IMPACT (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Read online

  Hierarchy collapsed almost immediately. Officers shouted orders, red-faced and shaking, while the swirling mass of people ignored them completely. Walscombe had found these specific high-ranking individuals particularly interesting. Their desperate calls for order and rationality in the face of the imminent, absolute disaster they (and the whole world with them) were about to face, had the somewhat opposite effect of making them appear utterly and totally insane.

  And yet, Walscombe too had panicked. No use denying it. Although panic, in him, was little more than a negligible increase of the heart rate, and a slight disruption of his logical reasoning. He had stood motionless, as hundreds of his colleagues and co-workers fled towards the upper levels, each carrying whatever belongings they had managed to gather. None of which would ever help them survive, or would ever prove to be of any use after the impact of a meteorite the size of Colossus.

  Walscombe had stumbled alongside the powerful torrent of human bodies, not quite knowing what to do.

  “The fuck are you doing, man?” someone had asked. He turned around and found Cliff, a senior technician he’d occasionally had a drink with, at Bob’s Bistro & Lounge, in town. Cliff was carrying a bundle of creased clothes, a gas mask, and a backpack overflowing with odds and ends. Cliff was on his way out with all the others.

  “What?” Walscombe had asked.

  “Get the fuck out of here! Come on!”

  He had actually considered this for an instant, before coming to a surprising conclusion. I have nowhere to go, he had thought. And it was true. No family, no friends he could honestly say he cared about (if there had been any, he’d lost touch with them years before, in any case), and no woman in his life.

  This, of course, was by design. The selection process that had lead him to become Chief Safety Officer of this nuclear hell hole was aimed at limiting the chances of appointing anyone who might waiver or fail to comply should orders come through from up top. Having emotional ties was an issue when your responsibility was launching a devastating nuclear attack that could lead to the death of millions of people and, if anyone was left to fight, would result in war.

  I have nowhere to go. And guess what? I don’t care.

  In the seconds before replying to Cliff, Walscombe made the decision that would, ultimately, prolong his life far beyond that of most of those who were now fleeing.

  “I’m staying,” he had said.

  “W-what?”

  “Yes, Cliff. I’m staying here.”

  The other man had obviously been in a hurry to leave, but his concern – which Walscombe had found rather touching, really – made him hesitate.

  “Are… are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, really. You go, Cliff.”

  “Well,” Cliff said, “maybe things won’t be as bad as they say, right? Maybe, I’ll see you out of here, when things settle down.”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  Cliff, who Walscombe believed was as good a man as they come, had awkwardly extended an arm and shook his hand. For an instant, Walscombe feared that he might actually hug him. Luckily, it didn’t happen. Cliff nodded a manly good-bye, and ran off with the rest of them. Walscombe, of course, never saw him again.

  Of the ten who had remained, only he and Major Donald White had stayed voluntarily. The others had just ended up stuck there. Then, news came through of what had happened outside after Colossus. And suddenly, they were grateful.

  That didn’t prevent seven of them from committing suicide though. The endless days inside the cramped, sunless facility caught up with them, and they simply couldn’t face it any longer.

  Walscombe, Don, and Jeff had reserved a special room for the bodies. At first, with only one dead, they hadn’t realised that a larger space would be required. After they found the third corpse hanging from the ceiling, they’d had to relocate them all. That hadn’t been a particularly enjoyable day. They carried them, one by one, to one of the meeting rooms. Walscombe had felt an unfamiliar fear of death as he struggled along the corridors, carrying Lieutenant Chris Hawthorne on his shoulder, the dead man’s feet dangling in front of his nose. He sometimes thought he could still smell the foul stench of their rotting bodies.

  Then a slightly surreal daily routine had set in. He, Don, and Jeff would have breakfast in the cafeteria. They had three years’ worth of disappointing food supplies stockpiled. Once every couple of days, Don would call a meeting in which they (but mostly he) discussed an interminable series of pointless matters. And, after a few maintenance tasks that kept them busy throughout the afternoon, they each retreated to their uneventful personal lives beneath the surface before meeting for dinner.

  It had gone on for months. And months. Until, finally, Walscombe too decided it was time to throw in the towel. There were only so many days he was willing to spend attending the needs of a useless top-secret nuclear weapons facility, reading the same novels over and over again, and trying to contain his irritation with the other two survivors. There was no one to keep the secret from for a start. The novels were fucking awful. And conversation with Don and Jeff was almost enough to drive anyone to suicide, even without the help of Colossus and company.

  That was when it first happened.

  He was standing there, methodically checking whether the knot that would eventually break his neck and suffocate him was strong enough, when the message arrived.

  It wasn’t the first inbound online communication they had received of course, but even those had ceased weeks before that. He suspected that a few hacker whiz kids around the world had managed to get online somehow, but he had neither the technical skills nor the will to keep trying himself. He’d repeatedly tried pinging the military servers they’d previously communicated with, but gave up after the first few weeks. Who cared, after all? His mind was made up.

  But, there it was – a message.

  For a second, he was mildly irritated. He’d meticulously planned his suicide, and the disruption of a carefully planned procedure was one of those things he found particularly irritating. Yes, he was going to do himself in and was wearing his best remaining suit for the occasion. Now, here came this communication, rudely interfering with his plans.

  He had leaned towards the screen. There was Ivan’s first message:

  [email protected]> Is anyone there?

  And, just as Walscombe’s eyes had lingered on that simple, but extraordinary question, came the second:

  [email protected]> And, if so, do you play chess?

  Chapter 11

  Alice and Adrian

  “What are you doing here?” asked the man behind the rifle.

  He wore a green raincoat and must’ve been in his sixties, although Alice found it hard to tell with the adults. She considered reaching out for Adrian’s hand, but the dark hole of the rifle’s muzzle held her still, as if hypnotized. Their death could creep out of that small, circular opening any second. Her mind only faintly registered the fact he was speaking English.

  They both just stood there, incapable of speaking.

  The man shifted his gaze to the massacre taking place on the beach, where the men in the black uniforms continued gunning down the scavengers. The gunshots pierced the air around them relentlessly.

  The man swallowed and Alice read fear in his eyes. He seemed to be wrestling with some internal decision he was finding hard to make.

  “Shit,” the man said and bit his lip. Then, after a second, he lowered his rifle. “Keep down. Follow me.” Without waiting, he turned his back to them and started walking away. Adrian looked at her. A single drop of sweat was slowly travelling down his earth-stained temple, leaving a trail of almost perfectly clean white skin behind it.

  He motioned towards the man, the frown in his eyebrows asking her if they should follow. She watched the hunched figure disappearing among the high grass, and – for the hundredth time since all this began – felt the awful sense grief at not being able to trust anyone in the world any more.

  Adults had once been p
rotective, generous. Her parents (Don’t DON’T don’t think about them now, she told herself), her relatives, their colleagues from work. Everyone had always smiled and asked her sweet, simple questions. They had lived in a world close, but separate from hers, and the overlap was one of love and gentleness. That’s what she had grown to expect. They were adults, she was a child and that’s just how things worked.

  Now, well, now adults had changed. They scuttled around, with hostile faces and eyes wide open, almost as afraid as she and Adrian were. And those that weren’t afraid, they were dangerous.

  The shots from the beach stopped. Adrian and Alice both turned, and saw those mysterious men in their evil uniforms standing still among the scattered dead bodies of the scavengers.

  “Let’s go,” said Alice. Anywhere was better than close to those men.

  They ducked low and tried to catch up with the man in the raincoat before he got too far.

  * * *

  The man turned, from time to time, to check whether they were still there. He didn’t seem particularly happy that they were.

  He held his rifle with one hand, using the other to wade his way through the tall grass stalks that grew along that stretch of the beach. For a while, they had heard the voices of the men in the black uniforms somewhere behind them, but they’d faded to little more than whispers. After a while, they vanished all together.

  Adrian watched the man’s boots ahead of him sink in the muddy ground as they crawled. He didn’t smell good, and the boy noticed the grey hair on the back of his head grew in greasy knots along his neck. Adrian felt for the butcher’s knife hidden beneath his jacket. There it was, ready to be drawn out if necessary.

  “Wait here,” the man said, stopping abruptly. They were close to the beach. He had led them westwards for about a mile or so, then followed a soft curve that had brought them close to the water again.

  He stood straight, peering above the grass, scanning the view for something. Then he pushed through the green stalks, and disappeared beyond them.

  They waited, in silence, while the rumble of the Channel waters engulfed them. The wind picked up again, and the overgrowth surrounding them curved and swayed. To the children, it suddenly felt like the whole world were tilting over.

  The man was back.

  “Come,” he said, and turned back. Once again, they followed.

  They stepped out onto the beach where a modest fishing boat was fastened to a small mooring. Waves rocked and lapped at the vessel’s hull where fading letters spelled out Elaine, the evanescent reminder of someone long gone.

  The man walked along the soaked wooden planks of the tiny harbour bridge, then noticed that the children had stopped and weren’t following him.

  “Look,” he started, then paused. “Oh God, you do speak English, don’t you?”

  “Yes, we do,” said Adrian.

  “All right, listen. You were headed to England. Or across the Channel. Or away from what-was-France, right?”

  The children remained silent.

  He sighed heavily. “You were lurking around along the beach, and I doubt you were headed south, unless you intended to reach the League, which would be crazy for two little sprogs like you. The only place that is vaguely safe around these ‘ere parts is across the water. So that’s where you were headed if you have any sense left in you.”

  “What if we were?” asked Adrian.

  “Right. Look – I’m going. And I’m going now. The blokes I’d come to collect ‘avent turned up, so there’s space in the boat if you want to come along.”

  The kids stood still.

  “Okay. Good luck.” He threw his rifle on board and started to climb inside the boat.

  The kids shared a glance. Alice bobbed her head, ever so slightly, towards Adrian. Her deep green eyes were filled with a melancholic acceptance of the possibility of danger. It was the sort of look, thought Adrian, that didn’t belong on a child’s face.

  He turned towards the man, who was now standing inside the boat, ready to set off.

  “Wait!” Adrian called out.

  * * *

  The boat shook wildly on the shattered seas.

  Alice and Adrian sat on opposite sides of the small vessel, eyes darting from the impetuous waves that seemed to threaten their lives at every merciless blow, to each other’s contracted face.

  The man held the rudder, knuckles white and face grim. White foam showered on him with every gush of the powerful wind. He was swearing and shouting, but the children couldn’t distinguish the words above the roar of the waters.

  As they rocked and swayed, Adrian watched the thin greyish line of the coast of what-was-France gradually vanish behind the mist.

  “How far is England?” he shouted towards the man, but he didn’t reply. Whether it was because of the noise or because he couldn’t be bothered, Adrian could not tell. He looked down, towards his feet, and checked that his backpack, which contained all his belongings, was still there. He’d ran the shoulder strap around his ankle, as he was used to doing when travelling on the underground, for fear of someone stealing it. He noticed that Alice had done the same. For some reason, this made him happy.

  He tried to hold steady, his hands constantly gripping onto the drenched, slippery surface of the boat, but it was difficult. The idea of being hurled overboard and ending up in those waters terrified him. He shot a quick look at the dark surface with its chaotic web of foam constantly breaking and reforming, like the letters of some evil, ever-shifting language. One that spoke of death alone. He remembered the stories of ancient sea creatures that could gobble up entire ships and create 30-foot waves with a mere motion of their tentacles. But, although it was all too easy now to picture one of them emerging below the hull, he realised they had become redundant. The sea itself was the monster.

  He doubled over, trying to keep himself from throwing up, as another wave struck them.

  * * *

  The storm died down a bit. The man now sat beside them, rummaging through an ice box. He tossed a couple of pieces of smoked haddock at each of them, and then dug into one of his own. Alice and Adrian could hardly believe their luck. Despite sea sickness, they suddenly realised how hungry they were. They bit eagerly into the fish’s chewy meat, licking their fingers and swallowing almost without chewing.

  “Good, yeah?” the man said, with a hint of a smile. Neither of them felt the need to answer him.

  Adrian noticed that the man’s eyes lingered on Alice in a way that he found alarming. He wasn’t staring, rather it was like he was trying not to stare. Adrian wondered whether an adult man could ever find a girl as young as her attractive. It made him sick to think so. But there it was – the man was glancing down at his food, then towards the sea, and then, invariably, he’d sneak a sideways look at her. It was a brief look, but one that allowed enough time for his eyes to creep upwards, from her shoes all the way to her face.

  Adrian wiped his hands on his trousers. “Ally,” he said to her, “could you get the towel from your backpack, please?” She nodded and stood up carefully, as to not lose her balance, then knelt down by her backpack. Adrian watched as the man’s eyes stayed on her. It was hard to interpret his expression. His eyebrows were close together, but his eyes had a hint of sadness to them. Not a sadness that moved Adrian in any way though.

  While she had her back to him, Adrian silently waved to the man to draw his attention. When he turned, and realised Adrian had noticed his glances, he frowned and swallowed, and looked away. Adrian waved again. This time, as the man looked at him, he opened his jacket slightly, to reveal the butcher’s knife concealed inside it.

  At first, the man seemed to chuckle, sarcastically. But then, as Adrian held his gaze, he dropped the smile. Looking Adrian in the eye, he nodded seriously, I understand. The boy suddenly felt pure disgust for this pathetic man.

  Adrian fixed his jacket, hiding the butcher’s knife from view again.

  “Here you go,” said Alice, turning around and
handing the towel to him.

  “Thank you.”

  “Have you seen those men before, sir? The ones in black?” Alice asked the man as she sat down again.

  “Twice before,” he answered without looking at her. “First time was about a month ago. There were two or three of them. They kept to themselves, but I noticed they weren’t afraid. Everyone’s afraid, these days. They weren’t.”

  “What about the second time?” asked Adrian.

  “The second time-” began the man, as he stood and took his place at the rudder again. “The second time there were more, fifteen or so. All with those flipping uniforms. They were hanging a priest. They’d tied a thick rope around his neck, and had him swinging from a lamppost. They sliced his belly open, before he was dead.” The man turned and spat in the sea. “So yes, I saw them just the twice. An’ I don’t want to bump into them again.”

  Adrian shivered. He looked overboard towards the waters, now a little calmer. Somewhere below them – it was hard to tell how deep – he noticed a large, faint white shadow, dancing in the ripples of the murky Channel waves.

  He leaned forwards, squinting, and realised he was looking at the carcass of a ship that had sunk to the seabed. Adrian could trace its vast size in the shimmering little projection that now scraped the surface of the water below him. It made him feel dizzy. For some reason, the image of that grand ship, forgotten and powerless in its silent, sandy tomb made him feel sorry. Sorry for the people who perhaps had been aboard that ship. Sorry for those who had waited for them, standing in harbours or by their doors hoping to welcome them back. Sorry for the ship itself, incapable of overcoming its destiny despite the metal might of its build.