Diary of the Apocalypse

By Kay Inglis

When an economic and societal breakdown starts to happen, Quarry House – remote and literally bullet-proof – is the perfect place to escape to. But remoteness also makes it impossible to follow the chain of events that results in the final breakdown and to identify the catalyst that made this apocalypse inevitable.

This diary traces one person's experience of life post-apocalypse, as they try to adapt and survive and make sense of what actually happened to the world they once knew.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kay Inglis
• Release date: Sep 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386136132

Book preview

Table of Contents

Diary of the Apocalypse | Kay Inglis | Copyright © K. Inglis 2018

Diary of the Apocalypse

Kay Inglis

Copyright © K. Inglis 2018

DM me your address, and if it all goes pear-shaped, I’ll come and find you #Apocalypse #lookoutforeachother

Thursday 15 th

I’ve harvested my first potatoes! They are a small and almost perfect oval shape and have white, waxy flesh. This is my first produce apart from the little radishes, which just keep on coming if I plant seeds regularly – until I run out of seeds, that is. It was never my plan to grow them in what I had expected to be my stylish solarium, but there it is. The potatoes are growing in bags, and I have tomatoes, basil, and the radishes in a variety of pots. Oh, and endless cress on the same principle as the radishes. Then there’s the cherry tree and the bay tree, but more about those later. I managed to tweak the gutter so that the water from the roof is channelled through the window into a couple of plastic barrels that used to reside in my garage, full of odds and ends. These are my main sources of water, so goodness knows what I will do if we continue to have really dry weather. I have a ridiculous amount of wine, thanks to my granddad, but I don’t think I could water the tomatoes with that. And I’m not going to venture out, not unless I get desperate. I just hope that never happens.

Sometimes I think about what it must be like for BB17 out there. I imagine BB17’s journey as like that made by Frodo and Sam across Mordor to Mount Doom. Except sometimes I imagine zombies instead of orcs. Then there was a film I saw a part of when I was channel-hopping years ago, where some guy was going somewhere in a post-apocalypse world. I don’t remember everything that happened, but he kept getting attacked and had to hide. I think this is what must have happened to BB17, because I don’t see why else it would take so long to get here, even if no cars are available.

I’ve tried to work out how long it would take to walk a couple of hundred miles. I’ve never been much of a walker, so I don’t really know how far it is possible to walk in an hour. A mile isn’t far, so it must be possible to go that far in an hour, so 200 miles in just 200 hours. Well, you wouldn’t walk all day and all night. Maybe you could walk eight hours a day, even if it was hard-going.  So you could easily do 200 miles in a month, even if your feet hurt and you had to rest for a few days. Or you got pinned down by orcs or zombies. Not that there really are zombies, but I bet some people have gone a bit zombie after everything that has happened. Anyway, I don’t know exactly how far BB17 has to walk, so all I can do is wait and see what happens. I’ve been doing a lot of that recently.

Sometimes I make up tweets in my head – you know, the sort of thing I would have tweeted before the internet went down. Usually the tweets are aimed at catching BB17’s interest. Stuff about what happened and why and who was responsible. BB17 would have had interesting stuff to say about that, even if I disagreed with it. And I have plenty of time to work out in my head how to make my comments really succinct to fit the 140-character limit on Twitter. BB17 was really good at saying things concisely and still getting across a clear meaning. Sometimes it was hard and people would jump on one of BB17’s tweets and say that it was nonsense, and that BB17 didn’t understand something, but it was only because you can’t always get every nuance of an argument into a single tweet.

I have given a lot of thought – some would say too much thought – to what BrexitBaby17 is like. It’s not like I have much to go on. A profile photo, a header photo, and that mini-bio thing. And all the stuff he said. Well, there is my first assumption. I’ve always thought of BB17 as a he. I can’t explain why, except to say that his tweets sounded male to me. I don’t know, something about the tone – matter-of-fact, confident and a bit cocky, but in a humorous way. Once or twice even flirtatious. BB17 knows that I’m female, because I was all straightforward on Twitter. A picture of me (a very flattering one, but, hey, I’m not going to pick a bad one) and my name, ElodieGSmith – G is for Grace. Of course, it could have been a false photo and identity – who knows with the internet? – but it wasn’t, and I think I came across as the Elodie that is me. So BB17 knows I am a girl and relatively attractive (it was a very good photo!). Mind you, it’s possible that BB17 is a lesbian, because lesbians flirt too, and that would be a bit awkward. Not that I mind lesbians, don’t get me wrong. I was bridesmaid at Sarah and Chantal’s wedding, and I love them dearly. But I wouldn’t flirt with them, because I like guys that way, not girls.

Anyway, BB17’s profile picture was of a wheelbarrow full of vegetables. This is not in the least helpful. He made a few comments about gardening and growing vegetables, which is fine. It did make me wonder if he is oldish, because my uncle had an allotment, and when I went there one day, it was all old men drinking tea. I’m pretty sure Jeremy Corbyn had an allotment, and he was pretty old. But I think BB17 is youngish. Again, I can’t say why, just something about the chatty style of his tweets. I’ve even wondered if he is really young. I mean, why Baby, and why 17? He’d had his Twitter account for a year or so, so maybe he was 17 when he got it and is 19 now. Well, I’m 32, so the flirting would be a bit awkward. Mind you, my photo was taken a few years back. Or maybe he likes the yummy-mummy image, although that could be a bit creepy, and I don’t want to be anyone’s mummy until I actually have babies of my own, and what are the chances of that now? I even wondered if the 17 was for 1917 – you know, the year he was born. But I don’t think many centenarians would tweet. And he wouldn’t have said that about walking the length of the country if he was 100 years old! So I don’t know what to make of Baby. It’s not quite like Babe – which would have meant a girl. But the sort of girl who calls herself a babe would probably have been posting lots of sexy selfies, and BB17 only posted a few pictures of vegetables. Maybe Baby as in Baby Boomer, which could mean some guy in his sixties, which would make sense of the wheelbarrow and the allotment, and be a bit disappointing for me.

Well, then there’s the profile comment. Mine said 48% – you know, one of the 48% who voted to remain in the European Union. And it said that I love cats, which is true, although I’ve never had one as a pet, but I followed a load of people who posted cute cat pictures. And it said that I was a florist. And there was a really lovely photo of my shop as my header photo. BrexitBaby17’s header photo had a Union Jack in it, which was, you know, typical Brexit, Little Englander stuff. But BB17’s photo was of a nice field with lots of wild flowers, and the flag was on a flag pole and only quite small. Most of the picture was flowers. I guess he just stuck the flag there for the photo. Or saw it somewhere and took the picture. There were some low hills in the background, but I don’t know exactly where in the country it could be. His little profile bio said up north, so maybe it’s Yorkshire or Derbyshire. It also said he was a Leave-voting liberal. That’s why I first tweeted him. I mean, how can you vote for Brexit and be a liberal? It’s like a contradiction in terms. That’s what I said to him. And BB17 tweeted back to say that you could if you thought the terms of the Lisbon Treaty were dictatorial. And that’s how we got started.

It’s getting dark now, so I am going to have to turn on a lantern. I will go back into my cave to do that – to make sure that nobody sees the light and comes to investigate. It’s not really a cave, it’s just that my house is built into the rock and the rooms at the back don’t have any windows, so the light won’t show from there. Having no windows isn’t like it sounds – the big sitting room isn’t all gloomy and pokey and damp. When I had electricity, it was beautiful in there. There were these recessed lights that illuminated the stone wall, and I could change the colour of the lights to suit my mood. And it’s got a wood-burning stove as well as the under-floor heating. Of course, the heating doesn’t work anymore, but I’ve got a reasonable stock of wood and stuff in the garage. I did wonder if anyone would see the smoke when I lit the stove, but it doesn’t come out of a chimney stuck on the top of the house. In fact, I don’t see how it is vented, because there’s only a rock face behind and above where it is. But this place was built by a really clever guy who had lots of brilliant and unusual ideas. Unfortunately he wasn’t that good with money and he got himself into financial difficulties by the time the house was built, so I got to buy it. I feel a bit bad about this – like he did all the work and I got all the fun – but there it