The World After: An EMP Thriller

by Ryan Casey

The pair of us laughed as we joined up with the rest of the group, eager to reach the bunker before nightfall—eager not to be homeless for the first time in my life.

  We knew we’d have to rest at some stage.

  We knew we’d have to sleep.

  But for now, we walked on, all eight of us, together.

  We didn’t think much of the sign for HMP Prison Buckley Hall when we walked past it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It soon became clear that we weren’t going to find this bunker before nightfall.

  We had been walking for a good few hours. The sky had gone orange, the threatening glow of darkness taunting us. The walking was becoming increasingly difficult. My feet were blistered to shit. Remy’s weren’t much better, neither were Haz’s. It just seemed to be Hannah, Jason, Sue, and their kids storming onwards, all of them still determined that they could find what they’d set out to find before the darkness surrounded them.

  Even more disconcerting was the fact that we were back in the suburbs. There were candles glowing in the windows of semi-detached houses, people standing at the end of driveways, looking at us through narrowed eyes as we passed. There seemed to be a pause on the conflict of the inner-cities here in the outskirts. The suburbs hadn’t quite descended into the all-out chaos of the cities. There were a few crashed cars, here and there, and people sounded disgruntled.

  But there was still order, here. I guessed that was because smaller communities like this had each other. They knew how to band together in times of crisis.

  If only they knew that this wasn’t just some normal power outage.

  “It’s about time we found somewhere to rest,” I said.

  The rest of the group slowed down, except for Jason. He kept on marching onwards, dragging his children along in the process. They had recently started crying, a sound that, while annoying, I had to sympathise with because they were clearly exhausted.

  “Jason,” Sue said.

  Jason groaned. “Sue, we can’t just slow down. You know as well as I do how important it is to get where we need to go—fast.”

  “Daddy, I’m tired,” Holly said.

  “Don’t you worry, Hol,” Jason said, putting a hand on his daughter’s back. “We’re going to be there in no time.”

  Jason kept on walking. It fast became clear that he didn’t have any intentions of stopping at all. I didn’t want to fall into some kind of conflict with him. But I didn’t want to lose him, either. He was one of our group now.

  “Jason,” I said, stepping forward.

  He spun around and squared right up to me. “What, Scott? Do you think you can do a better job of being a dad than I can? Do you think you know everything there is to know about parenting?”

  “Please. We’re just talking about taking a break.”

  “Yeah, well that’s easy for you to say when you don’t have any kids of your own, isn’t it?”

  I snapped, then. I couldn’t control it, couldn’t prevent it. I didn’t often see red in my life, but this was one moment where the red took over, and I couldn’t control myself.

  I smacked my fist around Jason’s face.

  He didn’t push back. My knuckles didn’t bounce off him like maybe I’d expected.

  Instead, he went falling right down to the ground in a heap.

  “Scott!” Hannah called.

  But I couldn’t stop myself now. I couldn’t stop myself now that Jason was on the ground, while he was looking up at me, blood pooling from his left eye.

  That smug face, and the thing he’d said. The horrible thing he’d said.

  I saw flashes of Harriet’s face, two weeks before her death.

  I felt the fear I’d felt then. But also the excitement. The excitement, as we’d prepared to take another step in our lives. The biggest step of all.

  I swung at Jason again, and I heard Sue screaming as more blood came from his head. Aiden and Holly were both crying now. Someone was pulling me, trying to drag me away, but still I just kept on trying to punch.

  It wasn’t the hatred towards Jason I felt.

  It was hatred of the situation.

  Hatred that I’d bottled up all this time since Harriet’s death.

  And as that pain filled my body, I couldn’t swing another punch.

  I could only let Remy and Hannah drag me away from Jason as I started crying.

  “Don’t you dare talk about me being a dad,” I said, shaking my head, my entire body shivering with a whole cocktail of emotions.

  Jason sat upright. He wiped at his bloodstained face. “You’re mad. I won’t have you anywhere near my family. Not anymore.”

  “Don’t lecture me about being a dad!” I shouted.

  I felt myself being dragged away, then. And then I knew there was more conflict, more words exchanged. But after that moment, it was mostly just a blur.

  All I could think about was the happiness I’d felt when Harriet came home and told me what she’d found out.

  And the pain I’d felt when I’d lost not one person that awful day, but two.

  Four hours later, and we were sleeping in a tent in the garden of one of the suburban residents.

  I was outside though. Jason and his family were in the tent, and he’d made it pretty clear that he didn’t want me near him, or them. Sue told me he’d come around, in time, and to sneak in the tent when he was asleep, which never took him long. He’d acted stupidly himself and should’ve seen what happened coming.

  But to be honest, I was still just trying to interpret what’d happened myself.

  The way I’d flipped.

  The way my emotions had spilled out in a way like they never had before.

  “What happened back there,” Hannah said, breaking the silence as I stared up at the stars. “You lost someone else. Didn’t you?”

  My chest tightened. Beside me, there was a cooking stove that Haz had set up to make us all some food that night. It had a simple push-button igniter and a two-litre pot. Really handy, for as long as we managed to keep hold of it. It’d save us having to start fires of our own, anyway, something which I was woefully clueless about.

  As for what Hannah asked me… I didn’t want to say the words. Because saying them crystallised a misery I hadn’t even accepted yet. I’d only just about processed the deaths of my mother, of Harriet. The other death… I’d kept that one hidden away, bottled up, only now, it felt like the grief was spilling out.

  Hannah put a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to talk. No one’s expecting you to. But you need to know that what happened back there… it can’t happen again. Because if it happens again, then how are we any different to anyone else?”

  I nodded. Part of me wanted to open up about my loss. How my daughter had died before I’d even known her, inside of Harriet’s body that day she’d timed crossing the road just a little too late.

  But I couldn’t. I still couldn’t.

  I just had to appreciate that someone had finally, finally made me feel like it was okay to open up about it.

  “I’m going to straighten things out with Jason tomorrow,” I said, taking a deep breath and looking up at the stars again. “And then we’re going to head to the bunker. All of us.”

  Hannah smiled. She kept her hand on my shoulder for a little while longer. Part of me wanted to tell her to keep it there. Part of me knew she wanted that, too.

  But eventually, she disappeared inside the tent, leaving me alone on the outside.

  “Goodnight,” she said.

  “Night.”

  She disappeared into the tent, and I sat alone, staring up at the stars.

  I wanted to find this bunker.

  I wanted to put things right.

  But at the same time, I couldn’t help being afraid.

  Not just of the world on the outside. But of the whole world of pain inside me, too, just waiting to burst out some more…

  Chapter Twenty

  I woke suddenly, freezing, to the sight of Jason standing over me.
>
  I gasped as I shot upright. The sun shone down on me brightly, but I felt sick and shivery. It felt, partly, like I’d just woken up from a long, drawn-out nightmare, and I wanted to believe that that’s all it was—a nightmare. All this rubbish about the power going down, about the world’s electricity supplies collapsing, that was just a figment of my over-active imagination.

  But then I felt the dew seeping through my trousers as I sat there beside a tent in the back of a garden, and I knew that it wasn’t a nightmare at all.

  That very reality made me vomit, right away.

  “Scott,” Jason was saying, his voice piercing to my ears. “It’s Hannah,” he was saying, but I didn’t hear the rest of what he said because I lurched forward to vomit once again.

  When I stopped vomiting, my eyes burning with the sensation, I lifted my head and looked up at Jason. I saw that he had cuts under his eyes, and it took me a moment to register that I had done that to him. I’d flipped yesterday when he’d confronted me about my ability to be a father. I knew I was in the wrong. I knew I shouldn’t have lost it like I did.

  But still, what he’d said to me hurt.

  “Hannah’s gone, Scott,” he was saying, his voice still distant and somewhat unreal sounding. “She’s gone.”

  It clicked, then.

  Hannah.

  Hannah, who I’d been with since the train broke down.

  Hannah who I’d known since the start of this whole mess.

  “Gone?” I said.

  “We woke this morning and found the zip of her tent open. Weren’t you last to see her?”

  I heard a slight accusatory tone to Jason’s voice, and part of me wanted to grill him on it. The other part of me knew he was probably right to be accusatory. I was the last to see her. I should’ve gone back in the tent.

  Instead, I’d fallen to sleep right beside the tent.

  I stood up, my head thumping. I didn’t remember waking up at all through the night, but I could tell I’d had a goddamned awful sleep. “Do you think someone’s been in here?”

  “Holly said she saw her just getting up and leaving.”

  “And what time was that?”

  Jason turned to Holly, who looked up at me while standing by her mum, Sue’s, side as if she’d done something wrong.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Stupid question.” Then I crouched opposite her. “Was it dark when you heard Hannah leave?”

  Holly looked up at her mum for reassurance, who nodded at her. Then, chewing on one of her fingers, she said, “No. It was light, I think.”

  “Well if it was light, she can’t have gone too far, wherever she’s gone.”

  I started to walk away, out of the garden of this house and towards the streets.

  “Where are you going?” Jason asked.

  I looked back and frowned. “Well, if she’s gone, I’m going to go look for her.”

  “It could be dangerous out there.”

  “It’s the same world it’s always been,” I said.

  Jason shook his head. “You don’t know that. Not today.”

  We looked at one another, and I knew Jason had a point. A night had passed. When people woke up and realised that the power still wasn’t back—and that they still had no idea what was happening—frustrations would peak to a whole new level.

  But still, the time for standing aside was gone. I had to go find Hannah.

  “I won’t be long,” I said, although I didn’t say it too confidently. Probably because I knew, deep down, that there was no telling just how long it would take me to find Hannah at all.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  I looked back again. Jason was walking towards me.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “No,” he said. “You’re right. We need to find her.”

  He kissed his daughters, then held Sue tightly.

  “I’ll be back in no time,” he said.

  “Do you have to do this, Jason?” Sue asked.

  Jason smiled. Nodded. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  We walked down the road together. It was a cul-de-sac, so, fortunately, there was only one way for us to go. And therefore by definition, only one way for Hannah to go too. But it made sense to search the remaining houses in the streets before we cast our search net even further.

  We were mostly silent, as was the rest of the street. We saw movement behind the curtains. People standing by their living room windows, tucking into bowls of Weetabix, oblivious to the fact that they might have to save some. In one of the driveways, two muscular men were trying to jumpstart their car—to no luck, naturally.

  “Scuse me?” I said, walking over.

  The men glanced at me like I wasn’t from around here.

  “We’re looking for a woman.”

  “Aren’t we all, mate?” He grinned.

  I ignored his quip. “Dark hair. Bright blue eyes. Fairly tall. Pale-ish skin. Have you seen her go by this morning?”

  The two men thought about it for a few seconds. “Not sure I did, mate. Sorry.”

  I felt my stomach sink. “Thanks anyway.”

  Jason and I walked further. We didn’t say anything to each other. It was still pretty awkward, in truth.

  It was Jason who broke the silence. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For what happened yesterday.”

  I waved him off. “It’s water under the bridge.”

  “I shouldn’t have questioned you like that. It was a dick move to make. Especially… especially having lost a kid myself.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that too.”

  “Like you say. It’s in the past. But it never truly escapes you. Not really.”

  He looked at me and smiled, and I looked back at him, and I smiled.

  He held out a hand. “Let’s start afresh.”

  I put my hand in his and shook. “Like we’ve never met.”

  “Except for the cuts and bruises.”

  “Could just pretend we got them go-karting or something.”

  “Go-karting?”

  I shrugged. “First thing that came to mind.”

  Jason laughed. “Funny thing you mention go-karting. First date Sue and I went on, believe it or…”

  He kept on speaking, but his voice faded into the background.

  It faded because I could see her in the living room of the house across the road.

  “Hannah,” I said.

  Jason frowned. Then he turned to look where I was looking.

  When he saw her, his jaw dropped. “Shit.”

  She was in the lounge of a detached house across the road. It was hard to see clearly through the glass, but one thing was for sure.

  There were three young lads standing around her, hoods pulled up over their heads.

  One of them was holding a knife.

  Part of me wanted to run. It wanted to get away and out of here.

  But I felt my fist tightening and I knew that as much as it terrified me, I couldn’t just back down and give in. Not while Hannah was in danger.

  “What do we—” Jason started.

  But it was too late.

  I was already running across the street, towards the house.

  I stopped at the door. Part of me wanted to take the old-fashioned, polite route of knocking. But time could be of the essence.

  So instead I just opened that door and stormed inside.

  The men swung around and looked at me, clearly surprised. There was a dull smell of cannabis in the air.

  The guy with the knife, wearing a grey hoodie, looked at me through gaunt, darkened eyes.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Fight or flight took hold. I should walk away and get out of here. This wasn’t my scene.

  “Hey,” he said, poking a knife in my direction. “You gonna answer my question or what?”

  I saw then that Hannah was crying. She’d partly undone the buttons on her collar. It made me feel sick, knowing what might have gone down here if I hadn’t got here soon.

  I gritted
my teeth together, no longer feeling fear but instead, pure rage. “Doesn’t matter who I am. You’re going to put that knife down and let Hannah leave.”

  “Hannah?” the man said, smiling with yellowed teeth. “Oh, you know her, do you? All we wanted was to see Hannah do a little dance for us, mate. Make the most of the whole no-police shit on our day release. Can’t say you don’t want to see that yourself, eh?”

  I stepped towards him. He pointed the knife right back at me.

  I looked him in the eye. I’d never stood up to anyone in my life like this before. I felt all the pent up times I’d wanted to building up and overspilling, right at this moment.

  “Put the knife down,” I said. “Let her leave. Now.”

  The man smiled, and I smelled the sourness of his breath. “Sorry, mate. But that ain’t gonna—”

  What happened next happened all too quickly.

  I pushed at the man.

  I lost my balance in the process.

  The man swung out.

  I heard a gasp. No, two gasps. Gasps from the two other hooded men, who were clearly just tagging along with their leader.

  I looked at saw the horror in Hannah’s eyes, too. And for a second, I wondered if I’d been stabbed, and I just hadn’t registered the pain yet.

  And then I looked around, and I saw what they were all gasping at.

  Jason was holding his neck.

  Blood was spurting out of it.

  His face was pale.

  “Jas…” I started.

  But it was already too late.

  Jason fell to the floor.

  The light in his eyes was already fading…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When I reached the driveway to the house we were staying in, holding Jason in my arms, I knew he was already gone.

  Hannah and I didn’t say anything. We just put him to rest outside the wall of the house. Right away, a few neighbours came running out, gasping, horrified by what they were witnessing—the first realisation that this world was well and truly losing not only the power but its morals.

  “I’ll—” Hannah said.

  “No,” I said. “No, I’ll go.”

  I tried to smile at Hannah, who half-smiled back at me, staying by Jason’s side.