Strangers

FALRIGG

‘Told you sumthin’ like this was gonna happen,’ Arthur had said to his wife before he’d set out this morning. They’d known something had been wrong in Thussock all day yesterday. Bloody army had stopped them getting anywhere near the place. He’d missed his doctor’s appointment because of the road blocks. Inconsiderate buggers.

When they heard the explosions last night, ten of them had set out from the village to try and see what had happened, to see if they could help. They’d made it as far as the first of the peaks before being turned back. They’d seen all they’d needed to see, mind. It had been the fracking site, all right. Arthur had been telling people from the start that place was an accident waiting to happen. It was some kind of chain reaction caused by gas deposits buried underground, Jock had said. It was all over the news now, of course, but Jock had heard first. His son was a teacher at a school in Glasgow. If anyone knew what had happened, it’d be him. Probably no bad thing that Thussock had been wiped off the map, though, after everything that had gone on there over the last couple of weeks.

Still, life goes on.

Arthur found her by the stream which ran along the bottom edge of his lowest paddock. Poor thing looked like she’d barely managed to get away in time before the town had gone to hell last evening. She’d been caught in a blast, that much was clear, and quite how she’d lasted this long, he didn’t know. He didn’t think she’d be alive much longer. Maybe the water had helped keep her alive, or the shock, perhaps.

Her legs and the right side of her face were badly burned. Some of her clothes were fused to her flesh. She’d no hair left on one half of her scalp. That was what upset him more than anything. She’d probably been a good looking woman before this, he’d thought. She’d groaned with pain when he’d lifted her up and laid her down in the back of the Land Rover. The dogs had gone crazy, but he’d just shooed them away. Bloody animals.

She watched him through her one good eye, the left eye blistered and burned, glued shut with discharge, and she reached out for him with the one hand that still worked. She pulled him closer until he could feel her breath on his face, then closer still until their lips met.