To my astonishment everyone in the room agreed with me and it was decided to go out early in the morning and return home mid-afternoon.
We talked about other things that evening, I can’t remember what, but by the time we all went to bed a tentative consensus between us had been agreed.
In the time of the Twice Dead, the people of Thorncroft Residential Home for the Disabled would do all they could to survive. To see as many days as they could in a world more dangerous than it had ever been before.
That night as I lay in my bed, in the darkness, my room door locked, my duvet curled around my body I stared into the darkness and thought many things.
Yet again, I wondered how we at Thorncroft had managed to survive the contagion. What made us so different from everyone else on the planet? Was it us? Was it an accident within an accident? Could it be because of where we were? Moreover, if it was, what was it about where we were?
True we were set in many acres of ancient woodland, part of the building (the garage) was once part of a Great Earl’s estate that had been put into trust by one of the Earl’s philanthropic descendants a million years ago (being sarcastic here by the way) with the end result being Thorncroft Residential Home for the Disabled. Nothing else had been built on the land since the conference centre, something to do with the trust, deeds and legalities about protected green spaces.
If where we were, was the reason the contagion had not affected us did that mean that the Twice Dead would not come here? No, that couldn’t be the case, Gregory had turned into a Twice Dead whilst he was here and then there was the man he had bitten, but perhaps that was part of the reason, what if they knew to keep away from this area if they were already turned. Gregory turned into a Twice Dead here; he wasn’t one when he had come back from time.
I wondered what was going to happen to the man who was now locked in the secure TOR space, tied down and drugged. How long before he changed? I exhaled, plumped up my pillow and my mind moved onto other things.
I thought about my life, who I had been before, how I had lived and dealt with my disabilities. I touched my leg, free of my leg brace, aching from overuse. I remembered each operation, each a painful reminder of their failure to stop the muscles and bone from getting weaker because of a rare congenital illness. Eventually they put special metal pins into my left leg and hip and this helped in that the degeneration was pretty much stopped but it didn't reverse the previous damage.
I was lucky in a way though, the genetic deformity that affected by leg and hip could have affected other parts of my body like my arms, and neck, but it hadn’t.
My parents, my real parents had taken me from hospital to hospital trying to get help for me. Until their deaths when I was three years old, I had been the much-loved child of Olivia and Sanjay Lal. A mixed race couple who defied their respective families to marry and have a child.
The accident that claimed them when I was three and in hospital for an operation left me not only an orphan, but also without family because neither of my parent’s family wanted the mongrel child born of a much hated relationship.
My mother’s family I found out had been upper middle class, wealthy, well connected and from what I could work out, as racist as they came. No way did they want their daughter married to a man of colour not even one like Sanjay who came from an equally wealthy, middle class background, but he was Indian and his parents like Olivia’s parents were dead against the match, ironically pretty much for the same reason, racial and in their case religious.
I remember when the Social Worker told me why I was in foster care, and I can still remember how bewildered I was, how hurt and how I had gone deep into myself, becoming what was seen as an emotionally defective child with serious physical health issues.
I had nothing of my parents, just fragmented baby memories of a woman with long blonde hair and a man with dark eyes and a lovely smile, but if I had any memories of their respective families, those I shoved away into some dark recess in my mind for to me they were an anathema, something to be struck down and buried deep.
There had been moments of happiness in my life, there had been Jack and Theresa and those wonderful three years in which I was part of a family. I clutched at my pillow. I had not thought about Jack and Theresa for a very long time.
When I had moved into Thorncroft and had been told that it was to be a permanent placement, dependent on my behaviour of course, I was happy, or as close to happy as someone like me can ever become.
Seb was right in a way, I was a lady of shadows. I had never had a boyfriend, never been kissed, was a virgin and weirdly never felt any kind of physical desire even when my hormones were supposed to be raging when I was a teenager. I drifted through puberty like I drifted through life. My periods were sporadic and painful and of late, they had been non-existent.
I had no desire to be a mother and now that I was thinking in depth, I wasn’t sure what I wanted from my life. I was I thought, a bit of a blank canvas, an odd splodge of paint here and there, but mostly blank. The others I lived with had more life than me.
Yet I had formed an unconscious attachment to Cassidy, a dislike of the spoilt Eden, a grudging respect for Seb despite him being an idiot at times, and I admired both Phoenix and Paul for their ability to be removed from most of their emotions.
I even liked Jasmine though she irritated me, and Stevie, he was special I thought, not just special needs, but special in other ways I couldn’t quite put my finger on yet.
I drifted off to sleep eventually, but it was not a restful sleep. I dreamt about Gregory, dreamt about his final moments on earth before I blew his head into a fine red mist mixed with bone and brain with a Glock 17.
After a very early breakfast, Mitch and I took everyone out to gather fruit from the trees that formed part of the grounds of Thorncroft. Phoenix was the only person exempted from this group task, as he was still unresponsive, being curled up on his bed, buried under his duvet.
Stevie happily pushed Paul’s manual wheelchair and Mitch carried a machete with him, for protection he said. We were aware of potential danger from the Twice Dead, but so far, none had made their way to the Home
We trooped across the gravel pathway that lead to Buckrams Wood, as it was known; we didn’t see the soldiers but we were aware of their presence, their trucks were parked in the drive way behind them the was a large green canvas tent, obviously some kind of base of operations.
Despite the horrors going on outside of Thorncroft and beyond, it was still a beautiful day. The morning breeze was cool on our faces, there was a slight dampness in the air but it was slowly disappearing, and I inhaled deeply once we stepped off the pathway, green moss, old earth and yet to fall leaves, a wonderful aroma, mixing together to give a heady taste of nature.
Sunlight glinted through the gaps in the leaves, and Cassidy lumbered towards the edge of the wood; the trees had once been part of a garden of a house that had long since been reclaimed by nature, but the trees had remained, and they caught the sun each and every day, the branches were heavy with fruit and the ground beneath the trees were littered with the fruit that had not been picked and were slowly rotting, creating compost for a future crop.
“Apples!” Cassidy bellowed in delight and he turned to wave to me, I was behind him and behind me was Eden and Jasmine, arm in arm, dragging a shopping trolley between them. I smiled, though my smile faltered when I heard Eden say to Jasmine, “He will probably eat the tree as well as the apples!” both girls then giggled.
“Don’t be nasty Eden,” Adag’s voice was reprimanding, and I turned to look at Eden who was protesting she was only joking.
Seb thundered passed in Lewis, clods of mulch flew high up in the air. Eden and Jasmine screamed as they were both showered in bits of earth, rotting apple and leaves.
I burst out laughing as the girls wailed to Adag who was trying not to laugh herself. I couldn’t resist shouting to Eden as I headed in Cassidy’s direction, “Seb’s only joking Eden!�
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Eden of course was wailing it wasn’t a joke as Adag helped the girls rid their hair and clothes of the flying debris.
Stevie had pushed Paul’s chair into the wood, parallel to the fruit trees, I was surprised to see Stevie gather some bluebells up from a patch of land near to the manual chair and hand them over to Paul. Paul though, took them and inhaled their scent.
I fell in step with Mitch who was grinning, “If I didn’t know any better,” he said, “I’d say Seb did that on purpose.”
I was inclined to agree with him.
Mitch knew a lot about nature and its free bounty, it was a hobby of his he said to me, well if you worked smack bang in the middle of nowhere, then took the hobbies you could find. I laughed.
“What would your hobby have been if you lived next to a sewage works like the one in Peacehaven?” I teased him as we came across a patch of edible mushrooms that we picked together.
“Probably counted turds,” Mitch said which made me laugh even more, and he pointed to bed of nettles, “We can make soup with those.”
“They sting you,” I said making a face.
“It’s a good thing to know,” Mitch said and then he added, “You better supervise Cassidy, he will just throw any old apple into the bag.”
I went over to Cassidy, who showed me his bag of apples which as Mitch predicted had apples among them that would rot the others. I showed him how to separate the rotten ones from the good ones. I explained to him why this had to be done. He listened and then said, “Can’t we cut the bad bits out Lucy?”
I hadn’t thought of that, “We could,” I agreed with him, “But leaving some apples behind is good, the birds and other wildlife get to eat them and what they don’t eat goes back into the earth to help grow more apples.”
I knew Cassidy had a short attention span so I made my explanation as simple and as quick as I could. He grasped what I was telling him and nodded his head. With me he picked out the bad apples and we debated over certain ones as to whether we should keep them.
Eden stomped by us with Jasmine, she glared at me but I ignored her. Seb had disappeared he didn’t get to take Lewis out and about in the grounds very often, mainly because of a rather unfortunate incident a few months ago where he disappeared for several hours in Lewis and was found by the lake in a drunken stupor.
It caused a bit of a scandal because the residents were not allowed to have alcohol on the premises. The live in staff could, but they could only drink it when they were off duty and in their own accommodation.
In fall fairness though, we could go to the pub and have a drink but no spirits or beer in our rooms was strictly adhered too. To this day Seb refuses to say where he got his drink from, theories ranged from him arranging to meet a friend by the lake, to one of the residents bringing it for him after a visit home.
Secretly I didn’t think much of either theory, there was something about Lewis that was different from other chairs and Seb’s disappearance possibly had to do with that because a week or so later he had several items delivered from eBay, all for Lewis. People don’t make connections, I do, like Eden and her stealing and nine times out of ten I am usually right.
We gathered plenty of apples and some unripe pears that I thought would be nice stewed in sugar. We entered the wood to look for wild garlic after we had picked our fill of fruit and mushrooms. The best place for the tastiest and most fragrant wild garlic Mitch informed us was down from the Monocot Lake.
I liked Lake Monocot. It was about a mile or so from the home but it fed a lot of steams and brooks that ran around the area. It was not a man-made lake, apparently it had been around in one form or another since the ice age. When the land the home had been on belonged to the Earl, he had installed a jetty from land to water and it was still there, standing the test of time.
The lake was out of bounds to residents and staff but I had found a short cut to it, via an overgrown pathway behind the summer house and on days when there were few staff at the home I would put on my walking leg brace, take a book, some water and fruit, pretend I was going to the summerhouse and then slip off to the lake and sit on the jetty for a couple of hours.
I was always careful not to stay there too long, the temptation was great as it was so beautiful. A vast silver mirror that shimmered in the breeze. An old jetty that was no longer in use and across the lake itself, a swathe of green and brown trees, intermixed with other foliage, more untouched land, virgin and pristine.
Now things had changed, I would be able to go to the lake and sit there for as long as I liked. The rules that had once bound me, were gone. The thought pleased me. I didn’t share my thoughts because I didn’t want to share the lake. Selfish, yes, but there are somethings you want to keep for yourself.
We soon found a big patch of wild garlic, next to a fast running brook. Once again I explained to Cassidy what we needed to do to pick the delicious herb. He helped me sit down on the ground and straighten my bad leg as it was cramping a bit.
I told him not do dig up too many of the bulbs, it was best to harvest leaves, stems, flowers and seed pods. They were great for salads, soups and pesto I told Cassidy. I then made him laugh by telling him he needed to look out for bird pooh as we dug with our fingers into the damp, soft earth to gather our bounty.
“Don’t bruise the leaves,” I said to him he started to grab a handful of the plants to yank them out of the earth, “Just pull them gently, pretend you have to pick up a really crumbly piece of pie you want to eat.”
Cassidy grinned, he understood that and very carefully he began to pluck the leaves.
Mitch had found more mushrooms and had taken the Eden and Jasmine with him to help gather them up. Adag was giving Paul a drink of water and Seb had reappeared with a bag full of rosehips which I suspected he had got from near to the lake as there were several bushes in that locality.
Stevie wandered over to me. He had been helping Adag with Paul but he left them to join us.
“Can I help?” he said.
“No, it’s ok Stevie,” I smiled up at him, “Mitch is over there with the girls, why don’t you see if he still wants to pick some nettles?”
He hesitated before saying, “Can’t I help?”
“I’m helping Lucy,” Cassidy said importantly, he was carefully taking some bulbs out of the ground and gently shaking the dirt off them before dropping them into the carrier bag at by our side.
“You’re going to have to help me get up in a minute Cass,” I said with a laugh, “I don’t think I will be able to get back up now I am down!”
“I can lift you up,” Cassidy said proudly, “I’m strong!”
“I’m stronger,” Stevie said immediately.
“You’re both strong,” I said, “Go and help Mitch and the girls Stevie, Cass is helping me.”
“OK,” Stevie said and he slowly turned around and headed to where Mitch was.
On our first food forage in the wood was, we all agreed as we headed back to the home loaded down a great success. Not only that but it had been a good distraction for all of us, taking our minds for a little off what was happening outside the walls of our home.
I was dragging a shopping trolley full of edible goodies with Cassidy and everyone else was carrying bags filled with nettles, mushrooms, rose-hips, apples and at the last minute we had gathered a load of pine cones to use at the craft table.
Paul looked better for having been in the sun, he had a small box of mushrooms on his lap as Stevie, pushed him back to the home in his chair.
“What do you call a cow with no legs?” Mitch was saying. We all groaned. He had been telling dreadful jokes since we had overfilled a basket of mushrooms and some had spilled out and he said quick as a flash, “Well there isn’t mush-room in that basket!”
OK, it was funny and Adag, Seb, Paul myself and Stevie laughed but we had to explain it to the others who laughed as well. This made Mitch tell other jokes that had us groaning and laughing at the same time.
It had been a nice day and it was a shame that the end part of it was somewhat spoilt. As we trooped out of the wood, laughing and talking, I heard a shout, saw a flash of camouflage green and then we were surrounded by soldiers, one of whom was the female Captain with the double barrel named of Lacks-Renton.
Jasmine screamed, as they moved menacing around us, rifles pressed against their chests, Mitch put his arm instinctively around the frightened girl’s shoulders. Surprisingly Eden didn’t scream but she did flinch, and press against her friend who clutched at her hand.
Cassidy looked bewildered and Stevie instinctively put his arms around Paul in his chair, equally bewildered and of course frightened by the sudden appearance of armed soldiers. Paul didn’t react, he just stared in his disconcerting way at the people surrounding us.
“Lucy,” Stevie said in a frightened voice.
“It’s OK Stevie,” I said though I wasn’t sure if it was.
“What the fuck?” Seb’s belligerent voice made one of the soldiers, with the name of DUKE on his combat jacket, advance toward him, raising his rifle butt and I moved in front of Seb, blocking him, letting go of the trolley but luckily the Captain took over.
“Where have you been?” she barked at me and Duke stepped back, his unsmiling blue eyes on me. Why was she asking me? I was just one of the residents.
“Fruit picking,” I replied as it would be rude not to answer.
“Don’t be Goddamn facetious,” the Captain snapped at me “You went away from the building and into the woods, you don’t know what the hell is out there!”
“Fruits trees and a shit load of squirrel crap, oh and some bird poop too,” I responded and this made Seb and the others laugh. I saw a soldier standing behind Duke smile, though his expression quickly went back to neutral indifference. I saw the name PETERS on his combat jacket, he was also the soldier Jasmine had offered to make a sandwich for in the kitchen. Well, he at least had a sense of humour.
“What’s your problem Captain?” Adag finally spoke, “We live here remember? Or had you forgotten?”
The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) Page 10
