The Quiet Apocalypse Read online

  THE QUIET

  APOCALYPSE

  NICK CRACKNELL

  Copyright © 2018 Nick Cracknell

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13:

  978-1984360427

  ISBN-10:

  1984360426

  for bo and jimmy

  PART ONE

  98%

  I don’t know exactly how long I have been here, but it is at least four days.

  That’s how long ago I woke up anyway.

  If you are reading this it might be that you have found me alive, or that I am long dead and this is the only record of what went on here.

  Like everything else around me in this place it is, currently, totally unknown.

  Indeed, I may not know exactly how long I have been here, but at least I do know where ‘here’ is. Or at least where all the signs point to it being…

  According to the literature I have seen so far, comprising mainly of tourist brochures and activity leaflets advertising pursuits like kids’ waterparks, camel trekking in the Timanfaya National Park and car hire, I am in the holiday resort of Playa Blanca on the island of Lanzarote.

  At first I couldn’t be totally sure as I couldn’t get out of the hotel grounds before it started to get dark, and I definitely didn’t want to start exploring after hours in my condition.

  Speaking of which, my head wounds have been healing remarkably. There seems to be no lasting damage other than some yellow bruising around my eyes and nose and a crusting of dried blood at the top of my brow where skin meets hairline. I surmise that the cut there must have been made with some form of blunt instrument, possibly a wooden rolling pin or baseball bat or something, as the skin is split evenly with no ragged edges, and there appear to be no other signs of trauma apart from a raging headache.

  I have no idea how I received the injury, but I don’t think it was self-inflicted. I don’t remember being so drunk that I forgot the events of the night before, which leads me to believe I was attacked in some way, or perhaps involved in some kind of accident which caused me to experience a significant period of unconsciousness.

  Depending on how long I was out, I may have been here for days or even weeks, although I sense it is a lot less as I don’t appear to have lost any weight. I certainly didn’t feel excessively hungry upon waking, but my thirst was unslakeable.

  I have also attempted to think as rationally as possible in order to fully grasp the dilemma in which I find myself. Said dilemma can be broken down into the following criteria:

  I am seemingly alone. I have seen no other signs of life in the five days of my sojourn thus far. No people, no animals, not even aircraft overhead.

  I woke up at the THB Sun Royal aparthotel in the resort of Playa Blanca, on the southern tip of Lanzarote. And that is where I have remained so far. The reason being that, although I am almost certainly the only person here, there is an ample supply of food and water (and alcohol) in the store and in the canteen.

  I am seemingly in sound body and mind.

  I have no idea how I came to be here, or why.

  The first day I spent taking in my surroundings was quite informative. After the initial confusion of waking up in a foreign environment, with a visible injury and no idea as to how or why I was there, I went about establishing how good or bad my circumstances were.

  The biggest advantage is that all the electrics are still on. I am able to boil water, cook food and see in the dark. The bad thing is none of the televisions (or at least the ones I have tried so far) seem to be receiving a broadcast of any sort. Nor is the computer I located in the reception area of the hotel complex able to connect to the internet.

  The clocks have all frozen at 2.04. My watch also has frozen, and the analogue date function has stuck on the number ‘4’. Presumably then, whatever happened here did so at 2.04 either am or pm on the 4th of July.

  It must be July, as my last memory was driving home from work at around 6pm on the 3rd July, and unless I was unconscious for over four weeks and somehow kept alive then it is unlikely to be August…

  Trying to think rationally then, it seems I was therefore only unconscious for, say, 24 hours. Which would make sense due to my aforementioned lack of hunger and wound condition.

  Taking that into account I woke up here at around dusk on 4th July, a matter of hours after the events which caused the complete abandonment or evacuation of every living thing in this resort.

  ---

  That is a lot of presumptions, but presume is all I can really do at the moment. I have often found that my first presumption is the most accurate, so I am going purely on gut feeling and those facts that have presented themselves thus far.

  For the sake of argument, if we say the day I awoke was the 4th of July and that was Day #1, then today would be Day #5. The 8th of July.

  But back to the start.

  I awoke just as the sun was going down in the sky, on a bed in one of the many apartments that comprise this resort. A flicker of a battery symbol with the figure 98% was emblazoned in front of my eyes; like the effect of looking at a bright light for too long and then shutting your eyes and still being able to see it.

  The pain was intense, and as the numbers in front of my eyes faded I sensed something was amiss. I felt injured. My head was blazing and my eyesight blurred, and it took significant effort to stand up and ascertain where I was.

  The apartment was, I have since learned, like every other of the 300-odd ones present. All are painted white, all contain a communal sitting room/kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom. The room had been cleaned, with fresh towels laid out and two bottles of cold mineral water in the fridge. I instantly gulped one down and almost immediately brought it back up. It tasted divine, but my head throbbed in protest at its iciness and my stomach was completely unprepared for the rush of liquid. I went into the bathroom and caught sight of myself in the mirror. The bandage around my head was fresh and I could see no blood leaking through anywhere so I decided to remove it.

  The linen stuck slightly as the last of it unwound, pulling a few strands of hair and some dried brown blood with it, and exposed the gash that had obviously rendered me oblivious. It looked clean and uninfected, so I decided to leave it exposed to the air rather than reapply the bandage. There were no sutures so I assumed it wasn’t that serious, although I could feel my brain had taken a hell of a shaking inside my skull.

  The main door to the apartment was closed but unlocked, with no key in sight, and on stepping out I found myself on a small patio looking out onto a square of identical terraced apartments arranged around a central swimming pool that was shaped like a misshapen ‘B’.

  I am, by nature, cautious to a fault, and perhaps it was the sheer silence around me that caused me to stop myself just as I was about to holler a loud ‘Hello?’

  There was utter silence.

  And I mean utter.

  Not even a breath of wind. I knew then and there that I was completely alone in this environment, as no human could ever exist in that sort of absence of noise. Humans make noise, therefore they are. Thus I instantly discarded my first hopeful notion that this was some kind of surprise party, and that my friends and family were going to leap out from various apartments or behind the tall silent palm trees that were spaced evenly around the pool and grounds.

  The pervading silence drew me on. The pool was as still as you would expect without a breeze to disturb it. I resisted the urge to leap in and splash about like crazy, but I did test the temperature with my foot.

  Oh, before I forget, I was also completely naked and strangely undisturbed by this fact.

  The water was warm and smelled faintly of chlorine. It was clear and clean. Nothing unusual. I giddily looked around for
signs of life, already knowing I would find none, and took in my surroundings.

  The apartments were arranged in a square formation, terraced in rows of ten, with pathways leading out at each corner to some other part of the complex. They were stacked two high, and the upper rooms each had a protruding balcony that jutted out over the apartment underneath to serve the double purpose of outside space for the upper room and a sun shade for the lower one.

  I located the shop in the north corner of the apartment square. The door was open and lights were on. A rotating stack of postcards featuring photos of Playa Blanca and its beach were my first indication as to where I was. The confusion was overwhelming, but I kept myself steady and tried not to panic. My first goal was finding some painkillers to stop the intense throbbing in my head.

  The shop was obviously meant to cater for people too lazy to leave the hotel complex itself and venture into the town. It had everything from sun cream and toiletries to tins of chili and pasta and even a section of blow-up toys for the pool. I located the drug aisle and broke open a carton of paracetamol. My Spanish is not great but thankfully drug names seem to be roughly the same in Spanish as they are in English. The law-abiding person inside me made me look around to see if there was a cashier or security guard watching me as I broke the top off the container and feverishly swallowed three of the tablets. I instantly chided myself for not looking to see if there were any faster-acting tablets that would give me more instant relief. There were, but as I didn’t want to overdose I kept hold of them until I could find something with a pocket to put on.

  There was a rack of beach shorts so I dug out a pair roughly my size and put them on but could find nothing to go on my top as yet. Why I felt the need to dress myself I don’t know. Even hunter gatherers covered themselves in skins so I suppose it was base human sense ingrained over millions of years of evolution that pushed me to clothe myself even though I was totally alone.

  The chilled food section had a selection of salami and cheese and some delicious looking olives stuffed with garlic, but I wasn’t hungry so left them in situ and made a mental note of where they were. The cashier’s computer was still on, so I tried to minimise the ringing up screen to see if there was an internet icon anywhere, but it was such a basic machine it seemed to only perform that one function.

  I walked around the aisles to see if there was anything else I could use. I picked up a small first aid kit but realised I didn’t really need it so set it back and again made a mental note of its whereabouts.

  There was a rack of newspapers in various languages, Spanish, Bild in German and The Sun in English. All were dated 3rd July and none contained any useful knowledge that would explain what was going on.

  There was a cigarette vending machine, and although I haven’t smoked for seven years and my head was screaming I allowed myself the indulgence of sneaking a couple of Euros from the cashier’s tray and acquiring myself a pack of Lucky Strikes. It felt odd smoking inside the store, and again the responsible person inside coerced me out of the shop to resume my explorations.

  I continued through to an open communal area containing two pool tables and a lift in the middle of a winding staircase down to a lower level. A huge skylight above the staircase flooded this area with natural light and I was able to see to the floor below but nothing of interest seemed to be there. There were two more computers in the far extremity of the room in an obvious attempt at creating an internet corner. I shook the mouse on both and the screens linked into life.

  My heart leapt a beat when I saw the Google Chrome icon on the desktop and my hands shook so much it took three attempts to double-click on it, but when the screen appeared it just said ‘unable to connect to the internet at this time’. What affected me more was that there was no date or time display in the bottom left of the screen like on normal desktops. Why would anybody have gone to the trouble to remove this function from a PC?

  A sense of foreboding crept over me and for the first time I wondered if this was all some kind of weird experiment designed to test human reactions and responses in an uncertain environment. A wave of nausea swept over me, and I must have collapsed or passed out as when I awoke it was pitch black outside and the temperature had dropped considerably.

  Although I was not cold, I was alone in an unknown, silent environment, giddy, hungry and in a brightly lit room open to the elements in the dead of night. I had to stave off a panic attack by breathing as deeply as possible and counting to twenty. It seemed to work, but my head was still pounding and I noticed I was still gripping the fast-acting paracetamol so I quickly popped two and stumbled back to the store to grab a bottle of water. The lights were all still on and the cashier’s till was still lit up, and something in me made me go over and switch it off to preserve electricity. I almost laughed out loud when I realised what I had done.

  After another cigarette I started to feel very light-headed, and an intense fatigue seemed to grab hold of me. It was all I could do to retrace my steps beside the dimly illuminated poolside back to my room before collapsing on the bed I had woken up on and falling into a deep, deep sleep.

  95%

  I have never known a thirst like it when I awoke. It raged, so I stumbled to the bathroom and without thinking turned on the tap and glugged down the liquid that cascaded out without even stopping to consider if it was potable. My stomach cramped and I realised as I caught sight of myself in the mirror that the weird battery icon was flickering in front of my eyes again, like before, only this time it said 95%. Somewhere in between going to sleep and waking up I had lost 3%. The thought stuck in my mind leaving a residue of unease as I headed out of the apartment. I couldn’t place its significance.

  The sun was high in the sky and it must have been a least midday as I stepped outside to the grim realisation that I wasn’t just in some weird nightmare. The heat was palpable and I again resisted the urge to leap into the pool, instead heading straight to the store to grab some more bottled water. The silence was still uninterrupted and when I accidentally knocked the stand of postcards over the crash appeared almost deafening. The pain in my head had abated slightly but I noticed I had wet myself in the night for the first time since I was a kid.

  I still didn’t feel in the least hungry but put it down to mild shock and forced myself to nibble on a few olives. After that my appetite seemed to surge back and I ripped open some cheese slices and salami and ate the lot, washed down with a carton of ice cold milk. Two or three seconds after I closed the door to the refrigerator it clicked on and started a low humming as it compensated for the heat I must have let in when retrieving the milk. I realised it was the first independent sound that I had heard since waking up that I hadn’t made myself. It sounded wonderful.

  Whether it buoyed me with a sense of optimism I don’t know, but I felt the need, indeed the urge, to set my exploratory sights slightly further afield.

  The open plan games room in which I had collapsed the night before opened out onto a sunny terrazza with 25 or 30 plastic tables laid around complete with sunbrellas. Every table was empty except for a single ashtray on each. I felt the need to check every single one, but the fag butt that would have indicated the presence of humanity here at some point could not be found.

  I went into the cafeteria at the western end of the terrazza and found a slush puppie machine still churning its icy, fruity contents around in an endless tombola. Again, what caused me to reach down and pull out the plug to stop it I don’t know. It was another independent noise, but one I felt I didn’t need to hear. The place still had electricity though, which indicated to me that somewhere on the island there must be a power plant operating somewhere, which might mean a staff to operate it. The lift too was working, but I was damned if I was getting in it.

  This terrazza overlooked another swimming pool centred in more rows of apartment blocks and at the eastern end of what I assumed would be the main entrance and reception to the hotel. I skirted round the lift and used the row of stairs
to descend to the pool on the other side. At the bottom it was clear that immediately below the terrazza was the main refectory, a huge room accessed by double glass doors that had been locked shut, but looking through which I could see the restaurant could comfortably house over 50 tables and chairs, and running down the entire length of one side of which was the most extensive buffet imaginable.

  I tried to open the doors but they wouldn’t give, so I shook harder in the hope they were only locked by the central door key and not bolted into the ground. No good. If I wanted to get in there I was going to have to break them down. I decided now was not the time and headed towards the main reception.

  The pool directly in front of the reception was identical to the one outside my room on the other side of the refectory, with an accompanying children’s’ pool beside that had been drained for some sort of works.

  As I expected, the reception area was also completely empty. There was a table in the corner with numerous leaflets advertising trips to Timonfaya National Park, aqua-scuba, parasailing and other watersports, and chartered bus tours around the island. Another computer sat solemnly in the corner by a room marked ‘luggage’ but it was completely dead when I tried turning it on.

  I went to the check in desk, leapt over and looked out at the room as if I were welcoming a new batch of tourists freshly arrived off the bus. Paperwork was strewn around a central desk with names and dates of arrival, and notes beside each one indicating to which rooms they had been designated. I scanned through all the names but didn’t recognise any of them.

  Then a thought occurred to me. I checked the manifest for Room 704, the one I had woken up in. A family called Schuler had checked out on Thursday 3rd July but after that the room was due to be empty for two weeks until the Schoffenhausens arrived on the 16th.