THE SOLE SURVIVOR

THE SOLE SURVIVOR

By Janet Baldey 

     

The weather girl turned back to face the camera, her dimples deepening.  Keiron stared mesmerised as the swirl of her hair followed the toss of her head.  He was in love.  She had to be the most beautiful girl on the planet.

         “So, it’s good news for all you stargazers. It’s going to be a clear night. Ideal for comet watching.”

         Keiron glanced towards his father and his faced burned as his father winked, quickly, he smothered all thoughts of the girl.

         “Dad, can I watch? Please.”

         His father raised his eyebrows. “Don’t know lad. There’s school tomorrow. What would Mum say?”

         “She’d let me. There won’t be another comet passing so close in the whole of my life. All my mates will be watching.”

         He was stretching the truth a bit here, well aware of what his mother would really say.

         “Certainly not, Keiron.  How can you concentrate on your lessons if you’re only half awake?”

         In a way, he was glad Mum wasn’t around.  His father was always much easier to handle. Sure enough, Dad was settling himself in his armchair with a little grunt of comfort.

         “OK. Just this once, but if there’s a problem with you in the morning…..” He looked at Keiron over the top of his glasses and Kieron shook his head until his neck hurt.

         “No trouble, I promise. Are you going to watch it with me?”

         “Wouldn’t miss it, son. Don’t have to get up for work in the morning.”

         His father had taken a couple of weeks off while Keiron’s mum was away caring for his Gran. This was despite Keiron, and his sister Becky, vowing it wasn’t necessary. But, in a way, Kieron had been glad when his parents had over-ruled them. If anything went wrong, he would get the blame and Becky could be difficult. “A right little madam,” his mother sometimes called her.

         Later that evening, cameras panned over the night sky while the professor fronting the programme pointed out each glittering constellation, his face alight with enthusiasm.

         Keiron was entranced, wondering if it was cissy to find it beautiful, like stretched black velvet sprinkled with diamonds.  Then, he erupted, his voice cracking with excitement.

         “I see it Dad. Look.…”

A faint luminous smudge had appeared on the outer reaches of the screen and as they watched, it gradually grew brighter, increasing in size until they could clearly see its tail of phosphorescence.

         The astrophysicist’s voice hushed to a reverent whisper.

         “This comet probably originated in the Oort cloud and has been travelling for thousands of light-years to get here. It’s the size of a largish building and could do a lot of damage if it collided with earth.”  He chuckled, “but don’t worry, we’ve been tracking it for years and it will miss us by a country mile.”

         Keiron remembered feeling faintly disappointed. It would be well cool if he was wrong. Something to talk about at school, anyway.  At last, the comet dwindled and disappeared.

Keiron’s dad got up and stretched. “Well, that’s that. Switch off the box, there’s a good lad. I’m off to bed.”

         It had been one mad rush to get out of the house the following morning. For some reason, their alarm clocks had failed, and they’d overslept.  His Dad plugged in the electric kettle but it refused to work.  He frowned and tried the lights.

         “Probably a fuse.  I’ll sort it out when I get back. Come on….”

         Outside, it was dark and oppressive, the cloud seeming to press down on them like an assassin’s blanket. All the neighbouring houses were in darkness, their shapes insubstantial in the gloom. “Must be a power cut”, his father said.

         As they neared the school, groups of youths were trudging up the road. None looked happy and several were fiddling with their phones. Keiron fished for his in his pocket, but it was quite dead.

         The power cut wasn’t just local because the school was affected as well. The teachers made an effort to carry on, but they were just as bewildered as the kids.  Phones were out, power had failed, and no newspapers had arrived in the shops. Rumours began as a trickle and increased to a flood, bobbing with a mess of guesswork. A nuclear device had exploded, hackers had destroyed the internet, and maybe, just maybe, the professor had got it wrong and the comet had collided with Earth.  When Keiron heard this, he was plagued with guilt, after all, he’d more or less wished for it.

         That evening it started to rain. By morning, it was a deluge. A seemingly solid sheet of water fell from the heavens and swirled down the streets while the drains vomited up ugly yellow bubbles. Keiron’s dad made a valiant effort to drive them to school but rain had got into the engine and it wouldn’t start. He came back in soaked to the skin and streaked with dirt.

         “Bloody rain’s filthy,” he growled and went upstairs to wash in cold water.

         For the next two weeks it showed no sign of stopping, there was still no heating and no news, only conjecture.  Keiron spent the days reading and staring out of rain-washed windows. His father had started to prowl around the house. There’d been no word from Mum and his Gran’s house was near a river. His father was torn but, at last, he made up his mind.

         “I’m going to fetch them. It’s best if we’re all under one roof.”

         Just before he left, he leaned out of the car window. “Don’t leave the house. People are starting to panic and there might be gangs roaming around.” 

         Keiron put his arm around his shivering sister and watched their father drive away, neither of them realising they would never see him again.

         Time crawled.  Both were continuously on edge, waiting for the sound of their car. After many false alarms leading to bitter disappointment, they developed thick shells of stoicism.

There was a good stock of food in the freezer but it was quickly defrosting and there was no means of heating it.  Both got heartily sick of cold baked beans and once, Keiron disobeyed his father and struggled to the corner shop, only to find it closed, its shelves empty.

         Soon, the rain turned to snow. The flakes flying faster and faster until they merged into a solid wall, deadening all sight and sound of life. The temperature plummeted and the house felt like a ‘fridge.  Both piled on layers of clothing but even so, they shivered continuously. At night they crawled under a mound of blankets and lay quaking in each other’s arms. Each day grew colder than the last until it was torture getting out of bed. By then, their food was gone so they didn’t bother. Becky cried a lot so Keiron tried to cheer her up by telling stories but most of the time they slept, drifting in and out of their separate dreams.

         Once Keiron woke to find the room flooded with light and almost fell out of bed thinking it was sunshine. He crawled to the window only to be confronted by a gleaming sheet of ice. During the night, a blizzard must have swept over the house, walling them in.  Numbed, he stumbled back to bed only to find that at some unmeasured moment, Becky had left the world.  He lay down and cradled the cooling body of his sister, waiting to join her.

         The old man put down his pencil and drew his coat closer. A born writer, he’d never known Keiron and Becky.  But although they were purely figments of his imagination, he was sure they’d existed somewhere in the world. Billions had perished, and a couple of youngsters left alone, would have stood no chance.

Sealed in their house, the youngsters would never have known the truth. Earth had suffered a massive hammer blow from a rogue asteroid lurking in the shadow of the comet, unnoticed by the scientists. Nearing earth it had veered away on its own unstable trajectory and smashed into Northern China sending a huge column of dust and interstellar waste into the atmosphere where it lay like a dirty shroud, blocking every vestige of heat from the sun.  And that was all it took. 

The man supposed he’d been lucky if lucky was the word. His father, who people had called as survivalist freak, had built a house with a huge basement capable of withstanding any nuclear attack, fully equipped with enough oil, water and food to last a decade.  Somehow, they’d managed to subsist.  But his parents were now dead.  He was on his own and food was running out.

Pulling on all the clothes he possessed, he went outside. Blinking continuously to stop frost forming on his eyelashes, he scanned the bleak wasteland stretching to the far-away hills and wondered if he really was the sole survivor.

CopyrightJanet Baldey