4

Everything at once.

4

 

“I can’t believe the news today.

Oh, I can’t close my eyes and make it go away...

Broken bottles under children’s feet;

Bodies strewn across the dead end street.”

 

U2 �" Sunday Bloody Sunday

 

Alison had left her most recent ex in the very early hours of the morning, the day this final world war began. She was not the only one. From what she had read online in the hour or so she had spent waiting for Jeremy to get home, half of her friends with partners seemed to have already called an end to their relationships in the preceding twenty-four hours.

 

The whole city was tense, and the screaming and the fighting in the streets had followed her the whole way home from work. A wave of violence and anger was sweeping through the streets. It seemed brutal and relentless, even for London.

 

That day when everything seemed to happen all at once, she had packed up her life in the back of her little electric car long before dawn. The argument ended at midnight, and a few hours later she was gone. (Truth be told, she had begun packing before Jeremy had even returned home.) She had broken out of the city ahead of the sun, and far from the chaotic morning rush which would never come.

 

She was headed to the home of her adoptive parents, who had recently moved to Paisley, just outside Glasgow. At 6.04am, just as the sun peaked its head over the midland peaks, the radio station cut out. A man’s voice, solemn and slow replaced it, explaining that a public emergency broadcast would follow.  After a pause, a woman’s voice explained that London had been hit by several nuclear blasts, its 9 million residents all presumed dead.

 

She drove through the tears as another minute of explanation followed. When they reported more blasts, destroying Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast she cried aloud.

 

The car stopped, right in the middle of the motorway. She opened the door, unclasped her belt and fell to her knees in the road, screaming and wailing that it couldn’t be true.

 

The only reason she wasn’t flattened by oncoming traffic there and then was that every other car up and early on the road had stopped too, other motorists and passengers reacting the same way to the same news at the same time.

 

And so they wept, young and old, man and woman, until a blast hit near enough for them all to be awoken to the immediate danger, the coming storm that would swallow all in its path.

 

Panicking, stout fathers and fierce mothers shepherded their bewildered flock back into their vehicles and started what for many of them would be their final journey.

 

Tear-filled eyes accounted for the first crash within seconds, flipping car after car into the air. Alison was a few cars ahead and accelerated with all the power her electric motor could manage.

 

A few miles down the road, the sound of aircraft drowned out their radios as a pack of twenty or so Bombers crossed the motorway in front of her. This being too small a target for their most precious ammo, they let the gunners in their tails take pot shots at the traffic as they past.

 

The god of Death claimed a few more souls, and the road blocked up ahead.

 

Alison managed to swerve around and exit the motorway before she hit the blockage.  She took the small roads after that, away from town, cities and people. When she saw signposts for the Pennines, she headed into them, hoping to hide out in the forest.

 

She blubbered and swore the whole way, as the clouds swelled above her, and the black rain began to fall, but she did not stop until she found the blasted building in which she now sat and drank and remembered. It was away from any major conurbation, and the destruction wreaked upon it so far was relatively small. She had thought then that it was probably hit by mistake, and hope that stray lightning would not strike twice.

 

As they used to say, we shall see.

 

She glanced down at Paul now. He was crying with his face whilst laughing with his voice. It made her afraid. She saw his first bottle was now empty, so she slid the multi-tool back across the floor for him to open the next one.

 

He didn’t seem to notice it. He just choked back the tears, and laughed, just once, slow and loud.

 

“This is it. Sin. The punch-line to the final joke. We did whatever we wanted, so the hammer came down.”

 

He looked Alison right in the eye.

 

“It’s like the book always said.”

 

Switching his gaze back inward, he said the words slow.

 

“This is it. The great reckoning. Judgement day. God has brought the rapture to our feet.”

 

Her face turned to grimace, and as she turned back to crack in the door she spat on the dusty floor with distaste.

 

“God didn’t do anything. It’s all on us.”