Ashwater

Chapter 3: Countdown

Copies... he needed twenty copies just for the beginning, he had the reading material, maybe some A3 sheets for mind-mapping. Would that fill the ninety minutes? Matt sipped his latest coffee, but it tasted foul and his gut shivered.

It better fill the time.

Ryan had stayed at his window, watching as the fire-engines passed them by and a plume of smoke had reached up and met the sky. Life will continue though, it always does. Maybe not for everyone; any single person, or even a few people or a dozen, they're just a tiny fraction. Everyone else stops for a while but that's it. They stop and they stare and then they move on.

Matt didn't have time for the inevitable hand-wringing. He chose not to luxuriate in it.

The photocopier rattled into life, offering an elderly wheeze as it sucked in the question sheet and began spitting out twenty copies. Matt stood over it, wishing it on, but the more hope he laid on it, the slower it seemed to run.

"What you doing?" Dawn called as she bustled past and into the staff-room before he could reply. After a moment, a head reappeared out of the big double-doors. "Did you not see the lightning?"

Yes, I did, He thought. But I ain't rubber-necking.

"You really think lessons will be on?" She was leaning, almost falling back through the door. "You think kids are gonna come in after all that?"

The copier ran dry, the twentieth sheet a little faded but ok, and Matt leaned back against it. It was hot but the plastic felt hollow, like if he opened it up there'd be no workings. No paper even, just space. "Is it really that bad?"

"The traffic was everywhere," Dawn replied, a little too excited but Matt forgave her that; nothing ever happened in Ashwater, and no-one had ever expected it would. No-one sane anyway. "I was half an hour trying to get off the motorway. It was everywhere I could see and just horns. It was like those videos you see from India or China..."

Matt scratched at his jaw a little too hard, as he always did when he was stressed, leaving red nail-lines that would fade slowly. He knew he couldn't hide from it, and that was what he had been doing; the sky was dark like night and a lightning fire was burning the town where he'd been born and raised.

"You gonna come with me, then?"

Matt had forgotten that she came in from the city every day. A few of the Humanities team had slept over at her house after the Christmas meal; he'd been ill and curled up on his sofa at home so he'd missed the whole thing. Every day, he thought, she had that dry drive for half an hour but this morning storm clouds had gathered like no-one had ever seen. Why wouldn't she be excited?

"You came through the storm?"

"Drove into it on the motorway," she replied. "Like the... did you see the solar eclipse in '99? You... how old are you?"

"Yeah, I saw the eclipse." He knew everyone saw him as younger than he was; there were times when it felt good, but this was not one of them. "Has Ross called yet?"

"I just got in," Dawn paused, then called back into the staff-room. Ryan's reply was muffled, maybe only half-interested, and she had to translate, "Not a word, he said."

"It was dark then?"

"Like the eclipse, but there was lightning too."

"Yeah," Matt nodded. "I'll come."

"Good man."

She could be tiring at times, but only deliberately. "Like any student at Ashwater, I want to see the place burn."

***

It was near quarter to nine and they were running down the stairs, four at a time. Nearly falling, they were so fast. Matt used to be quick, having run athletics for the college in his time, but she kept pace. She could have been a sprinter herself, but he knew he was getting old in a way she hadn' yet.

Twelve hour days and falling asleep on his marking was no preparation for inter-college try-outs.

Excuses, excuses.

The reception desk was down by two: Vera and Yvonne could have been anywhere, could have been ill maybe, but Matt would come to realise that he'd never see either of them again. Claire and Amy were heads down and keyboard-clacking, coffee cups steaming and abandoned next to them.

The world could end and the fires of hell could be lapping at their knee-highs and they would still have to finish their data.

Matt and Dawn burst out the double-doors then. It was January, sure, but it was dark too. Darker than nearly nine in the morning. The storm clouds were filling the sky, near enough, and the morning was choked and they were running.

A couple of cars pulled over and dropped off their kids guiltily, or maybe they knew they'd get that call to come pick them up again in half an hour. Maybe it was resignation, frustration. The parents looked tired, they were looking down at the dashboard. And their digital clocks.

Ten to nine and a nine o'clock start.

The fire better be good and it better be close.

They crossed the car park in big strides; he stumbled once but got to his feet again as they met the curb and burst their way into A block. The double-doors swung hard enough that Matt had to look back to make sure the handles hadn't planted themselves in the plaster.

When they flew out the fire exit, they saw it. The school, Ashwater Comprehensive, was burning like November fifth, it's grounds anyway. The glow of the fire was blown over the main building like a cinema projection, the shadows of firemen dancing as they ran. Matt half expected to see fireworks but, instead, they had arrived just in time to see the roof of their cycle shed collapse in on itself.