Game Changers of the Apocalypse Read online

The Vauxhall was still there, with its familiar Portmeirion sticker in the back window.

  He sprinted back inside to use the landline. Dead.

  He hurried back through to the bathroom and had his first pee of the day. Come on, come on…

  When he’d finished, he took his shirt off, turned around and checked his back in the mirror.

  Bloody hell. The red fern of a tattoo festooned his skin.

  He charged through to the bedroom, threw on a clean shirt and changed into a pair of jeans and trainers.

  Grabbing the car keys from the dish on the dressing table, he ran out of the bedroom and kept going.

  He pulled the front door shut behind him and jumped in the Vauxhall.

  A squirrel ran across the entrance to the driveway as he started up the engine.

  Another scurried up a tree as he eased out, between a parked yellow Polo and black Honda, into the road.

  His head banged.

  The tires gripped and unpeeled themselves from Tarmac as he took the corner. He checked the pavements this side, that side, and slowed to glance up turnings. Where is she?

  He accelerated towards a crossroads. Traffic lights changed to red.

  He hit the brakes, hung forwards in the diagonal strap and slammed back in his seat as the car jolt-halted over the line.

  Breathing hard, he waited.

  No cars passed, from either side.

  He checked his rear-view mirror. No cars came up behind him.

  None approached from the opposite side.

  What’s going on? Had he even seen any other traffic?

  A tic started up in upper left eyelid.

  The lights changed, and he set off again. He passed a succession of stationary, empty vehicles. Not only could he not see any moving cars, lorries, motorbikes, buses, he couldn’t see any people. No neighbours standing chatting. No-one walking their dog. No-one out jogging. No-one heading for the shops or the gym. No-one on their way into town. Just empty streets. Endless empty streets and deserted pavements.

  What time is it? His watch had stopped. But the sun was up. Where was everybody? Indoors?

  Flats and houses gave way to shops, all equally dark or with metal shutters down.

  He could feel the clapper of his heart, sounding the muffled tocsin. This isn’t right. This isn’t right at all...

  Stationary buses crammed the bus depot, all with familiar letter-number pairings on the front that he always thought sounded more like food additives or possibly pencils.

  Apart from odd glimpses of interiors, racks and racks of shoes, a corral of desks, vacant aisles, the whole street could have been a propped-up film set with nothing behind, now disused.

  He shook his head, sniffed. Braking and wrenching the wheel to the side, he parked on a zebra crossing outside the tube station.

  Leaping out of the car, he sprinted inside, across the concourse, past the untenanted ticket offices, and vaulted over the barriers. Clattering against a window at the back, he stared down at desolate platforms.

  He pressed his fingertips to the glass.

  Stretching away, crissing, crossing, as they curved this way and that, multiple sets of rails gleamed where the sun caught them—miles and miles of silent track.

  This isn’t—I don’t—His thoughts flew like birds over water, unable to land.

  He ran back up to the light and round and down to the junction. From the middle of the road, he scanned the three-storey red-brick buildings. How genteel, how Edwardian, they looked, from the second storey up. He’d never really noticed before.

  He gazed up and down the high street. A pair of pigeons waddled across the normally busy junction. Their iridescent necks glistened as their heads bobbed. Otherwise, nothing moved.

  What had happened while he’d been unconscious? What have I missed?

  On his way back to the car, he passed a TV and electronics showroom and all the TVs in the window showed the same black-clad figure veering towards the camera with awful, intense, tormented eyes.

  The figure turned as he turned. Christ, I’m losing it.

  He got back in the car and, crunching the gears, roared off.

  What if everyone’s hiding?

  “What from?”

  He slapped the steering wheel. “Great, now I’m talking to myself.”

  A motorbike on its side had him craning.

  He was getting better at noticing things, like the shut-down bus mid-way between stops. Cars had parked badly. A lot still had their lights on. Something had gone wrong. Something had gone very wrong. And Polly was caught up in it.

  The accelerator pedal creaked beneath his foot. The city blurred past.

  Simon would fill him in. Yes. He needed to get his mobile in any case. As soon as he got his hands on it, there’d be a message from Polly telling him she was okay.

  He swung up a side street.

  Bouncing now, he hit his head. The underneath of the car scraped. The shock absorbers squeaked like bedsprings. “Blo-ody speed-bu-mps.”

  Braking hard outside a row of maisonettes, he released the lever to his right before the vehicle had even come to rest. Momentum flung the door open. He ran up the stubby red-tiled pathway and pitched forward onto his knees.

  “Simon,” he shouted through the letterbox.

  He couldn’t see anything through the swirly glass.

  So he got up, lurched back out onto the pavement and peered up and down the street.

  A yellow skip with orange lights dangling from it sat outside a house done up like a translucent cube. Scaffolding just higher than the ridge of the roof surrounded the building and plastic sheeting covered that.

  A plank jutted out of the skip.

  He ran over and pulled on it.

  It was longer than he needed—much longer. The end knocked against the Tarmac as it came free, with a shudder that continued up his arms. He turned the plank side on, shuffled it along until he found its centre of gravity, lifted it under his arm, held it in place with one hand and stretched the other out to stop it seesawing.

  He paused to check that he couldn’t hear anyone out and about one last time before charging back round to the front door of Simon’s maisonette and, jousting-style, running the plank through the glass—which shattered instantly.

  He let the plank clatter to the side, reached in and unlocked the door. He’ll understand.

  Shards of glass in the carpet snapped underfoot.

  “Simon...” he called, quieter now.

  No answer. And no sign of Simon in the pine-floored lounge or the granite-topped kitchen. Greg picked up his phone and checked it. No messages. Damn. Then again, no reception either.

  He raced back out into the hallway and round onto the narrow staircase with its wooden bannister that, stage-set flimsy, bent slightly each time he hauled himself up. He checked the bathroom and the boxy spare bedroom that housed Simon's train set before hiking on up to the main bedroom, where his eyes travelled from the glass of water at the side of the unmade bed to the copy of Model Monthly (“Vintage Trains” issue) on the floor.

  Simon had gone as well.

  Perhaps they’d been evacuated. A twisting and tightening in his stomach. Where? He shook to a series of detonations in his heart. Why?

  Greg stepped over to the window and stared down at the yellow skip with its blinking orange lights. The jumble of white appliances and sofas and mattresses it held saved him from having to confront the empty properties on this side, the empty properties on that side, the deathly stillness in between.

  How many streets like this?

  He took off, out of the room, down the stairs, along the landing, down the stairs, out of the house and into the car. He set off again, slower this time because of the speed-bumps but increasing the pressure on the creaky accelerator pedal as soon as he turned onto the main road.

  He negotiated cars, vans, lorries and coaches, some at odd angles, many still with their doors open, as if some spectacle in the heavens had caused the occupants to j
ump out. He braked each time, as much to have a look as manoeuvre round but didn’t see anyone. Even the vehicles with doors open still had keys in the ignition.

  He flew over crossroads colour-blind to traffic lights, turned at junctions without looking the other way.

  Going the wrong way round the roundabout flung him to the side. Accelerating up a ramp pressed him back into his seat. He joined the dual carriageway, heading into town. He clasped the steering wheel so tightly that he could see the whites of his knuckles. The speedometer’s needle edged higher and higher—only dropping when he had to slalom around fishtailed cars.

  In a desperate attempt to relieve the pressure building up inside him, he let out a laugh.

  The back of his head knocked against the head rest and he knocked it again, again, again. Keep—it—together! Keep—it—together!

  Once off the dual carriageway, he had to weave in and out of more static traffic. A bus and a lorry had wedged together. He turned the wrong way up a one-way street and re-joined the main thoroughfare a little later on.

  He drove and drove and didn’t see a single moving vehicle, not one pedestrian.

  He shot past the entrance to work. The car park was empty. But then it would be on a Saturday.

  He chewed his lip, clung to the steering wheel, stayed facing front, kept going. He’d see someone soon and they’d tell him what had happened.

  The roads broadened, Marble Arch swept by and he found himself on Oxford Street, between the dirty white cliffs of facing buildings.

  He’d never seen London’s most famous mile and a half like this, without traffic, without the crowds. Even waiting for a night bus there had always been others. The road looked wider, longer. Signs hollered and whispered and shouted: “Marks & Spencer”, “Selfridge & Co”, “Bond Street Station”, “Debenhams”, “John Lewis.”

  Wrenching the wheel to the right at Oxford Circus, he straightened his outside leg, extended that foot. A succession of boutiques merged into one. Above that, 60 or more feet of Portland stone. It was like driving through the bottom of a man-made ravine. Half the street was in deep shadow, half in bright sunlight, as if the city had been hewn out of rock that had then been intricately carved.

  He gripped the steering wheel round the curve. Piccadilly Circus swung into view. High up, the giant split screen slipped by like a pile of giant widescreen TVs tuned to different channels, all showing adverts. He swerved past the fountain—moving target practice for the winged god atop.

  Up Coventry Street, between the Horses of Helios fountain on one side and the old Trocadero on the other. Either way ahead of or way behind everyone else in the rally circuit he’d turned Central London into, the engine roared as he changed down a gear for extra control now that the road had narrowed. Abandoned restaurants and shuttered ticket offices, fast food joints, souvenir shops and bureaux de change slid past.

  Fussy street furniture necessitated a slight detour, then out onto Leicester Square—normally busy at any time of day, now devoid of people and surrounded by deserted cinemas, bars-cum-restaurants-cum-clubs, fast food outlets, gift shops, ticket booths and casinos.

  His upper left eyelid kept lifting infinitesimally as if someone were tugging on it via a thread.

  Right onto Charing Cross Road, past locked theatres, betting shops, pubs, banks, restaurants, radio stations, down to St Martin-in-the-Fields, where the fissure of the street gave way to—opened out into—a canyon.

  He drove round the base of it, stopped, turned off the engine and got out.

  The domelike blue sky, hazy here, chalky there, with feathery wisps overlapping at different levels, domed the city. Gazing up at the sun a moment too long left a black hole at the centre of his vision. Glints and blobs of gold floated from one side to the other. A sickness at the pit of his stomach spread until it engulfed his entire being.

  He moved; everything else stayed still.

  No engines revved. No brakes squealed. No horns blasted. No sirens wailed. He hadn’t heard a single aircraft. Instead, the self-consciousness of silence.

  The soles of his shoes tap-tap-tapped across the giant slabs that made up the square—now emerging from the darkness that obscured whatever he tried to focus on—and his breathing snagged on his mind and threatened to unravel. Where are they?

  He strode past the four giant black lions, between the swimming-pool-blue basins, with their fountains, dolphins, mermaids and mermen, towards the steps to the terrace.

  The back of his neck prickled.

  He stopped and swung round but couldn’t see anyone, apart from Nelson, aperch his column, so continued walking.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something move high on the side of a building. A porcupine-spiky CCTV camera turned slowly in time with him.

  Just to be sure, he walked backwards.

  Sure enough, it followed him.

  He stopped.

  It stopped.

  His eyelid twitched uncontrollably.

  Was someone watching him in a control room somewhere? Several years ago, a guy at a dinner party had told him the site of what was or had been the CCTV control room for Central London—about the only interesting part of the conversation. Where had he said? Was it…?

  Deep under the old Trocadero, that was it.

  Greg shook his head. No, he was being paranoid. This was an electronic eye set to track suspicious movement. No-one’s down there—everyone’s gone.

  He ran up the granite steps to the platform, doubled back on himself and came to rest against the parapet. The black stanchion of a lamp stuck up to either side as he stared at the paddling pools and fountains and lions and lonely Nelson on his plinth and the flags over Whitehall. Greg breathed in slowly. Cold, static, lifeless, only statues peopled London now. The flesh-and-blood hands that fashioned them, the hands of the sculptors’ descendants, had gone. Heavy silence stretched out in every direction, endlessly. What the hell’s going on? A sob-choke.

  He staggered and gasped as if all the air had been sucked out of him. Concentrating on breathing, having to concentrate on it, he patted the parapet. Each inhalation came raggedly, loudly. Because would he ever feel the softness of Polly’s cheek against his again? Or inhale the scent of her hair? Drown in her hazel eyes?

  He filled his lungs to bursting.

  “Polly,” he shouted.

  The silence rolled back, up every radial street, before smothering him again.

  “Polly,” he screamed.

  The tail end of that cry bounced off walls different distances away like a snicker.

  He dropped to his knees and a river ran through him, overflowed. “Polly…” He tasted, sputtered, tears.

  Chapter 3

  The Writing on the Wall

  On the way back, Greg had an ache in his side like a rib missing. His eyes stung. He made it home in under ten minutes, flat out all the way apart from the odd chicane around stationary vehicles.

  Instead of stopping, he kept on going. That’s where she is! She could have left before the trains had stopped running. Her mum and dad could have collected her at the other end. She could—would—be at her parents’. She’s alive. She’s got to be...

  Why her, though?

  He put the question of why the odds should be stacked in his favour, and what it might mean if they were, aside.

  Back on the dual carriageway, heading the other way, he tore up the outside lane at 80mph. His wing mirrors shone, the steering wheel vibrated and the engine thrummed.

  Merging with the motorway, he moved over to the middle lane nudging 100mph. He’d get there in no time at this rate.

  No sooner had he got out of London than, as well as vehicles abandoned at the side of the road or parked in their lanes, he came across a Hyundai scrunched up against a tree, a burnt-out Saab, an off-the-road SUV and an overturned BMW, radial tires skywards. A lorry had ploughed up an embankment and rolled back down. He braked each time. He couldn’t risk any debris damage. A burst tire was the last thing he
needed right now.

  In between, apart from engine whine it could just as easily have been the road moving towards him, past him.

  Black heathland with stubby woods undulated around him before falling away.

  Reality shimmered in the heat as something gyred in the watercolour-blue sky. What was it? A murmuration of starlings?

  It floated down, down, drifted across the motorway right in front of him. It’s going to hit! He closed his eyes, had to open them again because he was driving. It descended towards the windscreen—and swept over it.

  In the rear-view mirror, skeins of yellow stalks corkscrewed in the car’s vortex. Straw. He let out a breath. Noticing a plastic packet of sweets in the central pocket, he reached for one. The bag crackled.

  He withdrew his fingers almost as quickly because the air had given them a dog-lick. He wiped the stickiness off on the J-cloth he used for the windscreen.

  He couldn’t put it off any longer. He had to stop to relieve himself.

  As he waited for the steaming stream to relent, he looked around and the “Soft Verges” sign up ahead occasioned a wry chuckle.

  His smile departed almost as soon as it had arrived. What the hell is wrong with me? He tugged up his fly, jumped back in the car and stomped on the accelerator pedal.

  When it came time to leave the motorway, he joined a road that dipped and rose but carried on straight, for miles, before swinging him this way and that. He clung to the steering wheel, hung on. Damn. He shot past a turning that could have been the one he wanted.

  If he carried on this way, he’d arrive, eventually, at the coast. So, slowing down, he took the next turning.

  Without Polly to guide him and with the network down on his phone, rendering its satnav useless, he had to rely on his inner compass.

  The road unreeled in the rear-view mirror.

  Half way up an incline, the engine coughed. The exhaust pipe sputtered. Everything gave out except the electrics.

  He yanked on the handbrake.

  The steering wheel’s pattern had transferred itself to his hands, which ached from gripping it. His fingers had lost all sensation at the tips.

  Flexing and unflexing them, he glanced at the fuel gauge. Shit. Why hadn’t he noticed the warning light?