Alex Knightly - Sudden Darkness - A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller

It was also damp and cold. Judging by the sound of sniffling, he wasn’t the only one coming down with a cold. That was the last thing they needed.

Killer.

It kept coming back to him and each time it did he felt the same gut-wrenching shame.

He buried his head in his hands. He’d been so angry at them and the other boys who’d taken his water.

He had a knife.

He blinked. Clive had a knife right now too; he was using it to cut the top off a packet of crackers. That didn’t mean Terry should kill him.

Is that what they were all thinking? Clive had taken his gun away. Annie had tried to calm him but he’d seen the look in her eyes.

“Terry. Are you alright?”

He blinked. They were all looking at him now. “Me?”

“Yes,” Olivia said. “You haven’t said a word all morning.”

“No-one has.” He coughed. They’d gotten up and rolled up their sleeping bags as if there was nothing strange about it. He couldn’t remember any of them doing more than grunting.

“You’re sweating. And it’s freezing in here,” Annie said. He was surprised to see concern in her face too.

“What do you care?” he snapped. “To you, I’m just a killer.”

She shook her head. “No. You’re not. I’m exhausted. We all are. I can’t get my head around any of this. But I probably would have done the same thing as you.”

Clive nodded. “I took your gun because you were in a state of shock. I’ve been trained to cope with what I had to do and it still doesn’t sit easily with me. You can have it back now if you feel up to it.”

“Yeah, but you…” He stopped. It was torture to even think about it and he wasn’t going to sit there and put himself on trial. Olivia took his hand and squeezed it.

No-one else spoke. They were all too tired to even change the subject.

Once Clive had all the tins open, they tucked into stale crackers and cold beans.

It didn’t feel like a victory that nothing had happened during the night. They’d just gotten lucky. Something bad was going to happen; maybe sooner rather than later.

Terry sighed as he finished the last of his beans and crackers. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t go on.

“Maybe we could hide out here for a bit,” he said. “Until things calm down. What’s another day anyway?”

Annie’s head snapped around. “What?”

“We’re all exhausted. Cycling and carrying these backpacks is harder than I realised.”

“It is, but we’re in some random warehouse. We have no idea what’s around us or whether the army’s mobilised in this area too.”

“How do you know they haven’t already gone to your farmhouse?”

She recoiled as if she’d been slapped. “I don’t,” she said. “But I think it’s fair to assume they haven’t. It’s remote. Whereas here… well, we don’t know how close the town is. We don’t know anything about the place.”

Clive shook his head. “As tempting as it is right now, we have to go out there at some point. People are only going to get more desperate. I think it’s best if we keep our heads down and focus on getting north as quickly as we can. We’ve just got to plough on.”

Terry chewed on his bottom lip. When they were just talking about it, it had seemed almost doable. Cycle two hundred miles. People ran that over a few days—not Terry, but people did.

Could he stay behind if the others all wanted to go on? He had food, but not much. How long was that going to last him? And he had no water except for the soda water Annie had shared with him. All he wanted was to be left alone, but the idea of it terrified him.

Killer.

“It’s not safe,” Annie said. “We got lucky last night. Who’s to say there wasn’t trouble and we didn’t hear it because we were all so knackered.”

Terry sighed. She was right. He knew it. He was sore from the crappy bike and his shoulders ached from the weight that had dragged on them all day. And it wasn’t just another day of that they were looking at. It was several. They were barely even out of London.

He wanted to scream. He didn’t know these people; he hadn’t chosen them. And now he was stuck with them, these strangers who knew what he’d done.

A voice screamed in his head that it was his own fault for not having anyone else. Why hadn’t he made more of an effort to find a girlfriend? Or even just chat to the old blokes in the pub?

Annie stood up. “We need to go.”

“How can you all be so relaxed? It’s two hundred miles!”

“More like one-seventy now.” Annie’s expression was serious. “We don’t have a choice.”

“We don’t,” Clive agreed. “And no-one’s relaxed about this. No-one.” He looked away as if that was the end of it, but then he turned back to Terry. “I told you about Olivia’s agoraphobia. Do you think she has it easy?”

Terry winced. He didn’t like talking about the woman like that when she was right there.

But Clive wasn’t finished. “Do you hear me? You need to think about this. Don’t you tell me you have it hard when Livvy’s living through her worst nightmare.”

“But…” Terry sighed. “She seems fine. You all seem fine.”

“Diazepam,” Olivia said lightly, and it all made sense to him then—her vacant look, her strange calmness at times and erratic behaviour at others. She wasn’t fine; she wasn’t fine at all.

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh. Now, come on. We’re better off sticking together and it’ll get easier as you get used to the bike. I know you’re dwelling on what happened yesterday, but try not to. It’ll get easier.” His face fell. “There’s something else I need to tell you both.”

“What?”

Clive shook his head. “The diazepam. I only have enough pills for six days. If it takes us any longer—which seems likely… We need to find a pharmacy.”

Olivia looked haunted. “He’s right.”

“We need medicine anyway,” Annie said quietly. “If any of us had been stabbed…”

Clive cleared his throat. “Well then. We’d best leave. We need to get as far north as we can and also find water and medicine. We have a long day ahead.”

Terry stared at his feet. All he wanted to do was curl into a ball and forget this nightmare. He couldn’t get that boy’s face out of his mind and the smell of hot metal still clung to him like a permanent reminder that would never go away.

He couldn’t think straight. What would he do if they left?

He needed them. He hated to admit it, but it was true.

“I’m coming.”

“Okay, let’s keep an eye out for a supermarket truck. We didn’t stop yesterday because the ones we passed had already been looted, but we’re not in a position to be fussy now. We need whatever food we can find.”

Terry shrugged. He was struggling to cycle in a straight line.

“And keep watching the signs above the exits. If we can’t find what we need on the motorway, we might have to get off and find a town.” Clive sighed. “But only if one of us has been there before, understand? I’m not leaving anything to chance.”

Terry gritted his teeth. It took every ounce of effort he had to stop his eyes from tearing up. Would this ever end?

He noticed a bright orange truck up ahead and he could tell from the way the others sat up straight on their bikes that they’d noticed too.

Their optimism soon vanished when they got closer and realised the siding had been torn clean off.

“Who did this?” he muttered. “There’s no-one around.”

No-one answered. Once they reached the truck, they all stopped and got off their bikes.

The truck bed was a mess. Pallets and boxes had been thrown around, with some of them tossed around the road.