The Grid Read online

  “Just wait,” I say. “It'll be back to normal soon”.

  “Yeah,” he says, “but I want my fucking money now”. He slams the brick into the blank screen, but he doesn't even make a scratch. “It's my fucking money,” he says.

  I nod and turn, but when I get back around the front of the store I find that my bike has gone. I look up and see someone riding away at full speed.

  “Hey!” I shout, but it's no use, he's already long gone.

  “Was that your bike?” asks a female voice from behind me. I turn to find a middle-aged woman, with tall red hair, smoking a cigarette. “I figured it wasn't his. I guess I should have said something. Sorry”.

  “It's okay,” I say, contemplating the long walk home. “I guess people are going a bit crazy”.

  “Guess so,” says the woman.

  “Do you know what happened?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “Saw a plane land over there,” she says, nodding in the direction of the part of town where I live, then she nods in the opposite direction. “Another one over there. That makes two. Seems a bit of a coincidence”. She seems pretty lethargic, almost tired.

  I notice the logo on her shirt and realise she works at the store that's being looted. “Shouldn't you do something about that?” I ask, looking at the door and listening to the sound of the two men inside continuing to fight.

  “Like what?” the woman asks. “Fifty people come barging in, what am I supposed to do about it? Anyway - “ She nods up at the security camera. “No-one's watching”.

  I take a deep breath, trying to take it all in. “So you don't know when help's coming?” I ask.

  The woman laughs. “I'm sure we're real high on their list of priorities,” she says, grinning.

  I nod. “Okay,” I say, “I'd better get home. Thanks”.

  I turn and start walking home, at which point I realise it's going to take me a couple of hours to get there on foot. I cast a quick look at the bus stop, but of course there's no way the buses are gonna be running at a time like this. So I just start walking, taking a quick look back over my shoulder to see the woman still standing there smoking and the guy round the corner still trying to smash the ATM open.

  When I get home, I immediately spot that the front door is open. For a moment, I wonder whether it might be my parents, and they've somehow managed to get back home, but as I enter the house I hear the sound of someone going roughly through the cupboards and drawers, and I realise it must be Pierce.

  “Fuck you,” I say, running through to the kitchen, but instead of Pierce I find a middle-aged man with the entire contents of our fridge in a couple of bags.

  “That's mine,” I say, keeping away from him and glancing around for something I can use as a weapon.

  “Fuck you,” he says, continuing to grab whatever he can to fill his bags.

  “You can't do this,” I say, stepping past the guy and reaching for a knife from the side. But he grabs me and throws me to the floor.

  “I'm sorry,” he says. “But I need this food, okay? For my family. I need it. Don't try to stop me. I don't want to hurt you”.

  I get to my feet. “You can't just take my food,” I say.

  “I can and I will,” the man replies. “There's nothing left in the store and I don't know how long this thing is gonna last”.

  “They're coming to help us,” I say.

  The man sneers. “Then you'll be fine, won't you?”

  I pull open a drawer and pull out a corkscrew, the only thing that looks vaguely threatening, and hold it out towards the man. “Put all that stuff back or I'll use this,” I say, trying to sound menacing.

  The man glances at me, laughs, then suddenly knocks my arm against the cupboard, causing me to drop the corkscrew. He twists me around and slams me against the wall, then he pulls me back and throws me against the kitchen counter. I bounce off the side and onto the floor, and I can tell that I'm bleeding from a cut on my forehead.

  “I told you not to make me do that,” the man says. “Now just stay on the floor and don't fuck about, okay?”

  I don't dare to move. This guy seems crazy enough to kill me if I push him too far. Plus, I'm not sure if I'm concussed, because the front of my forehead really hurts and I can see a small patch of blood where I fell. Listening to the guy as he finishes filling his bags, I finally hear him heading to the door, but he comes back and kneels next to me.

  “Okay listen,” he says, “I've never done anything like this before. I'm not this kind of guy. I've never hurt anyone. But you understand, right? I have to look after my wife and kids, and they need this food. I'm sorry, but what am I supposed to do? Let them starve because I'm too polite?”

  I'm too scared to look up at him.

  “Are you listening to me?” he asks.

  I look at him, hoping he'll just go away if I keep quiet.

  “Fucking bitch,” he says, grabbing my hair, lifting my head a little and then slamming it back down against the floor. I cry out in pain, and then the tears come, but finally I look up and see the guy is leaving. I stay on the floor for a few more minutes before I slowly get to my feet, feeling a little dizzy, and I look at the fridge, which is empty. The cupboards are the same. Fuck, this guy completely cleaned us out. There's no food anywhere in the house and –

  I walk over to the sink and turn the faucet, but there's no water. At first I can't work out why a lack of electricity would stop there being water, but then I realise there's probably a ton of electrical systems controlling the pipelines.

  I hear a noise outside. Grabbing the corkscrew that I dropped earlier, I go to the window and look outside, but I relax as soon as I see that it's only Pierce coming out of his house with a big backpack. I watch him walk down the path and onto the pavement before I realise what he's doing, and I run out to catch him.

  “Hey! Pierce!” I shout, catching up.

  He turns to me. “What?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Why do you care?”

  I sigh. “Someone stole all the food from my place,” I say.

  He nods. “I can see you've been crying”.

  I wipe my eyes. “Fuck you,” I say. “So do you really think no-one's coming to help us?”

  He bites his bottom lip for a moment. “Think about it,” he says eventually. “There's no electricity. There's not gonna be any, either. So everything's broken. No-one can contact anyone. No-one can go anywhere fast. No-one can fix things. Who do you think is gonna come and help us?”

  I turn and look at my house. “My parents...” I start to say.

  “They're in California, right?” Pierce replies. “That's two and a half thousand fucking miles away. The only way they can get here is if they walk, and that would take fucking a hundred days, not counting getting over mountains and the fact that they probably don't even have a detailed map. Do you see the scale of the problem?”

  I nod. “So where are you going?”

  “I have a plan,” he says cagily.

  “Is it a good plan?” I ask.

  “It's better than sitting here and waiting for a bunch of fucking zombie assholes to come and eat me,” he says. He sees the expression on my face. “What? You don't think they'll all turn into fucking cannibals when the real food runs out? This place is getting more dangerous by the fucking minute”. He laughs. “Fuck,” he says, “all my life I've been the crazy, paranoid one, and now suddenly everything's flipped and I'm right and you're the crazy ones”. He stares at me. “No offence”. He looks up at the sky. “It's gonna get dark soon. I have to get going. Seeya”.

  He turns, but I grab his arm and pull him back.

  “Are you sure you don't want to wait it out?” I ask. “They might come and help”.

  “You don't fucking listen,” he says, pulling away. “I'm going to walk to New York. It should only take a couple of weeks, at least there'll be some people there with brains. Look at this place. It's been a day since that plane crashed and no-one's come to put out the fi
re or take the bodies away. No-one. You know why? Because there's no-one whose job it is to do that any more”.

  “So you're just leaving?” I say.

  He nods. “I sure as hell ain't sitting around here waiting for someone to come and make everything okay. Fuck, you'd be better off praying to God if that's your attitude”.

  I think about this for a moment. “Can I come with you?” I ask eventually.

  He stops and stares at me. “You?”

  “Everyone's just standing around,” I say, “like they don't know what to do. And I kind of believe you that no-one's coming to help any more. So if you have a plan of what to do, I'd like to come in on it. If that's cool with you”.

  He stares at me, sizing me up, clearly deciding whether he wants me with him. “Ten minutes,” he says eventually. “I'll give you ten minutes to gather some stuff to bring. No girly crap, no make-up or any of that shit. Food. Tools. Stuff that might be useful. Okay?”

  I nod. “Okay. And when we get to New York, then what?”

  He shrugs. “Hopefully there'll be someone to help us”.

  I open my mouth to ask “And if there's not?”, but I decide to keep quiet. I can see in Pierce's eyes that the question is already on his mind. “I'll grab some stuff,” I say instead, turning and running into my house. When I get inside, I stuff some clothes into my bag, then I take one last look around and try to think if there's anything I need. Grabbing some paper from the desk in the hallway, I write out a quick note to my parents, telling them where I've gone. I tuck the note under the fruit bowl in the kitchen, and then I stare at it. Will my parents ever come home and find it? Will they ever stand here and read it? For a moment, I imagine them standing here, right where I am, reading the note. Would they be glad that I've gone off to get help, or would they be sad that I'm not here. And -

  “Come on!” Pierce shouts from outside.

  I take one last look at the note and then I head out the door. I don't know if I'll ever be back.

  Extract from the diary of Lydia Hoff

  Tonight there was blood in my pee. There, I said it. At my age, perhaps I should be more circumspect, maintain a little more dignity. But I want to be honest with you. My body is breaking down, it's falling apart on the inside. Things are becoming unstuck, and soon I will be dead. And since I am the last person in this part of the country who remembers that Great Disaster, I feel I should not censor myself as I tell my story. If you don't like to hear an old woman's rambling account of her life, you are free to leave.

  I mentioned Emma earlier. She was the girl I met when I was very young, shortly after the Great Disaster began. I met her, on and off, over a very long period in my life. She came to Morristown with her friend Pierce, having set out from her hometown shortly after the Great Disaster struck. She was a kind, happy girl who seemed very poorly equipped to deal with the growing emergency. I imagine that if the Great Disaster had never happened, Emma would have lived a long and happy life without adventure. But that's not how her life turned out, not at all. She ended up being the one who went up against the anarchists, but that just proves my point: it is often the most 'ordinary' people who prove to be capable of the most extraordinary acts of courage and bravery.

  Now that I know I am dying, that I have just a day or two left, I find myself thinking more and more of Emma, Pierce and the others. Back then, we thought that we would soon have electricity again, that the world would quickly get back to normal. But it never did. For example, in the early days we were always waiting for news from Washington. We assumed that, given time, the American government would get a handle on things and would come to tell us what was happening. But ninety years later, there has been no sign of the government. It is as if they simply vanished when the Great Disaster struck.

  And I often wonder what things are like in the rest of the world. Oh, when I was young I had such plans to travel to Europe and Asia and Africa. I wanted to see everything and everywhere. But back then, thanks to aeroplane travel, long distances could be covered so quickly. Today, even a trip to from the east to the west coast of the United States is a lifetime achievement, a journey that takes many months by horse. People make fewer big journeys these days, though the few journeys that they do undertake are inevitably grander and more epic.

  People ask me if I miss the old days. In truth, I miss the ease of my old life. If you wanted water, you turned on a tap. If you wanted to go to another city, you jumped on a bus or a train. If you wanted to find out an item of knowledge, or you wanted to watch a video, you went online. All those things are gone now. If I want to know a fact about history, I have to go to the library now. The world has changed so much, but in some ways things are the same as ever: fortune still favours the bold, and the brave.

  I wonder, is the light truly coming tonight?

  Chapter 5

  HOLLY

  We walk along the highway, figuring we can reach New York by following street signs. At first we walk in silence, sharing a kind of awkwardness that stems from the fact that although we're the same age, we have nothing in common and we've never really spoken before today. Pierce walks a few steps ahead of me, but eventually we start talking about how we grew up in neighbouring houses but never really became friends.

  “My parents told me to keep away from you,” I say, figuring I might as well be honest. “They said you were weird”.

  “Funny,” he says, “my parents said the same thing about you”.

  “Why?” I ask, genuinely shocked.

  He shrugs. “They said you were too normal”.

  We walk a little further. “My Mom said you bite,” I say eventually.

  “Not any more,” he replies, turning back to look at me. “Well, not often. I bit of few of my psychiatrists, though, and they all stopped seeing me. Fucking idiots”. He stops suddenly. “Look!”

  I turn and see what he's looking at: there's someone else walking on this road, a few hundred metres behind us.

  “Great minds think alike,” Pierce says.

  “So do idiots,” I say.

  We wait, and eventually the other person catches up. It's a girl, about my age and carrying a large backpack. She has long ginger hair and a pale, freckly face, and she's wearing a really girly summer dress. She doesn't look particularly excited to see us, but she stops as she gets close.

  “Hi,” says Pierce. “You going to New York too?”

  She stares at us for a moment. “Yeah,” she says, with a kind of vacant tone of voice.

  Pierce steps towards her and reaches out a hand for her to shake. “Pierce,” he says.

  She seems cautious and suspicious, even when it comes to shaking Pierce's hand, which she does reluctantly. “Holly,” she says, eyeing us both.

  “We're going to New York,” Pierce says in a friendly manner. “You going the same way?”

  She stares at us for a moment. “Yeah,” she says eventually.

  “Exactly,” says Pierce, smiling at me. “See? I told you”.

  I nod unenthusiastically before introducing myself to Holly. “Emma,” I say, trying to seem friendly. Really, really trying.

  “Hi,” says Holly.

  I feel like I recognise her face from somewhere. “I think I've seen you on Facebook,” I say. “I think you might be friends with some of my friends”.

  “Maybe,” she says, clearly totally uninterested.

  “I don't know the exact route,” Pierce says as the three of us turn and start walking, “but I figure we can follow the road signs, and we can look at the stars, and we should get there without too much trouble”. He seems almost hyperactive, like he's trying to impress... someone. But who? Me? Holly? Both of us?

  “Let's just keep walking,” Holly says dourly. Wow, she makes me seem like a ray of sunshine.

  “I'm thinking it'll take two, maybe three weeks to reach New York,” Pierce says jauntily, leading the way. “By then maybe there'll be some degree of organisation. Hell, we can get in at the ground level, maybe help orga
nise. That'd be cool, right?”

  He glances back at us, but we don't really respond.

  “Pierce is very much enjoying the whole apocalyptic tone of events,” I say.

  Holly smiles. Just a little, but enough to tell me that she's at least human.

  “I'm not enjoying it,” Pierce says. “I just figure we have to play the cards we're dealt. And this is how things are working out so far. There's no point sitting around twiddling our thumbs, let's get on with stuff”.

  Holly turns to me and, unseen by Pierce, mimes sticking her fingers down her throat and vomiting. I laugh. Surprisingly, I think I might actually end up liking Holly.

  As it starts to get dark, we realise that we need to find somewhere to sleep. We head off the highway and into the scrubland by the side of the road, at which point Pierce reveals that he has a sleeping bag in his backpack, but only a single one.

  “I guess I'd better give this up to one of you two,” he says, clearly a little reluctant but determined to do the 'right thing' as the only man in the group.

  “I'm okay on the ground,” Holly says, sitting down. “But it's gonna get cold. What do we do about heat?”

  Pierce smiles and produces a box of matches from his bag. “We build a fire,” he says. “Like they used to do in the old days, right? We'll be warm all night”.

  “If we don't burn to death,” Holly mutters.

  “It'll be okay,” I say, suddenly finding myself in the surprising position of not being the most pessimistic member of the group. “Pierce knows how to do it, right Pierce?”

  Pierce nods, though perhaps a little unconvincingly. “Survival 101”.

  As Pierce tries to look like he knows what he's doing, I glance over at Holly. There's something strange about her, but I can't quite explain it. She seems kind of... vacant, as if she's not quite with us. She often seems to be staring into space, and her answers to questions are usually just one or two words, like she's half-asleep all the time. There seems to be nothing proactive about her personality; she just reacts to things, as minimally as possible, and spends the rest of the time just kind of floating along. At first it was cute, but now it's slightly unnerving.