“Who’s asking?” I asked.
“No need to be so defensive, Jade,” he remarked.
He knew my name. The others had told him.
“The name’s Barry Gates. I’m a London Post reporter,” he announced.
Then he showed us his press card, which we examined carefully. I remembered our last encounter with a so-called reporter who wasn’t. The press card that included a hologram picture of Barry Gates looked authentic enough; however, the doubts in my mind remained.
“Anyone can get a card like this made by a local printer for a few euros,” I said airily.
He chuckled. “Ring the office number on the card, Jade. They’ll verify who I am.”
The reporter from the London Post newspaper was unshaven. He was a bit scruffy, I thought.
Wendy wore a silly smirk on her face, nudging me. I ignored her. When he winked at her, she giggled.
I quizzed, “What do you want, Mr Gates?”
He smiled. “Call me Barry, Jade.”
I didn’t.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, Jade,” he answered.
“What about?”
“The comet.”
Wendy and I hurried up the main school staircase. We were a little late for class after our brief encounter with Barry Gates from the London Post.
“Barry Gates is a hunk,” declared Wendy breathlessly. “I fancy him rotten.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
Wendy was suddenly worried. “Jade, was that a good idea of yours agreeing to give the London Post reporter an interview at lunchtime?”
“Of course, Wendy,” I answered with a smile on my face. “We get a free meal out of him in the bargain.”
She rolled her eyes.
We met Barry Gates, the London Post reporter, again in a burger restaurant near the school. It was our favourite lunchtime haunt. Wendy and I ordered shakes, Coke, burgers, fries and the sweet, but Barry Gates wasn’t too bothered. He wasn’t paying for it out of his own pocket. The paper was. He’d claim it all back on his expense account with a little bit more besides, I suspected.
We took our meals to a table by the window. Barry Gates drank black coffee. He called it a liquid lunch. I noticed the wry grin on his face as Wendy and I wolfed down the fries and burgers. Yeah, it was junk food, but Wendy and I loved it. Besides, I never put on any weight. I burned off all the calories in mental energy.
“So, Barry, what do you want to know?” asked Wendy, spitting bun.
He turned to me, disappointing Wendy.
He opened his notebook on the table. “Jade, what can you tell me about the Icarus 9 Comet?”
“It hit Jupiter in 2015,” I answered concisely. “It was on all the news at the time.”
The smiled appeared again. “Humour me, Jade,” said Barry Gates patiently. “We both know what I’m talking about.”
“Do we?”
He sighed. I was wearing him down. I wanted him to work hard for the information. Then Wendy spoilt my fun.
“A big comet is going to hit the world very soon,” she blurted out.
He scribbled something down in his notebook. “Most of these comets burn up in the earth’s upper atmosphere, don’t they?”
I was impressed. He’d obviously done his homework on the subject.
“Not this one,” I illuminated. “It’s big and fragmented, made of metals and rock. It won’t burn up in the earth’s upper atmosphere.”
“How big?” he probed.
“The biggest rock in the comet is over one kilometre in diameter,” I answered.
He stopped writing. “That seems rather incredible to me, Jade.”
I was annoyed. “If you don’t believe me, Mr Gates, ask Doctor Frost at the Mount Stephen Space Observatory.”
The name didn’t register with him.
When Wendy and I came out of the burger restaurant later with our stomachs full, it had stopped raining. The sun came out for the first time in many weeks. How very odd, I thought. Something strange was happening out there in outer space, and I knew what it was, the Comet.
Barry Gates thanked us for the interview outside the burger restaurant. Wendy, who had been making eyes at him throughout the lunch, wanted to see him again till she discovered that he was happily married with two, young kids. Still, she did have Kevin Willis to look forward to in the evening.
We declined Barry’s offer of a lift. We walked back to school as it had suddenly become a fine, pleasant summer’s day.
Wendy was worried again. “Jade, did we do the right thing giving an interview to that London Post reporter?”
“Yeah.”
“If dad finds out, he’ll be mad with us,” warned Wendy darkly.
I put my arm around her to reassure her.
“Don’t worry, Sis, our interview will probably end up on the funnies page. I don’t think Barry Gates took us very seriously.”
Boy, was I wrong.
I woke with a start in the half-gloom of the cellar. The others still slept. It was early. Tommy’s chubby, wet face was pressed into my bosom. He had crept into our bunk during the night. I gave him a little nudge, knocking him off me. He pressed his plump face into Wendy instead. I waited till some of the sleep had slipped out of my head before I rose without disturbing the others.
I sleepily floated down the hall in my Girls Kick Ass rock print top over my open dressing gown. The papers lay on the doormat with the morning post. It looked like junk mail and bills. They never stopped coming. I ignored the post and the papers as I unlocked the front door to take in the milk and cream that we liked in our morning coffee. As I took in the milk and cream, something made me look up at that moment. A small crowd had gathered outside our front gate. One or two had expensive-looking cameras. Bulbs flashed. They were taking pictures of me in my night clothes. One or two called out my name from the crowd. I fled inside horrified, slamming the front door shut. Who were they? What did they want? I already knew. When I saw the headline on the front page of the London Post, my heart sank. Oh, DROKK!
GIANT COMET FROM JUPITER
TO HIT
THE EARTH SOON?
The question mark puzzled me however.
Wendy and I sat around the breakfast table with the rest of the family later. Father was reading the front page of the London Post in absolute silence. He didn’t look very pleased. In fact, I think he was furious. When he looked up, I couldn’t meet his accusing eyes.
“Jade?”
I giggled nervously behind my cup of coffee.
“What on earth were you and Wendy thinking?” he asked in a quiet, measured voice.
I tried to explain, “He seemed harmless, Dad.”
“Who?”
“The London Post reporter.”
He sighed wearily.
“We-We didn’t think he’d take us very seriously, Daddy,” spluttered Wendy.
“And he bought us a nice meal too,” I added foolishly.
He shook his head. “What is done is done, and it can’t be undone.”
Wendy and I looked at each other and grinned.
“However…”
The smiles vanished from our faces.
Father drove us to school that morning as usual. Although our family had become almost celebrities overnight, life had to go on as normal. Nothing much had changed, though it had of course. The world had woken up to the fact that a giant comet was going to smash into our beautiful planet very soon…perhaps in a matter of weeks, even days. The thought made me shudder. In some ways, I think daddy was relieved that the rest of the world knew too. Knowing the awful truth for the past two years had become such a heavy burden on his shoulders. Now, he was sharing it with the rest of mankind, thanks to Wendy and I.
However, the expected widespread panic on the streets never materialised, puzzling me at first. People went about their daily lives totally unconcerned, it seemed. I suspected that many refused to accept
this awful thing. They didn’t want to believe it. And how many people believe what they read in the papers? It had turned them all into cynics. They were looking forward to a bright future ahead of them, bringing up their families, retiring one day with a company pension and not dying suddenly and violently beneath the path of a fiery comet. Questions weren’t asked in the Commons. It wasn’t debated in the House. MP’s had other things on their minds. They had a general election on their minds. Although father never said anything, I felt that he was bitterly disappointed. No one took the stories in the papers seriously anymore. They didn’t want to because they were afraid of the truth. On a lighter note, Wendy and I started an internet fan club on our computer. We called it Spot the Comet. Wendy was hoping to find a new boyfriend on the internet; however, mummy wasn’t amused when she found out about it. When all the fuss had died down, things seemed to return to normal in our part of the universe. The hordes of reporters and press photographers who had been camped outside our front gate for weeks vanished one morning. We were no longer news worthy. The papers had had their fun. The phone stopped ringing endlessly and the sacks of mail became a trickle of letters. Most people had forgotten all about the comet by late July. They were enjoying their annual vacations. They deserved them, for they had worked hard all year. The comet was a distant memory.
Then Icarus 9 finally arrived in our night sky. The coming of the comet was witnessed by millions worldwide. But she wasn’t seen as a threat. Many saw her as a thing of beauty instead; a new star shining brightly in the dark heavens. Some of our neighbours in the Close camped out in their back gardens waiting for her nightly appearances, weather permitting. Others held barbecues and celebrated her arrival with cold beer and burnt offerings. Cults, which were dedicated to the comet, sprang up all over the world. One strange cult in America was building a rocket, so their followers could fly up into space to meet the comet, but they ran out of money before they could complete the project. With every passing day though, she grew brighter and bigger in the night sky. We knew that she was drawing closer to us. We waited for her deadly embrace.
Monday, August 7th 2017
I marked the date off on the calendar in the kitchen. I was up first again, making Tommy’s favourite breakfast cereal, flakes. The others were still downstairs in the cellar. Tommy sat at the table eating his corn flakes in warm milk as I idly gazed on the kitchen window. It was a miserable day. The sky was grey and cloudy. No, I was wrong. It was an odd, sickly colour. I’d never seen anything like it before. I quickly dismissed the unusual sky from my mind as I made myself some breakfast. As I put two slices of whole bread into the electric toaster, I turned on the radio.
The early morning breakfast news came on shortly afterwards:
“A giant comet has struck Central California.
Many are feared dead…”
OH, DROKK! ZOOTWOSOME! VENUS PEBBLES!!!
Abandoning all thoughts of breakfast, I grabbed little Tommy, who looked bemused, still clutching his cereal spoon, and flew down the cellar stairs with him. I hastily bolted the door behind me. I felt a little safer.
Wendy looked up sleepily from her pillow. “What’s all the noise about, Jade?”
She saw it in my wild eyes. It said everything.
“Oh God,” she whispered fearfully as the colour drained from her cheeks.
We spent the day down the cellar. We huddled together around my pocket radio listening to the news, and it was all bad.
The BBC speaker on the radio read the grim news in an unemotional voice.
“Most of Los Angeles and San Francisco have
been destroyed by the giant comet. The two,
great American cities are burning out of
control. The President of the United States
has declared a ‘State of Emergency.’ An
ashen-faced spokesman for the State
Department said that there were few
survivors…”
I wondered if London was next.
“…and large comets have also hit other
towns and cities throughout the world.
Reports are still coming in of massive
destruction. Tens of millions are homeless.
So far, London has been mercifully spared,
but scientists predict that more comets may
be on the way…”
“It has started,” said father bleakly.
BOOK TWO
The Citadel and the Wolves
7. BLACK RAIN
It’s late spring 2018.
London is on ‘amber’ flood alert again.
I only mention this because the announcement has just appeared on breakfast TV spoiling my enjoyment of Tom and Jerry. Why do they keep on doing that? Jerry had just blown up Tom again. He always wins in the cat and mouse battles, which is a bit of a puzzle. Why is that? The mouse is an inferior animal to the cat, which is many more steps up on the evolutionary ladder. In theory, Tom should always win his battles against Jerry; however, it is only a cartoon after all!
On a more serious note, the flood alerts are a fairly commonplace thing now. We’re used to them. Everybody is blaming the comet for our changing weather patterns here in this country. It’s the same in the rest of Europe. We’re all experiencing severe weather conditions.
My American pen friend stopped writing abruptly in early August 2017 after the comet struck California. I never heard from her again, but I pray that she somehow survived. There were some survivors in the aftermath.
Other asteroids fell into the Pacific Ocean causing huge tidal waves in that region of the world. Tokyo is now underwater permanently, and many small islands have disappeared. A ‘medium-sized’ asteroid struck a remote part of the Australian bush. It left a crater five kilometres wide and one deep. The asteroids triggered off many earthquakes worldwide, and increased volcanic activity was reported in many parts of the globe. The Gulf States in the Middle East were also hit. The oil fires have been raging out of control for the past eight or nine months. London was spared. In fact, no asteroids hit Europe. We were lucky, we thought, but I wonder. Then a particularly large asteroid hit the polar ice cap. The ice is melting, and the seas are starting to rise all over the world.
I sometimes wondered about those on board the International Space Platform, Doctor David Newton and the others. Had they survived? They were on board the space platform when the deadly comet struck the earth. I’ll never know. Perhaps they did. But what if they had been marooned in space when the supply ferries from earth had stopped coming? It doesn’t bear thinking about and I won’t.
Floods and asteroids apart, I’ve got much more important things to worry about at the moment. I’m sitting my A-levels in the summer, and the worry is making me physically sick. My parents say that I shouldn’t worry, but I do. I do want to do well for father. If I get low grades, I’ll miss out on a place at university. Wendy did. She’s at secretarial college at the moment. That isn’t for me. I don’t see myself as a secretary in the future, sitting on the boss’s knee in a short skirt while I take dictation. That’s how I see it. Wendy quipped that she didn’t mind so long as he was young and handsome. Mum and dad overheard her. They weren’t amused needless to say. Wendy doesn’t take life very seriously. I do. I want to be a scientist. I admit that I’m very single-minded in that respect. I take after someone else very close to me, my father.
I frowned.
We turned the corner driving in our little electric city run around, a small, white van, The Lightning Compact, which has a top speed of 35 kph, though I rarely go over 20 kph in town. They’re so easy to drive too. There are only two foot controls, the accelerator pedal and the all-important brake pedal. Unlike a petrol vehicle, the electric van does away with the need for a clutch and the gears. Wendy and I borrowed the money from daddy to buy it. Since petrol rationing was introduced recently, the electric run around has become all the rage.
/> The giant vid hoarding on the street corner was advertising our little electric, town run around, The Lightning Compact. A pretty girl with no breasts, wearing cherry-red lipstick and a fixed smile implored us to buy one in her husky, sexy voice, which drifted across the road. She was speaking to the converted here because as I’ve already mentioned earlier, Wendy and I have got one, and I’m driving it this morning. The advertising on the hoarding changed to a bland government information notice advising us to conserve energy and water in these serious times. Then the cherry-red lipstick girl with no breasts and a fixed smile and a sexy, husky voice quickly returned.
We took a ‘short cut’ turning off Knight’s Hill and driving down Furneaux Avenue that took us into Tivoli Road. The public gardens, which were closed indefinitely and overgrown now with giant weeds and prickly brambles, quickly came into view on our left before we turned into Linton Grove by the old school taking us out onto Norwood High Street. Most of the shops were boarded-up. Some had sandbags on the doors. They were expecting floods again. They wouldn’t be disappointed.
I glanced at the depressing sky. It remained a permanent, sickly colour. We all miss the blue skies and the bright sun.
Wendy, who sat beside me in the front, passenger seat, giggled as she ended her call on her vid phone.
“Kevin Willis?” I asked unnecessarily, keeping my eye on the road ahead.
She announced, “I’m going to Kev’s 20th tonight.”
Yes, Wendy is still dating our Kev, the monster from the black lagoon.
“Mum won’t like it, Wendy,” I commented. “She doesn’t like you staying out late.”
She wasn’t bothered. “Daddy says it’s okay. Besides, Kev has promised to drive me home.” She frowned suddenly. “I’m not a little kid anymore, Jade. I’m almost nineteen. Some girls of my age in class at sec college are married. One has even got a kid of two.”
“Planning to marry Kev, are we, Sis?” I probed in a light-hearted way.
She giggled. “We’re nearly engaged.”
“Nearly engaged? What does that mean?”
“He’s saving up to buy the ring.”
We both laughed then.
The Citadel and the Wolves Page 10