When the Guns Die Down

The boy shuffled through the derelict, war-torn street, the only person to be seen or heard. All around him, the world had been reduced to ash. Debris of buildings that had been standing for decades now littered the road, and all colours were swallowed up in the dusty greys and browns that suffocated the city. A half-standing block of flats stood to his left, a great, gaping hole in the north-facing wall that left the inner rooms exposed to the cold. On his right, the terrace of houses that had once stood there had been mostly reduced to rubble.

To anyone who did not belong in the 23rd century, the boy might seem normal. His light hair was in need of a cut; shaggy and falling over his eyes, but that was not so unordinary. He wore a black, sleeveless hoodie which was a little baggy due to the fact it had once belonged to his brother, who had been several inches taller, and dark jeans, also a little baggy. His hands were slung casually in his pockets, his thumbs looped round the outside. Trainers scuffed the dirty concrete beneath his feet, scraping slowly yet rhythmically along the middle of the road.

But to anyone who knew what modern life was really like, the boy was something of an enigma. He did not run. He did not hide. He did not press himself into the shadows. If the planes were to begin circling now, he would be a sitting target. And yet, to anyone who gave the boy so much as a passing glance, it would seem as if he didn’t care.

Jack had been living his life like that for a while now. He watched people running and cowering in fear; broken people, simply trying to survive each day at a time, and he pitied them. For him, it was so much simpler: if he died, then so be it. He had heard stories about an afterlife and, though he didn’t know whether he believed them or not, there were few things that could be worse than the world he lived in. His mother had once told him that life was just a journey from birth to death.

His father had a different take on the situation. He once said ‘life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’ At the time, Jack had assumed that the philosophy was about growing up; about planning ahead for the future. But then, a few months later, the war had broken out. And the quote had become far more literal in meaning than Jack could have ever imagined.

Both of Jack’s parents were killed on the Night of Flames six months after. It seemed that they had now completed their journey. They were now in a world where they could put their so-called ‘other plans’ into practice. And Jack often began to feel that he would quite like to join them.

A drip of water splashed down onto Jack’s cheek. Glancing upwards, he could see heavy, steel clouds brewing in the sky above. The sun hadn’t been seen for days, and now it seemed the veil between it and the earth was growing even thicker. As more raindrops began to fall; great, thick globules that promised the arrival of a storm, he hurried towards the wreck of a building that stood to his right. It was two storeys high, but most of the wall of the bottom floor had been blown away, and it now creaked with the weight of holding up what remained of the upper floor. Still, it was a bit of shelter, if nothing else. Jack was not worried merely about getting wet; it was more the thought that, once he returned to his pathetic excuse of a house, it would be very hard for him to get dry again.

The derelict ruin was gloomy inside, but looked as if it might have once been a shop. The walls were scraped clean of all products, most likely by looters, but on the far side a counter stood, still perfectly intact, with a smashed till sitting on top of it. Presumably, someone had also tried to steal the money.

‘Who’s there?’

Jack’s eyes shot up into the gloom at the back of the building. Part of the far wall had been smashed in, leaving an enlarged entrance to the ruined storeroom, which was now more like a sheltered area where one could sit, unnoticed, amongst the debris of the buildings that had been behind the shop, which seemed to have been near enough obliterated.

‘Who’s there?’ the voice called again. It was a female voice; definitely coming from the backroom. Apprehensively, Jack moved towards it—not exactly afraid, but wary.

‘Hello?’ he called out, peering into the dusty backroom.

‘What do you want?’ Without warning, a girl near enough appeared in front of Jack. At least, he assumed she was a girl. She was so filthy and covered in dust, though, that he couldn’t quite tell. Her hair was matted and tangled; a sort of light, sandy colour which fell just past her shoulders. Her face was so well-slicked with dirt that he couldn’t clearly see her natural skin colour; it all merged into a dusty grey, and was shiny with grease, having evidently not been washed for a little while.

But as the girl took a few steps closer, her head tilted to the side as she examined Jack as though he was an alien, Jack felt a sudden jolt in his stomach, not so different from an electric shock.

He recognised this girl.

‘Jaime?’

‘How do you—‘ she began defensively, before stopping mid-sentence. Still wearing the expression that suggested she was studying him, she stepped forward again.

‘Jack?’ Her voice was shrill and soprano with the surprise, and her tone flipped upwards at the end of the word, as if she was asking a question.

‘I thought…’ he didn’t know what to say. That she was dead? Yes, he had thought that. Jaime Maxwell had disappeared months ago, not long after the death of her little brother. Her parents had died on the Night of Flames just like Jack’s parents—thousands had died that night. When she disappeared, people just assumed she had been killed either by a bomb or a falling building. She’d had no family left to go searching for her; no one who cared enough to find out whether she was still alive. So she’d just become a statistic. Whereabouts unknown; presumed dead, like hundreds of thousands of others.

But standing in front of Jack, her expression almost indignant, Jaime Maxwell was most definitely alive.

‘You thought I was dead.’ The ghost of a smirk crossed her face, and her cold eyes seemed to lighten just for a fraction of a second. ‘Just like everyone else.’

In all fairness, Jack and Jaime had hardly been close friends. They had been at school together; they had both been in the same English class in their final year and they had spoken once or twice during lessons, but nothing more than that.

‘I…did,’ Jack admitted sheepishly. ‘Where have you been?’

She shrugged, turning away and walking through the enlarged hole in the wall to the front of the shop. ‘I’ve been surviving.’

Surviving; like so many others. The people that Jack pitied. They weren’t living; they weren’t leading interesting, exciting, fulfilled lives. They were simply going through the motions, living on and on, because…because why? Because they felt they had to. Because that was what they were expected to do. But Jack had ignored all those expectations. He was making his other plans. Sure, he ate if he found food; drank if he found water; slept if he was tired. But he was determined not to let the war turn him into a coward. He was not going to run, and hide, and scream, and cry. He was not going to survive simply for the sake of surviving.

‘What about you then?’ she asked, almost as if it was a challenge. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I’ve been…’ he didn’t want to say ‘surviving’ too. ‘Surviving’ made it sound like he was struggling through, day after day, desperately trying to salvage the fragments of his old life. But that wasn’t how he was living at all.

‘I’ve been to loads of places.’ It was true. Jack hadn’t just crossed the whole of London more times than he could count; he’d been to numerous other places too. One afternoon, when he’d been feeling particularly reckless, he followed an old, deserted road right down to the south coast. It had been several nights later when he’d arrived, and the bombers had swarmed in in their hundreds, so he’d slept in the basement of an abandoned hotel. But the morning after, he had gone out onto the beach, not caring that it was cloudy and that the temperature was nothing more than mild, and he had paddled in the sea, and walked out onto the jetty amongst the boats, and even built a sandcastle.

‘Loads of places?’ Jaime repeated dubiously. ‘What, you mean all the underground stations in central London?’

‘No,’ he scoffed, ‘I’ve been further than that. I followed the Thames right through the countryside for at least a week. I visited the village where my grandparents used to live—it’s about twenty miles outside the city. I even went down to the beach.’

Jaime was unimpressed. ‘You crazy or somethin’? You trying to get yourself killed?’

‘No!’ was his instinctive, indignant response. ‘Course not.’

‘Well you bloody well sound like it.’ She turned away, walking back through into the half-destroyed backroom of the shop, pulling her ragged cardigan around her tighter.

‘You cold?’

‘No,’ she said, sounding rather defensive. It was only now that Jack remembered how he’d never actually liked Jaime. She was bearable in small doses, but nothing more. She was too pessimistic; too defensive; too sarcastic. She knew much more about making enemies than she did about making friends.

Jack would have gladly left there and then, but something, possibly the ominous rumble of thunder that rolled across the city, stopped him. Instead, he followed Jaime back through to the half of the storeroom that was still standing, leaning against the back wall and sinking down so that he was sitting on the ground. Outside the shelter, pelts of rain shot down from the sky like bullets, draining away all the colour that still remained in the bleak, derelict landscape, washing the world in shades of grey.