FF dystopian fiction (4,300 words)
On the day that the world lost its mind I was working the afternoon shift at the corner shop. The first thing I heard was a car horn. Loud and protracted, not so unusual at the sharp end of Catford High Street, even at one pm. So I paid no attention and continued counting out change for a customer who had just handed me a fifty for a pack of gum and some crisps.
Several seconds later, the honking was followed by an infernal crash. It made the window rattle, and that got my attention all right. The screeching of metal on metal made my teeth ache.
I looked past the customer who stood rooted to the spot. Had he not heard that noise? But I couldn’t spare him a thought because the din from the street was increasing. Caterwauling car alarms, more crashes and blaring horns assaulted my eardrums.
“Bloody hell.”
Wincing, I dropped the change. With my hands covering my ears, I hurried round the counter.
I wrenched the door open, the bell tingling merrily, and despite the noise nobody was screaming, nobody was running. In fact, at first I didn’t notice any people at all because the chaos on the intersection drew all my attention.
Twisted, smoking pieces of metal were heaped up in the road, spilling onto the pavement before the Broadway Theatre. Some of the debris was no longer recognisable as anything found in a car. I set off to check if anyone was hurt. If anyone – hell – was still alive.
I had just reached the crossing when I noticed I was the only one moving. I looked around. There were several people nearby, but they all stood stock still and silent. A cold sense of dread trickled down my spine. I eyed the wreckage. One of the cars had caught fire. The driver was in his seat, upright and staring vacantly through the shattered windscreen. He just sat there, as the flames licked up and into the car, making no attempt to escape the inferno. I should try to get to him before the entire intersection was ablaze. But something about the scene held me back. Why was nobody else helping him?
I went up to a young woman facing the wreck. She wasn’t moving a muscle.
“Hello?” I studied her profile. It was expressionless. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t react to my presence, or the carnage before her.
My heart hammering in my throat, I raised my hand. Touching her was the last thing I wanted to do. “Hey!” My voice flipped over into a low squeak. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey, can you hear me?”
No reaction. She still stared at the wreckage, swaying slightly from the momentum I had given her with my nudge.
Then, the same smooth expression of nothingness still on her face, she turned and walked away from me. The hairs stood up on my neck.
More movement caught my attention. Several of the nearby people had started walking. A few others still stood motionless. I couldn’t discern a pattern.
The blaze was gaining momentum. The crackling flames had found their way into the car. The man behind the wheel was now on fire, but still sitting as he had before. He hadn’t uttered a sound. The sight made me shiver. I turned and hurried back into the shop. It occurred to me how quiet it was. No sirens, no screaming. The car alarms in the pile-up had stopped howling, and only the crackling of the flames remained audible through the closed door.
My customer had disappeared. The till was still open, undisturbed.
And in the silent shop, my mind went blank. The enormity of the situation hit me. I couldn’t comprehend what was happening, I didn’t even have the vocabulary to form a coherent thought. I don’t know how long I stood there, as motionless as the figures outside
Then, with an almost audible groan of springs, my brain restarted like a clanky old motor. It turned over a few times, before at last, a thought formed in the fog.
Sasha.
“Fuck.” My girlfriend hadn’t even featured in my worries since this mess got underway. Uh, fiancé. Whatever. Thinking of the rose gold and silver ring I’d put on her finger only three months ago, I scrabbled in the handbag hanging over the back of the chair behind the till until I found my phone.
It rang and rang, and went to voicemail. I tried again, with the same result. Next, I dialled the direct number for Lewisham Hospital’s A&E department. Despite everything, I felt guilty about that. If shit had gone to hell in a handbasket, they needed all hands on deck.
I didn’t have to worry about my bad manners for long. There was no answer on that line either, the phone just cut out after a minute. The result was the same when I dialled 999.
I picked up the ancient corded phone that Ali, the corner shop’s owner hadn’t gotten round to having disconnected yet. There was a dial tone, but there was no answer on any of the numbers I tried from there either. I dropped the receiver. The fire in the intersection had picked up speed. Orange flames danced and flickered in the corner of the store window. I couldn’t stay here. I had to go get Sasha.
I forced myself to take a deep breath and consider my next steps. It wasn’t cold, not for early October, but I still pulled on my faux-leather jacket. Lewisham Hospital was less than fifteen minutes’ walk, but if there were more accidents along the way it might take longer. I grabbed a bottle of water, a few protein bars and the torch Ali kept to find stuff in the shop’s dingy, cramped back room. As an afterthought, I stuffed a couple of mace sprays and some lighters into my handbag as well.
The fire on the intersection had now engulfed all the cars. As I passed I could make out several figures inside, orange flames dancing in their hair. I shuddered. Best not to look too closely at anything for a while.
The street was eerily quiet. A few figures shuffled slowly here and there, in the road as well as on the pavement. One stumbled onto a grassy patch and I braced myself to rush and help if she fell. She didn’t, which made me sigh with relief. I had no idea what to do now. Could I even help them up? Would I dare touch them? My arms erupted in goose bumps and my heart beat high up into my throat. For a moment, I was convinced I’d be sick. I stopped and leaned over, supporting myself with both hands on my knees. After a few moments the panic receded a notch and I could breathe again.
I stood up straight. As creepy and unsettling as this scene was, there seemed to emanate no immediate danger from these people. People? Were they people still? I didn’t know. Zombies then, my brain supplied. I shuddered. No, not that word. Keeping the shufflers in my line of sight but at a distance, I set off at a brisk walk.
There were car wrecks everywhere. The moment when it had happened - whatever it was – all drivers seemed to have lost control of their vehicles at once. A few of the drivers had blood on their faces, but at least there were no other fires.
At the bus stop near the Aldi, I had to dodge around the biggest cluster of shuffling figures I had yet encountered. None of them seemed to be aware of one another, or of me. I tried to make eye contact a few times, but soon stopped. The emptiness in their expressions only served to push me to the brink of hysteria again.
As I walked I thought of Sasha’s residency on the dementia ward last year. I’d visited her a couple of times, and the patients there had looked a lot like these people. Only, on the ward everyone had been on the far side of seventy. Now, most of the people I saw were a lot younger.
An ambulance sat wedged into the gate leading to the A&E department. The driver was behind the wheel, looking blank but unhurt. Why were some of the people entirely stationary, while others ambled this way and that with no discernible purpose?
The A&E was silent. There were maybe thirty people inside, but only a few were moving at all. A couple seemed to have fallen off their gurneys. Again, I had to fight the urge to help. I didn’t know if any of them could feel pain. Hell, after seeing the burning driver in the wrecked car I doubted they were even alive.
A strong sense of claustrophobia overcame me. I was on the verge of another panic attack when all the lights went out at once. That didn’t help one bit, and I gave a small squeak of panic.
For a moment, it was too dark to see anything. I backed into a wall, my hands slick with sweat as I made contact with the cool, water-resistant paint. I wanted to screw my eyes shut. They would come for me now, all those figures hovering in the dark. They’d converge and rip me to pieces. I could almost feel clammy hands close around my neck.
Except, nobody was moving. And it wasn’t entirely dark, either. As my vision adjusted to the dim light coming from a few windows in the far corner, the swaying figures came back into focus. Nothing had changed. Everyone was as stationary as before.
I straightened up. My ribs ached where my heart beat against them. Was that even possible? Sasha would know.
Where was she? I refused to think beyond my mission of finding her. We’d get out of this place and never look back.
With one last sweep I ascertained she wasn’t in the main A&E. I made for the corridor down which lay the treatment rooms. It felt strange opening those doors. There were people in all of them, but nobody complained about the intrusion. By the time I tried the last room, the goose bumps on my arms were an inch thick.
“Hey.”
I might’ve yelled, I don’t know. I whirled around faster than I’d ever moved before. It made me stagger and lose my balance, and I landed on my ass with a thud. Good thing I’m well cushioned in the area, but the fall still knocked the wind out of me.
My first instinct was to scrabble away from the figure looming in the dark. But after the last hour, she was the least frightening thing I’d encountered, and I stayed put, just kind of gawping up at her.
“You okay?” She held out her hand for me and, after a flare-up of terror, I grabbed it and hauled myself to my feet.
“Think so, yeah.” I stretched my spine and wriggled my fingers and toes. Everything seemed in working order. When I looked up, she was still staring at me. “You gave me quite a fright, but I’m still glad to see you. I’ve had…” I broke off. I couldn’t put it into words. But she knew anyway, of course.” What do you think is going on?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea.” She reached out and touched my arm, as if to check I was real. “I still haven’t wrapped my head round it all. I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s unaffected.” She held out her hand. “I’m Caitlyn.”
“Heather.” I took the offered hand. It was the most surreal moment of my life, talking so calmly while around us the mute figures swayed. “Do you work here?” She didn’t look familiar. If she was A&E staff, I would’ve noticed her before that day. She was gorgeous, a very similar build and colouring to Sasha. But Sasha’s hair was cropped short and Caitlyn had long dreads caught up in a headscarf.
She shook her head. “I work at Sports Direct.” She looked down the hall. “My gran’s on the stroke ward, I came to check on her.”
Before I could respond, a static crackling started up behind us. We looked at each other, then into the gloom of the A&E department. The crackling picked up speed, then was replaced by a female voice.
“Fifty point seven zero four seven eight north. Minus four point six five one two six west. Fifty point seven zero four seven eight north. Minus four point…” It went on and on.
Caitlyn approached the nurse’s desk, where a transceiver sat that looked like an ancient CB radio. The broadcast came from there. I followed slowly. “What is that?”
“Sounds like coordinates.” She pulled a piece of paper close and scribbled down the numbers. “Yes, they’re definitely GPS coordinates.” She was still double checking her scribbles when things got weird.
The people around us, or whatever they were now, began to move. They sat up on their gurneys, abandoned their stations and shuffled, as one, for the exit. Caitlyn pulled me with her. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I can’t.” I tried to pull away. “I need to find Sasha. My…my girlfriend…fiancé, I mean.”
She turned to me. It was too gloomy to make out her expression, but the whites in her eyes were very noticeable. “I’ve been up on the wings.” She gestured around us. “Everyone I saw was like this. If your girlfriend is still in here, she’s like them. If she’s not here, maybe she got away.”
“Fiancé,” I mumbled automatically. Caitlyn didn’t bother responding. She tugged me along and this time I didn’t fight her.
We emerged into the ambulance bay, blinking in the sudden brightness. After the half-light inside, the overcast day was blinding. “Why did the power cut out in the hospital, anyway?” I shielded my eyes.
“Probably a fire somewhere.” Caitlyn sounded distracted. “Look.” She pointed at the road. I squinted. It took me a moment to make sense of the scene. The people who had streamed out of the A&E department with us were joining the stream of bodies that were all walking in the same direction.
“They’re walking towards Lewisham centre. I wonder why?”
“I wonder about the whole thing.” For the first time, Caitlyn’s voice quavered, and she sounded as freaked out as I felt. I turned to her.
“What’s happening here? Are they all…are they still alive?”
She shook her head helplessly. “I haven’t got the faintest clue. I was in the store when they all just…stopped.” She shuddered. “And there was this huge pile-up in the road. I didn’t know what to do first so I thought I’d check on Nan. She’s my only family…” Her voice trailed away.
I didn’t dare ask her how she’d found her grandmother. “You don’t think they’ll come back from this, do you?”
She took a deep breath, collecting her composure. “I don’t know.” She looked around. “But I don’t think it’s safe to stay here.” She gestured to the street, where the number of shuffling bodies was increasing steadily, all moving in the same direction. “They’re headed for central London, would be my guess.”
“And you think we should go the other way?”
She met my eye. The main emotion in her gaze was steely determination. “I do.” Her voice was steady again.
Her strength gave me courage. “Same.” We had to go somewhere, and even if nothing else was clear, I knew I’d never make it alone.
And still, my heart threatened to break as we turned our backs on the hospital. I’ll never see Sasha again. The truth hit me with such a force that I staggered. Caitlyn caught me by the elbow but said nothing. I made myself carry on. I couldn’t break down now, or she might leave me behind.
We saw the first soldiers near the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill. I was just thinking that I’d soon have no idea where we were, and that I hadn’t even thought of suggesting we pass by our Sydenham flat. Sasha had picked the museum for one of our rare days out a few months ago, and I was lost in those memories when Caitlyn pulled me through a park gate and into a thick clump of bushes without so much as a whispered warning.
“Oww!” I picked some thorny vines off my wrist. “What the hell?”
“Shh.” She peered anxiously through the brambles that, by the feel of it, had ripped my trousers to shreds. “I saw something. Be quiet.”
I obeyed. I’d already clocked she was a lot better at observing our surroundings than me. Regardless of what was going on, I wanted to survive the day.
Then we saw the soldiers. I say soldiers, but really, they were creatures right out of a Sci-Fi nightmare. Their armour was black, gleaming dully in the weak sunlight. At first sight, they might’ve passed as human beings wearing elaborate costumes, but soon I noticed that their waistline and hips were narrower than any man or woman’s ever could be.
“Wh…what are they?” I whispered, noticing for the first time how much I was shaking.
Caitlyn shook her head in mute horror, but took my hand in hers.
I’d tried not to look too often at the people we’d seen shuffling along or standing idle. In the last half hour we’d passed only a handful moving in the general direction of London, and even fewer that were just standing around. From our hiding place, we could see four, the biggest number in a while.
The soldiers, since I couldn’t come up with a better term – were they robots? aliens? – went up to one of the stationary figures in the road. One passed a small device up and down the body. Another raised a large gleaming gun and pointed it at the person’s chest. A blinding flash of green light, then the body dropped with a thud.
A smell of ozone in the air. I bit on my fist to stop from screaming. Caitlyn tightened her grip on my hand. “Come on.”
She tiptoed around the worst of the brambles and got us onto a path further inside the park. I had no idea how she managed to give the horrors in the street a wide berth, but when we hit tarmac again there was no trace of them.
“We’ll stick to the side streets,” Caitlyn murmured. “And we’ll go slow.” I could only nod.
We walked on until it was almost dark. We didn’t encounter any more soldiers, but bodies lay here and there in the street. It was depressing to think that by following their path of destruction, we could avoid those who were responsible for those deaths. It occurred to me that we might never see another of those blank-faced, swaying figures if we stuck to areas the soldiers had already cleared.
Even though it was a mild evening, by the time we stopped for the night I was shaking. Terror and fatigue made my teeth chatter. Caitlyn told me that we’d managed about ten miles. For me, who on good days walked maybe three that was a lot.
We found a small solicitor’s office in a residential street of Wimbledon. Caitlyn had decided we should stay away from the main roads, so we tried the doors in the side streets. All the homes were locked, but we struck gold with the office located in a Victorian conversion. Inside, we found two sofas. The electricity here was still working, and we ate what we found in the fridge – ham and bacon sandwiches and egg salad. I tried not to think about the people who’d put those things into the fridge for their lunch break that morning.
Caitlyn pored over a list she’d been working on during our meal. “We’ll have to kit ourselves out tomorrow.” She consulted her iPhone, which she’d plugged in with a charger she’d found in a desk drawer. “I’m amazed the internet’s not dead yet.” She scrolled some more. “There’s a hiking shop on Wimbledon high street, that’s our best bet.”
“How do you know about those things?” I leaned back against the sofa. We’d set out our food on the floor, shielded by the furniture. We’d kept off the lights and sat in the glow from an aromatherapy candle I’d found in the office loo. My eyes were growing heavy but I didn’t want to go to sleep yet. Despite the horrors we’d seen, I wasn’t scared now. We were warm and fed, and the confidence that emanated from Caitlyn soothed my frazzled nerves.
She shrugged without looking up. “I like to hike.” Her features were illuminated by the phone screen as she scrolled. She’d taken off the head scarf and her dreads fell loose around her shoulders. She swept them every now and then, and I had to fight the urge to take one and twirl it between my fingers. “And I once went backpacking in Australia.” She grinned briefly. “Not the best survival training there is, but as long as we stay near civilised areas we should be okay.”
“Beats my outdoor skills, for sure.” I yawned. “I get nervous if I don’t see at least two Starbucks every hour.”
She looked up from the phone and studied me pensively. “I want to check out whatever’s at those coordinates.”
I held her gaze. Her eyes were dark and shining in the light from below.
“That’s what I thought.” I swallowed. “But how will we know where to go?”
She raised the phone. “I figured it out. The numbers really were GPS coordinates. It’s a place in Wales, called Beeny Cliff.”
“Wales? Crikey.” I let that sink in. Could I walk that far? I shuddered at the thought of the blisters I’d soon have. And there was another issue. “Who says it’s not a trap by those…?” I didn’t know what to call them.
She didn’t need me to call them anything. “I thought of that. But it was a human voice on that radio. A female voice.” There was a glint in her eyes as she emphasised the last few words.
I wanted to ask her what she thought those soldiers were, but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I yawned again.
“Right, we need sleep.” She put the phone on the floor and picked up the candle. We moved the sofas close to the door, facing each other. My feet hung over the end, and my spine protested almost immediately about the sagginess in the middle. It was strange to have nothing but our coats for blankets. And yet, I felt a sense of relief that we’d avoided something much worse.
Caitlyn blew out the candle. “Night, Heather.” And after a moment, “I’m glad I ran into you today.”
“Same. Thanks for keeping me alive.”
“Aren’t you being a little overdramatic?” A low, throaty chuckle followed her words. My belly flipped.
“Not particularly. If you haven’t noticed, I’m not that great in a crisis.”
“In that case, you’re welcome.” Despite everything, the amusement in her voice warmed me from the inside.
“Night.” I turned over and closed my eyes. Immediately, Sasha’s face floated before me. She was smiling, but my insides grew cold. I miss you already. I won’t ever see you again, will I?
Would I be able to push away the horrors of the day? Would Sasha’s ghost let me sleep? Before the thought had quite formed in my mind, I was drifting into nothingness.
*
We’ve been on the road now for a week. We passed Salisbury yesterday. The walking is about as much of a drag as I thought. Our group now consists of five, all women. Caitlyn says the sample size is too small to make anything of that. Sasha would say something to the same effect. It’s a little eerie, how similar they are in some ways. And I can’t stop wondering what it means that we’ve seen no living men.
We were seven women for a few hours a couple of days ago, but the Black Knights picked off the two that went looking for food in a small hamlet Caitlyn wanted to avoid. We saw the flashes of their laser guns from afar, and hurried on.
They come in clusters. They sweep the villages. They shoot all the Empties – that’s what we’ve started calling the people whose mind has been wiped clean but where the new programming isn’t kicking in. They also shoot the Awake – people like us.
Already, we’re creating a new terminology.
Caitlyn has been sharing my sleeping bag for the last three nights. It hurts my heart and sometimes I’m ashamed that I couldn’t even stay faithful to Sasha for a week, but not being alone in this new and terrifying world is the only way I can keep going.
We still have no idea what happened, or who the Black Knights are. Some in our group think they’re the result of a government AI programme that got out of hand. Others are convinced they’re aliens. I don’t really have an opinion. They destroyed our lives, and we don’t know why, or how. As we walk for hour after hour, I try to formulate a plan to get rid of them.
Why were we spared? What is the ultimate goal of these machines?
Caitlyn always knows when I’m brooding. She takes my hand, her tired eyes try a smile. “Come on. We’ve got another hour of light. Let’s start looking for a good place to shelter for the night.”
I squeeze her fingers. They’re warm and real. She keeps me grounded, and with her help I can focus on the task at hand.
Tomorrow is another day. Maybe we’ll finally get a clue.
Several seconds later, the honking was followed by an infernal crash. It made the window rattle, and that got my attention all right. The screeching of metal on metal made my teeth ache.
I looked past the customer who stood rooted to the spot. Had he not heard that noise? But I couldn’t spare him a thought because the din from the street was increasing. Caterwauling car alarms, more crashes and blaring horns assaulted my eardrums.
“Bloody hell.”
Wincing, I dropped the change. With my hands covering my ears, I hurried round the counter.
I wrenched the door open, the bell tingling merrily, and despite the noise nobody was screaming, nobody was running. In fact, at first I didn’t notice any people at all because the chaos on the intersection drew all my attention.
Twisted, smoking pieces of metal were heaped up in the road, spilling onto the pavement before the Broadway Theatre. Some of the debris was no longer recognisable as anything found in a car. I set off to check if anyone was hurt. If anyone – hell – was still alive.
I had just reached the crossing when I noticed I was the only one moving. I looked around. There were several people nearby, but they all stood stock still and silent. A cold sense of dread trickled down my spine. I eyed the wreckage. One of the cars had caught fire. The driver was in his seat, upright and staring vacantly through the shattered windscreen. He just sat there, as the flames licked up and into the car, making no attempt to escape the inferno. I should try to get to him before the entire intersection was ablaze. But something about the scene held me back. Why was nobody else helping him?
I went up to a young woman facing the wreck. She wasn’t moving a muscle.
“Hello?” I studied her profile. It was expressionless. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t react to my presence, or the carnage before her.
My heart hammering in my throat, I raised my hand. Touching her was the last thing I wanted to do. “Hey!” My voice flipped over into a low squeak. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey, can you hear me?”
No reaction. She still stared at the wreckage, swaying slightly from the momentum I had given her with my nudge.
Then, the same smooth expression of nothingness still on her face, she turned and walked away from me. The hairs stood up on my neck.
More movement caught my attention. Several of the nearby people had started walking. A few others still stood motionless. I couldn’t discern a pattern.
The blaze was gaining momentum. The crackling flames had found their way into the car. The man behind the wheel was now on fire, but still sitting as he had before. He hadn’t uttered a sound. The sight made me shiver. I turned and hurried back into the shop. It occurred to me how quiet it was. No sirens, no screaming. The car alarms in the pile-up had stopped howling, and only the crackling of the flames remained audible through the closed door.
My customer had disappeared. The till was still open, undisturbed.
And in the silent shop, my mind went blank. The enormity of the situation hit me. I couldn’t comprehend what was happening, I didn’t even have the vocabulary to form a coherent thought. I don’t know how long I stood there, as motionless as the figures outside
Then, with an almost audible groan of springs, my brain restarted like a clanky old motor. It turned over a few times, before at last, a thought formed in the fog.
Sasha.
“Fuck.” My girlfriend hadn’t even featured in my worries since this mess got underway. Uh, fiancé. Whatever. Thinking of the rose gold and silver ring I’d put on her finger only three months ago, I scrabbled in the handbag hanging over the back of the chair behind the till until I found my phone.
It rang and rang, and went to voicemail. I tried again, with the same result. Next, I dialled the direct number for Lewisham Hospital’s A&E department. Despite everything, I felt guilty about that. If shit had gone to hell in a handbasket, they needed all hands on deck.
I didn’t have to worry about my bad manners for long. There was no answer on that line either, the phone just cut out after a minute. The result was the same when I dialled 999.
I picked up the ancient corded phone that Ali, the corner shop’s owner hadn’t gotten round to having disconnected yet. There was a dial tone, but there was no answer on any of the numbers I tried from there either. I dropped the receiver. The fire in the intersection had picked up speed. Orange flames danced and flickered in the corner of the store window. I couldn’t stay here. I had to go get Sasha.
I forced myself to take a deep breath and consider my next steps. It wasn’t cold, not for early October, but I still pulled on my faux-leather jacket. Lewisham Hospital was less than fifteen minutes’ walk, but if there were more accidents along the way it might take longer. I grabbed a bottle of water, a few protein bars and the torch Ali kept to find stuff in the shop’s dingy, cramped back room. As an afterthought, I stuffed a couple of mace sprays and some lighters into my handbag as well.
The fire on the intersection had now engulfed all the cars. As I passed I could make out several figures inside, orange flames dancing in their hair. I shuddered. Best not to look too closely at anything for a while.
The street was eerily quiet. A few figures shuffled slowly here and there, in the road as well as on the pavement. One stumbled onto a grassy patch and I braced myself to rush and help if she fell. She didn’t, which made me sigh with relief. I had no idea what to do now. Could I even help them up? Would I dare touch them? My arms erupted in goose bumps and my heart beat high up into my throat. For a moment, I was convinced I’d be sick. I stopped and leaned over, supporting myself with both hands on my knees. After a few moments the panic receded a notch and I could breathe again.
I stood up straight. As creepy and unsettling as this scene was, there seemed to emanate no immediate danger from these people. People? Were they people still? I didn’t know. Zombies then, my brain supplied. I shuddered. No, not that word. Keeping the shufflers in my line of sight but at a distance, I set off at a brisk walk.
There were car wrecks everywhere. The moment when it had happened - whatever it was – all drivers seemed to have lost control of their vehicles at once. A few of the drivers had blood on their faces, but at least there were no other fires.
At the bus stop near the Aldi, I had to dodge around the biggest cluster of shuffling figures I had yet encountered. None of them seemed to be aware of one another, or of me. I tried to make eye contact a few times, but soon stopped. The emptiness in their expressions only served to push me to the brink of hysteria again.
As I walked I thought of Sasha’s residency on the dementia ward last year. I’d visited her a couple of times, and the patients there had looked a lot like these people. Only, on the ward everyone had been on the far side of seventy. Now, most of the people I saw were a lot younger.
An ambulance sat wedged into the gate leading to the A&E department. The driver was behind the wheel, looking blank but unhurt. Why were some of the people entirely stationary, while others ambled this way and that with no discernible purpose?
The A&E was silent. There were maybe thirty people inside, but only a few were moving at all. A couple seemed to have fallen off their gurneys. Again, I had to fight the urge to help. I didn’t know if any of them could feel pain. Hell, after seeing the burning driver in the wrecked car I doubted they were even alive.
A strong sense of claustrophobia overcame me. I was on the verge of another panic attack when all the lights went out at once. That didn’t help one bit, and I gave a small squeak of panic.
For a moment, it was too dark to see anything. I backed into a wall, my hands slick with sweat as I made contact with the cool, water-resistant paint. I wanted to screw my eyes shut. They would come for me now, all those figures hovering in the dark. They’d converge and rip me to pieces. I could almost feel clammy hands close around my neck.
Except, nobody was moving. And it wasn’t entirely dark, either. As my vision adjusted to the dim light coming from a few windows in the far corner, the swaying figures came back into focus. Nothing had changed. Everyone was as stationary as before.
I straightened up. My ribs ached where my heart beat against them. Was that even possible? Sasha would know.
Where was she? I refused to think beyond my mission of finding her. We’d get out of this place and never look back.
With one last sweep I ascertained she wasn’t in the main A&E. I made for the corridor down which lay the treatment rooms. It felt strange opening those doors. There were people in all of them, but nobody complained about the intrusion. By the time I tried the last room, the goose bumps on my arms were an inch thick.
“Hey.”
I might’ve yelled, I don’t know. I whirled around faster than I’d ever moved before. It made me stagger and lose my balance, and I landed on my ass with a thud. Good thing I’m well cushioned in the area, but the fall still knocked the wind out of me.
My first instinct was to scrabble away from the figure looming in the dark. But after the last hour, she was the least frightening thing I’d encountered, and I stayed put, just kind of gawping up at her.
“You okay?” She held out her hand for me and, after a flare-up of terror, I grabbed it and hauled myself to my feet.
“Think so, yeah.” I stretched my spine and wriggled my fingers and toes. Everything seemed in working order. When I looked up, she was still staring at me. “You gave me quite a fright, but I’m still glad to see you. I’ve had…” I broke off. I couldn’t put it into words. But she knew anyway, of course.” What do you think is going on?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea.” She reached out and touched my arm, as if to check I was real. “I still haven’t wrapped my head round it all. I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s unaffected.” She held out her hand. “I’m Caitlyn.”
“Heather.” I took the offered hand. It was the most surreal moment of my life, talking so calmly while around us the mute figures swayed. “Do you work here?” She didn’t look familiar. If she was A&E staff, I would’ve noticed her before that day. She was gorgeous, a very similar build and colouring to Sasha. But Sasha’s hair was cropped short and Caitlyn had long dreads caught up in a headscarf.
She shook her head. “I work at Sports Direct.” She looked down the hall. “My gran’s on the stroke ward, I came to check on her.”
Before I could respond, a static crackling started up behind us. We looked at each other, then into the gloom of the A&E department. The crackling picked up speed, then was replaced by a female voice.
“Fifty point seven zero four seven eight north. Minus four point six five one two six west. Fifty point seven zero four seven eight north. Minus four point…” It went on and on.
Caitlyn approached the nurse’s desk, where a transceiver sat that looked like an ancient CB radio. The broadcast came from there. I followed slowly. “What is that?”
“Sounds like coordinates.” She pulled a piece of paper close and scribbled down the numbers. “Yes, they’re definitely GPS coordinates.” She was still double checking her scribbles when things got weird.
The people around us, or whatever they were now, began to move. They sat up on their gurneys, abandoned their stations and shuffled, as one, for the exit. Caitlyn pulled me with her. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I can’t.” I tried to pull away. “I need to find Sasha. My…my girlfriend…fiancé, I mean.”
She turned to me. It was too gloomy to make out her expression, but the whites in her eyes were very noticeable. “I’ve been up on the wings.” She gestured around us. “Everyone I saw was like this. If your girlfriend is still in here, she’s like them. If she’s not here, maybe she got away.”
“Fiancé,” I mumbled automatically. Caitlyn didn’t bother responding. She tugged me along and this time I didn’t fight her.
We emerged into the ambulance bay, blinking in the sudden brightness. After the half-light inside, the overcast day was blinding. “Why did the power cut out in the hospital, anyway?” I shielded my eyes.
“Probably a fire somewhere.” Caitlyn sounded distracted. “Look.” She pointed at the road. I squinted. It took me a moment to make sense of the scene. The people who had streamed out of the A&E department with us were joining the stream of bodies that were all walking in the same direction.
“They’re walking towards Lewisham centre. I wonder why?”
“I wonder about the whole thing.” For the first time, Caitlyn’s voice quavered, and she sounded as freaked out as I felt. I turned to her.
“What’s happening here? Are they all…are they still alive?”
She shook her head helplessly. “I haven’t got the faintest clue. I was in the store when they all just…stopped.” She shuddered. “And there was this huge pile-up in the road. I didn’t know what to do first so I thought I’d check on Nan. She’s my only family…” Her voice trailed away.
I didn’t dare ask her how she’d found her grandmother. “You don’t think they’ll come back from this, do you?”
She took a deep breath, collecting her composure. “I don’t know.” She looked around. “But I don’t think it’s safe to stay here.” She gestured to the street, where the number of shuffling bodies was increasing steadily, all moving in the same direction. “They’re headed for central London, would be my guess.”
“And you think we should go the other way?”
She met my eye. The main emotion in her gaze was steely determination. “I do.” Her voice was steady again.
Her strength gave me courage. “Same.” We had to go somewhere, and even if nothing else was clear, I knew I’d never make it alone.
And still, my heart threatened to break as we turned our backs on the hospital. I’ll never see Sasha again. The truth hit me with such a force that I staggered. Caitlyn caught me by the elbow but said nothing. I made myself carry on. I couldn’t break down now, or she might leave me behind.
We saw the first soldiers near the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill. I was just thinking that I’d soon have no idea where we were, and that I hadn’t even thought of suggesting we pass by our Sydenham flat. Sasha had picked the museum for one of our rare days out a few months ago, and I was lost in those memories when Caitlyn pulled me through a park gate and into a thick clump of bushes without so much as a whispered warning.
“Oww!” I picked some thorny vines off my wrist. “What the hell?”
“Shh.” She peered anxiously through the brambles that, by the feel of it, had ripped my trousers to shreds. “I saw something. Be quiet.”
I obeyed. I’d already clocked she was a lot better at observing our surroundings than me. Regardless of what was going on, I wanted to survive the day.
Then we saw the soldiers. I say soldiers, but really, they were creatures right out of a Sci-Fi nightmare. Their armour was black, gleaming dully in the weak sunlight. At first sight, they might’ve passed as human beings wearing elaborate costumes, but soon I noticed that their waistline and hips were narrower than any man or woman’s ever could be.
“Wh…what are they?” I whispered, noticing for the first time how much I was shaking.
Caitlyn shook her head in mute horror, but took my hand in hers.
I’d tried not to look too often at the people we’d seen shuffling along or standing idle. In the last half hour we’d passed only a handful moving in the general direction of London, and even fewer that were just standing around. From our hiding place, we could see four, the biggest number in a while.
The soldiers, since I couldn’t come up with a better term – were they robots? aliens? – went up to one of the stationary figures in the road. One passed a small device up and down the body. Another raised a large gleaming gun and pointed it at the person’s chest. A blinding flash of green light, then the body dropped with a thud.
A smell of ozone in the air. I bit on my fist to stop from screaming. Caitlyn tightened her grip on my hand. “Come on.”
She tiptoed around the worst of the brambles and got us onto a path further inside the park. I had no idea how she managed to give the horrors in the street a wide berth, but when we hit tarmac again there was no trace of them.
“We’ll stick to the side streets,” Caitlyn murmured. “And we’ll go slow.” I could only nod.
We walked on until it was almost dark. We didn’t encounter any more soldiers, but bodies lay here and there in the street. It was depressing to think that by following their path of destruction, we could avoid those who were responsible for those deaths. It occurred to me that we might never see another of those blank-faced, swaying figures if we stuck to areas the soldiers had already cleared.
Even though it was a mild evening, by the time we stopped for the night I was shaking. Terror and fatigue made my teeth chatter. Caitlyn told me that we’d managed about ten miles. For me, who on good days walked maybe three that was a lot.
We found a small solicitor’s office in a residential street of Wimbledon. Caitlyn had decided we should stay away from the main roads, so we tried the doors in the side streets. All the homes were locked, but we struck gold with the office located in a Victorian conversion. Inside, we found two sofas. The electricity here was still working, and we ate what we found in the fridge – ham and bacon sandwiches and egg salad. I tried not to think about the people who’d put those things into the fridge for their lunch break that morning.
Caitlyn pored over a list she’d been working on during our meal. “We’ll have to kit ourselves out tomorrow.” She consulted her iPhone, which she’d plugged in with a charger she’d found in a desk drawer. “I’m amazed the internet’s not dead yet.” She scrolled some more. “There’s a hiking shop on Wimbledon high street, that’s our best bet.”
“How do you know about those things?” I leaned back against the sofa. We’d set out our food on the floor, shielded by the furniture. We’d kept off the lights and sat in the glow from an aromatherapy candle I’d found in the office loo. My eyes were growing heavy but I didn’t want to go to sleep yet. Despite the horrors we’d seen, I wasn’t scared now. We were warm and fed, and the confidence that emanated from Caitlyn soothed my frazzled nerves.
She shrugged without looking up. “I like to hike.” Her features were illuminated by the phone screen as she scrolled. She’d taken off the head scarf and her dreads fell loose around her shoulders. She swept them every now and then, and I had to fight the urge to take one and twirl it between my fingers. “And I once went backpacking in Australia.” She grinned briefly. “Not the best survival training there is, but as long as we stay near civilised areas we should be okay.”
“Beats my outdoor skills, for sure.” I yawned. “I get nervous if I don’t see at least two Starbucks every hour.”
She looked up from the phone and studied me pensively. “I want to check out whatever’s at those coordinates.”
I held her gaze. Her eyes were dark and shining in the light from below.
“That’s what I thought.” I swallowed. “But how will we know where to go?”
She raised the phone. “I figured it out. The numbers really were GPS coordinates. It’s a place in Wales, called Beeny Cliff.”
“Wales? Crikey.” I let that sink in. Could I walk that far? I shuddered at the thought of the blisters I’d soon have. And there was another issue. “Who says it’s not a trap by those…?” I didn’t know what to call them.
She didn’t need me to call them anything. “I thought of that. But it was a human voice on that radio. A female voice.” There was a glint in her eyes as she emphasised the last few words.
I wanted to ask her what she thought those soldiers were, but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I yawned again.
“Right, we need sleep.” She put the phone on the floor and picked up the candle. We moved the sofas close to the door, facing each other. My feet hung over the end, and my spine protested almost immediately about the sagginess in the middle. It was strange to have nothing but our coats for blankets. And yet, I felt a sense of relief that we’d avoided something much worse.
Caitlyn blew out the candle. “Night, Heather.” And after a moment, “I’m glad I ran into you today.”
“Same. Thanks for keeping me alive.”
“Aren’t you being a little overdramatic?” A low, throaty chuckle followed her words. My belly flipped.
“Not particularly. If you haven’t noticed, I’m not that great in a crisis.”
“In that case, you’re welcome.” Despite everything, the amusement in her voice warmed me from the inside.
“Night.” I turned over and closed my eyes. Immediately, Sasha’s face floated before me. She was smiling, but my insides grew cold. I miss you already. I won’t ever see you again, will I?
Would I be able to push away the horrors of the day? Would Sasha’s ghost let me sleep? Before the thought had quite formed in my mind, I was drifting into nothingness.
*
We’ve been on the road now for a week. We passed Salisbury yesterday. The walking is about as much of a drag as I thought. Our group now consists of five, all women. Caitlyn says the sample size is too small to make anything of that. Sasha would say something to the same effect. It’s a little eerie, how similar they are in some ways. And I can’t stop wondering what it means that we’ve seen no living men.
We were seven women for a few hours a couple of days ago, but the Black Knights picked off the two that went looking for food in a small hamlet Caitlyn wanted to avoid. We saw the flashes of their laser guns from afar, and hurried on.
They come in clusters. They sweep the villages. They shoot all the Empties – that’s what we’ve started calling the people whose mind has been wiped clean but where the new programming isn’t kicking in. They also shoot the Awake – people like us.
Already, we’re creating a new terminology.
Caitlyn has been sharing my sleeping bag for the last three nights. It hurts my heart and sometimes I’m ashamed that I couldn’t even stay faithful to Sasha for a week, but not being alone in this new and terrifying world is the only way I can keep going.
We still have no idea what happened, or who the Black Knights are. Some in our group think they’re the result of a government AI programme that got out of hand. Others are convinced they’re aliens. I don’t really have an opinion. They destroyed our lives, and we don’t know why, or how. As we walk for hour after hour, I try to formulate a plan to get rid of them.
Why were we spared? What is the ultimate goal of these machines?
Caitlyn always knows when I’m brooding. She takes my hand, her tired eyes try a smile. “Come on. We’ve got another hour of light. Let’s start looking for a good place to shelter for the night.”
I squeeze her fingers. They’re warm and real. She keeps me grounded, and with her help I can focus on the task at hand.
Tomorrow is another day. Maybe we’ll finally get a clue.