Noah Ward is asleep.

The silence is balanced on a knife edge. He feels disorientated by it, trapped by it. The city is crumbling around him, in a hushed din, as nature tries to take back the terrain. Tree roots have dug through the concrete, carving the road into an ice field of tarmac islands divided by pot holes. And yet there aren’t any trees in view. He looks left and the road, lined with office blocks and glass shop fronts, seems endless. He looks right and the sensation is even more dizzying. The pitying silence remains. Then, thunder. A rumble at first, and the debris on the road begins to tremble and scatter. The clatter not coming from up above, but from inside the road. The tarmac is shaking and his feet begin to ache with vibration. The rumble of thunder becomes deafening as it grows in muster. He falters and takes a step back to rebalance, but it doesn’t help. He is toppled onto his side, flattened onto his back by the tide. Where is this sound coming from? He looks right: nothing. He looks left. There in the distance, a plume of dust and ash is spilling into the street like a hurricane ripping through the city. Thrashing, he begins to panic. The bristling sound of static. Something is crashing down the road, this ordinary road in London. It is London. He can tell it is London – the rusted street signs, the colour of the buildings, the atmosphere. It is London, but it’s destroyed. He fears that he is the one who has destroyed it. Or if it was not him, it was that cloud of dust and ash beating down on him with tremendous speed. He tries to stand, tries to right himself, but the oscillation in the tarmac makes it impossible. His body ossifies. Filled with concrete, spread eagled. Oh! he shouts, help me! He screams. Out of the wall of dust and ash a shape appears. A black block, a cube moving at pace towards him. There are more cubes, some large, some smaller, crammed in next to each other, hurtling in his direction. He tries to crawl out of the road, towards the shop fronts, pulling himself this way and that. Get off the street! He is going to be crushed dead if he doesn’t get to his feet! He can feel the dread, the inevitability of it waiting for him just moments away. Using his pitiful strength, his determination to live, he forces his arms and legs to move the rest of his body to the side of the road, and just in time as the first block comes careering past. Except it isn’t just a block, a black block – it is an oblong, a truck, a lorry. Trucks and lorries. They are driving past him, driverless. Heading right down the road away from where he lies. Trucks full to the brim with stuff. Stuff of all kinds, spilling their cargo into the streets. They don’t seem to care that they are shedding their loads, there are more trucks and lorries coming so what does it matter? He can see the stuff. Flat-screen monitors, lamps, armchairs, car engines, mahogany tables, salad forks, coats for dogs, doughnuts. Body parts. Human body parts – arms and legs and heads and breasts and penises and disembodied labia, piled high in the trucks, some tumbling out into the street due to the speed and the momentum of the juggernauts. He is disgusted at the sight, disgusted by the stuff, the endless stuff, the endless trucks. He gets to his feet, makes his way into the nearest open door. He moves inside, glides up the stairs, he’s covered in dust, and finds the first-floor window. The building is rumbling as the vehicles move past, like an impatient child waiting to leave. He looks down; more trucks! So much stuff, multi-coloured bottles, branded beer cans. Crystalline smartphones, blank books and pens. White inner earphones and browning bananas. He turns back and goes to the stairs, goes higher, climbing to the top. He is at the top of the building, on the 6th floor, and he can see all around him. The dust and the ash are clogging every street and every street is filled with trucks and lorries, laden with stuff. So much stuff. And they are all heading into the centre of the city. All roads lead there directly, straight as an arrow to the centre that is thick with forest. Thick with jungle. A dense green where plant life has become a dense pubic mound of vegetation. And all the trucks are heading for it. He moves off the roof and back down the stairs. He is at the bottom and bears left, following the trucks. He is used to the grumbling rumble and the thunder now. He can walk, he can even run, and he begins to sprint after the trucks as they hurtle past him. He is running and the forest is becoming thicker, the city lesser. The green, the dense green and brown roots of the trees at the centre, have spread out through the entire city. As he gets closer they turn into great horns, smashing their way through the filthy grey concrete. The air changes, the heat of the city is given over to the heat of the jungle. He starts to sweat. It drips down his spine, mixing with the sweat of the jungle. His pores open and let flow. He is still running, following the trucks, sweat stinging his eyes. The road is being swallowed, disappearing into a sopping moss. The pace slows as truck tires spin, finding it difficult to maintain their course. He slips and slides like the trucks, keeps falling to his knees. The road is almost gone. The concrete and glass buildings of the city have been all but swallowed up by the forest. Great walls of dark green create valleys connected to other valleys. Streams are flowing through what used to be London streets. He is still finding it difficult to stand. His shoes have no grip. Sitting down, he grabs the shoes off his feet, one by one, and throws them into the stream and they are immediately sucked in to it. His feet, his feet now have grip and he finds his way easier, but he still crawls on hands and knees. Most of the trucks have ground to a halt and are stuck, tires endlessly rotating. A mass of trucks begins to form around him, but some are still going. A natural selection. Still ploughing through the green. He follows behind in the wake of the strongest, moving ever further to the centre. But then the trucks stop. Stop dead up ahead. They begin to turn around, showing their back end to something at the centre. They tip their remaining loads out on to a pile. A mountainous pile of stuff. So much stuff, like he has never seen. There in the centre of the city. Once the trucks have emptied their loads they back themselves into the heap, allowing themselves to be absorbed by it, becoming smothered by it, and then they are gone. He moves in between two trucks that are emptying themselves, and begins to scramble up the mountain of stuff. He gets a grip on a washing machine, and uses a discarded streetlamp to pull himself further up. He avoids a pile of used nappies and makes a beeline for a collection of car parts and crockery. He pulls and hurls himself further up, sweat dripping into his eyes, and then he is at the top. A great plateau stretches out before him. It is as though the top of the mountain has been sliced off. But there at its centre is a figure. A figure, crouching. It is sifting through the pile of stuff and it occasionally stops to digest some of it, examine some of it, discard some of it. Noah moves closer to it. He is cautious. Gentle movements, non-violent movements, towards it. He can see it better now. It is the same height and size as him, and it looks human. But it has no definition. It is a figure of black, a thick black oil, a processed oil, tar from head to foot. As it moves, the tar – the oil – congeals and falls in great lumps off its torso and leaves a trail of inky blackness. It is agile, though, it moves with a briskness that suggests it is barely aware of its coating. But it is moaning. A guttural moan. It makes Noah sick, it flips his stomach with nausea. He moves closer to it and asks, are you okay? It stops dead still and raises what could be considered its head to look at him. It has eyes. Eyes that are blue, and the same as Noah’s. It has his eyes. His eyes are staring at him out of the thick sloppy blackness. I am hungry! it screams. The sound bubbles through the gap where its mouth would be if it was human. I am hungry and nothing satisfies me! Who the fuck are you, you fuck? Noah doesn’t reply or move. He guesses what to do next, which is to say his own name. I am Noah. I am Noah, it echoes. Hello, Noah, he says. It collapses in laughter, a laugh not unlike his own. Except it is a laugh that sounds like drowning. Its throat is filling up. It stops its guffaw and, on all fours, begins vomiting up the black. I could have drowned, you fuck! it says, spluttering uncontrollably. You have to help me now! I don’t want to die. The last word turns into a long snarl directed at him. It lunges at him, seizing his throat. He panics, trying to push it off, but there is nothing to touch, nothing to hold onto. Just the oil, thick and black, covering his hands, his arms, his body. He falls back and it falls on top of him. The oil is slopping into his eyes, into his mouth. He can’t breathe. Don’t let me die! it screams. I won’t! he replies. I won’t! Please, I won’t! he says, choking. Their shared eyes meet. Both sets are wide with fear. It releases the pressure, and the pressure transforms from violence to love. It smothers him, hugs him, cries into his chest. I am Noah! I love you!