“Well”, I said, trying to find my feet again, “I mean, you were decisive, calm and clear-headed while we were being chased by a group of thugs. Most people would have panicked and come apart, but you, well, uh, you did well”.
“For a woman?” She asked tartly.
“For anyone! Why is this suddenly about you being a woman? You handled yourself at least as well as any man I know today”.
“Just as well as, not better than?” She asked in the same tone.
“Well, er, maybe, yes. Look, whatever I said that annoyed you, I’m sorry, I was just trying to pay you a compliment. After all, it’s not like you’ve been through anything like that before, I should think, and I was impressed is all”.
I heard a noise from the seat next to me like a set of rusted gears straining against each other. For a horrible moment I thought Ralph was having a heart attack, then I realised that he was laughing, his eyes dancing with merriment.
“What?” I snapped, feeling like the butt of a joke that everyone else got but I didn’t. “What’s so funny?”
“Not been through anything like that before?” He wheezed, and I looked at Emily to see her grinning in return. “Have you met my daughter properly?”
“Properly?” I still didn’t get it, and the longer they chuckled at each other the angrier I became. “We didn’t quite have time for proper introductions, no”.
“Well then”, he said, placing a conciliatory hand on my arm, “allow me to introduce you to my daughter, Sergeant Emily Morris, 1st Battalion, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. I reckon she’s seen a damn sight more trouble in worse places than you or I could think of, so today might have been rough for you or me, but to her it was just a walk in the park”.
Chapter 18
The rest of the journey passed in silence, broken by Ralph’s occasional chuckles. I was already thoroughly embarrassed by my attempt to congratulate Emily on how well she’d coped, and the laughter really wasn’t helping my mood but I let it pass unchallenged.
Looking at it from her point of view, I supposed my comments could be seen as rude, although I preferred to think of them as uninformed.
Thinking back, I was surprised that I hadn’t worked it out for myself. Not only was she cool and capable under fire, as it were, but her house had been neat to the point of severity and now I thought about it she had that unmistakable military air about her.
I put it down to the events of the afternoon overwhelming me, and spent the rest of the journey trying to think of something suitable to say that wouldn’t make me sound any more like a moron than I had already.
In the end I settled for keeping my mouth shut, which seemed to be the best option when Emily finally spoke to me as we drew close to the cottage.
“Malc, thank you for today”.
I looked up and blinked for a second, unsure what to say.
“You’re welcome”, I said finally, “it’s nothing you wouldn’t have done for me”.
“Well I, we appreciate it. You could have just left us to it, come back and spun some story for mum and disappeared into the blue never to be heard of again”.
I felt a stab of guilt as I remembered considering that very thing.
“Wouldn’t have been right”, I said, glad that the darkness hid my burning cheeks. “I promised your mum I’d help get you home, and I don’t like breaking promises”.
“Well I think you’re a good man”, she said with a smile, showing dimples in the mirror. “Will you be staying with us when we get home? I’m sure dad could find a use for you and your friend both.”
I shook my head. “I’d love to”, I said, suddenly realising that it was true, “but my daughter is up in Manchester and her mother, well, let’s just say she’s not someone I want looking after my little girl the way things are right now”.
“You’re married?” Was there a hint of disappointment there? I banished the thought instantly; this was no time to be thinking about romance, no matter how attractive I found Emily.
“Divorced. We married way too young on the strength of a drunken club night. Not the most stable foundation for a relationship. Turns out we had nothing in common, and things only got worse the older Melody got, we couldn’t agree on anything in the end”.
I closed my mouth with a snap. Here I was, spilling my life story to someone I’d only just met while her father sat next to me with a loaded shotgun. It was almost enough to make me laugh, and I had to repress the urge to giggle like a child.
“How about you?” I asked instead, “got anyone back in the army?”
She shook her head. “No, I actually came out of the army about six months ago, despite what my dad said. I started up a little business repairing the things that people usually throw away once they stop working, then selling them on ebay. Almost ninety percent of electrical goods that go wrong and get thrown out are repairable, if you know what you’re doing. Made a killing. Not that I’ll be doing much of it for a while, I would think”.
We crested the final hill and she turned the car onto the drive that led to the cottage. As we pulled into the yard, however, I saw an old blue Landrover sitting by the Cottage door and immediately reached for the spare shotgun, only to have Ralph’s meaty hand clamp down on mine.
“Easy there, that’s Dave Edwards, he’s the local forester. Don’t think we’ll be needing the shotguns”.
I nodded and let go, but noted that he scanned the yard before he got out of the car, and his own weapon was at the ready as we approached the cottage, a light still on in the kitchen window.
As we walked towards the door it flew open and Harriet almost ran out. She and Emily caught hold of each other and hugged while I stood there awkwardly. Harriet finally disentangled herself from her daughter’s arms and swapped them for Ralph’s, squeezing him tight before gripping my hand, her eyes shining with tears.
“Oh, thank god you’re safe”, she said, pulling me towards the door as the others followed. “Jerry was beside himself, talking about hiking over there until Dave came by, then trying to convince him to go and search for you, but I knew you’d come back. Was it bad?”
I opened my mouth to answer but then caught Ralph’s stare.
“Not too bad”, I lied with a smile, “just a bit of car trouble”.
She nodded and accepted the explanation, leading us into the kitchen as Maggie ran around our feet, yapping excitedly until Ralph yelled at her.
Jerry was sat at the table, hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea, while opposite him sat a man in his early thirties who appeared to be carved from granite, his tattered navy jumper straining to cover his hugely muscled arms as he stood to shake our hands.
He seemed to be a pleasant chap, a permanent smile splitting his thick, dark beard as he folded a huge hand around mine, squeezing surprisingly gently and saying my name to himself when we were introduced.
In moments, it seemed, we were all seated around the table with mugs of tea, Ralph batting off questions about the delay in getting back and turning the conversation to how Dave had managed to get his vehicle working.
“I came out this morning and the battery was dead”, he said by way of explanation, “but I’ve got a couple of spares in the shed so I tried one and it worked. I thought I’d head over and make sure you and Harriet were ok. Your man Jerry here was about to explain what happened when you pulled up”.
We all turned to look at Jerry and he cleared his throat nervously.
“Right, well. I’ve already explained to most of you about the solar flare, and to some of you about the Coronal Mass Ejection, which is actually the thing causing all the problems. Do you all know what an EMP is?”
Everyone but Ralph nodded.
“Ok”, Jerry continued, “it’s an electromagnetic pulse, which is normally found when a nuclear device detonates, and it’s capable of destroying electronics and causing all manner of problems, such as overloads and the like. The Ejection, or CME for short, that we had yesterday was particul
arly bad, and in layman’s terms it’s the sun venting plasma, which acts like an EMP. The sun actually has a very strong electromagnetic field of its own, as well as its own gravity, but sometimes when the gravity weakens it sends out, well, puffs of plasma, I suppose you could say. It’s almost unheard of for one to hit the earth, but it does happen, clearly, or we wouldn’t be in this mess”.
He looked around with a smile, as if he’d covered everything, but there were more than a few confused looks at the table.
“So how does that explain my car battery then?” Dave asked, scratching his beard.
“Oh yes, well. A CME as large as the one that hit us is kind of like a giant taser hitting the earth. The shock would ground, in much the same way as electricity, and anything made of conductive material with a power source connected to it would effectively draw the energy out of its power source unless it was shielded and surge protected”.
“Like a metal car with its battery still attached?” Dave said, catching on.
Jerry took a swig of his tea and nodded. “Exactly. I detached my battery before it hit, so it was ok, and so would any that were being driven at the time, as the alternator would charge it up again, but if your vehicle was switched off when the CME hit, the battery would have drained, whereas the ones in your shed weren’t attached to anything so the charge wouldn’t go anywhere”.
“I think I follow you”, Dave said, “so what about all the other cars?”
“Microchips”, he said, waggling a finger. “We’ve become so reliant on microchips as a society that they’re in almost everything now. Unfortunately they are delicate enough that they are particularly susceptible to Electromagnetic variations, so everything that has a microchip in it is, well, pretty bloody useless now”.
Emily turned her mug with one hand while the other stroked Maggie’s head.
“What about older systems, pre the microchip revolution?”
Jerry shrugged. “They should work if you can find a power source, and maybe a working fuse or two. There’s no reason why, with a bit of make and mend, we couldn’t have ourselves back to the technology level of, say, the seventies, within a few weeks if there are enough people out there working on it”.
“I can think of a reason”, I said, standing and walking to the window to look out at the night sky.
“Oh really, what’s that?” Jerry asked, clearly annoyed at being interrupted.
“That”, I said, pointing out to where the sky was writhing with colour, blues, greens and reds all mixing together from horizon to horizon.
Jerry almost ran to the door, pulling it open and heading into the yard. We all followed, speechless as we looked up at the incredible display above us.
“Oh my god”, Jerry said, his voice barely a whisper, “it’s happening again”.
Chapter 19
We all stood in the yard, staring up in wonder as the sky pulsated in resplendent colour, washing our faces with its light.
“It’s beautiful”, Emily said, “what’s causing it?”
Jerry spoke without moving his eyes from the display.
“It’s the magnetic force of the sun interacting with the outer atmosphere”, he said, “although it’s a good deal more complicated than that. If my instruments were working I could see exactly what was happening, but even if they were it would drain… the car!”
He ran to the Golf and opened the door, pulling the handle for the bonnet and hurriedly lifting it to tear the connectors from the battery.
Following his lead, Dave did the same with the Landrover, quickly pulling up the passenger seat and pulling the whole battery clear before laying it next to the vehicle.
“Will it be ok out here?” He asked Jerry, who nodded as he returned his gaze to the sky.
“As long as there’s nothing draining it, it should be fine”, he said, “I just wish I knew if this was just a flare or another CME”.
“What difference does it make?” I asked, awed and scared by the lightshow at the same time. It might be beautiful, but it was also a sign that the worst of the storm wasn’t over.
“If it’s just a flare”, Jerry said without turning, “then it won’t cause further problems, but if it’s a CME then anyone who’s crawled out of their hidey-holes to start making repairs will find all their replacement kit being fried. It could set a repair effort back months”.
Emily came to stand next to me, arms hugging her chest as she looked up.
“I always wanted to see the Northern Lights”, she said with a wry smile, “and now I have, I suddenly wish I hadn’t”.
“I know what you mean. Did you see it last night?”
She shook her head. “No, I went to bed quite early, then woke up and nothing was working”.
“It wasn’t quite as strong last night, I think”, I said, trying to compare the lights to the ones from the previous night, “which makes me glad the electricity is already out or we’d probably see worse than we did then”.
“How bad was it?” She glanced over at me, trying to read my expression.
I shrugged and looked down at the ground, trying to block out the images of Brighton burning while we drove away, unable to help anyone against the sheer scale of the disaster.
“Bad”, I said shortly.
I half expected her to press but she merely nodded, putting a hand on my shoulder before moving to stand with her mother. I could feel the warmth of her hand long after she’d moved away, and again chided myself for thinking of anything other than going to find Melody.
“I can’t be standing out here all night”, Ralph said suddenly, and went back into the cottage. A few moments later the sound of clinking glass came from the kitchen, and I suspected that he was fixing himself something stronger than tea.
I moved up next to Jerry and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Do we need to be worried?” I asked quietly.
He looked at me over his glasses.
“How do you mean, exactly?”
“Well, you said that the CME is bombarding the Earth with radiation, are we likely to get sick?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t think so, no. At least not right away. The atmosphere works a bit like a sponge, stripping most of it away before it gets this far down. If we were in an aeroplane at thirty thousand feet it might be a different story, but as long as it doesn’t keep doing this every night we should be ok”.
“And what if it does?” I asked. “What if this isn’t a new flare, or CME, but the same one from last night. That means we would have spent all day being slowly cooked from up on high”.
He shrugged. “Not much we can do about it now”.
“Still, it would be nice to know what’s going on. Those famous algorithms of yours, your formula or whatever you want to call it, can it tell us what’s happening now?”
Jerry looked at me for a long moment before nodding hesitantly.
“It might, you know, particularly if I can get readings from stars. I’ve have to do the calculations on paper though”.
Without another word he headed into the cottage, coming back out a minute later with his telescope and a small green metal box which he attached to the end, a little like a silencer on a pistol.
He began looking through and making small adjustments, then squatted with a notepad resting on his leg and began making notes in tiny script with a pencil.
“Do you need help?” I asked him, but he just waved at me absently.
The others began to drift back inside so I followed, needing to be around people far more than I needed to watch Jerry at work.
We sat back around the kitchen table, Ralph drinking whiskey from a glass without offering to share.
“How’s your ankle?” Harriet asked as she made yet more tea, adding some wood to the stove to get the heat up.
I rolled my foot experimentally.
“Better than it’s got any right to be after today”.
Ralph shot me another warning glance and I changed the subject before she co
uld ask why.
“So, what’s the best way to get up past London if I’m avoiding the M23?” I asked, “and probably the M25 too. I don’t know how bad things are in London but I want to give it a wide berth, and the 25 is probably packed with cars”.
Ralph stood and crossed to one of the many shelves that lined the walls, pulling out a large road atlas and several smaller maps. He spread them out across the table and began pointing out roads with one thick finger.
“If you want to avoid the motorways, your best bet is to take the A247 to Woking, then go to Maidenhead on this road, then this one, and then head up to here”. He stabbed his finger at a point on the map.
“You got a choice then, you can either take the B4445 which is a straighter route but a smaller road, or follow the M40 right up north, suppose it depends on what things are like. When are you thinking of heading off?”
I sat back and accepted a mug of tea from Harriet with a grateful smile.
“As soon as I can. The longer I leave it, the worse things are going to get. I’ll probably head off first thing in the morning, providing the car’s still working”.
“And if it ain’t?” He asked, sitting back down and reaching for his glass.
“Then I’ll walk”, I said with a shrug, “what other choice have I got?”
Chapter 20
The next morning found me tired but full of nervous energy, waking to the faint sound of chopping wood outside. I hadn’t slept well, tossing and turning on the lounge floor as nightmares of Melody trapped in a burning house roused me every hour or so.
I looked over to where Jerry’s bedroll lay, untouched since the night before, and wondered if he was still in the yard with his telescope.
I stretched and yawned, the movement sending up a waft of stale sweat. I needed a shower, but that was something I suspected I’d be waiting a very long time for, so instead I settled for raiding Jerry’s kitbag and giving myself a quick baby-wipe bath.
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