Flare Read online

  By the time we reached the barn I was gripping the dashboard with both hands, teeth clenched to keep from screaming. Jerry parked the car on the far side of the large wooden structure from the road, then came round to my side and helped me out, half-carrying me to the smaller of the two doors.

  He shone his torch at the lock and grunted. It was secured with a hasp and padlock, and there was little chance we’d get it open without damaging the lock beyond repair.

  Jerry left me leaning against the wall while he checked the other entrance, a pair of huge double doors that were easily big enough for a large tractor to drive through when open.

  He was back in moments. “There’s no way we’re getting through that one”, he said, then headed off towards the car, returning in less than a minute with a small crowbar.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” I asked as he put the curved end in the loop of the padlock and began to put his weight on it.

  “I packed everything I could think of that I might need”, he replied as he pushed down harder. The lock came free with a crack, shockingly loud in the night air as a piece of metal shot off into the dark.

  He pulled the door open and stuck his head inside, playing his torch around before helping me through the door.

  “Looks like it’s used to store machinery, mostly”, he said as he led me towards several bales of hay sitting in a corner well away from the door. We passed an old tractor, half stripped down with pieces of engine lying neatly on a dirty white sheet, then a huge plough with rusted teeth and a long towing bar that almost took out my good ankle in the dark.

  I reached the hay and sank into it with relief, while Jerry disappeared back out to the car to get some camping gear, taking the torch with him and leaving me in the dark.

  The barn smelled of machine oil, hay and damp, and once the light was gone my ears immediately homed in on a rustling sound that I could only assume was rats, going about their night-time business with little care that we had interrupted them.

  The bobbing light of the torch came back through the door, held in Jerry’s teeth as he brought in armloads of bedding and a small lamp that he gave to me with an instruction to wind it.

  I stared at it for a moment, then saw the small winding-handle on one side and realised that it must be dynamo powered.

  I cranked it for a couple of minutes, then flicked a switch on the side and a soft light bathed the area, dim but good enough to see by once we were used to it.

  Jerry laid two thin foam mats on top of hay bales, then two sleeping bags, his new and shiny and mine old and tattered but comfortable-looking.

  “We should have a look at your ankle”, he said once he was done, “if it’s broken we need to find you some help”.

  I nodded, knowing he was right, and leaned down to undo my laces. Every little movement was agony, jagged shards of pain racing through my foot, ankle and lower leg, and I could feel the swelling scraping against the trainer as I gently eased it off.

  When I got to the sock Jerry had to help, and as he peeled it back he drew in his breath sharply.

  I looked down and in the beam of the torch I saw that my ankle was at least twice its normal size and heavily bruised, the puffy flesh an ugly purple colour.

  “That’s a little beyond my first aid skills”, he said with a grimace. “Do you think it’s broken?”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. It hurts like hell, but it might be a sprain or even a dislocation. I reckon the best bet is to strap it up and see what happens”.

  I pointed to the first aid kit he’d brought in with the bedding.

  “Have you got any icepacks in there?”

  He rummaged through and came up with a break and shake icepack and a length of crepe bandage, doing his best to strap my ankle before activating the icepack and placing it on the swelling.

  That done, I lay back and covered myself with the sleeping bag, leaving my ankle out and the bag unzipped so that I could keep it iced. I promised myself I would stay awake as Jerry went out to the car again, but I must have dozed because when I next looked over, he was back and pulling a pair of boil in the bag ration packs out of a mess tin that sat on a tiny burner, the flame giving off almost no heat or light from this distance, and precious little smoke either.

  “Do you want pasta in spicy tomato sauce or beef and dumplings?” He asked as he placed the bags on tin plates.

  “Pasta, I’ve tried the army’s excuse for beef before”.

  He passed me one of the plates and a fork while he tucked into the contents of the other bag, not even bothering to empty it onto the plate.

  I followed suit, pulling myself carefully into a sitting position with my back resting against another hay bale while I ate.

  “Is it going to be like this everywhere?” I asked when I was finished, putting the plate to one side and lying back.

  Jerry looked up from scraping the last of the so-called beef from the inside of the bag and nodded.

  “Yes, I would think so. Probably much worse on the day-side. If my instruments were working I’d be able to tell you just how bad it was, but as they have extremely sensitive components, I rather suspect that they’re junk now”.

  I nodded slowly as I took in what he was saying, pushing away the tiredness as I put together the pieces of what he’d been saying since I’d met him on the hilltop.

  One of the reasons I’d become a journalist was my need to know why, coupled with my inability to leave anything alone until I was satisfied that I knew everything about it. I’d been like it since I was little, forever taking things apart, both literally and figuratively, until my parents came close to tearing their hair out. I alternated between spending long hours in the public library, often being the last one to leave, to coming home with unspeakable things in jars for ‘projects’ that my mum would throw out the moment she found them.

  “How many people, apart from you, are capable of having come up with the same algorithms you did?” I asked.

  Jerry shrugged and lit a cigarette, then offered me the packet. I took one and lit it, then leaned back again, careful not to let hot ash drop on the tinder-dry hay.

  “Hundreds of people could have come up with them, but I suspect you’re asking how many people in my field of study may have known that this was going to be a bad flare, am I right?”

  I nodded, impressed that he’d seen where I was going from the first question.

  “Ok, so how many might have known?”

  “Apart from me, maybe four or five people in the UK, across the world perhaps a few dozen”.

  “And did you talk to any of the ones in the UK when you started to get your suspicions?”

  He shook his head wearily. “No. I tried, but none of them were available. It’s almost as if they were told not to talk to me”.

  I almost passed the last comment off as being Jerry’s innate paranoia, but then something occurred to me.

  “Jerry, how many of those people work for the government?”

  “None of them, directly, but they all consult for them just like I used to before I lost my job”. He glanced down at the ground as he said it, the wound still as fresh as it always would be. It must be hard to go from being a well-respected astrophysicist to a crackpot conspiracy theorist overnight, but that was exactly what had happened to Jerry.

  “So they all consult for the government. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the only other people who might have seen it coming disappeared shortly before it hit?”

  He nodded. “That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier. They would have been watching, all the space-capable governments would have been, although only us, the Americans and the Russians would have any chance of being able to predict the severity of a flare”.

  The ramifications of what he was saying were staggering. If the government had known that a flare this bad was going to strike but not warned anyone, it was nothing short of criminal. How many lives could have been saved if flights had been grounded and the nati
onal grid switched off, if such a thing were possible?

  “How much warning would they have had?” I was angry now, the burning houses in Brighton and the wreckage of the plane across the motorway playing in my mind’s eye like a horror movie.

  “Uh, fourteen, sixteen hours maybe. They’d know there was going to be a flare long before that, but you can only really be certain of the strength once it leaves the sun”.

  I finished my cigarette and stubbed it carefully on the concrete floor.

  “I thought you predicted it earlier than that?”

  He nodded. “I did, but I was still wrong, it was far worse than I thought. Maybe they realised how bad it was going to be and decided to wait it out in a bunker somewhere, then come back out and pick up the pieces once it’s over?”

  “Do you think there’ll be much left by the time they do?”

  He shrugged again. “Maybe, who knows? If they’ve had any time at all to plan for this, then they might have a work force that can get the infrastructure back up and running quicker than I thought. It might not be so bad after all”.

  “Well that’s a matter of opinion”.

  The voice came out of the darkness by the door, making us both jump. Jerry spun, scattering the plate and now cold stove across the floor with a loud ringing sound, while I all but pitched backwards off the hay bale.

  “Who’s there?” Jerry called nervously, “show yourself”.

  A figure emerged from the darkness, little more than a silhouette at the edge of the lamp light. It was hard to make out details at first, but the figure gradually resolved into the form of a man dressed in outdoor gear complete with a loadbearing vest, a cap, and a very large, very dangerous looking shotgun, both barrels of which were pointed directly at my chest.

  Chapter 9

  “What I’d like to know”, the man said, his voice low and dangerous, “is what makes you think that it’s ok to break into my barn, and why I shouldn’t just shoot you on the spot and have done with it?”

  “Uh, look, about the lock”, Jerry began, but the man spoke over him as if he hadn’t uttered a word.

  “It’s not like the police’ll be interested, not if what you’re saying is right. I could say that I caught you breaking in and I shot you in self-defence. I doubt they’d worry overmuch, and that’s if they ever even found you”.

  I’d never come so close to losing control of my bladder. As the man stepped into the pool of light from the lamp, I realised that he was older than I had first though, somewhere close to seventy. His hands, I noticed however, didn’t so much as tremble as he kept the barrels aimed at my chest. He had pure white hair sticking out above his ears and disappearing up under the cap, and several days-worth of stubble beneath eyes that were cold enough to belong to a serial killer.

  I raised my hands slowly, terrified that each movement might be my last.

  “Look, sir, I’m really sorry about the lock”, I began, leaving a pause to make sure he was listening, then hurrying on when he tilted his head. “I’m injured, and we had to find somewhere safe, somewhere away from the towns. It’s crazy out there, everything has gone to hell”.

  My arms began to shake from the strain of holding them so high, and Jerry looked like a rabbit caught in a set of headlights, his back stiff and eyes ludicrously wide.

  “Please, sir, we’ll pay you for the lock, and for your trouble”.

  The man spat on the floor, never once taking his eyes from mine.

  “And what good is money now, eh? And how do I know you two ain’t looters or worse? You might be escaped murderers for all I know, on the run from the law now the ‘lectric’s gone off. Might be I’m better off putting you two in the ground and cutting my losses instead of leaving you at my back, eh?”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. There were a million things that might have made a difference, but all I could do was stare at the shotgun, waiting for the blast that would end my life.

  “Come on Ralph, you’ve had your fun. You can see he’s injured, the poor boy, so stop playing the fool and give them a hand, why don’t you?”

  The voice came from behind the old man, and he turned his head while keeping the shotgun pointed at me.

  “I told you to stay in the house, woman!” He roared angrily, “this is no place for you, not on a night like this, what if they’d been criminals, eh? They would have had their way with you after they’d finished with me!”

  A woman easily as old as Ralph moved into the lamplight, her white hair up in curlers but the rest of her covered in practical clothes almost identical to the man’s. She seemed completely unfazed by his anger, instead moving closer to get a better view through the glasses that she raised from the chain around her neck.

  “I should be so lucky”, she said with a smile in our direction, “the last time anyone wanted to have their way with me was, well, when was it Ralph?”

  Even in the dim light I saw him go red from collar to cap as she continued to move closer.

  “You’ll have to forgive my husband”, she said, “he’s a little overprotective at times. And he’s been looking for someone else to shoot since that poacher back in 1967, not that he’d hurt a fly, normally, despite his manners”.

  She shot him a look which he ignored, stepping closer to us and keeping the shotgun trained on me.

  “Careful Harriet”, he said with a frown, “that one on the hay looks shifty, don’t get too close”.

  “I can assure you I’m anything but shifty”, I said, my voice several octaves higher than usual, “my name’s Malcolm King, and I’m a journalist. I live in Brighton and I’m trying to get to Manchester to get my daughter. I was on the phone to her when the flare hit and Jerry promised to drive me. He’s an astrophysicist and his car works…” I realised I was babbling and clamped my mouth shut. The woman still had a smile on her face but I couldn’t take my eyes off the shotgun and the frown just behind it, wondering if these would be my last few seconds on earth.

  Ralph spat on the floor again.

  “Journalist, eh? Said you looked shifty. So what was that you were saying about a flare? I thought this was just a power cut. We get enough of ‘em around here”.

  “That’s what happened”, I said, looking to Jerry for some support but seeing that he was rooted to the spot, unable to move, “a solar flare. The sun let off a burst of energy and it fried everything electronic. You must have noticed?”

  The old man shrugged. “Like I said, we get four, maybe five power cuts a year, don’t affect us much living out here so didn’t pay it much thought. How bad is it?”

  “Bad”, I said, my biceps beginning to shake as if I was palsied, “from what we can tell everything has stopped working, even the cars”.

  “Yours works ok, saw it driving up”. The accusation in his tone was enough to set my heart racing again. All it would take was a twitch of his finger and I’d be nothing but a dim memory and a red smear on the wall.

  “It’s Jerry’s”, I said frantically, “mine stopped working the same as all the other newer ones, but his is old and it doesn’t rely on computers like mine does”.

  His eyes narrowed, and then widened as Harriet walked calmly between me and the shotgun, blocking his view. He immediately raised the weapon, pointing it safely at the ceiling.

  “God damn it woman!” He yelled, loud enough to wake the dead. “Don’t you know anything? Get out of my way!”

  The smile finally dropped from her face and she turned towards him, raising an eyebrow. She said nothing, just looked at him for several long seconds, then turned back to me and smiled again.

  “What did you do to your foot?” She asked, walking up to me and placing a hand on one of my arms to gently lower it.

  “We saw a truck”, I said, rubbing my arms to restore the circulation, “and I thought the driver was injured so we tried to get him out. Turns out he was bigger than me and Jerry put together and dead with it, and he fell on me”.

  Just thinking about being buried
under all that dead flesh brought the memory back sharp and clear enough that I could feel the panic rising in my chest again. I took several deep breaths and pushed it away as she sat next to me and without asking took my bandaged foot, placing it carefully in her lap as she unwrapped it.

  “Who put this bandage on?”

  Jerry finally found his voice.

  “I did”.

  “Well it was nice of you to try and help your friend but it’s a good job I came along when I did. It was on so tight the circulation was being cut off. Another couple of hours and it would have caused permanent damage. What do they teach you nowadays?”

  “I’m an astrophysicist, not a nurse!”

  “Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know how to tie a bandage. My Emily could tie one better than this by the time she was five”. She looked up at her husband, who still pointed the shotgun at the roof but glared at us as if he’d rather have it shoved in our faces.

  “Ralph, we need to get this boy to the cottage so I can look at his ankle properly. I think it’s just a bad sprain but it might be broken. How about you take him in the car and I’ll have young Jerry walk me back?”

  Ralph growled, squinted and spat, but to my relief did as he was told, helping Jerry to gather our equipment and stow it in the car while Harriet, surprisingly strong for her age, helped me out to the car.

  “Thank you”, I said with feeling as she guided me out into the night, “I really appreciate this. I’m sorry about the lock on the barn, and of course we’ll pay for it”.

  “Oh shush”, she said, as if I were apologising for smashing a glass, not for breaking into their barn, “it’s not even ours anyway. We’re caretakers, of a sort, and the farm isn’t producing at the moment anyway, so there’s no one breathing down our necks about repairs and such”.

  I was about to ask her what she meant when Jerry took me off her hands, easing me into the passenger seat while Ralph sat on the driver’s side, the shotgun next to his door where I couldn’t reach it.

  As he drove away slowly, following a track that led away from the barn and across the field, I glanced back to see Jerry awkwardly offer his arm to the old woman as they followed.