by Moody, David
Steven had lost his sunglasses again in the confusion, and the world was too bright without them. He reached back into the stolen car and found them on the floor, stabbing himself in the eye with the frame in his desperate rush to get them on and shut out the painful light. It was only then that he was able to take in his surroundings.
It was the Mini he noticed first. The back wheels had been shunted over the edge of the road and the whole thing was hanging precariously now, like that scene he remembered from The Italian Job. He’d have laughed if he hadn’t been shaking so badly with nerves. He staggered back, feeling faint, numb with shock, and leant against a rock wall on the other side of the road until the temperature was too much to stand. His composure was returning. He thought he’d be okay now, though it had been a close-run thing. The car was salvageable. There still seemed to be enough grip between one of the back tyres and the dusty road to get him back on track.
When he looked around, he thought it was as if the colour had been sucked out of everything. The last traces of green which had been visible before the pulse had been burnt away, leaving the world full of nothing but yellows and browns. He saw smoke drifting in the windless sky, and he looked back at the area through which he’d just travelled and saw that a huge swathe of tinder-dry forest was ablaze, walls of flame eating through the trees. He pictured the whole world burning before long. What was there to prevent it now? Next to no water left to fight the flames, nor anyone with any inclination to do so unless they found themselves in immediate physical danger. No, it was clear that this forest fire and the inevitable hundreds more like it up and down the country and beyond would be left to burn indefinitely. The only way they’d ever be stopped, he thought, would be by natural fire-breaks; roads and walls and rock and the like. Before long, he decided, there wouldn’t be anything left to burn.
Steven was still shaking. He felt desperately alone now, as if he was the last man on earth. Out there by himself, surrounded by nothing but mile after endless mile of sun-scorched landscape, no movement other than the gently drifting palls of smoke, it seemed possible that he might actually be the only one still alive. Imagine that... finally getting to Criccieth and finding that he was too late, nothing to do but stand there in the ruins and wait for the inevitable next pulse to come and finish him off. Close to tears, he reached into the chokingly hot car again and retrieved his phone from under the passenger seat where it had fallen. Strange. It was switched off. Had the battery gone? He thought not – he’d been doing his best to conserve the little power he had left all day. He tried to turn it back on, desperate to finish his conversation with his parents and check they were okay, but it wasn’t working. He knew he was in shock: was he missing something? Not thinking straight? No; he checked the phone over a couple of times but the result was the same each time. Nothing. It was completely dead. He looked it over for signs of physical damage but couldn’t see anything obvious.
Frustrated, Steven checked the crumpled map, thinking he could try Sam’s phone or Norman’s land-line when he got to Criccieth. He had to try and speak to Mum and Dad again. He needed to tell them everything was going to be okay and that he’d see them again soon, to give them the same kind of welcome reassurance they’d always given him when he was younger. He knew in his heart there wasn’t any point and that any promises he made would be empty. He didn’t want to admit it, but he knew the real reason he wanted to call home again was to say goodbye.
He’d made it onto the same page of the map as Criccieth and he threw the rest of it away, knowing he wouldn’t need it again. Another mile or two further down this road and he’d be off the mountains and close to the village of Trawsfynydd. From there it was less than twenty miles. He could be there in the next half hour providing he could get the car back onto the road. Whether Sam wanted to see him or not, he just wanted this desperate journey over with now.
The sun began to dip below the mountains, and the relief was immense. He checked the car wasn’t about to slide down the hillside then opened all the doors he could to allow the stifling heat inside to subside. Ready to get going again, feeling slightly more composed now, he sat behind the wheel and turned the key.
Nothing.
The engine was dead. It didn’t even turn over. Not a spark. Not a single damn noise or even the slightest flicker of life. Damn wreck of a car. He cursed himself for picking the Mini. There’d been a Volvo on the forecourt next to this one. If he’d taken his time and thought about it and not panicked, he’d have picked something different, something better suited to driving across this unwelcoming landscape than this stupid bloody thing. He was angry with himself – no, he was fucking furious – and he fished under the dash for the lever and popped the bonnet open. Then, holding the metal hood in a fold in his grubby T-shirt so as not to burn his hands, he propped it open and checked for anything obvious. He didn’t know a huge amount about cars, and everything looked in reasonably good condition, so why had it failed so spectacularly? Maybe he’d be able to find something online that would help him... some kind of troubleshooting page if he could find a website that was still accessible and get a decent enough signal out here in the wilds. He tried the lifeless phone again but it was no use. And then it hit him: It was the energy pulse. Fuck, it was the energy pulse that did this.
He’d read about things like this happening in books and seen it in films, and even though pre-crisis fiction seemed a million miles away from his current situation, in the absence of any other explanation he decided he was probably right. EMP effects, he thought he’d heard them called. Electromagnetic pulses... something like that. He didn’t remember anything about the science, only the impact. Didn’t the same thing happen with nuclear explosions? All electric circuits fried? It seemed logical – as logical as anything could be anymore – that the frequent waves of energy from the sun were having a similarly destructive effect. For a moment he was numb behind the wheel, trying to imagine the consequences: no more cars, phones, computers, electric lights, radios, Internet... mankind’s ability to communicate had been dragged back thousands of years in the space of a few seconds. He visualised the roads he’d travelled along to get here today, Shrewsbury, the A14, the motorway around Birmingham, and he pictured them all having ground to a final, irreversible halt, all transport crippled. And hospitals, if any were still functioning: had their life support machines just been rendered useless; had ventilators stopped ventilating; had operations been terminated mid-procedure? It felt like the whole world was dying. Bizarrely, sitting there baking in the endless heat, trying to come to terms with the sheer scale of what might have just happened, Steven temporarily forgot the precarious isolation of his own situation.
What do I do?
His options felt like they were reducing by the minute. His only choice now was whether he kept going or gave up and spent the rest of his time here. He knew in a heartbeat that he had to go and he readied himself to walk, leaving the car as it was and pausing only to grab his rucksack. He emptied everything but the last scraps of food he had left and the dregs of a final bottle of water. He still had his car keys, his house keys, and his and Sam’s passports, driving licences and other important documentation, but everything else was gone now, all material possessions abandoned, irrespective of their worth, discarded along the wayside.
Oh, but the gradual disappearance of the sun was such an incredible relief. It had dropped below the mountain line now, leaving everything bathed in an inky darkness which, whilst still as dry and hot as ever, at least gave the illusion of being slightly cooler. And in the steadily darkening sky, thousands of miles overhead, he saw what looked like a tiny cluster of shooting stars, a meteor burning up in the atmosphere, perhaps? And then another. And one more. The longer he looked, the more of them he saw and it occurred to him that these were satellites dying. As all electrical circuits had been burned out down here on the surface of the planet, so the same had happened in the orbit of the Earth, where there was even less protection. These dist
ant fireworks were the satellites’ final communications with the people down below.
He started to walk, exhausted, his feet dragging on the ground. So near but so far... if only he’d managed a few more miles before the energy pulse had struck. At least much of the climb over the mountains was behind him now, he thought. Imagine if he’d lost the car an hour earlier, or if he’d never found it at all? Where would he be now? He knew there was no point thinking about what ifs and maybes... all he could do now was keep walking until he either made it to Criccieth or the next energy wave struck, whichever came first. The gap between the pulses was reducing. Despite feeling like a lifetime ago, it had been less than a day since he and Roy had cowered in the car together on the M6, roughly half the time before that pulse and the one which had preceded it. The next one could strike before dawn, he realised. The next one might hit before I reach Criccieth.
22
Steven had no way of accurately telling the time now. It left him feeling strangely helpless and out of step with everyone else, uncomfortably disconnected from the rest of the world. The largely downward slope here enabled him to make steady progress in the fading light and he forced himself to try and keep up a decent pace in spite of the toll it would inevitably take on his dehydrated body.
The residual glow of the sinking sun on the horizon gave way to the light from frequent untended fires all around. The dancing flames gave the arid landscape a distinctly alien appearance. Barren, devoid of almost all colour, it truly looked like nowhere on Earth now, reminiscent of photographs beamed back from robots on Mars. But it was the unending stillness which disturbed him more than anything. But for the fires he could see nothing else moving, no birds or other animals, even. He’d thought it before and he thought it again now, was he the only one left alive?
At long last he was off the hills, and almost immediately he reached the small village of Trawsfynydd. It had always been a tranquil place, but tonight it was deathly silent, unremittingly so. The village had been a safe haven for folks coming down off the mountains for hundreds of years, offering a warm welcome to weary walkers in the pub or the hotel bar, but not tonight. He remembered visiting here with Sam and her father once, not that long ago. Norman had told them the place was one of the last few strongholds of the Welsh language, and had even started taking lessons in a vain attempt to be accepted by the locals. Steven remembered how the villagers had humoured Norman, responding kindly to his mistakes and mispronunciations, playing along to keep him happy. Steven thought the place didn’t feel so friendly tonight. From a distance he scanned the solitary row of grey stone cottages in the centre of the village and the few other buildings nearby, and found himself hoping he didn’t see anyone and that no one saw him.
Stumbling down the steep incline towards a junction in the road, barely able to keep control of his tired legs, he realised that the entire place seemed deserted, with not a single light on in any of the buildings. The EMP would have had something to do with that, of course, but wouldn’t these folks have used candles or other types of lamp? Was everything so tinder dry that they didn’t trust themselves with naked flames anymore, or was there another reason? Did Trawsfynydd appear empty because it was empty? Why would the entire population of the village have upped sticks and disappeared? Where would they have gone? Not wanting to waste time but curious all the same, he paused and peered in through the windows of a couple of buildings. There was no movement in either of the cottages he checked, and the door of the pub had been locked and secured from the outside with a padlock and chain.
Steven continued walking through the village, approaching the shore of the once-huge, man-made lake with which Trawsfynydd shared its name. Like Lake Bala earlier, it was now little more than a vast and slightly muddy plain, remarkably desolate, like a scab in the midst of the surrounding forests. Why hadn’t the people clung onto the moisture here like they had elsewhere? There was a fire raging in the depths of one particular patch of trees and, in the uneven light from the raging flames, Steven saw what he thought was the probable reason for Trawsfynydd’s evacuation: a nuclear power station which stood on one shore of the lake. He’d always thought it an ugly and almost offensively misplaced building whenever he’d passed it; two huge, grubby brown concrete blocks, acutely out of place in these most beautiful of natural surroundings, an abrasive and insensitive contrast with everything which surrounded it. But it had been here longer than he’d been alive, and he guessed many of the people who lived in the village had never known the place without it.
The road continued along one side of the lake, and as Steven walked he thought more about the power station in the near distance. And the longer he thought about it, the more concerned he became. He knew next to nothing about how these places worked, but didn’t they need to be constantly cooled? Hadn’t that been the problem in Fukushima in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami? What if the reactors couldn’t be cooled?
The EMP... Jesus, what if the power’s already off in there?
He picked up his pace, walking faster than was comfortable now.
What if it’s already gone into meltdown? What if the air I’m breathing’s already filled with deadly levels of radiation?
He broke into a tired jog, not knowing what else he could do.
Shit, the forest around the bloody place is on fire... what happens if it reaches the building?
And now he was virtually sprinting, groaning with effort every time his feet hit the ground, feeling little shocks running the length of his body and struggling to swallow anything like enough oxygen from the parched, smoke-filled air.
Fuck it. What’s the point.
He stopped running as quickly as he’d started, not just because it was so damn hard, but also because he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. If the building exploded and spewed radiation everywhere... so what? If he was already contaminated... so what? There was nothing he or anyone else could do now. By the time I get sick, he thought, chances are we’ll already all be gone. And again, the scale of what was happening hit Steven like a hammer blow. The meltdown of a radioactive power station core? Just a minor inconvenience in the scheme of things now... It made him realise just how hopeless everything had become, and it made him even more determined to make it to Criccieth before it was too late. All he wanted was to see her. Just one last time.
✽✽✽
Steven desperately needed a drink. The sudden unnecessary burst of energy he’d expended after leaving Trawsfynydd had left him reeling, struggling to keep going. At the side of the otherwise empty road he saw the outline of a car parked under the limited shade of a dying tree. Just visible in the rapidly fading light, the outline of the roof and bonnet of the car were highlighted by the very last shards of the sun’s dying light. And he was sure he could see people inside it, at least two of them, maybe more. How anyone could stand to shut themselves away in that impossible heat was beyond him, and as he neared he began to convince himself he was looking at something else; luggage piled up, abandoned belongings stacked on the seats giving the impression of occupation perhaps?
The car was a run-of-the-mill Honda, black or dark blue in colour, he couldn’t be sure. Days of exposure to the tireless sun had stripped the metallic paintwork of much of its sheen, and the vehicle was coated in a layer of fine dust, giving it an unnaturally antique-like appearance.
There was definitely someone in the driver’s seat, of that much he was certain now. Even though the light was almost gone, there was no mistaking the outline of a man’s head and shoulders, hair gone wild, the side of his face pressed up hard against the glass as if he was sleeping. Steven cautiously moved closer, not wanting to startle the driver but already suspecting from his awkward position that the poor bastard was dead. He held back slightly, then stretched forward and rapped on the glass with his knuckles, bracing himself in case he was wrong. He wasn’t. The man didn’t react, didn’t move at all.
Steven tried the driver’s door, keen to take this unexpected
opportunity to scavenge, even though he didn’t expect to find much. It was unlocked and he pulled it open quickly, catching the body as it fell and pushing it back inside, holding his breath and screwing his eyes shut in protest at the sudden wave of musty heat which hit him hard; the vile combination of several rank odours, baked together in the confined space. Then came the stench of decay. It wasn’t a smell he’d been familiar with until this week. He’d caught its sickly sweetness a few times now, most notably around the scores of bodies in the fields near Shrewsbury. It was a unique, immediately identifiable reek, and yet here it wasn’t quite as strong as he might have expected. It was as if it had been cooked out. The body in the car had been dead for some time, it seemed. He gazed into the driver’s face, unnaturally still but appearing to twist and contort in the miserable light. His dry eyes bulged like they were trying to escape, and his stubbled skin clung to the curves of his eye sockets and jaw. He looked partially mummified.
Steven waited several steps back, struggling with his conscience. Did he loot this man’s belongings, or leave him alone out of respect? Taking the dead man’s last drops of drink, if he had any, wouldn’t change his situation, but it might make a considerable difference to Steven, the difference, even, between making it to Criccieth and not. There was still some twenty miles of walking between him and Sam, and to push on and walk it at night seemed eminently more sensible. He had to minimise the time he spent out in the sun.
His mind made up, Steven was about to open another one of the car’s doors when he stopped. He hadn’t noticed before, but sitting next to the man was a woman. He couldn’t see much of her from where he was standing, just her dried head lolled forward on drooping shoulders. She still had her seatbelt on, it seemed. And much as he tried to look away, he couldn’t stop himself now. He moved to the back of the car and opened it, then immediately closed it again. There were two dead children on the back seat. Two young boys. It was difficult to accurately gauge their ages, but he didn’t think either of them had been any older than seven or eight. Between them lay the remains of a dog, the family pet, its head and front legs spread-eagled over one of the lad’s laps. Steven leant back against the car and tried to control his breathing. Steady. Slow. For once the latent heat of the car’s body burning into him was welcome, reminding him he was still alive.
