I asked about the power station. I wanted to know if anyone had seen my dad. Someone said there’d been an explosion. I didn’t know what to believe.
And of course we should have gone back to school. It was due to reopen on Tuesday 11 January. I actually went. I even wore my uniform. For once I didn’t mind: those were my cleanest clothes. They’d been washed before Christmas. But school didn’t open. That councillor was there, turning pupils away. He said it was a “health and safety” matter. It wasn’t safe for us to be together in large numbers without heat, light and water – and in any case, most of the teachers hadn’t turned up.
The only place people could gather was in church. The second of January had been a Sunday, and vicars all across town had seized the opportunity for an illustrated sermon about the wages of sin. Soon the ringing of a church bell became the signal for people to come and hear the latest news from a traveller who had staggered in from another town, or to share some newly discovered food. But within weeks some of the vicars had been ousted by parishioners with more lurid interpretations of what was going on. And there were splits between the churches. One started worshipping the International Space Station, which was still orbiting, reflecting the sun and standing out as one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Its members interpreted obscure passages in the Bible to show that the astronauts onboard were not marooned, or dead, but waiting to return and redeem mankind. Another congregation started planning a trek across land and sea to Africa. They argued that low-tech societies would have survived the computer crash and would eventually come to save us, if only someone could tell them the mess we were in.
My neighbour, Dr Parker – the one who had told me off about the crisp packet – was behind that plan.
“You see, where we went wrong as a society,” she said, in the confident voice that had once served her well as a university lecturer, “was to let the technology take over. We got to the point where computers weren’t just a help – they had become essential for even the most mundane of tasks: the exchange of money; the distribution of food, fuel and the mail; the production of newspapers; the transmission of radio and television signals. Take away the technology and what were once simple operations become impossible. We will have to learn to live like primitive men again.”
“You mean like people in the 1950s?” said Mum. “We didn’t have any computers then.”
Dr Parker was thoughtful. “Well, we may need to go back a lot earlier than that. To relearn skills we have all lost.”
Half an hour later, there we were: Dr Parker, my mother and me, breaking into the museum by the back door. We stared at everything from warming pans to butter churns, and wondered what to take. In the end, the three of us lugged an old plough back home, ready to cultivate our gardens if things weren’t back to normal by the spring. Meanwhile, others were ransacking the library next door. They weren’t choosing books for their rarity or interest – simply for how well they would burn. Dr Parker drew the line at that.
When we got home, I found myself searching for one particular book. I had bought it for Dad as a joke present that Christmas. I’d never really thought it would come in handy, but what better title could there be now than The SAS Survial Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in any Climate, on Land or Sea. I silently thanked the author, John “Lofty” Wiseman, and wondered how he was getting on, wherever he was. Perhaps he and the SAS would manage to sort everything out, somehow.
“That’s what I can’t understand,” said Dr Parker when I showed her the book. “Where is the army? Where are the politicians? Why hasn’t anyone taken control? You’d think that in any human society someone would rise to the top.”
“There’s Councillor Lambert,” said Mum. “You see him all over town, trying to run things.”
“Trying to stop things, you mean,” said Dr Parker. “He’s always closing places down, sending people away. I bet he’d shut the hospital if an epidemic broke out.”
And he did, of course. As vomiting and diarrhoea spread through the town, Councillor Lambert decided that the hospital would become an epicentre of infection. He refused to let sick people inside. It hardly mattered, though. There was no medicine left, fuel for the emergency generator had run out, and most of the staff had already decided to stay away from patients for the sake (or so they told themselves) of their families. As people lost the energy to dig even the shallowest of graves for the dead, the groups of people praying to the Space Station grew larger every night. They implored the astronauts to descend and save us.
That would have been surprising enough, but no one was prepared for the strangers who did eventually come.
I think I may have seen them first. It was very early in the morning. I was out guarding the potatoes in the yard when I saw what looked like a horse-drawn cart. It was a cart all right, but instead of horses, it was being pulled by twenty or so half-naked, weary men. Their masters in the carriage wore long robes, headdresses, and had flowing beards. Beards are not an unusual sight these days – even I have one, of sorts, and Dr Parker doesn’t bother to pluck the straggly black hairs on her chin any more – but the beards on these men were luxurious, well-tended: an indication of status rather than desperation. These men were in command. You could guess that just from how they looked, from how clean they were, but the heavy rifle each of them carried left no room for doubt.
I was lucky. The tightly clipped hedge that had once marked the boundary to our front garden was now overgrown, and I was able to hide behind it and watch the strange vehicle go past. Up close, I could see the faces of the team hauling the carriage. They were oddly familiar. I knew I had seen them somewhere before. On television, perhaps? Was this the filming of some new extreme reality show? Were there hidden cameras? Had some cruel director been watching us in our distress? I tried desperately to place the faces. It was no good. I couldn’t remember their names.
But a moment later, I could recall what they did. They were the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and several other politicians familiar from a thousand boring bulletins. Here was the British Cabinet, the party people from the Millennium Dome, paraded in chains and shamed.
A tall man, who was holding the reins, pulled his slaves to a halt. He gave instructions to the other men in the carriage in a language I could not understand, and pointed towards the centre of town. Then with a slap from his whip he steered the cart in the direction of the school. There was no one around. The cart entered the playground, and a dozen fit, armed sentries took up position, their guns pointing through the railings at the surrounding streets.
I had to go. I had to take something to those poor enslaved men. They needed water. They needed food. I dug up some turnips and carefully poured rainwater from one of the museum chamber pots into an old plastic bottle left over from the millennium party nearly two years ago. I knew I would probably get caught, but this might be my only chance to find out what was going on. Perhaps the slaves would know what had happened to my father. Maybe they could tell me how to get us all out of this mess.