From Despair to Where

by Oliver Smith

  Nobody responded, silence filled the car as they each contemplated the message and what it actually meant. Jack was sceptical, but there was an element of hope in his gut that humanity might survive this disaster.

  -

  The journey after running into the army wasn’t plain sailing for the trio in the expensive Bentley, a few wrong turns and unpassable roads ate into time and left their progress hampered. As 4pm approached Jack and Lucy were both getting twitchy, wanting to find somewhere safe to stay and avoid travelling through the night.

  Lucy was now taking her first stint driving and was enjoying the feel of the powerful car, while Jack searched the map looking at the highlighted markers that they had earmarked as potential safe havens, “There’s a place called Dove Holes, I think if we get past there we get to some quieter spots; we can sleep in the car and set off again at first light. We need to turn right somewhere along this road.”

  The road ahead was breath-taking with sweeping corners, dipping hills and views that stretched miles into the horizon. Lucy couldn’t help but slow the car down to a crawl so the three of them could look out onto the rolling green hills and breathe in the natural wonder that they’d taken for granted, she stopped the car and got out and crawled up the grass verge to soak in the vista. Jack and Chloe followed, unsure what was going on, but did so anyway, happy to be out of the car once again.

  “We should be getting on.” Jack called up to Lucy, but she didn’t say anything, she beckoned them up the verge to take in the view.

  “It’s funny, I’m over 40 years old and I’ve never driven down a road so small and been so isolated in this country. I imagine that this place hasn’t changed a great deal since…well you know.

  “We haven’t got far to go today so we might as well take five minutes to take in the view. Look around us, there isn’t a soul around. It’s a shame we can’t just stay here, I feel wonderful right now.” Lucy reached for both Jack and Chloe’s hands and held them as she smiled into the distance, the grand view bringing tears to her eyes.

  “It is pretty. It reminds me of Lord of the Rings.” Chloe said who also looked to be lost in the wonder of nature.

  They stood in silence for five minutes, grateful for peace and tranquillity, the silence comfortable between the newly acquainted family.

  “Come on, let’s get cracking before we do stay here forever.” Jack said, skipping down the verge.

  They continued down the narrow track and turned onto another road called Lesser Lane, which was no less beautiful. After about three miles, signs of civilisation began to materialise, a house here and there, then turning into a full-blown street at a crossroads. The car pulled up and, to the occupant’s astonishment, a couple walked down the street towards them holding hands, the man waved and smiled.

  “What the hell is going on?” Lucy asked.

  “I have no idea.” Jack said opening the window as the couple approached.

  “Hi there, nice car.” The man said.

  “Thanks, we kind of borrowed it. Are you guys safe here?” Lucy asked.

  “Relatively safe love. A few wander over, but we’ve been managing quite well.” The woman answered pleasantly.

  “Are there many of you living here?” Lucy continued her questioning.

  “Aye, quite a few of us, silly really, but it’s really brought the community together.” The man answered this time giving the woman a little squeeze around the hips.

  “Listen, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but we’re looking for a place to stay tonight, do you know if any of the houses are empty?” Lucy was thinking on her feet.

  “All of the houses are full apart from Mrs Hambleton’s house. She’s in there though, but she didn’t make it, she’s stuck in there and none of us wanted to deal with her. She was a real dear.” The woman spoke this time, it was like they were in some sort of relay.

  “Go to the pub love, Maggie will help you out. I’m George and this is Cathy” The man chipped in.

  “Nice to meet you both, I’m Lucy and this is Jack and Chloe.” Lucy said pointing at the two others in the car as they both waved and smiled in unison.

  “Will Maggie really help us?” Lucy asked feeling paranoid due to her experiences of the past week.

  “She’s a gem is Maggie, she’d love some youngsters around, most of us are getting a bit old in the tooth.” Cathy said with a wink in George’s direction.

  “Just turn left here and you’ll see the pub just up the road, you can’t miss it, it’s the Beehive Inn.” George said continuing their bizarre way of following each other’s sentences. Lucy thought that the couple must have been together for eternity by their behaviour.

  “Thanks a lot for your help, we’ll go and see Maggie. Maybe we’ll see you later.” Lucy said with a wave.

  “We’ll be in the pub later playing dominos in the corner, come and say hello.” Cathy said as the couple continued walking down the road.

  “What do you think?” Lucy turned to Jack.

  “They seem like decent people and I’d much prefer to sleep in a house rather than in the car. What do you think Chloe?” Jack had made his feelings clear, but wanted to include the girl in the decision, she had as much right.

  “I liked them. Maggie sounds nice, plus they’ll have Coke too.” Chloe said, excited at the prospect of going to the pub.

  “Sounds like we’ve got our decision then.” Lucy said, as she drove the car in the direction that Cathy and George had pointed.

  Parking out the front of the pub, they disembarked the car and as they got out, Jack ensured he hid the guns from sight as not to scare the community, the pub door opened and a large lady stood in the door frame grinning towards Chloe.

  “Hello there, you need some help?” The woman called cheerily.

  “Hi, we just bumped into Cathy and George who said you might be able to help us out with a place to stay tonight.” Lucy said taking the lead once again.

  “Those pair should not be walking around without a care in the world. We’ve warned them about it, but they won’t listen the old buggers…oops pardon my French young lady.

  “My name is Maggie by the way and yes I’d love to help you out. We could do with our average age bringing down around here.” Maggie was a talker and a charmer. Lucy, Jack, and Chloe took to her straight away.

  Chapter 29 - A Solitary Figure in the Shadows

  Hooded, slow and determined, the solitary figure walked through fields and over walls. Often with a couple of dead only feet behind for company, the figure walked through rain, sunshine, and wind without slowing pace. Accompanied only by a bag, map and compass, the figure walked, heading north-east.

  The figure wanted nothing to do with the living and felt a bond with the dead, not a need, but a want for blood. Mercy and compassion were no longer part of the figure’s soul. A life of misery had befallen the person who was half raised by a mother that showed no love. Their father had been abusive from a young age and the only memories of the man revolved around heavy beatings as a four-year-old, cowering in the corner of a dilapidated house while the father kicked and beat the innocence and happiness out of the child. The figure was a man who had never been shown love, had been deprived of any good and through abuse and torture had little education or intellect to escape the perpetual spiral of sin and depravity.

  The destruction of the man’s childhood was completed by his mother’s addiction to heroin. With little time or care for the child, his mother would sell everything in order to satisfy her stimulated needs. All she had left to sell was herself, and wave after wave of indecent men would enter the house. Some of these men would take a fancy to young boys and any bright future for the child was wiped away with despicable actions from despicable men. The man’s mother died from an overdose when he was just eight year’s old and he was left in the house with the corpse for two weeks, eating cereal and drinking water to survive. Social services had never been able to locate the mother and child, the former having moved around Man
chester several times, renting houses using pseudonyms and paying cash; the child was left defenceless.

  He was eventually found by one of his mother’s punters who belonged to a gang. This man had also supplied his mother with heroin and had been owed money so broke down the door and instantly recognised the smell of the dead. He had also recognised that taking a child so young could prove a useful asset. Children had many functions for his gang, theft without consequence and acting as a mule. The biggest asset of a child joining his troop of criminals was loyalty. By providing for the child and stopping the abuse, the child would do anything that was asked. The abuse stopped and loyalty grew. For the child, life was changed and a new direction was provided, taking and doing as he pleased with the approval of his new family, he was no longer abused physically, mentally, or sexually, under the wing of his new brothers.

  As time went by, the child grew into a man, short, but powerful and with a wanton desire to destruct society, a society he blamed for his upbringing and the atrocities that he lived with on a daily basis when he should have been safe and enjoying his childhood. The gang changed over the years as the child grew into a man, the first leader got sentenced to a long jail sentence, but others stepped in and the fact that he had become part of the fabric of the gang, his standing and protection remained. With the passing of time, a man named Dale took over the gang, young, but intelligent and ready to lead, he knew the potential of the rescued child, now a man. The man’s name was Richie and Dale saw that his eyes held no fear and recognised that he was a killer in the making. Dale put Richie to work, eradicating rivals and heavy debtors. Richie relished the work, taking pleasure in extinguishing lives, with each life he took, he felt a little more whole and it helped wash away the unpleasantness of his upbringing. Richie lived side by side with the gang, but didn’t like the majority of them, he swore vengeance every time he was wronged, but never acted out of the respect he had for Dale and the togetherness of the group.

  The death of Dale had released Richie from the gang and in taking Naz’s life had freed him completely of any loyalty. For the first time he was on his own and making his own decisions. His decisions were based upon revenge and retribution. As a young man he had vowed to act against any person who wronged him and took great pleasure in plunging the knife into Naz and watching him die.

  He now had vengeance as his sole reason for being. Lucy’s words still rang in his ears, his mother, his abuse, she didn’t know her words of fury were so accurate as she lost her temper shouting at her tormentor, but the words hit home and Richie was made to relive his early life. He also felt the constant discomfort in his ribs from Lucy’s bat, whilst replaying his last meeting with the fair skinned redhead. Bulldog, Jack, and Lucy. They must all die.

  After murdering Naz, Richie wondered the area looking for Bulldog, he was certain that the man, whose name he didn’t know, was local and was confident that he knew where Jack and Lucy were heading to, so his natural instinct was to find Bulldog first. Eventually he returned to the mansion that the gang had taken refuge in and found two of his former gang members dead, each shot through the head. He felt nothing seeing their bodies, instead, he searched the house for their weapons, but found none. It was evident that the man he was looking for had been back and killed the two men and taken the weapons. He spent a long time searching the area, but couldn’t find any sign of Bulldog and had a nagging doubt in his mind that if he was to find the man he sought to avenge, he’d be outgunned. With reluctance, he decided to leave Bulldog until a later date and make a trip across the country to North Yorkshire, to the place he’d seen highlighted on the map in the house the gang had ransacked, Eastloch.

  Richie was prioritising and his priority was hearing the pop of Lucy’s trachea when he crushed the life out of her.

  Chapter 30 - Old Ways

  Maggie seemed genuinely happy to give Lucy, Chloe, and Jack a bed for the night and rolled over backwards to accommodate them. She had two spare rooms and offered one to the girls and the other to Jack. Both rooms were made up and Jack and Lucy wondered if the people these rooms belonged to were gone. They didn’t ask.

  To the delight of Jack and Lucy, but not Chloe, who had revelled in the lack of washing, the pub had hot running water thanks to Maggie’s late husband who was an engineer and had rigged the pub up with solar and wind power long before the collapse of the UK’s infrastructure. The pub itself was old and had its own water tower. A member of the community had recently installed a pump to keep the water topped up from a nearby stream that ran from the hills. The electricity worked, but was a limited supply so was reserved for refrigeration and hot water, the pub still had a working gas supply too. Maggie welcomed them to take a shower, but told them not to be any longer than five minutes each, Jack was tempted to combine their time and jump in with Lucy, but thought it might be a little rude considering they were guests and that Lucy probably wanted the shower to herself anyway. Jack and Lucy gratefully accepted the offer and savoured the five minutes; Chloe on the other hand had to be convinced, but did seem happy when she was given some banana scented shower gel.

  After finishing getting ready, they made their way downstairs into the pub following the smell of bacon and eggs. Maggie awaited them with a big smile to match her warm and large frame, “Come and sit down, I’ve made you an egg and bacon butty, I bet you could do with some real food.”

  Chloe eagerly ran to the table with a grin on her face. Lucy smiled back at Maggie and said warmly, “Thank you Maggie, you have been so kind to us already and now you’re using your meat, you should save this for yourself.”

  “Nonsense dear, we’ve got chickens laying eggs, we have pigs, cows for milk and some sheep. We’ll not starve here, we’re all working together sharing everything we have with each other, pulling together for our community.” Maggie said, beaming with pride.

  “It’s nice to meet such good people. We’ve had a bit of a rough run of luck with some of the folk we’ve run into.” Jack said looking serious.

  “Aye, we’ve had a couple of, shall we say, undesirables come through from the towns. Most have just been scared and left without much trouble, but Frank, you’ll meet him later, he frightened a few of the more determined off with his 12-bore, you hear that fire and you run for your life.” Maggie said with a chuckle, unconcerned about what these ‘undesirables’ could do to an elderly community.

  Lucy decided to move the conversation on to a more positive note, “How come you have hot water, running water, and I’ve seen a couple of lights on, you have electricity?”

  “The lights were on? I must turn them off.” Maggie said to herself , she continued, “My Eric was a bit of a whiz with all of the technical things, I’ve no idea what it all does, but we’ve got solar power, wind power and a water tank that fills up from the stream out the back. It’s a wonder that was designed to save us money when the pub was struggling, but it’s even more miraculous now. Luckily for me, his friend Frank is also a sparky and helps out if anything stops working.

  “Fortunately for Eric, he passed away 14 months ago so he didn’t see any of the awful things that are happening. There are about 30 of us in the village and we all have our jobs. We tend to eat together in the evening in the pub and then we each go about our business in the day. Some of them are avid gardeners so are setting about planting fruit and veg, others are trying to get the materials together to turn the village into a fortress to stop the dead from wondering in, but that’s some way off becoming a reality, they can’t make up their minds about how to do this. The others keep us safe from the dead, we’re well hidden so not many pass through and are quickly tackled before they can cause any harm. You met George and Cathy, they were on lookout, but they’re like a couple of lovesick teenagers, always bonking.”

  They all chuckled at the use of the word ‘bonking’, Jack and Lucy smiled at the thought of the old pair and their randy habits.

  “It’s impressive how organised you’ve become in such a short sp
ace of time.” Jack said in awe of Maggie and the community as a whole.

  “We had a gathering in here when it became apparent that the living were losing the fight. We’ve got some sharp minds here and they were the ones who got us organised, we were happy to have a plan and keep our community ticking over. We’ve lost most of the village, there were over 150 people living here, but most didn’t come back. Many of the people who are still here didn’t lose anyone as they’re all mostly retired so hadn’t ventured out of the village. It was the younger ones who went to work or did the school run who weren’t so lucky, the poor souls.

  “A couple of people don’t come in the pub much because they did lose people, so we leave them food and visit them regularly to check up on them. There’s not much we can do for them other than let them know we’re here when they are ready.” Maggie said as she lost her big smile for the first time.

  “Anyway, enough of the sad tales, you’ll meet most of the people in the village in a couple of hours when the grub is served. I hope you like beef stew as that’s on the menu tonight. The poor vegetarians have had to change their diets.” Maggie continued with a chuckle obviously not approving of the vegetarian lifestyle.

  “I’ve got to finish preparing tonight’s meal so please make yourself at home, help yourself to drinks, beer, wine, anything you want.”

  “You are too kind. We can’t thank you enough.” Lucy said, holding Maggie’s hand.

  “Think nothing of it dear. It costs nothing to be nice.” Maggie said as she disappeared into the kitchen at the back of the pub.

  Lucy and Jack left Chloe eating crisps and drinking coke playing with a set of dominos and her dolls and went to explore the pub. They found five chest freezers full of food, it looked as though someone had raided a nearby supermarket, there were also four fridges brimming with fruit and vegetables, they were well stocked and the fact that they were already planting a variety of crops and rearing animals filled both Jack and Lucy with a great deal of hope about surviving in a world without the luxuries they were used to.