But there wasn’t just one pursuer.
There was a swarm. Like fish in a net, pouring over and around one another, swarming over the people who weren’t fast enough, dragging them down to the floor.
Coming toward them…toward the door. Fast and fast and…
The man’s hand took hers. He looked horribly, terribly sad. With his one hand, he placed her hand on that pulsing, urgent button beside the door, but he didn’t force her to push it. He wouldn’t force her, she knew. Because it was her choice. Here, in this dream that wasn’t nice anymore. Her choice to leave (her people?) to the swarm outside the door. Her choice to give in, or to salvage what she could.
Save themselves, or give in and give up.
My choice?
He nodded, and she understood he meant more than just a simple yes. He meant it was always her choice.
Closer now, those people, hungry people with dull, frightening eyes. Closer, filling the corridor. Her people down among them, on the floor, held roughly against the cold flooring, feet and hands pushing them down while those that still could screamed at her to help them so that the words became painful to hear.
Tuck it away, she thought. Remember it. But push the fucking button.
She pushed it. The door to the ward closed and locked and the mass of hungry people, the swarm, thudded hard against the wood. But it held.
Dawn understood. Don’t give in. No matter the cost. Or, she thought she understood.
But she didn’t, because this wasn’t the end of her dream, only the beginning.
The swarm retreated from the door, and there, outside, some people came forward, wearing bloodstained rags and some kind of ceremonial crowns made of thorns or barbed wire or cloth crusted with broken glass. Rather than horrific, they looked frightened and deeply sad as they took their saws and blades to the people held down against the floor. Sawing and hacking at hands and feet and heads and flesh, quartering and butchering her people before portioning out their meat to the waiting swarm for them to feast.
Dawn woke with a scream and leapt from the bed, shaking, sweating and above all good and angry at her own mind for the dream. She was done sleeping for the night.
15
The walk down the stairs was an uncomfortable reminder of just how pregnant Dawn was. It wouldn’t be too long now. She was due a month down the line, but for some reason she felt she’d be sooner. Sometime soon. Definitely. A mother’s instinct or something else nagging at her.
Not that it made much difference. They’d die now or soon enough. Maybe she’d get to see the baby, maybe not. Either way, the world would be gone.
She was well aware she was in the pit of depression to be thinking such thoughts. She couldn’t drag herself up, and she didn’t see any reason to, either. It was true. A meteor was about to hit Earth. One bigger, scientists and politicians were insisting, than that which purportedly did for a species a damn sight hardier than humans in all their fragility.
Dawn…shut up.
Sometimes her little internal voices made a hell of a lot of sense.
More than enough sense, considering what her mind had just been through. She still felt weak, bruised, from her dream. But the lights were on in the kitchen, so she headed down to the hall, following her eyes and her nose…her nose was, it seemed, now under the command of the baby in her belly and the baby’s gigantic appetite for food, no matter the time of day or night.
And what was the baby smelling? Bacon.
She smiled, despite the lingering discomfort from her nightmare. Shivers passed up her back in the chill air, more from the memory than the cold. Thankfully, Richard was up, too. She was glad. She didn’t want to be alone.
His back was turned. He was frying bacon.
She grinned. Frying bacon at…she looked at a clock hung from the wall: Half past four in the morning. Just about time for breakfast, she thought. Her stomach, or maybe the baby, growled. Delight or impatience, she couldn’t tell.
“Morning,” she said, nearly laughing as Richard jumped and swore.
“Damn, you’re quiet on your feet.”
“Hardly,” she said. “Carrying a little extra these days.”
“Me, too,” he said, patting his broad belly. “Are you hungry?”
“Always. Every minute of the day. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I was eating for more than two.”
“I’ve plenty. I couldn’t sleep. Got a thing for bacon. Bacon with eggs and coffee. Should watch my weight, but…” He let the thought tail off with a sigh.
“Right. Want some help?”
“Nope,” said Richard, shuffling over to the fridge to take out more bacon. Streaky rashers, she noticed. “I’m not much good around the kitchen, but breakfast? Breakfast I can do.”
She pulled out a chair and sat, feeling heavy and ungainly. She’d pulled on a dressing gown when she woke, and now she was aware that, seated, it barely covered her anymore.
“Coffee?”
“I’d like to, but I think I’d better stick with tea. One sugar?”
“Okay,” he said, and flicked on the kettle beside the four-ring hob he was hovering over.
“Heard you having a dream…you shouted out…”
“Did I wake you?” she asked, then thought it a stupid question, but sometimes stupid questions get out before you can suck them back in.
“No, I was awake anyway. Can’t seem to sleep past four in the morning these days. Getting old, don’t you know.”
“Better than the alternative.”
“True. True.”
They fell into a companionable silence while the kettle boiled and the bacon fried.
She passed the time looking around the kitchen at all the little knickknacks a person collects over the years. A ceramic hen for eggs, a small electric egg timer on a tiled windowsill. Wooden (handmade?) spice rack on the wall. Pictures—none of Robert, she noted. Just Richard and his wife. She was a long time dead, but Dawn liked the pictures on the wall. No hint of sadness in the younger man. Not like now.
But then he’d lost plenty, hadn’t he?
He put her tea down on the tablecloth in front of her.
“Thanks,” she said. It looked too hot yet to drink, but she didn’t mind, because straight after he put down a plate full of dark, crispy bacon, and eggs. The eggs were a little crispy, too, fried in the same pan as the bacon, but the yolks were runny. Two thick slices of fresh white bread with a ton of butter (real) slathered atop followed on another, smaller, plate.
Her mouth watered.
“Any news?” she asked around a mouthful of food. The little dog, Maisy, came in from the garden and made a beeline for her and her plate of bacon.
Tough luck, doggy, she thought. She guessed she should have waited for Richard to join her, but her stomach and body and baby were all screaming at her to eat eat eat, so she did, with gusto.
“I listened to the wireless a little while ago. Nothing new. Few strikes here and there. Some cult in India doing some nasty stuff. Usual end-of-the-world crackpots sprouting out of the pavements. Bombs in Spain, America…blah blah. Wars beyond count, politicians and scientists talking a load of crap…so…no, I guess,” he said with a sad snort, “no news.”
She shrugged. “Sounds about right,” she said, and then fire lit the early morning sky.
16
“Fuck it,” said Richard. “That was close. It’s knocked the gas out.”
He put both hands on the worktop and leaned forward a little way. Like he was shocked and trying to catch his breath.
Dawn felt exactly the same way. She was suddenly freezing cold. Bone cold, not like a little shiver.
It’s here. It’s begun.
“Bacon’s done, at least,” said Richard, though even over her own crippling fear Dawn noticed his voice shake when he spoke. She loved him right then, absolutely, for trying.
And if he could? If he could cook bacon and make tea and be so fucking British while fire rained down from the sky?
She didn’t know where that thought came from, or if it was her voice or someone imagined. But she liked the thought. A good thought for the end of time.
Just eat your damn breakfast.
I will, then, she thought. She thought, too, that it might be nice to offer Richard an egg. She fought with herself for a second because her baby wanted it.
But if he can be British in the face of the end of the world, the least I can do is offer him a bloody egg.
“You want…” she said. It was all she managed before all the air in the kitchen was gone. One second she was about to offer eggs, the next, she was flung backward from her chair through the kitchen door.
Dawn landed with a heavy crack on her tailbone, skidding the length of the tiled hall to the hard, wooden front door, bashing her head.
Fire belched from the kitchen toward her, a roaring ball of flame. She didn’t have time to scream or run or duck. A shard of something sharp cracked into the stained glass at the top half of the door and carried right on through.
The fireball stopped short of her and blinked out to nothing but a stench.
Her breath returned and this time she did scream. Pain, fear, shock. Everything together. As she wailed, everything sounded dull and distant. Maisy ran yelping along the corridor, her coat on fire. The little dog bolted into the front room, yapping insanely. To Dawn’s ears, Maisy’s fear and pain was distant, underwater.
Dog’s on fire, she thought, and her thought, too, was distant.
Brickwork had blown outward and the ceiling above the kitchen collapsed. She could see the early morning sky through the wreckage, fire and pieces of the table and chairs. Kitchen towels drifted in the burned air, flaming feathers floating upward instead of down.
She could see a leg, too.
Richard.
She tried to stand but gasped at the pain in her head and her behind, crumpling back to the tiles (still cold, despite the fire not ten feet away).
The leg she could see wasn’t moving at all.
But he might be alive.
What had happened?
“Knocked the gas out…” she remembered that.
Can’t get up, she thought. But she gritted her teeth. She knew she could crawl, and that would have to be good enough.
Biting down hard against the pain, hearing very little and her head swimming, she lay down on her side and crawled toward the smoking, shattered kitchen.
“Richard,” she said, finding her voice. Even though it sounded odd through her broken ears, she knew her voice was raw, like the fire had charred her throat.
Burning stink, smoke drifting, but the fire was short-lived. The explosion had largely blown itself out.
Richard was on the floor. He was twisted at an unnatural angle, one leg beneath him, broken badly enough to be round the wrong way. His eyes were open. Glassy with shock and probably pain. Thankfully the shock would keep the worst of the pain away.
Sweat and blood beaded his brow. Metal, probably a piece of the gas cooker, protruded from his chest. Blood was welling from the wound.
Got to be through his lung, she thought, and with that thought, a kind of clarity descended on her.
He’s going to die if we can’t get help. I need to get him to a hospital. Ambulance? Probably quickest.
She took his hand to reassure him, her own injuries largely forgotten.
“Going to get an ambulance,” she told him. It hurt her to speak, but she was only dimly aware of it. But he wouldn’t let her go.
“Dying,” he said.
“Bollocks,” she told him, but he still wouldn’t let go.
“Dying either way,” he managed. There was a little blood in his spittle…it’d be a lot, soon.
“I’ve got to call for help…”
“No.” He spoke quietly, but there was strength there, still. Old and hurt, he might be, but there was still a hint of the man Dawn had seen earlier, up there on the wall. A man with his beautiful wife. Younger, before he’d been bowed by loss.
In his voice, there remained a sense that the old broken man on the kitchen floor had once been confident and strong.
“Dying,” he said again. “Saved you some…things. In the…”
He seemed to drift for a second, eyes flitting closed. But they opened again.
“With the washing machine…tumble…”
“Utility room?”
Richard tried to nod, but couldn’t. He closed his eyes, instead.
This time, they didn’t open again.
17
Dawn had no idea how long she sat there with Richard’s body in the dark. A long time, certainly. She was vaguely aware that she needed the toilet and that her legs were passing numb into dead. Aware of the stench of burning hair (her own, short to begin with, was largely stubble now, as were her eyebrows and lashes). Her skin felt raw. As it should. She’d been punched in the face by a gas explosion.
Even though she knew she was lucky to be alive, she didn’t feel it. The tears that ran down her face were soothing her skin and it didn’t feel right to her, almost as though she was finding solace in sorrow. Eventually, she cuffed her tears away and pushed her dead legs into carrying her to the toilet.
Maisy was dead, too, she saw. Burned up or died in simple shock, she couldn’t tell. The old dog was in the living room, curled in a corner, still smoking a little.
She carried on down the hall to use the small toilet below the stairs. Only then did she begin to think about the immediate future. The big one was going to hit—there was no doubt about that.
But what if she did live? Should she plan for a tomorrow?
Richard obviously had. And he was dead.
Doesn’t mean you’ll be dead, she thought.
But the world was going to die, right? If something as big as the rock due any day struck Earth, and it wouldn’t, couldn’t miss, then the toll?
All life on Earth, snuffed out in an instant? Or would some pockets remain?
If she didn’t die, she’d be a fool indeed, out in the middle of nowhere with nothing at all to sustain her, no help during her delivery…
So? she thought.
So go see what’s what, eh?
Dawn headed out toward the side of the house. Away from the destruction and death, though she couldn’t escape the smell of burned hair or charred flesh. That smell was coming from her.
The utility room was basically the garage. Richard didn’t own a car, but he did own an old motorbike with a sidecar. The bike was at the front of the garage. At the back, everything Richard had thought she’d need, if she lived.
If she lived.
She pushed that away and searched through the things on the shelf.
Richard, it seemed, had thought of pretty much everything a man could, and plenty a man wouldn’t. Buckets, first aid, home delivery kit, books, baby clothes, a few toys, dummies…even feeding bras. Not quite the right size, bigger than she was. But then she laughed. She knew he’d figured her boobs would grow with milk, and had bought accordingly.
The thought that he’d obviously spent time working all this out, and probably read the books, intending to be there should they live…it hurt. But kind of in a nice way.
There really was everything she’d need. Some things she might need, too. And lastly, she noted, one thing she hoped she wouldn’t.
She opened a long leather carry case on top of the fridge and found a Beretta over-and-under shotgun. The type of thing country people used for clay pigeon shooting, or for pheasant hunting. Not an American kind of weapon, like a pistol or a rifle, but a decidedly country gun. One that hadn’t been made specifically for killing people, but for country pursuits. An elegant yet beautiful thing, long and sleek and yet it felt somewhat ungainly and heavy when she picked it up and hefted the thing.
There was a box of shells, too, right next to the weapon on top of the fridge.
She didn’t know much about guns—just what she picked up from the boo
ks she read and the television she watched.
It looked expensive. It looked like it worked.
A cleaning kit rested beneath the box of shells.
She wondered if the gun was loaded. The thought gave her an odd chill, as she stood in the dim fluorescent light in the garage, holding the gun by the barrel. Thinking, just for a second, about trying out the trigger.
But she didn’t wish to find out if it was loaded. Not really. Gingerly, with hands that still shook, she closed the carry case. She convinced herself that she was honoring Richard’s unspoken wish as she carried everything out to load the car. Gun, too.
18
When Dawn was ready, after the car was loaded, she sat in the driver’s seat with absolutely no idea where to go.
Does it matter now? I could go anywhere…anywhere at all.
It was true. She could drive north, south. No one knew exactly where the rock would land. No one knew the effects, though everyone seemed happy enough to speculate.
Where she went would have no bearing on her chance of survival, because when everything was down to chance, you may as well roll with it.
She keyed the ignition. The clock came on, illuminating the dim interior of the car. Midday? That couldn’t be right…
“But…”
She’d sat in the dark with Richard for six hours?
That’s not the problem, is it, Dawn?
No. It wasn’t.
The problem was that the skies were still dark at midday.
“No…”
She clicked the radio on. Nothing but static. She tried tuning the radio with the automatic search. Nothing. No radio at all.
The air within the car felt staid, but above all chill—goose bumps rose on Dawn’s forearms, and her neck prickled.
Nothing. No one. Alone.
She bit her tongue because she could feel a seed of panic in herself. If she let it grow, she’d be in real trouble. It didn’t make sense to her, but she felt the truth of it, the shape of it. The big one wasn’t due yet, and when it was, it was due to strike Russia.
Left to Darkness Page 5
