by Ryan Casey
But there was something keeping him glued to the sight in front of him.
Something he just couldn’t turn away from.
That urge to help, even though he knew there was nothing he could do.
“Come on,” he finally muttered. “Let’s... let’s get away from here.”
He walked over to Ella’s side. Vomit trailed down her face. Black circles outlined her eyes. She looked even rougher than when they’d walked out here.
He felt that urge to ask her if she was okay. That urge to comfort her.
And then he felt that block again.
That mental block that he couldn’t conquer.
That feeling that he couldn’t look after his daughter.
Even if he wanted to comfort her, it just wouldn’t be enough.
He moved his hand away from her back. Scratched his head. “Really, Ella. We should get away from here. We should...”
He noticed something amidst the awful rubble and debris of the plane, then.
Something that caught his eye.
He turned back around. Walked towards the heat. Towards that burning metal smell. That charred meat stench.
On the blackened wrists of one of the passengers, he noticed a Rolex watch.
The time had stopped.
But it was stuck at one time in particular.
Just past three.
He looked at more of the watches, then. Looked at the phones, most of them smashed, but some of them intact.
But the more he searched them, the more he saw the same thing, again and again.
None of the phones were working. Not a single one.
And all of the watches had stopped.
All of them just past three.
Just like his alarm clock.
He stood in the middle of this wrecked plane and remembered the bang in the night. His first instinct was that some kind of power line must’ve been hit. Some kind of surge must’ve knackered the power supply at the cabin, even though that didn’t explain his alarm clock—that must’ve just been a coincidence.
But he saw the remains of this plane, and a new reality dawned on him.
Like a nightmare unfolding before him.
Something far, far bigger than he could ever imagine.
“What happened here?” Ella shouted. “What... what’s happening?”
Martin stood still. He looked at the wreckage around him. The contorted, burned limbs. The screaming faces. He could almost hear their cries for help echoing all around him.
He stood there. Remembered what he’d read about the effects of an electromagnetic pulse or a coronal mass ejection. The damage it could cause.
But that was still just something in the realms of science fiction.
That wasn’t a realistic possibility.
Right?
He looked around at Ella, and he said the only thing he could.
“Come on,” he said. “We... we need to get back to the cabin. We need to figure out what we’re going to do next.”
Ella looked at him differently now. There was curiosity to her eyes. A vulnerability about her that scared him. A sense that she needed looking after. Needed caring for in ways he couldn’t.
She opened her mouth. Went to ask him something.
And then Martin heard a shout beside him and felt a hand grab his arm from the wreckage.
Chapter Ten
Martin dragged his arm away from the screaming man in the wreckage.
It was like something out of a horror movie. The man clutched on to his arm with a tight grip, far tighter than anyone who’d been in a plane crash should be capable of. The survivor kept on making this animalistic wailing sound like a whimpering dog knocked down by a car. Martin had no idea how he’d survived this long after the crash. He had no idea how anyone could survive something like this at all.
But he was alive.
And he was desperate for help.
Martin looked at the man. He looked like he was in his mid-forties. He had dark brown hair, with patches of grey. Quite a big bloke, dressed in what looked like an expensive suit. It was hard to make out his face because it was totally covered in deep red blood.
“Please,” the man spluttered, blood pooling from his lips. “The lights… they just went out. They just… Help me. Help me. Please.”
Martin heard those cries, and he felt total sympathy for this guy. The lower half of his body looked like it was trapped between two seats. The bottoms of the seats were covered with blood. Martin couldn’t properly make out the state of this guy’s lower body. In a weird way, those seats might be the only thing keeping him alive, compressing the wounds.
He dreaded to think what he might find if he managed to drag this man from those seats.
But he had to do something.
He couldn’t just leave him here to die.
“Ella, stay back,” he said.
“What?”
“Just... just stay back a second. I need to try something.”
He put a shaking hand on the wounded man’s shoulder, making sure not to touch any open wounds. The man was so blood-soaked, it was hard to figure out where he was even wounded. The only wound visible was a piece of metal debris wedged into his right shoulder. It didn’t look good.
This guy needed air ambulance out here. Desperately.
But it didn’t look like there’d be any way of contacting them right now.
And it didn’t look like they’d even be able to get out here regardless.
Martin was alone.
He had a decision to make.
“I’m going to get you out of this mess,” Martin said. “You’re going to be okay. I promise. Okay?”
The man shook his head. His breathing was laboured, and his eyes streamed tears. “It just... it just went dark. It just went dark, and then it fell.”
“I know,” Martin said. “I know. But you don’t have to think about that now, mate. I’m getting you out of this. You’re going to be okay. You just have to trust me. Okay?”
The man’s blue eyes opened. For just a second, Martin saw something that looked like trust within them.
Then he gulped heavily. Forced a smile. “What’s your... what’s your name?”
“Martin. And yours?”
The man took a few more forced, heavy breaths. Then he winced with pain and forced another smile. “Charlie,” he said. “It’s... I wish I could say it’s nice to meet you.”
Martin smiled at that. He had to. “At least you’ve still got your humour. That’s going to count for a lot. Now let’s focus on getting you out of this mess, okay?”
Charlie tightened his grip around Martin’s hand with his shaky, cold fingers.
His eyes closed, just a little.
“If I don’t make it... tell my wife I’m sorry. Tell.. tell Priya I love her. I still love her. No matter what.”
Martin didn’t want to tell Charlie there was no chance of finding his wife. Especially not if this was what he thought it was.
But he half-smiled anyway. Tightened his hand back. “I will, Charlie. Don’t worry.”
He looked around at Ella, then. Saw her standing there, staring on, frozen.
And then he looked back at Charlie, and the seats crushing his body.
He swallowed a lump. Cleared his dry throat.
And then he took a deep breath.
You can do this. You’ve got this.
He reached for the seat and dug his fingers deep into it.
Charlie screamed right away. He felt blood pool over his fingers. He let go of the seat, instinctively, sensing he was doing more harm than good.
He looked down at Charlie’s body. Saw more blood creeping between the seats. Shit. This wasn’t good.
“It’s okay, Charlie. We’ve... we’ve almost got this. You’re almost out of this.”
But Charlie looked agonised. He shook his head. Bit down into his bottom lip so hard that Martin swore he saw blood seeping from it.
“You’re going to be okay.
I’ve got you, okay? We’ve both got this.”
He realised right then, as he grabbed the sides of that seat, that this really was a one attempt job.
He flashed back to his stint in the RAF. Afghanistan. Rushing to a downed helicopter. Finding a colleague, Tate, pinned between the seats.
Saving his life.
And he felt like he was back there all over again.
The smell of burning.
The sound of struggling.
The desperation in Charlie’s eyes.
He had one chance to get this right.
One chance to get Charlie out of this mess.
If he blew it, it was over.
He looked at Ella again. She was throwing up once more.
He turned back to Charlie, held on to that seat, prepared himself for whatever was next.
“I’m not going to leave you here like this,” he said. “I’m not going to let you die.”
He held his breath and dragged the seats apart.
It all happened so quickly.
The seats dragged out of the way.
Charlie let out a cry.
And as Martin looked down the seats, he saw it.
The bottom half of Charlie’s body was totally crushed.
It was hard to even distinguish one part of it from the other anymore.
He was a lost cause.
He looked down at Charlie, nausea building inside, vomit creeping up his throat.
He saw the way Charlie stared back at him, so tearful, so pained. So much suffering.
And then he saw Charlie’s eyes fade.
“No,” Martin said. He patted Charlie’s cheeks. “Charlie, wait!”
But Charlie didn’t drift back to life.
He didn’t say another word.
He didn’t move another muscle.
All Martin could do was crouch there by Charlie’s side.
All he could do was listen to the birds singing in the trees, like nothing at all was different.
All he could do was stare at another person he’d let down, another person in his care who hadn’t made it.
Chapter Eleven
Back at the log cabin, Martin and Ella sat in total silence.
It was early afternoon. At least he figured it was, anyway, based on how long they’d been back here, and where the sun was in the grey sky. The dusty television sat before them, nothing on the screen. That light hum of the fridge that Martin never used to even notice about this place was totally absent. The dust caught in his nostrils every time he breathed, and he heard wind whistling through the windows, rattling against the latches.
Ella sat on the single chair across the room from him. She slumped into the seat, spiralling her phone around her hands, staring at the blank screen like it might jump back to life at any moment. Every now and then, she threw it down and sighed. She looked bored out of her mind. He couldn’t blame her. Everyone, especially kids her age, was used to living in an age of distraction. An age of information. An age where everything was available in the palm of their hands. There was a cure for boredom. A cure for lack of knowledge. A cure for everything.
But that was gone, now.
All of it was gone.
Martin leaned back against the sofa. He couldn’t stop thinking about the man in the wreckage, Charlie. The pain in his face. The desperation in his eyes.
And the fear when he realised, just as Martin realised, that he wasn’t going to make it.
And Martin felt an old guilt awakening inside him. A guilt about the times he’d let people down in the past. Searching for his younger brother, Gary, desperate to find him. But knowing deep down already, with a sense of dread, that he was already gone.
He thought about that plane. About all the power, gone in a snap.
There was only one thing it could be.
And if they found more traces of it out there, Martin would be certain. Broken power cables. Cars at a standstill. More evidence of fallen planes.
All of it would bring home the truth.
That this was an electromagnetic pulse.
And it was serious.
“What’re we going to do?”
Martin looked around. Saw Ella sitting there. Still twiddling that phone between her fingers, spinning it around.
He thought about what he could say to Ella. A balance between what he knew he had a duty to tell her, and not wanting to terrify her right away.
“This event. It seems... it seems like some kind of electromagnetic pulse or coronal mass ejection event to me. And a serious one at that. Which could mean everything’s out. All the power. Everything mains powered. Battery-powered. Water supplies have ground to a halt. Cars won’t work. The internet isn’t even a thing anymore. Everything you thought you knew about the world, all of it has just... gone.”
Ella was silent. She looked over towards that blank television. Like she was still just processing the information.
“Will the power come back?” she asked.
Martin wanted to be honest. He wanted to be truthful.
But he also wanted to believe it would.
Not just for Ella. For himself.
So he looked away. Rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s... it’s probably just a temporary thing. The world’s an advanced place. It’s probably ready. It... it should be back in no time. Or at least... the worst case scenario is worth preparing for. But it’s not the likeliest scenario.”
The way Ella looked back at him told him all he needed to know right away.
She didn’t believe him for one minute.
But she didn’t push him.
“So like I said,” she asked, leaning forward in her chair. “What are we going to do about it?”
Martin rubbed his hands against his knees. There were so many things he had to do. His location here was decent, but he lacked supplies. Didn’t even have a decent bug out bag. Stupid, he knew. For all his passing interest in what might happen in a doomsday scenario, his interest in actually preparing for an event like this had lapsed.
But then they still didn’t know how widespread this was for certain. There could be places where the power still existed. Places where the military and the police had things under control, at the very least.
And then there was Ella.
Martin looked at Ella.
He looked at this girl he was responsible for. This girl he was supposed to care for.
And then he looked out of the cobweb ridden window, out towards the hills.
There was only one thing he could do.
Only one thing he could try.
“We’re going to head to Eskdale Green,” he said. “The closest village to us. We’re going to figure out how bad things are. Chances are... And once we know just what’s going on, we can think about getting... getting you somewhere safe. Back to your grandma’s.”
Martin swore he saw a glimpse of something in Ella’s eyes. Just for a moment, but it was definitely there.
He swore he saw disappointment.
But then she looked back at him and forced a smile.
“Come on then,” she said. “We’re not getting anywhere by sitting around here.”
Chapter Twelve
Martin and Ella didn’t speak much in the first couple of hours of their journey to Eskdale Green.
It was afternoon. The sun had come out, but it felt chillier than normal for this time of year. Martin knew he was probably imagining things. When you were paying extra attention to your surroundings, you noticed stuff that in the past, wouldn’t have meant a thing at all.
They were still wading across the hills. They hadn’t seen many people here. A few walkers a couple of miles back. But nobody seemed to know what was going on. All of them were in the same boat as Martin and Ella—staying somewhere remote, found they were without power, left stranded.
As far as Martin could tell, his EMP suspicions were gaining ground. Everyone he’d spoken to had run into the same problems: cars breaking down, phones goin
g black, everything grinding to a halt.
But they still only had a small sample of people to go off. The people he’d encountered were all staying in this particular area.
So there was still the outlandish, distant hope that this was just something localised. A test gone wrong. Something like that.
He knew he was clutching at straws. He knew chances were this was as bad as that voice in the back of his head kept screaming at him and telling him.
But then what use was speculating right now?
He had to get to Eskdale Green.
He had to find some kind of answer there.
If there was a key skill being in the military had taught him, it was to gather as much information as possible before reaching judgements. Keep calm. Keep composed. Stay rational and pragmatic.
Find out what was going on in a nearby village.
And then regardless of what happened, he had to make sure Ella could get somewhere safe. Somewhere she could be looked after.
“How much longer do we have?”
Martin heard Ella whinging about their walk. He looked over his shoulder. Saw her puffing out her lips, sighing. She still had her phone in hand like it might just spring back to life at any moment. Her once sparkling white Stan Smiths were totally covered in mud now. She looked beyond caring. And she looked knackered.
But there was nothing else they could do.
“Probably not far,” Martin said, keeping up a strong pace.
“Probably not far? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we’ve not got far to go. Probably. Now come on. You’re a fifteen-year-old girl. You lot are meant to have bundles of energy, aren’t you?”
Ella rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath. “I’m used to walking to school on a flat road. Not along mountains and through mud. And usually I’ve got some music or something to listen to. But I don’t even have that.”
“Well boohoo,” Martin said. “Want me to sing or something?”
Her eyes widened. “No. Please don’t.”