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don’t know what I would have done if you’d said no”.
    Jerry didn’t answer, instead slowing the car and peering out through the windscreen with wide eyes.
    I looked up, only now realising that the light had been gradually increasing as we approached the town.  In my mind, I think I’d dismissed the glow as approaching streetlights, only there weren’t any streetlights left working.
    Pulling the car to a halt, Jerry opened his door and got out.  I followed suit, and the moment I stepped out of the vehicle I could hear the roar and crackle of flames, mixed with the shouts, screams and cries of people trapped in their homes or standing outside them watching their lives burn.
    I could smell the fires now, the sharp acrid stink of burning wood, plastic and rubber catching in the back of my throat as the flames leapt and writhed, turning the scene into a hellish contrast of light and shadow.
    In front of us, a whole row of houses was aflame, while fewer than a dozen people stood watching, most of them in night clothes with bemused expressions on their faces, many gripping their now-useless mobile phones as if they would suddenly start working again.
    “What should we do?”  Jerry asked uncertainly, “there’s no water, no way of getting help and the back seats of the car are full of kit so we can’t take anyone with us”.
    He turned to me with an anguished expression.
    “How do we help them?”
    I ducked instinctively as the upper windows of a nearby house exploded outwards, filthy black smoke rolling out in clouds as the fire raged out of control.
    “You were right”, I said quietly, seeing the futility but hating myself for what I was about to say, “we can’t help anyone.  Except ourselves, anyway.  Let’s go, there’s nothing we can do”.
    We stood there for a few moments longer, perhaps hoping that inspiration would strike and we’d see a way to help, but eventually we climbed back in the car and Jerry started the engine, pulling away without another word.
    I’m not sure what was eating me more as we left the ravaged city behind, the fact that we hadn’t even tried to risk ourselves to help anyone, or my secret relief that we didn’t have to.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 5
    The roads were clear of other moving vehicles, although there were enough abandoned ones dotted around to make Jerry grip the wheel with whitened knuckles as they loomed out of the darkness.
    He took us along the A27, the main Brighton bypass, then joined the A23 heading up towards London.  As we merged with the larger road, we began to pass people walking back towards the coast on the hard shoulder, a few of them trying to wave us down.
    “I’m not stopping”, Jerry said after one man all but leapt in front of the car in an effort to stop us.  I nodded in agreement.  Despite my earlier desire to help, there was nothing we could do but perhaps give out some of Jerry’s stock of food and water, and we wo uld need that to get to Manchester.
    The miles rolled past in silence, neither of us having much to say.  Jerry was concentrating on avoiding the abandoned vehicles, some of which had crashed when they’d lost power, and I was still trying to come to terms with what had happened.
    I wondered if my house had survived, or if I would return to find it a charred and smoking ruin, or broken into and looted.
    Not that many of my worldly goods would be worth anything now.  I listed them in my head as I realised just how dependent I was on technology that was now largely useless.  Laptop, TV, phone, Ki ndle, playstation, tablet, ipod.  The list went on, and even when they restored the electricity it would still all be fried, little more than expensive-looking paperweights.
    It was hard to believe that one brief flare from the sun, our life-giver, had brought the modern world to its knees, but one look out of the window at the dark, abandoned cars that we were passing more and more frequently was enough to