The light of the torch is slight, but I rinse it over the solid object in front of me.
Tension loosens from my shoulder.
It’s a car.
Just a car.
I went tumbling over the bonnet.
The cold has frosted over the windshield, cracked but not shattered, and the rainfall glistens on the punctured tyres.
I turn the light around, wispy and frail against the strength of the blackout. All I can see is about a metre in front of me.
I stretch out my arm as far as it’ll go. My gloved fingertips press against the quiet, stagnant air.
I take a single, cautious step around the bonnet and turn the light over the darkness.
And I see that I’m at the edge of the road.
I take another step, gliding the soft light over bonnets and tyres and windshields.
Cars are abandoned in a heap between the road and the pavements… like one hell of a crash happened here.
A pile up.
The light only reaches over the bodies of a half-dozen cars. The darkness swallows the rest.
I take another step around the frozen crash, angling the light as I do.
I try to move my way around the tangled mess of metal. But I keep stumbling over bent wheels and broken glass and fallen bags and a stray bumper.
I inch around the corner of the crash, angling the light down the dark road—but a car door blocks my way.
Left open, rusted over in the cold, it’s barely hanging onto its hinges against winds that must have battered through here a hundred times.
But that’s not what slows me.
It’s not what cautions me.
Not the cars, not the pile up, not that I have to try and find my way around the crash.
It’s that buildings border the road on the left side. The light bounces off the windows—and at first, I flinch against the glare, as though it’s a glinting sword aimed at me.
I inch closer, weaving around the cars and the debris of the crash. I step over bags and lunchboxes and keys and a stuffed bear, pink, spattered with blood.
My throat thickens.
I move for the other sidewalk, lined with old brickwork.
I’ve chased the road into the heart of a town.
Or the only part of city that’s still standing, like an outer borough.
Back there in the fight, I saw nothing of our old world, our now dead civilisation. But maybe it used to be there, and units havepassed through and burned it all to the ground. Now, it’s just a road through nowhere—and suddenly ending up somewhere.
I’m not thrilled about this.
I shouldn’t be here.
