“Are you all right?” Poitr asked.

​

Maddie didn’t answer. Instead, she said: “Take a look outside.”

​

The rain, the source of all their problems, had also formed a veil shielding everyone inside the bus from what was happening outside. Maddie, being their driver, had needed to peer past the driving downpour and the slashing windscreen wipers, to enable her to drive. When the three men nearby forced their gazes to penetrate the rain and darkness, they understood the edge to her voice and the haunted look in her eyes, reflected on the windscreen glass.

​

What lay outside wasn’t the world they knew.

​

They were travelling along a main road in an affluent residential area. The road was wide enough to accommodate the bus, any opposing traffic, and cars parked on either side. Beyond the kerbs had been borders of grass and trees, pavement and then the large front gardens of detached houses. Poor visibility prevented the viewers from seeing past the fences or hedges of the gardens, and the houses were well out of sight.

​

Acid rain was ruining everything.

​

Grass had liquefied into pale yellow sludge, frothing amid the downpour. The leaves of evergreen trees had dissolved into slime and had dripped away. Tree limbs had been penetrated by the acid and started to jellify – they now sagged surreally, limp as cooked spaghetti; their barks were a smooth, glossy sheen; they were growing transparent and oozing apart. One trunk had sagged and drooped to land on a parked Range Rover. It hadn’t crushed the vehicle, but had sprawled across it, spread out and flattened. Tentacle-shaped drips of the trunk wormed their way down the sides of the car.

​

On the grass were occasional large gelatinous lumps. Many of these might once have been bushes deformed by the rain… Others, from the way they were stretched out, had clearly originally been people…

​

Whilst organic matter had suffered massive destruction by the rain, increasing effects were seen on other materials too. The surfaces of road signs were blistered, blurred and running – paint succumbing to the acid and turning to liquid. Exposed areas of metal showed varying stages of corrosion, from bubbling and blistering to sudden, severe rusting. A few parked cars had been ravaged already: the soft tops on several convertibles had dissolved and exposed their interiors; the back doors of a small white van had dropped off onto the tarmac – the hinges having crumbled away; elsewhere, the paint on every vehicle (plus fences, post boxes and other objects) had suffered just like the road signs and, sometimes, been washed away completely. Numerous streetlamps were dead, their light fixtures penetrated by the acid rain and shorted-out.

​

The bus passed a phone box, in which a girl was trapped. She banged on the windows and cried for help – but there was nothing the travellers could do for her. To leave the bus and approach her would be suicidal. To have her run through the rain to the bus would unleash horrific pain and suffering upon her.

​

Fifty yards further on, a car had lost control and veered off the road to their right. The driver had smashed into the rear of a parked Toyota – caving it its rear end and scattering the tarmac in debris – before plunging halfway through a hedge. Since the crash, the hedge had jellified and closed down around the car. It looked as if a giant green amoeba was attempting to absorb the wreck.

​

“Oh my God…” Mark muttered. “It’s become hell out there. Hell on Earth.”

​