The World After: An EMP Thriller Read online

  “Don’t lie. Neither of us wanted to meet each other in these circumstances.”

  I pulled my hand back, my heart pounding. To be honest, I wasn’t that great at speaking to women. Well, to strangers in general, for that matter. I usually came off a little sarcastic and cutting when really I was just trying to break the ice. Misinterpretation and misunderstanding were big, big bedrocks of my existence.

  But Hannah, well. She seemed to be going along with what I was saying. I appreciated her for that.

  “So. What about you?” I asked.

  “Me? Oh, nothing interesting. Just… well. Heading into uni.”

  I instantly regretted the “sweaty university students” comment. “You’re at uni?”

  She smirked. “Why? Do I look too old for uni or something?”

  I felt my cheeks blushing. “No, it’s just—”

  “I’m just messing with you. Yeah, I’m at Manchester Met uni. I’m a mature student, though, as they call us. I mean, I’m thirty, but I don’t feel all that mature.”

  “I know the feeling, sometimes. What do you study?”

  “Health and social care with sociology,” she said. “I kind of… well. I won’t bore you with the details, but I didn’t really do a lot productive in my twenties. Kinda bought into those lies that you should spend your twenties having fun, your thirties laying down the foundations for the rest of your life, and your forties settling down. Only problem is, I didn’t even lay down any pre-foundations in my twenties. So it looks like the thirties is gonna be the catch-up decade.”

  “Well, at least you had fun in your twenties.”

  “You settle down the second you hit the big 2-0?”

  I felt an immediate punch of regret over what I’d said. After all, my time with my wife, Harriet, were the best years of my life. I’d been happy. So ready to live like that for the rest of my life.

  But now she was gone, well… I realised just how little I actually had in my life and how much I was basing all my happiness and contentment on her. I’d placed all my eggs in two baskets: a good job, and a wife that I adored.

  Now both of those were gone, I’d soon realised just how easy it was for the foundations of life to tear away at the seams in two fell swoops.

  “Something like that,” I said. “I… I got married.”

  “Wow. You really did throw yourself in at the deep end, didn’t you?”

  “My wife. Harriet. She… she died two months ago.”

  I saw the jokey expression on Hannah’s face drop, right then. She actually turned a little pale. “Man. I’m sorry. Genuinely.”

  “It’s okay. You didn’t know.”

  She wasn’t so talkative after that point. I realised I should probably not have brought Harriet up. After all, bringing up the death of your wife forced a person to walk on eggshells around you and really think about what they were saying, which ultimately numbed them into not saying a thing at all.

  I looked out of the window. The train staff were still investigating the train. They were still struggling with their phones. One of the women in train gear looked up at me, and I could see from her expression that she was struggling to hold the facade of normality together.

  She smiled at me.

  I smiled back.

  And then I saw it.

  I couldn’t understand it at first. Honestly, it was surreal.

  There was something just falling from the sky.

  I heard a few gasps and whispers of disbelief as everyone who’d seen it realised what it was.

  A helicopter. Air ambulance. Quite a way in the distance, but it was clear to see that something was very wrong.

  Its rotors weren’t spinning.

  It was hurtling towards the ground.

  It was…

  “Oh sh…”

  The helicopter hit the earth and exploded in a ball of fire.

  Everyone looked on. Everyone inside the train, everyone outside the train, all of us transfixed by what we were witnessing.

  We didn’t want to say anything. None of us did.

  But there was an unspoken fear amidst all of us.

  A fear that what we’d just witnessed wasn’t just coincidence.

  A fear that the helicopter crash was possibly—possibly—related to whatever events were unfolding on this train…

  That fear was about to be realised.

  Chapter Six

  “Okay, folks. We’re gonna start vacating the train right about now. We need to get off here just so we know we’re…”

  The train conductor didn’t finish his sentence, as he stood in the middle of the carriage, looking increasingly pale by the second. But he didn’t have to, not really. We all knew what he was going to say. “So we know we’re safe.”

  And the fact that there was such an uncertainty from the people who were supposed to be looking out for you. Well… that was unsettling.

  Of course, there were limitations of having somebody else responsible for where you were going, what you were doing. But there were advantages, too. And those advantages included the fact that those people in control were really in charge, no matter the situation. So when you had the conductor of the train telling you—in as many words—that he didn’t know whether you were safe or not, it was time to worry.

  I stood up, fast growing nauseous, not with fears of losing my job anymore of course, but with the fear that this situation was fast unraveling. I assumed we’d been stuck on this train the best part of half an hour now—I couldn’t be certain of course, watch-less as I and everyone else was. And in that time, as small an amount of time as it was, people were already growing frustrated and desperate for answers. If there was one thing I’d discovered in the last half an hour, it was just how attached myself and everyone else really was to the inane draw of the black mirror in our palms—the fake social media reflections of personality, the text messages with people you’ve never met, the snaps chronicling people’s lives like it was a reality television show.

  Everyone had been given a podium on the great stature of life. And that podium had collapsed, leaving everyone facing up to a terrifying fact: they were nothing more than themselves, now.

  I followed the crowd of sardine-packed people out of the train. Up ahead, I could hear a couple arguing about needing to get to a hospital to see their dying father. I saw a man push another one back, as they battled to leave the train first. It was growing feral. People were reverting to base instincts. And they’d only been cut from the power for half a-bleeding-hour.

  “I knew how frustrating it’d be,” Hannah muttered, as we made our way to the door, which had been manually opened. “I mean, I live out in a terraced house in the countryside these days. We get power cuts all the time. Never thought of myself as one of these ultra-connected people. But hell, turn off the lights and the WiFi in a zero signal reception area, and yeah. It does get kinda refreshing. And also kinda boring.”

  I smirked and thought back to the time when Harriet and I had got caught in a massive power cut when we’d been staying in Center Parcs. The entire park had suffered a serious blackout, and for a while, it was disconcerting, as everyone huddled around in the darkness of the great centre.

  But then we stepped outside, looked up at the beautiful stars, seeming so bright without any light pollution, and we revelled in the present moment.

  Of course, that was then. This was now.

  And right now, things seemed… different.

  We stepped outside, and I was immediately grateful for some fresh air. Although it wasn’t that fresh, of course. There were loads of people standing at the sides of the tracks. An old man helped an even older woman over the tracks and onto the grass at the side. I couldn’t stop looking over at where that helicopter had fallen. The smoke was still rising from it. It didn’t seem like anyone had seen to it yet, which I found equally bizarre.

  “Looks like an EMP to me, mate. Phones down. Watches down. Transport down. End times, that’s what this shit is.”

>   I glanced to my right. There was a short, podgy lad beside me. He had long, curly ginger hair, and thick rimmed glasses. He was wearing a hoodie with Slayer written on the front, and tour dates on the back, which were fading away. It looked like he was speaking to me.

  I smirked back at him, politely more than anything.

  But remarkably, he didn’t stop spouting his crap.

  “I mean, it’s possible. I read loads of subreddits on it, and on AboveTopSecret, too. EMPs. Our governments have ’em. Someone probably used one on us. Took out all the power. Or maybe a terrorist got their hands on them. Shit. I mean, if it’s affected us here, then it’s probably affected the whole damn country. Unless it’s a solar flare. That way… shit. The whole frigging world could be affected.”

  My head was spinning with the speed this guy had been reeling theories off.

  “Oh,” he said, turning to me and smiling, holding out a chubby, greasy hand. “I’m Harry, by the way. But my friends call me Haz. I don’t have many friends. You can call me–”

  “Nice to meet you, Harry,” I said, taking his hand.

  He seemed part happy by the embrace of my grip, and part disappointed that I hadn’t called him “Haz.”

  “So, genius,” Hannah said, stepping towards Harry. “You’re so full of theories. What do we do now?”

  Harry scratched at his curly mane, dandruff falling out of it. “Well,” he said. “I guess… I guess if it is an EMP strike, we’ll know about it soon. But not through the news or anything. Just getting to Manchester and seeing if the power’s down there, too.”

  “And how will we know if it’s a solar flare or an EMP, or whatever?” Hannah asked.

  Harry shrugged. “We won’t. We won’t ever. No one will. If the power’s gone, how will we?”

  I mused on the thought for a few seconds. But scary as it was, I couldn’t accept what Harry was saying. It was the stuff of science fiction novels and shitty late night television shows, not of reality.

  “Regardless of whether this is an EM-whatever or not,” I said, “we’d be better off not staying around here. I take this train every day. Manchester is, what, a half an hour’s walk away, if we keep up the pace? We have to get there because that’s where we’re all going. No point standing around here and waiting for shit to happen.”

  Hannah nodded. As did Harry. “Lead the way, chief navigator!” Harry said.

  I didn’t smile. I didn’t laugh.

  I just headed forward, following the small group of people already breaking off and making their way to Manchester.

  I could see the buildings of the city in the distance.

  I didn’t know what was waiting there for me, or what to expect.

  But as the smoke continued to rise from that helicopter… I couldn’t help wondering.

  Chapter Seven

  “So, Scotty-boy. What do you do for a living?”

  Twenty minutes walking alongside “Haz”, as I now had no choice but to call him, and already I was exhausted.

  Not from the exercise. But from Haz himself.

  “I work with computers,” I said.

  “Whoa!” Haz shouted, so forced and exaggerated. “Computers are like, my life, bro. What kind of computer work do you do?”

  I scratched the back of my neck. “Just, SEO. Marketing. That kind of thing.”

  Haz lowered his head as if he was disappointed by what I’d said.

  “What’s up?” I asked. “Not what you were expecting?”

  “No, man. No problem with that. It’s just… well, y’know. I thought when you said you worked in computers that you’d be working in something… well, exciting.”

  I smiled a little, Hannah laughed too. “Well, sorry to disappoint you. What do you do that’s so exciting, anyway?”

  Haz rubbed the back of his sweaty neck as we walked alongside the train line. There were small groups of people just like us walking in the same direction. There’d been no attempt to bond or join up or anything like that. After all, as far as we were concerned, we were going to get back to Manchester and find that the world was all in order.

  At least, that was a dying hope that we were clinging to.

  “I work on video games,” Haz said.

  “Video games?” I said. “Like, for kids?”

  “Quiet, man. You know what the biggest age demographic is for video games?”

  “Under tens.”

  Haz shook his head, going red and angry, which I had to admit I was enjoying. “Twenty-five to forty. Ancient, basically. Like you guys.”

  Hannah laughed. “Charming. I’ve got one man surprised I’m a uni student and another saying I’m ancient.”

  “Wait,” Haz said, stopping. “You’re a uni student?”

  Hannah pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you start, kiddo.”

  We kept on walking. The closer we got to the high-rise buildings of the first train station inside Manchester, the more optimistic I grew that things were all going to work out. After all, the things Haz had said about EMPs and terrorist attacks, those things—as far-fetched as they were—weren’t exactly just going to go under the radar. I mean, terrorists might, might hypothetically attack the electrical grid for a while. But it’d get repaired.

  And a solar flare, too. Sure, I’d seen a documentary or two about them happening and what they might do if they hit. But they had fail-safes in place in case of those kind of events. Those documentaries were designed to instil fear and paranoia. And from the sounds of things, Haz had soaked all that fear and paranoia right up.

  “So, Hannah,” Haz said. “What do you study?”

  “Health and social care,” Hannah said.

  Haz made a mock yawn. “Damn. That sounds even more boring than Mr Computing over here—”

  “Well, maybe if you took the time to put down your video game controller and actually learned the kind of work social care graduates do, you’d be a lot more appreciative of us.”

  There was a frosty silence to the air, then. Hannah had gone red. Haz was speechless. I sensed that he had really touched a sore spot. She hadn’t displayed a fiery character like that since they’d started talking.

  Part of me wanted to ask. Part of me wanted to inquire.

  Instead, I just turned around.

  “Look at that.”

  There was a train ahead of us. Just like ours, it had stopped on the tracks. People were getting out of it, all of them making their way towards Manchester.

  “Believe me yet?” Haz said, walking around me.

  I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  We walked a little further, not saying much until eventually I saw the bridge above Manchester Oxford Road and felt a knot turn in my gut.

  “Hold up,” I said. “Looks like we’re here.”

  Manchester Oxford Road station was right ahead. I could see people gathered around it from our side. But not just that. I could hear shouting.

  But it wasn’t just that.

  What got me, even more, was the train on the opposite side of the track, completely abandoned.

  That train had slammed right into Oxford Road station.

  “Everyone evacuate!” a man shouted—whether he was police or not, I couldn’t tell. Could just be a member of the public for all I knew.

  We got closer to Oxford Road station. And when we got there, I realised something horrifying.

  The cars on the bridge over the station had stopped. Some of them had slammed into one another. There was blood. Screaming. People trying to use phones. Chaos.

  In the station itself, people were crushed inside. They were trying to climb over the ticket machines, which had broken, but were being stopped by train station staff before they could leave.

  There was chaos.

  There was pandemonium.

  And there was one thing for sure.

  “Looks like Manchester got hit too, after all,” Haz said.

  I didn’t want to believe him.

  I didn’t want to accept it.

&n
bsp; But I couldn’t argue with the evidence in front of me.

  Chapter Eight

  It was when I stepped closer to Manchester Oxford Road train station that I realised just how bad a situation I was really engulfed in.

  The sun beat down on the top of my head, burning in its intensity. I could see that the large clock dangling down in the middle had stopped right at the same time my watch and everyone else’s watches and phones had stopped—eight thirty-two. All of the screens indicating train journeys had gone out. The lights in the shops had turned to nothing.

  The only light came from the sun. But the sun wouldn’t stick around forever. It would get to night-time eventually, and then we’d have to deal with a whole new set of problems.

  No. Things would be resolved by then.

  I stayed close to Hannah and Haz as we stepped back outside the train station, onto the tracks. In the station, there were a couple of trains, some of them loaded with passengers, who seemed to be taking this whole situation in their stride as if the power was just going to flick back on.

  Part of me wanted to be as confident as they were. Part of me wanted to believe that this couldn’t last because it just couldn’t, could it? This kind of thing was the stuff of fiction. EMPs, and all that crap Haz spoke about, that wasn’t rooted in real life.

  Right?

  I kept on telling myself there was a possibility, even the slimmest of possibilities, that everything was just going to switch back on, and we’d all put our feet up on the sofa someday and laugh about this, one day in the future.

  Or more likely, we’d forget about it, just as we forgot about everything else seemingly of note at the time.

  But a bigger, more omnipresent part inside me told me I wouldn’t be forgetting this for a long time.

  It was going to stay with me for quite a while.

  “So what’s the plan now?” Hannah asked, as we worked our way around the side of the train station, towards the entrance, where we’d at least be in the city and on the roads.

  I thought about what we could do. I could probably still make it to work. But shit. Did I want to? After all, it didn’t feel like this chaos was simply consigned to the train station. It felt wider spread than that. I couldn’t explain why I knew that or why I felt it. But somehow I knew I wasn’t the only one facing up to that reality.