by Moody, David
As the end of his journey rapidly approached, it occurred to Steven that he only had two events left ahead of him now: the end of the world and, before that, finding Sam. Getting here had been his sole focus these last days. He’d wanted the endless journey to be over, but now it was virtually complete there was a part of him that wished he was back at the beginning again. He’d no desire to relieve any of the nightmare he’d just endured, but he wished he had more time. And then he began to beat himself up: why didn’t I try harder, why didn’t I leave sooner? Why did I allow myself to fall asleep in the hotel last night? Why did I listen to Roy and let him travel with me? There were so many ways he could have saved time and got here faster... if only there was a way he could reclaim that time and use it better.
Be positive.
It was hard, bloody hard, but he knew he had to try because he had made it. He was here now, and that was all that was important. He could just as easily have been delayed even longer. But for some of the choices he’d made, he might still be back in Shrewsbury or stuck on the M6, or dead in the backstreets of Birmingham somewhere.
Find Sam. Get down there and find Sam.
He couldn’t help smiling at the irony. The most important event in human history – no, the final event in human history – was approaching with terrifying speed, and yet that felt like a mere triviality, a frustrating inconvenience in comparison to the sudden dread he now felt at the prospect of facing Sam and her father.
He cycled past more houses: once relatively expensive and desirable homes where people had lived and loved and enjoyed the world together, they were now just shells. Some were in a terrible state; abandoned and dilapidated. It looked like the owners of other places had tried to safeguard their properties for as long as they could, only for the conditions to expose the futility of their actions. Peeling paint. Dried out, dust-bowl lawns. Burnt wood and shattered glass. Silence where there used to be noise. Darkness where before there’d been electric light and happy families. Ruination where before there’d been relative prosperity.
All the activity in the village seemed to be restricted to the beach, in particular around the headland upon which the castle ruins stood. Steven thought he should go down and look for Sam, but the idea of having to drag himself back up the steep climb if she wasn’t there was too much. Besides, his father-in-law was a stubborn, cantankerous old bastard. He’d surely be sitting this out at home, not wanting to give up his small square of land until he had absolutely no choice but to do so. He pictured Norman pacing the house, endlessly fussing around Sam, and the prospect of spending time with him – his last few days, perhaps – was hard to swallow. Why here? Why with him? He had to put such pointless thoughts from his mind. It’s too late for anything else now. Don’t think about the places and people you’ve left behind. Don’t think about Mom, Dad and Jess...
He cycled past the village green, always well-tended but now anything but. It was a drab and desolate sight, all patchy yellow grass and dried-out dirt. The brightly decorated planters he remembered being so lovingly maintained by the locals looked desperately sad now: flaking paint on the outside, filled with concrete-hard soil, withered petals and stems lying limp on top. A sun-peeled bench. A once well-stocked plant tub overflowing with insipid strands of tumbling brown. Topiary which had been carefully shaped before but which had long since lost all character and form.
Almost there.
Distracted.
Focus! This is it!
His heart thumped so hard it felt like it was an effort for it to keep beating, as if it was draining oxygen from his body, not circulating it. He felt light-headed, as if the blood in his veins had turned to dust. There was less than half a mile now, but he still wasn’t sure he’d make it. He pictured himself collapsing here, just metres from Sam’s father’s front door.
And there it was. He glimpsed Norman’s bungalow through the gaps between buildings and trees. It was an odd-looking cottage on the corner of the road behind the village health centre; a relatively recently built home with Velux windows in its sloping roof, surrounded by a garden full of grotesque stone statues sitting in a bed of shingle.
Steven took the right hand turn down the side of the health centre, pedalling hard up the final slope. But the speed at which he tried to take the corner took him by surprise and he lost control, half-falling and half-dismounting the bike, then picking himself up and marching on, focusing on the house up ahead, desperately scanning the dust-covered windows for signs of life. He imagined Sam looking out and seeing him, visualised her throwing the door open and running down the road to meet him, arms outstretched Hollywood-style, as desperate to hold him as he was to hold her.
The front door was open. The car was still on the drive. Christ, she must be here!
Steven stumbled again. He felt a twinge of pain. His shoulders were burning, red-raw with sunburn, his skin stretched tight. And then the pain increased, as if he’d been sitting with his back to an electric fire and someone had turned it up to full heat. And the light levels around him began to change.
Oh no... not now. Please, not now...
He knew what was coming. The ground began to shake like an earthquake, the air pressure increasing. Every movement felt heavy and forced, as if the pull of gravity was doubling with each passing second. He managed to look back over his shoulder as the temperature climbed and he was immediately aware of an intense, incandescent glow spreading out towards him from the horizon, speeding up the further it travelled inland. He thought he heard screams, people shouting in panic, but the howling wind made it impossible to tell which direction they were coming from. The beach below the castle? Should he have gone straight there?
The temperature soared again, another sudden and unexpected surge. He tried to blink but his eyes were unnaturally dry and all he could do was look down instead and cover his face, anything but risk looking up at the fire in the sky. Because that was what it had become now. The atmosphere aflame.
Panic.
Steven felt piss running down the inside of his leg. He tried to drag himself towards Norman’s house, the intense pressure and dry-heat of the gale force winds conspiring against him. Just a few more metres now. He could make it, he knew he could. But then the intensity of the light all around him was massively increased, and everything lost focus in the brilliance. Arms out in front of him, feeling his skin burn, eyes screwed shut, walking like a blind man...
And then the pressure changed again. A split-second of inexplicable silence and release, then a deafening roar and a gust of high-powered air which knocked him clean off his feet, throwing him forward like a blast wave. He’d no control over what was happening now, could only pray that when – if – this ended he’d still be alive. He hit the tarmac hard, then felt himself being blown along the ground, gravel shredding his knees, chest, face and every other exposed area of skin. And still he could hear the screams over the energy wave’s tumultuous howl, desperate calls for help in amongst the cacophony of other noises: shattering glass, walls collapsing, cars being blown into buildings and each other... the sound of the world being torn apart.
The pain and the fear didn’t matter anymore. He was numb. All he felt was relief that it was almost over. No more walking. No more fighting. No more...
He kept his eyes screwed shut. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything. Unable even to think. Vaguely aware of the wind dying down and the light finally beginning to subside...
Then nothing.
27
MONDAY 20 OCTOBER
He woke up in absolute darkness, and that in itself was a relief. For a while he wondered if he’d woken up at all or if he was dead. It was only when he tried to sit up and felt the incredible pain of his injuries that he knew for sure he was still alive and his nightmare wasn’t yet over. He felt a bizarre sense of disappointment, then elation when he thought he might yet get to see Sam, then gut-wrenching fear because no matter how fierce the energy pulse he’d survived had been, he knew there was wor
se to come. The inevitability of the next pulse was even more terrifying than the reality of the last.
Where the hell am I?
He lay still and looked around but it was a struggle to focus and he could make out little more than a few indistinct shapes. He tried to shift position to get a better look, but every movement, no matter how slight, caused him unbearable pain. He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious, but it had been time enough for some of his wounds to tentatively start to heal and knit together again. He felt his body’s attempts to repair itself come undone, fresh scabs tearing open whenever he moved even a muscle.
The effort was almost too much, the agony hard to endure, but he managed eventually to sit upright. He lifted an aching, trembling arm and lightly touched the back of his shoulder. He didn’t know what had happened to the shirt he’d been wearing, but he could feel that his skin was badly burned.
He was able to see a little more now, faint light seeping in from fires outside. He was in a garage. It wasn’t anywhere he recognised, and it definitely wasn’t Norman Hill’s place. Directly in front of him was an old sports car partially covered by a tarpaulin. Once someone’s pride and joy, it was now as completely worthless as everything else. He used the car to haul himself up onto his unsteady feet, pausing halfway when the pain became too intense, thinking he might be about to pass out again.
Once the nausea had subsided, he looked down at himself to try and ascertain the damage. He was covered in cuts, scabs, gouges and bruises. He must have been out of it for some time, because many of the dribbles of blood were completely dry now, and it hurt when he straightened his legs and more scabs broke. Watery discharge seeped from his many wounds. The fact he almost exclusively had lesions on his front and burns on his back helped him remember what had happened. Steven couldn’t tell which of his injuries hurt the most. The pain was constant and he felt like he was going to vomit.
He had to get out of here, wherever here was. He’d been so close to Norman’s house, so why had he been moved? Surely Sam would have seen him and brought him inside. And then a terrible, gut-wrenching thought struck him, almost making him lose his balance again. After all this, what if she’s not here? He’d had similar thoughts several times on his way to Criccieth, but then he’d had no choice but to put them from his mind and keep moving forward. Now he had no option but to consider them. What if she was thinking the same thoughts as me? What if she’s tried to get back home? He imagined the irony – the hideously cruel irony – of them passing each other in the midst of the chaos, oblivious. Maybe she’d been travelling around the north of Birmingham as he’d been navigating the south? Perhaps they’d passed during the madness on the M6? He pictured her finally making it back home, finding the house empty. Had coming here been a waste of time? A waste of the last little bit of time he had left?
He moved closer to the frosted glass panels in the garage door. He could see very little through them, save for the glow of numerous fires burning, the residual effects of the last energy wave. They’d be left to burn now. He knew no one would try putting them out. No time, no means, and no point.
He tried to open the heavy up-and-over door but it was locked and he couldn’t immediately find how to open it from inside. There was some kind of mechanism by his knees, but he had neither the strength nor the coordination to work it out. He instead turned his attention to the rest of the garage and shuffled through the clutter to get to the door into the house which he could just make out at the other end. He dragged his feet through the rubbish and repeatedly stubbed his toes but ignored the pain, already hurting too much to care. Before long the fire will come again and cauterize everything, he thought, unsure whether that made him feel better or worse. I won’t have to endure this for much longer. Until then, just keep going...
The other door was locked, but then he’d always known it would be. So was that it? Stop and give up now, potentially so close to Sam and yet as far away as ever? He couldn’t let it end this way and he began battering his fists against the wood, yelling for someone – anyone – to open up and set him free, his parched voice cracking with emotion.
When no one came he began throwing himself at the door, smashing into it with his shoulder, leaving insipid smears of blood and doing more damage to himself than anything else. Again and again he hurled himself forward until he could barely support his own weight and he collapsed on the concrete floor, exhausted. To have finally reached Criccieth had been a remarkable achievement. To have fallen at this final hurdle was a twist too cruel to take.
And it was only when he tried to pick himself up again, using the wall and a workbench for support, that he finally asked himself why he’d been locked in here? The likely answer came as quickly as the question: Norman Hill. Sam couldn’t have had anything to do with this, could she? It had to be Norman... either that or the residents of Criccieth, working together to keep outsiders away at all costs during these final days and hours. He leant against the bench and remembered the effort it had taken to get here, then cursed his own stupidity for letting Sam leave and not going after her sooner. He’d been such a bloody fool.
Is this how it ends? Do I just give up now and roll over after coming so close? No fucking way.
He ran his hands over the top of the workbench, feeling in the darkness for anything that might help. He found a screwdriver and forced it into the doorframe just under the lock, trying to prise it open. It was stubborn and he had barely any purchase. His hands were swollen and wouldn’t grip properly and his arms burned with effort, muscles screaming to stop, but he kept trying because he knew he had no other reason to conserve the little energy he had left. This was it. This was all he had left.
He found another screwdriver, one with a longer shaft, and shoved it between the frame and the brickwork and heaved.
Movement.
The crack of dried-out wood splintering.
The frame began to give way around the lock.
Spurred on by his limited success, he shifted position and tried again, throwing his full weight behind the long screwdriver. This time he felt even more of a shift, the lock clearly weakened. Taking a step back into the darkness, he was about to hurl himself at the door again when his foot kicked a lump hammer. He picked it up and began battering the handle and the part of the frame nearest the latch. The whole door was shaking now, moving more and more freely with each new impact. He dropped the lump hammer, took a few steps back, then ran at the door again. The shoulder barge shook him to the core but he did it again and again until the door flew open, the ugly noise filling the otherwise silent house.
No time. Run!
He sprinted into the house, disorientated by the darkness and losing his way. The little of the place he could see appeared desperately rundown, but he had no way of knowing if this was recent damage or if it had been this way for a while. Had the owners abandoned their home in the same way he had his?
And again he asked, why was I locked in here?
The front door was bolted. He couldn’t face the physical exertion and pain of trying to break another door down, so doubled-back on himself to look for a different way out. There was a wide bay window in the adjacent dining room. He grabbed a wooden chair from beside a table and hurled it at the glass, knowing that each second mattered more than ever now.
It was when he turned to shield his face from the window that he saw them. There were two bodies in the corner on a sofa clinging desperately to each other. They’d startled him at first, and he involuntarily started to apologise before seeing the blood. The moonlight and flickering flames from outside allowed him to see more than he wished he had. The sofa and carpet around the bodies was stained dark brown. On the woman’s left wrist was a deep, dry gash. On the sofa next to her, a blade. The two long-dead corpses were emaciated. Little more than husks.
Move, you idiot!
Steven ran back to the window and used the end of a long, flowing curtain to wrap around his hand and knock away the last few shards
of glass still caught in the frame. He then climbed out, tripping away from the house and falling awkwardly in a flowerbed. The brittleness of dead flowers made their thorns and barbs feel that much more spiteful, viciously slashing his already bloodied skin. Not for the first time he wondered if Sam would even recognise him if he found her.
He picked himself up and looked around, trying to get his bearings. The house he’d escaped from looked familiar from his many trips to Criccieth, but he couldn’t work out where he was in relation to everywhere else. He spun around and looked for the castle, the most obvious landmark. Find that and he’d be able to work out exactly where he’d been left.
And then he saw it, glimpsed through the gap between two dark buildings, just visible through the smoke and heat-haze of another house-fire. It quickly clicked into place. He was still close to Norman’s house. Just far enough away to be out of sight.
He jogged the length of the short, sloping road he found himself on, gravity keeping him moving more than any conscious effort, then turned first left. There was Norman’s bungalow up ahead. With renewed energy, all nervousness gone now, he began to run faster then threw himself through the open front door. The place was a sad shadow of its former self. Even though dark, he could see enough to know that nothing was where it should have been. Despite everything, it still shook him. He’d somehow expected his normally fastidious father-in-law to have kept everything exactly how it was, to have steadfastly refused to allow the impending apocalypse to encroach into his dull and blinkered world.