We’re locked in down here, sightless, deaf, fifteen of us. All lost someone. Wish we’d run. Maybe we’d still be ahead. #fucked
@JennyFall, Twitter, Friday, 18 November 2016
…in an old minibus… have to whisper because… still see them. Like ghosts in the night. Pale. They… against the windows. Maybe… listening, or feeling for… vibrations. We drove as fast as we could, then had a puncture. Trapped now and… seen what happens to those who make a noise. My daughter. (Silent tears.) My little girl…
BamKrauss, YouTube, Friday, 18 November 2016
We stopped and hid when we knew they were getting close. Isa says she thinks we should have gone on until the last moment. But we’re here now, trapped, in a field with a hundred other cars. Five of us in a Volvo. No food, no water, the stench of sweat and piss and fear. The vesps circle. They roost. And if anyone opens a door, they swoop. There are bodies. They have become birthing grounds. I wish we’d driven faster. Wish we’d run further. But they’d have probably still caught us. Sometime soon we’ll have to open the door.
David Mendoza, CNN Correspondent, France, Friday, 18 November 2016
There had been much to fear since the accident and losing my hearing. Travelling in cars upset and sometimes scared me. I didn’t like being alone in the house, even with Otis keeping me company. I sometimes found myself turning around and around, as if to catch sight of someone always just behind me. Dense crowds—public transport, sports venues, busy shops—could sometimes send me into a nervous, escalating panic. But it was a deep irony that one of my most traumatic memories was from before the crash.
I was maybe five or six years old, and it had all been a nightmare…
Jude was only a baby, and Mum wore him in a sling across her chest. Dad came in from the sunny, bee-buzzed garden one peaceful afternoon, while I was drinking orange juice and eating biscuits and listening to my favourite CD of Disney songs, and gestured Mum towards him. I thought they were going for a hug. I liked seeing my parents hug; even at that age I didn’t think they did it enough. Sometimes they even kissed, and they laughed when I told them it was gross because we all knew it really wasn’t. It was love, and whether awake or asleep I loved seeing that. But this time Dad only spoke to Mum in lowered, serious tones.
The sunlight immediately faded, replaced by a heavy, almost tactile shadow that fell over the garden and stole all colour.
Next thing I knew we were running, all of us, sprinting across our garden as if it were the size of a field, not the tiny lawn-and-flower-bed plot it really was. My dad grasped one of my hands, Mum the other, my little brother bouncing against her chest with every panicked step she took. I saw the swing pass by on the left, my sandpit on the right with its cover ripped off and strange, clawed prints shadowed in the damp sand, and with almost every step I kicked away an array of coloured balls of all sizes.
The thing that chased us was unseen but so obviously there. Its presence was a heavy, dense thing, a gravity behind drawing us back. The faster and harder we ran, the slower our escape seemed to be. It was a vast weight, and every time I tried to turn to look, to see what dreadful thing had invaded our happy, perfect world, my parents squeezed my hands and dragged me along.
The worst thing—the very worst, more fearful than the sudden darkness, the endless garden of discarded and progressively more broken toys, and the sense of that monstrous thing bearing down on us—was the expression on my parents’ faces. Terror for themselves. Dread for their children. The very real sense in their eyes that every step, every breath was hopeless and they were merely delaying the inevitable.
I’d screamed myself awake from each and every iteration of this nightmare. Over time their frequency had decreased, and at some point the nightmare stopped without me even noticing. Childhood was like that, I’d come to realise. A series of milestones, large and small, that were never really acknowledged until they had passed.
Sitting in the car, in the darkness, I remembered that nightmare. It bore down on me with suffocating weight, compressing my chest and making each breath laborious. We were being chased.
I saw Dad’s face in profile, and it reminded me so much of those dreams. Lynne held my hand and squeezed, and that reminded me as well. Each time I blinked, my vision was blurred with a pulsing, spotted image of countless discarded balls, and I thought they might deflate and spot that lawn for ever. The child that had played with them was long since gone.
I could see that none of them was talking. Even Jude had picked up on the tense atmosphere, snuggling into Lynne’s side. I wished that my brother was still beside me. It was a big sister’s job to look after her little brother in times like these—not that there ever had been times like these before. We might fight, but the fights didn’t mean we didn’t love each other. Mum often said, Just you wait until Ally grows up and leaves home, Jude, then you’ll miss her like crazy.
I leaned forward and looked across at him, catching his eye, smiling and making a circle with my thumb and forefinger. But he didn’t smile back. He knew that things were bad.
I checked the iPad again. I was following Twitter, a new trend labelled #vespsUK. When it had started trending I’d been shocked, because in truth, I hadn’t really expected it. Plugged in though I was to the information superhighway, until recently this had been something happening elsewhere in the world. We’re safe. We’re an island. This is all happening to someone else.
Not any more.
There were too many new tweets to read them all, but a few random ones I picked out said everything.
@DoverDoll
I see explosions out to sea.
@PottyBonkkers
The horizon is on fire, what R they doing?
@UKPM
Our forces are engaged with the vesp plague above the English Channel.
I rolled the folding cover down over the screen. I didn’t want to see. My scrapbook app was open, filling, scattered with folders and links, but right then I only wanted to be alone with my family, wishing I was ignorant of all that was happening. I turned in my seat and reached for Otis, splayed out now in the stolen Jeep’s empty boot. I scratched his stomach and he rolled onto his back, legs in the air. I felt him grumble with innocent contentment and wished it could be so simple for all of us.
We were back on the motorway. Glenn was behind us in his Land Rover, keeping close on our tail. There were lots of cars, moving fast. I leaned forward and clocked the speedometer reading sixty, and in the dark, with so many vehicles surrounding us, knew that was dangerous. There’ll be accidents. One little bump and everyone grinds to a halt.
But a few minutes later I saw why accidents were no longer holding us up.
Mum and Dad swapped a comment, then Mum spoke briefly into her phone. The lines of traffic slowed. Ahead, past the flaring of brake lights, I saw the glow of a fire. Vehicles in the inside lane slowed to a crawl, and Dad nosed across into the outside lane. I looked back to check that Glenn was still with us. He was so close that the Land Rover’s headlights were shielded by the back of the Jeep, and I could see Glenn plainly through the windscreen. I turned around again without waving.
We were still doing almost thirty miles per hour when we passed the wreck. Several cars had crashed, two of them entangled and burning, and there were stark scrape marks across the carriageway where they had been shoved aside and dumped on the hard shoulder. The fire still raged. A few people stood along the grass verge, one of them on her knees puking, some of them hugging, all of them confused and lost. We should pick them up, I thought, but then we were past and accelerating away again.
No one spoke.
There had been people in those burning cars, I was almost certain.
“Are you okay, Dad?” I asked, and he nodded without glancing back. His expression didn’t change. That fear, that tense concentration pressed in and moulded the way his lips were set, his eyes wide and filled with reflected light.
Mum turned and nodded at the closed iPad in my lap, then spoke very carefully. “Ally, see if you can find any traffic updates. We don’t want to be stuck in a jam.”
I nodded. Damn right we don’t, I thought. Not now. Not when they get here, in however many hours they’ll take. The idea of being trapped in a line of thousands of vehicles with grumbling engines, blaring horns, crying children and screaming people…
I searched. There was little to see. No one seemed interested in road conditions when there was much more to worry about elsewhere. I tried the recovery services—AA, RAC—to see if they were updating reports, but their websites seemed to be static, frozen several hours ago. It was strange. I was already looking at something as it had been. History looked so calm.
“Nothing,” I said, but when I looked up no one seemed to react. “Nothing on traffic,” I said again, louder, and Dad raised one hand to indicate he’d heard.
Lynne put her arm around me. I’m all right, I thought, but then I saw my grandmother’s face and realised that maybe the comfort was meant to go both ways. She was crying softly. Maybe it was pain from whatever was wrong with her, or sadness at what was happening. Frustration at not being able to help.
Traffic slowed again, and then the Jeep skidded to a sudden halt. I glanced back and saw the Land Rover, nose down, braking hard behind us.
Dad slammed his hands on the wheel, then opened the door and stood on the sill, only his lower body visible.
“Dad?” I asked. But Mum touched her finger to her lips.
Dad climbed onto the Jeep’s roof, one foot on the open door’s armrest, the other in the junction of door and frame. He disappeared altogether. I looked back and saw Glenn watching him. Around us people were leaving their cars, standing to look ahead. They threw jumping shadows in the sea of headlights.
I couldn’t see anything obvious causing the hold-up, but perhaps it was miles away.
I glanced at the Twitter feed.
@PottyBonkkers
Reached the coast. We’re locked in. Hear shouts, screams.
@UKPM
Our forces continue to combat the infestation.
@ReggieBeNold
An aircraft crashed close by, military, massive explosion, and we can hear those things crawling on our roof.
@ReggieBeNold
Saw old Mrs Rogers from next door chased down and killed.
@ReggieBeNold
Can’t stop our fucking dog from barking!
I looked back at Otis. He was on his feet now, tongue out and panting softly at the sudden change in circumstances. Will I be able to stop him from barking? I thought, and he looked at me with dark, loving eyes.
Dad clambered back into the car, looked across at Mum, and the fear burned in his eyes. He spoke briefly, then looked back, signing for me. “There’s a big fire on the road ahead, out of sight. Maybe it was a petrol tanker, or something else. We’ll not get past that way.”
Jude asked something, I missed it.
“Off-road,” I saw Dad say. He took the phone from Mum and called Glenn.
A minute later, seatbelts secured, we were driving along the grass verge. The hard shoulder was blocked with parked cars, and there were others doing the same as us. Glenn was still directly behind, and now that we’d moved out of the static line of vehicles, I could see the glow in the sky ahead.
To our left was a steep bank leading down into a ditch. There was no way we could drive down there; we’d either roll or get the car’s nose stuck. I closed my eyes, worried that the Jeep would slip and roll, trying to banish memories of the accident from my head. Lynne squeezed my hand again, and a flash of nightmare hit home once more—running across our garden, my swing seat swaying in an absent breeze, shadows solidifying and crushing us down, down, into the ground.
The Jeep bounced over the kerb and then turned left, tilting, light splaying across the interior and showing my parents leaning to the right and bracing themselves. Dad grasped the wheel in both hands and I could see him fighting it, knuckles white and muscles knotted. The Jeep flattened out, then there was an impact and broken wood and wire bounced across the bonnet against the windscreen. I felt a vibration as something scraped across the sides of the car, and Lynne tensed at the noise.
The Land Rover followed us through a broken fence, scraps of wood and barbed wire trailing behind for a moment. Then we were bumping across an open field.
Others were doing the same. We hadn’t been the first to make this choice, and the further we moved from the road, the more I could see of the raised motorway and the slope and ditch beside it. I counted at least six vehicles on their sides or roofs in the ditch along the stretch, and several others seemed to be trapped against the heavy wooden fence. A few more were crossing the field behind and around us, mostly four-wheel drives and at least one motorbike. And now that others had seen what was happening, I saw a dozen more cars attempting the same manoeuvre.
As one of them slid down the slope and thudded side-on into the ditch, I turned away.
We bounced and jolted across the field. Otis was barking, his breath warm and stale. I reached back and he licked my hand, then let me tickle his chest. He was standing, swaying and stumbling left to right, and I wanted to shout at Dad to slow down, take care, the dog was getting scared.
But we were all scared. Unlike Otis, we knew why.
Glenn pulled alongside and lowered his passenger window. He shouted as he drove and Mum shouted back. I tried to imagine the noise, remember what it must be like—the roar of engines, the slam of bodywork on the uneven field, the creak and groan of the vehicles’ movements, raised voices, and Otis barking once again behind me. In silence, all I had was vibration and memory.
Glenn took the lead, and my parents swapped a few quick words. Lynne said something. Dad shook his head.
“What?” I asked, but no one told me anything. I looked down at my covered iPad, not wanting to open it but feeling even more shut off from my family. I stroked the blue case and wondered what new horrors it might reveal.
Jude tapped my hand, leaning across Lynne’s lap. When I looked up he sat up again and started signing.
“Glenn says we need to stay away from the roads for a bit,” he said. “And he wants to lead the way.”
“Why?” I asked.
Jude glanced forward, obviously hearing something Dad muttered. Then he signed, “He thinks he knows best.”
I smiled at Jude. He smiled back, weakly, then huddled into Lynne again. He’d been so young when the accident happened, he didn’t know me any other way. Sometimes he knew instinctively what I wanted, and right then he’d sensed my anxiety at being cut out. Our parents didn’t mean to ignore me, I knew that. But sometimes including me in everything was hard work. I knew that too.
Ahead, several cars converged on a gap in the hedge and started passing through. Four of them made it, then the fifth got stuck in the mud churned up at the gate. Its wheels spun, splashing mud onto those cars waiting behind it. But it didn’t move. Another car edged forward behind it and shoved, but there was no movement.
People jumped from vehicles, panicked, shouting in mute anger.
Glenn led us away from the blocked gateway, heading for the field’s corner. We kept a couple of car lengths behind, and I noticed that Dad also kept a little to one side, trying not to follow in the Land Rover’s tracks. He wanted to give the Jeep’s wheels something to grab hold of. The field was ploughed and light glimmered from standing puddles. We could get stuck at any moment.
We reached a thick hedge of bushes and trees and Glenn angled along it, zigzagging slightly to shine his headlamps at the obstruction.
I was getting more and more frustrated. We were heading back towards the motorway, where the traffic was still static. More cars had poured down the steep bank, and there were now scores stuck in the ditch at the bottom. Shadows spidered back and forth along the roadway, silhouetted by the glare of headlights. Some of them seemed aimless, but small groups of people were now clambering down the embankment. They were already abandoning their cars.
I couldn’t imagine the traffic jam moving again. It already stretched as far as the road was visible to the south, and was probably growing longer by the minute.
I found myself wishing the people away. They’ll be scared. They’ll be noisy. The idea surprised and shocked me, and I felt ashamed. I wished I could close my eyes and imagine us all up to Scotland and into Red Rock, the place I’d last visited when I was too young to even remember.
I flipped the iPad cover off and opened the BBC News page. The live update feed streamed as it caught up, then I read the latest postings.
06:04—Several
ships burning in the English Channel. Many more adrift. It’s thought that engines have been turned off to cut down on noise.
06:11—Vesps sighted along south coast from Ramsgate to Eastbourne.
06:23—Many reports of attacks now coming in from across South East England.
06:28—Military assaults taking place.
Military assaults taking place. I was old enough to be chilled by how non-specific that was. Anything military was noisy, wasn’t it? Guns, explosions, aircraft, helicopters, bombs… The only stuff that was quiet might be chemical weapons, gas, stuff like that. But this was Britain. They never would.
“They’ve crossed the Channel,” I said.
The Jeep hit a dip and bounced, startling me. When I looked up I saw that we were following the Land Rover through a gap in the hedge, and a heavy vibration travelled up from beneath as the wheels struggled for purchase. Plants scraped and scored along the Jeep’s sides, and then we were through, lurching into the next field and accelerating after Glenn.
I saw Dad actually puff out his cheeks in relief.
Lynne reached over and closed the iPad cover. I frowned, glancing at my grandmother and leaning towards the door to see her face properly. I raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question.
“We know what’s going to happen,” Lynne said very carefully, then she drew me to her side.
I let myself be hugged. When I blinked I glimpsed that nightmare, running from shadows, the weight of dread.