I made my way to the other side of the village and the rain finally stopped. It didn't exactly break out into glorious sunshine but it brightened a little as I followed the ruined roadway into the outskirts of the city. I'd have to climb a little - the land rose up to the city edge before dropping down into the centre and from this side I had a good idea which road they would've taken in. Two others were across bridges and both of them had collapsed about three years ago. It might have been caused by a storm but I couldn't remember. A lot of the country changed from year to year and it was one of the reasons I often made my own maps or annotated the ones given to my by the US army. I could write down one location or place of interest and then scratch it off the following year. These were poorly made structures to begin with and without care and maintenance it was little wonder they fell down - sometimes with spectacular results.
A while back I was driving along the outskirts of Preston when I heard the stadium collapse, maybe caused by the vibrations of the car, but it was enough to make me shake in fear. It began like a distant thunder, rolling towards me until I began to think it was an earthquake instead. I'd driven away as quickly as I could until I saw the gigantic dust cloud overhead and realised what had happened. After that I had another reason to stay away from the city - as if I needed one. If a falling building didn't kill me then the packs of wild dogs would. They were horrible creatures, probably a mix of wild and domestic pets but still quick to re-learn the law of the jungle. It was another reason why I kept a pistol with me, loaded with hollow-point rounds.
As the land rose steeply I began to see what I was looking for. The road, littered with rusting heaps of old cars, ran in a straight line up to the top of the rise, then banked down and to the south right into the heart of the old city. The cars had long since been picked clean of fabric or plastic and now all that was left were dirty brown scrap heaps sat on oxidised aluminium rims. They'd been abandoned in a neat line of traffic, all nose to bumper, more than likely when the first of the sirens began to sound all that time ago. I imagined it was a panicked affair, people jumping out of their little metal boxes to try and outrun the first of the missile strikes. Where would they be running to? I wondered. A shelter? The army? Dad had never gone into any details about how our country ended up like this but he sometimes talked about The Great Panic and the time the sky rained dust for months. He warned me that it hadn't been a nuclear attack. “No son, if it had then we'd all be dead now. Not just you and me, but the world. Scorched into death like wood on a fire.”
I'd left it at that and never really cared to find out more. I'd grown up in it and I was happy. It was those who visited it who looked the most shocked by what they saw, those who could see their own cities across the sea and wondered with amazement whether it could happen there too.
I found a hand print on the bonnet of an old Ford and the drying puddle of urine beneath it, soaking into the crumbling tarmac. It was smaller than my own hand and it was the man's left, used to steady himself while he pissed up against the car. There was no band on the third finger.
I walked on and found more disturbances in the dust. One of them had stepped in a patch of mud that had risen through a crack in the road and left a dry footprint a pace onwards. A third was to the far left hand side of the road meaning they'd spread out in a line. All three had been here. All three had gone over the hill and down into the city and I'd have to follow. I didn't want to, that was for certain, and I checked the magazine on my pistol, flicking the safety off. It was insanity to go there given that any number of the buildings were on the verge of collapsing and the roads themselves were prone to caving into the sewers below. On top of that great packs of dogs roamed the streets, living in the hollowed out shells of shops and pubs, eager to sniff out their next meal and track it down. Why they stayed there instead of going out into the country was beyond me, but they were there all right.
Cautiously I followed the tracks down a long street lined with crumbling houses, brick and concrete cracking with age, some even falling apart to expose dust filled insides like a thousand year old corpse. More cars. More rusting heaps still parked where they'd always been parked. Children's push bikes, the bones of a bygone age scattered around overgrown graveyard lawns. A skeleton of some large animal. It was all the detritus of a man-made sepulchre and I hated it. I wanted out the moment I started heading in. It was oppressive and stifling and stunk of death - namely my own death.
I pressed on, following the patterns in the dirt that became fewer and far between but were still easy to follow. They'd kept along this road in a uniform line, perhaps breaking away here and there to examine a house or a car, but more or less they kept on until they reached a junction marked by the mangled wrecks of two large transport trucks. They'd collided bang in the centre of the cross roads, one coming down the road, the other coming from the right. The door of one had been wrenched open and the brittle remains of the driver had been dragged out. The cab was empty and I climbed up to look inside, confirming my suspicion that the three of them had looked inside. The dust had been disturbed around the glove box and there were hand prints all over the dashboard. I guess that there was always a chance that others had missed something, especially in an unlikely place like a glove box.
The tracks went on down the road to the city centre. I followed, gathering pace a little as I went, eager to get it over with and get out. I descended another sloping street, turned right and followed the traffic of a dozen smashed cars until the tall high-rise office blocks could be seen between the towering oaks that had once lined a quaint street that was now overgrown. It was here that I really did consider turning back.
There were cars blocking the entire tarmac strip leaving only the pavement on the left hand side to walk on. I found their spoor and it was clear that they'd walked in single file, but on top of their muddy footprints were another set, another cluster of markings - that of a dozen padded feet.
I fought the feeling to just turn tail and run, to never look back. It froze me on the spot and I realised I was holding my breath - and the grip of the pistol. It was an agonising time of deciding between doing the sensible thing and doing the right thing, the choice that best fit with my own ethos. But was it my ethos, or the ethos passed down to me by my Dad? What would he have done and what should I do? All this fired through my mind in moments but to me they felt like years.
Finally I returned to my senses, took a deep breath and set off along the tracks, still following and still hoping that somehow I'd find them alive.
The paw prints of the dogs were a far easier spoor to follow and they must have followed the scent for a while before moving to act. I walked for another twenty minutes before I came across my first signs that the three of them had engaged the animals and faired reasonably well. Where a section of road leading to the very centre of the high street widened there'd been a violent struggle near two wrecked cars and a motorcycle. There were three dead dogs littered across the tarmac - two had been shot through the chest, the other had had its throat cut. There was plenty of dry blood splattered around the area and it didn't seem that old when I touched a little with my fingertip. There were also no obvious human casualties either, which was a good sign. The only blood was clearly that of the dogs. But how come I hadn't heard the shots? Silenced weapons? If so, what were they really after? How well trained were they?
As I neared the large indoor shopping precinct I got my answer. There, disembowelled and half eaten, was the remains of the first of the treasure hunters. He'd taken his own life with a silenced Gloch which sat loosely in his lifeless hand - the exit wound at the back of his skull painting a blossom of pink on the stonework behind him. He was young, early 20's perhaps, and his face was pale and expressionless save for where blood and brain matter leaked out over his blue lips from the bullet hole in the roof of his mouth. Nearby there were two more dead dogs, each one hit in the head and chest. The boy'd been a good shot.
I wanted to check his body, to get some
I.D, but it was too dangerous to stay still. I suspected the worse now and if any of the dogs had survived, which I was sure they had, then they'd be looking for me next. So instead I looked inside the shopping precinct as far as the shuttered doors before coming back and, finding nothing, I looked for spoor around the corpse.
To the left near an alley that ran behind the shops I saw a few drops of blood near a rusty bin. I might have missed them had the light been a little worse, but I just caught a glimmer of them as I was looking around. I peered down the mouth of the alley and saw some more further on and followed. It was darker there and I held my pistol out in front of me, cocked and ready in case I had to react quickly. There was no need. Lying across the flagged street was my second corpse. He had the expression of a man deep in sleep and I might have tried to wake him up if it hadn't been for the lack of anything inside his open chest cavity. There was an enormous pile of half-chewed intestines and blood and fleshy bits and I leaned against the wall with a hand over my nose. The stench was vile and even breathing through my open mouth was a struggle.
His pack was on the floor near some bins and I grabbed it before walking away into fresher air. At the mouth of the alley I took a deep breath and listened. Nothing. I didn't like it. My scent would have been as strong to them as that rotting corpse had been to me yet there were no dogs here, not even the sound of them in the distance and I still had one more corpse to find. I resumed my search, leaving the pack near the first body and finding another on the other side of some railings towards the bus station. It was a woman's pack, small with pink trim and a 'Hello Kitty' fob hanging from a zip.
Rebecca's pack.
I took it back to the others before following the trail Rebecca's pack had put me on. Still there were no sounds, no barks, nothing. I felt like time was in a glass and the last few grains were about to fall. I sped up, scanning the ground as quickly as I could. A shoe. A piece of clothing. A bone. The clues led me towards the railway station where I found a pack dropped in haste. It must have been the pack belonging to the first body I'd found. The steel shutters had been prised upwards and then forced back down but something had got between the concrete floor and the door. There was blood all over the place and the remains of a dog with mangled front paws lay off to one side.
I tried the shutters but they weren't for budging. Then I heard something on the other side and I stopped breathing to hear it better. It was like a scurrying sound, like rats on a hard floor, but it was coming closer, getting louder and I took a step back, raised my pistol and took a deep breath. Then the shutters suddenly shook as something huge slammed into them from the other side. I heard snarling and barking, then the sounds multiplied and I realised with both horror and joy that the dogs were trapped inside the railway station and unable to get out.
I ran round the side and found a window to peak in through, looking all over for a sign that the last treasure hunter might have survived. I peered into the gloom, seeing the six dogs behind the shutters trying to get at me. Then I looked towards the ticket booth and noticed an odd shape near the desk. Then I realised that it was the upper body of my last man, his legs a few feet away and wedged in between the supports of a steel bench. His pack was near his head but I had no intentions of going after it.
The dog with the mangled paws must have managed to get under the shutters before it slammed down on him, crushing his chest. This had given the others the gap they needed to get in and have their feast but the dog had managed to free himself, allowing the shutters to close and trap the others inside. I realised how lucky I'd been. If it hadn't been for this turn of events I might have been dog kibble by now.
I returned to the other two bodies and did a quick search of their pockets, turning up two wallets and the maps they'd brought with them plus a number of other useful things. In their packs were meals-ready-to-eat, chocolate bars, tools and plenty of climbing equipment. I planned to take it all for myself but when I came to Rebecca's pack I stopped before I'd even opened the zip. It felt like I was betraying someone, like I was guilty of something and so I simply put it with the others, unopened.
The recovery of their bodies would have been much more difficult if it hadn't been for the shopping trolley I found down the alley where the second boy had died. I loaded it with the corpses first, then built up a pile of packs and loot on top. It looked macabre in the reflections from the perspex safety windows of the shops but it was highly practical. I wanted to get them back to the 'Rover as quickly as possible because the odds of there being more dogs drawn to the noise was rising as I heard the shutters rattling even from where I was. I also wondered how much damage they could take before they made a gap big enough to get through.
I wheeled the trolley down the pavements, trying my best to counter the broken wheel it had which caused it to drift sideways as I pushed. I was leaving a trail of blood that was dripping between the mesh bottom and it left bright pink spots as I went. I felt like a fool, like a bone collector of old in a Jester's costume. What part of my life had gone wrong to reach the point where I was pushing a trolley of dead kids down a road whilst trying to escape a band of savage hounds?
It took a while but I managed to get to the 'Rover and I was panting from the effort. I opened the back and shuffled the body of Rebecca along to make room for the others. Then I sat the packs on top of them before closing the door. I kicked the trolley away and got into the cab, eager to put something solid between me and the ever-present threat of the dogs.
I sat there sucking air into my lungs and taking swigs from my bottle as the night came in. I'd been out too long and I was eager to get back home, to carry on getting the poly-tunnels ready for the spring, to find one of the roaming cows and kill it for winter meat. There was so much to do back at home that I was glad I'd finished the job and could now return to it.
I thought about driving through the night but decided against it. I'd drive out of the city and find somewhere to hang the hammock. One last night, then on to the South to debrief at Fort Washington before heading home. I'd resupply there while I was at it. I was eager to relieve myself of my macabre cargo and the thoughts of a young girl slowly dying as the sun sank into the horizon.
2.
Fort Washington was situated a few miles south of what was once Birmingham before the missiles landed with the level of destruction you could only achieve through mass bombardment. Nearly all the major buildings had been levelled and their falling rubble had brought down a great many others that hadn't. I'd never been anywhere near the middle of the chaos simply because the slightest vibration might set off another chain reaction like a line of dominoes, toppling the fragile remains of a once thriving hub of existence.
From an elevated position you could see the crumbled skyline, the odd resilient structure here and there and sometimes the smoke from some subterranean fire, a burning vat of spilled chemicals or something. That's as close as I'd ever been - the concrete walls of Fort Washington and all that was behind them.
The gates were set at the start of a narrow corridor made from concrete slabs about waist height, interspersed with barbed-wire barricades set in stages so that anyone driving in couldn't approach it directly. Two guards stood watching me pull up, several more waited on a raised platform made of steel girders where they trained their weapons on me without much enthusiasm.
I stopped at the gate and the engine spluttered. I was on fumes and I'd used most of my fuel getting there. I knew that I'd have to take a trailer full back home if I was to see out the winter. The gate guard motioned for me to stop with his free hand and the other began to walk slowly towards me with the effort a man might have if he didn't give a shit. Which I knew he didn't.
“I.D?” asked the guard as he approached the driver's side window. He was in DPM and wore a heavy looking helmet that covered most of his face. I passed him my wallet and he flipped it open, checking the photo against the real me a few times before being finally convinced I was the same guy. “What's in the back?”
he asked.
“Three dead,” I replied.
“Treasure hunters?”
“Nothing as glamorous as that - but yeah.”
“Okay,” he sighed, bored with the whole process. “You armed?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It's on my hip. Can I get it?”
“Slowly now.”
I slid the pistol out of its holster with my thumb and index finger and held it up. I could see his grip tighten around his own rifle. Bored soldiers tend to make dangerous checkpoint guards. I slowly began to eject the clip, pulling back the slide and releasing the single round in the chamber. I passed it all to him and he nodded to his partner.
“Please get out of the vehicle,” he said, stepping back. I opened the door and jumped down onto the tarmac, my hands open and loose by my sides. He gestured to the Guard cabin set back behind the far gates, the ones into the compound, and his partner jumped into my 'Rover, driving it through the barbed-wire chicanes.
We walked into the small room that served as shelter for those on duty and straight away I could smell the coffee in the percolator on the desk, bubbling away with its heady caffeine goodness.
“May I?” I asked, pointing to it.
“Sure,” said the Guard as he opened a small safe and put my pistol inside it. I took a white ceramic cup from the side and poured myself some of the hot brew. It'd been there a while but it was still nice. There were biscuits in a packet on a plate so I took three when the guard's back was turned. He sat at his desk filling in the relevant paperwork with a stubby pencil.
“So how did it go?” he asked without turning to look at me. I was too busy looking at the staff rota.
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