Conrad Williams - One

'She can't ... she's not ready to . . . process what happened,' Chris said.

'Are you?'

'How about you first? What's your story?'

Jane told him about his experience on the seabed and the violent deaths that had followed. 'I don't know what happened. I wasn't around to see it. But you . . . you were on the surface. How did you survive it? Did you even see what it was?'

'I don't know. We were walking out in the fields. Long walk. We were tired, and we were looking for a place to sit and have something to eat. We found these tunnels, concrete tubes just coming out of the hillside. I don't think they were meant to be open, but the grille on them was all broken and rusted to hell. There was a sign, burnt white, rusted. Could hardly read it but you could just make out NO TRESPASSING. I don't think the tunnels had been used much recently . . . whatever it was they were for.'

'Maybe a decommissioned lead mine,' Jane said. 'We're in the right part of the country for them.' 'Lead. OK. Whatever. So anyway, we went in. We had a torch with us. It looked like it might rain so we had our packed lunch inside. When we'd finished we felt better, you know, so we were shining the torch deep into the tunnel, asking each other how far it reached. We were always going to have a look, but we were dicking about, daring each other.'

'You went in? Deep?'

'We walked for about twenty minutes. Straight in. It went on for miles. It got colder. At one point I turned the torch off, having a laugh with Nance, pretending the batteries had gone flat. It was so dark you couldn't see . . . you know the colour of your own blood behind your eyelids? None of that. Nothing. Nance freaked out. I freaked out. Torch back on. We decided we'd pretty much had enough after that. There was that worry – what if the batteries did fail? What if I dropped the torch and smashed the bulb . . . so we were just heading back when this enormous tremor hit us.'

Jane waited. He had held his breath. He let it out now in a steady quiet stream, not wanting to interrupt Chris's flow. Chris was looking at his hands; his too were tigered with thin, sore-looking weals, as if they had been stung with a whip. He picked at the dry flaking skin around the marks.

'It put us on our arses. I thought the tunnel was going to collapse on top of us. We were both screaming, and I think that put us in more of a panic than what was going on. After it had stopped we were still screaming. It took a while to realise it was over. We weren't hurt. Maybe a bruise or two. And then we felt this enormous heat. It just came charging down the tunnel. Where it had been cool, cold even. Damp. Now it was roasting. It was like being in a sauna. Steam everywhere. We started running. We just wanted to get out.'

'What did you see when you got outside?' Jane's voice had become a narrow choked thing. He kept thinking of Stanley. Maybe he had been on the balcony when the tremor hit. Five flights up. Maybe he had fallen. Maybe not. Maybe he had been burnt to a crisp up there. His lungs turned to leather.

'What you see now,' Chris said. 'Only there were fires in the woods. The sky was on fire too. Sheep were still standing in the fields, but they were burning. The whole place was burning. I thought we'd bought it. We hid at the tunnel entrance, trying to breathe. After a while – I don't know how long . . . hours maybe, maybe only minutes – there was a difference. There was rain. Horrible, burning stuff. Like acid. Oily and orange. But the fire in the sky went out. There was just this disgusting coloured smog. It got everywhere, coated the back of your throat like lard. Nance was sick.'

Chris picked up his penknife and fiddled with the hinge. He did not look at Jane. 'We came back here. We buried a farmer we found in the car park. He was . . . Jesus. He was . . .'

'Yes,' Jane said. 'I know. It's OK.'

'It's not OK, though, is it?' Chris asked gently. 'Nothing's OK. I mean, how big is this? I tried using my phone to call 999. To call home. No signal. Nothing is working. No TV. No radio. I mean, how fucking huge is this thing?'

'I'm revising my estimates almost every day. Upwards.'

They sat in silence for a while. Eventually Nance came out of the bedroom, pausing at the threshold as if to check on the content of their conversation.

'Did you see any other survivors?' Jane asked.

Chris shook his head. 'I thought we should head for Newcastle, but Nance . . . she isn't ready yet.'

'It's a good idea. Newcastle. Hospitals. Someone must have survived there. From what you described, it seems that exposure was the danger up here. In Newcastle there's more shelter.'

Chris seemed infected by his enthusiasm. 'If it even reached that far,' he said. He got to his feet. 'It's got to be localised. Some awful offshore fuck-up. A nuclear sub. Those things carry heaps of warheads, don't they? Hiroshima times ten or something. We're just wrong place wrong time.'

'I don't think so,' Jane said, quietly, shooting a look at Nance. Her attention volleyed moistly from one man to the other. 'It doesn't matter,' he added.

'I can handle it,' Nance said. 'You'd rather I was standing here giggling?'

'It's just . . . well, there'd be help by now,' Jane went on. 'It's been a week. Over a week. This place should be crawling with Hazmat suits and outside broadcast units from the BBC.'

Chris sat back down. 'Yeah, you're right. My God.'

Nance said, 'So what now?'

Jane spread his hands. 'I'm headed for London,' he said.

'Why?'

'My little boy is there. I have to find him.'

'Family,' Chris sighed. 'Shit. My dad is in his eighties. He's got diabetes, angina . . . Lovely little combo.'

'He's in Sydney, right?' Jane asked. 'OK, so calm down a minute. It might be that this is localised after all, a UK thing. We don't know if it's global.' It hadn't occurred to him for a moment that it might be.

'If it's global, it isn't terrorism,' Nance said. 'It isn't ''oops, I pushed the meltdown switch'' at the power plant.'

'It can't be global,' Jane said.

Chris turned his head to the window. 'Fire in the sky,' he said.

They agreed to accompany Jane as far as Newcastle and assess the situation there. Chris had rebuilt his optimism and was convinced they would walk out of the danger zone into green grass and fresh air before they reached the city's outskirts.

'There's nobody come to help because they looked at what happened and didn't expect any survivors,' he said, and he would not be shifted on his stance.

Jane led them back across the field to his tent. They helped him dismantle it and pack it back in the rucksack.

'Which way?' Nance asked. Sweat stippled her upper lip. She was clenching and flexing her fingers fast. He could see the tendons in her neck pulling the skin tight.

Jane pointed south. 'Just keep the sea on your left and we can't go wrong,' he said. Nance was looking at Chris, signalling something with her eyes. 'Go on,' Jane said. 'I need to take a leak and get this pack on. I'll catch you up.'

He watched them cross the road and sink out of view into the next field. Nance was talking intently, not allowing Chris to respond. Her head jerked towards him at the start of every sentence. Jane couldn't work her out. She seemed utterly uncoupled by events, but in the little bubble that she shared with her man she was determined, unshakeable, domineering. Jane had met a few people like that over the years and he didn't like them at all. They were often suspicious of other people and had a small circle of friends, if any at all. They never offered any solutions, never took the initiative, but behind the scenes they connived and agitated and planted seeds of doubt, usually with the one person they knew best, often a spouse who was so far under the thumb that they owned a flat head.