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

The others shrugged. Maybe it was everything that had already happened that day that meant they were no longer capable of getting worked up. Clive didn’t know.

“Yes, I suppose it was eerie, but we’re out of there now.” They were about halfway back to the motorway, going back the way they’d come. “Do you know where you’re going?”

Si’s shoulders were still tensed up. “I suppose. Back to the motorway and north.”

He sighed. It had been one thing after another since they’d left that dairy truck, which was now little more than a distant memory even though it had only been a few hours. They hadn’t even had a chance to discuss everything that had happened. And yet, even though the horror of being locked in a burning building was clinging to him like a weight and making it hard to breathe, he didn’t blame the girl. Not after what she’d told them; not after the horror of hearing that big engine screaming around after them. He reached for Olivia’s hand. She was staring blankly out the windscreen in front of her. He had no way of predicting how the events of the day would affect her long term, but perhaps the tranquillity of a farm would help.

“Yes, the north,” he muttered. “Where it’s hopefully safe.”

Si snorted. “We have a long way to go yet.”

“Yes, but that’s made far easier now that we have a car. How much fuel do you have in this old thing?” He frowned. Maybe he was losing his edge. It should have been the first thing he thought of.

“Enough,” she said.

“What does the fuel gauge say?”

She laughed. “It says empty. It always says that. It also says we’re going ten miles an hour.”

“You realise that we’ll find ourselves in trouble if we run out of fuel.”

She turned around. “No shit. You asked me what the fuel gauge said. I told you. I said we have enough. I should know, I put twenty litres in it last week.”

“Oh.” He sat back. He was exhausted, but he fought it. They were far from safe, no matter how much his body protested.

He looked around at the others. Terry had fallen asleep. He couldn’t see Annie’s face, but judging by the way she was slumped in front of him, there was a good chance she was dozing too. Olivia’s eyes were open, but only she knew what was going on behind them. He hoped the pills were giving her some relief.

Clive’s eyelids drooped despite his best efforts to stay awake. He dozed off for a few seconds at most, starting awake when his vision filled with a wall of petrol-fuelled flames. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself.

“If you’d poured fuel around the door we’d never have gotten out.” It was something that had been plaguing his mind all day, no matter how much he tried to brush it aside.

She shrugged. This time she didn’t turn around, which he was grateful for. “I had to make sure I had time to find out where Max was. It would have been pointless otherwise. I left that wall clear and poured the petrol around the other three.”

He shook his head. “There was so much room for error. You could have hurt yourself before anyone came.”

“So?” Her voice was flat. “I did what I could with the tools I had around me, alright? This isn’t some school project. I don’t care if it was a C effort or a messy job…” she sighed. “I’m sorry you got involved in it, believe me. If you hadn’t turned up, I could be on the way to Max by now. Not going off in the opposite direction.”

Clive looked out the window. They were making good progress now they’d gotten on the motorway, but he was wary of the fact that they’d have to pass the outskirts of various large towns and cities before they hit Yorkshire. It would only take one roadblock to cancel out all the progress they had made. “Do you have any idea of who they were or where they might have taken him?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’d never seen them before. Four of them. They had shotguns. Rough. You know.” She took one hand off the wheel and waved it around as if searching for the right word. “Common, I suppose. Though people might say that about me too.”

He watched her as she drove in silence. When she wasn’t looking back the wrong way and scaring the life out of him, she was a meticulous driver, watching her side and rearview mirrors compulsively before her eyes darted back to the road in front. “What were you going to do then?” He cleared his throat. “If those men were working for some sort of gang—which seems likely—you’d have had to go in there without weapons.”

She sighed. “I thought about that. To be honest, I didn’t know if their guns would melt in the fire or whether they’d have spares in the car. It was something I’d have had to think about before I went in there. I’m not stupid.”

“I know you’re not,” he said. “But you’re also a young girl and I can’t imagine you have much experience of going up against people like that. It’s dangerous. You could have gotten yourself killed.”

She pursed her lips and tightened her jaw. He could see the glint of tears in the corner of her eye. “I’m the only one he’s got. He’s a good man. He didn’t deserve that. He doesn’t deserve it.”

He shook his head. In his almost sixty years, Clive had seen a lot of people get far worse than they deserved, and many people who lived charmed lives despite their cruelty and greed. There was no rhyme or reason to it. By rights, this was just one more case of life being unfair. He ought not to have been particularly fazed by it, but he was. Perhaps it was her age. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d stayed there, starving, in order to endanger herself and try and save that man.

Whatever it was, it seemed like a far better use of his time than guarding some old fool like Charles Mackintosh. He couldn’t save everyone; he’d abandoned his duty to even try. But could he do something to lift the weight from this girl’s shoulders?

“Look, let’s get to the farm and get some rest, eh? We’ll be able to think clearer then.”

She froze. “What do you mean, we ?”

What were they going to do at the farm, exactly? Walk in the fields and spend their day tending to sheep? A crisis had erupted around them. He owed it to Olivia to get her to safety. After that…

He was highly trained in a way that the vast majority of the population wasn’t. And something about the girl’s story had crawled under his skin and was refusing to go away.

He was about to explain when his blood ran cold. There was something else besides the noisy old Renault engine. “Slow down for a moment,” he hissed, sitting forward and gripping the seat in front of him. “Ease off the accelerator.”

“Why?”

“I think I hear something.”

She did as he said, slamming on the brakes so hard that they all jolted forward, which woke Annie and Terry from their sleep.

“There was no need to do it quite so sharply. For all I know, it’s nothing.”

She sped up again without replying, this time throwing them back against their seats.

“Oh, for goodness sake.” What was she worked up about? “I only asked you to—”

“I know what you asked me. And I slowed like you said. But then I didn’t need to.”

“What do you—”

He fell silent when she pointed at her rearview mirror. He couldn’t see what she was seeing because of the angle it was tilted at, so he turned to look out the back. He almost collided with Olivia as he did. She’d been going at a fair speed all along, but now she’d sped up past that, to the point where the old engine was whining towards its limit. They were being thrown this way and that as she avoided the stationary cars and vans that dotted every lane of the motorway.

And then he understood. He didn’t see it at first, but then his eyes focused on it. A grey speck in the distance behind him. He’d been right. He’d heard it.