The Truth is Dead (9 page)

And it wasn’t just in the press. We actually
saw
it making its way towards us on the telly. There were special programmes all day on New Year’s Eve, showing midnight sweeping from east to west across the world, starting somewhere way down under. Tonga, or somewhere like that. I’d check; except I can’t. Not now. It’s not as if I can go on the Internet, or even down to the library. Anyway, by lunchtime the TV news was running pictures of one place after another having a party and then going dark: New Zealand, Australia and countless other countries I’d never heard of. The reports were followed by interviews with British government ministers, who kept telling us not to panic: they had plans in place for midnight GMT.

In our house we had good reason to believe them. My dad worked in IT at the power station. He already knew that he would have to go to work that night. He was annoyed about missing the celebrations. But he was confident that the plant would cope, even if the doom-mongers turned out to be right and its many computers did go down for a while. So Mum hadn’t joined the bands of people who’d decided to do some last-minute stocking up on tinned food and bottled water. The message on the telly was clear: some faraway places were having a bit of a Y2K hiccup, but everyone was sure that they’d have themselves up and running again soon. Meanwhile, it was over to Davina McCall and the jolly crowds outside the Millennium Dome who were gathering early in the hope of seeing the Queen and getting a good spot to watch the fireworks at midnight.

Through the afternoon there were a few reports on TV of people rushing to airports and harbours in search of transport westwards, to places where the new century would arrive a little later. A guest in the studio noticed a prominent politician and a minor royal in one of the check-in queues. The programme swiftly cut back to Davina and didn’t return to the airport story.

I suppose we should have realized then that there really was something to worry about. But by that time, Mum had got us all helping to make the sandwiches for our street party, and Dad was leaving for work. If I’d known it was to be the last time I’d see him, I’d have said a proper goodbye. But my friend Fergus had come round to have a go on Donkey Kong on the Nintendo 64 I’d got for Christmas, and I didn’t want to look wet. So when Dad said, “Have some candles ready for when it all goes black at midnight” we all just laughed.

So you see, we were warned. But no one wanted to take it seriously.

At midnight we were all outside in the street, high on the hill looking out over town. It was a balmy night. Not really cold at all. I found myself talking to neighbours I’d hardly met before. Everyone was happy and friendly, even the lady from number ten, Dr Parker, who had once told me off for dropping a crisp packet in the street. Mr Miller had run an extension lead out through his front-room window and set up a little telly on his garden wall, so we could see Big Ben doing its chimes. In the build-up to midnight, the security at the Dome went wrong and the glitterati of London all got stuck in Tube stations waiting to be let out. It was quite funny really.

“Looks like the Millennium Bug has struck early.” Mum laughed. “I’m all for it, if it gives that lot a taste of what it’s like to use public transport these days!” But she knew it was just good old-fashioned British incompetence. The kind we dream of now.

At about 11.45 p.m., the telly people interrupted their coverage of the big party to run a statement from the Prime Minister. He looked ahead to the new century and its promise of prosperity and peace. He slipped in some reassurance about any technical glitches that might happen at midnight. They would only be temporary. There was no need to panic. Mrs Miller was staring at the screen. “He’s said that once too often,” she mumbled, sounding worried. But no one took any notice and we all filled our glasses for a toast.

The cameras cut to Big Ben. The long musical chimes started, escorting out the final seconds of the year. Then there was the pause before the first big bong. But where that bong should have been there was only silence. Silence and darkness. A darkness like we’d never known. The TV screen was black. The streetlamps had gone out. Down in town there were some car headlights on the move, but very few, and they quickly flashed away. Most people were asleep, or celebrating. Looking up, I could see more stars than ever before.

And then the fireworks started. With all the lights out, it was the best display I’d ever seen. Fountains of colour burst out against the black sky. We drank and shouted, and when the explosions were over and we still couldn’t get the telly going, we drank some more and rammed candles into the empty bottles to light our way indoors. Everyone gathered by an open fire in the Millers’ house, surrounded by torches and candles. Mrs Miller played the piano, and we laughed together for hours, joking about the power cut, until gradually we each found our way home to sleep. Fergus led us down the street by the light of his new mobile phone. “It’s all it’s good for,” he said. “I can’t get a signal.”

When I woke up, late the next day, I had forgotten about the blackout. I tried to turn on my computer, but it was dead. I went to call Fergus to see if his house had any power, but the phone line was out too, and the radiators were cold. I went into the kitchen. The kettle wouldn’t switch on. The fridge was silent and dark inside. I swigged the last of the milk. It still had a slight chill to it. Then I went up to see if Mum and Dad were awake. But Dad hadn’t come home from work. Things must be worse than he’d expected. We tried the transistor radio. Nothing.

“Maybe the one in my car will work,” said Mum. “The battery gets charged by the engine.”

So we went outside – me in my slippers, her still in her dressing-gown – and sat in the car, trying to tune in. But there was only crackle and hiss.

“The BBC must be putting out something,” said Mum. “They have emergency generators for times like this. Lots of buildings do. Hospitals. Places like that.”

I looked across the town. Sure enough, there were lights on in the hospital. They were on emergency power.

“Let’s go down there. They’ll know what’s going on,” said Mum, starting the engine with no thought to what she looked like. “We can get some more petrol on the way, so we can keep the car battery going.”

But other people had had the same idea. There was a tangle of traffic round the petrol station, and a frightened man was sticking up signs saying NO POWER. PUMPS OUT. NO PETROL. Mum wriggled the car round and set off towards the hospital. It was the same there. The car park was full, and a traffic jam was snaking round the block. It was as if the whole town had been lured towards the hospital lights. We parked a few streets away and walked towards the casualty department. A man was standing on a box, shouting to the crowd outside. I recognized him. He was a local councillor, Mr Lambert. He’d given out the prizes at my school. He was a pompous prat. His hour had come.

“Order. Order please, ladies and gentlemen!” he was saying. “Everything is under control. Emergencies only now, please. The hospital is under great strain. They’ve got power, but no phones and no computers. They can’t call up anyone’s notes. They can’t run the new X-ray machines and scanners. And you can’t come in just to keep warm. Go home now and put on some woolly clothes. Everything will be back to normal before you know it.” He looked at my mother in her dressing-gown. “Are you a patient here, madam?”

“Good Lord, no!” squealed Mum, suddenly aware of her nightclothes. We ran back to the car and zoomed home. We saw a gang of men walking towards a darkened television shop. They were carrying iron bars and looked ready to smash their way in to grab what they could.

“Someone should call the police,” said Mum. But then she remembered that the phones were out and nobody could.

“We could go to the police station,” I said.

“If they hadn’t closed it down,” said Mum. “They thought it wasn’t worth having so many so close together when everyone could keep in touch by phone and in cars. They weren’t thinking about times like this. I’m not wasting petrol driving miles just to fetch the police. We’re going to have to save fuel. This might go on for days.”

And it did. For far more than just days. And it stopped being fun or interesting and started to get boring and frightening at the same time. For a little while the neighbours who had enjoyed New Year’s Eve together supported each other in their torment. Food and firesides were shared. But on the second weekend we woke to a familiar bottom disappearing over the back wall. We got downstairs and found the last of the Christmas Stilton gone.

Gradually everything that needed recharging ran out of power – you couldn’t even use a mobile phone as a torch. Those men who had raided the TV shop had chosen the wrong target. People were stealing batteries and gas bottles and boxes of matches now. The water stopped running, and sewage started backing up out of the drains. We cleaned ourselves with baby wipes, until they ran out and we just stayed dirty. People took plastic bottles to the swimming pool and collected the stale chlorine-laden water to drink.

At first, police cars toured the streets, looking for looters. They kept hungry families out of Tesco while food rotted in the dead freezers. Then the police ran out of petrol too, and requisitioned bikes – riding around, armed, to shoot thieves. Within weeks, the uniformed men on bikes became looters themselves, to feed their families. Anything they couldn’t eat they sold at extortionate prices. I asked my mum why they were doing it, when they were supposed to be in charge.

“It’s hard for anyone to be good at a time like this,” she said, “especially when you have a family. And it must be difficult to be a good policeman when you are a family man with a gun.”

People walked to nearby towns to get help and came back with rumours. It wasn’t just our town. Things were bad everywhere. There was news of the underground bunker near Bath, built long ago to house important people after a nuclear attack. Before the Bug it had been a top-secret place, known only to the Great and the Good: those with jobs of national importance. The trouble was, when things got tough, the Great and the Good had brought their families with them for shelter, and their numbers were added to by everyone who had been Great and Good in the past. Former officials, former ministers and two former prime ministers had all remembered the secret address to which they had once been privy. Soldiers had to guard the door. Shots had been fired. Famous people were dead. And the bunker was no use anyway, because there was no way of getting food in or messages out.

I asked about the power station. I wanted to know if anyone had seen my dad. Someone said there’d been an explosion. I didn’t know what to believe.

And of course we should have gone back to school. It was due to reopen on Tuesday 11 January. I actually went. I even wore my uniform. For once I didn’t mind: those were my cleanest clothes. They’d been washed before Christmas. But school didn’t open. That councillor was there, turning pupils away. He said it was a “health and safety” matter. It wasn’t safe for us to be together in large numbers without heat, light and water – and in any case, most of the teachers hadn’t turned up.

The only place people could gather was in church. The second of January had been a Sunday, and vicars all across town had seized the opportunity for an illustrated sermon about the wages of sin. Soon the ringing of a church bell became the signal for people to come and hear the latest news from a traveller who had staggered in from another town, or to share some newly discovered food. But within weeks some of the vicars had been ousted by parishioners with more lurid interpretations of what was going on. And there were splits between the churches. One started worshipping the International Space Station, which was still orbiting, reflecting the sun and standing out as one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Its members interpreted obscure passages in the Bible to show that the astronauts onboard were not marooned, or dead, but waiting to return and redeem mankind. Another congregation started planning a trek across land and sea to Africa. They argued that low-tech societies would have survived the computer crash and would eventually come to save us, if only someone could tell them the mess we were in.

My neighbour, Dr Parker – the one who had told me off about the crisp packet – was behind that plan.

“You see, where we went wrong as a society,” she said, in the confident voice that had once served her well as a university lecturer, “was to let the technology take over. We got to the point where computers weren’t just a help – they had become essential for even the most mundane of tasks: the exchange of money; the distribution of food, fuel and the mail; the production of newspapers; the transmission of radio and television signals. Take away the technology and what were once simple operations become impossible. We will have to learn to live like primitive men again.”

“You mean like people in the 1950s?” said Mum. “We didn’t have any computers then.”

Dr Parker was thoughtful. “Well, we may need to go back a lot earlier than that. To relearn skills we have all lost.”

Half an hour later, there we were: Dr Parker, my mother and me, breaking into the museum by the back door. We stared at everything from warming pans to butter churns, and wondered what to take. In the end, the three of us lugged an old plough back home, ready to cultivate our gardens if things weren’t back to normal by the spring. Meanwhile, others were ransacking the library next door. They weren’t choosing books for their rarity or interest – simply for how well they would burn. Dr Parker drew the line at that.

When we got home, I found myself searching for one particular book. I had bought it for Dad as a joke present that Christmas. I’d never really thought it would come in handy, but what better title could there be now than
The SAS Survial Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in any Climate, on Land or Sea.
I silently thanked the author, John “Lofty” Wiseman, and wondered how he was getting on, wherever he was. Perhaps he and the SAS would manage to sort everything out, somehow.