by Calum Kerr
It was only at this point that Stan noticed that their group contained no children apart from the girl that Nicola had been carrying. He guessed it was partly because it was the middle of a school day, but maybe they’d also not made it away from the road – either through a misguided belief that it was safer to stay, or because with children to slow them down they hadn’t made it to their impromptu gathering in the woods. Whatever it was, Stan wasn’t going to worry about children who weren’t even there, he just thought it was interesting.
He wondered what sort of airburst had caused the rain of burning metal and wondered if one of the jets they’d seen previously had exploded for some reason. There was no way of knowing, unless he went back to search for larger debris; something he was definitely not going to do. He was just curious. With each new event, each new catastrophe, he grew more and more confused about just what was going on.
As though his thoughts about children had cast a spell, he noticed that Nicola’s girl was awake and now standing next to her. The girl was unhurt by the falling fire, but her mother was cradling her upper arm. She had torn a strip off the bottom of her t-shirt and was attempting to wrap and tie it with one hand. Stan stepped over and took the strip from her, tying it over a shallow burn which was weeping ever so slightly.
He smiled at her as she winced. “Don’t worry, love, we’ll find somewhere soon where you can wash that and put some cream on it.”
She returned a weak smile. “Well, I hope so. After all, somehow I seem to have become the leader of this gang and I guess I’m responsible if we don’t.” Stan thought that the smile lit up her face, but he could see signs of stress and pressure which were undoubtedly not new, but he imagined that today wasn’t helping matters much.
“Don’t worry. This is England, not America. You can’t go very far without finding another town, or at least a farmhouse, hotel or pub. Hell, I’m surprised these woods have gone on as long as they have. I thought the only trees left in this country were being kept in nature reserves.”
She nodded, partly in agreement, partly acknowledging his attempt to make her feel better. “That’s true, we’re not exactly out in the wilds, are we?” Her smile was more genuine this time and Stan thought he might be making a little break-through with her.
“I’m Stan, by the way.” He held out his hand.
She took it and shook it. “I know, I remember.” Nice! thought Stan. “I’m Nicola.” She smiled again. “But I guess I’ve been loud-mouthed and annoyingly assertive enough for you to remember that too.”
Stan was about to respond with something complimentary which would let her know that she didn’t need to be so hard on herself, when Dave walked up and ruined the moment, as usual.
“Stan? Erm… Nicola? I think we’ve found somewhere.” He pointed over to the left and Stan saw the edge of a path which seemed to have simply appeared in the woods. Small posts with swags of rope linking them headed off into the undergrowth and a few of the group were already milling around a sign at the end. Dave led the three of them over, and Stan was impressed to see how the group parted to let Nicola through. He moved in behind her, stealing some of her authority by his proximity to her, and so was able to see the sign. It was a rustic board with an arrow pointing along the path. It said ‘Downside Outdoor Pursuits Centre.’
Thirteen
Despite being able to do forty wrist curls, with 15 kilos, three times a week at the gym, Tony was only able to manage about twenty yards over the uneven ground before he needed to set Sam back onto her feet. The large lump of twisted metal had been followed by a rain of smaller pieces, some of which had fallen heavily into the undergrowth sending up small streamers of dark smoke. Others had drifted down around him, sparks in the darkness, like being inside the descending cloud from a firework. One had lit on his hand, like a hot needle digging into his flesh, and for a moment he nearly dropped the girl, but he’d managed a few more steps as the rain came to an end.
Finally, unable to go any further with his burden he let her slide from his arms and was grateful to see that she was able to stand now. She had stopped screaming when he picked her up, but she was still making small whimpering noises. He tried rubbing her shoulder and making shushing noises, but he wasn’t sure that he was really having any effect.
He’d never been good with crying women. When they started it was usually his cue to leave. And, if he could manage it, the crying would only happen when he was long gone. Or so he assumed. He had so little contact with the women he saw, that he could only imagine their heartbreak and sobbing when they realised he was never coming back, and that his initial promises had all been false.
Sam slowly came back to reality, reaching into the small handbag which Tony only now noticed she had been clutching, for a tissue to dry her eyes. She wiped them, and her face, and blew her nose. Her hand dipped back into her bag, disappearing the tissue, and came out with an even smaller bag. From that she extracted a compact mirror, which she used to inspect her face. Then, with a tut, she started to pull out small items of makeup with which she started to reconstruct the mask which had been disturbed by her tears.
Tony stood and watched her, wanting to tell her to hurry up. The urge to get away from whatever cataclysm they had been caught up in had finally taken him over and he wished he had gone with the others. At least they would have had someone who could have taken care of Sam for him. He’d known her for such a short while but was already resenting the responsibility she represented. He didn’t know the words, however, to ask her to put her makeup away and come with him away from the zone of fallout, so he simply watched her.
With each dab of foundation and each sweep of a brush she seemed to grow more composed, and he started to reason that letting her have this time to rebuild her façade was probably the best answer to her distress. At least, he thought, as long as nothing else blows up while we’re standing here.
Finally she seemed satisfied with her repair job. She put her tools back into their pouch, and the pouch back into her bag, and turned to him. He could still see the redness around her eyes, but he had to admit she looked a lot better. In fact, she looked a lot more than simply ‘better’. She might not have red hair, but Tony was suddenly glad to be responsible for her. This whole event might not turn out to be a complete washout after all.
“I’m so sorry, Tony. I know I need to keep my head if we’re going to be okay, but it was just such a shock. I mean, I was talking to them and then… then…”
Tony could see she was on the edge of tears again, and moved to head them off. “I know. Terrible shock. Terrible business all round. I don’t know what the world’s coming to. But what else were you going to do? Terrible shock. Terrible business. But you’re okay now. I’m okay. We’re okay. Still, I think, maybe, the others were right. Whatever’s going on over there,” he pointed in the direction in which he thought the road lay, though he honestly was no longer sure, “is obviously still going on and might even be spreading. We need to get somewhere safe, somewhere where we can contact the authorities and get help. I think we should see if we can catch up to them.”
Sam took all this in, and Tony was pleased to see the way her composure came back as he spoke. Maybe this responsibility lark was not as hard as it was cracked up to be.
“You’re right, Tony. So right. I’m so glad I stayed with you.”
Tony nodded, and smiled, looked around them and then, taking her hand, led her off into the woods.
Fourteen
The path very quickly turned into a trail which led through woods which became more and more manicured as they progressed. It was hemmed in on both sides by more of the stake and rope fences, causing them to walk side by side. Nicola found herself at the front, of course, with Alyssa at her side. The girl seemed remarkably unaffected by the day, although she had been quieter than usual. She looked around her as they walked, seemingly enjoying this unscheduled trip into the countryside, and Nicola wondered how much of what had happened she was actua
lly taking in.
Stan and his friend, who she seemed to think was called Dave, and actually might be his brother now she thought about it, walked behind her. Stan seemed to have decided to be her bodyguard, or consort, or something, since he had first guided her entrance to the forest. Behind them the rest of the group had paired up. Some were nursing wounds from the falling debris, but each of these had found someone to help them, to keep pressure on wounds or help them walk where the injury was to feet or legs. It was a model of altruism that, to be honest, she didn’t expect. Not in England, anyway. She had encountered some nice people, sure, people who would willingly help each other for no personal gain. But she had also met many selfish people who just wanted to keep their heads down and wait for someone else to take responsibility. People like Tony. She hadn’t been able to believe the show he’d put on. What was he hoping to prove? What was he hoping to achieve? All he’d managed to do in the end was convince three other people to risk their lives with him. She knew he was scared, but where was the basic human desire to run away. Only an Englishman, she thought, even as she cringed at her mental voice sounding like a typical American.
Since she’d come back she’d done her best to fit in. She knew how people in this country thought of Americans and, hell, she agreed with most of them. It didn’t help that Rob had embodied all of those things that people hated most about Americans. He was loud, brash, opinionated, and ignorant of anything outside his corner of the world. His concession to exoticism and worldly-wisdom was to have married a once-English woman. She wasn’t sure which she hated most: that she had been a trophy wife, or that it had taken her six years to realise it.
On her return she had tried to fit back into English society, regain the accent she had worked so hard to lose at fourteen, when she had found herself as the ‘foreign’ girl in her class, tried to remember what it was to be quiet, and to keep her opinions to herself, and to complain only about the weather. She had tried, but somehow the second half of her life was proving much harder to shed than the first.
Still, she reflected, if it was the dreaded influence of Americanisation – an international infection which she was accused of spreading by anyone with more than one drink in them – that had led to the cooperation between this random group of strangers, then she was finally pleased to have been a carrier of the virus.
As the path wound through the woods, occasional breaks in the ropes led to activity areas: a platform with a zip-wire running from it, a rope net slung from a tree, a rickety bridge over a large mud puddle. But something was wrong. The zip wire sagged in the middle almost to the ground, ready to guide anyone stupid enough to use it straight into the floor. The net had come loose at one corner and hung down like a malevolently winking eye. Slats had fallen from the bridge giving it a gap-toothed smile. It had seemed such a find: an Outdoors Centre would be well-stocked with first aid materials, and who knew, they might be far enough away from the EMP for working phones or at least a radio. Now Nicola was starting to realise that what they would find would be an empty building, its sign hanging loose, and no help to be found.
At least, she thought, if it was empty and abandoned they could break in and find shelter while they did what they could with the injuries and protect themselves from any more falling debris. If they were lucky there might be some abandoned supplies. Even some old sheets would help as makeshift bandages.
They weren’t lucky.
They rounded the final corner into a wide clearing and Nicola discovered that even her carefully studied, bleak outlook had been hopelessly optimistic. At some point there had been a fire which had reduced the Centre to a few blackened shards of metal framing: rotted fingers grasping at the sky; and a pile of ashes and molten glass. Small streams of smoke emerging from leaves which had piled in the debris of the buildings showed that the rain of burning that they had endured in the forest had reached at least this far, the clearing providing no barrier to the sky.
Nicola took only a few steps into the clearing and the group formed into a semicircle behind her, lining the boundary between trees and space. A low moan came from a few who had not realised the significance of the broken-down activity areas.
Nicola thought that she should probably say something to them. These people had followed her, and she had led them away from their original direction in the hope of finding help at this Centre. Although it wasn’t her fault, she felt that she had in some way let them down.
Before she could say anything, however, she heard Stan clear his throat. “Ah well, it was worth a try.” His voice was conversational but loud enough to reach them all. “At least we’ve found a road.”
Nicola turned in surprise and saw him pointing past the burned wreckage of the buildings which had captured her vision, to where a tarmacked road, covered by the fallen leaves and branches of who knew how many years, led away from what would once have been the car park for the Centre.
Her heart lifted. She might not have found help, but she had helped them find a route that might lead them to somewhere better. Where there was a road, there would be – eventually – civilisation.
She set off to circle the shell of the Centre, but was pulled up short by Alyssa who still held her hand, but refused to move. Nicola looked down at her daughter and saw her pointing above the trees on the far side of the clearing. Following the pointing finger with her gaze, Nicola could see three shapes in the sky. They were vaguely triangular, but these were no jets. They were hovering like helicopters, but there were no rotors. As she watched, they zigged and zagged from side to side, contrails of missiles fired from the ground passing between them, and Nicola realised they were hovering somewhere over the burning field from which they’d fled.
From their bases, thick green streams of light shot out, parallel to the paths of the missiles. A few moments after the appearance of the beams, Nicola could hear a singing, whining noise which was accompanied by a rumbling, roaring, crumbling noise like a distant rock-fall. The three UFOs started to move closer, and so did the noise. If they kept on in a straight line it wouldn’t be very long before the beams, and the steadily loudening noise, would arrive at the clearing in which they were standing.
Once more she scooped Alyssa into her arms, turned to face all the people who were still staring at the apparitions in the sky, and screamed, “Run!”
Fifteen
Tony hated the countryside. He always had. He’d been brought up in North Manchester where grass was for parks and trees were the things which they periodically planted on the edges of pavements and left to die. He’d never seen the attraction of walking the hills or wandering by the sides of rivers. He was a creature of the city-centre; of clubs and pubs, shops and restaurants, paving stones and tarmac. He wasn’t sure he’d ever really thought about it, but he hadn’t known that such places as this really existed. This was not the kind of woods that you saw on television with rosy-cheeked couples walking hand in hand, their over-sized dog bounding around them looking for sheep to worry. There were no paths in this forest, just trees and fallen leaves, mud and stone and moss. His city shoes slid on the slickness under foot, a crust of mud forming around the leather sole. Sam stumbled after him, the heels of her shoes, admittedly shorter than they might have been, either sinking into the soft ground, or skittering on stone. She hung onto his arm and he half-guided, half-carried her through the dimness.
He kept expecting to come across some kind of path or clearing, but these woods seemed entirely unmanaged and untouched by human hand. He wondered how long it had been since anyone had walked between these trees, or even if they ever had. Maybe this was primordial forest that had never known man’s presence before.
This thought was cut short when they passed around another of the impenetrable stands of trees which blocked their way, to see that the trees ended only a hundred yards in front of them. The woods thinned allowing sunlight to light the ground, and then there was grass visible beyond.
As they walked towards this oasis of
light the leaf-litter became more sparse and the ground grew more solid underfoot, making the going easier and allowing them to move faster. A few yards from the end of the shade, Tony saw a picnic bench sitting on the grass in the sunlight. For a moment he wondered if it was a mirage, a drowning man spying a pool of water with its attendant date trees. But it never wavered, and as they emerged finally into the light he saw that it was not isolated. Beyond the bench were four, five, six, ten, twelve more. They led in a scattering to a large brick building with a glass conservatory. And then Tony saw the sign at the front which announced this was The Hare and Hounds. They’d found a pub, and for a moment Tony considered believing in God.
Now onto the soft grass, Sam paused to remove her shoes, and they half-ran over the grounds to the building. There were no lights showing from inside, but there were half a dozen cars parked outside, and the doors and windows were open. As they reached the car park Sam stopped again to put her shoes back on. Tony waited impatiently, and then as soon as she had them back on, set off again, with her trailing him. He neared the open doors of the conservatory and heard voices inside. At last! People! Someone who could help him.
They walked into the bright conservatory and looked around. There was no-one in the room in which they found themselves, though there were some half-eaten meals grown cold on one of the tables near the window. The voices were coming from deeper inside, in the gloom of the pub proper. Probably gathered at the bar, Tony thought, and led Sam through.
The talking stopped as everyone watched the new-comers walk in.