Autumn Read online

  It never ceased to amaze Kieran just how much crap ended up in his inbox overnight. The system filtered out and deleted the obvious rubbish, so there was a fair chance that every message which got through to his account might be important and had to be checked. He wanted to develop his own kind of spam filter: one which would detect and remove the things which really wasted his time… multiple invites to the same meetings from different people, countless requests for information he’d already provided, reports linked to projects he’d long since ceased to have any involvement with, inane conversations between people who didn’t understand the difference between ‘reply’ and ‘reply to all’… At this time of the morning everything annoyed him. He fired off an abrupt reply to an infuriating colleague from another department, suggesting that if he’d read his previous reply, he’d have found all the information he was asking for now. He paused just before he clicked ‘send’. Too hasty. Too risky. He deleted his reply and rewrote it using far less confrontational language. A slanging match in front of the rest of the team was definitely not what he wanted this morning.

  An error in a formula in an Excel spreadsheet kept Kieran occupied for far longer than it should have. He’d wasted the best part of half an hour before spotting a rogue comma in place of a period. He thought it frustrating that it had taken him so long to find, and also that such an inordinate delay could be caused by a single tiny mistake. Just one character out of place had prevented a whole stream of calculations from being completed. It was the same with everything he did, really. Attention to detail was of paramount importance, and there was no margin for error. That was one of the reasons he liked to get in before everyone else. The quiet gave him chance to get a head start before the room filled with other people and their constant chatter and noise. Well, usually it did, when he wasn’t being distracted by stupid bloody schoolboy errors in simple spreadsheets.

  The others were really late.

  He couldn’t remember anyone saying they were going to be in late today. They’d all left as normal last night, and no one had said anything about doing anything different this morning. Drew and Marc should definitely have been here by now. Maybe they’d got stuck in traffic? He’d have got up and looked out of one of the windows, had there been any. Leaving the office would have taken too much effort, so he returned his attention to his emails, chuntering angrily because although he’d replied to all the messages he’d received this morning, as yet no one had got back to him with responses to any of the questions he’d asked. If I took as long as the rest of them, he thought, there’d be hell to pay. He remembered back to his most recent trip to Japan, to the firm’s head office. This simply wouldn’t have been allowed to happen there. Everything felt like it was calculated down to the second in Japan. He’d hoped to bring back some of the Japanese work ethos with him, but his efforts hadn’t gone down well. ‘Look outside, lad,’ one of the old hands on the production line had said to him. ‘What do you see? This is Welsh Wales, man, not Toyko!’

  Another fifteen minutes passed. Kieran was starting to get genuinely concerned now. His colleagues were no longer just slightly delayed, they were seriously late. And the fact it was all of them turned his concern into something resembling mild panic. Am I the one who’s in the wrong place? Am I supposed to be somewhere else? Was today the day of the offsite meeting? He frantically checked and double-checked his diary. It wasn’t like him to be this disorganised…

  Nothing. A blank screen. No scheduled meetings.

  He started to feel a little better when he remembered Drew having said something about running diagnostics first thing before the production line reached full capacity, but the temporary relief disappeared again quickly because the fact remained, everyone else had failed to show for work.

  He fished his mobile from his pocket, checked for messages, then dialled Marc’s number. It rang and rang, eventually switching to voicemail. Kieran cancelled before leaving a message, worried he’d sound like a nagging old woman. He tried Drew’s number next. Same. No reply. He didn’t like it when his routine was messed-up like this. He wasn’t obsessive-compulsive or anything like that, but he did like logic and order to be maintained. As a software engineer, he’d learnt to think methodically and predict logical outcomes, and what was happening this morning just wasn’t making sense. There was probably a simple, straightforward explanation for all of this, but he couldn’t find it. Maybe there’d been an accident since he’d arrived? Any snarl up on the A48 would inevitably impact the traffic trying to get onto the business estate.

  Kieran angrily shoved his chair under his desk. He headed for the door, phone still in hand. The signal strength was poor this morning. Maybe that was it? Maybe they’d been trying to call him but hadn’t been able to get through? Bloody Vodafone. Sometimes he thought it would be easier to go up to the roof and shout rather than try to get through to anyone on this network. He tried a few more numbers as he walked. Mom and Dad, a couple of friends, his sister, his other half… still nothing.

  Christ, it was quiet on the landing outside his office.

  All the noise he’d expected to hear – the chatter from the canteen, the rumble of machinery from the production line downstairs, the hustle of people scrambling to get to their desks on time – was absent. Just the background hum of the building in its place: the low groan of the air conditioning.

  Kieran soon found other people.

  He walked into the canteen, then stopped in utter disbelief. Bodies. There were bodies everywhere. One of the canteen staff was slumped against the wall behind her till, face pressed against the plaster, blood dribbling down her chin and onto her white apron, dripping on her name badge. A little further ahead was one of the guys from the production line. It took Kieran a few seconds to recognise him, so agonised was the expression on his lifeless face. Blood pooled around his mouth which hung open in a never-ending scream. At a table nearby sat one of the HR managers, slumped forward in a chair surrounded by the corpses of several visitors. They were young and smartly dressed, probably here for interviews, he thought. The last wisps of steam still snaked up from their unfinished drinks.

  And there, right on the other side of the room by the window, facedown on the carpet, was Andrew.

  ‘Drew?’ Kieran said as he stood over him. He cringed, his voice seeming to echo endlessly off the walls. He said his friend’s name again… still no response. Kieran knelt down and looked around, hoping someone else would come along who could explain what the hell was going on. He reached out and rested a hand on Drew’s shoulder, then shook it lightly. When he didn’t move, Kieran shook him again, harder this time. Then again and again before rolling his dead friend over onto his back. He could only stand to look into Drew’s pallid, blood-splattered face for the briefest of moments before staggering away, reeling with shock.

  What the hell happened here? What do I do?

  He looked out of the window, head spinning, barely able to focus on what was going on inside the building, never mind out there. But once he looked past the factory grounds he saw that, for as far as he could see in every direction, the rest of the world appeared to have suffered the same inexplicable fate as the people here. From the streets directly below, all the way to the centre of Cardiff in the near distance, nothing moved. Dead builders littered the housing development, construction abruptly halted. The Waitrose car park was an unruly mass of crashed cars, abandoned trolleys and dead shoppers. One of the slick sales guys from the Jaguar dealership lay sprawled in a puddle, the water ruining his expensive designer suit. Birds occasionally darted across the grey sky, and the tops of the trees shook in the wind, but other than that, nothing and no one moved.

  Everyone was dead. Everyone but him.

  #

  A return to the familiar gave Kieran a meagre crumb of comfort to hold onto. He cursed himself, but he didn’t know what else to do. Everyone else was dead and yet there he was, sitting in front of his computer ploughing through his work as if nothing had happened
. He clung desperately to distractions, working through his daily to-do list, using the banality of the most menial tasks he could find to block out the fear. He was terrified when he thought about what was waiting for him on the other side of the office door: What if I’m next? When am I going to die?

  It felt like hours, but only a few minutes had passed before he got up from his seat again. He’d been trying to type, but his hands were shaking. His throat was dry. He picked up a water bottle he’d brought with him from home, but he could barely hold it steady enough to drink.

  I can’t just sit here like this.

  He had to do something. He left the office and returned to the canteen where he helped himself to a coffee from one of the vending machines. He stood on the far side of the room and stared at Drew from a distance, forcing down the hot drink so fast he scalded himself. The pain and bitter taste was welcome. It made him feel alive and helped counteract the bizarre thoughts now filling his mind: What if it’s me? What if I’m the one who’s dead? It was marginally easier to believe he’d passed away and found himself stuck in a real life Twilight Zone episode, than to have to accept that everyone else had died just like that, without any immediately obvious reason. How could he have not noticed the world ending?

  The light, open space of the canteen was reassuring. He sat at an empty table a few seats down from the dead manager and his equally lifeless guests. He tried constantly to contact the people who mattered with his mobile. When they didn’t answer, he tried anyone else he could think of. He worked his way through his entire address book, then picked up Drew’s phone from where it had fallen near to his corpse, and tried all his contacts too. Nothing. No one.

  It was then that he remembered the drunken conversation from the club the other week. It felt perverse to now be trying to remember what was said to help him stay alive. Kieran had been trying to pluck up courage to go home, but hadn’t Marc said something about the office being an ideal place to hide? He’d talked about getting food from the supermarket and maybe taking a car. All those things could wait, Kieran decided. He had enough food here in the canteen to last a while, and his own car was in the car park, visible from the canteen window. He still had a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach that he should try and get back, but he placated himself by constantly repeating Marc’s drunken assurances that this was a good place to hide.

  On autopilot, Kieran finished his drink then walked across the canteen and switched on the TV mounted on the wall. The BBC news channel was silent. He felt around the outside of the TV’s housing for control buttons and changed channel. He clicked up again and again until he’d worked his way back around to the start. No one was broadcasting. Some stations showed nothing at all, others a mix of motionless studios, dead presenters and slumped audiences; real-time freeze-frames.

  Face it, he told himself, it’s actually happened. You’re the only one left.

  #

  The day felt never-ending, the night even more so. All the comfort and familiarity of the office disappeared along with the light. The electricity had failed in this part of town late into the evening, but he’d remained where he was, sitting under his desk like a kid hiding under his bed, occasionally drifting off to sleep for a few seconds at a time, only to jolt back into reality and scare himself stupid over nothing. No matter how dark and unsettling it was, at least here in the office he was alone. The thought of being outside this room with them – his dead colleagues and friends, the unknown thousands beyond – was unbearable.

  He checked his phone regularly. The signal was no better, and still no one called or sent messages. As the hours crawled by he felt increasing guilt, sitting here like a coward while his parents and his partner and everyone else he cared about was out there. But what else was he supposed to do? The probability (increasingly the certainty) was that they were all dead. He couldn’t do anything for them. Dad would most probably be on the golf course somewhere. Mom… well she could be anywhere. Kieran pulled his knees up to his chest and sobbed himself to sleep.

  #

  It was morning but still dark when he finally left the office. He could stand being there no more. He put on his coat and filled his pockets with food from the canteen, then went outside—

  —and almost immediately turned back again. Despite being surrounded by corpses inside, he’d been sheltered from the reality of the illogical nightmare. He could feel the wind and rain on his face, a constant reminder that he was no longer hiding behind walls, windows and doors. Now he felt vulnerable; naked and exposed. It was what he couldn’t see or hear which unnerved him most of all. There was no traffic noise; no engines, horns or brakes. No people moving or talking. Everything was in the exact same place it had been yesterday. He looked back up at the canteen window, wondering whether Marc had been right and if he’d made a mistake coming out. Too late now. He couldn’t go back inside… From the outside looking in, his work building now looked like a tomb.

  The silence was deafening. It felt like a deadweight, pressing down on him, getting heavier by the minute. He made straight for his car: a silver Ford Fiesta Zetec. It was nothing special, but right now it felt priceless. The smell of its upholstery, the feel of the steering wheel in his hands, the noise the door made when he shut it… all reassuringly familiar. He started the engine and turned up the stereo to cancel out the quiet of the last twenty-four hours.

  He pulled out of the car park and onto the road, the familiar journey home already anything but. Progress was slow. It had been the height of rush hour yesterday when it – whatever it had been – happened, and every stretch of road now was clogged with mile after mile of stationary traffic. From time to time he was able to use hard shoulders, bus lanes and pavements to build up a head of speed, only to suddenly have to brake again to avoid crashed cars and other obstructions. He drove around bodies with care and concentration. Even after all that had happened, the thought of wilfully causing any further damage to these poor people was abhorrent.

  Home.

  He finally reached the front door of his house, but paused before going in. A deep breath, one last look over his shoulder at the devastated world, then he went inside. There was no one else there: he could tell from the way the alarm had been set and from the gaps on the pegs where Mom and Dad’s coats would have been hanging. The silence inside his home was as ominous as the lack of noise outside, but fractionally less intimidating. At least for now, this place still felt like it used to.

  #

  Another endless night followed; hours spent staring into space, looking for answers he was beginning to think he’d never find, imagining the fates of the people he loved and trying to block out the pain they must have felt when they’d died, trying to suppress his guilt at not going out and looking for them. The conversation from the nightclub still rattled around and around in his head. All that talk of trying to survive, of finding weapons and hoarding supplies. Fucking idiots, he cursed. They’d talked about the end of the world like it would be an adventure. Well, he was here to tell them it wasn’t. It most definitely wasn’t. It was a living hell. He was almost beginning to envy the dead. At least for them the torment was over.

  But as the hours progressed, he forced himself to get a grip. The initial shock was beginning to fade – whether or not it would ever completely disappear, he wasn’t sure – but he was, gradually, starting to think more clearly again. He was going to need food and, whether he liked it or not, he was going to have to think about his long-term survival. Either that, or maybe he should just end it all now. Fuck no, he thought. That idea didn’t bear thinking about, not even for a second.

  When daylight came, he got up (he’d fallen asleep fully clothed, lying on his bed), then made himself eat and drink something. His plan this morning was simple: get out, find enough food to fill the car, then get back. If it went well, he thought he’d maybe try something else tomorrow. Perhaps he’d drive a little further and start looking for other survivors, because he couldn’t be the only one lef
t alive, could he?

  He drove along the roads he’d followed yesterday, knowing they were passable. His route was harder to stick to than he’d expected, because everything looked different driving in the opposite direction. A bike which had skidded out from under its dying driver had been easy to spot yesterday. Travelling the other way, however, Kieran almost didn’t see it until it was too late. He slammed on his brakes and stopped just short of driving over the driver’s outstretched arm.

  Where to go? The Waitrose near to work was an option, but there were nearer stores. He aimed for the Sainsburys near Thornhill, thinking that if things got difficult he could always disappear into the Pendragon pub next door and drink away his fear. He took a wrong turn in the chaos, the abhorrent sights all around distracting him. There was a car flipped over onto its roof, the bodies of its dead passengers trapped inside in full view, their faces smashed up against the broken glass. Every new face he saw made him think about the people he’d loved and lost; the people who mattered who’d be out here somewhere like this. Helpless. Dead. The thought of Dad out on the golf course really hit him hard and he began to sob. Was he as useless and selfish as he now felt for having abandoned them all? But he kept asking himself, what could he have done…?

  With his mind unfocused and tears in his eyes, he clipped the wing of another wreck then reacted too slowly and hit the kerb. He then overcompensated and lost his grip on the steering wheel. His beloved Fiesta ploughed into a low brick wall outside a house, the force of the unexpected impact throwing him forward. His face thumped against the steering wheel, and he felt his left eye immediately beginning to swell.