This short fiction by Kate Atkinson was originally published in the 19 December 2011 issue of the New Statesman.
And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.
Isaiah 5:30
In the beginning was the Void. Then came the Word and with the Word the World began.
Then one day, to everyone’s surprise, the Void returned and Darkness rolled over the land.
Tuesday 15 May 2012, to be precise. On Mountain Standard Time in Cochise County it was 6am and Phil Beckett was still asleep. He usually beat the sun to rising but not today and when he woke a few minutes later, feeling thick-headed and grouchy, he remembered with regret the booze he’d drunk the previous evening. He’d thrown a barbecue in the backyard to celebrate the arrival of his first grandchild – a boy (a bonus, but he knew he couldn’t say that to either his daughter or his wife). “Preston”, he was called. Odd kind of name, in Phil’s opinion. He’d hoped for “Philip”. He usually stuck to beer but last night he had wetted the baby’s head with an 18-year-old single-barrel bourbon he’d been saving for this very occasion. His daughter, Melissa, his only child, was an ambitious attorney with a law firm in Tucson and the “occasion” had been a long time coming.
Thanks to last night’s Elijah Craig, he rolled out of bed like a much older man. His wife had been on Cuba libres all night and was still asleep. She wasn’t a drinker by nature and Phil didn’t much want to be around when she woke. He shambled into the kitchen and switched on the Keurig Elite their son-in-law had bought them for their wedding anniversary last month. Phil preferred the old aluminium stove-top pot but it seemed to have disappeared. The Keurig’s convenient, his wife said, and Blake would be upset if he thought we didn’t use it. How would he know? Phil asked. Blake had been to the Double Diamond exactly three times in five years. He has a hidden camera or something?
He drank his coffee on the porch. The morning was hotter than usual. And quieter. He looked out over his land and thanked God for His bounty in giving his grandfather this little corner of south-east Arizona. Phil ran a four thousand deeded acre spread, the best watered in the county, three hundred head of cattle out there, prime beef on the hoof. And not one of them was making a sound this morning.
He looked for the big skinny tom that he admired and disliked in equal measure. It usually came out to greet Phil as soon as it heard him moving about, slinking out of the barn where it slept at night. If Phil was feeling benevolent he shared the cream from his coffee with it. No cat this morning. No birds either. The dog was here, though, ambling out of the house with the same hungover gait as Phil instead of bounding around enthusiastically. Mitch, a retriever-cross, a big puppy-dog really, not a rancher’s dog. Phil rubbed the top of its head with his knuckles. Sure is quiet this morning, he said to the dog. He was spooked by the sound of his own voice. He glanced up and felt weirdly relieved to see a buzzard high in the sky, revolving slowly on a lazy thermal.
Come on, buddy, he said to Mitch, draining his coffee cup. Let’s go for a drive.
The dog liked sitting up front in the cab of the heavy-duty Silverado with its head out the window, grinning like a dope as its ears fluttered in the breeze. This morning, however, it sat up straight, scouting through the windshield as if it were riding shotgun in Indian country.
They followed the dirt track up to the ridge, from where there was a good view of the creek and the low pasture below. It took a moment for Phil to understand. What the heck? he said, glancing over at Mitch as if the dog might confirm what he was looking at. The dog’s ears twitched but otherwise it remained impassive.
The cattle were lying on the ground – forty or so of them – as if they had been pushed over by a giant hand. When he was a boy Phil had played with an old wooden Noah’s Ark that had been his father’s and he had an unexpected memory of the pleasure he had taken in lining up all the animals and then knocking them over, like dominoes, all the way from elephant down to cat. The smaller species – mice, insects – were lost long before Phil was born. He wondered if the Noah’s Ark was still in the attic and if “Preston” would like it.
He crashed the Silverado into reverse and accelerated back down the track and across the rough terrain towards the pasture. When he clambered out of the cab he could feel his heart jittery in his chest.
He counted thirty-eight. All dead. He grabbed for his cell, dialled Ken Traub over at the Double E. Ken answered immediately, said he was standing in the middle of a corral of twenty yearling steers. All dead.
Next, Phil tried Shane Hollander at the Bar K. He was a strict Lutheran, Phil had never heard him swear, but today he surprised him by answering the phone, saying, What the fuck, Phil?
Dead cattle? Phil said.
No, Phil. Dead people. Dead people everywhere. All dead.
***
1pm on the other side of the world. Greenwich Mean Time in the Waitrose on Morningside Road where Genevieve was sheltering from the rain that had suddenly turned heavy and winterish for May. Since being made redundant from an architectural practice three months ago she found herself lingering, loitering even, in places that she would normally have speeded through.
She was reflecting on the whiteness, some might say pastiness, of the well-fed faces around her. Not at all like the Chesser Asda where she usually shopped and which, as well as being a haven for the tired, the poor and the huddled masses, was also, unlike Waitrose, populated with people of every nationality and colour.
But not green, Gus said. Or blue, or red or purple or –
Enough, Genevieve said. He was a very literal child. He was six, in school. She had lied to get him into his (good) primary, said they lived with her mother in the Grange. (You’re moving back in with me? Genevieve’s mother said, keeping her face admirably neutral.) Now, with all this time on her hands, Genevieve found herself frequenting the school’s catchment area – shops, cafés, the library – mildly paranoid that anonymous authority figures were spying on her, trying to catch her out in the lie. (They are, Genevieve’s mother said.)
As an economy measure, she had recently sold her car, so here she was, taking refuge from the lunchtime rain in a clean, well-lighted place where it was reassuring (or possibly not) to know that there were so many different brands of balsamic vinegar in the world, something not apparent in the Chesser Asda.
Genevieve picked up a “mini” watermelon, hefty and round like a cannonball, before wandering aimlessly over to the flower-stand where she plucked a slender sheaf of gladioli from a galvanised bucket. She should probably get a basket even though both items seemed too unwieldy to be confined to one. She would not normally have bought either watermelon or gladioli. She wasn’t even sure she wanted them (and, more to the point, could she afford them?). Fetching a basket would be a commitment. She began to experience the usual kind of low-grade existential angst she associated these days with decision-making.
From her post at the flower-stand, Genevieve had a clear view of the supermarket’s glass entrance doors. It was still raining heavily. Should she make a run for it? She could hardly stay in Waitrose all afternoon. (Or could she?) She watched as the automatic doors, obedient to an invisible will, swished politely apart to admit a middle-aged woman, the hearty, outdoors type, suitably dressed, top-to-toe, for the rain. Beyond the woman, Genevieve could see an elderly man, stooped and crooked, who was snailing heroically towards the doors. He was what her mother would have called “dapper” – good tweed overcoat, a cap on his head, a cane in one hand, an umbrella held awkwardly aloft in the other. He was once a little boy like Gus. Bruised knees, filthy hands (always), a stoic yet hopeful demeanour. Small on the outside, vast on the inside. Gus would one day be an old man like him. Genevieve’s heart came suddenly untethered.
A draught of damp air from the open doors made her shiver. The chill brought with it an odd animal-like premonition. She was still holding the watermelon in one hand and the gladioli like a spear, as if she were about to pike something, in the other. Fruit and flowers, offerings at the temple. She returned the flowers to the galvanised bucket and watched as the old man stopped to close his umbrella, shaking the rain off it. The doors closed again before he reached them.
And then the world went dark. Completely, as if someone had flicked the switch on the sun. Pulled the plug, too, for there were none of the tiny jewels of coloured light, the humming and thrumming, that indicated electronic life. Smoke alarms and cash registers, freezers, fridges and sprinklers, were all lifeless. No emergency lights, nothing glowing with faint comfort. No daylight coming in through the automatic doors either. Dark inside and out. For a moment Genevieve had the Damascene thought that she had been struck blind.
She groped in her bag for her iPhone. Also dead.
After what seemed like a long silence, as complete and absolute as the darkness, people began to voice their bafflement. A quiet, poignant Hello? from somewhere near her right shoulder. Who turned the lights out then? from a would-be joker and then the voice of a small child, inquisitive rather than frightened, but nonetheless distressing to Genevieve, saying, Mummy?
Is there anyone there? someone asked, as though they were partaking in a seance. A hand brushed Genevieve’s hair and she was reminded of the ghost train at the seaside of her childhood. It was as if they were playing a sombre game of blind man’s buff, governed by rules of extreme bourgeois rectitude. A raised managerial voice advised everyone to keep calm, although as far as Genevieve could tell no one was panicking. Someone bumped against her (Sorry, sorry), knocking the watermelon from her hands. Genevieve heard it land with a thud and roll away, a planet discarded by a careless child-god.
She was not the only one, it seemed, who thought they had suddenly lost their sight. Blind? someone said, as if trying out the word for size. Genevieve thought of The Day of the Triffids. It seemed improbable. What was more likely – an invasion from outer space by killer alien plants or a total eclipse of the sun and its electronic cohorts? But then surely eclipses were foreseen, charted events, not sudden biblical calamities?
The “pulse”. She had read about it in a newspaper a few months ago. It was something to do with solar flares. An increase in sunspot activity was due and was going to cause geomagnetic storms, knocking out satellite communications and causing blackouts on earth. “Catastrophe” and “chaos” were predicted across the globe (it was an article in the Daily Mail, she remembered now). She wished that she had paid more attention. She wasn’t sure what a geomagnetic storm was but it certainly didn’t sound good.
But then, just as suddenly as it had been turned off, the power was snapped on again. People blinked at the sudden assault on their retinas from the overhead lights and looked about in confusion as if they were expecting something to have changed during their unexpected daytime journey into night. Everything was just as it had been. Daylight had returned outside. A blink, that was all. The universe blinked.
Waitrose rebooted itself and the air was filled once more with the low whining and buzzing noises of robotic insect life as the big fridges and the cash registers came back to life. The automatic doors began dutifully opening and closing again. Several people headed straight for the outside but the majority of customers, after some hesitation, recommenced shopping. A babel of mobile-phone ringtones started to fill the air. Genevieve supposed everyone wanted to share their own experience of the dark. Once they would have written laborious letters and the event would be forgotten by the time the letter was delivered into another hand. Her iPhone vibrated in her own hand. It was Genevieve’s mother asking if she was all right. Yes, she said. (Was she?)
Look outside, Genevieve’s mother said.
The customers who had already left Waitrose were still standing in a little huddle near the doors, looking aghast. Genevieve saw the dapper old man, lying supine on the concrete, his cap tilted rakishly, a peaceful expression on his face, even though the hard rain was falling steadily on it. She hurried towards him, crouching down and feeling for a pulse. None. Standing up, she found herself next to the woman who was dressed so well for the rain.
Has someone phoned for an ambulance? Genevieve asked and the woman who was dressed for rain (but who would never leave her house again, no matter the weather) simply lifted her arm and pointed like a mute seer at the length of Morningside Road. That was when Genevieve realised that the crowd’s distress was not on account of the dapper old man but for a much wider horror.
Everywhere that she looked there were people lying on the ground – as though they had been struck by a narcoleptic spell. The Big Issue seller who hung around the entrance to Waitrose was curled up like a baby next to the ranks of wire trolleys. A young woman who was sprawled in the middle of the pelican crossing was still grasping the handle of a pushchair. The baby inside the pushchair looked – like the dapper old man – as if it were taking a much-needed nap. The old Romanian beggar woman who sat every day outside the hospice shop had keeled over, her hand still outstretched for coins. One man and his dog were bedded down on the pavement together. It was a new Pompeii.
Cars had crashed into each other, others were slewed across the road, passengers and drivers lying insensible, half in and out of the doors. A bus standing at a nearby stop had opened to admit passengers into its belly. Everyone inside the bus looked as though they had fallen asleep in their seat. The people waiting in the queue had dropped where they stood in a tidy fashion. The bus driver remained at the bridge, piloting a ghost bus, his head lolling forward as if were taking forty winks while waiting for his tardy passengers to board. The automatic doors kept trying to close but were foiled by the inert body of a woman draped across the platform, her bus pass still clutched in her hand.
No one was waking up. No one was climbing to their feet and shaking their head in bewilderment at the sudden enchantment that had overtaken them. They were dead, Genevieve thought. All of them. Dead.
From what? Gas? A terrorist attack (in Morningside?). An acoustic device – the kind they had on ships to repel pirates (again – Morningside?). Or had they all simply drunk the Kool-Aid, obedient to some bizarre order, while Genevieve was debating whether to buy a watermelon?
But – not everyone was dead. No one who had been locked in Waitrose was dead, for example, and when Genevieve looked around she could see people in cars, in shops, on buses, who were definitely alive. People who had stayed inside. Behind closed doors. Whereas everyone who had been outside –
Jesus Christ – the school playground! Gus. Genevieve reeled from the thought as if she taken a physical blow, staggered, and almost tripped over the body of the dapper old man. She set off at a run, pushing her way past the living and dodging the dead with the adroitness of the counties hockey player she had once been.
***
So, Genevieve said tentatively, not wishing to rekindle any alarming memories. What happened at school?
The little kids were scared, Gus said.
You’re a little kid.
He made a face. Not really.
Thank God for the rain, which had meant that the whole school had spent their lunchtime indoors. There were a few peripheral casualties. The crossing-man on duty, a classroom assistant. Genevieve had to skirt the body of the deputy head lying just outside the school gates. A smoker, paying the price of her habit.
I’m never letting you out of my sight again, she said to Gus.
Never?
Never.
He shrugged. OK.
Glancing out of the window, Genevieve saw a sparrow land on the bird table in the shared garden of the block of flats. It began to peck nervously at the toast crumbs that one of Genevieve’s elderly neighbours put out each morning. It was the first bird that Genevieve had seen all day. The elderly neighbour herself was spreadeagled on the path. Her fat ginger cat who spent most of his day asleep inside was sniffing the old lady’s body with greedy curiosity. Burying the dead was going to be a problem, Genevieve thought.
What? Gus said.
Nothing.
Now wash your hands.
On the television, newsreaders and pundits were wallowing in the apocalypse. It had been worldwide and had lasted exactly five minutes. A cataclysmic event more overwhelming in its awfulness than anything previously experienced on the planet – half a million Krakatoas, a hundred thousand Hiroshimas.
The commentators were talking in Cretan terms – The end of civilisation as we know it. The greatest disaster since the dinosaurs were wiped out. The Black Death had killed a third of the world’s population but it had taken only people (only!) but the Dark (as it was apparently now called) seemed indiscriminate in its choice of prey.
Billions of farm animals in the fields had gone but the battery hens and the veal calves survived. Children in playgrounds and streets all laid out but the worst kind of paedophiles and murderers in jail were spared. Diamond miners survived, trawlermen died. Swaths of the poor were scythed down – workers in the fields, the homeless, the drunks and the whores on the street.
In the great shanty towns of Karachi, Lagos and Cape Town, corpses were scooped up by bulldozers. Two-thirds of the population of Africa wiped out. All the animals of the Serengeti, of the Antarctic, of the Malaysian rainforests.
Planes plummeted like game birds from the sky, although some miraculously survived, coasting silently through the blackout before regaining power. Cyclists, dog walkers, cricket teams, sunbathers, tourists on the Grand Canal. Princess Anne. The Prime Minister. All gone. In the Far East, moving into night at the time of the disaster, there were slightly fewer casualties although it seemed that all it took was an open window – a crack – for the Dark to get in.
The population of New Zealand fared best, not so the forty million sheep that lived there.
There were myriad theories. In order of popularity these were: a shock-and-awe alien attack; a new kind of plague; a cull by God; a hole in the space-time continuum (this, of course, would evolve into the Void theory); an increase in the earth’s magnetism – or a sudden decrease; a poisonous miasma emanating from Venus; the revenge of Gaia. “A terrible harrowing,” the Archbishop of York said, and was condemned for being overly biblical.
Across the globe people rioted and looted and stockpiled. As you would. Genevieve thought of all the useful things she might have bought in Waitrose when she had the opportunity. The shelves would be cleared now, even the balsamic vinegar would have been snatched.
Not only the birds but also the bees survived. No one understood why, but they were grateful (pollination and so on). Many scientists, shut away in their labs, had also survived and would soon be set to work on the reason for the illogical staying power of the birds and bees (no one foresaw what a problem they would become).
The plump, newly elevated Deputy Prime Minister appeared on television, basking in the seriousness of his position. He exhorted everyone to stay calm and not panic. He sounded like a supermarket manager. The spirit of the Blitz was invoked. Genevieve turned the television off.
Will it happen again? Gus asked.
I hope not, Genevieve said.
But it did. At 1.05pm the following day the universe blinked once more. A lot of the casualties were people who were burying the dead from the first time.
It lasted for five minutes and came five minutes later every day. Like clockwork. People were thankful for this regularity. You can set your watch by it, but at the same time, as it were, the implications of this machine-like precision were disturbing.
The people who remained adapted. Dying embers of church congregations were fanned into life as many turned to religion. Others sank into apathy. Genevieve’s mother said she wished she’d had shares in one of the artificial meat corporations.
Genevieve wondered what they would do if one day the Dark came and didn’t go away again.
***
Phil Beckett never did make sense of what happened to his daughter and grandson. Five years after the first Dark, when anyone with any sense knew to the exact second when it was coming, knew to take all necessary precautions, she broke down on I-8.
Every couple of miles along the interstate there were billboards saying “Avoid the Void!” and “Don’t Let the Dark In!”. Did she not see them? She was so smart. Why had she been so dumb?
She was found on the hard shoulder, Preston by her side, holding her hand. He’d just started elementary school. They had got out of the car and had started walking – in eighty-five-degree heat. Why? Why hadn’t she just waited for a breakdown truck? A passing motorist saw them running back to the car but the Dark overtook them.
That was three months ago. His wife had turned to God and pills. Phil had given up on God, didn’t believe in pills.
Blake came round all the time. He hadn’t had a job since the first Dark. Phil felt a coldness towards him that was maybe unfair. Maybe not.
They had been doing OK. After the cattle went, Phil had transformed the Double Diamond into a dude ranch. We never take you out in the Dark. That all stopped with Melissa’s death. The horses were up for sale now.
Midday. The Dark was due at twenty past the hour.
Going out to settle the horses, Phil shouted to his wife.
The horses were always skittish beforehand. His wife was watching TV in the living room, reruns of crap – The Bold and the Beautiful, All My Children – shows that were cancelled years ago. His wife didn’t reply.
Come on, Phil said to the dog.
A shadow passed over them. One of the giant flocks of Arizona grasshopper-sparrows flying overhead. Once on the most endangered list, a darned nuisance now.
In the barn, Phil checked the windows, searched everywhere for cracks and pinholes, all the time talking soothingly to the horses. At 12.18 he stepped outside and shut the door behind him, leaving the dog inside with the horses, but Mitch started scratching at the door, whining sadly. His wife treated Mitch with amiable indifference. Phil tried to put himself inside the dog’s head. What would Mitch want? Pretty much the same as he wanted himself, he guessed.
Come on then, buddy, Phil said, opening the barn door, shutting it carefully again after Mitch came out.
The dog stood sentinel by his side, waiting patiently for whatever was going to happen. Phil put out his hand and rubbed the dog’s head. His watch was slow and the Dark surprised them both when it came.
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