“Juno!” The word seemed to echo in the awkward silence.
The wound in Callum’s scalp throbbed, and he wiped at the slow trickle of blood down his temple. Now that the sun was on the decline, cold began to bite at him in earnest. In an effort to break the awkward silence, he said, “Gregor, this is Anna and her sister Jem.”
His face deathly pale, Gregor’s gaze was broken, and he cast searching eyes on Callum. He swallowed as though against a dry throat. “You have brought her for me, Frostie. My Juno.” The words were barely audible and for the first time Callum saw pain in Gregor’s eyes, a confusion scraping away at the hard surface of his emotions to reveal raw vulnerability beneath.
Thrown by Gregor’s reaction, and unable to think of anything better to say, Callum repeated his introduction, “This is Anna and Jem, her sister. I rescued them from the shopping mall. There were bombs man! The power went out, and then a frikkin’ bus-.”
“Yes,” Gregor interrupted, still staring at Anna. “I heard explosion. And there is smoke.” He glanced to the distant horizon and the black smoke billowing from the town’s centre, then took a step forward, placing a trembling hand on Anna’s arm. He seemed to be testing to see if she was real. “And you saved her?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “My Juno.”
Anna tugged, pulling her arm from Gregor’s grip. “My name’s Anna.”
With the spell broken, Gregor took a quick step back as though bitten. “Anna,” he repeated, the implacable hardness of his face returning.
“And this is Jem.” Callum’s breath billowed white with the words. The temperature seemed to be dropping with each second that they stood on the pavement.
“It’s short for Jemima,” the young girl explained.
“And Frostie, he save you?”
“Well-”
“He saved us from the plane.”
“The plane?”
“We nearly died!” Jem blurted. Anna placed a protective arm around her shoulder.
“Can we go inside? It’s freezing out here.”
“You nearly died?” Gregor asked, ignoring Callum’s plea and turning his attention back to Anna. She nodded in return. “Please! Come inside,” he said, suddenly aware of the cold.
Disconcerted by Gregor’s behaviour, intrigued as to who ‘Juno’ was, Callum followed the girls into the house.
“Close door,” Gregor grunted as they stepped into the living room. “Keep in the heat. We have power failure so boiler not working.”
“We’ve been attacked!” Jem blurted as the living room door closed behind her. “We’re at war and we’ve been attacked!” Almost silent as they walked to the house, the burst of emotion in the young girl’s voice was a surprise. “They shot a plane out of the sky. It crashed ... on the street. We nearly ... died. The shopping centre burned down.” Words tripped over each other as she spoke between sobs.
Uncharacteristically, Gregor was instantly soothing. “Come in. Come in. Sit down.” He motioned for the girls to sit on the large sofa in the living room. Several half-stoned pairs of eyes turned to look. “Where’s Dominic?” Shannon asked.
For the first time, Callum realised he hadn’t seen Dominic since the bombs went off at the shopping centre. “I don’t know. We got separated.”
“If you mean the smaller man you were with, I saw him leave through the exit to car park.”
Callum simply stared at Anna for a moment as he processed the information. If Dominic had been anywhere in the car park when the plane hit, then he would have burned alongside Gregor’s shiny BMW.
Anna stood beside Callum, holding herself stiffly, one hand gripping Jem’s, “It was chaos.”
“Sit! Please, sit,” Gregor urged. “Tell me about it all.”
The next minutes were spent reliving the horror that unfolded at the shopping centre; how the bombs went off, the carnage in the hall, the lights failing, and then the bus breaking through the window and how Callum had saved them from the plane that crashed into the already burning shopping mall. She left out the fact that she had been spotted by two plainclothes police officers and used Callum to escape them. Jem sat on the sofa, tight against Anna’s side, chest heaving as she tried to stifle her sobs.
Gregor listened, his eyes flitting from the girls, to Callum, and then the window as though searching for something outside even though the curtains were only partially open, and the view revealed nothing more than the terrace on the opposite side of the road. He made no effort to interrupt Anna’s flow of words. And, as she finished relating how Callum had led them beneath the bridge as the plane hit the mall, he merely asked that Shannon bring his khaki holdall from the bedroom. His face was inscrutable, emotion only visible for a fraction of a second when he caught sight of Anna, who he now seemed to be studiously ignoring.
He commanded Toadie to open the curtains, demanded that another torchlight or candle be found, then told Callum to sit at the table before disappearing into the kitchen. The sound of running water could be heard, along with a grumble that there was no hot water, and then he reappeared.
Anna, Jem, Toadie, Jake, Aaron, Starlet, and Shannon watched mesmerised as he took the khaki holdall and placed a roll of tightly bound fabric on the table. Inside, neatly arrayed in fabric partitions were tubes of ointment, stacks of plasters, rolls of bandage, scissors, curved needles, black thread, and packets of antiseptic wipes. Without speaking, he ran a finger across the roll, then pulled out a pair of tweezers and a can of antiseptic spray.
Gregor moved behind Callum, demanding that he remove his jacket and t-shirt. Cold fingers traced along Callum’s back as Gregor muttered indecipherable words in his native tongue.
“What is it?” Callum asked.
“This will sting.” The stinging was simultaneous with his words.
A cloud of antiseptic sprayed across Callum’s scalp. “Fu-”
“Language!” Gregor reprimanded. “We have ladies in the house, Frostie.”
Shannon snorted with derision and cast a scowl at Anna.
“Sorry!” Callum hissed through gritted teeth as the pain from the antiseptic seared his scalp. “Damn, that hurts!”
Several seconds passed in silence with all eyes on Gregor as he dabbed at Callum’s scalp.
“Hell!” Callum hissed through clenched teeth, forcing back the expletives he wanted to shout. “Is it bad?”
“Is nothing. Just a cut.”
“It feels like my head is about to explode,” Callum seethed as the stinging pain intensified, sweeping across his scalp in waves.
“Is anaesthetic too. Will help with pain. I have paracetamol-”
“Here.” Toadie reached over the back of the sofa, joint in hand. “Take a drag on this, it’ll help with the pain.”
Callum eyed the smoking joint. “Nah, mate. Not my thing.”
Toadie made a disinterested but derisive snort. “Your call,” he said and slumped back down into the sofa. Anna winced at Callum’s pain as Gregor hovered above his head.
“Only small scratches,” Gregor continued. “They will heal.”
“They look deep to me,” Anna offered. “Perhaps we should take him to hospital? They could need stitches.”
“Stitches!”
“Psht! Hospital. No. Gregor will fix this.”
“Are they deep, then?”
“Well-”
“Is scratch. No need to cry like baby.”
“I’m not crying-”
“I have seen worse.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“No.”
“Then maybe we should take him to A&E?”
“I know what to do, Ju- ... Anna. You not to worry. Gregor fix this.”
“How come you know what to do?”
“I just do,” Gregor replied and replaced the spray and tweezers into their compartments before removing a case of needles and a piece of card wound with black thread.
“Oh my God! Are you going to sew it up?” Jem blurted.
Callum shuddered, nause
a beginning to swirl in his belly. “Maybe I should go to the hospital?”
“Gregor always takes care of us, when we get hurt,” Jake said from the sofa.
“Just sit still, Frostie. I sew you up nice and neat. You know I do a good job.”
Callum gave a mute nod and sat in absolute stillness, gritting his teeth as Gregor worked, forcing himself to endure the pricking that now added to the sensation of burning on his scalp and the throbbing pain deep inside his head. A couple of beers and some paracetamol would help to dull the pain.
The stitching finished, Callum’s scalp liberally sprayed with the stinging antiseptic, Gregor washed his hands and cleansed the tools, then replaced them all in the pouch, retied the strings and packed it all away in his khaki holdall. “Is good job. You will live. Go to put on clean t-shirt.”
Callum rose to obey the command as Gregor pulled out his mobile. “Mobile communications still not working. There is no power yet.”
“I think the power grid has been attacked,” Callum offered. “It’s the only explanation.”
“Bit far-fetched that is, mate,” Aaron scoffed.
Ignoring Aaron, Gregor asked, “Why the only explanation?”
“Well, it’s what makes most sense. The electrics don’t work. Mobiles don’t work. That plane crashed, and I’ll bet it was because its operating systems went down.”
“Callum said it was an electric magnet attack,” Jem offered. “And that’s what brought the plane down.”
“An electromagnetic pulse,” Callum corrected. “It’s the one thing that ties everything together. If a pulse is strong enough, it can make the electrics crash. A nuclear bomb detonated at high altitude-”
For the first time Toadie sat up with something approaching animation. “You saying we’ve been nuked?”
“Maybe. I don’t know what else it could be.”
“Nuclear attack! Is bullshit.” Gregor said. “That is for movies. Not for real life.”
Callum shrugged, unwilling to argue his point. He had no other explanation for what could have caused the simultaneous loss of power across the town and the plane falling from the sky.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As the bus blocked the sunlight, adding to the shadows in the already greyed-out shop, Vicky had taken a step through the doors to follow the girls, and instantly frozen, watching in horror as the bus smashed into the windows, shattering the glass, and forcing the door’s metal frame to bend, crack, then yawn open. The mannequins seemed to come to life, one swaying in its fur trimmed mustard-coloured coat and woollen beanie to kiss another with a similar coat in an alternative, on-trend, grey before rocking back on its pedestal. She flinched as another explosion sent vibrations through the building. The mannequins toppled and fell, crashing between a carousel of skirts and another of evening dresses. A ceiling tile crashed a few feet to her left and she yelped as a hand clamped on her shoulder. Blood trickled from a wound in his scalp and he was mouthing at her, shouting through the noise that swam in her head. She gave a final glance to the shop’s interior, noticed figures clambering through the empty window, then relented and followed Joshua into the main hall.
The journey back to the police station had taken three hours, the escape from the shopping mall a miracle. Joshua had led her through the wide hallway, pulling her out through the doors just as the plane hit the building. Every cell in her body felt the vibration of its impact, and then their journey had become a desperate effort to run from the fire and the falling debris.
Sitting back at her desk, Vicky took another sip of coffee from the plastic cap of PC Mandy Pattison’s flask. It was the only warm drink available and was laced with sugar. Vicky loathed sugar in her coffee but, with her hands trembling and the shock of the afternoon still coursing through her veins, she was glad of the sweetness, barely aware of the plastic-tinged taste of the lukewarm drink. She read through the first two paragraphs of her report and began to detail the incidents immediately before the blast, trying to describe the middle eastern looking guy who had pushed the rucksack beneath the bench as accurately as possible. Looking back on the afternoon, Vicky began to wonder if she was dreaming. It still seemed unreal.
As she and Joshua had walked back from the mall, they had talked about it with horrified and confused amazement, barely aware of the stalled cars that filled the roads, and the dead traffic lights. The idea of the shopping centre being targeted for attack was insane. That it had also been hit by a plane was bizarre. This wasn’t New York, for heaven’s sake. Freshney Place wasn’t a financial hub. If the target had been a glass-walled and towering bank on Canary Warf, she could understand, but who in their right mind would target an impoverished northern fishing town like Grimsby? On the world stage it was a speck of dust and, even in England, it was just an inconsequential backwater.
She took another sip of warm coffee, finished writing the description of the suspected bomber, and took a paracetamol to help dull the pain in her leg where the shard of glass had penetrated. She had forgotten about the injury until they were almost back to the police station and had it cleaned and dressed by one of the front office staff who was also a first aider. The room contained four other shared desks and was unusually quiet. The continual buzz of the overhead light above the desk she shared with Joshua was missing, as was the perpetual clack of fingers on keyboards as her colleagues tapped away at their digital paperwork. No phones rang. Without lights, the room was darkening as the early winter sun lowered. She shivered. The heating had stopped working along with the lights, phones, and the computer system that hooked up every aspect of communication within the force. There was no access to files, no processing of charge sheets and, even more bizarrely, all police vehicles were out of action. That was what made it all seem surreal. How could a whole fleet of cars, and vans, stop working? It made no sense.
One theory was that the explosion at the shopping centre had taken down the power lines with it. This didn’t explain the lack of working cars, or the aeroplane crashing into the building and making the layers of carparking a stack of concrete pancakes with a layer of police surveillance van spread between them. She gave a shudder as she thought of their van parked on level three, thankful that they hadn’t been inside at the time the plane hit. She took another sip of coffee, only vaguely aware of the milling officers in the room and the low chatter. The room greyed-out a little more. Snow had begun to cling to the window frame, and across town it was laying over rooves and settling on treetops. She remembered the weather warning on yesterday’s news. A cold front was coming in, temperatures were dropping, they were in for a cold winter, perhaps the coldest for decades.
In her mind she watched the young runaways, Anna Crofton and her sister Jemima, climb through the glassless window beside the bus and wondered if the man had taken her back to 12 Lovett Street. She finished the last dregs of coffee. A group of officers had congregated around one desk, dissecting the afternoon. A wave of guilt washed over Vicky. She should be out there, helping people. They should all be out there, but without instruction from the top, they were without guidance. No phones, no radios, no emails, and the one man who should be here giving direction, had set off this morning for Halifax to attend a conference. They were without leadership, and the whole station seemed to have come to a grinding halt. She finished writing her report, read it through, corrected several spellings, then signed the bottom. It had taken Joshua quite some time to find a paper copy of the form for her to fill in. Going digital was all very well, but when this kind of thing happened, the whole system fell apart.
“EMP,” PC Allan Baldwin was saying.
One of the other officers laughed out loud.
“Well, why not? We’ve lost all power. Cars are stalled in the street, and the plane that hit Freshney Place just fell out of the sky. Rick saw it. He said it just kind of fell, then glided down.”
“Where’s your tin hat, Baldwin?”
“Shut it, Cash!”
“You don’t think it was a
imed at the building then?”
“Rick said not. He reckons it lost power, and from what he said, it lost power at the same time as everything else.”
“What the hell’s an EMP.”
“Something from fairy tales,” PC Steve Freestone scoffed. “Or Hollywood.”
“Nope. They’re a real threat.”
“If they were a real threat, then we’d have been briefed.”
“They’re real enough. The House of Commons Defence Committee saw them as a developing threat in 2012 and the US convened a special Committee in 2017 to evaluate the threat. Both countries specifically mentioned Iran as a possible source if they ever got hold of nukes.”
“Unlikely that Iran has got hold of nuclear weapons! We’d have heard about it.”
“And pigs fly!”
PC Frank Cash spoke up, “I’ve never even heard about them, so what exactly are they?”
“EMP. Electro-magnetic pulse. It’s an electrical pulse that interferes with the earth’s magnetic field. We get them all the time, from the sun, but usually they don’t interfere.”
Freestone scoffed again. “Are you seriously saying that the sun blasted the shopping centre and made a plane crash into it.”
“No! Don’t be a bloody arse! Why are you always riding my back?”
“Hey, calm it you two,” Vicky intervened. “Let the man talk. He could be onto something.”
“In this case, I don’t think it’s the sun that’s caused the blackout. Our government declared war yesterday.”
“I thought it was this morning.”
“Yesterday,” he repeated, “there was a lag between the declaration and them announcing it to the nation.”
“Makes sense. Go on.”
“Well, if they have the capability, the Iranians could have set off a nuke high in the atmosphere. If it was strong enough, it could knock out the grid and disturb the communications network, even power down a plane mid-flight.”
“Nuked! You really are talking out of your arse.”
“Hell!”
“Shut it, Freestone,” Vicky said with terse annoyance. “How long would a pulse like that knock out the power for?” she continued.
Dark Winter Series (Book 1): Dark Winter Page 9