Epilogue
It’s been a while now since the world
collapsed.
I miss Andy. I miss him so much. And his
children miss him.
I don’t know how we’ve survived, how we
managed to keep going. It’s been a blur to me, just moving from one
day into the next. I know we left London soon after that night. I
remember Leona had to drag me out of our house, away from our
bedroom, where we left Andy.
Leona’s been a tower of strength. I was
useless for a long time. She got us out of London, and then we
finally found a community in the countryside willing to take us
in.
Very kind people, very different - historical
re-enactors; the sort of people you would see at those big English
Heritage events where they replayed battles from the English Civil
War. Normal people with jobs and mortgages (back before the
collapse), but with this other parallel life, attempting to revive,
to learn the everyday skills of a time long before we had oil doing
everything for us. Very different people, unlike any I’ve met
before; they had already mastered so many of those skills of
survival, the basics like . . . how to make soap, how to make bread
from grain. You know? The simple things.
And there’s so much to do, we’re kept busy,
which is just as well.
We have several wind-up radios in the
community, and from time to time there are broadcasts from the BBC
World Service. For a time, just after the first week, it looked
like a recovery might be on the cards. Oil lines were being fixed
and a trickle of oil was getting through. But things were too
broken, too messed up. We heard horror stories coming from the two
dozen or so ‘safe areas’ the government had established. The
supplies ran out at the end of the second month, and the people
crammed inside turned on each other. And the same thing, so we
hear, has happened in other countries around the world. America, I
think, has been hit particularly badly.
In the months that followed, there was a
worrying time . . . there was a limited war between China, India
and Russia over the Tengiz oilfields. It started with tanks and
infantry, and escalated to a few nuclear bombs. Then very quickly
it blew itself out. Perhaps some sanity broke out at the last
moment, or perhaps their troops decided to stop fighting. Or maybe
they simply ran out of the oil they needed to continue
fighting.
Often, in the evenings, when the community
gathers together, we discuss who was behind it all. Because, you
see, it’s obvious to everyone now that there was someone behind
this. The theories are many and varied. The most-voiced opinions
are that it was either a Muslim plot to destroy the decadent
western lifestyle, or, alternatively, an attempt by America to
destabilise all her economic rivals in one go . . . but somehow it
went wrong for them too.
I’m not convinced by either theory, but I
don’t know enough about politics to offer a better suggestion. Andy
would have known. He knew all about that kind of thing.
We’re being kept very busy right now, as I was
saying. There’s a lot to do, crops to grow, tend, cultivate or
pick. We’re digging a well, down to the clean water-table below us,
and we have animals that need looking after. Jake’s landed the main
role as chicken tender; feeding them, collecting the eggs. When
he’s a little older, he’ll also have to cope with killing them on
occasion, plucking them, gutting them.
Leona’s struggling a bit now. She was strong
for me when I needed her. Now, she’s finding it hard to cope. I
know she misses her father, and I know some of the things that
happened before I got home really traumatised her. There’s a lot of
crying.
Jacob misses Andy terribly too. But he’s also
so proud of his dad, and tells anyone who’ll listen that his dad
was a superhero. I love that he thinks that about Andy.
Anyway, we’re alive, and my kids will mend
eventually. And things will eventually knit themselves back
together again. All those empty cities, full of burned-out homes,
and looted shops . . . one day people will migrate back to them.
When it all eventually comes back together again, I think it’s
going to be very different.
To use one of Andy’s pet phrases . . . the oil
age is over.
Just like all those other ages; the Stone Age,
the Bronze Age, the Steam Age . . . it’s been and gone. Hopefully
what replaces it will be a world less greedy, less obsessed with
having things; trinkets and baubles, gadgets and bling. I wonder
what my children’s children will make of the weathered and faded
mail order catalogues they’ll undoubtedly come across, everything
lavishly powered by electricity; giant American-style fridge
freezers, those extravagant patio heaters, electric sonic-pulse
hi-spin toothbrushes, automatic can-openers.
God, did we really get that lazy?
That’s something Andy would have said, isn’t
it? Christ, I miss him.
I need to say something though, out
loud.
I’m pretty sure you won’t hear this Andy,
you’re gone. There’s none of that looking down from heaven
nonsense, is there? You’re gone, that’s it. But all the same, I
need to say this even if it’s just for my own ears . . .
I’m sorry. I did always love you, I just
forgot that for a while. You came back for us, and you saved us.
Our son and our daughter will always, always remember you as a
hero.
And so will I.
Love you, Andy.