Конрад Уильямс - One

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘That doesn’t look right, does it?’ Chris asked.

They were a mile from Front Street. It had taken them three hours. Jane was considering picking Angela up and carrying her. She took a few puffs from her inhaler but the canister sounded as though it was empty when she shook it. Jane was about to ask Chris which of around a million not-right things he could possibly be referring to, when he saw how the sky had assumed a closed aspect. It didn’t look as granular as it had earlier in the day. The sickly brown colour had deepened. It appeared solid, but as Jane stared he saw that there was movement; the wall bulged and shrank infinitesimally, like the slow explosion of storm clouds.

‘There was a mist, a fog, first few days I landed,’ he said. ‘Maybe this is that in a different form. Dirtier. Maybe it’s fog that’s become polluted. A pea-souper.’

None of them were agreeing with him. Nobody was saying a word. They stared at the dimpling umber wall as it came on. Jane dropped his gaze to its foot and saw how fast it was really moving; it ate the ground. He’d once seen footage of a pyroclastic flow after Mount Unzen had erupted in Japan. A cloud of superheated ash hurtling down the mountain at over two hundred miles per hour.

‘That’s not fog,’ Brendan said. ‘That’s a dust storm.’

Now Jane did pick up Angela. She squawked her indignation and started berating him, but he ignored her.

‘Come on,’ he shouted, and headed for a large farmhouse at the edge of the field. It was in bad condition. Fire had gutted it; the roof was partially caved in. But there was one corner that looked relatively solid despite the lack of windows.

‘Get your tent ready, Chris,’ Jane called.

‘But it’s only a two-man job.’

‘Get it fucking ready.’

Jane could feel the first grains stinging his face, like grit churned up in the wake of a bus or a lorry in the high street. He was glad of the goggles and the mask. He could hear Chris and Nance and Brendan swearing and spitting. Angela had stopped shouting at him, perhaps because she could see the seriousness of the situation, or her lungs would no longer allow it. They reached the eastern wall of the house as the dust storm boiled up around them. Jane felt his breath sucked from his throat as the ferocity of the wind vaulted over the dented inverted V of the roof. Nance and Chris both yelled. Jane kicked at the sagging door and it rocked in on its rotten hinges.

‘No,’ called Angela. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘Get inside!’

‘No. The wall will come down. We’ll be crushed.’

Chris got the tent down in what seemed to be a large living room. ‘Where do I hammer the pegs?’ he shouted.

‘Just get inside!’

They all piled in as the dust storm’s muscles flexed against the house. Even above the howl of the wind and the grapeshot of dust and grit against the tent fabric, Jane could hear the suck and blow of Angela’s lungs and her prayers to the Almighty. There was something else too, and no matter how hard he tried to bend the sound to the logic of his mind, he could not. It was obviously the savage, blood-keen cry of a bird.

If it was going to come down, it would have done so before now,’ Jane said. Angela would not shut up about the wall. He closed his eyes to the headache hatching behind his eyes, and wished for a long cold beer. He tried to step back from his irritation; she was just focusing on that to keep her from the fright of the storm, or the dust storm in her own lungs, that was all.

They had begun desultorily to help pack away the tent but everyone could see it was a pointless task. The skin was punctured in numerous places. Chris called a halt and threw it away. ‘We can get another one in Newcastle,’ he said. ‘Top of the range. No expense spared.’

Everyone seemed a little put out by the sudden relief of a task; they looked at each other with a mix of puzzlement and doubt. Jane supposed there was a concern that the storm might return; three times it seemed to have drifted away only to return, like a dog tied to a post. And there was Angela too. He wondered if Chris and Nance were waiting for her to fall back on a stock disaster-movie trope: You go on without me… I can’t make it . He had no doubt they would gladly piss off, yet the awkward truth was that he too wished he could leave her behind. Leave all of them behind. He couldn’t rid himself of that bitter longing. It stayed on like the crackle of the dust against the tent’s laminated plastic.

They filed out of the building into a coffee-coloured desert. Nance, her feet bound with strips from a torn shirt, winced at every step. The sky appeared to have been coated with another layer. Dust hung against the background of the clouds like swarms of insects looking for a crop to decimate. They felt it furring their hands and clothes. Jane remembered one time during his childhood when he wakened to red dust coating the cars outside, sand borne thousands of miles from the Sahara on a freak wind. This could have come from anywhere, any desert, any steppe, any prairie. Jane had a vision of the world turned opaque; just another dead planet to anybody looking down from outer space, a cold stone masked by a caul of toxic gas.

He looked north, along the raised strip of road. His pack would be gone, or so buried in dust it might take a lifetime to find. His shoulders felt naked without its weight. He had a good two litres of water in the bladder, food to last a couple more days, the First Aid kit, his own one-man tent, his maps. He did not share Chris’s que sera sera attitude. Yes, they could replenish their supplies in Newcastle, but they had to get there first. They had no shelter. No provisions. If another dust storm came they would have to hope they were near enough to some kind of dwelling. If they were caught out in the open, they were dead.

He didn’t say any of this out loud, but he saw that he didn’t have to.

‘Shall we?’ he said, turning south.

Darkness was upon them before they knew it. They had walked for so long in something akin to a midnight sun, the light soapy, ill-defined, that they had not noticed the day tipping away from them. The temperature plummeted. There was nothing to do but keep going until they found a house where they could rest until dawn. Angela’s breathing seemed to have levelled out, despite the exertion. He guessed the mask was helping. Maybe the cold did too.

Half an hour later they came upon what seemed to be little more than a beat-up shed for cattle. All the straw within it had burned to ash and been blown away, the shed’s walls painted black by fire. A charcoal smell lingered. The walls and roof were intact, the columns supporting the open bays stout, undamaged. It had been built carefully, to last, by craftsmen who knew something about storms. A trough was filled with water that resembled molten lead. A little way off, bones lay in the dust, roasted curves partially buried. A large skull tilted onto its side, fat burned to black upon its surfaces, grinning as if floored by the irony of dying so close to shelter.

They huddled together under shared coats in one corner, like kids during playtime. None of them slept. The darkness became absolute. The baying of the wind was an animal trapped in a cage, trying to find a way out. Jane couldn’t hear his own breathing above it. When he thought he might fall asleep after all, when the cold in his muscles seemed to reach a plateau, he felt another body, smaller, nestling into him, snuffling for warmth.

‘Hi, Stan,’ he said.

‘Hi, Dad. Budge up, Dad, I’m freezing cold.’

‘We’ve been colder than this. Remember when we went to Skye?’