Lights Out

by Amy Cross

  “I don't give a shit.”

  Anders pauses for a moment, before turning and walking over to where Milo is on his back. Emily is stroking the dog's belly, and Anders crouches down to watch them.

  “Dopey dog,” he says, before reaching out and giving Milo a scratch under the chin. “Look after yourself, boy. I'll be back for you tomorrow, and on the off-chance that I'm not...” He hesitates, and then he allows himself a faint smile. “Well, then I'll see you in Heaven. I might be a little late, though. There'll probably be an asterisk by my name on the entry list. But I'll get it, don't you worry about that. I can answer for everything I've ever done.”

  He continues to scratch Milo for a moment, before forcing himself to get to his feet. Without looking back, he turns and walks away, heading out of the park and over to the spot where he parked his car.

  Sitting alone on the bench, Cassie has tears in her eyes. But even as one of the tears starts running down her cheek, her eyes remain fixed on the distant tower.

  Chapter Ten

  11:50am

  “Honey, is that you?”

  “Daddy!” Emily shouts, before Cassie even has a chance to shut the front door. “We got a dog!”

  “We're looking after a dog!” Cassie calls out, but it's too late. Emily is already running through to Steve's office, and Milo – still dragging his lead – pads off after her, apparently quite happy.

  “His name's Milo!” Emily yells in the office. “Daddy, isn't he cute? He lets me stroke his belly and everything!”

  Cassie removes her coat, while waiting for her husband to emerge and start asking the obvious questions. Then, as Emily continues to coo and shout over Milo, she hangs her scarf and hat back in their rightful places under the stairs and shuts the door. Then, finally, Steve emerges from the office with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “For an old friend,” Cassie says.

  “A dog, honey?”

  “He doesn't shed. It'll hardly affect your allergies at all.”

  Steve turns and looks back into the office, before coming out to join his wife.

  “He'll have to sleep outside,” he tells her.

  “Can't he sleep in Emily's room?”

  “She has allergies too.”

  “She does not. It'd be good for her to look after a dog for the night. It'd teach her about responsibility.”

  “The dog has to sleep outside.”

  “We'll talk about it later,” she replies.

  “Normally I'd have a lot of questions,” he says with a sigh, “but today we actually have bigger things to worry about. I'm starting to think that our plan of staying put for the night might not have been so wise. Have you seen the news? People are going kinda nuts over this whole blackout thing.”

  “We'll be perfectly safe,” Cassie tells him.

  “People are looting shops,” he continues.

  “I didn't see any looting outside.”

  “It hasn't reach here,” he says. “Not yet. But between the anarchists and the criminals and the people who think this is a sign of some great religious apocalypse, I'm getting nervous. There won't be any police to call, Cassie. We'll be on our own.”

  “Good job we've got a dog staying with us, then,” she replies, with a faint smile. “I bet he's great at barking. I sure wouldn't try to mess with a place when there's a dog inside.”

  “But what if -”

  “It's going to be fine,” she adds, putting a hand on his arm. “Yes, there'll be idiots out there, but not nearly as many as the TV makes it seem. I guarantee you that we're going to have a boring night with no lights, maybe a few candles, and then the sun'll come up and the storm'll be over and this will all just be a crazy story that we laugh about in years to come.” She pauses, waiting for him to admit that she's right. “And I really need to pee, honey,” she adds, “so do you mind if I run to the bathroom?”

  “I want to barricade the windows.”

  “With what?”

  “I don't know. Wood, I guess.”

  “What wood?”

  “I...”

  His voice trails off.

  “I can barricade a window,” he says finally, a little defensively. “I might be a mild-mannered architect by day, but I can do DIY when I have to. I can protect my family.”

  “I know you can,” she replies, “but this is going to be much harder if we start overreacting to every little thing.”

  “Watch this,” he says, taking her by the hand and leading her past the office and through to the kitchen, where he takes his phone from his pocket and brings up a news page. “Maybe I'm panicking a little. Maybe. But maybe you're also not taking this quite as seriously as you should.”

  “Honey, I -”

  Before she can finish, Cassie sees shots on the phone showing buildings that have been set on fire. Her first instinct is to assume that the shots are coming from far away, but then she sees a banner at the bottom of the page and she realizes that the images are from Bermondsey in London. She sighs, watching for a moment as people race along the street, and as a few police officers run helplessly and powerlessly to try to stop them.

  “People only need the slightest incentive to lose their shit,” Steve says, keeping his voice low now as if he's worried that Emily might overhear. “A lot of people in this world are just one small cue away from going completely nuts. They might all have their different reasons, but the result is the same. Maybe that's just one area where you and I see the world very differently, Cassie. You have a lot more faith in the inherent goodness of human nature.”

  She raises a skeptical eyebrow, although she can't tell her husband why he's wrong. Her past life is all one big secret, and as far as Steve's concerned she just lived a boring, quiet life as an office worker until they met. She can't possibly tell him about the missions abroad, about the firefights and the undercover operations that left her with very little faith in human nature. She has to maintain the very studied front that she's had up ever since she quit that life.

  “Bermondsey is a long way away,” she says, even though she hates the fact that she's having to play a little dumb. A little placid. “It's not here.”

  “We have idiots in Kensington, too. They're just more polite.”

  “Our idiots will all be hiding terrified in their living rooms,” she tells him.

  “A mob has invaded one of the museums. They're ransacking the place for treasures.”

  “One mob. In one place.”

  “Someone torched a church in Sheppey.”

  “That's a quiet day for Sheppey.”

  She waits, but Steve merely stares at her for a moment before leaning closer and kissing her on the forehead.

  “That's one of the things I love the most about you,” he says.

  “What is?” she asks, feeling a ripple of concern in the pit of her belly.

  “Your innocence. The way you see the world.” He kisses her again. “You're such a good, innocent woman, Cassie. Unfortunately, that means you can't imagine the depths to which some people can sink. It's just not in your nature to think like that. You don't know how horrible the world can be.”

  She bristles at that description. For a fraction of a second, in her mind's eye, she thinks back to the day she personally executed three militants in the Middle East. She remembers the feel of pulling the trigger, and the sight of the backs of their heads exploding. And that's just one example. There were hundreds of deaths at her hand.

  “That innocence is one of the reasons I married you,” Steve continues.

  She looks up at him and sees that he really believes what he's saying.

  “But let's meet halfway, okay?” he says with a smile. “After you've been to the bathroom, go and use that innocence to make sure Emily's not scared. Make her believe what you believe. After all, that's your job. You're her mother. Meanwhile, I'll go and find some wood and I'll barricade the windows. Try to think of a good explanation for Emily, yeah? Try to make her think that it's all a game.”
/>   “Steve,” Cassie replies, starting to panic slightly, “I think I need to tell you something. I -”

  “It's going to be fine,” he says again, kissing her once more on the forehead before turning and heading toward the front door. “I know you're scared, honey, but I'm going to keep us all safe. It's probably a good thing that we have this dog staying with us.” He grabs his coat and opens the front door, and then he glances back at her. “Who did you say you borrowed it from, again? Is it someone from down the street?”

  “Just an old friend,” she says, hating the fact that she backed down from telling him everything. “No-one you know.”

  Chapter Eleven

  12:01pm

  “Fuck!” Cassie whispers as she puts her head in her hands and leans forward, trying to get rid of the feeling that her head's about to explode. “Fuck this. Why now?”

  She can hear Emily still playing with Milo downstairs, but in the back of her mind she can also hear Anders' words going around and around. She keeps trying to forget what he said, or to rationalize her response, but deep down she knows that he's right. She remembers the day when she last saw him, when they both reiterated their vow to track down Michael Essien if they ever got the chance. She remembers the hatred she felt for Essien, and she remembers how hard she had to fight to stop herself going after him there and then.

  “The man is surrounded by technology,” Anders told her on that day. “We'd be shredded. The only way to get to him is if, somehow, he eventually ends up without all that technology. Then we'll have a chance.”

  She remembers her own response, too. Every word of it.

  “Promise you'll be ready when the day comes,” she replied. “Promise we'll kill that bastard when we get the chance. For Tom's sake.”

  Those words felt so strong and important at the time. Now they echo through her mind, through her whole body, like ghosts trapped in a tomb. Ten years ago Tom's death was still so fresh, so numbing. Ten years ago she lived for the hope – no, for the knowledge – that one day she'd be able to go back and deal with Essien. Ten years ago she thought and dreamed of nothing else. Ten years ago she hadn't sunk into normal life, she hadn't got the pretty house on a pretty hill in a pretty part of London.

  “Things change,” she whispers, trying to make herself believe those words. Or is she just making excuses? “I'm not the same person.”

  She remembers something else she once said, too:

  “Something changed in me! And it won't change back!

  She closes her eyes, and in a flash she remembers racing across the desert, hurrying toward a burning car that has barely stopped rolling since it hit the IUD. She can hear screams coming from inside the car, but already she knows that it's probably too late for anyone inside the vehicle. That doesn't stop her, of course. Even as she reaches a wall of impenetrable heat, she forces herself to go on until she starts screaming. The heat is pushing her back, burning her face and hands, but she can hear the screams of the men who are still burning to death inside. And then somebody grabs her from behind, and she finds herself being dragged away from the flames by Anders. Finally the pair of them drop to the ground as the screams get lost in the roar of the flames, and she stares in horror at the inferno as Anders tells her that it's too late, that everyone inside that car is gone.

  She opens her eyes again.

  Her hands are trembling.

  Suddenly there's a knock on the bathroom door.

  “Honey?” Steve calls out. “Have you seen my power-drill?”

  “You don't own a power-drill,” she replies, managing to keep the fear from her voice.

  “I do,” he says. “It's orange with black bits.”

  “That's not yours. Your borrowed that from your father last year. You gave it back to him.”

  “Did I?”

  “You did.”

  There's a pause.

  “Are you sure?” he asks finally.

  “There's a hammer in the greenhouse,” she tells him. “That's the closest you're going to get.”

  “I didn't know we owned a hammer.”

  “I got it for...” She sighs. “Never mind. It's in the greenhouse, Steve.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She sighs, but then she hears him muttering to himself as he walks away, and then she hears him heading back downstairs.

  “I've worked in HR since I left uni,” she remembers herself telling him on their first date. “It's not exactly what I wanted to do. I mean, I studied English Literature, I thought maybe I could work in publishing or something like that. But it never really happened, and HR pays the bills.”

  She remembers how hard she worked to make herself sound ordinary, even a little boring. When she met Steve, she'd been back in civilian life for only a very short time and she was still struggling with the night terrors and the moments of waking panic. PTSD, she'd been told, although she'd never been keen on accepting any kind of diagnosis. She didn't want it solidified, she didn't want to give her condition a name. She'd told herself that she could just push through it, and somehow that's exactly what had happened. She'd sunk into the cover story, and Steve had genuinely made her feel better. She remembers the moment she realized, with great surprise, that maybe she could handle a quiet family life with a husband and even a few children.

  And she'd forgotten Tom Dansing.

  Or if not forgotten, she'd at least put him out of her mind. Certainly that name had never left her lips since her return to Britain. She'd always flinched a little whenever she met somebody named Tom, but that had been the extent of her willingness to acknowledge that particular sliver of her past.

  Steve knew nothing of Tom. He didn't even know that Tom had existed.

  Sitting now on the lid of the closed toilet, Cassie knows how easy it would be to sink into her memories of that man. She knows she could close her eyes and see him again, maybe even smell him. She could get lost for hours – days, even – in all the moments she's been forcing herself to not think about. For a few seconds the thought is enticing, and she almost closes her eyes before, finally, reminding herself that she needs to be stronger. The memory of Tom Dansing is flickering at the edge of her consciousness, but she refuses to let him into her mind. She knows there'd be good times to think about, and bad times too, and that eventually she'd end up thinking about the moment he died, the moment when he was murdered in cold blood by Michael Essien. She knows that if she thinks too much about Tom, she might actually end up running out of the house and going to meet Anders. Where did he say he'd be again?

  Oh yes.

  The corner of Bazely Street and Mountague Place.

  7pm.

  Don't be late.

  “No,” she says, putting her head in her hands once again and leaning forward, trying to forget those instructions. “I'm not going.”

  Downstairs, Steve has started hammering.

  “I'm not that person anymore,” Cassie says out loud, hoping to persuade herself. Even though she remembers all the trips to the gym, all the little ways she told herself for years that she was keeping herself in shape in case she ever got the chance to go after Essien, she now tries to convince herself that it's too late. That even though she wants to go and kill Essien, the opportunity has come too late. “I can't do it.”

  The hammering continues for a moment, before stopping abruptly as Steve lets out a cry of pain.

  Sighing, Cassie gets to her feet. She flushes the toilet to make it seem as if she's been doing something, and then she washes her hands. At the same time, she makes sure not to catch sight of her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. She's scared that she wouldn't see her reflection at all, that instead she'd see her younger self – ten years younger, dressed in camouflage clothing and with blood and mud smeared across her face – staring back with an expression in her eyes of pure loathing and contempt.

  Chapter Twelve

  13:10pm

  “Damn it, this is heavier than it used to be!” Anders gasps as he carries the box
across the lock-up garage and finally puts it on the table.

  A little breathless now, he takes a step back and waits for a moment. It had never occurred to him that he might be getting out of shape, but he's unpleasantly surprised by just how difficult it has been to move all these boxes. Sure, he hasn't been to the lock-up for almost a year, but he's been going to the gym and taking care to eat well, keeping in shape ready for this moment. Now, as he finally gets his breath back, he's left with one unpalatable truth that he can't ignore.

  He's getting old.

  Better get on with it, then, he tells himself. It's time to rise to the occasion.

  “Officials have announced,” the news presenter says on the radio, as Anders opens the first box, “that all power supplies will now be cut off at precisely three o'clock this afternoon. While this is around three hours before the solar storm hits, government experts have advised that a controlled shutdown is likely to cause less damage than one that simply occurs due to external factors. This thinking is in line with plans to put power stations and other sensitive locations into emergency shutdown procedures. And even though the storm is expected to pass at around three in the morning, the power grid is unlikely to be reactivated until approximately 6am, so that important checks can be carried out first. Officials caution, however, that these timings are extremely uncertain, and are subject to change at any moment.”

  Anders glances at his watch.

  A little less than two hours to go, then another three or four until the storm properly hits. Forecasts are varying from one source to another, but most agree that the effects of the storm will truly arrive between six and seven in the evening.

  “Meanwhile,” the presenter continues, “military leaders have confirmed that all armed forces are being deployed to protect sensitive sites around the country. Sources have stressed that emergency plans have existed for some time to cover situations in which power would be out for an extended period, and that there is no question of any sites being left undefended. Key roads have now been shut down and declared to be for military use only, and this has added to congestion troubles as people continue to leave major cities.”