Paul Grzegorzek - Flare

“Any other advice?” Emily asked, taking one of the detectors and clipping it to the front of her uniform.

“Yes, once you leave here, don’t drink any groundwater. We’re lucky in that the water here comes from the south, but about half a mile north you reach a dip in the land and everything you drink from then on will have the risk of being contaminated. We’ll give you as much bottled water as we can, but we don’t have much to spare.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked bluntly.

“Why wouldn’t we?” Lindsay countered.

I shrugged. “Our experiences with other people recently haven’t exactly been friendly. Everyone we meet seems to have their own agenda, whether it be stealing everything we’ve got or trying to enslave us. It’s just odd, is all.”

Lindsay stared at me for a long time as if trying to decide whether or not to be offended.

“There aren’t so many people left,” she said finally, “that we can afford not to help, wouldn’t you agree?”

I nodded slowly, thinking how much easier and quicker our journey would have been had everyone felt the same way.

“You’re right, my apologies. I’m just not used to getting help for nothing in return.”

Lindsay reached over and tapped the detector still on the table with a bitten fingernail.

“Then consider these a loan instead of a gift, and the information you’ll bring back with them as payment, if that makes you feel better.”

I forced a laugh from somewhere.

“Do you know,” I said as I picked it up and clipped it onto my belt, “I think it might.”

“Maybe another twenty minutes,” Emily said, pointing at a sign by the side of the motorway. “You’ll need to direct me once we reach the city.”

We’d taken leave of the farm with a new backpack, enough food to see us through twenty four hours and a couple of torches, all they could spare for us.

I glanced at the bag by my feet and wondered again at the kindness of total strangers, so unexpected after everything we’d gone through.

“Let’s not even bother with the city,” I replied, “Angie never needed an excuse to avail herself of her parents’ hospitality, and their place is about half an hour closer.”

“I’ll still need directions.”

“It’s the turning after next, then just follow the signs for Woodford Aerodrome.”

She nodded and returned her attention to the road while I kept glancing down at the detector on my belt. Even though I knew it was my imagination, I swear I could feel the hovering threat of radiation prickling my skin, wondering if even now I was receiving a lethal dose that my detector was too damaged to pick up.

“Will you stop that? You’re making me nervous.” Emily waved a hand towards my belt. “It’ll tell you if there’s a problem, and checking it every few seconds won’t do more than give you neck-ache.”

“But what if it doesn’t work?”

“The detection system is gas and paper, what’s not to work? The only electronic bit is the alarm, so as long as you keep an occasional eye on it, you’ll be fine.”

“Ok, sorry. Radiation scares the shit out of me, though.”

“You’d be a moron if it didn’t, but if we’re committed to this then what choice have we got?”

“Not much.”

“Then why worry?”

“Because I’d never forgive myself if you died because of me.” I realised the words were true even as I said them. I’d only known Emily for a handful of days, but already she was closer to me than anyone bar Melody. Time and again she had put herself in danger on my behalf, although for the life of me I couldn’t see why, and now she was driving into an area that for all we knew was irradiated enough to kill us both, and all because of me.

“Emily, why are you doing this?”

She glanced over and I could see a slight flush to her cheeks.

“Doing what?”

“All this. Keeping me out of trouble, helping me to find Melody, driving towards a nuclear bloody disaster for someone you barely know.”

She opened and closed her mouth a few times as if about to speak, but seemed unable to find the right words. I waited patiently, watching her hands tighten on the steering wheel until her knuckles were white.

“I, uh, ah shit, I’m no good at this,” she said finally, then abruptly stopped the car and turned to face me. “Do you really have no idea why?”

I shrugged helplessly. “If I did I wouldn’t have asked.”

She rolled her eyes towards the heavens.

“God give me strength,” she muttered. “Look, you’re a really nice guy, ok?”

I nodded, feeling like a seventeen year old being given the brush-off.

“A really nice guy,” she continued. “In fact you’re the first man in years who hasn’t tried to impress me with how strong he is, or how masculine, or how many tours of Afghanistan he’s done. Do you know how refreshing it is to spend time with a man who can hold a conversation and doesn’t try to get me into bed after thirty seconds?”

“Probably about as refreshing as it is for me to spend time with someone who can answer the phone without having to do her nails first.”

“Your ex?”

I nodded. “You have no idea.”

She put the vehicle into gear and pulled away again, then turned up a slip road and took us onto a roundabout that I recognised as only being a few miles away from Woodford. I could feel my hands trembling with anticipation, both from seeing Melody again and the conversation we were having.

“What I’m trying to say,” Emily kept her eyes firmly fixed on the road, “is that I like you a lot, and if circumstances had been different then I think we’d already have, uh, well…”

“Become romantically involved?” I said it light-heartedly but I could feel my pulse racing.

She nodded. “If you want to sound like a Mills & Boon novel, sure.”

“I usually try and avoid that.”

“Good choice, but let me finish before I run out of steam, ok?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“Now all of my training tells me that being romantically involved with someone you may need to put your life on the line for is a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t… ah bollocks, well I just like you, ok?”

Her cheeks were burning, and I wondered where the competent soldier had vanished to as she stared rigidly through the windscreen. The other thing that confused me was how at odds this sudden awkwardness was with the way she’d acted in the shop in Maidenhead when we’d been getting changed. I sighed and shook my head, wondering if I’d ever be smart enough to understand a woman properly.

“Well thank you, for everything,” I said with what felt like my first genuine smile in days, “and for the record, there’s no one I would rather have had with me.”

She smiled back, then glanced up at the sky. “Looks like rain.”

I followed her gaze to see dark clouds scudding in from the northwest, still in the distance but moving closer. Neither of us voiced the worry we shared, that the clouds would be carrying irradiated water from the power plant, but Emily picked up speed and I leaned forwards as if it would help us travel faster.

We hit Woodford village at a steady sixty, only Emily’s excellent reflexes keeping us on all four wheels as she took corners that were made for half that speed, and as the neat, detached and semi-detached houses flashed past, I saw one or two people out in their gardens, presumably drawn by the noise of or approach.

“Next left,” I said, and Emily swung the wheel, almost colliding with a van that had been abandoned in the road. I didn’t bother telling her to slow down, instead keeping my eyes on the advancing clouds through the treetops that lined the backs of the nearby gardens.