there was one more line of text, where the screen usually stopped. He looked at the screen again. Then he swiped out of the terminal and back in again. He couldnât imagine it possible. It was too unreal. But however many times he looked, the one line of text glared back at him, making his head spin and his chest heave and fall as he slid back down the bricked edge of the shelter.
----
B iological Children : Twins, Ariel & Lucia Webb-Davenport [Born Year 68]
3
The Neighbour
I n the cupboard under the stairs Alice found a claw hammer, an unopened packet of nails and an axe that was covered in tiny flecks of cobalt-blue paint. It was the same colour her father had painted the bathroom in their house back in the country. Alice realised that she couldnât even remember what his voice sounded like. She didnât even have any pictures.
She started with the table. She wasnât exactly sure why she was doing what she was doing, but it was something she had seen on television months before about preparing for a hurricane. There had been a lot of those programmes in the last year. Her mother had always turned the channel over.
âYou donât want to watch things like that,â she said. âThis rubbish is too depressing.â And then, âGet me a can of lager out of the fridge before the soaps start.â
When it came to Storms, it was all, apparently, about the preparation.
----
â B oard down the windows , close all the hatches,â Alice said to herself as she smacked the blade against the table. The axe wasnât heavy, but it was difficult to control. The first splinters of wood she managed to hack off the edges were as thin and useless as her arms felt.
Her cheeks turned crimson at the effort as she shaved sticks into small piles that grew slightly larger with practice. Next she moved on to the sideboard and then a desk until she had enough pieces of thin wood to board over the window in her motherâs bedroom as well as the glass door that looked out onto the balcony. It took her until nightfall to cover over both, but it was the satisfying sound of the rain on wood that soothed her as she sucked on some biscuits and fell asleep in the sunken arms of the sofa.
The next morning, the rain had stilled to a thin mist. Alice thought it had stopped altogether until she got to the window. She pulled back the curtains, damp with water that had blown in through the cracked window and onto the wood. Fine droplets steamed downwards in filmy white sheets; but at least the wind was still. Alice crept out onto the balcony. The skies were the colour of weathered slate and slithered with showering rain that came from all directions.
Looking across the city, there was smokeâa lot of itâfrom small fires that burned in the upper floors of some of the higher buildings further out of town. Alice counted at least fifteen fires and two smaller buildings collapsed at their knees, exhausted, as she stood there. It felt unreal, like television. The London Eye stood like a stopped clock in the distance, bent and broken.
The river that snaked through the centre of the city had burst its banks, flooding the streets with rancid, stinking tidewater that swirled over parked cars and street lights and around trees and houses. It was deep now and the water had risen well above the windows of some of the houses opposite. The sharp summits of buildings stuck out like exclamation marks and others created even tables that protruded in miniature from the deep, swirling mass. Alice couldnât work out how deep the water was, but on the higher ground she could see the very tops of traffic lights and the shiny cabs of trucks. There were lines of cars reflected in the depths of the water where the pavements used to be. She edged out closer to the balcony rail. In the pools, she could see things floating. Different-coloured things of different shapes and sizes. It didnât take her long to work out that
----
B iological Children : Twins, Ariel & Lucia Webb-Davenport [Born Year 68]
3
The Neighbour
I n the cupboard under the stairs Alice found a claw hammer, an unopened packet of nails and an axe that was covered in tiny flecks of cobalt-blue paint. It was the same colour her father had painted the bathroom in their house back in the country. Alice realised that she couldnât even remember what his voice sounded like. She didnât even have any pictures.
She started with the table. She wasnât exactly sure why she was doing what she was doing, but it was something she had seen on television months before about preparing for a hurricane. There had been a lot of those programmes in the last year. Her mother had always turned the channel over.
âYou donât want to watch things like that,â she said. âThis rubbish is too depressing.â And then, âGet me a can of lager out of the fridge before the soaps start.â
When it came to Storms, it was all, apparently, about the preparation.
----
â B oard down the windows , close all the hatches,â Alice said to herself as she smacked the blade against the table. The axe wasnât heavy, but it was difficult to control. The first splinters of wood she managed to hack off the edges were as thin and useless as her arms felt.
Her cheeks turned crimson at the effort as she shaved sticks into small piles that grew slightly larger with practice. Next she moved on to the sideboard and then a desk until she had enough pieces of thin wood to board over the window in her motherâs bedroom as well as the glass door that looked out onto the balcony. It took her until nightfall to cover over both, but it was the satisfying sound of the rain on wood that soothed her as she sucked on some biscuits and fell asleep in the sunken arms of the sofa.
The next morning, the rain had stilled to a thin mist. Alice thought it had stopped altogether until she got to the window. She pulled back the curtains, damp with water that had blown in through the cracked window and onto the wood. Fine droplets steamed downwards in filmy white sheets; but at least the wind was still. Alice crept out onto the balcony. The skies were the colour of weathered slate and slithered with showering rain that came from all directions.
Looking across the city, there was smokeâa lot of itâfrom small fires that burned in the upper floors of some of the higher buildings further out of town. Alice counted at least fifteen fires and two smaller buildings collapsed at their knees, exhausted, as she stood there. It felt unreal, like television. The London Eye stood like a stopped clock in the distance, bent and broken.
The river that snaked through the centre of the city had burst its banks, flooding the streets with rancid, stinking tidewater that swirled over parked cars and street lights and around trees and houses. It was deep now and the water had risen well above the windows of some of the houses opposite. The sharp summits of buildings stuck out like exclamation marks and others created even tables that protruded in miniature from the deep, swirling mass. Alice couldnât work out how deep the water was, but on the higher ground she could see the very tops of traffic lights and the shiny cabs of trucks. There were lines of cars reflected in the depths of the water where the pavements used to be. She edged out closer to the balcony rail. In the pools, she could see things floating. Different-coloured things of different shapes and sizes. It didnât take her long to work out that
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