Harry Styles and the New York Apocalypse

HARRY STYLES and the NEW YORK APOCALYPSE

(A Novel)

G.B. Hope

HARRY STYLES and the NEW YORK APOCALYPSE

(A Novel)

G. B. HOPE

Published by CreateSpace 2015

ISBN: 978-1511575980

Cover design: Jon Parris

to Shadrina

Bibliography

Liam McAlister
(English, trying to reach New York to rescue his sister)
People Liam meets along the way:
Allison Davies (English)
Sabrina (Indonesian)
Julius (American)
Mr Manning (American)
Mrs Manning (Indonesian)
Gus ( American )
Michael Clavell
(English, trying to reach New York to rescue his girlfriend)
People Michael meets along the way:
Molly (Australian)
Dr Neeson (American)
Mr Ferguson (American)
Taylor (American)
Jerry (American)
Jane Flynn (American)
Sienna (American)
Kacie (American)
Characters on Long Island
Steven Ziegler (American)
Martin Ivanovic (American)
Mr Stickford (American)
Mr Grainger (American)
Other characters in New York and Long Island
Danielle (English)
Charlie (English)
Elaine D'Acampo (American)
Mr Springsteen (American)
Mrs Springsteen (American)
Jonathan (American)
Kat (Filipina)

HARRY STYLES and the NEW YORK APOCALYPSE

There seemed to be an ornate bridge crossing their route into the town. Looking through the heat haze on the road ahead, the bridge puzzled him for some reason. He glanced at young Jerry, slightly ahead and to the side, but the youth just plodded along. The girls, slightly behind him, began to talk again. He would ask them to be more attentive soon more eyes to watch for threats, or find supplies. But then he didn't have to bother because silence fell like night in the jungle, as it became clear that six figures were hanging from the bridge  dark, slim shapes moving slightly in the breeze. His group grimly advanced towards the sight. The figures became female forms. Young teenage girls. Jerry looked to him for reassurance. Taylor walked with a hand covering her mouth, horrified. Sienna threw up on the side of the road, with Kacie pausing to comfort her.

They stopped in a line. Two of the hanging girls were spun away, and the other four had long hair covering their faces, so at least they were spared that horror. He assessed the girls’ clothing; all trendy and clean. What a tragic sight. A message was spray-painted on the side of the concrete bridge above them:
We Can’t Live Without You Justin
.

Taylor, Kacie and Sienna began to talk amongst themselves, perhaps trying to understand the message, but he was beyond caring. He glanced up again, noticing that one of the girls had on a Justin Bieber tee-shirt underneath her denim jacket.

‘Let’s move on,’ he said.

Then the wind picked up, turning one of the girls with short hair. Her face was almost indescribably horrid, purple, pathetic in its bloated, sad grimness. Sienna cried out in shock. He forced everyone forward, and they walked, but he had to take Taylor by the arm to stop her looking back.

‘Keep your eyes open!’ he shouted to Jerry, who had gone out on point again. ‘What’s this town we’re coming into?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied the young man, ‘but if we pass through it I think we eventually hit Bridgeport.’

They passed a ghostly quiet Elementary school, with a chain-mail fence all around it, and then some seriously looted stores, which showed bare shelves, like white ribs, even from the middle of the road. They entered the town proper as it curved to the right, wide open as usual, with wooden buildings, cars abandoned. There were no ‘‘normal” corpses, which was a good thing, at least. But no living people either.

They were tired. He could see it on the faces of the girls. He just wanted to find somewhere for them to rest, hopefully with some kind of provisions.

Still they remained undisturbed by living man or beast, moving towards the larger brick buildings of the town centre, which stood as a hazy mirage up ahead. Jerry pointed out a partly-burned delivery truck, standing above the abandoned cars. Apart from the 50% black scorching from the rear of the vehicle to the centre, it looked untouched. He knew Jerry was suggesting it might still contain whatever it had been delivering. They circled round it. It seemed just possible to force entry via the burnt side panels. Jerry hopped up and started to pull back the metal. He and Taylor lent a hand, and then Jerry had squeezed inside. Wanting to keep alert while they were preoccupied, he scanned the surrounding area.

A tinny exclamation of success preceded packets of dried fruit being thrown out onto the highway. The girls scrambled for them, ripping them open like the starving refugees they were. Jerry appeared, placing down more of the same.

‘Banana chips,’ read Taylor from the side of a packet, screwing up her face.

‘I hate bananas,’ said Kacie, but it didn’t stop her reaching in and devouring some. Sienna declined to eat.

Jerry passed some more packets down to him. They couldn’t carry many, and didn't really want to, but they ate well as they continued ahead along the road.

‘Have a banana!’ he suddenly shouted.

His companions stared at him, aghast, but he just laughed crazily with black humour. It was an English joke and that made it all the funnier to him.

‘Have a banana!’

The first suicide came after twelve hours. Her name was Rhona Shields, a twenty-year-old mother of two, who threw herself from the balcony of her council flat in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. If there had been anyone willing to evaluate the event, then twelve hours might have been considered a short period of time.

All around the world, billions of people had lived through every emotion since the situation began: from sleeping soundly through it, to being mildly put out by it, to being concerned, bored, distressed, frustrated, angry, turning to drink, experiencing painful withdrawal symptoms, breaking things, screaming at screaming children. Perhaps Rhona Shields was ready-primed to be the first over the edge, being as she was a manic-depressive alcoholic who had once put her head in the oven.

More suicides followed - too many to think about, let alone document; but there was fourteen-year-old Maria Nadal in Barcelona, who took an overdose after fourteen hours, middle-aged Jeffrey Docx in Brussels, who slashed his wrists in the bath, and retired Peter Allbinson in a small village outside Gothenburg, Sweden, who took pills before slashing his wrists in the bath.

Governments would have told people not to panic, if they'd had any way of communicating to the people. Family and friends gathered and tried to come to terms with what had happened. In general, it was the over forty-fives who kept their heads, who told the younger people to be patient. The very old were quite shocked by the hysteria - they made sandwiches, did the garden, finished the newspaper crossword, found the candles. They wished the youngsters would get a grip, stop shouting in the streets, stop being so silly. It was not to say they were unconcerned with the strange developments - they were very concerned. But it was something that might just resolve itself as suddenly as it had gone awry.

Of course, nobody knew that what had happened was confined to their region, or even their country. It was just a strange thing to happen, a phenomenon, and they had to come to terms with it in their own ways.

The suicides only accounted for a fraction of the deaths. Thousands died in crashes when their moving vehicles became out-of-control missiles; thousands more died when aeroplanes fell from the skies. Planes were down all around London, for example. A woman by the name of Tamzin Hart considered herself to be the world’s most nervous flyer. Having recently passed through a Fearless Flyer course at Heathrow airport, in order to visit her sister in Australia, she then sat on a stranded 747 at the end of the runway, as planes dropped from all points of the sky, visible from her porthole. The course hadn’t covered that.

In a Paris suburb, a young Gendarme called Olivier Evra, dealt with an accident which had involved a motorbike careering into a tobacconist shop. The rider was dead, while the pillion passenger escaped completely unhurt (he had probably bailed off the back at the last second). The shop owner had a few cuts from flying glass, but overall there was no great panic for the officer to receive assistance. Even so, he would have liked his walkie-talkie or his mobile phone to actually be working. None of the members of the public nearby had any life in their phones either. Evra wandered fifty yards or so to a main road, seeing absolutely zero traffic. What cars there were, stood idle, as did their drivers, talking animatedly amongst themselves. Evra found the whole thing to be extremely eerie.

Simultaneously, in subways in New York and Moscow, train drivers, Henry Goodfellow and Sergei Bobrik, had walked their passengers to safety. They had both done it before, and both gave thought to a terrorist incident, yet this time it was different, with no communications from base, and having to lead people out in pitch darkness, as there was no security lighting or glow from people’s cell phones. Once up to the surface, Henry stood in bright sunlight, drinking a coke while he waited for the emergency services to arrive - Sergei stood in moonlight, drinking tea from his flask, waiting for his supervisor. It occurred to both men that something extreme was taking place, and that governments and security services had no contingency plans for it whatsoever.

***

Twenty-five-year-old Londoner, Liam McAlister, had always wanted to visit America, ever since, as a child, he had chosen to become a rabid New York Giants fan. He had not, however, expected to arrive by rowing boat. Yet there he was, doing his best Sir Steve Redgrave gold medal winning impression, hauling on a massive oar, with a black man who looked liked the World Champion heavyweight boxer, David Haye, beside him on another oar. It wasn’t David Haye, of course, although the goatee was magnificent. Behind him in the orange cruise ship tender sat a man of Hispanic descent, and alongside him was a pretty little Asian girl, both straining on their own oars. And in the stern, doing precisely nothing, sat an Englishwoman - he knew her name to be Allison Davies, because they had spoken briefly on board, a few days earlier. Talked briefly, because, although she was extraordinarily attractive with jet black hair and green eyes, and possessed the body of a model, she had to be the most miserable bitch he had ever come across in his life. Why travel on a cross-Atlantic liner if you hated the motion of the sea, despised the food, mocked the entertainment and ridiculed the other passengers? Liam had not enjoyed the cruise either, but he had only been on board due to his fear of flying.

‘I’m Julius,’ the black man suddenly said to Liam. ‘How you doing, man?’

‘I’m good. I’m Liam.’ Liam strained with his oar again. ‘Let’s not shake hands just now, Julius.’

Julius had been the one to demand (threaten) that the crew on the boat deck lower another tender because he was leaving the stricken vessel that very minute. Nobody had been foolish enough to challenge him. Liam and the Hispanic man had decided to go too, then the Asian girl had asked to join them. Allison had stepped in at the last second. The crew were sending off an official landing party, who would seek assistance and return to the drifting vessel, so Liam’s expedition was not expected to return.

They were near to the shore, a beach with dark green cliffs above, interspersed occasionally with big houses. Liam was extremely surprised to be unable to see any people waiting for them. Other introductions came from over his shoulder - the Asian girl was called Sabrina and the Hispanic man Gustavo, but “call me Gus”.

‘What’s the plan?’ asked Gus of Liam.

Why’s he asking me? thought Liam. He almost told him they would go get a burger and a strawberry shake. ‘Erm, find some locals and get help.’

‘Will we be arrested?’ asked Sabrina.

Liam found it a fairly stupid question, but she sounded frightened so he looked over his left shoulder and gave her a smile.

‘Where are you from, Sabrina?’

‘Jakarta, Indonesia.’

‘Oh, really?’

While he was in that position he looked back at the drifting liner, bright in the morning sun, with little shapes of people watching them go. They should have been in New York harbour that morning. But the inexplicable event had left them adrift in high seas, without any power, Internet or cell phone connections. The previous night had been awful, in pitch dark, people vomiting but without any toilets working. The crew did their best to assure the passengers that the ship was in no danger, but there had still been anger and hysterics. Liam, travelling alone, but sharing a cabin with a stranger, had tried to sleep through the emergency. In the early hours, though, thinking about every ship disaster from the
Titanic
to the
Costa Concordia
, he had gone up on deck and lingered near to people he knew to be European. He had listened to their concerns over the blackout and the ship’s predicament.

So, as the tender reached the beach, Liam was tired and grouchy. He looked about him; still not a soul had noticed the unexpected arrival of the ship. The four rowers took a rest, trying to get their breath back. Then Julius and Gus, both wearing backpacks, jumped ashore. Liam hauled himself up and followed, turning back to assist Sabrina. He left the sullen Allison Davies to her own devices.

‘Are there any supplies in the boat?’ asked Gus. ‘I’ve brought food and bottled water, but maybe we should check.’

‘I don’t think there’s anything in the boat,’ Liam assured him. ‘A crewman told me it was empty.’

Liam watched Allison get her feet wet and curse loudly, then took one last look at the liner, before turning his back on it.
Welcome to America
.

They all started walking off the beach. Now Liam and Julius shook hands.

‘Julius, where are you from?’ asked Liam.

‘New Jersey.’

‘Are you a
Giants
fan?’

‘No,
Jets
. So, you’re a Brit?’

‘Well, I’m English. Why were you over there? You don’t seem like a
Tower of London
kind of fella.’

‘Looking to buy a chain of fitness clubs in the South East. My boss wanted to come back by cruise ship. Hell, I didn’t mind, I wasn’t paying. What’s your story?’

‘My sister’s looking to be an au pair or something in New York. I was coming over to have a holiday with her before she starts work.’

‘You must be worried for her. Are you married, no? I’m divorced, without kids, so I’m just crazy scared for my folks.’

‘Julius, you’re assuming what happened on the boat has happened on land too.’

‘Well, we weren’t in no Bermuda Triangle, were we?’

Allison shouted from behind, ‘There's still no life in my fucking phone!’

Sabrina also had a dead mobile in front of her face.

‘This is not good,’ said Gus.

‘Let’s find a town,’ advised Liam.

They pushed on inland. A few impressive wooden houses stood overlooking the bay, but there were no obvious signs of life, so they moved along a straight main road. Liam talked with Julius, while also listening to the conversation of Gus and Sabrina. As he had expected, they were both part of the crew - Gus was a chef and Sabrina a chambermaid. They talked in hushed tones as if still worried about losing their jobs and what would happen to their respective families.

They began to approach a road sign. Liam read it out loud for them all. ‘
Entering Salem. Established 1626.
’ He looked at Julius. ‘Don’t they normally say Welcome to…?’