Aftermath: The Complete Collection (Books 1 & 2)

by John Wilkinson

  ‘No I’m fine’ he replied, straining his neck to look up at us. ‘I don’t need any help.’

  ‘Are you sure, we have food and water, even some hot coffee.’

  ‘I told you I’m....Did you say hot coffee? I haven’t had a hot drink for some time, if you could spare a cup, I would be grateful.’Roy opened my rucksack while it was still on my back, and took the flask out, pouring a cupful into the lid. He handed it to the man, who grabbed it with his little, fat fingers, and then cupped it in both hands to warm them. ‘So you have enough food and water to last your journey?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah I have plenty, people have tried to steal it, but I’m wise to that.’

  His hands shook as he raised the cup to his bearded mouth, blowing the surface before taking a sip. He told us about what had happened to him since the attack, and where he was going, while he finished his drink. When he had, he gave the cup back to Roy, who wiped the dirty fingerprints off, before screwing it back onto the flask and putting it in my rucksack. I helped the man to his feet, he thanked us and we watched him on his way. As we continued walking, I noticed Roy kept looking back at him, ‘He won’t last much longer’ he said, picking up a large stone from the field. ‘We should take his food, before anyone else does.’ I was slightly taken aback at first, taking a few seconds to respond. ‘I’m not going to steal from an elderly man, what are you suggesting we do to him?’

  Roy looked at me as though my question had been stupid, before answering, ‘What do you think? Take his food. He’s going to die soon enough anyway, it’s just a matter of time, and someone will benefit from that bag of food, it might as well be us.’

  I grabbed his arm to try and get hold of the stone, but he forced himself free. ‘I cannot believe what I’m hearing’ I said. ‘We’re not even desperate for food and you would have us kill for it.’

  ‘I never said kill him, but he’s dead already, you must know that, his food is wasted on him. How long will our food last? How long before we are desperate for water again? We have to take every opportunity that comes our way, if we don’t, someone else will.’

  ‘So you would kill him with that?’ I said, pulling the stone out off his hand and throwing it onto the scorched ground.

  ‘You’ve killed people without a second thought’ he responded. ‘Every person I have killed, I had to make a decision on, whether it was to put them out of their misery, or because I considered them a threat.’ I was that pissed off with the conversation that I stomped off in the direction we had been walking in, it took me a few minutes to calm down. Roy caught up to me but didn’t speak for thirty minutes, sensing I was not in the mood, and the subject was never discussed again. The dogs that had been barking earlier made a fleeting appearance, a large pack of around twenty, briefly sighted behind us before disappearing into the darkness. By the time the grey burned out buildings of West Linton came across our path, we were seriously in need of a rest. On the outskirts of the town we discovered a mass grave, full of rotting bodies, probably the ex-inhabitants of the town. It was around twelve feet by six, dug into the frozen ground, its depth was hard to gauge, as I couldn’t see the bottom. West Linton was the first built up area we walked through today, made up of small housing estates and straight roads, the town was substantially burned out. We saw no sign of life until we were leaving, when a man came walking towards us in the middle of the street. He walked slowly, stumbling like he was drunk, from a distance, he resembled a zombie from a Hollywood film, but this was no film. He staggered towards us, shaking uncontrollably, his eyes looked bloodshot and raw, he did try to communicate when he saw us, but he seemed confused, we kept our distance believing he had some kind of illness. His skin looked burnt and was rotting around his mouth and eyes, the smell that accompanied him was similar to the bodies we encountered at the entrance to most towns. I didn’t notice it for a while, but he had a severed hand around his neck tied to a piece of string, it wasn’t his hand and when we asked him about it, he just laughed uncontrollably, to the point it was awkward. The fingers looked like they had been chewed on, nibbled, I was sure I could see scraps of dead skin hanging from his teeth. The conversation was not worth repeating here, in fact in barely made any sense. We left him confident he was unable to follow, but checked behind a couple of times to be sure. The nearer to Edinburgh we walked, the blacker the snow got, which had been floating around for a few hours. As we left West Linton, the snow started to come down with some force, causing long black ash drifts. We tried to take cover under the plastic sheeting but our legs got more and more wet, and then the cold took hold. We were struggling to walk, losing the feeling in our legs, ahead I could see the start of the Pentland Hills looming through the muggy horizon. A marker for me when I’m driving, just ten minutes until I’m home, but right now it might just provide us with some cover. The snow was beginning to burn my skin, my eyes and mouth, red painful rashes appearing anywhere not covered. Just before we reached the forest, we had a scary moment with the wild dogs. Roy was following behind me, as I walked the muddy path towards a wooden shed covered with ivy. The ground around my feet was covered in paw prints, the further afield I looked, the more I noticed. I got the feeling we were being watched, before three dogs suddenly jumped out from behind the shed, snarling and showing their teeth. They looked deranged and twitchy, like they were standing on hot coals. Drool was dripping from their jaws, and their fur was matted with dirt and grime. The smell was foul, it filled my nostrils. The dog in the centre of the three, lunged towards me, its paws scrapping through in the mud. It was barking and growling, looking for a reason to go for me. I walked backwards, slowly, making sure to not look it in the eye, while still keeping tabs on its whereabouts. I reached around to the back of my rucksack and unhooked my crowbar, bringing it around to my front. It lunged forward again, barking. I smacked my crowbar into the ground in front of it, and shouted back, ‘You wanna fuck with me?’ The two dogs behind came forward, parallel with the central one. I made myself as big as possible and shouted back, ‘Come on you mother fucker,’ while banging the ground repeatedly, but still not looking them in the eye. They continued to bark aggressively, challenging us, as we backtracked as slowly as possible. I was worried where the rest of the dogs were, that they might be circling us. But as we got further away, the rest of the pack appeared behind the central three, running around in circles, causing dust to cloud above them. As the dogs challenge dropped, the cloud helped us stay a safe distance away from them as we made our way around the pack, remaining as quiet as possible. I don’t know if we had just stumbled upon land they considered theirs, or they had been hunting for food, but we had a lucky escape, and it was an area to avoid on the way back. We crossed the road fifty yards before the forest, my legs nearly buckling on the tarmac, I was almost on my knees, but the forest did offer us the protection we needed. The wind lost its potency, with virtual no black snow reaching us on the ground. The trees had lost all their foliage, with just an odd branch remaining. Their black charcoal bodies looked like the needles of a hairbrush. In some areas of the forest, there were no trees still upright, as the nuclear winds had found a way through the valleys and hills. The ground was covered in a black mulch consisting of leaves, branches and ash, but we could still make better ground than in the open. We walked under cover of the forest for over two hours, it had a very strange atmosphere, I kept thinking I could see someone through the trees, but there was no one there, my eyes were playing tricks. That’s possibly why when I saw the flickering orange light to our left, further into the forest, I didn’t think anything of it. But as we drew parallel, we could both hear the sound of voices coming from the same direction. With no bullets left, investigating was always going to be a risk, but Roy thought we needed to know more about what we were dealing with, but I sensed he wanted to find a group who were a bit more like minded. There was an overpowering smell of burnt wood, the deeper we walked into the forest, but it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant smell, we trod as carefully a
s we could, not wanting to alert anyone to our presence, and stopped around forty yards from a gathering of men, all warming themselves by a large fire. I leaned against a large burnt tree trunk, its texture gritty and rough, I was trying to get a better view, the group was large, maybe more than a hundred. They were in high spirits, singing and dancing, the drink was flowing as the men moved between the food on the fire and the large barrels sat to their right. They didn’t behave like the man we had seen on the road, they moved freely and without constraint. I couldn’t get a view of what was on the fire and signalled for Roy to try, but his view was as restricted as mine, the men were largely gathered around it, eating from it. Could they be trusted? I couldn’t see any children or women in the group, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. I heard shouting from further into the forest, more men were arriving carrying something over their heads. Some of the group who were standing in front of the fire went to greet them, there was much whooping and a hollering, as they surrounded the newcomers, I tried to get a better view of the fire, moving a couple of trees nearer. I could just about make out a shape against the fiery orange, but I couldn’t be sure what it was. As my eyes were trying to piece together the picture, the group arrived back and threw a body onto the floor in front of the fire, my eyes moved to the corpse and to my horror, I realised it was the body of a child. The men were dancing around it, singing, completely unaware of anything going on around them. I stepped back, still reeling from my discovery, I could feel the blood draining from my face, as I stumbled towards Roy. ‘It’s a child Roy, they’re eating a child.’

  ‘I know’ he replied, ‘let’s get out of here.’

  We stumbled back through the darkness to the road and continued towards my farm, with an extra boost to our energy reserves. We never spoke about what we’d seen, I don’t think we could quite believe it, sometimes there are no words can express the horror. How can we have reached this low a point, that we are eating our children? That it’s an acceptable thing to do. With our new found energy, we completed the final few miles of walking in good time and found this outhouse to take shelter in as we wait for the right moment to gain entry to the my bunker. We haven’t chanced lighting a fire, the coffee June made for us is still warm enough to give some heat to our bodies. It’s now ten thirty p.m. we will wait until after twelve before making our move.

  16/11/2027 - Time 03:20

  We rested in the outhouse for a couple of hours, leaving at around twenty to twelve. We had a ten minute walk before reaching the outskirts of my farm, the wind had dropped off but it was still cold. The world was an incredibly dark place at night, with no light from the moon or stars to help guide us, I had to use my memory and knowledge of my property to get us around. We entered the farm at the top left of my land, finding an area where the barbed wire fence had been cut. Following the hedgerow past the small lake I had fished as a child, we walked to within three hundred yards of the main building, and one hundred from the shelter. We sat in the grey overgrown grass, observing the house for any patrols or torchlight, but there was none. We watched for close to ten minutes, before setting off for the wooded area to our left, where the shelter was located. We crept across the frozen ground to the edge of the trees, once there, I counted seven trees in from my right, confirmed there was one parallel to it on my left and got down onto my knees to find the door handle. I felt around in the gravel for the pull handle, the dirt was building up under my frozen finger nails. I dug until I felt the cold hard metal of the handle, gripping it with my left hand, I lifted it. Some of the loose stones and gravel tumbled off, but most of it stayed in place. Roy held the door as I turned my torch on, put it between my teeth and descended the ladder, one step at a time. When I reached the bottom, I shone the light up the shaft to help guide Roy down the ladder, when he reached the bottom I shone it over the room. There was a few magazines and a book left on the coffee table, a couple of dirty plates were stacked on the drainage board, with a collection of knifes and forks placed neatly in the pile. There was a multitude of other crockery, including Emma’s favourite cup. The shelter looked very different by torchlight, like something out of a museum. The bedroom door was lightly a jar, I spoke softly in order not to alarm, but loud enough to be heard. ‘Emma are you there?’ I listened for a response, but there was only silence, as I got closer to the door it creaked slightly, moving a few inches, and then I heard a voice, ‘Dad is that you?’ A small face appeared through the shadows, big, wide eyes peering at me from behind the door. ‘Emma, my princess, I told you I would come back for you.’