The soldier stood and walked around the table, stopping in front of me.
“Despite what you might think,” he said, “we really are doing what’s best. The cities are dangerous, in a few days what’s left of them will be breeding grounds for disease and rats. Current estimates put about ninety percent of London as presumed dead in the fires, with similar casualty rates for all the large cities. We need to start again, build from scratch, and we need to do it fast. We’re not barbarians, but I understand that you’re worried about your daughter and I want your assurance that if I cut your bonds you won’t try and do anything stupid.”
I looked over at Emily, who nodded.
“Fine, I won’t do anything stupid, but you can’t expect me to start hoeing fields while my daughter is still out there.”
He shrugged and produced a pocket knife, sawing through the plastic that bound my wrists, then did the same for Emily as my fingers tingled with returning blood.
“That’s something to be discussed another time,” he said as he moved to the door. “As I’m sure you can imagine, I’m a very busy man. I appreciate your situation, but hopefully once you see what we’re already beginning to achieve here you’ll come on board. We don’t have the time or the resources to let survivors go running around in the wilderness, no matter how urgent they think it is. I’ll have someone escort you both to the lockup, you’ll remain there for today and then tomorrow you can join one of the work crews.”
He opened the door but the Secretary called out before he could summon the guards.
“Colonel Tibbett, leave the Journalist with me for a moment, would you? I want to talk to him about something.”
The Colonel nodded and waved a guard forward from his position in the corridor.
“Take the sergeant here to the lockup, then have her report to admin for assignment.”
The guard saluted and motioned for Emily to follow. She turned and looked at me.
“Are you ok with this?” She asked, ignoring the dark look the Colonel threw her way.
I shrugged and raised my palms in a gesture of defeat.
“I don’t see what other choice we’ve got.”
She hesitated for a moment longer and then nodded, throwing a very brief, wry smile in my direction before she followed the guard out of the door.
The Colonel looked over at me for a moment, then at the Secretary before letting himself out, leaving me alone with the man who, apparently, was running what was left of the country, in whatever way he saw fit.
Chapter 33
“Do you know why I asked to speak to you privately?”
I shook my head, perched on the edge of the chair he’d insisted I sit on, unsure how to feel or what to think. Travelling with Emily, despite all the hardship and horror, had been like a little bubble insulating us from the rest of the world as we made our way towards our destination, but our capture had burst that bubble and now nothing seemed to make sense.
“It came to me as I remembered that bloody question you asked,” the Secretary said, leaning back in his chair and mopping his forehead with the arm of his suit jacket. “And I thought; a man like that really likes to get to the bottom of things, and wants to tell people what’s really going on. Am I right?”
I shrugged. “All that feels like a lifetime ago, now.”
He nodded. “Doesn’t it though? Water?”
I nodded and he poured me a glass himself, sliding it across the smooth wood of the table.
“So here’s the rub,” he continued. “I find myself in a very difficult situation. How much do you know about what happened?”
I took a sip of water before speaking. “There was a Coronal Mass Ejection that hit the planet as well as a flare, and it knocked anything with a processor out and overloaded the national grid.”
He nodded. “You’re very well informed. However, did you know that it’s still happening?”
“I had an inkling, yes. I have a friend who’s an astrophysicist and he thinks there’s something strange going on, and we saw the aurora the second night as well.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Only the second night? What about the other nights since?”
I thought back, then realised that Emily and I had been crawling into the tent before the sun was fully down and sleeping right through, more or less. I told him so and he frowned as if I was trying to hide something.
“Well we have a few experts of our own, although their equipment is mostly useless now, and they’re telling me that what the sun is doing could go on for weeks or even months. Can you imagine what that will do to any attempt to get things up and running again?”
I nodded. “I think so. You can’t begin to rebuild infrastructure because any attempt to make anything more advanced than a simple circuit will get blown again immediately.”
“That’s right. So keep that thought going and tell me what’s going to happen to the population when they run out of food and clean water.”
It wasn’t hard to figure that one out; I’d already seen the first stirrings of what would happen on my travels.
“People will start to die.”
He nodded emphatically, the few hairs on the top of his head waving frantically.
“Exactly. So we’re bringing as many people here as we can and trying to stockpile for the winter, and get the ground ready for planting in the spring. Even in the best case scenario, it could be up to a year before we can turn the lights on again.”
I thought that through for a few moments, imagining just how bad it would get, particularly once the winter set in. Would people stay in their homes and slowly waste away, or would they set out like a plague of desperate locusts, eating everything in their path until they hit the sea or ran out of places to plunder?
“So how do I come into this?”
The Secretary leaned back and steepled his fingers in front of his chest.
“As far as I’m aware, I’m the closest thing to a government this country has anymore, but I only just made it myself. I was travelling back down from Scotland when the flare hit, and it just so happened that I was only a few miles away from here when everything stopped working. I have no idea if anyone else on the cabinet survived, but as they were still in the heart of London, I think it’s safe to assume they didn’t. The only people travelling with me were a police escort and my driver, my assistants were several hours ahead of me in another car so I suspect they got caught up in the London fires.”
He looked at me expectantly but I couldn’t see where he was going with it so I gestured for him to carry on.
“Look,” he said, rubbing his face tiredly, “I’m good at what I do, but I’d be the first to admit that I’m not exactly a people person, and Tibbett, well, I’ve known Tibbett for a long time and he’s an excellent soldier but PR is not his forte. I need someone with me who’s good with words, Malcolm, someone who knows how to get information across without wild speculation, just facts and maybe a little, ah, softening here and there. Does that sound like something you can do?”
The last thing I’d expected in the middle of all this was a job offer, and I blinked at him a few times as I tried to take it in.
“You want me to work for you?”
He shrugged. “Why not? You’ll get food, good accommodation, clean water. In return, I just want you to make sure that the people understand why we’re doing this, understand their place in this new machine we’re building.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I understand what you’re trying to do but I need to go and find my daughter. It has to be my first priority.”
The Secretary’s face darkened.
“You do realise, don’t you, that we can’t let you leave?”