The Citadel and the Wolves (13 page)

Monday, August 7
^th
2017

I marked the date off on the calendar in the kitchen. I was up first again, making Tommy’s favourite breakfast cereal, flakes. The others were still downstairs in the cellar. Tommy sat at the table eating his corn flakes in warm milk as I idly gazed on the kitchen window. It was a miserable day. The sky was grey and cloudy. No, I was wrong. It was an odd, sickly colour. I’d never seen anything like it before. I quickly dismissed the unusual sky from my mind as I made myself some breakfast. As I put two slices of whole bread into the electric toaster, I turned on the radio.

The early morning breakfast news came on shortly afterwards:

“A giant comet has struck Central California.

Many are feared dead…”

OH, DROKK! ZOOTWOSOME! VENUS PEBBLES!!!

Abandoning all thoughts of breakfast, I grabbed little Tommy, who looked bemused, still clutching his cereal spoon, and flew down the cellar stairs with him. I hastily bolted the door behind me. I felt a little safer.

Wendy looked up sleepily from her pillow. “What’s all the noise about, Jade?”

She saw it in my wild eyes. It said everything.

“Oh God,” she whispered fearfully as the colour drained from her cheeks.

We spent the day down the cellar. We huddled together around my pocket radio listening to the news, and it was all bad.

The BBC speaker on the radio read the grim news in an unemotional voice.

“Most of Los Angeles and San Francisco have

been destroyed by the giant comet. The two,

great American cities are burning out of

control. The President of the United States

has declared a ‘State of Emergency.’ An

ashen-faced spokesman for the State

Department said that there were few

survivors…”

I wondered if London was next.

“…and large comets have also hit other

towns and cities throughout the world.

Reports are still coming in of massive

destruction. Tens of millions are homeless.

So far, London has been mercifully spared,

but scientists predict that more comets may

be on the way…”

“It has started,” said father bleakly.

BOOK TWO

The Citadel and the Wolves

7. BLACK RAIN

It’s late spring 2018.

London is on ‘amber’ flood alert again.

I only mention this because the announcement has just appeared on breakfast TV spoiling my enjoyment of Tom and Jerry. Why do they keep on doing that? Jerry had just blown up Tom again. He always wins in the cat and mouse battles, which is a bit of a puzzle. Why is that? The mouse is an inferior animal to the cat, which is many more steps up on the evolutionary ladder. In theory, Tom should always win his battles against Jerry; however, it is only a cartoon after all!

On a more serious note, the flood alerts are a fairly commonplace thing now. We’re used to them. Everybody is blaming the comet for our changing weather patterns here in this country. It’s the same in the rest of Europe. We’re all experiencing severe weather conditions.

My American pen friend stopped writing abruptly in early August 2017 after the comet struck California. I never heard from her again, but I pray that she somehow survived. There were some survivors in the aftermath.

Other asteroids fell into the Pacific Ocean causing huge tidal waves in that region of the world. Tokyo is now underwater permanently, and many small islands have disappeared. A ‘medium-sized’ asteroid struck a remote part of the Australian bush. It left a crater five kilometres wide and one deep. The asteroids triggered off many earthquakes worldwide, and increased volcanic activity was reported in many parts of the globe. The Gulf States in the Middle East were also hit. The oil fires have been raging out of control for the past eight or nine months. London was spared. In fact, no asteroids hit Europe. We were lucky, we thought, but I wonder. Then a particularly large asteroid hit the polar ice cap. The ice is melting, and the seas are starting to rise all over the world.

I sometimes wondered about those on board the International Space Platform, Doctor David Newton and the others. Had they survived? They were on board the space platform when the deadly comet struck the earth. I’ll never know. Perhaps they did. But what if they had been marooned in space when the supply ferries from earth had stopped coming? It doesn’t bear thinking about and I won’t.

Floods and asteroids apart, I’ve got much more important things to worry about at the moment. I’m sitting my A-levels in the summer, and the worry is making me physically sick. My parents say that I shouldn’t worry, but I do. I do want to do well for father. If I get low grades, I’ll miss out on a place at university. Wendy did. She’s at secretarial college at the moment. That isn’t for me. I don’t see myself as a secretary in the future, sitting on the boss’s knee in a short skirt while I take dictation. That’s how I see it. Wendy quipped that she didn’t mind so long as he was young and handsome. Mum and dad overheard her. They weren’t amused needless to say. Wendy doesn’t take life very seriously. I do. I want to be a scientist. I admit that I’m very single-minded in that respect. I take after someone else very close to me, my father.

I frowned.

We turned the corner driving in our little electric city run around, a small, white van,
The Lightning Compact,
which has a top speed of 35 kph, though I rarely go over 20 kph in town. They’re so easy to drive too. There are only two foot controls, the accelerator pedal and the all-important brake pedal. Unlike a petrol vehicle, the electric van does away with the need for a clutch and the gears. Wendy and I borrowed the money from daddy to buy it. Since petrol rationing was introduced recently, the electric run around has become all the rage.

The giant vid hoarding on the street corner was advertising our little electric, town run around,
The Lightning Compact.
A pretty girl with no breasts, wearing cherry-red lipstick and a fixed smile implored us to buy one in her husky, sexy voice, which drifted across the road. She was speaking to the converted here because as I’ve already mentioned earlier, Wendy and I have got one, and I’m driving it this morning. The advertising on the hoarding changed to a bland government information notice advising us to conserve energy and water in these serious times. Then the cherry-red lipstick girl with no breasts and a fixed smile and a sexy, husky voice quickly returned.

We took a ‘short cut’ turning off Knight’s Hill and driving down Furneaux Avenue that took us into Tivoli Road. The public gardens, which were closed indefinitely and overgrown now with giant weeds and prickly brambles, quickly came into view on our left before we turned into Linton Grove by the old school taking us out onto Norwood High Street. Most of the shops were boarded-up. Some had sandbags on the doors. They were expecting floods again. They wouldn’t be disappointed.

I glanced at the depressing sky. It remained a permanent, sickly colour. We all miss the blue skies and the bright sun.

Wendy, who sat beside me in the front, passenger seat, giggled as she ended her call on her vid phone.

“Kevin Willis?” I asked unnecessarily, keeping my eye on the road ahead.

She announced, “I’m going to Kev’s 20
^th
tonight.”

Yes, Wendy is still dating our Kev, the monster from the black lagoon.

“Mum won’t like it, Wendy,” I commented. “She doesn’t like you staying out late.”

She wasn’t bothered. “Daddy says it’s okay. Besides, Kev has promised to drive me home.” She frowned suddenly. “I’m not a little kid anymore, Jade. I’m almost nineteen. Some girls of my age in class at sec college are married. One has even got a kid of two.”

“Planning to marry Kev, are we, Sis?” I probed in a light-hearted way.

She giggled. “We’re nearly engaged.”

“Nearly engaged? What does that mean?”

“He’s saving up to buy the ring.”

We both laughed then.

Wendy and I parked the electric van in the college car park that is reserved for both students and teachers alike.

The strange onion-shaped, ultra modern 6
^th
form college block where I’m studying for my A-levels is part of a complex that includes the secretarial college. It is opposite St. Jude’s, but 6
^th
form college as I soon discovered is a world away from school. There are no uniforms for a start. They let you wear your own clothes. I dress casually, throwing on jeans or little skirts with T-shirt or cropped tops and trainers. What’s more, they treat you like adults at 6
^th
form college. They call you by your first name. It’s a relaxed, easy-going atmosphere; nevertheless, we all work extremely hard here. You have to if you want high grades, and as I’ve already mentioned, I do.

I met Wendy in the atrium at lunchtime. Although there’s a fine restaurant in the college, we still prefer to eat out. It has always been our way.

We left the electric van by the park gates. Wendy and I sat on a bench by the lake in the local Crystal Palace Park demolishing our burgers and fries that we washed down with cold Coke. We needed to recharge our batteries. I call it mind food. Yeah, I know, junk food again.

When I glanced at the sickly sky, I noticed that it had suddenly darkened, puzzling me.

“Anyone special entered your life recently, Jade?” asked Wendy out of the blue.

“Pardon?”

“Boys, Jade. You know, you’ve seen them about in college. They usually wear trousers or jeans.”

“I wear jeans,” I remarked.

She ruffled my short hair playfully.

“You should grow it longer, Jade. It’d make you look more feminine.”

I was annoyed. “Are you suggesting that I’m butch, Wendy Robinson?”

She giggled nervously. “No, of course not, Jade. Don’t be so defensive all the time. You’re rather pretty. You should show it more.”

“What for?”

She nudged me. “So boys would look at you more.”

I explained wearily, “I don’t really care if boys never look at me. I don’t have time for them, Wendy. My studies are much more important to me at the moment. I want to do well in my A-levels and go on to university.”

Wendy didn’t understand. “You should go out more in the evenings, Jade. It’d help you relax. You’re up tight too much of the time these day.”

“Exams make me up tight, Wendy. Once I’ve got through them, I’ll be a better person.”

“Why don’t you come to Kev’s 20
^th
tonight?” suggested Wendy, trying to be helpful.

I shook my head. “Revisions.”

I wasn’t going to blow my chances of high grades by attending Kev’s 20
^th
birthday. It’d have to be a rain cheque, I thought, which is an Americanism.

We slipped into one of our silences.

I stared hard at the sky frowning again. I became aware of it after awhile as my eyes adjusted to the strangeness of it all. The clouds, this alien phenomenon that straddled our world, weren’t still as I had once thought. Was this really earth? It was almost imperceptible to my senses, yet it was happening. The clouds were moving. They were moving. They were nudging one another, forming a pattern of weird concentric circles. It was almost hypnotic to watch. It vanished as quickly as it had begun.

A single droplet of rain struck me on the nose. I brushed it off. I was puzzled when Wendy giggled.

“What?”

“You’ve got a dirty smudge on your nose, Jade.”

“Simple things please simple minds,” I retorted. I opened my bag and took out a Kleenex wipe.

It happened without warning. The sky was filled with huge thunderbolts and lightning. It was terrifying. Then the heavens opened. We both screamed when the dirty rain hit us ferociously. VENUS PEBBLES!! We were caught out in the open. It hadn’t happened like this before. There was worse to come. We ran all the way to the park gates to our electric van. We gratefully threw ourselves into the dry and safety of the cab. We were covered in the muck. We sat there for some moments in silence watching in awe at the lightning and the dirty rain. It was like being caught in the middle of a horror movie. Someone had unblocked the drains in heaven, but it was more like hell. It turned day into night. You couldn’t see through it. It was like trying to look through a dirty window pane, but it wasn’t, and we decided that it was too dangerous to drive through if you could. I found a dry towel in the back. I wiped my face. When I wiped Wendy’s face, tears filled her eyes. I stroked her face reassuringly and kissed her lips.

Although the black rain had abated, the sky remained dark and brooding. We couldn’t return to college in our state, so we decided to head home for a change of clothing.

I flicked on the headlights and the windscreen wipers, clearing away the black muck that had been deposited on the windscreen. Squeezing the accelerator pedal gently, we swung out from our place by the park gates. We drove down the road in our van. The electric motors hummed reassuringly. The feeling of dread remained however. The parked cars on either side of the street were now covered in a film of black slime. As we turned the corner, we witnessed some of the devastation that the black rain had caused. A car was lying on its roof with its engine still running. We caught a glimpse of the driver behind his shattered windscreen. He was still strapped in his seat, and his face was covered in blood. I thought he was dead. We didn’t dwell.

It began as light hailstones. It quickly developed into something else. The heavy hailstones fell from the black skies, pounding the roof of our van. We were vulnerable in the small van, and we needed to get under cover quickly. I remembered the old railway bridge on Lockwood Avenue. It was in the opposite direction to which we were travelling. I put the van in reverse and swung her around twisting the steering wheel urgently as the large hailstones exploded on the road all around us. Wendy screamed when a dirty hailstone the size of a golf ball shattered our windscreen. ZOOTWOSOME! VENUS PEBBLES too! We were driving blind briefly. I hesitated before I punched a hole in the shattered windscreen. I was unaware of the pain as the broken glass split my skin, and the blood ran freely down my injured hand. The electric motors whined in protest as I put my foot through the floor racing through the ferocious hailstones. Wendy sat huddled beside me, shivering. When we stopped under the railway bridge, we hugged each other gratefully. There we sheltered until it stopped much later.