Paradigm (9781909490406) Read Online Free PDF Page B

banging quietened into a dull thud and then into nothing, and all she could hear was the dripping of the rain.
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    O n the third day after the Storms started, her mother still wasn’t home. When Alice got up to refill her water jug, there was a hammering coming from somewhere in the building but she couldn’t be sure where. Moments later she saw a white blaze that came from outside the window and lit up the whole of the sky with an iridescent flash, like slow-motion sheet lightening. She drank down the water quickly then ate some biscuits and mummified her body back inside the folds of the blankets. There was no sign that her mother had been back at all. Her eyes felt hot and fiery. All night she dreamed of explosions and furnaces and shooting flames that licked the inside of her brain until all her memories were burned and blackened.
    Twice she woke up screaming empty words that didn’t even make it out of her mouth. There was screaming and silence and, through her dreams, Alice remembered being frightened. It was a cool, quiet type of frightened that didn’t come from watching a scary movie or the barking of an angry dog. It was the type of terrified that bled out of the clouds slowly, dripping down onto the balcony where paint had been blistered by the sun and eked into the tenth-floor flat over several hours. It was the type of scared that came at the start of things, rather than at the end.
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    F inally , several mornings after the Storms had started, Alice awoke feeling almost normal—although she wasn’t really sure what that felt like anymore. She tested out her legs slowly on the carpet and tenderly limped into the kitchen. Each morning she checked the rooms carefully, peering in every corner for any trace that her mother had returned. But she hadn’t. The green hands of the clock read ten minutes past ten. When she turned on the cold tap, a slushy grey-brown liquid dripped out, slumped into the sink and dried up into a pile of rusty sediment. The hot tap did exactly the same.
    In the dim light that filtered in through the curtains, Alice could see that most of the shopping she had bought was still on the counter, including cartons of juice and crisps as well as biscuits, tins of soup and fruit. She pulled together a crisp sandwich breakfast, followed up with chocolate and washed down with apple juice. She wiggled her toes and flexed her legs, feeling a spurt of life force coursing through her bloodstream.
    â€˜Ma,’ she called, as she did every morning, but there was nothing. Then Alice stretched her arms and her neck and shook herself all over. She took a deep breath and opened the curtains—but what she saw immediately terrified her.
    Instead of the usual view of the diagonal cranes and London Eye in the distance, the city below her was all but unrecognisable, coated in a thin film of water. Fires burned in the windows of the houses of the street opposite. A man stood on the roof of his car as a swan sailed past him. A strong gust of wind blew him clean into the water and as he flailed around, the swan took off into the air. In the flat, the balcony doors banged against their hinges and from upstairs there was a thump and then the crash of glass. Alice shook in fear, her heart beating fast inside her ribcage. She held her breath. There was silence, except for the pattering of rain on the window. A soft, regular pattering.
    â€˜Ma?’ Alice’s voice was tentative and quiet. From upstairs, Alice thought she could hear something, a soft, fluttering noise, the same kind that her mother made when she was brushing her hair, getting ready for work. She put one foot on the first of the creaky stairs. The countries of the crinkled map looked back at her.
    â€˜Ma?’ she said again. ‘Are you home? I can help you again. Look, I’m not sick.’
    Alice stopped still and listened, but there was no sound coming from the bedroom anymore. Her throat felt raspy