They drove up the A23 en route to the city and it was only once they passed the turn that she was expecting to take that she realised they weren’t stopping for anything. Or anybody. Emily turned to face her mother who was crying again, her shoulders shaking, her tears spreading out from puffy, mascara-stained eyes. Her hands were clasped together as if she was praying, and her father sat stoically like a statue staring from the window. The sirens on the top of the cars ahead and behind wailed to notify the less fortunate of their presence, and they sailed through the traffic as if nothing and nobody else mattered.
“What about Grandpa?” Emily asked. Her mother let out a whimper, the sound of a dog whose paw had been trampled. It was a pathetic cry, one that she probably didn’t even expect to make. “Dad, what about Grandpa?” Emily asked again, pulling at his arm. She studied his face and found that was clenching his jaw tighter than usual, and she heard some of his breath escape before he turned to look at her.
“There is no room for your Grandfather, Emily. There is no time.” He reached across and placed his hand on his wife’s knee, but this only seemed to make matters worse because Helena Grayson let out another yelp, another pathetically trodden paw, and she pulled her knee away from him as if he were a leper, and that his touch was that of certain death.
“But, Dad,” Emily stuttered. “He’ll die.” Another whimper. “Dad, do something. You can fix it. You can organise it. You can get him in, I know you can.” He didn’t flinch as Emily dropped to her knees on the floor of the car, as if he hadn’t even heard or felt her. “Dad, you can do anything.” Her words became more desperate as each attempt at reason was met by a sullen, hopeless shake of his head. “You can do it, Dad. You can. And if anything goes wrong we can sneak him in. He can sleep in my bed. I’ll sleep on the floor. Dad,” she pleaded, kneeling next to him and rubbing her hands over his clenched fists, begging for him to see that it was possible. “He’s going to die.” She grabbed the car phone with her remaining strength, gleaned from the desperation of the last hope. In her heart she already knew she was defeated.
“I have to warn him,” Emily said. Before she punched the third number her father snatched the phone from her hands, leaving Emily broken and pleading at his feet, her eyes swollen with tears. “He’s going to die,” she said one last time, before flopping forwards so that her head balanced on his knee. The creator and consoler of pain.
Emily felt every bump of the last twenty minutes of the journey. Nobody told her to sit back up. Nobody stressed the importance of her seatbelt. Nothing in those last moments mattered. It was only as she realised they had begun a descent into a car park that she woke up from her daze. Her mother was talking to her, and Emily realised that she had been for some time because she drifted awake mid-sentence. Her mother was telling her about the wonderful suite they were going to live in, how she knew the beds were going to be so comfortable, and how everything was going to work out for the best. That she shouldn’t panic. Her mother had stopped crying, and she was smiling instead. But her cheeks were smeared with black, like war paint on a soldier. It was as if somebody had flicked a switch. Perhaps she too realised that their future had been decided for them by people more powerful than they would ever be. They were here because they had no choice. And yet somehow, they still had more choice than those they had left behind.
Before the car had stopped moving the door opened, pulled from outside. They had been waiting for them. A man wearing a dark suit and white shirt, with a curly wire like an endless pig’s tail dangling from his ear, peered in.
“Sir, welcome. You need to follow me, sir.” Anthony Grayson stepped out of the car without hesitation. He knew what to expect. He knew what was coming. He had been briefed. “Miss. Come on now, Miss.” The suited man held out his hand and reached into the car, prompting Emily to take it. She stared at it for a while, wondering if his family were here or whether he too knew that the people he loved were going to die. “Miss, there is no time for this.” Emily took his hand, pushed by her mother from behind. Her eyes were downcast as he pulled her from the car, her rucksack trailing behind her in a limp hand. She pulled her blazer across her chest, still feeling foolish for her juvenile protest.
Around her she saw a storeroom. Piles of sheets, boxes of what she thought from the words written on them must be food. She saw people that she recognised from the television, politicians, and maybe, if she wasn’t mistaken, an actor whom she had seen in a movie when she had sat next to Amanda and made adolescent promises. Her father was asking the man wearing the wire about things like time to impact and payload, and as Emily walked along behind him she got the distinct impression that he was in charge. At least in some capacity.
The man in the suit ushered them into a lift, people and the sound of fear all around them. Everybody was shouting and screaming, either in pain or in hope. Emily didn’t know which, but thought there seemed to be little difference between the two emotions right now. There were both men and women crying, joined by other kids who looked as confused as Emily. She tried to smile at one boy, no older than five, but he just stared at her, dumbfounded and in shock.
Inside the lift, elbows and the smell of breath nudged her from almost every angle. Others seemed pleased to have her father around, and they greeted him with the title, Sir. One even made an attempt to shake his hand, but her father’s response was weak and apathetic. The men watched Anthony Grayson, women tried to calm children. Somebody was still crying, the sound of defeat, as if the person knew it was game over. It hurt Emily’s ears, scared her even more than the people who were shouting. But somehow it was still better than the emptiness of silence. Silence made her feel like the world had already disappeared. She slipped a hand into her father’s and felt his grip tighten against her fingers. She pulled her headphones out of her blazer pocket and one at a time placed them in her ears. She drew out her iPod and pressed play. It didn’t matter what music it was. She was just looking for anything to help her hide inside herself, to forget that there was nothing more than a terrifying fragment of the world left. Just as she heard the beginning of Fix You, the lift jolted and stopped. The lights flickered and then went out. The iPod slipped from Emily’s hand and fell to the floor. She pulled her hand from her father’s sweaty grip, but before she could crouch down somebody had stamped on it, breaking the screen. Knees jostled her from both left and right, including one which struck her in the lip. She followed the orange light, her fingers scrambling amongst the panicked feet until she made contact and snatched it back up.
“Emily, Emily,” her father shouted. “Give me your hand.” She felt him grab her, pull her up and close to his chest. He was hurting her again, but this was a different kind of pain, and one she knew arose out of desperation. Light shone down on her as if the sun was rising just above the horizon, and as she looked up she saw her father’s eyes glistening, his pupils darker and wider than the deepest of oceans. The lift had stopped between floors, and another man, probably in his fifties, had already pushed open the escape hatch and had pulled himself through it. The emergency lighting flickered into the lift from inside the shaft like ripples of sunlight through gigantic summer clouds. The man hung his head back into the lift, reaching both hands down, shouting at people to be calm. Anthony Grayson lifted Emily up like an offering to the Gods, a sacrifice, a desperate last prayer before the end of the world for them all to be saved. She felt him lift her above the heads of others whose fingers clawed at her legs and feet. As the hands of the man on top of the lift reached down and took hold of her wrists she heard her father shout from beneath her, his words carrying her upwards.