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

As a concession to the gridlock and delays the power outage would no doubt cause, she threw on gym clothes and trainers instead of her usual trouser suit. That way, she’d be more comfortable if she had to wait on the platform for ages.

She got to the door and something nagged at her. Annoyed by her own paranoia, she went back to the kitchen and threw the rest of the breakfast bars into a backpack and took her stash of emergency cash from the bottom drawer.

By now, she was having to sing to herself in her head to keep her thoughts from wandering.

She was two hundred miles from home.

She knew no-one in London.

Adrenaline raced through her veins even though she told herself it was nothing to worry about.

When Annie opened the outer door of the building, she saw why it had been so dreary inside. The sky was the colour of smoke and the rain was pelting down almost horizontally. She pulled up her hood and wondered if she should have taken a weapon.

She rolled her eyes. Stop thinking the worst. There might have been a storm near one of the main power stations.

As for the water and the gas, she’d lost count of the number of times she’d asked an executive about maintenance of backup generators only to be met with glazed eyes. No-one was ever as prepared as they thought they were. It was probably the same at the water company.

She frowned when she got out onto the street.

There had been nothing remarkable about her blocks of flats, which were usually quiet so early in the morning. Now that she reached the street, warning sign after warning sign flashed in front of her in every direction.

At first, her brain had jumped to the conclusion that the scene was normal. Peak morning traffic. There was nothing unusual about cars at a standstill.

But they weren’t just idling. There was no engine noise; no clouds of exhaust fumes wafting in the cold air.

She spun around and looked back down High Street. Further along, a car had concertinaed into the back of another vehicle. A bus was stopped almost directly in front of her, blocking her view of the other side of the street.

Stop it. It’s just a crash.

It wasn’t. The bus was empty. So were the cars around it. Nobody was slamming on their horns and swearing—which they certainly would be doing if this was normal London gridlock. She hadn’t been there long, but she knew that much.

Sometimes when the rain was heavy, she took the bus to the station. Her usual stop was about fifty yards from where she now stood. The crowd sheltering underneath it was packed together and people spilt out the sides. She had never seen it so busy.

Intrigued, she found herself moving closer to get a better look. From the way people were stomping and jerking their heads, they were running out of patience.

Annie had seen enough and she was already soaked. She turned and walked on towards the underground station. She buried her hands in her pockets and tried not to think about the cold.

All along the street, cars had ploughed into each other and been left abandoned. She was rattled by the sight of several motorbikes abandoned in the street. It was another sign that the crazy theory she was trying not to think about might not be all that crazy. Those bikes must have stopped working—otherwise, why wouldn’t their riders have gone around the traffic?

She walked faster, heart thumping so hard she worried she might pass out. At every bus stop she passed, she had to stop and squeeze past the crowds of people waiting. People were beyond the point of agitation—she could see it. What were they doing? Why were they just standing there?

It was all wrong. It was crazy: she had never seen anything like it.

Adrenaline pumped through her body. She started to run towards the station.

The crowd outside the tube station was even deeper than at the bus stops. After a few minutes had gone by, she started to suspect the queue wasn’t going anywhere. She circled around the back of the crowd and climbed up on a junction box. The gate had been pulled across, just like it was pulled across every night after the last train had been and gone.

She turned away, looking this way and that as if the answer was a physical thing she might find nearby.

Now what?

She squeezed her eyes shut.

With the tubes down and the roads blocked up, she had no way to get to work. Nor could she log in remotely since her laptop was dead.

Her heart was thumping so loudly that she was certain she could hear it over the hum of discontent from the crowd around her.

Walk , a voice inside her screamed. You turn around and walk to the farm. Now!

She bent her head. The tears were coming thick and fast now, not that anyone around her would notice. The farm was two hundred miles away. It would take her a week to get there. Longer, probably, since it was the middle of winter and she’d need to find shelter each night before it got dark.

She shook her head. It was a daunting prospect, but that wasn’t what bothered her the most.

It made her heart sick to think of what they’d lost if it was true; if this had all been caused by an EMP. Everything she’d worked for; everything they had sacrificed.

She couldn’t take it anymore. She had to get out of there, away from the angry crowd and out of the rain.

The rain was starting to ease. She forced one foot in front of the other.

Go. Go now. Everything will be okay, but you need to get out of London.

Then she realised that it wasn’t a choice between walking or staying put. She remembered the bikes that came with the flat. Bikes to explore the canal banks.

It would still be a hell of a challenge to go all that way alone if her suspicions proved correct, but she’d get there a lot faster on a bike.

She glanced up at the sky and frowned. The heavy grey clouds were starting to thin out. She gasped in surprise. The sun was high in the sky, not low and weak. It was far later than she’d thought. She must have fallen asleep at some point after all. There was no way she could go anywhere now, whether on a bike or on foot. Not with only another four hours or so before dark.

Her mind raced. With every passing second, it was becoming clearer and clearer that something terrible had happened and there was only one explanation that fit. She looked around at the crowded streets, filled with confused, frustrated people She had never felt so alone.

And it was only going to get worse.

Terry frowned. He’d wondered many times if the day could get any weirder, and each time he’d been surprised to find that it could. First, it had been the gridlock on High Street where several cars had rear-ended others but nobody had stuck around to fight about it. Then the shuttered shops and pubs, and all the people milling about on the street as if they didn’t know what to do with themselves.

And even that had paled into insignificance once he arrived at the shop and eventually managed to get in via the customer door when his swipe card wouldn’t work.

He’d never seen the shop so busy. Not on Christmas Eve; not even when they had a big sale on. The place was thronged and it had been since he got in. It didn’t help that half the shift hadn’t turned up and the backup generator that the manager liked to brag about wasn’t working.

GrocerySavers was the sort of place that appealed to bargain hunters shopping in bulk. They sold a hell of a lot of frozen food, all of which was now sweating in powered-off freezers. It was getting closer and closer to the point that it would be a health and safety risk to even sell it anymore, even with a warning to cook it on the same day.