by Mark Morris
He paused and took a swallow of water. No one said anything. After a moment he put his bottle down and carried on.
"One morning, 3 months ago, I set off for work. It had been a bad night and I was like a zombie. I should never have been driving. I hit a child. She was 6. She was with her mother, but she saw her friend across the road and ran out without thinking.
I was told that it wasn't my fault, but on top of everything else I couldn't endure the thought of trying to live with the guilt of what I had done. I knew in my heart that if I'd had my wits about me that child would still be alive."
Suddenly he gave a hard, sharp laugh that made me jump and said, "Or until the flood came and reduced both our individual pasts and our collective past to an irrelevancy, the child would still have been alive." He spun a hand above his head, as if demonstrating how the past had swirled away like smoke and didn't matter anymore.
"So I came here to end it all. But the flood beat me to it. And the flood really DID end it all. But in so doing it made my intended gesture seem trivial somehow. In an odd way it made me realize that there was no point in dying. Or at least no point in dying by my own hand. It even made me start to think that maybe I had done that little girl a favor. I had saved her from this. From the horror of possible survival."
Nobody seemed to know what to say and for the next minute or so there was a funny sort of silence. Mrs. B walked over and gave Greg a hug. He didn't exactly hug her back, but he didn't pull away either.
Everyone had forgotten about Marco, over by the window, until he said, "There's another fire."
"What?" Dad said, jumping up and rushing over. I stood up too and went to stand by Dad. Marco gave me another one of his creepy stares, but I stared back at him and this time HE looked away.
The blue lightning was going crazy tonight. You couldn't tell whether it was coming up out of the ground or down from the sky. It danced around like a living thing. It reminded me of one of those glass balls with electricity inside that follows your movements when you put your hand on it.
We'd talked about it earlier, when we were cooking. In fact, me, Dad and the Beamishes had talked about it a few times, but nobody had any real idea what it could be. Dad said he thought it was some sort of random electrical discharge (whatever that meant), Mr. B said he thought it was something to do with the crazy weather or pollution, and Mrs. B wondered whether it was something to do with the army, maybe some new weapon that had got out of control. We didn't know whether IT had caused the flood or whether the flood had caused IT, or even if it was anything to do with the flood at all.
Anyway, the new fire. The city was so dark that it was hard to tell how far away it was, or how big. It was closer than the blue lightning, but it still wasn't much more than a glow in the darkness. To us it looked about as big as a candle flame. If I put my thumb over it on the window I could just about blot it out. I got the feeling it was somewhere high up, like on top of a building or something. But it wasn't just a burning building. Dad said he was pretty sure it was a signal, a beacon for others to see.
"Man rediscovers fire," Greg said. "The city is coming back to life." "We ought to go there, man," Max said.
Dad looked at his watch. "I agree. But not now. It's impossible to tell how far away it is. Let's wait till tomorrow."
"What if the fire isn't there tomorrow?" Mrs. B said.
Dad said, "If it isn't it isn't. But somehow I think it will be."
"Yeah, and it'll be just as impossible to tell how far away it is tomorrow," Marco said, as if Dad was stupid.
"Not if they light up at dusk, or even before, it won't," said Dad.
I thought that Marco was going to punch Dad, but then he pulled a face and turned away.
"So who wants to go on a little expedition tomorrow?" Dad said. "I think we should keep the numbers down. Say, a nice, tight band of 3."
"Yeah, count me in, man," Max said straightaway.
The 3 oldies looked at Marco, as if he was the other obvious choice, but he stayed silent. Suddenly afraid that Greg or Mrs. B would vol-unteer and I would be left here with him, I said, "Yeah, me too."
Dad winked at me and suddenly I realized that he had got the 3 he wanted. Marco might have been tougher than me and Max, and more able to help out if things turned nasty, but it was clear Dad liked and trusted him about as much as I did.
Sue hefted the Glock in her hand and wondered at what point she'd be tempted to put the business end in her mouth and pull the trigger. Maybe she never would. Maybe she'd get used to this way of life which she already thought of as the three S's-solitude, scavenging, survival. Maybe in time she'd come to like her own company so much she'd even discourage whatever human contact might happen her way. She pictured herself five years from now as some wild hillbilly with rotten teeth and mad eyes, pointing a Heckler and Koch at fellow survivors and shouting, "Get orf moi land."
The image made her smile. Well, almost. Because however okay she'd been in the past, living on her own, she really craved some company now. The loneliness was starting to get to her; that and the sheer fucking boredom. And there was something else too, a dull, enervating weight in her belly and bones that she had come to recognize as fear caused by uncer-tainty and the unknown.
She'd done okay, however, for all that. Better than okay. In the three days since the flood water had abated, she had made herself a new home on the top floor of an office block, a half mile from where she had previously lived; she had scoured the local retail outlets, stockpiling food and water and medicines and various household goods; she had undertaken an expedition to a police station four miles away, which she knew housed an armory that was not as secure as it might have been, and had liberated six Glock 17 9mm self-loading pistols, four Heckler and Koch 9mm carbine rifles and as much amnmunition as she could carry in a sack made of a dried-out duvet cover; and finally she had built a bonfire on the roof of her old apartment block out of whatever she could find that was not so saturated that it wouldn't light when doused with paraffin.
Last night she had lit her fire for the first time, and for a couple of hours had been in a celebratory mood, watching the flames leap high. She had even toasted a bag of nmarshnmallows she had found two days earlier and had been saving for the occasion, washing them down with gut-warming slugs of Glenlivet. It was only when her fire had started to dwindle that she had looked south, towards the river, and had seen a second fire.
Immediately she had scrambled to her feet and rushed to the edge of the roof. Ridiculous though it was, she had felt an urge to leap up and down, to wave her arms and yell. She wondered whether this second fire had been lit as a response to her own. She waited for hours, until her own fire had gutted to almost nothing, wondering if they would come. But they didn't. No one did. She sat there until there was no more warmth in the embers, until the manic blue lightning on the horizon was superseded by the first pale talons of dawn. Then she plodded the short distance back to her new home and crawled into her cocoon of bedding, wondering if the firemaker would come tonight; wondering whether she should go to them.
She slept for three hours, until her own sense of urgency woke her, and then, eating breakfast-a vacuum-packed bag of dried apricots-on the hoof she set about collecting material for bonfire number two.
She lit it late that afternoon, just as the light was seeping from the unseasonably bright sky. Her muscles ached, her hands were rough and sore with splinters, and for the first time since showers and baths had become a bygone luxury, she could smell herself-the sour smell of her own sweat. As the damp wood began to spit and pop, Sue retreated to her little camp forty yards away and sat down, her back against the brick wall of the central stairway block.
She opened her rucksack and took out a tin she knew from its shape contained sardines or mackerel or pilchards. She ate the fish cold with a fork, and then she delved into her rucksack again and extracted three further tins, their labels soaked away. These would comprise the surprise element of her evening meal.
She was becoming used to opening tins and taking pot luck, eating whatever they contained. The first tin she opened tonight contained macaroni and cheese, the second, oxtail soup and the third, coconut milk.
She put the macaroni and soup tins close to the fire to warn through. While she waited she sipped the coconut milk and took the Glock apart again. Her aim in the police had been to become a weapons operative, perhaps even to eventually lead an armed response unit. She had found herself stymied in her career course by the incipient sexism that persisted even in the dynamic, forward-thinking metropolitan police force of the twenty-first century. As a result, her firearms training had been minimal. Most of what she knew about guns she had learned from the Internet. Even so, she had successfully managed to strip down the weapons she'd procured, dry them, clean them and put them together again. She had tested them out in the cavernous interior of a B&Q store that was a silt-caked jungle of splintered wood, mangled metal and shattered fixtures and fittings. She had fired into the gloom, half expecting one or more of the guns to blow up in her face. The noise had been deafening. A thousand fat birds, which had been feasting on the neighborhood dead by day and nesting in the rafters by night, had exploded upwards in shock. Now Sue carried a Glock at all times, handling it constantly like a talisman.
The other guns were back at the office block, carefully wrapped and concealed behind a stack of office chairs in a stationary cupboard. When she was there she spent most of her time taking them apart and putting them back together again, like a child with a favorite jigsaw.
She ate her food, put the gun back together again, and settled back to wait. She watched the blue lightning start to flicker up from the horizon, like a living force rising from the earth, attracted by the darkness. She wondered whether she'd ever again see an airplane leaving a vapor trail across the sky or whether she'd look out across London and see it aglow with house lights and streetlamps and the headlights of growling traffic.
Eventually she dozed-and dreamed. In her dream she was running through London's busy streets, trying to warn people about the oncoming disaster. It was a variation of a dream she'd had several tines over the past week. On each occasion she had reached such a pitch of desperation that she eventually woke, floundering in her bedding, instinctively reaching for her gun.
This time, however, it was not the dream that woke her. It was the sense that she was not alone.
As ever, her first response was to strengthen her grip around the reassuring weight of the weapon in her hand. Her eyes felt hot and gritty, as though full of embers, her face half baked, the skin dry and stretched. She extended the gun in front of her and rubbed at her eyes with grubby fingers.
"Who's there?" she called. "Step out where I can see you.,, There was a scrape to her right, like someone dragging something across a rough surface. Her head snapped in that direction, the gun swinging like a compass needle. She had the impression that someone was standing around the corner of the central block, pressed up against the brickwork.
"No use sneaking up on me," Sue warned. "I'm armed." Then, realizing that this might be the wrong tactic, she said, "I'm not going to hurt you."
Another few seconds, and then a dark shape sidled around the edge of the wall. Sue tensed, then relaxed. Peering at her curiously was a girl, maybe six years old.
"Hello," Sue said, "where have you come from, then?"
The girl just looked at her, wide-eyed.
"What's your name?" Sue asked, lowering the gun, then placing it on the ground, out of sight.
When the girl didn't answer, Sue said, "Shall I tell you my name?"
The girl gave a brief nod.
"It's Sue. Which is an okay name, but I'll bet you've got an even nicer one. Do you want to tell me what it is?"
The girl whispered something, but it was lost in the crackle of the fire.
"What was that, honey?"
"Sam," the girl repeated.
"Is that short for Samantha?"
She nodded.
"And are you on your own, Sam?"
Another nod; then the girl's wide-eyed gaze shifted to the fire, as though she had never seen one before.
"Did you see my fire from the ground?"
"Yes."
"It's nice and bright, isn't it? Do you want to sit next to me and get warm?"
For a moment the girl appeared to be weighing up the risks. Then she sidled across to Sue and sat beside her.
"There," Sue said, "that's better, isn't it?"
The child looked so lost that Sue's heart immediately went out to her. She had always believed she didn't have a single maternal bone in her body, yet she felt an urge now to put an arm around this tiny scrap of a thing, infuse her with human warmth and comfort.
She didn't, though. She didn't want to terrify the poor thing by coming on too strong, too quickly. For the time being she contented herself with merely sitting next to the child, reveling both in her silent company and in the undeniable proof that she wasn't the last human being left alive on Earth, after all. She looked down at the little girl again, and suddenly it occurred to her that she had seen her before. Sue wondered why she had not realized it immediately, why it had taken until now for the penny to drop.
"Sam?" she said.
The little girl looked at her, eyes wide and gleaming, face solemn.
"Sang, what happened to you when the water came?"
At first Sue thought the little girl wouldn't answer, that perhaps her memories were too painful. Then she said, "I don't know."
"You don't know?" Sue said. "You mean, you don't remember?"
Sam didn't reply, merely gazed at Sue with her huge liquid eyes.
"Do you remember being rescued?" Sue persisted. "Do you remember sitting on the door in the water, and the people on the roof rescuing you?"
Still no answer. Nothing but a petulant shrug.
"There were six of them," Sue said. "They were wearing nice clothes. They'd dressed up for a party...."
Sam's face was still unreadable.
"Do you remember the people?" Sue asked gently. "Do you remember what happened to them?"
A frown wrinkled the girl's brow, but still she didn't respond. Sue had to clench her fists to prevent herself from shaking the girl by the shoulders.
Perhaps the party people had set the fire, she thought suddenly. Despite what Sam had said about being alone, perhaps they were on their way here now, stumbling through the mud and over the rubble, bedraggled and filthy, still wearing their dinner-party clothes. Perhaps Sam had run on ahead, eager and excited to find the big fire they had all seen.
"I'm hungry" the girl announced suddenly. Sue felt a momentary flash of irritation, but then nodded, a little ashamed. "'Course you are, sweetheart," she said. "Let's see what we've got here, shall we?"
She turned to where the rucksack was propped against the wall. There were some snacks in there-not much, just dried fruit and chocolate and crackers in cellophane packets.
"Do you like-" she started to say, and then all at once she felt incredibly strange. Not faint or sick (though there were elements of both sensations), but rather as though she were being drawn out of her body, or more specifically as though a hole had opened in the base of her spine and her life essence was being tugged out like some thick, viscous rope of matter.
She gasped and tried to turn, but all at once her body felt immensely heavy, as though gravity had suddenly increased and was crushing her down. With an intense effort she twisted her head on a neck that felt like drying concrete. She felt as though the skin on her back was stretching, tearing, as though her bones were being bent out of shape like the bars of a cage. Through her darkening vision she saw Sam and the blue lightning. Except the blue lightning was no longer up in the sky.
It was coming out of Sam's mouth.
Something terrible was happening to the little girl. Strands of blue lightning were crawling from her mouth and stretching across her face like the shimmering legs of some huge spider. And though her sk
in was darkening, a sickly white luminescence was leaking from her pupils, as though she were inverting light, turning into a negative version of herself. There was a sound coming from her too-a buzzing and crackling, like a swarm of angry electric bees. As Sue watched, the girl's form seemed to dissolve, to become so alien, so indefinable, that Sue found she could no longer even focus upon it. It was as if both her vision and her mind slid across its surface, making no impression, like a tiny blade on a vast diamond.
Sue whimpered and turned away trying to keep her swimming thoughts together. Her hand-vast and cumbersome as an anvil-groped across the concrete roof. The pain in her back was excruciating now. Tears were streaming from her eyes, blinding her. With a vast effort she closed her hand around the handle of the gun, gritted her teeth to lift it, and screamed a long, rusty scream of pain as she twisted, gun arum swinging round. With no hesitation she pointed the gun directly into Sam's face and pulled the trigger. She had a confused impression of something black and jagged, like overlapping chunks of slate, beneath a halo of thrashing bluewhite light filaments. And then the thing-no longer remotely resembling anything that might once have been a little girl-uttered a shrill, utterly inhuman screech, and was gone.
Sue sank to the concrete, her body seeming cold and boneless, as though she were a puddle of melting ice. Had she killed the thing? Or at least driven it away? She hoped so, because she had nothing left in her. A black cloud suddenly rushed forward to engulf her, and this time she did nothing to resist it. She floated in blackness for a while. And then she felt something beside her, touching her arnz, and she burst into consciousness, gasping and screaming, scrabbling for her gun. "Hey," she heard a voice say, "it's all right."
She tore open her eyes. For an awful moment she thought the girl was back again, looming over her, and then she saw that this was an older boy, his dark skin glowing with a chestnut hue in the firelight. He looked alarmed. He licked his lips.