by Stephen Laws
I couldn’t get my head around it all. It didn’t seem real.
Then I saw a couple of kids lying a little way off, half buried in broken bricks. They were holding hands, heads together; as if they were playing some kind of game. Maybe blindman’s-buff. They were lying like that, face down, covering their eyes and counting while all the other kids in the school were hiding. There was a big, dark stain around their heads that stopped me from calling out or going down to them. I turned away.
And that’s when I knew that all this couldn’t be happening.
What I was seeing now wasn’t real.
Not ten yards from where I sat was a great wall of spinning dust. It was a gigantic, spinning, twisting whirlwind. All gushing and turning in on itself, like when you see clouds on the television, clouds that’ve been speeded up. Imagine that, all black and brown and reaching up so high you couldn’t see the sky. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst of it was—there was no noise.
The way that dust cloud was moving about there should have been a noise like a whirlwind. But there was no noise, no rushing wind, no storm sounds. Just dead, dead quiet. When I looked again properly, things just became more unreal.
The dust cloud was all around me.
I followed the great cloud down to the street, where the school fence vanished into it. There was parkland just beyond the blockhouse, where kids used to play football. Just grass and a few straggling bushes. It was going to be developed as a factory, someone had told me. But about five hundred yards out in the middle of that “field” the dust cloud had formed a great barrier all the way round, curving in towards the housing estate. Following the line of this impossible, swirling cloud, I could see about eight or nine hundred yards of council houses; maybe three streets. Some of the roofs had caved in, but all of the windows were blown out. There were people down there in the streets, but I couldn’t see what they were doing. The cloud barrier seemed to go right along Irskine Street—you couldn’t see anything beyond, except the gigantic wall of black-brown stuff. Then the dust cloud swirled up into the shopping complex. I could only see half of the shopping centre. It seemed as if there were buildings missing. Great big spaces between offices and shops that weren’t there before. But I couldn’t be sure.
Crazy, but I reckoned that the cloud, the silent whirlwind—whatever—had hemmed us in a quarter-mile all around; so that I couldn’t see anything beyond it.
At first, when I tried to stand, my legs just wouldn’t do what I wanted. Shock, maybe. I stood still for a minute, and then began to pick my way through the rubble, waiting for my strength to come back. Then I saw what was half buried just before me, and I froze.
It was half a body, the lower half of an adult.
I guessed that it was one of the teachers, but I had no idea who it might have been. I supposed it was a man—anyway, it was wearing trousers. But the upper half was buried under rubble. Whoever he was, he was very, very dead. I dry-heaved, but I felt as if I’d swallowed a large stone. I started to move down past the body, trying not to look. Rubble and dust began to slide under my feet, and for a moment it seemed I might lose my balance. I dug in my heels, clouds of dust rising around me, and the cracked brickwork that had been covering the upper half of the body—and its face—fell away.
That’s when I was sick, bending at the waist and retching; trying not to see what I’d already seen.
It was Stafford—what was left of him.
His smashed spectacles were still on his face; his eyes wide and staring, his mouth open as if he was in the middle of delivering another lecture. The back of his head…well, the hell with telling you that. You know what I mean. I had cause to hate him, but he didn’t deserve what had happened to him.
Moaning, I hurried on past him, trying to give the body a wide berth. Then I heard someone calling my name.
“Jay! Jay O’Connor!”
For a moment I froze. Was it him? Calling me back, telling me what else I’d done wrong? Then I realised it was a younger voice and looked back to see that Damon, Wayne and Paulie had managed to scramble out of the same hole as me. They’d started a mini-landslide of rubble down towards me. I yelled at them, but I was glad when some of the debris covered the corpse and hid it from sight.
“Follow me,” I called, as I turned and headed out across the fractured remains of the school yard. About fifty feet away was the huge cloud of whirling dust. I remembered what one of the kids had said about the school yard just opening up, realising that the cloud must be coming out of the big “crack” they said had appeared there. It was almost hypnotic, watching the twirling, churning smoke. It wasn’t real. The fact that it was all around, like some kind of cage. It made me feel small, and when I looked up into it I felt as if everything was upside down and I might fall. Fall right up into the sky.
“What are we going to do?” asked a voice to my rear. When I turned, I saw that Damon and Wayne were right behind me. Their clothes were torn, their faces dirty. I guess I didn’t look too much of a picture myself. The boy called Paulie was a little way behind them. His head hung like a kid getting a telling-off. As I watched, he just slumped into a cross-legged squat. Like a naughty boy, waiting to be told what to do.
“What’s happened?” Damon gestured hopelessly back at the mounds of rubble and shattered brickwork.
“An earthquake, judging by the looks of those other houses down there,” I said flatly.
“So what do we do?” asked Wayne.
“Find the emergency services,” I said. “Get help for anyone else trapped in there.”
“Why…why hasn’t someone come?” asked Damon. “Where’s the fire brigade, and the ambulances? Christ, the place fell apart and we were left in there…and no one came!”
He was right. There was an eerie silence out there. Where were the sounds of fire klaxons and ambulance sirens?
Paulie made a noise behind us; a noise like he’d been hit over the head with something. Then he made a high-pitched sort of keening noise and began to sob. The two other kids turned on him, yelling abuse. I didn’t like the noise he was making. It was too distressed.
“Leave him alone!” I snapped.
Damon and Wayne kept on yelling at him to stop. Now they were picking up stones and throwing them at him.
“I said leave him alone!”
I moved forward to stop them, but suddenly I couldn’t walk straight. My legs felt strange. Like I was floating. Suddenly Wayne, Damon and the crying kid were no longer there. I had to get away, back to the real world. I was reeling. The school gate was right in front of me. When I reached for the bars, I felt sure they’d feel as if they were made out of rubber. But they were cold and hard, and when I took my hands away, they were covered with red rust.
That’s not rust, said a little voice inside. That’s dried blood.
I dry-heaved then. Folded up double on the shattered concrete, hugged my guts and tried to get the nightmare out of me. Nothing would come, because there was nothing inside. But my eyes felt as if they might swell and pop out of their sockets with every convulsion. Next thing I remember, I was staggering down the main street away from the school. The ground beneath me was cracked and rutted, just like a ploughed field. Somewhere behind me, I could hear Damon and Wayne yelling at Paulie.
Then I was falling.
At the last, just before everything went black, I felt sure that I’d run straight off the edge of the world. Straight into one of those bloody great cracks in the ground.
I was falling for ever.
Third time dead?
This time I didn’t seem to care.
Chapter Eight
The Community Centre
“All right, everybody!” shouted the man in the paramedic gear.
The crowd in the community hall were in no mood to listen. Someone, somewhere, began to weep, and that set the half-dozen kids crying, too.
The paramedic climbed up on to one of the plastic tables. It wobbled beneath him and h
e did a tightrope walker imitation with his arms at either side before it settled.
“Everybody!” he yelled again. “Listen!”
This time the hubbub began to quieten. Now there were only the muffled sounds of weeping.
“When the hell are they coming?” shouted a man from the back of the room. His remark set everyone off again; all hundred and fifty packed into this room, all frightened, all traumatised. The paramedic began waving his arms and yelling for quiet once more.
Alex Stenmore ran both hands through his hair, remembering his fight with Candy at home, just before the ceiling fell in and their lives fell even further apart than he’d believed possible. He looked down to where she half sat, half crouched against the community hall wall. She was staring at her hands, chewing her bottom lip. The sight of her stirred something inside, and he moved to touch her. But he knew what her reaction would be; could see in his mind’s eye how she would slap his approach away. He knew that she was suffering; knew that she needed a drink. He couldn’t get close enough to her to discover whether she was suffering withdrawal, or whether she was still in a state of shock. She had said very little since they’d staggered out of their collapsing house and into the main street. From a safe distance, they’d watched it fall apart. First, the front wall caved in, blowing the garage doors out across the street. When the dust had cleared, the ceiling had gone, all of the windows had been shattered. There were other people in the street, all milling in confusion and staring at the devastation. No matter how hard Alex thought back to it, he couldn’t remember how they’d got out of the house. Everything had been blurred by the nightmare. Trapped in that milling throng, they had also got caught up in a stampede through the smoke-filled streets when the gas main under the house across the road had ruptured and exploded, engulfing the windows in a gigantic fireball. Later, in shock and drained of strength, they had sat at the side of a fractured pavement with a crowd of others, waiting for help to come.
But there had been no wailing of sirens, no police cars or reassuring blue uniforms telling them where to go or what to do. Eventually, hours later, only two paramedics in a battered ambulance, both with expressions of shock and bewilderment; the vehicle filled with the broken and the bleeding and the dying as it crawled and bumped along the ruptured street with its blue light slowly blinking in silence. The paramedic hanging out of the back doors had told those on the street to follow behind. Some had tried to climb up into the ambulance, others had tried to drag the paramedic out as anger overcame them when he refused to jump down and help their injured loved ones. The man had lashed out with his feet, hanging in the doorway, barring anyone else from climbing in, yelling at them to follow and bring the injured with them if they could. If not, to leave them. They’d be back for them in a while. But the ambulance hadn’t led them to a hospital or an army station or a clinic. It had led them to this community centre.
Just an ordinary red-brick building that had somehow survived the tremor. The roof was intact, the walls hadn’t caved in. The only damage had been to one of the three large windows, which had cracked and splintered. Someone had managed to nail hardboard covers on it and had swept away the glass. Inside, the building looked more like a school gym. There was a serving area of sorts at one end where a bar was set up for local dances. Bare-board floors. Strip lights. Notices of forthcoming events.
When Gordon Tranwell had shuffled in with the others, his guitar slung over his shoulder, a woman with a bandage across her forehead and the beginnings of two spectacular black eyes had asked him for his name and address. He had seen her taking names from the people in front of him and knew what was going to happen. When it came to his turn, he tried to speak but knew that nothing would come out.
“Name and address, please?” asked the woman in a flat monotone.
Gordon waved at his throat and shook his head.
The woman looked up from her clipboard. Gordon repeated the action.
“Can’t you tell me?”
Gordon shook his head again.
“I know it’s been a shock for you. For everyone. It’s terrible. But we have to know who we have here.”
Gordon tried to push past, head down.
“Please, can’t you…?”
Anger, shock and plain resentment flooded Gordon. It was the necessary fuel he needed.
“Tranwell! Gordon! Got it?”
The woman flinched as Gordon pushed ahead into the main area. He didn’t look back. His face was burning. Now he hated himself and struggled to control tears. His aunt was dead, buried beneath the falling rubble in her own kitchen…and he couldn’t even tell anyone about it. He elbowed through the crowd and found a place against a wall. Bracing his back against it, he sank to his knees, slinging his guitar across them and listening as the paramedic on the wobbling table tried to get some attention. People had been laid out in the middle of the floor, on makeshift mattresses. There were a couple of IV drips set up on makeshift cradles. But there was something wrong here. Why were people being brought here? Why hadn’t they gone to the hospital? Where were all the doctors and nurses?
Gordon looked across at the two middle-aged women and the white-faced little boy. They were trying to catch the attention of a woman with a pile of what seemed to be gauze bandages and medical supplies in her hands.
“It’s the boy,” said Annie, to the woman. She tried to push past, but Lisa caught her arm and made her stop. “Something’s wrong with him,” Annie went on. “He won’t talk, won’t do anything but stare. I think it’s shock, and he needs to be seen. His parents…”
“I’m sorry,” said the woman, and now they could see the look of distress on her own face. Hair straggled down over her red-rimmed eyes. She could barely speak. “I’m not…not a nurse. I don’t know what to do or where everyone’s supposed to be. My husband, you see. And my little girl…” The woman pushed off through the crowded room, taking her anguish with her, and was lost from sight.
“Will you be quiet and listen!” yelled the paramedic from his insecure perch on the plastic table. It was not so much the sound of his voice which did the trick as the fact that, as one of the few authority figures in the room, his tone betrayed a sudden loss of control. And with so few here in control, with so few authority figures, the sense of shock was palpable as the room quieted, apart from the wailing of one baby and the sniffling of a child. The paramedic pulled himself together, loosening a collar beneath a suddenly purple face. He wiped one hand over that face, breathing deeply, before continuing.
“That’s better. Better. Now…I know you have lots of questions, but if you’ll just…”
“Where…?” began a man from the other side of the room.
“Just…” The paramedic caught himself again, regaining control. “Just…wait a moment. Now, look, I know everyone’s frightened, and there are people here who are hurt. But there’s only me and Sean over there in the corner at the moment, and the stuff we’ve got in the ambulance outside.”
“When can we get out of here?” wailed a woman. “When can you take us to a proper hospital? My husband needs a hospital.”
“The radio in the ambulance still isn’t working. We don’t know why, because it wasn’t damaged. But at the moment there’s just static. We’re still trying to get through…”
“Why don’t you just take us to a hospital?”
“Because,” said the paramedic, fighting to keep control, “you know and I know that something isn’t right here. Something isn’t right about that dust cloud that’s got us all hemmed in. We daren’t risk driving into it. Have to wait until it clears.”
“Why doesn’t somebody come? Where’re the police, for Christ’s sake?”
“Look, we just have to hold out and wait. Give the emergency services a chance to organise.”
“You know more than you’re letting on, don’t you? You’re deliberately keeping us here…”
Alex turned away from where the paramedic tried to maintain order. Everything was too con
fusing. The aura of fear in this room was very real, and despite the fact that the man on the table was trying to act in a rational, caring manner, anyone could see just by looking in his eyes that he was terrified, too.
“Alex.”
He looked down to where Candy sat, cross-legged. For a long time she had been staring down at the floor.
“Yes, love?” he asked.
“I’ve got to have a drink.”
“There’s a water cooler over there, I think…”
“You are such a stupid fucking bastard, Alex. I’m talking about a drink.”
Alex was overwhelmed by conflicting emotions. Distress, helplessness and seething anger. “Can’t you…?” He gritted his teeth, not wanting to lose control. “Can’t you just wait? I mean, until everything’s sorted out here.”
“I need a drink now. I’m not wanting an argument about it. I want one. I need one.”
“Where am I going to find alcohol right now, Candy?”
“Don’t call me Candy.”
Alex looked back at the paramedic, straining to hear what he was saying, needing to tune out of this conversation.
“It’s not smoke, no,” said the paramedic. “There are no fires. We’ve checked everything out in these two blocks. There’ve been no electrical shorts. No problems with gas mains after the first explosions. Nothing like that. The stuff we’re seeing all around us is…well, it’s dust.”
“But dust doesn’t act like that,” said an elderly man, head swathed in bandages. “It’s all around us, and it just keeps…just keeps…swirling and moving. Dust is supposed to settle after a while, isn’t it? That’s smoke, it’s got to be.”
“It’s not. I’ve been right around the periphery. We’re in a half-mile-square area here. Bounded by Wady Street on the west. Part of the shopping precinct to the north, although most of that has been destroyed. The A19 on the east. And Main Street to the south.”
