little girl trapped in a world collapsing into anarchy and despair filled him with an acidic horror that scalded through his veins.
‘Oh God, what have I done?’ he gasped.
Tears spilled from his eyes, running as far as his cheeks before they froze into globules of ice.
Foot falls crunched through the snow behind him, and Cody swiped a sleeve across his face as Jake joined him on the ridge. Cody did not look at Jake, his eyes glued to the distant sun as though its light were the only thing keeping him alive.
A heavy Arctic Jacket fell gently across his shoulders as Jake laid it there, ice crystals pattering against the fabric as they skimmed through the frigid air. Cody reluctantly pushed his arms into the sleeves as he heard other footfalls joining them on the ridge.
Jake slowly squatted down on the ice beside Cody and stared out toward the distant sunlight.
‘You know that we can’t leave here, Cody,’ he said. ‘It’s much too far. We’d never make it.’
‘The snowmobiles,’ Cody snapped. ‘We’ll tow supplies.’
Jake shook his head. ‘We couldn’t take enough fuel and food with us. It’s more than a thousand miles to the nearest settlement. We’d die long before finding anybody.’
Cody felt the rage of a lifetime swell inside him, as powerless to escape as he was. It seethed and seared and then imploded into helplessness.
‘I can’t leave them,’ he managed to rasp. ‘I can’t.’
‘You already did,’ Jake said. ‘But right now all you can do is stand up.’
Cody looked at Jake, who stuck out a thickly gloved hand.
A thousand conflicting thoughts and memories passed in utter silence through Cody’s mind. He wanted to leap off the ridge and start running south. He wanted to punch Jake in the face for not understanding. He wanted to find a gun and turn it on himself for his stupidity and his selfishness. He wanted to die. And he wanted to live.
Cody took Jake’s hand and got to his feet.
‘We need a plan,’ Jake said.
***
8
Week 7
My dearest Maria,
I don’t know where to begin.
It is hard to write these words. Something inside of me wants to destroy everything, to burn and break in fury at the cruel blow that fate has delivered us all. My every thought is with you. I cannot sleep for the fear that infects me, of what you may be going through and for rage at my inability to help you. Nothing in my imagination could have prepared me for such terrible suffering, yet I know that it pales into insignificance compared to what you must be facing right now.
Despite our shared horror at what has befallen mankind, we have managed over the past few days since the solar event to formulate a plan of action. Jake has become the rock of our team almost overnight. He has, I suspect, the least of concerns as he has no family to worry about. Bobby, an orphan, appears also to have risen to the challenge. The rest of us labour through our duties like robots, unable to free our thoughts from family and loved ones. For all we know, as we work our cities burn and citizens are dying in countless numbers.
Like all of them, I can only hope and pray that somehow the spirit of human cooperation and companionship that allowed us to rise above our fellow species on this planet will shine through once again, and save those dearest to us from the unimaginable fate of succumbing to the disaster that hangs over us all.
*
‘We’re on our own.’
Jake’s voice had sounded small in the immense darkness outside the observatory.
Cody had stood alongside Bethany, the rest of the team beside them. Hoods raised, puffs of their breath billowing out into the cold air. The entire group had been overwhelmed with a sombre resignation that had reminded Cody of the soldiers who had fought in the trenches of the First World War or stormed the beaches of the Cotentin on D-Day: still alive and yet doomed. The futility of their situation had hit hard but they had remained silent as Jake spoke.
‘We’ll shift the