Everyone likes to think they’ll keep their cool in a crisis; that they alone will rise above the twin animal instincts of cowardice and selfishness to become the hero of the tale. Those people you read about in the newspapers, the ones who are brave enough to snatch the gun from the shooter, or who are smart enough to lie beneath a dead body and stay still until help comes—Surely, people think, that will be me if I ever have to face my worst nightmare. Of course we need to think this way. How do you get on a plane, navigate a busy train station at rush hour, or otherwise carry on inhabiting this burning hellscape of a planet without telling yourself it will all be okay? So, yeah: everyone likes to think they’ll keep their cool in a crisis. And that is proof—if proof were needed—that all human beings tell lies, most of all to themselves.
Because no one handles a disaster. There are lucky people, and then there are those who, by some fluke of fate or genetics or religious affiliation, manage not to be total idiots.
*
It was a Friday morning, and a jury of twelve sat in a room buried deep within the corridors of their local Crown Court.
At the time of the announcement, the jurors were sitting in their customary circle, deliberating.
Perhaps ‘arguing’ was a more accurate description of what they’d been doing, because their discussions had not been productive.
They were one hour in when the door opened.
This was unusual. Normally, the ushers knocked before entering. Deliberation was supposed to be carried out in utmost privacy.
Heads turned; some jurors betrayed their annoyance at being interrupted in their hallowed duty. Others looked hopeful; perhaps someone had come to restock the biscuits.
At the door was an usher with plum-coloured hair. She was slightly out of breath and her eyes betrayed panic.
‘There’s been an attack.’
For a moment, none of them seemed able to comprehend what had been said.
The usher elaborated upon seeing their blank expressions. ‘There’s been a chemical attack.’
Mostly, people sat in stunned silence.
Only one person spoke. Her name was Vivienne, and she combined an eccentric dress sense with a flair for unusual proclamations. ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘The end of the world.’
A bit dramatic, thought Leonie Vogt, who was more worried about how she’d chosen to dress for the apocalypse. It was an unspoken rule known to anyone who’d seen more than a handful of disaster movies: whatever you wear on the last day of civilization will be the outfit you wear for the rest of your life. Granted, in a post-apocalyptic world, that might not be too long.
At least Leonie’s dress was khaki. The subtle print might even pass for camouflage.
One person stood up as though to leave.
‘No,’ said the usher. ‘You’ve got to stay inside and keep calm.’
The phrase reminded Leonie of an irritating mug favoured by one of the other jurors.
The usher started handing out gas masks, pulling them from a bag as though handing out party favours. Apparently, since the Salisbury attack in 2018, the government had made tentative steps towards ‘chemical attack planning’, which seemed to be about as well-thought-out as their pandemic planning, so Leonie wasn’t holding out much hope.
The usher dished out just four gas masks. Leonie looked pointedly at her eleven companions and then back at the usher, who didn’t seem to see the funny side of it. Perhaps she was also in shock.
That was when it started.
Two of Leonie’s number began arguing over whose chair the other was sitting in (‘That’s my chair,’ ‘There’s no such thing as your chair, these are the court’s chairs,’ ‘But I’ve sat in it all week!’ ‘So?’ ‘So it’s my chair…’).
As Leonie watched her fellow jurors, she thought about how wrong the movies had it. People didn’t scream and run about with their arms flailing.
Eight out of the twelve were simply frozen, unable to take any decisive action or process what they’d just been told. That left only one other person who could redeem them all by behaving sensibly.
‘I need to leave,’ he said. An hour ago, he’d appointed himself foreperson, offering no one else the opportunity to put themselves forward. ‘I need to make sure my family are okay.’
The usher let out the universally recognized sigh of someone in a customer-facing role when confronted with a twat. ‘Sir, you can’t leave the building. I’ve been told to make sure that no one leaves.’
‘But my children—’
‘Sir, we have a protocol to follow, and you mustn’t leave the building.’
‘Then I want my phone. Let me get my phone.’
‘The phones will remain in the lockers until the building is secure.’
No one else had considered their phones. No one had thought to ask where in the city the chemical had been released, what type of chemical, or how. That’s the other thing people can’t do when disaster strikes. They can’t think.
Leonie, however, wondered what else the usher was hiding from them, if only to protect them from themselves.
With the world as it was—the Doomsday Clock set at sixty seconds to midnight—Leonie had become morbidly curious about how to survive terrorist attacks. It was the eleventh hour: now or never for the world to find a way of saving itself. As a result, she found herself drawn to stories about how people reacted when confronted with their worst fears. One such article had told of people standing on the beach, watching the tsunami roll towards them, while others had been known to dawdle while being evacuated from a burning plane so they could take selfies. Some people injected themselves with the antidote to nerve gas without even being exposed to it. There were reports of people forgetting to open the filter on their masks. Imagine being killed, not by the enemy, but by your own stupidity.
A thud. She looked around. Sure enough, Tanbir, a shy young man who hadn’t contributed at all to their deliberations had fallen sideways from his chair and landed heavily on the industrial carpet. He was wearing a gas mask.
The usher went straight over to help the poor guy. Leonie glanced at the pair who’d been arguing about the intricacies of chair possession rights and saw one of them eye up the seat left empty now that its owner was unconscious and on the floor.
Leonie took a moment to reflect. What was her reaction, if any? She guessed she was experiencing bystander syndrome. She didn’t go over and help the unfortunate fool who’d cut off his air supply while having a panic attack and was only vaguely aware of the usher going over to administer first aid. After a while, he was propped up and blowing into a brown paper bag.
‘This is it,’ said one of the frozen people, now reanimated like a clockwork monkey, clashing her cymbals. ‘The end of the world.’