Aftermath by Rhona Gorringe
AFTERMATH
Hannah was impatient to see how her village had survived such biblical destruction. Armageddon the television newscaster had described it before the screen went blank. Telephone contact was erratic and her mobile battery was flat. The house next door was empty and her neighbours on the other side had taken advantage of the unexpectedly good weather and gone away. She felt isolated and sought confirmation that she was not the only person left in the world.
She walked down the hill towards the park. Immediately she saw the ripped up saplings and bushes, broken tree branches, upended benches and wire litter bins, their contents spewed around the boating lake or at least where she thought it was. There was no putting green just a huge lake. Half submerged spiny, succulent plants leaned drunkenly around the snack kiosk, its shutters hanging lopsidedly.
A freak storm had lashed and battered the area. People had been warned to stay indoors. One hundred miles an hour wind and piercing rain brought flash flooding to the beleaguered village. The ground was too parched to accept it and like quick silver the spiteful water ran without hindrance wherever it wanted. Then the evacuation started. Families were rescued as the water rose up through their floor boards. It snaked under front doors into the holiday lets, shops, cafes and offices. Cars were abandoned.
The village hall became a refugee centre and volunteers in rubber boots served cups of tea and wrapped bewildered people in blankets. The rescue services worked twenty four hour shifts. Then as suddenly as the storm came it departed leaving a calling card of flotsam, wreckage and devastation.
As Hannah reached the shopping area she saw the filth stained walls and high tidemarks of rubbish.
She almost retched at the pervading stagnant smell. A few people in fluorescent yellow jackets clutched clipboards and walked round shops, confusion and shock on their tired faces as they tried to assess the damage but no one had any time to stop and chat.
Glad to be moving away from the smell, Hannah reached the close which backed on to the primary school playground. It was eerily quiet. Then she remembered hearing that all schools were shut. She stopped and stared. On the pavement was a large skip, piled with carpets, sofas, TV sets, armchairs, cushions, rugs, toys; heartbreaking remnants of once happy lives. Her eyes misted. Involuntarily she stretched and touched a large stuffed black and white dog, with plastic beads in its worn collar. It lay on its side next to a sleeping baby doll, swaddled in a sagging nappy. Perched on top of this pathetic pile was a child’s baking set, plastic spoons and bowls, a pink cheese grater and rolling pin.
Hannah took the dog home. She would dry it out, brush its matted coat and return to the close and find the person who thought it lost.
The litter left behind by the flood devastation is very poignant and you can feel the sense of devastation felt by the unfamiliarity of things uprooted and flung about. We see people on television resignedly sweeping flood water out of their houses and perhaps we don’t always ‘get’ the smell, the cold and tiredness and all the sad losses.
From Simon: This is a moving picture of the devastation caused by flooding. At the beginning one is not sure of the scale of what has happened. The use of the words ‘biblical’ and ‘Armageddon’, along with Hannah’s fear that she might be ‘the only person left in the world’ prepare the reader for a major apocalypse. And as, gradually through the narrative, we become aware that it is not quite that bad, we are still aware of the appalling effects natural phenomena can have on our secure, day-to-day lives. The fact that the setting is a village, that archetype of domestic security, increases the reality of the disaster. The sense of desolation is increased by the use of well-chosen words and phrases: ‘the spiteful water’, the volunteers ‘wrapped bewildered people in blankets’ and the detail of the dog with ‘plastic beads in its worn collar. In this world of natural chaos, I liked the positivity of the ending, as Hannah prepares to find the stuffed dog’s owner. In terms of answering the brief, putting the required items into a list could, in different circumstances, be a cop-out. In this case, it adds the dystopian imagery, that such diverse objects should be brought together by the force of the flooding.