Pete kept rotating the workers every hour, giving people a rest while they kept watch on the barricades. After just two days of hard work, Allan and I both agreed that what we had created should, hopefully, be good enough to protect us. We were surrounded by a high fence topped with barbed wire or razor wire. Long nails had been hammered through the fences to further deter people from trying to climb over them. Stanley had come up with the idea of attaching tin cans to the wire. They would rattle together and make a noise to warn us of an attempt by anyone to climb the fences. Without the usual traffic noises you hear in a city, it was eerily quiet at night, so any sound would easily be heard. The wire mesh I had provided covered most of the downstairs windows of the houses. Vulnerable doors and windows had been boarded up with plywood. On the road, we had the barricades of cars at each end, and a barbed and razor wire fence across the road where our houses were. I had the idea of using bulk bags filled with soil to build a solid wall inside the wire fence, to protect us further. A few trips to the local builders’ merchant provided us with enough empty bags, and the wall was rapidly being completed by a hoard of enthusiastic children, armed with wheelbarrows and buckets and spades, as they dug up the soil from front gardens on the road and filled the bulk bags.
My house, being the most central in the road, was designated as a shelter where, in the event of an attack, anyone not involved in the fighting would gather together. The doors were reinforced with more plywood and we made simple wooden locking bars, which could be dropped into place to bar them completely. Allan also planned to build more defensive positions in the back gardens and close to the barricades, to provide protection from bullets, or whatever missiles might be thrown at us in the event of an attack. Finally, he was devising a signalling system using whistles, so that people would know which direction the attack was coming from, and react accordingly.
None of it was very pretty but it all seemed very effective. It was amazing how much could be achieved in a short space of time, with everybody working together as a team.
All the food had been collected from the police station and the gang’s house. Pete had been calculating the stores, with our newly-acquired stock.
“I’ve worked out that we now have enough to feed us all for over six months. This is great, but it will still run out eventually, so now that most of the defensive work has been done, we’ll need to carry out foraging missions to collect what we can from empty houses and shops.”
Pete proposed this at the next breakfast meeting, telling them,
“Allan will continue his work on the defences, but the majority of this work has been done now, so I’ll need to allocate more people to supply gathering.”
“Then you’d better take some women on those trips, because if it’s left to you men, most of you can’t even find your own socks in the sock drawer, so I despair at what you’ll find,” Becky said, causing much hilarity. Pete, once he had stopped laughing, was in full agreement, so despite the mock disgust and outrage from the men, a least one woman was allocated to lead each foraging party.
Pete then made a number of other suggestions, to which we all agreed.
“If a house looks occupied, we won’t try to force entry, we’ll try to communicate with whoever’s inside, reassuring them that we mean them no harm. If they want to talk to us and they prove to be friendly, we’ll make it clear that we’re not in a position to give out our own supplies, but that we’ll be happy to offer any medical assistance we can, and help them improve their home defences.
If they want to join our foraging parties, then they’ll be allocated a share of whatever we find. It seems to me the fairest way to do it. We’re not animals, and if people need help, we’ll offer what we can, but we still have to look after our own families. We can’t afford to give away food we’ll need ourselves, but if they want to help us find it, then they can have some.” Everybody thought this was a fair plan, so Pete continued.
“If the people we meet turn out to be hostile, we’ll just walk away and let them get on with trying to survive. If we’re attacked, all the foraging parties will be armed, so we’ll respond with force and kill them if we have to, or at least take whatever weapons they’ve got, so that they won’t be able to go on terrorising other people in the neighbourhood.” Again, this met with agreement.
“If we meet other groups of people looking for supplies, the same rules will apply. If they’re friendly, we’ll try to work with them, or at least agree on areas to search so that we aren’t wasting time searching properties and shops that have already been thoroughly cleared. We don’t want to start getting into disputes over territory, and I hope that the majority of people we encounter will just be trying to survive, and will be happy to agree to work together, or at least to stay out of each other’s way. If that isn’t the case, then we’ll do whatever is necessary to protect ourselves. All groups will carry walkie-talkies with them so that they can call for assistance if needed.” Allan had something to add at this point.
“I think it would be a good idea for the response team to use pedal bikes to enable them to get to wherever they’re needed more quickly. I’ll train everybody who’ll be going out, on the basics of working as a team, if attacked. We learned a valuable lesson in our assault on the gang’s house, of how effective it was working together, and providing cover for each other. Some simple instructions now could save lives, so I think we need to put this training in place.” Pete replied to this.
“I couldn’t agree more. Bob, can you and the rest of the team who
attacked the gang’s house carry on with the defences? In the meantime, Allan and Tom are going to give arms training.”
Allan and I gave everyone else a crash course on safe gun handling and defensive techniques. We were mostly making it up as we went along, but as the day wore on, we learned a lot by trying to visualise all the different scenarios in which an attack might take place, and the best ways to counter them.
Everyone in a foraging party would be wearing police body armour and helmets for protection. For those who hadn’t fired a shotgun before, I drew the outline of a person, with paint, on a shed in the back garden of one of the abandoned houses, and they all had some practice in taking a few shots at the target.
The training lasted for a couple of days, until Allan deemed everybody competent enough to go on foraging missions.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Russell unveiled his new wood burning oven. It was an incredible contraption, made from steel sheets and parts cannibalised from other ovens and barbecues. It had a large oven, heated from below by a wood fire, and a hotplate for heating pans on the side, also heated by a wood fire. He told us a bit about it,
“The only thing is, it only seems to have two heat settings: very hot and cold, but by trial and error, using different quantities of wood, I’m confident we’ll learn how to use it properly.”
It was very heavy and it took eight of us to manhandle it out of his garage and put it in the communal kitchen. We all stood around expectantly as Russell stacked the kindling and larger logs and lit the fires. A lot of smoke leaked out of the gaps and joints, but most went up the chimney. The mood was light, we knew it was another thing that we had achieved as a group.
Yes, we took the mickey out of Russell, telling him well done, but how was anybody going to see through all that smoke to cook? And various other witty remarks but he took it in good heart and pointed out,
“Well, if I’d had power, I could have used my welder to make better joints. You’ll have to put up with it until I can think of a way to seal them.”
“But Russ,” I said, “your welder’s been fried in the EMP, it wouldn’t work anyway.
“It should. After what you told us, I read about EMPs in a back copy of one of the science journals I collect, and I reckon it’d be OK. I keep it in a steel tool safe along with all my other power tools, and, because I look after my tools, unlike the rest of you heathens, I lined it with rubber to stop them getting scratched
. If a fuse has blown on it or something else has gone, I love tinkering with electronics, and I’ve got boxes and boxes of spares, so I would have been able to cobble something together and get it going. But I haven’t bothered, because with no power, what’s the point?”
I stood there looking at him, open-mouthed and shocked at my own stupidity. Eventually I said quietly,
“Would a four KVA generator power your welder? Because if it does, I’ve only bloody got one which should work. I haven’t tested it yet, but I kept in in a Faraday cage, and it’s only a pull start, so I reckon it should be OK.”.
He nodded.
I turned to Pete and said, “Pete, we’ve missed a trick here. I didn’t know what Russ had and, yes, he’s made something fantastic, but how much better would it have been if he could have used his tools? I feel so stupid!” I was angry with myself for overlooking the obvious. As neighbours, we all knew each other to some extent, some a lot better than others, but in Russ’s case I only had a vague idea of what he did. He was some sort of consultant who had travelled a lot and had sometimes been away for long periods. “Russ,” I said, “what exactly do you do?”
“My background’s in engineering, but I specialise in helping to design and oversee the construction of power plants all over the world, and lately I’ve been doing mainly alternative energy projects, wind farms, tidal, projects like that. But my love is electronics, restoring old things and getting them working again, or making stuff from scratch, just to see if I can do it. Sometimes I have a month or two between projects and it gives me something to do. If I’d known about your generator, I could have made something a lot better than this thing.”
Pete spoke up. “Look, no one is to blame here, we’ve achieved so much in such a short time, but Tom, you’re right, we’ve all assumed that we know each other and what kind of skills we can bring to the group. Russ, I’ve known you for years, but I didn’t know anything about you tinkering with electronics and stuff. I’m going to talk to everybody individually over the next day or so, and find out exactly what skills they have and if we can use them. But right now, I’m hungry, so let’s see what our cooks can conjure up on the beast over there.”
After a breakfast of pancakes and porridge, while Pete was organising the first foraging party and agreeing a route to take and a time limit for returning, I took Russ to my garage to show him my generator and tools. Allan and a few others went to the police station to feed the prisoner. We hadn’t reached a decision yet about what to do with him. We’d all calmed down after the attack, and executing the man didn’t hold much appeal for us, especially after Michelle spoke up for him.
“He was the only decent one in the gang. He never attacked or tried to force himself on me or the other girls, and one time, he tried to stop another girl being beaten to death by another gang member. I think he only joined them as a way of finding food and a chance to survive.” Clearly, when Allan returned, we’d need to decide his fate.
Russell got the generator going at the first attempt, and we carried it to the kitchen, where once the oven had cooled down, he was planning to improve on his design. Pete informed him that he’d decided to make him our technology expert and tasked him with coming up with ideas to make our lives safer and, if possible, more comfortable. You could see the excitement in his eyes and the cogs in his brain ticking over. He quickly blurted out ideas about lighting and water filtration. Pete stopped him.
“Russ, finish the oven and then just check what everybody else has lying around. If you think you can use it and make something work, just come and tell me. You know what our priorities are and I’m sure with your ingenuity you’ll be great. Just don’t baffle me with science, tell me what it does and if it’ll work.”
By now, Allan had returned from the police station, so I reminded Pete that we needed to make a decision about the prisoner. He called everybody available together to discuss what we should do. I spoke first. I didn’t defend him, but I did explain what Michelle had told me about him. Allan spoke next, saying that he agreed with Michelle’s opinion of the young man and that he didn’t think he posed a risk to us at all. A few of them still wanted to put him on trial for murder and for all the horrible acts the gang had committed.
Pete handled the meeting well and listened to all the views and points made. He reminded everybody that if the vote found him guilty, we would have to execute him by hanging or firing squad and he would ask for volunteers from those giving the guilty verdicts, to carry out the sentence.
Pete explained he would be asking for two decisions by a show of hands: guilty or not guilty. If he was found not guilty, the man would be set free, but with the promise that if we came across him at any point in the future, his sentence would be changed back to guilty. It was obvious from the vote that no one really had the heart or will for an execution, so most people voted “not guilty”. Most seemed relieved about the result. There had been enough bloodshed and the idea of a public execution was too much.
I accompanied Allan up to the police station to release the prisoner. We both agreed that the right choice had been made and were as relieved as everyone else about not having to execute him.
He was overjoyed, but very scared about what he would face out there. Allan warned him about what would happen if we saw him again, handed him a small bag of food and told him to go. We watched as he ran up the road and disappeared around the corner.
While we were there we carried out another search in case we’d missed anything that might be useful. We found a few more sets of body armour and some cans of pepper spray, but the best find was the supplies for the vending machine, which we discovered after breaking open a locked cupboard. The chocolates and crisps would make great treats for the children. We both felt like Santa, as we each carried back two bin bags of goodies slung over our shoulders.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Pete was waiting for us to return before he sent out the first foraging party. I was tasked with leading the response team if they needed help. I’d wanted to be on the foraging party, but Pete had had a quiet word with me, saying that I had done enough lately and other members of our group needed to start doing things on their own, rather than relying on Allan, me or him to take the lead in everything. Also, although he was allocating everybody tasks on a daily basis, some people had more usable skills than others. Going on a foraging expedition was something everyone could contribute towards. Once again the ideas, when he put them forward, seemed obvious, but he was always the first one to come up with them.
Before they left, we reminded them to stick to the agreed route, and to keep checking in with us every ten minutes so that we could track their progress.
If we needed to rush over there to help them, we would know exactly where they were and there would be no delay in reaching them.
I checked on the kids. They were still working away at filling the bulk bags with soil. They were all filthy but happy, and with a bit of adult encouragement, it had turned into a competition to see which group of children did more in a day, with the winners being allowed to pick the DVD to watch in the evening. The wall had a row of two bulk bags stacked on top of each other and one behind it to act as a walkway. It was going to be a solid barrier over 6ft high with the only weak point being the gate. Allan had returned from making sure his team of workers were continuing the defences in the back gardens, and was trying to design a gate that would be solid enough to match the wall, but could be opened without too much effort. I told him to have a chat with Russell and see if they could come up with something using his welder. They were soon sitting at a table having a lively discussion about it.
I went home to catch up with Becky, and found her sitting at the kitchen table with Fiona, Michelle, Kim and Mandy. They seemed to be having a group counselling session, helping the women to adjust to their freedom and get over the horrors they had experienced. Not wanting to intrude, I grabbed a quick cup of coffee and left to find Pete and Jerry.
Jerry was finali
sing his list of residents of the road. He wanted to give everyone a complete health check and start regularly monitoring us all, in the hope that he would spot any health problems early and if possible, prevent them from becoming serious. He said that Fiona was going to do the same with our teeth. Prevention would be better than cure and as Jerry and Fiona were the experts, Pete was giving them all the help he could so that they could start as soon as possible.
The foraging party had checked in a few times. They were having a few successes and were finding food in most of the empty houses, hidden in the back of cupboards or, using the torches I’d given them, in cellars. They had also seen some terrible things. In a few houses, they’d discovered people who had apparently starved to death in their beds. You could tell from their voices that it had been a harrowing experience, discovering people who had been too afraid to leave their houses to find help, and then when it was too late, not having the energy to move. Most had probably gone to bed to try to keep warm and then died. In another house a whole family had committed suicide. A note had been left saying that they were overdosing on sleeping tablets, rather than face slowly starving to death. The smell from all the decomposing corpses had been horrendous and you knew if there were any dead bodies in a house as soon as you opened the door. After the first few dreadful discoveries, as soon as the front door was opened and the smell of death was released, they didn’t enter the house. Instead, the front door was marked with a cross and the foraging party moved on.
UK Dark Series (Book 1): UKD1 Page 14
