I said as I began to run, “I’m going to do what I can”.

I didn’t wait for an answer, but jumped in the car and turned the key in the ignition.

Nothing happened.  I turned it again, but not so much as a flicker came from the engine or any of the other systems.

“It won’t work”, Jerry’s voice came from just outside the car, making me jump.  “It’s less than a year old so it’s full of computers and they’ll all be fried.  Come on, we’ll use mine”.

I got out of the car and pocketed the keys without thinking, then followed Jerry to his old banger.  He opened the rear door and loaded some of the equipment I’d seen in the field into the back seat. 

“What made you change your mind?”  I asked as he made his way to the front of the car.

“You’re right”, he said over his shoulder as he levered up the bonnet, “I can’t just stand up here and watch”.

Turning to one side so that I could see what he was doing, he held up the battery leads and reconnected them to the battery before closing the bonnet and waving me into the passenger seat.

He turned the key in the ignition and the car sputtered into life.

“One of the joys of being skint”, he said as he turned on the headlights and made his way carefully down the rutted track towards the town, “my car is old enough that the only electronics are the ignition and the radio, and the ignition has no live parts to speak of”.

I didn’t reply, too dazed by what was happening to be able to make small-talk.  My mind’s eye kept replaying the moment the electrical surge had hit the city, seeing first the large explosion, then the dozens of smaller fires that had sprung up in its wake.

Then there was Melody.  Getting to her had seemed risky but doable when I’d thought about driving up, but without a working car it would take me days, maybe even weeks to reach her.

“Jerry”, I said, breaking the silence, “what are you planning to do now?”

He glanced over at me.  “Well, like you said, there are people down there who need help”.

I shook my head.  “No, not right this second now, I mean after”.

He shrugged uncertainly.  “I didn’t really think that far ahead, not properly.  The boot is loaded up with supplies, camping gear and the like.  I was intending to find somewhere out of the way and ride out the worst of it in the hills, I guess”.

I paused for a second, wanting to ask but dreading the answer if he said no.

“My daughter is in Manchester”, I began, then forged on as I saw him shake his head, “and her mother is probably the worst person to be looking after her in a crisis. Please Jerry, can you drive me up there?  Please?”

My eyes searched his face as he drove, looking for anything that might give away what he was thinking as he sucked his teeth and shook his head.

“I don’t know, it’s a long way Malc.  I’ve got a spare can of diesel in the back but I don’t know if it’ll be enough to get us all the way up there, and the petrol stations won’t be pumping anymore, those that didn’t go up in flames”.

“Then we can syphon some on the way”, I said eagerly. “Think about it Jerry, there’ll be thousands of cars as new as mine that won’t work, just sitting there useless.  I’m sure the owners won’t mind if we trade something for the fuel”.

Jerry finally looked at me, his expression somewhere between sympathy and anger.

“And what have you got to trade, Malc?  Everything in the car is mine, and money won’t be much good, will it?”

He was right, but my concern for Melody was overriding my usual habit of trying to avoid confrontation.

“I promise you Jerry, I’ll pay you back somehow.  Even if it takes me the rest of my life.  This is my daughter we’re talking about, my flesh and blood.  I’ll walk if I have to but the longer it takes me to get to her the more chance there is of…”

I couldn’t finish past the lump in my throat.  Just the thought of anything happening to Melody was enough to reduce me to tears.  I looked out of the passenger window as we pulled out onto the tarmac road at the bottom of the hill and fought to compose myself.

“Ok Malc, ok”, Jerry said quietly, “I’ll take you as far as I can.  I suppose one place is as good as another to camp after I’ve dropped you off”.

I squeezed his shoulder, feeling on the verge of tears again, this time of gratitude as the gut clenching fear faded to a quiet, unsettling murmur.

“Thank you Jerry, I don’t know what I would have done if you’d said no”.

Jerry didn’t answer, instead slowing the car and peering out through the windscreen with wide eyes.

I looked up, only now realising that the light had been gradually increasing as we approached the town.  In my mind, I think I’d dismissed the glow as approaching streetlights, only there weren’t any streetlights left working.

Pulling the car to a halt, Jerry opened his door and got out.  I followed suit, and the moment I stepped out of the vehicle I could hear the roar and crackle of flames, mixed with the shouts, screams and cries of people trapped in their homes or standing outside them watching their lives burn.

I could smell the fires now, the sharp acrid stink of burning wood, plastic and rubber catching in the back of my throat as the flames leapt and writhed, turning the scene into a hellish contrast of light and shadow.

In front of us, a whole row of houses was aflame, while fewer than a dozen people stood watching, most of them in night clothes with bemused expressions on their faces, many gripping their now-useless mobile phones as if they would suddenly start working again.

“What should we do?”  Jerry asked uncertainly, “there’s no water, no way of getting help and the back seats of the car are full of kit so we can’t take anyone with us”.

He turned to me with an anguished expression.

“How do we help them?”

I ducked instinctively as the upper windows of a nearby house exploded outwards, filthy black smoke rolling out in clouds as the fire raged out of control.

“You were right”, I said quietly, seeing the futility but hating myself for what I was about to say, “we can’t help anyone.  Except ourselves, anyway.  Let’s go, there’s nothing we can do”.

We stood there for a few moments longer, perhaps hoping that inspiration would strike and we’d see a way to help, but eventually we climbed back in the car and Jerry started the engine, pulling away without another word.

I’m not sure what was eating me more as we left the ravaged city behind, the fact that we hadn’t even tried to risk ourselves to help anyone, or my secret relief that we didn’t have to.

Chapter 5

The roads were clear of other moving vehicles, although there were enough abandoned ones dotted around to make Jerry grip the wheel with whitened knuckles as they loomed out of the darkness.

He took us along the A27, the main Brighton bypass, then joined the A23 heading up towards London.  As we merged with the larger road, we began to pass people walking back towards the coast on the hard shoulder, a few of them trying to wave us down.

“I’m not stopping”, Jerry said after one man all but leapt in front of the car in an effort to stop us.  I nodded in agreement.  Despite my earlier desire to help, there was nothing we could do but perhaps give out some of Jerry’s stock of food and water, and we would need that to get to Manchester.

The miles rolled past in silence, neither of us having much to say.  Jerry was concentrating on avoiding the abandoned vehicles, some of which had crashed when they’d lost power, and I was still trying to come to terms with what had happened.

I wondered if my house had survived, or if I would return to find it a charred and smoking ruin, or broken into and looted.

Not that many of my worldly goods would be worth anything now.  I listed them in my head as I realised just how dependent I was on technology that was now largely useless.  Laptop, TV, phone, Kindle, playstation, tablet, ipod.  The list went on, and even when they restored the electricity it would still all be fried, little more than expensive-looking paperweights.

It was hard to believe that one brief flare from the sun, our life-giver, had brought the modern world to its knees, but one look out of the window at the dark, abandoned cars that we were passing more and more frequently was enough to assure me that it very much had.

“How did you know?”  I asked, startling myself as much as Jerry as the question popped out of my subconscious.

“Know what?”  Jerry swerved and cursed as someone leapt out from the hard shoulder, arms waving frantically.

“That the flare would be so bad”, I replied, watching the forlorn figure disappear in the mirror.  “And why were you the only one?”

“Before I, uh, left the university, I was one of the country’s leading experts on the sun, and flares in particular”, he said, “and I was working on a series of algorithms that would not only predict when and where a flare would hit, but also how strong it would be”.

He slowed the car a little, making an obvious effort to try and relax his death-grip on the wheel.

“I finally figured it out a few days ago”, he continued, “which turned out to be about six months too late.  I tried to contact the government, but the best I could get was some smarmy little shit who was undersecretary to the undersecretary of sweet F.A.  He told me that I didn’t need to worry, and that their experts had told them that the flare was going to be a small one, and would most likely just skim the atmosphere.  Idiots”.

“Why didn’t you go to the media?”  I asked, “show them your calculations and make them listen?”

He glanced over at me and I hurriedly looked away from the accusation in his eyes.

“I tried them first, but the algorithms have taken me years to perfect, how in hell could I convince some self-obsessed journalist that I was telling the truth?  When I called you yesterday it was my last hope.  I knew that it was going to hit sometime in the next seventy two hours, and I knew it would be big because the CME was going to hit at the same time, and I was really, really hoping that you would at least listen to me so that we could get the word out”.

A steely knife of guilt slid between my ribs and stabbed me in the gut.  He was right, had I listened to him in the first place then maybe we could have done something. 

“I’m sorry”.  It was totally inadequate, but at the same time all I could offer.

He sighed and shrugged.  “Don’t worry, I don’t suppose we could have done much anyway.  Can you imagine anyone agreeing to turn their power off at the mains?  No TV, no music, all the food going off in the fridge?  It probably just would have made everyone panic”.

“We could have saved a few, maybe”, I said, the guilt burning a hole in my stomach and making me feel sick.  “Enough to have made a difference”.

“It’s not like the human race has been wiped out”, he said, trying to sound cheerful, “we’ve just dropped back to the stone age overnight.  No drama, eh?”

I looked at him in amazement for a moment, then saw the sly grin and burst out laughing in spite of myself.

“Funny bastard”, I said, the mirth fading as quickly as it had come.  “So how long do you reckon it will take them to get everything up and running again?”

“In truth, I don’t know.  It looked pretty bad when it hit, worse than I expected”.

“Worse than you expected?  How much worse?”

He shrugged again.  “I can’t say for sure, not without deciphering the readings I took just as it hit”.  He nodded back over his shoulder to the reams of printouts on the back seat.

“So what are we talking, days, a week, a month?”  I tried to imagine how many people would die if power wasn’t restored by then, and didn’t like the numbers my mind was offering.

He slowed the car to a crawl and pulled out his cigarettes, lighting one before speeding up again.  I picked up the packet from where he’d dropped it and helped myself to one, lighting it and coughing as the thick smoke filled my lungs.

“The way it looked tonight”, he said slowly, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the power never came back on at all”.

Chapter 6

The truck had slewed across the road, the huge trailer toppling and blocking all three lanes.  The cab itself was embedded in the central reservation, mangled shards of steel and concrete sticking out in all directions.

Jerry pulled to a stop a dozen metres away, peering through the windscreen to see if there was room for us to squeeze past on the hard shoulder.

“What do you reckon?”  He asked.

“I reckon we should see if the driver is still alive”, I said, climbing out of the car.  The guilt I felt after our earlier conversation was too strong, and I couldn’t bear the thought of the driver lying trapped in the cab while we drove past.

“Malc, wait!”  Jerry scrambled out and hurried after me, the thin beam of his torch illuminating the wreckage.

I ignored him, approaching the cab carefully.  The heated metal of the engine was still ticking as it cooled, and up close the damage was even worse than it had looked from the car.

It had hit the reservation at an angle, presumably when the weight of the trailer pulled it off balance, and the driver’s side had crunched into the concrete with horrific force.

As I got close, I could see a fat, pale arm glistening in the moonlight, black streaks running from elbow to wrist where it had punched through the window and now lay against the grill, the rest of the body still hidden within the cab.

“Hello”, I called, “can you hear me?”

The wind picked up and I shivered.  I’d dressed warmly for the time of year, jeans, hoody and a light jacket over the top, but the total absence of sound from anywhere made me feel colder, somehow.

I’d never realised just how much sound pollution there was, the constant thrum at the edge of my hearing that signified the rest of the world going about its business, even in the dead of the night.  Instead, all there was now was the soft whistle of the wind and the occasional bark of a fox from somewhere in the distance.

I turned to see Jerry at my shoulder, his face pale.

“Is he alive?”  He asked nervously.

“There’s only one way to find out”.

I walked up to the cab, still canted at a dangerous angle, and gently took hold of the door handle.  It refused to budge. 

I grabbed it with both hands and tugged, feeling the lock disengage, but the door itself was bent out of shape and it wouldn’t open.

Placing a foot up against the cab, I hauled with all my strength and suddenly the door flew open, spilling three hundred pounds of dead flesh on top of me as the body of the driver came free.

I collapsed, feeling my right ankle buckle with a sharp tearing pain that made me cry out as I hit the road, small pieces of broken glass and concrete digging painfully into my back.

I came to rest with the driver’s sightless, staring eyes inches from mine, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle.  Panic welled up inside me, a knee-jerk response to the horror of having so much dead, corpulent flesh covering my own body. 

I lashed out, kicking, punching and clawing as I screamed in fear, doing little except to wobble the fat on the body as my panic grew worse.

His chest pressed down on my own, feeling like someone had dropped a car on me.  My lungs laboured to breathe and black spots danced in front of my eyes as I came perilously close to blacking out. 

At the very edge of my perception I was aware of Jerry, his stick-thin arms striving manfully to pull the dead weight off me before I was crushed.

Between us, we managed to roll the body just enough for me to scramble out from underneath, my chest heaving like a bellows as I sucked in huge lungfuls of air.

I lay there for several minutes, my breathing gradually slowing until I had control of myself again, suddenly embarrassed by the panic attack.

“Thank you”, I said to Jerry, “I, uh, well, thanks”.

He offered me a hand and I took it, using it to haul myself to my feet.  My right ankle buckled immediately and I nearly sprawled on top of the corpse.  Jerry caught the strain, keeping me steady while I lifted my right foot and gritted my teeth until the pain had passed.

“Do you want me to take a look?”  Jerry asked, shining the torch at my trainers.

I shook my head.  “No, not yet.  It’s not bleeding, and other than that it doesn’t make much of a difference if it’s broken or sprained, either way we need to keep moving.  We can check it out when we stop”.

He nodded in agreement and tucked an arm under my shoulders, helping me back to the car.  He eased me into the passenger seat before getting in himself and starting it up, pulling onto the hard shoulder and squeezing past the end of the trailer by dint of putting two wheels up onto the verge.

“Can I make a suggestion?”  He asked as we pulled back onto the road and began to pick up speed.

“Go on”, I said, peering down into the rubbish that littered the footwell as if I could see the swelling in the dark, unable to shake the dead driver’s face from my mind as I did so.

“No more stopping to help”.

I nodded in agreement.  “Yeah, sure.  Sorry”.

He shrugged and slowed the car as we passed another wreck, this one a pile up with five cars wedged together and spread out across two lanes, two lifeless bodies lying tangled in the road nearby.

“No need to be sorry, I’d just rather get us to Manchester in one piece, that’s all”.

I looked at the bodies, one a man in a business suit, perhaps a late commuter on his way home, the other a young woman with long brown hair matted thickly with blood.

There was no sign of the other drivers, and after our recent experience I had no wish to stop and find out if they were ok.

My ankle was beginning to feel uncomfortably tight, and as I reached down I could feel the swelling pushing at my trainer, rubbing at the bloated flesh as the joint filled with fluid.  I could only hope that it was a bad sprain, not a break, and that the fluid wasn’t blood.

The pain was excruciating, bad enough that every bump in the road jarred it and sent pins of agony up as far as my knee.

“How is it?”  Jerry asked, seeing me lean forwards.

“Not good, but I’ll survive”, I said, straightening, “I think it just needs strapping up”.

“I’ve got a first aid kit in the boot, we can strap it when we stop to rest.  I was going to get you to share the driving but now…”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll be fine once it’s strapped”.  I tried to sound cheerful, burying the worry that it might be broken.  If it was, even if we did get to Melody without further incident, I couldn’t be sure how much use I would be in keeping her safe when I could barely walk.

The thought wasn’t much comfort as we drove on into the night, and I tried to put it from my mind as I watched the ruins of the world I had known flash past outside the window.

Chapter 7

Gatwick airport was burning.  We could see the flames from the main road, a little less than a mile to our left as we headed towards London.  There were now dozens of cars on the road, many with groups of confused looking people huddled around them.

Our car was beginning to draw a lot of attention, and more than once Jerry had to put his foot down at the risk of hitting someone to get away from grasping hands and angry shouts.

One man actually chased us, sprinting along the road as we disappeared into the night, falling quickly behind and screaming at us in his frustration.

Maybe he had children he was trying to get to as well, but I pushed the thought fiercely aside.  Even if we could fit more people in the car, what if they wanted to go somewhere else?  Would they see their need as greater than ours and take the car by force?  It wasn’t worth the risk, and one glance at Jerry’s stony expression told me that he felt the same.

We’d gone a couple of miles past the airport when the road curved, and in the distance I could see something burning across all six carriageways, north and southbound.

“What the hell is that?”  I asked as Jerry slowed.

“I don’t know”, he said, pushing his glasses further up his nose, “it looks like the whole road is on fire”.

We didn’t have to wait long to find out.  As we drew closer, I began to make out details, first a long metal tube stretching from one side of the road to the other and beyond, broken in places where hungry flames licked at the structure, then a long tapering wing with two huge engines, one of them split and scattered across the road.

Even from here I could smell the stench of burning jet fuel.

“Poor bastards”, I said out loud, realising from the direction the cockpit was facing just how close these people had been to making it to the airport when the plane must have lost power, dropping like a stone.

“We can’t go through”, Jerry said, “we’ll have to go back and find a way around”.

He slowed again and pulled a U-turn, heading back the way we’d come.

“I think I saw a slip road a little way back, we’ll try for that and see where it takes us”.

I nodded, still thinking about how the people on the plane must have felt when everything went dark, knowing that there was nothing they could do to save themselves as they dropped out of the sky.  The thought brought me close to tears.

The slip road Jerry had seen was tiny, a single lane track that I’d completely missed in the dark.  He turned onto it and we were heading north again, passing buildings that were dark but seemed untouched by fire.

The road curved around the left, taking us north west, and small houses began to appear on both sides of the road, gradually growing larger and more affluent looking as we got further away from the motorway.

A couple of the houses had lights in the windows, and for a brief moment I allowed myself the hope that the damage wasn’t as bad as we feared, but then we passed a smouldering, burned out substation and I realised the lights must have been from lamps or perhaps generators running on petrol.

“Do you have any idea where this road takes us?”  I asked as the lane narrowed, dipping down as high, wooded banks rose above us.

“Not a clue”, he said, not taking his eyes from the road, “but we’re going in roughly the right direction so I guess we keep going until we find a signpost.  I’ve got maps in the back but they’re buried under the camping gear”.

I lapsed back into silence, falling into a half-doze as we followed the winding country lane until it came out onto a larger, two-lane road.  We took a right, and as we turned I saw that the sky ahead of us was glowing a faint orange.

“Looks like a big town up ahead”, I said, guessing that the glow signified burning buildings, “are you sure we want to go this way?”

“Unless you want to try and get past that plane, we don’t really have a choice.  I don’t fancy driving around in the countryside until we get lost and run out of diesel.  We’ll find the town, work out where we are and get the maps out, then plan a route”.

“What I wouldn’t give for a sat nav”, I said wryly, and he nodded in agreement.

The glow in the sky grew brighter as we began to pass suburbs, row after row of terraced and semi-detached houses that were all dark.

On some the residents had gathered outside in the street, a few looking up at the sky while others stood in nervous or threatening-looking groups.

We passed a stand of shops, the glass fronts smashed and the goods from inside strewn across the pavement.  As I watched, two young lads ran out of one with arms full of chocolate and alcohol, their hoods up to hide their faces as an older, fat man chased after them with a cricket bat, his dressing gown flapping around his ankles.

“That didn’t take long”, I said, thinking back to the article I’d been working on only that day, although it felt like months ago.  “They’re looting already”.

“What did you think would happen?  No police, no CCTV, no way of identifying anyone short of walking around hunting for them, and who’s going to be stupid enough to do that now?  They were probably out on the streets the second their playstations stopped working, looking for trouble”.

At the sound of the car, both the lads looked in our direction before bolting down an alleyway and out of sight, perhaps thinking that any working vehicle would have to belong to the forces of law and order.

We drove on, the signs telling us that we had reached Redhill, a large town but one that I’d never been to before. 

“I’m going to try and find a shop that hasn’t burned down or had everything stolen”, Jerry said as he negotiated the silent streets, “I want to save my supplies for when we really need them”.

“Are you sure?”  I asked, nodding towards the red glow in the sky, “it looks like half the town’s on fire”.

“Then I’ll find a shop in the half that isn’t burning”, he said, turning away from the glow and promptly losing us in a maze of residential streets.

As we reached one junction, I jumped out of my skin as another car pulled out, lights on main beam and horn honking as it passed us, swerving from one side of the road to the other.

I got a glimpse of the occupants as it tore past, five teenagers crammed into a vintage Mini, the driver swigging from a bottle of vodka that he raised at us in salute, almost crashing into us in the process. 

“Jerry, I think maybe we should leave”, I said, watching in the mirror as the mini careened off the road, through a garden fence and then back onto the road again to continue its chaotic journey.

As we sat there watching, a large group of youths began to approach from a nearby street, most of them holding bottles of alcohol and not a few with bats, crowbars or large pieces of wood in their hands.

They were laughing and pointing at us, and despite not being able to hear what they were saying it didn’t take a genius to guess what was on their minds.

“Yeah, I think so too.  Forget the shop, let’s just go”.

He put the car into gear and pulled away.  I twisted to watch the group, some of them running now as we gathered speed.  When it was clear they wouldn’t catch us, a hail of bottles arced up into the air, raining down all around us, shattering on the road and spraying the sides of the car with broken glass and alcohol.

A few thumped onto the roof and one lucky shot bounced off the driver’s window mere inches from Jerry’s head, making him yell in shock and almost swerve off the road.

“What did we do to them?” He shouted, keeping his head low as if we were being shot at, peering over the wheel from somewhere down between his elbows, “Why are they doing this?”

“Because”, I said as I watched them fade into the distance, knowing the answer but not finding any comfort in it, “we’ve got something they haven’t, they want it, and there’s no one left to stop them taking it.  So if I were you, I’d keeping driving until we find somewhere dark, safe and a very long way from anyone else”.

Chapter 8

Ten minutes later we were thoroughly lost.  Jerry had taken us back out of the town proper, and now we found ourselves navigating yet more narrow country roads.  The only thing keeping me from sleep was the excruciating pain in my ankle, tiredness dulling my senses while the pain enhanced them so I found myself exhausted but buzzing with nervous energy at the same time.

“I need to stop soon”, Jerry said, his voice betraying his own tiredness, “everything is starting to blur”.

I pointed at a dirt track a dozen metres ahead, starlight illuminating the barn that it led to.

“Will that do?” 

He squinted and then nodded, pulling off the road and onto the rutted track, every bounce and jolt sending waves of pain up my leg.

By the time we reached the barn I was gripping the dashboard with both hands, teeth clenched to keep from screaming.  Jerry parked the car on the far side of the large wooden structure from the road, then came round to my side and helped me out, half-carrying me to the smaller of the two doors.

He shone his torch at the lock and grunted.  It was secured with a hasp and padlock, and there was little chance we’d get it open without damaging the lock beyond repair.

Jerry left me leaning against the wall while he checked the other entrance, a pair of huge double doors that were easily big enough for a large tractor to drive through when open.

He was back in moments.  “There’s no way we’re getting through that one”, he said, then headed off towards the car, returning in less than a minute with a small crowbar.

“Where the hell did you get that?”  I asked as he put the curved end in the loop of the padlock and began to put his weight on it.

“I packed everything I could think of that I might need”, he replied as he pushed down harder.  The lock came free with a crack, shockingly loud in the night air as a piece of metal shot off into the dark.

He pulled the door open and stuck his head inside, playing his torch around before helping me through the door.

“Looks like it’s used to store machinery, mostly”, he said as he led me towards several bales of hay sitting in a corner well away from the door.  We passed an old tractor, half stripped down with pieces of engine lying neatly on a dirty white sheet, then a huge plough with rusted teeth and a long towing bar that almost took out my good ankle in the dark.

I reached the hay and sank into it with relief, while Jerry disappeared back out to the car to get some camping gear, taking the torch with him and leaving me in the dark.

The barn smelled of machine oil, hay and damp, and once the light was gone my ears immediately homed in on a rustling sound that I could only assume was rats, going about their night-time business with little care that we had interrupted them.

The bobbing light of the torch came back through the door, held in Jerry’s teeth as he brought in armloads of bedding and a small lamp that he gave to me with an instruction to wind it.

I stared at it for a moment, then saw the small winding-handle on one side and realised that it must be dynamo powered.

I cranked it for a couple of minutes, then flicked a switch on the side and a soft light bathed the area, dim but good enough to see by once we were used to it.

Jerry laid two thin foam mats on top of hay bales, then two sleeping bags, his new and shiny and mine old and tattered but comfortable-looking.

“We should have a look at your ankle”, he said once he was done, “if it’s broken we need to find you some help”.

I nodded, knowing he was right, and leaned down to undo my laces.  Every little movement was agony, jagged shards of pain racing through my foot, ankle and lower leg, and I could feel the swelling scraping against the trainer as I gently eased it off.

When I got to the sock Jerry had to help, and as he peeled it back he drew in his breath sharply.

I looked down and in the beam of the torch I saw that my ankle was at least twice its normal size and heavily bruised, the puffy flesh an ugly purple colour.

“That’s a little beyond my first aid skills”, he said with a grimace.  “Do you think it’s broken?”

I shrugged helplessly.  “I don’t know.  It hurts like hell, but it might be a sprain or even a dislocation.  I reckon the best bet is to strap it up and see what happens”. 

I pointed to the first aid kit he’d brought in with the bedding.

“Have you got any icepacks in there?”

He rummaged through and came up with a break and shake icepack and a length of crepe bandage, doing his best to strap my ankle before activating the icepack and placing it on the swelling.

That done, I lay back and covered myself with the sleeping bag, leaving my ankle out and the bag unzipped so that I could keep it iced.  I promised myself I would stay awake as Jerry went out to the car again, but I must have dozed because when I next looked over, he was back and pulling a pair of boil in the bag ration packs out of a mess tin that sat on a tiny burner, the flame giving off almost no heat or light from this distance, and precious little smoke either.

“Do you want pasta in spicy tomato sauce or beef and dumplings?”  He asked as he placed the bags on tin plates.

“Pasta, I’ve tried the army’s excuse for beef before”.

He passed me one of the plates and a fork while he tucked into the contents of the other bag, not even bothering to empty it onto the plate.

I followed suit, pulling myself carefully into a sitting position with my back resting against another hay bale while I ate.

“Is it going to be like this everywhere?”  I asked when I was finished, putting the plate to one side and lying back.

Jerry looked up from scraping the last of the so-called beef from the inside of the bag and nodded.

“Yes, I would think so.  Probably much worse on the day-side.  If my instruments were working I’d be able to tell you just how bad it was, but as they have extremely sensitive components, I rather suspect that they’re junk now”.

I nodded slowly as I took in what he was saying, pushing away the tiredness as I put together the pieces of what he’d been saying since I’d met him on the hilltop.

One of the reasons I’d become a journalist was my need to know why, coupled with my inability to leave anything alone until I was satisfied that I knew everything about it.  I’d been like it since I was little, forever taking things apart, both literally and figuratively, until my parents came close to tearing their hair out.  I alternated between spending long hours in the public library, often being the last one to leave, to coming home with unspeakable things in jars for ‘projects’ that my mum would throw out the moment she found them.

“How many people, apart from you, are capable of having come up with the same algorithms you did?”  I asked.

Jerry shrugged and lit a cigarette, then offered me the packet.  I took one and lit it, then leaned back again, careful not to let hot ash drop on the tinder-dry hay.

“Hundreds of people could have come up with them, but I suspect you’re asking how many people in my field of study may have known that this was going to be a bad flare, am I right?”

I nodded, impressed that he’d seen where I was going from the first question.

“Ok, so how many might have known?”

“Apart from me, maybe four or five people in the UK, across the world perhaps a few dozen”.

“And did you talk to any of the ones in the UK when you started to get your suspicions?”

He shook his head wearily.  “No.  I tried, but none of them were available.  It’s almost as if they were told not to talk to me”.

I almost passed the last comment off as being Jerry’s innate paranoia, but then something occurred to me.

“Jerry, how many of those people work for the government?”

“None of them, directly, but they all consult for them just like I used to before I lost my job”.  He glanced down at the ground as he said it, the wound still as fresh as it always would be.  It must be hard to go from being a well-respected astrophysicist to a crackpot conspiracy theorist overnight, but that was exactly what had happened to Jerry.

“So they all consult for the government.  Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the only other people who might have seen it coming disappeared shortly before it hit?”

He nodded.  “That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier.  They would have been watching, all the space-capable governments would have been, although only us, the Americans and the Russians would have any chance of being able to predict the severity of a flare”.

The ramifications of what he was saying were staggering.  If the government had known that a flare this bad was going to strike but not warned anyone, it was nothing short of criminal.  How many lives could have been saved if flights had been grounded and the national grid switched off, if such a thing were possible?

“How much warning would they have had?”  I was angry now, the burning houses in Brighton and the wreckage of the plane across the motorway playing in my mind’s eye like a horror movie.

“Uh, fourteen, sixteen hours maybe.  They’d know there was going to be a flare long before that, but you can only really be certain of the strength once it leaves the sun”.

I finished my cigarette and stubbed it carefully on the concrete floor.

“I thought you predicted it earlier than that?”

He nodded.  “I did, but I was still wrong, it was far worse than I thought.  Maybe they realised how bad it was going to be and decided to wait it out in a bunker somewhere, then come back out and pick up the pieces once it’s over?”

“Do you think there’ll be much left by the time they do?”

He shrugged again.  “Maybe, who knows?  If they’ve had any time at all to plan for this, then they might have a work force that can get the infrastructure back up and running quicker than I thought.  It might not be so bad after all”.

“Well that’s a matter of opinion”.

The voice came out of the darkness by the door, making us both jump.  Jerry spun, scattering the plate and now cold stove across the floor with a loud ringing sound, while I all but pitched backwards off the hay bale.

“Who’s there?”  Jerry called nervously, “show yourself”.

A figure emerged from the darkness, little more than a silhouette at the edge of the lamp light.  It was hard to make out details at first, but the figure gradually resolved into the form of a man dressed in outdoor gear complete with a loadbearing vest, a cap, and a very large, very dangerous looking shotgun, both barrels of which were pointed directly at my chest.

Chapter 9

“What I’d like to know”, the man said, his voice low and dangerous, “is what makes you think that it’s ok to break into my barn, and why I shouldn’t just shoot you on the spot and have done with it?”

“Uh, look, about the lock”, Jerry began, but the man spoke over him as if he hadn’t uttered a word.

“It’s not like the police’ll be interested, not if what you’re saying is right.  I could say that I caught you breaking in and I shot you in self-defence.  I doubt they’d worry overmuch, and that’s if they ever even found you”.

I’d never come so close to losing control of my bladder.  As the man stepped into the pool of light from the lamp, I realised that he was older than I had first though, somewhere close to seventy.  His hands, I noticed however, didn’t so much as tremble as he kept the barrels aimed at my chest.  He had pure white hair sticking out above his ears and disappearing up under the cap, and several days-worth of stubble beneath eyes that were cold enough to belong to a serial killer.

I raised my hands slowly, terrified that each movement might be my last.

“Look, sir, I’m really sorry about the lock”, I began, leaving a pause to make sure he was listening, then hurrying on when he tilted his head.  “I’m injured, and we had to find somewhere safe, somewhere away from the towns.  It’s crazy out there, everything has gone to hell”.

My arms began to shake from the strain of holding them so high, and Jerry looked like a rabbit caught in a set of headlights, his back stiff and eyes ludicrously wide.

“Please, sir, we’ll pay you for the lock, and for your trouble”.

The man spat on the floor, never once taking his eyes from mine.

“And what good is money now, eh?  And how do I know you two ain’t looters or worse?  You might be escaped murderers for all I know, on the run from the law now the ‘lectric’s gone off.  Might be I’m better off putting you two in the ground and cutting my losses instead of leaving you at my back, eh?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say.  There were a million things that might have made a difference, but all I could do was stare at the shotgun, waiting for the blast that would end my life.

“Come on Ralph, you’ve had your fun.  You can see he’s injured, the poor boy, so stop playing the fool and give them a hand, why don’t you?”

The voice came from behind the old man, and he turned his head while keeping the shotgun pointed at me.

“I told you to stay in the house, woman!” He roared angrily, “this is no place for you, not on a night like this, what if they’d been criminals, eh?  They would have had their way with you after they’d finished with me!”

A woman easily as old as Ralph moved into the lamplight, her white hair up in curlers but the rest of her covered in practical clothes almost identical to the man’s.  She seemed completely unfazed by his anger, instead moving closer to get a better view through the glasses that she raised from the chain around her neck.

“I should be so lucky”, she said with a smile in our direction, “the last time anyone wanted to have their way with me was, well, when was it Ralph?”

Even in the dim light I saw him go red from collar to cap as she continued to move closer.

“You’ll have to forgive my husband”, she said, “he’s a little overprotective at times.  And he’s been looking for someone else to shoot since that poacher back in 1967, not that he’d hurt a fly, normally, despite his manners”.

She shot him a look which he ignored, stepping closer to us and keeping the shotgun trained on me.

“Careful Harriet”, he said with a frown, “that one on the hay looks shifty, don’t get too close”.

“I can assure you I’m anything but shifty”, I said, my voice several octaves higher than usual, “my name’s Malcolm King, and I’m a journalist.  I live in Brighton and I’m trying to get to Manchester to get my daughter.  I was on the phone to her when the flare hit and Jerry promised to drive me.  He’s an astrophysicist and his car works…”  I realised I was babbling and clamped my mouth shut.  The woman still had a smile on her face but I couldn’t take my eyes off the shotgun and the frown just behind it, wondering if these would be my last few seconds on earth.

Ralph spat on the floor again.

“Journalist, eh?  Said you looked shifty.  So what was that you were saying about a flare?  I thought this was just a power cut.  We get enough of ‘em around here”.

“That’s what happened”, I said, looking to Jerry for some support but seeing that he was rooted to the spot, unable to move, “a solar flare.  The sun let off a burst of energy and it fried everything electronic.  You must have noticed?”

The old man shrugged.  “Like I said, we get four, maybe five power cuts a year, don’t affect us much living out here so didn’t pay it much thought.  How bad is it?”

“Bad”, I said, my biceps beginning to shake as if I was palsied, “from what we can tell everything has stopped working, even the cars”.

“Yours works ok, saw it driving up”.  The accusation in his tone was enough to set my heart racing again.  All it would take was a twitch of his finger and I’d be nothing but a dim memory and a red smear on the wall.

“It’s Jerry’s”, I said frantically, “mine stopped working the same as all the other newer ones, but his is old and it doesn’t rely on computers like mine does”.

His eyes narrowed, and then widened as Harriet walked calmly between me and the shotgun, blocking his view.  He immediately raised the weapon, pointing it safely at the ceiling.

“God damn it woman!”  He yelled, loud enough to wake the dead.  “Don’t you know anything?  Get out of my way!”

The smile finally dropped from her face and she turned towards him, raising an eyebrow.  She said nothing, just looked at him for several long seconds, then turned back to me and smiled again.

“What did you do to your foot?”  She asked, walking up to me and placing a hand on one of my arms to gently lower it.

“We saw a truck”, I said, rubbing my arms to restore the circulation, “and I thought the driver was injured so we tried to get him out.  Turns out he was bigger than me and Jerry put together and dead with it, and he fell on me”.

Just thinking about being buried under all that dead flesh brought the memory back sharp and clear enough that I could feel the panic rising in my chest again.  I took several deep breaths and pushed it away as she sat next to me and without asking took my bandaged foot, placing it carefully in her lap as she unwrapped it.

“Who put this bandage on?”

Jerry finally found his voice.

“I did”.

“Well it was nice of you to try and help your friend but it’s a good job I came along when I did.  It was on so tight the circulation was being cut off.  Another couple of hours and it would have caused permanent damage.  What do they teach you nowadays?”

“I’m an astrophysicist, not a nurse!”

“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know how to tie a bandage.  My Emily could tie one better than this by the time she was five”.  She looked up at her husband, who still pointed the shotgun at the roof but glared at us as if he’d rather have it shoved in our faces.

“Ralph, we need to get this boy to the cottage so I can look at his ankle properly.  I think it’s just a bad sprain but it might be broken.  How about you take him in the car and I’ll have young Jerry walk me back?”

Ralph growled, squinted and spat, but to my relief did as he was told, helping Jerry to gather our equipment and stow it in the car while Harriet, surprisingly strong for her age, helped me out to the car.

“Thank you”, I said with feeling as she guided me out into the night, “I really appreciate this.  I’m sorry about the lock on the barn, and of course we’ll pay for it”.

“Oh shush”, she said, as if I were apologising for smashing a glass, not for breaking into their barn, “it’s not even ours anyway.  We’re caretakers, of a sort, and the farm isn’t producing at the moment anyway, so there’s no one breathing down our necks about repairs and such”.

I was about to ask her what she meant when Jerry took me off her hands, easing me into the passenger seat while Ralph sat on the driver’s side, the shotgun next to his door where I couldn’t reach it.

As he drove away slowly, following a track that led away from the barn and across the field, I glanced back to see Jerry awkwardly offer his arm to the old woman as they followed.

“Thank you for helping us, you won’t regret it, I promise”, I said to Ralph, but instead of replying he just grunted and patted the shotgun, as if reminding me of who was in charge and what would happen if I tried anything.

As if it was something I was likely to forget.  I knew, for better or for worse, that no matter what Harriet might think, we were completely at her husband’s mercy and should he decide that we were too much of a risk, there wasn’t much we could do to stop him from putting us in the ground.

Chapter 10

  We pulled up in the yard of a medium-sized, two storey cottage that looked to have been built around the turn of the last century.  It was built of solid-looking red brick, with ivy liberally covering the wall nearest to us, two small windows peeking out from between the leaves.

The yard itself was large enough to park half a dozen cars, with an open-sided stable that had been converted into a garage for a car that was currently covered with a dust sheet.

On the far side of the cottage, I could just make out some kind of vegetable garden, plants growing in neatly ordered rows with some clinging to a framework of bamboo.  Just past that, I could see another shed, and from this came the lowing of a cow seemingly disturbed by the sound of the engine.

As I opened the door of the car, a black and white border collie began to bark excitedly, running up to sniff at me, tail wagging as one blue and one brown eye looked up at me with fierce intelligence and a questioning look.

“Maggie, quiet!”  Ralph snapped at her, and she stopped barking, instead growling low in her throat even as her tail wagged and she continued to sniff every part of me she could reach.

“I take it she’s friendly?”  I asked, easing myself out of the car and leaning against the door while she investigated my injured ankle.

“Friendlier than some who don’t think you should be here”, he said, then collected his shotgun and stood with it casually tucked under his arm as we waited for Harriet and Jerry to catch up.

I spent the time looking at the cottage and the fields surrounding it, realising that the reason we hadn’t seen it from the road was the gentle roll of the ground, forming a natural dell with a small hump in the middle upon which the building stood.

The yard itself was made from concrete, the only mud on it from the tracks the car had made coming in.  The rest of it was scrubbed bare and clean, with nothing in the yard so much as an inch out of kilter.

Jerry and Harriet came into the yard a few minutes later, chatting and laughing like old friends.  I wondered how someone as friendly and likeable as Harriet had married someone as grim and forbidding as Ralph, but I knew from experience that some marriages just worked and some didn’t, no matter the demeanour of the participants.

“Ralph Morris, have you left that poor man standing in the cold with an injured ankle?”  Harriet demanded as soon as she saw us standing there.  “Honestly Ralph, have you no shame?”

He stiffened and glared at me as if it was my fault that he was being dressed down by his wife.

“Not when it comes to your safety, no.  I wanted to make sure that your man there behaved himself”.

Harriet shook her head in frustration and came around the car to me, brushing an excited Maggie out of the way.

“I’m sorry dear, let’s get you inside and get that foot seen to.  Welcome to Bramble Cottage”.

With her on one side and Jerry on the other, I was almost carried inside while Ralph followed behind, out of sight but still obvious by the stony silence he carried with him.

The door they led me through opened into a large kitchen with a parquet floor, in the centre of which stood a table more than large enough for the eight chairs that sat around it.

Every wall was covered in shelves, and all the shelves were packed with jars, bottles and packets of things I couldn’t identify in the light of the torches Jerry and Harriet carried.

Three of the walls had doors seemingly nestled between the shelves, while the fourth had a long, low cooking range finished in dull enamel, from which two large pipes emerged and ran up the wall to disappear into the ceiling.

The range gave off a warmth that instantly made it feel homely, and as they placed me carefully in one of the chairs I could smell a dozen different spices and the faint scent of cooking meat.

Maggie had followed us in and immediately made for the range, curling up in front of it on a tattered old blanket while Harriet bustled about and lit several oil lamps, their glow surprisingly bright.

Throughout this, Ralph stood by the back door as if at attention, clearly unhappy about the turn of events but unwilling or unable to cross his wife as she welcomed two strangers into his home.

“Now”, she said once the lamps were lit.  “I’ll make us all a nice cup of tea and then we’ll have a look at your ankle, see what we can do”.

Jerry sat next to me, his chair half pulled out so that he could keep an eye on the still-armed Ralph while he spoke to me.

“Looks like we’ve landed on our feet, if you’ll excuse the pun”, he said quietly.  “Harriet told me on the walk over that Ralph likes to posture, but she said he’s got a heart of gold”.

“Yeah, I can see it on his sleeve”, I said, eyeing the shotgun.

“No, really.  Apparently he’s just protective over her since they had a burglary a few years ago and he slept right through it, so he’s suspicious of anyone who turns up at night now.  She told me he’ll relax when he’s sure we don’t mean any harm”.

He kept his voice low, and I could see Ralph straining to hear what we were saying.  Realising that we weren’t helping ourselves by muttering to each other, I raised my voice and addressed the couple.

“I want to thank you again for helping us”, I said loudly, “like I said earlier, I’m trying to get to Manchester and find my daughter, Melody.  She’s only eleven, and her mum isn’t exactly practical, if you know what I mean?”

“You got a picture?”  Ralph’s gruff voice surprised me; I was expecting Harriet to answer.

I obediently pulled out my wallet and slid out one of the pictures I always kept in it, this one showing Melody laughing in the sun as she ran along the pebbles on Hove beach, her long brown hair sweeping out behind her and her blue eyes shining with joy.  It was my favourite, taken only a few months before when she’d come down for one of her hurried visits.

I slid it across the table and Ralph broke the barrels on his shotgun before placing it on the counter next to the sink, then crossed to pick it up and squint at it.

“Cute girl”, he said eventually, “where did you say she is?”

“Manchester”, I said as Harriet brought several mugs and a bowl of sugar over to the table, “she lives up there with her mum, we split up a couple of years ago”.

“Marriage should be for life”, Ralph said, sitting at the table but within easy reach of the shotgun, “it only seems to last five minutes nowadays”.

“You haven’t met my ex-wife”, I said with a smile, and Ralph surprised me by giving a short bark of laughter.

“So how come you two are travelling together then?”  He asked, relaxing slightly as his wife brought over a steaming iron kettle, its wooden handle wrapped in a tea towel.

Jerry looked at me and I waved for him to explain.

“I, uh, I sort of predicted that the flare would hit, and that it would be bad”, he began, “and I called Malc because I wanted him to go to the media but, well, anyway, he came to see me while I was up on the downs taking measurements, and that’s when the flare hit.  Did you see the lights in the sky around midnight?”

Ralph shook his head.  “No, we go to bed at about nine, and get up with the dawn, usually.  Lifetime of habit is hard to break that way”.

Jerry waited while Harriet poured tea for us all, disappearing through one of the doors and coming back a few moments later with a clay jug of cool milk.  I raised an eyebrow as she poured milk into my mug.

“It’s fresh from the cow each day”, she said in answer, “unpasteurised.  We still use the old larder from when the cottage was built, the freezer is down there now, of course, but it’s built into the foundations so it still stays cold even on hot days.  Between that and the Rayburn stove”, she pointed the jug at the cooker, “burning wood to provide heating and to cook with, we’re pretty much self-sufficient so power cuts don’t bother us much”.

“Then you’re perfectly placed to survive what’s coming”, Jerry said, sitting forward as he warmed to his subject.  “Because it could be weeks or months before the power comes back on, and without supplies coming in to the cities and towns, people will spread out looking for food.  My advice would be to board up your windows and doors and only go out when you absolutely have to.  It’s only been a few hours since it hit, so everyone is still probably waiting for the lights to come back on.  Give it a day or two until they realise there’s no more food coming, and people will start getting desperate”.

“Do you really think it’s as bad as all that?”  Harriet asked, worry creasing her already lined forehead.

He nodded.  “I’m afraid so, and even if I’m wrong it’s better to be safe than sorry”.

He went on to tell them about what we’d seen, starting with the fires that had seemed to envelop Brighton, then the abandoned cars on the road, and finally the crashed plane and the groups of youths that had chased us for no reason.

As he spoke, Ralph’s face grew more and more grim, and even Harriet’s usually cheerful face became drawn and worried-looking.

They began to exchange concerned glances, and when Jerry was finally finished they were both clearly agitated about something, although I couldn’t tell what it was.

Ralph’s thick, scarred fingers were wrapped around his tea mug as if trying to crack it, and Harriet was hugging herself tight.

“Is everything ok?”  I asked gently.

Harriet shook herself and stood.

“Fine, fine.  Just a lot to take in, that’s all.  Now let’s have a look at that ankle of yours and we’ll see how bad it is”.

She shifted her chair round to the side of the table and lifted my foot, placing one of the lamps nearby as she fussed and tutted, moving my ankle gently and running bony fingers over the joint.

I winced at every movement, but she ignored me, then directed Ralph to get her first aid kit from under the sink.

“It’s not broken”, she said finally, “just a sprain I think, although it’s a bad one.  You’re lucky”.

She laid the first aid kit out on the table in front of her and took out a length of bandage, deftly wrapping it around the injured joint.  When she finished, it was tight but not overly so, and when I put my foot on the floor I found that I could put more weight on it than I’d been able to before.

“Thank you”, I said with a smile.  “Looks like you’ve done that before”.

She nodded as she packed the kit away.

“Once or twice, I was a nurse for almost fifty years.  Community stuff mostly, but I worked up in London in the sixties in one of the big hospitals. Now you need to keep it raised and use an icepack too. I saw that Jerry has got a few in his car, so you can use those.  If things are as bad as you say I might be needing mine”.

“Well thank you again, both of you”.

Harriet smiled and Ralph grunted, then the old man stood and gestured towards one of the doors leading further into the cottage.

“Suppose we can’t be turning you out in the middle of the night, so you can both sleep in the lounge.  You’ll be comfortable enough with your sleeping bags, but no funny business.  You, astrophysicist, how about you go and get your things while I show your journalist here where you’ll be sleeping?”

Jerry obliged, heading out into the yard while Ralph and Harriet led me through to the lounge, a small, cozy room with bookshelves lining most of the walls while the centre was dominated by a pair of worn but well looked after sofas and a reclining chair.

A small table sat between the chair and the sofa, littered with yesterday’s papers and a pair of reading glasses where the rest of the room was almost severely tidy.

Jerry came back in a few moments later and laid out the sleeping bags on the floor.  I didn’t even bother to undress, climbing straight into my bag and falling asleep even before Ralph had turned out the light.

Chapter 11

I woke to the smell of frying bacon and coffee.  Light filtered through a crack in the curtains and I lay there for a moment trying to remember where I was.

It all came flooding back as I moved my injured ankle and felt it throb, wincing as I sat up and unzipped the sleeping bag.

I looked about for Jerry, but his sleeping bag was already rolled up neatly and tucked half under one of the sofas.  I stood slowly, testing my weight on my ankle and realising that it would hold well enough to get me into the kitchen.

The day was already hot.  As I entered the kitchen rich, golden light streamed through the window, making me squint as Harriet immediately chivvied me over to the table and laid out a plate of bacon, eggs and mushrooms and a large mug of coffee.

Jerry was already there, cleaning his plate with a piece of bread, and he looked up long enough to smile before wolfing it down, all the while watched by the mournful eyes of Maggie, sitting attentively at his feet in the hope of being slipped a morsel.

“Morning”, Harriet said as I began to eat, my stomach growling with hunger, “I trust you slept ok?”

I nodded, mouth too full of food to talk.

“That’s good.  Thought you could do with a proper meal before you head off”.

I swallowed a mouthful.

“Thank you.  For this and for letting us stay.  Where’s Ralph?”

“He’s outside chopping wood for the stove, he asked to talk to you when you’ve eaten”.

Something in her tone worried me but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“I can go”, Jerry said, pushing his chair back, but Harriet shook her head.

“No, don’t worry, he wants to talk to Malcolm.  Not to be rude”.

Jerry shrugged but our eyes met as he spoke.

“Not rude at all”.  He raised an eyebrow at me but said nothing further, and the silence stretched as I hurried my breakfast, took a swig of coffee and then stood.  I almost tripped over the dog, who had slunk under the table to sit at my feet now that Jerry’s plate was empty.

“Which way?”  I asked.

Harriet gave me directions and I followed them, heading out into the yard then through the vegetable garden, past a chicken coop where several well-fed specimens scratched in the dust, and soon saw Ralph sitting on a thick, wide log with countless axe scars crisscrossing its surface.

A pile of split logs sat on one side while on the other a rough shelter kept the un-split ones from the worst of the weather.

As he sat, he idly ran his hands up and down the haft of a wickedly sharp axe.  Despite the breakfast and Harriet’s friendly demeanour, I couldn’t help but think back to Ralph’s threats from the night before.

“You wanted to see me?”  I said, putting as much weight as possible on my uninjured foot while the other barely touched the ground.

Ralph looked up and nodded. 

“First off, want to apologise for last night.  Seems I put the wind right up you and your friend, and after we worked out you wasn’t burgling us I should have relaxed.  Harriet tells me I’m too protective of me and mine, and maybe I am, but you’ve got a family and no doubt you’d do the same in my place”.

I couldn’t help but nod in agreement.  If I’d been him, I might even have sent us packing just to be safe, injured or not.

“Well”, he continued, “that being said I reckon you owe us a favour now, what with us patching you up and feeding you”.  He squinted up at me, trying to read my expression.  I shrugged and gestured at him to continue, not sure what to say.  It was true that they’d helped us out when they didn’t have to, but my most pressing need was getting up to Manchester and finding Melody and I didn’t want anything interfering with that.

“I know you’re angling to get to your daughter as quick as you can”, he said as if reading my mind, “which is why I’m asking you this favour, ‘cause you know how important family is”.

“Every minute I don’t know she’s safe just terrifies me more”, I said, hoping he’d catch the hint.

He nodded.  “Then you know how I feel.  Our daughter, Emily, she lives just south of Guildford.  It’s only twenty miles or so, but her car’s obviously not working or she’d be here already, that or something’s happened to her.  I’ll not blame you if you say no, but the trip would only take an hour or so there and back”.

The last words came out in a rush, and all the while he looked me in the eye, one father to another as he all but begged me to go and find his daughter.

My heart sank.  I wanted nothing more than to get in the car and head straight up to Manchester, but this man and his wife had helped us out and now he was asking for a return on that favour, albeit without any expectation that I’d agree.

“Have you not got a car?”  I asked, then instantly regretted it as he took my question for a no.

“Landrover’s in the shop, supposed to be picking it up in a few days”, he said, looking down at the ground, “and the one in the yard is in pieces, more of a project than an actual car, you might say”.

I realised how much it had cost him to ask someone he barely knew for something so important, and I was suddenly minded of my begging Jerry to take me to find Melody.

“Where exactly is this place?”  I asked, and there was a gleam of hope in his eyes as he looked back up at me.

“It’s a village on the outskirts of Guildford, not far at all”.

“But”, I said, “why ask me instead of Jerry?  It’s his car after all”.

He shrugged and stood, swinging the axe with practiced ease so the head sank effortlessly into the chopping block.

“Not being rude to your friend, but not only is he not a parent, it’s clear that you’re the doer out of the two of you, and he’ll follow your lead.  I may not know much but I know people, and I reckon if you say yes, he’ll agree”.

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, and it was only when I started working out what I was going to say to Jerry to convince him to do it that I realised I’d already made the decision to help.

“Ok, sure”, I said, “but I can’t force Jerry to go if he doesn’t want to”.

Ralph smiled, and there was nothing of humour in it.

“Oh don’t worry”, he said as he led me back to the house, “I’m not entirely daft.  He’ll be staying here to look after Harriet, while you and I go and find Emily.  Means that we won’t be sat there for days waiting for you to come back, not knowing, while you change your minds and head off up north”.

My heart sank.  Although he was making sense I couldn’t pretend to like the idea, and I was pretty sure that when I tried to explain it to Jerry he’d like it even less than I did.

Chapter 12

“Are you mad or just stupid?”  Jerry demanded, pacing up and down the yard in agitation while he waved a lit cigarette around as if conducting an orchestra.

“I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that”, I said mildly, “it’ll take us maybe an hour to get there and back, and then you and I can be on our way”.

“And you expect me to let you go haring off with an old man who came inches from putting holes in both of us last night?  In my car?”

I sighed and leaned against the wooden rail fence that hemmed in this side of the yard.

“Look, I know it’s a big ask, but he’s trying to find his daughter and I can’t blame him.  And we owe them, Jerry”.

“No”, he shook his head, “you owe them.  I’m just here because I was too stupid to say no when you asked me to drive you halfway across the bloody country, when I should be keeping my head down and waiting for this to blow over!”

“So they didn’t feed you and give you somewhere to sleep last night?”  I knew that arguing with him wasn’t the right way to get him to agree, but he was pushing my buttons.

“Yes, they did, but they wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t been driving you up north”.

He sucked hard on the cigarette and then used the stub to light a new one.

I sighed and rubbed at my eyes.

“Please, Jerry.  I know I’m asking a lot, really I do, and I’ll find a way to make it up to you, I swear”. 

He began to shake his head, then suddenly the fight went out of him and he shrugged.

“Fine, why the hell not?  It’s you who wants to get up to Manchester so badly, I don’t know why I’m complaining about getting some extra rest and another cooked meal.  Just bring my car back in one piece!”

“Thank you.  I’ll treat it like it was my own”.

“As long as that doesn’t mean ditching it on a hill somewhere, I’ll hold you to that”.

I reached out and squeezed his arm.

“I really do appreciate what you’re doing for me, you know”, I said as he walked and I hobbled back to the cottage.  “Most people would have left me to fend for myself by now”.

He shook his head.  “Not the decent ones.  I can’t pretend to be happy about this, but I said I’d help you get up north and if that means taking a detour to fetch their daughter then so be it.  I’m going to empty the car though, just in case.  You’ll have a bit more room for her stuff then, if you do find her”.

He unlocked the car and began pulling kit out of the boot, gesturing for me to help.  Within a few minutes, all his gear was piled by the cottage door, and I looked at the heap in surprise, wondering how he’d managed to fit so much into such a small car.

Ralph helped us cart it all into the lounge while Harriet prepared a huge lunchbox in the kitchen, presumably to keep us fed while we were out.

I hoped we wouldn’t be gone long enough to need it, but nothing I had seen since the flare had struck told me it wasn’t a good idea to be prepared just in case.  

My ankle was aching from overuse, and as Ralph and Jerry continued to ferry things through the kitchen, I began to slow, wincing with each step.

Finally, Harriet took hold of my arm as I limped through the kitchen and directed me to a chair.

“Sit there and put your foot up”, she said, not unkindly but with a stern look.  “You’ll be no good to anyone if you wear yourself out now”.

I sat as directed and thanked her as she brought me a bottle of water and some painkillers, wolfing them down and drinking half the bottle in one go.  I was more than a little worried that my ankle would make me next to useless in helping Ralph, but he didn’t seem the sort of man to do a thing without thinking it through and I was fairly sure I’d be ok to drive as long as I didn’t overdo it.

The heat grew as I waited, watching the other two finish piling all of Jerry’s worldly possessions in the lounge, and soon I was pouring sweat as the sun beat through the window.

“Do you think this heat is something to do with the flare?”  I asked Jerry once they’d finished moving everything.

He sat across the table from me and helped himself to my bottle of water before speaking.

“Yes and no.  It’s nothing to do with the flare itself, but there is a lot of uncommon activity on the sun’s surface at the moment, and the CME has just sprayed us with superheated plasma, so it’s all kind of connected but one is not necessarily a consequence of the other, if that makes sense?”

I shrugged.  “Sort of”.

He flicked his hair back from his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, as if talking to a particularly dim student.

“When the plasma hits the atmosphere, it strips away the protective layers that surround the earth.  Not permanently, but enough to let a much higher proportion of the radiation from the sun through, which this far down is felt as heat and light.  Probably not a good idea to hang around in the sun too long today, just in case.  God only knows how much damage it could do your skin”.

“Now there’s a cheery thought”.

He nodded.  “Isn’t it just?  Both the flare and the CME should be over by now, however, so it’s probably ok, but without my equipment working I can’t be sure”.

I nodded at the lounge door.  Several items from the car had been scientific machines of unclear design.

“Any chance you can get it going again?”

“I don’t know.  It depends on how badly it was damaged, and what sort of power sources I can find to run them.  I’ll have a look while you’re gone”.

Harriet closed the lid on the lunchbox and slid it across the table to me.

“That should keep you both going”, she said, then turned to Jerry.  “We’ve got a diesel generator in the shed.  It’s old, but we’ve got plenty of diesel so you should be able to get it going if you need power”.

Jerry instantly brightened and stood.  “That would be great, thank you”.

“But perhaps we’ll see Ralph and young Malcolm off first, eh?”

“Oh, yes, of course”.  He sat again, looking slightly embarrassed, just as Ralph came back into the room with a green canvas shooting bag slung over one shoulder and a pair of double barrelled shotguns, one of which I recognised from the night before.

He passed the other to me and I took it uncertainly, just the touch of the smooth wood and metal making my heart thump with the first stirrings of fear.

“You know how to use it?”  He asked, passing me a handful of cartridges.

“I’ve been clay shooting a few times, never shot at anything breathing though”.

“Well hopefully you won’t have to; it’s for just in case”.

I nodded and stood, picking the car keys up from the table.  The painkillers were beginning to work now and I could put a little more weight on my foot.

“Right then”, I said, moving the shotgun to my left hand and reaching out to shake Jerry’s with the other.  “We’ll see you soon”.

“Good luck, and remember to bring my car back in one piece!”

Harriet crossed the room and gave Ralph a peck on the cheek and a quick hug, then to my surprise she did the same to me.

“Thank you”, she whispered, squeezing my free hand, “this means a lot”.

I reddened as Ralph glared at me over her head, and then disentangled myself as graciously as I could.

“It’s my pleasure”, I said, following the old man out to the car, “we’ll see you in an hour or so and you can pay me back with lunch”.

Outside, Ralph took the keys and motioned me into the passenger seat. 

“I’ll drive on the way there, I know where it is”, he said by way of explanation as he started the car, “so you better keep that shotgun loaded and pointed in the right direction.  I don’t mean to let anyone stop me getting my little girl back, and I expect you to follow my lead no matter what happens.  Are we clear?”

“As crystal”, I said, sliding a pair of cartridges into the breech and snapping it closed, all the while wondering if I’d have the guts to use it, even if my life depended on it.

Chapter 13

Ralph drove as if the devil himself were chasing us, speeding along country roads that were little more than a single lane but were supposed to accommodate two-way traffic, hedgerows and small wooded copses flashing past at frightening speed.

So far we hadn’t encountered any abandoned cars, but I had a very real fear that his ageing reflexes wouldn’t hit the brakes in time if we did, and I was haunted by visions of us ending up parked in the back seat of another car, bleeding out slowly with no one to come to our aid.

“So”, I said, more to distract myself from the constant threat of imminent death than any real desire for conversation, “Harriet mentioned something last night about the farm not being worked at the moment.  What’s all that about?”

“Government thing.  Too many farms producing food means the market gets flooded, so some farmers get paid to let their fields lie fallow.  The owner lives in London now, gets paid every year for just having the land while we keep an eye on things.  Works pretty well for us, we get the cottage paid for and a bit left over, and in turn he leaves us to it.  ‘Sposed to end next year, but I reckon he’d be wise to start getting everything ready now after last night”.

I nodded in agreement.  I’d heard of the deal before, but until I’d seen the sheer number of fallow fields we’d driven through that morning, I hadn’t realised just how wasteful a thing it was.  Hundreds of acres of prime farmland were just sitting there, the fields slowly succumbing to nature while the government paid for it to stay that way.

We’d been on the road for about twenty minutes, passing the occasional house and the odd farm, but other than that we could have been alone in the world.  The shotgun was an uncomfortable weight in my lap, and I’d begun to develop a nervous habit of making sure the safety lever behind the barrels was engaged, my thumb rubbing it every few seconds.

“Where is it that we’re going, exactly?”   I asked as Ralph slowed a little to take a blind bend.

“Place called Milford, just southeast of Guildford.  It’s a fair sized village, and a lot of the area’s built up now, so I’m taking the back roads.  Don’t want to bump into trouble if we can help it, just want to find Emily and get home safe”.

I couldn’t argue with that sentiment, and despite my fear of the man the night before I found myself warming to Ralph.  He was a simple, uncomplicated man who seemed to know his place in the world and was happy with it, with his family coming before everything else.  It was a view I appreciated, and I genuinely hoped that we would find his daughter as easily as he seemed to think we would.

The sun was climbing high in the sky now and the heat in the car was oppressive.  I’d opened my window and Ralph had done the same, but the wind coming into the car seemed as hot as that already inside, bringing with it the smell of dry grass and too-hot engine.

“Does it seem hotter to you than usual?”  I asked, thinking back to what Jerry had said that morning.

“The whole month has been hotter than usual, but now that you mention it I do think it’s gone up a few degrees today.  Bugger”.

I looked up as he pressed hard on the brakes, bringing the car to a shuddering halt.  A silver 4x4 pickup had been abandoned square in the middle of the road, leaving a narrow gap on one side that Ralph aimed for, scraping the passenger side against the steep, stony bank and probably taking some paint off.

Ralph muttered something too low to hear and picked up speed again, leaving the 4x4 behind in moments.  He didn’t drive quite as fast as before, however, and after another twenty minutes we reached a crossroads with a sign showing that Milford was only two miles away.

Not long after he took the turn we began to see houses, just one or two at first, but then more and more until we were driving along a street, semi-detached properties overlooking the road with large front gardens and driveways.

Most of the gardens had people in them.  Some just milled about, but not a few had barbecues going, presumably to use up the last of the meat from the fridge or freezer before it spoiled.

Each and every one, however, turned to stare as we drove past, some pressing against their fences to get a better look while others waved at us to stop.

“Should we stop?”  I asked Ralph uncertainly.  While none of them had the fevered, desperate look from the airport or the air of violence the youths in Redhill had had, I still wasn’t comfortable being in the position of having the only working car for miles around.  Despite the shotguns, it would be far too easy for someone to just take what they wanted, and I gripped the weapon tight as my stomach began to churn.

“No”, Ralph said, looking back in the mirror, “I don’t reckon they can tell us anything we don’t know already”.

We drove on in watchful silence, Ralph taking a snaking route through the village as the houses went from semi-detached to terraced, then got smaller and smaller until they seemed to crowd in on each other.  I didn’t need Ralph’s warning to know that we were entering a much less salubrious area.

“Emily lives here?”  I asked, keeping a careful eye on a small group of lads who had jumped to their feet at the sound of our engine and were now watching us in turn, their faces unreadable.

“A few streets over.  This is the quickest way”.

I pointed to half a dozen men sitting in garden chairs in the street, empty beer cans littered around their feet as they watched us pass.

“I think the long way might have been better”.

He nodded, his face grim.

“Think you might be right, but too late now”.

As I looked up at the houses, I could see faces pressed to the windows, the whole street seemingly watching us pass.  Ralph put his foot down, taking the next turn and I sighed with relief as they disappeared from view.

The street we were on, however, seemed little better.  Two lads in their twenties were cycling towards us, bulging backpacks slung over their shoulders and scarves pulled up over their faces despite the heat.

“No points for guessing what they’ve been doing”, I said as we passed them, their looks changing from challenging stares to open fear as I hefted the shotgun.

Ralph just shook his head, saying nothing, and took the next turn into a street that seemed tidier, the houses slightly larger and the gardens well looked after.

“This is it, number 24”, he said, pulling over and looking up and down the street before getting out.

I followed suit a little more clumsily, trying to keep my weight on my good leg, hold the shotgun and look around to make sure we were safe at the same time.

There was no one in the street, although I could smell barbecuing meat from not too far away and hear the faint buzz of conversation.  Several of the houses, however, looked as though they’d been broken into, doors yawning wide and windows smashed.

Having decided that we were relatively safe, Ralph marched up to the door of the nearest house and knocked loudly.  I followed more cautiously, still looking around to make sure that no one was watching us.

“Emily, it’s Dad”, he called, face pressed to the glass of the front door, “I’ve come to take you home”.

After a few moments, I saw a shape through the glass as someone approached from the other side, then the door opened on the chain.  I couldn’t see past Ralph, but from the smile on his face I knew it had to be Emily.

The door closed again and then opened hurriedly, a hand beckoning us inside.

“Get in, quick”, she said from behind the door, “it’s not safe outside”.

Ralph hurried in and I followed, Emily closing the door behind us.  I turned and stuck out my hand to introduce myself, but instead of shaking hands with the dowdy, fifty-something school-teacher type I’d been expecting, I found myself face to face with an attractive woman of athletic build who was several years younger than me, with short brown hair and hazel eyes that looked me up and down challengingly.

“I don’t mean to be rude”, she said to her father, ignoring my hand, “but who the hell is this?”

For the first time since I’d met him, Ralph looked uncomfortable.

“Emily, this is Malcolm, er, Malc, he calls himself.  He and his friend Jerry pitched up in our barn last night and your mum decided to take them in against my better judgement.  Turns out they’re ok, though, we used Jerry’s car to get here and Malc agreed to come and help”.

She switched her gaze back to me and I felt like a fly under a microscope.  Her eyes dropped to the shotgun, then travelled down to my ankle, the bandages showing above the tongue of my trainer.  Finally, she shrugged and held out her hand.

“Hi, Emily.  Sorry to be rude but the last twelve hours have been… difficult.  No one knows what’s happening, but there are no police anywhere and some of my neighbours have started helping themselves to anything or anyone who takes their fancy.  I’ve been barricaded in my bedroom most of the day, listening to them going from house to house.  I’ve got no idea what’s happened”.

“It was a solar flare”, I said, “my friend Jerry is an astrophysicist, he can explain it properly when we get back.  Which we’d better do as soon as we can if things are as bad here as you say”.

I looked meaningfully at the door and she nodded.

“I’ve packed a bag already, I was going to wait for nightfall and then cycle to the cottage”, she said, “wait here and I’ll grab it”.

She gave Ralph a quick hug and a smile, then disappeared upstairs to return a few minutes later with a camouflage Bergen backpack, heavily laden and tied down professionally.  She had also changed into a pair of black combat trousers and a green t-shirt, and had a small bum-bag cinched around her waist.

“Right, I’m ready”, she said, “let’s go”.

I’d been expecting a long wait while she packed, and was greatly relieved that we would be going so quickly.  Being in a town was making me nervous, and her retelling of events from that morning had made me even more so.

Hobbling to the door, I opened it and stepped outside, only to backpedal rapidly, almost banging into Emily as she came out behind me.

There, standing around the car with everything from baseball bats to golf clubs, were almost a dozen men ranging from eighteen to fifty, and every one of them was staring as us in a way that made me know deep in my bones that they were itching to use them.

Chapter 14

I stopped, my back pressed up against Emily as she in turn halted.  The men waiting for us were an unkempt lot, mostly unshaven and overweight, a few in tracksuit trousers or shorts while the others wore jeans.  The only clean-looking thing about them was their footwear, almost all of them wearing brand new, gleaming trainers of varying designs that looked fresh out of the box.

“We don’t want no trouble”, one of them called out, taking a half step forward, “just give us the car keys and them shotguns and you can go on your way”.

My heart was thumping so loudly that it was a wonder the others couldn’t hear it.  I’d all but forgotten the shotgun, dangling uselessly in my left hand.  Ralph hadn’t, however, and a pair of barrels slid into view over my right shoulder, pointing directly at the man who’d spoken.

“How’s about you lot bugger off before I fill you full of holes?”  Ralph suggested, his tone as hard and unfriendly as it had been the night before.

I studied the man who had spoken while I waited for his answer, trying to decide how this would play out.

He was in his early forties, at best guess, with greasy salt and pepper hair that hung to his shoulders, swept back and held in place with a pair of new sunglasses, the label still attached to the frame.  I didn’t need to be a genius to figure out where both those and the trainers had come from.

His broad, hairy chest and cannonball-like stomach were barely covered by a grubby white vest, almost the same colour as his grey tracksuit trousers in places.

His eyes were what drew me though, two small, brown orbs that flickered over us constantly, weighing, assessing, calculating the way I imagined a horse trader would look over a field of brood-mares.

He watched us for a long moment, then slowly put the golf club he was carrying up on his shoulder, looking for all the world like he was having a catch-up with his mates outside the pub instead of having his life threatened with a shotgun.

“You got four shots”, he said, leaning back against the car, “and there’s twelve of us.  I reckon you can wing what, three or four of us, maybe five, before we get ya. It comes to that, you and your mate ‘ere’ll get proper fucked up, and girly’ll get another type of fucking, you get me?”

He leered as he spoke and some of his friends laughed, but I could almost hear Ralph’s finger tightening on the trigger.

The whole situation was about to go rapidly downhill, and I had to do something, anything to stop it from devolving into bloodshed.

Before I could think it through and change my mind, I stepped forward and snapped the shotgun up to my shoulder, pointing it directly at the speaker.

“Seems to me like you’ve got it wrong”, I said, frantically dredging my memory for everything I’d ever learned about shotguns.  “First, the spread on these is enough to catch every one of you if you come at us”.

I measured the distance by eye and plastered on what I hoped was an evil smile.

“You’re what, twenty feet away?  Not even the old man can miss at that range.  You know what happens when shotgun pellets hit someone?”  I forged on, not giving their leader a chance to speak, as I saw more than a few of them look at each other and begin to mutter, one actually edging behind the car.

“Well the pellet, which is lead, is poisonous anyway, but the worst bit is the sepsis that sets in because each pellet pushes any clothing it passes through into the wound.  So you survive the blast, but after a couple of days you start getting sick and even though you think you’ve got the pellets out, your wounds start to ooze pus.  Then you start getting a fever and you end up on your back, getting worse and worse because all those tiny little pieces of cloth are inside your body, poisoning your bloodstream and killing you day by day”.

Almost all of them were looking at each other uncertainly now, and one reached out to touch their leader on the shoulder, but he batted the hand away and brought his golf club across his body as if it might protect him.

“And we don’t need to fire right away”, I continued, almost babbling now but determined to get out of this alive at any cost, “we can just wait until you’re a few feet away and fire, and the first couple of you will get cut in half.  Who fancies that then.  You?”

I pointed the gun towards a brute of a man standing at the back of the car.  He’d been in the process of moving towards the back of the group, but now he froze, shaking his head a barest fraction.

“Thought not.  How about you?”  I swung it towards a lad no more than eighteen, making his blond mullet quiver as he shook his head.

The leader finally found his voice.  “Bollocks.  No way can you get us all, we’ll fucking tear you apart”.

I nodded in agreement.  “You’re right, we can’t get you all, but I reckon that if you come for us fewer than half of you will be standing by the time it’s done. Not good odds for you, is it?”

He struggled with this for a moment, then turned to one of the lads at the back, almost out of sight behind the car.

“Trev, do me a favour?”

Trev nodded.  “Sure dad, what?”

“Run back to the house and get everyone else who ain’t doing nothing and bring ‘em back, will ya?  If he wants to play numbers, we’ll give ‘im numbers”.

The lad glanced at us nervously and then took off like a hare, keeping the car between us and him until he was well out of range.

“So”, the speaker said, “give it five minutes and there’ll be fifty of us, and then you’re fucked.  So what you gonna do about that?”

As he spoke he was edging back into the crowd, using the others to block him from view as he worked himself around the car.

“Got any bright ideas?”  I muttered over my shoulder, having played my hand and lost.

Emily laid a hand on my arm.

“Yes”, she said, “we get back in the house and go through the garden and into the fields, then wait until they get bored.  They’ll leave eventually, and then we can come back for the car.  Dad?”

“Not much else we can do”, he growled.

“Fine”, I said, “let’s do it”.

Before the group could react, Ralph’s shotgun barrels disappeared back over my shoulder and I heard him retreat into the house.  Emily went next but kept a hand on the back of my t-shirt, guiding me back through the doorway. 

The moment my shotgun was through she slammed the door, then turned and led us through the house to the kitchen, flinging the back door open and hurrying out into the garden.

The garden was small, little more than a grassed box with a low hedge that looked out over a playing field at the rear.  Emily moved straight to the corner of the garden and forced her way out through the hedge where the two corners met and the brush was thinnest, then turned and helped first her dad, and then myself through.

We were horribly exposed, with only the back gardens of her street blocking us from view on one side.  On the other three sides the field spread out for hundreds of metres, showing anyone who cared to look exactly where we were.

“So what now?”  I asked, my thumb stroking the lever on the shotgun so rapidly I had to force myself to stop.

“This way”, she said, and led us across the field at an angle towards the nearest treeline.  “There’s a patch of woods just past the edge of the field.  No one goes there, so we should be safe until the sun goes down or they get bored and leave, whichever comes first”.

I nodded and followed, falling further and further behind as my ankle began to protest at the sudden exercise.  The others slowed to allow me to keep up, but I could see the frustration on their faces as we crawled across the field in plain view for the world to see.

We’d almost reached the treeline when I glanced back, seeing something that made my heart sink.

Pouring out of Emily’s back garden was a veritable flood of people, all of them armed and heading in our direction.

Gritting my teeth I ran for the trees, ignoring the screaming pain in my ankle as I caught up with the others, all of us running from the men who wanted nothing more than to kill us, or in Emily’s case, far worse.

Chapter 15

I was almost doubled over in agony by the time we reached the trees, my ankle a throbbing mass of pain that brought tears to my eyes.

“I’ve got to stop”, I gasped, “I can’t keep running”.

Emily and Ralph both slowed, her seemingly fresh but the old man breathing like a bellows as he fought for air.

“Not as fit as I used to be”, he wheezed, leaning against a tree.

Emily looked around, then pointed to a large oak with low branches.

“If we can’t run, we climb.  Come on”.  She ran over to the tree and jumped up, catching and branch and easily pulling herself up, Bergen and all.

I hobbled after her as fast as I could, Ralph following behind.  I could hear his lungs rattling now, the sound registering even over the pain in my foot.

As we reached the tree I put my back against the trunk, knowing that seconds counted if we were to get out of reach of the men following us.

Emily leaned down and took Ralph’s shotgun, then reached out for his arms while I made my hands into a stirrup and boosted him up.

The old man was incredibly heavy, years of manual labour turning him into a lump of solid muscle that was almost too much for me to lift, even for a moment, but Emily caught his wrists and somehow he scrambled up onto the lowest branch, then began climbing to the next.

“Grab hold”, Emily said, lying on the branch and reaching down again, grabbing my shotgun and then coming back for me.  I could hear the shouts of the men following us now, and I took hold of her arms while my one good foot scrabbled at the bark for purchase.

I’d never been so scared in my life, not even when Ralph had us on the wrong end of his shotgun the night before, but despite the adrenaline surging through my system I just didn’t have the strength to haul myself up.

I hung there, waving and twisting while Emily grimaced with the strain of trying to hold my weight, unable to do more than scrape my foot uselessly against the trunk.

“They went this way!”  The shout was less than a dozen metres behind.  I let go of Emily and dropped to the ground, nearly screaming as my ankle tried to buckle again.

“The shotgun!”  I whispered furiously, but then I caught a glimpse of movement in the trees behind me and I bolted, tearing through low scrubby bushes, brambles and nettles until my ankle finally gave out and I plunged down a bank into a small dell, rolling over and over until I came to a halt against a fallen tree.

Panic had me now, my breath coming in short gasps and blood thundering in my ears, but I still retained enough sense to haul myself over the fallen trunk, burying myself in the loam on the other side and then freezing, sure that they would hear my panicked breathing and be on me like hounds on a fox.

Only they weren’t. 

Twenty seconds passed, then thirty, then a minute, and still I lay there unmolested.  As the rushing in my ears began to fade and I got my breathing back under control, I realised that I could hear voices, the loudest belonging to the man in the vest who had spoken to us earlier.

“Tell you what”, he was saying from not far away, “throw the keys down and we’ll call it even”.

“The hell we will, there are three of us up here, with two shotguns.  They can fire and I can pass them cartridges all day if we need to.  So why don’t you and your mates just go home?”

Emily’s voice held not a trace of fear, and I couldn’t help but wonder at her ability to stay so calm and focused in what had to be the worst crisis she’d ever faced.  Even as the reality of my own situation struck home, I couldn’t help but feel admiration for the woman.

“Nah, I want that car.  Any idea how long it takes to get all the stuff back from town on bikes?  Car’d be much better”.

“Is it really worth lives?”

“Could ask you the same”.

“What guarantee have I got that you won’t keep waiting for us if we throw the keys down?”

“Ok, I’m fuckin’ bored of this.  Throw the keys down now or we’ll set up underneath the tree.  You can’t stay up there forever”.

“Try me”.

White-vest began to snap out orders, detailing several of his men to go back to the village for chairs, beer and food.  Fairly sure now that none of them knew I was still on the ground, I cautiously climbed back over the fallen tree and inched my way up to the lip of the dell, raising my head over the edge only as far as my eyes.

My heart sank when I saw how many of them there were.

Almost twenty men now stood around the tree, although far enough back to avoid the worst of any sudden shotgun blast.  The leader leaned against a smaller tree at the edge of the clearing around the oak, scratching himself with one hand while the other still held his club.

I slid back down into the dell and over the trunk again, making sure I was well out of sight in case any of them decided to explore, then took stock of my options.

My first thought was that I didn’t have many.  Even if I was a skilled fighter, which I most certainly wasn’t, there was no way I’d be able to take on so many opponents.  Even fighting one or two of them was enough to make me want to piss in fear.  That left two choices, or maybe three.

First, I could try and make my way on foot to the nearest decent part of town and see if I could find someone to help, but that was unlikely to say the least.  Not only could I barely walk, but I didn’t know anyone in the area and the chances of them deciding to help a total stranger when they had their own worries were slim to none.

Second, I could walk away.  I could cut my losses, try and find my way back to the cottage and tell Harriet… Tell her what?  That I’d been too scared to try and help and her husband and daughter had died because I was a coward?  No, that didn’t bear thinking about, and just the thought of leaving them when they needed me most filled me with a self-loathing that I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with.

So it had to be option three, only I wasn’t sure what that was.

And so I lay there, occasionally crawling up to the lip and looking over as the morning turned into afternoon, the heat becoming almost unbearable even with the shade of the trees keeping the worst of the sun off.  I was desperate for a drink, the feeling made worse when several of their number returned with coolers full of beer and began handing around cans.

They stood or sat in small groups, some on chairs that appeared from the village, others on the bare earth while they waited for us to give up and either come down or throw the keys.

It was hard to know how long I’d lain there, watching them smoking, talking and drinking, but it had to have been several hours when their leader waved a few of them to one side and had a low conversation with them, too quiet for me to hear from this distance.

After a few minutes of conferring, two of them went around the clearing, tapping some of the others on the shoulders and motioning them back towards the village while others stayed where they were, talking and laughing.

By the time the ones tapped on the shoulder had slipped away, I counted seven left.  Still too many for me to tackle them head on, but I’d always prided myself on my ability to think outside the box, and if I had any hope of Ralph and Emily getting out of this alive, I needed that skill now more than ever.

Chapter 16

By the time the sun dropped over the horizon I felt half-delirious with thirst, my tongue several sizes too big and my head thumping painfully.  I could have slipped away and tried to find water but I’d been too scared, both of being seen and not finding my way back.

There were still half a dozen men sitting around the tree, and from the occasional reappearances the leader had made throughout the day, his threats more and more esoteric each time, I had the firm feeling that this was now less about the car and more about his pride, maybe even his standing in the eyes of the others.

His last visit had been about an hour before dusk, one of the others daring to ask when they could leave only to have him roar at them incoherently before stomping off back to the village.

I’d nearly been discovered several times throughout the day, the lip of the small dell I lay in perfect for those who wished to relieve themselves, seemingly competing to see how much of my hiding place they could splash with urine, the smell only adding to my headache.

More than once I’d been tempted to give up and crawl off into the bushes, but the imagined look on Harriet’s face was enough to keep me there, along with the understanding that Emily and Ralph were most likely relying on me to do something to help.

I’d made and discarded a dozen plans during the day, all of them either risky, unworkable or downright stupid, but as the air cooled and small creatures began to rustle in the leaves around me, I knew that I had to find a way to distract the men around the tree.

Then it came to me.  Not much would draw these men away, but there was one thing that they would value more than the car and the potential for sated lust and violence that capturing my friends would provide.

Praying they wouldn’t hear me, I scrabbled through the leaf mould to the far side of the dell and into the bushes at the edge, then half crouched, half hobbled as fast as I could, cutting in a wide circle back towards the village.

It took me the best part of quarter of an hour to get there, hurrying from bush to bush and freezing at the slightest hint of movement.

My palms were sweating and my head was thumping like a drum by the time I reached the first garden fence, my courage all but gone before I’d even started on my hazardous course of action.

Keeping low, I used the fence as cover and crept towards the street we’d driven through when we’d seen the two cyclists with their packs full of looted gear.  I’d heard white-vest talking about bikes earlier, and so I had to assume that they were linked.

When I reached what I thought was the right spot, I rolled over a fence and into the garden beyond, immediately getting tangled in the undergrowth.

The lawn hadn’t been cut in months by the look of it, and children’s toys were scattered at random in the long grass like brightly coloured mantraps, tripping me as I tried to make my way silently to the side of the house and the path that led past an old wooden shed to the street.

The houses were dark but I could see the faint hint of flames from the street, and as I sidled along the path and peered around the corner, I saw white-vest and several other men sitting around an oil drum, flames licking up from it to illuminate their faces as the drank yet more beer and smoked cigarettes from cartons of two hundred that were littered around their feet.

They’d clearly done well out of the disaster so far, but I wondered how long they’d last when they realised their microwave ready-meals were no longer on the menu and they had to find real food to cook.

I shook my head to clear it.  Now was not the time to be making silent jibes about lifestyle, not if I had any chance of helping Emily and Ralph.  I put the stray thoughts down to my lack of water, and looked in vain for anything I might use to quench my thirst.

Nothing presented itself, however, so I moved in a crouch to hide behind a pair of metal bins that gave me a good view of the road and its occupants while keeping me firmly hidden.

I stayed crouched there for about ten minutes, watching the comings and goings around the fire.  While the houses on this side were semi-detached, the ones on the far side were terraced and all crammed together with tiny gardens that were little more than scrubby patches of brown earth, and if I was to have any effect at all I realised that I needed to cross the road without being seen.

Drawing back to the shed, I tried the door gently.  It moved, but the hinges were rusty and the squeak they gave was enough to raise the dead.

I froze, heart in mouth as I waited for a shout of discovery, but none came and after a long minute I moved the door again, this time lifting it slightly as I pushed.

It still groaned, but not so loud now, the noise more than covered by the laughter and conversation coming from the fire, and in moments I had it wide enough to slip inside.

It was pitch black inside the shed.  I hadn’t thought this far into my plan, trusting that I’d find the things I needed, but without being able to see I was at something of a loss.  The small space smelled strongly of creosote, old wood and mouse droppings, and I ran my hands through all manner of unidentifiable, cobweb-covered things looking for anything that might do as a light source.

After several minutes of searching I found an old torch, the batteries almost dead but giving out just enough light to see by after being in the dark for so long.

Shining it around, I realised that no one had used this place for months. Dust and cobwebs were thick on every surface, the workbench holding tools that had rusted to their clamps.

Checking the lower shelves, I repressed a shudder as a spider the size of my hand darted into cover with alarming swiftness.  Working with as much haste as I could while remaining quiet, I looked through the shelves until I found what I needed.  Stuffing it all into an old garden sack, I turned the torch off but kept hold of it, then exited the shed and crossed the back garden again, going back over the fence and along several houses until I reckoned I was far enough away from the fire not to be seen.

I was about to climb another fence when I saw a footpath, a narrow dirt smear that separated two of the fenced gardens.  It was littered with dog mess, but I picked my way along it, pleasantly surprised that my ankle was bearing up well.

I paused at the end of the footpath, leaning out past a hedge to check the road in both directions.  Once I was sure I was clear, the fire and its complement of men a good twenty metres away and all but lost around a slight curve in the road, I hurried across to the far side and straight into the first garden.

This was where my plan got a little hazy.  I’d seen from the car earlier that all the gardens were linked, a concrete path running between house and garden just wide enough for one person, passing every front door in the row, so I could get as far along the road as I needed to without jumping any more fences.  But could I really do what I was planning?  Despite everything, even knowing that the people around me would quite deliberately and cheerfully tear myself and my friends apart if they caught us, I was about to put them and their dependants at risk, possibly even kill some of them.  Could I honestly justify my actions?  My father, a civil servant for most of his adult life, and a particularly law-abiding man, had once said to me, ‘don’t do anything you couldn’t put your hand on your heart and justify in front of a jury’.  Despite our disagreements about other things, that particular quote had stuck with me, and I’d always tried to follow the spirit of it, if not the letter.

But now I was about to change all that.  For the first time in my adult life, I was going to break a law, risking lives in a cold, calculated attack that could very possibly leave someone dead.

My hands shook as I checked the contents of my bag, making sure everything was there.  Once I was certain, I moved along the path, ducking under windows and keeping to the shadows as much as I could while the whole street seemed to be congregating around the fire out on the road.

I could hear dozens of voices now, with children shouting and playing as they ran in and out of the gardens, one running right past me as I froze in the dark, almost shouting in shock as the little lad barrelled out of his house and into the street with a tin of chocolates clutched in his hands and a wild grin on his face.

My heart felt like it was about to burst, and by the time I moved again my hands and legs were shaking and my knees felt like jelly.  I made it another two houses before I decided that I was close enough and pulled the stolen items from my bag, setting them out at my feet and looking around to make sure that the low hedge shielded me from view.

Confident that I wasn’t being observed, I opened the box of matches and took two out, laying them on the path, then picked up the can of lighter fluid and gently pushed the letterbox open, squeezing the tin as hard as I could and liberally dousing the carpet inside with the foul smelling liquid.  I sprayed yet more into the inside of the letterbox itself, then coated the outside too before throwing the empty can back into the sack and shoving it behind a bin.

Taking a deep breath I lit the first match, my hands shaking so badly that the flame went out.  Tossing it aside, I lit the second and this time the flame sprang to life, its yellow glow making the fluid on the door glisten.

Knowing that I couldn’t delay, I held the letterbox open and dropped the match onto the wood inside.

It lit with a whoosh, flames spurting out and burning my hand, arm and face.  I stumbled backwards, the smell of burnt hair matching the hot, stretched feeling of the skin on my cheeks.

Within seconds the hallway was on fire, flames licking hungrily at the carpet, door and walls, throwing crazy shadows through the glass that made up the top half of the door.

I heard a shout from the street and ran without thinking, back along the path to the end of the street, not noticing the pain in my ankle as I rode the wave of adrenaline and let it carry me out of sight of anyone coming to investigate.

I hit the end of the path and ducked behind the last hedge, peeking back out to see if anyone had seen me.

I needn’t have worried.  The whole street appeared to be packed into the front garden, staring in surprise at the flames that were now bright enough to see from even this distance.

“It’s Jamie’s house, where is he?”  Someone shouted.

“He’s in the woods”, someone else replied, “someone get a bucket or something!”

Seeing my chance, I fled across the road while they were all busy, taking the footpath back to the fields and following the treeline until I was close to the oak and the group of men below it, their faces thrown into sharp relief by a small fire one of the had made.

This was where it could all go wrong.  I looked back towards the village and was surprised to see a glow from the fire I’d set, a thick pall of smoke beginning to form over the street.  It had spread far more quickly than I’d imagined, and I hoped that would help my cause.

Stepping into a thick stand of trees, I hid myself as best I could among the narrow trunks and deepened my voice, trying to make myself sound like one of the villagers.

“Jamie”, I shouted, letting the very real fear I was trying to control enter my voice.

“What?”  Came an answering call from below the tree.

“Your house is on fire”, I shouted, “we need help before all the other houses go up!”

“You what?  You’d better be pulling my fuckin’ leg”.

“I ain’t, go look!”

A few moments later two forms hurried past my hiding place.

“Shit, look, you can see it from ‘ere”, one said nervously.

“Oh fuck”, the other, a man in a lurid green t-shirt, breathed, beginning to run towards the village, “my fuckin kids are in bed, come on, what are you fuckin’ waiting for?”

The last was screamed as he sprinted, his companion and several others from the tree following with shouts of alarm.

That should have been the moment to strike, to let the others know that there were only two or three men left to guard them, but as Jamie’s words sank in I dropped to my knees, overwhelmed by the urge to vomit.

My kids are in bed, he’d said, and as I realised what I’d done I began to throw up violently, huge convulsions that sprayed the forest floor with what little was left of my breakfast. 

The crunching of feet on dry leaves made me look up, helpless, as two of the remaining men came to investigate the noise.

“What, had too much beer?”  Said one, laughing, then he leaned closer and comprehension dawned.

“Hang on, you’re one of the… oof!”

He dropped the ground bonelessly, his friend turning to see what was happening just as the butt of a shotgun smashed into his neck where it met his shoulder.

He just about had time to gasp and reach for his neck as he collapsed, Emily stepping over them and grabbing me roughly by the collar, hauling me mercilessly to my feet.

I stared up at her through tear-filled eyes, seeing Ralph at her shoulder, carrying her Bergen and the second shotgun.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”  Emily asked, but I could only shake my head, unable to tell her that I’d most likely just murdered someone.

“Well whatever it is, we don’t have time for it”, she continued, pushing me roughly back towards her house, “not if we want to get in the car and get out of here”.

Between her and Ralph they got me pointed in the right direction, alternately guiding and shoving me until I managed to put one foot in front of the other and keep going, unable to take comfort in the fact that I’d saved my friends when the price was so very high.

Chapter 17

I don’t remember much of the walk back to the car.  I remember Emily physically pulling me through the hedge when I stopped and just stared at it, and I remember catching the worried glance she and her father threw each other when they thought I wasn’t looking.  I was looking; I was just so wrapped up in my own misery that I didn’t care.

We reached the front of the house without incident and they hurried me towards the car, still sitting where we’d left it but now with the driver’s window smashed in and the car thoroughly searched, the glove box left open and Jerry’s maps scattered all over the back seat.

Emily got in the driver’s seat while Ralph shoved me unceremoniously in the back and climbed in after me, unwinding the passenger window so that he could poke his shotgun out.

“We’re ready”, he said, and Emily started the engine, then pulled a U-turn and headed back the way we’d come that morning.

I finally looked up at that, realising that we would have to drive past my brutal handiwork.

“Can’t we go another way?”  I asked, but Emily shook her head.

“Not a chance.  There’s no way out of the estate the other direction, it just goes around in a big circle.  We want to get back to mum and dad’s, we have to drive past them.  Are you up to using a shotgun?”

I shook my head.  The thought of hurting anyone else was almost enough to make me weep.  I’d always thought I was strong, and maybe I was, but I challenge anyone not to crack up in the face of what I was going through right then.

“Fine, well just keep your head down if it goes wrong.  Hang on”.

She turned the corner and I couldn’t help but stare.  Not only was the house I’d torched in flames, but the fire had spread to the next one and was threatening a third.  Thirty or so people had formed a bucket chain, using what little water was available from water butts and bottles, but they stood little chance of dousing the raging inferno.

“What the hell did you do?”  Emily breathed, picking up speed and jinking to avoid the few people running across the road to add their paltry water supplies to the chain.

“I…”  I stopped, seeing something that cut through the fog in my mind like sunlight on a rainy day.  Picked out in the headlights was a man I recognised as Jamie, two children in his arms and tears running down his face past a huge grin as he clutched them to his chest.

The children were squirming, clearly unsure why their dad was making such a fuss, but to me it was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my chest and suddenly I could breathe again.

“I did something really fucking stupid”, I said, “but it worked”. 

I could hear the crackle of flames through the window, bringing back vivid images of Brighton on fire, but then the night was split by a huge shout.

“Fucking stop them!”

The man in the white vest ran out into the road and scooped up his golf club from where it lay by the fire, running after us and hurling it as hard as he could in our direction.

It went wide, curving off into a front garden and burying itself in a hedge, but I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we turned the corner and the street and its occupants were lost from view.

“You want to keep your speed down love”, Ralph said, as calmly as if he were giving a driving lesson and not escaping from a bunch of violent looters, “there’s a few cars abandoned on the road and it won’t do us much good if we crash”.

“Yes dad”, she replied in a weary tone, “I’ll be careful.  Shall I take the long route or the short one?”

He hesitated for a moment.  “The short one, I reckon.  Your mum’ll be fit to burst with worry, let’s not keep her waiting longer than we have to”.

She nodded and took a left, heading down country roads that to my eye looked identical to the ones we’d followed the other way that morning.

“How long will it take us to get back?”  I asked, looking down and realising that the front of my t-shirt was stained with vomit.

Ralph saw where I was looking but didn’t comment, instead opening the Bergen and pulling out a plastic water bottle which he passed to me.

“About half an hour, maybe forty minutes, we don’t get no interruptions on the way”, he said as I almost ripped the top off the bottle and drank most of it in one go.

The warm, plastic-tasting water was unbelievably good and I drank a little more before pouring some on my t-shirt and trying to get the worst of the vomit off.

When I’d finished I looked up to see Ralph watching me, his brow furrowed.

“What happened back there?”  He asked bluntly.  “You sort of fell apart for a while”.

I shrugged, still uncomfortable with how close I’d come to committing one of the most heinous crimes I could imagine.

“I set light to one of the houses to distract them”, I said finally, “but when I told the guys who were guarding you, one of them started panicking because he thought his kids were in there and I…”  I tailed off, unable to finish the sentence, but Ralph was looking at me with a surprising amount of compassion and not a little understanding.

“Well”, he said, clearly uncomfortable with showing his feelings but needing to make his point, “I don’t rightly blame you for feeling like you did, I reckon I would’ve felt the same.  I take it that was him in the street trying to squeeze his kids to death?”

“Yeah, so they’re ok, but when I think how close it came…”  I stopped again, feeling absurdly close to tears.  “You must think…”

“That you’re a good man who did what he could when he could have run away and left us”, Emily broke in, glaring at the mirror.  “You made a tough call in a difficult situation, but the result is that we all got out ok and no one died, so I call that a win, don’t you?”

I couldn’t fault her logic, and I was emotionally mature enough to know the difference between genuine remorse and moping, realising that I was getting perilously close to the latter.

“You’re right”, I said, forcing myself to smile, “and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how well you handled yourself today”.

“Oh really?  How do you mean, precisely?”  There was something in her tone that made me realise I was walking into a trap, but I couldn’t for the life of me see what it was or why it was there.  It reminded me of the sudden arguments I’d had with Angie, and the conversational pitfalls I’d never seen until too late.

“Well”, I said, trying to find my feet again, “I mean, you were decisive, calm and clear-headed while we were being chased by a group of thugs.  Most people would have panicked and come apart, but you, well, uh, you did well”.

“For a woman?”  She asked tartly.

“For anyone!  Why is this suddenly about you being a woman?  You handled yourself at least as well as any man I know today”.

“Just as well as, not better than?”  She asked in the same tone.

“Well, er, maybe, yes.  Look, whatever I said that annoyed you, I’m sorry, I was just trying to pay you a compliment.  After all, it’s not like you’ve been through anything like that before, I should think, and I was impressed is all”.

I heard a noise from the seat next to me like a set of rusted gears straining against each other.  For a horrible moment I thought Ralph was having a heart attack, then I realised that he was laughing, his eyes dancing with merriment.

“What?”  I snapped, feeling like the butt of a joke that everyone else got but I didn’t.  “What’s so funny?”

“Not been through anything like that before?”  He wheezed, and I looked at Emily to see her grinning in return.  “Have you met my daughter properly?”

“Properly?”  I still didn’t get it, and the longer they chuckled at each other the angrier I became.  “We didn’t quite have time for proper introductions, no”.

“Well then”, he said, placing a conciliatory hand on my arm, “allow me to introduce you to my daughter, Sergeant Emily Morris, 1st Battalion, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. I reckon she’s seen a damn sight more trouble in worse places than you or I could think of, so today might have been rough for you or me, but to her it was just a walk in the park”.

Chapter 18

The rest of the journey passed in silence, broken by Ralph’s occasional chuckles.  I was already thoroughly embarrassed by my attempt to congratulate Emily on how well she’d coped, and the laughter really wasn’t helping my mood but I let it pass unchallenged. 

Looking at it from her point of view, I supposed my comments could be seen as rude, although I preferred to think of them as uninformed.

Thinking back, I was surprised that I hadn’t worked it out for myself.  Not only was she cool and capable under fire, as it were, but her house had been neat to the point of severity and now I thought about it she had that unmistakable military air about her.

I put it down to the events of the afternoon overwhelming me, and spent the rest of the journey trying to think of something suitable to say that wouldn’t make me sound any more like a moron than I had already.

In the end I settled for keeping my mouth shut, which seemed to be the best option when Emily finally spoke to me as we drew close to the cottage.

“Malc, thank you for today”.

I looked up and blinked for a second, unsure what to say.

“You’re welcome”, I said finally, “it’s nothing you wouldn’t have done for me”.

“Well I, we appreciate it.  You could have just left us to it, come back and spun some story for mum and disappeared into the blue never to be heard of again”.

I felt a stab of guilt as I remembered considering that very thing.

“Wouldn’t have been right”, I said, glad that the darkness hid my burning cheeks.  “I promised your mum I’d help get you home, and I don’t like breaking promises”.

“Well I think you’re a good man”, she said with a smile, showing dimples in the mirror.  “Will you be staying with us when we get home?  I’m sure dad could find a use for you and your friend both.”

I shook my head.  “I’d love to”, I said, suddenly realising that it was true, “but my daughter is up in Manchester and her mother, well, let’s just say she’s not someone I want looking after my little girl the way things are right now”.

“You’re married?”  Was there a hint of disappointment there?  I banished the thought instantly; this was no time to be thinking about romance, no matter how attractive I found Emily.

“Divorced.  We married way too young on the strength of a drunken club night.  Not the most stable foundation for a relationship.  Turns out we had nothing in common, and things only got worse the older Melody got, we couldn’t agree on anything in the end”.

I closed my mouth with a snap.  Here I was, spilling my life story to someone I’d only just met while her father sat next to me with a loaded shotgun.  It was almost enough to make me laugh, and I had to repress the urge to giggle like a child.

“How about you?”  I asked instead, “got anyone back in the army?”

She shook her head.  “No, I actually came out of the army about six months ago, despite what my dad said.  I started up a little business repairing the things that people usually throw away once they stop working, then selling them on ebay.  Almost ninety percent of electrical goods that go wrong and get thrown out are repairable, if you know what you’re doing.  Made a killing.  Not that I’ll be doing much of it for a while, I would think”.

We crested the final hill and she turned the car onto the drive that led to the cottage.  As we pulled into the yard, however, I saw an old blue Landrover sitting by the Cottage door and immediately reached for the spare shotgun, only to have Ralph’s meaty hand clamp down on mine.

“Easy there, that’s Dave Edwards, he’s the local forester.  Don’t think we’ll be needing the shotguns”.

I nodded and let go, but noted that he scanned the yard before he got out of the car, and his own weapon was at the ready as we approached the cottage, a light still on in the kitchen window.

As we walked towards the door it flew open and Harriet almost ran out.  She and Emily caught hold of each other and hugged while I stood there awkwardly.  Harriet finally disentangled herself from her daughter’s arms and swapped them for Ralph’s, squeezing him tight before gripping my hand, her eyes shining with tears.

“Oh, thank god you’re safe”, she said, pulling me towards the door as the others followed.  “Jerry was beside himself, talking about hiking over there until Dave came by, then trying to convince him to go and search for you, but I knew you’d come back.  Was it bad?”

I opened my mouth to answer but then caught Ralph’s stare.

“Not too bad”, I lied with a smile, “just a bit of car trouble”.

She nodded and accepted the explanation, leading us into the kitchen as Maggie ran around our feet, yapping excitedly until Ralph yelled at her.

Jerry was sat at the table, hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea, while opposite him sat a man in his early thirties who appeared to be carved from granite, his tattered navy jumper straining to cover his hugely muscled arms as he stood to shake our hands.

He seemed to be a pleasant chap, a permanent smile splitting his thick, dark beard as he folded a huge hand around mine, squeezing surprisingly gently and saying my name to himself when we were introduced.

In moments, it seemed, we were all seated around the table with mugs of tea, Ralph batting off questions about the delay in getting back and turning the conversation to how Dave had managed to get his vehicle working.

“I came out this morning and the battery was dead”, he said by way of explanation, “but I’ve got a couple of spares in the shed so I tried one and it worked. I thought I’d head over and make sure you and Harriet were ok.  Your man Jerry here was about to explain what happened when you pulled up”.

We all turned to look at Jerry and he cleared his throat nervously.

“Right, well.  I’ve already explained to most of you about the solar flare, and to some of you about the Coronal Mass Ejection, which is actually the thing causing all the problems.  Do you all know what an EMP is?”

Everyone but Ralph nodded.

“Ok”, Jerry continued, “it’s an electromagnetic pulse, which is normally found when a nuclear device detonates, and it’s capable of destroying electronics and causing all manner of problems, such as overloads and the like.  The Ejection, or CME for short, that we had yesterday was particularly bad, and in layman’s terms it’s the sun venting plasma, which acts like an EMP.  The sun actually has a very strong electromagnetic field of its own, as well as its own gravity, but sometimes when the gravity weakens it sends out, well, puffs of plasma, I suppose you could say.  It’s almost unheard of for one to hit the earth, but it does happen, clearly, or we wouldn’t be in this mess”.

He looked around with a smile, as if he’d covered everything, but there were more than a few confused looks at the table.

“So how does that explain my car battery then?”  Dave asked, scratching his beard.

“Oh yes, well.  A CME as large as the one that hit us is kind of like a giant taser hitting the earth.  The shock would ground, in much the same way as electricity, and anything made of conductive material with a power source connected to it would effectively draw the energy out of its power source unless it was shielded and surge protected”.

“Like a metal car with its battery still attached?”  Dave said, catching on.

Jerry took a swig of his tea and nodded.  “Exactly.  I detached my battery before it hit, so it was ok, and so would any that were being driven at the time, as the alternator would charge it up again, but if your vehicle was switched off when the CME hit, the battery would have drained, whereas the ones in your shed weren’t attached to anything so the charge wouldn’t go anywhere”.

“I think I follow you”, Dave said, “so what about all the other cars?”

“Microchips”, he said, waggling a finger.  “We’ve become so reliant on microchips as a society that they’re in almost everything now.  Unfortunately they are delicate enough that they are particularly susceptible to Electromagnetic variations, so everything that has a microchip in it is, well, pretty bloody useless now”.

Emily turned her mug with one hand while the other stroked Maggie’s head.

“What about older systems, pre the microchip revolution?”

Jerry shrugged.  “They should work if you can find a power source, and maybe a working fuse or two.  There’s no reason why, with a bit of make and mend, we couldn’t have ourselves back to the technology level of, say, the seventies, within a few weeks if there are enough people out there working on it”.

“I can think of a reason”, I said, standing and walking to the window to look out at the night sky.

“Oh really, what’s that?”  Jerry asked, clearly annoyed at being interrupted.

“That”, I said, pointing out to where the sky was writhing with colour, blues, greens and reds all mixing together from horizon to horizon. 

Jerry almost ran to the door, pulling it open and heading into the yard.  We all followed, speechless as we looked up at the incredible display above us.

“Oh my god”, Jerry said, his voice barely a whisper, “it’s happening again”.  

Chapter 19

We all stood in the yard, staring up in wonder as the sky pulsated in resplendent colour, washing our faces with its light.

“It’s beautiful”, Emily said, “what’s causing it?”

Jerry spoke without moving his eyes from the display.

“It’s the magnetic force of the sun interacting with the outer atmosphere”, he said, “although it’s a good deal more complicated than that.  If my instruments were working I could see exactly what was happening, but even if they were it would drain… the car!”

He ran to the Golf and opened the door, pulling the handle for the bonnet and hurriedly lifting it to tear the connectors from the battery.

Following his lead, Dave did the same with the Landrover, quickly pulling up the passenger seat and pulling the whole battery clear before laying it next to the vehicle.

“Will it be ok out here?”  He asked Jerry, who nodded as he returned his gaze to the sky.

“As long as there’s nothing draining it, it should be fine”, he said, “I just wish I knew if this was just a flare or another CME”.

“What difference does it make?”  I asked, awed and scared by the lightshow at the same time.  It might be beautiful, but it was also a sign that the worst of the storm wasn’t over.

“If it’s just a flare”, Jerry said without turning, “then it won’t cause further problems, but if it’s a CME then anyone who’s crawled out of their hidey-holes to start making repairs will find all their replacement kit being fried.  It could set a repair effort back months”.

Emily came to stand next to me, arms hugging her chest as she looked up.

“I always wanted to see the Northern Lights”, she said with a wry smile, “and now I have, I suddenly wish I hadn’t”.

“I know what you mean.  Did you see it last night?”

She shook her head.  “No, I went to bed quite early, then woke up and nothing was working”.

“It wasn’t quite as strong last night, I think”, I said, trying to compare the lights to the ones from the previous night, “which makes me glad the electricity is already out or we’d probably see worse than we did then”.

“How bad was it?”  She glanced over at me, trying to read my expression.

I shrugged and looked down at the ground, trying to block out the images of Brighton burning while we drove away, unable to help anyone against the sheer scale of the disaster.

“Bad”, I said shortly.

I half expected her to press but she merely nodded, putting a hand on my shoulder before moving to stand with her mother.  I could feel the warmth of her hand long after she’d moved away, and again chided myself for thinking of anything other than going to find Melody.

“I can’t be standing out here all night”, Ralph said suddenly, and went back into the cottage.  A few moments later the sound of clinking glass came from the kitchen, and I suspected that he was fixing himself something stronger than tea.

I moved up next to Jerry and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Do we need to be worried?”  I asked quietly.

He looked at me over his glasses.

“How do you mean, exactly?”

“Well, you said that the CME is bombarding the Earth with radiation, are we likely to get sick?”

He shook his head.  “I wouldn’t think so, no.  At least not right away.  The atmosphere works a bit like a sponge, stripping most of it away before it gets this far down. If we were in an aeroplane at thirty thousand feet it might be a different story, but as long as it doesn’t keep doing this every night we should be ok”.

“And what if it does?”  I asked.  “What if this isn’t a new flare, or CME, but the same one from last night.  That means we would have spent all day being slowly cooked from up on high”.

He shrugged.  “Not much we can do about it now”.

“Still, it would be nice to know what’s going on.  Those famous algorithms of yours, your formula or whatever you want to call it, can it tell us what’s happening now?”

Jerry looked at me for a long moment before nodding hesitantly.

“It might, you know, particularly if I can get readings from stars.  I’ve have to do the calculations on paper though”.

Without another word he headed into the cottage, coming back out a minute later with his telescope and a small green metal box which he attached to the end, a little like a silencer on a pistol.

He began looking through and making small adjustments, then squatted with a notepad resting on his leg and began making notes in tiny script with a pencil.

“Do you need help?”  I asked him, but he just waved at me absently.

The others began to drift back inside so I followed, needing to be around people far more than I needed to watch Jerry at work.

We sat back around the kitchen table, Ralph drinking whiskey from a glass without offering to share.

“How’s your ankle?”  Harriet asked as she made yet more tea, adding some wood to the stove to get the heat up.

I rolled my foot experimentally.

“Better than it’s got any right to be after today”.

Ralph shot me another warning glance and I changed the subject before she could ask why.

“So, what’s the best way to get up past London if I’m avoiding the M23?”  I asked, “and probably the M25 too.  I don’t know how bad things are in London but I want to give it a wide berth, and the 25 is probably packed with cars”.

Ralph stood and crossed to one of the many shelves that lined the walls, pulling out a large road atlas and several smaller maps. He spread them out across the table and began pointing out roads with one thick finger.

“If you want to avoid the motorways, your best bet is to take the A247 to Woking, then go to Maidenhead on this road, then this one, and then head up to here”.  He stabbed his finger at a point on the map.

“You got a choice then, you can either take the B4445 which is a straighter route but a smaller road, or follow the M40 right up north, suppose it depends on what things are like.  When are you thinking of heading off?”

I sat back and accepted a mug of tea from Harriet with a grateful smile.

“As soon as I can.  The longer I leave it, the worse things are going to get.  I’ll probably head off first thing in the morning, providing the car’s still working”.

“And if it ain’t?”  He asked, sitting back down and reaching for his glass.

“Then I’ll walk”, I said with a shrug, “what other choice have I got?”

Chapter 20

The next morning found me tired but full of nervous energy, waking to the faint sound of chopping wood outside.  I hadn’t slept well, tossing and turning on the lounge floor as nightmares of Melody trapped in a burning house roused me every hour or so.

I looked over to where Jerry’s bedroll lay, untouched since the night before, and wondered if he was still in the yard with his telescope.

I stretched and yawned, the movement sending up a waft of stale sweat.  I needed a shower, but that was something I suspected I’d be waiting a very long time for, so instead I settled for raiding Jerry’s kitbag and giving myself a quick baby-wipe bath.

The smell of coffee wafted in from the kitchen and I followed it, finding Emily and Harriet sitting at the table with their heads together, talking quietly.  Dave had left the night before, reattaching his battery and roaring off into the night with the promise to return soon.

“Morning”, I said, making them both jump.

Harriet rose with a smile and poured me a cup of coffee.  I took it gratefully and dumped several spoons of sugar in it.  I had the feeling I’d need the extra energy today.

“Did you sleep well?”  Emily asked as I sat down.

I shook my head.  “Bad dreams”.

Harriet nodded towards the window.  “Better than no dreams at all, Jerry’s been out there all night”.

I rose and crossed the look out, seeing him sat on the ground with an eye glued to the telescope.

“I guess I’m driving this morning then”, I said, flexing my ankle.  It didn’t feel too bad, only hurting when I pushed it too far to the left.  The rest of the time it just felt bruised.

“Which brings me to what I wanted to talk to you about”, Harriet said, her tone serious.  “Sit down please Malcolm”.

I sat back down, a faint tingle of worry stirring in my stomach.

“What’s up?”

The two women glanced at each other, then Harriet spoke.

“Once you’ve made it up to Manchester, and …when you find your little girl”, I noticed the silent if but let it ride, “what are your plans then?”

I shrugged.  “I haven’t really thought that far ahead.  Originally I was going to take her back down to Brighton, but I reckon most of it is ash by now”.

They exchanged another glance and this time it was Emily who spoke.

“Bring her here”, she said, “there’s plenty of room and food, and there’s a spring in the next field that can give us enough water too.  There’s no point you roaming around looking for somewhere safe when we’ve got everything you need”.

A lump formed in my throat.  These people, only a stone’s throw from complete strangers, were offering me a place to stay, a chance to be a part of their community and somewhere safe for my daughter.  I had to blink back sudden tears.

“Really?  You’d do that?”

They both nodded.

“But what will Ralph say?”  I asked, unable to imagine the gruff old man agreeing to having two extra mouths to feed.

Harriet laughed.  “You don’t know him as well as you think you do, it was him that suggested it”.

My eyes widened at that, and I felt humbled by this wonderful family that chance had allowed us to stumble across.

“I, uh, I take it that goes for Jerry too?”  I asked, realising that I couldn’t abandon him after everything he too had done for me.

“Of course, although he might have to get his hands dirty once in a while”.

I smiled as I imagined Jerry digging in the garden, his coat still buttoned up to the neck despite the heat.

“I’m sure he could be persuaded”.

Harriet looked pleased.  “Well, that’s settled then.  I’ll air out the spare bedroom.  It’ll be cramped, but not so bad as you’d think.  I’d best start making you some food for the road”.

She got up and began to bustle about the kitchen while Emily and I finished our coffee in contented silence.  I sat there for a while longer, drinking up the cozy atmosphere before finally getting to my feet.

“I need to go and speak to Ralph”, I said, and Emily nodded.

“He’s out at the woodpile”, she said, “can you tell him that breakfast will be about half an hour?”

The yard was already uncomfortably hot as I stopped next to Jerry, seeing that several pages of his pad were now covered in his cramped scrawl.

“Have you moved since last night?”  I asked, making him jump.

“Christ, don’t do that!”  He exclaimed, pulling off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.  He looked exhausted, his face grey and haggard.

“You look like you could do with some sleep”, I said, squatting next to him.  “Learn anything useful?”

He nodded and showed me the pad as if it would make sense, then patted the green box he’d put over the end of the telescope.

“This filter is very useful, it allows me to see light at different wavelengths”, he said as he lit a cigarette and slumped back onto the ground.  “There’s a lot more activity going on up there than I thought.  It works as a daylight filter too, so although I can’t look directly at the sun I can see the edge of its aura, and that’s given me a lot to work on.  Is that coffee I can smell?”

I nodded.  “There’s a pot on the stove, looks like you could use some.  I’m going to go and speak to Ralph, I’ll see you back in the kitchen, yeah?”

He nodded and pulled himself to his feet, almost stumbling as he headed for the kitchen.

Ralph was splitting logs with his usual ease, the axe rising and falling in a steady rhythm as he split one, hooked another from the pile and set it on the block, then repeated the procedure.

He was facing the cottage and saw me coming but didn’t stop, his arms glistening with sweat where they poked out from the rolled up sleeves of his shirt.

“Gonna be another hot one”, he said as I stopped a respectful distance away.

“It is”, I agreed, “but it’s good travelling weather”.

“The girls talk to you?”  He asked, never breaking his rhythm.

“They did.  Wanted to say thank you”.

“No point you running around with your girl when there’s plenty here”.

“There is that”.  I kept my thanks short, sensing that the old man wasn’t comfortable with outward displays of emotion, particularly between men.  “Just wanted you to know how much I appreciate it”.

He nodded, splitting another log clean through, then paused, resting on the haft of the axe and looking me square in the eye.

“Won’t say this again, so listen up.  You’re good folk.  You could have run off yesterday but you didn’t, and you put yourself in danger for us.  That’s something I won’t forget, so don’t go thinking this is charity, it’s not. Might need a man like you around if things don’t get better in a hurry, so you just make sure you come back quick as you can”.

He picked the axe up again and continued his work while I struggled to find something appropriate to say.

“I’m going to head back in”, I said eventually, finding nothing else that wouldn’t embarrass us both, “Emily says to tell you breakfast will be about half an hour”.

He nodded once and I left him to it, heading back to the cottage and all the while wondering at my good fortune.  Against all the odds I had a place to stay, food on the table and a friend who was willing to travel halfway across the country with me, despite the dangers we might face.  For the first time since I’d stood on that hill and watched Brighton burn, I felt that we might actually have a chance at a future, as long as we could find Melody and bring her back safe.

Chapter 21

“I’m not going with you”.

I looked up from my breakfast, fork frozen halfway to my mouth as I stared at Jerry.

“Sorry?”

He looked down at his plate, surrounded by his notes.

“I can’t go with you”, he repeated, “I’ve been going through my notes and there’s still something happening with the sun.  The problem is that for me to work out what, I need to take readings from the same place each night, and I can’t do that if I’m on the road”.

I dropped my fork, splattering the table with food but too angry to care.

“What am I supposed to do?  Walk up to Manchester?”

He shook his head and pushed his chair back as if ready to run.

“Of course not!  Take the car by all means, but I need to stay here.  This is important, Malc, really important.  There are implications I can’t begin to understand without more readings, I have to do this”.  He looked back at his notes.  “I’ll probably be more use here than I would on the road anyway”.

Everyone was staring at me. I let go of the breath I was holding, picking up my napkin and dabbing at the food on the table under Ralph’s stern glare.

“Fine, I’ll go on my own”.  I tried not to sound like a sulky teenager but I wasn’t having much luck.  Damn it though, even if he was right he was letting me go out there alone, and the thought scared me.

“No you won’t”, Emily said suddenly, “I’ll go with you”.

The silence stretched as I stared at her, unsure what to say.  Conflicting emotions were raging inside me, surprise, relief, worry, and I could see at least two of those on every face around the table.

The silence was broken by the smack of a meaty fist on the table as Ralph pushed back his chair and stood.

“Over my dead body!”  He declared, his face red and eyes bulging.  “I didn’t go through all that to get you back only to have you traipse halfway across the bloody country with some man you hardly know!”

He drew a breath to continue but Harriet spoke before he could.

“Through all what dear?  I thought you just had car trouble?”

I’d never seen the wind so neatly taken out of someone’s sails, and I would have laughed but for the look he gave me.  I put my hands up and shook my head to declare my innocence and he turned the stare on Emily, who looked back defiantly with arms crossed over her chest.

“Come on, Dad.  You asked him to help you come and find me, why should I do any less for him?”

His mouth opened and shut a few times, his face still red but slightly less than it had been a moment before as he tried to find the right words.

“It’s not the same”, he said, “I only just got you back!  What happens if you get lost, or injured, or the car breaks down and leaves you stranded?  What then?”

She shrugged.  “Then I’ll use all that army training you’re so proud of and find my way back here.  I’m not asking your permission, I stopped doing that a long time ago. I’m just telling you what’s going to happen”.

He stared at her for a moment longer, then strode out into the yard without another word.

Emily looked at me, her face unreadable.

“Well?”  She asked.

“You’d do that for me?”

“You did it for me”.

“I know, but, well…”

Her eyes narrowed.  “Don’t tell me I just had the first row with my dad since I was sixteen and you’re going to say no”.

I shook my head.  “No, I mean yes, well, no, I’d love you to come with me, I just don’t want you to think you have to, is all”.

Her words came out slowly, as if explaining something to a four year old.

“I don’t think I have to, I want to.  I hate the thought of you being out there alone while I sit here nice and safe, it just doesn’t seem right.  So how about you start packing up what we need while I go and talk some sense into my dad, eh?”

She left the table, stopping only to place a hand on her mum’s shoulder before heading after Ralph.

I looked over at Harriet, unsure what to say, but she had the resigned look of someone well used to things as they were.

“He’ll come around”, she said, “he always does.  He’s never been able to say no to her, but he worries.  Now as they’re outside, give me a hand with the dishes and then we’ll start packing up the car”.

We worked in silence, clearing up around Jerry who was already buried in his work, eyes scanning his notes and making yet more on a clean piece of paper.  Washing up was done by dint of filling the sink from a nearby bucket, then using fresh water from a large clay pitcher to rinse it all off.

Despite the archaic way of doing things we were soon finished, and Harriet began laying out food for us to take on the journey, as well as a portable stove with two small bottles of gas and a several boxes of matches.

“I know you shouldn’t be gone more than a day or two”, she said as I looked at the growing pile, “but Emily told me what happened when you went to get her so it’s better to be prepared”.

I couldn’t argue with that and so began to carry things out to the car, packing them as neatly as I could in the boot.  The final tally included a pair of sleeping bags, a small tent, several large bottles of water, food for several days or more if we rationed it, and a rucksack full of anything else Harriet could think of that we might need.  Even if we ended up having to ditch the car, something that didn’t bear thinking about, I reckoned that we would be able to fit most of it in the rucksack and Emily’s Bergen, which was now half empty and packed on top of everything else.

I’d just finished stowing the maps in the back of the car when Emily and Ralph came into view, his broad arm around her shoulder as she tucked herself into his chest.

“I’ll be fine”, she said, “I promise you”.

He shook his head, his face a swelter of different emotions, ranging from fear to anger and making several stops in between.  He caught sight of me then and stopped, stepping away from Emily and motioning me to one side.

I’ll admit I was a little nervous.  I was beginning to like Ralph, but in many ways he was still a mystery and often more than threatening.

He took me by the shoulder and steered me firmly out of earshot of the others, only stopping when we reached the fence at the edge of the yard.

“Two things”, he said without preamble.  “First, bring her back safe”.

I nodded, but he poked me in the shoulder hard enough to bruise.

“I mean it, not a scratch.  If anything happens to her then I won’t be responsible for my actions”.

“I’ll do everything I can to keep her safe”, I promised, “but to be honest she’s more likely to be the one keeping me alive”.

“Aye, you’ve got the right of that”.

“What’s the second thing?”  I asked, rubbing my shoulder.

He looked down at the ground and then back up at me.

“No funny business.  I know she’s a grown woman and all, but she’s still my daughter, and if you try anything…”

I gave a nervous laugh.  “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure she’d break me in two the first time I tried to so much as hold her hand.  I think you’re ok there”.

“That’s as may be, but I still need to know she’s travelling with an honourable man”.

Something in his words stung me and I bit back.

“I was honourable enough not to leave you yesterday when I could have done; I think I’m honourable enough not to pursue something that’s not wanted!”

Ralph had the good grace to look embarrassed.

“Right, well then.  Good luck, and come back quick.  You’ll be taking one of the shotguns and a box of cartridges with you, but if you’re clever you’ll let her do any shooting that needs to be done”.

He led me back across the yard, filling my ears with last minute instructions.  When we reached the car Harriet gave me a quick hug, then a longer one for Emily before she got into the driver’s side and I the other.

Ralph reconnected the battery and the car started first time, the noise shattering the peace of the yard and setting Maggie to barking.

“Come back safe!”  Harriet called as we pulled away, and I watched her and Ralph in the mirror, standing with their hands clasped together, until we crested the hill and the landscape hid them from view.

Chapter 22

Emily knew the roads well, taking them at a healthy speed that was much more comfortable than the breakneck pace Ralph had set.  We talked about small things, such as what I’d done before the flare or how her life had been in the army, and I could almost imagine that we were just two people out for a leisurely drive, taking in the sights of the countryside.

Our way of life might be in tatters but the sun still shone, the trees still waved in the wind and birds still flew overhead.  The world would go on, with or without humanity crawling its way across the surface, and the thought was at once reassuring yet unnerving.

“So what made you want to join the army then?”  I asked, genuinely interested.  The thought of wilfully putting yourself in harm’s way, not to mention living in rough conditions for a good part of your life, held absolutely no appeal for me whatsoever.

“I don’t know, I just always wanted to be a soldier”, she said after a moment’s pause.  “Even when I was little, I was always playing war with the boys, it was just something I knew I was going to be”.

“So why REME?”  I asked, giving her regiment its abbreviated name.

“I like fixing things too.  I didn’t just want to be a grunt, and besides, they don’t let women fight on the front line, so it meant that I could be useful and get on with my job without being restricted by my gender”.

“Fair point”.

“How about you, why a journalist?”

“I’m bloody nosy”.

She laughed, a pleasant sound after the last few days.

“No really, come on”.

I shrugged, trying to decide how best to explain it.

“I was always good at finding things out”, I said, “I mean really digging to find the truth about something, and I’ve always had a burning need to know why.  I thought about joining the police when I was younger, but I would have had to do years fighting with drunks before they let me anywhere near CID, and that was what interested me, interviewing people and catching them out.  Having a reason to look into things, I suppose, to celebrate the good and expose the bad”.

“So you think information wants to be free then?”

I shook my head.  “Not always, sometimes things need to be kept quiet for the greater good and I understand that, unlike some of my more aggressive colleagues, but I do think there’s a lot that goes on in the world that needs bringing to light so that people can make more informed decisions about things that effect their lives”.

Emily nodded.  “That makes sense.  We had an aggressive reporter with us the last time I was in Afghanistan, he was determined to find someone mistreating a prisoner, or something equally juicy, and in the end we had to get rid of him”.

“How do you get rid of someone like that?”  I asked, not sure that I wanted to hear the answer.

“We arranged for him to join a patrol we knew was almost certain to be ambushed”, she said with a grim smile, “gave him a taste of the reason we were really out there.  He came back with dirty trousers and a nervous tic, and a few days later he flew back to the UK”.

“Sounds like he deserved it”, I said, not entirely sure but wanting to keep up the conversation.

She nodded.  “He did.  He tried to pay one of the locals to say that he’d been beaten by British soldiers, but we got wind of it first, thank goodness.  Not a nice… Shit!”

I looked up, trying to work out what she meant, then saw what she was looking at.  We’d crested a tall hill, and off to our right I could see a huge cloud of black smoke, seemingly going on for miles, right over London.

Although we were too far away to make out details, there was a shimmering beneath the smoke that spoke of more fires than I could count.

“That doesn’t look good”, I said.  “Seems like the cities got the worst of it.  I wonder how many people survived?”

Emily pointed along the road to where an old Ford Sierra was driving towards us, roof rack weighed down with luggage.

“At least one”.

She slowed as we approached, as did the other driver, a hugely fat man in his mid-thirties accompanied by his equally large wife.

He wound down his window as he pulled up next to us, sweat dripping down his forehead and a slightly wild look in his eyes.

“I wouldn’t go that way if I were you”, he said, his wife nodding in agreement, “everything that isn’t on fire is being looted, and there are hundreds of people trying to get out of the city.  I almost had to run someone over to get away, it’s chaos”.

“We’re heading to Manchester”, Emily explained, “we don’t have a lot of choice”.

“Well don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Me and the missus, we’re heading for the coast, see if it’s better down there”.

“Don’t head for Brighton”, I warned, “it was on fire last time I saw it”.

He shrugged.  “I was aiming for Bognor, got a sister down there.  Good luck”.  He put his foot down and drove off, a plume of thick white smoke coming from the exhaust.

“He’s got water in his oil”, Emily said, tutting.  “Gasket’ll probably blow before he gets ten miles”.

“I’m a bit more concerned about how many people might try for the car”, I said as she pulled away, “if he’s not exaggerating it sounds like it’s going to be interesting”.

“Yeah well, let’s see how we go, eh?  No point worrying about something when you can’t do anything about it.  We detour too far and it’ll take us a week to get there”.

As we drew closer to Woking more cars appeared on the road, some old bangers that looked ready to fall apart, others lovingly cared for but all of them at least twenty years old.  No one else stopped, however, and more than one driver put their foot down when they saw us as if afraid that we would try and stop them.

The outskirts of Woking itself were choked with abandoned cars, and a thick haze of smoke hung in the still air, strong enough to make us cough as it blew in through the broken window.

It was heavy and acrid, burning rubber, plastic and fabric with a hint of meat that I guessed wasn’t pork.

I shuddered, and Emily spared me a quick glance to show she felt the same way.

As we drove, we passed roads that had been barricaded, cars and trucks having been pushed across the junctions while hard faced men and women watched us drive past, makeshift weapons at the ready.  It was a legacy of the riots a few years before that I hadn’t expected to see so soon.

The closer we got to the centre of town, the more fires we began to see.  Some buildings were already burned out, smouldering shells devoid of life, but many were still burning.

Families, some dressed in nothing more than their night clothes, sat or stood outside their gutted homes, some weeping, others looking blankly at the carnage around them as if stunned by what had happened.

Not a few stared at our car hungrily, and as we nosed our way through the maze of abandoned vehicles more and more people began to drift towards us, reminding me of the youths in Redhill, only far more desperate, perhaps willing to kill to feed their families.

“I think we need to pick up speed”, I said as a man in a dressing gown and only one slipper reached for my door handle and missed it by inches.

“I can’t, there are too many cars here, we’ll crash.  That happens, we’re screwed”.

“They get into this car, we’re screwed”, I replied, checking for the fourth time that the door was locked.

“It’s ok for you, you’ve got a bloody window!”  She snapped, “make sure you’re ready with the shotgun”.

I lifted the weapon and snapped the barrels shut, my thumb brushing the lever again as if it were a talisman against having to use it.

Those closest to us saw it and melted back, but more and more people were pressing them from behind, dozens now watching our slow procession through their midst.

I felt the sudden urge to piss, so strong that I had to look down and make sure there wasn’t a wet patch already.  The faces of the people we passed were pinched, hopeless and hungry, and I had no doubt that were I in their position I’d do anything to get some food or something warm to wrap myself in at night.

The crowd began to press close again and Emily threw caution to the wind, putting her foot down and yanking the wheel to avoid the stationary vehicles that littered our path.

No one chased after us as we sped away, but many of them stood and watched us, the hopelessness in their expressions all the more harrowing for the fact that no one was going to come and save them, and without food or clean water, most of them would be dead within a week.

Chapter 23

“Why don’t they leave?”   I asked as we drove past another, smaller group of dispossessed families.

“And where would they go?”  Emily demanded.  “The ones who could leave, did, I reckon.  These are the people left behind.  If you didn’t have Melody to think of, what would you have done?”

“Probably died in my bed, but if I’d survived, I don’t know.  Maybe headed for somewhere safer”.

“But where?”  She persisted.  “Where would you have gone and how would you have got there?”

I shrugged.  “Honestly?  I don’t know”.

She stabbed the dashboard with her index finger.

“And that’s exactly my point.  If you’ve got a family, or elderly parents who can’t look after themselves, you’ll stay and try and make the best of what you’ve got.  Imagine trying to walk to another town or city with four kids and grandma strapped to your back.  It’s not gonna happen.  So they sit here instead and wait for someone to come and save them”.

“You’ve seen this sort of thing before, haven’t you?”  I said with sudden insight.

She nodded.  “Yeah, it’s the same when the Yanks bomb a village, or the Taliban butcher half the population and set fire to the houses.  The ones with the will to carry on, well, carry on.  The others just sit down and wait to die”.

By the time we got to the far side of Woking we’d passed dozens of groups, none so large as the first we’d encountered but all stamped with that look of helplessness and despair.  Two of the groups were fighting over a trolley full of food from a nearby supermarket, and even from the road I could see that the shelves were already bare, stripped by those who had been quicker to seize the advantage.

As we drove through the suburbs we also passed a pair of teenagers, each carrying one end of a boxed, 50” plasma TV, their nervous looks making it clear that they’d stolen it from somewhere.

“Are they fucking stupid?”  I said as I pointed them out to Emily.

“About as stupid as that question”.

“Fair point”.  And it was.  We’d been fortunate in having Jerry with us to explain what was happening.  To everyone else, their world had just stopped without reason, the logical assumption being that at some point, someone in command would throw a switch and the world would pick up where it left off.  Without news, radio or TV, few people would realise what had happened, and fewer still would have the wherewithal find a way to survive.

The road north of Woking was fairly free of cars and we picked up speed, passing a petrol station with several vehicles abandoned at the pumps and half a dozen people industriously looting what little was left in the shop.

One of them ran out and shouted something at us, but the words were lost as Emily kept going.

“This car makes us a bloody target”, she said as she looked at the vanishing figure in the rear-view mirror.

“We’d be more of a target on foot”.

“Yeah, probably”.

We lapsed into silence, the state of the town enough to make even the most diehard optimist stop and think.  Someone had once said that our society was only three meals from barbarism, but I was fairly sure they hadn’t factored in a lack of TV and all the other devices that kept people chained to their sofas.  Once again I realised how very lucky we had been to fall in with Ralph, Harriet and Emily.

The couple were tough, self-reliant and practical, and Emily was all of those and army-trained to boot.  Without them, I knew, our chances of survival would have plummeted dramatically.

As we got further out from the town, the road cutting through woods and fields with the occasional house here and there, we began to pass walkers, mostly on their own or in couples, but occasionally entire families, all laden with heavy bags as they travelled.

All of them looked tired, haggard and some were nursing injuries, mostly burns.  Part of me wanted to stop and see if there was anything we could do, but the sensible part of me knew that there were too many people and all it would take was for someone to try and take advantage and we could lose everything.

Unable to take the stares of the walkers anymore, I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, trying not to think about anything other than getting to Manchester.

The motion of the car lulled me into a half-doze, only broken when Emily hit the brakes and tapped my shoulder at the same time.

“Trouble”, she said, and I looked ahead to see a man and a woman, back to back in the middle of the road while she held a small bundle in her arms.  At their feet were two rucksacks, and the man held a claw hammer up, brandishing it at the five men and women that surrounded them.

As we drew closer a couple of the group looked back at us, but quickly returned their attention to the couple when the man darted forward and struck one of them on the shoulder with the hammer.

Emily pulled up several metres short, unable to go around with them spread out across the road.

“What do we do?”  I asked nervously, thumb stroking the shotgun again.

Emily looked grim.  “We wait.  I don’t like it but there are too many of them”.

Just then, the bundle in the woman’s arm let out a wailing cry, the scream of an infant announcing its hunger to the world.

I looked at Emily and our eyes locked.  No matter what else I might do before the world righted itself again, I would not, could not stand by and watch a couple protecting their baby and not do something to help.

Emily nodded at the unspoken thought and reached into the back seat, freeing her Bergen and slipping a hand inside.

When it came out it was clutching a small black pistol which she tucked into her waistband, tugging down the hem or her t-shirt so it was out of sight.  She looked up at me as if daring to say anything but I just shrugged as I got ready to open the door.

“Don’t use the shotgun unless you have to”, she said warningly, “you might hit the people we’re trying to help.  Take some spare cartridges too”.

I scooped a handful from the bag at my feet and slipped them into my pocket.  Emily was already out of the car and walking towards the group, and I had to hurry to catch up, my palms slippery on the stock of the shotgun and my mouth horribly dry.

“Ok, that’s enough!”  Emily’s shout made them all turn, a couple of them edging back as they saw the shotgun in my hands.  “I suggest you leave them alone and go on about your business”.

The group exchanged a few doubtful looks, and a woman in her twenties with a long ponytail and, incongruously, far too much makeup, nodded and motioned to the others to move to the side of the road.

“Ok, ok, we’re leaving.  We don’t want any trouble”.

From their clothing, age and hairstyles I guessed the group had found themselves together by chance rather than design, but despite several of them being older they all took the cues from the young woman, moving to the treeline with looks that ranged from fear to frustration.

I approached the couple warily, the baby still shrieking as they eyed me with not a little fear.

“Are you ok?”  I asked, and the man nodded.  He could only be about twenty, the woman maybe a year older, and he had a blond quiff made me think of Tintin.

“What was that all about?”  I directed the question at them both, but the man stepped protectively in front of woman and child, although what he thought he could do with a hammer against a shotgun I couldn’t begin to guess.

“They wanted food, and when we told them we didn’t have any they tried to search our bags.  Then one of them made a grab for Sam and Jenny hit her.  I managed to get the hammer out and keep them off but I reckon it would have turned really nasty if you hadn’t turned up, so thank you”.

He kept his eyes on the shotgun as he spoke, still unsure whether we were saviours or yet more thieves.

“We’ve got room in the car for the three of you”, I said, voice as calm as I could make it with adrenaline still running through my system like wildfire, “at least let us get you away from here or they’ll just attack you again when we’re out of sight”.

“Really, you’d do that?”  He looked at his wife and she shrugged and nodded.

“This is Jenny and our little boy Sam, I’m Tom”, he said, picking up their bags and carrying them to the car, Jenny following in his shadow while I backed away from where the group stood watching at a safe distance.

“I’m Malc and this is Emily.   We can talk later, for now let’s get out of here”.

They squeezed into the back seat bags and all, and in a few moments we were off again, the car groaning under the extra weight.

“So”, I said to the couple as we rounded and bend and lost the group from sight, “why were you out here in the middle of nowhere?”

Tom leaned forward to speak to me over the noise of the engine.

“Well”, he said, breathing as if he’d just run a race, “me and my friends needed a car, and this seemed the best way.  I’m really sorry and all that, but I think you probably ought to stop before things get messy”.

I felt a sharp prick in my kidney and looked down to see the tip of a kitchen knife held there by the man we’d just rescued.  Jenny, if that was indeed her name, was holding a second knife to Emily’s stomach, one arm still clutching the baby while the other snaked between the chairs to keep the blade against my friend.

The shotgun was useless in such close quarters, the barrels now broken and pointing into the footwell in any case, and I ground my teeth together as I realised how well we’d been played. 

Emily slowed the car to a stop and turned the engine off, resting her hands on the wheel.

“What now?”  She asked through gritted teeth.

“Now”, Tom said as he used his spare hand to pull the shotgun away from me, “we wait for our friends to catch up, and then we’ll see”.

Chapter 24

“Don’t seem right to kill them”, Jenny said to the rest of the group while Tom stood watch over us with the shotgun.  We were sat on the verge while they went through our car, pulling everything out and spreading it on the grass nearby before splitting it between themselves.

I’d been watching in miserable silence as our food, water and medical supplies disappeared into bags and pockets, too afraid of the shotgun to try and argue with them, but now they were talking about our fate I began to listen carefully.

“You want to leave witnesses?”  One of the men asked, his white shirt grubby and sweat stained.  “What if they can identify us?”

Tom looked over at them.  “Identify us to who?  It’s not like there are any police about.  I’m with Jenny, I reckon we let them walk”.

He turned back just as I was thinking about making a foolhardy grab for the shotgun.  My legs had begun to tense but I settled back and pretended I was trying to find a more comfortable position.  As far as I knew, Emily still had the pistol tucked in her waistband, but I had no idea why she hadn’t pulled it yet and I couldn’t exactly ask with Tom standing so close.

The woman with the makeup laughed nastily.  “Yeah, but you’re always with Jenny.  Under the thumb.  What if they’ve got friends nearby, eh?  What then?  We’re clever, we’ll bury them in a ditch”.

Hearing them discuss our deaths so casually made me feel sick to my stomach.  I looked over at Emily, hoping for some indication that she was about to leap into action while they were still focused on our gear, but she ignored me, watching the group carefully, eyes flicking from one face to another. 

She’d barely said a word to me since we’d been stopped, instead concentrating all her attention on our captors, watching their every move.

As the group continued to argue, Tom stepped a few feet closer to them, the better to both listen and get his point across.  They seemed split pretty much down the middle, the woman with the makeup leading the half that wanted us dead and buried, Tom and Jenny the half that wanted to let us go.

As soon as I judged Tom far enough away, I turned to Emily as casually as I could.

“What are we going to do?”  I whispered hoarsely.

“I don’t know yet”.  She spoke quietly but calmly, no fear in her voice whatsoever.  I wished I felt even a fraction as relaxed as she sounded.  “I think we’re best off seeing how this plays out.  If they let us go, at least we’re alive even if they have got all our stuff.  If they decide to kill us then they’re not leaving me a lot of choice”.

“Can’t you shoot him?”  I said quietly, nodding my head towards Tom.

She shook her head.  “This isn’t a film.  I have to reach behind myself, pull the pistol out, take the safety off and aim at someone who has a shotgun pointed at us.  How do you think that’s going to turn out?  No, we need to wait until we’re standing at the very least, and if it does go bad I’ll need you to distract them”.

“Distract them how?”

“You’re a resourceful chap, I’m sure you’ll think of something.  Now if you don’t mind, I want to hear what they’re saying”.

I switched my attention back to the group as the argument between Jenny and the other woman grew more heated.

“We can’t just go killing everyone we come across”, Jenny snapped, “we’re not murderers”.

“But stealing’s ok, if it suits you?”

“Well, yeah, it is.  But stealing is only stuff.  Murder is taking someone’s life.  You can’t take that back once you’ve done it”.

“Well I say we shoot them and have done”.

“And I say I didn’t vote for you to be in charge, Sandra, and my bloke has got the shotgun”.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”  Sandra pushed up close to Jenny, their eyes mere inches apart.  The baby began to grizzle as he sensed the tension, and immediately Jenny turned away, soothing him with a dummy and soft cooing sounds.

“Fucking pussies, the lot o’ya.  Don’t know why I bothered helping you in the first place”.

“Because it’s hard to rob people on your own?”  Tom suggested, getting a dark look in return.

I cleared my throat.  “There is another option”, I said, wilting slightly as everyone turned to look at me.

“Go on”, Tom said, gesturing with the shotgun for me to continue.

“You could let us join you”.

Sandra shook her head.  “No, we’ve got too many people already.  I say we kill them and be done with it”.

Tom half turned to look at her and I felt Emily tense next to me, one hand slowly moving towards her waistband.

“You want them killed”, he said, “you do it yourself”.

Sandra stormed up to him and grabbed the shotgun, pulling it from his unresisting grip.  Hefting the unfamiliar weapon, she raised it to her shoulder but Emily was already moving, pulling out the pistol and aiming it in one smooth motion that spoke of years of practice.

Time slowed, every movement taking an age as I threw myself to one side, still watching as Emily’s finger tightened on the trigger, flame exploding from the muzzle as the roar washed over me, louder than I would have believed possible.

The bullet hit Sandra high in the chest, spinning her around as she fired in turn, both barrels spewing flame as thousands of tiny pieces of shot burst from the weapon, followed a split second later by the sound of metal hitting metal.

The front of the car shuddered as the pellets hit, tearing through the bonnet as if it was made of paper and burying themselves in the engine.

Time rushed back in, sound, smell and vision all returning to normal as if a bubble had popped.

Sandra collapsed, screaming incoherently, but everyone else stood frozen in shock at the sudden violence.  Then, as if an invisible chord had been cut, they ran, all of them sprinting back down the road towards Woking, Tom looking back over his shoulder as he steadied Jenny who carried their child.

I got to my feet shakily as Emily flicked the safety back on and tucked the pistol away again.  She crossed to the screaming woman on the floor, kicking the shotgun out of reach and then kneeling to look at the damage.

Gathering the tattered shreds of my courage I followed, looking over her shoulder at the gaping hole the bullet had made.  Bile rose in my throat and I had to choke it back down again to stop from vomiting.

“Help me!”  Sandra croaked, flecks of blood spattering her chin as she spoke.

“You should have thought of that before you tried to kill us”, Emily said, her voice flat, but she turned the woman on her injured side and grabbed one of the discarded rucksacks to use as a pillow.

I stood there, as useless after the action as I’d been during, still feeling sick but unable to look away from the huge pool of blood just inches away from my feet.

“Is she going to be ok?”  I asked, and Emily shook her head.

“No, Malc, she’s not.  She’s just been shot with a 9mm pistol from close range and the bullet went through her lung.  She’s going to die”.

I had the sudden urge to shout at her then, to scream at her for being so fucking calm when she’d just inflicted such grievous damage on another human being.  She’d delivered the news like a weather report, heedless of the fact that the dying woman could hear her, and in spite of the fact that same woman had been about to kill us I felt like I’d just witnessed a violation of everything I’d held dear for my entire life.

I’d never so much as hit another person in anger since school, my father having taught me that violence was a very poor way to solve anything.  To see someone I liked and respected treating a death she’d caused with such disinterest was almost too much to bear.

A huge wracking cough burst from Sandra and she began to convulse, gasping and clawing at her throat with her free arm as if she could tear the blockage free.  Blood sprayed out across the road and her back arched.

I stumbled away, horrified.  I’d seen death before, but always at a distance, insulating me from the terrible reality.  Suddenly it was right here in front of me, every awful moment etched forever in my mind.

Even Emily stepped back as Sandra’s back arched, her face a mask of pain and fear as her eyes bulged and the air was suddenly filled with the stench of faeces.

She scratched at her neck one last time and then lay still.  I moved another few steps towards the verge before I lost my breakfast, throwing up for the second time in as many days, heaving until there was nothing left.

“How do you do it?”  I asked without turning, wiping my mouth on the back of my arm.

“Do what?”

“Stop it from driving you mad, block the feelings out, keep going, all of it”.

“You don’t”, she said, and I turned to look at her, still standing over the body, staring at it as if engraving the moment indelibly in her memory.  “You just do what needs to be done and you save the feelings for later.  This may not be the world we want, but it’s the one we’ve got.  You let your guard down for even a moment and it leaps up and bites you on the arse, they just proved that.  Some might say that she got what she deserved”.

“And what do you say?”  I asked quietly.

She shrugged and looked up at the sun.

“I say we’ve got a long way to go, and the sooner we get moving, the sooner we can find your little girl”.

Chapter 25

The car was wrecked.  The blast from the shotgun had torn the engine into pieces that even Emily’s skills couldn’t reassemble, particularly not with the few tools we had to hand.  The one thing that was on our side, however, was that the group had run off without their bags, leaving most of our own kit behind except the few items they’d pocketed.

Under Emily’s direction I worked quickly and silently, packing food, medicine and water into a rucksack and then adding the small stove and one of the bottles of gas, the other going in her Bergen when mine was full to bursting.

She took as much of the water as she could carry, along with the tent and all the utensils, then packed the rest of the space with food.

We tied our sleeping bags underneath, and Emily took the maps and torches from the car before picking up the shotgun and retrieving the box of shells.

She offered it to me but I shook my head.  I couldn’t bear to touch it right now, although I knew I was making myself look weak.

In my heart I knew that she’d done the right thing.  She’d saved my life, and in return all I could do was stare at her as if she were some kind of monster, but if it affected her in any way she didn’t show it.

Instead she worked with a practiced efficiency and within minutes we were ready to go.

“We need to find another vehicle”, she said as we began to walk, my ankle stiff but usable.  “We’ll try for the next town, see if we have any luck”.

“What if we don’t find one?”

“Then we keep walking”.

And so we did.  It was a long time since I’d done any serious exercise, and although Emily set a gentle pace I was soon gasping, my back bent under the weight of the rucksack and my socks beginning to rub uncomfortably in my trainers as they soaked through with sweat.

We met no one else on the road for the first hour, and neither of us suggested that we investigate the few houses that we passed.  I was beginning to develop a healthy fear of anyone I didn’t know, and apart from a vehicle we had everything we needed.

As the day wore on the heat increased, giving me a headache that pulsed quietly in my temples.  We were stopping for a few sips of water every couple of miles, but the truth was that we were sweating out far more than we were taking in and by late afternoon I wanted nothing more than to lie down in the shade and pant like a dog.

Occasionally we passed other people but they gave us a wide berth, some stepping off the road and into the fields or woods on either side when they saw the shotgun that Emily cradled in her arms.  Only two cars went past us, one already full and the other speeding up and almost knocking us off the road in its haste.

The sun was on its way to the western horizon when we hit the motorway.  The map told us it was the M3, the small lane we’d been following spilling us out onto the road with almost no warning.

It was strange to see such a huge stretch of road so empty, and I felt horribly exposed as we crossed it, climbing the central reservation and hurrying across to the far side and back onto the smaller road we needed to follow. 

We didn’t talk much, both lost in our own thoughts and only discussing small things, such as which route to take when we consulted the map or letting the other know when we needed to find a convenient bush or tree.

I felt tired from more than just the unaccustomed exercise.  Part of me was refusing to believe that I lived in a world where you could now kill someone with little or no consequence, where life was already becoming cheaper than a car boot full of food and water, but the rest of me knew I couldn’t go on hiding from reality.

If I was to survive, and more importantly help my daughter survive, I needed to get a grip on myself and learn to do whatever it took to keep going. 

It’s a horrible thing to discover how weak you really are, and I was very much a product of my time, a latte drinking, crossword solving warrior of the written word, not someone who could shoot a person as calmly as if I was picking flowers.

I knew that I was being unfair to Emily.  If I was a product of my time, she was as much a product of her training.  She’d seen combat, spent most of her adult life in a profession where life was dear but death was a constant, very real threat, and she had acted to save us from that threat.

Without her, I’d most likely be a corpse on the side of a road somewhere, not living, breathing and still moving towards my daughter, no matter how far away we might still be.

As we trudged along the lane, surrounded on both sides by woods and fields that the evening sun cast in brilliant gold, I caught up with Emily, ignoring the twinge in my ankle as I picked up the pace.

“Thank you”, I said, and she turned her head to look at me as we walked, her expression unreadable.

“For what?”

“For saving us back there.  I may have come across as a little ungrateful in the heat of the moment”.

She shook her head.  “Not ungrateful, just, I don’t know, naïve maybe?”

I bridled at being called naïve, but if I was being honest with myself I couldn’t argue.  We were in her world now, not mine, a world of quick thinking and life or death decisions, and it was something I wasn’t used to.  Until last week, my hardest decision had usually been whether or not to have vanilla in my latte. 

“I’m trying”, I said, looking for the right words to explain how I was feeling, “but it’s not easy.  The way you shot that woman, no fear, no remorse. That’s not something I’m used to”.

Emily snorted.  “Shows what you know”.

“Sorry?”

She stopped and turned to face me, brows furrowed in anger.

“There you are making all these grandiose proclamations when you don’t have a fucking clue.  No fear, no remorse, my arse!  I was scared shitless, but I’ve been taught to ignore the fear, push it aside so I can do what I need to do.  And of course I feel remorse.  You think I can shoot someone and not worry about it afterwards?  All I can see is her face.  I keep playing the moment over and over in my head, wondering if I could have done something different, if I acted too soon or too late.  Besides, every time the shit hits the fan you run away and throw your guts up, so don’t go judging me until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes”.

She turned and strode off down the darkening lane, her back stiff and pace crippling.  Not wanting to be left alone, even smarting with the rebuke, I hurried after her, my ankle beginning to hurt again after the day’s forced march.

I felt like I should be angry with her.  She’d just told me that I was arrogant, thoughtless and absolutely no use when she needed me.  She was being a little unfair, I thought, especially after I’d set the fire that allowed her and Ralph to escape, but I knew in my heart that she was right.  If we were to get through this and bring Melody back safe, she needed me to be strong, perhaps ruthless, but certainly she needed me to step up more than I’d been doing so far.

I finally caught up as she reached the brow of the next hill, falling into step with her wordlessly.  We walked that way in silence until the sun was just a sliver of light on the western horizon.  Finally, when it was almost too dark to see, Emily spotted a place she deemed safe for camping, a small copse of trees about fifty metres from the road.   As we worked together to put up the small tent and stow our things inside, I dared to hope that the silence was a companionable one, and that it would last as we crawled into the tiny space and bedded down for the night.

Chapter 26

I woke to the unfamiliar sound of someone snoring next to me, and rolled over to come immediately face to face with Emily, just visible in the dim light that pierced the canvas.

She looked peaceful in sleep, and years younger with the habitual toughness leeched from her face by slumber.

I sat up quietly, trying not to wake her, and crawled from my sleeping bag to unzip the tent and slip outside.

The morning was surprisingly cool with grey clouds scattered overhead.  I hoped that the oppressive heat had broken, it would be far easier to walk without the sun beating down on us from dawn until dusk.

Pulling the bags out behind me I set about making breakfast, putting the stove together and lighting it, then filling a pan with water from our dwindling supply and setting it to boil.

It heated surprisingly fast for such a small stove and within a few minutes I had two bowls of porridge ready, as well as two steaming cups of black coffee.

I leaned into the tent to wake Emily but instead saw her sitting up, smiling as I jumped.

“I was about to wake you, I’ve made breakfast”, I said, gesturing towards the bowls.

“I know”, she said with a tentative smile, “I woke up when you opened the tent but I figured you at least owe me breakfast so I thought I’d wait”.

Her harsh words of the night before still lay between us, but it seemed that we had both resolved not to mention it, and as we ate breakfast and sipped our coffee we began to talk with a little of our former closeness, still a fragile thing when it had been interrupted.

“How’s your ankle?”  She pointed at my bare feet, one of them still wrapped in a now-dirty bandage.

I shrugged.  “A lot better that I thought it would be but it still hurts like buggery”.

She looked over at my trainers, worn, scuffed and forlorn-looking.

“We need to get you some proper boots, trainers aren’t made for walking long distances.  You’ll be lame before we’re halfway there otherwise”.

Without thinking about it my hand went towards my pocket, an ingrained response to any talk of shopping that had me scrambling for Google on my phone to look for the best deals.  Emily caught the movement and laughed when I explained, then gestured at the field.

“Even if you still had a phone that worked, I think Amazon would struggle to deliver out here, drones or not.  We’ll have to risk heading into the next town or village that we see.  Either that, or we need to start looking at the houses we go past, see if there’s anything useful”.

I shifted uncomfortably.  “That feels a lot like stealing”.

She nodded.  “It does, because it is.  But it’s about survival now Malc, everything we’ve seen over the last few days tells us that”.

She paused for a moment, then looked down at her feet when she spoke again.

“Look, about yesterday.  I’m sorry I was so harsh with you.  It’s easy to forget that most people haven’t been through what I have, and I kind of assume a certain level of competence and practicality in everyone, then I end up surprised when it doesn’t materialise.  I think it’s a mix of serving in the army and having a dad as capable as mine is.  You know we never bought any furniture when I was a kid?  My dad made everything.  Tables, chairs, even a sofa, although that leaned to one side and gave everyone back-ache”.

She stopped and took a breath.  “What I’m trying to say is that I was too harsh on you, and I said some really nasty things, and I’m sorry.  I know this is all new to you, and this is probably turning into the steepest learning curve you’ve ever experienced, but this trip is about your daughter, so I guess I just felt, well, underappreciated”.

I reached out and touched her arm, trying to ignore the electric thrill that ran through me when her fingers brushed mine in return.

“I’m the one who should be sorry”, I said, pulling my hand away slowly, unwilling to break the connection but knowing I had to, for my own sanity if nothing else.  “I made a stupid assumption based on my own fears, and it wasn’t fair on you.  How about we put yesterday down as an off-day and forget about it?”

She nodded and smiled, and I wondered if I imagined her own reluctance as she took her fingers from my arm.

“Let’s do that”.  She squinted up at the clouds.  “Not going to be quite as hot today, but cloud cover can be deceiving.  We need to find somewhere to top up our water, get you some boots and hopefully find a car that works.  Best we get cracking, eh?”

It took us about fifteen minutes to break the tent down, scrape the bowls and cups clean and clear everything away before taking turns at the far end of the small copse.

That done, we marched back to the road, my feet sore and my calves burning from the previous day’s walking, but for some reason I felt alive in a way I hadn’t done in years.  Even my constant fear for Melody was muted, still very much there, but no longer the insistent gnawing feeling that tried to claw its way out of my stomach every few minutes.  I wondered at that as we walked, at first feeling like a bad parent, allowing my relief at re-cementing my growing friendship with Emily to overshadow my concern for my daughter, but then I realised that it was that very friendship that was giving me any real hope that we would be reunited.

Without Emily, I knew, I would never make it, would probably not have made it this far, and I almost felt like the miles were melting away under our feet as we headed north, each step bringing us closer to my little girl.

We’d been walking for about an hour when the trees and fields gave way to houses, just a few at first, large, sprawling things with security gates and high fences, several of which were now little more than burned-out shells, then rows of smaller dwellings, many of which were gutted by fire.  Here and there one stood almost untouched, and from at least one of those we were watched by hostile eyes, a man and two women who stared at us until we were out of sight, making my shoulder blades itch until we were well past.

Smoke spiralled into the air from several streets away, and in the distance I could hear shouting, then a scream abruptly cut off.

Emily hefted the shotgun, her eyes darting from tree to hedge to abandoned car, constantly looking for trouble before it got to close.  I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up and made sure I kept pace, although never crossing into her field of fire.

“I don’t like this”, I muttered to myself, but Emily heard and nodded.

“Me neither.  I was going to stop and try and find you some boots, but I think we’ll just keep going.  I’m sure another few miles in trainers won’t kill you, but stopping might”.

It wasn’t until we rounded an abandoned supermarket delivery truck that we saw the bodies.

A man and a woman lay on the pavement, his body curled protectively around hers.  The pitiful remains of what had been in their rucksacks surrounded them, the bags themselves torn apart and the whole area splashed with blood as if they’d been attacked by an enraged beast.

I could smell that blood, and flies buzzed as they flew around the bodies, looking for a home for their eggs.

“They’re fresh”, Emily said in a low voice, eyes constantly moving.

“How do you know?”  I asked, fighting the urge to vomit while trying not to look at the naked fear written all over the dead woman’s face, the blank eyed stare only making it worse.

“If they’d been killed yesterday they’d be bloated by now, and if they’d been killed last night they’d be stiff”.  She nudged one of the bodies and the arm flopped lifelessly.

“And the blood is still wet.  I reckon an hour, maybe less since they died.  Let’s get out of here”.

I nodded and suddenly wished I were holding the shotgun.  If we were attacked now I’d be able to do little but get in the way, leaving Emily to defend us both once again.

As we passed the bodies I couldn’t help but look at the wounds, of which there were many.  They looked like they had been hacked to death, defensive wounds on the wrists and arms of the man and a huge slice in the back of the woman’s head that turned her golden hair red and laid her skull open to show her brain beneath.

Aside from the buzzing of the flies and my own harsh breathing, the street was eerily silent.  Emily took the lead and we pressed on, getting to the end of the road and taking a left, then a right until we were heading north again.

As we put some distance between ourselves and the bodies I began to breathe again, although I was beginning to strain my neck from looking behind us so often to make sure we weren’t being stalked.

“Who do you think did it?”  I asked when we were several streets past the gory scene.

Emily shrugged, still looking everywhere she thought there might be a threat, shotgun half-raised as she walked.

“Who knows?  Maybe it was someone they knew who had a grudge, maybe complete strangers looking for food.  Doesn’t really matter now, does it?  Dead is dead.”

“I guess not”.

Emily pointed to a shop at the end of the street, the plastic signs in the window claiming that they sold ‘everything you need in one store’.

“How about we check out their claim?”  She said, “see if they have anything useful?”

The door to the shop was wide open, the glass panels above and below the central metal bar both smashed.  I felt more than a little fear at entering a place where we could easily be trapped, but I was determined to prove to Emily that I was useful, so I nodded bravely and followed her up to the window.

She peered inside, then pulled a torch from her pocket and passed it to me.

“I’ll go in first”, she whispered, “you follow with the torch.  Try and shine it wherever I point the shotgun, but for god’s sake don’t point it in my face, ok?”

I nodded again, and before I could change my mind we were moving, Emily slipping through the door silently while I crunched broken glass under my feet and winced even as I flicked the torch on and followed her in.

The shelves inside were almost empty, the cigarette display behind the till the same.  Empty food packets were littered here and there, one bag of rice have split and emptied its contents all over the floor, making it feel like we were walking on sand.

It took a few seconds for the smell to register, and we followed it to the farthest aisle, where a short, fat man in his fifties lay in his pyjamas, the back of his skull caved in while a softball bat lay a few feet from his outstretched hand.

The body was beginning to bloat and more flies were buzzing happily as they explored.

“Poor bastard”, Emily muttered, giving the shop a final look-around to make sure we were alone.  There was only one other door, this one leading to a store room at the back.  Inside that room were a few boxes of random goods and a desk piled high with paper, but other than that anything of use had been taken.

“I’ll check in here”, she motioned towards the few boxes left, “you look in the shop.  Anything we don’t have or we need more of is good.  Not sure we’ll have much luck with boots though”.

She dropped her Bergen and pulled out a second torch as I went back into the main shop, running my eyes over the all-but-bare shelves.

All of the food and water had been taken, as well as alcohol, cigarettes and sweets.  I found a single packet of polos wedged between two parts of the counter and pocketed them, then began to look in the clothing section, more accurately a corner of the shop that barely took up two shelves.

Several jumpers had been left behind, and holding one up I could see why. Throwing it back on the shelf, I looked for footwear but apart from an empty box it was all gone.

The only other thing I could find was a bottle of washing up liquid, standing on its own on an otherwise empty shelf.  Presumably whoever had ransacked the place didn’t feel that washing up should be a part of the apocalypse.

Emily came out of the store room after a couple of minutes clutching several bags of dried fruit and a small box of batteries.

She held them p for me to see.  “Not much there, how did you do?”

I held up the mints.  “Not exactly going to see us through the winter, but hey”.

She snorted a laugh and went moved to the door, peering out into the street before jerking her head for me to follow.

As we left the village behind, something that had been bothering me finally clicked.

“How many houses do you reckon were in that village?”  I asked, looking back at the rows of roofs, some black with char while others stood untouched.

Emily shrugged.  “Don’t know, couple of hundred maybe?  More a small town than a village”.

“Let’s say two hundred houses then.  Times that by three occupants per house as an average, that would mean six hundred people.  Take away the three in the house we saw watching us, and the three bodies, that makes, what, five hundred and ninety four people”.

She nodded, seeing where I was going with it.

“So”, she said, looking back herself as the road turned and hid the buildings from view, “where the hell did they all go?”

Chapter 27

Slough was still burning.  Heavy black smoke roiled in the sky ahead of us, mixing with the clouds until it became hard to tell which was which.  Below the smoke, a haze of heat and the occasional flame could be seen as we approached the M4, and we both slowed.

“We need to go around”.  Emily pulled the map from her leg pocket and unfolded it, holding it up and motioning me closer.  Our heads almost touched as we studied it together and I was acutely aware of the closeness.

There was something about her firm competence, her strength in more than just the physical, that drew me as much as her quick wit and dimpled smile.  It was all I could do not to brush back the stray lock of hair that fell across her brow, turning the instinctive movement of my hand into the tugging of my collar, releasing a wave of musty sweat that spoiled the moment as she grimaced.

“We can take the M4 west”, she said finally, “and loop around by smaller roads until we’re heading back towards the M40.  What do you think?”

I nodded, pleased to be asked for my opinion for all its redundancy.

“I can’t see any other way.  It adds time onto the journey but I don’t see us being able to make our way through that”.  I pointed at the flaming town.

She tucked the map away and we set off, angling northwest as we drew closer to the motorway.

It was just after midday by the time the road came in sight, and I picked up my pace as the six empty lanes came into view but Emily suddenly grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“What?”  I said in alarm, looking around.

She held up a hand for silence, head tilted to one side.

“Do you hear that?” She asked.

I shook my head but then I heard something, a faint rumbling that grew louder even as I listened.

“What is it?” 

She pulled me off the road and up a wooded embankment overlooking the motorway, tucking herself down at the top of the hill and motioning for me to do the same.

I dropped down next to her and looked out over the huge road.

“Those sound like four tonners”, she said, looking east to a bend about half a mile away.

“Four what?”

“Four tonners.  Four ton army trucks, used for transporting soldiers and carrying supplies”.

Relief flooded through me and I got to my knees.

“Oh thank god!  If the army has mobilised then it’s not as bad as we thought!”

She reached up and yanked at my waistband, pulling me sprawling back to the ground.

“Let’s not go and worship them just yet”, she growled, “we don’t know who they are or what they’re doing.  We don’t even know it’s our army.  I can think of any dozen countries who use four ton trucks, it could be an invading force for all we know”.

I lay back down properly, thoroughly chastened.  It seemed that I was destined to make a fool of myself every few minutes and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t seem to help doing it.

Perhaps sensing my frustration, Emily squeezed my shoulder and gave me a quick smile before returning her attention to the road.

A few moments later a pair of olive green trucks drove into view, travelling no more than five miles per hour.  Thirty or so soldiers in woodland camouflage trotted along behind, all armed with rifles and carrying small rucksacks that looked like the side pockets of Emily’s Bergen strapped together on a yoke.

As they drew closer, a ragged wave of humanity came into view behind them, hundreds of tired, hungry looking people with pinched faces, some of them sporting recent injuries but all carrying rucksacks or holdalls.  Those very few not carrying bags were instead burdened down with children too young to walk, and on either side of the column soldiers walked in a loose cordon a few metres apart, eyes as much on the people they were escorting as any threat from the outside.

I couldn’t hear any conversation over the truck engines, but none of the walkers appeared to be talking much in any event, and as they drew level with us an older woman in a faded red jumper and corduroy jeans dropped to sit at the side of the road, fewer than ten metres away from our hiding spot.

The next soldier in the outer cordon bumped up against her, placing one booted foot under her arse and giving her a gentle shove.

“Come on, on your feet Grandma”, he said, not unkindly but without much enthusiasm either.  “You know the rules. We don’t stop for another hour at least”.

The woman looked up at him, exhaustion stamped on her features.

“Just leave me then”, she said, her voice barely carrying to where we lay hidden.

“I can’t do that either”, he said, slinging his rifle to grab her under the armpits and haul her to her feet.  He looked at the passing civilians and grabbed the arm of a burly teenager.

“Oi, you.  Keep her up, keep her walking. Both of you go without rations for the rest of the day if she doesn’t keep up”.

The teenager took hold of the woman with surprising speed, and for a moment I thought it was borne out of care for the elderly, but as the soldier moved on the youth grabbed her hair painfully in one fist and twisted hard, making the woman scream.

“Listen bitch, I ain’t going without food for you, so you fucking walk or I’ll make you wish you was dead.  You get me?”

I felt Emily’s body tense next to mine and I almost climbed to my feet, thoroughly shocked at behaviour that was so, well, un-British, but then I saw that neither the other civilians nor the soldiers did more than glance over at the anguished scream, the civilians looking back down at their feet and the soldiers returning their attention to the roadsides as the woman was prodded onwards.

I shared an astonished look with Emily.  Whatever orders those soldiers were following, they didn’t seem to be particularly concerned with the welfare of their charges.

I turned my head to get a look in the back of the trucks, assuming they were filled with those too injured to walk, but instead I saw boxes and bags of food and huge pallets of bottled water, all guarded by a pair of soldiers in each vehicle with heavy machine guns and grim expressions.

“I’m glad you stopped me”, I whispered, seeing Emily nod her head as she looked closely at the soldiers.

“Do you know who they are?”  I asked quietly.

“It’s hard to tell from here, but I think the patches are the Guards, which would make sense if they came from London, but I can’t be sure without getting closer”.

I shook my head.  “Please don’t”.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on it.  We’ll wait until they’re past and then head after them, but only as far as we need to, then we’ll turn north again”.

We lay silent after that, not moving as the soldiers passed just below us, eyes scanning the undergrowth but without any real suspicion of finding anything to worry about. 

Emily had chosen our spot well and despite our vantage point the undergrowth kept us well hidden from view.  The stream of people seemed to go on and on, but eventually the back markers passed us with another two trucks full of supplies, and as Emily stood I worked my cramped legs to get the blood flowing again.

“How many do you think there were?”  I asked as I got to my feet.

“About fifteen hundred civilians, a hundred and forty soldiers or thereabouts.  I can’t help but wonder where they’re taking them”.

“I shudder to think.  Was it just me or did they look more like prisoners than rescued civilians?”

She nodded.  “They did, and I don’t like it.  Come on, they’re far enough away now, I think we can follow them without getting spotted”.

I put a hand on her arm.

“But only as far as our turning north, right?”

“Of course.  Don’t worry Malc, your little girl comes first.  Maybe after we’re back we can try and find out what’s going on, but not yet”.

With a final glance along the road to make sure we were alone, I followed her down the steep bank and onto the tarmac, following in the footsteps of the soldiers as we resumed our journey.

Chapter 28

We followed the convoy for about two hours, keeping well back but still seeing the trucks far ahead when we rounded bends and crested hills.

I was worried that they would see us in turn and send someone to investigate, but Emily assured me we were too far away and too small to be noticed.

“If we were driving a truck, I’d worry”, she said, and I bowed to her experience.

We turned off the motorway at a junction that headed north, climbing the slip road under a steel grey sky that threatened rain despite the muggy heat.

The moisture in the air seemed to make my ankle throb, and I found myself lagging further and further behind as the thick greenery to the side of the road abruptly gave way to buildings, mostly industrial but with houses visible behind a last screen of trees off to our left.

A large truck sat in the roadway opposite an office building, the back still locked on the trailer but the cab doors wide open.

Looking around to make sure we were unobserved, Emily hauled herself into the cab and then leaned out to pull me up behind.

I’d never been in a proper truck cab before.  It was surprisingly roomy, with a small sleeping cubby behind the two seats.  This one had a microwave on a shelf above the window, as well as a TV on an extendable stand that could be pulled down to rest in the middle of the windscreen.

The bedding was surprisingly clean, and anything personal had been stripped out to leave small pieces of blue tack and a lonely drawing pin on the rear wall.

“Lie down on the bed and take your shoe off”.  Emily pointed at the small cubby and I obediently squeezed in, but paused before undoing my trainer.

“Uh, you know we haven’t washed for a couple of days”, I said, but she shrugged.

“Believe me, after you’ve spent ten days in thirty eight degree heat with no water to wash in, you get a lot less worried about things like that.  What I am worried about is you keeping up”.

I removed the trainer, then my sock, grimacing at the smell of sweaty feet.  Despite her words, Emily wrinkled her nose as she unwrapped the bandage.  She took my heel in one hand and my calf in the other and began to rotate the joint slowly, and we both winced as it clicked and ground.

“That doesn’t sound good”, she said with a frown.  “Priority number one has to be getting you some proper footwear with ankle support.  The bandage is ok but it’s not enough”.

She redid the bandage, making sure it was tight, and I put my sock and trainer back on hurriedly.

“Where are we now?”  I asked as she began to search the cab for anything useful.

“Maidenhead, apparently.  You ever been there?”

I shook my head.  “Not to stay, only passing through.  Do you know it?”

“Not really, although it’s bound to have something like a camping shop where we can find you some shoes.  You want to do that Google search now?”

We both smiled, although a little sadly.  The first thing I would do if my phone was working, I realised, was call Melody just to hear her voice.  I’d become used to speaking to her every single day no matter what happened, and the sudden lack of contact was starting to wear at me.  I didn’t know if she was safe, well, happy or…  I couldn’t even finish the thought.  I could only pray that Angie had managed to get them to her parents, eminently practical people who would keep them fed from the years of tinned food in their larder.

“Good to go?”  Emily’s voice pulled me from my daydreaming and I nodded, then slid off the bed and between the seats to follow her out onto the road.

As we set off again, Emily pointed at the unscarred buildings around us.

“I wonder why some of the places we go through are burned to the ground and others are untouched?”

“I’ve been thinking about that”, I said, pleased to be able to offer a theory on something, “and I think it’s to do with the substations.  Different areas draw different amounts of power, right?”

She nodded and gestured for me to continue.

“So some areas are close to overload already.  I wrote an article about the risk of a brownout a couple of years ago, and apparently there are places where they are, uh were, just a few kettles away from a shutdown.  Yet other areas have a substation for every few streets, or so it seems.  I reckon that the areas that caught fire are the ones that were already close to capacity, and the ones that handled the local current better had time for their switches to trip or whatever it is that they do, stopping the surge from carrying on into the buildings.  How does that sound?”

Emily chewed her lip as she thought about it.

“That would make sense.  I don’t know how sensitive the cut-offs are, but a big enough overload on an already taxed system would almost certainly result in a massive surge”.

“So now you’ve got your engineer brain on”, I said as we walked close to the central reservation, both of us now scanning the buildings on either side of the road  for any signs of life, “answer me this if you can.  Did you speak to Jerry much about what happened with the flare?”

She nodded.  “Yeah, we had a few minutes to chat”.

“So why is it that my phone almost burned my hand off but and car batteries were drained if they were plugged in, but our torches still work?”

“I don’t need Jerry to tell you that one.  Your phone has a processor in it, and everything that did overheated almost immediately.  I think that might be another cause of the fires, to be honest.  And as for the battery thing, your car is a big lump of metal, but a torch or anything smaller would avoid the worst of it unless you were carrying one of those huge metal maglites, the ones that take eight batteries”.

I still didn’t quite understand it but I nodded as if I did, hating to look stupid.

The buildings on either side of the road gradually went from industrial to domestic, but as with the last place we’d been through, there was no sign of anyone still living in the area.

Of course they could be shut away indoors while they waited for the power to come back on, but the windows we passed remained empty and the whole place had a desolate feel to it, as if stripped of humanity.

The truck was almost half an hour behind us when we came across a row of shops, all but a laundrette and an army surplus store with the windows smashed and goods looted.

The laundrette had presumably escaped because it held nothing of value, but the surplus store was a different matter.  Both large windows had steel roller-shutters pulled down over them and the door in the middle was steel-reinforced wood. There were serious dents and gouges in the metal but it had held firm, keeping out the looters.  Unfortunately, it seemed it was going to keep us out as well.

“Boots and proper clothing behind those”, Emily said, giving the door an experimental rattle.  “All we need to do is work out how to get in”.

I pointed to the windows above the shop, single-glazed sliding sashes that a child could break into.  A child that was twenty feet tall, that is.

“Maybe we can find a ladder?”

“Sure”, she said, “and where are we going to find one of those?”

I looked up the road, spying a builder’s van at the far end.

“In that, maybe?”

She shrugged and led the way to the van.  It was locked, but the stock of the shotgun put a window out quickly enough.  I winced at the noise, half expecting angry residents to pour out of their houses, but nothing stirred as Emily reached in, opened the door and climbed inside.

She disappeared over the seats into the back, and opened the rear door a few moments later, coming out with not just the ladder but also a small toolkit.

“Never know when it might come in handy”, she said, stowing it in her bag as I held the ladder.

“Anything else useful?”  I peered into the back at the shelves and boxes lining the walls.

“Only if you like porn”.

“I think I’ll pass, thanks”.

I carried the ladder over to the shop, allowing Emily to keep her hands free for the shotgun, then we swapped as the ladder was extended and placed up against the wall.  I stood with my good foot on the bottom rung as she climbed, trying to watch her and keep an eye out at the same time as my sweaty palms gripped the shotgun too tightly.

“It’s not even locked”, she called back down as she slid the window open, “I’ll be back out shortly”.

She pulled the pistol from her waistband and rolled smoothly through the window, leaving me to stand there in the road with the irrational fear that the police would turn up and arrest me for burglary.

The image was so ludicrous that I began to chuckle, and I was still laughing as I heard the bolts on the inside of the door slide back and it creaked open.

“What are you laughing at?”  Emily demanded, expression showing that she thought she might be the butt of the joke.

“Just worrying about getting a criminal record”, I giggled, and she laughed too.

“I promise to put in a good word for you, come on, the place is full of stuff”.

I took the precaution of removing the ladder in case anybody happened by, collapsing it and laying it on its side against the wall of the laundrette.  When Emily saw what I was doing she nodded her approval.

“Good thinking.  Now let’s see what we can salvage before someone does show up to investigate the noise we’ve made”.

I cast one last look up and down the street, then hurried inside, eager to find myself some new boots, and maybe some clothes that didn’t smell quite so bad.

Chapter 29

“I look stupid”, I said, staring at my reflection in the mirror.  As well as a pair of shiny black Magnum boots, Emily had agreed with my need for a change of clothes.  Where we differed, however, was on what that change should be.

She selected outfits for both of us which consisted of woodland camouflage jackets and lightweight trousers, with leggings underneath in olive green.  To hers she had added a pistol holster also in olive green, a drop-leg, she called it, while to my outfit she had added a green canvas webbing vest with elastic loops to hold shotgun cartridges.

“The long-johns keep the heat in and the lightweights dry quickly if they get wet”, she explained, “and if it gets hot we can just take the long-johns off”.

So saying, she stripped down to her underwear as if I wasn’t there, standing gawping at her matching black bra and panties as if I’d never seen a woman before.

Her body was soft in all the right places and hard in others, with firm, rippling muscles across her stomach and shoulders that were smoothed by her natural curviness.  I felt an uncomfortable heat in my groin and quickly turned away, red-faced.

“And you don’t look stupid”, she said from behind me, “I think you look kind of cute”.

I glanced down at myself and readjusted the waistband of my trousers to hide my embarrassment.

“Cute?  Never thought I’d hear someone call me that”.

“Well there’s a first time for everything”.  I heard the sound of a zip being done up.  “If you’ve calmed down enough you can turn back now”.

I closed my eyes and wished for a second that I could sink through the floor, then turned to be hit by the full force of her dimples as they framed a wicked grin.

“Unless, of course, you want to stay here a little longer?”

Her fingers played with the zip on her jacket as she stared at me, eyes bright in the dim shop interior.  I wanted nothing more in that moment than to step towards her and help her with the zip, but as I took that first step my ears caught a noise from outside the shop and I froze, my libido wilting like a cut flower left out in the sun.

“I’m telling you, I heard something”.  It was a deep male voice, middle aged and rough-sounding.

“Well there’s no one here, is there?”  The second voice was higher but also male, with a whiny tone that instantly set my teeth on edge.

“What about in the shop?”

The door rattled and Emily drew her pistol from its holster while I reached out and picked up the shotgun, thumb immediately stroking the safety to check it was on.

“Nah, it’s locked.  ‘Ere. You reckon there’s anything interesting in there?”

“Prob’ly.   You wanna get caught by the soldiers when they come back, though?  They didn’t finish this area properly, remember?  That one with the stripes said just people from here, they’d come back for supplies later”.

“Yeah, I was there, I remember.  Just thought we might find something interesting is all”.  The voices began to fade as they walked away, their footsteps just audible through the shutters.  I breathed a sigh of relief and looked over at Emily, cursing silently when I remembered what they had interrupted.

“We should go”, Emily said as if the moment had never happened, “let’s pack the bags and see if there’s a back door”.

I nodded glumly and waved goodbye to the close encounter, instead pulling myself together and sorting through the other goods we’d piled next to the bags.  There were bags and bags of army rations, sanitary wipes, water purification tablets, two pairs of binoculars, a pair of wicked looking army knives with sheaths that we put on our belts, waterproof matches and about a dozen other things that were all apparently essential to our ongoing survival.

“People actually buy this stuff?”  I asked as we packed it all into the Bergens, my rucksack having been replaced with a new one from the shop.

Emily nodded and pulled a heavy compass from the pile, hanging it around her neck by its cord.

“You bet.  Most of the guys who come out have snaffled so much kit over the years that they don’t know what to do with it, so they hit civvy street and sell it to places like this.  You get all sorts buy it.  Hunters, gamekeepers and paintballers to name just a few.  Don’t knock it, everything you’re wearing is British Army issue and only a few years old.  If you look after it, it’ll last you for months if not years”.

She had also selected a second set of clothing for us, this one all black, and mine went into the Bergen along with all the other supplies.

When we were finally packed I heaved the load onto my back and swayed slightly under the strain.  Emily came over and tightened the straps around my waist, and I was uncomfortably aware of her closeness as her head almost rested against my chest.

She straightened before I could pluck up the courage to do anything, another moment lost as she shouldered her own pack and led me towards the back of the store.  I still held the shotgun, but for some reason it felt more natural now I was dressed like a soldier, even if I thought I did make a poor one.

The rear of the shop did indeed have a back door, the rusted bolts showing how little used it was.  Emily cleared the small alleyway behind with a quick glance, then motioned me to follow and we slipped into a passage that was barely wide enough for my shoulders, the side pockets of my pack scraping against brick on both sides.

The alley led us out into a street that was at a right angle to the front of the shop, and Emily briefly pulled out her new compass to make sure of her bearings before leading me on through Maidenhead towards the M40.

My mind kept going back to that moment in the shop, trying to read her expression in retrospect and making sure that I hadn’t misread the situation.  How many other options could there be?  She had clearly been offering something more than just friendship, but why then, why not in the tent the night before?

I would be the first to admit that I’m no expert when it comes to women.  Since Angie I’d had a couple of drunken encounters at parties, but otherwise I’d avoided the traps and pitfalls of a relationship, choosing instead to concentrate all my energy on the split between work and Melody.  It had seemed safer, and I hadn’t wanted Melody to feel even the slightest bit awkward about visiting whenever we could find the time, so I had kept the house a woman-free zone.

And so I agonised about what had happened in the shop, almost convincing myself that I’d been mistaken, or that she was just teasing me or making a joke.  Almost, that is, except for the look in her eyes when they met mine, half challenge, half need.

I was so caught up in my thoughts, in fact, that when I heard a scraping noise from an alleyway between two houses I barely looked up, thinking that it must be a cat searching for food or perhaps a bold fox.

That lack of awareness almost proved my undoing.  I’d drawn parallel to the alley, Emily a few metres ahead, and as I looked into the dim passage I caught a hint of movement that rapidly turned into the figure of a man, crouched behind some bins but now on his feet and launching himself at me, hands already reaching out to grapple.

I backpedalled rapidly, stumbling away from him as I opened my mouth to shout a warning to Emily, but as I glanced in her direction I saw her already struggling with two other men as she tried to keep them off and draw her pistol at the same time.

My own attacker tore out of the alley in a blur of motion, his weight striking me in the chest as he bore me to the ground, trapping the shotgun between us.  I kept hold of it, battling to pull the ungainly weapon free, but the man simply used his weight to keep it wedged and began punching me in the face with one fist while the other hand rested on the ground to give him leverage.

The pain was incredible.  I’d never realised just how much one bony body-part striking another could hurt.  I screamed as his fist connected with my nose, feeling hot blood spurt, but before I could recover he struck me again, this time finding my eye and digging his knuckles in so far that I thought my eyeball would pop.

“Help!”  I screamed, twisting and turning my head to avoid the blows, but as I looked in Emily’s direction I saw that she was already being held down by her two opponents, one of them kneeling on her arms with her own pistol pointed at her head while the other tried to rip her trousers off, getting kicked for the trouble but ignoring the blows as if they were nothing.

I realised then what was going to happen.  Emily would be raped, I would be killed and then if she was lucky so would she.  Then these men would go through our things and take what they liked, and I would never reach Melody.

Something inside me snapped.  That’s the only way I can describe it as my hands came free of the shotgun, my left grabbing the man’s throat and squeezing while the right dropped to my waist and found the knife there.

It was as if I’d spent my entire life wearing a set of chains around my morals, my values, maybe even my whole mind, but now they dropped away and I watched with cool detachment as I pulled the knife free and sheathed it again, this time in my opponents ribs.

His scream was a choked-off wheeze, my other hand still around his throat as I pulled the knife out and stuck it in again, climbing a rib each time to make sure that I did the job properly.

At the third strike he coughed blood into my face, my nose, my open mouth but I kept going, five, six, seven, and suddenly he went limp, his body a dead weight that I kicked off, rolling myself to my feet Burgen and all without a thought.

I picked up the shotgun, flicked the safety off and walked up behind the man with the pistol.  As I raised the barrels his companion looked up from fighting to remove Emily’s underwear, shock and fear making his eyes bulge.

I barely heard the roar as I pulled the trigger, both barrels cutting the kneeling man nearly in half, the pistol flying from nerveless fingers as blood soaked his companion.

Forgetting his intended rape the third man stood, both hands out in front of him.

“No, no, please.  We didn’t mean nothing by it, please!”  He began to back away as I broke the barrels on the shotgun, the spent casings flying out.  Had he charged at me then he might have lived, but instead he continued to stumble backwards, too scared to turn his back and run.

I reached up to my webbing and pulled two more shells free, slotting them into the breech, the clicked it shut and raised the weapon to my shoulder.

A hundred words came to mind, sayings that I’d heard and collected over the years, or perhaps a recounting of this man’s misdeeds in the few minutes since I’d met him, but in the end all of those words were worthless, less than ash on the wind.

Instead I let the shotgun speak for me, the trigger light against my finger as I fired both barrels again.

The man screamed and flung up his hands but too late, the body completing the motion even after the brain had died as two barrels-worth of shot drove through his skull from close range, erasing his face from everything except my memory.

I opened the breech again and reloaded, only then looking down at Emily, who still lay in the road with her trousers around her knees and several angry looking red scratches on her thighs. 

Her face was what drew me, however.  Her eyes were huge, and as she stared up at me it almost seemed that she didn’t recognise who I was.

“Are you ok?”  She asked quietly, sitting up awkwardly, Burgen still strapped to her back as she wriggled her trousers back up.

I shook my head and tried to speak, but the shaking wouldn’t stop, going from my head to my arms, down to my knees until I couldn’t stand, collapsing on the road as my whole body shuddered.

Despite her own ordeal, Emily dropped her pack and put her arms around me, holding me close and rocking me gently as sobs poured out of me uncontrollably.  Whether they were for the lives I’d just taken, or the loss of something in my own soul I couldn’t tell.  Because, despite everything I’d ever believed about violence not being the answer, god help me if some long-denied part of me hadn’t enjoyed killing those men.  

Chapter 30

“Who do you think they were?”  I asked, my voice hoarse.

We’d walked in silence and were now reaching the far edge of Maidenhead, having stopped only to collect the pistol before leaving the twisted, mangled bodies lying in the street where they’d fallen.

Emily shrugged.  “Probably locals that hid when the soldiers came though.  Maybe the same guys we heard outside the shop.  Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

I shook my head.  “I guess not”.

We lapsed into silence again, although far more watchful than the one that had almost gotten us killed earlier.  Every wall, tree or bush was now a potential risk, cover for an attacker to hide behind and I scanned each of them carefully with the shotgun held ready.

I still didn’t know how to feel.  I knew I should feel guilt, remorse maybe, but instead I just felt empty, as if my sense of self had been drained away by the atrocity I’d just committed.

If someone had told me a week ago that I would kill three men in broad daylight in the middle of the street, I would have laughed in their faces.  I savoured the words as they ran through my mind, testing each one for its sting but finding none.  Murder, killed, stabbed, shot.  None of them evoked a reaction more than a vague stirring somewhere deep in my gut, as if the actions those words hung on were simply things that had to be done now, as mundane as cleaning ones teeth or taking a shit.

I figured that I was probably in shock, and wondered if it would wear of suddenly to leave me paralysed with guilt, unable to come to terms with the terrible thing I’d done.

But was it so terrible?  They had meant to hurt us, kill us even, and was it wrong to kill to stop it from happening to yourself and the ones you cared about?

My mind spun in circles, the whispering voices of conscience and reason fighting with each other in a battle that I couldn’t bring myself to care about.

Instead I let new-found instincts take over, my eyes roving for threats while my mind carried on its ever-spiralling debate without me seeming to take part.

We walked on the A404, signs telling us to keep going for High Wycombe, where we would merge with the M40 and then follow that to Manchester.  Somehow, approaching a road that would have taken us less than an hour by car was a huge achievement, and I hoped that we would find another vehicle soon considering how dangerous walking was proving to be.

I was also more than a little worried about Emily.  Since the attack she’d withdrawn into herself, talking when spoken to but never volunteering information or making any attempt at conversation without prompting.  I knew it had to be a reaction to the horrific attack, but I didn’t know how to broach the subject without blundering into it like an idiot and causing more damage, so I kept quiet and watched her carefully in case she needed me.

The sun was low in the sky when we finally reached High Wycombe, having spent the day walking past tall fences that had blocked the noise of the road from the houses nearby in better times, the tips of trees poking over as if watching our lonely journey.

As we trudged down the slip road onto the M40, the road that would take us to Melody, I called a halt.

“What do you think, give it a mile or so to get away from the town and find a place to camp?”  I asked, getting a weary shrug and a nod in return.

We walked towards the setting sun, visible occasionally through the puffy clouds that still filled the sky, my ankle feeling better for the support of the boots but my toes painful from where the stiff leather rubbed at them.

For a moment I caught myself wishing that we could book into a hotel, have a lazy soak in the bath and then eat a huge plate of cheap-and-cheerful food in a nearby pub, but banished the thought as whimsical and childish before it could take hold.

The world had changed.  In less than a week, everything had turned on its head, and if I was to survive then I needed to think practically, not spend my hours wishing for things that would never be.

I had to call Emily’s name three times when I found a suitable camping spot.  She finally stopped and did little more than run her eyes over the clearing I’d pointed to before walking over to it and dropping her Bergen.

It was only thirty or so metres away from the road but I’d been walking up on the high verge and while it was visible from here in the light, no one from the road could see it and at night you’d have to trip right over us to know we were there.

A few days ago I would have been proud of my newfound ability but now it was just survival.

I set the cooker up while Emily pitched the tent, but instead of joining me for the meal she crawled inside and zipped it shut behind her without a word.

I ate my food alone, staring up at the tops of the trees to catch occasional glimpses of the stars in the early evening sky when the cloud allowed, and considered giving Emily her space by sleeping outside.

I didn’t consider it for long, however, as a light rain began to fall and I hurried to stow everything away before unzipping the tent and crawling in.

Emily’s eyes stared at me in the semi-darkness, the huge, luminous orbs of a wounded animal or scared child.  Without a word, I removed my boots and outer clothing, then slid into my sleeping bag and reached out to put an arm around her, drawing her in close so that her back was to my chest and my face rested in her hair.  Her body jerked as I touched her, then she relaxed and snuggled in close as silent sobs wracked her small frame.

There was no passion there, no repeat of our earlier tension, but instead just the warm comfort of another human being held close in a world that no longer made sense.

Chapter 31

The next three days were almost identical.  Wake up, make breakfast, strike the tent and walk along the M40, sticking to the hard shoulder and listening carefully for any sign of military vehicles that we might have to hide from.

I had little doubt that we would be scooped up and taken away were we to be found, although I had no idea where or why they were taking people.

As the days went on we both came back to ourselves a little.  My detachment seemed to be fading, although I still lacked the remorse I felt should be appropriate, and Emily began to talk again, telling me stories of her childhood that occasionally had me crying with laughter as she looked on with a smile.  It sounded like growing up with Ralph for a father had been interesting, and I wished I’d know my father for longer as I listened to the stories.

“What about your parents?”  Emily asked late on the third day, as if reading my mind, “you never talk about them”.

I shrugged.  “Not much to tell.  My father died when I was fairly young.  He was only fifty eight but he had a heart attack.  My mum did her best after that but we were always struggling to make ends meet.  She had a little business going repairing clothes out of the back room, and between that and what the government gave us we had enough, but we never went on holiday or even really went away for the weekend, unless it was to her sister’s in Norfolk”.

“Any brothers or sisters?”

I shook my head.  “No, and I think I was an accident to be honest.  My mum was always really uptight, even before my dad died.  She used to treat me like I was a necessary evil.  I don’t think she ever once actually asked me about my life other than to make sure I wasn’t sick.  Maybe she would have been better off with a dog”.

I tried to keep the sadness out of my voice but failed.  It was always the same when I thought about her, wondering why we had never been close.  It made hearing the stories and seeing the way Emily, Ralph and Harriet were with each other utterly charming, but at the same time a stark reminder that I’d never had those things.

Which was why, I’d always promised, I would make sure that when I had a child we would be friends as well as family, and that we would share everything.

Emily squeezed my arm briefly as she walked past, climbing a slip road for a better view of the terrain ahead.

I followed her slowly and was half way up when she came running back down at a flat out sprint.

“Get off the road!”  She said, grabbing me and pulling me back the way we’d come.

I complied without thought, following her as she raced for a stand of trees, the trunks tucked behind the hedge that lined the road.

We forced our way through the hedge and made for the trees, throwing ourselves flat on the ground as a faint rumble reached my ears.

“What is it?”  I asked, gasping to get my breath back after the sudden run.

“Army convoy”, she whispered, despite the noise coming from the road.  “Eight trucks, several hundred soldiers and a couple of Landrovers at the front with .50 cal machine guns.  Looks more like an invading force than a rescue mission.

“Where the hell are they all coming from?”  I whispered back.

She shrugged and peered around the tree, trying to see the road through the thick hedge with little success.

The sound of engines grew louder, and then the faint sound of marching feet joined it.  Joining Emily in looking around the tree, I could just make out a forest of legs in the same camo we were wearing marching past on the road.

As I watched, the trucks pulled to a halt and a voice called out, telling the men to break ranks and have chow.

“Shit”, Emily breathed, “that means they’ll put out sentries and they’ll push out at least this far.  We need to move, now”.

Without waiting to see if I followed she moved back from the trees, turning and hurrying across the field, horribly exposed as she made for the hedge on the far side.  Seeing no other option I followed her, but I hadn’t made it more than a few feet when I heard a shout from the road and a dozen soldiers pushed through the hedge, rifles to their shoulders.

“Halt or we fire!”  The voice rang out from just the other side of the trees, and I saw Emily stiffen, then stop and raise her hands, turning back to face them.

I thought for a minute they hadn’t seen me, but then the voice called again.

“And you, behind the trees.  Put the weapon down and step to your right”.

I exchanged an anguished look with Emily.  There was nothing we could do but comply, anything else and I had no doubt we’d be fired upon, and there was no way that all twelve of them could miss.

I put the shotgun down carefully and raised my hands, stepping slowly to my right as I turned to look at the soldiers.

Twelve men knelt in a firing line, half with their rifles trained on me and the others on Emily, while a thirteenth man stood slightly behind them, a tab with sergeant’s stripes in the centre of his chest.

“You, the man, step forward and walk to your left until you reach the end of the line”, he said, and I did as instructed, stopping as I came within a few feet of the end soldier.

At a nod from his sergeant, this soldier slung his rifle and pushed me roughly onto my front, removing the Bergen and my belt, including the knife, before pulling out a set of large cable ties and binding my wrists together uncomfortably tight.

I gasped in pain but he ignored me, instead going through my pockets and clothing until he was sure I had nothing else that might be a threat.

As he took my wallet, I turned my head to look at him.

“Please”, I said, “there’s a picture of my little girl in there, don’t take it”.

The young soldier glanced at the sergeant, who shrugged.

“All personal effects to be retained by us until everything has been processed.  Now shut up”.  He turned back to Emily.  “You, approach slowly, hands behind your head.  If I see anything I don’t like, you get shot”.

I couldn’t see her approach, held down as I was in the grass, but I heard her hit the ground as two soldiers left the line, one returning to hand her pistol to the sergeant while the other searched her.

“Hey, I’m a sergeant in the Royal Electro…ugh!”  I tried to turn my head to see what was happening but the soldier was ready for me, planting a knee in my spine and forcing me into the earth so hard I chewed mud.

“The prisoner will not speak unless ordered to!”  The sergeant shouted, “whoever they think they might be!”

A few moments later the sergeant barked another order and the line broke, two soldiers hauling me to my feet while another pair took hold of Emily, marching us back through the hedge and onto the road to the curious stares of the rest of the soldiers.

It was an impressive convoy.  The road fairly teemed with soldiers, and as we were pushed towards one of the trucks a man with two golden pips on his chest walked over and motioned for the men walking us to stop.

“What have we here?”  He said, looking me up and down and then switching his gaze to Emily.

“They were trying to run away”, the sergeant said, “but when we caught them, this one claimed to be a sergeant, REME I think”.

He pointed at Emily and the officer strode over to stand in front of her.

“Is that correct?”

She nodded.  “Sergeant Emily Morris, 1st Battalion REME.  Service number 25095611, sir”.

He looked at her for a long while before speaking.

“So why is it, sergeant, that you were trying to make off rather than identify yourself?”

“Seen a lot of strange things sir, wasn’t sure what was going on, and I, uh, I’m attending to a family matter sir”.

She glanced over at me as she spoke and I saw the hopelessness in her expression.  Now we were caught up in whatever great machine these people worked for, there was little hope of us getting free to find Melody unless we were very lucky.

“A family matter?  That doesn’t explain why you were trying to avoid us.  Still, you can explain all that to the Colonel”.

He signalled to the sergeant. “Detail four men and take them back to base in one of the Landrovers”.

“Sir”. 

Arms seized us again and we were hustled into the back of one of the vehicles, wedged onto metal benches in the back while our gear was placed safely out of reach.  Four soldiers climbed in with us and the Landrover pulled a U-turn, heading northwest along the M40.

“I don’t suppose you can tell us where we’re going, can you?”  I asked the soldier next to me.

He elbowed me in the ribs hard enough to hurt.  “No talking”.

I winced and looked over at Emily, hoping to see something in her expression, confidence perhaps, but instead I could only see a worry that mirrored my own as we were driven in silence to whatever fate now awaited us.

Chapter 32

We were on the M40 for about thirty minutes before the driver pulled off and headed west, first taking a main road and then cutting through country lanes that twisted and turned and had me thoroughly lost in minutes.

Although any attempt to speak was dealt with aggressively, our escort seemed to have no problems with letting me lean forward so that I could see where we were going.

I was more than a little nervous of our silent, too-young looking guards, their eyes hard under their Kevlar helmets and their rifles always within easy reach.  It was enough to convince me that trying anything other than doing exactly what they told us to would be a mistake.

Until, that is, we crested a hill and I looked out over the valley below, and the strangest sight met my eyes.

To our right was a small town with rows of pretty-looking houses and neat gardens, seemingly untouched by what had happened.  Just to the west of the town was what could only be a military base, with high fences, squat, soulless buildings and a large field with a long airstrip.

In a huge perimeter around that, however, someone had strung out barbed and razor wire, with hastily erected guard towers dotted along the fence, the glint of sunlight on rifle barrels and machine guns telling me that they were manned.

Within that new perimeter, hundreds of tiny figures were working, some raising what looked to be small buildings, while others walked out towards the fields that were within the fence, some holding livestock while others had the remains of crops growing in them.

“What the hell is that?”  I said, forgetting to remain silent, and got another elbow in the ribs for my trouble, this one hard enough to bring tears to my eyes as I struggled to breathe.

“You’ll find out soon enough”, my tormentor said, “talk again and I’ll knock your teeth out”.

By the time I could straighten to look out of the window again, the scene was lost from view in the rolling hills, but I’d seen enough to get my brain working.

The camp, or whatever it was, looked a little like I imagined a beachhead in hostile territory, except that in was in the middle of Oxfordshire and encompassed enough farmland to feed hundreds if not thousands of people.

This must be where they were taking everyone they’d been gathering up, I realised, although whether they were helping them or using them for some other reason I wasn’t sure.  We were too far away to tell what was really going on, but I had the feeling we were going to find out sooner than we liked.

We passed through no fewer than four checkpoints before we got to the base, each one manned by half a dozen soldiers with various badges and emblems on their uniforms.  I knew they signified different regiments, but without Emily to tell me who they belonged to I couldn’t even hazard a guess.

The base itself was lightly manned, a result of so many soldiers being needed for the massive perimeter, I assumed.  The Landrover pulled up in front of what looked to be some kind of administration building, and as soon as we stopped the tailgate was let down and we were pushed out and onto the tarmac before being led inside.

The building was dim, almost gloomy, and smelled of polish and paper.  They marched us through a reception area and down a long corridor, finally arriving at a nondescript wooden door.

One of the soldiers knocked and then walked in, leaving us in the corridor guarded by the other three.  There was a brief, low buzz of conversation and then he came back out.

“They can go in”, he said, “kit to be left out here”.

Emily was pushed through the doorway and I followed closely behind, not wishing to be propelled by an overeager guard and find myself going sprawling.

None of the soldiers came in with us, instead closing the door behind us and leaving us to look around the room as bright sunlight streamed in through a large window.

It appeared to be a conference room.  A large table sat in the middle, a dozen chairs spaced around it, and pictures of various military endeavours graced the walls.

A now defunct conference phone sat in the middle of the table, as well as a jug of water and several glasses, but it was the occupants of two of the chairs that drew my attention.

One of them was a man in his mid-fifties, greying hair neatly cut and matching the colour of his pencil-thin moustache.  He wore a camouflage shirt and trousers, the seams still perfectly pressed, and even sitting down he looked unusually tall.

There was something of the school-master about him, a feeling that from the second he laid eyes on me he was judging me, weighing my usefulness.

The second man was a complete contrast.  He was about the same age, but there the resemblance ended.  His scruffy brown hair was receding rapidly, leaving a few lonely hairs to sprout from the top of his head while the rest hugged the sides and back.  He wore a business suit that looked like he’d slept in it for several days running, the white shirt turning a grubby grey and the tie poking out of an inside pocket where it had been stuffed.

He had bags under his eyes that bulged out from beneath his brown spectacles, and he looked very much like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

It was with a start that I realised that I recognised him.  Iron the suit, give him a few hours’ sleep and put him in a photograph shaking hands with someone over a multi-billion pound defence project, and there sat the Secretary of State for Defence, Terrence Harvey-Smith.

I stood there staring, all kinds of crazy thoughts running through my head.  Perhaps the government had survived, were rebuilding with areas farmed out to cabinet members to look after.  The thought gave me a little comfort, but then I remembered how the civilians we’d seen had been treated and the first tendrils of fear began to tickle in my stomach.

It was the old soldier who spoke first.

“I’m told you’re REME”, he said to Emily, straight to the point.

“Yes sir”, she replied, “Sergeant Morris, 1st Battalion”.

“We need more soldiers, so that’s good for us.  I’m also told, however, that you were trying to make off from troops when you were apprehended”.

“We were simply trying to carry on with our journey sir, not running away”.

I looked around the room as they spoke, sizing up our chances of escape and seeing none.  Even if we could somehow get free of the room, we were smack in the middle of the base, and besides, the man in front of us might be older but he fairly radiated a calm competency that I had no doubt would extend to killing us both if necessary.

“And what journey is that?”  The Secretary spoke for the first time, looking at us both.  The soldier frowned at the interruption but let it pass.

“We’re trying to get to Manchester to find my daughter”, I said before Emily could speak, “she’s only eleven years old”.

The men exchanged a glance and the soldier shook his head.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings”, he said softly, “but most of Manchester is in flames.  A recon unit came back this morning and the fires are as bad as London”.

My stomach lurched and I felt a sudden urge to throw up.  Forcing it aside, I met the old man’s eyes and shook my head.

“She’ll have got out.  Her grandparents live south in one of the smaller towns, they’ll have made it to there”.  I willed myself to believe it even as I spoke.  The thought of it not being true was too much to bear.

The Secretary waved his hand as if the subject was unimportant.

“That’s as may be, but we couldn’t let you go up there at any rate.  We’re trying to rebuild civilisation here, we need all the hands we can get, no exceptions”.

“No exceptions?  That’s my little girl you’re talking about!”  I was beginning to get angry now, and anger felt better than fear so I let it build.  “Who gives you the right to take people off the street, hold them prisoner and then dictate what they can or can’t do?  Last time I checked this was still a free country!”

The soldier leaned forward, frowning.

“I don’t think you know who you’re talking to, young man!  And besides, if we don’t do something drastic there won’t be a country, never mind a free one!”

“I know exactly who I’m talking to, he’s the Secretary of State for Defence, but that doesn’t give him the right to tell me what I can and can’t do!”

Harvey-Smith stared at me intently, eyes boring into mine.

“I thought you looked familiar”, he said at last, “what’s your name?”

I was so taken aback by this that I forgot for a moment to be angry.

“Malcolm King, I’m a journalist”.

He nodded as if remembering.  “About six months ago, you asked that bloody annoying question about the defence deal with the Chinese and the risks of corporate espionage”.

I nodded, amazed that he would remember one journalist out of a crowd of dozens.

The soldier turned to him.  “You know him?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but the question was a pain in the arse, ruffled a few feathers with the Chinese sitting next to me in the bloody room”.

“So what now?”  I said, the anger coming back.  “Do I get punished for speaking my mind?”

The soldier stood and walked around the table, stopping in front of me.

“Despite what you might think”, he said, “we really are doing what’s best.  The cities are dangerous, in a few days what’s left of them will be breeding grounds for disease and rats.  Current estimates put about ninety percent of London as presumed dead in the fires, with similar casualty rates for all the large cities.  We need to start again, build from scratch, and we need to do it fast.  We’re not barbarians, but I understand that you’re worried about your daughter and I want your assurance that if I cut your bonds you won’t try and do anything stupid”.

I looked over at Emily, who nodded.

“Fine, I won’t do anything stupid, but you can’t expect me to start hoeing fields while my daughter is still out there”.

He shrugged and produced a pocket knife, sawing through the plastic that bound my wrists, then did the same for Emily as my fingers tingled with returning blood.

“That’s something to be discussed another time”, he said as he moved to the door.  “As I’m sure you can imagine, I’m a very busy man.  I appreciate your situation, but hopefully once you see what we’re already beginning to achieve here you’ll come on board.  We don’t have the time or the resources to let survivors go running around in the wilderness, no matter how urgent they think it is.  I’ll have someone escort you both to the lockup, you’ll remain there for today and then tomorrow you can join one of the work crews”.

He opened the door but the Secretary called out before he could summon the guards.

“Colonel Tibbett, leave the Journalist with me for a moment, would you?  I want to talk to him about something”.

The Colonel nodded and waved a guard forward from his position in the corridor.

“Take the sergeant here to the lockup, then have her report to admin for assignment”.

The guard saluted and motioned for Emily to follow.  She turned and looked at me.

“Are you ok with this?”  She asked, ignoring the dark look the Colonel threw her way.

I shrugged and raised my palms in a gesture of defeat.

“I don’t see what other choice we’ve got”.

She hesitated for a moment longer and then nodded, throwing a very brief, wry smile in my direction before she followed the guard out of the door.

The Colonel looked over at me for a moment, then at the Secretary before letting himself out, leaving me alone with the man who, apparently, was running what was left of the country, in whatever way he saw fit.

Chapter 33

“Do you know why I asked to speak to you privately?” 

I shook my head, perched on the edge of the chair he’d insisted I sit on, unsure how to feel or what to think.  Travelling with Emily, despite all the hardship and horror, had been like a little bubble insulating us from the rest of the world as we made our way towards our destination, but our capture had burst that bubble and now nothing seemed to make sense.

“It came to me as I remembered that bloody question you asked”, the Secretary said, leaning back in his chair and mopping his forehead with the arm of his suit jacket.  “And I thought; a man like that really likes to get to the bottom of things, and wants to tell people what’s really going on.  Am I right?”

I shrugged.  “All that feels like a lifetime ago, now”.

He nodded.  “Doesn’t it though?  Water?”

I nodded and he poured me a glass himself, sliding it across the smooth wood of the table.

“So here’s the rub”, he continued.  “I find myself in a very difficult situation. How much do you know about what happened?”

I took a sip of water before speaking.  “There was a Coronal Mass Ejection that hit the planet as well as a flare, and it knocked anything with a processor out and overloaded the national grid”.

He nodded.  “You’re very well informed.  However, did you know that it’s still happening?”

“I had an inkling, yes.  I have a friend who’s an astrophysicist and he thinks there’s something strange going on, and we saw the aurora the second night as well”.

He raised an eyebrow.  “Only the second night?  What about the other nights since?”

I thought back, then realised that Emily and I had been crawling into the tent before the sun was fully down and sleeping right through, more or less.  I told him so and he frowned as if I was trying to hide something.

“Well we have a few experts of our own, although their equipment is mostly useless now, and they’re telling me that what the sun is doing could go on for weeks or even months.  Can you imagine what that will do to any attempt to get things up and running again?”

I nodded.  “I think so.  You can’t begin to rebuild infrastructure because any attempt to make anything more advanced than a simple circuit will get blown again immediately”.

“That’s right.  So keep that thought going and tell me what’s going to happen to the population when they run out of food and clean water”.

It wasn’t hard to figure that one out; I’d already seen the first stirrings of what would happen on my travels.

“People will start to die”.

He nodded emphatically, the few hairs on the top of his head waving frantically.

“Exactly.  So we’re bringing as many people here as we can and trying to stockpile for the winter, and get the ground ready for planting in the spring.  Even in the best case scenario, it could be up to a year before we can turn the lights on again”.

I thought that through for a few moments, imagining just how bad it would get, particularly once the winter set in.  Would people stay in their homes and slowly waste away, or would they set out like a plague of desperate locusts, eating everything in their path until they hit the sea or ran out of places to plunder?

“So how do I come into this?”

The Secretary leaned back and steepled his fingers in front of his chest.

“As far as I’m aware, I’m the closest thing to a government this country has anymore, but I only just made it myself.  I was travelling back down from Scotland when the flare hit, and it just so happened that I was only a few miles away from here when everything stopped working.  I have no idea if anyone else on the cabinet survived, but as they were still in the heart of London, I think it’s safe to assume they didn’t.  The only people travelling with me were a police escort and my driver, my assistants were several hours ahead of me in another car so I suspect they got caught up in the London fires”.

He looked at me expectantly but I couldn’t see where he was going with it so I gestured for him to carry on.

“Look”, he said, rubbing his face tiredly, “I’m good at what I do, but I’d be the first to admit that I’m not exactly a people person, and Tibbett, well, I’ve known Tibbett for a long time and he’s an excellent soldier but PR is not his forte.  I need someone with me who’s good with words, Malcolm, someone who knows how to get information across without wild speculation, just facts and maybe a little, ah, softening here and there.  Does that sound like something you can do?”

The last thing I’d expected in the middle of all this was a job offer, and I blinked at him a few times as I tried to take it in.

“You want me to work for you?”

He shrugged.  “Why not?  You’ll get food, good accommodation, clean water.  In return, I just want you to make sure that the people understand why we’re doing this, understand their place in this new machine we’re building”.

I shook my head.  “I’m sorry, I understand what you’re trying to do but I need to go and find my daughter.  It has to be my first priority”.

The Secretary’s face darkened.

“You do realise, don’t you, that we can’t let you leave?”

“Can’t or won’t?”

He shrugged.  “Not much difference from where you’re standing.  I need someone like you, Malcolm, but I won’t beg. Perhaps a few days in the fields will make you change your mind”.

He opened his mouth to call out to the guards but I held up a hand.

“How about this”, I said desperately, “you let me and Emily go and find my daughter, then we come back and I do this job for you?  We’d only be gone a week or so, less if you can lend us a vehicle?”

He barked a laugh.  “Do you think I’m stupid?  We’d never see you again!  No, you either work for me or you work in the camp.  Guards!”

Two soldiers hurried in, then slowed as they saw no immediate danger.  I sized them up, wondering if I could somehow get past them and make a break for freedom, but one look convinced me that would be madness.

“Gentlemen, take him to one of the work parties and get him started on something that will keep him busy, then let me know where you’ve put him.  Oh, and warn the guards that he’s a flight risk, we can’t have him being shot trying to escape”.

One of them saluted while the other grabbed my arm in a vicelike grip, pulling me from the room before I could do more than glare at the Secretary.

As they marched me down the corridor and out onto the tarmac, I made the mistake of trying to reason with them.

“Look”, I began, “this is all a… Oof!”

I folded in half as one of them casually slammed a fist into my solar plexus, driving the wind from my lungs and leaving me gasping for air while tears filled my eyes.  I couldn’t walk, but they simply lifted me off my feet, carrying me towards the fields and work gangs as if I were nothing more than an annoyance they were keen to be rid of.

Which, I supposed as I fought desperately for air, I was.

Chapter 34

The only stop we made on the way out to the fields was in an old hangar that had been converted into a supply store.  Here they stripped me down to my underwear and gave me a baggy pair of olive green overalls that zipped up the front, with no unit markings or other insignia. 

Once I was dressed, they marched me past the airstrip and onto what looked to be a playing field, although now it was crowded with groups of people building temporary shelters from canvas, while at the far end three work parties were putting up more permanent looking structures out of wood and corrugated iron.

I didn’t try talking again, instead taking everything in as we walked, desperate to find something that might help me escape.

We finally stopped at the fence line just north of the playing field, where a group of miserable-looking civilians were building a wall, using old planks and bits of ply board to create a more permanent barrier just inside the barbed wire.

There were twenty people in the group, with three soldiers keeping a watchful eye on them, two with rifles at the ready while one approached us with a clipboard.

“Who’s this?”  He asked my guards.

“Secretary wants him to work with you for a few days.  Keep him busy, but apparently he might try and run away so don’t let him out of your sight”.

The soldier, a man in his thirties with the two stripes of a corporal on his chest, sighed and looked to the heavens.

“Why do I keep getting the misfits?”  He complained.  “Fine, leave him with me; we’ll keep him busy alright”.

The guards nodded and about faced, heading back to the comfort of the admin building.  I watched them go, but turned sharply when a hand seized the front of my overalls and began to drag me towards where the group was working.

“Daydreamer, eh?  We don’t have time for that.  What’s your name?”

“Malcolm King”. 

“Well, Malcolm, welcome to Work Group Seven.  It’s our job to reinforce the perimeter, something which I suspect we’ll be doing for weeks, so I hope you’re used to getting your hands dirty”.  He let go of me with a final shove and began to make notes on his clipboard.  “Well go on, get working!”

I looked at the rest of the group.  They were a mixture of men and women from sixteen through to sixty, and all of them wore matching expressions of hopelessness and bone-weary tiredness.  I looked back at the corporal, trying to decide how best to tell him that I needed to find Melody, but one look at his stony expression convinced me that conversation would most likely end in a beating.

Sighing, I picked up a plank of wood and approached the fence, seeing how several of the group were creating a wooden framework with hammer and nails, while others attached the planks to this framework and a few, myself included, brought fresh material from a large pile nearby.

Everyone else wore their own clothing, my overalls marking me apart.  At first I thought they weren’t talking to me because of that difference, but after a few minutes I realised that the only conversation was about the work, a muttered word here and there or a request for a different piece of wood.

Despite the cloud cover the day was hot and within minutes I was soaked through with sweat, my arms burning from the unaccustomed exercise.  I suddenly realised why everyone looked so tired and I wondered how long they’d been working like this, keeping up a constant, plodding pace while armed soldiers hovered nearby.

As the day wore on we moved further and further from the woodpile, each trip taking longer as my arms turned to jelly, my fingers raw with splinters.  I lost count of how many times I considered throwing down my load, refusing to do any more work until I had a rest, but the first time I made to put down the plank I was carrying, one of the other workers, a woman in her thirties wearing a filthy pair of jeans and a faded t-shirt, shook her head at me and motioned for me to keep going as she threw a worried glance at the guards.

“Don’t”, she whispered frantically as she passed me, putting a world of fear into that one word, enough for me to shoulder the plank again and keep walking. 

We carried on like that for hours as the sun crawled across the sky, the only breaks a very brief stop for water that was passed around by the guards and another some hours later to relieve ourselves in a nearby pit that had been dug in full view of everyone else still working.

It began to remind me more of a concentration camp than a new world order, and it was only by sheer strength of will that I made it to the end of the day, the halt finally being called when it became too dark to see properly.

The walk back to camp was short but painful.  My stomach was cramping from hunger and my arms hung at my sides as if made from lead.  The guards pushed the group into a huddle and led us back, one in front and two behind to make sure that no one tried to slip away in the dark.

I was starting to think that we would be locked away overnight without food, but instead we were taken to a large tent lit by the soft glow of battery-operated lamps hanging from the ceiling.

There were trestle tables inside, crammed in with barely enough room to walk between, while at the far end several women were serving food from large metal containers kept warm over gas burners.

I followed the rest of my group, picking up a tray as I reached the counter.  We shuffled along, trays held out while first a plate, then dollops of unappetising looking food were slapped onto it.

I looked up to thank the women for the food and almost dropped my tray in shock.  There, stripped of her uniform and wearing overalls similar to mine, stood Emily, ladle in hand as she scowled and slammed mashed potato onto the waiting plates.

I shuffled closer and our eyes met as she filled my plate.

“What are you doing in here?”  I whispered, the sound of food hitting plates covering the sound.

She glanced over my shoulder and looked back at me, brow furrowed in anger.

“This place is a fucking joke”, she whispered back, “I’m a fucking engineer, not a dinner lady!”

The woman next to her frowned and pointed at the person behind me.  Emily scowled back but obediently put a scoop on the empty plate.

The pressure of the people behind me forced me onward and I looked back to see Emily still watching me, but too far away now for any conversation to go unnoticed in the almost silent tent.  I gave her an apologetic shrug and moved down the line, having a scoop of peas and a lonely frankfurter added to my meal before I followed the rest of my group to a set of tables in the middle of the floor.

We ate in silence, too tired to do more than chew mechanically as the ever present guards stood by the entrance and watched us.  My stomach began to complain as long-denied food overwhelmed it, but I forced the rest down anyway, unsure when my next meal would be.  If I could, I planned to escape that night, to somehow find Emily and get through the fence.  I’d seen a few likely places that afternoon, dips in the terrain that were hidden from the guard towers that stood watch over the perimeter, and I hoped that with a little luck we would be able to use one of those to our advantage.

My fork had just scraped the last of the potato from my plate when one of the guards came in and looked around.

“Time”, he called, “curfew, come on”.

Several people hastily shovelled the rest of their food into their mouths even as they were standing, then filed out.  As I left the tent, I was again pushed into a large group and we were herded towards another tent about a hundred feet away from the mess, this one made of heavy canvas with only one entrance and the sides firmly pegged down, and a white W-7 stencilled to the side of the entrance flap.

It could comfortably have slept ten, maybe fifteen people, but all twenty one of us were shepherded inside, everyone else groping towards a set of blankets and a pillow set on the ground in the dim light.  I stood there at the entrance, looking around for a spare set of bedding.

“You waiting for an invitation?”  It was the corporal, appearing at my shoulder and making me jump.

“No, but I don’t have any blankets”, I said hopefully.

He shrugged and put a hand in the small of my back, propelling me further into the tent.

“Well you can either find someone nice enough to share, or you’ll have to do without tonight.  I haven’t got time to send someone running off just to make sure you’re nice and cosy”.

I stumbled form the shove and turned to protest, but the flap was closed and zipped in seconds.  A few moments later I heard the sound of a padlock snapping shut, and I turned back into the gloom, hoping to hear someone, anyone, offer me a space in their blankets.

It was a long, cold night.

Chapter 35

I woke, shivering and cramped, from the few hours’ exhausted sleep I’d fallen into on the hard ground.  Even with the days being hot, the earth under the tent was hungry for more and had leached most of the heat from my body.

No one met my eyes as the tent flap was thrown back, allowing morning sunlight to stream through the east-facing entrance.  Despite the light, the sun was only just over the horizon as we were chivvied out and into the mess tent to be served a breakfast of stale bread, baked beans and black coffee.

As with the previous evening, we were barely given time to finish the meal before being ousted once more, first to the latrine ditch where we all stood or squatted next to each other in embarrassed silence and then on to the pile of wood.

Everything ached, even my bones.  I didn’t know how I’d get through the first hour, let alone the day, but midmorning found me still carrying wood and setting it in place while others hammered nails in, making a piecemeal barrier that shut off my view of freedom piece by mismatched piece.

The sun beat down ferociously, making me feel like one of the nails being beaten into the wood, almost a physical force that made my head droop as I walked back and forth.

A little after midday, the pile of wood was finally gone, just a few offcuts too small to be of any use strewn in the grass.  I expected us to be put to some other task, but instead the corporal ordered us to sit down and passed out a bottle of water each.

I almost cried as the lukewarm plastic was pressed into my waiting hand, my fingers trembling as I unscrewed the lid and poured water down my parched throat.

“Careful, you’ll be sick if you drink it too fast”.  The woman who had given me the warning the day before sat next to me, her bottle still almost full as she sipped at it slowly.

I glanced around warily to make sure the soldiers weren’t too near, and seeing them busy talking to the corporal, I inched closer.

“How long have you been here?”  I asked quietly.

“Since Tuesday, I think.  What day is it now?”  She shrugged.  “Not that it matters much”.

I thought back over the days, trying to get it right in my head.  I’d met Emily on Monday, the morning after the flare, and then we’d headed off to find Melody the next day.  It felt like a different lifetime.  We’d travelled together for three, or was it four days since?  I was so tired I couldn’t remember, the days on the road together seeming to blur into one.

“I think it’s Saturday, or maybe Sunday”, I said finally, looking up at the sound of a vehicle coming towards us across the field.

It was one of the four tonners, the canvas stripped from the back so that it could hold more wood, taken from god only knew where and piled haphazardly so that bits were occasionally shed like unwanted skin.

It pulled up nearby and the driver jumped out, beckoning us over.  With a collective groan, we stood and began to help in getting the load off the truck and into a pile so that we could continue our work.

And so the day continued.  I expected to stop for lunch, but the bottle of water was all we were given, so I made it last, pulling it from my pocket whenever my hands were free and taking tiny sips to stave off the hunger.  By the end of that day I had decided that whatever order The Secretary was trying to bring to the chaos, I wanted no part of it.  I’d seen animals treated better than we were, and as the sun set on my second day working on the fence, I knew that I had to get out of here soon.  Every day I was here was another day that I wasn’t on my way to Melody, and I knew that when the fence was completed it would be even harder to escape.

Throughout the day I’d been keeping an eye on the other work groups, tiny figures in the distance that scurried to and fro like ants as they built up their parts of the perimeter.  From what I could see, the fence would be complete in another few days so the sooner I acted the more chance I had of winning free.

With that in mind, on my last trip to the woodpile I searched for a few seconds until I found a wood-shaving barely an inch across.  Pocketing it, I picked up a large piece of wood and half carried, half dragged it to the fence.  While I helped the man with the hammer hold it in place, I crouched to help keep the bottom of the wood against the frame with one hand while the other cast around until it closed around one of the nails.  This quickly went into the same pocket.  I didn’t dare look up to see if anyone was watching me, although I doubted they’d know what I was intending even if they had seen anything, but no one raised an alarm or came hurrying over.

Once the last piece of wood was in place we were herded together and marched back towards the mess tent.  I squirmed and elbowed my way into the middle of the group, using their bodies to hide my hands from the searching eyes of the guards.  Those hands worked frantically in the few seconds I had, using the nail to scratch and re-scratch two symbols into the wood-shaving before I pushed it as far into the crease of my palm as I could.

As I’d hoped, Emily was in the serving area again, her eyes catching mine the moment I stepped into the tent.  The long, slow shuffle towards her was torturous, my hands sweating as I worked out how I was going to pass the shaving over to her.  Of course I could have tried whispering to her, but if anyone overheard there was a risk that they would pass that information on, and after my talk with the Secretary I had to assume that everything I might say or do was being observed, and most likely the same for Emily.  Why else would they have an Engineer, and a sergeant no less, serving in the mess tent?

As I approached, I kept looking down at my hand and then back at Emily, hoping she would get the idea, but if she did then she gave no sign.

Finally it was my turn, and I lifted my plate towards her, the shaving on my very fingertips under the plate.  She took the edge of the plate with her left hand while the right shovelled food onto it, and for a split second I felt her fingers brush mine before she pushed the plate back towards me and I moved on.  I could no longer feel the shaving against my fingers, and I prayed that she had it rather than it having fallen to the floor in my clumsy attempt at a pass.

It was all so cloak and dagger, so old prisoner-of-war movie, that I would have laughed had it not been so horribly real.  Instead, I tucked my head down, went to my seat and ate mechanically, knowing that what happened next was now out of my hands, and hoping that Emily had more freedom than I.  If not, I suspected that we would both be stuck here for a very long time.

Chapter 36

The next morning dawned without any night-time interruptions, despite my staying awake most of the night to listen out for even the barest scratch against the canvas.

I’d been given my own blanket and pillow, but even with the added comfort they brought it was still uncomfortable.  Of greater concern, however, was my worry over what had happened to Emily.  Perhaps she was on a curfew as rigorous as mine, or maybe she’d been caught sneaking out to find me, or had even been locked in.

I hoped to catch a glimpse of her at breakfast, but only one woman was serving this morning with ill grace as she slammed scoops of already-loathed baked beans onto our plates.  We ate in the usual silence, but as we formed up to head out to the fence, a pair of soldiers appeared from around the mess tent and spoke quietly to the corporal.  He conferred with them for a few seconds and then scanned the group, his eyes coming to rest on me.

“Malcolm King, front and centre”.

I stepped forward as the others melted away from me, hoping not to catch whatever bad luck was pulling me from their ranks.

When I didn’t move fast enough the corporal grabbed me by the arm and shoved me towards the waiting soldiers.

“Come on, don’t dawdle.  Just because you’ve got somewhere else to be doesn’t mean we’ve all got time to stand around.  There’s a world to rebuild, you know”.  Chuckling to himself, he led the crew off, a few of them throwing curious looks back over their shoulders.

“Where are we going?”  I asked, and to my surprise one of the men answered.

“The Secretary wants you”.  He pointed towards the building, just visible above the sea of tents that now covered the field, and without further prompting I set off, the guards trailing me.

It felt good not to be shoved, grabbed or otherwise manhandled, but the walk was still far from pleasant.  There was a churning in my gut, a fear that Emily had been discovered on her way to find me last night and now we were both going to pay for it.  Bile rose in my throat at the thought, and my overactive imagination ran through scenarios that all ended with me being placed up against a wall and shot. 

By the time one of the soldiers knocked on the door to the conference room, I was pouring with nervous sweat and could barely stand still.  A voice called us in from the other side and the door was opened long enough for me to be pushed through before closing again.

Inside, time seemed to have stood still.  The room was exactly as it had been two days ago, except the pile of paperwork on the large table was now threatening to spill over onto the floor.  The Secretary sat in the same chair, wearing the same rumpled suit, although he’d managed to find a clean shirt from somewhere.

He didn’t look up as I entered, merely gesturing me towards a seat while he carried on reading the report in front of him.  I sat, more to stop my legs from shaking than out of any desire to be at the same table with this man, my inherent dislike of him amplified a thousand fold by the experiences of the last forty eight hours.

“Have you changed your mind yet?”  He said finally, looking up from the paper and frowning at me from behind his glasses.

So that was it.  He was hoping that by now I’d had enough to crawl into his pocket and accept my place.  Damn him if he wasn’t a hairsbreadth away from being right.

“Why me?”  I asked plaintively.  “There must be a hundred other people out there who could do the job.  What have I got that they haven’t?”

He pushed the report away and stared at me for a long time.

“I’m sure you recall me saying that I’m not a people person”, he said at last, “but I do pride myself on being a fair judge of character”.

He poured himself a glass of water, letting me watch as he drank it slowly before topping it up again.

“You’re right”, he continued, “there are other people here who could do it, but they’ve only seen a hint of what might happen.  You’ve been travelling for days, and I think you realise just how bad it will get out there without order, without some kind of structure to rebuild.  Am I right?”

I nodded reluctantly, coming to a decision.  If I continued to say no, I’d remain in the work group, spending my days shuffling to and fro while Melody was subject to her mother’s dubious care.  If I said yes, however, it would give me more freedom and therefore a greater chance at escape.

“Ok”, I said, knowing that if I sold myself too cheaply he would be suspicious, “but I want a couple of things”.

He smiled triumphantly, sitting back and waving a hand for me to continue.

“Such as?”

“First, I want my, uh, girlfriend back, Emily”.

“I suppose I can arrange that.  What else?”

“As soon as I can, I want leave to go up to Manchester and find my little girl.  She’ll be safer here”.  I bit the inside of my lip while he considered this, and sighed with relief when he nodded.

“Fine, but I can’t promise you how soon it will be.  There’s a lot of work to do here”.

He leaned forwards and stuck out his hand for me to shake.  I leaned in and took it, suspecting that I was making a deal with the devil, giving it as brief a shake as I dared.

“So”, he said, “let’s get you a proper room and some clean clothes, then we’ll get you started.  I think the first order of business is for you to write me a speech, something that tells everyone what we’re trying to do, and how important they all are to rebuilding what we’ve lost.  Do you think you can do that?”

“I’m sure I can scratch something up”, I said, trying to sound keen.

“And once that’s done”, he said grandiosely, “I’ll want you by my side as much as possible, to, ah, chronicle events as they happen.  Future generations need to know what happened after The Fall”.  He stopped and sounded out the words, then smiled.  “The Fall.  You can use that if you’d like”.

“You want me to write your biography?”  I said incredulously.

He nodded.  “Is there a problem with that?”

“Uh, no, no that’s fine”.  I hoped I was more successful than I felt at keeping the sarcasm from my voice.

“Good, well that’s settled then.  Guard!”

A soldier hurried in and saluted.  “Sir?”

“Take Mr King to the accommodation block and find him a suitable room and some fresh clothes.  Once that’s done, I need a security detail on him, for his protection”.

He glanced at me as he said the last, making his meaning clear.  He might have accepted my service but he was a long way from trusting me.  I couldn’t blame him, I thought as I followed the soldier out of the room, because I had every intention of running away at the very first opportunity.

Chapter 37

My new room was a small cubicle in the unmarried officer’s barracks, my guard informed me as he led me to a nondescript brown door in a corridor full of them, and although it was tiny, just enough room for the bed, wardrobe, shower cubicle and toilet, it seemed a palace after the cramped confines of the tent.

“The shower works”, he said, pointing to it, “we’ve rigged up the old gas boilers and we’ve still got gas left in the tanks, but for how long we’re not sure so get ‘em while you can.  I’m going to find you some clothes, I’ll be back in a few minutes”.

He closed the door and for the first time in days I was alone, a once familiar feeling that now seemed strange.  I also realised, now that I was in an enclosed space, how badly I stank.  Stale sweat, grime and other less savoury substances covered my body and I decided to test the shower, part of me wondering if it was a crude joke on the part of the guard.

The water flowed, however, starting off cold but quickly heating, filling the small room with a cloud of steam.

Stripping off and throwing my clothes in the corner, I stepped into the stream of near-scalding water and sighed with relief as it battered my weary muscles.

I was still in there when the soldier returned, sticking his head into the shower cubicle regardless of my nakedness.

“Clothes are on the bed”, he said, “I’ll be outside the door when you’re ready”.

I nodded, hands cupped to cover myself.  He withdrew and I heard the door close, and once I was sure it was safe I turned the shower off and grabbed a towel hanging nearby.

It was rough but clean, and once I was dry I ventured into the main room to see a pair of olive green combat trousers and a white t-shirt, both clean and pressed, as well as two pairs of sports socks and a pair of thicker green ones.

The underwear he’d found, however, was several sizes too big but I put it on anyway, feeling the cotton bagging up against my legs as I pulled the combats on.

Now that my body was clean I began to notice other things.  My mouth, for example, tasted like someone had crept in and taken a shit in it overnight, while my face was covered with several days’ worth of stubble.

I rubbed condensation off the small shaving mirror in the bathroom and stared in shock at the scrawny figure looking back at me.

I’d lost maybe ten pounds, my cheekbones sharper than I’d ever seen them, framing the hollow pits beneath my eyes.  My beard, which I couldn’t truly call stubble anymore, was growing in black but heavily peppered with white, while my freshly washed hair waved like a dandelion without grease and dirt to hold it down.

I grinned into the mirror, showing yellow teeth and gums that were beginning to bleed, as they always did whenever I failed to clean my teeth regularly.

In all, I was a mess.  I looked like a parody of the man I’d been only a week ago, a caricature of the trendy Hoveite journalist who wrote such cutting articles about the darker side of mankind.

Inspection over, I opened the main door to see my guard lounging against the wall.  He quickly straightened when he saw me.

“Need anything sir?”

“Yeah, a razor, a toothbrush and some hair wax”.

He shrugged.  “I’m sure I can scratch something up, sir, but it might take me a while”.

“I don’t suppose it’s urgent.  Do you know where I’m supposed to be working?”

He nodded.  “There’s an operations room back in the admin building, I’ll show you”.

I paused as the door closed, looking for a key, but the soldier shook his head.

“Won’t need to lock it, sir.  Nothing worth stealing anyway”.

I nodded and followed him as he led me back to the admin building, the sun pleasant now that I wasn’t breaking my back under its glare.  As we reached the reception area, he turned the opposite direction from the conference room where I’d met the secretary and led me along another corridor to a large steel door which stood slightly ajar, the electronic keypad next to it now useless and replaced by two hulking soldiers with pistols holstered at their waists.

They nodded at my guard and stared at me, then stepped aside and let us pass.

The door opened into a large room, which by the shape and size of it I guessed once housed some kind of command and control centre.

There were still banks of monitors to one side, but anything electronic had been removed and now all the desks were littered with paper while uniformed staff sorted through stacks of reports, shipment details and whatever else they had to deal with.

It took me a moment to realise that all the staff in here bar two or three were women, the other men clearly holding positions of authority as they walked up and down checking work and signing off on orders.

A small number of women stood at ease just inside the door, but before I could wonder at their purpose one of them was handed a sheaf of papers and she took off out of the door at a jog, relaying them to wherever they needed to go.

The whole room smacked of military efficiency, and I was acutely aware that I stuck out like a sore thumb.

As I stood there uncertainly, a man with three golden pips emblazoned on his chest tab strode over and smiled, sticking his hand out.

“Malcolm King, I presume. I’m Captain Barnes, I run the command centre.  The Secretary said you’d be coming, your desk is this way”.

He led me to a small area by the far wall already stacked high with papers, a pad, pencil and half a dozen pens set neatly in the middle.

“Hope you can do without typing”, he said with a smile, “believe it or not we’ve still got some old typewriters in storage but we’ve yet to find any ribbons for them”.

“This will do fine”, I said, finding the buzzing chatter of the room strange after two days of working in silence. 

“Good”.  Barnes pointed to a nearby desk where several soldiers were lined up with mugs in hand.  “Tea and coffee over there, help yourself whenever you want it.  There’s a toilet over in the corner, but if you need a number two then you need to use the chemical loo outside.  Lunch is served in the canteen from twelve until two, I’ll make sure someone shows you the way.  Anything you’re not sure of, come and find me”.

He smiled and walked away, immediately surrounded by staff who needed his signature or advice, leaving me to sit at my desk, the empty pad waiting for me to fill it with words that would explain to those outside why they had to work from dawn until dusk in horrific conditions while I sat in a pleasant room with everything I needed to keep me comfortable within arm’s reach.

Chapter 38

By the time I was summoned for lunch several hours later my pad was still empty.  The luxury of just sitting in a comfortable room and doing nothing was too tempting, and I whiled away the hours by thinking up ways to escape.  Part of me was thinking how nice it would be to stay here, if Melody were also with us, but the larger part of me balked at being part of any organisation that treated some so badly while pampering those towards the top.

Lunch was a cheerful affair, served in a utilitarian but airy canteen with large windows that looked out over the field of tents, people chatting to each other and laughing while they ate.

I sat alone, unwilling to try and force my way into any of the already established groups, and for their part the soldiers were happy to leave me to it.

The food was excellent, grilled chicken and fresh greens with a cheese sauce that was rich enough it made my stomach hurt, a far cry from the basic stodge they’d given us in the mess tent.  I ate every guilty mouthful, each bite a reminder of the difference, and wondered how I was ever going to write something that would keep those out there happy with their lot.  The whole situation very much put me in mind of concentration camps despite the logic of necessity that drove the Secretary, and I again resolved to break free as soon as I could.

A chair scraped back next to me and I looked up at the unexpected interruption to see Emily, dressed again in combat fatigues but still frowning as she sat next to me with a full tray of food.

My heart leapt when I saw her, but her eyes bored into mine with an intensity that choked off the words of greeting before I could utter them.

“So you sold out”, she said flatly, the words making my stomach churn.

I looked around to make sure that no one was close enough to hear and shook my head.

“No, of course not!  But what good could I do out there, building fences and being watched every second?  This was the only way I could see of getting us out of here”.

I could see that she wanted to believe me, and I desperately needed her to.

“This isn’t much better”, I hurried on before she could speak, “but at least we’ve got a little freedom now.  That’s why I asked for you”.

She raised an eyebrow at that.  “Oh really?  The guard they sent was quite clear that I was some kind of prize when he showed me to your room”.

I shook my head.  “No, it was nothing like that, I promise. I may have fibbed to the Secretary and implied we were a couple, but only because he’d be suspicious if I asked for you to be reassigned for any other reason”.

She sighed and shrugged, then began shovelling food into her mouth.

“Whatever”, she said around a mouthful, “so long as you promise me we’re getting out of here”.

“Of course we are, I just need to figure out how, is all”. 

“Well anything has to be better than serving food in the mess tent”, she said, stabbing angrily at her chicken.  “This place is a fucking joke”.

I pushed my plate away, no longer hungry.

“I thought, well, I thought you might be pleased being back with the army”.  I regretted it the instant I said it as her eyes flashed and she waved her fork under my nose.

“Happy?  This isn’t my army, it’s a group of misogynistic thugs working for a pencil pusher with delusions of grandeur”.

I looked around hurriedly to see if anyone had heard the outburst.

“Keep your voice down”, I muttered, “unless you want them to send you back to the mashed potato.  And what do you mean, misogynistic?”

She glowered at me but lowered her voice.  “Have you not seen what’s going on here?  Have you seen a single woman armed?”

I looked around again, this time studying the soldiers in the canteen.  All the men had pistols holstered at their belts or rifles slung on their backs, but now that she mentioned it I couldn’t see a single female soldier with anything more threatening than a pencil.

“No, but surely some of the patrols have women in them?  They can’t be so flush with soldiers that they can afford not to”.

She shook her head.  “I volunteered for the patrols, thinking that maybe I could find a way to get us out of here, but I was told that women were too valuable to risk on the front line”.

“Too valuable?”  I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what they meant, and her next words confirmed it.

“We’re baby machines.  If we’re going to rebuild the population then they need us safe, where they can keep an eye on us.  It’s like living in the dark ages”.

“And they told you this?”

“Well not in so many words, but it was pretty clear what they meant”.

“But there are women on the work gangs”.

“Gangs which are always under guard and never leave the perimeter.  I suspect that any sign of danger would have them all locked away somewhere safe.  It’s a teenage boy’s fantasy come true.  Lots of guns, some fort building and a supply of captive women”.

As I looked again at what was happening I realised she was right, making me even more determined to escape, and never bring Melody within a hundred miles of this place if I could help it.

“What about everyone else here?”  I asked, “shouldn’t we warn them?”

“What, and risk warning the wrong person and being sent out to the fields, or worse?  No, let’s just worry about our own necks for now”.

I nodded and stood.  “Well, I’d better get back to my desk, I’ve been here too long already.  What are you going to do now?”

She shrugged and picked up her plate of half eaten food, placing it on the tray with mine.  “I’m to report to Captain Barnes, I’ll be working on intel coming in from the scouts to help plan missions”.

“Well he seems like a good enough chap, I met him earlier.  At least we’ll be working in the same area, nice of them to put us together”.

She nodded but looked less than thrilled.

“Yeah, you could look at it that way, or you could think of it as them being able to keep an eye of us both with only half the manpower.  Doesn’t seem so nice that way, does it?”

I waited as she put the tray on a rack near the door, then we walked together down the hall to the command centre.  Once inside, she reported to Captain Barnes and was allocated a desk, while I returned to my own and the empty pad waiting for me to spin lies for a man I was coming to loathe.

Chapter 39

My friends, colleagues, comrades in adversity, we find ourselves in a time of unprecedented upheaval and uncertainty.  Many of us have lost loved ones, our homes and our way of life but we must strive now for the future, putting those losses behind us as we look to our survival and that of our country.  Life has become hard, I know, but that hardship will strengthen us for the trials ahead…

I dropped the pencil onto the pad and stared at what I’d just written, resisting the urge to tear the page off and throw it onto the growing pile in the bin under my desk.  I was writing propaganda, and bad propaganda at that, the thought of the Secretary using my words to cajole the unwilling populace into servitude almost enough to make me physically sick.

Still, I reminded myself, if I finished the day with nothing to show for the hours at my desk I might very well find myself back out in the fields as a not-so-gentle reminder that my position was tenuous at best, so I picked up the pencil and got back to work as Captain Barnes strode past my desk for the fourth or fifth time since lunch.

Each of us here has our part to play, every job essential no matter how menial it seems.  Future generations will look back on our sacrifice and know that what we did, we did for them, indeed they will only exist because we did not sit down and…

I slammed the pencil down and stood, heading over to the coffee table and pouring a cup of the strong black liquid.  I stirred in three sugars just because I could, then crossed back to my desk and stared down at the half dozen lines that hadn’t yet found their way into the bin.

It was all starting to feel a little unreal, as if I might wake up in the tent next to Emily and realise this had been nothing but a bad dream.

I took a sip of the coffee and grimaced.  It had to be real, I thought, not even I could dream up coffee as bad as this.

I looked over to where Emily sat, poring through reports and making occasional notes on a pad of her own. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, but even so her dimples were still in evidence and it was all I could do not to cross over and rest my hands on her shoulders, ease the tension out of her stiff back with my thumbs.

“Writer’s block?”

I jumped, slopping hot coffee across my hand as Barnes appeared behind me, silent as a ghost until he’d spoken.

“Christ, don’t do that!”

“Sorry.  You were miles away.  How’s the speech going?”

I gestured towards the bin, scalded hand tucked it my armpit.

“As you can see, if there was a prize for starting again I’d be the only contender”.

“I understand.  I used to write poetry, you know”.

I stared at the officer, square jawed, broad shouldered and annoyingly handsome in his uniform as he admitted to something that was surely a rather un-soldierly pursuit.

“Really?”

He nodded.  “War stuff mostly, but a few love poems here and there too”.  He laughed and shook his head. “What a bloody disaster they were”.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you been in the army?”

“About eight years.  Joined up and they put me through University, then Sandhurst for training.  Seen a lot since then, never expected to be watching the end of the world though”.

“It’s hardly the end of the world”, I said, “just not such good news for us.  For all we know this has happened dozens of times before and the world just kept going”.

“Perhaps”, he shrugged, “doesn’t help us much either way now, does it?”

I nodded and turned back to my desk, assuming the conversation was over, but Barnes touched my shoulder and leaned close.

“Do you mind if I ask you something?”  He said quietly.

“Of course not, ask away”.  I was intrigued, Barnes was the last person I expected to be sharing confidences with.

“The Colonel told me that when you and your friend Emily were rounded up, you were travelling up north to find your daughter, and that you’d been on the road for days, is that true?”

“Yeah, pretty much, why?”

He perched on the edge of my desk and gestured for me to take my chair.

“How bad is it out there, I mean really?  We hear things here, of course, and there are the reports”, he paused and waved a hand around the room, “but it’s hard to get a proper feel for what’s going on from those”.

I thought carefully before speaking, trying to put everything I’d seen into words.

“It’s bad”, I said finally.  “At first it was just a few people looting, those that survived the fires, but then the shops were emptied and people started fighting over what was left.  We’d reached Maidenhead before we were attacked for what we were carrying and…”, I looked over at Emily, “other things”.

He followed my eyes and nodded.  “That’s what we’re trying to avoid by doing this”, he said, but I wasn’t sure which of us he was trying to convince.  “Things might be tough right now, but at least we’ve got some kind of order”.

“Things are a damn sight tougher for those out there”.  The words came out before I could help myself and I flinched, waiting for the tirade that was sure to follow, but Barnes only nodded again.

“True, and that’s what…”  He stopped and shook his head, then stood.

“Anyway”, he said brusquely, “I’m sure you have plenty to be getting on with, mustn’t keep you”.

He smiled briefly and hurried away before I could say anything else, leaving me with the distinct impression that he was troubled by what was happening here and desperate to talk to someone about it.

Filing the information away for future use, I turned back to my desk and began writing, only to tear off the piece of paper a few moments later and throw it in the bin.

Sighing, I pulled the pad closer and started again.

My friends in adversity…

Chapter 40

We stopped for dinner in the canteen before heading back to our room, Emily and I followed at a discreet distance by our ever-present guard. 

Emily had been distracted during the meal, and barely said a word on the way back to the accommodation block, which worried me.  I wanted to recapture the comfortable friendship we’d had on the journey when it had been just us, but I worried that too much had changed and I didn’t know where to begin.

We bumped into several officers in the hallways, a few of whom gave us strange looks but no one challenged us.

I opened the door and Emily stepped inside.  I went to follow but paused and looked at the guard. 

“Do you need a chair or something?”  I asked, but he shook his head.

“No, my relief will be along shortly, he can get one if he needs one”.

I nodded and closed the door, then turned to see Emily sitting on the edge of the bed with several pieces of paper clutched in her hand.

“What’s that?”  I asked, very aware of how small the room was with the two of us in it.

“Oh sit down”, she said as I hovered by the door, “I won’t bite”.

I shrugged and sat next to her on the bed, our legs almost touching.

“So what is it?”

She passed me the bundle of papers and I squinted down at the tiny words scrawled across the first page.  It was a list of sites that showed possible stores of food and water, with today’s date at the top.

I scanned the page and looked back at her.

“What am I looking for?”

“Turn the page”.

I did, and saw yesterday’s date with another list of sites, most of which had been crossed through in pencil.

“And?”

“Keep going”.

I flicked through to the last page and stopped as two things immediately caught my attention.  The first was that it was a printout.  That in itself was enough to make me glance at the door to make sure it was firmly shut, but when I looked back at the paper it was the second thing that made my eyes widen.

“This is dated the 12th September!”  It was an effort to keep my voice down.

Emily nodded.  “That’s right.  Two days before the flare hit”.

“But that means…”

“That someone knew about it before it was going to happen.  Did you not wonder how they got this whole thing in place so quickly?  It’s only been a week, but already they’ve got almost a thousand acres fenced off and nearly three thousand civilians under lock and key.  I thought this whole setup felt wrong, somehow.  Now we know why”.

I stood and began to pace, only able to take a few steps before turning the other way.

“It’s not just wrong, it’s criminal!  How many people might have been saved if they’d known?” 

Emily shook her head tiredly.  “We’ll never know.  The question is, what do we do know we have that?”  She pointed at the paper clenched in my fist.

“It doesn’t change anything”, I said, “not for us.  We still need to get out of here as soon as we can.  Speaking of that, I think Barnes might be persuaded to help somehow”.

“Really?  How?”

I told her about the conversation we’d had that afternoon and she made a noncommittal noise.

“It could be true”, she said, “but it could be some kind of test, see if you’re committed, so to speak”.

I shook my head.  “I don’t think he’s that good an actor. I’m used to listening to people, remember.  I think he’s genuine”.

“So how does it help us?”

“I don’t know”.  I stopped pacing and dropped to the bed, making the springs squeak.

“Well at least you smell better than you did yesterday”, she said with a ghost of a smile, “can you believe they’ve managed to get the showers working?”

I nodded.  “Yeah, gas apparently”.

We both stared at each other as the words came out, the idea forming in my mind mirrored in her eyes.

“And what’s the problem with gas?”  She asked quietly.

I raised a warning finger and walked to the door, pressing my ear against the thin wood and listening carefully.  I couldn’t hear anything on the other side, but that could mean anything.

“Fancy a walk?”  I asked loudly, and Emily nodded.

I pulled the door open quickly, half expecting to find the guard with his own ear against the door, but instead of the man from earlier another soldier lounged against the far wall, a man in his twenties with arms like tree trunks and small, piggy eyes that were too close together under his shaven hair.

“I assume we’re allowed to go for a walk?”  I asked, stepping out into the corridor with Emily close behind, the papers no longer in sight.

He straightened and shrugged, a movement like boulders rubbing together.

“Don’t see why not”.

He followed us out into the yard, keeping us in sight but allowing us enough privacy to talk, which put my mind at ease.  Had he heard anything suspicious when we’d been talking in the room, he would have been on our heels.

“Where shall we go?”  I asked, looking out over the playing field and seeing the crews hard at work while the sun was still above the horizon.

“Not that way”, she said, leading me towards the other side of the buildings so that we walked between them and the high fence that separated the base from the nearby village.

I nodded at the small houses.  “I guess they were the first ones to be brought under the Secretary’s wing”.

“Probably.  What do you make of him?”

“The Secretary?  I think he’s a self-serving, public school idiot with more power than sense”.  I stared at the empty houses as we walked, the blank windows looking uncomfortably like they were watching eyes, stripped of hope and left to do nothing but wait for the ravages of time.  I shivered at the thought.

“There we are”, Emily said, nodding towards a small building with a white gas tank next to it, a series of pipes connecting the two as they disappeared inside the brickwork.

“Great, now what?”

She glanced up at me.  “Why do I have to come up with all the ideas?”

“Because you’re an engineer.  I’m just a puking journo, remember?”

I smiled as I said it and got an answering grin.  It was like the sun coming up, and heat flared in my stomach.

Perhaps she felt it too, because she suddenly looked down and cleared her throat.

“Right then, let’s walk a little bit further and then head back, eh?”

I nodded and we carried on, passing the small building without showing too much interest for the sake of our constant shadow.

We walked on for another few minutes, then rounded the far side of the admin building and headed back, taking our time in the cool evening air.

I didn’t have much to say, but just being in Emily’s company was enough.  I longed to reach out and take her hand but I was too scared of being turned down, or worse, laughed at, so instead I contented myself with walking close enough that every so often my hand brushed her arm, and convinced myself that was enough.

The sun was beginning to set as we reached the accommodation block, a golden-orange disk slipping over the horizon and turning everything to amber.  I wondered for a moment how something so beautiful could be so deadly, but then wasn’t that often the way with nature?

When we returned to the room the door was ajar.  A stab of worry hit me, even though I had nothing personal to steal, but as I hurried in I saw that a large pile of books and papers had been left in an untidy stack next to the bed.

Emily closed the door behind her.

“What the hell is that?”

“No idea”.  I picked up the first book and saw that it was a 2013 diary, the red cover worn and the gilt lettering already flaking.

I opened it and flicked through, reading an entry here and there until I realised what it was.

Dropping it back on the pile I picked up a small notepad, scanning the pages until I was sure.

“He was bloody serious!”

“What?”  She asked, picking up the discarded diary and reading a few pages.

“Is this the Secretary’s?”

I nodded.  “It sure is.  I’d hoped he was joking when he told me he wanted me to write his biography.  He must have been making notes and collecting things for years.  Who in hell brings their notes to an end-of-the-world party?”

“The man in charge, I guess”.

“Yeah, well at least we know how we’re starting the fire now”.

She laughed, a delicate peal that made me smile in return.

“So what happens after we’ve started the fire?”  She asked, the laughter fading as quickly as it had come.

“We use the distraction to find a vehicle and don’t stop driving until we run out of fuel, I guess”.

She frowned.  “Doesn’t sound like much of a plan”.

I shrugged.  “If you’ve got a better one then I’m all ears”.

“Not off the top of my head.  When do you want to try it?”

“I don’t know.  I suppose we’ll just have to wait until we can find the right moment, then make a break for it”.

Only, as it turned out, we didn’t have to wait after all.

Chapter 41

I was woken by someone pounding on the door.  I sat up, almost falling out of the narrow bed as Emily shifted beside me.  We’d fallen asleep pressed against each other in the cramped confines, but by unspoken agreement neither of us had done more than rest an arm on the other.  Whatever might blossom between us one day, it wouldn’t happen here.

The room was pitch black and it took me a few seconds to get my bearings.

“I’m awake”, I called, and the door opened to show the outline of our guard in the eye-watering light of the LED lantern he held.

“You need to get up and get dressed”, he said shortly, “the Secretary needs you now”.

I felt Emily tense. The only reason I could think of for being woken in the middle of the night was the discovery that the paperwork she had stolen was missing, and we exchanged a worried glance as the guard set his lantern on the floor and closed the door.

As soon as he was gone I jumped out of bed and pulled my combats on.  We’d both worn underwear and T-shirts in bed, and as Emily swung her long legs out from under the blanket I tried not to stare.

“Does he mean both of us?”  She asked as she began to dress.

“No idea, but if I’m going, I want you there with me”.

She nodded and began to button her uniform shirt.

“Do you think it’s about this?”  She waved the papers at me.

“I don’t know, but I don’t see what else it can be about”.  I reached out and took the bundle, stuffing it deep into the pile of notes the Secretary had left for me.  “Good luck to them finding it in that lot”.

In a few moments we were ready, and I opened the door with lantern in hand to find the guard almost hopping from foot to foot in the hallway.

“This way”, he said the moment he saw us, leading us out of the building without another word, clearly anxious to deliver his package.

The night sky was a riot of colour, the swirling snakes of blue, red and green almost taking my breath away with their beauty.  It drew my eyes even as we walked, shimmering curtains like a veil across the stars, brighter than a full moon.

A shout from outside the Admin building made me tear my eyes from the sky to see several Landrovers outside the offices, bonnets up and batteries being replaced while soldiers in battle gear hurried to and fro.

“What’s going on?”  I asked the guard, but he ignored me and picked up the pace instead, only halting when we reached the vehicles.

A soldier a few years older than me with the crown of a Major on his chest tab and a fierce expression under his Kevlar helmet accepted a salute from the guard and gestured at me irritably.

“You go in the second vehicle with the Secretary, but I’ve got no orders about her”.  He hiked a thumb as Emily as if she was a piece of luggage, instantly putting my back up.

“What’s your name?”  I demanded, suddenly tired of all this military posturing and following orders.

“Major Curtis”.

“Well, Major, I’m not sure what my official title is but I’m on the Secretary’s staff.  If I say she goes, she goes”.  I tried to look imposing as I spoke, forcing away the remembered reflection of dandelion hair and hollow eyes.

The Major looked at me for several long seconds and then shrugged.

“Fine.  Not worth the hold up to argue.  Second vehicle, if you please”.

I nodded and climbed into the rear of the second Landrover, wedging myself in between two soldiers and a man in a civilian suit with a hard expression and a tiny pin on his lapel that I’d seen somewhere before.

Two more men with suits were in the vehicle, one driving while the other sat on his own on the seat just behind, with space next to him for the Secretary.

Emily sat next to me, and suspecting I wouldn’t get any answers from the other passengers I chose to wait until the secretary arrived for an explanation about our midnight ride.

I didn’t have to wait long.  Outside, soldiers leapt into vehicles and then the Secretary himself came out, a Kevlar vest strapped over his shirt and an incongruous-looking helmet perched on his head with the rim touching his glasses.

He climbed in and looked around, nodding at me before slapping the driver on the shoulder.

“Are we good, Geoff?”  He asked, sounding wired.

The driver nodded.  “We’re good sir.  Following the Major’s lead until we get there”.

As one the vehicles pulled away, soldiers on the gate lifting the barrier and dropping it again the moment the last vehicle was through.

The Secretary half-turned in his seat to look at me, frowning slightly when he saw Emily but not passing comment.

“I guess you want to know where we’re going, eh?”  He asked, his hands fidgeting with the top of his vest.

I nodded.  “Wouldn’t say no”.

“About an hour ago, one of our patrols ran into another army unit. They had the audacity to tell our men to stand down and submit to their authority, claimed they were acting on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister”.

I felt a sudden surge of hope.  If there were other, higher members of the cabinet out there then the Secretary’s reign could be cut thankfully short.

“What happened?”

“What do you think happened?  Our men refused and then some hothead on the other side started shooting.  We had greater numbers and the upper hand, of course, but now the others are holed up in a petrol station and we can’t dig them out.  One of ours was sent back for reinforcements, so I’m going out there to wave the olive branch and see if we can’t bring them over to us”.

“But surely if they are working for the Deputy Prime Minister then we’ve got a duty to submit to his lead?”  I asked, instantly regretting it the Secretary spluttered with rage.

“Have you ever met the man?”  He demanded. “Edwin Collins couldn’t lead ants to a jam pot!  He’s a pencil-pusher of the worst order, and one of the coalition, not even a proper politician if you ask me!”

“So why am I here?”

He took a deep breath, visibly forcing himself to be calm before continuing.

“You’re here because I want every word I say recorded.  Whatever happens tonight, I need everyone to know that every decision I make is for the good of this country, and not for personal power”.

I nodded as if I believed him.  “Of course.  I’ll make sure I record everything”.

“Good”, he said, turning back to look out of the windscreen, “see that you do”.

The roar of the engine and the vibration of metal on metal drowned out any attempts at further conversation as we tore through country lanes at breakneck speed.

Judging from the number of abandoned cars that had been forced up on the side of the road, I guessed that the army had already cleared routes that led to and from the camp in case of situation like this where speed was of the essence.

We’d been driving for about half an hour when I began to hear faint popping sounds, a little like fireworks in the distance, but as we drew closer the cracks became louder, more sustained and I realised that we were listening to gunfire.

The convoy pulled to a halt in the middle of nowhere and I craned my neck to get a better view of what was going on, but all I could see was the back of the first Landrover as it disgorged soldiers who immediately fanned out around the vehicles, rifles pointing towards the hedges that lined the road.

“Out out out!”  The soldier nearest the rear door yelled, and pushed it open to jump into the road and join the defensive formation.

Emily, the suited man and I got out more slowly, the man joining the two other suits to form a protective ring around the Secretary as his shoes touched tarmac.

The gunfire was louder now but sporadic, occasional bursts ripping through the air as ghostly light from the Aurora bathed the scene.

A tired, filthy soldier ran up to the Secretary and saluted, his uniform stinking of cordite and his face smeared with dirt.

“We’re holding them sir, but they’re good.  I’m not sure it’s safe for you to come any closer yet”.

The secretary nodded as nervous sweat dripped from under his helmet, his eyes wide as he flinched from each burst of gunfire.

“How many casualties?”

“Seven, sir”.

“How many of ours?”

The soldier glanced down and then back up before speaking.

“Uh, seven sir”.

“What?”

“Like I said sir, they’re good”, the soldier said hurriedly.  “they’re not regular army”.

“What do you mean?”  The Secretary’s eyes were bulging behind his glasses, no doubt as he saw part of his dream of a country unified under his leadership slip away.

“They claimed to be 21 SAS sir, out of London.  Said they made their way to the barracks when the flare hit, then tabbed on foot to Downing Street through the fires.  Tough bastards, sir”.

I could hear the admiration in his tone, and wondered how he could justify fighting people that should be on the same side, particularly those he held in such high regard.

Even I had heard of 21 SAS, a reserve regiment with several bases, one of which was in London somewhere, and I could well imagine them running through the fires if that’s what they put their minds to.

“What’s the situation now?”  The Secretary demanded, fists clenched.

“They’ve taken cover in a petrol station.  They’ve got a sniper on the roof and perhaps a dozen men inside.  They’re well-armed too, sir, plenty of ammo.  We won’t dig them out in a hurry without a lot more men”.

“Fuck it!”  The Secretary swore.  “Do you think they’ll talk?”

“Maybe to you sir, do you want me to see if they’ll agree to a ceasefire?”

He nodded.  “Do it.  But I want their guarantee that I’ll not be targeted.  Remind them that I’m a cabinet member”.

The soldier saluted and hurried off while the Secretary paced up and down in the road, clenching and unclenching his fists as he waited for an answer.

Chapter 42

Ten long minutes later the same soldier came running back, grinding to a halt in front of the Secretary and almost bowling him over.

“Sir”, he threw a hasty salute, “they’ve agreed to talk sir”.

The Secretary nodded, but made no move to step forward.

“Are you sure they won’t shoot?”

The soldier looked aggrieved.  “They agreed to a ceasefire, sir!”

“Yes, but can we trust them?”

“They’re British troops, not terrorists, sir.  You should be fine as long as you don’t upset them”.  I realised then that the Secretary may have the troops’ loyalty, but only because of his position.  They were following orders because that’s what they did, but from what the soldier had just said I suspected that they might just loathe him as much as I did.

I thought back over what I knew of the Secretary since he’d come to power, brought in to replace Phillip Hammond, who had been far too much a supporter of the armed forces and not harsh enough in making the cuts the government deemed necessary to save money.

Terrence Harvey-Smith, however, had had no ties to the people he was brought in to oversee, and had slashed and slashed at budgets until not a single man or woman in the armed forces hadn’t felt the pressure of his reign in one way or another.

“Uh, with respect, I’m not sure you’re the right person to talk to them”, I said, an idea forming as I stepped closer.

Emily glared daggers at me but I didn’t have time to explain anything now.

The Secretary stared at me as if I’d just insulted his mother.

“What do you mean?”  He said, his voice low and dangerous.

I leaned closer, noting the way the men in suits slid hands under their jackets while their eyes tracked my every movement.

“Sir”, I said, hating to use the honorific but hoping it would mollify him, “do you really think that the man who cut the armed forces almost in half, however necessary, should be the one to step into the sights of an army sniper?”

The angry retort died on his lips, I could almost see it tumbling away as his brain worked through the ramifications of what I’d just said.

He leaned closer, our noses almost touching, and I could smell his fear.

“What do you suggest?”  He asked quietly.

“Send me.  I’m a talker, sir, it’s what I do.  Well, that and writing, but I think they might respond better if I explain to them all the good you’re trying to do.  And besides, if you want it written up afterwards that you did all the talking, I’ll be able to do.  History is written by the victor”.

His eyes searched my face for a long minute, but he finally nodded.

“Do it”.  He said, then waved the soldier over.  “Malcolm is going to talk to them.  Take him up there, but get a squad to move around the back of that petrol station.  If things don’t go the way we want then throw everything you have at it”.

The man gestured for me to follow, and with a last quick glance at Emily’s furious face I hurried away into the darkness after the soldier as he led me around a bend and out of sight of the vehicles.

As we rounded the corner, the petrol station came into view, as did the detritus of battle.

Several soldiers still lay where they’d fallen, pools of blood glistening as they reflected the distorted colours from the sky.  Others were huddled in the hedges and the ditch to one side of the road, while several more took cover behind a bullet-riddled Landrover that blocked both lanes.

Another vehicle, a pale blue people-carrier, was parked next to one of the pumps in the dark forecourt, a hose lying next to it with the other end snaking away into the darkness.

“Permission to approach?”  My guide yelled, making me jump.

“Advance one and be recognised”, came an answering shout from inside the station shop.

“Good luck”.  The soldier clapped me on the shoulder and melted back into the darkness.  I swallowed the lump in my throat and stepped forward, raising my hands and walking slowly towards the vehicle as I imagined the scope of a sniper trained on my forehead.  Sweat was pouring from me, soaking my back as I approached.

“Stop there!”  The voice came from nowhere but I obeyed it instantly, freezing in place.

“Turn slowly, keep your hands up”.

I did so, performing a slow pirouette before coming back around to face the dark windows of the shop.

“Who are you?”  The voice was male, and sounded tough as old boots, a cold edge to it that sent shivers up my spine.

“My name is Malcolm King, I’m a journalist”.

“What’s a journalist doing here?”

I shrugged.  “Same as everyone else, trying to survive”.

“I’m stepping out now, keep your hands up until I tell you otherwise.  You drop them, we shoot.  You make any signals, we shoot.  Clear?”

“Very”.

A shadow detached itself from the deeper shadows to the side of the building, slowly resolving into the shape of a man in black combat gear with webbing of the same colour over the top, the pouches full to bursting.  I didn’t recognise the type of rifle he was carrying but it looked dangerous, black, stubby and pointed right at me.

Scuffed boots stopped several feet away from mine, and as the man stepped out from the shadows of the forecourt roof, I saw that his face had been daubed in black and green so that the only feature that stood out were his flinty eyes.

“Are you carrying a weapon?”  He asked quietly.

“No”.

“Lift your T-shirt and turn again”.

I did so, and he finally grunted. 

“Ok, drop your arms”.

I did, but held a hand out to shake.  “Malcolm King”.

He stared at it for a moment, then shrugged and slung his rifle, although I noticed he pushed it far enough back that he could reach his holstered pistol in an instant, then took the proffered hand.

“First Lieutenant Chris Rogers, 21 SAS”.  He let go of my hand and took hold of his rifle again.  “Suppose you want to tell me what’s going on, eh?”

“I guess so.  Uh, did I hear right that you’ve got Edwin Collins safe?”

He nodded.  “He was the only one we could find.  Everyone else was either dead in the fires or made their own way out”.

“Whereabouts are you staying?”

Rogers gave me an incredulous look.

“You expect me to tell you that?”

I shrugged and sized up the man in front me.  Although I couldn’t be sure, I had the feeling that he was one of those straight-down-the-line men who would smell bullshit a mile away.  Taking a deep breath, I decided to risk everything on one throw of the dice.

“To be honest, I’m not sure how this is supposed to go.  Look, I’ll be straight with you.  The Secretary has built a camp over hundreds of acres with an army base as its nucleus.  He’s gathered thousands of civilians and he’s using them as slave labour to fortify the place and start producing food while he sends his troops out to secure supplies.  It’s horrific, and it needs stopping”.

Rogers stared at me, face impassive as he processed the information.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I’m hoping that the Deputy PM isn’t doing the same thing, and that you’ll understand how important it is that we don’t lose our humanity while trying to save our lives”.

“Where is this camp?”

“I don’t know for sure, but it’s not far away.  It’s an old airfield”.

“What’s the name of the army base?”

I tried to remember the name on the sign but it wouldn’t come to me.

“It’s run by a Colonel Tibbett if that helps?”

He nodded.  “Abingdon Dalton barracks.  It’s a logistics base, how convenient for them”.

“Isn’t it though?”

“How many men has he got?”

I shrugged, wishing I’d thought to bring Emily.  “Three, maybe four hundred, I think”.

“Any idea what his plans are?”

“You mean apart from running the country?  I asked him on the way here if we shouldn’t submit to the Deputy PM’s authority, but he told me the guy was an idiot so I guess he won’t let go without a fight”.

“Well if he wants one of those, we’ll give him one”.  For the first time since we’d met, I saw a flash of emotion in Roger’s eyes and it was all anger.  “There’s a chain of command and he bloody knows it”.

“There’s more”, I said, hoping that I was making the right decision by telling this complete stranger everything.

“Go on”.

“My friend Emily, she discovered something yesterday.  She was working on lists of possible supply sites and she found one that dated back to two days before the flare”.

“You what?”

I nodded.  “Someone knew it was going to happen.  If information like that were to reach the government, who would be the first person to find out?”

Rogers ground his teeth.  “Any project advanced enough to know what was going to hit us would be run by the military, so it would go through the Defence Secretary.  No bloody wonder he just happened to find himself at a Logistics base when it all kicked off!”

His hands tightened on his rifle, and for one terrible moment I thought he was going to break the ceasefire right there with me still stuck in the middle, but he forced his hands to relax.

“Thank you Malcolm”, he said, “this is crucial intel.  I need to get back to the PM with it, see what he wants to do”.

“They’ve got a squad moving around behind the petrol station”, I said, remembering, “so if you try to get away then they’ll cut you down”.

Rogers grinned suddenly, making him look surprisingly youthful.

“No they won’t.  While we’ve been talking my men have been slipping out into the woods.  Anyone tries to follow us and they’ll have a nasty surprise.  You’re welcome to come with us if you want?”

I shook my head.  “I’d love to, but Emily is still with them, and I can’t go anywhere without her”.

He nodded and shook my hand.  “Well, if you don’t mind going back and telling the Secretary that we’re considering our options, I’d be very grateful.  It should give us time to get away.  And if there’s anything else we can do, now is the time to ask”.

“I don’t suppose you could create some kind of distraction, could you?”  I asked hopefully, and was surprised to hear him laugh.

“Now that”, he said as he stepped backwards into the shadows, “just happens to be our speciality”.

Chapter 43

“What did they say?”  The Secretary demanded the moment I was within earshot.

“I put our side across”, I lied smoothly, “and he’s asked for some time to consider it”.

“Do you think they’ll come over?”

I shrugged.  “He seemed like a sensible man, I reckon he’ll realise which way the wind is blowing and act accordingly”.

His eyes narrowed at that, and I forced myself to remember that whatever this man was, he wasn’t stupid.

“I explained how important it was that we don’t waste resources fighting each other when there’s so little left”, I said hurriedly, “and he promised to come back to us within quarter of an hour”.

He nodded at that, mollified.  “Well it’s not as though they can slip away, we have the place surrounded”.

He turned to the Major.  “Curtis, assume command.  If we receive no answer within fifteen minutes then we’re going in”.

The other man nodded and hurried away, taking the other soldiers with him apart from the drivers who kept their vehicles idling to prevent the batteries draining.

“Did he say how many men they had?”  The Secretary pressed, but I shook my head.

“He didn’t give anything away, I’m afraid.  He did agree that he didn’t want more violence, however”.

“Well that’s very much up to him seeing the light, isn’t it. We can’t go having rogue units zipping about the countryside stealing our resources, now, can we?”

I could have driven a truck through the holes in his logic but wisely chose not to say anything.

As the Secretary called another soldier over and began detailing orders, I slipped back towards where Emily leaned against the nearest vehicle.

“What the hell was that about?”  She demanded in a low voice.

“Making friends”, I said just as quietly.  “And with any luck getting us away from here.  Their leader promised us a distraction, so if something happens get ready to act”.

“Something being what, exactly?”

I shrugged and spread my hands.  “No idea, but I think it’ll be big”.

I was imagining some kind of explosion possibly, charges set up to go off inside the petrol station or something equally flamboyant, but when the distraction came it surprised us all.

Fifteen minutes came and went, and the Major sent a runner back to the Secretary to confirm the order to storm the building.

The Secretary strode forward impatiently to get a view of the petrol station himself, but only got a few yards when something small and fast tore through the night air, his Kevlar helmet flying off his head as the sound of a distant shot reached us and he fell to the ground, screaming.

“Ambush!”  The cry went up even as the soldiers opened fire, pouring bullets into the surrounding hedgerows with a roar that seemed to shake the very earth, the night suddenly alive with muzzle flashes.

I stood and watched in amazement, unsure if we truly were under attack or if this was the distraction we’d been promised.

“Come on!”  Emily grabbed my shoulder and spun me in a half-circle as she sprinted towards the last Landrover, the driver already turning the vehicle in preparation for a quick getaway.

“Orders!”  Emily snapped through the open window, and the driver, drilled by years of practice to obey instantly, stopped the vehicle and leaned over to hear what she had to say.

She barely slowed as she reached through the window, grabbing his un-helmeted head and slamming it hard into the door frame.  He cried out in pain and she did it a second time, then tore the door open and pulled him, stunned, to the ground.

“Get in”, she shouted over the gunfire as she grabbed his sidearm and vaulted into the driver’s seat.

I jumped in the back, and by the time I had the door closed she was already off down the road, accelerator flat to the floor.

I kept low, expecting shots through the back windscreen at any moment, but none came and after a few moments I straightened.

“Are we being followed?”  Emily called over the noise of the engine.  I looked back over my shoulder, watching for any tell-tale lights but saw nothing.

“I think we’re ok”, I said, climbing awkwardly into the front between the seats.  “Thank you”.

“For what?”  She didn’t look over, too intent on keeping us on the road in the dark.

“For acting so quickly.  Had it been down to me I’d probably still be standing there trying to work out what was happening”.

“You’re welcome.  Good distraction by the way, that was one hell of a shot, whoever fired it”.

I nodded.  “I was expecting them to blow the petrol station up”.

“What, and waste all the petrol in the tanks?  Not likely”.

“So what now?”

“We head north again.  Let’s see how far this heap of junk will get us, maybe find some diesel somewhere if we get too low”.  She flicked the fuel gauge and I saw that it was showing about half a tank.  I assumed that was good news, then I remembered how thirsty Landrovers tended to be.

“How long do you think it’ll take us to get to Manchester from here?”  I asked, “can we do it in one run?”

She laughed.  “We’re not on foot anymore Malc, Manchester’s only about three hours away by car”.

After days of walking, it seemed almost inconceivable that we could get halfway across the country so quickly, and I realised how much my worldview had changed in the last week.

The thought that I might have my little girl in my arms before dawn was enough to bring tears to my eyes, even though we still had to find our way back through territory that we now had to consider hostile.

I looked back over my shoulder once more, still expecting to see some sign of pursuit but nothing moved on the road except us.  Perhaps, I mused, the Secretary was dead, and without him the soldiers were unsure what to do.

Emily glanced over at me and took a hand off the wheel long enough to give my arm a quick squeeze.

“You look shattered”, she said, “why don’t you try and get some sleep.  I’ll wake you when it’s your turn to drive”.

I nodded and settled down in the uncomfortable seat, the after-effects of the adrenaline making me feel tired to the bone.

Despite my excitement at the thought of seeing Melody again so soon, the motion of the vehicle was soon enough to lull me into a deep sleep as the miles rolled past.

Chapter 44

It was still dark when Emily nudged me awake, although the first tendrils of pre-dawn light were mingling with the vibrant colours from the aurora, making them fade as we turned towards the sun.

She’d stopped the vehicle by the side of the motorway, her face pinched with tiredness.

“You want me to take over?”  I said, stretching out a cramp in my calf.

“Please, I’m exhausted”.  She left the engine running as we swapped seats, and I pulled away, almost stalling when I dumped the clutch.

I pulled back out onto the road, wondering where we were.  There were a lot of abandoned vehicles dotted about, some just left where they had stopped, others where they had ploughed into other vehicles or the central reservation.

I looked over at Emily to see that she was already asleep, head tucked into one shoulder, so I kept my attention on the road and kept my speed to a steady fifty, figuring that would give me enough stopping should something unexpected loom out of the darkness.

It was almost twenty minutes before I saw a sign, telling me that we were approaching the junction of the M42.  That meant we were within spitting distance of Birmingham, and I began to search the horizon for any sign of the fires that had destroyed so many of the big cities.

A few minutes later I saw the slip road and took it, curving around onto the 42 and towards the M6 toll road.  Heading through the city would have been faster, but I had no idea how bad it was and I had no wish to drive into any trouble.

As the sky lightened, I saw a thick plume of smoke rising to the northeast, right above the city centre, and I knew I’d made the right choice.  If anyone was left they’d be starving by now, and our vehicle would be too tempting a target for them to pass up.

We made good time on the M42, then onto the M6 toll past the now defunct electronic tagging system, the tall buildings of Birmingham’s city centre visible to our left.

I could see several different plumes of smoke now, and I couldn’t help but wonder what was still burning after so many days.

My thoughts, as they often did when I had time to myself, turned to Melody.  I wondered if they were at her grandparents’ house, and if so how her mother had coped with the lack of amenities.  She’d always been one for getting her hair and nails done, sometimes as often as three times a week, never daring to so much as open the door to the postman without hours of makeup being carefully applied.

Thinking of Angie made my heart sink. I had to face the very real possibility that she would be coming back with us, her sharp voice harping on at me from the back seat as if the apocalypse were somehow my fault.

And then, of course, we couldn’t just leave Angie’s parents behind, and what had been a simple grab and run mission in my head was suddenly laid out for what it really was; a nightmare in which I carted my ex-inlaws halfway back across the country to the small cottage just outside Redhill.

It was almost enough to make me stop the car, but it would be worth it, all of it, just to have Melody safe.

I kept going as the sun climbed into the sky, fluffy white clouds dotted here and there like cotton wool.  It was another beautiful day, and had I not been so tired and worried I might have enjoyed it a little more.  Instead, I made and discarded plans for routes that would get us back to Ralph and Harriet while avoiding the whole Oxford area, realising that we would most likely have to drive the long way around the M25.

I was so caught up in my musings that I almost didn’t see the roadblock until it was too late, assuming that it was just a pile of cars strewn across most of the road.  It was only when a figure with a rifle stood on the roof of a truck and aimed his weapon at us that I realised what it was.

“Shit!”  I slammed the brakes on, causing Emily to bang painfully into the dashboard.

“Ow!  What the hell?”

I said nothing, but simply pointed at the two figures that approached us from the scrub at the side of the road.  Neither of them were armed, but the one with the rifle pointed at the windscreen was more than enough for me to discard any thoughts of trying to drive away.

“You have got to be shitting me”, Emily muttered, easing back the slide of her stolen pistol and making sure a round was chambered.  “What the hell do they want?”

The men approaching the car didn’t seem threatening, one of them even waving at us once he had our attention, but there’s something about having a gun pointed at you that makes you feel at a disadvantage, no matter how friendly someone seems.

Both men were dressed in police uniform, right down to black Kevlar vests and handcuffs sitting proud on their belts, but after the last week I knew we couldn’t take anything at face value.

The men were within a dozen feet of the vehicle when Emily rolled down her window.

“That’s close enough”, she called, “what do you want?”

One of them took a last step and shrugged.

“Just checking who you are”, he said with a smile, “we’ve not seen many working cars, and those few we have seen tend to be trouble”.

“Are you really police officers?”  The question was blunt but fair, and the man nodded.

“That we are.  We’re out of Stafford, a few miles up the road.  We’ve managed to get a fair sized group of people together, so we’ve got men on all the major roads making sure we turn trouble away before it gets to us, if you get my drift”.

Emily nodded.  “Yeah, I can understand that.  Look, we’re trying to get to Manchester, my friend’s little girl is up there.  Are we ok to go through?”

The man smiled again.  “Well you two don’t seem like trouble.  You’d be welcome to stop at the camp if you want a bite to eat to see you on your way?  It’s about a mile down the road”.

My stomach rumbled at the thought of food and Emily thanked him as he waved to the man with the rifle, who promptly jumped down off the truck.

I waved as I pulled away, and Emily took the pistol from where she’d had the tip of the barrel pressed against the inside of the door.

“That was unexpected”, I said as we drove through a narrow gap in the barricade, having to steer around another car set just back from the main group of vehicles.

“You’re telling me.  I automatically assumed it was an ambush, bloody good job I didn’t shoot him just to be on the safe side!”

“How close were you?”

“You don’t want to know”.

The camp was indeed only a mile or so down the road and visible from the Motorway.  A shantytown had sprung up around several old farm buildings that were enough like Ralph’s cottage to make me suddenly homesick.

I pulled onto a slip road and then took another left, finding a large metal gate at the top of a dirt track with a man and a woman guarding it with shotguns.

I wound down the window as they approached, guns held loosely but ready should they need them.

“Morning”, I said with a smile, “the police let us through, said it would be ok to stop for some food”.

“Where you headed?”  The woman asked, blowing on a stray lock of hair that fell across her face.

“Manchester”.

She nodded as if I’d passed some kind of test, then gestured to her companion who opened the gate and waved us through.

We bumped down the farm track and into the yard, slowing as a group of kids ran past shouting with  pleasure as they chased a bright red football across the concrete.

The sound of the vehicle brought more than a few curious faces to windows and doors as I pulled up.  A sea of tents had been set up just behind the main house, and more bright canvas could be seen inside a nearby barn, giving the place an almost festival air.

Half a dozen men and women came out of the house to greet us as we got out of the car, including a woman in police uniform with three pips on her shoulders and a huge man with an equally massive beard and a green wax jacket.

We introduced ourselves and were introduced in turn to the small group, but only the names of Lindsay, the Chief Inspector, and Max, the farmer whose land we were on, stuck.

“Where have you come from?”  Lindsay asked as we were shown into the kitchen and sat at a table where several other people were already eating.  The large room was crowded but there were still seats to spare as two men in grubby white aprons managed half a dozen pans on a stove almost identical to Harriet’s.

“I came from Brighton originally”, I said, “but we’ve been all over”.

Lindsay nodded.  “We’ve had quite a few people through, going north and south, where are you headed?”

“Manchester, I’ve got a daughter up there”.

She nodded, but I caught the quick glance she threw at Max, who shrugged.

“May as well tell’em”, he said in a thick accent, “got a right to know”.

“Tell us what?”  I said, suddenly worried.

Lindsay sighed and sat at the table, an old man scooting his chair over to give her room.

“Manchester was badly hit by the fires”, she said slowly, “and we’re worried about radiation as well”.

“Radiation?”

She nodded.  “There was an explosion at Heysham power station.  No one knows how bad it is but we have to assume the worst”.

My heart thudded in my chest as the news sank in.

“How far is that from Manchester?”

“Sixty or seventy miles, but without computers there’s no way of predicting the fallout pattern because we can’t see what the weather is doing.  For all we know the radiation has gone west, but it’s equally possible that all the land between here and the power plant is already irradiated.  I’m really sorry, but even if you do find your daughter alive and well, it still may be too late”.

Chapter 45

The smell of the room, sweat, frying meat, coffee, suddenly made me want to vomit as the walls closed in.

“A nuclear explosion?”  I asked, the bottom dropping out my world.

Emily took my hand while Lindsay shook her head.

“No, not a nuclear explosion.  A conventional explosion that affected nuclear material.  Have you ever heard of a dirty bomb?”

I nodded, unable to speak for fear of bursting into tears.

“Well”, she continued gently, as if speaking to a frightened child, “it’s the same principle.  It was only a small fire at first, but something caught and then most of the plant went up.  The explosion would have pumped radioactive material into the atmosphere, and from then it’s a lottery as to where it goes.  Your daughter might be fine”.

“But she might not”.  Emily spoke for me, gripping my hand in hers as if I might run away.

Lindsay shrugged.  “I’m really sorry, we just don’t know.  It’s one of the reasons we decided to set up here.  There’s a long series of valleys, a natural wind tunnel if you like, that brings north-westerlies straight into the town from the bay at Heysham.  Even though we’re only a few miles south here, it’s about a hundred times safer”.

“You seem to know an awful lot about this”, Emily said.

“I was on the crisis planning team for any emergencies involving the plant.  Everyone above the rank of inspector within a hundred miles has got a handy little ‘what to do’ card.  I was one of the people who wrote it”.

One of the aproned men approached with two plates of food but Emily waved him away.

“We still have to go up there”, she said firmly, her tone brooking no argument.  “We haven’t come this far just to give up now”.

Lindsay nodded as if she’d expected nothing less.

“Well I won’t try and stop you from going; in fact I have a few things that might help.  The first of which is a plate of food.  You both look half-starved and you’ll be no good to anyone if you drop from hunger”.

As if on cue, the man reappeared with the plates and put them in front of us, then returned with two mugs of tea.

Emily squeezed my hand hard and I looked up at her.  The sympathy in her eyes almost made me cry.

“Malc”, she said quietly, leaning so close that our noses almost touched, “we will find Melody, ok?  And I’m sure she’ll be fine.  There’s been no strong winds and no rain for days, so there’s a very good chance that it’s only the area within a few miles of the power plant that’s been affected.  Please, I know you’re worried, but I need you to keep it together if we’re going to find her”.

I nodded slowly and straightened, still feeling on the verge of tears but knowing she was right.

Removing my hand from hers, I picked up my fork and stabbed a mushroom, then placed it in my mouth and chewed as if it didn’t taste of dust and hopelessness.

I could see that Emily was unconvinced, but she turned to her own meal and began to eat as Lindsay excused herself and left the kitchen.

“It’s nice to find some people that don’t want to rob or enslave us”, Emily said around a mouthful of egg.  “Makes a change”.

I nodded and continued to eat mechanically, trying valiantly to quieten my panicked thoughts.  It was all I could do not to bolt out of the kitchen and jump in the Lnadrover, but some tiny, logical part of my brain knew that they were right and the time it took to eat a meal wouldn’t make any difference either way.

Emily lifted her mug and took a swig, then let out a contented sigh.

“Oh my god, I’d forgotten how much I love tea.  Coffee is all well and good, but I’ve missed this”.

I watched her as we ate, my mind unable to tear itself away from thoughts of radiation and the horrific problems it could cause.  I’d spent several weeks investigating Fukushima in Japan and the still-unquantified damage that the explosion there had caused, and I knew that even a small dose of the kind of radiation that power plant accidents pumped out could be deadly.

I was saved from the effort of making conversation by the return of Lindsay.  She sat across from us and placed two small boxes on the table, rectangular in shape and made from yellow plastic with a clip on the back and a small round hole on the front.  The whole thing was about the size of my hand.

“PRD’s”, she said, “portable radiation detectors.  That little hole on the front will turn from yellow to black if you hit serious radiation.  There’s supposed to be an audible alarm as well, but there’s no test button so we don’t know if that bit is working or not.  You’ll just have to keep an eye on each other, and if it does go black get the hell out of wherever you are, fast”.

I nodded my thanks, her kind gesture going a little way towards dispersing the fog that was blanketing my mind.

“Any other advice?”  Emily asked, taking one of the detectors and clipping it to the front of her uniform.

“Yes, once you leave here, don’t drink any groundwater.  We’re lucky in that the water here comes from the south, but about half a mile north you reach a dip in the land and everything you drink from then on will have the risk of being contaminated.  We’ll give you as much bottled water as we can, but we don’t have much to spare”.

“Why are you doing this?”  I asked bluntly.

“Why wouldn’t we?”  Lindsay countered.

I shrugged.  “Our experiences with other people recently haven’t exactly been friendly.  Everyone we meet seems to have their own agenda, whether it be stealing everything we’ve got or trying to enslave us.  It’s just odd, is all”.

Lindsay stared at me for a long time as if trying to decide whether or not to be offended. 

“There aren’t so many people left”, she said finally, “that we can afford not to help, wouldn’t you agree?”

I nodded slowly, thinking how much easier and quicker our journey would have been had everyone felt the same way.

“You’re right, my apologies.  I’m just not used to getting help for nothing in return”.

Lindsay reached over and tapped the detector still on the table with a bitten fingernail.

“Then consider these a loan instead of a gift, and the information you’ll bring back with them as payment, if that makes you feel better”.

I forced a laugh from somewhere.

“Do you know”, I said as I picked it up and clipped it onto my belt, “I think it might”.

Chapter 46

“Maybe another twenty minutes”, Emily said, pointing at a sign by the side of the motorway.  “You’ll need to direct me once we reach the city”.

We’d taken leave of the farm with a new backpack, enough food to see us through twenty four hours and a couple of torches, all they could spare for us.

I glanced at the bag by my feet and wondered again at the kindness of total strangers, so unexpected after everything we’d gone through.

“Let’s not even bother with the city”, I replied, “Angie never needed an excuse to avail herself of her parents’ hospitality, and their place is about half an hour closer”.

“I’ll still need directions”.

“It’s the turning after next, then just follow the signs for Woodford Aerodrome”.

She nodded and returned her attention to the road while I kept glancing down at the detector on my belt.  Even though I knew it was my imagination, I swear I could feel the hovering threat of radiation prickling my skin, wondering if even now I was receiving a lethal dose that my detector was too damaged to pick up.

“Will you stop that?  You’re making me nervous”.  Emily waved a hand towards my belt.  “It’ll tell you if there’s a problem, and checking it every few seconds won’t do more than give you neck-ache”.

“But what if it doesn’t work?” 

“The detection system is gas and paper, what’s not to work?  The only electronic bit is the alarm, so as long as you keep an occasional eye on it, you’ll be fine”.

“Ok, sorry.  Radiation scares the shit out of me, though”.

“You’d be a moron if it didn’t, but if we’re committed to this then what choice have we got?”

“Not much”.

“Then why worry?”

“Because I’d never forgive myself if you died because of me”.  I realised the words were true even as I said them.  I’d only known Emily for a handful of days, but already she was closer to me than anyone bar Melody.  Time and again she had put herself in danger on my behalf, although for the life of me I couldn’t see why, and now she was driving into an area that for all we knew was irradiated enough to kill us both, and all because of me.

“Emily, why are you doing this?”

She glanced over and I could see a slight flush to her cheeks.

“Doing what?”

“All this.  Keeping me out of trouble, helping me to find Melody, driving towards a nuclear bloody disaster for someone you barely know”.

She opened and closed her mouth a few times as if about to speak, but seemed unable to find the right words.  I waited patiently, watching her hands tighten on the steering wheel until her knuckles were white.
“I, uh, ah shit, I’m no good at this”, she said finally, then abruptly stopped the car and turned to face me.  “Do you really have no idea why?”

I shrugged helplessly.  “If I did I wouldn’t have asked”.

She rolled her eyes towards the heavens. 

“God give me strength”, she muttered.  “Look, you’re a really nice guy, ok?”

I nodded, feeling like a seventeen year old being given the brush-off.

“A really nice guy”, she continued.  “In fact you’re the first man in years who hasn’t tried to impress me with how strong he is, or how masculine, or how many tours of Afghanistan he’s done.  Do you know how refreshing it is to spend time with a man who can hold a conversation and doesn’t try to get me into bed after thirty seconds?”

“Probably about as refreshing as it is for me to spend time with someone who can answer the phone without having to do her nails first”.

“Your ex?”

I nodded.  “You have no idea”.

She put the vehicle into gear and pulled away again, then turned up a slip road and took us onto a roundabout that I recognised as only being a few miles away from Woodford.  I could feel my hands trembling with anticipation, both from seeing Melody again and the conversation we were having.

“What I’m trying to say”, Emily kept her eyes firmly fixed on the road, “is that I like you a lot, and if circumstances had been different then I think we’d already have, uh, well…”

“Become romantically involved?”  I said it light-heartedly but I could feel my pulse racing.

She nodded.  “If you want to sound like a Mills & Boon novel, sure”.

“I usually try and avoid that”.

“Good choice, but let me finish before I run out of steam, ok?”

I nodded.  “Sure”.

“Now all of my training tells me that being romantically involved with someone you may need to put your life on the line for is a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t… ah bollocks, well I just like you, ok?”

Her cheeks were burning, and I wondered where the competent soldier had vanished to as she stared rigidly through the windscreen.  The other thing that confused me was how at odds this sudden awkwardness was with the way she’d acted in the shop in Maidenhead when we’d been getting changed.  I sighed and shook my head, wondering if I’d ever be smart enough to understand a woman properly.

“Well thank you, for everything”, I said with what felt like my first genuine smile in days, “and for the record, there’s no one I would rather have had with me”.

She smiled back, then glanced up at the sky.  “Looks like rain”.

I followed her gaze to see dark clouds scudding in from the northwest, still in the distance but moving closer.  Neither of us voiced the worry we shared, that the clouds would be carrying irradiated water from the power plant, but Emily picked up speed and I leaned forwards as if it would help us travel faster.

We hit Woodford village at a steady sixty, only Emily’s excellent reflexes keeping us on all four wheels as she took corners that were made for half that speed, and as the neat, detached and semi-detached houses flashed past, I saw one or two people out in their gardens, presumably drawn by the noise of or approach.

“Next left”, I said, and Emily swung the wheel, almost colliding with a van that had been abandoned in the road.  I didn’t bother telling her to slow down, instead keeping my eyes on the advancing clouds through the treetops that lined the backs of the nearby gardens.

“Second right, then the last bungalow at the end of the Close, number seventeen”.

I could barely believe that we were so close, and despite my best efforts I found myself fidgeting like a schoolboy, knees bouncing up and down as I balanced on the balls of my feet.

Emily finally slowed as we turned into the Close, and I pointed to the bungalow at the end, separated from its neighbours by lovingly tended gardens on one side and a garage and driveway on the other.

The Landrover pulled to a halt, the engine falling silent.  I reached for the door handle but paused, turning to see Emily watching me.

“I’m scared”.  Of what I might find, or might not find, but I didn’t need to say that, the look in her eyes told me she understood.

“Whatever we find, we do it together”, she said, reaching for my hand and squeezing it.

I nodded and we got out.  I waited for her to come round the vehicle, and she surprised me by taking my hand again, holding it tight while the other hefted her pistol.

I was about to tell her that she didn’t need it, but then what did I know?

We approached slowly, footsteps loud on the paved path that led to the front door, blue paint faded but still good and the brass knocked in the shape of a lion with the ring in its mouth just as I remembered it.

I came to a stop, one foot on the brown doormat while the other seemed unwilling to leave the path.  Net curtains prevented us from seeing anything through the windows but even so the house felt empty, abandoned.

I took a deep breath and grabbed the brass ring, slamming it against the strike plate three times in quick succession.

The hollow knocking echoed in the silent street, my shoulder blades itching as if someone was watching us.

Ten seconds passed, then twenty, and still no answer, no sound of rushing feet from within.

Bending to the letter box I pushed the flap open and called through the hole.

“Melody, it’s dad.  Are you here?”

Nothing.  I could smell spoiled food and the stink of a latrine through the narrow slit, and dread touched my heart.  Someone had been living here, and fairly recently too, but if it was someone I knew then surely they would have answered by now.

Exchanging a glance with Emily, I lifted the mat and was rewarded by the sparkle of the spare key as sunlight hit it.  I picked it up with shaking hands and tried to put it in the lock, metal rattling against metal as my nerves got the better of me.

Emily took the key and slid it into the lock, turning it smoothly and pushing the door open.

The smell hit me like a smack to the nose.  Half gagging, I stepped back with a hand covering my mouth.  Whoever had been living here had clearly been using the toilet just inside the front door for days, and clouds of buzzing flies swarmed around the unflushable waste.

Squaring my shoulders, I stepped through the doorway and into the hall, the soft beige carpet newer than the one I remembered.  Photographs of Angie, her brother Doug and Melody lined the walls in small, neat frames, while the telephone table just outside the toilet held a picture of Angie’s parents, Frank and Rita, smiling and holding hands in front of the Blackpool tower.

The lounge was at the back, next to the kitchen, and I led Emily that way, glancing into the bedrooms as we passed but seeing no sign of life.

The lounge was large and airy, with two sofas and several chairs, all angled towards the large TV that sat on the wall above the old fireplace.  The room was a mess, books, magazines and empty tins of food scattered everywhere, while the net curtains that covered the patio doors looked as though someone had used them as toilet paper.

Heart in mouth, I crossed to the kitchen, flinging open the door and finding even worse devastation.  Not only was every surface littered with empty food tins and packets, many with mould growing in them, but every drawer and cupboard had been turned out, contents spilled onto the floor and then seemingly kicked here and there.

The large larder on the far side of the kitchen stood open, and even from here I could see that not a single bean remained.  All eight large shelves were empty, enough food to keep a family going for a month vanished.

I stood and stared, wondering what had happened, where my little girl was and if she had been here when the house was ransacked.  The thought was enough to shake me out of the haze of fear and uncertainty that had fallen over me, anger replacing it in a flash.

I spun on my heel and headed back down the hall to the bedrooms, first checking Frank and Rita’s.  The bed was unmade, clods of dirt smeared on the end of the duvet, and the usual clutter on Rita’s dresser had been swept onto the floor to create a pile of powder, paint and perfume that almost covered the smell from the toilet.

Almost knocking into Emily, I went to the room nearest the front door and flung it open.  This was the guest room, the room that Melody would use if she was staying here.

My heart almost broke as I stepped through the doorway.  Melody’s Minnie Mouse sleeping bag, a gift for her seventh birthday, lay unzipped in the middle of the double bed, the inside stained with mud or worse.  Her travel case, battered, bright pink and painfully familiar from her weekends with me, lay on one side on the floor next to the bed, the contents trampled and kicked about.

And there, on the small table next to the bed, sat Melody’s diary, the one thing in the world I knew that she would never go anywhere without, and seeing that, I knew that something terrible had happened to my little girl.

Sinking to the bed, I placed my face in my hands and I wept as my world fell apart.

Chapter 47

Tuesday 15th September.

Dear diary, today has been weerd.  My dad called me last night and told me all the electricity would go off and then it did while we were talking.  I woke mum and she told me I was dreaming but then I made her look at the sky and she saw it was all different colours like a night rainbow and she got scared. She tried to call a taxi to go to nana and grandpops house but the phone wasnt working and then the house next door caught fire so she made me pack my case and we took my bike and we ran.  she tried to get a taxi on the street but no cars were going anywhere and there were lots of fires. A man ran past us screeming with his hair on fire and mummy got even more scared but I wasnt two scared because dad told me he would come and get me. Mum wanted to get a train or a bus but everyone was screeming and shouting and there were no buses so we walked and ran.  I tried to tell her about flares from the sun but she wasnt listening. It only takes half an hour to get to nana and grandpops in a taxi but its much longer walking.  Everywhere was on fire and I saw a dead woman hanging out of her window.  It made me sick. Some other people were walking too and one man tried to steal mums suitcase but she took her shoe off and hit him with the heel until blood came out of ears.  That made me sick too.  We walked all night and I wanted to leave my bike because I was tired pushing it but mum said if anyone tried to hurt us and she said it I should get on and ride to nanas.  When it was morning we got to woodford and then we got to nanas.  Grandpops was standing in the front garden waiting for us and they took us in and nana made me spaghetti hoops but she had to use the bbq in the back garden for the pan because her cooker didnt work.  Were here now and dad said he would come for me.  I told mum and she got angry.  I’m tired and I’m going to sleep.

Fat teardrops spattered the page of the diary, smudging the broad blue pen-strokes that I knew so well.  Every word was like a stabbing pain in the chest but I forced myself to continue the way one pokes at an open wound.

Thursday 17th September

Dear diary, the toilet doesnt work and I can smell it in my bedroom.  The shower in nana and grandpops room doesnt work either. Mum keeps trying to use the phone in the hall but grandpops got angry with her this morning and they shouted at each other a lot.  Nana tried to stop it like she always does when they fight but mum stormed out and left. Sometimes I think that I’m the grownup.  Its evening now and mum still hasnt come back.  I’m worried about her and I asked grandpops if I could go and look for her but he said she would come back. He looked scared when he said it though.  I think he wants to go and look for her.  I told him I could use my bike and cycle away from anyone nasty but he wouldnt let me go.  I cant see very well because its getting dark so I’ll let you know tomorrow.

I ran a hand over the page, touching the paper as if I could connect with Melody.  Emily sat next to me on the bed, reading over my shoulder as she gripped my arm with both hands.  Tears streaked her face and I saw my own pain mirrored there as we read on.

Friday 19th September.

Grandpops went looking for mum last night and he didnt come back either.  Nana keeps crying and I cant make her happy but I’m scared too so we both cry.  She keeps making food but I cant eat.  I want dad to come. If he comes I know he will find mum and grandpops and well be ok.  I had to poo in the garden today because the toilet is too full.  Nana says grandpops will fix it when he gets back but I dont think he’s coming back.  I’m scared.

Friday again some men have come to the house and nana thought it was mum and grandpops and she opened the door and they came in and made us sit on the sofa while they started eating all the food without cooking it and one of them took a poo behind the sofa and it smells and then he used the curtains instead of paper because we haven’t got any left. I felt sick and I tried to run away but they shut me in the bedroom and then I heard nana fighting with them but they went outside and then I couldnt hear her anymore.  I HATE THEM

My hands almost tore the diary in two as they clenched into fists.  My throat burned with the need to find these men, to tear them apart with fingers and teeth if I had to, to find out what they had done with my daughter.  I thought I’d felt rage before but that paled into laughable comparison to this, this inferno that raged inside me.

I sprang up from the bed, almost sending Emily flying.

“Malc”, she said, but I shook my head, unable and unwilling to hear anything that wasn’t the screams of the men who had hurt my little girl.

Images that no parent should have to face sprang to mind, feeding the flames until I felt as if I was going to burst.

I needed air, needed space to breathe before I exploded, but as I reached for the front door I heard a sound that froze me to the spot, hand halfway to the handle.

Melody’s bike bell.

It was ringing frantically out in the street as if in warning.  My hand moved again, flinging the door open as I raced out, feet barely touching the ground as I hurtled towards the Landrover and the three figures next to it.

Two were scruffy, unkempt figures, men in their late twenties and filthy clothes, but it was the third person that drew all my attention.

Sitting on her bike, wearing a stained pink t-shirt and grubby jeans, her hair greasy and matted to her head, was Melody.  One of the men had a black-fingernailed hand held casually around her throat while the other man examined the Landrover.

“Daddy!”  Melody shrieked, “I knew it was you!”

She turned to the man holding her as best she could with her neck in his grip.

“See?  I told you he’d come for me and now he’s going to kill you like you killed Nana”.

I took all this in as I ran, head lowered to charge the men and tear them apart.

The men had different ideas, however, the one by the Landrover quickly stepping behind it to use it as cover while the other lifted Melody bodily off her saddle with one hand, while a large kitchen knife appeared in the other and was placed with the blade under her chin.

“Steady now mate”, he called out, “unless you want Melody kebab”.

The world stopped moving, or I did, I wasn’t sure.  My anger turned to sick fear as Melody kicked once, then stopped as the blade was pressed hard into her soft skin.

“Hey, put her down, we’ll give you anything you want”, I said, keeping my eyes locked on Melody’s.  “It’s ok baby, don’t worry, I’m going to fix everything”.

The look of hope on her face made me sick.  Somehow, even with a knife at her throat and me with no cards to play, she believed that I would make everything ok.

The man holding her looked at his friend.

“What if we want to keep the girl?”

I shook my head.  “Not going to happen.  I’d rather we both die than you take her anywhere”.

He glanced at his friend again and shrugged. 

“What about the car?”

“You can have it”.

“Where’s the keys?”

“My friend has them”.

“Well call him out then.  Don’t want no surprises”.

I looked back to see Emily in the shadows of the hallway, pistol in hand but unsure what to do.

“It’s ok Emily, come out”, I called, and she tucked the pistol behind her leg but kept it in her hand.  As she walked out into the sunlight both the men whistled.

“Tell you what, we’ll take her and the car for the kid”.

I shook my head.  “No, our deal is for the car.  And besides, if you took her with you you’d be dead before you got half a mile”.

“What a way to die though!”

“Please, just put Melody down, you’re hurting her”.

Her captor started to comply, and as soon as her feet touched the ground Emily snapped the pistol up, drawing a bead on his forehead.

Before she could fire, however, he saw the movement and jerked Melody off her feet.  She gave out a strangled squeal as he dangled her in front of his face.

I took a step forward before I could stop myself, almost crossing into Emily line of fire.

“Easy now”, he said, “how about we take the gun and the car, eh?”

I ignored him, tearing my eyes away from Melody long enough to look at Emily.

“I need the keys”.

She dug into her pocket with her free hand and held them out to me.  I took them and turned back to the men, the second one now crouched behind the Landrover, only his eyes visible through the window.

“I throw you the keys”, I said, “and you give us Melody”.

“Yeah right.  I let the girl go and she shoots us.  I’m not fucking stupid”.

“Fine.  I give you the keys, your friend there starts it up and once he’s behind the wheel you can get in, but Melody stays outside.  You try and move her an inch into the vehicle and my friend here will shoot both of you and damn the consequences.  That’s my final offer.  Anything else and whatever else happens today, you both die”.

I let some of the anger bleed into my voice.  It must have been enough, as the men didn’t even look at each other.

“Fine.  Throw us the keys”.

I did, watching as they landed next to the rear wheel.  The second man scooped them up and jumped in, starting the engine almost immediately.  He leaned over and opened the passenger door, while the man holding Melody edged closer, then used the door as a shield while he climbed into the vehicle.

For one horrible second I thought they were going to try and escape with Melody, but then I saw her dirty white trainers hit the road and the Landrover shot off like a cork out of a bottle, barely slowing as it pulled a U-turn and disappeared out of the close.

I only saw this out of the corner of my eye as I ran for Melody, scooping her up from the road and lifting her chin to check that she was ok.

Up close she stank, her face crusted with dirt and dried food but I didn’t care as I crushed her to my chest and rocked her back and forth, tears streaming down my face once again.

“Oh my baby, my baby, I thought I’d lost you”, I said through the tears, her head tucked under my chin.  “I’m sorry it took me so long, I’m so, so sorry”.

She hugged me back, tears of her own cutting tracks through the filth as she pulled away to look up at me.

“They’re all gone”, she said, “mum, nana, grandpops.  They’re all gone and I don’t know where they are”.

“It’s ok baby”, I said softly, my arms tightening to pull her back to my chest.  “I promise you I’ll never leave you alone again.  I promise”.

I turned to look at Emily, who still stood with pistol in hand, held awkwardly now as she watched us with an unreadable expression on her face.

“It’s going to be ok”, I called to her, wondering why she wasn’t as happy as I was, “it’s all going to be ok”.

She shrugged and put the pistol away, then came closer and put a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m really glad that Melody is safe”, she said quietly, “and she’s worth a thousand Landrovers, but how in hell are we going to get back home without a car?”

I shrugged helplessly, just glad that my little girl was in my arms and unable to think any further ahead than that.

Then the rain began to fall.

Chapter 48

We ran for the house, no words needed as the threat that the rain carried with it soaked us to the skin in the time it took us to travel down the path and through the front door.

“Make sure all the windows are closed”, Emily said as she slammed the door shut.

I tried to put Melody down but she clung to me with surprising strength.  Knowing that I couldn’t do what I needed to with an eleven-year-old hanging onto me I prised her fingers free as gently as I could.

“Sweetheart, we need to make sure the windows are shut, it’s very important.  Can you go and check the ones in your room? I promise I’ll be just next door”.

She nodded and wiped her nose on her sleeve as she finally let go, eyes still wide and fearful.  “You promise?”

“I promise, go on”.

She turned and hurried into her bedroom as I ran for the kitchen, seeing the small, wide window at the top of the frame open.  I grabbed the handle and pulled it shut, then went back through the lounge and double-checked that the patio doors were closed.  Once that was done I went to check the main bedroom with its ensuite bathroom, but Emily came out of the door before I could get there.

“All done”, she said, “but we need to get out of these clothes, they’re soaked”.

Melody ran out of her bedroom and immediately tried to climb into my arms in a way she hadn’t since she’d been little.  Despite the fact that she seemed unharmed, I could only guess how badly she’d been affected by everything that had happened.

“Melody”, I said gently, “I want you to meet Emily.  She’s a very good friend and without her I wouldn’t have been able to come and find you.  You can trust her”.

Melody looked up at Emily uncertainly, then stuck out a filthy hand.

“Hi, I’m Melody”.

Emily took the hand solemnly and shook it, then grinned.

“You do look like your dad”.

The grin faded as she glanced at me, eyes travelling to my belt.

“Uh, Malc, how long has your detector been like that?”

“What?”  I looked down and saw that the paper in the small hole at the top had gone from yellow to black.  The implications made my skin crawl as if ants were burrowing beneath it.  “Oh shit”.

“Dad!”

“Now’s not the time, Melody.  We need to get changed, quickly.  Have you got clean clothes in your room?”
She shook her head.  “Everything is dirty”.

“Well find some dry ones and get changed into them, go on.  Even your underwear”.

She nodded and went back into her room.  Emily was checking her own detector and I saw that it, too, had a black circle at the top.

“How long since you last checked it?”  She asked.

“I don’t know, just before we came in, I think”.

“I think I did the same.  We need to find some clean clothes, and hope that the rain caused it”.

I nodded.  If the radiation was already in the air then we were done for, but if it had been brought by the rain then we stood a chance.

I led her into Frank and Ruth’s bedroom, then began hunting through the wardrobe for something that might fit.  I pulled out a pair of jeans and a shirt for me, then found a pair of black corduroy trousers and a brown jumper that I thought might fit Emily.

I turned to hand them to her and froze as I saw her standing there, stark naked as she threw her clothes into the corner.

I felt myself blush and tried to pass her the clothes without looking.

“Come on Malc, we don’t have time to be shy”.

I nodded, the image of her naked curves burned into my mind’s eye.  Praying that my body wouldn’t rise to the occasion I stripped my clothes off, then pulled on the jeans so fast I nearly did myself an injury.

Once we were dressed, we looked very much like an old married couple, and I wondered if I looked as strange as Emily did.  Unfortunately for me, I could also clearly see that she wasn’t wearing a bra and suddenly discovered that my new jeans were a little too tight. 

“Why is it”, I said quietly, “that we spent all those nights together and nothing happened, but now we get a radiation shower and suddenly all I want to do is take your clothes back off?”

She stared at me in shock for a second, then began to laugh softly.

“I don’t know”, she said, flashing her dimples, “maybe because you’re bloody awkward?”

I grinned in return.  “There is that, I guess”.

I glanced out of the window and saw that it was still hammering down.

“Maybe take a rain check?”

“Ha bloody ha”.

The door creaked open and Melody came in, wearing slightly less dirty clothes.

She stopped and looked at us with a shrewd expression, then turned to Emily.

“Are you his girlfriend?”

I spluttered and was about to tell her off for asking inappropriate questions, but then stopped myself.  A week ago the question might have been rude, sure, but Melody had lost almost everything and everyone she had ever known. Surely she had a right to know if I was bringing someone else into her life?

Emily and I looked at each other as the question hung between us.  She gestured at me uncertainly, and I shrugged.

“We’re not sure yet”, she said finally, “but we do like each other”.

Melody nodded as if that was the answer she’d been expecting.

“Good, because you’re nice.  Are we going back to Hove?”

Emily blinked at the sudden change of subject, something I was more used to.

“No love, Hove is burning like Manchester, but Emily’s mum and dad live on a beautiful farm in the countryside with chickens and a cow and their own gardens where they grow vegetables, and they’ve said we can go and live with them”.

“Are they nice?”

“Yes, they are.  Ralph pretends to be mean sometimes, but it’s just an act, and Harriet was a nurse for fifty years and she makes really nice food”.

Melody smiled, and the sight almost brought tears to my eyes.  I loved her more than anything else in the world and to see her already beginning to bounce back from what she’d been through was a balm to my wounded soul.

“Good, because I’m hungry”.

“Well it’s a long way to go”, I said, “and we still don’t know how we’re going to get there yet, we don’t have a car anymore”.

Her smile faded as she thought back to the men who had taken it, but then she brightened.

“Why don’t we take grandpops’ car?”

“Er, grandpops doesn’t have a car”.

She nodded, sending pieces of muck flying from her hair.

“Yes he does, it’s in the garage”.

I exchanged a glance with Emily, hardly daring to hope that the answers to our problem could be so close.

“But wouldn’t he have taken it with him when he went looking for mummy?”

“No, he said it would draw the wrong kind of attention.  Shall I show you?”

She walked towards the door but I grabbed her arm.  My heart nearly broke when she shied away from the sudden movement, a stark reminder of her recent captivity.

“Don’t go outside love, not while it’s raining”.

“Why not?”

I sighed and looked at Emily, who came to the rescue.

“Melody, how much do you know about radiation?”

“What, you mean like nuclear bombs?”

She nodded.  “Yes, that’s right”.

“We did Hiroshima in history, it was horrible”.

Emily nodded again.  “Well there was an accident, and radiation like the bombs might be in the rain, so we have to stay out of it.  It’s why we had to change our clothes”.

“Oh, ok”.

I blinked, expecting an argument, and smiled gratefully at Emily.

“But we do need to get out to the garage”, I said, “Emily, if I cover myself with something waterproof do you think I’ll be ok?”

She shrugged uncertainly.  “Maybe, maybe not.  We should stay out of it as much as possible if we can”.

She left the room and I followed her into the lounge, taking Melody’s hand.  Her small fingers in mine were a gift that I would never take for granted again.

Emily strode to the window and eased the filthy net curtains aside, looking up at the grey clouds that filled the sky.

“It doesn’t look like it’s going to let up anytime soon though”, she said, “and we need to get out of here as soon as we can”.

I thought about it for a moment, then decided that the risk was worth it.  The side door to the garage was only half a dozen steps from the patio doors, and I knew from experience that Frank left it unlocked.

“Let’s see what we can find to keep me dry”, I began to look around for something that might work, “something waterproof”.

We turned the house upside down, piling everything that might be useful in the centre of the lounge.  Emily sorted through the pile and selected several items, then began to dress me as if we were playing some kind of bizarre game.

A few minutes later, I stood by the patio door wearing a wax jacket that came to my thighs, my lower legs wrapped in layers of clingfilm while one of the two pairs of marigolds we’d found covered my hands.  Over my head I wore a large plastic washing bag in bright tartan.  I felt like an idiot but I couldn’t argue that I would be dry.

“Melody”, Emily said as she put a hand on the door handle, “just in case I want you to go into your bedroom and shut the door until I tell you, do you mind?”

Please at being asked like an adult, Melody nodded and left the room.

“How are you feeling under there?”

“Stupid but dry”.

“Right.  Just remember not to touch us when you come back in, I’ll use the washing up gloves to take the outer layers off and then we’ll stick them in the washing machine where no one can touch them by accident.  Oh, and Malc?”

“Yeah?”

She lifted the bag and kissed me, just a brief peck on the lips but it was enough to set my heart racing.

“You’re a good man”.

I could only nod as she dropped the bag back over my head, reducing my visibility to strip of floor a few inches in front of my feet.  I heard the snick of the lock turning and then the rasp of the door as it was pulled back on its runners.

“Go”.

And I stepped out into the rain.

Chapter 49

The grass was slick under my shoes as I tottered unsteadily towards the garage, concentrating on keeping my balance with only a few inches of garden visible.  Anyone watching probably would have been howling with laughter, particularly when I walked head first into the garage wall and nearly brained myself, but I found the door with groping hands, feeling the cold metal of the handle through the rubber gloves.

I tugged hard, feeling the warped wood protesting as it refused to budge, but I pulled again, harder this time, and it finally popped open with a speed that nearly took me off my feet.

I stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind me and took the bag off my head, careful to touch only the outside.

It was dark in the garage, but I could make out the dim shape of something large covered by a dust sheet just in front of me.

Scanning the shelves, I saw an old torch that had seen better days in the seventies, but to my surprise it came on when I flicked the switch, the feeble beam just enough to see by.

I pulled the gloves off as well, leaving them on top of the bag just inside the door, and tugged the dust sheet aside to see what was beneath.

For years now, I’d know that Frank was working on a ‘project’ in the garage, with the only sight I’d ever had of it being the occasional engine part he’d brought into the lounge to work on over a sheet of old newspaper while the rest of us sat there in front of the TV.  I’d often thought it just an excuse, a reason not to have to talk to his confusing southern son in law, but as the dust sheet came free I realised just how wrong I’d been.

I saw wood first, clean, polished lines over long windows that stretched back for half the length of the car, and then smooth, green steel that curved gently towards the front.

Gleaming steel, polished to perfection, wrapped the headlights, the grill and formed the bumper that curved around the front of the car, and through the window I could see that the keys were in the ignition.

“Well that won’t have any processors in it”, I muttered to myself as I opened the door and leaned in to turn the keys.

The ignition clicked, but no sound came from the engine.

Wishing Emily was here with me, I pulled what I hoped was the bonnet latch and was rewarded with a click.  Lifting the bonnet, I found an engine so clean I could see my reflection in it, but even to someone with my limited mechanical knowledge the problem was clear.  There was no battery.

I shone the torch across the cluttered shelves that lined the walls, moving around the garage with a sinking feeling as no battery immediately made itself obvious.

Then, just as I was about to give up, I found a large, plain cardboard box and opened it to see a brand new looking battery, plastic covers still over the terminals.

Pulling them off, I took the battery in shaking hands and slotted it into the compartment under the bonnet, then attached the leads.  Dropping the bonnet, I headed back round to the driver’s door, careful not to drop on the inside of the car, and turned the key.

The engine coughed and spluttered but didn’t turn over.  Cursing, I tried it again but got the same thing.  Worried that I might drain the battery without ever starting the car, I decided that Emily’s deft touch was needed.

Putting the gloves and bag back on without getting my skin wet was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but after several minutes of swearing and tugging I finally got myself ready and headed back out into the garden.  I made a beeline for the patio doors as rain hissed and pattered off the bag, frighteningly close as I realised that the only thing between me and a potentially lethal dose of radiation was a washing bag.

I heard the door slide back as I came close, stumbling over the step and nearly falling into the lounge, the door closing behind me the second I was through.

“Well?”  Emily asked as her gloved hands pulled the bag from my head.

I smiled.  “Ever wanted to drive a Morris Minor?”

“You’re shitting me”.

“Nope.  Looks like he completely rebuilt it.  Only problem is that I couldn’t get it to turn over”.

“Did you use the choke?”

“What choke?”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty seven, why?”

She shook her head.  “Never mind.  So it’s working?”
“I guess.  I had to put the battery in, it was on a shelf in the garage, but if you think you can get it started then we’ve got a way out of here”.

I began to peel off my outer layers but she stopped me.

“Hang on.  If it’s working there’s no sense in getting changed then having to put it all back on again, we may as well go now”.

“But what about the rain?”

She shrugged.  “Melody and I will have to get dressed up too, then we’ll all go out and get in the car”.

“But what if it doesn’t start?”

“What else do you suggest?”

I was about to recommend staying put until the rain stopped, but then my eyes dropped to the detector that Emily still wore, the black circle stopping the words before they came out.

“Fine, let’s get it done then”.

Emily called Melody back into the lounge and she came bouncing in, stopping short when I warned her not to touch me.

She and Emily helped to dress each other in what was left on the pile while I looked on, pleased that Melody was coming back out of her shell so quickly despite the seriousness of our situation.

It only took them a few minutes, and when they were done they stood in front of me in a bizarre mishmash of clothing and household goods that reminded me of a bad pantomime, but hopefully it would be enough to keep them safe and dry.

With our bag still in the Landrover, there was nothing else for us to take apart from what we had on us, with the exception of Melody’s diary which she insisted on slipping into an inside pocket.

“Right, are we ready?”  I said, and got nods from both of them.

Lowering the bag back over my head, I pulled the door open and stepped back out into the rain, hurrying to the door and pulling it open so that they could slip inside.

I pulled it closed once they were through, then we all stripped off our contaminated clothing and threw it in the far corner.

Once free of her outer clothing, Emily made a soft noise in her throat and began running her hands over the car as one might a lover.

“You like the car then?”  I said, slightly bemused.

“Oh, this isn’t just a car”, she breathed with a look of reverence.  “This is a 1968 Morris Traveller.  We had one of these when I was a kid, we used to pack it full of stuff and take trips to the seaside”.

She turned and looked at me with a beatific smile on her face.

“Some of my happiest memories are being in a car like this.  Your father in law had good taste”.

“Shame it wasn’t genetic”, I muttered, but she had already turned away, sitting in the driver’s seat and pulling out a small knob in the centre while she gently pressed the accelerator.

She turned the key and the engine started immediately, the clanking whirr of its old but rebuilt engine filling the small space as it came to life.

“It sounds perfect!”  She called over the noise, “Open the door and let’s get out of here”.

Melody climbed into the back while I tugged at the large garage door, the sliders squealing loud enough to wake the dead as it finally slid up into the roof.

Rain still pelted down outside, deadly puddles forming in the gutters, and I prayed that the car was well-built enough that it wouldn’t leak.

Climbing into the back with Melody and wrapping my arms around her, I watched through the windows as we pulled away, leaving the bungalow and its dark memories behind.

Chapter 50

We jolted and swayed in the back seat, Melody tucked under my arm and sleeping despite the noise and movement.  I watched her face as she slept, having to stop myself from waking her by covering it with kisses.

Her eyes kept scrunching up, her hands balling into fists as she muttered incomprehensible words, and again I worried that what she’d been through might take years to heal.  Added to that, I realised, would be more months or possibly years of hardship while we waited for the sun to stop hurting our world, and grief, worry and joy mingled until they were almost one emotion, taking me to the crest of the wave one second only to drop me into the trough a moment later.

I rested my cheek against the top of her head and tried to stop thinking, just taking pleasure in the feel of having my little girl back in my arms.  It was an intoxicating feeling, and with it came the towering need to protect her from everything this new world might throw at her, while at the same time knowing that she would have to become tough to survive.

I raised my eyes to the back of Emily’s head, realising that here was the perfect role-model for Melody.  Tough but honest, caring yet uncompromising, she was exactly what someone needed to be to survive, and I knew that I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for her.

As if she could feel me watching her, Emily glanced at me in the mirror.

“We’ve got a full tank of petrol, do you want to try and head straight back home?”

I shook my head gently, scared of waking Melody.

“No, we need to go back to the farm first, warn them that it’s not safe up here”.

She nodded and turned her attention back to the road, flashing me a quick smile as if I’d made the right decision.  That smile gave me a warm glow inside, not dissimilar to the way I felt with Melody in my arms, and that made me realise something.

I wasn’t quite sure when, exactly, I’d fallen in love with Emily, but sometime in the last week I had.  Not the head over heels, crazy intensity that I’d felt when Angie and I had met, but we’d been little more than kids then, both too wrapped up in our own little bubble to see that we were a disaster waiting to happen.

No, this was the long, slow burn of loving someone that I knew was too good for me, a person I’d come to rely on so completely that I couldn’t imagine waking up and her not being there.

Of course knowing how I felt and acting on it were two very different things.  What woman wouldn’t run a mile if you told her you loved her after little more than a week in each other’s company?  Even in my heyday I’d been bad with things like that anyway, and just the thought of trying to tell her how I felt made my stomach turn inside out.

Melody stirred next to me and I pulled away to see her eyes crack open, flaring wide in a moment of panic before she realised where she was.

“Hey, it’s ok”, I said, brushing the top of her head with my hand.  “I’m right here”.

She yawned and then pulled a face.  “I need to clean my teeth”.

I nodded.  “We all do.  When we get home we’ll make sure we all get properly clean.  You smell”.  I poked her in the ribs and she giggled, then her face grew serious.

“Dad, what if those men find us again?”

“They won’t”.

“But what if they do?”

I sighed, not knowing what to say to make her feel better.  I finally settled on the truth.

“I’m never going to let anyone hurt you ever again”, I said seriously, “and if we see those men then Emily has a gun and she’ll shoot them.  She’s a soldier, you know”.

Her eyes grew wide.  “Really?”

I nodded.  “Really.  And she’s a really good shot”.

Melody leaned forwards.  “Are you?”

Emily glanced back in the mirror and smiled.

“I am.  Better than your dad, anyway.  Perhaps, if your dad thinks it’s ok, me and my dad can teach you how to shoot when we get back to the farm.  How does that sound?”

Melody turned to me hopefully.

“Can I dad?  Please?”

I shrugged.  “I don’t see why not, if you really want to”.

She nodded.  “I do, because if I can shoot then I can stop anyone from hurting me if you’re not there”.

“But I’ll always be there”.

She turned away, looking down at her hands.

“I thought mum would be too, but she went away”.  She glanced up at me out of the corner of her eye.  “You don’t know what’s going to happen, do you?”

I opened my mouth to reassure her, then realised I was falling into old habits, so instead I took one of her hands and kissed it, regardless of the filth that caked her skin.

“All the time I’m alive, I will keep you safe.  If I ever have to go away for any reason, then you’ll be with Emily, or Ralph or Harriet.  You’re right, I can’t promise that I’ll always be there, but all the time I am I won’t let anything happen to you. Do you believe me?”

She nodded and took her hand back, hiding it in her lap as if embarrassed.

“I’m hungry”.

“So am I, but we’re going to a place that has food, and nice people.  It’s run by a woman who was a chief inspector in the police, her name’s Lindsay and she’s really nice”.

“Will we be there soon?”

I glanced at the empty space on my wrist, my watch most likely still sitting next to my bed in Hove, if the house was still standing.

“Uh, not too long”.  I leaned forward and saw that we were going about fifty miles an hour.  The speedo didn’t go much higher and from the shaking and rattling, neither would the car.

“Maybe an hour or two.  Why don’t you try and get some more sleep?”

She nodded and curled up, head on my chest and feet tucked under her legs.  In a few moments she was breathing deeply, eyes closed as she drifted off into dreams that I prayed were pleasant ones.

Chapter 51

I came to with a start as the car pulled up, jerking awake and almost knocking Melody into the footwell.

Emily wound her window down and leaned out to wave at someone.  I blinked a few times and realised that we were outside the gate to the farm near Stafford.

The man nearby was unfamiliar, but the woman with him was the same one who’d let us through earlier.  It was hard to believe it was the same day, and that only hours before we’d been here eating breakfast.

After a brief check and a smile for Melody, the woman opened the gate and let us through.  We bumped down the track and pulled into the yard, having to squeeze past an army Landrover parked there.

I thought that odd and glanced down at the registration.  My blood went cold as I recognised it.

“Emily”, I said, pointing, “recognise the vehicle?”

She nodded, reaching for the pistol and pulling it into her lap, then put the car in reverse and was about to pull away when Lindsay came out and waved to us.

Emily glanced at me.

“What do we do?”

“Let’s see what she has to say.  Maybe they found it abandoned”.

Stopping the engine, Emily wound down the window again as Lindsay walked over, pushing through the crowd that was beginning to form.

“You’re alive!”  She said with obvious relief.  “Thank god”.

“Why wouldn’t we be?”  Emily asked, one hand still on the pistol that was now tucked between the door and the seat, out of sight.

Lindsay pointed at the Landrover.  “One of our patrols came across two men driving your car, and they said they’d found it next to two bodies so they took it.  They got brought here for some food so we could find out what happened but they kept changing their stories so we locked them up in the feed shed”.

“You’ve got them?”  I asked, glancing at Melody to see if she was following the conversation.  I could see by her expression that she was.

Lindsay nodded.  “We have.  The latest story is that you attacked them for no reason and they managed to get away by stealing the car and driving off, then they came looking for help.  What happened?”

I put a hand on Melody’s shoulder.

“Lindsay, this is my daughter Melody.  Those two arseholes broke into her grandparents’ house, killed her grandma and then kidnapped Melody.  When we tried to get her back they put a knife to her throat, and we gave them the vehicle in exchange for Melody”.

Lindsay’s face, already drawn, darkened as her brows drew together. 

“They did what?”  She spat through gritted teeth, and I suddenly remembered that she was, or had been, a police officer.

I nodded.  “When we got there, they were…”  I stopped, suddenly very aware that I’d been avoiding asking Melody certain questions.  Some my mind shied away from, unable to find a way to ask, but I didn’t even know what they’d been making her do when they took her away from the house.

I turned to Melody.  “What were they doing?”  I asked, “of course you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to”.  I gabbled the last bit, suddenly, horribly out of my depth.  Part of my brain was screaming the question, did those bastards touch you? but the rest of it refused to even think about it.

Melody looked everywhere but at Lindsay.

“Um, they, er, they were stealing things, and they made me knock on doors and say I was lost.  I didn’t want to do it, they made me!” 

Lindsay shook her head.  “It’s not your fault, dear, but I think you and I should have a little talk, maybe without your dad.  Perhaps your friend Emily might come along?”

We all looked at each other uncomfortably.  Emily and Melody hardly knew each other, but I knew that Melody would never speak in front of me if something darker had happened.

“Would you mind?”  I asked Emily.

She frowned but nodded.  “Sure, if Melody is ok with that?”

Melody shrugged, eyes still downcast, and fresh worry bloomed in my chest.

I opened the door and got out of the car, then helped Melody out as Emily came to stand next to us.

Lindsay came over and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Sorry to do this to you Malcolm, but we need to decide what to do with these men quickly, before word gets out and they get lynched.  Before we make that decision, we need the full facts”.

“Yeah, sure, just be gentle, ok?  She’s been through a lot”.

She squeezed my shoulder and held out a hand to Melody, who took it with a glance back at me before the three of them headed off into the farm building.

Left to my own devices and suddenly unsure what to do, I headed to the kitchen and found the evening meal being prepared.

One of the chefs recognised me and waved a spatula in my direction. 

“You came back then?  Find your little girl?”

I nodded.

“Good.  No food yet, but I can make you a cuppa if you like?”

“That would be wonderful”, I said, forcing a smile.  What I really felt like was going to find the men in the feed shed and tearing them limb from limb, but I’d let those shackles slip once and I vowed never to do it again.  I could still remember the feel of another man’s blood on my face as my knife punctured his lung again and again, and I shuddered at the thought.  No matter how tough I had to be to survive, the man I’d become that day scared me.

I sat with both hands wrapped around my mug, thinking these and other dark thoughts while I waited for Melody and Emily to return.

It seemed to take forever, but my tea was still warm when they came back through the door hand in hand, Emily with a relieved smile on her face.

She gave me a thumbs up with her free hand, and some of the ice around my heart melted.  Melody came over and sat on my lap, subdued but not upset, and I looked over her head at Emily as she found herself a chair and sat.

“How did it go?”

Emily looked at Melody.  “Sweetie, do you want to go and play with the other kids outside?  I bet they can show you the animals”.

Melody shrugged and looked up at me.

“Do you want me to, dad?”

I stroked her hair.  “Only if you want to, love.  We’ll be right in here, just make sure you stay in the yard, ok?”

She nodded and slipped off my lap, walking to the door slowly.  She stopped and turned by the door.

“Those men can’t hurt me, can they?”

I thought about that for a second.  Lindsay didn’t seem like the type of person not to have them well under lock and key.

“You’ll be fine sweetheart, but I can go and check if you want?”

She considered this for a second, then shook her head.

“No, I believe you”.

She walked out into the yard and I looked at Emily, who had been served her own mug of tea.

“Well?”

She shrugged.  “They were using her to get people to open their doors so they could rob them, but they didn’t touch her.  One of them wanted to, but the other one wouldn’t let him, apparently”.

I released a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding.

“Thank god for that.  Do you think she’ll be ok?”

“She’s a tough kid, but she’s been through a lot.  I think she’ll be alright though”.

“Any idea what Lindsay is going to do with them?”

She picked up her mug and blew on the steaming brew.

“I don’t know, but whatever it is she’s going to do it quickly.  There are already mutterings from people, and she needs to do something if she wants to stay in control”.

“Yeah, but what?”

“The way I see it she’s got two choices.  The first is to send them out into the world without any supplies, let nature take its course”.

“And the second?”  I thought I already knew the answer but I had to ask.

She shrugged and looked down at the table before meeting my eyes.

“Well they can’t stay here, they don’t have the resources to spare.  The only other option I can see is execution”.

Chapter 52

In the end it was done quietly.

We stayed the night, a married couple making room for us in their corner of the barn so that all five of us slept almost nose to nose.  The evening was taken up by Emily and I making statements, much as we would have done had we reported a crime before the flare, each page signed and a declaration made that we were telling the truth.

“We have to observe the forms”, Lindsay had said when they were both finished, the paper disappearing into a tatty blue folder.  “We may have slipped a little but we’re a long way from barbarism”.

“I wish everyone else felt the same.  Maybe we’d have a chance at rebuilding then”.

She’d nodded at me and left, and we’d bedded down in the barn, only to be awakened just after dawn by Max, the farmer whose land it was.

He put a finger to his lips as I woke, then motioned to Emily.  I touched her shoulder and she woke instantly, then looked at Max and nodded.  We both knew what was happening, there could be no other reason for being woken so early and in secret.

I looked back at Melody and frowned, then leaned in to speak in Max’s ear.

“I can’t leave her alone, she’ll panic if she wakes up and we’re not here”.

He shook his head.  “We’ll only be gone a few minutes, and my boy David is standing by the door.  She cries out, he’ll be in here like a flash and he’s good with kids, don’t worry”.

I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t see any other way around it, so we crept out as silently as possible, nodding to the young lad who stood in the shadows of the yard, his face hidden by the misty clouds that blocked the sun.

It was much colder this morning, and as Max led us behind the barn and across the fields behind, tendrils of mist wrapped around our legs like the hands of the dead reaching out for us.  It was an unusually macabre thought, but it suited my mood.

We crossed two fields before several dark shapes rose out of the mist, coalescing into the standing forms of Lindsay and one of the officers we’d met at the barricade the day before, and the kneeling figures of the two men who had kidnapped Melody.

Just the sight of them made me snarl, and I felt the shackles in my mind tremble.

Lindsay and her colleague nodded at us, while the kneeling men looked up, silent.  One look at my face told them all they needed to know, and as we slowed they returned their eyes to the muddy ground in front of them.

Both were handcuffed, but now these cuffs were removed while Lindsay’s colleague covered them with a police-issue pistol held in one hand, while the other held, somewhat incongruously, a pillow.

Keeping clear of the line of fire, Lindsay moved around the side of the men so that they could see her as she spoke.

“You are here today to answer for your crimes.  In a perfect world, you would be tried by a court in front of a jury of your peers, and then sentenced by a judge, but this is not a perfect world.  Instead, I have to do what I can with the cards I’ve been dealt.  You’ve been accused of murder, kidnapping and robbery.  Do you have anything to say?”

The men shared a glance, then the one who had held the knife to Melody’s throat shrugged.

“Will it make a difference?”

“Probably not”.

“Then fuck you all”.

Lindsay nodded and motioned for her colleague to step forward.

“I’ve seen the evidence, as have three others picked at random from the camp, and all agree that you are, on the balance of probabilities, guilty of all the charges.  There are two possible sentences, but I feel that if you are released, you will continue to prey on those weaker than you”.

One of the men looked up, then spat at Lindsay’s boots.

“If you’re gonna kill us, just fuckin kill us”.

I’d expected them to beg, to plead for their lives, but instead they were meeting their fate with a rough dignity that annoyed me, as if they no longer wished to be part of this screwed up world.  I wanted them to cry, to scream, to realise that what they had done was wrong, to admit that we were in the right.

I even hoped for one brief second that it was all an act, that they would try to break free at the last second, and I imagined myself seizing the pistol from Emily’s waistband and shooting them both as they ran into the mist.

Instead, the officer stepped up to the first, placing the pillow against the back of his head.  He glanced at Lindsay who, face pale as the mist around her, nodded once.

The sound of the body hitting the ground was louder than the retort of the pistol, muzzle buried as it was in the pillow.  The smell of charred feathers and cordite filled the air, followed quickly by another smell as the dead man’s bowels released.

Before the other could do more than blink, the pillow was moved to his head and the pistol pushed into it.

He looked up at me just as the trigger was pulled, his eyes widening as the bullet tore through his skull and he slumped to the ground next to his friend.

I felt strangely empty as I watched them lying there.  I searched for some kind of feeling, remorse, relief, anger, guilt, but again there was none.

Emily’s hand stole into mine and squeezed my fingers, making me look at her. 

“Are you ok?”  She asked softly, as Lindsay led our silent procession back towards the buildings.

I shrugged, unsure what answer to give.

“I think so”, I said, keeping hold of her hand.  “I just don’t know anymore”.

She just nodded at that, pulling my arm around her shoulders and leaning into me as we walked back to the barn, leaving the dead where they had fallen.

Chapter 53

Breakfast was a subdued affair, partly due to the fact that Lindsay had shared with the camp the news Emily had given her about the radiation detectors.

In my surprise at finding the Melody’s captors here, the radiation had all but slipped my mind, but it was all anyone here could talk about as we joined the many that squeezed into the kitchen for a bowl of lumpy porridge and a mug of coffee, with more queuing patiently outside.

Melody was unusually subdued that morning, and had been since we’d come back to find her awake and sitting up, silent in the darkness but with tears glistening on her face.  She refused to talk about it, however, so I left it alone and hoped that whatever was bothering her would come to light with time.

Once we finished eating it was time to say our goodbyes.  Emily and I were both keen to get an early start, wanting to get on the road and away from the gloom that overhung the farm.

Lindsay stopped us in the yard, two full packs in her arms.

“Take these”, she said without preamble, “food and drinking water, and a first aid kit.  I hope we meet again one day”.

I took the packs and stowed them in the car, then shook her hand.  Emily and Melody did the same, then Emily asked if Lindsay had a road atlas and a pen.

Lindsay sent one of the ever-present children to go and fetch them from her room, making small talk about the weather while we waited.

When the boy ran up with the map and a red marker, Emily took the map and scanned the pages until she found Surrey, then put a small red cross on the map and handed it to the police officer.

“That’s where we are”, she said, “if things get too bad up here and you need somewhere to head for, come and find us.  The farm is huge, even bigger than this one, although the land hasn’t been used for the last ten years or so.  Oh, and keep the Landrover with our thanks”.

Lindsay thanked her and shook her hand again, then waved us off as we got in the car and drove up the bumpy dirt track, Melody in the back on her own with a new pen one of the children had given her, already writing furiously in her diary.

I sat in the front with Emily, silent as we drove out of the gate and waved to the guards, then pulled onto the roundabout and south onto the M6.

“I’m going to try and work our way across country when we get past Birmingham”, she said after a few miles, “see if we can get onto the M1 and then go clockwise on the M25.  I don’t fancy bumping into the Secretary’s men”.

I nodded in agreement.  “I’d better see if I’ve got any change for the Dartford toll”.

It was a weak joke, but it brought a smile to Emily’s face.

“Dad?”  Melody looked up from her diary.  “Can I ask you a question?”

“Go on”.

She paused as if searching for the right words, her face deadly serious.

“Those men are dead, aren’t they?”

I exchanged a quick glance with Emily.

“Yes darling, they are”.

She paused again, looking down at her diary, then back up at me.

“Am I a bad person because I’m pleased they’re dead?”

I wished that I was in the back with her, able to put my arms around her.  No eleven-year-old should have to ask that question, but I immediately understood how important it was that I answered it, and answered it well.

“It’s never a nice thing when anyone dies”, I said, choosing my words carefully, “but sometimes, just sometimes, there are people so bad that if they carried on living they would make other people’s lives even worse.  Those men were like that.  If we’d let them go, they would have kept on hurting people, and that wouldn’t be fair on the people they hurt, so we had to do something that no one liked to stop them”.

“You had to kill them?”

I looked to Emily for help, but I could see from her face that she was as lost in the minefield as I was.

“There wasn’t any other choice, love.  But they hurt you, and Nana, and so it’s natural for you to be relieved that they can’t hurt you anymore.  I’m not pleased that they’re dead, but I am pleased that they won’t hurt anyone else”.

She thought about this for a long moment and then nodded as if she’d come to a decision.

“That’s why I’m pleased too”, she said, and returned to her diary as calmly as if we’d been discussing the weather.

Glancing out through the window, I looked up at the heavy grey clouds that threatened rain, wondering if they still contained radiation this far south.  I couldn’t be sure, I was no expert after all, but it did make me wonder about the other nuclear power stations dotted across the country, and suddenly wished for a working Geiger counter.

The weather had definitely turned, the long dry spell shattered overnight as storm clouds continued to build.  It made me worry about the future, about how we would survive when the cold storms of winter hit, but then I reminded myself that humanity had survived for thousands of years before electricity, and no doubt would survive for thousands more even if we never clawed back what we’d lost.

The rain finally began to fall as morning turned to afternoon, a light spattering at first but quickly intensifying to the point where the wipers struggled to keep the windscreen clear.  It rattled off the room like a thousand crazed drummers, adding to the noise of the half-century old engine until I could barely hear myself think.

We’d passed Birmingham late in the morning, a few of its taller buildings just visible through the rain-smeared windows, and when we reached the M42 Emily turned off and drove confidently along smaller roads that had me lost within minutes.

We finally came out on the M1 just above Luton, the road here often half-blocked with abandoned vehicles, many starting to show wear from the elements after a week or more in the open.

We were drawing close to the M25 when Emily tapped the fuel gauge and looked over at me.

“We’re running low”, she said with a grimace.  “It might run like a dream but it drinks fuel”.

I waved a hand at the cars we were passing. 

“Take your pick”.

She pulled over near a tangle of cars and we got out, having no choice but to risk the rain.

“We should be ok this far south”, Emily said dubiously, but just in case we made Melody stay in the car despite her protests.

All of the cars had been locked, as if the drivers expected to be able to return for them, but the windows were easy enough to smash with screwdrivers from the small toolkit we’d found in the boot of the Traveller.

Although the central locking systems were fried, we quickly developed a simple method of smashing a window, unlocking the driver’s door and then climbing in to pull down the back seat and access the boot that way, searching for hose or tubing that we could use to syphon petrol from the tanks.

In the end Emily gave up looking, instead lifting a bonnet and ripping a length of tubing from the engine.  I produced an empty petrol can from the boot of another car, and then sucked on the end of the tube that she had put into a petrol tank, spitting out the fuel when it rushed into my mouth and made me gag.

We filled the can and transferred it to the Traveller several times, then filled the can once more and put it in the boot where it filled the car with the headache-inducing smell of petrol. 

We climbed back in and Emily started the engine while I turned to Melody.

“You ok?”  I asked, and she nodded.

“Yes, but I’m bored now”.

“I know”, I said as we pulled away, “but it shouldn’t be too long now”.

Emily glanced back over her shoulder.  “Two hours, I think, maybe three because we’re going the long way around.  Can you last that long? We can play a game if you like?”

Melody nodded.  “Ok, what should we play?”

Emily smiled.  “I’ve got an idea.  Let’s each think of the thing we miss the most from before the flare.  I’ll go first.  Ice cream.  Mint chocolate chip ice cream with marshmallows on top.  Malcolm?”

I smiled and shrugged.  “Easy.  Skinny lattes with vanilla.  Melody, how about you?”

She said nothing for a moment and I looked back to see tears tracking their way down her cheeks.

“My mum”, she said quietly, “I miss my mum most”.

For the next hour, we travelled in silence.

Chapter 54

We’d just passed the turnoff for Romford when I spotted something moving to the side of the road some way ahead.

“Do you see that?”  I pointed towards it, unsure through the driving rain what it might be.

“What the hell?”  Emily peered through the windscreen.

“Are they people?”  Melody asked as she leaned over my shoulder to get a better look.

As we drew closer I saw that they were indeed people, hundreds of them walking in a huddle across a field to the side of the road, while dozens appeared to be harnessed to the front of trucks that were being pulled with much difficulty through the wet mud towards the motorway.

As we drove closer, more and more people appeared over the brow of the hill, those at the rear trudging in the churned-up much of those at the front.

“Where are they coming from?” Melody asked me, but I could only shrug.

“No idea, but we want to get past before they reach the road.  I don’t like our chances if they get in front of us”.

Even as I spoke, those at the front of the mass were pointing at us, some waving their arms while others began to run clumsily through the mud towards the motorway.

I watched in amazement as yet more people came over the hill, thousands of weary travellers carrying loads on their backs as they walked, or pulling trucks and trailers piled high with belongings.

“Can we go any faster?”  I asked Emily, and the engine strained as she put her foot to the floor, the speedo creaking up to a hairsbreadth over seventy and vibrating as if caught in a gale.

“That’s all we’ve got”, she said, eyes fixed on the road ahead to spot the abandoned cars that flashed out of the rain with almost no warning.  “Melody, sit down and put your seatbelt on please”.

Melody did as she was told and I reached for my own seatbelt, pulling it across and clicking it in place.

“Take this”, Emily said, passing me the pistol with one hand, “but don’t use it unless you have to, there’s only twelve rounds in it”.

I took it awkwardly, the grip cold in my hand.

“Do you think it’ll come to that?”

“I don’t know, but better it doesn’t and you’re ready than the other way around”.

The front edge of the crowd had reached the hard shoulder now, men, women and a few children running out into the road as if they could stop us with sheer weight of numbers.  I could see their faces now, hungry, desperate, eager for whatever we might have, including our car.

I wound the window down with a shaking hand and raised the pistol, hoping those closest to us would see it and pull back, but they kept coming.

Emily pulled into the outside lane, as close to the central reservation as she dared, her wing mirror mere centimetres away from the concrete barrier.  Even then it seemed as though it wouldn’t be enough as hundreds of people spilled out onto the road, some shouting while others just ran at us.

I spared a glance for Melody, strapped into her seat but nose pressed up against the glass, staring into the eyes of those that would take everything she had without stopping to think, and I swore that that would never happen.

Raising the pistol, I aimed at a man who was running at an angle, trying to get in front of us, and pulled the trigger.

The boom was shockingly loud inside the car, smoke filling the air with the stench of cordite.  The man I’d fired at dropped, but then got to his feet again and checked himself with both hands, patting his body up and down with a look of relief on his face.

Then we were past, pulling away from the leading edge of the crowd as we thundered along the motorway.  I flicked the safety back on and dropped the pistol into my lap, then closed the window again, my face and arm soaked by the driving rain.

“Are we clear?”  Emily asked.

“Yeah, I think so”, I said shakily, “what the hell was that about?”

“They’re desperate”, she said, “Did you not see how thin they were?”

It hadn’t registered at the time, but now I realised that they had all been gaunt, underfed, half-dead on their feet.  I could only imagine how much sorely-needed energy they had expended trying to stop us, some willing to risk death just to get at whatever we might have with us.

“How in hell did it come to this?”  I asked, more to myself than anyone else, but strangely it was Melody who answered.

“Mr Simms in history said that we were only three meals away from barbarism”, she said matter-of-factly, “even if Sally Higgins thought that was in France”.

I burst out laughing, a high-pitched, nervous giggle that made me sound like a naughty schoolgirl.  That in turn made Emily laugh, and then Melody joined in, all of us roaring until we could barely breathe.

I knew that it was just a reaction to the adrenaline, a salve for the fear, but even so it felt good, and it was several minutes before I got my giggling back under control.

“Melody”, I said, turning to smile at her, “did I ever tell you that I love you”.

“I know”, she said.  “I’m very loveable”.

“Yeah, not to mention modest, eh?”

She nodded solemnly.  “I get that from my dad”.

“Hang on a minute, I thought you got your brains from me, and your lack of modesty from your…”  I stopped, seeing Melody’s face fall at the thought of her mother.

“I think”, Emily interrupted, “that we’re only about an hour away from home.  Just think, tea, bacon and warm beds!”

I could have kissed her right there for giving me a way out.

“Now when we get there, Melody, I need you to be on best behaviour, ok?  We’ll be living with them for a while, so let’s make a good first impression”.

Melody nodded, as grateful as I was for the reprieve.

“Dad, how did you meet them?”

“Well”, I said, wondering how to edit the tale for young ears, “it’s a long story”.

“I’m not going anywhere”, she said mischievously.  “And if it’s too long then I’ll just fall asleep anyway”.

“Fine”, I said, pretending to be offended but secretly pleased to be able to distract her from what we’d just seen, “then sit back and let me regale you with the tale of how a humble astrophysicist and a mature yet good looking journalist came to rescue the fair daughter of a grumpy old troll and his oh-so-patient wife”.

And so I began the story, while the miles rolled past and we drew ever closer to home.

Chapter 55

The last few miles were startlingly familiar while at the same time feeling like a distant memory.

As the road we were on crossed over the top of the M23 and brought us down past the slip road Jerry had taken when the plane blocked our path, I began to feel excited, like a child seeing grandparents he knew would spoil him after being away for months.

“I wonder if we could get a shower rigged up”, I said as Emily navigated the narrow lanes.  “Maybe get a tank on the roof, or set something up in the yard maybe?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t see why not.  The showers we had in some of the forward camps were relatively simple.  As long as you’ve got a metal tank and you can heat it, the rest is easy”.

“What’s a forward camp?”  Melody asked from the back seat.

“It’s from when I was in Afghanistan, with the army.  We had a couple of big camps, like fortresses with lots of buildings, and then we had smaller camps that were closer to the fighting”.

“You were in Afghanistan?  Never!”

Emily nodded solemnly.  “I was too.  It was my job to fix all the machines that broke, and get water pumps working in the villages when they stopped working or their wells dried up”.

“That’s so cool!  Do you think I could be a soldier when I’m older?”

Emily and I shared another glance,  a habit we were quickly forming with Melody’s insistence on asking awkward questions.

“That all depends on who the army is fighting for, love”, I said, “but I’m sure Emily could teach you how to fix things if you want?”

“I’d like that.  Then I can make sure everyone I like has water to drink”.

Emily smiled in the mirror.  “That’s a good way to think.  Once we’re settled in at home, I’m sure there’ll be loads of projects we need to work on.  I’ll need your help if you don’t mind?”

Melody nodded eagerly.  “Can I?  I’ve never fixed anything before”.

“Neither has your father, apparently.  I think we’ll all be getting our hands dirty soon enough”.

We crested the final rise and the driveway came into sight, my heart catching in my chest as I saw a glimpse of the small cottage beyond.

“We’re home”, I said with a smile, and Melody pressed her face against the window for a better look.

“I can’t see it”, she complained, “just those hills”.

“Ah, that’s why it’s such a good place”, I replied, “no one knows it’s there.  It’s hidden behind the hills”.

Emily turned the Traveller into the drive, taking the uneven surface slowly.  We pulled into the yard and I half-expected to see Ralph standing there waiting for us while Maggie ran in excited circles, but no one came from the cottage despite the kitchen door being open.

Dread clutched at my heart.  Had we gone all that way and back again, only to find that some horrible thing had happened to those we’d left behind?

Emily stopped the car and held her hand out for the pistol.

“Melody, stay in the car”, she said quietly, her tone brooking no argument.

I turned and ruffled Melody’s hair.  “They’re probably out looking for food”, I said with a cheerfulness I didn’t feel.  “We’ll just check the cottage in case”.

We got out of the car, closing the doors quietly, as if the noise of the engine a few moments before wouldn’t have given us away to anyone inside.

Emily looked at me over the car and I saw the closest thing to panic I’d ever seen on her face.

“I’m sure it’s fine”, I said, but she shook her head.

“No, it’s not.  The door is open and it’s raining.  Mum never leaves it open when it rains.  And if the door’s open then Maggie should be in the yard, but she’s not.  Something is very wrong”.

We stood and listened, the rain hissing down and soaking us as we waited, trying to hear anything out of place.

After a minute or so, Emily gestured to me and moved towards the kitchen, half-crouched with the pistol in a firing position.

I followed as quietly as I could, empty hands curling into fists for want of a weapon, and we were almost at the door when suddenly a stocky figure burst out of it, shotgun in hand and screaming an incoherent warcry.

I fell over backwards in my haste to get away, scrabbling at the concrete as death approached, rain falling in my eyes and making it hard to see anything.

I heard Melody scream from the car, and then Emily’s voice cut across the yard in a scream.

“Dad, no!”

The world stopped.  Rain still hissed down but everything else was frozen in place as the figure stood in the doorway, peaked cap streaming water as Ralph blinked uncertainly, shotgun still held in his meaty fists.

“Emily?”  He said disbelievingly.  “Emily?  Malcolm?  We thought, we thought…”  He dropped the shotgun and turned to his daughter, sweeping her into his arms and crushing the breath from her.

“You’re alive!” he said, swinging her around in a circle, “oh my days, your alive and you came back”.

I picked myself up off the concrete slowly as Melody burst from the car and ran over to me, clutching my leg as I struggled to stand.

“I thought you were them bastards from the village come back again”, Ralph said as he finally put Emily down.  “You’ve been gone so long we thought you were dead”.

“What bastards from the village?”  Emily asked, getting her breath back.

“You know, the ones that tried to steal the car when me and Malcolm came to get you.  They searched your house and found our address, then came over to cause mischief.  I chased them off but they threatened to come back and burn us out like we did to them”.

He strode over to me and pumped my hand furiously, then stooped and stroked Melody’s cheek.  “This your little girl?”

I nodded, heart still pounding.  “Yes, this is Melody.  Melody, this is Ralph”.

She moved away from me and held out her hand.

“You’re the troll”, she said, “dad told me all about you”.

Ralph looked up at me with a wicked gleam in his eye.

“Did he now?”

I swallowed nervously and smiled.

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose”.

He grunted and picked up his shotgun, gesturing at us to follow him into the kitchen.

“Harriet!”  He shouted, “it’s ok.  It’s Emily and Malcolm and they’ve got little Melody with them”.

The door to the larder flew open and Harriet almost ran out, her speed belying her age, to wrap Emily in her arms.  A black and white blur came next, Maggie filling the kitchen with excited barking as a sheepish looking Jerry followed, several days’ worth of stubble making him look even more like Jeff Goldblum.

“I’m glad you made it”, he said with a smile, “really glad.  I’m sorry I didn’t come with you”.

I shook my head.  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Jerry, but I’m not.  I don’t think you’re built for what’s happening out there”.

He shrugged and introduced himself to Melody, then in turn introduced her to Harriet who immediately exclaimed over her grubby hair and face.

“Oh my child”, she said with a horrified expression, “did they find you in a mud bath?”

With a quick kiss on my cheek and a grateful smile, Harriet bustled Melody off to clean her up and Ralph closed the door on the outside world, then crossed to a shelf and took down a bottle of brandy and several glasses.

He poured a generous measure into each and soon we were sat around the table, Emily and I taking turns to relate our adventures, glossing over a few bits but mostly telling it for what it was; a story of horror, desolation and loss.

“Well you’re home now”, Ralph said firmly, his huge hand covering Emily’s where it sat on the table, “home and safe”.

Home we might be, I thought as I drank in the comfortable feeling of being surrounded by people I trusted, but with people like the Secretary, the men from Emily’s village and hordes like the one we’d narrowly avoided on the way back,

I knew that our troubles were far from over.