by Jack Ziebell
Marius looked at the girl. “Well if they wake up and she’s gone, we’ll be on the run for kidnapping, not just trespassing in a hospital, although I think under the circumstances we can justify it, yah?”
Brian looked at the five bodies; the mother was a big lady and probably weighed more than the security guards slumped next to her. The smoke was definitely visible now, down past the elevators. He knew what he had to do. “Marius, get a wheel chair and a stretcher, we can’t leave these people in here to die.” He turned to the girl, “What’s your name?”
“Tabby, mom calls me Tabitha,” she said and sobbed.
“Tabby,” said Brian, “It’s going to be alright, we’re going to help your mother and these people, but you have to help us and do as we say, right?
“Really?” The girl looked at Brian with suspicion.
He could tell Marius thought he was making a mistake, but Marius didn’t argue, no doubt banking an ‘I told you so’ for later. He quickly found a wheel chair, but stretchers seemed to have been replaced with trolleys.
Marius looked down at the obese woman and frowned. “We’ll have to carry her.” They grabbed an arm and a leg each. “Jesus she weighs a fucking ton!”
Brian strained, they could lift her, just, but carrying her any distance would have been difficult. “Just drag her.”
They pulled the woman by her feet and she slid relatively easily along the smooth hospital floor, aided by her purple velour jumpsuit.
They didn’t even try the elevators and pushed the door to the stairwell open. Smoke wafted through, other floors were also on fire below, but the fire doors were keeping the worst of it out.
Brian wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “Christ, this is a nightmare.”
Marius glared at him.
“Tabby,” said Brian, “Can you try and hold your Mom’s head as we slide her down the stairs?”
She nodded.
Painfully slowly they made their way down, step by step, Brian pulling the mother’s feet and Marius trying to control her descent by holding her arms, also doing his best not to drop his lighter or set himself alight. Tabby, coughing heavily from the smoke, was struggling to protect her mother’s head from the steps but it was already bleeding from several deep gashes. As they neared the ground floor, something on a higher floor exploded and the building shook. The girl screamed but Brian and Marius didn’t pause and continued their descent with renewed speed, finally reaching the stairwell exit.
The lobby, now only dimly lit by moonlight through the large glass doors, was filled with motionless people, slumped in chairs or lying on the floor where they fell. The smell was overpowering, Brian noticed that everyone had at best wet themselves, including the woman they were carrying. Marius grabbed a wheelchair next to an old lady who looked liked she’d fallen from it badly, limbs awkwardly bent. He straightened them out, more out of respect than hope it would help her.
“What’s wrong with them?” the girl cried, “Why won’t they wake up?”
“I don’t know,” Brian lied; he had a very rough idea of what happened, some sort of interference with the brain by the swathe, knocking askew the electric nerve impulses that keep us ticking over, temporarily disabling minds or worse. He didn’t want to think about worse.
“Here, you can push your Mom outside, she’d be happy to know you are helping her.” It was all Brian could think of to say to calm her. “Marius, we’ve got to get as many people out as possible.”
He turned to go back into the stairwell but could see through the glass in the door that it was already filled with thick smoke.
“Don’t bother – it’s not worth it,” said Marius. “Take everyone out of the lobby, say a prayer for the rest.”
They spent over two hours dragging people from the lobby waiting area, reception desk and ground floor café. They laid them out in the parking lot, from where they could see smoke billowing from the higher floors. When they finished they collapsed with exhaustion, backs to a lamppost.
“Now what?” said Brian.
Marius was resting his head in his hands. “Now I am too tired to think, but from the looks of it, this is everywhere.”
Brian scanned the horizon, he could see smoke rising from different parts of the city. Beyond the car park, the cars on
Main Street were stopped at various angles. He could just make out the absence of engine sound; strange as he thought a few accelerator pedals would have had feet wedged lifeless and heavy upon them.
Tabby was sitting a little away from them, stroking her mother’s hair but staring vacantly into the distance, to the hills past the smoke. It was too much for any of them to take in. He turned to Marius, who had lit a cigarette and was looking thoughtful; too tired to think? He knew Marius too well for that to be true, the man never switched off.
“How long do you think until they wake up?” asked Brian.
“Who knows? Either they wake up in a few hours and start cleaning up the mess or maybe they’ll never wake up. Rule of threes will apply.”
“Rule of threes?”
“Yah, you know; we die in three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food.”
“Oh,” said Brian, “You forgot three month’s without hope.”
“Well I guess that one will only apply to us, or anyone else who is left by then,” said Marius, his thoughts already somewhere beyond their conversation.
Chapter 16
Asefa was gone for what seemed like an eternity and Tim was ready to get out of the crawling darkness.
Mahmood was also growing impatient. “Your friend, curse him! He has left us!”
“Do not be so quick to judge those you don’t know Mahmood,” said Tim.
Suddenly there was movement in the light at the top of the shaft. Asefa’s voice echoed down to them. “You are not going to believe this shit man - something has happened up here, something bad.”
“What? What is it?” Tim shouted back.
“You need to see for yourself. Don’t climb - those rails were as loose as you thought. I am going to lower the lift by hand with the crank, it will be slow but it’ll work.”
The lift was slowly lowered and even more slowly raised. Eventually they burst into the blinding midday sun. Asefa was bent over, sweating and leaning on the crank.
“Where is my man, he will pay for his insolence.” Mahmood shouted as he stepped out of the lift, his bravado had returned now he had been freed from the darkness.
Asefa was panting, trying to catch his breath. “I don’t think he will Mahmood, look.”
They looked to where Asefa was pointing; several bodies lay on the hot ground.
“My men,” said Mahmood, “Are they shot?”
“No not shot, but something has happened to them. Maybe gas?” said Asefa.
Tim knew the army was dirty, but gassing its own people would be a step too far even for them, at least he thought so. The Chinese? Unlikely, why risk their reputation and prospects in Africa over one small mine? Further away he could see more bodies, some slumped awkwardly as if they had suddenly fallen from where they stood. He pulled out his satellite phone and tried to dial the office; nothing. He tried dialling the four other numbers he could actually remember, including Sarah’s sat phone and his parents’ home in England; nothing, the phone was clearly dead; they’d have to deal with this on their own. He thought for a moment. “Asefa, help me move these people, the way they are lying they could be choking on their tongues. Mahmood, you too – just roll people onto their sides and make sure their heads are tilted back.”
“Yes Mister Tim,” said Mahmood obediently and sprang into action quickly for his portly frame.
It didn’t take Tim long to see that some of those who had fallen badly were already dead, suffocated. He also noticed that the sea of people stretched off down the road towards the village and mosque in the distance. “Asefa, what the fuck has happened here?”
“I don’t know man but I don�
��t like it. I once heard of something like this, where gas built up under a lake and one day it came out and drowned half the town. A friend of mine was there, he said he saw people clutching their throats and just drowning in the air. They said it was carbon monoxide from under the ground, volcanic stuff. But there ain’t no lakes or volcanoes around here. And if it was a heavy gas, it would have gone down the mine shaft too.”
Mahmood was in a panic, frantically turning bodies like a pale automaton.
“Mahmood!” Tim called to him, “You can stop. Mahmood stop. If they were going to die they’re dead already, otherwise there is nothing we can do.”
Asefa dragged a young man underneath the awning of the office. “We must move them into the shade, if we leave them in this sun, by noon they will be cooked like chickens.”
“You’re right,” said Tim, “Asefa, drive into town and get help.”
Asefa climbed into the SUV but Tim didn’t see the engine start. He could see Asefa turning the key repeatedly and looking under the dash.
Asefa got out and looked under the bonnet. “Looks like somebody melted the electrics, this car is not going no place. I’ll go on foot.” With that he jogged off down the road.
Tim looked at the sea of bodies and a sinking feeling grew within him.
By midday he and Mahmood had dragged most of the people near the mine into the partial shade of the rock face and an assortment of buildings.
Mahmood was crying. “Allah! Why have you done this to me? Why?” He continued mumbling to himself in Arabic, prayers Tim guessed and hoped someone up there was listening.
Tim looked up to see Asefa coming towards them on an old bicycle, precariously rolling a second empty bike beside him. As he stopped, both bikes toppled over and he rolled into the dirt. He stood up, shaking his head and looking at the ground. “It’s the same in town, whatever happened, happened there too. Couldn’t find a single person conscious, just fire and death.”
Tim squinted and looked towards the town, he could see smoke rising in the distance.
“I tried to move some people,” said Asefa, “But didn’t know where to move them too. I didn’t know. I… I brought these,” he motioned to the bicycles but stared at the ground in front of him.
The thought of Sarah burned into Tim’s mind, as the fear that the madness around them might not be as isolated as it first appeared developed into a thought. “Asefa, we need to get back to the office, it’s in the nearest town of any size anyway and we need to see how far this has spread, my guess is not too far, but I want to be certain.”
“What about me?” said Mahmood.
Tim put his hand on Mahmood’s shoulder. “You stay and look after your people the best you can Mahmood. Try to give them water from a wet rag but don’t drown them, and don’t turn them.”
“But, but…” Mahmood didn’t have a good argument to respond and in any case Tim didn’t feel like balancing him on the back of his bike for a hundred kilometres over unmade roads.
“Asefa, lets pack up some gear and water from the car and cycle – no chance there were any cars in town?”
“No Timmy, I didn’t check them all, but the ones I did look at were same as ours, wiring shot to hell, like they were struck by lightning. If we’re going to go, we are going to have to pedal ourselves.”
“Well I hope you had your Wheetabix,” said Tim, thinking that those words had never been spoken more forlornly; Mahmood had probably never even eaten breakfast cereal and Asefa had probably never had a Wheetabix and neither were living in the UK in the nineties to see the commercial.
He and Asefa loaded up their backpacks with anything they thought useful; first aid kit from the car, water, Leatherman and any food they could find; which consisted of some granola bars, peanuts and Somali bread rolls. They tied additional water bottles under the bikes crossbars in some tattered plastic bags.
Tim climbed onto his bike. “OK, lets go.”
“Here,” said Asefa, throwing him a Somali scarf, “You are going to need that.”
Tim tied the scarf around his head, put back on his sunglasses and they hit the road. If it wasn’t for his worry for Sarah, this would feel like the beginning of another adventure to tell the folks about in the pub beer garden back home. But setting off he felt it was the beginning of something worse.
Chapter 17
Brian looked at Marius, who was happily munching on a Snickers bar. Marius threw one over to him. “Good for energy.”
They had been resting on the grass verge in the hospital car park for over an hour. Brian took a bite of the Snickers; damn they had never tasted that good before. He could taste all of the ingredients; the peanuts, the chocolate, the caramel but most of all the damn sugar. He could feel the energy surging back through his body as it was nourished. He tried to think of the last time he had physically exerted himself to the point of exhaustion but quickly gave up. He should do it more often, once things had got back to normal. Back to normal? Whatever happened, he was pretty sure ‘back to normal’ was not going to be one of the scenarios. He’d probably have to explain why he didn’t tell anyone else about his Faraday cage theory, even though he had thought there was only a point-one-percent chance of it having any affect and in any case he’d only thought of it with about five minutes to spare. Could anyone else have made it to safety if he had told them? Well a few more people could have fit into the MRI room, but not many, and if there had been a panic they’d never have got in and shut the door in time.
His brain was flicking through the other possible shelters that may have protected people. Anything that was specifically shielded against electromagnetic attack should have worked; at least a few government nuclear facilities should have had that. The military had always been wary of a Russian electromagnetic attack on US soil; both sides had been aware of the risks EMP posed, should a nuclear warhead be detonated in the upper atmosphere. When atomic bombs were tested at altitude, scientists had taken note of the mysterious side effect that disabled electronics for miles in all directions; and that was in the days when electronics were built like tractors on both sides of the Pacific. So yes, there should at least be some military types buried underground somewhere wondering what the fuck happened and what they were supposed to do about it with what remained of their authority. He was glad he wasn’t in their shoes.
But who else? Anyone who had been in the equivalent of a Faraday cage, but what would suffice? Metal buildings had too many windows, air vents and doors, plus large sections that were often made of non-conductive materials. Cars had rubber tyres and a metal construction making them good in a lightning storm, but the windows meant they offered no protection from a giant wave of EMP. Something like a shipping container would be perfect, but you’d have to be in there with the door tightly shut, meaning it was unlikely that anyone had made it that way. Submarines, yes they’d be ideal, as long as they hadn’t suffered too much damage; the point of a Faraday cage was that the metal cage you were in didn’t touch anything conductive inside the cage and he didn’t know enough about submarine design to say whether that was the case. Perhaps the deep ocean also provided some protection, with its salts and dissolved metals, who knew? He shuddered to think of the watery graves of thousands of sailors that may have instantly been created.
And planes? Jesus they must have all gone down, adding to the electrical fires already ablaze in the cities. And what about the nuclear plants, how many were there in the country again? A hundred, hundred-and-fifty? How did their fail-safes work? He thought he’d seen something once that if the electricity to a plant failed, it would shut off an electro magnet holding the control rods in place, automatically dropping them into the reactor to shut it down. But did that completely shut it down if nobody came to fix it, for days, weeks, longer? He didn’t know, but wished he did. Where was the nearest nuclear reactor anyway? What a mess, what a fucking mess. He hoped everyone woke up soon and started clearing it up before it got any worse… Ships cabins, in steerage, no win
dows? But the ships themselves would be in a bad way, probably ablaze and drifting in the oceans without their engines or instruments for navigation.
Marius broke his train of thought. “Hey Brian, check this out.”
Marius was holding his keys near a metal railing when suddenly they jumped from his hand and attached themselves to the rail. “Cool yah! Das ist magnetised!” He had an irritating habit of slipping back into German when he got excited.
“Must have been some kind of effect of the swathe,” said Brain.
“Duh really? I just thought it was hospital car park magic - of course it was the fucking swathe, but fuck knows how it did that!”
Brian pulled the keys off the railing and looked at them. “I guess it wasn’t straight EMP, it must have had some other properties, stuff we haven’t seen before; which explains the larger number of electrical fires and the affect on people. EMP doesn’t usually have any impact on us. We have a small amount of iron in our blood; but not enough that would allow our brains to fry like a micro-chip.”
He scanned the smoking horizon, while his mind scanned through the possible physical properties of the swathe. What the hell could have caused what they were seeing before them? Neither he nor Marius could come up with a rational answer based on the science they knew, nor an answer based on pure speculative guesswork. “So where do we go from here? Where are your parents and what about that girl I heard when I called your place?”
Marius kept his eyes fixed on the horizon. “My parents are in Berlin, and I don’t think I will be flying home soon, do you? The girl, I didn’t really know her – we met at a club last night and she left last night when I did. She gave me her number, but you know, they say you should wait three days…”
“Well,”
“That was a joke Brian, I don’t think her number would work and I didn’t even know her second name, let alone her address. If nothing had happened I don’t think I would have called her back anyway – she told me science was just a ‘belief’ and should be placed equally alongside all other beliefs! Ha!” He shook his head. “What about you Brian? Family?”