Flare Page 2

  I shook my head. “I don’t buy it. They’ve known about the risk of big flares for a long time, they must have put some money into protecting the grid”.

  Jerry barked a laugh. “For a journalist, you can be very naïve. The energy companies pay all those billions they make out to their shareholders, and keep the rest for themselves. What little money goes back into the system just replaces parts that are worn out or goes on research for cheaper ways to make the money they already charge. To protect the grid against something as big as a major flare properly would cost billions, and who’s going to pay that kind of money out for something that might never happen?”

  “So what happens if the grid does overload?” As much as I didn’t want to believe him, for once Jerry was making a kind of sense. I could well imagine how bad things might get if the grid went down over the winter. Thousands, perhaps millions of people would die as food, fuel and water delivery ground to a halt, with too few people in the modern world having any idea how to live off the land.

  “Well the flare will work like an Electromagnetic Pulse”, Jerry said, waving his cigarette to emphasise his point, “and that will knock out pretty much anything with a chip in it. The grid will stop regulating itself when the chips in its circuits fry, but the power stations will carry on pumping out electricity, only there’ll be a backwash and the transformers will blow. In order to get it all up and running again they’ll have to replace every single transformer in every single substation in the country. And that’s not even the worst of it”.

  I opened my mouth to ask the inevitable question, but as I did the sky lit up again, the same blues, greens and reds as earlier but so vibrant that it looked as if a team of giants were standing behind the sky with laser pointers, each trying to outdo the other.

  “What the…” I looked at Jerry but he had crouched by his display again, his fingers flashing over keys and dials as the printer continued to churn out reams of paper.

  “If you’ve got anyone to call, I’d do it now”, he called over his shoulder, “I think the cell towers are about to go down”.

  There was only one person in the world I wanted to call, and if Jerry was wrong she’d be grumpy with me but I could live with that. Pulling out my phone, I hit speed-dial and after a moment it began to ring.

  I was about to give up when Melody’s sleepy voice answered the phone.

  “Dad, do you know what time it is?” The line hissed and crackled as she spoke.

  “I know sweetheart, I’m sorry. Listen to me though, and listen carefully. There’s a very good chance that the electricity will stop working for a while all over the country, and if it does then I’m going to drive up and find you, ok?”

  “What, all the electricity?”

  “Yes love, all of it”.

  “Then how will I charge my phone?” She asked, still half asleep.

  “The phones won’t work either, so if it does happen, you need to tell your mum that I’m coming and make sure that she keeps you safe. Can you do that?”

  “…Dad, you’re scaring…” The line began to fizz, small popping sounds making her voice almost unreadable.

  “Melody, tell your mum to keep you safe, I’m coming, ok?”

  “Dad, I ca… hear y… I’m scare…”

  “Melody, it’s ok, you’ll be fine. Just make sure you tell your mum. Maybe get her to take you to nan and grandpa’s, eh?”

  They lived in the suburbs just outside the city, and still had the wartime mentality of stockpiling food ‘just in case’ that had been drummed into them by their own parents. I figured they had a far better chance of survival than Angie’s ‘get a takeaway on the way home’ way of thinking.

  “…the sky! Dad, it’s…” The line gave a final pop and went dead. The phone felt hot against my ear and I pulled it away to see that the screen was totally blank, the battery pack hot enough to burn my hand.

  “Shit. Jerry, I need to leave, now”. I dropped my phone on the ground, too hot to hold anymore, and looked around to see him frantically unplugging his equipment, pulling out the batteries and placing them in his bag.

  “Jerry”, I called again, “I’m going, now”.

  I thought for a moment that he hadn’t heard me, but as I turned he looked up at me.

  “Malc, wait!”

  I stopped, every fibre of my being telling me to get into the car and drive to Manchester now, but there was a note of pure panic in Jerry’s voice that rooted my feet to the ground.

  He pointed south, and as I followed his finger I saw something that would have frozen me to the spot if I wasn’t already.

  All across the city and the fields below us, I could see electricity pylons, their metal frames spitting fat blue sparks that crawled out from the substations and on towards the homes they connected to like jagged spiders of pure electricity, scuttling towards the unsuspecting city.

  “Oh my god”, I muttered, unable to do more than stare in horror, hoping, praying that the discharge would ground itself before it reached the homes and businesses laid out below us. Only it didn’t.

  And then the world caught fire.

  Chapter 4

  The city went dark below us, whole streets winking out into darkness in a split second until not a single electric light shone anywhere that I could see.

  At the same time, the electrical charges struck in too many places to count. For a few seconds I thought that they had all grounded safely, losing their charge before doing any damage, but then a roiling explosion lit the night sky, a huge gout of flame and dirty smoke shooting up into the air somewhere in the heart of Brighton.

  Other, smaller fires began to follow, and I watched, helpless, as flames began to spread. The rolling boom of the first explosion hit us, but other than that it was eerily silent up on the hill, nothing but the wind blowing in gently from the sea, bringing with it the tang of salt air even up here on the downs.

  I kept expecting to see blue lights, maybe hear the faint echo of sirens as the fire service and ambulances raced to save lives in the carnage below, but the streets stayed quiet and dark, not counting the hundred or so small fires that dotted the landscape from one side of the city to the other.

  I turned and looked at Jerry, his face a mask of horror that mirrored my own.

  “Jerry, how could this happen?” I asked, still not quite believing my own eyes.

  Another explosion lit the night, this one much closer, somewhere in Shoreham. The sound hit us much faster this time, a sharp retort that echoed around the hills before fading into silence once more.

  “I told you, Malc, I tried to tell everyone but no one would listen”.

  There were tears in his eyes, I could see them glistening in the faint light from the moon.

  “But it’s night time”, I continued, as if using logic would turn back the clock and stop it all from happening, “how can a flare hit at night?”

  “You’re thinking of it as a beam, like a laser”, he said, reaching into his rucksack and rooting around for something within. “Think of it more like water or a cloud of gas. If you spray water at a ball bearing, or pump gas at it, it doesn’t just hit one side. Sure, the worst of it will hit the surface facing the spray, but it envelops the ball bearing. And it’s not just energy from the flare. There was a coronal mass ejection too, what we call a CME, superheated plasma spat out from the sun. If you think this is bad, try and imagine what it’s like on the other side of the world. It could be that the only reason we’re still alive is because we’re on the opposite side to the sun”.

  I turned back to the city, unable to look away as the flames began to spread. The fires, small pinpricks of wavering light from this distance, were too many to count, and I shuddered as I thought of the hundreds of unsuspecting people waking from their beds to find their world reduced to flame, fear and darkness.

  “There must be something we can do, we have to help”, I said, but my feet didn’t move. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the scene below.

&n
bsp; “What, exactly?” Jerry asked savagely. “Maybe if someone had listened to me then everyone could have been evacuated from the cities, or they could have shut the power off in their houses. All we can do now is stay out of the way and wait for the fires to go out”.

  I shook my head. “No, I can’t just stand by and not do anything”.

  Shoreham was burning now, the town below us glowing brighter as more and more fires spread with no one to douse the flames. The wind picked up, bringing with it a faint scream and the sound of shattering glass.

  The noise galvanized me into action, unsticking my feet and pushing me towards the car.

  “I can’t just stand here, Jerry”, I said as I began to run, “I’m going to do what I can”.

  I didn’t wait for an answer, but jumped in the car and turned the key in the ignition.

  Nothing happened. I turned it again, but not so much as a flicker came from the engine or any of the other systems.

  “It won’t work”, Jerry’s voice came from just outside the car, making me jump. “It’s less than a year old so it’s full of computers and they’ll all be fried. Come on, we’ll use mine”.

  I got out of the car and pocketed the keys without thinking, then followed Jerry to his old banger. He opened the rear door and loaded some of the equipment I’d seen in the field into the back seat.

  “What made you change your mind?” I asked as he made his way to the front of the car.

  “You’re right”, he said over his shoulder as he levered up the bonnet, “I can’t just stand up here and watch”.

  Turning to one side so that I could see what he was doing, he held up the battery leads and reconnected them to the battery before closing the bonnet and waving me into the passenger seat.

  He turned the key in the ignition and the car sputtered into life.

  “One of the joys of being skint”, he said as he turned on the headlights and made his way carefully down the rutted track towards the town, “my car is old enough that the only electronics are the ignition and the radio, and the ignition has no live parts to speak of”.

  I didn’t reply, too dazed by what was happening to be able to make small-talk. My mind’s eye kept replaying the moment the electrical surge had hit the city, seeing first the large explosion, then the dozens of smaller fires that had sprung up in its wake.

  Then there was Melody. Getting to her had seemed risky but doable when I’d thought about driving up, but without a working car it would take me days, maybe even weeks to reach her.

  “Jerry”, I said, breaking the silence, “what are you planning to do now?”

  He glanced over at me. “Well, like you said, there are people down there who need help”.

  I shook my head. “No, not right this second now, I mean after”.

  He shrugged uncertainly. “I didn’t really think that far ahead, not properly. The boot is loaded up with supplies, camping gear and the like. I was intending to find somewhere out of the way and ride out the worst of it in the hills, I guess”.

  I paused for a second, wanting to ask but dreading the answer if he said no.

  “My daughter is in Manchester”, I began, then forged on as I saw him shake his head, “and her mother is probably the worst person to be looking after her in a crisis. Please Jerry, can you drive me up there? Please?”

  My eyes searched his face as he drove, looking for anything that might give away what he was thinking as he sucked his teeth and shook his head.

  “I don’t know, it’s a long way Malc. I’ve got a spare can of diesel in the back but I don’t know if it’ll be enough to get us all the way up there, and the petrol stations won’t be pumping anymore, those that didn’t go up in flames”.

  “Then we can syphon some on the way”, I said eagerly. “Think about it Jerry, there’ll be thousands of cars as new as mine that won’t work, just sitting there useless. I’m sure the owners won’t mind if we trade something for the fuel”.

  Jerry finally looked at me, his expression somewhere between sympathy and anger.

  “And what have you got to trade, Malc? Everything in the car is mine, and money won’t be much good, will it?”

  He was right, but my concern for Melody was overriding my usual habit of trying to avoid confrontation.

  “I promise you Jerry, I’ll pay you back somehow. Even if it takes me the rest of my life. This is my daughter we’re talking about, my flesh and blood. I’ll walk if I have to but the longer it takes me to get to her the more chance there is of…”

  I couldn’t finish past the lump in my throat. Just the thought of anything happening to Melody was enough to reduce me to tears. I looked out of the passenger window as we pulled out onto the tarmac road at the bottom of the hill and fought to compose myself.

  “Ok Malc, ok”, Jerry said quietly, “I’ll take you as far as I can. I suppose one place is as good as another to camp after I’ve dropped you off”.

  I squeezed his shoulder, feeling on the verge of tears again, this time of gratitude as the gut clenching fear faded to a quiet, unsettling murmur.

  “Thank you Jerry, I don’t know what I would have done if you’d said no”.

  Jerry didn’t answer, instead slowing the car and peering out through the windscreen with wide eyes.

  I looked up, only now realising that the light had been gradually increasing as we approached the town. In my mind, I think I’d dismissed the glow as approaching streetlights, only there weren’t any streetlights left working.

  Pulling the car to a halt, Jerry opened his door and got out. I followed suit, and the moment I stepped out of the vehicle I could hear the roar and crackle of flames, mixed with the shouts, screams and cries of people trapped in their homes or standing outside them watching their lives burn.

  I could smell the fires now, the sharp acrid stink of burning wood, plastic and rubber catching in the back of my throat as the flames leapt and writhed, turning the scene into a hellish contrast of light and shadow.

  In front of us, a whole row of houses was aflame, while fewer than a dozen people stood watching, most of them in night clothes with bemused expressions on their faces, many gripping their now-useless mobile phones as if they would suddenly start working again.

  “What should we do?” Jerry asked uncertainly, “there’s no water, no way of getting help and the back seats of the car are full of kit so we can’t take anyone with us”.

  He turned to me with an anguished expression.

  “How do we help them?”

  I ducked instinctively as the upper windows of a nearby house exploded outwards, filthy black smoke rolling out in clouds as the fire raged out of control.

  “You were right”, I said quietly, seeing the futility but hating myself for what I was about to say, “we can’t help anyone. Except ourselves, anyway. Let’s go, there’s nothing we can do”.

  We stood there for a few moments longer, perhaps hoping that inspiration would strike and we’d see a way to help, but eventually we climbed back in the car and Jerry started the engine, pulling away without another word.

  I’m not sure what was eating me more as we left the ravaged city behind, the fact that we hadn’t even tried to risk ourselves to help anyone, or my secret relief that we didn’t have to.

  Chapter 5

  The roads were clear of other moving vehicles, although there were enough abandoned ones dotted around to make Jerry grip the wheel with whitened knuckles as they loomed out of the darkness.

  He took us along the A27, the main Brighton bypass, then joined the A23 heading up towards London. As we merged with the larger road, we began to pass people walking back towards the coast on the hard shoulder, a few of them trying to wave us down.

  “I’m not stopping”, Jerry said after one man all but leapt in front of the car in an effort to stop us. I nodded in agreement. Despite my earlier desire to help, there was nothing we could do but perhaps give out some of Jerry’s stock of food and water, and we would need that to get to Manchester.<
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  The miles rolled past in silence, neither of us having much to say. Jerry was concentrating on avoiding the abandoned vehicles, some of which had crashed when they’d lost power, and I was still trying to come to terms with what had happened.

  I wondered if my house had survived, or if I would return to find it a charred and smoking ruin, or broken into and looted.

  Not that many of my worldly goods would be worth anything now. I listed them in my head as I realised just how dependent I was on technology that was now largely useless. Laptop, TV, phone, Kindle, playstation, tablet, ipod. The list went on, and even when they restored the electricity it would still all be fried, little more than expensive-looking paperweights.

  It was hard to believe that one brief flare from the sun, our life-giver, had brought the modern world to its knees, but one look out of the window at the dark, abandoned cars that we were passing more and more frequently was enough to assure me that it very much had.

  “How did you know?” I asked, startling myself as much as Jerry as the question popped out of my subconscious.

  “Know what?” Jerry swerved and cursed as someone leapt out from the hard shoulder, arms waving frantically.

  “That the flare would be so bad”, I replied, watching the forlorn figure disappear in the mirror. “And why were you the only one?”

  “Before I, uh, left the university, I was one of the country’s leading experts on the sun, and flares in particular”, he said, “and I was working on a series of algorithms that would not only predict when and where a flare would hit, but also how strong it would be”.

  He slowed the car a little, making an obvious effort to try and relax his death-grip on the wheel.

  “I finally figured it out a few days ago”, he continued, “which turned out to be about six months too late. I tried to contact the government, but the best I could get was some smarmy little shit who was undersecretary to the undersecretary of sweet F.A. He told me that I didn’t need to worry, and that their experts had told them that the flare was going to be a small one, and would most likely just skim the atmosphere. Idiots”.