AND ITS FALL WAS GREAT
A collection of seventeen short stories from just around the next corner.
Some set in a post-collapse Britain. Others in or around mental hospitals. Many imagine futures that we Britons could soon be living in.
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Nerdy sociology researcher Colin presents at a conference three months after almost every Briton’s life and future suddenly saw an enormous change for the better. Reform that had way more substance than a politician’s vague promises. The clue is in the ‘almost’.
Comfortably retired senior nurse Kate regards her wall of framed qualifications, awards, commendations and photographs with pride. A knock on the door threatens the lot when a memory she thought impenetrably sealed in a vault is exhumed.
After the collapse, in a remote valley forgotten by the survivors in the world beyond, a handful of men travel nomadically between surviving farms, wholly populated and steered by women, working as mechanics, builders, electricians, hunters. One man, arriving at a rarely visited farm, finds a little boy living there, the only one he’s come across.
A top flight football match is referred by a robot while two formerly elite human refs are permitted to review only a handful of its decisions.
A woman accuses a man of rape on a marginal, post-collapse commune.
A successful post-collapse farm is invaded by professional criminals straight from the pages of modern crime.
A senior nurse manager returns from a conference and sends a coruscating email to her underlings.
When a patrol captures two teenagers from the enemy camp inside the no-man’s-land between their territories, a squaddie is baffled by the action his officers take next.
Two surviving tribes have found a way to co-exist peacefully until a former neoliberal businessman arrives.
Parker in the new world
An excerpt
THE THREE MEN WALKED in through the open kitchen door, spreading out and professionally commanding the room. Each was carrying a loaded crossbow. Two were workshop made, attaching a quarter inch metal strip to a robust wooden stock. The third, in the hands of the biggest man, standing relaxed in the corner nearest the stove, was a pre collapse professionally made crossbow. It was pointed directly at my chest. It only took me a moment to click the men must have spent a day or maybe two, scoping our farm and routine, calculating the prime moment for taking the room, when our guard was down and most men were away, working in the fields and woods.
There were six of us, Tommo and Alex, Cynthia, Ally and Pascale. The women had been cooking and the room was filled with the delicious smell of stew.
“Who else is in the house?” the man in the middle asked, his voice high and excitable.
Tommo didn’t move but Alex and the three women looked at me. The big guy’s eyes registered the exchange.
“Well? Come on then,” Excitable said to me, “Hurry up.”
I waited, trying to look calm and unruffled.
“Just two children playing upstairs,” Alex answered nervously.
The big guy raised his eyebrows at me, wanting confirmation, at the same time moving his aim to point in the centre of Alex’s chest.
“Yes,” I answered, powerless.
“Told you,” Excitable said to the big guy who nodded, exuding calm and control. The gesture spoke a thousand words.
The six of us stood silently looking at the three men. The three women retreated from the oven to stand beside or behind us.
“What are you going to do?” Cynthia asked, her voice wavering.
“Whatever we want to,” the big guy spoke for the first time.
The women silently moved closer to us men but said nothing.
“You,” Excitable said, pointing at Ally. “Come here and feed us.”
Carefully, systematically, the three men ate our lunchtime stew, one by one, while covering us with their crossbows. They made no mistakes, there was no opportunity to get the drop on any of them.
Once they’d finished, the big guy stood back up and wiped his mouth.
“I’m taking him upstairs, keep an eye on the rest.”
“What are you going to do with him?” Ally asked, panic lacing her voice.
“Come on,” he ordered me, going through the door and finding the stairs without help.
On the first floor, where the bedrooms began, he stopped me with a big ham sized palm on my chest.
“What weapons do you have hidden up here?”
My face must have dropped. I’d been dreading this since he said ‘upstairs’.
“Don’t think you can trick me,” he said, reading my mind. “I know you’ve got weapons up here, I just don’t know where they are.”