By Sean Joyce
Location: Junction 7, M60
This morning the birdsong means more than on any other day. He listens for a moment from beneath the bed covers and they are almost in the room with him, flitting amongst the shadows.
When he pulls back the curtains, sunlight pours into the room like the sea into a sinking ship.
He makes the bed before slipping on the clothes already laid out on a wicker chair in the corner of the room. Black boxer shorts. Grey flannel trousers. White shirt. Red tie. A pair of chequered socks.
He picks up his ID badge from the bedside table and clips it onto the right breast pocket of his shirt.
He looks in the mirror. His eyes are tired but the room is bright and seems to glow.
He brushes his teeth in the bathroom for exactly two minutes, just as the dentist instructed, then combs his hair.
Downstairs in the kitchen he eats a bowl of cornflakes. He lavishes the flakes with a layer of sugar and mixes it into the milk. He closes his eyes and focuses all attention on the cold, mushy sweetness in his mouth.
Before leaving the house he returns to the bedroom and opens the wardrobe. Kneeling down he removes a shoebox from the back of the wardrobe and pulls off the lid. Inside the box is a revolver. He places it in his rucksack before running downstairs, setting the burglar alarm and locking the door.
The rows of trees along the motorway are green and luscious and alive. They make him smile.
The giant computerised boards along the motorway say: ACCIDENT AHEAD, JUNCTIONS 9-10, EXPECT DELAYS.
He gets off at junction seven. He will not be late.
By Dave Hartley
Location: Primark, Piccadilly Gardens
We hear the robot bug aliens are following the tram lines to the city centre, minutes away from Piccadilly Gardens, so the soldiers point to Primark and beckon to retreat inside. And yes; there, as we push against the fractured glass, the sounds of explosions from the heat rays can be heard in the distance and we look upon this clustered realm of synthetics and special offers as our last venue of hope, our potential graveyard.
I used to hate you for dragging me in here on a Sunday, shopping day, for your cheap basics, socks, hats, necklaces. I would remind you of the slave kids and you would point to the various labels on my current clothes and ask if I thought the other shops were all that different. But I only complained because this place bewilders me. A warehouse of fabrics that has been slightly organised ready for the hungry hordes to pillage and pilfer in basket filling frenzy. It’s the feeling of literally having my clothes ripped from my back that puts me off.
It all seems so disgusting now, at 3am, stalking into the abandoned space like a room from an unfinished computer game. Now that our very existence is threatened, the life of Western luxury is not something we want on our conscience at the pearly gates.
Never mind, soldier on. Survival instincts have long taken over, morals left behind in the idyll of three days ago, and I love you more than ever as you keep a firm clasp of my frightened hand and you draw breath to take nominal leadership again.
‘Right, we need to build a barricade,’ you say, mostly to me but also so that the others can hear and the only thing you don’t realise is how proud of you the geek inside me has become. Alien invasions is supposed to be my area, but I have been floundering like a dying fish.
The soldiers, of course, have begun this task already, but they are periphery, technical authorities and glad of an organiser such as you to take control of their brief; we sixteen, the hapless band of cinemagoers whom they found camped down in screen 14 of the Odeon six hours ago. We had stuck together, feasting on popcorn and slushies for two nights, not daring to venture further than the foyer as one by one our mobiles slowly died.
By Simon Morrison
Location: Heathfield Road, Davenport
The knock on the front door was finger-light; Miles almost missed it from back in the kitchen. He finished pouring water into the kettle – perhaps a little more, now the man was here – returned it to its stand and then, wiping his hands down on his trousers, walked to the front door.
‘Pest control, I’ve come from the council.’
‘Yes hi, I was hoping it was you. Come in, come in.’ Miles opened the door a little wider so the man could step through into the hall. Before pulling it shut he took a look up, then down, his road, the blossom on the trees, the cars on their drives, then followed the man back into his home.
The man was of smallish build; five six, maybe seven. Blue overalls and grey, wiry hair that needed cutting back – perhaps by a horticulturalist rather than a barber. His beard erupted like a tangle of spiders. He had already shuffled down the hall so that Miles hadn’t been able to study his face. Miles liked to get a fix on people’s faces, and make some connection – crack jokes, talk sports – whatever was needed to get them on side. With no eye contact, any connection would be brittle, ephemeral. Miles was suddenly aware he was still in his night time attire: an old T-shirt featuring a band that had faded along with their transferred image, grey jogging bottoms from an abandoned gym regime, backless slippers. He was at home a lot more these days, following the redundancy. The day’s elasticity stretched to his wardrobe and grooming as much as his diary.
‘I’ve just put the kettle on, would you like a brew?’ Miles was already in the cupboard, reaching for mugs and tea bags, the clatter of domesticity. ‘My wife’s into all that herbal stuff. Camomile and peppermint and Lapsang Souchong and God knows what else. But then again, she’s not here so it’s builder’s tea for me. Would you like a…’
‘…No thank you. I’ve had my lunch, not so long ago.’
Miles replaced one of the mugs. ‘A juice then, or water?’
‘No really, I’m fine.’
The man’s face was already wedged into the space beneath the kitchen cupboards and surfaces as he prodded around, moving toasters and bread bins. Miles had planned to tidy up a little more, but the dishwasher had packed in only that winter and what with the kids and one thing and another … . He stopped himself, aware he was constructing an apology to Morven; crazy, when she wasn’t even here. No need to apologise inside your own head, he thought, breathing out, slowly. The sun chose that moment to tip through the north-facing window, throwing a yellow beam on a crumb crime scene.
By Max Dunbar
Location: Withington Village
In which our hero hits Fuel, Withington on a slow Monday evening to check out a show. What was happening was some kind of art installation night aimed at (according to the fliers) creating ‘new, autonomous social spaces, as opposed to commercial “social”’ spaces like pubs and clubs’. These revolutionary spaces were to contain vegetarian cafes and prayer rooms. Best put a bar in there, Anderson thought, or else the whole thing will never get off the ground.
The show itself consisted of a five-minute soundscape followed by a raucous pub quiz. Anderson spent the entire time drawing with felt pens on a sheet of A1 set aside for this advertised purpose. He drew a pair of monkeys watching the sunset, an image he’d had in his head for years. Then downstairs for more drink, at some point a long discussion with the high-functioning autistic who hung out here, complaining that all the men in her Northenden support group kept hitting on her. Then it was time to leave the soul kitchen for another night, for some reason this C & W song from the Mad Men soundtrack in his head:
Some say a man is made out a mud/A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood…
For some reason the far lane of Wilmslow Road had been replaced by a rich green bayou. The OneStop and Canadian Charcoal Pit were only just visible in its shimmering mist. Anderson thought what the fuck, what the fuck, I can’t be that drunk – but he couldn’t remember his last straight day. You could even smell the illusion, something coppery and organic.
Ignore it, he thought, move on, you load sixteen tons, what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt, so he set his face ahead against this new river and reached the station by Withington library. There were already a gaggle of rough-looking women at the bus stop. A 42 drew up, precluding conversation.
By Benjamin Judge
Location: High Street, Northern Quarter
‘All I’m saying is it was a bloody stupid idea.’
‘But it has done wonders for tourism, Geoffrey. Skiing on Urbis, husky trekking down Deansgate, not to mention the tours to the top of the dome.’
‘I was late for work this morning because of a bloody mammoth!’
‘Well…’
‘A mammoth! I wish I’d never got that transfer.’
*
Outside, the snow drifted across High Street and down toward the Arndale Centre. A raven pecked forlornly at a half-eaten pizza that was partly buried in the snow. In the distance you could hear the organising howls of wolves as they steadily entrapped one of the caribou that grazed the tundra of Platt Fields. All this took place within the dome, miles across, that covered all of Greater Manchester and controlled the weather. The two professors sat in the Northern Quarter but all Manchester was northerly now. Manchester, and its impossibly huge dome, had redefined the word northern. Manchester was a new arctic. It was the home of the new Ice Age. It was the snowy city.
*
‘And where did they get the mammoths anyway?’
‘Oh, the Science Department have been working on this for decades.’
‘Well I’m not Science, Kevin. I am Modern Languages. And frankly I can’t see how an influx of American tourists will help me to get funding for a new translation of Rimbaud’s juvenilia.’
‘But Geoffrey…’
‘Don’t try to convince me. Seven of my students didn’t turn up to a seminar last week because of rumours going around that a sabre-toothed tiger had been spotted in the Living Sciences Quadrant. Can that be right, Kevin? A sabre-toothed tiger?’
*
It was right. Professor Kevin Fould knew all about them. He was Head of Biology and was one of the godfathers of the new fauna. There were sabre-toothed cats and mammoths. There were herds of giant elk that roamed across Burnage and Didsbury. Stoats danced among strewn litter in their ermine coats. Sea eagles soared over Beetham Tower. Kevin’s favourites were the woolly hippos that would sometimes smash the ice from the top of the ship canal with their mighty front feet so they could wallow in the in the lush, icy silt below.
His life, which he thought was over when Mary left and took the children with her, brought a new wonder with each dawn. While Mary and the kids sat in her mother’s flat in Rotherham watching soap operas and game shows he was watching evolution dancing an old but favourite waltz. Every day was like an incredible dream. To live in an Ice Age! Yes, he missed his girls and yes, he spent most evenings justifying the project to the less enthusiastic members of faculty but for God’s sake, this was a miracle of science and human endeavour.
*
