by Andrew Tudor
Twenty minutes later she began to recognise features of the countryside around her.
“Hold on, Irene,” she called. “Let me go in front now. I know where we are.”
Irene slowed down and allowed her to overtake, smiling encouragingly as Julie and Lucy rode past. They continued for another half-hour or so by which time they were very close to the edge of the Malverns. Finally, Julie turned off the road and along a roughly tarmacked track which led towards a group of buildings: a large farmhouse, a smaller bungalow, and an array of sheds and barns. But before they could reach the house there was a shout from away to their right and a man could be seen running towards them through a field of sheep.
“Julie! Is that you? Wait.”
The two cyclists halted, a much relieved Julie turning towards the running figure and calling out to him.
“Yes, it’s us, Brian. We’ve got here at last.”
Her brother reached the field’s gate and, unwilling even to stop to open it, vaulted over and flung his arms around his sister, almost knocking her, Lucy, and the bike to the ground.
“Careful,” Julie laughed, “you’ll have us down.”
“Sorry, sorry. I’ve been so worried,” Brian said breathlessly, releasing her from a hug. “I expected you a couple of days ago.”
“You did get the message then?” Julie asked.
“Yes. I tried to send a reply but it bounced.”
“Ah, right. We wondered if you’d even get it so that was something. This is Irene.” She gestured in her friend’s direction. “And this one on the back of the bike is Lucy. We collected her along the way.”
“Hello Irene and Lucy,” he said, smiling at both of them. “Come on up to the house. Jean and the boys are there. They’ll be so pleased to see you. Here at last, safe and sound.”
“Yes,” Julie said, turning to grin at Irene. “I suppose we really are, aren’t we?”
The township of West Point in Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia, had a deserved reputation as the most desperate slum in one of the world’s poorest countries. Although by the 2030s it was partly inundated by rising sea levels, it remained home to over 100,000 people who lived in the most abject of circumstances. When the flu arrived it tore through the densely populated shanties, killing many in its first wave. Weakened by illness and poor diet, thousands more of the initial survivors fell victim to other diseases, including typhoid, which rapidly caught hold in circumstances of almost non-existent sanitation. Then on top of that came a second wave of flu, raising the death rate to a level hitherto never seen by the World Health Organization staff reporting on it. Corpses piled up in the streets and washed around in the ocean, while the smell of death and decay was everywhere. Neither the Liberian government nor the international authorities were willing or able to provide any meaningful response to disease on this scale. West Point and its godforsaken people were simply left to rot.
6
The mottled black-and-brown yak stood chewing the cud directly in front of the seated man. Then, with the relaxed confidence born of an oft-repeated action, she took a few steps forward until she was no more than a metre from the bench, her large shaggy head inclined purposefully in the man’s direction. Hart smiled to himself and, slowly reaching forward, he scratched the animal between her formidable horns. The yak lifted her head a little, pressing into his fingers with every sign of enjoying the contact, letting out the occasional quiet grunt. If only humans were as easily pleased, Hart thought, grimacing at the memory of his day thus far. As if she could feel his discontent the yak once more raised her head and looked placidly into his face. Then, with a final sympathetic grunt, she turned away and continued her grass-eating progress across the Whipsnade pasture.
Hart watched her go with some regret. Of an evening he had fallen into the habit of sitting on this bench just as the yak had fallen into the habit of visiting him there, the two evidently enjoying each other’s company. But today had been particularly frustrating and, as the beast had sensed, Hart was restless and irritated. The ERA commune – if an enterprise so lacking in communal spirit could be called that – was tumbling deeper and deeper into a hole of its own digging, disputatious cliques undermining its capacity to survive in the increasingly threatening world. Although Jerry Rowlands was making some efforts towards ensuring the safety of the group, usually by delegating tasks to Hart, it was also apparent that like the Jerry of their Oxford days he actually rather enjoyed the political squabbling among his fractious activists. Not so much a case of divide and rule, Hart thought, as one of divide and relish.
Today’s discussion had in theory revolved around the plan to disperse and hide in the event of the PeePees confronting them. In practice, however, it had collapsed into violent disagreement about the most effective methods of guerrilla warfare, an activity in which none of them had any experience. The futility of all this was then further reinforced by stubbornly held differences of opinion as to who constituted the real enemy. One now quite substantial group was set upon ignoring the PeePees altogether in favour of waging a secret war of terror within the Homeland. They were already manufacturing improvised explosive devices and had decided that in the event of a direct threat from the PeePees they would return to the Homeland and foment revolution there. Another rather more amorphous group – Hart thought of them as uninformed latter-day hippies – insisted that, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, those that they liked to call ‘real people’ were essentially good. They fully expected the PeePees’ evangelical army simply to embrace their doctrine of peace and love, a deeply naïve position from which they refused to budge. Hart’s own expectation was that if faced with an ultimatum most of Whipsnade’s occupants would allow themselves to be converted to the PeePees’ cause, in his view an entirely justifiable position when the only alternative was death.
In spite of all the dissent and confusion, however, over the past few weeks Hart had at least managed to organise some transfer of resources to various hiding places. How long these caches would survive in the face of ruthless invaders remained to be seen, so he had taken additional precautions. Most of the stores were booby-trapped, and in company with only one of his most trusted security guards he had concealed a choice selection of supplies and arms in a couple of particularly well-hidden locations. If desperate measures became necessary, he and a small group, the membership of which he already had in mind, would draw upon these resources and evade the PeePees as best they could. Recalling how many empty houses he had encountered on his journey south from Nottingham, he was sure that they would be able to find shelter somewhere and hope to outlast the fundamentalist storm.
It would be a sad conclusion to the Whipsnade venture, but had he really expected any other outcome when he first made his way here? Hart thought not. He had known only too well what kind of enterprise Rowlands would be likely to create and he had also known that in due course England would inevitably fall into a state of profound social disarray. He had simply been curious, evincing a kind of anthropological interest in observing the devastation that Zeno would precipitate. Hart flinched mentally at the thought of Zeno and particularly at his own failure to take action when that was still possible. It would have been too late to stop the epidemic but it might have helped maintain order rather longer, perhaps even long enough to put precautionary measures in place. He simply did not know. What he did know was that he had not intervened directly and that this was an abrogation of responsibility for which he and others had paid too high a price.
Preoccupied by these dismal reflections, he walked slowly back towards his living quarters in one of Whipsnade’s old Lookout Lodge chalets. Not for the first time he wondered what had happened to Irene and Julie, having heard nothing from them since that last occasion at Irene’s home. Were they still stranded in the Homeland? Had they fled, as he would have advised them to do? Were they even still alive? He promised himself that when he got home he would try
to contact them via the CommsTab that he had given to Julie. The Homeland authorities would undoubtedly be able to eavesdrop but he didn’t suppose that they were bothering any more. They had much more important things to worry about.
Lost in such thoughts Hart was vaguely surprised to find that he had arrived at his front door. The chalet was tiny but it had become home to him, and at least he had it to himself. Always independent, since the onset of the crisis he had discovered that he valued his solitude more than ever. Once inside he looked around the interior with a critical eye and, after sending a message to Irene and Julie, set about tidying up the documents that had accumulated on his table. This was what the plan of resistance had come to, he thought, piles of paper of no interest to anyone except me. Just as he completed the tidying operation there came a knock at the door. This was unusual – Hart did not have visitors – so it was with some curiosity that he responded. There on the doorstep stood Jennifer Connolly, his undercover agent among the PeePees.
“Jenny!” he exclaimed. “I wasn’t expecting you until the weekend. Come in. Is everything OK?”
“It’s fine, Jonathan,” she replied with a smile of greeting. “At the weekend there’s a whole lot of motivational assemblies and crap like that which I daren’t miss, so I thought I’d best come now while I could get away.”
“So what’s happening over there?”
“They’re having a huge recruitment drive the length and breadth of East Anglia. I guess they’ve learnt their lesson from the Loughton fiasco and are going for much greater numbers. As far as I can tell they’re not aiming to move yet. They’re going to build up their army then head west with a front reaching from the Midlands down to here.” She shook her head ruefully. “It will be pretty bad, I’m afraid.”
“Seems hardly worth you going back then,” Hart said. “We know it’s coming and the precise timing probably won’t matter – we’ll hear all about it from the people who flee ahead of them.”
“I’m not so sure about that. From what I gather there’s a lot of disagreement among the people around The Prophet. Some want to avoid winter and wait until spring; others want to go as soon as they’ve got the biggest army possible even if it is winter; and he’s crazy enough to claim divine inspiration and set out tomorrow. You’ll get a lot more warning if I stay there until the decision’s made and then make a run for it. I don’t think anyone suspects me.” She grinned and gestured towards him. “They know I’m visiting my sick mother.”
Hart laughed. “And I’m failing in my motherly duties – have you had anything to eat? I’ve got some eggs and mushrooms. We could have omelette.”
“Sounds good,” Jenny said. “It’s a long bike ride and I haven’t had anything since morning.”
Over the meal Hart brought her up to date on the intricacies of recent ERA politics, her unrestrained laughter at the foolishness of it all doing much to relieve his earlier black mood. He told her about the secret caches and that, if she were willing, she was to be one of his special group when they had to leave Whipsnade.
“Of course I’ll come,” she said, laying a hand on his arm and adding, “thank you, Jonathan.”
A little discomfited at this unexpected show of affection, Hart stood up. “I’ve got some malt whisky. Would you like some?” he said, crossing to a cupboard from which he produced a bottle and two glasses. About to pour the drinks he suddenly became conscious of Jenny just behind him. When he turned around she drew him into an embrace and kissed him on the lips. Initially he froze – he had not expected this – but then the sensual pleasure of the contact, as well as the passion that Jenny brought to it, overcame his initial resistance and with growing intensity he returned her kiss. Enveloping her in his arms he pressed her body hard against his own. Encountering bare skin at the base of her back he slid his hand up inside her shirt and, finding no underwear to obstruct him, continued on around her body to caress her naked breast. She pulled away from him a little and looked into his eyes.
“That’s lovely,” she whispered, drawing him back to her.
When he came to think of those moments later what he would especially recall was her joyful giggles as they struggled to remove each other’s clothing and then her smiling down at him, long fair hair now hanging loose about her face, as she straddled his hips and began moving her body against his.
In the morning he awoke to find her already up and dressing.
“I’m going to have to set off soon,” she said apologetically. “I can’t take the risk of being too late back.”
“You know you don’t really have to go,” Hart replied as he rose from the bed. “Why not just stay here?”
“No, I should definitely finish the job. Then I’ll be back.” She smiled and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll be OK. I’ve been doing this for months, remember.”
Hart sighed. “If you say so,” he said, resigning himself to her decision. “Jenny,” he began, then paused. “Why? You know… last night?”
She took his hand in both her own and looked directly at him. “Because I like you, of course. A lot. And…” she paused, perhaps seeking the right words or wondering whether to say any more at all. “And… because you always look so sad.”
After breakfast they walked together to the main entrance where Jenny had left her bike in the care of the guards. Reclaiming it, she and Hart stood chatting for a moment by the ERA sign and then, conscious of the watching men and their propensity to gossip, Hart hugged her briefly and whispered in her ear.
“Thank you, Jenny. Be careful.”
She mounted up, and with a cheerful wave to the guards and a private blown kiss to Hart she set off down the road, at last vanishing from sight around the corner. Had Hart been able to see that far he might have observed a figure, also with a bicycle, who emerged from the woods at the side of the road just after Jenny had passed. But he did not, and nor did Jenny who cycled on knowing nothing of the man who followed her all the way back to the PeePees’ Essex territory.
Hart spent much of that day in a haze, at times not even certain that what had happened was real. He tried to stop himself from wondering if anything might come of their encounter, convincing himself instead that it was a one-off, a passing in the night. But, as he realised to his considerable surprise, he really wanted there to be more. Not just more lovemaking, although that had been pleasurable enough, but more of their simply being together. Although he was maybe twenty years Jenny’s senior that had not seemed to bother her, so perhaps when she came back they might pick up from where they had left off. He wished now that he had insisted on her not returning to the PeePees, that he had been firm enough to keep her with him. But committed to her task as she was, she would surely have found that to be an unacceptable use of his official authority. No, he would just have to wait and hope for the best.
At around eleven o’clock that night he finally fell asleep in the warmth of memories of the previous evening and, he was pleased to think, with Jenny’s perfume imbuing his bedding. Then at about 6.30 the next morning he was awakened by a buzzing from the old-style walkie-talkie system that he employed to keep in contact with his security guards. Sleepily he responded.
“Yes, Hart here. What is it?”
“Mr Hart, it’s Tom. I’m on gate duty. I think you’d better come down here. There’s something bad happened.”
“I’m on my way,” Hart said, rising from his bed as he did so. Throwing on his clothes he set out for the main gate at a trot. In a matter of minutes he was there and met by a pale-looking Tom who gestured mutely towards the ERA sign on its plinth. There was a naked body tied to the sign, a body which Hart instantly recognised. Jenny’s corpse was covered in bruises and burn marks, her long hair had been shorn, and, to Hart’s horror, he saw that her fingernails had been ripped out. He groaned and sank to his knees next to the lifeless figure. Tears came as he reached out to touch her hand, as i
f that could somehow rekindle a response in her.
“Bring something to wrap her in,” he called to the guards, “and a knife so that we can cut her down.”
He knelt before her amidst the ashes of his hopes of the previous day. When the guards arrived with a sheet and a knife, he held her in his arms while they cut the ropes that bound her to the sign and then lowered her gently onto the sheet and wrapped it around her. Waving away the guards’ offer of help, and still in tears, he carried her back into Whipsnade for the last time, leaving behind the crudely written placard that had been placed at her feet. It was headed with an insignia comprising two interlinked Ps over a crucifix, and its crimson lettering spelled out a biblical passage which it ascribed to Romans 2:8. ‘For those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.’
Life on Malvern Edge Farm did not prove to be an instant bucolic idyll. In the circumstances this was hardly surprising since the first news that her brother broke to Julie was that their father had died from flu-triggered pneumonia a couple of months earlier. Brian had tried to contact her at the time but with no success; Hart’s replacement of her CommsTab had left her without a publically accessible identity on the standard networks. Since then her mother had reacted badly to her father’s death and was now living alone in the bungalow, communicating very little with the world beyond her walls. On top of the emotional strain, this had left Brian running the farm virtually single-handed. Disease had seriously diminished local availability of farm labour so, although he could buy in help from a small group of estate employed peripatetic farm hands, this was intermittent, expensive and unpredictable. He was working long days and still not managing to keep on top of everything.
As if all this wasn’t enough, he had a remarkable story to tell them about the Malvern area itself. As everywhere, when the epidemic took hold it brought with it food shortages, collapse of local government institutions, and, initially at least, small-scale criminality. Into the power vacuum that this created had stepped the unlikely figure of a Birmingham racketeer who had owned a country mansion in the area for many years. Bringing a group of hard men with him, he had imposed order by dint of ruthless elimination of opposition and the imposition on the rural community of the kind of protection rackets that he had successfully operated in the city. All businesses in the area, including the many farms, were obliged to pay what were euphemistically described as ‘taxes’. Of course some refused, but after the adults and children of one stubbornly resistant farming family were murdered and their land appropriated, all the others recognised the grim reality of their predicament and capitulated.
