Flare

Chapter 7

Gatwick airport was burning. We could see the flames from the main road, a little less than a mile to our left as we headed towards London. There were now dozens of cars on the road, many with groups of confused looking people huddled around them.

Our car was beginning to draw a lot of attention, and more than once Jerry had to put his foot down at the risk of hitting someone to get away from grasping hands and angry shouts.

One man actually chased us, sprinting along the road as we disappeared into the night, falling quickly behind and screaming at us in his frustration.

Maybe he had children he was trying to get to as well, but I pushed the thought fiercely aside. Even if we could fit more people in the car, what if they wanted to go somewhere else? Would they see their need as greater than ours and take the car by force? It wasn’t worth the risk, and one glance at Jerry’s stony expression told me that he felt the same.

We’d gone a couple of miles past the airport when the road curved, and in the distance I could see something burning across all six carriageways, north and southbound.

“What the hell is that?” I asked as Jerry slowed.

“I don’t know,” he said, pushing his glasses further up his nose, “it looks like the whole road is on fire.”

We didn’t have to wait long to find out. As we drew closer, I began to make out details, first a long metal tube stretching from one side of the road to the other and beyond, broken in places where hungry flames licked at the structure, then a long tapering wing with two huge engines, one of them split and scattered across the road.

Even from here I could smell the stench of burning jet fuel.

“Poor bastards,” I said out loud, realising from the direction the cockpit was facing just how close these people had been to making it to the airport when the plane must have lost power, dropping like a stone.

“We can’t go through,” Jerry said, “we’ll have to go back and find a way around.”

He slowed again and pulled a U-turn, heading back the way we’d come.

“I think I saw a slip road a little way back, we’ll try for that and see where it takes us.”

I nodded, still thinking about how the people on the plane must have felt when everything went dark, knowing that there was nothing they could do to save themselves as they dropped out of the sky. The thought brought me close to tears.

The slip road Jerry had seen was tiny, a single lane track that I’d completely missed in the dark. He turned onto it and we were heading north again, passing buildings that were dark but seemed untouched by fire.

The road curved around the left, taking us north west, and small houses began to appear on both sides of the road, gradually growing larger and more affluent looking as we got further away from the motorway.

A couple of the houses had lights in the windows, and for a brief moment I allowed myself the hope that the damage wasn’t as bad as we feared, but then we passed a smouldering, burned out substation and I realised the lights must have been from lamps or perhaps generators running on petrol.

“Do you have any idea where this road takes us?” I asked as the lane narrowed, dipping down as high, wooded banks rose above us.

“Not a clue,” he said, not taking his eyes from the road, “but we’re going in roughly the right direction so I guess we keep going until we find a signpost. I’ve got maps in the back but they’re buried under the camping gear.”

I lapsed back into silence, falling into a half-doze as we followed the winding country lane until it came out onto a larger, two-lane road. We took a right, and as we turned I saw that the sky ahead of us was glowing a faint orange.

“Looks like a big town up ahead,” I said, guessing that the glow signified burning buildings, “are you sure we want to go this way?”

“Unless you want to try and get past that plane, we don’t really have a choice. I don’t fancy driving around in the countryside until we get lost and run out of diesel. We’ll find the town, work out where we are and get the maps out, then plan a route.”

“What I wouldn’t give for a sat nav,” I said wryly, and he nodded in agreement.

The glow in the sky grew brighter as we began to pass suburbs, row after row of terraced and semi-detached houses that were all dark.

On some the residents had gathered outside in the street, a few looking up at the sky while others stood in nervous or threatening-looking groups.

We passed a stand of shops, the glass fronts smashed and the goods from inside strewn across the pavement. As I watched, two young lads ran out of one with arms full of chocolate and alcohol, their hoods up to hide their faces as an older, fat man chased after them with a cricket bat, his dressing gown flapping around his ankles.

“That didn’t take long,” I said, thinking back to the article I’d been working on only that day, although it felt like months ago. “They’re looting already.”

“What did you think would happen? No police, no CCTV, no way of identifying anyone short of walking around hunting for them, and who’s going to be stupid enough to do that now? They were probably out on the streets the second their playstations stopped working, looking for trouble.”

At the sound of the car, both the lads looked in our direction before bolting down an alleyway and out of sight, perhaps thinking that any working vehicle would have to belong to the forces of law and order.

We drove on, the signs telling us that we had reached Redhill, a large town but one that I’d never been to before.

“I’m going to try and find a shop that hasn’t burned down or had everything stolen,” Jerry said as he negotiated the silent streets, “I want to save my supplies for when we really need them.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, nodding towards the red glow in the sky, “it looks like half the town’s on fire.”

“Then I’ll find a shop in the half that isn’t burning,” he said, turning away from the glow and promptly losing us in a maze of residential streets.

As we reached one junction, I jumped out of my skin as another car pulled out, lights on main beam and horn honking as it passed us, swerving from one side of the road to the other.

I got a glimpse of the occupants as it tore past, five teenagers crammed into a vintage Mini, the driver swigging from a bottle of vodka that he raised at us in salute, almost crashing into us in the process.

“Jerry, I think maybe we should leave,” I said, watching in the mirror as the mini careened off the road, through a garden fence and then back onto the road again to continue its chaotic journey.

As we sat there watching, a large group of youths began to approach from a nearby street, most of them holding bottles of alcohol and not a few with bats, crowbars or large pieces of wood in their hands.

They were laughing and pointing at us, and despite not being able to hear what they were saying it didn’t take a genius to guess what was on their minds.

“Yeah, I think so too. Forget the shop, let’s just go.”

He put the car into gear and pulled away. I twisted to watch the group, some of them running now as we gathered speed. When it was clear they wouldn’t catch us, a hail of bottles arced up into the air, raining down all around us, shattering on the road and spraying the sides of the car with broken glass and alcohol.

A few thumped onto the roof and one lucky shot bounced off the driver’s window mere inches from Jerry’s head, making him yell in shock and almost swerve off the road.

“What did we do to them?” He shouted, keeping his head low as if we were being shot at, peering over the wheel from somewhere down between his elbows, “Why are they doing this?”

“Because,” I said as I watched them fade into the distance, knowing the answer but not finding any comfort in it, “we’ve got something they haven’t, they want it, and there’s no one left to stop them taking it. So if I were you, I’d keeping driving until we find somewhere dark, safe and a very long way from anyone else.”