An unfamiliar voice came from the front of the crowd. It held a monotonous tone, simply stating facts. “You are stricken with an unknown illness. We have decided that it would be best if you left the town right away. Those of us that are left here are forced to be cautious and aggressive in order to ensure the continuing lives of ourselves and our families. I’m sure you understand, given recent events. You have five minutes. You can take what you brought with you.”
By the time the man was finished, Tariq had lowered both his hands and his jaw and remained dumbstruck for at least a minute while his brain struggled to comprehend what was coming at him.
“I can see that you are in shock,” the man said. “As I said, we are very concerned for our own welfare – there are still kids here – and we won’t hesitate to drag you out of town if you don’t start moving RIGHT NOW!” The man yelled the last words abruptly and it was enough to shake Tariq to action. He stood up and headed straight for his bag in the living room. He carried the litre bottle of water with him as he went. The living room window showed even more goggled eyes and covered faces – some even in swimming goggles – watching his every move intently. Tariq’s thoughts whirled around unceasingly as he hurriedly loaded his bag onto his back.
He walked into the hallway to see a path had been cleared for him to pass through, his bike was clear in the middle of the road. No-one wanted to get too close unless as a last resort. He stepped out to see the voice of the group standing closest to the door.
“Where are Anton and Jennifer?” Tariq asked curiously.
The reply came, “Who?”
Tariq sighed with frustration. “The people who were in this house this morning.”
“Oh. They are being quarantined for the next forty-eight hours as a precaution.”
“I can assure you now that they and I will be fine,” Tariq started. “My sickness has already passed. I was clearly only suffering with exhaustion – and now – simply dehydration. Why don’t we just sit this through?”
“It’s ‘Tariq’ isn’t it?” Tariq nodded to the man’s question. “Tariq, most of us saw the cloud and debris left by the bomb and some of us even saw the flash that it gave off. It was clearly set off to kill as many as possible. We know you were closer to the blast than us and none of us know whether the blast held chemical or biological contaminants to spread and infect across the country. We see it as a perfect opportunity to carry the death further than a typical nuclear explosion would be able to. Those close enough to be infected, but far enough not to die, would flee away from ground zero.” The man held Tariq’s gaze so that it felt as if it was boring into him.
“You are all being unreasonable.” Tariq averted his eyes and shook his head.
“Right now, we are being reasonable. Don’t test our reason’s resilience.” The man pointed towards Tariq’s bike. “You get to choose how you leave. Make a good choice.”
The seriousness of the man’s eyes finally wore Tariq down and he turned and walked past the other men lining his leaving parade. He brushed off the saddle of his bike and looked around. There were probably fifty or so people in the street around him. Seeing a clear path to safety brazened him and he tried to regard the eyes of each person. “I have studied much literature and science in my time and when you do that you start to forget. You start to forget that the majority of the population of this country and many others is not anywhere near those standards. You start to feel like humans are more than just animals clamouring for survival. It is only in moments like this, that you realise that that isn’t true. Enjoy your survival. I wish I could see how long each one of you will last with all the eyes of your neighbours bearing down on you. Fuck you all and fuck your town. In fact, I think this country might just deserve what is happening to it.” Tariq, lips pursed, held his middle finger up and scanned the crowd with it. Nothing left to lose. He pushed off and cycled straight out, trying to look relaxed, but pulled forward by a knot of urgency in his chest.
Chapter 22 - Day 3
In the kitchen of Leighton’s family farm, the old couple sat fixated as they were perched at the breakfast bar watching the news on a small television. A kettle boiled water ready for a morning cup of tea. Life hadn't changed much for them since the attacks, and neither much had the news. They had just a few channels that were broadcast from outside the UK, they had tried to call their provider, but all they got was an automated message about the high volumes of calls. The only other thing they had as an indication that something may have been awry was the lack of communication from their son. They would usually get at least a text message every few days along with a phone call from Shannon to make sure there was nothing that they would need.
World news channels had yet to catch up with what had happened elsewhere across their country and without internet connection, they only saw and heard that which was broadcast. It mostly focused on the peace deals that were swinging back and forth in the Middle East. A de facto truce being declared and by all accounts soon to be finalised into a long-lasting peace deal put the mind of the restless at ease, to all those that could receive its message, at least.
Leighton's father, Phil, took the controller and start to flick through the few news channels available, looking for a story that had yet to be heard at least a few times already. The parliament channel had been down for nearly three whole days and instead broadcast the same as the world news channel next to it. One of the foreign news channels showed a crowd, German and Russian flags intermingled, waved both ferociously and joyously above the people’s heads.
The narrator spoke in English. “...the large-scale aerial attacks are now nearly half-way though the seven-day campaign with military and economic centres now silenced completely. Members of the Russio-Germanic alliance have fled onto the streets already in celebration at the subduction of one of the greatest enemies to world pea-”
The channel suddenly came up static, shortly after being replaced with a simple screen stating [The channel is no longer in service, you may have to reconfigure your set top box.] Kerry, looked at her husband, concerned, urging him to quickly change the channel over to see if any more was being said elsewhere. The national news was displaying the same message. The only channel left was still replaying the same messages and interviews from earlier proceedings in the Middle East.
They talked together as the rotation on screen continued all throughout the day, an eye always on the screen expecting a breaking news story to flash up at any moment. Nothing obvious was coming to mind as to what the story they caught a glimpse of pertained to. The assumption they came to was that it was related to the main story.
The television continued persistently on its loop. Many hours later, Phil and Kerry fell asleep on the sofa waiting for the breaking news that they believed would eventually come.
With the Sun at its zenith, Mina sat smoking the last of her tobacco. She was already mulling over the thought of heading into town, though she had pushed it to the back of her mind every time it had tried to bubble up. She still didn’t know what to do about Drew and she knew her phone line was still down from picking up the handset a few times a day. Most important to her was whether his mad babblings were true. It was only now, three days on, that she could even entertain the idea that it was a hoax. With him, anything was possible, but with him and the phone lines cutting out at the same time it was just enough coincidence to cause worry and not quite enough to lead to certainty.
Mina thought about Grace down in the town and the corners of her mouth raised a little at it. It was going to be worth going down there, because otherwise the whole town may as well have been Schrodinger’s cat. The thought continued that perhaps she was the cat and everyone else was just purposely not observing her. No one ever bothered to wander up into her little valley – a fact she enjoyed thoroughly – which meant to her as an observer of the world, the town was the one with multiple possible permutations.
The scenario that most frequently replayed across her mind was tha
t of a town that remained standing, and within it all its inhabitants. She would open the gate on the other side of the bridge and be confused that everyone greeted her in the normal way, with large grins and friendly nods of the head. She would confide only in Grace what she had been going through inside her own head since the phone call. She would be embarrassed and she would have to try hard to make sure no-one else found out about what she would from then on call her ‘episode’. Her phone line would be fixed along with all the problems that she currently expected.
Mina tried to keep a containment on how often she thought about the other option. It regularly horrified her that the scenario described by Drew and the possible causal rather than coincidental death of her telephone line could be the reality. She might have got lucky to survive, out away from the town and city lights that would have attracted bombs in the night. She hadn’t had a chance to see any dark hour since the call due to her coping methods. The image she held of a town – flattened – was sometimes met with the image of survivors alongside her, ready to work together to get to safety. Other times she only saw ghosts of the people she knew. She would talk to them as if real and consult with them about why they hadn’t passed on. The final manifestation was the grimmest. She would be met with just death, empty bodies lining the streets and hidden under rubble. She would always push this thought away. She tried to focus her mind on a favourable outcome, though always with difficulty. She knew she had to find out.
Mina’s feet dragged as she started on her way down the gravel path. She managed fifteen minutes of the walk before she deviated onto the grass and eventually into the trees. After another twenty minutes, she stepped back out of the tree line onto the path running back towards her house. She wasn’t ready to solidify the condition of the town in her mind and instead sat back down on her porch running over the multitude of possibilities in her mind once more.
Tariq had holed himself up in an abandoned petrol station a few miles west of the town from which he had been so rudely ousted. At about a mile from the town’s boundary, he had to work harder and harder to push forward. The fears he had had after watching the looming cloud three days ago finally caught up with him. He hit a puncture. It was slow enough that he couldn’t recall where it may have happened once he had noticed the lag in the front wheel. He had spent the best part of an hour trying to work out where it was on the inner tube, but drenched in sweat on the bend of a country road he eventually came up at a loss. There was no mark on the outer tyre to indicate the damage and frustration and dehydration caused him to move on by foot.
The garage had clearly been abandoned in a rush and Tariq had found a rear entrance unlocked and ajar when he arrived. He was in a bad mood after leaving his bike on the side of the road about two miles away and he had to drag himself about trying to secure the place as much as possible. He had quickly found another set of keys for all the doors and had managed to lock down all the outer shutters quite easily. He felt fortunate that they were pulled down by hand rather than electric motor.
As the darkness had set in, he found that a generator had kicked in to power some dim emergency lighting around the building and under the forecourt and so he had then had to spend a long time walking around using a cast-off piece of two by four to smash all the bulbs in. He certainly didn’t want to make himself too obvious a target to anyone, be they on the ground or in the sky. He was perfectly happy with a light source that he could turn off at will and the garage was well stocked with half-priced, ten pounds forty-nine, faux-metal torches and the appropriate ‘D’ sized batteries to last him some time.
He slept on a tattered couch in a staff room with no windows. It gave him enough of a feeling of security to sleep well, even throughout the headache that still burned at his temples.
The pitch darkness panicked him when he first awoke, but once he managed to find the torch that he held fallen asleep clutching and in the middle of the night allowed to roll just out of arms reach across the floor, he had regained his bearings. He spent the rest of the day taking stock of the garage’s shop, restocking the powered down freezers for the food that he felt would be able to last longer in the slightly cool environment it offered. He was able to eat well and recorded his notes and read the last papers that were issued up to this part of the country, all now at least three days out of date.
As the evening drew in, Tariq built himself a cot by turning the sofa around so that it was almost closed in by the wall and its own back. He did leave a small gap so that in the event of hearing someone or something, he could slide into the gap with his sleeping bag over him and hopefully in the darkness he would be overlooked. He didn’t think it would work, but in a room without windows, it subdued his paranoia just enough.
Tariq heard whistles and explosions gradually reach a crescendo nearby and a sick fascination overtook him. He stepped outside the fire escape and wedged it open with a fire extinguisher, constantly checking the set of keys in his pocket as he moved around. Scanning the sky, he started to see movement that blocked his sight of stars. The cloud-like mass appeared almost overhead as the horizon in all directions lit up with temporary flashes that popped like fireworks in brightness and frequency. His heart sank and a morbid feeling overtook him that that night may be his last.
He picked out the most expensive liqueur he could find, and collected a pack of cigarillos, a lighter and some cheap, giveaway binoculars and went out around the side of the building until he found a ladder that would take him up onto the flat roof. If the bombs were to land where he was, he may as well enjoy the final moments and embrace them head on rather than have them find him curled up, hiding in a small gap between a sofa and a wall.
Feet planted just below him on the top of the forecourt, he sat on the edge of the building’s roof. He lit his cigar after taking a swig from the bottle that left a warm trace down his throat and into this stomach. It settled his nerves and he started to feel ready to witness his last sights of the world. Facing east he saw flashes amongst the orange glow of fire over the horizon. As his cigarillo burnt down, those sights got closer and closer until he realised that they must be now close enough that the fire and destruction must be over the town he had been forced to leave the day before.
Even though he couldn’t see the town itself, he could make out a lot of the intervening distance through the binoculars which handily blocked out the direct lights of the fires and allowed him to feel confirmed that the town was in fact burning. He lifted his bottle in the air and muttered a few words to himself about karma. He laughed, said, “Fuck you,” out loud towards the flames and laughed again, still holding his bottle high.
Tariq, still sniggering to himself, carefully stubbed out the last embers of his first cigarillo and lit another. The sniggering turned to a hysterical laugh and eventually to tears before returning to a hysterical laugh. ‘I’m going to fly,’ he thought as he wondered how much flammable liquid was in the ground and pipes below him. Even flicking open the flame on the lighter might be enough, but it hadn’t been so far. He knew that if anything was going to fall through a few thousand meters of air before hitting the garage, pure luck or divine intervention would be the only things that could save him. As his laughing died down he couldn’t even work out if he cared or not. The faint tingling of drunkenness could be felt in his lips and fingertips and he lay back against the roof.
Tariq stared up at the sky and waited, perpetually tensing his muscles in reaction to the loud bangs and pops that came from all directions, bracing himself for whatever darkness was to come over him after an inferno was triggered around him. Ten minutes passed and Tariq looked out to his left, where the flashing lights and amber glows continued to raze. All the sparks of light were now in that direction. Nothing remained to the east or west, but for the orange ebbing glow of fire. As he watched out he saw the same thing replicating, moving its way meticulously further north. A relief washed over him. He might just have had that luck. He might just see another dawn.
Chapter 23 - Day 4
Tariq opened his eyes slowly into the darkness. Disorientated, he grasped around where he lay for his torch and eventually found it. As he stood up he felt his sense of balance struggle to keep him upright and he kept himself so with one hand on the back of his sofa turned cot bed. He reached the door which lead into the main shop front. It was day time, judging from the ambient glow that came through the window shutters and around the edges of the main door.
He felt horribly dehydrated and reached for a sugary drink from one of the warm open fridges. It tasted foul, but he needed the sugar. As he gulped down the drink, he felt the insides of his head press in. He hacked. “I am shit-noosed hungover. Damn it,” he told the room.
He picked up a few papers from last week and headed through the pitch-black room that was his home to the fire escape and pushed it open to let in the bright morning sunlight. He winced and spent the next few minutes slowly peeling his eyes apart as they grew accustomed to the intensity. Eventually, he felt comfortable enough to take up a seat on a low curb with his back against the building, still within a couple of steps of the emergency door, ‘well, in case of emergency,’ he thought.
The papers were only ever going to be a distraction. Full of last week’s headlines from a past world and articles he had already read, they provided little stimulation. Perhaps too much stimulation would not have been what he really wanted in his slightly fragile state. He read through three different publications and most of the time he was reading the same headlines by different journalists. He always found that interesting though, how two different people could carve the same truth into different stories and wrestle the events around to match either their own set prejudices or the agenda that the paper was trying to align with.
Ousted: A thrilling debut novel of survival and humanity Page 12