M. Marshall - The End Is Nigh

“He doesn’t know his name surely?” asked Liam.

“I have no idea. Shadow!” I shouted again.

After another minute or so I saw him. He came trotting across the forest floor towards us, true to form bringing a prize. This time it was a big hare he carried in his mouth. Unlike the last time I decided it might be worth keeping to cook at Matt’s parents’ later. It would be better than another can of beans. It would be good to show his usefulness to Matt. He never did like dogs.

Before setting off, I shared the last bit of our cooking chocolate with Liam and positioned Rosa on my knee as I buckled up my seatbelt in the front seat. Shadow laid himself on the back with our bags.

We would reach our destination in less than an hour.

IT TOOK US forty-five minutes to get to Loughton from where we were. The woodland had begun to thin out the closer we had got to Loughton. I was surprised at the damage to the buildings around us considering how far away from London we were.

“I didn’t think that there would have been anything this far out of the city which would make a worthy enough target for an attack.” I looked over at Liam who was also looking out at the ravaged environment we now found ourselves in.

“I’m not sure they thought about it like that. I really don’t know enough about where the bombs did or didn’t hit. Do you?” I shook my head.

There was nothing out there of note that I was aware of. Then again, as a lowly housing minister, there was a great deal of information regarding national security which I was not a party to.

“Who knows what they had stashed out here.” I thought aloud.

We pulled off the main road and onto one of the smaller roads leading into the town centre. I felt a knot forming in my stomach. The buildings here were badly damaged. The high street and the west part of the town had been devastated by a blast which must have caught the town in its radius of destruction. Whole sides of buildings had crumbled away. Most of the high street was left in ruins, flattened except for a few staircases standing up like sentry towers peeking out of the rubble.

My hand flew over my mouth in shock. I couldn’t speak. I had expected damage but not this. Not all the way out here. I could feel Liam’s eyes on me as he drove further through the town. Had he expected this?

“Are you sure he would have come here? It’s not that close to North London you know. He sounds like an intelligent man your fella. I’ll bet he got on his motorbike and drove North, out of range.” I just stared out of the front window.

There was no movement, not one flicker of life left in the town. It was early, and the sun was coming up to give what was left of the high street a golden wash of colour. The sky was so orange it almost looked red as the sun highlighted the edges of the staggered lines of clouds above us. Contrasting in its beauty to the carnage below. “Elizabeth, I don’t think that anyone is living here now. Even if he was here, I’m not sure he’d have stayed. There are not any safe buildings left. They couldn’t have used any of these for shelter from the fallout.” I looked into his eyes they were full of concern and something else. Understanding.

Did he know what it was I was feeling? Maybe he had already gone through this. Was this the reason why he had insisted on staying with me earlier when I had suggested he went on to the Bunker? I felt a fool then as I understood that he had already suspected that this would be the scene to greet us.

“I need to see it. Their house. It’s a few streets from here so it could be fine.” As the words left my mouth, I knew in my heart that it would be impossible for it to have survived unscathed. The scale of the damage here, in this part of the town, was too much.

It was difficult to tell where we were as we pulled off the high street. Most of the rows of terraced housing had been reduced to rubble. The debris of roof tiles and bricks covered the road. Where normally you wouldn’t be able to see past the first row of houses you could now see at least four rows back. Towards the East side of the street, the few houses which had managed to escape losing their second floor stood up like rotten teeth in an old woman’s grin.

I burst into tears. “I’m lost. I have no idea where we are. I know that we’re on the right side of the high street, but I can’t see a thing I recognise.” Liam stopped the car and leaned over to take my hand.

“Hey, it’s okay. We don’t know he was here. Take a minute. Look around for any landmarks you might remember.” I had only been here a few times in the last three years since Matt and I were married. Since we had Rosa, they visited us.

Liam squeezed my fingers together. He looked so concerned. I didn’t understand why he was still here, surely all of this was just slowing his journey getting to the Bunker. I tried to explain to him that with all of the destruction I couldn’t find the right house. “What we need to do is get a closer look. Otherwise you won’t be able to let it rest. Do you want to get out and see if you can find something you recognise to use as a reference point? That way we can work our way from there and figure out where his house should be.” I nodded and silently slid out of the car and closed the door. Rosa sat up in my seat and placed her hands on the window looking out at me walking away from her. She began to cry, and I ignored her.

My feet crunched down on to the surface of the road. Hearing the sound had made me look at what it was underneath my feet. There, lying in the road crushed into tiny little pieces were all of the ingredients to the people’s lives on this street. A piece of lego, a picture frame and so much dust. Dust flew up with every step I took.

I should have covered my mouth when I got out the car. I grabbed my t-shirt and pulled it over my nose and mouth as I walked. I needed to make sure that this was not the street I was looking for. I needed to find something I recognised. Liam joined me.

“I left Rosa in the back of the SUV and gave her a bag of those baby biscuit things to amuse herself with.” I didn’t even acknowledge him. I was glad she was in the car. I couldn’t let her see this.

Stuck in a dream, I walked away from the car. Shadow and Liam followed at a respectable distance. Neither of us were sure of what we would find. Shadow stayed close when normally he would have been running ahead looking for food. Smart boy, he’d learnt that to survive in this new world he must feed himself.

It took me a good ten minutes of walking around the area we had parked before I was able to spot the royal blue and white sign of the local corner shop. I had seen it on our previous visits. I knew it was where Matt’s Dad collected his morning paper, something Matt used to say he bought more for the pictures than the words. I remembered how we’d laughed together the first time he had told me that.

His Dad had blushed such a shade of red that his mother had told him to go and splash cold water on his face. I would have given just about anything to be back at that breakfast table now. Awkward as it had been. They were a lovely family, such kind-hearted people with nothing but the very best intentions.

Seeing something I knew from before meant that I could tell where we were. This had been the right street after all, although Matt’s parent’s house was down the far end of the terrace. It was easy to see that we weren’t going to get the car down there.

“It’s down here. At the end of this street. Maybe you should wait with Rosa.” Liam nodded in silent agreement choosing to stay quiet.

Shadow had obviously decided that for him being close felt best. He kept pace with me, his nose in line with my right knee. You could just about make out where one house ended and where the next began by the way the piles of rubble had fallen and where the odd parts of the structure still stood. Without having to get close to the house, I knew it was going to be a miracle to find Matt here. Liam could be right. He may not have been here at all. As I walked closer to the place where I recognised as their house, my body went numb.