'What?' Jen said, turning back.
'Take me with you?' she asked.
Jen's heart broke again.
'Can you drive?' Jen had no idea where the question came from. It appeared fully formed in her mouth, but it was a good one. Mira's face dropped and Jen guessed the answer was no.
'I can drive,' the other boy said, the first time he had spoken. His voice was deeper than she'd imagined. She turned to him, the crossbow aim following her gaze, which made him drop the gun and put both hands in the air. Without the weapon she saw them both as they were: scared shitless teenagers who had fallen in with the wrong boy. Kids, trying to make sense of the end of the world.
She sighed.
'Come on then,' she said. She turned and headed for the door.
Out in the street she felt the weight of what had happened in there, what might have happened to her, and her knees almost buckled. The sun was out now, the smoke from the fires mingling with the few clouds and leaving an ashen hue to the sky. She took a breath and strode out, looking behind her to see her new charges running from the house.
Chapter Nine
Dead Melodies
Tom slept on a curved concrete ramp in Sunderland's skate park. At least, he tried to. The combination of cold concrete, the noise of the park's nocturnal wildlife, and adrenaline still coursing through his veins ensured any sleep he got was fleeting at best.
The sun rose over Mowbray Park, highlighting the famous lion statues. Tom sat up, every joint protesting as he did so. Morning light struggled to break through the smoke of the fires punctuating the skyline. Dotted around the park were corpses of the tramps who'd used to take refuge here every night despite the best efforts of the Council.
His stomach ached. He looked at Leon, who stirred in the ramp of the next half pipe. The dark rings under his eyes suggested sleep had not been his companion, either. Tom felt dreadful, the gnawing pain in his stomach complementing the headache jackhammering his skull.
'Urgh,' was all he could say.
Leon didn't respond. Tom stood and stretched, but a pain jolted his stomach. He bent over.
'You alright?' Leon asked. Tom struggled to stand upright and nodded.
'Just need to walk it off.'
They left the skate ramps and headed for the edge of the park. Tom rued the alcohol they'd drunk in the nightclub, its diuretic properties not the best choice for someone already dehydrated. Neither of them had eaten in over a day. Leon looked as bad as Tom felt.
He also stank: a nauseating mix of sweat, beer, and fear. He longed for a warm bed and a warmer shower. It occurred to him that empty houses stood all around them. Why had they chosen to spend the night outdoors?
A distant explosion shook the morning air. They stopped by a bench and watched as a pillar of smoke arced into the morning skyline.
'We need to get out of the city, I think,' Leon said.
'Yeah,' Tom replied.
'I don't think it's safe.'
Tom nodded, the pain in his head making it hard to focus.
He needed to sit down.
As if to prove his friend's point, a battered old Fiat Punto careened around the corner of the street that backed onto the park, its engine buzzing.
'Down!' hissed Leon, but the car was gone before Tom could even process the order. 'Tom, get down!' Leon barked again.
There were other voices, but Tom couldn't place them. His head swam, and his vision went fuzzy. People shaped blurs followed the car's path, running. Tom couldn't move.
'Fucking bitch!' a voice exclaimed. It sounded male, angry, and local.
Tom stood, struggling to stay upright. He stared at his feet, the only things that didn't seem to be spinning.
'What the fuck do we do now?' another voice shouted.
'We find another car,' came the reply. A third voice? Tom squinted in their direction, trying to make them out.
'Guys! Just let it go, yeah?' This one sounded different from the others, a note of panic floating around it. 'I don't think we need–'
'Shut up.'
Tom had lost track of the voices now, and willed himself to move, to stop standing there, but his body refused to obey the order. His heart pounded, and he tasted bile at the back of his throat.
'What the fuck is that?'
They'd discovered him.
Hands pulled him down, but he fought them off, and he stumbled forward. He managed to look up, but could make out nothing more than abstract shapes, colours, and stars shooting past him. He grabbed hold of something, a hedge, perhaps, and promptly vomited all over it.
It felt like he was purging his own soul. It hurt him deep inside. He fell, and all went dark.
* * * * *
His head was an abrasive mess of noise and light when he awoke. There were people all around him. Hands jostled him. Was he in a fight? He didn't remember being in a fight.
He tried to swing his fist, but his arm felt leaden. He gave it all the effort he could.
'Argh, fuck's sake,' a voice said nearby. Tom chalked that one up as a victory.
'Fucking get off me,' he managed to say, or noises somewhere in that general direction.
His head pounded and his stomach hurt. He burst into tears, which he hadn’t meant to do. He couldn't make out what was happening, but there were definitely hands on him. He fought them weakly, and felt himself slam into something.
He started to crawl. He was on the ground. He deduced this meant he could escape. He looked up through bleary eyes and made out legs, lots of legs.
The world went dark again.
His eyes forced themselves open. To his relief, all was silent, and he was in a bed. His whole body ached, and his first conscious breath came out as a rasp.
'Welcome back, Frodo,' Leon said from the chair beside his bed. 'The Dark Lord is no more. The ring is destroyed, and we are back in Rivendell.'
'Fuck off, Leon,' Tom said, with some effort. 'Where am I?'
'A house. You passed out. Actually that's not quite right. You pulled off a full exorcist, threw up, collapsed, started convulsing, started fighting yourself, and fell over. You were a one man Jim Carrey movie.'
'What?' was all Tom could manage.
'Your little piece of performance art was enough to convince those guys we shouldn't be beaten to death.'
Tom sat up, his head still throbbing, but some sense of equilibrium returning to him. 'Who were they? And where are they?'
His throat felt like sandpaper, and Leon handed him a glass of water, which he gulped down.
'Drug dealers,' Leon replied. 'But, you know, okay ones. Some girl had stolen their car not knowing they had stashed it full of pills and weed. They were not best pleased. Luckily for you, one of them was also a med student, said you were suffering from shock, dehydration, or exhaustion. Possibly all three. They helped me get you in here, and went on their merry way.
'Did they have any news?'
'Not about the storm. They said a big crowd had come down from the estates the first night and went fucking berserk. Looting, raping, and pillaging. Even they'd hidden and waited for it to pass.'
'Wait,' Tom said. 'First night? How long have I been out?'
'A day, more or less. It's morning again. Yesterday was quiet though. No mobs. I guess they moved on in another direction.'
'Where are we?' Tom looked around the room, which was sparsely decorated, but somehow opulent.
'Not far from where you passed out. The door was unlocked. No bodies inside, I guess the inhabitants were in the street watching. We should be safe here until we decide what to do.'
Tom nodded. He tried to get out of the bed, unsuccessfully at first
'Any food?'
'I'll see what I can do.'
'No, it's okay. Thanks for sticking with me and helping me out.' He swung his legs out of bed, at which point he became aware of his own nakedness. They both exchanged a momentary glance of discomfort.
'Here, try these on.' Leon chucked some clothes his way, oversiz
ed boxer shorts, jeans, and an ironed plain T-shirt.
The bathroom suggested a single male inhabitant to the house: single toothbrush, lots of male grooming products. Nothing to suggest the permanent presence of a woman. As Tom cleaned his face and stole the dead man's toothpaste for a finger brushing, he wondered who it might have been, whose house they were playing magpie in. Affluent, he guessed; the clothes were stylish and the grooming products spoke of fashion consciousness. Fashion. Another thing that would be dead and buried in this new world. Functionality was the name of the game now. So, it wasn't all bad. No more fashion magazines. No more celebrities. No more reality television.
He left the bathroom feeling much better, Leon passing him on his way out with a magazine in hand, closing the door after him with a grin. Tom made his way downstairs.
The ground floor was no less tasteful than the first, and Tom wondered if he and Leon might not stay there, wait this whole thing out and see what happened. They could go out for food and hope to Christ nobody ever came knocking on the door.
The kitchen was well appointed, although the floor was wet from the defrosted freezer. There was still no electricity. He paddled through it in bare feet and opened the fridge. The milk hadn't yet turned, so he downed half of it, reasoning this might be the last chance he had for proper milk for a while. He searched the cupboards for cereals to accompany the remainder.
He took his bowl of Shreddies, drenched in milk and sugar, and sat at the breakfast bar, feeling a twinge of happiness for the first time since the storm. Was it too soon for that? Did feeling happy to be eating Shreddies make him a bad person? He was halfway through the bowl when he caught sight of the man watching him from the lounge out of the corner of his eye.
Tom jumped, spilling the milk over the counter.
Their eyes met. A smart man, his eyes staring at Tom through stylish glasses; he made no reaction when Tom noticed him. He moved a gun into his lap, and Tom's heart sank.
'Hello,' Tom said.
'Hello,' the man replied, a menacing half smile creeping over his face. He was tough looking, in his forties by Tom's estimation. His stylish jumper betrayed the outline of a well-maintained physique.
'We're in your house, aren't we?' Tom offered, and the man nodded.
Leon came bounding down the stairs, also dressed in the clothes of the man with the gun. He too didn't notice him at first.
'Ah, mint, breakfast,' he said. 'I can't believe how nice it is to be wearing clean clothes.'
'Um,' was all Tom could say, before the other man spoke up.
'Well I wouldn't get too comfortable in them.'
Leon jumped and issued a tiny yelp. He span round in the direction of the sofa. He took in the sight before him, and when he saw the gun his hands shot up above his head.
'What the…'
'My thoughts entirely,' the man said in a low voice. 'You two scruffy little cunts want to tell me what you're doing in my house?'
'I, um,' spluttered Leon.
'I passed out. I was sick. My friend brought me here.'
'You just thought you'd break into my house?
'I, we…' stammered Leon.
'Yes,' Tom said. 'Sorry, but we thought it was empty.'
'And you don't know who I am?' the man asked.
'No?' Tom and Leon answered in unison. Why would they know him?
'Okay,' the man said, and stood, putting his gun into a holster in his jacket. Tom relaxed as the gun disappeared from view. The man fixed them with a cold look.
'Don't get too fucking comfortable, you pricks. I'm putting the gun away because I've decided you two are about as threatening as a fucking pot plant.' He moved to the breakfast bar opposite Tom and motioned for Leon to join them.
'Look, we're sorry, and we'll get out of here as soon…' started Tom, but the man held his hand up to silence him and Tom obliged.
'I don't want to hear it. The whole world's gone fucking mad and if we're all going to have to start explaining ourselves and apologising for every decision we make then we're not going to get anywhere. You do what you have to survive, yeah?'
Tom and Leon nodded their vigorous agreement to his rhetorical question.
'Do you have any idea what's going on?' Leon asked.
'Big storm kills almost everyone. There's no radio, no news, no government, no help. By the looks of it, it's taken roughly a day for people to start going off the fucking deep end.'
'It's not just a local thing?' Tom asked.
The man shook his head. 'Who knows? I've been trying all military frequencies and there's nothing.'
'You're military?' Tom asked, surprised at how comforting that notion was to a lifelong pacifist.
'In a way.' The man left it there.
So that was it. This was the end. Tom thought about his parents, whether they were still alive. He'd not even tried to phone. A wave of guilt and sadness washed over him, but the man snapped him out of it.
'So, are you two going to clean up my fucking house, or what?'
They stared at him. He broke out in a wide grin.
'Don't be fucking dense. We're not staying here. None of us.'
'What do you mean?' Leon asked.
'We're going to start to put the pieces back together. Sound good to you?'
Tom felt relief wash over him, smiled, and nodded.
Chapter Ten
Bring it on Home
Burnett stared at the mutilated corpse.
He's still out there.
A shiver ran down his back. He left the man on the bench. There were no forensics to collect. This was no crime scene to investigate. There was only a killer to find, and Burnett intended to do exactly that.
He walked back to the station house, Tana following behind. Burnett looked at his companion, who seemed to have shrunk somehow, his eyes dazed and fixed on the ground in front of him. They entered the building.
'Short of driving around the place looking for an obvious and blatant serial killer there isn't much to go on,' Tana said, exasperated.
'I'll find him,' Burnett replied.
'How?'
'I'll find him as soon as he decides to be found, and not a minute sooner, but I can't sit about and wait.'
Tana nodded.
'Do you think all this is down to him?' he asked, gesticulating around at their new world.
Burnett shrugged. He was trying to find an arrest record, anything written down, but he knew any report would be stuck in the computer that sat dead on the front desk.
'What do you reckon it is?' Tana asked, pacing now.
'No idea. It could be it's a local thing, like a chemical leak or something. He could have arranged something like that.'
'Doesn't feel like that does it though?'
'No,' Burnett admitted. 'Whatever this was, I don't think it was man made, but he knew it was coming, somehow. He's involved.' He turned to Tana. 'You picked him up by the church. Did you get a name out of him?'
'No. Asked, but nothing given, so I put him in the back of the car and brought him back.'
'Okay, well let's go to where you picked him up,' Burnett said.
Tana nodded, but Burnett could see reticence on the man's face.
'Yeah, of course,' Tana said, 'but don't you think we've got bigger things to be looking at?'
'By all means, you go deal with the end of the world,' Burnett replied. 'Just take me there first.'
Tana frowned.
'There's a fucking lunatic running around disembowelling people for fun,' Burnett continued. 'The end of the world doesn't seem to have made him pause for even a second, so I'd say stopping him is priority number one. We'll figure out the rest of it afterwards.'
'Okay.'
They broke into the firearms locker, such as it was, took a few handguns and two shotguns, and made their way out to the parking lot. Armed with all the keys they could find, they managed to unlock one of the high-speed pursuit cars, but it wouldn't start. It wasn't until they tried one of the battered pool cars
that they had any joy.
'Weird,' Burnett said, as they climbed in.
Tana took the driver's seat. 'Electrics,' he said, as he gathered his huge frame in enough to get behind the wheel. 'Whatever did this, it's fried every circuit-board. Any modern car that relies on an internal computer will be completely useless now.'
'Great,' Burnett said. What he needed right now was less obstacles in his way.
Tana took the opportunity of the short drive to the church to regale Burnett with his many theories. 'Have to be something pretty spectacular to fry the electrics like that. I mean, the emergency lights were out in the station, you notice that? They're supposed to come on come hell or high water, but nothing. I reckon it was those scientists in Switzerland or wherever, you know, where they were shooting atoms or whatever at each other?'
'I'm pretty sure it won't have been that,' Burnett said, but Tana had already moved on.
'Or, it could be some kind of terrorist plot. Like an electronic bomb or something. An…'
'EMP,' Burnett said.
'Right! Or it could be the Government. Or…'
Burnett blocked him out. This was why he didn't have partners. He'd never been in possession of a sparkling wit or gregarious nature, and as the years had rolled on social interaction seemed to be a trick he was getting worse at. Where long ago he'd suffered homophobic taunts and chants, now nobody even knew that much about him, or took the time to find out. Coming out in a rural Police force in the mid-nineties, especially when he'd not had any choice in the matter, that wasn't much fun. These days it wouldn't even be much of a deal.
Over the intervening years he'd begun to resent others for their ability to be jovial, witty, and warm. He'd gone from being the station poof who’d cheated on his beautiful wife with a rent boy in Hull, to the weird detective nobody talked to. After a few more years, even the resentment had eroded and now he just didn't give a shit.
All he wanted to do was solve puzzles, and he had a job where he could do that. If he'd been more outgoing chances were he would have been promoted out of the only job he wanted by now, so c'est la vie.
Blood on the Motorway, #1 Page 6
