After It Happened (Book 1): Survival

by Devon C. Ford

  They both laughed, sipped their single malts in perfect synchronicity and leaned back onto their camp beds, deep in.

  LAND ROVERS

  They woke the next morning with a little more purpose. Packed the car with as much as they could, including more tins and bottled water from a nearby shop, and set out with their plan of building a survivors’ society. They decided that the X5 had to go; it was a big vehicle but the boot was fitted with the stuff for the guns and didn’t have enough space plus it had too many fancy gadgets which would maximise its breaking down potential.

  A set of decent walkie-talkies were found, along with a stack of batteries. Dan tried the police radio in the car, but without power to the systems the digital network was down.

  First stop, proper survival vehicles. They discussed this, and without much argument settled on Land Rovers. Ten miles away was a dealership, and after having to reverse the X5 through the big glass doors they set about car shopping.

  Neil had his heart set on a new Range Rover, but Dan argued that they needed to be less bling about their choices and more utilitarian.

  He settled on a black one-ten Defender with a roof rack and Neil eventually followed suit and chose a similar grey one. Dan’s had a winch on the front, which he thought would come in handy at some point. It took a while to find the keys and tools to remove the wheels from other Defenders and strap them down on the racks so both had another five spare wheels.

  They found a few jerrycans in the garage, and Dan helped himself to the speed jack they’d used to get the other wheels off. After he’d almost choked himself on diesel by trying to suck it through the piece of hose pipe, Neil showed him a better way by putting the whole pipe into the tank and putting his thumb over the end before drawing it out quickly. The repeated this until both trucks were full and they carried sixty litres of extra fuel taken from the rest of the stock vehicles.

  They’d gathered maps from the camping shop, but both Neil and Dan knew the area anyway. They decided to set up their temporary camp on the car park of a large nearby Morrisons. As they jumped in and started their new motors, Neil called out a warning over the radio.

  “I saw someone!” he said excitedly.

  Dan looked over to him and saw him pointing straight in front towards some bushes. He drove to the left and into the car park behind the bushes, just in time to see a flash of movement disappearing again behind an industrial unit.

  He got out and shouted to whoever it was, “Come back! We won’t hurt you, it’s ok…PLEASE…”

  Nothing.

  From what he could see he had no idea if it was male or female, young or old.

  They decided to leave a message anyway, and using spray paint they daubed instructions to come to the supermarket, giving directions and leaving the keys to the X5 there with a promise to help.

  As they drove, Neil called Dan on the radio again from his position behind as they dodged the abandoned cars.

  “Mate, there’s a caravan place down here on the left, shall we check it out?”

  “Plan” he replied, who actually hated caravans for a number of reasons.

  Neil had great fun, he moved a few of the smaller ones around and took the wheel clamps off two big caravans. He hitched them up to the Defenders, clearly having done this before, and gave Dan a quick lesson in towing. It would’ve been a valuable lesson, however he delivered it in the style of the quintessential travelling gentleman and he couldn’t really follow much of it.

  The word ‘Dags’ appeared once or twice and there was a mention of what to say if ‘da po-liss’ stop them, but Dan was laughing too much to take careful note by the end.

  They noted the site for a return trip to get more caravans and gas bottles, wishful thinking for finding more people they supposed. They towed both caravans to the supermarket and parked them up away from the main entrance, which was blocked with abandoned cars. Clearly someone had tried to break in; unsuccessfully by the look of things.

  They set about moving the abandoned cars clear, giving themselves space to set up the caravans. The beauty of driving a Defender was made clear; it was the big bully of car pushing.

  Neil was obviously experienced at setting up the fold out legs. Dan thought that caravan holidays probably meant family, so he kept very quiet.

  “I’ll go and finish the botch job on those doors” he called to Neil, who just waved irritably as he was busy winding down the weird leg things.

  Give me a tent any day, thought Dan.

  He had to use the hydraulic door spreader to get the doors open enough to prise the lock housings out, and was sweating and out of breath by the time he’d finished. He could smell the fruit and veg starting to go off already. A quick walk around the shop showed that there was enough food and water to last for months living in their caravans, he just wanted to find as many people as he could to join them.

  Maybe saving more people will wipe out the guilt of leaving her in bed where she died.

  When he got back outside Neil was finishing connecting the gas bottle to the last caravan and graced him with a loud, cockney “tadaa!”

  Dan in turn produced some tins of stewed steak and potatoes and a box of eggs; mountaineering spew it was again then.

  As they sat in folding chairs by their caravans eating dinner, they discussed the next day’s plans.

  “We need a lorry. Load it up with all the good stuff from here” said Neil

  Dan agreed that it was a good idea, they needed to find proper supply and scavenging vehicles if the thought forming in his head were to work. But they’d also need a lot more people with them to drive and load those trucks.

  “I think we should stay here for a while – the weather will be ok for a few months and we’ve got plenty of food and shelter. What we need to do is get out there and get more vehicles and caravans back here, and more people to fill them.” Dan paused, unsure if he should voice his ideas just yet.

  “There have to be more people alive; we saw one at the Land Rover garage remember?” he reasoned.

  “Ok mate, chill out yeah?” shot back Neil, this time in a convincing Cape Town accent. “Tomorrow. Tonight we rest and continue our prescribed course of Glenfiddich. Chin Chin!” he said, raising an actual glass this time.

  LEAH

  She felt cold. She’d decided to sleep in the back of the car the men left. She heard them smashing the doors with it and watched them for ages, wanting to go and speak to them. She wanted to burst out in tears and ask for help and tell them she was scared and that her Mum and her little brother hadn’t woken up.

  She wasn’t that naïve really; she knew they were dead.

  The night before, she listened to her mum coughing all night until she didn’t cough any more. Her brother hadn’t made a noise for hours and she knew in her heart that they were gone, she just wasn’t brave enough to go and check. Everyone had got poorly, then they just died.

  She lay there all night in the silent pitch black; the street light outside her window having shut off during the night. She’d been inside the house for two days now because everyone was sick. Before her mobile phone lost wifi and then normal signal, none of her friends would answer her texts or Facetime calls.

  She waited in bed until 8:30, as she always did so as not to get in trouble for waking people up. She wasn’t like some other twelve year olds; she wasn’t feeling the need to sleep all morning like a teenager yet.

  She loved her makeup, YouTube and she lived never more than two feet away from her iPhone. Just like the family members in the house, everything she loved just no longer existed. She was scared, hungry, traumatised and completely alone.

  She couldn’t force herself to check the other two bedrooms; to see what she knew was in there would just make it real.

  Leah tried to be logical. She got a bottle of water from the fridge, which wasn’t that cold any more, and helped herself to the secret stash of chocolate for breakfast. She couldn’t quite bring herself to reason that the previous owne
r had no further need of it.

  She sat down and tried the TV. Dead. The laptop. Dead. The Kindle. Dead. Like a typical twelve-year-old she was already bored. She tried her phone. It had no signal or data, but she played games for a while.

  She decided that she couldn’t sit there forever with nothing to do, so she got dressed, packed her handbag and another bag with some essentials (makeup, hairbrush, mirror, phone charger) and went downstairs.

  She left the house, not bothering with a coat as it was warm and dry, shut the door behind her and probably blocked out the fact that she’d never return there again.

  She walked into town, bag in the crook of her elbow, iPhone in hand playing some Taylor Swift, with a small sense of normality. She ignored the dead silence that surrounded her and the sight of abandoned cars. The inactivity of the world seemed alien and frightening.

  That’s when she heard the glass breaking. She killed Taylor quickly and crept up to the bushes where there was a car garage. She saw two men, one tall and dark, the other shorter and fatter with no hair. They seemed to be friends and they didn’t look like paedophiles, but as she was told in school all the time; you don’t know what a paedophile looks like and you should never go to strangers without a parent. Well that clearly wasn’t going to happen, and she didn’t trust the look of the men enough so she just watched.

  They were in there for ages, and could hear them arguing about the cars. One said, “Look at this one though, it’s gorgeous” He said ‘gorgeous’ in a funny voice, which made Leah smile.

  The taller one, who looked moody and not funny at all, said the other man wanted to be a drug dealer and started taking wheels off the cars. Leah knew drug dealers were bad people, so she thought she’d done the right thing by staying put. The moody one had something on his leg which Leah thought looked a bit like a gun. She knew that guns were illegal and that worried her.

  She watched the moody looking one nearly throw up when he tried to drink the petrol out of one of the cars, but the funny one showed him what he was doing wrong.

  Leah decided that she would just walk past and speak to them, make out like she was going somewhere. She doubted they were the kind of bad people she was always told to avoid, but you never know. She probably realised deep down that she had to find some help.

  She had nobody left to look after her.

  She’d been daydreaming like that for a while when she looked up and saw the funny man looking right at her. The moody man drove his big car fast to where she was hiding, so she ran. She didn’t know how far she had gone but she was gasping for breath and crying uncontrollably by the time she stopped. She thought the moody man shouted at her when she ran away, and decided it was probably a good idea she didn’t go near them.

  A while later she walked back to where the garage was, and saw that the men were gone. After a time spent watching from the bushes again she went to see what they’d done, and read the note they had painted on the floor:

  “Survivors at Morrisons – come and join us. We can provide food and shelter. We’ve left the keys to the BM – food and water inside”

  She thought that the BM was the big car they had used to break the doors, but didn’t understand why they took other cars. There were numbers after a capital A painted there too, Leah though that might be a road or something. She did know a big Morrisons in the next town because her mum took them there when they didn’t go to Aldi, but she didn’t know how to get there.

  She looked around the garage for a bit. Nothing worked, just like at home, but she did find loads of biscuits in a cupboard under a coffee machine that looked like a spaceship. She ate a whole packet, and drank one of the bottles of water left in the car.

  Now she faced a difficult decision. She thought that the men she saw had scared her, but now that they left the note they seemed to want to help. They probably knew what was going on and could help her get to her Grandparent’s or something. She decided that she probably had to find other people, and these men had left her water and some other snacks so they probably weren’t going to hurt her.

  She decided that she should definitely go and see them at the shops. The only problem being, that she didn’t know how to get there. The car they left had a big fancy screen, and she though that might be a sat nav. If she could get it working she could type in ‘Morrisons’ and the road number and it would show her the way.

  She went to put the key in the ignition like she’d seen other people do all the time. Only problem was that there wasn’t a key hole, and the car key didn’t have a metal bit sticking out. She eventually figured out that the key was like a bank card that you fitted in the slot on the dashboard. She put it in and the blowers started up, startling her.

  There was a button that said ‘START STOP engine’ which seemed like a good way to go.

  She pressed it and was rewarded with the noise of a six-cylinder diesel firing up straight away. She didn’t know this, obviously, but she jumped out of her skin because it sounded like a lorry was in the building with her.

  Steadying her nerves, she looked at the gear stick. Grandad’s car had numbers on it and she knew you had to put it in ‘1’ then take off the handbrake. Then you had to do the pedals; change gear, stop and go. Easy.

  This one had letters and symbols and there wasn’t a handbrake and only two pedals. She messed around with the controls for a while until, completely terrifying her, the car shot backwards and hit a Jaguar sports car.

  Panicking, she moved the gear thing again until the car stopped moving and hit the button to make the engine stop. Leah started to cry, thinking that she was in trouble and would probably not get any pocket money until she was about twenty years old; like the time she knocked a glass ornament over in a shop and her mum had to pay for it.

  Then it dawned on her that she wasn’t going to get in trouble, because there was nobody left to tell her off.

  Crying harder, she curled up on the backseat where she eventually realised she was cold. Resigned, she turned the fan to hot, shut the door and lay down to cry some more.

  SHOPPING

  “Morning Old Bean!” shouted Neil from outside Dan’s caravan, banging on the hatefully thin wall. He groaned inside his sleeping bag. Bad idea to have finished the whole bottle of single malt but the apocalypse waits for no man; Dan struggled out of bed and stumbled outside.

  Neil already had the camp cooker going and had rescued bacon to go with the eggs. Deciding that some greasy food was definitely the way forward, he drank water from a bottle and clumsily retrieved his toothbrush to try and get the feel of dead cats out of his mouth.

  “Morning, Happy” croaked Dan “Keep the noise down, please?”

  “If you say so Boss!” he replied, loud as ever. “Today, we’re going to have a look around local. There’s an industrial estate over there” he said, pointing past the petrol station

  “I’m going to find what I can. You coming, lightweight?”

  Neil stood there with a grin, waiting for his baited hook to catch Dan’s cheek.

  Dan refused to be goaded, and mildly agreed that the idea was a good one. Visibly disappointed, Neil raised his voice louder and adopted and new character – that of the USMC Drill Sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. Before the repertoire got too loud for Dan he held a hand up to stop the tirade.

  “Ok mate, take a minute and we’ll set off after breakfast” Neil said, relenting.

  Over their bacon and eggs, Neil listed what he wanted to find.

  “We need a pump to get all that diesel from the petrol station, and either a tanker or plenty of cans to put it in. I want to find a seven and a half tonne truck to load up with the longer lasting stuff – because it stinks in there and I don’t want to have to suffer that every time you sleep in and I have to fetch my own breakfast…” that got a warning eyebrow raised by Dan, but nothing said.

  “We need tools, vehicle tools too. Or at least know where to get them, and a couple of Stihl saws – can’t be faffing about like you do for
ten minutes opening a door” He continued, slightly more softly this time. We need more spray paint so’s people know where to find us too.”

  Dan agreed, and they set off for the industrial estate in one Land Rover, after moving nearly all the kit to the caravans. They found a car garage, with all the tools Neil needed and he reckoned he could even get the tyre machines working with a generator. Definitely one to note for the future.

  Dan perked up when they found a small unit marked ‘Shooting Supplies’. The doors took some beating, but eventually they were in. The teenage boy in both of them came out, and a large selection of knives were added to the shopping list. They selected a decent folding Kershaw knife and a fixed blade each and attached them to themselves, looking ever more the Mad Max characters. Neil still had his Glock in the back of his waistband, not being able to bring himself to wear the ‘poser’ leg holster.

  Handguns being what they are in Britain – highly bloody illegal – there were no alternative holsters for Neil’s weapon readily available. Dan made a note to hit an army surplus soon and get some kit for them both.

  Not knowing what the future would hold, they took an armful of twelve bore shotguns, six boxes of cartridges and Dan insisted on a crossbow and a competition bow. “Ammo will run out one day, and on that day you’ll be glad you know Robin Hood here unless you want to be vegetarian?” teased Dan.

  Before they left, Dan stopped and stared at something under the glass counter. Neil went over and saw that he was looking at a two-foot-long curved machete, like a cross between a kukri and a broadsword. Dan helped himself to it, and fixed Neil in a serious stare.

  “You don’t think Zombies will…” he started.

  Neil stared back at him for a long time. “Nah. No chance, that’s just films mate” Then helped himself to a similar tool as they left.