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    Apocalypse Tales
    Apocalypse Tales
    Apocalypse Tales
    Ebook70 pages1 hour

    Apocalypse Tales

    By Kay Inglis

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    About this ebook

    Five apocalypse tales: The Magpie Plague, Central Depot, Panacea, The Hoard, Democracy Otherwise.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKay Inglis
    Release dateOct 14, 2016
    ISBN9781536557343
    Apocalypse Tales

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      Book preview

      Apocalypse Tales - Kay Inglis

      Table of Contents

      Apocalypse Tales

      The Magpie Plague

      Central Depot

      Panacea

      The Hoard

      Democracy Otherwise

      Apocalypse Tales

      Kay Inglis

      Copyright © Kay Inglis 2015

      The Magpie Plague

      I rode up to London on my motorbike today. I took photographs – because taking pictures is what I do. I may have enough battery power left on my laptop to actually look at them. On the way back I found a van and loaded my bike into it. I then stopped off at a couple of shops to stock up on what I need to keep me going until I know what life holds. I went to a camping shop to pick up a portable stove and some canisters of gas. I found torches, batteries and candles. I picked up bags of coal and logs from a garage. And I stopped at a supermarket for tins of food, cans and bottles of drink – including wine and beer – and products such as soap, shampoo and basic medical supplies. In all that time I didn’t see a single living person.

      ***

      It started in this country. Other countries thought they might be able to escape by closing borders and culling bird populations, but despite these precautions they all went down like a row of dominos, one after another. I always recall my mother telling me not to worry about something-or-another by saying that it was never the thing we feared that came to pass. The disasters that actually struck our lives were usually unexpected. As a tenet for not worrying this may not have been the most comforting, but I found it was very often true. It was certainly true in the case of the Magpie Plague.

      However, I do recall waking one morning to the sound of clacking – like numerous crabs walking over a hard surface. I twitched open the curtain by my bed and saw that the flat roof of my conservatory was completely covered with a milling crowd of magpies. It struck me then that there was something sinister about them, their smart uniform of black and white making them look like some sort of military police on patrol. I banged on the window to shoo them away, but although one or two took the hint, most of them seemed to feel the confidence of a gang of bullies by virtue of their numbers.

      At that time I was working as a freelance photographer, and if it had been any other species of bird I might have reached for my camera. It was my habit to take photographs of anything and everything because it was never possible to tell what would produce the iconic image I was always searching for. The most lucrative picture of my career had been a chance snap of a litter-strewn park which seemed to get picked up as the stock photo for any article written about the decline of public services. My more artistic pieces never seemed to resonate the way I wanted them to, and although I picked up various commissions from various publications, I was sometimes driven to taking wedding photographs for friends and acquaintances to help pay the bills.

      So that morning I settled for cursing feebly at the battalion of birds which had moved in on my property and closing the curtains against them. The vast increase in the magpie population had not gone unnoticed as the birds were beginning to be a public nuisance. They had taken over the position of the pigeons of Trafalgar Square and the seagulls that snatched fish and chips from seaside holidaymakers as the chief avian menace in the British Isles. But what turned them from an annoyance to a pestilence that brought an end to the world as I had known it in the thirty-one years of my life is a matter for conjecture, as is the fact of my survival when so many billions died.

      I recall the day when I noticed the dawn patrol of magpies that had settled on my roof because it was also the same day as the incident which I credit with my survival. It was a particularly warm and pleasant early spring day with expected temperatures – so the weather forecaster promised me – of about ten degrees above the average for the time of the year. So, since I didn’t have any particular project to work on, I thought I would go and take some spring pictures – blossom, primroses, tulips and suchlike. Nothing particularly original in the thought but, as I said, I was never sure what would make the striking image that would sell itself. It could be that I was distracted by some coincidental scene which would have a story to tell and would pay the bills for a year.

      I had a very pleasant day. I took my motorbike to nearby woods and a park and walked round the local market taking as many as a fifty snaps as I did so. I bought some sandwiches and sat by the pond, sharing the crust with a couple of friendly ducks. It was when I was doing this that a magpie made its assault on me, probably attracted by the food I held. It swooped in as I held out a small corner of the sandwich. In fact it missed its intended target as its beak caught my hand painfully and I dropped the bread, which the duck grabbed quickly before scuttling off for cover. I instinctively swung my arm at the magpie which flew up to a tree where it cackled and cawed in annoyance. Meanwhile I sucked at the cut to my hand, which was bleeding slightly. By the following morning the cut had festered and was showing signs of infection. I treated it myself, not being one to visit the doctor without great

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