Interrupted Journey

I knew at once that something had gone badly wrong.

The lights in the restaurant flared briefly then we were plunged into semi-darkness. There was the smell of burning electronics. I’m a electronic engineer and I recognise that ozone smell.

But this was the first time I’d ever experienced all the electronics in a room burning out at the same time.

The background noise changed too. We’re continuously immersed in a sea of noise: other peoples’ music; the gentle hum of transformers; and the rumble of traffic. You only notice it when it’s gone. For a brief moment there was silence but this was brought to an abrupt end by the crunch of colliding cars on the street outside.

My fourteen-year-old son, James, was staring at me through a curtain of hair, still holding a slice of pizza which was starting to droop in his hand. “She was right,” I said in a quiet voice, not really believing it myself. “It’s happened.”

It was supposed to be a simple shopping trip. Seven-year-old Elizabeth was at a sleepover with her friend Amy, so James and I had taken the chance to visit our favourite outdoor shop in Amberford. James needed new boots and I was looking for a couple of things for our upcoming camping trip. Though it was thirty miles from home, it was owned by Mike, an old army friend of Mary’s, who was James’s godfather. Not only did we receive substantial discounts and personal attention from the shop owner, it was a great chance to keep in touch.

After finishing our shopping, we had driven on to the climbing centre that I used to use when I lived in the area. It was frightening how out of practice I had become and watching my son scoot up the walls had made me feel quite old.

James and I were enjoying a late lunch together when the lights went out.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“Something’s cooked all the electronics,” I answered, checking my phone. It was completely dead. He took out his own phone and started prodding at the screen.

“It’s the sort of thing your mum was preparing for,” I explained to him in a low voice.

“She was preparing in case our phones packed up?” James asked.

“Not just the phones,” I explained, lowering my voice and leaning towards him. “It looks as if the electronics in the cars out there is fried too.” I nodded at the unmoving cars and busses in the road behind him. “Lorries too... food delivery lorries... and the electronics that run the water... and gas... and what about the police radios?”

James was quiet for a long time as he started to understand what I was talking about. “What about Lizzie?” he asked at last.

“She should be OK for a while,” I answered with more confidence than I felt. “Amy’s parents will look after her. We’ll just have to get back there as quickly as we can.”

“But you said the car won’t work,” he said, his voice rising in worry. “How are we going to get home?”

“Keep it down, mate,” I said. “We don’t want to start a panic. Give me a minute.”

I fought my own instincts to hurry back to our car and instead forced myself to think.

For Mary’s sake, I had gone through the motions of preparing for the end of the world. Even if you didn’t believe in all that ‘the end is nigh’ stuff, a lot of it made sense: keeping a stock of food at home and buying in bulk meant better prices and less time wasted in supermarkets; her home grown vegetables always tasted better than the shop bought ones; and the Land-Rover was the right vehicle for visiting her parents up on their farm. Even after her death, I’d carried on, though I was nothing like as rigorous as she had been.

So, we had all kinds of good things stashed away for just this kind of emergency; and here we were, stuck miles away from home.

“We’re going to have to walk,” I told James.

He gave me a puzzled look.

“If our car’s not going to start, that’s the only way we’re going to get home,” I explained.

“But it’s miles!”

“About forty, if we go through the hills. I can get us up to Mike’s house but then...” I thought for a moment. “Then we can go past your Grandma’s place; it’s pretty much on the way… in fact, once we’ve collected Lizzie it might be best if we all stay on the farm until this is sorted out.”

“How long is that going to take?”

“We’ve absolutely no way of knowing,” I answered. “If this is just a local thing, the army could arrive tomorrow to sort everything out. If it’s worldwide...”

We were both silent for a few moments.

“All being well, I should be able to get the Landy running,” I went on. “It’s not got much in the way of clever electronics and your mum made sure we kept a few spare parts. If that works, we’ll be able to get all our stuff back to the farm.”

As we were talking, the restaurant manager came over to our table. He explained that, because of the power cut, they would not be able to finish serving our meal. He politely asked us to leave so that he could lock up. There would, of course, be no charge.

“That’s fine,” I responded. “We were just about done anyway. Could we have a couple of small boxes for the rest of the pizza, please.”

“Certainly,” the manager replied. He seemed relieved. Some of the other customers had been giving him much more trouble.

“And I don’t suppose there are a couple of bottles of water we could have?” I asked on impulse. “It looks like the cars aren’t working and we might have a long walk home.”

“Of course,” the manager replied. He was keen to get us on our way. A few moments later we were heading out of the door.

There was a strange atmosphere in the street. The familiar hum of traffic was absent and voices were carrying in an unfamiliar way.

Half the people seemed to be treating the whole thing as a big joke - half were treating it as an inconvenience aimed at them personally. Nobody else seemed to be treating it as the serious and life changing event that I feared it might be - then again, we weren’t exactly shouting about it. Perhaps everyone else with suspicions was keeping their heads down, too, and doing what they needed to do.

We had step out into the road to avoid a large crowd that had gathered around the entrance to a supermarket then and made our way back to the car-park. A number of the cars had their bonnets up including the one next to ours. An elderly gentleman was staring into the motor compartment.

“Are you having problems?” I asked in as casual a tone as I could manage.

“It won’t start,” the gentleman replied.

“Oh dear,” I said as I pressed the button on my key fob and, as expected, nothing happened. “Looks like we might have problems too.” James gave me a slightly quizzical look but fortunately kept quiet.

I unlocked the door with the key, climbed in and opened the passenger door for James. He climbed in too but gave me another puzzled look.

“We’re just going to go through a bit of a pantomime here to avoid attracting attention,” I explained in a low voice. “Then we can pack up our stuff and get going.”

He nodded his understanding.

“Now have a think - it might be a while until we can get back to the car. Is there anything we should take with us?”

I had to smile when he opened the glove compartment and took out the tin of sweets that we kept there. “Good thinking,” I said with a smile. “Now, is there anything else in there that might be useful?”

I popped open the car bonnet and went through the motion of fiddling with the engine then went round to the boot. I knew that Mary had left a basic ‘get home’ kit in a small locker in one of the side walls. I roughly knew what was in it and had replaced the food and water a couple of times. It included a lightweight backpack, a very basic tent, four foil sleeping bags, a tiny solid fuel water heater and a compact multi-tool plus, of course, three different ways of lighting a fire. Not great luxury but it would get us home.

She had also hinted that there were further supplies concealed below the spare wheel - but managed to make it clear that I should not investigate until I really needed to - plausible deniability. So, after checking that nobody was watching, I removed the wheel and undid the screws securing the panel beneath it. As I removed the panel, I found a long, plastic-wrapped package - my suspicions were confirmed. After rechecking that nobody was watching, I wrapped it in an old blanket that we kept in the back of the car and tied the bundle to the outside of the rucksack so it looked like a slightly oversized bed roll.

James’s hunting had produced a cheap pocket knife, a pack of tissues and half a packet of Paracetamol. He even found a cheap pair of children’s binoculars which, after a moment’s thought, I stuffed into the pack.

I tore out the relevant page from the road map. Though not at a sensible scale for walking it was marginally better than nothing.

“Put your new boots on,” I told James as I did a last check through the car. “We’d better take your old shoes, though, just in case...”

Then, with a final glance towards the car, we set off to walk home.