IMPACT (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Tale (3 page)

“Hello, Angus,” said Paul, raising a hand in the air.

The man didn’t reply. He just kept staring.

“We’ll have to do something about that, at some point, I’m afraid,” Paul whispered to Catherine.

Catherine sighed. Indeed they would.

They walked in.

There they were. Those two cunts.

He saw them walking up the road, heading towards another one of their ridiculous meetings.

The nurse, wasting all the medicine on those infected Poles and Gyppos swarming in from all over the goddamn place, and the priest, selling his load of old bollocks to anyone stupid enough to buy it.

Fuck them.

They weren’t coming anywhere near his house. And, most of all, they weren’t going to take Toby from him. Ever.

Because that’s what they were after, wasn’t it? His son.

They thought he, Angus, wasn’t capable of taking care of him.

“Perhaps we could lend a hand,” the nurse had said, during her last visit. She had spoken through the door he had refused to open. “It must be rather difficult for you, all on your own. Angus?”

She had tried to make it sound nice, but what she really meant was, ‘
you’re a drunk, you can’t look after your boy, and he’s better off with us
.’

He rested one hand on the Remington Model 798 in his lap, and drank a big gulp of beer. Shite. He was down to his last few cases of the stuff. Then what?

They were looking at him now.

“Hello Angus,” the priest called out. Cowards. Standing there, not daring to approach him. He waited, studying their movements. After a few seconds, they walked into the school.

He looked around, at the empty homes, empty streets, empty skies. He felt a shiver. Peering down, he noticed he was only wearing a stained t-shirt and jeans. It was cold. Perhaps he should go inside and get a jacket. Maybe another beer.

Then the wailing began again.

* * *

He dragged himself up the creaky stairs, walking past the dull walls, where photographs of the life he’d lived before hung, covered in dust. Try as he might, he couldn’t avoid catching glimpses of those rectangular reminders of what had been. Sometimes, those glimpses hurt. On other days, they spoke of a past so different, so alien, they hardly caused any pain. Today, it hurt.

He and Hellen, not older than thirty, lying in the garden on a summer’s day. Hellen, in the kitchen, showing off a cake she’d baked. The three of them on a forgotten beach in Greece during a holiday, Hellen holding a caring hand in front of their son’s eyes, to protect them from the blazing sunlight. There was also a picture of the other boy, their nephew on her side. He lived in Switzerland. God knows what had happened to the poor kid, after the impact. But he couldn’t concern himself with that, too. He simply couldn’t.

He thought of a poem he’d once read. It often came to mind when walking past the pictures.

Oh when I was in love with you,

Then I was clean and brave,

And all around the wonder grew

How well did I behave.

But fancy passes by,

And nothing will remain.

And miles around they’ll say that I

Am quite myself again.

Of course, it wasn’t the fancy that had passed, in their case. It was Hellen.

He swallowed.

Another cry came from upstairs. It was the guttural, inarticulate howl of someone suffering. It somehow seemed to rhyme, he thought, with what he felt inside. But those were the thoughts of a drunk.

It felt like he, too, was coated in dust.

* * *

The room was tidy. He had to keep it like that, not only for Toby, but because it represented a small island of innocence inside his dull and pitiful house.

The boy was sitting up in his bed, covered in sweat, his thin limbs weakly beating the air around him as he cried. The pain had got worse in the last year or so, and there were no doctors around to help with his condition, one that he was born with. His blind eyes scanned the perpetual darkness he lived in, in search for his father.

Angus walked over to the bed and gently picked him up. Toby was 19 years old, but weighed just over 100 pounds.

He patted the boy’s back, cradling him as one would a toddler. The crying gradually died down.

“It’s okay darling,” he said, his voice broken, to his unfortunate son whose frowning face now lay against his shoulder.

He felt the tears rolling down his own eyes.

“It’s all okay.”

There once had been stars beyond the clouds.

Adrian wondered whether there were any left at all.

He stirred in his sleeping bag, Alice breathing quietly by his side. He didn’t want to wake her. They’d have to be on their way soon and he wanted her to enjoy a few more minutes of sleep before they left. Also – although admitting this made him feel uneasy – he liked looking at her while she slept. Not
staring
or anything, just occasionally taking a peek. Her face had no trace of the concern that haunted each and every one of their waking moments. The silent raising and falling of her chest, now oblivious to the threats that lurked around them at all times, spoke to him of a place of peace and happiness; hinting at the possibility that in a quiet corner of this broken continent they might one day carve out a place for themselves. A place to be together, safe.

Moving quietly, he reached out for the backpack that he’d tucked by his feet and drew a worn notebook out of it. A pencil was fitted inside the spiral binding. He removed it, flipped open the notebook, and began to nibble on the end of the pencil. Centred at the top of the page were five words:
Things I missed out on

After a few seconds of deliberation, Adrian started scribbling.

The Oculus 3 (mainly for Monkey Island VR)

The latest filmmersion release

The beach holiday to Sardinia, with Mum (September)

My last year at St. George’s (school)

Actually, in Sardinia, also spying Amanda when she changes into her bathing suit in the old wooden shed, the one by the beach house

(He couldn’t help throwing a quick, guilty glance towards Alice after writing that last line.)

Having a dog

Adrian tapped the end of his pencil on the page. It was strange. Yes, there were
lots
of things he knew he’d missed out on. They often struck him at odd, unexpected moments, but he found it difficult to imagine an alternate present in which he’d actually get to enjoy them. Or, not quite difficult, but uninteresting. It didn’t
hurt
much (although it did a little) to think of the awesome games he might now be playing on the new Oculus Rift set. But it didn’t really matter. Only incidentally did he consider the fact that he was measuring the importance of these issues by how much pain they caused.

What really hurt were other things. Not what he had missed out on, but what he
missed
. He let the pencil tip hover above the page, then he drew a line beneath his previous list and added a title for a new one:
Things I miss
.

But, just as he’d finished scratching the paper with that last, upwards curve of the
s
, he felt as if someone had opened the floodgates inside his chest. It was like one of those tsunamis in the Atlantic Ocean had suddenly found its way inside him, and was about to wreck unimaginable havoc. If a present he’d never really known was one he found difficult to regret, the past was quite a different beast. One thirsty for his tears.

He quickly closed the notepad, slipping the pencil back inside the spiral binding.

Maybe some other time
, he told himself.

* * *

The sea was screaming.

Or that’s how it appeared to the two of them, laying flat in the grass and peering down towards the beach.

The wind battered the furious surface of the waves, as the Channel waters shook and roared their foaming rage. Somewhere beyond the Channel lay England and, within England, Adrian’s aunt and uncle.

But right now they couldn’t have seemed any further away. Not only because of the wild stretch of water. Two groups of people stood on the beach, confronting each other.

One group appeared to be scavengers, although they were in such rough conditions Adrian had initially thought they were ‘wraiths. There were about fifteen of them, clothes filthy and eyes rabid.

The other group, a smaller group of about six or seven, were different. They stood before the scavengers, blocking their path. Adrian had never seen anyone like them before. They were still, their stance disciplined, as the disorderly scavengers cried obscenities and threats at them. More strikingly, they wore uniforms.

Alice and Adrian had encountered the occasional group of soldiers during their travels, although they’d always done their best to avoid them – there was no knowing who they were serving, or whether they were dangerous or not. But these men were definitely not military. There were no armies with uniforms like these, black with red stripes along the sides. Their uniforms actually appeared to have been ironed, which was beyond rare these days. And despite something sinister in their design – something that was hard to pinpoint but most definitely there – Alice and Adrian found it hard to look away. There was an enchanting quality to their cleanliness, their
order
that harshly contrasted with the chaos surrounding them.

The men in these uniforms stood firm, legs slightly parted, and stared, expressionless, towards their opponents.

The two children watched as one of the scavengers spat on the sand, then shouted towards the other group, a fist raised in the air. Another one, an elderly woman, was pointing beyond the uniformed men.

The atmosphere was tense, and just shy of breaking out into a physical confrontation. The smaller group never uttered a word.

“What are they doing?” asked Adrian. Alice simply shook her head.

One of the scavengers picked up a large plastic bag containing what appeared to be vegetables, and headed deliberately towards the martial-looking men. His intention was, apparently, to walk past, ignoring them.

At first, they did nothing. The men merely watched the wretched individual approach them without the slightest variation in their expressions. The man with the plastic bag turned towards his group and smirked sarcastically, as if to say that these men, despite their intimidating appearance, obviously posed no threat.

Then came the first gunshot.

Its sound was almost completely drowned out by the tumultuous storm. Alice and Adrian felt their hearts stop as the horrific scene unfolded before them: the scavenger walking forward, leaving deep footprints in the wet sand, turning his head, while almost exactly at the same time, as if following some sort of secret choreography, one of the other men raised his arm, the small, dark object in his hand hardly discernible.

This moment was the longest. From their perspective, the children caught a glimpse of what was to come – an instant’s worth of the future. They witnessed the possibility of the scavenger’s death before he, the victim, was even aware of the gun pointing in his direction. If ever he was.

Just as the scavenger’s head started turning, the uniformed man (he was standing slightly ahead of the others, although it wasn’t clear whether he carried more importance, within their mysterious hierarchy) raised his pistol. And fired.

What followed was both terrible and strangely uneventful. A sudden silence. A lifeless body falling to the ground with a muffled thud which the kids didn’t hear, but imagined. Then the stillness of the scavengers, as they realised their life was in peril. Adrian noticed he was holding Alice’s hand (gripping it, actually). He couldn’t remember having reached out for it.

Now, the other uniformed men raised their arms, each holding a firearm the children hadn’t noticed before.

“Let’s
go
, Ady,” said Alice.

“Y-yes” muttered Adrian, almost incapable of looking away.

There was something mesmerising about those men. Something terrible.

Then the firing began. So did the screams. It was nothing short of an execution.

Adrian felt Alice pulling him up. Yes. It was time to go. While the fight (if one could call it that) ensued, they’d perhaps manage to slip away, unseen.

They stood up, turned around, and saw the rifle pointed at them.

“Tea, anyone?”

Paul smiled as Ms. Brand, a sixty-year-old former school teacher, posed this quintessentially British question to the Council members. Despite it all, and despite the apparent fate of his own Church, some traditions held strong. This was one of the reasons he had returned after all, wasn’t it? The British ability to down-play even the greatest of tragedies, at least on the face of it, by following their odd set of priorities, the first of which was invariably a cup of tea.

A chorus of ‘yes, please’ and a couple of ‘cheers, Marge’ had Ms. Brand pouring out seven steaming cups.
Perhaps, when the last teabag finally runs out, so will their sanity
, Paul thought to himself, leaning forward with a smile to accept a heart-warming
cuppa
.

They sat in a circle in the centre of what had once been a classroom. Colourful drawings still covered the walls, and Paul’s eyes wandered upon a touching depiction of Bately Castle populated by Norman soldiers and what appeared to be a dragon peering outside of the Eastern tower. The dragon was smiling, and seemingly got along well with its military fellow tenants. Everywhere were hills, trees, and butterflies. A kindly sun shone above it all, indiscriminately dispensing joyous rays of light on everyone and everything. Nature, thought Paul, was indeed indiscriminate, both in its blessings and its curses.

“So,” started Bill Hughes, a retired Major in the British Army, who now helped coordinate Bately’s patrol and defence squad, which they referred to as the Guard. “If we’re all ready, let’s open the proceedings.”

Everyone nodded.

“Good.” Bill said and gestured towards a slightly overweight kid in a black hoodie, by far the youngest attendee in this Council meeting. Sean shuffled in his seat and seemed to shrink as all eyes turned towards him. He nodded nervously.