Authors: Craig Saunders
Get
him involved. Be cold, if you have to. Warm if that works...but get the hell
out.
Sure,
she was calculating. Not a nice thing to be thinking about herself, maybe, but
Francis was a survivor. If it came to it she'd kill to keep going.
I
already have,
she thought.
Together,
Edgar and Francis covered those yards. Slowly, achingly and agonising.
Kssh
fucker didn't bother her at all. Yet every time Ben's dead face surfaced, she
hated herself just enough to take the pain.
Pain
wasn't just on the outside. And pain wasn't just useless, either.
Edgar
stumbled and nearly took them both down. As it was, the shift in her weight
hurt enough for her to cry again. Tough or not, broken flesh hurts. Broken
bones hurt a hell of a lot worse.
'Francis?'
'Still
alive.'
'Are
you sure about this? Can you drive?'
'I
hope so,' she said.
'Do
it anyway,' said Edgar. 'Fire's coming. The man who brings fire? O'Dell. Right?'
Movement
was agony, but it wasn't going to go away, was it? Why be a little bitch about
it? It was her pain. Pain was better than
him
.
'I
can deal with it,' she said. Now they were just ten yards from the van.
Another
horrible thought came to her.
What if the keys aren't there?
'Good,
Francis.' Talking was tiring him, but he didn't give in, either. Maybe because
of what he said next. 'Because I can see it. His fire's coming, Francis. It's
coming
now
.'
Chilled,
the thought spurred them both on the last few feet. The keys were there,
hanging from the ignition.
'Sometimes,
God is good enough,' she said.
The
van stank of rot. Behind the only two seats, the interior was covered with old
blood, shards that were probably teeth, and clumps of hair. The mess in the
back crawled with flies.
It
was good enough. Both clambered into the passenger side. Francis shuffled
across the bench seat and turned the key.
Despite
the dents in the van, the still heat, the human remains, the flies, and even
her pain, the engine sounded just as good as a peal of childish laughter.
'That's
the best thing I've ever heard,' she said, and pulled away from the farm. The
engine rumbled like it agreed.
*
The
van balked at any speed over fifty. It probably sustained some engine damage
from swiping the Mercedes. It didn't matter - for a while, with the windows
down and the rushing wind to blow away the heat and the stench, it felt
wonderful.
Silence,
but punctuated by Francis' swearing - whenever she had to shift gear, or even
just to take a corner. Turning the wheel pulled at the drying wound across her
back.
Her
mind still sparked, though. A slow fire, perhaps, these thoughts, like coals
burning and glowing a low-orange in the early hours. After ten, twelve miles, she
checked on Edgar and found him staring at her.
'What?'
'You're
bleeding.'
'Aren't
we both?'
'No...you've
a nose bleed.'
Francis
brought her finger to her nose and wiped. There, on the second knuckle, a bright
line of blood on her filthy hands.
'Would
you look at that,' she said. She shrugged, then hissed at the pain the gesture
brought. 'Could be worse, I suppose. My feet are fucked, and I can still
drive. I can handle a little more blood.'
'You
swear a lot.'
'Yeah.
I do. If I stop swearing, it'll be because I'm dead. And if I'm dead, we'll
both be fucked, won't we?'
*
O'Dell
waited on confirmation in his black Audi. A phone call would have sufficed, but
he'd waited over a half a century to see the first of his fires light the sky. Things
he'd never be able to feel - blast radius, fire, shockwave, radiation - would
always be denied to him. But it was a clear day, no weather dampening, low
atmospheric detonation - four miles and change, there would be almost total
devastation. Maybe ten miles out, heavy radiation, depending on what the
weather brought in the next few days. But radiation's not instant. It takes a
while. The Audi, ten miles out, was far enough for O'Dell to live and close
enough to watch.
For
so long he'd balanced the world in his hands, and he was tired of holding it. When
things become tiresome, or heavy, or old - a sensible man puts them down.
The
car was cold, the air condition in the car set as high as it would go. The
glass was heavy, as were the doors and floor and roof. The car's suspension was
modified, too. An executive model made just about as good as car could be.
O'Dell
sniffed a little, not noticing a dot of blood beneath his nose. Air
conditioning often gave him the sniffles. He didn't worry, just wiped with a
handkerchief.
He
glanced at his watch, not the handkerchief.
0759.
'Boom
boom,' he said. No cigar or brandy for him, though. When you set out to destroy
the world, one little bomb was nothing to get stiff about.
*
The
temperature spiked suddenly and rapidly in the charnel van Francis' drove. The
wind through the open windows no longer a relief, but dry, uncomfortable. With
the wind, a weird, electrical fire-smell. Like the breeze from an old electric
fan, dusty and dangerous, bare wires heating up someplace inside a plastic
shell. Francis glanced in the wing mirror. Edgar glanced at his. An automatic
response, partly, but also because they were expecting an explosion.
Just
not
this
.
A
double flash just beat a cloud that rose skyward. No rain fall from this cloud,
but earth, instead. Not falling down, but blasted up, like a cloud that could
only work backwards. Everything was suddenly upside down, everything suddenly
wrong.
Dust
and fire, the shockwave and the radiation, and an entire town vaporised in the
first nuclear explosion on British soil.
'Was
that...?' Edgar couldn't seem to finish the sentence. He blinked, compulsively,
but so did Francis. Her eyes felt full of sand, or grit. Watery and sore both,
but she wouldn't take her hands from the wheel. If she stopped, or crashed, they
were dead.
'I
think so,' said Francis.
'Are
we going to die?' he asked.
Francis
shrugged.
'How
far is that going to reach?'
'I
don't know.'
'All
those people...all...are they...?'
Francis
slammed her fist against the centre of the wheel. 'I don't know! Stop fucking
asking, for fuck's sake.'
She
took a calm and slow breath of hot air. Maybe full of poison already.
Her
own panic wasn't helping, and wouldn't ever help. She had to be a cold hand
now, more than ever.
Because
this is the end.
She
tried to speak like a normal person, but she was unable to think her way around
that simple sentence. It became a barrier in her head.
'This
is the end.'
Just that. From
a song, a film, she couldn't remember. Just four words
on endless
repeat.
'They're
dead,' she said when she could think and not scream. 'If they're not, they will
be. Let me drive, Edgar. For the love of God...leave me alone so I can drive.'
*
They
were thirty or more miles out, too far for the shockwave to affect them.
A
few miles more and they reached their destination. Francis found herself nearly
blind when she pulled the van into the shade beneath an underpass. Traffic
thundered across the road above, and rocked the van on the road below. Panicked
drivers, but none careened or crashed or drove their cars from the bridge in a
fit of despair while the cloud rose to the south.
The
underpass was the best shelter she and Edgar could get. Thick concrete above
and all around. Like those old Cold War survival tips - hid under a table. She
figured that was against falling debris, rather than the radiation.
But
their table was concrete. Better, she hoped, against blast and the invisible
killer that would follow. She'd seen those old films of nuclear experiments on
unnamed islands, sat in cinemas, gazing up at CGI apocalypses more times that
she knew.
None
of which told her how far could be safe.
'How
far do you think we got?' Edgar's ragged words were soft, hard to hear against
the constant roar of traffic. The van sat half-in, half-out of the near side
lane. Cars sped by. Some people yelled at them from open windows, others just
honked. More just swerved around the van and fled wherever they could.
Francis
was groggy, filthy, covered in blood and pain.
No
respite yet,
she thought.
No showers, no four poster beds or morphine
drips
.
She
wondered if those things were done, or if they would come again. Comfort, or
safety.
'Don't
know,' she said, tired of most everything, including Edgar. 'You want to sleep
on in the van, go ahead. Or, you could sleep like a king on a bed of splintered
pallets here. This is the best there is. It's where I've been hiding. Might be
the best there is for a while.'
'Here?'
'What
do you think? O'Dell just blew up your hometown. With a
nuclear bomb
.
You think I'm going to go rent a flat in Kensington, get a shih tzu in a
fucking handbag and go looking for the paparazzi? I'm on the run, Edgar. So are
you.
Jesus, wake up!'
'What
about a hospital?'
'Can
you hear yourself? We'd be dead five minutes after we get there.
Dead.
Don't you get it? If you want to live, stay away from everything.
Everyone.
And
if you think one bomb is the end for a man like O'Dell, you're an idiot.'
'I
need stitches...doctors... '
'And
I need a good man, cheap gin and two new feet. None of those things are
happening, either, are they? Get out of the van,' she said.
Edgar's
cheeks flushed, anger the only colour left in his skin. 'What happened to you?'
'O'Dell,'
she said. 'And if you hadn't noticed...he just happened to you, too.'
She
was too tired and hurt to yell more than that.
It
was maybe a foot from the seat to the tarmac.
Getting
out of the van was going to hurt enough to shut them both up. But staying
inside wasn't particularly comfortable, either. She hurt, he hurt, too. She got
it, but
God
, did he have to bitch about it
all the fucking time
?
'You
want to come, come. Meet the boy who saved your life. Or, you're welcome to
drive to the nearest hospital and take your chances.'
'I
can't drive!'
'No?'
said Francis.
She
wrenched the door opened and slipped and hit the road. She cried out. Pain
pulsed through her, head to toe. But she didn't give in.
She
never did.
Fuck
my feet, too. I'll crawl.
A metallic,
grinding noise echoed from the concrete. Francis looked, but flash-blind and
deep in the shadows, the direction was impossible to gauge.
Unbidden
and unreasonable, fear touched her.
O'Dell
found George.
He's
coming from the shadows, close by. Scrapping something against the surface of
the road. Wordless but for a noise hissing between his sharpened, insane teeth.
'Kssh,' he's saying. The scrapping blade is rising.
'KSASH!'
Against
terror, Francis would never give. She crawled from the sound.