Update 10

 – Alice –

They cut through beside one of the ugly offices, and reached the main road through the industrial estate, before Alice dared look back. The sound was colossal; she had seen a building demolished before – a long-winded, careful affair, despite the fact that destruction was the goal, and that had taken weeks – but this was the sound of a months’ worth of wrecking balls and splintering masonry rolled up into a few, heart-shaking seconds. The sinkhole was now at least five hundred metres across, and still expanding. The office block that she had skirted around, was just a plume of dust and handful of girders now.

They kept running, Alice gesturing to the traffic to get clear, but instead, people stopped and leapt out of their cars. ‘Just run!’ Alice yelled, her bag swinging madly on her arm. The man was beginning to carry himself now, and she felt able to let him go. The onlookers had realised now and were backing away. The road began to crack; people shrieked and started to run, following Alice, who was now at full sprint. The terrible crumbling roar continued, punctuated by the crunch of cars toppling into the void.

At the crossroads, she banked left and kept on going. Traffic was starting to screech to a halt now, at the sight of so many people running away from their workplaces. They were pouring out of the buildings and joining the throng. The garage on the corner, its forecourt filled with fancy cars, upended and slid back into the maw. Alice didn’t think about anything except running, about anything except putting one foot in front of each other as fast as she could and praying with all her might that the ground that she landed on was solid.

She lost track of the route she was taking, knowing only that all she could do was put distance between her and malevolent, swelling hole that was swallowing her town. She was heading down hill, now, and thought that reaching the valley in the bottom was the right thing to do. Hertfordshire was a reasonably hilly place, for somewhere so south, but getting off the hills had to be better than stopping here and just hoping.

Others either had the same idea, or were simply following her, assuming she knew what to do.

Eventually, as she finally obeyed the stitch in her stomach, Alice slowed to a jog, then finally, a walk. The roaring sound seemed to have stopped, but Alice was not going to go back and look. She had it now; she was going to get back to the flat, if she possibly could, then make her way to Zack’s. He had been saying for weeks that he and Jessica would be happy to put her up in the spare room, but she had resisted, saying she was managing. It had been a lie, and she knew Zack knew it, but he hadn’t pressed her very much. With any luck, she’d be able to get hold of mum and dad, and she wondered whether they had seen the news yet. She did a quick calculation in her head and thought it was probably very late in the day down under; she would speak to them later, then, by which time she might be able to really say out loud that she had missed being buried alive by only a few seconds.

Well, now she would pack a bag, walk across town, and throw herself upon her brother’s mercy. Most of her possessions were packed, anyway, and had been for a while, ever since she had started getting behind on the rent. It wasn’t for a lack of trying; she had been working all the hours available, but there weren’t that many to go around.

And now, as she realised there would be no more hours, because her office was now in millions of pieces, she thought with a pang of her colleagues. Immediately, she pulled her phone from her coat pocket and brought up the Whatsapp work group, but the connection was flaky; she presumed the network was being flooded by thousands of people all doing the same thing. There were messages from a few of them; Jack and Hannah confirmed they were okay, and supervisor Erin had been dropping off her kids at school on the other side of town, so she was safe. But several others had said nothing at all.

Just then, her phone pinged to alert her to the dwindling credit, so she disconnected the data and slipped the phone back in her pocket.

As Alice strode purposefully through the town, jaw clenched tight, she saw the TV screens in shop windows showing nothing but devastation; and not just the sort from which she had so recently escaped, but extensive earthquake damage and, she did a double take, the sea coming inland, smothering green fields, hedgerows, and houses. People were crowded around, unable to take it all in. Some cried quietly to themselves, others were trying to get through to loved ones and friends, but the networks seemed to be crippled.

‘Hello? Mum, can you hear me?!’ the man nearest to Alice called into his phone.

A murmur went through the crowd. ‘Can anyone make a call?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Nor me,’ said another.

‘A load of cell towers could be out,’ someone else suggested. Alice thought they were probably right. The footage on the screens kept updating, as more and more dreadful footage rolled in. Alice lingered a few minutes longer, but it soon became numbing; the enormous sink holes, the collapsed buildings with people already digging in the rubble, the roads turned to moonscapes by the churning earth. And it seemed have affected everywhere more or less east of the M1, from Edinburgh to London. The scrollbar along the bottom of the broadcast announced the PM had summoned a meeting of the COBRA committee, though the underground had been shut down and the traffic all through the capital was backed up for twenty miles.

She pressed on, trying to keep things in perspective. Her fists were balled, deep inside her coat pockets. The shaking seemed to have finished, thankfully, but there was no sense of normality returning. The police had moved as quickly as they could to shut down main routes, bearing in mind that a significant route through the town had suddenly vanished into the ground. All non-essential traffic was being ordered off the roads. People were out in front of their houses, trying to make sense of the damage, but kept Alice pounding the pavements, sidestepping the many deep cracks, craters, and gawkers, her mind fixed on her plan.

Her flat, tucked at the back of a row of old terrace houses, seemed to have mostly escaped the external damage, but the inside was another matter. She stood her lamp back up, but the bulb had smashed. She gingerly picked the shards out of the carpet and tossed them in the bin. Pictures had leapt off the wall and she picked them up, leaving them in a pile for now. The cupboards in the kitchen had all swung open, and the few packets and tins within had fallen out. These went back carefully, and she waved the kettle hopefully under the tap, but no water poured when she turned the tap. This was, she told herself, to be expected, and hopefully temporary.

But she had seen the roads closed all the way from the town centre to her flat. How would repair crews get there? How would they even know where to start. Could they even get here, or was the whole town cut off from the rest of the country? She took a can of Sprite from the counter and pulled the ring, but it fizzed excitedly, showering the worktop and Alice herself. No doubt shaken up by the quake.

The bathroom light did not work. She then went from room to room, but the power was out. She risked a very quick look in the fridge, but there was very little left in there; she had never thought she would ever find the sight of an empty fridge comforting, but she did now. Clean towel in hand, she dabbed up the worst of the spillage and supped on the can, glad of the sugar hit.

In her bedroom, Alice found her bookshelf had toppled over and all the books lay scattered, spines bent out of shape by the weight of the wood.

It was this, more than anything, that hit her hardest. She lifted the shelf and stood it back where it belonged, but couldn’t pick up the contents; some of them had been presents from her father – a new book every birthday and Christmas, and she had kept every single one. She felt as if they were a link to him, across ten thousand miles of land and sea, in a way that email never could be. But now they looked broken, defeated, and she felt the same, slumping against the wall, with the tears she had been supressing for at least an hour finally running down her face.