Flare (14 page)

I’ll admit I was a little nervous.  I was beginning to like Ralph, but in many ways he was still a mystery and often more than threatening.

He took me by the shoulder and steered me firmly out of earshot of the others, only stopping when we reached the fence at the edge of the yard.

“Two things”, he said without preamble.  “First, bring her back safe”.

I nodded, but he poked me in the shoulder hard enough to bruise.

“I mean it, not a scratch.  If anything happens to her then I won’t be responsible for my actions”.

“I’ll do everything I can to keep her safe”, I promised, “but to be honest she’s more likely to be the one keeping me alive”.

“Aye, you’ve got the right of that”.

“What’s the second thing?”  I asked, rubbing my shoulder.

He looked down at the ground and then back up at me.

“No funny business.  I know she’s a grown woman and all, but she’s still my daughter, and if you try anything…”

I gave a nervous laugh.  “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure she’d break me in two the first time I tried to so much as hold her hand.  I think you’re ok there”.

“That’s as may be, but I still need to know she’s travelling with an honourable man”.

Something in his words stung me and I bit back.

“I was honourable enough not to leave you yesterday when I could have done; I think I’m honourable enough not to pursue something that’s not wanted!”

Ralph had the good grace to look embarrassed.

“Right, well then.  Good luck, and come back quick.  You’ll be taking one of the shotguns and a box of cartridges with you, but if you’re clever you’ll let her do any shooting that needs to be done”.

He led me back across the yard, filling my ears with last minute instructions.  When we reached the car Harriet gave me a quick hug, then a longer one for Emily before she got into the driver’s side and I the other.

Ralph reconnected the battery and the car started first time, the noise shattering the peace of the yard and setting Maggie to barking.

“Come back safe!”  Harriet called as we pulled away, and I watched her and Ralph in the mirror, standing with their hands clasped together, until we crested the hill and the landscape hid them from view.

Chapter 22

Emily knew the roads well, taking them at a healthy speed that was much more comfortable than the breakneck pace Ralph had set.  We talked about small things, such as what I’d done before the flare or how her life had been in the army, and I could almost imagine that we were just two people out for a leisurely drive, taking in the sights of the countryside.

Our way of life might be in tatters but the sun still shone, the trees still waved in the wind and birds still flew overhead.  The world would go on, with or without humanity crawling its way across the surface, and the thought was at once reassuring yet unnerving.

“So what made you want to join the army then?”  I asked, genuinely interested.  The thought of wilfully putting yourself in harm’s way, not to mention living in rough conditions for a good part of your life, held absolutely no appeal for me whatsoever.

“I don’t know, I just always wanted to be a soldier”, she said after a moment’s pause.  “Even when I was little, I was always playing war with the boys, it was just something I knew I was going to be”.

“So why REME?”  I asked, giving her regiment its abbreviated name.

“I like fixing things too.  I didn’t just want to be a grunt, and besides, they don’t let women fight on the front line, so it meant that I could be useful and get on with my job without being restricted by my gender”.

“Fair point”.

“How about you, why a journalist?”

“I’m bloody nosy”.

She laughed, a pleasant sound after the last few days.

“No really, come on”.

I shrugged, trying to decide how best to explain it.

“I was always good at finding things out”, I said, “I mean really digging to find the truth about something, and I’ve always had a burning need to know
why
.  I thought about joining the police when I was younger, but I would have had to do years fighting with drunks before they let me anywhere near CID, and that was what interested me, interviewing people and catching them out.  Having a reason to look into things, I suppose, to celebrate the good and expose the bad”.

“So you think information wants to be free then?”

I shook my head.  “Not always, sometimes things need to be kept quiet for the greater good and I understand that, unlike some of my more aggressive colleagues, but I do think there’s a lot that goes on in the world that needs bringing to light so that people can make more informed decisions about things that effect their lives”.

Emily nodded.  “That makes sense.  We had an aggressive reporter with us the last time I was in Afghanistan, he was determined to find someone mistreating a prisoner, or something equally juicy, and in the end we had to get rid of him”.

“How do you get rid of someone like that?”  I asked, not sure that I wanted to hear the answer.

“We arranged for him to join a patrol we knew was almost certain to be ambushed”, she said with a grim smile, “gave him a taste of the reason we were really out there.  He came back with dirty trousers and a nervous tic, and a few days later he flew back to the UK”.

“Sounds like he deserved it”, I said, not entirely sure but wanting to keep up the conversation.

She nodded.  “He did.  He tried to pay one of the locals to say that he’d been beaten by British soldiers, but we got wind of it first, thank goodness.  Not a nice… Shit!”

I looked up, trying to work out what she meant, then saw what she was looking at.  We’d crested a tall hill, and off to our right I could see a huge cloud of black smoke, seemingly going on for miles, right over London.

Although we were too far away to make out details,
there was a shimmering beneath the smoke that spoke of more fires than I could count.

“That doesn’t look good”, I said.  “Seems like the cities got the worst of it.  I wonder how many people survived?”

Emily pointed along the road to where an old Ford Sierra was driving towards us, roof rack weighed down with luggage.

“At least one”.

She slowed as we approached, as did the other driver, a hugely fat man in his mid-thirties accompanied by his equally large wife.

He wound down his window as he pulled up next to us, sweat dripping down his forehead and a slightly wild look in his eyes.

“I wouldn’t go that way if I were you”, he said, his wife nodding in agreement, “everything that isn’t on fire is being looted, and there are hundreds of people trying to get out of the city.  I almost had to run someone over to get away, it’s chaos”.

“We’re heading to Manchester”, Emily explained, “we don’t have a lot of choice”.

“Well don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Me and the missus, we’re heading for the coast, see if it’s better down there”.

“Don’t head for Brighton”, I warned, “it was on fire last time I saw it”.

He shrugged.  “I was aiming for Bognor, got a sister down there.  Good luck”.  He put his foot down and drove off, a plume of thick white smoke coming from the exhaust.

“He’s got water in his oil”, Emily said, tutting.  “Gasket’ll probably blow before he gets ten miles”.

“I’m a bit more concerned about how many people might try for the car”, I said as she pulled away, “if he’s not exaggerating it sounds like it’s going to be interesting”.

“Yeah well, let’s see how we go, eh?  No point worrying about something when you can’t do anythi
ng about it.  We detour too far and it’ll take us a week to get there”.

As we drew closer to Woking
more cars appeared on the road, some old bangers that looked ready to fall apart, others lovingly cared for but all of them at least twenty years old.  No one else stopped, however, and more than one driver put their foot down when they saw us as if afraid that we would try and stop them.

The outskirts of Woking itself were choked with abandoned cars, and a thick haze of smoke hung in the still air, strong enough to make us cough as it blew in through the broken window.

It was heavy and acrid, burning rubber, plastic and fabric with a hint of meat that I guessed wasn’t pork.

I shuddered, and Emily spared me a quick glance to show she felt the same way.

As we drove, we passed roads that had been barricaded, cars and trucks having been pushed across the junctions while hard faced men and women watched us drive past, makeshift weapons at the ready.  It was a legacy of the riots a few years before that I hadn’t expected to see so soon.

The closer we got to the centre of town, the more fires we began to see.  Some buildings were already burned out, smouldering shells devoid of life, but many were still burning.

Families, some dressed in nothing more than their night clothes, sat or stood outside their gutted homes, some weeping, others looking blankly at the carnage around them as if stunned by what had happened.

Not a few stared at our car hungrily, and as we nosed our way through the maze of abandoned vehicles more and more people began to drift towards us, reminding me of the youths in Redhill, only far more desperate, perhaps willing to kill to feed their families.

“I think we need to pick up speed”, I said as a man in a dressing gown and only one slipper reached for my door handle and missed it by inches.

“I can’t, there are too many cars here, we’ll crash.  That happens, we’re screwed”.

“They get into this car, we’re screwed”, I replied, checking for the fourth time that the door was locked.

“It’s ok for you, you’ve got a bloody window!”  She snapped, “make sure you’re ready with the shotgun”.

I lifted the weapon and snapped the barrels shut, my thumb brushing the lever again as if it were a talisman against having to use it.

Those closest to us saw it and melted back, but more and more people were pressing them from behind, dozens now
watching our slow procession through their midst.

I felt the sudden urge to piss, so strong that I had to look down and make sure there wasn’t a wet patch already.  The faces of the people we passed were pinched, hopeless and hungry, and I had no doubt that were I in their position I’d do anything to get some food or something warm to wrap myself in at night.

The crowd began to press close again and Emily threw caution to the wind, putting her foot down and yanking the wheel to avoid the stationary vehicles that littered our path.

No one chased after us as we sped away, but many of them stood and watched us, the hopelessness in their expressions all the more harrowing for the fact that no one was going to come and save them, and without food or clean water, most of them would be dead within a week.

Chapter 23

“Why don’t they leave?”   I asked as we drove past another, smaller group of dispossessed families.

“And where would they go?”  Emily demanded.  “The ones who could leave, did, I reckon.  These are the people left behind.  If you didn’t have Melody to think of, what would you have done?”

“Probably died in my bed, but if I’d survived, I don’t know.  Maybe headed for somewhere safer”.

“But where?”  She persisted.  “Where would you have gone and how would you have got there?”

I shrugged.  “Honestly?  I don’t know”.

She stabbed the dashboard with her index finger.

“And that’s exactly my point.  If you’ve got a family, or elderly parents who can’t look after themselves, you’ll stay and try and make the best of what you’ve got
.  Imagine trying to walk to another town or city with four kids and grandma strapped to your back.  It’s not gonna happen.  So they sit here instead and wait for someone to come and save them”.

“You’ve seen this sort of thing before, haven’t you?”  I said with sudden insight.

She nodded.  “Yeah, it’s the same when the Yanks bomb a village, or the Taliban butcher half the population and set fire to the houses.  The ones with the will to carry on, well, carry on.  The others just sit down and wait to die”.

By the time we got to the
far side of Woking we’d passed dozens of groups, none so large as the first we’d encountered but all stamped with that look of helplessness and despair.  Two of the groups were fighting over a trolley full of food from a nearby supermarket, and even from the road I could see that the shelves were already bare, stripped by those who had been quicker to seize the advantage.

As we drove through the suburbs we also passed a pair of teenagers, each carrying one end of a boxed, 50” plasma TV
, their nervous looks making it clear that they’d stolen it from somewhere.