by Joe McKinney
The light becomes electric and the sounds change as I drive deeper into the tunnel. The signal on the radio disappears and the sounds of the city get muffled, snuffed out by the noise of car engines echoing off the close walls. The road ahead bends away to the left and I can see the bright red glow of brake lights up ahead. Drivers are always having to brake hard at the end of this tunnel. They don’t anticipate the filter system. Everyone drives too fast down here without thinking and… and there are a stack of cars backing up now. Christ, I hope it is just the filter and nothing more serious. I’m cutting it fine as it is. To be stuck this close to the office would be unbelievable.
The noises around me are starting to change again. Brakes squealing. Engines straining. Hang on, the traffic’s stopping, grinding to a halt. There must have been another accident up ahead. Christ, three in one morning, and all in the space of less than a mile… what are the chances of that?
Shit, what the hell is going on here? It’s a bloody pileup. A load of cars have smashed into each other at the mouth of the tunnel. They’re wedged together and… and I’ve got to stop before I hit them. I slam on my brakes but I’m going too fast to stop in time. The car behind me isn’t slowing down, and neither is the one to my right. The guy on my right hasn’t even got his hands on the wheel. What the hell’s wrong with him…? I’m going to hit something or something’s going to hit me. I try to keep hold of the steering wheel and find a path through the chaos but I’m just—
#
Less than a minute later, Peter Guest woke up. The world around him was completely silent. Disorientated, he gently pushed himself upright in his seat and gagged as blood trickled down the back of this throat from his broken nose. The first thing he thought was that he was going to be late for his vital meeting, and he struggled to get out of his seat, unbuckling his belt and disentangling himself from the now deflated airbag. He had to get out of here and get to the office. He had to let them know what had happened. Surely they’d understand if they knew he’d been in an accident…
Peter slowly focused on his dull surroundings. The end of the tunnel up ahead allowed a certain degree of grey morning light to seep across the scene. The yellow-orange strip lights in the ceiling above provided a little more illumination, enough to see that his car was wedged between the tunnel wall on his left and the wreck of a black taxi cab to his right. He tried to open his door but could move it no more than an inch or two. He lifted up his aching body, clambered over the dash, and crawled out through what was left of the shattered windscreen. He rolled over onto his back on his car’s crumpled bonnet and just lay there, looking up. The effort required to move just that short distance had been immense and he had to psych himself up before moving again. He waited a moment or two longer to let a sudden debilitating wave of nausea subside, then stood upright on his car and leant against the grubby tunnel wall for support.
For as far as Peter could see both ahead and behind, the tunnel was filled with an unprecedented tangle of crashed traffic. Some vehicles had been forced up into the air by violent impacts. A few cars behind where Peter was standing, a once pristine bright red, two-seater sports car lay on its roof, straddled widthways across two other vehicles, its driver and her passenger crushed.
Apart from him, he realised that nothing and no one else was moving.
Peter began to edge forwards, clambering over wreck after wreck, using them like stepping stones to get him out of the tunnel. He was in pain but he had to keep moving. He needed daylight and fresh air. He needed help.
After dragging himself over the boot, the roof and then the bonnet of another car, Peter was faced with a short jump onto the boot of another. Pausing to compose himself and bracing for impact, he jumped onto the second vehicle and lost his footing, slipping down onto a small triangular patch of clear road. He fell awkwardly against another car door, causing the body of a woman to slump over to one side. Her head thumped the window with a heavy, sickening noise, and he realised he hadn’t thought about the other drivers. Struggling with his own situation, he’d only been concerned with his safety and trying to get out of the tunnel as quickly as possible. But now he’d stopped to think about the others, they were suddenly all he could see. He scrambled to try and help the nearest person but it was no use, the poor bastard was already dead. The woman in the van beside him was the same, as was the next one he found, and the next, and the next. He kept looking, refusing to accept the illogical truth that he was the only one left alive.
Everywhere Peter looked now he saw bodies: battered and bloodied faces smashed against windows, limp corpses hanging out of half-open doors. And the longer he stared, the more he saw. In the low gloom he saw broken bones, pools of dripping, crimson-black blood, ruptured skin, gouged eyes, twisted limbs and smashed faces. Shock numbed his pain and he began to move again, adrenalin driving him forward until he was finally out in the open air.
But the carnage and devastation wasn’t limited to inside the tunnel. All around him now it continued, endless and inexplicable.
Peter walked along silent streets, finally reaching his office almost an hour later. There, amongst the corpses of the colleagues and business associates with whom he should have been meeting and negotiating, he sat and tried to make sense of the nightmare his world had suddenly become.
#
It was late afternoon before I made it back home. I walked most of the way, and took a bike the rest. The roads were impassable. When I got there the house was empty, just as I’d expected it to be.
I ran the half-mile to Joe’s school. Once or twice I nearly stopped and turned back, almost too afraid to keep going. By then I’d already seen hundreds of bodies, possibly even thousands, but they were faceless and nameless without exception. As I neared the school I began to see people I recognised. I walked amongst the bodies of people I had known: Joe’s teachers, the parents of his classmates, Jen’s friends… I knew that somewhere in the school building I’d find them.
Joe was in his classroom. I found him underneath his desk, curled up in a ball like he was trying to hide. Jen was in the assembly hall, lying next to an upturned chair, buried under the bodies of other dead parents. I carried my wife and my son into another room where the three of us sat together for a while longer.
If I’d listened to Jen I would have been there when it happened. I might not have been able to do anything to help them, but if I’d listened to her I would have been there when they needed me most. My wife and child died frightened and alone.
I don’t know what to do now. I don’t even know if there’s any point trying. I lost everything today.
WEBB
‘I ain’t interested, mate,’ Webb says, even though he knows it’s a mistake to piss Crawford off. Crawford throws the car around the corner.
‘Don’t remember sayin’ you had a choice.’
‘I don’t do stuff like that anymore. I told you, I ain’t getting involved.’
‘You’re fucking useless, Webb,’ Crawford yells at him, flicking his cigarette butt through the half-open window. ‘It’s safe as houses, this is. You ain’t going to get no grief, and you ain’t giving me no grief either.’
‘You said that last time. Look what happened then.’
‘Wasn’t my fault. That was Kenny. Nothing to do with me.’
‘Kenny was stitched-up. It was everything to do with you I heard.’
‘Then you heard wrong.’
Crawford cranks up the volume of the stereo to drown out Webb’s noise. It also drowns out the sound of the car’s knackered exhaust that makes it sound more like a bike. The windows are rattling with all the noise, vibrating in time to the relentless thumping bass. They stop at a red light. Some old woman looks at Crawford and shakes her head despairingly. He gives her the finger and yells at her to fuck off.
‘Thing is,’ he shouts at Webb as they start moving again, ‘if you don’t do this then Al’s gonna get really fucking mad, and you know what Al’s like when he’s mad. It ain’t gonn
a be my fault if he comes knocking at your door asking why you let him down…’
‘Al’s got better things to do. He ain’t gonna knock at my door.’
‘You’re right about that, mate. He won’t knock, he’ll kick the fucking thing down. You heard about what happened to Marky when he pissed Al off after that fight at The Gallery last week? I seen his brother down the precinct. He said Smith still can’t feed himself. They don’t know if he’s gonna… Shit!’
‘What’s up?’ Webb asks, nervous. Crawford’s looking in the rear view. Webb turns around and sees a police car hanging on their back bumper. ‘Just take it easy,’ he says, ‘you ain’t done nothing wrong, have you?’
Crawford’s sweating. ‘This is one of Al’s cars.’
‘And?’
‘Well Al don’t buy his fucking cars, know what I’m saying?’
Webb looks around again as the blue lights on the roof of the police car start flashing. ‘What you gonna do?’ he says. Crawford looks scared. Big man’s not so brave now. ‘What you gonna do?’ Webb shouts at him again. There are sirens now.
At the last second, Crawford crosses from the inside to the outside lane, squeezing through a gap between two cars moving at different speeds. He turns right, then does a U-turn across the other carriageway, doubling-back on himself and leaving the police car stuck in traffic. All they can do is watch Crawford disappear.
‘Nice one,’ he says under his breath, feeling smug. He puts his foot down again and really starts to move. The streets are busy. He weaves around parked cars and pedestrians and almost knocks a cyclist off his bike. The cyclist shouts something at him but he’s long gone.
‘They’re still following,’ Webb says. He can see the blue lights behind them. They’re not giving up. They’re way back but they’re getting closer, fast. Crawford’s fighting his way through the traffic but it’s moving out of the way for the law and the gap between them is getting smaller by the second. ‘What you gonna do?’ he asks for a third time.
‘Back to Al’s.’
‘Fuck off,’ Webb says, sounding scared. ‘I’m not going to Al’s.’
‘Looks like you are.’
‘He’s gonna be pissed if you turn up there with the law behind you.’
‘I’ll lose them.’
‘You won’t. Fuck off, Crawford. Let me out!’
‘What, you want me to pull over and drop you off? Prick.’
‘Yes! Fucking let me out.’
‘With the fucking police right behind me?’
‘Yes!’
‘Fuck off!’ he says again.
The police car is close behind, blue lights filling their mirrors. Crawford’s trying not to panic. He can’t think straight. Does he head back to Al’s or keep going into town and try losing them? Does he just dump the car and run? There’s another gap in the traffic. He swerves left and takes a fork in the road and drives up and over a fly-over which leads right into the heart of the city…
. . . and the backed-up, rush-hour grind.
‘You fucking idiot,’ yells Webb. ‘You’ll never get away from them now. Traffic’s too heavy. They’re gonna have your bollocks, mate…’
‘Our bollocks, mate,’ he says as they begin their descent. Down through a short tunnel, under a busy interchange, then back out into daylight. They hit the centre of town and the snarling queues. Halfway down Temple Street and the already crawling traffic has slowed to a stop. Crawford slams on his brakes, over-revving the engine and nudging forward as he looks for a way through.
Webb panics.
He gets out of the car and starts to run along the pavement, crashing into people. Everyone else seems to be walking the other way and he has to fight his way against the tide. Crawford goes to follow him but stops. There’s a sudden pain in his throat. A sharp, searing pain like someone’s slicing him with a knife. He starts to cough. He can’t breathe… and now the police officer hammering on his window isn’t his biggest problem. He’s choking now. He can taste blood in his mouth…
The policeman turns around and looks back at his colleague who’s just fallen out of the patrol car. He’s lying in the middle of the road, writhing around in agony. A couple of passer-bys start to move towards him but, before they can do anything, they’re both suddenly grabbing at their own throats, feeling intense, inexplicable pain. Both police officers are down now. The first has rolled into the gutter, his body convulsing, oxygen-starved.
Webb keeps running until the people around him start dropping to the ground. He slows down but keeps going, weaving through the ever-increasing carnage, side-stepping the bodies as they fall, not knowing what else to do. He looks back over his shoulder and sees that everyone else is down. Crawford’s not moving and neither are the police. Neither is anyone else. He’s the only one still standing.
Webb stops running and his bottom lip starts to tremble like a kid that’s just been shouted at by the hardest teacher in school. All around him people are dead or dying. Cars are crashing. The world is falling apart, and none of it makes any sense.
He smells food and his belly starts to rumble. He’s standing next to a burger bar. Everyone’s dead inside and the food in the kitchen is starting to burn. He’s fucking terrified but his mouth is watering and he needs a drink. Maybe it’ll help calm his nerves, he thinks. Maybe it’ll help him think straight. He goes into the burger bar, picks up a tray and helps himself to everything he can find behind the counter that’s cooked. He steps over dead and dying staff as he grabs a load of burgers, fries and drinks. He leaves the restaurant, shaking with nerves but still trying to look cool as a fucking cucumber, then walks back to Crawford’s car, looking up at the buildings on either side of the street so he doesn’t have to look down at the bodies. He puts the tray of food on the passenger seat then shoves Crawford’s body out and gets behind the wheel. He can’t drive but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know where he’d go if he could. He shuts the doors and locks them then winds up the windows and turns the music up so fucking loud it hurts. For now, the food and the noise stop him thinking about anything else.
JACKIE SOAMES
Jackie Soames opened one eye, then closed it again. It was late. Too late. She should have been up hours ago. More to the point, George should have woken her up. Bloody man, he was absolutely useless. She didn’t ask much of him; she ran the business and looked after the punters, all he had to do was keep the home running and keep her happy. It was an unusual arrangement but it had worked well for more than twenty years now.
Jackie opened one eye again and double-checked the clock. Quarter-to-eleven! Christ, how could she have slept in for so long? She needed to get ready to open up. She’d never missed opening time before – not even on the day her father died – and she knew she’d get some stick from the regulars if she was late unlocking the doors today. More importantly, she couldn’t afford to waste time like this. Time was money. The pub was only just breaking even as it was.
In this trade, Jackie often told anyone who’d listen, you live and breathe the job. You’re never off duty. She worked from the crack of dawn until the very end of each day, and she couldn’t believe that George had let her sleep in for so long. Where was he? She remembered him getting up when the alarm went off just after six o’clock, but she didn’t remember him coming back. Strange, she thought, he usually brought her up a coffee before eight and left it on the bedside table. There was no cup there today.
Last night had been hard going. Monday nights were usually difficult, but Jackie always tried to put on something special to pull in a decent sized crowd. She’d tried quiz nights and theme nights and cheap drinks promotions but her traditional, dyed-in-the-wool punters were hard to please. Last night they’d had a band on, and bloody awful they’d been too. Nice enough lads, but they were all noise and no talent. She’d come across plenty of similar acts trying to make a name for themselves over the years. Crank the sound up loud enough, they seemed to think, and no one will know we can’t play.
They should have been here to pick up their stuff a couple of hours ago but she hadn’t heard them. The bedroom was right over the bar, and anything happening down there would surely have woken her up. Christ, she must have been in a deep sleep. Maybe she was coming down with something? She couldn’t afford to get ill. She couldn’t risk leaving George in charge.
The band hadn’t gone down well last night. The Lion and Lamb was a traditional British spit-and-sawdust pub with traditional spit-and-sawdust locals, and halfway through their set, the heckles from the crowd had all but drowned out the noise of the band. The drummer had given up straight away, sitting behind his kit and drinking, no longer playing. The others kept going for another song and a half before admitting defeat. Trying to make the most of a disappointing night without leaving the boys in the band out of pocket, Jackie had locked the doors after closing time and kept everyone drinking through the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Christ she was really paying for it now.
Finally managing to prise open both eyes, she picked herself up out of bed, stumbled to the bathroom and threw up. That was better. Once the acidic taste of vomit and the booze-induced disorientation had passed she began to feel herself again. As a regular drinker of admirable capacity and many years standing, Jackie was hardened to the effect alcohol had on her system. It was a well rehearsed routine now: she got drunk, she fell asleep, she woke up, she threw up, she felt better. And the next day she did it again. It was all part of the job. The first cigarette of the day helped settle her stomach.
Where the hell was George?
‘George?’ she yelled. ‘George, are you down there? Do you know what time it is?’
When he didn’t answer she quickly got dressed (no one ever saw her in her nightwear except her husband) and went out onto the landing. Nothing. No sign. Cursing her husband under her breath, she stormed back to the bedroom. He must have gone out. That bloody man had gone out and left her fast asleep. And the lads from last night wouldn’t have been able to get back in and get their stuff, either. With just over half an hour to go before opening time, Jackie was close to losing her temper on a massive scale. God help George when she got hold of him. He was probably down the betting shop, he decided, flittering away the money she’d earned on horses and dogs. She’d have sacked him by now if she hadn’t been married to him.
