by Jason Ayres
About two miles away they stopped on the side of the road where it ran through some open woodland, close to the cottage where, unknown to them, Hannah and Jess were holed up for the winter.
“This will do,” said Dan. They got out of the car. Unseen by Ryan, Dan lifted the gun with a cloth they used for clearing the windscreen and tucked it into his coat pocket.
Between them they dragged the body far enough into the woods that it couldn’t be seen from the road. There was no question of trying to bury it in the frozen ground. All they could do was dump it behind a tree.
Snow was falling again all around them, and Dan figured it would not be long until she was completely covered in snow. She probably wouldn’t be found for months.
“We tell nobody about this, OK?” said Dan. “No one.”
As he spoke, unseen by Ryan, he dropped the gun onto the ground behind her body.
Ryan nodded. They turned and made their way back to the Land Rover, as fresh snowflakes fell onto the dead girl’s body.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kaylee cradled her newborn baby in her arms as Charlie, looked on, a proud look on his face.
He had been born just after midnight, making him the first baby born on the island not only of the year, but also of the decade.
They had been on the island for two months. Phil and Cathy had been only too pleased to have their children staying with them, but things had been a little crowded.
After a couple of weeks, they’d managed to rent an apartment in the same block, and Charlie had even managed to find some part-time work as a waiter. With that and support from their parents, they were managing to get by.
They had still heard nothing from their friends back home. The weather had continued to be atrocious across the UK, but things were gradually becoming more organised in the cities. With the help of the US Army, some power had been restored, but London remained under a state of martial law.
Most of the refugees who’d arrived in the city from other parts of the country were living a life in sleeping bags on school hall floors, relying on soup kitchens for food. The TV pictures they had seen looked unremittingly grim. They reminded Charlie of old films he’d seen portraying life in the USSR during the Cold War.
Charlie had been lucky to get work, considering the lack of British tourists on the island, but there had been plenty of arrivals from other parts of Europe looking to escape the cold.
The climate had returned to more or less normal in the Canary Islands, and they were able to dine outside on the balcony on Christmas Day. Kaylee was heavily pregnant now and wondered if she might have a Christmas baby, but all remained calm. For only the second time since she found out she was pregnant, she allowed herself a small sip of champagne as they made a toast to absent friends back home.
Her waters broke at lunchtime on New Year’s Eve, and her father drove her and Charlie to the hospital in Puerto Del Carmen. As the rest of the island celebrated the end of one of the most eventful and unusual years in recorded history, Charlie held her hand tightly as their baby boy was born into a world with an uncertain future.
They had talked about possible names for the baby and hadn’t come up with a firm choice, but as she cradled him in her arms she thought of Hannah and Jess back home, and realised what she wanted to name him.
“I want to call him Peter,” she said.
“Perfect,” replied Charlie: Peter Adams, born 1st January 2030. Speaking of which, the other Peter will be coming out of the Bubble in a few days’ time.
This was a fact of which Hannah and Jessica were all too aware, but Hannah was getting increasingly worried about how she was going to get to the tunnel to see him, let alone get him back to the cottage.
Up until Christmas, the weather had been on and off, with the sun breaking through only occasionally as the dust in the atmosphere continued to block out its rays. Every time it seemed there might be some sort of thaw, increasingly frequent and severe snowstorms put a stop to it.
As she and Jess looked out on Christmas morning at the snow-covered landscape, she reflected that she’d got the one thing she’d always wished for: a white Christmas. The old phrase “Be careful what you wish for” came into her head. She would gladly trade this white Christmas in for a bit of normality now.
Between Christmas and New Year the weather worsened and it snowed incessantly for the first week of January, the snow piling up higher than ever before.
Two days before Peter was due back, it finally relented, but by then the snow was above the downstairs windows. It must have been six foot deep at least.
The next day, there were less than 24 hours left until Peter was due to emerge, but it was snowing again. She’d talked the situation over with Jess and they’d agreed that Hannah would have to go to try and get to him by herself, leaving Jess alone in the cottage.
Going out of the front door was impossible, so she had to climb out of the bedroom window and make the short drop onto the surface of the snow below. Although she was only going about a mile and a half to the tunnel, she looked to all intents and purposes as if she was going to climb Everest. She had thought of everything.
In addition to ensuring she was dressed for the occasion, she’d also filled a rucksack full of clothes for Peter, plus two days’ supplies of food and water in case she got stuck. She’d also brought a shovel. She would like to have taken more, but driving was out of the question. In fact, she couldn’t even see the car anymore: it was completely buried under the snow.
The snow was so deep that it was quite hard to work out exactly where she was going. Roads no longer existed. All that was visible now was a huge, white blanket, with a few trees sticking out here and there.
She could, however, make out the outlines of the buildings of the town, in particular the church, which she made a beeline for. As long as she headed directly towards the church, she was going in the right direction.
Her heart sank when she finally reached the embankment. Where the path to the tunnel should have been was just a solid drift of snow. It had filled the path where it cut down towards the tunnel and drifted. It must have been at least fifteen feet deep, and the entrance to the tunnel was no longer visible.
Night was falling, and he wasn’t due to emerge until an hour or so before dawn. She tried to dig down into the snow where she figured the entrance to the tunnel might be, but it was hopeless in the falling snow. She managed to dig down a couple of feet, but it was tough going. She couldn’t stay out here all night, even kitted out like this: she’d die of exposure.
She walked back the few yards from the embankment to the first house on the estate, broke in, and tried to grab a few hours’ sleep in her thermal sleeping bag.
Long before dawn, she got up again and headed back to the tunnel. There was a howling wind outside whipping up yet another blizzard. With despair she saw that the hole she had dug the previous evening had already been filled in again by the drifting snow.
She took out her shovel and began to dig again, driven on furiously by her desire to see once more the man she loved. When the handle snapped, she continued with her bare hands. She could get no deeper than a few feet, though. Below that, the snow had impacted into a solid block of ice.
Tears of hopelessness and despair welled up in her eyes. She checked her watch to see that he should be arriving about now.
“Peter!” she cried, over and over again. “Can you hear me?”
There was no reply. It was hopeless. There was no way she was going to be able to get him out. She only hoped that he was safe in there – what if the snow had filled the whole tunnel, or what if there was no air in there?
She sobbed, broken-hearted, her spirit crushed, full of the realisation that she may never see him again, and even if she did, it would not be for another eleven years.
She felt numb with the cold, and if it had not been for the little girl waiting alone for her mummy back at the cottage, she may well have just given up there and then, lay down and gone to sleep for
good. There was nothing more she could do.
Reluctantly she turned around and began the long, lonely trek back home. Jess would be sleeping now and she wanted to be back before she awoke. She had no idea how she was going to break the news to her daughter that her father wasn’t coming home.
It took her an hour and a half to get back, and she almost lost her way twice, with no landmarks to guide her. Finally she saw the cottage in the distance and pressed on for home. Jess was waiting for her and watching from the window.
Getting back in was not easy, but she eventually managed to climb back up to the bedroom window, where Jess helped her through. Then there were many tears as she explained what had happened. All they could do now was dust themselves down and start again.
The weeks passed, and the days began to grow longer. Snowed in, they remained isolated in the cottage, with no sign of another living soul outside. It snowed most days, and even when it wasn’t snowing, the sky was grey and dark.
Then, in February, things began to change. The snow stopped falling and the sun began to break through. It was still too weak to do much to melt the snow around the cottage, but elsewhere in the country, things began to recover.
The US Air Force had arrived in the UK to help, bringing in thousands more ground troops. Between them, they managed to clear the city streets and allow some free movement again.
Martial law was lifted in London. There was no fear of any further looting. Most people’s spirits had been well and truly broken. Stealing expensive goods was the last thing on their minds, and they didn’t stray far from the soup kitchens.
The runways at the various airports and airbases were cleared, allowing more military aircraft to take to the skies, at last allowing aid to get through to the smaller towns and villages. One morning in mid-February, Hannah and Jess were awoken by the sound of a helicopter passing overhead. As they watched, it dropped food parcels down into the town.
With their own supplies running low, Hannah decided to make the journey into town to see if she could find them. Travel through the snow was much easier now, but by the time she got there, she was unable to find anything. Unknown to her, it had already been collected by Dan’s followers.
The flights became more frequent, soon occurring on a daily basis. Hannah and Jess had taken to going outside to try and attract the attention of the pilots. Waving furiously at the skies, they were rewarded when a large parcel, full of food, landed at their feet.
Despite the lack of new snowfall and temperatures creeping back above freezing, what lay on the ground stubbornly persisted. The combined effects of the sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere and the snow cover itself continued to reflect the sun’s weak winter rays back into space.
But then, in the second week of March, the change that everyone had been waiting for arrived. The cold air mass that had been stubbornly sitting over the British Isles for nearly five months was finally pushed out of the way by warmer, wetter Atlantic air moving up from the south-west.
When Hannah and Jess woke up on Monday 11th March it was to a sound they had not heard for a long time. There was heavy rain falling outside. To begin with, it froze as it hit the snowy ground, but gradually as the day went on, the top layer of snow began to turn slushy.
The change in weather had come just in time. Despite using it extremely frugally over the past month, the oil in the tank had finally run out. They still had a small amount of firewood which they burned for warmth for the next two or three days but soon that was all gone, too.
It had rained relentlessly over those three days, but now it had stopped. A huge amount of snow had melted, and now they had a new problem. Water was pouring into the kitchen under the front door. Hannah stuffed towels, clothing, everything she could find under the door to try and stem the flow, but it was clear that they were not going to be able to stay in the cottage much longer.
Fortunately, she awoke the following morning to a very pleasant surprise. As her eyes opened she was aware of a red flashing light next to her bedside table. She focused her eyes and saw the red, luminous letters “12.00” flashing back at her.
Excitedly, she woke her daughter who was curled up next to her. “Jess,” she said. “I think the electricity is back on. We can go home.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Slowly, the country was coming back under government control. Getting the electricity back on had been the first priority. By the middle of March, supplies had been restored to most towns and cities in Southern England.
Further north, conditions had been far worse, and the work progressed more slowly, but by the end of the month, the power was back on as far north as Glasgow.
Roads were becoming passable again, and the military began to roll into towns where they had previously been unable to go. The population was still almost totally reliant on food parcels, but as freight became possible again, more supplies began to make it into the cities.
When Dan saw that the street lights had come back on, he knew it was time to get out. He called a meeting of the community and told them it was time to disband and go home.
Most of the members of the community had mixed feelings about Dan. Yes, he had helped them to survive, but the dictatorial way he had ruled them hadn’t gone down well with most of them. They had kept quiet about it in the most part because they had no alternative. They all remembered what had happened to Jack.
Other rumours had begun to circulate about Dan, too. Aimee was by no means the only girl he’d coerced into giving him sexual favours.
Dan was no fool. He could see that with the melting snow, and the electricity back on, his hold over these people had gone. This was why he had called the meeting. He wanted to pre-empt any action they might take.
He started by thanking them for being part of the community, but explained that it was now time to go home. They were free to take whatever remained from the stores. Confident that his generous approach had buttered them up, he called the meeting to a close and got ready to leave.
He wanted to get out of the base as soon as possible. He’d begun picking up radio broadcasts in his office over the past couple of weeks, and was more than aware that the real Army was on its way. He didn’t want to have to answer any awkward questions about why he was impersonating an officer.
As Dan was making preparations to leave, Hannah and Jess were also making their way home. They had decided to cut through the woods on the way back, where months previously they had gathered wood before the worst of the snow hit.
The woods had been protected from the worst of the snowdrifts by the trees, and in one or two places a few patches of bare ground were now exposed. In places, a few spring bulbs were beginning to emerge, filling Hannah with renewed hope for the future. Her hopes were shortly to be dashed, though, as she tripped over what she at first took for a log.
When she looked more closely, the grim realisation hit her that it was actually the body of a dead girl. “Oh my God,” she uttered.
“What is it, Mummy?” asked Jess, who was just behind her.
“Stay back, babe,” replied Hannah. “It’s nothing.”
But it was too late. Jess had already seen the body. Hannah reached down and rolled the body over. It had been frozen solid in the snow for months, and was perfectly preserved. She instantly recognised the face.
“Lauren,” she cried. How cruel could life be? A few moments ago she had been feeling full of optimism about the future, and now she’d found this, a young life, taken away in its prime.
It was then that she noticed the gun, just a couple of feet away from the body. She examined the body more closely and found the wound to the head. It didn’t feel like a gunshot wound, though.
She may have been holed up in the cottage for the past five months, but she was still the D.I. of the town, and she was determined to find whoever had done this. She opened her bag and took out a towel and ever so gently wrapped the gun in it, taking care not to wipe off any fingerprints.
Jess beg
an to cry. Hannah pulled her closer to her and hugged her for comfort. She felt a tear roll down her own cheek, dripping onto the face of the dead girl below. A few inches from Lauren’s face, the first snowdrop of spring was starting to flower. The circle of life was beginning again.
All over the country, other bodies were being discovered. Jack Taylor, the young lad whom Dan had thrown out of the camp, was one of them. The melting snow revealed many more along the roadsides where they’d fallen, their journeys never completed.
Others were found dead in their homes, many of the elderly, in particular, had succumbed to hypothermia.
With the restoration of electricity, television was up and running within a few weeks, beginning with just a news service. It was only then that the full death toll from the big freeze began to emerge. In the UK alone, it was estimated at over two million. Worldwide estimates ranged wildly, but figures of up to 70 million were being talked about.
Life was going to take a long time to return to normal. After the snow came the floods. The ground floors of millions of properties were inundated as the snow melted, running in great torrents through the streets, the drainage unable to cope.
One of the first things Hannah wanted to do on her return was to get into the tunnel to find out if there had been any evidence of Peter’s reappearance. The first time she went down there it was waist-deep in water.
Eventually, when the flood waters had subsided, she walked along to the exact spot where The Time Bubble was located and found an extremely damp note tucked into the wall.
She pulled it out. The flood water had made the end of it soggy, but the rest was intact. She turned it over to read it.
“P.G. 11/01/30 6.45am”
They were his initials, and the date he’d been due to come back. So at least she knew he had been here. She needed to speak to Josh. He would know the exact time of the next jump. Please let it not be in the middle of winter, she thought.
At least he was alive, and her worst fears that he would somehow have been trapped in the tunnel were unfounded. But now eleven long years stretched in front of her like a yawning chasm.
