The Grid Page 7

  But I might not live to see it. I feel so cold, and I can tell that my body is shutting down. Don't ask me how I know, I just know. The funny thing is, I don't mind. I have lived such a long life, against all the odds, that it's almost impossible to believe that I could have survived some of the things that happened to me. And I saw so many people die around me. Horrible, violent deaths. Things a young girl should not see. I saw them all.

  According to Calvin, the lights will return in the dead of night. I have found my father's mobile phone, which I kept after he died. I have set it on the windowsill and I am waiting to see if it will spring back to life. If it does, the world will emerge from its darkness and will be given back the gift of electricity. But I'm not getting my hopes up too much. I've been promised so much in the past, and rarely have those promises come to pass.

  Imagine, though, if the electricity does come back tonight. Imagine all the stories waiting to be told. That is why I'm writing this down now. Even though it is dark and I can't see the page, though I can't see my own writing, I am determined to get this all down, just in case the gift of electricity will be returned to the world tonight. Then, perhaps, my story will be heard.

  Chapter 10

  ECOTONE

  Pierce is laughing. He won't stop. Though there's a bloody wound to the side of his head, he's doubled over with amusement, crying at the hilarity of it all. That's it, then: he's finally lost his mind.

  In the distance, there's pounding on the library doors. They're going to find a way in sooner or later, and we have to get out of here. But with Pierce in this state, there's no way we can run.

  “No!” I shout as Rachel brings the paperweight down on Pierce's head again. I just manage to push her away in time, knocking her to the ground.

  “He deserve to die,” Rachel spits at me.

  “I know,” I say, trying to force her back. “But if you stay and kill him, you'll lose your last chance to escape. Those doors won't hold for much longer”.

  Rachel stares at me with a look of hatred, then she gets to her feet and drops the paperweight. “Fuck you, then,” she says, and then she turns and runs.

  The others run too. Everyone runs. I turn back to Pierce, who's still giggling away on the floor.

  “I can't leave you here,” I say to him. “But if you won't come with me...”

  “Is my brain showing?” he asks between the laughs, looking up at me.

  I shake my head. “But you're bleeding a lot. We have to get you to a...” I stop speaking. What was I going to say? We have to get him to a hospital? Ha! Good luck with that. But we definitely have to get out of this building.

  “Fine,” Pierce says, slowly getting to his feet. “Sorry, I've got a bit of a headache”. He laughs again, but it's clear that the wound on his head is deep and serious.

  There's a loud smashing sound. Pierce and I turn to see the library door being broken open, and half a dozen men step through. They're carrying an array of weapons: some of them have swords, some of them have guns, one of them has no weapons at all but looks strong enough to squeeze the life out of both of us. The lot of them, they're staring at us.

  “We need to get out of here,” I say to Pierce quietly.

  To my shock, Pierce takes a step towards the men. “You can't kill me!” he shouts at them. “I'm a genius!”

  “Come on!” I shout, grabbing the back of his shirt and pulling him through to the next room. It's hard to see where we're going, because the sun is setting outside and there are no lights in here. We step behind a bookcase and listen, and we hear the men walking slowly towards us.

  “Now what?” Pierce hisses at me.

  I open my mouth, but I don't know what to say. Our murderers are walking towards us, they're on the other side of this bookcase, and there's no way out.

  “Watch this,” says Pierce. He turns and peers through the book, and then he steps back before running into the bookcase, knocking it over onto the men. “Irony!” Pierce shouts as the men collapse under the bookcase's weight, then he turns to me. “Run!”

  Together, we run back to the main hall. There are still some men milling about in the doorway, so we run up the steps. As we reach the top, something snaps past my head and smashes into the wall ahead of us. With a sudden shock of realisation, I realise someone just shot at us.

  “Down!” Pierce shouts, and we hit the floor just as another bullet hits the wall. “They can't have many shots,” Pierce says. “They need to preserve ammo. We just gotta wait until it gets dark, then we can get outta here”.

  Behind us, a man appears at the top of the stairs. He's carrying a large sword, and he steps towards us with a big grin. “Genius, eh?” he asks, raising the sword and slicing it down at Pierce, who lurches out of the way just in time.

  Scrambling to my feet, I run down the corridor, turning to see that Pierce has barely moved. He's still on the floor, still looking up at the guy with the sword, who jabs at Pierce again, but this time Pierce rams into the guy, knocking him down. Grabbing the sword from his hand, Pierce slices it straight through the guy's neck.

  “Run!” Pierce shouts at me, turning and running after me, the sword still in his hand.

  We head through to what turns out to be a dead-end, a display room with a few cabinets filled with vases but no way out. In the corridor outside, we can hear the dying guy screaming, and the sound of others coming up the stairs.

  “Out the window,” Pierce says, and we head over and pull the window open. Looking out, it's clear that it's a long drop down, but there are some bushes and it looks like our best shot.

  “Shit,” says Pierce.

  “What?” I turn to him, and I realise he's looking at something next to me. I turn and find the young girl, Lydia, looking up at me.

  “Do you want to hide with me?” she whispers.

  As the men reach the doorway, Pierce grabs Lydia and literally drops her out the window. He then pushes me up onto the ledge.

  “It's almost dark,” he says. “It'll be easier to get away when there's no light”. And with that, he pushes me off the ledge and down into the bushes.

  I land with a heavy thud, and I feel something crack in my arm. The pain is sharp and intense, but adrenalin helps me get to my feet. Somewhere nearby, I can hear Lydia crying, and when I find her she's got a gash on her leg, though it's getting so dark, I can barely see.

  “Good luck!” shouts Pierce from above.

  I look up and see him at the window. We make eye contact for a moment, and then he pulls the window shut. As I stare in stunned silence, I hear the sound of him screaming from inside, and then the window opens and a man looks out. I pull Lydia away with me and we run as fast as we can, away from the library, away from Pierce. Away from this place where order and chaos are colliding.

  Extract from the diary of Lydia Hoff

  My lungs feel so dry.

  This is it.

  The end.

  I stare at the mobile phone, which I can still see in the moonlight. Sat on the window ledge, it looks like an antique, like something from a distant past that time forgot. I remember my father using that phone, shouting into it. When I was young, antiques were things like old lamps and vases. Now, antiques are things like mobile phones and laptops. Not that they're any use, though. They're just blobs of plastic and metal.

  Very carefully, I take a deep breath, and I hold it. There. I'm done. That was my last breath. I will breathe no more. And for some reason, my last memory is of running away from the library with Emma, all those years ago. We ran and we ran. Oh my God, how we ran. We ran out of that building, out of that town, and we kept on running all night. We ran until... until... But I don't want to think about what happened next. Not now. I have breathed in my last breath. Now I breathe it out, a hoarse and dry sound, like a rasp.

  And then, as I stare at it, the mobile phone blinks into life. The little screen lights up, and the Pioneer logo appears. It's as if the past century hasn't happened at all. And as the phone powers u
p, I look at the window and see little specks of light appearing in the darkness outside.

  It's back.

  It took a hundred years.

  A hundred years of darkness.

  But finally, the power is back.

  I smile.

  But I'm about to die.

  The last thought that passes through my mind is of Emma. The way she sobbed after we lost Pierce, and the way she fought on, and the way she helped us all, and then ultimately the way she died. Never before has such an ordinary, normal person become such a hero by accident. And then there was Pierce. Oh, Pierce. How we cried when you died.

  Standing at the window, looking at the little mobile phone, I feel my body collapse. I fall backwards. But I never land. I just fall, forever, or that's how it seems. But I know that when I finally land, I will be dead.

  And my last memory is of being in the field with Emma and the ghost of Pierce. I remember how Emma was so sad that Pierce was dead, and how we walked and walked until we reached a place where we thought we'd be safe.

  And then the Sickeners came.

  And now, as I die, all the lights come on.

  Epilogue

  Slowly, Lydia opens her eyes. She stares up at me, and I try to smile back at her.

  “Are you crying?” she asks.

  I think about my answer. “Yes,” I say. “But it's okay”.

  As Lydia sits up, I turn and look at the horizon. The sun is coming up over the field. We're a long way from Morristown, in a cornfield. We ran all night, and now we're resting. Lydia has a nasty gash to her side, but she'll be okay. I have a broken arm, or maybe it's just fractured. Either way, we just have to hope for the best.

  “What's that?” I ask, noticing that Lydia has something in her hands.

  “Nothing,” she says, hiding it at first but then letting me see. “My Daddy's mobile phone,” she says. She keeps pressing the button to turn it on, but nothing is happening.

  “Come on,” I say.

  Lydia and I get to out feet and we start walking.

  “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “I don't know,” I say. “Away from mean people”.

  “When will we get there?”

  “In a while,” I say, though the truth is that I don't know where the hell we're going.

  We walk on, and suddenly we come to something truly surprisingly. Running through the middle of the cornfield, there's a train line. Just a single line, but it's big and metal and it stretches off in both directions as far as the eye can see.

  “We'll follow this,” I say.

  We head west, with the rising sun behind us and our long shadows before us. I can't help wondering what it would be like if Pierce had come with us. Why did he shut that window? Why didn't he save himself? How did he die?

  “Are we going to Hollywood?” Lydia asks.

  “I doubt it,” I say. Then again, who knows? If we walk far enough... And as we walk along in the early morning sun, it feels like we're so far from the rest of humanity.

  “Was Pierce your boyfriend?” Lydia asks.

  “No!” I say. “God no!”

  We walk on a little along the train tracks.

  “He'll save us, you know,” says Lydia.

  “He's dead,” I say.

  “Not Pierce,” Lydia says. She takes my hand. “God”.

  I wish I could believe her. But we're so far from everyone, it's hard to believe anyone will ever come and save us. There's no 'them' coming to make everything okay. There's just us. Us against the world.

  Coming Soon

  The Grid II:

  The Sickening King

  Six months after humanity was plunged into darkness, the Sickeners are on the loose. Radiation-ravaged and determined to make everyone like them, they know no mercy. And when they capture Emma and Lydia, they prepare to take them back to a place where everybody dies.