Dark Days

by Ryan Casey

  And part of that was his own fault. Because he knew if he struck up some kind of relationship with her, that would make him responsible. He wasn’t sure how responsible he could be.

  He reached for his alarm clock. He carried one of those old analog travel ones everywhere with him. It did him good not to have the numbers fed to him every single time. A little mental exercise, even though it was second nature by now. Something Sarah used to tell him. The things that stuck with you.

  He frowned when he saw it.

  The clock was stuck around five past three.

  He shook it. Sighed. That explained it. The batteries must’ve gone. Suppose there was a case for this move towards a digital everything after all.

  He dropped it back on his bedside cabinet and heard another shout down the corridor.

  He looked around at the doorway. Heard one of the doors—sounded like the bathroom one—open up then slam.

  “This stupid place,” Ella muttered. “Can’t even have a bloody shower.”

  Martin covered his face and sighed into his grimy hands. Sounded like the power was out again. Wouldn’t be the first time. Again, it was part of the rustic charm of this place, at least when he and Sarah used to visit here. Living that fantasy of a more off-grid lifestyle, he supposed. And besides. He’d spent time on tour with the RAF. He knew a thing or two about waking up early and taking ice-cold showers. Didn’t get to him too much.

  That rustic charm of this place was gone, now. It was just an annoyance. An inconvenience. It wasn’t the same. He’d made a mistake ever coming back here. Some kind of misguided belief that he could reach a kind of catharsis with a daughter he’d lost long ago.

  He needed to leave this place. As soon as possible.

  He climbed out of bed. Walked across the room, threw on some clothes even though he stunk of sweat and booze. No point even trying to shower. Guess he could head down and check on the backup generator Cynthia, who he rented this place from, told him about—without any real knowledge on her part of how those things ran or whether it was maintained. She just inherited these cabins from the builder when he died. Made a load of passive income from her “rural retreats”. He daren’t tell her these cabins definitely needed a lick of paint, even for somewhere that wasn’t supposed to feel like a luxury hotel.

  Regardless, he didn’t hold out much hope for the state of that generator.

  He buttoned up a white oxford shirt, threw on a pair of slim blue jeans and slipped on his Dr Martens boots, and stepped out of the room.

  Ella stood in the hallway outside his room. She looked pale in the light of day. Large black rings around her eyes. Arms pressed to her chest. She was wearing a white dressing gown that was way too big for her. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.

  “The shower’s not working,” she said.

  Martin rubbed his greasy hair and nodded. “Yeah. That happens sometimes. Listen, Ella—”

  “And my phone, too. It’s not charging. I had it plugged in all night and it’s not starting up. If this stupid power in this place ruined it, I’ll...”

  She didn’t finish what she was saying. Just looked away, cheeks red, shaking her head.

  Martin took a few breaths. This weekend hadn’t even started, and already it was a disaster. “I’m sure the electricity here had nothing to do with it. That’s not possible–”

  “Whatever. I just... I just want to go home.”

  Martin felt a sting when he heard Ella say those words. He’d been planning heading home himself. But hearing Ella say she actually wanted to go... that made his stomach sink.

  “You’re probably right,” he said. “I...”

  He remembered something, then.

  Something he’d completely forgotten about.

  The explosion. The fire.

  He turned around from Ella and walked into his bedroom. He looked out of his window.

  He could still see smoke rising in the distance, above the trees.

  “What’s up?” Ella asked.

  Martin walked over to the side of his bed. Reached for his phone, which was still attached to the charger.

  When he lifted his phone, he noticed something that made his stomach sink.

  “That’s strange,” he said.

  “What?”

  He peered into the black mirror of his screen and frowned. “My phone. Not working either. Been on charge all night too.”

  Ella laughed. “See. I told you. This shitty electricity here did it.”

  Martin didn’t know what to say. All he could think was that it was some kind of power surge. He glanced out of the window at that smoke in the distance. “Wonder if it’s something to do with that bang we heard last night?”

  Ella didn’t seem interested. “Whatever. If my phone’s broken, I don’t care. I didn’t even take out AppleCare either, so it’s gonna cost loads to fix.”

  Martin walked past her. He headed down the creaky steps, out into the cool October morning air. He took a few breaths of the damp air, walked around the back of it, feeling a little better already.

  He checked on the backup generator.

  That was fried too. No life in it at all.

  “Damn it,” he said.

  He turned around and saw Ella standing there. She already had her rucksack over her shoulder, even though she wasn’t dressed. Damn. Talk about eager to leave this place. “Well?”

  Martin sighed. “Looks like we’re gonna have to get home, kid. I need to give Cynthia a call and let her know about the state of this place, too.”

  Ella nodded. A part of Martin expected her to smile and cheer. That was the weird thing. She actually looked kind of sad.

  He headed inside. Cleaned up the booze and put stuff into binbags while Ella got changed. Gathered his things and headed to the door.

  He looked back at the lounge. At the flaking wallpaper. At the little sign hanging from the kitchen wall: “A meal without wine is just called breakfast.” He looked at this place like he was seeing it on a screen, and he gulped.

  “Goodbye,” he muttered.

  He headed outside to his car. Ella stood beside it. Tight blue jeans. A red hoodie with I FEEL LIKE PABLO etched onto it. Hair tied up in a little bun on her head.

  He lifted his key and went to unlock it.

  Nothing clicked.

  Nothing happened.

  Martin frowned. His car keys too? Seriously?

  He clicked the manual key out and stuck it in the boot. “This is why technology is crap,” he said. “Never works when you want it to.”

  Ella rolled her eyes as she planted her rucksack in the boot next to Martin’s.

  He slammed the boot shut. Tried the key a few times again. Phone. Alarm clock. Keys. Anything else to add to his list of shit that wasn’t working?

  He got in his car. Sat back in the cool leather seats, Ella in the back. Chose not to sit next to him for some reason. Said she got travel sick, something he doubted.

  “You wanted this all along, didn’t you?” Ella asked.

  Martin swung around. “What?”

  She half-smiled at him, but there was no happiness there. “This. Leaving this place. This is what you wanted anyway. Right?”

  He wanted to say so much to Ella. To apologise. To tell her how wrong she was. How it was far more complex than she gave it credit for.

  But he just turned around, stuck his key in the engine, and turned it.

  Nothing happened.

  He frowned. He turned his key again.

  But again, nothing happened.

  “You cannot be serious,” he said.

  “What’s wrong, McEnroe?”

  Martin ignored his daughter’s slightly-witty-for-a-millennial joke. He turned his key again. Pulled it out, put it in again. Wondered if he was doing something wrong.

  But he wasn’t.

  There was nothing different here.

  “What’s happening?” Ella asked.

  Martin sat there in the quiet car.

&n
bsp; He stared out at the hills all around.

  Alarm clock.

  Shower.

  Phones.

  Backup generator.

  Key fob.

  And now the car itself.

  “Hey,” Ella said. “What’s happening?”

  He sat still, silent, and stared out into space, over towards that smoke.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  But he knew deep down that something was.

  Something very big.

  Chapter Eight

  Martin walked towards the source of the smoke, Ella by his side.

  It was late morning. It hadn’t rained, but the air was thick and damp. Trees surrounded Martin. Every time he walked around here, he was transported right back to when he used to visit here with Sarah. The smell of the damp bark. The coolness of the air. The sound of leaves scrunching underfoot. Everything dipped in autumnal orange hues.

  Martin rubbed the back of his neck as he walked off in the direction of that smoke. His head wasn’t banging as much now. He felt a lot better. Miracle what a bit of fresh air could do. He hadn’t eaten any breakfast. Wasn’t sure he’d keep it down him. He asked Ella if she wanted to grab a bite before they headed off, too, but she didn’t seem too fussed.

  He didn’t ask her if she always turned food down. Her skinny frame told him all he needed to know.

  She walked along behind him. She didn’t have any wellies or decent boots with her, just a pair of Adidas Stan Smith trainers. If they were bright white when she’d set off on this walk, they weren’t anymore. She moaned about it a few times, but she’d stopped complaining for the most part. Probably figured there wasn’t a lot it would achieve anymore.

  Martin couldn’t stop thinking about the lack of power. The way everything had gone out. The shower. The car. The phones. Even his damned analog alarm clock. At first, he wondered if perhaps there had been some kind of power surge at the log cabin. It’d explain the phones and the shower.

  But the car... the clock... none of those made sense.

  Either they were a massive coincidence.

  Or this was something different entirely.

  Something big.

  “I just don’t get how a power surge or whatever can affect a car. Like, that wouldn’t happen, would it?”

  Martin shook his head as he clambered further through the trees. He heard birds singing above him. The day felt really quiet. Quieter than normal. He wasn’t sure how to explain it. It just felt like something was... missing. Like something had changed. “I can’t see how a power surge could do that.”

  “Then what could?”

  Martin shrugged. “I can’t see how anything...”

  He stopped speaking. He didn’t have an answer to Ella’s question. Or at least he didn’t think he did, not at first.

  But then he remembered something he’d read about a long time ago.

  It sent a shiver up his spine.

  “Perhaps there is something that could’ve done this.”

  “What?”

  Martin cleared his throat. “It’s highly unlikely. Chances are, this is just a series of coincidences.”

  “But?”

  “But... well. There is something that could knock the power out. Or rather, two things.”

  “Go on.”

  Martin thought back to the books he’d read a few years ago. Being stuck in the lorry waiting in long queues gave him a lot of time to delve into a vast array of topics. For a while, he’d been deeply interested in the idea of EMPs. Electromagnetic pulses. EMPs have the power to wipe out all kinds of electricity, mains or battery powered or otherwise. Usually, they didn’t affect analog devices like wristwatches and clocks, but if the blast was strong enough, it was a possibility. Events like that could be caused by two major reasons: a bomb exploded just above the surface of the world by a rival foreign power, or a coronal mass ejection—a CME—from the surface of the sun.

  “Many years ago, something happened called the Carrington Event.”

  Ella sighed. “If you’re going to give me a history listen, let me stop you right there.”

  “The Carrington Event,” Martin continued, “happened in 1859. It was a powerful geomagnetic storm. Something called a coronal mass ejection—a CME—battered the Earth and caused one of the biggest geomagnetic storms ever recorded.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  Martin continued, ignoring his daughter. “There was something called a ‘white light flare’ from this storm. It caused an aurora the likes of which are usually only seen in the Arctic, right across the globe.”

  “So big deal. There were a bunch of lights.”

  “I saw those lights last night. But it’s worse than that. Far worse. The Carrington Event took out telegraph systems all over Europe and North America. Some telegraph operators got fried by electricity. A few years ago, someone did a study. Estimated the cost of a similar event today at around two trillion dollars.”

  Ella rolled her eyes as they walked along. “It wouldn’t happen today.”

  “If it did, it would cause widespread disruption. Blackouts. Outages that could in the worst case scenario never be solved. And there was a similar solar storm a few years back. 2012, I think. But it passed the earth’s orbit by a week. You’ve no idea how close a call that was. But don’t underestimate the effects of one of these solar events. We’re talking planes falling out of the sky. People with pacemakers collapsing and dying. The life support machines in hospitals failing. And that’s only the immediate impact. Imagine a world where people can’t have their medication delivered. Where the supermarkets stop having food deliveries. And even worse, all this time, nobody has any idea what’s happening, because there’s no television, and there’s no mobile phones, and no internet. Even the army is just as lost as everyone.”

  Ella was quiet for a few seconds. Like she was really mulling this over. Eventually, she spoke. “So you think this is another Harrington Event?”

  “Carrington,” Martin said. “No. I don’t know. I mean... I hope not. What I just said, that’s the worst-case scenario. It’s unlikely it’d get to that. But... well. Let’s just see if we can find some answers, right?”

  Ella nodded. “Even if the power went out, the government would sort it out in no time. The world’s prepared for stuff like that nowadays. Right?”

  Martin thought about the stories he’d read. He thought about the tales of how quickly society would spiral out of control. No lights. No cars. No mobile phones. No water pumps.

  And then the domino effects. The economic collapse, instantaneous. Starvation. Dehydration. Fires spiralling out of control. The breakdown of society. Disease. Death.

  He swallowed a lump in his throat. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

  They walked further into the woods. The further he went, the more he told himself that this couldn’t be an EMP. It was something of fiction. Something doomsday preppers worried about.

  They were going to be okay. Ella was right. Even if this were some kind of EMP event, the government would soon have things under control.

  Right?

  He smelled smoke growing stronger in the air. Coughed a little. Saw something up ahead—the outline of something metallic behind the trees. Something that didn’t look natural.

  He pushed the branches in front of him aside, and he stepped towards the source of that smoke.

  When he saw it, his entire body went numb.

  “What’s...” Ella started.

  But Martin didn’t hear the rest of what she said.

  He didn’t hear anything.

  All he could do was stare at what was before them both.

  And he knew right then that everything had changed.

  Chapter Nine

  Martin stared at the scene in front of him and started to wonder if his EMP fears were right after all.

  The sun peeked through the thick grey clouds, illuminating this scene before him and Ella. For a time, all he could do was stand there and s
tare. ’Cause this wasn’t right. This sort of thing didn’t happen. Not in the Lake District.

  “How...” Ella started.

  She didn’t finish.

  Or maybe she did. Martin was too lost in what was in front of him to know for definite.

  The wreckage of a plane lay before him. It wasn’t a small plane, either. It was a commercial jet. Shards of twisted, contorted metal stuck out of the ground. The smell of smoke filled the air, tickling Martin’s throat, making him splutter every now and then. The fire had burned out, but the area around the plane still felt warm and suffocating.

  For a few moments, as Martin stood there, eyes watering, he wondered whether he might be hallucinating. This wasn’t the kind of thing that happened in the Lake District. It wasn’t the sort of thing that he was supposed to come across out here. And not this weekend of all weekends. Not the weekend he just happened to be with Ella.

  In Afghanistan when he was with the RAF, sure. He’d witnessed a downed helicopter once. A memory that stuck with him throughout his life since. But not the kind of thing he ever thought he’d witness again.

  But the more he stood there, the more he blinked, the more he listened to Ella’s muffled, confused voice asking him what was happening, what was going on, the more he realised this was real. Very real.

  It was then that he smelled something else. Something that made anxiety claw its way through his stomach, rise right up into his chest.

  Flesh.

  Cooked flesh.

  The seats of the planes.

  Bodies sitting on them.

  Martin stared at the scene, heart racing. It was like he was seeing things on a screen, not something he was witnessing in reality. He felt empty inside. He wanted to stop looking. He wanted to turn away. But he just couldn’t.

  The bodies were in various states and conditions. Some of them were charred to a crisp. Others, it was hard to make out hands from feet.

  There were older people. Younger people. Babies.

  All of them with pained expressions on their frozen faces.

  All of them with terror in their burned-out eyes.

  Martin heard something, then. Ella. She was throwing up behind him. Losing her shit. He knew he needed to get her away from here. This wasn’t the kind of thing a kid should see. Hell, nobody should see a damned thing like this. Let alone a kid.