disappears away into the bowels of the factory complex.
Suddenly I’m alone: soaking wet and freezing cold, just me and the sea and no one else. I haul my backpack up onto my shoulders and start walking along the seawall back out of town, welcoming the isolation.
An enormous, motionless wind turbine towers above everything in this part of Lowestoft, and I gaze up at it as I pass. Hinchcliffe thinks he’s going to get it operational again one day soon, so the town will have a steady power supply rather than having to rely on generators and the like. I hope he’s right. For now it just stands here useless: one of its massive blades broken, its internal mechanics and wiring no doubt completely fucked. It’s a huge white elephant: a constant reminder of what this place used to be.
I pull my coat tight around me, put my head down, and walk. The house is still more than a mile away. I could live with the chosen few in Hinchcliffe’s compound if I wanted to, but I’d rather not. I prefer to remain at a cautious distance on the very outskirts of town, well away from everyone else. Out there I’m close enough to Lowestoft to be able to get in and take what I need, but still far enough away to stay out of sight and out of mind of everyone else.
3
OUT OF HABIT I follow the same route each day, using the footbridge to cross the empty road from town and get into the housing development. I’m out of shape. The steep steps are always that much steeper than I remember, and I have to stop halfway across to catch my breath.
The world is dark tonight—no streetlamps, house lights, or lines of traffic producing the ambient glow of old—and the center of Lowestoft behind me is easy to make out. In the midst of the darkness of everything else is a clutch of blinking lights and burning fires, their brightness concentrated around Hinchcliffe’s compound. It’s hard to believe that this is what passes for a major center of population now. The same thing has no doubt happened around the country: minor towns becoming major towns by default because they’re the only habitable places left. It reminds me of a medieval settlement. I remember watching TV documentaries when I was a kid about social experiments where people stepped back in time and tried to live in anything from Iron Age settlements to Tudor houses. This place feels like that but in reverse. Today it’s as if people from the past have moved in and taken over the ruins of the present. Hard to believe that all those towns and cities I remember are gone, either abandoned or destroyed. All those places I used to know … London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff … all reduced to piles of toxic ash. I only have hearsay, unsubstantiated rumor, and common sense to go on, but if what I’m hearing is true and all those places really are dead, then out here on the east coast is probably as safe a place as any to be. I’m guessing that it’s only areas like Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, and here—the extremities of this small, odd-shaped island—that are still livable.
Down off the bridge again and within a couple of minutes I’ve been swallowed up by the darkness of the deserted housing development where I’ve based myself this last month or so. This place feels like a shadow-filled tomb at the best of times, little more than a maze of twisting, interconnecting roads, avenues, and cul-de-sacs. It was probably a perfectly decent, comfortable, relatively affluent, middle-class area before the shit hit the fan and everything went to hell last year, the kind of place Lizzie said she always wanted us to end up in. Now it’s just like everywhere else, and the ruins are welcome camouflage.
I use landmarks to guide myself through to the very center of the development, things that no one else would give a second glance. I walk across a deserted children’s playground, catching my breath when the wind rattles the chains of an empty swing, turn left at the road where three of the
Suddenly I’m alone: soaking wet and freezing cold, just me and the sea and no one else. I haul my backpack up onto my shoulders and start walking along the seawall back out of town, welcoming the isolation.
An enormous, motionless wind turbine towers above everything in this part of Lowestoft, and I gaze up at it as I pass. Hinchcliffe thinks he’s going to get it operational again one day soon, so the town will have a steady power supply rather than having to rely on generators and the like. I hope he’s right. For now it just stands here useless: one of its massive blades broken, its internal mechanics and wiring no doubt completely fucked. It’s a huge white elephant: a constant reminder of what this place used to be.
I pull my coat tight around me, put my head down, and walk. The house is still more than a mile away. I could live with the chosen few in Hinchcliffe’s compound if I wanted to, but I’d rather not. I prefer to remain at a cautious distance on the very outskirts of town, well away from everyone else. Out there I’m close enough to Lowestoft to be able to get in and take what I need, but still far enough away to stay out of sight and out of mind of everyone else.
3
OUT OF HABIT I follow the same route each day, using the footbridge to cross the empty road from town and get into the housing development. I’m out of shape. The steep steps are always that much steeper than I remember, and I have to stop halfway across to catch my breath.
The world is dark tonight—no streetlamps, house lights, or lines of traffic producing the ambient glow of old—and the center of Lowestoft behind me is easy to make out. In the midst of the darkness of everything else is a clutch of blinking lights and burning fires, their brightness concentrated around Hinchcliffe’s compound. It’s hard to believe that this is what passes for a major center of population now. The same thing has no doubt happened around the country: minor towns becoming major towns by default because they’re the only habitable places left. It reminds me of a medieval settlement. I remember watching TV documentaries when I was a kid about social experiments where people stepped back in time and tried to live in anything from Iron Age settlements to Tudor houses. This place feels like that but in reverse. Today it’s as if people from the past have moved in and taken over the ruins of the present. Hard to believe that all those towns and cities I remember are gone, either abandoned or destroyed. All those places I used to know … London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff … all reduced to piles of toxic ash. I only have hearsay, unsubstantiated rumor, and common sense to go on, but if what I’m hearing is true and all those places really are dead, then out here on the east coast is probably as safe a place as any to be. I’m guessing that it’s only areas like Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, and here—the extremities of this small, odd-shaped island—that are still livable.
Down off the bridge again and within a couple of minutes I’ve been swallowed up by the darkness of the deserted housing development where I’ve based myself this last month or so. This place feels like a shadow-filled tomb at the best of times, little more than a maze of twisting, interconnecting roads, avenues, and cul-de-sacs. It was probably a perfectly decent, comfortable, relatively affluent, middle-class area before the shit hit the fan and everything went to hell last year, the kind of place Lizzie said she always wanted us to end up in. Now it’s just like everywhere else, and the ruins are welcome camouflage.
I use landmarks to guide myself through to the very center of the development, things that no one else would give a second glance. I walk across a deserted children’s playground, catching my breath when the wind rattles the chains of an empty swing, turn left at the road where three of the
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