Evacuation Point: End of the World, #1

By James Loscombe

Welcome to the end of the world

A terrible virus arrives in Great Britain, killing its victims or turning them into depraved monsters. An evacuation is organised but along the way Evan loses his daughter Harriet. He returns to the city to search for her and comes to the attention of a vicious gangster called Cortez who will stop at nothing to have what he wants. Evan has only one chance: reach the heliport before the final evacuation. If they don't escape now, they will be trapped forever on an island full of criminals and monsters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Loscombe
• Release date: Nov 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386865025

James Loscombe

James Loscombe has been publishing under various pen names for the last five years. He lives in England with his wife Tamzin and their sons Jude and Oscar.

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We watch the helicopters overhead and I can think only one thing: they aren’t coming back for us.

There are dozens of them. They fill the early morning sky like bats. Their blades make a chopping sound which I can feel in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know who is on them, but I know that it isn’t us.

Harriet tugs my arm and I look down at her.

Come inside daddy, she says.

In a minute sweetheart, I say.

More helicopters appear to replace the one’s which have flown out of sight. I don’t know where they are coming from and I don’t know where they are going.

Daddy come inside, Harriet says. I made breakfast.

I want to continue watching the helicopters because while I do that, there’s a chance they haven’t forgotten us. One of them might turn around and land in front of the house. A man in military uniform might climb out and announce that he’s there to pick up Evan and Harriet.

The chances of that happening are small, but while there is any chance at all, I am reluctant to leave.

Harriet says something which I don’t hear above the chopper blades and the next time I look down she’s gone. I look back at the house and see her standing at the kitchen window, watching me, watching her. She’s safe there. I turn back to the helicopters and watch our last hope for survival disappear beyond distant buildings.

Harriet is sitting in the living room in front of the television when I finally return to the house. These days there isn’t much on except news, but she likes to watch it.

The things which scare me are not the same things that scare her. She can watch a report about forgotten victims in a quarantined hospital without having nightmares about wide eyed children dying alone in their beds. I cannot.

I sit down on the edge of the sofa, ready to leave if it’s bad. What are you watching? I say.

Harriet doesn’t turn away from the screen. She’s holding a bowl of cereal that’s a month past its sell by date, scooping it into her mouth. We don’t have any milk so her crunching is almost as loud as the helicopters. The news, she says.

Anything interesting?

They’re saying that the quarantine is working, she says, between mouthfuls of dry cereal. There aren’t any reports of outbreaks except here.

That’s good, I say, but a part of me doesn’t feel like that. The news that Indigo Runner is only in the UK makes me feel isolated and alone.

No one is saying whether the quarantine was set up by our government or one of the others. I can believe either. Indigo Runner started here. So far, we are the only country that has reported outbreaks, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been others.

We have become a pariah nation. There are no more flights into Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted or anywhere else. No more cargo, no more food. We have been abandoned by the rest of the world.

I stand up and walk through to the kitchen of our ground floor flat. I open cupboards, even though I know they will be empty.

Is there any more coffee? I call out.

No.

Tea?

No. I hear her spoon scraping the bottom of the bowl.

I lean against the work surface and reminisce about sitting at my desk drinking coffee, trying to work out which words sounded best in the sales copy I was writing. Better times.

And we’re almost out of food, she says.

I look up and Harriet is standing at the door. She’s eleven years old. After a month of eating whatever we can scrape together she looks thin and malnourished. She looks no older than eight.

She wipes the bowl with a damp cloth. We can’t spare the water for washing up, but if there’s no more food then won’t have to use it again.

Are you going to the shop? she says.

My mouth is dry.

We’ve both seen the reports on the news; the shops are still open but they are under military control. Men with guns stand at the front, handing out boxes of rations. They don’t ask for money.

Last week there were riots.

On the news I saw a man get shot in the face for trying to push past the soldiers. They left his body on the ground for more than an hour. People climbed over him as if he was a sack of cloth. The news didn’t show the clean up afterwards. I can’t imagine there was much left after a thousand people had trampled him.

If I don’t go to the shops then we will both starve to death.

I can’t even remember the last time I ate anything that wasn’t covered in sugar.

They might have coffee, she says.

I’ll go, I say.

I’ll come too.

I shake my head and Harriet wilts. As loathe as I am to leave the house, there is no way that I am going to let her. You need to stay here.

Why?

Because it’s not safe. You’ve seen the news.

It’s not only food riots that are a risk. The streets are rife with criminals and there’s no one left to stop them taking whatever they want. Not to mention the Infected. Although local quarantines mean there is little danger of them attacking.

What if something happens to you? she says.

Nothing is going to happen to me.

It might.

It might. I was a copywriter by trade, not prepared for surviving in an environment like this. But if something happens to me, at least she will be safe. I don’t know if there is any hope left, but if I have any, then she is it.

This isn’t up for discussion Harriet, you’re not coming with me.

After a moment she nods and I have to believe that she’s serious. If I believed that she would follow me out of the house, then I would never be able to leave.

Go back and watch cartoons on or something.

She looks as if she might argue, but then thinks better of it. I listen to her footsteps as she walks back to the living room. The sound of helicopters has stopped. No one has come to save us.

Outside it is quiet. Our flat is on what used to be a busy high street. The road leads to the centre of Brixton. There’s a tube station twenty minutes away but I’m pretty sure there aren’t any trains running now.

I close the door behind me.

Harriet is standing at the window. When I wave at her she disappears and I can only hope that she doesn’t take it into her head to follow me.

I start walking.

The corner shop where we used to buy milk closed during the first outbreak. The owner, Mr Ellis, lived in the flat above us, but I haven’t seen him for more than a month. I try not to think about the possibility that he is decomposing in his bed. But I know that would be one of the better outcomes in this situation.

Looters cleaned out the shop long ago. The military has been all over London, taking all the food that remains. You can no longer get fresh food but, we were a nation of hoarders, and there are plenty of tins and packets to go around.

I am the only one on the street. There are no engines and no other voices. It is a strange feeling, to be alone in London, not one that I care for.

There is a children’s playground on my right. When Harriet was younger we used to take her there. I have many happy memories of watching her go down the slide, or run around with the other children. When I look at it now all I see is misery.

The graffiti reads:

THE RUNNER IS COMING TO GET YOU!

Or the classic:

SINNERS BEWARE! GOD IS JUDGING US ALL.

I can’t look at it without tears filling my eyes. The whole country seems to be falling apart. It seems like only a matter of time before the people holding it together abandon us.

What will happen then?

When the soldiers leave, as I’m sure they will, who will stop the criminals taking over?

I speed up, hoping to leave my bad thoughts behind. I am prone to melancholy, but it won’t help either of us survive. I need to focus on the task at hand, if I don’t get food then we will be dead before the criminals have a chance to take the city.

The nearest supermarket is on the other side of the railway bridge. I am still a mile away but I can already hear people shouting. There are other people on the street now, but we don’t look at each other. We walk with our heads down and our hands in our pockets. None of us wants to be here, but necessity has driven us to it.

I used to drink at a little bar on this street. It only had half a dozen tables and overpriced beer, but I liked the atmosphere. Not that I was a big drinker, you understand, but every other Friday Cassie would stay home with Harriet and I’d go out. Two beers was about my limit, enough for an hour or more of conversation with the other people who drank there.

I could write a book, I’d say to Cassie. London Stories.

You should do it, she’d say to me.

Maybe I will, I’d reply, but I never did.

I’m no longer thinking about a book, but I miss the conversation, the trading of stories. It made the world seem more personal. As if there was a point to it beyond feeding ourselves and making babies.

I occupy myself with thoughts of the days before Indigo Runner. When Cassie was still with us, and I had hopes that amounted to more than mere survival.

The smell is the first thing I notice after the noise. It is the odour of a thousand people who can’t spare the water to wash themselves. It is the smell of desperation which seems forever on the verge of panic.

I join the back of the crowd and look around, trying to work out what the system for queuing is. There doesn’t seem to be one, but I am British and queuing is part of my DNA.

As people at the front leave and other people join behind me, I find myself trapped. I can’t help but wonder what will happen to me if there is another riot. I won’t be able to fight my way out if there is.

Not many people talking, which is how I am able to hear the whispered conversation. Like everyone else who must be able to hear it, I pretend not to. No one whispers to an audience, and if they can’t have real privacy, at least they can have imaginary.

The two men are standing to my left, less than five metres away, but they might as well be a mile. There are at least twenty people between us. One is old, wearing a blue wool hat pulled down over his ears. The other is younger, long greasy hair hanging over his shoulders. They don’t look like a threat, but what they are saying should make me reconsider.

It’s not like that any more, the younger man says.

Of course it is, we’re not animals. There are still laws and rules.

The young man nods, but I can tell he’s not agreeing. Sure, sure, but some things have changed, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

You know they have. Are you telling me you’d starve to death rather than steal?

I didn’t say that.

So you would steal?

The old man thinks. He nods.

So what’s the difference?

"Stealing from a shop isn’t the same