Nick approached his site slowly, listening all the time and scanning the area for people or for any other signs of disturbance. He also checked his snares on the way in and carefully studied the small branches that he had placed across possible routes to his campsite. If they had been disturbed he would know that there was a chance someone had discovered it. It was all just as he had left it though so he moved on into the site. Even from close up, the shelter and accompanying parts of his camp were still hard to see. Everything was built from the available surrounding materials so it blended in to the trees and undergrowth perfectly. He was an expert at camouflage and bush craft. Although there were less people around now to discover him, the people that were around were far more dangerous. So he kept to his skills and stayed hidden.
His camp site consisted of his lean-to sleeping shelter. The roof of which was made from branches with the leaves still attached, and a rough made wooden seat. Under the lean-to was a raised sleeping platform. A few feet in front of his lean-to there was a timber tripod set up over a patch of burnt ashes from last night’s fire.
Not far away he had hidden his large rucksack. It contained spare clothing, weapons and other survival kit. It was hidden up in a tree in a waterproof bag. If his camp was discovered he could just retrieve that and move on.
Nick knelt down by the ashes and brushed them to one side with his hand. He took a small tin from a pouch and opened it, taking out a few pinches of dry tinder. This he placed on the ground. From around his neck on a cord he pulled out a magnesium fire rod, and by scraping the back of his hunting knife down the rod he produced a small shower of bright sparks. These caught in the tinder and began to smoulder. He blew gently on the tinder and reached behind him to where he kept his fire wood. It was nice and dry under the raised bed of the lean-to. He pulled out some of the smaller dry sticks and he soon had a nice little fire going. He sat back then to watch the flames dance and disappear into the air. The boy came into his mind. He felt bad about leaving him, but he shook his head to clear it. He’d saved him. That was enough. He stood up and began to prepare his camp site for the night.
Dan was distraught. For some time he just sat there feeling numb. Being with the man had made him feel safer than he had since the beginning of the flu. Now that he was gone he felt even more scared and alone than he had before. He looked about himself. The wood was overgrown here and it was gloomy under the trees and bushes. He tried to think about what to do next. What was it the man had told him? “Stay away from people and get some kit?” Well he had already worked that out and he had some kit in his bag. He had a sleeping bag, a penknife, a water bottle along with some other bits and pieces that he had taken from a millets shop.
He knew about all that sort of stuff from the camping trips his dad used to take him on. Back then though, there were campsites full of friendly people. Now he had to stay away from people, but how do you stay away from people when they kept popping up everywhere? He looked around the woods again. At least there was no one here at the moment. That made him think. Was this where the man lived? In these woods? Then he realised that it might be why he had been there at the road. Maybe he had heard people and thought they were getting near to where he lived.
Dan made a quick decision then. He stood up, straightened his clothes, picked up his rucksack and set off in the direction the man had taken.
There had been nothing in his snares, which unfortunately was not unusual. Nick had learnt a long time ago not to rely completely on his bush craft skills for food. Wildlife was just too bloody smart. Sometimes Nick had to combine bush craft with what he called foraging from towns and farms. He knew that most people would have called it stealing before the change, but he had never taken all that much. Just enough to live on. None of that mattered now of course.
From one end of his shelter he pulled out his cooking pot and a couple of tins. One was Spaghetti Bolognese and the other a tin of hotdogs. ‘Yum, my favourite,’ he murmured quietly to himself as he took out a Leatherman multitool from one of the pouches on his belt. After opening the tins he emptied them both into the soot blackened cooking pot. He then hung the pot on the tripod over fire and sat back smiling contentedly as he watched his food heat up.
Dan had been walking in the same direction that the man had taken for over an hour now and he knew that he was lost. He wished he had done what the man had said now and gone to the services to find a map. Maybe he was wrong and the man didn’t live here. Maybe he was just walking through the woods to get to somewhere else. He sat down and started to despair. He hated being on his own. Apart from being scared all of the time, everything always went wrong for him. It was then that he smelled the smoke, and with it, food cooking. His stomach cramped. He had finished the last of his food yesterday.
‘I bet it’s a fire with food cooking on it,’ he said to himself quietly. ‘That’s just got to be him.’ He stood up again and began to creep forward in the direction that the smell was coming from. After a few minutes he was relieved to see the orange flicker of a fire through the trees, then he felt a light tap on his shoulder. He nearly jumped out of his skin and he would have yelled, but a rough hand came from behind him and covered up his mouth. He went stiff, suddenly terrified.
‘Shush boy!’ Nick told him quietly. ‘Do you understand? Just nod if you do.’
Dan nodded and Nick slowly took his hand away.
The boy turned around.
‘I’m sorry! I didn’t know what else to do,’ Dan said quickly. ‘I thought about it after you left and I thought you might be camping in these woods.’
Nick closed his eyes for a second, then he smiled and said quietly, ‘well aren’t you the clever one.’
Chapter three
Beth ran across the car park in front of the derelict supermarket and ducked down beside a low wall. She was a little out of breath, but over the past six weeks, due to the lack of food and a lot of running around, Beth had shed about two stone in weight.
Slimmer and fitter, she thought, I’ll call it the end of the world diet. She smiled dryly at that as she lifted her head slowly and looked over the wall at the broken glass front of the supermarket. It seemed empty in there. I hope it’s not, she thought as she pulled herself up and over the wall and ran in through the open doors. The flat soles of her knee high leather boots crunched on broken glass.
The place was a complete mess. It was a lot worse than when she last came, and even then it had looked like a herd of elephants had charged through it. This time though, it looked as if they had come back again and purposely trashed the place. Elephant vandals. After everything that had happened the thought of that still made her smile again. She then quickly started overturning the broken shelves and scattered rubbish, looking for something to take home to her girls.
She hated leaving the two girls alone in the house but she believed that it was safer than bringing them with her. They lived in a quiet cul-de-sac and she knew that all of the other houses in the street were empty now. Well empty of the living anyway.
After the flu had finished killing people off and the riots had started Beth had boarded up all of the downstairs windows from the inside. Breaking up her lovingly brought furniture to do so. Then with that done she had decided to wait it out. Luckily she had completed a large food shop the day before the riots had started. Using strict rationing, with most of it going to the girls, this had lasted for nearly five weeks. Then she had begun to collect food and water from the other houses. Doing her best to ignore the smell of the decomposing bodies that now inhabited them.
This collecting and an earlier frightening visit to the local supermarket had kept them going for another three weeks. The one key factor that had kept Beth and her two girls alive since the pandemic though was Beth’s superior knowledge of surviving the apocalypse. Knowledge she had gained from watching uncountable hours of zombie movies.
Half an hour later with a tin of peaches and a broken, half empty box of coco pops in her bag, Beth was once aga
in out in the open. It wasn’t enough. Tears clouded her vision and she wiped them away as she remembered the scared and hopeful looks on the girl’s faces as she had left the house.
‘We’ll be ok mum.’ Although at fourteen, Sammy was younger than her sister by two years, she was the far more serious of the two. ‘I think everyone’s dead anyway.’
‘Not everyone!’ Kay had stated firmly. She was wearing her very own serious expression. Taking after their mother, both of the girls were pretty. Sammy had long blonde hair and Kay’s was brown. Kay was sixteen now, but with her big brown eyes and cute expressions she still had an endearing little girl look about her. ‘That would be impossible,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. ‘Just think about it. Only us survived in the whole world! That would be impossible.’
‘God!’ Sammy let out a frustrated sigh, annoyed at her sister. She was the complete opposite. She was always serious and although she was smaller and younger than her sister, she looked and acted older. ‘I didn’t mean everyone in the whole world. Of course that’s impossible! I just meant everyone around here.’ She flung out her slim arms in exasperation. ‘They’re either dead or gone somewhere else. We haven’t seen or heard anyone in weeks.’
‘Doesn’t mean they’re all dead though. It might just mean their being quiet,’ Kay told her, then she paused for a second, thinking. ‘Just like us.’
‘God! I give up!’ Sammy flung her arms out again.
‘Give up what?’ Kay asked. ‘I was only saying.’
‘Yes! I know what you were saying!’ Sammy interrupted. ‘God I was just trying to make mum feel safer! You can be so stupid sometimes.’
‘I’m not stupid,’ Kay said with superiority. ‘You’re the one who thought everyone was dead. Mum needs to be careful because they might not be.’
‘Ok girls, calm down and stop arguing.’ Beth pulled her blonde hair back quickly into a pony tail and tied it with a band. She glanced at the mirror by the door to see what she looked like then quickly wished that she hadn’t. Beth had a natural beauty that most times only she couldn’t see, but the last few weeks had taken their toll. She thought that she looked drawn out and tired, and she was right. She did.
She turned to the girls. ‘I will be back really quick, and I’ll be careful. Just in case everyone’s not dead.’ She smiled then she gave each of them a kiss on the cheek. ‘Stay quiet and be nice to each other.’ She took a last look at the two of them standing there by the door. ‘Put all the locks on and screw the wood back across after I leave. I’ll be back with some more food and water very soon.’
Now all she had to do was get back. The shopping trip had been a waste of time. While she was running back between the abandoned cars and watching for not dead people, Beth was making plans. They would be forced to leave the safety of the house now. They would have to find somewhere else to survive. You never know, she thought, maybe everyone else is dead. And the funny thing was she almost hoped that they were.
The big Nissan 4 by 4 was able to pick up a bit of speed at last on a small stretch of the M25 that wasn’t crammed with abandoned and sometimes not so abandoned cars. Heavy rock music blared from the open windows. Echoing out into the deadly silent world outside. There were two men in the car. Both of them were sitting in the front seats. Both of them were bouncing and singing along to the music. Both of them were in their mid-thirties and both of them were big, heavy and tattooed. They also had the same cold blue eyes and the same light blonde hair.
The one in the passenger seat stopped singing and shouted over to his brother, ‘hey! Do you ever wonder where everyone was going?’
‘Ay?’
‘I said.’ He leant across and turned down the music.
‘Hey! I was listening to that!’
‘Fuck that Jeff. I was just saying. Do you ever wonder where all these people were going?’
‘No! He pushed his foot down hard onto the brake pedal. His brother was thrown forward and had to slam his hands onto the dash to stop himself hitting the windscreen. ‘Hah! Where’s ya fuckin seatbelt?’ He grinned nastily.
‘You’re such a wanker man. If you weren’t my brother.’ He pushed hard against the dash and shoved his bulk back into his seat.
‘You’d what bill? Shag me?’
‘You’re such a wanker Jeff.’
‘Yeah you told me. Haha!’ he laughed manically. ‘Now turn the music back up arshole.’
‘Can’t you just be normal?’ Bill leant across and turned the music back up. ‘Just for a change.’
‘What!’ Jeff shouted back and then laughed again.
‘Fuck you man.’ Bill leant back and closed his eyes as his brother started weaving madly between the stationary cars. He wondered once again if they’d make it to the coast alive, then he opened his eyes and saw the sign for the M3 exit.
‘Thank you god!’ he shouted, looking up. ‘I fuckin’ hate the M25!’
Beth had decided to head for the south coast. It seemed to make some kind of sense to her. The further south you were the warmer it was. Also for some reason heading south felt more appealing than heading north, more natural. Maybe it was instinct, like the way birds headed south for the winter.
So after coming home the day before yesterday, with her tin of peaches and half empty box of coco pops she had sat the girls down and told them that they would have to leave their home. Kay had kept quiet, looking thoughtful but Sammy had made it very clear that she didn’t like the idea.
‘But we’re safe here mum. We don’t know what it’s like out there.’ She was scared. This was the only home that she had ever known. It was her safe place away from the world. With the only two people left in the world that meant anything to her now. Their dad walking out on them all when she was only three years old had had a deep and lasting effect on her.
‘We have to leave darling,’ Beth told her quietly. ‘We have nearly run out of food. We probably have enough left for about a week, and drinking water for about two. After that we will have to go anyway. So we need to go while we still have enough to get somewhere.
‘But I don’t want to leave our house!’
‘No! We have to go,’ Kay stated firmly. She was looking the other way thoughtfully, as if she was looking off into the distance and trying to imagine what it would be like.
‘We have to go Sammy,’ her mum repeated. ‘And we have to go as soon as possible. So we will go in the morning,’ she said it firmly. ‘And we will take next doors car. It’s newer than ours.’
‘Where will we go mum?’ Kay asked.
‘I think that we should go south and head for the coast.’
‘The seaside! Yey that would be great.’ Kay suddenly smiled widely. They had been locked in the house for weeks and the idea of going to the seaside made her feel happy. ‘Can we go to Bournemouth?’
The three of them had been on holiday to Bournemouth last year and the girls had loved it. The thought of that even brought a smile to Sammy’s lips.
So that was it. The decision was made. After that they pulled together as they always did. They pulled together as they had always had to do. Beth went into their neighbour’s house and found the keys to their new Golf hanging on a hook in the kitchen. She didn’t go upstairs. She had made that mistake a few weeks ago only to find Tony and Sheila lying on their bed together. They had been covered in flies and slowly rotting in the summer heat.
The car was loaded with anything they thought might come in useful. Which was all the food and water they had left, and any various items that Beth could imagine they might need for the hundred and fifty mile journey from their small town to the seaside resort of Bournemouth. What they would need when they eventually arrived there she had no idea.
It was a long day the next day. A day spent weaving in and out of abandoned cars. Some of the cars were empty. It looked like the owners had just abandoned them and walked off. In some of the cars though, they saw sights that would stay with them forever. After a short while they all stopped looki
ng into the other cars and focused more on the fields and woods, which were all quiet in the summer sunshine. They didn’t see a single living soul and their progress was extremely slow. The roads were a nightmare of jammed cars.
At one point they had become completely stuck. They had been forced to abandon the new Golf and walk, carrying with them as much of their supplies as they could. They’d had to endure a nightmare walk around the blockage until they found another suitable car to carry on with their journey. Suitable meaning that the keys were still in the car and that there were no dead ones in it. They slept in that car the first night as best they could and carried on the next morning. When they finally made it onto the M3 at about ten o’clock that morning they all cheered. The sheer amount of cars on the M25 had been horrendous. The M3 wasn’t as bad and after the first mile or so the amount of cars became even less. It was still slow progress but it was a great deal better than on the M25.
Beth turned the car onto the hard shoulder once again and drove along it slowly until she saw yet another car blocking the way. She looked for a gap, saw one and pulled back out and around the blockage.
New World: Nick Smith Book one (Nick Smith Series 1) Page 2
