Flare Page 6

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that, and it was only when I started working out what I was going to say to Jerry to convince him to do it that I realised I’d already made the decision to help.

  “Ok, sure”, I said, “but I can’t force Jerry to go if he doesn’t want to”.

  Ralph smiled, and there was nothing of humour in it.

  “Oh don’t worry”, he said as he led me back to the house, “I’m not entirely daft. He’ll be staying here to look after Harriet, while you and I go and find Emily. Means that we won’t be sat there for days waiting for you to come back, not knowing, while you change your minds and head off up north”.

  My heart sank. Although he was making sense I couldn’t pretend to like the idea, and I was pretty sure that when I tried to explain it to Jerry he’d like it even less than I did.

  Chapter 12

  “Are you mad or just stupid?” Jerry demanded, pacing up and down the yard in agitation while he waved a lit cigarette around as if conducting an orchestra.

  “I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that”, I said mildly, “it’ll take us maybe an hour to get there and back, and then you and I can be on our way”.

  “And you expect me to let you go haring off with an old man who came inches from putting holes in both of us last night? In my car?”

  I sighed and leaned against the wooden rail fence that hemmed in this side of the yard.

  “Look, I know it’s a big ask, but he’s trying to find his daughter and I can’t blame him. And we owe them, Jerry”.

  “No”, he shook his head, “you owe them. I’m just here because I was too stupid to say no when you asked me to drive you halfway across the bloody country, when I should be keeping my head down and waiting for this to blow over!”

  “So they didn’t feed you and give you somewhere to sleep last night?” I knew that arguing with him wasn’t the right way to get him to agree, but he was pushing my buttons.

  “Yes, they did, but they wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t been driving you up north”.

  He sucked hard on the cigarette and then used the stub to light a new one.

  I sighed and rubbed at my eyes.

  “Please, Jerry. I know I’m asking a lot, really I do, and I’ll find a way to make it up to you, I swear”.

  He began to shake his head, then suddenly the fight went out of him and he shrugged.

  “Fine, why the hell not? It’s you who wants to get up to Manchester so badly, I don’t know why I’m complaining about getting some extra rest and another cooked meal. Just bring my car back in one piece!”

  “Thank you. I’ll treat it like it was my own”.

  “As long as that doesn’t mean ditching it on a hill somewhere, I’ll hold you to that”.

  I reached out and squeezed his arm.

  “I really do appreciate what you’re doing for me, you know”, I said as he walked and I hobbled back to the cottage. “Most people would have left me to fend for myself by now”.

  He shook his head. “Not the decent ones. I can’t pretend to be happy about this, but I said I’d help you get up north and if that means taking a detour to fetch their daughter then so be it. I’m going to empty the car though, just in case. You’ll have a bit more room for her stuff then, if you do find her”.

  He unlocked the car and began pulling kit out of the boot, gesturing for me to help. Within a few minutes, all his gear was piled by the cottage door, and I looked at the heap in surprise, wondering how he’d managed to fit so much into such a small car.

  Ralph helped us cart it all into the lounge while Harriet prepared a huge lunchbox in the kitchen, presumably to keep us fed while we were out.

  I hoped we wouldn’t be gone long enough to need it, but nothing I had seen since the flare had struck told me it wasn’t a good idea to be prepared just in case.

  My ankle was aching from overuse, and as Ralph and Jerry continued to ferry things through the kitchen, I began to slow, wincing with each step.

  Finally, Harriet took hold of my arm as I limped through the kitchen and directed me to a chair.

  “Sit there and put your foot up”, she said, not unkindly but with a stern look. “You’ll be no good to anyone if you wear yourself out now”.

  I sat as directed and thanked her as she brought me a bottle of water and some painkillers, wolfing them down and drinking half the bottle in one go. I was more than a little worried that my ankle would make me next to useless in helping Ralph, but he didn’t seem the sort of man to do a thing without thinking it through and I was fairly sure I’d be ok to drive as long as I didn’t overdo it.

  The heat grew as I waited, watching the other two finish piling all of Jerry’s worldly possessions in the lounge, and soon I was pouring sweat as the sun beat through the window.

  “Do you think this heat is something to do with the flare?” I asked Jerry once they’d finished moving everything.

  He sat across the table from me and helped himself to my bottle of water before speaking.

  “Yes and no. It’s nothing to do with the flare itself, but there is a lot of uncommon activity on the sun’s surface at the moment, and the CME has just sprayed us with superheated plasma, so it’s all kind of connected but one is not necessarily a consequence of the other, if that makes sense?”

  I shrugged. “Sort of”.

  He flicked his hair back from his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, as if talking to a particularly dim student.

  “When the plasma hits the atmosphere, it strips away the protective layers that surround the earth. Not permanently, but enough to let a much higher proportion of the radiation from the sun through, which this far down is felt as heat and light. Probably not a good idea to hang around in the sun too long today, just in case. God only knows how much damage it could do your skin”.

  “Now there’s a cheery thought”.

  He nodded. “Isn’t it just? Both the flare and the CME should be over by now, however, so it’s probably ok, but without my equipment working I can’t be sure”.

  I nodded at the lounge door. Several items from the car had been scientific machines of unclear design.

  “Any chance you can get it going again?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on how badly it was damaged, and what sort of power sources I can find to run them. I’ll have a look while you’re gone”.

  Harriet closed the lid on the lunchbox and slid it across the table to me.

  “That should keep you both going”, she said, then turned to Jerry. “We’ve got a diesel generator in the shed. It’s old, but we’ve got plenty of diesel so you should be able to get it going if you need power”.

  Jerry instantly brightened and stood. “That would be great, thank you”.

  “But perhaps we’ll see Ralph and young Malcolm off first, eh?”

  “Oh, yes, of course”. He sat again, looking slightly embarrassed, just as Ralph came back into the room with a green canvas shooting bag slung over one shoulder and a pair of double barrelled shotguns, one of which I recognised from the night before.

  He passed the other to me and I took it uncertainly, just the touch of the smooth wood and metal making my heart thump with the first stirrings of fear.

  “You know how to use it?” He asked, passing me a handful of cartridges.

  “I’ve been clay shooting a few times, never shot at anything breathing though”.

  “Well hopefully you won’t have to; it’s for just in case”.

  I nodded and stood, picking the car keys up from the table. The painkillers were beginning to work now and I could put a little more weight on my foot.

  “Right then”, I said, moving the shotgun to my left hand and reaching out to shake Jerry’s with the other. “We’ll see you soon”.

  “Good luck, and remember to bring my car back in one piece!”

  Harriet crossed the room and gave Ralph a peck on the cheek and a quick hug, then to my surprise she did the same to me.

&
nbsp; “Thank you”, she whispered, squeezing my free hand, “this means a lot”.

  I reddened as Ralph glared at me over her head, and then disentangled myself as graciously as I could.

  “It’s my pleasure”, I said, following the old man out to the car, “we’ll see you in an hour or so and you can pay me back with lunch”.

  Outside, Ralph took the keys and motioned me into the passenger seat.

  “I’ll drive on the way there, I know where it is”, he said by way of explanation as he started the car, “so you better keep that shotgun loaded and pointed in the right direction. I don’t mean to let anyone stop me getting my little girl back, and I expect you to follow my lead no matter what happens. Are we clear?”

  “As crystal”, I said, sliding a pair of cartridges into the breech and snapping it closed, all the while wondering if I’d have the guts to use it, even if my life depended on it.

  Chapter 13

  Ralph drove as if the devil himself were chasing us, speeding along country roads that were little more than a single lane but were supposed to accommodate two-way traffic, hedgerows and small wooded copses flashing past at frightening speed.

  So far we hadn’t encountered any abandoned cars, but I had a very real fear that his ageing reflexes wouldn’t hit the brakes in time if we did, and I was haunted by visions of us ending up parked in the back seat of another car, bleeding out slowly with no one to come to our aid.

  “So”, I said, more to distract myself from the constant threat of imminent death than any real desire for conversation, “Harriet mentioned something last night about the farm not being worked at the moment. What’s all that about?”

  “Government thing. Too many farms producing food means the market gets flooded, so some farmers get paid to let their fields lie fallow. The owner lives in London now, gets paid every year for just having the land while we keep an eye on things. Works pretty well for us, we get the cottage paid for and a bit left over, and in turn he leaves us to it. ‘Sposed to end next year, but I reckon he’d be wise to start getting everything ready now after last night”.

  I nodded in agreement. I’d heard of the deal before, but until I’d seen the sheer number of fallow fields we’d driven through that morning, I hadn’t realised just how wasteful a thing it was. Hundreds of acres of prime farmland were just sitting there, the fields slowly succumbing to nature while the government paid for it to stay that way.

  We’d been on the road for about twenty minutes, passing the occasional house and the odd farm, but other than that we could have been alone in the world. The shotgun was an uncomfortable weight in my lap, and I’d begun to develop a nervous habit of making sure the safety lever behind the barrels was engaged, my thumb rubbing it every few seconds.

  “Where is it that we’re going, exactly?” I asked as Ralph slowed a little to take a blind bend.

  “Place called Milford, just southeast of Guildford. It’s a fair sized village, and a lot of the area’s built up now, so I’m taking the back roads. Don’t want to bump into trouble if we can help it, just want to find Emily and get home safe”.

  I couldn’t argue with that sentiment, and despite my fear of the man the night before I found myself warming to Ralph. He was a simple, uncomplicated man who seemed to know his place in the world and was happy with it, with his family coming before everything else. It was a view I appreciated, and I genuinely hoped that we would find his daughter as easily as he seemed to think we would.

  The sun was climbing high in the sky now and the heat in the car was oppressive. I’d opened my window and Ralph had done the same, but the wind coming into the car seemed as hot as that already inside, bringing with it the smell of dry grass and too-hot engine.

  “Does it seem hotter to you than usual?” I asked, thinking back to what Jerry had said that morning.

  “The whole month has been hotter than usual, but now that you mention it I do think it’s gone up a few degrees today. Bugger”.

  I looked up as he pressed hard on the brakes, bringing the car to a shuddering halt. A silver 4x4 pickup had been abandoned square in the middle of the road, leaving a narrow gap on one side that Ralph aimed for, scraping the passenger side against the steep, stony bank and probably taking some paint off.

  Ralph muttered something too low to hear and picked up speed again, leaving the 4x4 behind in moments. He didn’t drive quite as fast as before, however, and after another twenty minutes we reached a crossroads with a sign showing that Milford was only two miles away.

  Not long after he took the turn we began to see houses, just one or two at first, but then more and more until we were driving along a street, semi-detached properties overlooking the road with large front gardens and driveways.

  Most of the gardens had people in them. Some just milled about, but not a few had barbecues going, presumably to use up the last of the meat from the fridge or freezer before it spoiled.

  Each and every one, however, turned to stare as we drove past, some pressing against their fences to get a better look while others waved at us to stop.

  “Should we stop?” I asked Ralph uncertainly. While none of them had the fevered, desperate look from the airport or the air of violence the youths in Redhill had had, I still wasn’t comfortable being in the position of having the only working car for miles around. Despite the shotguns, it would be far too easy for someone to just take what they wanted, and I gripped the weapon tight as my stomach began to churn.

  “No”, Ralph said, looking back in the mirror, “I don’t reckon they can tell us anything we don’t know already”.

  We drove on in watchful silence, Ralph taking a snaking route through the village as the houses went from semi-detached to terraced, then got smaller and smaller until they seemed to crowd in on each other. I didn’t need Ralph’s warning to know that we were entering a much less salubrious area.

  “Emily lives here?” I asked, keeping a careful eye on a small group of lads who had jumped to their feet at the sound of our engine and were now watching us in turn, their faces unreadable.

  “A few streets over. This is the quickest way”.

  I pointed to half a dozen men sitting in garden chairs in the street, empty beer cans littered around their feet as they watched us pass.

  “I think the long way might have been better”.

  He nodded, his face grim.

  “Think you might be right, but too late now”.

  As I looked up at the houses, I could see faces pressed to the windows, the whole street seemingly watching us pass. Ralph put his foot down, taking the next turn and I sighed with relief as they disappeared from view.

  The street we were on, however, seemed little better. Two lads in their twenties were cycling towards us, bulging backpacks slung over their shoulders and scarves pulled up over their faces despite the heat.

  “No points for guessing what they’ve been doing”, I said as we passed them, their looks changing from challenging stares to open fear as I hefted the shotgun.

  Ralph just shook his head, saying nothing, and took the next turn into a street that seemed tidier, the houses slightly larger and the gardens well looked after.

  “This is it, number 24”, he said, pulling over and looking up and down the street before getting out.

  I followed suit a little more clumsily, trying to keep my weight on my good leg, hold the shotgun and look around to make sure we were safe at the same time.

  There was no one in the street, although I could smell barbecuing meat from not too far away and hear the faint buzz of conversation. Several of the houses, however, looked as though they’d been broken into, doors yawning wide and windows smashed.

  Having decided that we were relatively safe, Ralph marched up to the door of the nearest house and knocked loudly. I followed more cautiously, still looking around to make sure that no one was watching us.

  “Emily, it’s Dad”, he called, face pressed to the glass of the front door, “I’ve come to take you home”.r />
  After a few moments, I saw a shape through the glass as someone approached from the other side, then the door opened on the chain. I couldn’t see past Ralph, but from the smile on his face I knew it had to be Emily.

  The door closed again and then opened hurriedly, a hand beckoning us inside.

  “Get in, quick”, she said from behind the door, “it’s not safe outside”.

  Ralph hurried in and I followed, Emily closing the door behind us. I turned and stuck out my hand to introduce myself, but instead of shaking hands with the dowdy, fifty-something school-teacher type I’d been expecting, I found myself face to face with an attractive woman of athletic build who was several years younger than me, with short brown hair and hazel eyes that looked me up and down challengingly.

  “I don’t mean to be rude”, she said to her father, ignoring my hand, “but who the hell is this?”

  For the first time since I’d met him, Ralph looked uncomfortable.

  “Emily, this is Malcolm, er, Malc, he calls himself. He and his friend Jerry pitched up in our barn last night and your mum decided to take them in against my better judgement. Turns out they’re ok, though, we used Jerry’s car to get here and Malc agreed to come and help”.

  She switched her gaze back to me and I felt like a fly under a microscope. Her eyes dropped to the shotgun, then travelled down to my ankle, the bandages showing above the tongue of my trainer. Finally, she shrugged and held out her hand.

  “Hi, Emily. Sorry to be rude but the last twelve hours have been… difficult. No one knows what’s happening, but there are no police anywhere and some of my neighbours have started helping themselves to anything or anyone who takes their fancy. I’ve been barricaded in my bedroom most of the day, listening to them going from house to house. I’ve got no idea what’s happened”.

  “It was a solar flare”, I said, “my friend Jerry is an astrophysicist, he can explain it properly when we get back. Which we’d better do as soon as we can if things are as bad here as you say”.