Inevitable: A Short Story

Charlie

Charlie stood on the roof of his thirteen-storey apartment building, his toes peeking over the edge as he looked over the city. He waggled them, feeling the cool night breeze tickle between each toe, contrasting with the sensation of the rough granite under his heels. 

The city had gone to Hell. For all Charlie knew, maybe the whole world had by now.

He watched the lights twinkling and remembered a time when he'd looked across the skyline, fingers intertwined with Emily's and thought how magical it all seemed from up high. Away from all the dirt and grime, the congestion and the hustle-bustle crowds, the half-crazed sale shoppers and hysterical tourists, the city was a creature of beauty, its skin bejewelled with thousands of sparkling fairy lights. But not now. Now the city was burning, all aflame as if some great dragon had swooped down from above and laid waste to the infected streets and diseased populace. From up here, Charlie could see the pockets of fire, like a field of bonfires alighting the city. Only these fires weren't for toasting marshmallows and sausages, these were for toasting houses, shops, high-rise blocks and flesh.

He thought about his Grandad, grumpy old sod that he was, and wondered where he was now. He wondered whether he was safe, locked away in his flat, away from the madness and the carnage, cowering behind drawn curtains and dead-bolted doors, living off those tins of spam and fruit cocktail that he had always hoarded in his larder just in case.

It's war mentality, son, he had said whenever Charlie had mocked those cans stacked high in the cupboard, lined up like row upon row of little tin soldiers. You never know when those bastards are going to drop them bloody bombs again, better to be prepared.

Gramps, the Germans aren't coming back, you know, Charlie had laughed, shaking his head. It's not 1939 anymore.

Don't bloody matter, Chuck, his Grandad had replied, wagging his finger. They'll be back. And if it's not them, it'll be those bloody Japs. And let's not forget the Yanks, trigger-bloody-happy, them lot. Especially that Bush bastard.

It's not Bush, anymore, Gramps. It's Trump.

Don't bloody care, sniffed Grandad. It'll be some bugger, you mark my words.  

And he'd been right. Only it hadn't been the Germans, the Japanese or even Trump. And it definitely hadn't been bombs.

The word was that it had been social terrorists; working together with some former government vivisectionist who'd turned his back on the mighty establishment in an effort to bring it to its snivelling public schoolboy knees, only it had all gone horribly fucking wrong. Threats had soon become very real. So real that soon they were telling everyone not to drink the water. They were even showing warnings on the television, a bit like those boring party political broadcasts, the ones they used to put on instead of Eastenders and Corrie, pissing everyone off in the process.

Some people had rushed straight out and decimated the bottled water aisles in the supermarkets and mini-marts, leaving with trolleys full of Evian and Highland Spring. Charlie had even been there one night after the first warning had aired, oblivious of the threat while he bought one of them Dine-In-For-A-Tenner meals for him and Emily, carrying a basket containing a family size lasagne, garlic bread, a cheesecake and a cheap bottle of plonk. Feeling quite proud of his bargain purchase, he'd been distracted when suddenly two blokes had caused a riot over in aisle thirty, punching ten shits out of each other over a two-litre bottle of mineral water. They'd literally been rolling around on the floor, going at each other like animals, spraying blood over the empty shelves. Rolling his eyes, Charlie had paid for his stash at one of those annoying automated tills and left the store, getting home to find Emily crouched in front of the television, one hand clapped over her mouth and the other constantly hitting the rewind button on the Sky Plus remote, playing the transmission over and over again. By her feet, a glass of water had been knocked over, leaving a sodden stain on the carpet.