Prologue - The Beginning of the End

Prologue of a brand new sci-fi novel. Written 2017.

The cold white light hit me like a gale-force wind, and I have to duck my head and barge toward it shoulder first. It is incredible to think, to know that I had lived without it for so long. 

So many things I have been without.

I attempt to stand, but the long hours crouched begging for escape have turned my calf muscles into oak and I kneel before the ancient paternal deity that is our sun. The Lee-Enfield rifle grasped tightly in my hand has become my staff, my sword, my totem, and I am a fledgling warrior, genuflecting before my Lord awaiting blessing for the battles to come.

A lungful of the sweet fresh air revives my will, and I stand. Up until this point my blinkered vision has taken in so little. But now I see.

What was once thick overgrown grass is now dark ashes which settle in snow-like drifts around me. The tree are silvered by their final passing, and their reaching branches are entirely free of leaf and life. Now the small branches point like inverted lightning toward the fitful sky as it blackens.

There are no sounds besides the rustle of my boots among the debris.

In this forest where I had spent many contended hours listening to the birdsong, the excited yip and bark of the dogs taken walking, and the cheerful voices from the elderly men on the golf course across the hill. Even the wind was missing, or rather the sounds the wind would make whipping against the long-forgotten fronds.

I begin walking slowly, further into the wood, listening out for any sign of life or of activity. With each step my aching legs begin to loosen, but my back is struggling with the weight of my bag. Everything feels taut and robotic, and yet weak and sure to falter. I tell myself to drop the bag if any thing happens to I’m free to move. The gun, the knife, the ammo belt and the bits and pieces filling the pockets of the old man’s jacket are the essentials, I can leave the bag if the situation commands it.

The light is beginning to give me a headache, and I remember the sunglasses in the side pocket of the rucksack. Leaning the rifle against a trunk I remove the bag and again I kneel as I retrieve the sunglasses, when suddenly I am aware of a low rumbling. Looking east towards the golf course I can see little in the sky. Tortured branches still mask my view.

The hum grows and grows, and I begin to run the fifty-odd metres to the dry stone wall marking the forest boundary. My chest is tight within a few steps, but whether this is caused my my extreme lack of fitness or the anxious prospect of meeting someone, I can’t tell.

Suddenly I see a something approaching, a black mark moving across the grey skies. There is only one thing it can be of course, but will they see me? Do I want them to see me? What happens if they see me?

I instinctively take a step back from the wall and crouch, as if this will make a difference.

The jet crosses over and passes on. It looks small and military. Oh well I think, at the very least I’m not the last one.

Heading back into the forest and retrieving my supplies I meet the path, and follow it’s crooked journey towards the caravan and Marty’s land. It is a mercifully short walk, and I am grateful to be able to sit and rest.

Marty’s battered caravan is still sat on bricks beside me, but the padlock is on and I have no key. What I do have a key for is the Norton, and old 70s motorbike with a half-full tank. But I’m not leaving yet.

I stare back in amongst the treees in the direction I came in, and a major part of me is longing to return from whence I came. I could tell myself that there is nothing there for me anymore, but that is not - strictly - true. That place was safety, security and shelter, for my mind, body and soul. The truest example of Sanctuary.

The thing is, that the passing plane which is troubling me still proves something. I am not the only survivor, and I must, I must seek out the others. I need them like I need the air around me to be clean and pure, and I need them soon.

However, what I need now is a smoke. My eyes scan across to the hammer on the floor.

Smashing through the window of Marty’s caravan was hugely liberating and allowed me to vent an enormous amount of frustration, though I feel no animosity towards Marty - wherever he is. Clearing the remaining glass from the frame, I pull myself in through my newly created hatch and inside. I realise just how weak my arms are as well, although I must weigh a stone or so less than I did a year ago.

Inside is musty and stale, and I can just make out the furniture in the dull illumination from the window. I open the top cupboard and the drawer below simultaneously and smile at the domesticity I display. I leave with enough to finish filling the Bergen; a few tins of lager, two bottles of whisky, 200 pack of duty free cigarettes, and some sugary stoner snacks from the cupboard together with what must be an ounce of grass, a bar of hash and a couple of pipes. 

If I’m leaving the security and safety I have known in these long months of fear; if I am stepping out alone into the wilderness with a tent, a gun I have no idea if I can actually shoot and a held confidence that all will be okay; well, let’s just say I’m not going out sober if I can help it. Faith does not find itself easily in me. 

Sitting back on a hewn log I open a tinnie and sip at it. I crack one pack out of the carton of Lucky Strikes and light one up. And it could all be so normal; a man sat with a beer and a f*g on farmland in the English countryside, and maybe that normality is what I am so desperately craving, not the nicotine I missed so sorely in the early days, or the numbing brilliance of “a drop o the good stuff”, but for the entire world to go back to normal, to not be changed. 

The truth is it’s people I’m craving. Not even people, just a person. Anyone. Anyone, who doesn’t want to do me harm would do.

So I finish the beer and and the cigarette and I walk over to the bike when I realise something that wasn’t there before. A foreign smell. And then I realise, it’s the smell of burning. Burning means fire, and fire means people, all the way back to Prometheus. The smell is strong and I follow it away and down the hill, rifle in hands.

Walking slowly I see the pillar of black smoke turning white as I pass the treeline. If I remember correctly from Boy Scouts, the smoke turning white means it is going out. Or was that from TV? Either way, I decide that I should move quickly, in case whoever was or is there leaves. I start into a jog.