The Finite

THE

FINITE

The Finite

Kit Power

Black Shuck Books

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Black Shuck Books

All content © Kit Power 2019

Cover design and interior layout © WHITEspace, 2019

The moral right of Kit Power to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This one’s for Scarlet. Thank you.

I’ve loved every second of being your dad.

It’s all for you.

1

My daughter’s screams woke me. “Daddy Luke! Daddy Luke!”

I remember looking over at the empty patch of bed, where ‘Daddy Luke’ would normally be sleeping. I remember cursing him for not being here, for that bastard overnight training course taking him to London. Away from us.

“Daddy Luke!”

Fuck off, kid, you’re stuck with me tonight. “Daddy Rob is coming, sweetheart!”

I was already stumbling out of bed as I said that, glancing back at the digital clock display: 3:48. I remember thinking Christ, this fucking kid. Is she trying to kill me?

Five minutes before the end of the world, I thought that.

She didn’t protest my appearance; at least there was that. Luke and I had been trying to wean her off her dependency on him, her favouritism, but it had been hard work. Stubborn kid. She wanted what she wanted. She just clung to him. It was always Daddy Luke that got the teary hugs, the midnight calls. I envied him it, but secretly, I didn’t always mind. Especially at times like this.

“What’s the matter, princess?”

She lay in her bed, growling rather than crying, clutching her foot. “My foot has belly ache!”

“Aw, sweetheart. This foot?”

“Yeh.” She held it up for me, and I sat on the pink chair next to her bed, rubbing it. Poor kid – growing pains were really getting bad lately. I looked at her clock as my thumbs started to move gently over the soles of her feet.

3:50

“It hurts, Daddy Rob.”

“I know sweetheart, I’m sorry. Does this help?”

“Yeh.”

“Okay.”

I yawned, hard enough to make my jaw crackle a little. “It’s late! So late for a little girl to be awake.”

“Yeh.”

“Do you need some medicine, do you think? Some Calpol?”

No reply. She was already drifting off again, eyes glazing over, lips drooping. I checked the clock again.

3:51

I looked back at her face, and I watched her eyes close, her breathing start to regulate. I started to relax the rubbing, and she groaned and flexed her foot again.

Not so fast, Daddy Rob.

I let out a deep sigh, and carried on rubbing my daughter’s foot. I remember feeling pretty pissed off. Resentful of Luke’s absence and just achingly tired. Thinking about the school run in the morning and having to get to the office afterwards. Picked a bad day to give up coffee, I thought, smiling to myself in the dark. Staring at the glowing green digits of the clock without really looking. Listening to the muffled rattling of the rain against the double glazing.

How long have I been doing this?

3:52 became 3:53. I gradually reduced the pressure on my daughter’s foot, watching her face for any sign of stirring.

Daylight flooded the room.

My head snapped round to the window, expecting to see a helicopter or something. Instead, I saw a white light on the horizon, so bright it hurt my eyes.

It was the end of the world.

I felt my stomach drop, a bitter taste in the back of my throat. I noticed the clock had gone out.

“Daddy Rob…”

I flung myself onto the bed, covering her body with mine. She started to squeal with shock, but her cry was obliterated by the sound of breaking glass as the window shattered. I felt the whole room under us lurch forward, as if pushed by a giant. There was a blast of intense heat across the back of my bare legs. I yelled out, and tried to tuck them under her duvet. She’d stopped screaming, and I could feel her hot, damp breath on my chest, soaking through my T-shirt. She was panting, but not struggling. Too scared to, maybe.

The heatwave passed quickly, and the light slowly faded. I held my daughter tight and stroked her hair, whispering to her.

“It’s okay, baby girl, it’s okay, it’ll all be over in a minute…”

As the intense brightness faded, the room fell into pitch darkness. The light from the bathroom was out. So were the streetlights outside the window.

“Daddy’s got you, you’re okay.”

All was black.

2

So I’m Robert. Rob Andrews. And I’m dead.

Likely, I’ve been dead for some time, in fact. If someone is reading this, it’s going to be decades from now.

Now.

Now is me sitting here, typing this. As I type, my daughter is lying next to me, in my bed. The empty windows are covered by the mattress from the spare room, but it’s still cool, so Charley is wrapped up, blankets and the duvet, oblivious to the soft clacking of the keyboard.

I’m going to have to be quick. I’ve got this battery and one spare, so that gives me, what? 8-10 hours of typing time? About that, I think. I turned off the WiFi, turned the power settings to maximum eco, but even so, it’s a juice-hungry laptop.

Okay. So this is today.

3

Eventually, Charley whispers to me in the dark.

“What’s happening, Daddy Rob?”

“There’s been an explosion.” The pain in my legs is bad, but it’s nothing compared to the feeling in my stomach. My gut is churning, and I can feel sweat popping all over my back, my face.

“Is that what broke the window?”

“Yes, sweetheart.” The darkness is total. Absolute. I close my eyes anyway, trying to picture the layout of her room in my mind. The bedside table with the clock and the lamp, on the other side, her bookcase, wardrobe.

“What blew up?”

“I don’t know.” Which is true, but I’m pretty sure, given the direction and size of the explosion, that it was London.

I think Luke’s name, but push it back down before I can picture his face. No time for that shit.

What to do? That’s the question.

The rain is still coming down, the kind of summer shower that’s a drag during the day, but normally comforting at night, as it drums against the walls and roof and windows of your house and you lie, snug and safe and warm and dry. Soothing.

Not so much when you can hear the raindrops landing inside the room.

“Is that why the lights went out?”

“I think so, yeah.” EMP, or just grid disruption? My mind’s running back through all those CND horror pamphlets and books I inhaled in my 20s, megatons and blast radius, psi circles and rem per hour and fallout…

“When will they come back on?”

My mind is still trying to run away, trying to calculate, like the maths problem from hell. If a nuclear warhead detonates in or over London, and the explosion is powerful enough to shatter windows and sway houses in Milton Keynes, how long is a five-year-old girl likely to survive the resulting radiation poisoning; and, for extra marks, after how many days will she start vomiting blood?

“When will they come back on? Daddy Rob?”

I take a deep breath. I move slowly, sliding to one side a little, but still covering most of her with my larger frame. I place my head on her pillow and talk softly, directly into her ear.

“I don’t know, sweetheart. Probably not tonight.”

“You mean it’s going to be dark all night?”

“Yes, I think so.” And the rest.

“I don’t like the dark! I can’t sleep in the dark!”

“Sweetheart…” She’s getting riled now, that stubborn, angry tone entering her voice.

“No! Daddy Rob…”

“Listen, Charley…”

“No, I can’t sleep in the dark, I can’t…”

“I will stay with you! I’ll stay with you, okay?”

That shuts her up for a second. She’s very occasionally asked me to stay with her after story time – more often the proposition has gone to Daddy Luke – but we’ve both been firm about saying no. She needs to…

She needed to be okay about sleeping by herself. Now, though? Fuck it.

“All night?”

“Until the morning, yeah.” I stroke her hair back from her forehead, then kiss her. “Okay? Daddy Rob will stay here with you, okay? Cuddle up and keep you warm until the morning. Keep you safe.”

She curls up into herself at this, delighted. “I love you, Daddy Rob.”

I smile next to her, honestly touched, for a split second removed from the circumstance and just glowing.

“I mean, I love Daddy Luke too…”

“I know you do, darling. So do I.” I feel a lump riding in my throat at that last, but I don’t think it makes it into my voice. “Go to sleep now, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you for staying with me, Daddy Rob.”

It’s far too much. I kiss her again and hug her tight – what she calls with delight ‘a big squeezy’ – and then settle next to her, still covering as much of her body as I can with my own; partly as warming blanket, partly as shield.

I think about the layout of the room again. I’m pretty sure I could navigate out into the hall, maybe even down the stairs… but there’s problems with that. For one, even if I did, I don’t know where the torches are. Not a clue. For another, I’d have to leave her behind, and she’d freak out completely.

And the reason I’d have to leave her behind is because we’re both barefoot, and there’s broken glass all over the floor from the window. And I am no Bruce Willis, I think. I smile to myself in the dark, and feel the smile twist as the tears threaten to come. I choke them down as best I can,

I don’t want to wake her.

4

Sorry for the present tense. I know it’s confusing. I’m not much of a writer. But it’s how I remember it, you see. It’s all still so fresh. And I want you to see it, to feel it, the way I did. I want, as much as I can, for you to feel it as though it were happening, not as something past.

I don’t want to think about being past. About her as past.

I’m not ready for that.

5

I lie in the dark for a while, trying to think. To work things out. My thoughts become circular: I start by trying to think about a way to get a light source, cursing myself for leaving my phone on the bedside cabinet charging. Then I try and remember if the torch is under the stairs or in the jumble drawer in the kitchen, if we have candles in that same drawer, anything to light them with, and thoughts of light remind me of the flash I saw outside the window, brighter than daylight (I was lucky not to have been blinded, I think) and the heat from that blast, the burns on the back of my legs and what they probably mean, especially coupled with the rain that has fallen steadily since the blast, and my only question is how big a dose we took, how powerful, and I’m trying to feel like there could be a chance, if we get medical treatment soon, but the fire in my legs and the heat and force of the blast tell me that’s a fool’s hope, that there’s no medical help coming, not with enough medicine for a town this size, and the truth is, the dose is almost certainly untreatable, I’d know more if only I could see the damage to my legs… and the cycle starts again.

Time is slippery now, the only constant my daughter’s hot breath against my chest. My mind tries to move to her, or to Luke, and I pull it back to the floor and the darkness and the light, afraid, desperately scared of what will happen if I allow myself to start really facing them. It’s shock, sure, and I have no idea how much time has passed before light flickers into the bedroom, pale, blue, bright, and a familiar voice yells “Rob? Luke? Anyone home?”

It’s Pete, of Pete and Sharon fame. My neighbours.

“Pete!”

Charley stirs. I think about walking down the mattress to get close to the window, but I’m worried about the glass again. I settle for sitting up, smoothing the duvet back over her, tucking her in. The rain has cooled the air, but it’s not actually cold.

“Rob?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you and Luke okay? Charley?”

“I… Charley and me are okay, yeah. We’re… stuck, actually. In her room. There’s glass all over the floor and it’s pitch black…”

“Right! Right. Want me to come up? I’m… erm, the fence is down, which is how I got in the garden – I thought I’d better have a look and see if everything was okay, you know…”

“You okay? Sharon?”

“She’s fine, yeah, we’re on the other side of the house, so the window blew out rather than in. Bloody scary moment, but we’re alright. She’s got the gas stove out, she’s making a cuppa now. D’you want me to come in? Your patio doors are broken, I could get through…”

“Would you?”

“Of course, yeah! No problem. You in the back room?”

“Yeah, me and Charley.”

“Okay, see you shortly.”

I hear footsteps, first squelching, then sploshing, then crunching as he approaches the house. I feel my way back to Charley and shake her. She grumbles – not speaking, just a noise in her throat.

“Charley, sweetheart, you have to wake up.”

“Muuuuuuuuuuhh”

“Charley. Charley.”

“Don’ wanna…”

“Come on, baby girl, I know you don’t want to, but you need to wake up now.

“Daddy Rob…”

I hear the door open as bright torchlight stabs into my eyes, and this time Charley and I groan as one, involuntarily.

The light plays over the floor. There’s glass all over the carpet, the pink chair, which is now soaked with rain water. The glass twinkles dully. Overlaid on that is a fine layer of dark grey-brown dust. It coats the floor, the duvet, my own arms and body. I see it in Charley’s hair. My stomach sinks, my worst fears realised.

“Well, THIS is a bit of a mess, isn’t it?”

Outside, the rain hammers down. Relentless.

6

We’re in Pete and Sharon’s house. I’ve never been in here before.

It’s kind of a revelation.

There’s a lot of mirrors. Like, a disconcerting amount. Vintage, or copies of same – Pepsi, Esso, Marilyn, Elvis. We sit in the living room, and my eyes keep getting drawn to the (please let it be fake) huge oil painting of a racehorse over the mantelpiece, in a heavy wooden frame. The zebra print rug (!) that covers most of the living room floor. The porcelain knick-knacks that seem to cover every available flat surface. The cumulative effect is one of profoundly irritating distraction – there’s always something in the corner of your eye screaming for your attention.

The light source doesn’t help – maybe a dozen tea lights on a coffee table in the centre of the rug, the flames flickering every time anybody stands up or sits down, sending reflections across all the damn mirrors and porcelain like a geriatric glitter ball.

I’m being spoken to.

“Sorry?”

“How’s the tea? Is it okay?”

I look down at the not-quite warm enough cup of what appears to be grey dishwater. I take a sip. It tastes about as bad as it looks, albeit sweeter. “Lovely, thanks.”

I give Sharon a smile, which she returns automatically. It’s a sad, distracted thing, but better than nothing.

“So…” says Pete, and I gratefully drag my eyes away from his wife’s made up face and leopard print silk dressing gown and back to his bloodshot blue eyes under bushy grey brows “…you think it was London?”

I take him in, try to. His grey hair, even at four in the morning, combed in regimented lines back from his forehead. His perma-tan spectacularly failing to hide the paleness around his eyes and lips, or the high colour on his cheekbones, almost like rouge. Those eyes – watery, but unwavering.

I take another sip of dishwater to buy some time, but it doesn’t help much, and I’m left with “I think so, yeah.”

He puffs his cheeks out, holds the pose for a second, then poooofs the air out in a sigh, sending sparkle lights across my field of vision. He looks old. I mean, he is old, they both are, in their seventies at least, but with the tans and the carefully selected wardrobe and so on, they normally make a good fist of looking… not young, but alert, wiry. Healthy.

Not tonight. I guess 4am and crisis have a way of reasserting the age thing.

“Russians, do you think? Or that American lunatic, even?”

Part of me wants to laugh. I mean, what could it possibly matter? But then I look down at Charley, sacked out on the leather sofa next to me under a mountain of blankets. Be kind, says Luke in my mind, as he often would in person, and I shy away from that train of thought in a hurry, but it centres me. Another sip of mud, then

“I don’t know, obviously, but I doubt it. If it was them, there’d be more bombs, I think. A lot more. I mean, it could have been an accident, I suppose. Anything’s possible. But I doubt it.”

He’s nodding soberly as I stumble my way through my thoughts, taking it in.

“So you think it’s the… you know… whachercallem… Jihaddies?”

I think about that for a second.

“If I was guessing, yes. It must have been a warhead, the size of the blast… I mean, if that was London and it was this big this far out, that’s a huge device, has to be a warhead…” I realise I’m painfully close to rambling, talking too fast, but can’t seem to help it. “So, so it’s probably a stolen device, or bought, you know, black market, Russia’s been a mess since forever, huge arsenal, it only takes one…”

He’s nodding again, looking a little paler.

“I mean, I’m just guessing. Like I said, could be a misfire, I suppose.”

“You don’t think it was a meltdown, maybe? Like Chernobyl?” He nods at Sharon. “We thought…”

I glance back at her, and see something awful in her face. Sadness and fear, mixing to make desperation. I swallow hard before answering.

“I… it’s possible, of course, but it looked like a detonation to me.” My mind travels back to the brightness of the first flash, the burns on the back of my calves that are still throbbing, just starting to itch as well as hurt, and the dust coating the interior of my little girl’s bedroom. Most of all, that dust. On the floor, and in the rain, staining the drops brown as they ran down the waterproofs I threw over myself and Charley as I carried her across the lawn into my neighbours’ garden. If it was London, only a warhead would get the blast and debris to us that quickly. Which means the rem count in the fallout that is soaking into the ground outside, and that is coating my daughter’s room – that we inhaled and lay under for at least thirty minutes before Pete and his torch came to the rescue – is more than enough to kill us all.

I look back at the sleeping bundle next to me, and completely miss the next question.

“Sorry?”

“I said, how do you know all this?” It’s Sharon talking, and I turn to look at her.

“Erm, well, I don’t know anything, really. But I was in CND for a few years, and I read a lot about the subject back then. I mean, I imagine I’m out of date, there’s got to have been… developments, technological, what have you, but…”

“…but you think…?”

“…Yeah.”

We sit in silence, I sip mud. My mind pulls me back to Charley, and I place a hand gently on the blankets covering her, feeling the rise and fall of her breath.

I feel tears threaten then.

“Okay, so what now?”

I look up at Pete. His tone is almost conversational, but there’s a desperate hunger in his eyes.

“Well, I’d start with a radio. If it… if it’s just London, there should be some broadcast from elsewhere…”

“Manchester!” His face brightens.

“Well, yes, possibly…”

“Yeah, with the BBC move from London. Of course. We’ve got one in the shower, I’ll just…” He gets up slowly, carefully, and heads out of the living room.

I look at Sharon. She smiles, but it looks like an effort. She’s clearly terrified.

“What do you think happens next?” There are questions behind the question, and panic just under the surface, and the obvious answer feels… unhelpful.

Be kind.

“At a guess, I’d say there’ll be an evacuation.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”

“Look, honestly, I don’t know any more than you, I’m just guessing, but…”

“No, no, I understand…”

“…hopefully the radio will tell us more…”

“My dad was an evacuee, you know. During the war.”

It’s uncomfortable, almost painful, this reaching for something relatable, something grounding. Part of me wants to laugh, but I’m not remotely amused.

Be kind.

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, he…”

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