by Moody, David
All around him people went about their business with a new found urgency. The fear was palpable. There was a quiet desperation about the way they moved now: heads down, keeping themselves to themselves, appearing almost too afraid to talk to anyone else about what they’d just experienced. The energy pulse had been terrifying, so much stronger than the last.
It seemed like everyone was trying to get home at once. The roads, relatively quiet a short time ago, were now full of traffic. Steven joined a snaking queue which stretched a quarter mile towards a clogged up roundabout, the snarl-up itself caused by huge queues at the pumps of a beleaguered petrol station spilling out onto the road, no one going anywhere fast. Thankfully his own tank was three-quarters full.
Trapped behind the wheel, all he could do was think about what had happened. He tried to look for reassurances but found none. The increase in strength between this pulse and the last had been remarkable, but was it because it had happened earlier in the day? Did that even matter? He remembered, feeling uncomfortable with himself and not a little self-obsessed, that it was always daylight somewhere on the planet... And if they continued to come and they continued to increase in strength (as, he recalled, the trendy scientist on TV earlier in the week had said they might), then how strong would the next wave be, and when would it strike? Maybe there won’t be a next one, he thought? But that seemed increasingly unlikely. The heat showed no sign of abating. If anything it was hotter now than before the pulse had hit.
Steven inched his car forward, keen to get moving, desperate to get away from here. Because, he realised, it wasn’t just the strength of these pulses or waves or whatever which was changing. He remembered experiencing something out on his patio in the early hours after the barbecue at Yvonne’s, then again outside the pub last week.
Shit. They’re getting closer together.
10
FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER
He’d tried calling Sam again after the slow crawl getting home last night but she hadn’t picked up. He eventually got through on the landline, but only to Norman. Their conversation had been brief. Steven had said he’d shortly be on his way to Criccieth, Norman told him not to bother, that Sam was better off without him. Fortunately, Norman had hung up before Steven could tell him what he thought of him. He’d tried to get through again a couple more times, but the phone was off the hook. There seemed more chance of it raining than of him getting to speak to Sam tonight.
It had taken him longer than planned to pack for the journey. He’d begun by getting together enough stuff for a few days away, then realised he might need more: clothes, food, all the water and drinks he could carry. Then he thought more about the heat and the energy pulses, remembering what Lydia had told him about her husband, camping out in the garage, convinced the end was fast approaching. In light of what had happened in town after leaving the office, that hadn’t seemed as far-fetched a prospect as it originally had. He went back for his passport, driving licence, family photographs, heirlooms, all the documents he kept in the safe, even the safe itself... Spooked, he’d eventually worked his way through the entire house methodically, room by room, taking everything of value, anything irreplaceable. Though he wouldn’t allow himself to admit it, he was working under the unspoken assumption that he wouldn’t be coming back here for some time, if at all. Too tired to head out, by late evening he lay down for a while to rest.
The bedroom was still grey with the crossover light of dawn when he finally got up. He’d spent hours in the gloom waiting for this time to come, thinking himself in circles, but now the morning was here he didn’t want to move. After washing and dressing (just a T-shirt and shorts, the most comfortable clothes he could find), he sat at the computer to work out the best route for getting to Criccieth. It was a journey he’d driven many times, but never under extreme conditions like these. The Internet was usually a distraction – all too easy to surf off-topic and end up looking for sex or sport or anything else – but this morning he remained uncharacteristically focused. He printed off several alternatives, keeping his options open. His usual route took him towards the centre of the country via the M6, then west on the M54 or further north towards Manchester and Liverpool depending how busy the motorways were. His heart sank when he clicked the traffic overlay. It seemed pretty much every road around Cambridge was now outlined in heavy red. Birmingham was the same, Stafford too. In fact the roads around every major city were apparently clogged. It angered him. Did people have a genuine reason for travelling like he did, or were they all like Trevor: the lone Prepper in his garage, trying to escape something which was clearly inescapable?
He was worried he didn’t have enough water. He’d tried to buy more from the local store in the road behind his last night, but had had little success. Although the owner of the shop had occupied his usual position behind the till, everything else had looked completely different. Fresh food was non-existent and there were prominent gaps on most of the shelves and in the chilled cabinets. Pretty much every drop of alcohol had gone. Even the ropey-looking tins with sun bleached labels which had been on display for as long as Steven could remember had been bought up. He’d found a few items but had been charged over the odds. ‘You’re kidding me?’ he’d said when the bill was tallied up. ‘I’ve hardly got anything.’
‘Prices gone up,’ the shopkeeper explained. ‘No delivery for three days. You want it, you pay it.’
The world was falling apart around him. It seemed ridiculous and far-fetched, and yet the evidence was incontrovertible. Commerce was grinding to a virtual halt. Even if the weather conditions changed now, he wondered whether it would be too late? It felt like the end of the world had crept up on him and everyone else and taken them all by surprise. Yesterday’s energy pulse had tipped the balance. In less than twenty-four hours mild concern had given way to tangible fear.
Time to leave.
He walked around the house one last time, wondering if there was anything else he needed to take, anything he’d forgotten. The only noise came from the TV news which he’d been half-watching. Even the BBC seemed in a sorry state this morning. He didn’t recognise the newsreader. Maybe he was an understudy, or an understudy’s understudy, a local presenter thrust into the national media spotlight in the absence of everybody else? Didn’t matter anyway. Steven doubted many people were still listening and even if they were, he didn’t have anything worth saying. A few filmed reports from a couple of days ago went around on a loop with ticker-tape headlines below which hadn’t changed since their first airing. The time was the only thing still being updated. Steven switched the set off, locked up, and went out to the car.
‘Don’t reckon you’ll get far today,’ a voice shouted to him as he left the house. It was Phil Parkes, his neighbour, a strip of a man with an eighties mullet. He was in the middle of his dust-bowl of a front lawn with his wife Debbie, both of them sitting on deckchairs under the shade of an elaborate yet badly faded parasol. Debbie waved her drink at him and he waved back. It wasn’t even eight, but she’d already hit the bottle hard.
‘Got to try, haven’t I.’
‘You should do the same as Debbie and me, mate... just sit back in the sun and watch the world fall apart. Nothing you or I can do about it, anyway.’
‘I know that. I need to get to Sam though.’
‘Where is she?’
‘At her dad’s. North Wales.’
Phil pulled a face. ‘It’s gridlock out there, mate, that’s what I’ve heard.’
‘I don’t have any choice,’ he said, and he started back towards his car again. Phil Parkes was a cocky bugger who always had something smart to say, some unnecessary and usually inappropriate wisecrack. Steven waited for it to come, but it didn’t. He looked back at his neighbour who simply raised his beer bottle and nodded his head at him.
‘All the best, mate. Hope you make it. Give her our regards when you get there.’
Steven threw a last few things into the boot of the Audi, alongside his and Sam�
��s most important possessions; the highlights of two lives packed into a depressingly small space. He was distracted, and when he shut the boot and went back down the drive, he walked straight into someone coming the other way.
‘Steven?’ the man said. Steven looked at him, confused. He was vaguely familiar, but obviously not familiar enough.
‘Yeah... what?’
‘Remember me?’
‘Sorry, mate, no.’
The man – mid-forties, plump, wearing a godawful Hawaiian shirt, shorts which were too long for his stumpy legs, sandals and off-white socks – lifted his sunglasses and sweat-soaked cap. ‘It’s me, Roy, remember? We met at Yvonne’s barbecue a few weeks back.’
‘Ah, right...’ Steven said. ‘I don’t remember much about that night.’
‘You and me both, pal.’
Steven tried to edge around him, keen to get on the road after too much procrastination. To his annoyance, Roy wedged himself firmly in the way. ‘Can I get through?’
‘Look, Steve,’ Roy said, holding his position, ‘I know this is a bit of a long shot... Yvonne said your missus was in Wales and you might be trying to get up there if you hadn’t gone already.’
‘So?’
He took a deep breath. ‘I need a favour.’
‘I don’t have time for favours. Don’t have time for anything.’
‘I need a lift. Just to Stoke. Please? Look, Steve, all my family’s up there. I’ve got no way of getting to them.’
‘Coach? Train?’
‘None running. Come on, how would you feel?’
Steven knew that was a cheap shot, but to an extent it worked: he was feeling isolated and cut-off himself and he had the means to get where he wanted. But who was this idiot? ‘I don’t know... I hardly know you. Why should I?’
‘Come on, man. It’s not gonna cost you anything. Just take me as far north as you’re going, please. You’re my last hope. I don’t have a car... I can’t get up there without a lift. Yvonne said you’d help. She said you were decent.’
‘Yvonne says a lot of things.’
‘I’ll pay you.’
‘Take a look around, Roy. What good’s your money?’
‘I’ve got supplies,’ he said, clutching at straws, swinging his heavy backpack off his shoulders. ‘Loads of food and drink in here. I’ll share it. You can have your pick.’
‘I don’t need it. I’ve got enough.’
Roy’s shoulders slumped. He leant back against Steven’s car, defeated, then immediately moved again when the hot metal burned his bare skin. Steven watched him weighing up his limited options, and he couldn’t help put himself in the man’s position. What if he’d been the one with the car and Steven the hitchhiker desperately trying to get away? How would he feel if his only chance of seeing Sam again rested on the goodwill of a stranger like this? It wasn’t as if he didn’t have space in the car, and maybe the company would be welcome...
Roy turned and was about to walk away when Steven called him back. ‘Okay. No diversions, though, and don’t piss me about. We go my route in my time and you tell me when you want to get out. I’m not promising anything, and I’m definitely not dropping you off at the door.’
11
Roy didn’t shut up. Not a single fucking pause for breath. Steven hoped it was nervous relief and that he’d calm down soon enough. He made no attempt to engage or take an active part in the one way conversation, he just stayed focused on the road ahead and on the prospect of getting to Sam’s father’s house later this afternoon. It didn’t feel such an impossible journey now they were actually on the road and making progress.
‘Thought it’d be much worse than this,’ Roy said, eyes darting from side to side like a little kid. ‘I mean, you can tell things aren’t right, but it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.’
‘We’ve only been driving ten minutes. Calm before the storm?’
‘You think?’
Steven did, but he didn’t bother to elaborate. Along all of the roads they drove down Steven saw tell-tale signs that all was not well. There were conspicuous gaps outside houses where other people had already set out on similar journeys to his, and he saw countless other families still cramming themselves into the backs of their cars, packed in tight with as many of their belongings as they could fit inside, other possessions and even sticks of furniture in roof boxes and lashed onto roof-racks, covered with tarpaulin. ‘They look like they’re going on holiday, don’t they,’ Roy said, bemused. ‘Bloody hell, look at them!’ He pointed at a group of five men who were trying to balance a huge, flat screen TV on the roof of a Volvo estate, one on each corner and one acting as foreman, shouting instructions which the others seemed to be largely ignoring. ‘Glad that’s not us, eh mate?’
Steven didn’t answer. He was distracted looking at other houses now, homes where there wasn’t any activity outside, but plenty happening inside. Homes where families and extended families were gathering together in one place. It made him think about Mom, Dad and Jess. Should he have been with them? They knew he’d been planning to drive to Criccieth, but it didn’t sit right knowing that later today he’d be with Sam’s father, enduring the tension and swallowing down the mutual dislike. Choices had to be made. He couldn’t be in both places at once, and being with Sam was all that mattered right now. It was a no contest. But maybe he’d be able to persuade her to travel back with him in a couple of days? Maybe the roads would be quieter by then, when this initial panic subsided? Or perhaps the weather would have finally broken? He didn’t hold out much hope of either being the case.
‘It all feels a bit backwards, don’t it?’ Roy said.
‘What does?’
‘The traffic. It’s opposite to normal. Most days you have to fight to get into town, today everyone’s trying to get out. Makes you wonder why they’re bothering.’
‘Same reason we are, I guess. Trying to get to people before... before things get too bad.’ He tried not to make his sentence sound as final as it felt.
‘So you’re going to North Wales, you said?’
‘That’s right,’ Steven replied. He pulled out from a side-street and joined a relatively major road for the first time since leaving home and cursed at the volume of traffic, their progress reducing to a crawl.
‘How long’s that gonna take you?’
‘It’s five or six hours when we normally do it.’
‘Well you can double that today, I reckon,’ Roy said, and Steven just looked at him. ‘What?’
‘I could do without that kind of encouragement.’
‘Just saying it as I see it.’
‘Well don’t.’
‘I mean, look at that,’ he continued, oblivious. He gestured ahead to a fuel station. Steven had seen queues for petrol yesterday, but nothing like this. The snaking lines at the pumps were gone and the place looked almost derelict now, drained dry. The small store was closed, security grilles over all the windows. There were no prices on the signs, just black spacers where numbers should have been. The forecourt was empty save for a single car which looked like it had been dumped, all the doors wide open. But then he realised it was just to keep the people inside cool. The traffic shunted forward, then stopped again, affording him a better view. He watched as a man slightly older than himself dashed from pump to pump, trying each of them, hoping to shake out a final few precious drops of fuel for his car. Inside the vehicle his family roasted. A mother tried to placate the two kids wedged into the backseat, a panting dog stuck between them. Steven imagined that they’d been on the road for some time as they all looked exhausted. He didn’t think they’d be going much further today. So was this it for them? Stuck on a blisteringly hot petrol station forecourt, miles from home? For once he was glad of the distraction when Roy started talking again.
‘So you reckon the refineries are still working?’
‘What?’
‘I was just trying to work out why there’s no fuel.’
‘Could be any
one of a hundred reasons.’
‘I know, that’s what I was thinking. Could be the refineries are knackered.’
‘Or the drivers just can’t get through.’
‘Or the computers aren’t working.’
‘Or the staff didn’t turn up to open the store. Could be anything.’
Roy shook his head. ‘Getting pretty scary, ain’t it? We’re gonna be going all Mad Max-like if we’re not careful. Fighting over fuel and all that.’
‘You reckon? That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’
‘Nothing extreme about it. Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that. Good job there’s two of us, mate. Wouldn’t want to be out on my own trying to get through all this.’
Steven didn’t say anything. He was too busy considering the implications of Roy’s dubious wisdom. If he was right, and much as Steven didn’t want to admit it, it looked like he probably was, then how would he get back from North Wales? Did he have enough fuel for a round trip? Would he be able to get more in Criccieth where population numbers were far lower than here in Cambridge? Or, in leaving home this morning, had he made an unexpectedly final choice?
‘Turn right,’ Roy said.
‘What?’
‘Here. Quick. Turn right.’
‘But...’
‘I know a cut through. If we’re heading for the A14, turn right. Now!’
Steven sneaked across the adjacent carriageway, cutting through the other line of vehicles at the last minute and receiving a volley of horn blasts and shouted abuse as a result. Up ahead, another car had attempted a similar sudden change of direction but with less success. A Ford Mondeo had taken a left turn just below the brow of the steep hill they were now beginning to climb, only to be hit in the side by a large, ugly Citroen travelling in the opposite direction. Steven saw the crash from a distance and didn’t think anything of it at first, just one of those things. He’d do what everyone else was doing and drive up and around over the grass verge at the side of the road to avoid the debris and the jutting out rear wing of the stranded Mondeo. ‘This doesn’t look good,’ he said as they neared the crash. Neither the Mondeo or the Citroen could move, both cars locked together in a tangle of plastic and metal. But it was the reactions of the respective drivers which caught Steven off-guard. He almost drove into the back of the car in front with shock when the male Citroen driver, clearly in the wrong, dragged the female Ford driver out of her car. Two screaming young kids scrambled out of the back of the Mondeo and tried to pull their mother the other way. The furious, clearly desperate man got behind the wheel of the Mondeo and tried to move it out of the way, knackered engine straining. And all the time the chorus of horns and shouts increased in volume around them, yet no one else dared get involved.
