Page 34 of 59 Minutes
CARRIE
Kennington Road is thick with people, those already running and stumbling have now been joined by those drivers and passengers still able to get out of their cars. Others, trapped in their vehicles, push through windows and thump their fists against unbreakable sunroofs.
Carrie wants to tell Grace not to look but it’s not Grace who is looking and slowing them down, it’s her.
Any minute, more police will arrive with guns like at Waterloo, the army maybe, goodness knows. Carrie grabs Grace tighter, dodging people and bikes and pushchairs. Oh god, pushchairs.
People stumble from all angles, running, shouting.
A heavily pregnant woman screams outside a beautiful Georgian house on the other side of the road.
She has a toddler in a thin buggy, the kind you’d take on holiday as it folds tiny enough for the plane.
Carrie and Emma have one from when they took Clementine to Crete in September, a bottle of sunscreen still trapped in the folded basket, the pushchair shoved in the Everything Cupboard.
The pregnant woman lifts the whole thing almost over her head presenting the child to the faces watching from the middle floor windows.
‘Michael, please, you have to let us in!’
The toddler screams.
Grace stumbles to a stop, staring at the buggy in the woman’s shaking arms.
‘Tell me about your brother,’ Carrie says, guessing.
‘He’s so little,’ Grace says. ‘He won’t know what’s going on, he’ll never—’
‘How old is he?’
Grace opens her mouth, but then shakes her head. ‘It’s easier if I don’t talk about him, actually.’
The side roads they pass are emptying as exhausted Londoners stumble up steps and slide behind front doors.
Most people must either be in their own homes or have barged their way into sheltering in other people’s.
Where are all the homeless people that she would usually see whenever she walks home?
The man by the Pret near the Park Plaza, who always tells her he loves her when she buys him a latte.
She hopes he is inside the Pret for once, drinking a huge milky coffee.
With each road they pass, fewer people are out in the open but their presence is felt through sound. Radios and TVs chunter behind windows. They play the same recorded messages, but the millisecond delays create a discordant orchestra of the same horrifying information.
A brief lull settles, as they leave the worst of the crashed cars behind.
The radios and TVs have paused and instead, through covered windows, they hear the sounds of crying, talking, kettles boiling, furniture being dragged about.
Carrie is holding her breath, without fully knowing why.
But when the broadcasts start again, it’s just more of the same.
As if someone somewhere had to rewind an old tape.
‘This is an announcement from the Health Security Agency. A radiation emergency is expected in your region in the coming days, depending on the amount of radiation carried by the incoming missiles, and the area they strike.’
‘They don’t even know what’s coming!’ someone shouts.
The crowd stills and Carrie and Grace slow with it.
Back to the early bewilderment of Waterloo, people looking at each for answers, no one knowing anything.
‘Are we running about for nothing?’ a man says.
The woman nearest to him shrugs and starts to move away.
‘The potential scale of emergencies will vary from site-to-site,’ the radio continues.
‘Food and water supplies will be adversely affected, and it may not be possible to seek emergency care from hospitals or other health services. It will be vital to stay inside your homes, as fallout will be extremely dangerous. There is a plan for the supply of iodine tablets to the general public.’
‘I don’t even know what iodine is,’ Carrie says as they move away again, leaving some people still motionless behind them.
‘Potassium iodine, y’know?’ Grace says, like she’s prompting Carrie to remember a film. You know, the one with Brad Pitt where he’s not really there?
‘I … don’t know. Sorry.’
‘It’s a stable form of iodine, it helps block, well, sort of block radiation poisoning. It’s like the good kind of iodine that battles against the bad type …’
‘The radioactive type?’ Carrie says.
‘Exactly.’
‘God, you’re so clever, I didn’t know any of that when I was your age.’
‘You don’t know any of it now,’ Grace says and then covers her mouth. Carrie laughs, she can’t help it. Oh god, it’s coming out manic. I’ve turned , she thinks. I’ve lost it now.
‘But, Carrie,’ Grace says and her tone stops Carrie’s laughter like a brake. ‘You do know that …’
‘What?’
‘Like, iodine and sheltering and … all that stuff they’re saying?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, you know it’s … that’s not going to … it’s just to keep us all …’
‘What?’
‘Do you really want to know?’ Grace says.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not sure you do.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s just … what happens next,’ Grace says. ‘I read … I read a lot about this when the Ukraine stuff first happened and I asked my physics teacher.’
‘And?’
‘And I don’t think it’s going to go how people think.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Carrie, the whole city will be—’ She stops like she’s run out of air. ‘Actually, I don’t think I should … look, just, focus on getting home and spending these last minutes with your kid.’
‘What do you mean, last minutes?’
As they jog, Carrie notices a man just ahead of them standing in the entrance to an alleyway. He is static. As static as any of the abandoned cars.
‘Grace,’ she says again, ‘what do you mean last minutes?’
Grace doesn’t answer. Grace is gone. At least, Carrie can’t see her. She can’t see anything, the whole street has just gone pitch-black. No street lights anymore, no light leaking from the barricaded windows or under doors. The power is out.
‘Grace!’
She hears a muffled sound, a voice, but even as her eyes adjust and black turns to grey turns to a bruise of shapes and smears, Grace is still not here.
She grapples in the empty darkness, arms finding nothing to connect with.
‘Grace!’