Adam's Ale
When it happened, it happened everywhere and it happened at much the same time. It was the same story wherever you went. So it makes very little difference what area we choose to look at.
So let us choose Greenacre Close in the small English town of Bredford on the morning of Monday June 22nd. The sky was an unhealthy dun colour which the weak sunlight could scarcely penetrate. A foul stench seeped from the drains. None of the neatly arranged flower gardens had bloomed. It was a very unpleasant morning indeed.
Those among the Close’s inhabitants who were up and about were blithely doing what they had to do, and idly thinking what they had to think.
Mrs Ross at number 6 was impatiently cramming her two sons football kit into a tub full of hot water because the new washing machine she had bought the previous week had broken down. Things always seemed to be breaking down recently.
Anne-Marie Johnston at number 15 was brushing her teeth and wondering if her boyfriend had got his hair cut as she had ordered him to when they had argued last Saturday night. He would if he loved her.
Little Christopher Walker at number 2 was scrubbing his round red face for the second time that morning, his mother having reprimanded him for daring to present himself for school in such a grubby condition. But the dirt never went away.
Old Martin O’Hara in the end house at number 18 was easing his plump body into a bath blue with relaxing salts which he hoped would deaden the pain of his arthritis. If only he could find salts that would deaden the pain of his loneliness.
And so on. In every home in the Close, as in every home everywhere, things were going on as normal.
But then people started to realise that it was not like every other day.
Mrs Ross drew her arms out of the tub to investigate the stinging pain around her wrists. When she lifted them to her eyes, she saw that her hands were gone, and that she had only two bleeding stumps sticking out of the end of her green pinafore dress. She collapsed.
Anne-Marie rinsed her mouth out and grinned into the mirror to check that her teeth were gleaming. Her mouth was a bloody and empty gash. She could not scream because she had no tongue.
Christopher’s body was slumped over the sink when his mother came to look for him. It had no face.
And no-one ever saw Martin O’Hara waddling down to the pub ever again.
June 22nd was the first day of the last year. The day when the pollutants that had been poured for centuries into water and air and earth and flame had finally combined into something that would annihilate the human race. The day when water turned to acid and air to poison gas. The day the world started to die.
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