Paul Grzegorzek - Flare

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.

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.”