Autumn: The Human Condition (4 page)

Something was happening up ahead.

Struggling to shuffle in her seat and move her cumbersome bulk while still keeping control of the car, Sonya peered into the near distance where she could see movement in sudden, unexpected directions. Her heart sank. That was all she needed. She was a couple of miles away from the nearest motorway exit. An accident now would most probably add hours to her journey. She'd been joking with Chris on the phone last night that if he kept making her do this drive she'd end up giving birth in the back of the car on the hard shoulder. The idea didn't seem so funny now...

Whatever it was that was happening, it was quickly getting worse. Sonya could see the sudden red flashes of the lights of countless hastily applied brakes, burning brightly through the grey gloom of the early morning. Even over the sound of her own car's engine and the radio station she was listening to she could hear strained mechanical whines and squeals as drivers struggled to control their cars. Almost immediately the screaming brakes were replaced with grinding thuds and heavy groans and thumps as vehicle after vehicle after vehicle slammed and crashed into the back of the one in front, literally hundreds of them quickly forming a vast tangled carpet of twisted, wrecked metal along the entire visible length of the motorway.

She had no time to react. It was getting closer now. There was no obvious way to avoid the carnage. Now it was starting to happen all around her.

Forced to slam on her own brakes as the vehicles immediately ahead of her lurched to a sickening halt, Sonya braced herself for impact. She didn't know what she was going to hit, what was going to hit her or even from which direction the first impact would come. All around her every vehicle seemed to be losing control. Just ahead, in the rapidly disappearing gap between the front of her car and the huge pile up which filled the road, cars, vans and lorries were swerving and crisscrossing the carriageway as if their drivers had just given up and stopped trying to steer them. The first collision she felt came from the right as a solid four-wheel drive vehicle smashed into the passenger door behind her, the force of the shunt sending her car spinning round through almost one hundred and eighty degrees so that she found herself facing away from her original direction of travel. Now head on to the rest of the traffic, Sonya's shock and surprise gave way to utter disbelief and abject fear.

An expensive executive's car was heading straight for her. For a few short seconds (which felt like painfully long minutes) Sonya watched the driver of the car thrashing about wildly. He was clawing at his neck with one hand, scratching and scraping at it desperately as he struggled unsuccessfully to hold onto the steering wheel with the other. His face was red and his eyes wide with pain. He was choking. Distracted as the car was rocked again by a collision from the left, she turned and looked out through her passenger window. A tanker had smashed into a van which had, in turn, smashed into her. The driver of the van had been hurled through his windscreen and now lay sprawled face down over the crumpled bonnet of his vehicle. His bloodied head slammed down onto the battered metal just a short distance from where she sat. She looked away in disgust and caught a glimpse of the tanker driver's face. The middle-aged man's face was pressed hard against the shattered glass of his side window, frozen in an expression of terrified agony. Dark red blood dribbled freely down his chin, contrasting starkly with the rest of his blanched white face. The executive's car ploughed into Sonya at speed, sending her flying back in her seat and then lurching forward awkwardly. Consumed by a sudden wave of nauseating pain as her distended belly and her baby were momentarily crushed again, she briefly lost consciousness.

In the few minutes that Sonya was unconscious the world around her changed almost beyond all recognition. She slowly woke and cautiously half-opened her eyes. Slumped heavily forward with her face pressed hard against the steering wheel she pushed herself upright, struggling for a moment with the weight of her unborn child. Her own safety was of no concern as, for a few seconds longer, she remained still and closed her eyes again, running her hands over her tender belly until she was sure she had felt the reassuring movements of the baby inside. Her split-second feelings of relief and elation were immediately forgotten when she lifted her head again and looked around.

Apart from the occasional hissing jet of steam rising up into the morning air and smoke and flame from numerous burning vehicles, the world was completely silent and still. Nothing moved. Where she had expected to hear voices and cries for help there was nothing.

Sonya instinctively tried to open the door to get out of her wrecked car. Another crashed car to her right, however, had wedged it shut and she was unable to force it open any more than just a couple of centimetres. The van which had collided with her on the other side prevented her from opening the passenger door. The sunroof seemed the only safe escape route. Suddenly freezing cold and shaking with shock and nervous fear she turned the key in the ignition far enough for her to be able to use the electrics of her disabled car. She lifted a trembling hand and operated the control which opened the sunroof. The sudden, jerking noise sounded disproportionately loud in the oppressively silent vacuum of the grey morning. The tinted window above her slid open before stopping with a heavy thud. Slowly lifting herself up onto her clumsy, unsteady feet she guided her head and shoulders out through the restrictive rectangular opening. She cautiously stood upright on her seat and waited for a moment and wriggled her toes, water retention having swollen her tired feet and ankles. She lifted her arms out of the car and then eased and squeezed her pregnant stomach through the rubber-lined gap. Her arms weak and heavy with nerves, she put the palms of her hands flat on the roof of the car and pushed herself up and out. A few seconds of grunting and straining and she had moved far enough to be able to sit on top of her wrecked vehicle. For a while she just sat there in stunned disbelief and surveyed the silent devastation around her. The carnage seemed endless and without any apparent reason.

The motorway around her was dead in both directions. Whatever had happened had worked its way back along the wide road towards the city. Sonya carefully shuffled around so that she was looking back towards the collection of tall, imposing buildings which she had driven through little more than three-quarters of an hour earlier. For as far as she could see both ahead and behind her the traffic on the motorway was motionless. She deliberately tried not to look too closely at any of the wrecked vehicles although it was hard not to stare. Their drivers were dead. Some remained sat in their seats, frozen and lifeless. Some were burning. Others appeared to have suffered a more violent and inexplicable fate. Many twisted and bloodied corpses lay on the ground in the random gaps between the wrecks of their cars, tankers, lorries, bikes and vans.

A cold autumnal wind gusted along the length of the road, buffeting Sonya and prompting her to move from her exposed position. Overcome by the sheer scale and speed of what had happened, and unable to think about anything but the safety of her unborn child, she carefully pulled her feet out of the car and lowered herself down the windscreen and onto its crumpled bonnet. Using the wrecks of other vehicles she made her way over to the hard shoulder. Once there � where the road was a little clearer � she began to walk back towards the city. Dark thoughts occupied her mind with every step. What had happened to Chris in all of this...?

The city, more than four miles away, was dying too. She could clearly see the destruction, even from a distance. Random explosions ripped through buildings and fire began to quickly spread and take hold. She could see smoke pouring into the early morning air in thick, steady palls, leaving a dirty grey shroud hanging above the devastation.

With her swollen feet already sore, and with the delivery of her baby ominously close, Sonya dragged herself back towards the city in search of someone � anyone � who could help her.

HARRY STAYT

Given the choice, if they didn't need to get up and go to work, school or whatever each day, many people (probably most) would prefer to spend their mornings in bed. Harry Stayt is not like most people. Harry is up, washed, dressed and ready to run by eight o'clock at the very latest, usually much earlier. Harry does not enjoy being cooped up inside. By trade he is an outbound activities instructor, qualified to teach (amongst other things) rock climbing, abseiling, caving, rafting, canoeing, kayaking, mountain biking and hill walking. The summer holiday season has just ended and he has no lessons booked for the best part of the next three weeks. For the first time since early summer he now has some time to himself. Harry being Harry, he intends to spend much of this time undertaking those activities he is usually paid to teach.

Harry loves to run. He rents a small cottage in a village which is nestled on the banks of a large, man-made lake. A single, continuous road of some eight miles in length encircles the eservoir. This is his regular running route.

Harry sat on the front step of the cottage and, as he tied his laces, he looked out over the stunning view which greeted him. There could be no better way to start each day, he decided. The world was silent save for bird song, the rippling of the water on the surface of the lake and the occasional distant rumble of farm machinery and traffic. And if this was favourite time of day, he thought, then early autumn was his favourite time of year; a brief, quiet interlude after the busy summer holidays and before the winter snow and ice brought skiers, snowboarders and others to this area of the country. This morning was picture perfect. The sky above him was a cool, clear, uninterrupted blue and the lush greenery surrounding the scene was slowly beginning to turn. The endless shades of green which had been present all summer had now begun to disappear and had been replaced by yellows, oranges and brittle browns. And the air... Christ, even the air tasted good this morning. Cool but not too cold, dry but not parched and with a very gentle breeze which blew at him from across the surface of the water.

Around Harry the population of the small village were beginning their morning rituals and daily routines. As he stood up and closed his front door he looked round at the few small houses and shops nearby and smiled inwardly. What was it about human nature that made people so desperate to trap themselves into strict routines like this? Couldn't they function without this structure? He'd moved as far away as he could from the city to escape from the relentless boredom and monotonous familiarity of the rat-race but even here, out in the middle of nowhere, there was still too much focus on structure and conformity. All around him the same people were doing the same things at the same time of day as they always did. Mrs Rogers was opening the village store as she did every morning, putting the same goods out on display in exactly the same place as always. Her husband was taking the daily delivery of bread, milk and papers. The small school gates were being opened and children were beginning to arrive. It was happening everywhere he looked. In some ways he was no better, he had to admit. He often ran the same route at the same time of day and he always performed a well-rehearsed stretching and loosening exercise routine before going out. Although he wanted to believe otherwise, maybe he was as regimented as the rest of them.

Harry checked the door was locked, checked that he had tied his spare key onto the string of his shorts, checked and started his stopwatch and then began to run. He moved slowly at first, knowing that the first few footsteps were crucial. He'd had more than his fair share of avoidable injuries over the last couple of years and he knew now that it suited his body to start slowly and gradually build up to something resembling a decent speed. In any event, this was a simple training run and he didn't intend overdoing it.

He jogged out through the village, acknowledging a couple of bemused folk as he passed them, ran across the dam and then began his usual clockwise circuit of the lake. He'd run this route many times before and had adapted it over time. He knew that it was more sensible to run clockwise because the majority of the children who attended the school lived on farms and in other villages to the east. The timing of his run today had been carefully considered so that he wouldn't reach the busiest stretch of road until the school traffic had been and gone. He expected the rest of the route to be quiet. Although very busy at the height of summer, with the ending of the holiday season the lake and the village had become noticeably quieter. Harry didn't expect to see more than a handful of people while he was out.

That was how he liked it.

Three miles in and the village had long been lost in the distance behind him. A heavy canopy of trees bowed over the road, giving Harry shade from the strangely cool but still brilliant and relentless sunlight. The cover muffled and changed the sounds around him, blocking out the very distant rumble of village noise and traffic, making every birdsong and animal noise seem random and directionless, and seeming to amplify the constant thud, thud, thud of his trainers pounding the ground. His breathing also seemed inordinately loud although he knew it didn't matter if it was because there was no-one else nearby to hear him.

The peace and tranquillity was disturbed momentarily. A car engine (which could have been ahead or behind him and anywhere between half a mile and a mile and a half away) was abruptly and unexpectedly silenced. Harry then thought he heard the crackle and spit of splitting wood. It could have been anything, he quickly decided, but it was probably nothing. One of the local farmers working their land on the steep banks of the lake perhaps? He ran on regardless.