Flare (18 page)

“I can’t see any other way.  It adds time onto the journey but I don’t see us being able to make our way through that”.  I pointed at the flaming town.

She tucked the map away and we set off, angling northwest as we drew closer to the motorway.

It was just after midday by the time the road came in sight, and I picked up my pace as the six empty lanes came into view but Emily suddenly grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“What?”  I said in alarm, looking around.

She held up a hand for silence, head tilted to one side.

“Do you hear that?” She asked.

I shook my head
but then I heard something, a faint rumbling that grew louder even as I listened.

“What is it?” 

She pulled me off the road and up a wooded embankment overlooking the motorway, tucking herself down at the top of the hill and motioning for me to do the same.

I dropped down next to her and looked out over the huge road.

“Those sound like four tonners”, she said, looking east to a bend about half a mile away.

“Four what?”

“Four tonners.  Four ton army trucks, used for transporting soldiers and carrying supplies”.

Relief flooded through me and I got to my knees.

“Oh thank god!  If the army has mobilised then it’s not as bad as we thought!”

She reached up and yanked at my waistband, pulling me sprawling back to the ground.

“Let’s not go and worship them just yet”, she growled, “we don’t know who they are or what they’re doing.  We don’t even know it’s our army.  I can think of any dozen countries who use four ton trucks, it could be an invading force for all we know”.

I lay back down properly, thoroughly chastened.  It seemed that I was destined to make a fool of myself every few minutes and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t seem to help doing it.

Perhaps sensing my frustration, Emily squeezed my shoulder and gave me a quick smile before returning her attention to the road.

A few moments later a pair of olive green trucks drove into view, travelling no more than five miles per hour.  Thirty or so soldiers in woodland camouflage trotted along behind, all armed with rifles and carrying small rucksacks that looked like the side pockets of Emily’s Bergen strapped together on a yoke.

As they drew closer, a ragged wave of humanity came into view behind them, hundreds of tired, hungry looking people with pinched faces, some of them sporting recent injuries but all carrying rucksacks or holdalls.  Those very few not carrying bags were instead burdened down with children too young to walk, and on either side of the column soldiers walked in a loose cordon a few metres apart, eyes as much on the people they were escorting as any threat from the outside.

I couldn’t hear any conversation over the truck engines, but none of the walkers appeared to be talking much in any event, and as they drew level with us an older woman in a faded red jumper and corduroy jeans dropped to sit at the side of the road, fewer than ten metres away from our hiding spot.

The next soldier in the outer cordon bumped up against her, placing one booted foot under her arse and giving her a gentle shove.

“Come on, on your feet Grandma”, he said, not unkindly but without much enthusiasm either.  “You know the rules. We don’t stop for another hour at least”.

The woman looked up at him, exhaustion stamped on her features.

“Just leave me then
”, she said, her voice barely carrying to where we lay hidden.

“I can’t do that either”, he said, slinging his rifle to grab her under the armpits and haul her to her feet.  He looked at the passing civilians and grabbed the arm of a burly teenager.

“Oi, you.  Keep her up, keep her walking. Both of you go without rations for the rest of the day if she doesn’t keep up”.

The teenager took hold of the woman with surprising speed, and for a moment I thought it was borne out of care for the elderly, but as the soldier moved on the youth grabbed her hair painfully in one fist and twisted hard, making the woman scream.

“Listen bitch, I ain’t going without food for you, so you fucking walk or I’ll make you wish you was dead.  You get me?”

I felt Emily’s body tense next to mine and I almost climbed to my feet, thoroughly shocked at behaviour that was so, well,
un-British
, but then I saw that neither the other civilians nor the soldiers did more than glance over at the anguished scream, the civilians looking back down at their feet and the soldiers returning their attention to the roadsides as the woman was prodded onwards.

I shared an astonished look with Emily.  Whatever orders those soldiers were following, they didn’t seem to be particularly concerned with the welfare of their charges.

I turned my head to get a look in the back of the trucks, assuming they were filled with those too injured to walk, but instead I saw boxes and bags of food and huge pallets of bottled water, all guarded by a pair of soldiers in each vehicle with heavy machine guns and grim expressions.

“I’m glad you stopped me”, I whispered, seeing Emily nod her head as she looked closely at the soldiers.

“Do you know who they are?”  I asked quietly.

“It’s hard to tell from here, but I think the patches are the Guards, which would make sense if they came from London, but I can’t be sure without getting closer”.

I shook my head.  “Please don’t”.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on it.  We’ll wait until they’re past and then head after them, but only as far as we need to, then we’ll turn north again”.

We lay silent after that, not moving as the soldiers passed just below us, eyes scanning the undergrowth but without any real suspicion of finding anything to worry about. 

Emily had chosen our spot well
and despite our vantage point the undergrowth kept us well hidden from view.  The stream of people seemed to go on and on, but eventually the back markers passed us with another two trucks full of supplies, and as Emily stood I worked my cramped legs to get the blood flowing again.

“How many do you think there were?”  I asked as I got to my feet.

“About fifteen hundred civilians, a hundred and forty soldiers or thereabouts.  I can’t help but wonder where they’re taking them”.

“I shudder to think.  Was it just me or did they look more like prisoners than rescued civilians?”

She nodded.  “They did, and I don’t like it.  Come on, they’re far enough away now, I think we can follow them without getting spotted”.

I put a hand on her arm.

“But only as far as our turning north, right?”

“Of course.  Don’t worry Malc, your little girl comes first.  Maybe after we’re back we can try and find out what’s going on, but not yet”.

With a final glance along the road to make sure we were alone, I followed her down the steep bank and onto the tarmac, following in the footsteps of the soldiers as we resumed our journey.

Chapter 28

We followed the convoy for about two hours, keeping well back but still seeing the trucks far ahead when we rounded bends and crested hills.

I was worried that they would see us in turn and send someone to investigate, but Emily assured me we were too far away and too small to be noticed.

“If we were driving a truck, I’d worry”, she said, and I bowed to her experience.

We turned off the motorway at a junction that headed north, climbing the slip road under a steel grey sky that threatened rain despite the muggy heat.

The moisture in the air seemed to make my ankle throb, and I found myself lagging further
and further behind as the thick greenery to the side of the road abruptly gave way to buildings, mostly industrial but with houses visible behind a last screen of trees off to our left.

A large truck sat in the roadway opposite an office building, the back still locked on the trailer but the cab doors wide open.

Looking around to make sure we were unobserved, Emily hauled herself into the cab and then leaned out to pull me up behind.

I’d never been in a proper truck cab before.  It was surprisingly roomy, with a small sleeping cubby behind the two seats.  This one had a microwave on a shelf above the window, as well as a TV on an extendable stand that could be pulled down to rest in the middle of the windscreen.

The bedding was surprisingly clean, and anything personal had been stripped out to leave small pieces of blue tack and a lonely drawing pin on the rear wall.

“Lie down on the bed and take your shoe off”.  Emily pointed at the small cubby and I obediently squeezed in, but paused before undoing my trainer.

“Uh, you know we haven’t washed for a couple of days”, I said, but she shrugged.

“Believe me, after you’ve spent ten days in thirty eight degree heat with no water to wash in, you get a lot less worried about things like that.  What I
am
worried about is you keeping up”.

I removed the trainer, then my sock, grimacing at the smell of sweaty feet.  Despite her words, Emily wrinkled her nose as she unwrapped the bandage.  She took my heel in one hand and my calf in the other and began to rotate the joint slowly, and we both winced as it clicked and ground.

“That doesn’t sound good”, she said with a frown.  “Priority number one has to be getting you some proper footwear with ankle support.  The bandage is ok but it’s not enough”.

She redid the bandage, making sure it was tight, and I put my sock and trainer back on hurriedly.

“Where are we now?”  I asked as she began to search the cab for anything useful.

“Maidenhead, apparently.  You ever been there?”

I shook my head.  “Not to stay, only passing through.  Do you know it?”

“Not really, although it’s bound to have something like a camping shop where we can find you some shoes.  You want to do that Google search now?”

We both smiled, although a little sadly.  The first thing I would do if my phone was working, I realised, was call Melody just to hear her voice.  I’d become used to speaking to her every single day no matter what happened, and the sudden lack of contact was starting to wear at me.  I didn’t know if she was safe, well, happy or…  I couldn’t even finish the thought.  I could only pray that Angie had managed to get them to her parents, eminently practical people who would keep them fed from the years of tinned food in their larder.

“Good to go?”  Emily’s voice pulled me from my daydreaming and I nodded, then slid off the bed and between the seats to follow her out onto the road.

As we set off again, Emily pointed at the unscarred buildings around us.

“I wonder why some of the places we go through are burned to the ground and others are untouched?”

“I’ve been thinking about that”, I said, pleased to be able to offer a theory on something, “and I think it’s to do with the substations.  Different areas draw different amounts of power, right?”

She nodded and gestured for me to continue.

“So some areas are close to overload already.  I wrote an article about the risk of a brownout a couple of years ago, and apparently there are places where they are, uh were, just a few kettles away from a shutdown.  Yet other areas have a substation for every few streets, or so it seems.  I reckon that the areas that caught fire are the ones that were already close to capacity, and the ones that handled the local current better had time for their switches to trip or whatever it is that they do, stopping the surge from carrying on into the buildings.  How does that sound?”

Emily chewed her lip as she thought about it.

“That would make sense.  I don’t know how sensitive the cut-offs are, but a big enough overload on an already taxed system would almost certainly result in a massive surge”.

“So now you’ve got your engineer brain on”, I said as we walked close to the central reservation, both of us now scanning the buildings on either side of the road  for any signs of life, “answer me this if you can.  Did you speak to Jerry much about what happened with the flare?”

She nodded.  “Yeah, we had a few minutes to chat”.

“So why is it that my phone almost burned my hand off but and car batteries were drained if they were plugged in, but our torches still work?”

“I don’t need Jerry to tell you that one.  Your phone has a processor in it, and everything that did overheated almost immediately.  I think that might be another cause of the fires, to be honest.  And as for the battery thing, your car is a big lump of metal, but a torch or anything smaller would avoid the worst of it unless you were carrying one of those huge metal maglites, the ones that take eight batteries”.

I still didn’t quite understa
nd it but I nodded as if I did, hating to look stupid.

The buildings on either side of the road gradually went from industrial to domestic,
but as with the last place we’d been through, there was no sign of anyone still living in the area.