by Linda Talbot
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The Flood
Jimmy Lind was the first to see the dark cloud rise vertically and spread over the hill. It grew like some sinister omen born of vaporous rage and hung incongruously in a clear blue sky.
Soon the blue was obliterated. The cloud cast a vast shadow on the town and showed no inclination to disperse.
"Cumulonimbus!" stated the weather men, which meant little to the townspeople who prepared for a deluge. But no rain fell, the cloud bore down, the wind dropped.
Then one morning the sun reappeared and round it hung an icy halo.
"Cirrostratus - a veil of crystals," explained the weather men, aware that the weather had been displaying increasing eccentricity. Pollution had at last taken its toll of the Earth's atmosphere; from the ionosphere, from which strange radio waves had been received, to the stratosphere which had protected the Earth from ultra violet rays but which had worn thin. And the planet's temperature had steadily risen.
And the troposphere, where the weather was controlled, no longer dictated the seasons; its gases and water vapours unable to regulate the elements. Snow in July was commonplace but as the sun's rays grew more persistent, the snow vanished and the air became arid. People developed dry coughs and visible burns. No rain fell for three months anywhere on Earth.
This was when the scientists decided to use a newly developed method of replenishing the conditions in the troposphere, essential to the Earth's climate.
Two days later the cumulonimbus appeared, then the veil of ice crystals. The sun vanished and at first the hail stones were welcomed, rattling on roofs and scattered translucently over farmland. But three days later they were still falling and gradually they grew larger. Soon they lay several metres deep and a battalion of snow ploughs could not move them. Damage was widespread.
Jimmy Lind and Melissa, his wife, lived on an isolated farm within walking distance of Havering Hill, where the cloud materialised. The force of the hailstones shattered the guttering round the roof of the farmhouse and as a bitter wind rose, the stones were flung with frightening force against the windows until they cracked and one, upstairs, shattered. Jimmy boarded up the gap and the flying stones assumed a deeper note like the endeavours of a demented timpanist. Eventually there was a lull and, uncannily, the silence crept back.
It was June but the sky glowered, the hail stones rattled as they shifted and winked in heaps, beneath a break in the grey. Tradesmen could barely penetrate the piles of stones in town. Farms were entirely cut off. Fortunately, Jimmy, whose toughness was as much a state of mind as a physical asset, had ample reserves of food in the domed containers beside the farmhouse. But the sense of isolation was unnerving.
Melissa turned staple foods into unprecedented combinations that tasted as bizarre as they appeared and were at first refused by their daughter Kate. Then even she accepted the eccentricities of necessity.
An advance in the technique of transmissions enabled the weather forecasts to continue but the meteorologists were no longer elated by the novelty of the phenomenon. They had no means of confirming future weather patterns, although as far as they could deduce, the hail would recommence. They had perceived no break in the cloud or rise in the temperature. The strain of the responsibility was apparent on their faces and most were marooned in their stations; prophets who had lost the power of prediction.
Daniel Schultz was delighted as he sifted hail stones through his hands. They shimmered, clear as crystal; firm enough to cut into facets. In his dim workshop he abandoned the repair of antique watches, in which the quartz was once considered a minor miracle and he started to fashion the stones, wearing fine gloves against the cold.
He could not reach a retailer and if he did there would be no one to buy the strange stones; the commonplace masquerading as the rare, mounted as bracelets and rings with the audacity of forty carat diamonds.
The Evangelists waded as though propelled by miraculous motion, through the stones to Havering Hill. There, addressing the acres of glinting stones and a sullen sky in which a faint sun glimmered, they preached the coming of the Second Flood.
The radio waves from the ionosphere grew more distinct; their communication high-pitched and persistent, which the Evangelists considered an affirmation of their prediction.
No one could get near enough to hear. But they managed to televise their words of warning and as the sky clouded thickly once more, the converts grew.
The weather men, wary of victimisation, promised an improvement, and when none came, became scapegoats for the people's despair. No meteorologist dared venture outside for fear of encountering the intermittent bands of hungry inhabitants from the town seeking supplies and resorting to violence.
One night Jimmy and Melissa woke to hear Kate screaming. Running into her room, they found two young men climbing through the window. Unable to break through Jimmy's improvised reinforcements on the storage domes, they had sought the nearest means of entry to the house, hoping to steal from the kitchen.
On seeing Jimmy, one drew a knife and lunged. Swiftly, Jimmy kicked it from the youth's hand and grabbed it as the intruders scrambled back through the window.
Several times Jimmy and Melissa heard vagrants throwing missiles at the storage domes and cursing in desperation as they departed.
Meanwhile, people swayed by the Evangelists, struggled outside to build chapels from the freezing stones; the brick built ones having been abandoned.
Shaking with cold, the converts prayed but could not bring themselves to sing. Even Jimmy and Melissa were seized by an elemental sense of foreboding. Reason had fled and fear eradicated the last vestiges of hope.
No word was heard from the scientists. They were said to be in conference somewhere underground but could not be located.
The hail recommenced; the great stones thudding like the armoury of a demolition unit. In the brief moments when it stopped, from beyond Havering Hill, a loud hammering was heard. There was a splintering of glass, a banging of wood and other heavy materials and occasionally a thin voice was raised in a wailing kind of prayer. And as if in eerie chorus, the radio waves from the ionosphere drifted - a curious cacophony of suffering sounds. Then the hail began again.
"The roof won't hold much longer," warned Jimmy and that night a huge hailstone penetrated the loft to crash into the spare room, scattering crates, boxes and books.
In the town whole houses collapsed, their inhabitants killed outright or stumbling out into the freezing temperature to die. The most sophisticated power supplies devised to defy disasters, failed. The weather men no longer appeared. Screens were blank. The sole sound was the incessant clatter of the stones and a low wind that endlessly whined.
Melissa was first to see the halo reappear around the sun that burst one morning above the hill. The heat was so fierce when Jimmy opened the door, he stepped abruptly backwards, his face already burnt.
No one could venture out without protective clothing. The few officials able to penetrate the melting stones and searing heat, could do little to alleviate the congestion.
Within three days floods were rising. The water around Jimmy's farm was a shimmering sheet in the blinding sun. Hastily he built a rudimentary boat from the wood he could reach by placing a ladder from the kitchen window to the nearest container for provisions. Plank by plank he eased over the wood, and clearing the furniture, built the long boat on the dining room floor. Then he loaded it with food.
The water rose higher, lapping the windows. The family carried the boat up the straight staircase where plaster, loosened by the bombardment of hail, fell from the ceiling with a thud.
Jimmy eased the boat through the large window and held the stern while Melissa and Kate scrambled in with difficulty. They were wrapped in oilskins to stave off the hottest rays of the sun and protect against the wet. As the atmospheric gases decreased, harmful ultra violet rays seared the earth. Jimmy climbed in last and moving the elementary rudder, shoved off from the window.
The water barely stirred, but towards the town survivors clung to any flotsam they could find as the flood washed higher. Finally, an ashen group of scientists surfaced; steering a strange circular craft of their crazed invention, designed to spin over rising and turbulent water. But the water, like a retaliation against man's interference in the natural order, formed a long, deliberate wave, reaching from a row of shattered houses to the steep bank where a road once ran. In seconds the boat was swallowed.
Then from the direction of Havering Hill, a vast Ark built from pieces of wood, glass, plastic and metal, glided regally, like a fantasist's indulgence, conceived to ride the Flood and catch the sun. It was packed with Evangelists, converts and meteorologists, anxious to escape the wrath of water-logged survivors. Below deck, Daniel Schultz moped; his new line in brilliants reduced to dirty water.
The Linds headed for the long shadow cast by the hill. The Ark glided past, echoing with thin voices singing hymns; its wash precariously tilting the Linds' small boat.
And as they looked beyond the Ark to the remnants of the town, they saw in the cloudless blue, not a white dove with an olive branch, but the hungry circling of a gaunt black bird.
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