Chapter 4 BEE
FOUR
BEE
A tornado of panic rips through the campsite—and the background noise is the radio in the Winnebago, cranked all the way up.
‘Four sources confirmed. Scotland, Northern Ireland, Norway, and Iceland. An incoming report that the blackout is advancing on the coast of the North Americas.’
Tesni is grabbing things at random.
Ramona piles what she can into a laundry basket.
The whole setup of the camp, from chairs and tables to coolers and drying racks lined with socks and underwear, it’s all in shambles.
A stampede came through here, too.
The campervan blocked much of the traffic from barrelling through our things, and on the other side of the camper is a row of two wooden boxed outhouses that at least saved the Winnebago.
But not everything was saved.
‘If you are in an affected area, you are to stay indoors. Take shelter and wait for further instruction.’
The annex is collapsed and shredded.
Ruby and Louise are cutting it away from the campervan door. The screech of serrated blades scraping over coarse fabric, it tenses my shoulders.
‘Do not drive. Do not take the roads. Do not attempt to self-evacuate. Please, stay indoors. The dark cloud at its current travel rate is estimated to touch the west coast of North America in two hours. Please, do not attempt to flee. Seek shelter immediately.’
The frantic radio transmission is the murmur beneath grunts, curses, and the cracking sound of plastic.
I look over my shoulder—and find Ramona sweeping her arms over a foldable table. Everything on it is wiped off. The kettle and gas stove, the metal plates and cups, all rattle into the laundry basket at her feet.
“Careful with that!” Louise shouts. The gas stove is her main concern, the target of her wide, worried gaze. “We might need it!”
Ruby mutters from somewhere under the collapsed annex, “Just focus on this.”
‘Affected areas in blackout are as follows: Britian, Ireland, Iceland, Norway…’
The radio crackles.
My breath pins to my chest, and I stare at the door of the driver seat, willing the transmission back.
‘France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium. The blackout is rapidly spreading…’
“The mainland,” Tesni says, her voice a breathy sound. “It reached the mainland. Did you hear that? France, Spain… It’s over Europe now.”
The annex rips free in pieces.
Louise tackles the metal poles, dragging them out of the path of the van; Ruby hauls the tarp away.
I roll the hose around in a circle, winding, winding, winding. The same hose I used to wash off the girls—for good measure—when we first got to camp a half-hour ago.
Now, in nothing but their underwear, they don’t waste any time.
Tess blinks, then turns her gaze around. “Did you hear me? In the time it took for us to walk back here, that dark cloud… the blackout reached mainland Europe.”
What she’s really saying is Ruby shouldn’t have gotten on a moral high horse, that Ruby wasted time.
I toss the hose onto a pile of clothes in a laundry basket for Ruby to cart into the camper, then I move for Tesni.
She turns to look at me, sickly pallor washing out her freckled face.
“It’s alright,” I tell her, but it’s a lie.
If that darkness is what I think it is…
It’s more than a cloud.
And it will go much farther than Europe.
And it’s really as far from ‘alright’ as possible.
“We’re going to be ok.” The lies come too smoothly. “Do you hear me? You and I will be fine. I promise.”
Her icy eyes lift—and her gaze pierces into me.
Hollow.
“Should we get firewood?” Ruby calls out, hauling a crate into her grip. “While we’re here?”
Ramona shoots her a withered look. “Do you have time to cut down a tree?”
Louise snaps, “Just put everything you can grab into the van. If it’s broken, leave it.”
Ruby nods, a faint sickly sheen to her brow, then she staggers under the weight of the crate pulling down on her arms.
‘Northern areas of Portugal are also affected, and of Italy—reports confirmed just now, Germany is in total blackout.’
“Come on,” Tess tugs away from me, but not before I notice the glossy sheen pasted over her pale face. She looks on the verge of passing out. “Help me pack this.”
She drops to her knees and folds the chairs.
The tension in her stiff arms works against her. She draws for patience, scraps of it, to delicately fold over the chairs one by one until they are flat on the ground, when she looks to be on the verge of ripping them apart in frustration.
I crouch down at her side and help.
‘The East Coast of the North Americas is now in blackout, I repeat—’
Tesni stills.
Her hollow stare slides to the radio.
‘The blackout has reached the coastlines of New York and Montreal, and is currently moving over land. We have lost communication—’
I touch my fingertips to her shoulder.
Tesni flinches.
Ramona abandons the foldable table. “Did that say it’s here?”
“Not here,” I sigh. “On the other side of the country.”
Ramona turns her bloodshot eyes on me. “But it’s coming this way—from both directions now, right? It’s coming from the sea,” she gestures over her shoulder, as though the Pacific Ocean is right behind her, then throws her hand out in front, a general gesture to the west coast, “and that way, now.”
Louise snaps from the doorway, “We already knew it was headed this way. Why else were the animals bolting outta here like Usain on coke? Get a fucking move on!”
Ruby tilts her mouth. “Louise, don’t—”
“No! I’m not standing around here while you all rehash the fucking disaster headed our way, acting like it’s news to you—because you just don’t want to believe it. If you’re going to do that, do it in the van. Don’t waste my fucking time.”
Tesni’s jaw rolls.
Her words are swallowed down, deep in a dark place stirring within her, but her eyes… hollow.
Louise kicks back from the door, then disappears into the van.
Hand soft on Tesni’s shoulder, I give her a gentle squeeze. “You’ve got this?”
Not meeting my gaze, Tesni gives a stiff nod, then shoves her weight into the chair to flatten it.
There are only two left for her to fold.
And if what the radio says is right, and the blackout has reached the North American continent, then I can’t spare a moment on chairs.
“Need to pee.” A small fib.
I push up into a jog—and head straight for the cluster of trees and boulders.
With a glance spared back at the disintegrating campsite, most of it cleaned up and packed inside the van now, I fish out my cell from my bag.
The screen glows under the tap of my sweaty thumb.
My mouth pinches around a trembling exhale before my thumb starts the dance—the same routine it has practiced a dozen times since we abandoned the dirt field for the campsite.
Every moment that presented itself, where I could slip to the back of the group on the walk here, delayed by the cars and trucks lined up in gridlock on the highway, I snuck out my phone and dialled my dad’s number.
Just as I do now.
Two names at the top of the call log.
Two red names, tried and tried and tried, five times each.
None of those calls went through.
I try again.
My hand trembles with my breath as the photograph of my dad alights the screen. Mousy hair like mine, but his is a mop over a weathered face, not exactly aged and wrinkled, rather it’s the eyes that speak of lives lived.
The line holds. It doesn’t ring.
The signal unribbons from my cell, searching for network, for connection, and I wait, just staring at the familiar face of my dad on the screen until—
The photo fades back to the call log.
My mouth twists with the rush of tears.
I gulp them down, thick.
The blackout is interfering with signals. That’s what the radio said. Or was it Tess who said that?
Either way, it’s just a signal block—right?
Satellites or cell towers or whatever it is, that’s the fault. It doesn’t mean anything bad has happened to my dad.
If I’m right about the blackout, about what that darkness really is, then I shouldn’t worry about dad. He’s smart. He would know, too. And he would have gotten himself to safety. He knows where to go, the only place to go.
Still, the thickness in my throat is swelling.
The pad of my thumb drifts to the second name.
‘Eamon.’
I hit the name.
The screen darkens to a single image: Tinkerbell.
It’s my idea of a joke. Not so funny now that the call doesn’t connect, and it fades back to the call log.
The tears bubble up inside.
Silent, that twist of my face warps completely and I drop to my knees.
The phone is tight in my grip. I bring my fisted hands to my head, doubled over, and in the secrecy of the sparse woods, where the other girls can’t see me, I fracture.
“Bee!” The faint hitch of Tesni’s voice disturbs me. “Come back! Now!”
Hands dropping to my lap, I lift my reddened eyes to the cluster of trees. The milky film of tears warps my sight.
I blink, hard, forcing out the remaining tears, then shove myself upright. My boots scuff uneasily on the foliage.
I take a moment to wipe at my cheeks before I start for the campsite.
It’s all packed up.
Even the rubbish, the empty cans and bottles, foil wrappers, all swept up from the hard grass.
My steps are soft as I advance on the group.
Louise and Ramona huddle at the nose of the camper, the window rolled down to release the frantic radio transmission onto the campgrounds.
Ruby hangs out that very window, in the driver’s seat already, geared to go.
It’s Tesni in the doorway that I head for.
A dumb expression is slack on her freckled face. She turns that look on me, blinks once, twice, then slides it back to the nose of the camper.
The transmission carries on.
‘…the interference of satellite connection is disrupting communications. All affected areas are cut off from all forms of communication, including cell service and internet…’
I run a hand down my face. “Yeah, I know,” I mutter, muffled, then drop my hand to rest on my hip. “I’ve been trying to call my dad.”
Tesni frowns on me for a beat before she shakes her head. Loose strands of peachy hair slip over her flushed cheeks.
“Not the radio…” Tesni lifts her arm, then points her finger, stiff. “That.”
I trace along her pale, smooth arm, her straightened finger and black-painted nail, chipped, then past the length of the campervan.
Ruby is still leaning out of the rolled-down window.
But I understand better now, the silence that has them hushed at the nose of the camper, the stagnancy that has stiffened them all and rooted them to the spot—
It isn’t the radio transmission.
It’s that…
I drag my gaze over the horizon.
Beyond the campsite, the earth drops into a canyon, then boulders into lumpy dried lands that stretch on as far as the coastline. With binoculars, the rippling blue of the sea looks close enough to touch.
The view is the reason we even chose this campsite. But that view is gone.
Darkness is rolling in.
A cloud, they called it.
That’s what the radio said.
Dark cloud.
This…
This is a cluster of thick, dense clouds and smog and shadows, fuelled by rolling, tumbling energy.
It barrels and chugs through the horizon.
It is smoke, it is steam, it is cloud, it is darkness.
It is everything—all consuming.
And it is tumbling right for us.
I am distantly aware of a tear falling down my cheek. My fears, my worries of the blackout—confirmed.
My breath releases in a tremble, and it shatters the stiff silence rooting us all in place:
“Go.” A guttural command that utters from me.
A blur, Ruby jerks back into the driver’s seat and rolls up the window; Ramona and Louise turn on their heels and barrel for the door. But before they can reach it, Tesni has tilted towards me and snatched a fistful of my t-shirt.
There is nothing kind about the way she hauls me into the campervan first.
My shins hit the step, hard enough for a wince to hiss through me. Teeth gritted, I’m grabbing at the railing and hoisting myself up.
Not a heartbeat later, Ramona and Louise are shoving inside after me.
Tesni’s grip shifts to my forearm, tearing and pulling at my flesh, and she yanks me out of the way. Before I’ve even righted myself, the door slams shut behind me.
The camper shudders with the slam—and chugs to life.
“Someone better get up here,” Ruby’s squeaky voice hitches, and her hand hits the gearstick. “I am not driving alone!”
No hesitation, both Louise and Ramona run up the camper to the front, squeezing through the narrow hall.
Tesni makes no move to follow them. She watches them slip into the seats, but her mind is elsewhere behind those vacant eyes of hers.
I lower myself onto the edge of the bed. My shins ache against the movement, surely bruised behind the denim.
The camper jolts into movement.
Ruby is too harsh, too panicked on the gears. That same panic strangles her voice, “Where are we going?”
No one answers.
So Ruby turns the camper onto the road and takes the direction of the town.
Beyond the windows, the darkness still tumbles towards us.
I shift around to watch it roll like black poison over the horizon.
“Turn on the beams.” Ramona’s mutter comes from the front. It’s followed by a click as the bright lights are switched on—a useless preparation for that darkness spilling over the sealine.
“It’s just a blackout,” Tesni says, soft, then drops to sit beside me. The mattress dips. “It’s just… a blackout—it’s temporary.” Her gaze flings to me, desperate. “Right?”
She needs that to be true.
I could tell her it is temporary, that all is well. And it would be another lie.
I know what that darkness is, where it came from—and what comes with it.
This is not the sort of dark that comes with night. Not with stars and the gleam of the moon. A switch flicking in a room can’t illuminate this darkness.
This…
This is different.
Different than anything Tesni knows.
Different than anything this world has seen.
The blackness is thick enough to feel in the air, like heat; it is too thick to see a hand in front of a face; it is suffocating; it is the pressure of a weighted blanket draped over the shoulders.
This is darkness from another world.
A world of warriors and horror and violence—
A world of fae.
Their darkness is coming here.
It is invading.
I realise I am stuck in a fucking extermination.