FIFTEEN MONTHS EARLIER
The ground shakes. Huge vibrations cause me to stumble as I run, almost as if something is bursting up through the ground and not actually falling from the skies. I vaguely think of Tom Cruise's War of the Worlds, and the great mechanical aliens erupting from the Earth where they'd lain dormant for years, waiting, waiting. But this isn't aliens. It's not the sinister Grey creatures that the world has discovered lives among us. The bombs that are falling over the city are from one of our once-greatest allies and we were just not ready.
Are you ever ready for your world to get ripped apart at the seams?
I thought I was ready. I've been preparing. Physically. Mentally. Practically. But now it's here, now it's finally happening, I'm not sure I'm ready after all.
The force of the explosion reverberates through my bones and makes my teeth rattle in my skull. My heart races, a triple-time drumbeat hammering against my chest. My breath is short and rasping, and my throat burns. I have no idea whereabouts the impact is. All I know is that it felt close – too close – and everyone is running. Screaming. Crying.
I'm being herded, forced to run with the masses, all headless, confused, panicked, and I don't want to go this way, but to try and break free now would see me trampled underfoot because there isn't anywhere to go but with them. The strange thing is, that as we run without direction, there's this overwhelming feeling of being alone. We don't talk to the person fleeing next to us. We don't encourage anyone to keep going. We're like separate entities, running as if each of us is the only person in existence.
It's every man for himself now. Don't trust anyone. Are we each who we say we are? What are we hiding? Are we one of them?
As we run up the high street, right where the old Tesco's Express store and the pricey boutique selling fancy wedding hats and fascinators had stood, until they both got looted and burnt out just a couple of weeks ago, I spot a small girl standing on the other side of the road. The girl looks to be about seven, and she's just standing there clutching a small pink bag in her hand. The bag is typical of many kids her age, a sparkly backpack covered in unicorns and glitter. Her hair is long and almost white-blonde. I imagine she would have made a great Angel in the school nativity, in a white smock dress and tinsel-halo.
I see this girl as I run and she's just watching us all go by. She's not crying or wailing. Her expression is blank. She must be in shock. That has to be it. She's alone and at once I want to break free and run to her, scoop her up into my arms and carry her off, but I'm still running. Everyone is running past her like she's not there and she doesn't even seem to care. She doesn't cry out. She doesn't try to grab anyone.
She watches.
She waits.
Waiting, waiting.
Somehow, she picks me out in the panicking herd and our eyes meet.
Hers are black. Pure, inky black and instantly I'm reminded of the creature in the alley. I see the creature bending over Tom, its long thin fingers reaching for him.
I stare at the girl as I run, barely able to keep in pace with the crowd and she smiles and waves, like she's on a London open-top tourist bus, waving at everyone going by.
What sport this must be. What entertainment, watching us all flee. Watching us die. Watching the world burn.
No one else notices her, this little girl with her black eyes and unicorn bag. Maybe she's not even there. Maybe my unravelling mind has created her, moulded her from thin air and hysteria.
Engines roar behind us and some people in the herd shriek, high-pitched panic-filled screeches that hurt my ears and spur me to run faster.
Something is coming. Something is coming this way.
Up the high street, a convoy of military vehicles speed past us, their huge wheels dwarfing the running crowd. A few people have swarmed into the road itself and I watch, with horror, as the lorries hit them, pulling them under the wheels as if they were nothing.
They're nothing. We're nothing. Roadkill. Just keep going.
Don't stop.
Overhead, I hear the scream of planes, and right where the convoy of army vehicles has just rounded the corner, the world explodes. The force of it hits hard and I'm flung backwards. I feel my feet lifting off the ground and then I'm down again, caught in an avalanche of people tumbling like dominoes. A few seconds pass and I look up, dazed. My cheek is warm and sticky to touch, and it takes me a moment to realise there's another person underneath me.
Flashes of orange and black swarm across my vision, bold Rothko colours filling the landscape. Noise like I've never heard before crowds the air, so loud that I have to clap my hands over my ears.
A building is falling. I watch through the billowing cloud of dust and smoke as the five-storey department store building crumbles as if it was made of matchsticks, one after the other. My eyes sting, tears spilling liberally down my face.
'Shit, shit, we have to move,' I say to the person whose legs are almost tangled with mine. I turn as if I'm underwater, each movement feeling like I'm stuck in treacle, only to look into the dead eyes of a man whose head is now welded to the edge of the kerbstone. Thick, viscous blood pumps out from behind his neck into the gutter, spilling over cigarette butts and a month-old copy of one of the tabloid newspapers. The headline reads 'Keep Calm and Carry On' and underneath 'PM urges calm in wake of alien discovery.' How so much has changed for them all in just a month. For me, it changed the moment Tom was killed. From the moment I had led us both down that alley. From the moment I set everything in motion and tore my own world apart at the seams.
I take a deep breath, but grit and dust floods into my mouth and I choke on it, bending double next to the dead man, coughing up into the gutter where his blood pools thickly.
A sharp tug from behind jolts me upright.
'Give me it,' a hoarse male voice rasps in my ear. 'Give me the fucking bag.'
I'm still half-dazed from the bomb impact, my body weakened and for a second, I can't register what's happening.
Another tug, and this time, a swift kick to my side which knocks the air out of me and I'm down again, prostrate next to the dead guy, staring into his blank eyes.
I feel the strap of my backpack being yanked from my shoulder and instantly I panic. I think I'm even panicking more about the prospect of someone taking my bag, than I was about fleeing with the herd as the bombs dropped overhead.
No. No. He can't. I can't let him take it.
It's mine. My survival kit. Everything I thought I would need should this day come. And I'd known it was coming. I'd always known that what had happened to Tom was part of something bigger. I'd felt it every day since. A change in the air. An awareness. Something that had prickled under my skin. Unease festering in my veins.
I'd put together a kit. Things I thought I would need if everything came tumbling down. A change of clothes. A torch. A knife. Painkillers. A small first-aid kit. Water bottle. Energy tablets. Protein bars. Matches. Batteries. Tom's copy of H.G Wells' War of the Worlds with a picture of us taken at the Maria Luisa tucked inside the front cover.
I remember when I'd put it all together, wondering how the Hell my whole life could have been reduced to so little. Now, with someone trying to take it from me, the contents of the bag seemed like more riches than I could possibly ever imagine.
'P-please,' I croak, as my assailant roughly rolls me onto my side, so they can pull at the other strap. I get a good look at him now. Older. Maybe in his late forties. He looks normal. A little bit like Des, one of Tom's teaching colleagues from the school. But this is how it is now. Normal people doing terrible things. Normal people turning into monsters to get what they want.
The man is pulling at the strap hard, yanking and yanking, twisting my arm as he tries to steal everything I have left in the world. I scream as the pain in my shoulder flares violently and he kicks me again. Nausea floods my throat. I'm going to be sick in the gutter. Oh god, I'm going to die here, I can feel it. I'm going to die next to the dead guy with his brains spilling out onto the kerb. I'm going to die with my face stuck to a blood-saturated copy of that shitty newspaper Tom and I both hated with a passion.
Just as I think the normal guy who looks a bit like a schoolteacher is going to kick me to death or pull my arm from its socket, he jolts and slumps to the ground hard, landing on top of the dead guy. He groans, his eyelids flickering. Blood pumps from his ear. He isn't dead. Not yet.
'Can you stand?' a voice says.
I roll onto my back, my head on the kerb.
The sunshine blazes through the hazy smoke-filled air.
Funny, I had always thought the end of the world would come with a storm. A hurricane. Torrential rain. Tumultuous thunder cracking the skies open. I'd never expected the end of the world to happen on a hot August day when the heatwave was already burning up the city at nine o'clock in the morning.
'You need to get up,' the voice speaks again and a dark silhouette looms over me, the sun behind him picking up unruly black curls, the shape of his ears.
I can't breathe. For a moment, the world has vanished and it's just me and him and oh fuck, I can't breathe.
He reaches down, holding out his hand.
I reach for him and slip my hand into his. Feel his fingers encircle my wrist. His skin is warm. Soft. Gentle. I stare at our joined hands.
He pulls me to my feet, and I blink the sun out of my eyes.
The pain is scalding. Violent. Swift. Like a kick to the ribs.
It's not him. It's not Tom.
'You'll be okay,' the man says, who has Tom's curls but isn't him. He's younger. His nose is flatter, his lips thinner. 'I have to go.'
'David, come on,' urges a woman, and David – not Tom, oh god, not Tom – releases my hand and runs in the direction of a woman standing just a few metres away, her face streaked with dust and fear.
I watch as they link hands and run, never looking back.
I look down at my own hands. Palms up. Empty.
'I'll be okay,' I whisper to no one.
My heart beats a ghost note.
Pulling my bag back onto my shoulders, I begin to run.
Another plane screams overhead and I keep running. Past the avalanche of bodies. Past the human roadkill. Past the looted and burnt-out shells of buildings.
Past the dead child, still clutching her unicorn bag, her black eyes staring up into the skies.
I still don't know where I'm going, but I'm going to be okay. I know I am. I've made it this far and I know it's all because of Tom. That man who saved me might not have been him, but I have this weird feeling that Tom hasn't left me. For a moment - just for a fleeting, bliss-filled moment - I think that was his hand in mine. I think it was him, looking out for me, reaching out, lifting me up again, letting me know that I'm not really alone.
He's here, by my side, watching out for me and as long as I hold onto that – as long as I hold onto him – everything is going to be okay.
I'm going to be okay.