Devastation

by Jane Dougherty

  Tully’s house, four stone walls and red tiled roof, forgotten by time and the developers, sat in a patch of wasteland between industrial estates and sterile farmland. The center of a ramshackle assembly of barns and outhouses, it was the heart of the Community.

  Tully didn’t remember life before the Community, like he didn’t remember his mother except as a fuzzy warm presence. When she’d died, his dad hadn’t been able to bear the constant reminders of her—in the house, the walks they took together, the shops, the town, even the language. When a lorry driver friend had told him about this community of Hairies outside Paris, unreconstructed hippies living on a vacant lot with their own generator, their goats and their allotments, Tully’s dad was all ears. These were people who spoke a language his Molly had never uttered, in a country they had never visited, living a life on the edges of everything they had known together.

  It didn’t take long for him to pack up little Tully and everything useful, stick it in a van and leave Liverpool, England, and the ghost of Molly behind. A farm worker’s cottage with a roof that was still intact became Tully’s home. In winter, there was a fire in the hearth and icicles on the bedroom windows. In summer the doors stood open, and cats and the hot breeze drifted in and out.

  Tully was going to his fancy international school to learn how to be a Very Important Person and save the planet. Jack was doing his bit in the Community to at least destroy as little of it as possible, to make himself as innocuous and discreet as a squirrel, or a cricket, or a barn owl.

  And barn owls make lousy pastry cooks.

  Tully could have made that last observation aloud and Carla would have understood, like she understood Euclid and German. She understood him so well. Tully only felt complete when he had his arms around her, her head nestled in the crook of his arm, her hair tickling his chin. In his dad’s favorite cinema that smelled of stale popcorn, feet and a century of dust, she made him feel like the strong, silent hero in old Gary Cooper films. With her slender, almost angular, frame and elfin features, she seemed fragile, vulnerable, but like the wasp-waisted cowgirls, she was really tough as old boots.

  “Fancy the cinema this afternoon? The Champo’s showing Casablanca. Again.”

  Carla grimaced. “Not in this heat. I don’t know why the owners of that place think you can’t watch an old film without the authentic atmosphere too—sweaty armpits and hair lacquer.”

  Tully sighed. “I’m not going around the shops.”

  “Let’s just go for a walk in the woods.”

  * * * *

  The woods was Carla’s name for the brownfield area that was home to the Community. Wild flowers had first colonized the site, followed by saplings. The watercourse that had once been forced underground had broken out of the cracked pipeline and now ran free, bordered by young trees and thick brambles. Tully never really understood Carla’s fascination with the place. She spent her summers with her grandparents in the Dolomites—real, clean countryside, with fresh air and wild animals. In the woods, the soil was thin, full of pebbles and bits of glass, even if it was animated with lizards, field mice and the odd snake. In Tully’s woods, the predators were house cats, their sleek shadows and unblinking eyes often glimpsed as they prowled through the thickets. No savage beauty surrounded the Community, no forests or snow-capped mountains, but it was Tully’s home.

  “There’s something sad about this place. Don’t you feel it?” Tully asked once. “Not lifeless concrete, but not countryside either.”

  Carla just smiled and popped a blackberry into his mouth. “It’s plucky. Struggling, but not dead. The roses have come back. That’s something to be happy about, isn’t it?”

  * * * *

  “Let’s just go for a walk,” Carla said as she gathered up the remains of their lunch. Tully flicked the moist, oily crumbs of Gabriella’s focaccia off his shirtfront and settled back against the tree.

  “When Dad’s quiche has settled, then. I can’t face a bus journey until my stomach juices have neutralized it.”

  Carla joined him and lay back in his arms. Tully bent to kiss her forehead. Carla, her eyes closed, smiled up at him, sighed and snuggled herself into a more comfortable position. For a while, Tully watched the shadow pattern cast across her face by the gently fluttering leaves. Beyond their patchy canopy, the sky pulsed with a metallic sheen, crisscrossed by the vapor trails of innumerable jets.

  Tully peered through the gaps between the leaves. How long had it been since anyone had seen a clear blue sky, he wondered, or the stars in the night sky? He followed the black specks of fighter aircraft as they spun yet more trails across the already encumbered sky and wondered idly where they were going. Jerusalem? Kiev? Teheran? Mexico?

  News broadcasts had announced more rioting in Glasgow, that Lombardy was on the point of seceding from the rest of Italy and that the Green Warriors fighting to protect the last few thousand square miles of Amazonian forest from the bulldozers had been massacred by the Brazilian army. There were so many, what the news bulletins referred to laconically as trouble spots, that the holiday industry had more or less folded. Suddenly the misery, held at bay for the tourists beyond those palm-fringed beaches of paradise, was armed and highly dangerous.

  Carla opened her eyes with a frown, and Tully shivered. The sky was clouding over. Fast. Thick gray and yellow banks of cloud, like the scum that had to be regularly removed from the surface of the Seine, bubbled up from the south. Gooseflesh prickled his bare arms as sweat cooled. The temperature plummeted. The crowd moved uneasily now. Heads turned skyward, watching the approaching cloud mass with apprehension. Lightning flickered like a faulty light fuse, and they heard the deep rumble of thunder.

  “Looks like we’re in for one hell of a storm,” Tully murmured, hoping that was all. But the queasy feeling in his gut uncoiled, reminding him it was still there, and murmured back that it wasn’t.

  Everywhere students bent to collect up their belongings or ran for cover beneath clouds that had billowed and swollen to cover the whole sky. Tully grabbed Carla’s hand and they dashed for the cloister. As they reached its cover, the sky rumbled and loosed a barrage of huge hailstones. Instants later, the white iceberg shrapnel turned stone-dark as rocks replaced hail.

  A piercing scream ripped from the middle of the quadrangle as a student stumbled to the ground, the side of his head a bloody smear. The air roared with the thunder of falling rocks, some the size of footballs, all steaming and sizzling as they scorched tracks in the grass, and the shrill shriek of exploding glass. The plane trees moaned as branches bent and cracked, and the rising wind whined in fury. They watched as four students grabbed the unconscious boy and ran with him to one of the offices across the other side of the quad.

  “This is crazy,” Carla murmured. “Rocks don’t just drop out of the sky.”

  “One of the Hairies was bending Dad’s ear the other day about…well, rocks dropping out of the sky,” Tully said in a conversational voice he hoped sounded comforting. “Volcanic stuff raining down on a village in the Vosges. That was weird enough, but even weirder, it was hot! As if it had just been blown out of a volcano.”

  He recalled the scene, whiskey bottle and glasses on the table, cat picking her way along the edge of the sink to see if anything interesting was lurking in the bottom. Then his eyes widened as details of the conversation came back to him—the red, thickly bearded face, the heavy red fist slamming down on the table making the glasses jump, the cat falling into the sink.

  “Jesus! If he was right, things are going to get a bit bumpy around here.”

  For years the hairy, homespun friends of his father’s from the Community had been predicting the end of the world. Their only point of disagreement was which of the many disaster scenarios would hit first.

  Carla grabbed Tully’s arm. “The communications room, come on! The satellite pictures will show us what’s going on.”

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t mind having a look at the sports channel either.”

&nb
sp; Carla stared at him.

  “If they didn’t get the covers on the pitch in time, Dad can chuck away those tickets for the match tonight.” Tully realized it sounded as though he was turning everything into a joke, as usual, but if he didn’t laugh, he’d panic. He knew what was causing the squirming, oppressive feeling in the pit of his stomach. At least, his gut knew. His head just refused to accept it.

  Order your copy here

  About the Author

  Jane Dougherty is a product of the Irish diaspora, brought up in Yorkshire, educated at Manchester and London, before moving to Paris to work in the wine trade. She now lives in Bordeaux with her family, a Spanish greyhound, and a posse of cats. She writes fantasy with a touch of history and mythology and enjoys retelling Celtic legends. She is a sucker for anything Viking. Following a family tradition, she also writes poetry and short fiction and has been published in several anthologies, literary journals, and webzines.

  Email: janedougherty33@gmail.com

  Jane loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.finch-books.com.

  Also by Jane Dougherty

  Abomination