As the Light Dies

by M. D. Woodham

  Dean kept calling out as they went becoming more and more frustrated and worried as he continued getting no reply. They passed Reception and Dean took the upper ramp first that lead up to the gym and the cafe.“They all must’ve just forgotten to clock out Dean,”said Keith trying to keep up.

  “Nah, not a chance,”said Dean.“Even if they did none of them would have left the place wide open with no alarm on. Something must have happened to them! God knows what, but something must have!”

  Keith went quiet. He felt bad having not thought that his colleagues might actually be in trouble. Even when he was checking the pool with Dean, he wasn’t worried, and didn’t expect to find anything, but it was dawning on him that Dean was worried, and probably had expected to find something in the pool. Keith felt bad for not taking the pool search seriously and stayed quiet as they walked up the ramp.

  At the top of the ramp the floor spread out to form a large open plan dining area for the main cafe. The back wall was made up of floor to ceiling glass panels that reached from one end to the other and normally gave a great view of the athletic field and the rugged countryside beyond, but right now only the vague outline of the spectator seating enclosure swam in and out of view. Spindly silhouettes surrounded them formed by the upturned chair legs that sat on the table tops, again untouched from how Ann had left them the night before.

  To their right the cafe sat with its curved glass facia and chromed coffee machine reflected the ashen snow through the glazed back wall.

  “Place hasn’t been touched,”said Dean pushing open the gym doors.

  “HELLO,”he yelled. There was no echo and no reply.

  “HELLO!” he tried again only to be met by the same silence as the first time.

  “Ok,”he said,“spread out and search the gym. Ann you take the left Keith the right and I’ll take the middle and we’ll meet up by the free weights down the bottom ok?”

  They all set to work. Sam wandered here and there sniffing around but never straying too far from Dean. Ann trod carefully as she stepped over rowing machines and behind treadmills. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. Keith searched between and behind cross trainers and stationary bikes and Dean searched around the weight machines. The search took less than two minutes. They all came together at the far end of the gym by the dumbbells and weight benches. No-one had turned up anything.“I just don’t understand it,”said Dean.“One of the main doors was open, and there was no alarm. Three people are clocked in but there’s no one to be seen. What’s happened?”he asked more to himself than to the others, then before either of them answered he said,“C’mon let’s go and check the halls.”

  The three of them checked the sports halls and their equipment cupboards, then the climbing wall and then the changing areas and hadn’t found anything. They all came back together by the row of glass panelled doors that led out on to the athletic track directly below the café’s rear glass wall above. They each stood in silence, deflated and discouraged looking out at the black snow as it rushed against the glass thrust along by the gale outside. The spectator seating enclosure on the far side of the track looked like a giant black shoe box just at the edge of their visibility.

  After a moment Dean said,“Right guys I can’t think what might have happened to the guys on shift, all I can suggest is that we do another sweep of the building, the whole lot, and the maintenance bay as well, and if there’s anything that either of you think that we’ve missed then say so and we’ll get it checked ok, and if we still haven’t come across them all I can suggest is that I go outside with Sam and check around the outside of the building. But if they are outside for whatever reason I’d have hoped that they will have come back in by the time we finish our second search. That’s all we can do.”He was shaking his head as he finished.

  “It is all we can do Dean,”said Ann,“there’s nothing else we can do. It’s not our fault that we all trekked in and found the doors open and no-one here, in fact it’s probably just as well we have trekked in. So that maybe now we can do something about it.”Ann paused for a second, then added,“We are doing something about it.”

  “Yea,”said Dean,“but it just doesn’t feel right you know. I’ve just got a bad feeling about all this especially with the news that’s been on the TV.”

  “Ooh yea!” Keith chirped in.“Did you guys see the reporter guy in Norway on that internet news site? It was nasty!”

  “I didn’t,”said Ann shooting a stern look at Keith.“But Tim did. He told me about it, said he thought it was a hoax. But some of the proper news he saw, the legit stuff sounded quite grim. Germany and France were suffering quite badly at the time.”

  “And Russia.”said Keith.“It’s spreading in all directions and....”

  “Right,”said Dean butting in,“C’mon. Let’s go and start this search, and remember to check everything no matter what it is. We might find a clue, and even the tiniest clue might lead us to where they are, so keep your eyes peeled guys.”

  Ann and Keith nodded and they all started back towards Reception to restart their search. As they walked Dean thought about Gavin and wondered where he was right now and how he was doing. He had images of him being stranded in a broken down bus somewhere out in the middle of nowhere without a clue where he was. Then his thoughts turned to their parents, he wondered how things were with them, how they were holding up. He could see himself having to walk the twenty odd miles or so up there to check on and help them once he’d found Gavin. He just wished that he’d been able to call them earlier, before all this started, he wished he’d called them before his shift last night, the ash was already predicted by then after all.

  Ann worried about their missing colleagues; she was beginning to sense the same fear as Dean and it made her worry about her own family, Tim and the boys.

  Maybe I should’ve just stayed home, she thought.

  Keith hoped they found something soon, he saw no point in being here as things were, he was tired and he wanted to go back home to his bed.

  CHAPTER 12

  Shelly Connor peered through the little square window of the airtight container that she and Jeff, her cameraman, had been relegated to. It was a part of the mobile field lab set up inside the disused air hangar. Shelly thought the whole set up looked like it had been lifted straight from the set of a sci-fi movie. They were all housed inside a big see-through polythene bubble within the hangar with several airtight containers with their own small airlocks sealed on to the bubble around its sides. She looked out on to the floor of the hangar at the many scientists as they worked by gaslight and powerful glow sticks now that the power had died, trying to find out what was so different about the ash. Why it was supposedly causing widespread electrical failures and even hysteria in some cases, maybe even here. She was thoroughly pissed off and stressed out.

  “Come and sit down Shell,”said Jeff.“Just chill out for a minute,”he said,“there’s nothing we can do right now but hope that the news continues to get out somehow.”

  “How!” she snapped turning around from the window.“We’ve lost all contact with the network and now the internet’s gone!”

  “Shell, just becauseourgear’s given up doesn’t mean everyone else’s has. I mean look how long our gear lasted running off its own feed in here, managing to hold off the affects of the ash....”

  “We’re in a fucking sealed building!”she snapped cutting him off.

  Jeff ignored her outburst, he knew her to well, he continued.“Even if the net is down everywhere I think more than enough news got out by the end.”

  Shelly gave Jeff a sharp look that said more than words and this time he cringed.

  Shelly had been on edge since they’d been removed from the work floor after a second scientist had fallen ill. Since then a third, fourth and fifth scientist had been overcome by the suspected effects from the ash, and now there were others that were starting to look ill, including Professor Andrew Gunn who Shelly had been interviewing for the network when he cou
ld spare the time. Shelly and Jeff had been cooped up since, in this tiny sealed off med lab tea room with nothing to do but wait. Shortly after being holed up, for their own protection, they were told by the network that they were being pulled off air because they weren’t being productive enough.

  Shelly had blown a fuse, the biggest fuse Jeff had ever seen her blow in the years that he’d been her assigned cameraman, and she knew how to blow a fuse. She shouted and swore and even kicked the door a couple of times and slammed her hand down on the work top!

  Jeff didn’t say anything, he gave her some space to calm down while he rigged up one of the scientist’s laptops that had been left on the countertop and before long he had the news up.

  He called Shelly over to watch some of what their network were running with and what they saw shocked them to the core!

  There was footage of people attacking people with such ferocity it left them speechless.

  One clip was of a businesswoman running bare foot up a steep high street through the thick discoloured snow. Her face was contorted out of shape with fear as three darkened figures emerged through the ash chasing after her! She disappeared through a broken window of a looted shop. The three figures followed her in and within seconds they dragged her back out kicking and screaming and set about beating her with their feet and hands, some even grabbed her hair and pulled leaving her head to resemble the knot in a tug o’war rope! Clumps of hair tore away in fevered hands pulling patches of bloody scalp with it. A man emerged from a nearby doorway to help and was overpowered in seconds and treated to the same fate. The tape was cut just as more darkened figures appeared through the dirty snow making a beeline for the two fallen people!

  Shelly felt sick seeing it.“What the hell!”she blurted.“They were like wild animals,”she said as another tape started playing. In this shot a group of people dirty with ash were smashing their way in to a shop which the reporter said the owner and his family were thought to be hiding in. It was a little corner newspaper shop with a protective steel shutter pulled down over the front door and mesh grilles over the windows. The group of attackers only had their hands and feet to try and smash their way in, and they were literally tearing themselves to bits. One repeatedly punched the steel shutter over the front door with ferocious speed oblivious to any pain. Others hammered and kicked the window grilles bending them out of shape desperately trying to tear them from the building. The attack was frantic and unrelenting.

  “Why are they doing that?”said Shelly.

  Jeff shrugged his shoulders and shook his head,“Makes me glad that I’m in here and not out there,”he said. One of the mesh grilles finally sprang away from the building and within minutes the attackers managed to break a small hole through the toughened glass. At first it was only a spider’s web of tiny cracks spreading out from one corner, but the cracks grew bigger, and bigger as the glass gave in to the relentless abuse and then as a tiny hole appeared one of the crazed attackers forced his hand through, skinning himself to the bone all the way up to his elbow. In that instant they all wanted to be the one pushing their hands through. They all gathered around the same spot attacking the wounded glass like wild things climbing over each other trying to reach inside. All Shelly and Jeff could see were their backs jostling around pounding at the glass fighting each other for position. Suddenly one of the figures was thrown back from the group and Shelly gasped!

  It was the figure who’d been the first to force his arm in through the broken window and he was missing his arm from the elbow down. Flaps of fleshy skin and muscle swung in the air where his forearm had been a few minutes ago!“Jesus!”said Jeff,“they tore his arm off to get at the window!”

  The pair of them watched amazed as the figures pulled the razor sharp glass to pieces with their bare hands, slicing themselves and gouging holes out of their hands, losing fingers desperate to gain access!

  Reports running along the bottom of the screen said police were massively overworked, and that all emergency personnel were being over exposed to the elements resulting in many falling ill. Lots of the country’s hospitals had lost power and were relying on candle and gaslight and most had been so massively overwhelmed that they’d been reduced to laying their dead in their car parks!

  Then the attackers forced a big enough hole in the glass to push themselves through and they piled in to the shop shredding shoulders, hips and thighs as they squeezed through the unforgiving jagged and sharp edges, climbing over each other in their rush to get in, someone started to scream, and then the tape was cut.

  The screen shot returned to the studio where two news reporters sat at their desk staring out at Shelly and Jeff. They looked tired,exhausted even, and frightened. Shelly sat down opposite Jeff and ran her hands through her hair.

  “This is fucking useless,”she said,“I hate feeling useless like this, what’s going on out there? I mean, what thefuckis going on! It’s terrible, it’s unnatural, those damn crazies, what they’re doing is horrible.No, it’s worse than that, it’s evil! They were like out of control wild fucking animals! Wild animals with rabies! We should be doing something to help. We shouldn’t be trapped in here doing sweet fuck all while those death factory hospitals continue to overflow out there!”She slammed both of her hands down on the table spilling her coffee.

  “We have helped Shell,”said Jeff.“Your interviews earlier with the Professor out there informed millions of viewers about the early developments.Wehelped warn everyone watching about the possible dangers related to the ash,andwe told them what precautions to take. Now it’s someone else’s chance to get their story out. Don’t you think that other news teams felt the same seeing you on the screen while they waited for something to happen? We did help;the ones that listened that is!”

  Shelly looked up at him,“We clearly didn’t help that poor woman being chased down the street or the family hiding in the newsagents. How much of this is getting out? What good are wereallydoing....”

  “We saw it didn’t we,”Jeff cut back in.“We know it’s gone out on the air as terrible as it was. Some people will have seen it Shell. People will know, people are hearing and seeing all the time and they’re spreading the word amongst themselves thanks to people like us.”

  Shelly ran her hands through her hands again.“Hmmm maybe,”she said,“but I can’t help feeling that we’re not doing enough, at least if we were out there on the work floor with the scientists I’d feel better, even though I know that we have no way of broadcasting. I’d just feel better you know, being out there, feeling a part of things if only to be a witness to how things happened you know, take notes, document it you know.”

  “Yea Shell, I get you. But you’re just working yourself up. Our situation isn’t going to change. Try and calm down for a minute ok, maybe longer if that’s possible but a minute minimum ok.”

  Jeff stood up before she could protest, and walked over to the counter top where there was a small gas ring rigged up. He could feel her staring at his back, not amused at being told to calm down.

  “You want another coffee?”he asked turning and nodding towards the one she’d spilled.

  He noticed that all the anger he knew for a fact had just been there, had washed out of her face already.

  “Yea, go on then,”she said.“Thanks Jeff. I’m sorry about earlier, losing the plot a bit.”

  “One coffee coming right up, and don’t mention it Shell. I wouldn’t have expected you to have taken it any other way.”

  “Cheeky bastard,” she said trying to hide a smile.

  They waited in silence while the little gas ring hissed warming the water, and before long the aroma of strong coffee filled the room.

  Jeff placed a steaming cup in front of Shelly and she raised her head from her arms and hovered over the mug breathing in the aroma, it gave her a lift as she inhaled deeply and sighed.

  “Thanks Jeff,”she said.

  “No problem,”he said sitting down opposite.“You know one thing that’s worrying me?
”he said.“No, said Shelly, what?”

  “Well, my worry is having to stay here with those scientists through there getting sick, maybe even going fucking crazy like the people on the news. We both saw what happened to the scientists that became ill through there, especially the last one, he totally flew off to bat shit city. I mean Christ Shell it took three men to hold him down, even four towards the end, and they only just managed that. If those sedatives hadn’t kicked in when they did he would have gotten lose I fucking bet you, and then what? Would he start tearing up the place like those crazy fuckers on TV? Maybe even tearing them up!”

  “We don’t know that Jeff,”quipped Shelly.

  “Ok, fair enough,”he said holding up his hands.“You’re right, we don’t have any facts, we don’t know for sure, but you saw how fucked up things turned when that last guy flipped and it only took seconds, and he nearly overpowered four men. Anyway besides that, or as well as that, I’m worried that we’re stranded here, and could be for a long time! All the vehicles are out of action now, and it aint exactly walking weather out there, and even if it was where would any of us walk to? We didn’t pass a house for miles and miles before we got here, nothing! Were properly out in the sticks, and a couple of yards over there somewhere,”he pointed towards the far wall.“There’s a two hundred foot drop in to the North Sea....”

  “And!”Shelly cut in.

  “Well what I’m trying to say is,isthere any food supplies? Coz we’re all gonna need to eat at some point, especially the sick guys in that other hut across the hangar. Where the hell do we go to get some, and where are we gonna sleep?”He gestured to the floor waving both his hands.

  ”I don’t know Jeff.We’llfind out wont we,”said Shelly sounding like the anger was returning.

  “Sorry Shell, I just don’t like being in here while those sick guys are screaming and banging through there in that make-shift first aid room! Not after seeing the news footage.”