As the Light Dies

by M. D. Woodham

  It was all so fast.”Lara’s lower lip was quivering, and a tear ran down her face as Maggie tried to reassure her.

  “I was scared you know, I honestly didn’t know what else to do so I turned around and ran through the back, and I only just managed that. The men who had been banging at the till window got in. They broke through the glass, climbed through and raced after me.

  I just got through the door and shut it as one of them grabbed the handle on the other side.

  Thank God the door opened, the doors security key pad was blank, it wasn’t lit up you know.” “Safety feature,”said Andy. Lara nodded.

  “Well I got through, and I locked it from the other side and they started banging like crazy, I don’t know what they were using but it made a hell of a noise, the door practically bounced around in the frame every time they hit it.

  I ran to the staffroom and tried the fire exit but it was frozen solid, I couldn’t even push down the doors push bar. Then without thinking I grabbed the stool, climbed up on top of the counter and broke the little window at the back with the stool legs, then I climbed up on the stool and picked out as much of the glass as I could that was still stuck in the frame and as I did I heard the staff door smash open behind me, so I just had to go for it, even though there was still some glass left in the frame. I only had my chest out of the window when the stupid stool fell over.

  I thought I was stuck.”Another tear ran down Lara’s cheek but she didn’t stop talking, she was on overdrive now.

  “I swung and kicked my legs and banged my elbows on the wall from outside trying to push through, I think I kind‘a lost it for a minute!”

  “Who could blame you,”said Maggie,“I think we all would at that point....”

  “Anyway, I wriggled around and got loose and I fell out head first and scraped my face against the wall as I fell but I was just in time, I could hear them right behind me in the staffroom, they were screaming and shouting, some were calling after me and others were making that weird noise. It was horrible! It was like they were having some kind of fit or something!

  I sat against the wall for a minute outside scared I’d broken something, trying to think what to do next and then I got scared that they might try and run around the outside to catch me.

  So I tried the button for the carwash roller door just in case and I couldn’t believe it when it worked. Well, it opened just enough for me to squeeze under, so I did, scared shitless that the door was going to fall on me. It nearly did. It slammed down right behind me just brushing passed my arm as it did but I was in and they couldn’t get me.

  I couldn’t hear much after that, I heard the odd bang or scream but that was all, mostly all I heard was the wind and the thunder until the guys came round looking for me.”

  Lara looked at the three guys with her wet eyes.“Thanks for coming to get me guys,”she said,“I honestly thought I was stuck out there for good. Thank you so, so much.”

  “You have Collin to thank,”said Andy and he nodded in Collin’s direction.“He’s the one who sounded the alarm.”

  Maggie cut in then,“Speaking of Collin, have you taken your lunch yet?”

  “No,”said Collin,“I was sti....”

  “Well go on lunch now, and then come and find me afterwards, I’ll have something for you to do.” “Yea, ok,”he said nodding and he stood up to leave as Leann leaned around Maggie and said,“Thanks Collin. I couldn’t have lasted long over there, thank you.”

  “No problem,”he said smiling and then he left them to it and went for his long overdue lunch break.

  *****

  He sat by himself in the candlelit canteen, the truck driver was the only other person there and he was sleeping on a line of chairs over in the back corner. Mad Maggie had tried to take him to hospital along with Lara but her car was dead just like everyone else’s.

  Droves of people were coming back in to the supermarket asking to use a phone to call for roadside assistance and so on, taking no notice of the sign that Jimmy put up that said the phones were out of order. When he tried to tell them, they simply demanded they get to use a phone and when that didn’t work with Jimmy they moved on looking for another member of staff to harass.

  They thought they were being fobbed off despite the supermarket being in total darkness.

  The whole place was being lit by candles. They were angry and started shouting at whoever tried telling them that the phones were broke.

  Maggie tried telling them they were lucky that the supermarket was still open and that it hadn’t been raided like some of the other supermarkets around town that the police had told her about or even the supermarket’s own petrol station.

  She said she saw it as doing her bit for the community by keeping the doors open as long as she could, even though the place was practically bare.“Its shelter for them,”she said.“Until we’ve tidied up and are ready to leave, we’ll leave the doors open, in times like these we all need to pull together.”

  Collin was glad to be out of the way for a while. He’d been tired before he’d even gone outside to clear snow. Now he was exhausted.

  After eating the sandwiches his Gran made for him, Collin sat with his head cradled in his arms and his eyes closed and dozed. He was even too tired to look at his latest Incredible Hulk graphic novel that he’d taken in with him, it sat beside him unopened. He dozed off and on, occasionally lifting his head to look out the windows on to the car park. He watched as people, whole families, attempted to start their walk home laden down with shopping bags and crates of water.

  Maybe it was just as well that the kids came in the end, he thought seeing the little figures weighed down with shopping.

  He watched as the ash faded, turning darker, turning day in to night, the dead of night. Then he dozed off again. He woke with a jolt when he heard screaming.

  He sat bolt upright swiping his lunch box with the back of his hand by mistake sending it skidding along the table where it banged in to Leann Smith and stopped.

  “Shit! I’m sorry,”he said jumping up to reach his lunchbox. Leann slid it back to him smiling.

  “Calm down action man,”she said.“I’ll live.”

  Then looking at him she said,“Here check this out,”and she shimmied across a couple of seats until she was opposite him and she slid her iPad between them.

  Collin’s cheeks felt like they’d caught fire they were so hot, he saw where the screams were coming from and felt stupid. Leann was watching some crappy horror film or something on her iPad.

  “This is supposed to be footage from Norway,”she said.“It’s from some reporter that managed to post on the internet.”

  Collin looked up at Leann reluctantly and asked,“How come you’re iPad’s working?”

  “I don’t know. I saw Lara before she went home, I can’t believe she just walked, I mean, like on her own. Did you know that she’d cut her side really badly when she climbed through that window at the petrol station?”

  “Uh, no!”said Collin.

  “Well she did and she didn’t even know until Maggie realised in the first aid room earlier when she lifted her top.”

  Collin just shook his head stuck for words as he felt knots of guilt start tugging at the pit of his stomach again.

  “Anyway,”said Leann,“she said that her iPhone still worked earlier when she was in the petrol station. She said she was watching the internet on it before the shit hit but she couldn’t text or call anyone. But after she made her run for it and tried it in the car wash it was dead, she said that she thought that just being out in the ash for a few seconds fucked it up. So, anyway I thought I’d give the iPad a try, seeing as I have it with me. I never leave home without it. It’s been in the locker since I got here, and the ash hadn’t arrived by then.”

  “Ah huh,”said Collin looking at the screen.

  “Well,” she said,“maybe the ash hasn’t affected all of the airwaves yet or something. Or maybe it’s only affecting the actual electrics you know like i
f it touches them or something you know like if it gets in to the workings of things, down in the circuit boards or whatever.”

  Collin shrugged his shoulders he didn’t have a clue about these kind of things, but he thought it sounded about right.After all, the ash only started affecting things once it started to settle, he thought.

  “Have you tried to email anyone yet?”he asked.

  Leann nodded and then shook her head.“Yea, but I had no luck. Anyway, after talking to Lara I nipped in to the changing rooms and checked to see if my iPad was working and it was, so I set it to download the news so that if the signal was killed off with the electrics or whatever, at least I’d have some current news downloaded and might be able to get an idea of what’s happening out there, you know. At least before my iPad dies that is.”

  Collin was nodding trying to think about what she was saying trying to make sense of it while trying to understand why she was saying it to him.

  “I’ve only just turned it back on, and I’ve got this weird video that was actually on the news, it sounds pretty bad. Check it out.”

  She pressed the screen sliding her finger along the scroll bar at the bottom until she got to the start of the downloaded video and she let it play.

  The camera was being held by a reporter, as he drove along some deserted looking town centre. He was on his own. They caught a glimpse of him as he manoeuvred the camera. All they saw was his thick black hair, the rest of his face was wrapped up behind a dark red scarf.

  He just finished saying something as the video started playing like he’d already started talking before he pressed the record button.“I think he missed his own introduction,”said Leann.

  It was hard to see much of the town, the ash was so thick, but it was definitely deserted.

  A deep roar of thunder grumbled overhead and the reporter flinched and swore.

  “Fucking thunder!”he said.“I’ve been in the van keeping it running for three days now. I’ve seen too many people switch off or stall and then that’s it they can’t get started again no matter what they do, and I’m scared that if I leave the van someone else will take it. So it’s become my home for the last few days.

  All the electrics on the van are dead but at least it’s still running, thank God for diesel huh, but God knows for how long. I emptied our last jerry can in to the tank last night so when that runs out that’s it because the petrol station pumps are all dead and I don’t know where to even look for a manual pump.”He slowed down and stopped at what looked like it might be the centre of town.

  He panned round with the camera.

  Collin and Leann could just make out roads leading off straight ahead and to either side, it looked like he was in the middle of the town square, in the middle of a cross roads maybe.

  “It’s like this everywhere,”he said,“every single shop whatever it sells has been broken in to and looted, or just plain vandalised!”The camera zoomed down one of the streets and gradually as it tried to focus through the murky ash Collin and Leann saw that all the windows were broken. At least the ones that were visible. Giant shards of glass hung from the frames like teeth, shelves and stalls were poking through some of the broken windows and debris littered the street in front of the shops slowly being buried by the ash and snow. A TV faced them with a shattered screen filling up with dirty snow. Everywhere the camera looked it looked like some kind of nightmarish shadow land.

  “I’ve seen some of the looting going on. If you can call it that!

  The violence I’ve seen is unbelievable. It’s horrible to watch. Terrible! The closest thing I can relate it to is dog fighting, it’s just raw, it’s animalistic, savage!

  It’s slowly gotten worse. The longer that this whole thing goes on for, the settling ash, the dirty snow whatever it really is, it just gets worse and worse!”

  The camera zoomed back suddenly and Collin and Leann saw inside the cab, the top of the steering wheel here and some of the dashboard there as the reporter turned the steering wheel and started moving again, heading left along a different route.“I’ll head back to the hospital and try and get a view for you,”he continued.“Maybe I can pick up Rick this time. Rick’s my cameraman, he was admitted yesterday after he started to get really sick.

  When I took him in things at the hospital were terrible. People were having to be sedated and restrained all over the place because of their delirious outbreaks. Even doctors were tied down on hospital beds, and there were beds lined along every single wall I saw and everyone of them had someone tied down on top of it. It was a horrible sight, just horrible! People were shouting and swearing, or screaming while others were coughing their guts up, just like Rick.

  There up was puke and snot everywhere. It was all over the floors, over chairs, down the walls, and that’s if it’s even puke. It’s as black as ink!

  I wanted to tell Rick to try and just see it through, stay with me in the van you know, but he’d gotten too bad. The poor guy couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t eat, couldn’t even drink. He tried but whatever he tried, it just came right back out again and then his breathing would get worse.

  I had to let him stay there, I had to. I had to make him stay!”

  He carried on driving along the street, bobbing up and down as he drove over the thick ashy snow. Canopies jutting out over shop fronts looked like they were about to burst through with the weight of the dirty snow on top of them.

  Collin looked up for a second and said,“Do you think it’s a hoax? Someone just trying to scare people?”

  “Pretty sick joke if he is,”said Leann.“People will panic watching this, especially with it being shown on the news.”

  “Yea, I suppose,”said Collin hoping Leann wouldn’t be able to see his red cheeks in the candlelight.

  As the reporter drove, they saw the carnage. Broken windows everywhere and debris littered the streets thrown mindlessly out of shops and houses and cars. A shiver ran down Collin’s spine.“It looks just like the kiosk,”he said.

  “Really!” said Leann.“God, poor Lara, must have been petrified eh?”

  Collin nodded. The screen started to blink off and on for a moment and they both thought the iPad was about to die as the view changed but it settled again and the reporter left the town. He drove down a narrow country road enclosed by tall black trees on both sides. At a glance the scene on the screen looked like some obscure artist’s bizarre creation, a cloud of charcoal dust framed within charcoal sticks.

  “I’m coming up to the hospital now,”said the reporter.“This road leads straight to it. Hopefully we’ll be able to see it in a minute. If not, I bet we’ll be able to hear it.”

  He turned the camera to face in to the woods as he bobbed along. They were pitch black like the haunted woods in a fairytale.

  “Fuck going down there,”said Leann and Collin nodded.

  “This is a spruce forest,”said the reporter,“it should be evergreen. The whole area should be green and bursting with foliage but the ash has killed everything; every tree or plant, or shrub, whatever. If it’s growing out of the ground it’s dying even if it isn’t meant to be, and it’s because of the ash!

  It was Rick that noticed it first, they’re not that colour because of the ash settling on them, they are actually dying off, they’re all brittle. They just crumble to dust in your hand. Once we started to take notice of it we realised everything is dying, the ash is like a cancer. You can try to brush the ash off and no matter how gentle you are branches and big ones too, just break off and crumble in your hand.”

  The van bounced over some large drifts causing the guy to nearly drop the camera, the view flashed across the inside of the van for a second almost making Leann flinch.

  “I can tell you that it feels really weird being here right now, it doesn’t feel right somehow, it’s almost like I can feel a change happening. Apart from Rick and the doctors at the hospital yesterday, the ones that weren’t restrained, I haven’t come across another normal person, I mean someone that�
��s not ill or coming down with the ash sickness. They’re either laying around puking up that black gunk or covered from head to toe with ash smashing things up making this weird gurgling noise! It’s just nuts!”

  He carried on driving slowly down the road. Collin almost felt edgy, he wanted the guy to stop and turn back, and then the van did stop.

  The reporter got out and started walking along in front of the van leaving it to idle as he set out on foot.“I know by the sight of that tree there that I should be able to see the hospital from here if we get a break in the ash.”He pointed at a tree that had been snapped off roughly eight feet up leaving giant splinters poking straight up at the heavens.“I’ll walk a bit further and see if we get lucky,”he said.“I came up this morning to see Rick and the sight was, it was, uh.”His voice sounded like it was starting to break up with emotion.“It was terrible,”he managed.“I couldn’t go in. I just couldn’t. It wasn’t safe to, so I went straight back to the hotel and emptied our rooms. I threw everything we have in to the van and then I started to film. I thought that I should try and get word out about what’s happening here, spread the word you know. Let people know what’s really going on! I had to, in case no one else is, or can. Plus I don’t think that anyone will believe me without the film for proof, they probably still won’t. But I’ve got to try. I have to try and warn people!”

  Leann asked Collin,“What do you think he means?”

  “I don’t know,”said Collin.

  “I wonder why he couldn’t go in,”Leann finished and the reporter stopped.

  They could hear his heavy breathing and the faint chug, chug, chug of the van behind him. There was a faint bang in the distance. A thud! The reporter flinched, he panned the camera around and zoomed in to the vast expanse of dirty snow filling the air like heavy fog. It was almost dizzying to watch without anything solid to focus on as he searched ahead using the camera like a telescope. After a moment when he didn’t find anything he zoomed back out again and said,“We’re close,”and he kept on walking.“After what I saw earlier,”he said,“and heard I don’t want to be seen. You’ll know what I mean in a minute.”