by Moody, David
He was about to step back out into the sunlight when he stopped and checked himself. What the hell am I doing? Until today, the closest he’d come to committing a motoring offence was getting a speeding ticket, and that was only because he’d thought he was going to be late for a meeting. And now here he was, contemplating stealing a car.
You don’t have any choice. The world’s gone to hell. Where’s the moral obligation when society is clearly fucked?
One step out into the sunlight. The brightness scorched him and he pulled himself back again.
This is madness...
He was on the verge of walking away, but he made himself stop and consider the alternatives.
If I don’t do this, how will I ever get to see her?
If I take one of these cars, will anybody really give a shit?
Do it. Do it NOW!
He marched across the road with a new-found, yet not wholly convincing, determination, the sun burning his exposed skin, blinding him as it bounced off the cars. Then he ran and shoulder-charged the small office door, expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t, and he flew through, landing on the floor in the stifling heat amongst a layer of yellow-curled papers. The air was barely breathable and he lay on his back for a few seconds, struggling to get up.
It didn’t take long to find what he wanted. In fact, it was almost too easy. There was a flat metal cabinet hanging on the wall behind a desk, its door swinging invitingly open. Inside were bunches of keys, all of them conveniently labelled with registration numbers. He took the first one he could definitely match up with one of the cars on the forecourt, a ten year-old Mini, and turned to leave.
Was that it? The simplicity of the theft was disarming. Steven had to remind himself he was committing a crime. It could only have been any easier if the keys been left in the ignition, and as he crouched down beside the open door of the Mini and waited for the build-up of heat inside to subside slightly, he readied himself for an attack from the owner of the garage or even the entire population of Llanymynech. His pulse raced as he stashed his rucksack in the back then climbed into the driver’s seat and he stayed low, doing what he could to remain hidden behind the steering wheel, well out of sight.
Steven steeled himself for trouble, then turned the key. Nothing. He tried again... still nothing, just the faintest signs of life from the car’s engine. Then again and again. Then he sat upright, no longer concerned, only interested in getting the car going. He pumped the pedals and tried again, and this time the engine caught, spluttering like a seasoned smoker’s first cough of the day. He revved and over-revved the engine, desperate not to let it fail, filling the silent village with an abrasive, tractor-like din, but he didn’t care anymore, because he knew that this car was his lifeline and that doing this would slash the time he was apart from Sam now from hours to maybe just minutes. He swerved off the forecourt and instinctively stopped at the give way line, waiting for other traffic which was never going to come. He looked up and saw people now: faces at windows, checking out the noise, a man behind a wall watching from under the brim of an unfeasibly large straw hat, others sitting in the relative cool of an open garage... none of them were interested, none of them were going to try to stop him. No one cared that he was taking a car. He could have taken the lot if he’d wanted, or spent his time choosing the best of the bunch. And it was a sobering thought as he put his foot down and raced away from Llanymynech: none of the things which used to matter count for anything anymore. All that’s important is staying alive.
✽✽✽
Steven felt elated – he was on top of what was left of the world. He’d a quarter of a tank of fuel and the roads here were silent. He’d seen barely any traffic, stationary or otherwise, since the horrific crash outside Shrewsbury. His instincts had proved to be correct. Stay west, he’d told himself first thing this morning at the motorway service station. He felt smug; superior, almost. He swigged from his dwindling water supply in celebration, toasting himself, figuring his journey would be finished before he needed a refill.
According to the clock on the dash, it had just turned half-past three. He checked the dog-eared map as he drove, trying to work out the quickest route to Criccieth. The blast of an approaching horn startled him and he looked up to see another car hurtling towards him – the first vehicle he’d seen since leaving the village. He panicked and swerved out of the way, almost ending up buried nose-first in the hedge at the side of the road. For a moment he wondered if it was someone from the garage in Llanymynech, looking for him, and it was only after the car had gone that he realised how ridiculous that was.
Stay focused. Concentrate.
It was getting harder. His nervousness increased the closer he got to Criccieth. Everything seemed impossibly paradoxical: he drove at an irresponsible speed and took reckless risks around virtually every corner because he wanted to get to Sam in as short a time as possible. And yet driving at such speed was an unnecessary risk in itself. He’d travelled hundreds of miles since leaving home and now had a relatively short distance left to cover... to crash out and injure himself now would be stupid. It felt like he was constantly fighting with himself: damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
He grabbed his phone, compounding the danger but desperate to hear Sam’s voice. He wanted to tell her he was almost there, to reassure her he would be with her soon, but at the last moment common-sense took hold and he threw the phone back down.
21
The Mini was eating up the miles now, tearing through the arid countryside and leaving only a trail of dust in its wake. Steven had passed through Bala a few minutes ago, a small town nestled on the shore of the vast lake from which it took its name. He and Sam had stayed there once. She’d convinced him to try kayaking, a sport she’d always enjoyed. He’d spent more time out of the boat than in it, soaked through and shivering with cold.
The lake had been impossibly difficult to spot today, even from the stretch of road which ran right alongside it. Where he remembered an expanse of choppy grey water, there was now only a dried-up mudflat. He could see people in the distance out there; a small tented village which had sprung up around a visible dip. The deepest part of the lake, he presumed. Maybe there was still a little water there? As he followed the steep road out of the town and up into the mountains, he tried to imagine what this place might be like in a few days time? How much water would be left then? Would the entire population of Bala chase the last drops together, all of them crowding around a final puddle of moisture, the lake’s last sigh?
He always used to dread this part of the journey and also, paradoxically, to look forward to it. Being here meant he was close, only a little time before he had to suffer Sam’s dad’s company, and yet the majesty of the area seemed somehow to compensate his unease. This vast, sparsely populated region made him feel insignificant, the beautiful landscape unfolding forever. There were endless swathes of greenery in every direction, lush forests covering the sides of the hills, the crags and rocky outcrops of the mountains jutting up towards the sky. The car rumbled over a cattle grid which, to him, had always signified the beginning of the Snowdonia National Park proper, an area of incredible splendour and scale. There was nowhere else like it.
What Steven saw today was heart-breaking. Even after everything he’d been through on his way here, the sights which unfolded around him were a stark reminder of the power of the sun. When a place as magnificent as this can be reduced to a lifeless shadow by the constant heat and light, what hope do I have?
He noticed the animals first, and seeing them filled him with a sudden swell of sadness. There were always sheep here, balancing precariously at the top of sheer rock faces, climbing crags with surprising grace to find that elusive patch of grass upon which to graze. Others diced with death and dashed across in front of cars in search of food, whilst older members of the flock would swagger along the middle of the road with well-earned nonchalance, making the intermittent traffic wait for them. Today, however, he saw none o
f their expected movement, but he could still clearly see them. The sheep lay like fallen clouds, the wind-rush of his passing car the only thing which disturbed their tangled fleeces.
This place could be inhospitable at the best of times. It often felt like it was on a time delay; when the snow had melted away from everywhere else, drifts could still be found here on the peaks. Similarly, when the rains and floods had dried away from the rest of the area, the rivers and streams up here would continue to run wild, filling the air with spray and noise. Not today. Where he’d always seen water before, he now saw empty grooves in the land, some slightly darker than others, clinging desperately to the last residual molecules of water but fighting a losing battle, gradually giving up everything to the baking heat. And where Steven remembered seeing waterfalls – ferocious, powerful, unstoppable cascades of untamed foam and spray – he now only saw bare rock faces, dry as bone.
Vehicles were always few and far between up here, except, perhaps, at the very height of summer during school holidays. The constantly twisting, undulating roads were empty today, save for a couple of abandoned cars which seemed to have been either left at the side of the road or shunted out of the way by others. One or two had been shunted too hard by the looks of things. He’d seen several overturned at the bottom of the foothills. One had been gutted by fire, and that fire had spread to much of the surrounding area, reducing everything it touched to stark black, its progress only halted where the grass and vegetation had given way to rock.
The nearer Steven was to Sam, the more intent he seemed on convincing himself this would be a wasted journey, that she’d slam the door in his face and refuse to talk to him in the way he’d refused to talk to her about everything that had happened to the two of them since the summer. More than anything, the thought of having to turn around and fight his way back to Cambridge filled him with dread. He knew that would never happen now – it felt too late, if anything – and yet that meandering train of thought continued and set him to thinking about home. And then he thought about his parents. And then everything and everyone else he’d left behind. There was no doubt that this was where he should be, that trying to get to Sam was his sole purpose now, but it hurt to remember. On a whim, wishing he’d done it sooner and maybe handled things differently, he picked up his phone from the seat next to him. There was a little battery life left, and more signal strength than he’d seen in a while which surprised him as the coverage was usually awful around here... Still struggling with the unpredictable twists and dips of the narrow road, he scrolled through his contacts and called home.
It took an age to connect, then rang out for what felt like an eternity. He was about to give up when someone answered. He didn’t recognise his father’s voice at first. He sounded older than his years. Weak. Beaten. Resigned.
‘Dad?’
‘Steven? That you, son?’
‘Yeah, it’s me.’ It felt so good to talk, even though he was as dehydrated as Dad sounded. ‘I tried to call last night. This is the first time I’ve got through to anyone.’
‘Where are you?’
‘You really want to know? I’m not far from Criccieth. It’s taken the best part of two days to get here.’
‘Samantha with you?’
‘No, Dad, she’s already there. She came up earlier in the week.’
A pause. Precious seconds wasted. ‘Things are really bad, son.’
‘I know,’ Steven said, and he quickly redirected the conversation. ‘Anyway, how are you and Mom? Jess with you? You all safe?’
The phone cut out. He cursed it and looked down at the display, then lifted it back to his ear and clung onto the steering wheel with his other hand as he threw the car around a tight left turn, his back wheels kicking up a plume of dust from the edge of the road. Dad’s voice returned mid-sentence, washing in and out. ‘... thought we’d be okay down here... been trying to phone you all day. Your mom’s been going out of her mind with worry.’
‘Sorry, Dad, there was nothing I could do. Like I said, I haven’t been able to get through to anyone. The roads have been chaotic. It’s madness out here.’
‘I know, son, I saw it for myself. When you weren’t answering, me and Jess tried to get over to your place... back after half an hour when I... backed-up all the way to the dual carriageway.’
‘You’re breaking up, Dad. Don’t know if you can still hear me. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving. Everything sort of just happened... there wasn’t a lot of planning.’
‘D’you want to talk to your mother? She’s keen to talk to you, son...’
Steven swallowed hard, knowing he might be about to speak to his father for the last time. ‘Okay. See you, Dad.’
‘Take care out there, son. I’ll see you when you get back.’
Tears were rolling down Steven’s face now. Between his crying and the unflinching sun it was difficult to see anything. He slowed down, a low stone wall on his left the only thing which separated him from a stomach-churning drop of several hundred metres. ‘Steven? Is that you, love?’
It was too dangerous to keep going. He pulled into a passing point and stopped. ‘Hello, Mom.’
‘You on your way to Norman’s?’
‘Yeah, Sam came up earlier in the week. We didn’t know things were going to get so bad so quickly.’
‘I think it’s just a lot of fuss over nothing myself,’ she said, and he laughed at her enviable ability to trivialise even the most impossibly dire situation. The sun was burning his arms and the top of his thighs now that he’d stopped and he pulled away again, driving slowly, loving the sound of his mom’s voice as she talked tirelessly and without any authority. ‘I said to your father that this’ll all be over in a couple of weeks. You mark my words. I think we’ll be lucky if we—’
A sharp burst of static and distortion almost made him drop the phone. Deafened, he pulled it away from his ear, the intense white noise still audible from a distance. When it stopped and he listened again, he couldn’t hear anything. ‘Mom... Mom, are you still there?’
Nothing.
‘Mom...?’
He looked at the phone, then looked up.
He felt it before he saw it, an irrefutable increase in the heat and light outside. He wanted to believe he was wrong, that he was imagining it, that it was just exhaustion and dehydration playing tricks on him, but in his heart he knew exactly what this was.
He couldn’t bare to look at the sun as it was, the unimaginably bright disc of light already burning without opposition in the perennially cloudless sky, but its brilliance was definitely increasing, the blue of the atmosphere intensifying to white. It was as if the sun itself was beginning to grow, losing definition and expanding outwards until it filled the entire sky. Was that what was happening? Was this it? Were these few moments all he had left? He felt the car shaking as if he’d driven off the road and onto a dirt track and he slowed down again, now unable to see anything out of the windscreen but white light. Now it felt like it was the ground itself which was shaking; an earthquake in a place where there’d been only the mildest, barely detectable tremors in hundreds of thousands of years. Steven stalled the car in panic and threw himself forward, the temperature climbing rapidly. He leaned across the passenger seat, desperate for cover, but it wasn’t enough and he felt his exposed skin beginning to prickle and burn. The small of his back, the top of his ears, his neck... whenever he moved to shield himself he left another part of his body exposed.
Still the car continued to shake, edging closer to the side of the road, but all he could do was push himself lower, cramming as much of his body as he could into the foot-well, the gearstick and handbrake sticking into his ribs.
As small as he could make himself in the already confined Mini, he angled his head to one side and tried to look up. The brightness was too much. The inside of the car was filled with impossible light, and all he could think was that he would have been caught out in this had it happened earlier. And he thought about Jane
and Roy and all the other people he’d seen since leaving home... the road full of refugees outside Shrewsbury, the bottleneck on the M6, the families in the service station... He imagined their agony: no shelter, no way of escaping the sun, literally burning to death under these savage rays. He wondered if the light was ever going to fade, or if this was how things would be from here on in?
And he thought about Sam. So near now, but so bloody far.
The car was moving with even more force now. It rocked from side to side, as if caught in a crosswind which constantly changed direction, before being shunted back hard. Then it dropped; a sudden, unexpected, stomach-churning fall of inches which felt like miles. Steven lurched forward, smacking his head and losing his glasses. He fumbled for them in the foot-well, desperate to cover his eyes. The impact was so violent and unexpected... had he been hit by another driver?
It felt like the air was being burned away. Barely able to breathe in the heat, Steven tried to move but he was trapped, still wedged between the gearstick and the seats. He managed to lift his head slightly. Was the light finally beginning to fade now? He wasn’t sure. He tried to look again. Although still intense, the brilliance was definitely starting to reduce. A few more seconds passed and he was able to look around the inside of the car with marginally more comfort. A few seconds longer still, sure now that it was over, and he slowly pushed himself back upright.
It took a while to get out of the car, his body hurting, muscles cramped and screaming with pain after holding position too tight for too long. Every movement took real effort and concentration. The car’s interior was too hot to touch and he had to cover his hand with his T-shirt to get the door open, snatching gingerly at the red-hot handle. He half-climbed, half-fell onto the scorching tarmac, sliding out like a worm hunting the darkness and moisture of soil but finding only concrete and grit. He writhed on the ground until he was completely free, then quickly got to his feet, the soles of his shoes absorbing the latent heat that the rest of his body couldn’t stand.
