She was well aware that the city would probably descend into chaos—but would it happen this soon?
Best to be prepared.
The knives were all blunt and old and she wished now that she’d bought a sharpener. But it was too late for that. She took the cheap chef’s knife and put it in the mesh side pocket of her backpack, careful to face the blade towards the front. She put the bag on her back and checked she could reach the handle.
It was better than nothing.
She ignored the voice that insisted she was never getting on a train again. If nothing else, this would be a warmup for the next day.
She hurried to the door, checking the roll of notes in her bra before she opened the door. She locked it behind her, feeling nothing at all for the place.
The bikes were still out the back and she could have kissed them. There were two others there. Expensive road bikes, though they were shabby and rusting in places like they’d been abandoned a long time ago.
Annie hammered the pedals as hard as she could. King’s Cross was three miles away. Not far. It would take her about twenty-five minutes. She wanted to be there and back before dark. Straight down High Street, then right, left, right. Easy.
She squeezed her brakes hard as soon as she got out onto High Street. The footpath was busy with people wandering aimlessly and the street was clogged up with cars, still abandoned. She took a deep breath and moved into the road. She had assumed it would be easier to cycle without the risk of being hit by a bus, but with so many vehicles to dodge, it was more challenging than she expected.
And she felt strangely vulnerable. She hadn’t thought about it before, but with motor vehicles stricken, her bike was now one hell of a commodity.
She stood and pedalled as hard as she could even though the muscles above her knees were already stiff and aching. She had given up trying to tell herself that it wasn’t an EMP.
This is stupid. Of course the trains aren’t running.
But she kept going. She had done a loop from the flat to the station and then to the supermarket earlier that day. She wanted to see more; to exhaust herself and silence the cruel voice in her head that hadn’t stopped since she realised what was happening. She focused on the road; on weaving in and out around cars and buses. The footpaths were full of people wandering around looking lost and helpless.
Soon, her mind was taken off her own worries by the sheer madness all around her. What was it going to be like tomorrow? Next week? There were people everywhere.
Where are the police? Why hasn’t anyone taken control of the situation yet? She hadn’t expected it to be immediate, but it was almost a day since everything stopped working.
And even as she thought this, she realised it was asking a lot. The police probably had folders and folders of emergency procedures with fall back technology. And it had probably all just been rendered useless. It would take far longer than twenty-four hours to rebuild even a primitive electronic infrastructure if everything had been destroyed.
The damage near her flat had actually been mild compared to what she was seeing now. The burnt out wrecks of cars smouldered away in the middle of the streets, some hazardously close to petrol stations.
She was panting from the exertion now. Her shoulders were starting to ache from the cheap, poorly padded backpack dragging on them—and that was after she had taken out most of what she had packed. She forced herself to go harder even though she was already pumping sweat.
It was chaos and it only got worse. She followed the road around a corner and found herself in what felt like a scene from a war movie. There were huge tower blocks on either side of the street and there were people everywhere, smashing at cars with hammers and bits of metal; leaning out of windows and howling at each other. One group of teenagers was taking the wheels off cars and stacking them all into a big pile in the middle of the road. Her stomach churned with fear as she raced past them.
The destruction was unbelievable. If someone had described it to her she would have assumed they were exaggerating. It was out of control. There were hundreds of people taking their anger and frustration out on everything around them. She had to keep reminding herself that it hadn’t even been a full day.
She wasn’t prepared for this, she realised with a jolt of horror. By now she knew beyond all doubt that this was the result of an EMP; that Britain wouldn’t be coming back from this any time soon. She also knew that a cheap backpack of soda water and energy bars wasn’t going to cut it.
She pedalled on in a daze, avoiding the eyes of the trickle of people walking towards her. She didn’t need to see their fear and horror when she was fighting her own.
They’re getting out, she realised, just as something whizzed over the top of her head. It was only when she heard glass shatter and snapped her head around that she realised what it was.
The glass had broken on the asphalt and sent a rope of iridescent flames gliding along the surface and melting the tyres of the closest cars, before igniting them. It would have been a beautiful sight if it wasn’t so bloody frightening.
Someone had thrown a petrol bomb into the street.
Her hands shook and she had to work hard to stop herself from screaming. The weird thing was no-one else reacted; like it was perfectly normal. She looked up to try and see where it had come from, before thinking better of it. Now wasn’t a good time to stop. She darted onto a side street. Anything to avoid the carnage on the wide main road, even though she now had no idea where she was. There was no safety in numbers anymore.
Why is no-one stopping this?
At least there were fewer cars to avoid. She picked up speed, not making eye contact with any of the people she passed. The main road arched around towards the station, so she tried to follow the same course through the back streets and keep her journey time to a minimum. She turned onto one street where all the windows had been shattered—not just in shops but in houses too.
She emerged onto the main road unexpectedly and stopped to look around and get her bearings—she didn’t often come this way and she didn’t know the streets as well as in other areas. She soon realised her mistake. It was worse here. Far worse. Stricken cars had been piled up into giant forts. She had no idea how the hell they’d managed that—or why they’d bothered. The doors had been torn off. Smoke plumed from an office building across the streets and flames occasionally darted up from the room accompanied by thick black smoke.
She shook her head. It hadn’t even been a day. She was beginning to wonder if she’d fallen asleep for a week. None of this made sense.
She pedalled on in horror. Now she wasn’t even thinking about the trains—of course they weren’t going. She was trying to remember what shops were around the station. She’d need a better knife, for starters. And a sleeping bag. And a decent pack if she was to keep any kind of speed at all.
You idiot. You bloody idiot. You could have got all that stuff earlier if you’d actually thought about it.
It was hard to take her eyes off the carnage. It was unbelievable. She’d never seen anything like it in her life—not even on TV. How could she have anticipated this? She might have laughed if it wasn’t so frightening: all those business continuity plans she had helped create had involved key workers making their way on foot to the backup work site. No-one was worried about work anymore when survival was no longer a sure thing.
She zigzagged along the footpath, jumping off here and there whenever there was a gap in the cars on the road; avoiding countless piles of broken glass.