Straight to You Page 0,48

while the very ground that they stood on began to burn under their feet. The bulletin continued.

'The weather department has, in association with various other government institutions, recorded record temperatures in England for the tenth day running. A high of thirty-one degrees Celsius was recorded in mainland Britain yesterday, eclipsing the previous record set in 1865 by some seven degrees. Experts have predicted that the conditions look set to continue at least until the weekend.'

Once again, the authorities appeared to have little idea of what was going on or what was about to happen. As I had already seen over the past few days, all that could be confirmed were the facts that were already known and there was little point in that. It didn't matter to me or to anyone else if it was twenty-eight or thirty-five degrees outside, every single person on the face of the planet knew that it was inexplicably wrong.

'As yet,' the announcer continued, unaffected by my silent criticisms, 'government sources have still been unable to identify the cause of the heatwave but the minister for the environment today issued a statement advising that...'

I switched off the set. I had no intention of listening to the pointless pontification of some sad old man who, in all probability, had no more idea of what was going wrong with the world than the goldfish in the drying pond in my back garden. At least the fish seemed to be enjoying a relatively normal life and appeared to be content to bathe in the warm pond while the world baked around them.

All that I could do was go with the general flow - there was nothing that I could do to alter the course of almost certain destruction which the unprepared planet seemed doomed to follow. I had to admit, though, the temptation to visit the city centre and do a little looting and wanton vandalism myself was strong. I could easily have desecrated the walls of my office without even giving it a second thought.

As I drove away from the main road and the city centre, the roads again became quieter and there was considerably less traffic about. The talk of heat on the radio had reminded me of the energy pulse that we had experienced last night (its memory had, so far, been buried under the weight of my concerns for Samantha) and, as I thought about it further, it suddenly occurred to me just how much brighter and stronger it had been than the last one. Terrifyingly, I also noticed that as the intensity of the heat and light seemed to have quickly increased, so the gap between the waves seemed to have reduced.

Samantha's house was empty. I stopped the car outside and walked despondently towards the front door. It came as no great surprise that there was no answer when I knocked and I peered through the frosted glass windows in the garage door to see that the family car had gone.

I walked back to the front of the house and peered through the net curtains to see inside. The living-room was bare, stripped of all personal possessions and the furniture sat under heavy, white dust sheets. The house had an overpowering atmosphere of lifelessness and it was difficult to believe that it was the same place from which I had picked up Samantha just over twelve hours ago.

The house felt dead and devoid of all personality and it was then that I realised just to what extent I was missing Samantha already. I knew that I had to get to her quickly and my final, nagging doubts were quickly blown away by the emptiness which I felt. I hoped that by the time I was ready to make my way north to reach her, most other people would have reached or would be nearing their journey's end.

I knew that there was nothing to be gained from waiting by the empty house any longer. I quickly drove home (it only took a few minutes to reach my house) and I soon managed to formulate a rough plan of campaign for the next few days in my troubled mind. I would pack a few things and then set out, with my first priority being to get to Samantha. Once I had found her, I decided, I would continue the journey north to where my family waited in Scotland. I prayed that Sam would want to come with me - if she wanted to stay with