Born to be Wild is playing at full volume in my headphones, the powerful roar of the Kawasaki’s engine reduced to a vibration that has become an intrinsic part of my existence for the past few days. I’m driving through the winding back roads of rural Sussex, enjoying the dynamic curves and sweeps that keep the speeds low and the thrills high. I left Brighton an hour ago, and have been testing the bike’s agility as much as possible. I don’t know what I expected from the town that I grew up in, perhaps hoping that I could find some connection to my old life. All I found was seagulls, and when I saw what they were doing I left in a hurry.
I’ve had nothing but time to think since leaving London, winding my way south, taking any road that picked my fancy. I’ve been navigating by instinct, the bike becoming more of another appendage than a mode of transportation whilst my mind wanders off in flights of imagination, unravelling years of untouched memories, and weaving them into a million scenarios of what was, and what might have been.
I keep coming back to thoughts of Nina, thoughts that I shouldn’t dwell on. How long was she cheating on me? Is that why I decided to cheat on her? Did the distance between us grow as a result of her infidelity? Or, and this is the thought that I come back to the most often, was our failing relationship simply a natural consequence of the fact that we didn’t like each other all that much? I try to remember what it was that brought us together, but the only thing that occurs to me is flitting memory of a random snog on a dance floor leading to a night of amazing sex, and then another, and another…
All things considered, we did pretty well for a relationship which was built entirely upon fucking, and avoiding emotional intimacy. She could be a crazy bitch sometimes, and I know I didn’t love her, but even so I can’t help but feel that there was something else between us that was left unspoken.
Then again, maybe I’m just getting confused with Emily’s feelings for me, which she made no attempt to hide in our office. She was everything that I had dreamed of in a PA: smart, effective, organised, and pleasing on the eye. I guess that when a woman like that decides she wants something it’s only a matter of time until she gets it. In my case she exercised her considerable talents to get me drunk at our office Christmas party, and then dragged me to an expensive boutique hotel in Marylebone to fuck my brains out. I’d argued with Nina that morning, and didn’t feel any particular moral qualms when Emily slipped her hand into my trousers and suggested we leave the party. I could barely remember who Nina was when we checked out two days later, sore all over, covered in scratch marks, and determined to repeat the experience as often as discretion allowed.
With the luxury of distance, the similarities between the two women are startling. Both the same age, twenty eight. Both tall, slender, brunettes, with figures that were guaranteed to turn heads; Nina a little taller, Emily with bigger breasts. Both strong, confident women, though Nina more clearly a man-eater, her attitude either intimidating or exhilarating, dependent upon whether she liked you. Both with a unique sense of style that was cleverly tailored to be elegant and professional whilst accentuating their striking bodies. In other circumstances they probably would have been either great friends, and a devastating combination.
The thought of them together leads me to the though of them both naked, and I have to push that idea to the back of my mind lest I forget about driving entirely and end up in a ditch or wrapped around one of the endless supply of trees that line the road. I pull over for a brief stop, taking a long gulp of water from one of the several bottles in my rucksack, and turn my attention back to the road for a while. Miles pass, and before long I’m powering through Surrey, around the M25, and headed North. The long, straight motorway is a perfect counterpoint to the twisting roads of the morning’s ride, and I let the bike pick its own speed. One positive, with nobody else alive there’s nobody to enforce speed limits, and the Kawasaki seems to have an endless supply of acceleration. I ease off the throttle when I notice the speedometer ticking up to one-eighty.
The simplicity of picking a straight line from the four lanes and holding it for a few hours lets my mind drift again, and now all of the theories that have been worming their way through my imagination for the past two weeks rise to the fore.
The first is obviously some kind of biological attack, to which I was somehow immune. I can rule that out with little effort, as it’s inconceivable that such an attack could strike the whole country (and the question mark is still there… the whole world?) simultaneously and with such complete coverage. Possibly a nation state could launch such an attack, but without any kind of warning or provocation? No, it can’t be an attack.
Those same arguments rule out a natural disease or virus, though I’m hardly an expert the likelihood of something so deadly and widespread hitting overnight seems almost as unlikely as a biological attack. If such a thing did exist naturally, I reason, it would have wiped us out long before now. It’s not like new diseases just spontaneously spring into existence without warning. So natural causes are off the table.
Which takes me into the realm of the supernatural, of the phenomenological. I don’t believe in God, at least not in the traditional sense espoused by most religions. If there is something out there, it’s not some old guy with a beard who takes such a prurient interest in people’s sex lives. The idea of a God who only hangs around to punish and reward at the individual level seems like such a cosmic waste of power that I feel compelled to tear apart religious beliefs whenever I hear them.
But. There’s always a “but”, and this one has been haunting me for two weeks without me giving it serious consideration. It goes: “but, what if I’m wrong?”
Well, in that case the question isn’t so much “why kill everyone?” as “why leave me alive?”. I’m not special, not worthy of being singled out for special attention. Neither a particularly good person, nor particularly bad, I’m only guilty of the same kind of behaviour as millions of others.
No, if I’m wrong, and there is a God, it wouldn’t make sense for him to eradicate humanity and forget about me in the process. Something with that kind of power counting off the world’s dead and coming up one short just doesn’t seem feasible.
As far as I’m concerned, God’s just as dead as Nietzsche.
If God’s out of the frame, then all I have left are a series of increasingly wild ideas that run the gamut of dodgy science fiction plots. I haven’t run into any ambulatory alien plants yet, and as far as I can tell there’s no giant alien entity tearing the planet apart for it’s thermal energies, so I’m pretty much at a dead end. It’s almost a shame really – I was a huge fan of science fiction when I was younger, and had a collection of comic books that would be worth a fair bit if there was anyone left to buy them. I vaguely recall one story about a scientist who is the last man left alive after some kind of plague that turns people into zombies.
Zombies.
I giggle, and the giggle turns into a guffaw. I have to stop the bike sharply, because I know I’m going to lose control. When it comes to a screeching halt I yank the helmet off and collapse in a fit of hysterics. I think of all the crappy horror movies I’ve watched over the years, with the plucky band of heroes the last living humans fighting off wave after wave of brain-starved zombies. I know with certainty that I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.
I regain my senses slowly, leaning against the bike and taking slow sips of water, smoking a cigarette that calms me somewhat. I’m in the middle lane of the M1, somewhere close to Sheffield, but all I can see to the horizon in every direction are green rolling hills and the odd small farmhouse or village spotted across the landscape. To the east, the hills rise into a bank of cloud that threatens to drop its contents unceremoniously at any moment. To the west, the sun is sinking towards the horizon with gathering pace, the few high clouds tinged pink with refracted light. It’s a beautiful sight, and I take the time to enjoy it. Time is really all I have now.
I ride on through much of the night, the bright beam of the headlamp the only source of light in the moon-less evening. It’s uncanny, how dark the world is now that man’s not here to add his own artificial illumination to the night sky. The pale white band of the Milky Way is obvious, and I can pick out more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life. It occurs to me that mankind has always striven to drive back darkness; that primordial fear of what lurks out of sight an urge that has driven our development for millennia.
I’m roaring through the peak district, once again enjoying the winding roads, though taking a great deal of care now that my vision is limited only to the road lit by the headlamp. My eyes have become somewhat accustomed to the gloom beyond, and for the most part I can see the edge of the road without much effort. So when a huge shape bounds out of the darkness across the road in front of me I almost fly off the road in my effort to swerve and avoid it. Heart pounding and every limb shaking, I regain my balance and keep the bike on the tarmac. Just a deer, I tell myself. Just a deer trying to kill us both. I know for certain that hitting it would have been fatal.
I ride for just long enough to find an open patch of grass, and stop to smoke a cigarette before I pitch the tent for the night, not wanting to risk my luck any further. It takes me about fifteen minutes, not bad for how much my hands are still trembling. I fall asleep and dream of shapeless forms chasing me through the darkness.
All in all, I’m glad that there are no zombies.