by Amy Cross
“I know,” says the man, raising the axe, ready to strike at me. “And we don't want you leading them up here”.
“I'm not leading them anywhere,” I say. “I'm just trying to get away. They didn't even notice me. Now will you fucking let me past?”
He shakes his head. “Back the way you came,” he says nervously.
“Not a chance,” I say. “I'm not gonna cause any trouble, just let me past”.
The man tries to stare me down. “No. Fucking. Way”.
I look into his eyes and see real fear, real determination. But I need to get past him, I need to get moving so I can find somewhere safe. Safer than this, anyway.
“I'm just going to walk past you,” I say calmly, maintaining eye contact. “And you're going to let me, okay?”
The man shakes his head, adjusting his grip on the axe.
“You're not going to hurt me,” I say. “We're in this together. We're the same, you and me, yeah? We're the same. And I'm not gonna cause you any trouble, so you're gonna just let me get past”. I raise my hands. “Okay?”
I step forward, but the man instantly raises his axe and swings it at my head. I feel it slice against my neck and I fall backwards, banging my head against the wall before I hit the ground. I stare up at the guy, and I try to feel the wound on my neck to see how badly hurt I am. But then I notice something on the ground next to me: a headless body. Jesus Christ, this guy has killed someone else before he met me. He's...
I stare at the body.
Blood is spurting from its neck, its hand is twitching, and it's wearing my clothes. I blink a couple of times. As the axe-man starts to run away down the street, I keep staring at the headless body next to me. I try to scream, but I find I can't move my mouth. All I can do is blink, and even that is... becoming... harder... to...
Chapter 1
DEATH FROM ABOVE
Server not found.
Unable to locate server at this URL.
Hints:
Check the address to see if there are any typing errors such as ww.example.com instead of www.example.com.
If you can't access any pages, check your computer's network connections.
If you are using a firewall or proxy, check that your computer is permitted to access the Web.
Below this text, a grey button: Try again.
The problem is, I've been hitting the 'Try again' button constantly for about ten minutes, but nothing ever happens. Fucking internet. Every site I try just returns an error message like this, as if the whole internet has just vanished. My parents have always been too cheap to pay for a decent connection, so we get downtimes every other day, sometimes for hours on end. I sigh and stare at the screen. I should just go and do something else for a few minutes, but then what if the internet comes back on and I miss it?
I grab my phone and flick it open, but the screen is dead. Damn it, I must have forgotten to charge it. I sigh and look up at the computer screen, just in time to see the image blink off. The screen goes totally black and I sit there, staring at it, wondering what else can go wrong, when I suddenly realise that something is very, very strange.
I turn my head slowly and look at my bedroom door.
Silence.
In the whole house, there's silence. I don't hear the fridge humming. I don't hear the air conditioning doing its thing. I don't hear anything. Goddammit, I think this might be the first time in my entire 19 years that I've ever been in complete and utter silence.
It's weird.
I stand up and go to the door, and I look down the hallway.
“The fuck?” I say out loud. Are we seriously having a power cut again? This sucks. I swear, when I'm playing some crappy Facebook game, I never have any problems, but whenever I actually have to do something important online – like email someone or look for a job – the damn internet just cuts out. Great timing again, Internet Gods.
As I turn to go through to the kitchen, I become aware of a sound in the distance. At first it's fairly low and faint, but it seems to be getting stronger. I stand there in the doorway, listening to what sounds like something falling. And then, finally, I hear someone shouting outside. Before I really have time to react, there's a huge crashing sound and the whole house shakes, knocking me to my feet and shattering all the windows. Glass flies over me and, as I lay there, the floor continues to vibrate for a few seconds before another loud explosion sets everything off again.
I sit up, and I can now hear in the distance lots of screaming and shouting. What the hell's going on?
I get to my feet and head to the front door, but I can instantly see that something's going on outside through the little window in the hallway, the glass of which has been blown out. People are running down the street, and there are sounds of chaos outside. It also feels like something else odd is happening, like... Yeah, it feels hot, like there's this wall of heat in the air.
I open the front door and head out onto the lawn. People are running along the street, but as I look in the direction they're headed, I can't see anything. What are they running towards? Confused, and feeling heat against my back, I turn and look the other way, and that's when I see it.
That's when I realise.
They're not running towards anything.
They're running from something.
About 200 metres down the road, surrounded by the burning rubble of a dozen houses, there's a huge smoking pile of wreckage sending thick black plumes into the sky. The heat is shocking, forcing me to take a couple of steps back, but I can't help staring. What happened? Where did that wreckage come from? And then I spot something in the flames, and I realise that I'm looking at a jet that just crashed into a bunch of houses.
“Holy fuck,” I say out loud, just before there's another huge explosion and I'm knocked clear off my feet, landing against a wall and collapsing to the ground while hitting my head and passing out.
Extract from the diary of Lydia Hoff
Because I'm an old woman, people often want to know what I remember from the days before everything changed. Their curiosity is touching, and I don't mind telling the same stories over and over. They gather around like children, and they ask me what things were like:
What was the internet?
Was tap water really available all day?
Did you ever go up in an aeroplane?
I always start by reminding them that when the power went, we all assumed it would be a temporary inconvenience. I was six years old at the time, and I remember my father coming into the room and telling us not to worry, that 'they' would fix everything soon. All he talked about was 'they' and 'them', and I suppose he meant the government, whom he assumed would have the ability to resolve the problem and save us all. But as time ticked by, even my father had to realise that 'they' were not coming and 'they' were in no position to help.
We never found out what happened to our government. I suppose that, without electricity, they had nothing to do. They couldn't make their voices heard further than they could shout, and any decisions they made would have to be enforced by them, themselves. They had nothing to offer, and the mechanisms of political power were broken. So they simply faded away, though I am quite sure some of them railed in anger and fury as they did so.
Then they ask me about the anarchists. They ask if there were really no anarchists in the days of electricity. I tell them that it's true, there were none. The anarchists came after the electricity left, and they came because there was nothing to stop them. I still think, ninety years later, that the anarchists are the most deathly evil things I have ever encountered. They are evil because they choose to be, because they delight in causing agony to others. I can't comprehend how their mind works, what drives them to do the things they do to their prisoners. Or perhaps I can comprehend it, but for the sake of my humanity I have to pretend that I can't.
When I talk of the old days, I'm always saddened when I remember friends who are no longer with us. I remember particularly a girl named Emma, who I met
two or three times. She was always looking for a boy named Pierce, saying she had to find him. That was all she could talk about by the end: I must find Pierce, I must find Pierce, I must find Pierce. She wept at the thought of what she had done to him, and she felt a terrible shame at her betrayal. I think she blamed herself for abandoning him, for letting him down and for allowing him to become what he became. She was always trying to find a new way to save him, to bring him back, even as she got older. It was a tragedy in so many ways.
I'm tired, and the light is fading. I'll have to stop writing for now. Every time I get tired and go to bed, I wonder if this is the end for me. But my memories seem to keep waking me up afresh each morning. That's good. I'm not quite ready to die yet, not until I've written down everything that happened all those years ago.
There's a certain irony to the fact that I'm writing this tonight, of all nights. For one thing, I feel I am going to die in the next few hours. Don't ask me how, I just feel it in my bones. But the really important thing is that just as I enter my own personal darkness, the world is due to emerge into the light.
Chapter 2
PIERCE
“Finally,” says Pierce, the guy who lives next door, as I open my eyes and sit up. He's about my age, hot with messy, longish blonde hair and dark, intense eyes. We've lived side by side for five or six years and barely ever spoken, mainly because he's always seemed like a bit of a loner. Up close, though, he looks friendly enough, and he smiles as he stares at me. “I was fighting the urge to peek a look at your boobs,” he continues, “I think I was gonna give in soon, so it's probably a good thing you woke up when you did. You're Emma, right?”
I blink a couple of times and look around. I'm back inside the house, in the kitchen, but I can instantly tell that the whole jet crash thing wasn't a dream: the windows remain smashed in, and I can hear shouting and screaming outside. There's a smell of burning rubber and gasoline in the air.
“What happened?” I ask, checking my head and feeling a lump and a sore, tender area right on top.
“Short version,” Pierce says, taking a deep breath, “is a fucking passenger plane crashed down the road. Totalled about twelve houses. Still burning. Lots and lots of people almost certainly dead in very fiery ways”. He frowns. “It's quite exciting out there, you wanna come and see?”
I stare at him. “What's the long version of the story?”
He shrugs. “No-one knows,” he says darkly, fixing me with a determined stare. “Fucking thing just dropped out of the sky like a stone. Now stay still”. He wipes some tissue paper against my forehead, taking away a little blood. “I'm no expert,” he says, peering at the wound, “but I don't think you're dead or anything like that”.
“What?” I ask, trying to get up.
“Stay still!” he says, forcing me to stay where I am. “You hit your head, I don't know if you need stitches. You might be delirious. You might be lots of things”.
“Since when were you a doctor?” I ask.
“Since never,” he replies. “Therefore I don't know if you need stitches”. He sits back. “There. You probably won't die, and if you do, my conscience is clear. I did my best. It won't be my fault”.
We both stand up.
“What's happening out there?” I ask, looking at the back door.
“Like I said,” he replies, “there's a fucking huge jet that's smashed into a load of houses. Bits of it keep exploding. I guess that's the fuel tanks or something”.
I turn to him.
“Based,” he says sheepishly, “on my admittedly shaky expertise when it comes to such things”.
I walk to the window. From here, all I can see is thick black smoke covering the whole neighbourhood. “Is anyone dead?” I ask.
“Well duh,” Pierce says, joining me at the window. “Hundreds,” he says, “maybe more. It was a big jet. I saw it come down, it was a double-decker. If you include the people on the ground, maybe thousands are dead. You should have seen the explosion. It was massive. Like a fireball, like 9/11 times ten”.
“Fuck,” I say.
“And you know the spooky thing?” he asks.
“There's something spooky about it?” I reply.
A grin crosses his lips. “It's been almost an hour since it happened,” he says, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
I stare at him. “Okay,” I say, not sure what he means.
“Listen,” he says.
I listen.
“I don't hear anything,” I say.
“Exactly,” he replies. “This shit went down an hour ago, and no-one's turned up to help. No police, no medics, no fire crews. Nothing. No sirens. No help at all. It's like... we're in this bland suburban neighbourhood, and we're all alone. Apparently the rest of the world doesn't care about any of this”. He turns to me. “Isn't that cool?”
Looking out the window, it's like we're in the middle of a warzone, like we've fallen through the laptop screen and ended up on CNN. I've never been abroad, never left America, but this is what I imagine it must be like: scary, uncertain, dangerous.
“Someone'll come,” I say. “They have to”.
“Not if they're dead,” Pierce says, smiling.
“Don't talk shit,” I say.
“What if,” he continues, warming to his theme, “there was some huge apocalypse and everywhere on Earth was destroyed and we're all that's left? What if...” He pauses for effect. “What if we have to repopulate the species?”
I turn to him. “You're enjoying this,” I say, disgusted.
“Me?” he says, looking surprised. “I'm not enjoying anything. I just think it's funny how much faith you have that we're going to get helped here when we're blatantly not”.
“They're coming,” I stress to him.
“Who are they?” he spits back at me, suddenly angry. “God? Angels? The government? If they were coming, they'd be here by now. If they were coming, we wouldn't even be having this conversation”. He pulls his phone from his pocket and thrusts it into my hands. “Call someone. Go on. Call someone for help. Anyone. Try it”.
I glare at him for a moment, then I flip open his phone and immediately see that it's blank. I try to turn it on, but it doesn't work.
“How can I?” I ask, handing it back to him. “The battery's dead”.
“It's not,” he says. He walks over to the other side of the room and flicks the light switch a few times; nothing happens. “Nothing works. The lights. The phones. The internet”. He grabs a torch from the side and flicks it on and off, except there's no light. “Nothing”.
“So there's a power cut,” I say. “The plane probably hit a power cable”.
“The plane landed after the power cut started,” Pierce says. “About two minutes after, to be precise. And a power cut wouldn't explain why the torch doesn't work, or why my fully-charged phone won't switch on. It's like -”
We're suddenly interrupted by a cry from outside, from the back yard.
“Help!” shouts a man with a muffled voice. He sounds like he's being strangled.
We rush out and find the old man from across the road staggering towards us, clutching his chest. At first I assume he's injured from the plane crash, but there's not a scratch on him as he collapses at our feet. Kneeling down, we roll him over. His face is flushed and red, and he can barely breathe.
“Call help!” he splutters. “Call someone!”
“We can't,” says Pierce.
“Call help!” the old man says again, looking up at us desperately, turning even redder.
“You're having a heart attack,” Pierce says with the confident tone of voice of someone who seems to actually know what he's talking about.
The old man shakes his head. “Pacemaker,” he rasps, pulling open his shirt to reveal a chest with lots of white hairs and, beneath them, the distinctive lump of a pacemaker under his skin. “Pacemaker not working, need...” He gasps, like a fish out of water. “Need help. Call them!”
“There's no-one to call,” Pi
erce says. “The phones are dead”.
“Don't listen to him,” I say, interrupting. I keep my gaze on the old man, and I try my hardest to smile. “There's an ambulance coming,” I say. “They're on their way. They're gonna help you, I promise”.
The old man nods, but he's clearly not got long left. He can barely breathe, and he's clutching at his chest.
“What's your name”? I ask him.
“G... G...” He can't get the sounds out. “Gary Evans,” he eventually manages, with the kind of forced formality that you usually get from a kid on his first day of school.
“It's going to be okay, Gary,” I say.
“There's no -” Pierce starts to say, but I elbow him in the ribs and he falls back. I didn't mean to hit him so hard, but I'm not entirely sorry that I did.
“When are they gonna get here?” Gary asks, his voice fading, his eyes starting to glaze over.
“Soon,” I say. “Soon, Gary. Okay?”
He reaches his hand up, and I take it in mine, and then he stares at me for a moment before his head falls back. He keeps his eyes on the sky, then he breathes out slowly, and it takes me a few moments to realise that he's dead. Fuck, he died right in front of me, he died... I look down at his hand in mine. He died touching me! I let his hand go, freaked out by the whole thing.
“Why did you lie to him?” Pierce asks, still sitting back after I elbowed him.
“I don't know,” I say, shaking my head.
“Seems pretty cruel, lying to a dying guy,” Pierce continues.
“I wanted to give him hope,” I say, reaching down and closing Gary's eyes.
“False hope,” Pierce says. “They aren't coming. They can't come. Something's seriously wrong”.
“It'll be okay,” I say, staring down at Gary's dead face.
“Oh,” Pierce says, “you keep saying that “.