Net zero

In my new short story, net zero is not quite what it seems......

Alun turned away from the window as a news alert pinged on his laptop. There was nothing to see in any case; the gold and russet trees that enfolded the river hidden behind a chill Autumn mist that had risen with the sun. He wasn't sure how long he had been standing there, looking out upon nothing, unseeing. Three years had passed now and he'd been slowly rebuilding his life. He had been convinced he was winning the battle too, but the sudden realisation that today was Halloween - the third anniversary of the day Bethan had left him - had been like a dagger to his still fragile heart.

He took a sip of tepid coffee from the mug in his hand and grimaced. Crossing to the sink he dumped the mug in a greasy washing-up bowl before edging on to a stool at a battered farmhouse table. For a time, he simply stared at the screen. When he was still at the university, most of his working day was spent shackled to a computer. These days, though, it was rare indeed for him to peer through the only portal that brought news of the outside world into his life. Why would he? What could possibly be of interest? He did it now partly on a whim and partly because old Dafydd, down the road, had told him there was some news he thought he might like to hear. Alun had doubted that, but said he'd take a look anyway.

He opened the feed and took in the headline. He should have leapt for joy, pumped his fists, raised his arms skywards. It was what he had spent so much of his adult life pushing for, working towards, and here it was in Arial Bold. Net Zero Carbon. Over the last few years, across the planet, the flood of unmitigated greenhouse gases had slowed, reduced to a trickle and now, it seemed, stopped altogether. In the year of Our Lord 2035, they had done it. Everyone had said it was impossible, that it couldn't happen, but here it was, the first step towards rewilding a climate enslaved by the centuries-old polluting activities of humankind.

Alun's eyes remained focused on the headline, but his mind was elsewhere. There was no celebratory response, no sense at all that the extraordinarily good news shout-out had even registered. The story was a long one, but Alun didn't scroll down. His hands remained in his lap, fingers slowly curling and uncurling as if they wanted to, but couldn't find the energy. After a few minutes there was a faint click as the machine entered sleep mode, and the screen went dark.

He stood then and wandered into the beamed dining room and from there into a wide lounge. An extravagant picture window filled the entire wall facing the valley, and through it a grey light suffused the unlit room. An unkempt patch of grass, more meadow than a lawn, sloped from the house down to a low stone wall that separated the garden from the woods that fell steeply away towards the fast-flowing river. A garden swing, rusting now and listing badly, framed an apple tree in the far corner. A child's playhouse hugged the stone wall, it's front flat on it's face in the grass, exposing a tiny table and chair upon which the elements of a plastic tea-set lay scattered.

Alun's dark-shadowed eyes filled then, and a single tear traced a circuitous route down one grey-stubbled cheek. On the retina of his mind's eye another scene played out, bringing life to the dreary view beyond the glass. Under a sky of brilliant blue, a small boy, dark of hair, suntanned, laughed with the joy of life as an elegant, blond, woman pushed him higher and higher on the swing. She paused and bent down as a little girl approached and presented her with a posy of daisies. The woman took the flowers and hugged the child, who skipped away delighted. Then she stood tall and waved at Alun until the hues of a summer's day faded into the bleakness of Autumnal gloom.

The room was chill and he shivered involuntarily as he squeezed his eyes shut against the gratuitous scene of happier times. Crossing to the stone fireplace, he knelt and busied himself with paper and wood scraps, setting a fire that blazed up quickly in the brick-lined grate. The light of the flames danced on the walls and ceiling, displacing the grey with a merry flush that did nothing to brighten Alun's wretchedness.

Standing, he dragged a small wing-backed chair close to the fire and slumped into it. Stretching out his arms to warm his hands, he kept his eyes tight shut lest the dancing flames reveal more pictures of a past he had no desire to see. Three years felt like a long time, but the feelings of guilt and loss were still desperate at times. The howling anguish had subsided. If it hadn't he would have ended it all long ago. He knew that for a fact. But when he didn't keep himself busy, the emptiness was still soul-destroying. Even now, it sometimes consumed every waking minute so that he could focus on nothing else, could barely function as a human being.

October 31st, 2032 had been a very different day. The hottest Halloween on record, the mercury had touched thirty-three degrees Centigrade in the Welsh borders. But it had brought no pretensions of horror. By then, the real thing had been with them for months. The blistering heat had persisted long into the night, so that keeping Bethan's fever under control had proved impossible. She had tossed and turned, muttering and calling out as her sweat-drenched body soaked the sheet beneath. Then, in the relative cool of the dawn, the delirium had passed and her temperature had fallen. Alun had dared to hope then, and had cried with joy as her eyes had opened, bright and clear, and looked straight at him. In a tiny voice she had said 'am I getting better daddy?' and he had given her hand a squeeze and nodded. She had sighed then, and closed her eyes. By mid-morning she was gone.

It was the culmination of more than half a year of growing desperation and dread, as the threads that held society together first frayed, then tore apart. When, a decade earlier, Covid-19 had faded from plague to mere inconvenience, everything had exploded back into action; a return to normal with added turbo chargers. Greenhouse gas emissions had soared, global travel had burgeoned, and any plans to build back better were trampled beneath a headlong stampede for growth at all costs. As memories of the pandemic faded, so the assault on the world's forests had intensified, the risks either forgotten or ignored.

So, when SARS-CoV-3 – otherwise known as Covid-31 – had erupted from the loggers camp, deep in the Amazon Forest,the world was once again caught with it's pants down. As in 2020, countries were too slow to close their borders, and soon the virus was everywhere. This time, however, there was a difference. This time the death rate wasn't one percent. It was 90 percent.

The virus reached UK shores early in 2032. Alun could see what was coming, and he had reckoned they could hole up for the duration. After all, they were off-grid, had a couple of acres and a few animals, and shotguns – if they needed them. But there was still stuff they couldn't do without. Iestyn's asthma medication for a start. They'd had six months supply, but by the summer, the heat and humidity had left the boy gasping for breath much of the time. Alun knew he had no choice but to head out and try and track some down. By then, the hospitals were little more than giant morgues, the pharmacies empty and shuttered and doctor's surgeries closed – some burnt out – so there was no medication to be had. Alan did, however, bring something back. The cough had started two days after his return and he had taken to his bed the next day. A week of raging fever, coughing blood and vivid hallucinations had followed. By the time he'd recovered, Iestyn was gone, taken in less than twenty-four hours as the virus had torn through his weakened lungs.

The weather had been hot and the ground baked hard, and Alan had been too weak to dig, so they'd had to empty one of the chest freezers to store the body. It was another three weeks before they managed to bury Iestyn. As they'd stood at the graveside, numb with pain and loss, Gwen had been wracked by a coughing fit that brought up flecks of blood. Four days on, she lay still beneath the sun-parched earth close to her son.

That had left just the two of them. Alun had clung to Bethan as if to life itself. He'd watched her constantly for signs of infection, and for ten days there'd been none. Slowly the belief had grown that somehow they had got away with it, that Bethan had managed to dodge the blight he'd unwittingly brought into their home. The little girl had closed in on herself, rarely speaking and retreating to the make-believe world of her dolls. But every morning she had crawled into Alun's bed for a story - until the day she hadn't. He could hear her wheezing even before he had opened her bedroom door. When he'd gone in she hadn't acknowledged him. Her small chest was heaving beneath the tangled bed covers and her whole body shivered. He'd known that there was little he could do, but he'd done the best he could. For a day and a night, he'd brought ice and water to cool her body and had turned her constantly to try and clear her lungs and airways, but it had made no difference. He'd buried her at midnight, on the other side of Gwen.

Alun must have dozed off, because when he next took notice, the fire was out and the sun was blazing through the picture window. He stood and crossed to the patio doors at the far end of the room, and let in the soft air of a fine Autumn morning. The sky was a clear blue, uncontaminated by either cloud or contrail. Planes were a rare sight indeed these days, with borders still as tight as a gnat's arse and global travel all but ended.

He could barely make out the graves now. The earth mounds had long subsided, and the unkempt forest of long grass all but hid the three small wooden crosses. He had half a mind to get the mower out, and had turned towards the tool shed when the doorbell rang. He recalled, then, that he had agreed to help out at the community store that morning. That would be his lift.

As he shrugged on his jacket, Alun tapped a key on the laptop, looked again at newsfeed, and nodded. Well, it was good news. More than that – fantastic news. But, to be fair, getting to net zero on a planet of less than eight hundred million souls really wasn't that big a deal, was it?

Net Zero was published in February 2022 in the new anthology, Contagious Tales: 22 Modern Folk Tales in the Wake of the Pandemic and Climate Crisis.