by Cross, Amy
“104 nuclear power stations,” he continues, “all of them now without electrical power. All of them. No cooling systems. No safety systems. Minimal back-ups. And no means of recovery whatsoever. Do you understand what that means?”
I sigh. “104 nuclear explosions in the next day or two?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Not explosions. Meltdowns. Not up. Down. Get it? Huge blotches of land across the country, impossible to enter and impossible to avoid”.
“Impossible to avoid?” I say. “Why?”
“Because they're each about five miles wide,” he says, shaking my shoulders like I'm some kind of idiot. “And I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't have a map of where they are, do you?”
I push him away. “Fuck off,” I spit at him. “I'll just find out by going onli...” My voice trails off. I turn and look at my laptop, and a heavy sinking feeling hits me. “Fuck,” I say softly. I turn back to Pierce. “What do we do? How long before they... start melting down?”
“I don't know what we do,” he says calmly. “And it's too late, they've already started. But we can't stay here because of the flames. We have to get out of here, go somewhere where there's something better”.
“Like what?”
“I don't know,” he says. “I haven't figured it out yet”.
“Then you haven't got any better ideas than I've got,” I reply. “I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying here and waiting for my parents, okay?”
Pierce stares at me, and he opens his mouth to argue. But he seems to realize it's a lost cause.
“Okay,” he says, turning and heading to the door. He looks back at me. “I'm not sitting around waiting for some magical unicorn fairy to come and save the day. I need to get some stuff together but I'll be gone in the morning. I guess I won't see you again, so good luck”.
And with that, he's gone.
I head over to the other window, and I see Gary's dead body on the lawn. Okay, things look bad right now, but help's coming. There'll be firefighters to tackle the burning plane, and someone'll find a way to get everything back up and running. The important thing is not to panic, and to just hold on and be patient. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to stay at home and wait until everything goes back to normal.
Extract from the diary of Lydia Hoff
My father said: We must stay here. This was before the ecotone. Although my mother wanted us to leave our home and go to the city to see if there was any news, my father insisted that we must stay at home. He said he would find us some food, and that help would be on the way. We believed him.
No-one knows how many people died in the first day, but we can be sure that it was a huge number. There were seven billion people on the planet back then. I imagine that at least half of them must have died quite soon. Certainly here, in America, there were corpses everywhere. We all relied so much upon electricity back then.
One of those who died was my brother, Russell.
I loved Russell so much. He was almost ten years older than me, and I thought he was so wonderful. So cool. I always wanted to go with him wherever he went, but he couldn't have a little girl following him all the time. He always took time to play with me, but I always wanted so badly to live his whole life with him. I loved him as much as any sister can ever love her brother. Even now, ninety years after he died, I find myself wondering every day what he would have been like if he had been able to grow up and become a man.
When the power cut came, my family assumed it was just a temporary glitch. It wasn't until about two days later, when even our phones still didn't work, that we began to fear that something was terribly wrong. There was just no news coming from the outside world at all. And then we heard stories about aeroplanes crashing nearby, not just one but many. And we heard about back-up generators failing at hospitals, and we found that there was less and less food, and less and less water. By the third day, we were starting to panic.
My father took my brother Russell out early one morning to go and find food. They took hunting rifles, which mercifully still worked because they didn't require electricity. My mother was concerned, but my father reassured her that they would be very careful with the guns. I, of course, begged and begged to be allowed to go with them, but my father said I must stay at home. I was so angry at the time, though now I understand that if I had gone with them, I would have died.
My mother and I waited all day for them to come home. When dusk came, my mother told me to go to bed and a little while later I heard the front door open, followed by sobbing. I didn't dare leave my room, so I waited until morning and it was only then that I found out my brother had been killed by a bear. My mother and father were distraught as they told me that without electricity, there was no light from the town to scare the bears away. It was then that I first heard the word that has stayed with me ever since, the word that is used to define a place where two habitats overlap: ecotone. My brother was killed by the ecotone.
Chapter Four
I wait, and wait, and wait. When night comes, the whole neighborhood is lit up by the light from the fire where the plane crashed, but fortunately the wind seems to be blowing the flames in the opposite direction. Unable to sleep, I find myself sitting by the window, just staring out at the pitch black street. I don't think I've ever been in such a silent, dark place before. And although I half expect all the lights to suddenly come back on, I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me Pierce might be right.
No-one's going to come.
I eventually fall asleep, but I wake up as the sun is rising. There are birds singing nearby, a noise that I've only ever noticed on TV before. I get up and wander about the house for a while, not really sure what to do. There's still no power, so I eat something from the fridge and decide I need to be more proactive; I need to take control and find out what's going on. Although it's tempting to just sit in the house and wait to be rescued, I guess I might end up just sitting here forever.
So I decide to head into town. Figuring there must be some information about what's happening, I grab my bike and cycle through a succession of deserted streets. I don't know where everyone is, but I guess they're all just waiting inside until we find out what's going on. There are still cars in the driveways, and at times things seem almost calm and peaceful.
It's very different when I get into town, however. There are people milling about – not as many as I'd expected, but still people. I thought there might be some kind of meeting happening, maybe in the library or on the steps of the town hall, but there's nothing like that going on. Instead, people are just wandering about, talking in small huddled groups, and (somewhat surprisingly) pushing shopping carts full of food along the street.
“Do you know what's happening?” I ask a woman pushing a cart past me.
“Sorry,” she says, and keeps going.
I walk my bike around the corner and find that the local supermarket has had its doors forced open. People are filing in and out like ants, taking whatever they can. They're stock-piling food in case of an emergency, and as I get near the door I hear what sounds like fighting and arguing inside. Peering inside, I see two men struggling at the far end of the store; one of them is in a headlock, and they're grappling with one another while those around them just empty the shelves into their baskets. The store is almost bare; clearly most of the stuff was taken earlier.
Seeing a crushed packet of chips on the floor – which someone clearly stepped on as they left – I consider taking them, but I decide not to. After all, that'd be stealing and I'm pretty sure we aren't at the point yet where we need to start looting. I look up at the security camera monitoring the inside of the store, but then I remember that it's probably not running anyway.
Leaning my bike against the wall, I go around the corner and find a man trying to smash an ATM machine with a brick. He looks up at me.
“Fucking thing won't pay out,” he says.
“Just wait,” I say. “It'll be back to normal soo
n”.
“Yeah,” he says, “but I want my fucking money now”. He slams the brick into the blank screen, but he doesn't even make a scratch. “It's my fucking money,” he says.
I nod and turn, but when I get back around the front of the store I find that my bike has gone. I look up and see someone riding away at full speed.
“Hey!” I shout, but it's no use, he's already long gone.
“Was that your bike?” asks a female voice from behind me. I turn to find a middle-aged woman, with tall red hair, smoking a cigarette. “I figured it wasn't his. I guess I should have said something. Sorry”.
“It's okay,” I say, contemplating the long walk home. “I guess people are going a bit crazy”.
“Guess so,” says the woman.
“Do you know what happened?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Saw a plane land over there,” she says, nodding in the direction of the part of town where I live, then she nods in the opposite direction. “Another one over there. That makes two. Seems a bit of a coincidence”. She seems pretty lethargic, almost tired.
I notice the logo on her shirt and realize she works at the store that's being looted. “Shouldn't you do something about that?” I ask, looking at the door and listening to the sound of the two men inside continuing to fight.
“Like what?” the woman asks. “Fifty people come barging in, what am I supposed to do about it? Anyway - “ She nods up at the security camera. “No-one's watching”.
I take a deep breath, trying to take it all in. “So you don't know when help's coming?” I ask.
The woman laughs. “I'm sure we're real high on their list of priorities,” she says, grinning.
I nod. “Okay,” I say, “I'd better get home. Thanks”.
I turn and start walking home, at which point I realize it's going to take me a couple of hours to get there on foot. I cast a quick look at the bus stop, but of course there's no way the buses are gonna be running at a time like this. So I just start walking, taking a quick look back over my shoulder to see the woman still standing there smoking and the guy round the corner still trying to smash the ATM open.
When I get home, I immediately spot that the front door is open. For a moment, I wonder whether it might be my parents, and they've somehow managed to get back home, but as I enter the house I hear the sound of someone going roughly through the cupboards and drawers, and I realize it must be Pierce.
“Fuck you,” I say, running through to the kitchen, but instead of Pierce I find a middle-aged man with the entire contents of our fridge in a couple of bags.
“That's mine,” I say, keeping away from him and glancing around for something I can use as a weapon.
“Fuck you,” he says, continuing to grab whatever he can to fill his bags.
“You can't do this,” I say, stepping past the guy and reaching for a knife from the side. But he grabs me and throws me to the floor.
“I'm sorry,” he says. “But I need this food, okay? For my family. I need it. Don't try to stop me. I don't want to hurt you”.
I get to my feet. “You can't just take my food,” I say.
“I can and I will,” the man replies. “There's nothing left in the store and I don't know how long this thing is gonna last”.
“They're coming to help us,” I say.
The man sneers. “Then you'll be fine, won't you?”
I pull open a drawer and pull out a corkscrew, the only thing that looks vaguely threatening, and hold it out towards the man. “Put all that stuff back or I'll use this,” I say, trying to sound menacing.
The man glances at me, laughs, then suddenly knocks my arm against the cupboard, causing me to drop the corkscrew. He twists me around and slams me against the wall, then he pulls me back and throws me against the kitchen counter. I bounce off the side and onto the floor, and I can tell that I'm bleeding from a cut on my forehead.
“I told you not to make me do that,” the man says. “Now just stay on the floor and don't fuck about, okay?”
I don't dare to move. This guy seems crazy enough to kill me if I push him too far. Plus, I'm not sure if I'm concussed, because the front of my forehead really hurts and I can see a small patch of blood where I fell. Listening to the guy as he finishes filling his bags, I finally hear him heading to the door, but he comes back and kneels next to me.
“Okay listen,” he says, “I've never done anything like this before. I'm not this kind of guy. I've never hurt anyone. But you understand, right? I have to look after my wife and kids, and they need this food. I'm sorry, but what am I supposed to do? Let them starve because I'm too polite?”
I'm too scared to look up at him.
“Are you listening to me?” he asks.
I look at him, hoping he'll just go away if I keep quiet.
“Fucking bitch,” he says, grabbing my hair, lifting my head a little and then slamming it back down against the floor. I cry out in pain, and then the tears come, but finally I look up and see the guy is leaving. I stay on the floor for a few more minutes before I slowly get to my feet, feeling a little dizzy, and I look at the fridge, which is empty. The cupboards are the same. Fuck, this guy completely cleaned us out. There's no food anywhere in the house and –
I walk over to the sink and turn the faucet, but there's no water. At first I can't work out why a lack of electricity would stop there being water, but then I realize there's probably a ton of electrical systems controlling the pipelines.
I hear a noise outside. Grabbing the corkscrew that I dropped earlier, I go to the window and look outside, but I relax as soon as I see that it's only Pierce coming out of his house with a big backpack. I watch him walk down the path and onto the pavement before I realize what he's doing, and I run out to catch him.
“Hey! Pierce!” I shout, catching up.
He turns to me. “What?”
“Where are you going?”
“Why do you care?”
I sigh. “Someone stole all the food from my place,” I say.
He nods. “I can see you've been crying”.
I wipe my eyes. “Fuck you,” I say. “So do you really think no-one's coming to help us?”
He bites his bottom lip for a moment. “Think about it,” he says eventually. “There's no electricity. There's not gonna be any, either. So everything's broken. No-one can contact anyone. No-one can go anywhere fast. No-one can fix things. Who do you think is gonna come and help us?”
I turn and look at my house. “My parents...” I start to say.
“They're in California, right?” Pierce replies. “That's two and a half thousand fucking miles away. The only way they can get here is if they walk, and that would take fucking a hundred days, not counting getting over mountains and the fact that they probably don't even have a detailed map. Do you see the scale of the problem?”
I nod. “So where are you going?”
“I have a plan,” he says cagily.
“Is it a good plan?” I ask.
“It's better than sitting here and waiting for a bunch of fucking zombie assholes to come and eat me,” he says. He sees the expression on my face. “What? You don't think they'll all turn into fucking cannibals when the real food runs out? This place is getting more dangerous by the fucking minute”. He laughs. “Fuck,” he says, “all my life I've been the crazy, paranoid one, and now suddenly everything's flipped and I'm right and you're the crazy ones”. He stares at me. “No offense”. He looks up at the sky. “It's gonna get dark soon. I have to get going. Seeya”.
He turns, but I grab his arm and pull him back.
“Are you sure you don't want to wait it out?” I ask. “They might come and help”.
“You don't fucking listen,” he says, pulling away. “I'm going to walk to New York. It should only take a couple of weeks, at least there'll be some people there with brains. Look at this place. It's been a day since that plane crashed and no-one's come to put out the fire or take the bodies away. No-one. You know why? Because there's no-one w
hose job it is to do that any more”.
“So you're just leaving?” I say.
He nods. “I sure as hell ain't sitting around here waiting for someone to come and make everything okay. Fuck, you'd be better off praying to God if that's your attitude”.
I think about this for a moment. “Can I come with you?” I ask eventually.
He stops and stares at me. “You?”
“Everyone's just standing around,” I say, “like they don't know what to do. And I kind of believe you that no-one's coming to help any more. So if you have a plan of what to do, I'd like to come in on it. If that's cool with you”.
He stares at me, sizing me up, clearly deciding whether he wants me with him. “Ten minutes,” he says eventually. “I'll give you ten minutes to gather some stuff to bring. No girly crap, no make-up or any of that shit. Food. Tools. Stuff that might be useful. Okay?”
I nod. “Okay. And when we get to New York, then what?”
He shrugs. “Hopefully there'll be someone to help us”.
I open my mouth to ask “And if there's not?”, but I decide to keep quiet. I can see in Pierce's eyes that the question is already on his mind. “I'll grab some stuff,” I say instead, turning and running into my house. When I get inside, I stuff some clothes into my bag, then I take one last look around and try to think if there's anything I need. Grabbing some paper from the desk in the hallway, I write out a quick note to my parents, telling them where I've gone. I tuck the note under the fruit bowl in the kitchen, and then I stare at it. Will my parents ever come home and find it? Will they ever stand here and read it? For a moment, I imagine them standing here, right where I am, reading the note. Would they be glad that I've gone off to get help, or would they be sad that I'm not here. And -
“Come on!” Pierce shouts from outside.
I take one last look at the note and then I head out the door. I don't know if I'll ever be back.
Extract from the diary of Lydia Hoff
Tonight there was blood in my pee. There, I said it. At my age, perhaps I should be more circumspect, maintain a little more dignity. But I want to be honest with you. My body is breaking down, it's falling apart on the inside. Things are becoming unstuck, and soon I will be dead. And since I am the last person in this part of the country who remembers that Great Disaster, I feel I should not censor myself as I tell my story. If you don't like to hear an old woman's rambling account of her life, you are free to leave.
