Aftermath: The complete collection Read online

  ‘Hours felt like days’ Nancy said, putting a hand on Roy’s knee. ‘Days felt like weeks, but Roy looked after us, me and the baby, he has got us this far. Now all we need to worry about is how this baby is going to be born’ she said, putting Roy’s hand on her belly.

  Roy continued ‘I think we are lucky in reality, things could have gone much worse. We haven’t had any undesirables finding the place’ he said, smiling at Lee. Lee smiled back before responding ‘Apart from the man who claimed he was at ground zero.’

  ‘Dexter was not a threat, it’s just his story was hard to believe.’ Lee gave me a plate of hot food which I tucked into like I hadn’t eaten for years, sausage and beans, my first hot meal in three months. When I asked Roy about the man Lee had referred to, he told me about a month after the attack someone had turned up at the b&b. He said his name was Dexter Isaac and he was passing through on his way to a camp he believed was on the north west coast of England. He only stayed one night but his story was remarkable, he claimed his house was at ground zero in Manchester and he survived the impact with only a scratch to his head. After hearing what sounded like bombs going off, he went outside to investigate. He saw smoke bellowing out of three impact zones, but they were out of his sight, hidden behind buildings, he could only see the smoke. People were panicking, screaming, and running in all directions. Then an incredible blue light blinded him, he had the sensation of floating, looking down watching people below. The blast wave moved outwards faster than his eye could keep up, everything in its way was destroyed and incinerated. He said buildings just folded like paper thrown on a fire, he then blacked out, waking up some time later unhurt. On his walk out of Manchester he suffered no ill effects from the radiation fallout, and watched people dying all around him. Survivors had started to surface as the area around burned, bodies were literally exploding, people bleeding from every orifice. He described the devastation, with buildings destroyed for mile upon mile, twisted metal jutting out of the ground. The shadow of shoppers looking up to the sky as the bomb exploded was cast onto the footpath as they vaporised, people caught in the black acid rain that encompassed the area for hours after the blast had their skin dripping off their bodies. Yet he didn’t suffer from any reaction, he offered no explanation as to how he had survived, only that God had spared him, it was a miracle. Roy still didn’t know whether he believed Dexter’s story, but he had no reason to lie, he had asked for nothing but a bed for the night, and had gone first thing the next morning. Nancy was not able to corroborate Roy’s story, he had kept her away from Dexter for fear of the radiation he might be carrying. Just then we were interrupted by a man bursting into the room shouting, the candles were blown out and I followed everyone outside. Two hundred yards down the dirt track I could just make out the shape of a vehicle, lit from above by a beam of light. Above the light was a big black shape seemingly hovering in the dark ash sky, what it was I didn’t know. After thirty seconds it disappeared silently, dissolving into the darkness. Nancy went back into the house to sit down, as the men ran towards the vehicle. As we approached, the silhouette of a man crawled out from under the car, muddied and emotional, he hugged every member of the group. I was then introduced to the two men as Steve and Simon, as we walked back towards Nancy in the house, they started to tell us what had happened to them. Now I’m going to lay my cards down on the table straight away, I would love to believe in the existence of extraterrestrials but until I see cast iron proof I cannot, but I offer no explanation as to what I saw above the vehicle. I one hundred percent believe in the existence of life on another planet, but have they made their way to ours? I’m not sure, its nearly one hundred years since the supposed crash site in Roswell, New Mexico, and we still have no more compelling evidence than that. As we sat in the living room with the glow of a candle lighting up Steve’s face, he described what happened. ‘We had spend a largely unsuccessful day trying to find a car to travel down to Nottingham in, wanting to stick to the more rural areas, and staying off the roads. So we were looking for a farm vehicle that could cope with the terrain, we looked for hours, it was becoming quite disheartening. Eventually we found an abandoned farm with a truck that had enough petrol to make the journey, and the car keys were still in the ignition, so we set off back to the b&b. By that time, the darkness had set in and the roads were proving tough to navigate, it all looks the same in the dark, and with no lights on you cannot see further than a metre in front of you. We were trying to stay as anonymous as possible, driving quietly and slowly, we even smashed the headlights on the truck as we couldn’t seem to turn them off. Simon was the first to notice something, hanging in the sky thirty yards to the right of us.’

  Simon continued the story ‘It was hard to pick it out at first, hovering in the darkness with no lights, it was moving silently parallel to our car, after a few miles tailing us, it moved over the top of the vehicle. I cannot emphasize enough how enormous this thing was, it was the size of a football pitch, it dwarfed everything around us. We didn’t know what to do, we panicked, should we stop the car? Slow down? We were only going thirty but the road surface was difficult, bumping and throwing us around. Then this beam of light came on, temporarily blinding me. It was scanning the car, searching for something, by now we were on the dirt track towards the b&b. I didn’t want to give our place away so I told Steve to run for it when I stopped, I slammed on the brakes and jumped out. I decided to cause a diversion so Steve could get away.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that’ Steve interrupted. ‘You could have been killed. The light must have followed him, I got out and ran, not looking back until I reached the house. We told you last week, what we had heard, and seen, but no one believed us. Something has happened to this planet, after the nuclear attack. We have been invaded, there is no protection, nothing to defend us, no Governments, army or police. We are all fucked.’

  ‘There is no proof of that’ interrupted Lee. ‘Why would something attack, what is there to gain? Look around for fucks sake, there’s nothing left.’

  ‘We know what we saw’ replied Steve.

  ‘But that’s it’ said Lee. ‘You don’t know what you saw, it could have been anything.’

  ‘What was it then Lee?’ Steve asked, clearly getting annoyed. ‘What was hovering over the car? You saw it, I know you did. Tell me what you saw? Have you seen anything else in the sky for the last few months? There’s been nothing in that sky, not even a fucking bird’ shouted Steve. At that point Nancy, sensing the tension in the room, asked Roy to take her up to bed, which he did. It’s a big day for her tomorrow with Lee taking us to a local doctor he met previously, this baby is on its way whether we are ready or not, and he has medication that will help induce the baby, allowing him to control the birth. I decided it was a good time to call it a night myself, it’s been a long day and I was looking forward to sleeping in a bed for the first time in eleven weeks. Lee showed me to my room, which was small, with an en-suite bathroom and a small dressing table, where I’m sitting writing this entry with the light of my torch to help me.

  2/11/2027 - Time 11:45

  I’m taking this opportunity to record a few pieces of information from this morning, before we go out to meet Lee’s contact. I woke up early, around seven forty five AM, I cannot remember the last time I slept so well. I picked a piece of broken glass out of the sink to have a look at myself, and almost didn’t recognize the man looking back. My hair was long and straggly, I seemed to have aged ten years in three months. My mostly brown hair had been infiltrated by grey, even my unkempt beard was greying. On the sink was a plastic cup housing a collection of multi coloured toothbrushes, which I tipped out and plunged into the bath full of water. I poured enough water into the sink to have a wash, turning it dirty black as months of dirt and grime came off my face. I pulled the plug out and it rotated down the plug hole leaving a dirt stain, which I washed away. Jane, my wife, didn’t like me with a beard, so I never h
ad more than three days growth, but things are different now. I got a pair of scissors out of my rucksack, which was on my bed, and pulled the beard away from my face to cut. Hair fell into the sink, as I cut more, and more, straightening it. Then I took some off my head, cutting it as neatly as I could, and then collecting it all and flushing it down the toilet. When I got downstairs, I noticed Lee was sat outside around a crudely constructed fire, boiling what looked like soup. Two holes had been dug in the ground around three feet apart, smoke was pouring out of one hole with a large soup bowl sat on the other. He was busy putting sticks in the smoking hole, next to him was a dry stone wall with a hole where stones had fallen out, which I sat in. I asked him about how he knew the doctor we were meeting later today. ‘Around a month before I met Roy’ he said. ‘I was making my way from Bury towards Ramsbottom when I came across a primary school that had collapsed, around seventy children were thought to be inside, it had been used to house children that had lost their parents. I joined in the rescue party and met Doctor Chris who was helping any children found alive, he had set up a small hospital in the abandoned house next door. For the first couple of days we had a bit of success with around twenty three pulled out alive, Doctor Chris treated them and made them comfortable. As the conditions started to take their toll, we were just finding dead bodies, it was so cold it hurt. After five days we had saved twenty six and hadn’t found anyone alive for two days, just body after body, so tiny, it was heartbreaking. But I was sure I could hear a little voice, still alive, I was convinced. I worked through the conditions, on my own for the most part, until in the early afternoon of the seventh day when I found a little girl. She had a badly injured leg, which had to be amputated, but with the help of everyone we saved her. It was worth the extra hours searching in terrible conditions for that moment, when I saw her hand moving, those little fingers that gripped my hand. When I left, there was around forty tiny body bags, all in a line. I met Roy on a trip out to get medical essentials for Doctor Chris, he was looking for some pain relief for Nancy at the local chemist, or what was left of it. Roy told me where the b&b was if I ever needed somewhere to stay, I found it that night. When I left the makeshift hospital, Doctor Chris told me if I ever needed medical help to come and find him at the site, his work there was not done. I explained I had met a man whose wife was due to give birth, he assured me he would be able to help when the time came. As we talked, Steve came outside and leaned on the wall watching the sky as the grey ash clouds rolled overhead. He told me about his brother, himself and their plans, as Lee handed out some warm soup. They are twin brothers, although you wouldn’t know it to look at them, Steve has long black straggly hair, receding off his mainly bald head. He wore thick black glasses and had a big thick black beard, the kind that was on his face long before August. Simon looked younger with a full head of black hair and a neat black beard, he was slimmer than his brother who was positively round. They had been at home in Cumbria when the attack took place, and lost contact with Simon’s son, Carl, who was at university in Nottingham, and they were on their way to try to find him. He had some advice for me on my journey, and described some of the things they had seen. ‘The first thing you need to know is to avoid built up areas, especially cities. That’s where you’ll find the most trouble, gangs who just kill anyone who gets in their way. Everywhere we have visited has been looted, burned out with the inhabitants murdered. I’m not sure if the country has lost seventy percent of its population to the bombs that dropped, the aftermath, or if most people are just hiding, afraid to come out. Money is worthless, you cannot buy your way out of anything, the only thing you can use is food, but if you have it, you will be targeted. Trust no one, and I mean no one.’ Steve watched Lee go back into the house, before continuing. ‘You can decide to believe what we’ve said with regards to the creatures or not, it’s your choice. But we know what we saw, and it wasn’t human. On our journey down from Cumbria we had other strange sightings, including objects moving through the black sky in a way I have never seen before. Around five miles south west of Lancaster we came across what appeared to be abandoned vehicles on farmland, they were absolutely enormous, the size of houses. They had no wheels and looked like they had sunk into the mud which had in turn, frozen. There were five of them, they looked like people carriers or something. Made from a kind of material that didn’t allow dust or ash to settle on it, like it had an invisible layer. Lee dismissed everything we said but he’s wrong, he just doesn’t want to admit what he saw.’ I told Steve of my plan to go in search of my family in Edinburgh, he told me of the difficulties of making such a journey. Driving will almost certainly make you a target for the gangs looking for food and vehicles, but if you walk, you will have to deal with just as dangerous an obstacle in the weather. Just at that point, Simon arrived outside, zipping his jacket up. ‘I’ve told Lee we will head off after tea, and walk through the night, it’s the safest time.’ We shared a look before he explained ‘We just want to make sure things are all ready for Nancy and Roy before we go, everything sorted for the birth, they were incredibly kind to us when we arrived here. We had been travelling for days in terrible conditions, and were both pretty unwell, they didn’t need to help us but they did.’

  Steve added ‘More than that, they went out of their way to help us, we were sick, bed ridden and Nancy nursed us back to health. Sharing the food and water they had, most people wouldn’t. We had been exposed to the wind and rain for two days, we were wet to the bone, everything was wet. We both had open weeping sores that couldn’t repair due to the conditions, Simon had picked up a particularly nasty cut to his leg on some barbed wire. At first, it didn’t appear too bad, but it just wouldn’t heal. It bled and bled into his boot, by the time we got here, the blood had frozen solid around his foot. Roy had to cut the boot off before Nancy could treat it. I left the brothers to discuss their plans while I wrote this up, as I walked up the stairs I past Nancy, who gave me a smile. At the top I met Roy who seemed to be waiting for me, he told me I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted, I thanked him but said I needed to get back to my family’s farm, and would probably leave tomorrow. I can hear Lee shouting me, it’s time to go and meet Lee’s doctor.

  3/11/2027 - Time 14:07

  I’m not really sure how to make this diary entry, I woke up today in a world completely removed from any expectations I had. When I surfaced two days ago, my assumptions of what life would be like were wildly inaccurate, but after yesterdays developments, I’m no longer in the dark, I will talk you through yesterdays events. When I arrived downstairs everyone was ready to move out, wrapped up tight we headed out across the Lancashire countryside. Roy took Nancy’s arm across his shoulder and helped her along the five mile walk, Lee explained it would be safer to walk in daylight than chance a vehicle. The white grey of the sky was matched only by the white grey ash and snow on the ground, it was often blinding and always disorientating. As we walked, I asked Lee what his plans were for the future, he told me he had no plans at the moment, but might head towards the coast in the future, where it would be warmer. We walked for around three miles along the ash covered fields until some grey buildings loomed into view in the distance. They appeared like the shadows of forgotten towns, as we neared them, the wind started to pick up. Nancy was visibly struggling, so Simon helped her by taking the weight from her other side. The wind above our heads was picking up, dust and ash blew around our legs. I felt tense, I cannot explain why, I checked behind us and in front, but everywhere looked deserted. I couldn’t see anything to worry me, but I still wasn’t happy, something felt wrong. I glanced over at Lee who acknowledged my concern, he too seemed worried. He had pulled his gun out, I asked him where we were going, he pointed to the first building on the left, over the other side of the humpback bridge in front of us. I couldn’t see what was on the other side and it concerned me, as we approached the bridge, Lee checked down its right side, and pointed me to the left, which I checked. As we reached the top of
the bridge I saw an old looking truck jack knifed at the bottom, partly obstructing the road. As we slowly continued, two dark figures appeared from behind the truck and walked out stopping opposite us. They were around twenty yards away, it was too dark to see any detail. I took a step backwards and turned only to find four figures behind us, they walked towards us, armed with what looked like rifles. Simon and Lee had the only weapons in our group, mine was in my rucksack which I couldn’t get to without alerting them. I searched around for something that could turn the situation our way, but there was nothing, we were outnumbered and out-gunned ‘What’s going on?’ Shouted Roy, his voice breaking.

  ‘Throw your guns down’ shouted a voice from behind us, Steve indicated to Simon to throw his down, it hit the floor, dust rising from the ground. I looked at Lee who still hadn’t dropped his, ‘Put your gun down Lee’ I said, he turned to face me, his gun pointing in my direction.