by Cross, Amy
“Wait,” says Pierce. “Let me get something straight. Are we setting out on some grand mission to save humanity and defeat the evil anarchists? Or are we just trying to save our own skins?”
I turn to him. “Save our own skins,” I say. “Got a problem with that?”
“Nah,” he says. “I never wanted to be a hero anyway”.
Once we get out of the building, it's clear that things are going badly. There's smoke rising into the sky from somewhere not too far away. A couple of people run past, and one – a young guy, late teens – stops, with panic in his eyes.
“They're right behind us,” he blurts out with a heavy Scottish accent. “Come on!”
He runs off, leaving Pierce and me watching him go.
“The world's falling apart again,” Pierce says. “Which way do you wanna go? Left or right?”
A few hours later, it's getting dark as we head to the center of town, but of course there's no-one about. Everyone has hidden themselves away, determined to try to wait out the trouble. It's not a bad strategy, but I don't have too much confidence that it'll work.
“Hey!” shouts a voice in the distance.
At first, I can't see who's calling us, but then I spot a guy on the steps of a building on the other side of the town square. He's waving at us. When Pierce and I get over to him, I recognize him as the Scottish guy who ran past us earlier.
“In here,” he says, ushering us through the doors of the building and into a large lobby area. Behind us, he slams the doors shut.
“Is this a library?” Pierce asks, looking around the room.
“I think so,” says the Scottish guy. He reaches out a hand for Pierce to shake. “Craig,” he says.
Pierce waves him away. “I'm going to go look at the books,” he says, hobbling towards the main room.
I shake Craig's hand. “Emma,” I say. “What's going on?”
“There's tons of fucking assholes heading this way,” Craig says. “That's what's going on. I've seen fucking bodies in the street, I saw this little kid getting...” His voice trails off. “They're fucking evil,” he says. “Fucking evil”.
“Hellooooo!” Pierce shouts from the other room. Craig and I go through and find him in the main part of the library, wandering between the shelves. “Anarchists!” he screams. “Come and get me!”
“Is he alright?” Craig asks.
“Not really,” I say.
“Right,” Craig replies. “No offense, but if it comes down to it, I'm not risking my life for him”. He turns to me. “Or you”.
I nod. “Same here”.
Pierce runs over to us, a crazed look in his eyes. “I want to be an anarchist,” he says. “I want to be one of them, not one of us. I want to go... what's the word? Crazy. Nuts. Insane. Doolally. I want to be a baddie. I want to be on their side”.
“No you don't,” I say.
“I do!” he says, seemingly offended. “I fucking well do! I wanna be like that”.
“I don't have time for this shit,” Craig says to me. “Is he gonna shut up, or should we throw him out the front door?”
“He's okay,” I say. “He's just a bit excitable”.
Craig clearly isn't convinced. “Make sure he keeps his mouth shut, or he can go out there and take his chances, okay?”
Leading us through to another room, Craig brings us to the rest of his small group. Half a dozen people have taken shelter in the library, ranging from young to old. I recognize one of them, the little girl from earlier. The rest just look terrified, as if they're waiting for the barbarians to smash down the door and come to kill them. Which, frankly, is kind of what might happen.
“I don't understand,” I say to Craig. “Why would people act like this?”
Craig shrugs. “All the controls are gone. Aren't you tempted to go crazy? No-one's going to stop you”.
“They killed my wife,” says a man who is sitting by the window. He's old, with white hair and a large belly. He keeps his gaze fixed on the scene out the window, waiting for the first sign of trouble. “They cut her head off and said they were gonna eat her”.
“Some of them pretend to be zombies,” says a woman sitting near me. She's younger, maybe in her 30s. “It's a fashion thing. They act like zombies, they call themselves zombies, some of them even try to eat human flesh like zombies. Of course they're not zombies, they're just fucked up. They'll take any excuse”.
I walk over to the little girl, Lydia. “Hi,” I say, sitting next to her. “Where's your Mommy?”
The way she looks at me, I can instantly tell that Lydia's mother is dead, and that Lydia saw what happened. “Gone to heaven,” she says.
“They're here!” says the man at the window. Craig and I walk over and spot a couple of men wandering into the town square. They're carrying rifles and they seem to be looking around to see if there's any sign of life.
“Get away from the window,” Craig hisses at us.
“I don't care if they see me,” says the man. “I'll take 'em on”.
Craig pulls him away. “It's not just about you,” he says.
“We need a plan,” says the woman. She turns to me. “My name's Ruth”.
“What we need,” says Pierce, who is standing in the middle of the room, “is a missile launcher”.
“Ignore him,” I say to Ruth. “How many of them are there?”
Ruth shrugs. “How can we know? All we know is how many of us there are. Not enough”. She turns to Craig. “There's no point fighting. We should focus on trying to escape”.
There's a bang at the main doors. We all look over.
“They're here,” says the man who was sitting by the window.
“Oh goody,” says Pierce, stepping towards the door. “A party!” I grab his arm and pull him back.
“Quiet!” says Craig. “If they don't know we're here, they might just go away”.
“Motherfuckers!” Pierce screams at the door.
“Fuck you!” Craig says, grabbing Pierce by the throat and punching him straight in the center of the face. Pierce crumples to the ground, blood spilling from his nose.
“You broke my nose!” Pierce shouts. “You fucking broke my nose!”
There's more banging at the door, heavier this time, more determined.
“They heard him,” Ruth says. “We have to get out of here”.
Craig turns to Pierce, rage in his eyes. “You fucking asshole,” he says. “They're gonna kill us all now”.
Pierce looks up at him, blood still pouring from his smashed nose. He smiles. “Didn't you have a Plan B? Whoops”.
Craig laughs uneasily. “Plan B is to fucking kill you right here”. And with that, he kicks Pierce hard in the chest. Doubling up in pain, Pierce spews blood onto the floor.
I push Craig away. “We need to leave,” I say. “Not fight each other”.
“She's right about leaving,” Ruth says, coming over. She looks down at Pierce. “But this little idiot is too dangerous. Democratic vote time. Who agrees we kill him?”
Slowly, everyone puts their hands up, apart from the little girl and me. I look down to see even Pierce has one hand raised.
“You can't kill him!” I say to Craig. “He's sick. He doesn't know what he's doing. Wait for him to get over the withdrawals and he'll -”
“What?” Craig shouts. “He'll go back in time and not risk getting us all killed?”
“Out of the way,” says Rachel, pushing past Craig. At the last moment, I see that she has a large paperweight in her hand. It looks heavy and strong.
“No!” I shout, but I'm too late. As I rush towards her, Rachel brings the paperweight crashing down onto Pierce's skull.
Extract from the diary of Lydia Hoff
Calvin was here tonight. Dear, beautiful young Calvin. He told me: tonight is the night when the lights will come back. I don't know how he knows this, but he is often right about such things. In recent days, I have seen him hunched over complex charts and maps. So perhaps he is right. Pe
rhaps the magnetic reversal is to finally end. Perhaps tonight, finally, our electric world will come back to us.
But I might not live to see it. I feel so cold, and I can tell that my body is shutting down. Don't ask me how I know, I just know. The funny thing is, I don't mind. I have lived such a long life, against all the odds, that it's almost impossible to believe that I could have survived some of the things that happened to me. And I saw so many people die around me. Horrible, violent deaths. Things a young girl should not see. I saw them all.
According to Calvin, the lights will return in the dead of night. I have found my father's mobile phone, which I kept after he died. I have set it on the windowsill and I am waiting to see if it will spring back to life. If it does, the world will emerge from its darkness and will be given back the gift of electricity. But I'm not getting my hopes up too much. I've been promised so much in the past, and rarely have those promises come to pass.
Imagine, though, if the electricity does come back tonight. Imagine all the stories waiting to be told. That is why I'm writing this down now. Even though it is dark and I can't see the page, though I can't see my own writing, I am determined to get this all down, just in case the gift of electricity will be returned to the world tonight. Then, perhaps, my story will be heard.
Chapter Ten
Pierce is laughing. He won't stop. Though there's a bloody wound to the side of his head, he's doubled over with amusement, crying at the hilarity of it all. That's it, then: he's finally lost his mind.
In the distance, there's pounding on the library doors. They're going to find a way in sooner or later, and we have to get out of here. But with Pierce in this state, there's no way we can run.
“No!” I shout as Rachel brings the paperweight down on Pierce's head again. I just manage to push her away in time, knocking her to the ground.
“He deserves to die,” Rachel spits at me.
“I know,” I say, trying to force her back. “But if you stay and kill him, you'll lose your last chance to escape. Those doors won't hold for much longer”.
Rachel stares at me with a look of hatred, then she gets to her feet and drops the paperweight. “Fuck you, then,” she says, and then she turns and runs.
The others run too. Everyone runs. I turn back to Pierce, who's still giggling away on the floor.
“I can't leave you here,” I say to him. “But if you won't come with me...”
“Is my brain showing?” he asks between the laughs, looking up at me.
I shake my head. “But you're bleeding a lot. We have to get you to a...” I stop speaking. What was I going to say? We have to get him to a hospital? Ha! Good luck with that. But we definitely have to get out of this building.
“Fine,” Pierce says, slowly getting to his feet. “Sorry, I've got a bit of a headache”. He laughs again, but it's clear that the wound on his head is deep and serious.
There's a loud smashing sound. Pierce and I turn to see the library door being broken open, and half a dozen men step through. They're carrying an array of weapons: some of them have swords, some of them have guns, one of them has no weapons at all but looks strong enough to squeeze the life out of both of us. The lot of them, they're staring at us.
“We need to get out of here,” I say to Pierce quietly.
To my shock, Pierce takes a step towards the men. “You can't kill me!” he shouts at them. “I'm a genius!”
“Come on!” I shout, grabbing the back of his shirt and pulling him through to the next room. It's hard to see where we're going, because the sun is setting outside and there are no lights in here. We step behind a bookcase and listen, and we hear the men walking slowly towards us.
“Now what?” Pierce hisses at me.
I open my mouth, but I don't know what to say. Our murderers are walking towards us, they're on the other side of this bookcase, and there's no way out.
“Watch this,” says Pierce. He turns and peers through the book, and then he steps back before running into the bookcase, knocking it over onto the men. “Irony!” Pierce shouts as the men collapse under the bookcase's weight, then he turns to me. “Run!”
Together, we run back to the main hall. There are still some men milling about in the doorway, so we run up the steps. As we reach the top, something snaps past my head and smashes into the wall ahead of us. With a sudden shock of realization, I realize someone just shot at us.
“Down!” Pierce shouts, and we hit the floor just as another bullet hits the wall. “They can't have many shots,” Pierce says. “They need to preserve ammo. We just gotta wait until it gets dark, then we can get outta here”.
Behind us, a man appears at the top of the stairs. He's carrying a large sword, and he steps towards us with a big grin. “Genius, eh?” he asks, raising the sword and slicing it down at Pierce, who lurches out of the way just in time.
Scrambling to my feet, I run down the corridor, turning to see that Pierce has barely moved. He's still on the floor, still looking up at the guy with the sword, who jabs at Pierce again, but this time Pierce rams into the guy, knocking him down. Grabbing the sword from his hand, Pierce slices it straight through the guy's neck.
“Run!” Pierce shouts at me, turning and running after me, the sword still in his hand.
We head through to what turns out to be a dead-end, a display room with a few cabinets filled with vases but no way out. In the corridor outside, we can hear the dying guy screaming, and the sound of others coming up the stairs.
“Out the window,” Pierce says, and we head over and pull the window open. Looking out, it's clear that it's a long drop down, but there are some bushes and it looks like our best shot.
“Shit,” says Pierce.
“What?” I turn to him, and I realize he's looking at something next to me. I turn and find the young girl, Lydia, looking up at me.
“Do you want to hide with me?” she whispers.
As the men reach the doorway, Pierce grabs Lydia and literally drops her out the window. He then pushes me up onto the ledge.
“It's almost dark,” he says. “It'll be easier to get away when there's no light”. And with that, he pushes me off the ledge and down into the bushes.
I land with a heavy thud, and I feel something crack in my arm. The pain is sharp and intense, but adrenalin helps me get to my feet. Somewhere nearby, I can hear Lydia crying, and when I find her she's got a gash on her leg, though it's getting so dark, I can barely see.
“Good luck!” shouts Pierce from above.
I look up and see him at the window. We make eye contact for a moment, and then he pulls the window shut. As I stare in stunned silence, I hear the sound of him screaming from inside, and then the window opens and a man looks out. I pull Lydia away with me and we run as fast as we can, away from the library, away from Pierce. Away from this place where order and chaos are colliding.
Extract from the diary of Lydia Hoff
My lungs feel so dry.
This is it.
The end.
I stare at the mobile phone, which I can still see in the moonlight. Sat on the window ledge, it looks like an antique, like something from a distant past that time forgot. I remember my father using that phone, shouting into it. When I was young, antiques were things like old lamps and vases. Now, antiques are things like mobile phones and laptops. Not that they're any use, though. They're just blobs of plastic and metal.
Very carefully, I take a deep breath, and I hold it. There. I'm done. That was my last breath. I will breathe no more. And for some reason, my last memory is of running away from the library with Emma, all those years ago. We ran and we ran. Oh my God, how we ran. We ran out of that building, out of that town, and we kept on running all night. We ran until... until... But I don't want to think about what happened next. Not now. I have breathed in my last breath. Now I breathe it out, a hoarse and dry sound, like a rasp.
And then, as I stare at it, the mobile phone blinks into life. The little screen lights up, and the Pioneer log
o appears. It's as if the past century hasn't happened at all. And as the phone powers up, I look at the window and see little specks of light appearing in the darkness outside.
It's back.
It took a hundred years.
A hundred years of darkness.
But finally, the power is back.
I smile.
But I'm about to die.
The last thought that passes through my mind is of Emma. The way she sobbed after we lost Pierce, and the way she fought on, and the way she helped us all, and then ultimately the way she died. Never before has such an ordinary, normal person become such a hero by accident. And then there was Pierce. Oh, Pierce. How we cried when you died.
Standing at the window, looking at the little mobile phone, I feel my body collapse. I fall backwards. But I never land. I just fall, forever, or that's how it seems. But I know that when I finally land, I will be dead.
And my last memory is of being in the field with Emma and the ghost of Pierce. I remember how Emma was so sad that Pierce was dead, and how we walked and walked until we reached a place where we thought we'd be safe.
And then the Sickeners came.
And now, as I die, all the lights come on.
Epilogue
Slowly, Lydia opens her eyes. She stares up at me, and I try to smile back at her.
“Are you crying?” she asks.
I think about my answer. “Yes,” I say. “But it's okay”.
As Lydia sits up, I turn and look at the horizon. The sun is coming up over the field. We're a long way from Morristown, in a cornfield. We ran all night, and now we're resting. Lydia has a nasty gash to her side, but she'll be okay. I have a broken arm, or maybe it's just fractured. Either way, we just have to hope for the best.
“What's that?” I ask, noticing that Lydia has something in her hands.
“Nothing,” she says, hiding it at first but then letting me see. “My Daddy's mobile phone,” she says. She keeps pressing the button to turn it on, but nothing is happening.
