Author: Mark Renney

The road signs are still standing and at first, this intrigues Davis. It doesn’t make sense to him when everything else has been demolished and flattened, reduced to strewn rubble. The foundations of buildings remain but these are merely platforms of pitted concrete and rotting timbers, of faded linoleum and cracked tiles.
The names of places on the signs of towns and cities that are now only memories. Over time Davis has begun to accept this irrelevance, reading and following them as he has before and, lost in the distance between, he will often forget.
Even the temporary signs have survived, those warning of congestion and road works. Davis follows these diversions although he can see quite clearly there are no obstructions ahead.

As he walks Davis thinks almost constantly about stopping. This idea, more this conviction, plays in his head as if on a spool. An extract from a news bulletin but one he has missed, that he hasn’t heard, one, perhaps, he has had to invent.
It isn’t so much that Davis wants to stop, more that he feels it is necessary. That, if there were anyone still around to give out advice, someone from the Government perhaps, or the Army or the Police, the message would be to make the best of things and begin again.
But Davis doesn’t stop. Occasionally he and one of the others will cross paths and they might nod at each other, even smile. But despite the message lodged in his head Davis keeps on walking.