As Jose tried to fight off the heart attack he was sure was about to hit him, she said, “I’ve been sent down as back up.” She lifted the bat she was holding, “I really hope you’re a good shot, because I’ve never played cricket in my life.”
Despite his mounting panic, he couldn’t help but smile at her. “You scared the shit out of me… I promise you that no cricket will be played here.” He didn’t know what to say, but was pretty sure that what he had said so far was very wrong. He tried to correct it by offering her the gun, “Do you want to swap?”
She tilted her head to one side and looked at him awkwardly. “I saw you that first night we had these lunatics attacking us. I think we’re both safer if you keep a hold of that. I’d hesitate until someone was chewing on my throat to react.”
He wasn’t keen to give up the gun, so wasn’t going to argue the point. What she had just said, little as it was, made him feel pretty macho, so he squared his shoulders and prepared to search the house. At the back of his mind he wondered how deliberate this was by Jed. If there was a plan, or if he was just winging it. Either way he was doing a good job of asserting control.
Quietly, with his gun raised in front of him, and with Becky at his back he moved along the hallway towards the stairs. They wanted food, water and bandages, and the kitchen was most likely to furnish all of these. He planned to avoid additional exploration as much as possible. It only took a few steps to establish that it was a family home with two young children. There were toys dotted along the walls, and family pictures mounted everywhere. Jose started to wonder about what had become of the people who usually lived there, but quickly forced the thoughts from his mind. Compassionate thoughts about people he was in the process of robbing was not a good idea. He tried to focus on listening for any noises around him. All he heard was the quiet footsteps and soft breathing of the woman behind him.
The kitchen was quickly found and raided. All of the doors downstairs were open, displaying the purpose of the rooms behind them. In different circumstance Jose knew that he would have been expected to try and shift the HD TV, or at least the games consoles that he could see, but they had become irrelevant. The jugs of water and the bags of food that they stole from the rapidly warming fridge freezer were what mattered. Part of him suggested that they should take everything edible, but he decided that they only needed enough for breakfast, and they could all be in their own homes by lunchtime. If it wasn’t for the crazies outside they would only be a few minutes away, and this whole burglary would be ridiculous.
Despite a thorough ransacking, they found nothing in the kitchen that was suitable for bandaging their shot friend. Becky suggested that they should take the sheets from one of the beds. He didn’t want to rummage around the house any more than he had to, but conceded that this was necessary. Fred needed something, and Jose didn’t know how they could get him to a proper hospital.
They went back upstairs. Becky was carrying most of their plunder, which felt wrong, but they agreed that he needed to have one hand dedicated to their gun. He led the way, with the gun in front of him. Once they got upstairs she started ferrying the supplies upstairs while he went alone to check out one of the bedrooms. He had willingly come down from the attic alone, but now that she wasn’t behind him, he missed Becky’s presence. Before entering the room he knocked quietly on the door and listened for any movement. There was not a sound, so he slowly entered the room, keeping the gun raised.
He almost dropped his weapon when he saw the family huddled in the corner of the room. They were more afraid than he was, so didn’t seem to notice. They looked at each other awkwardly from opposite corners. The father was in front of them, and was clutching on to a table lamp, which looked like a pretty effective club. Jose knew that the gun gave him a clear advantage in the situation, but didn’t know what to say. He just felt that he had been caught red handed robbing someone, and felt like the police should be appearing behind him at any second.
Eventually the father broke the silence, obviously uncomfortable having a gun pointed at him. He was ready to offer up any of his possessions on the condition that his family wasn’t hurt. Jose had no intention of hurting anyone, so confessed that they had already taken some food. He told them that all he needed was something to use as bandages for an injured friend. The fear that had started to dissipate returned to the eyes of both parents. The mother said, “If he’s been bitten it’s best that you turn that gun on him. There’s no saving him now. Just don’t leave him alive near my children.”
“He hasn’t been bitten. He was caught in the cross fire when the police were taking out some of the infected.” She didn’t relax at Jose’s explanation, but did move to a wardrobe, which she opened and removed some sheets that she threw in his direction.
“These will do for your bandages. Now please leave us alone.”
He felt bad leaving them, looking so unprepared to defend themselves, but didn’t know what to say. There was no way they would agree to come with him, and no way Jed would allow it. They were sitting ducks for whatever decided to attack them. He hoped that they would be able to stay hidden, but at some point they would have to find food and water if this crisis was not brought under control. They were a family who thrived in the normal civilized world that they inhabited. Jose doubted their ability to adapt to the carnage that seemed to have engulfed London.
With his sheets he went back up into the loft. He didn’t mention the family that he had stolen them from. His appearance was barely noticed. Everyone was eating, drinking and whispering to each other. No one acknowledged that he had provided this banquet. He didn’t mind. His thoughts were on the sweeping changes that had happened to his world over the last couple of days. The societal niceties could be disregarded.
Newcastle
Ruth and her housemates were all gathered together in the kitchen. The power had just failed, killing the looped TV programming that they’d been watching all day. It was still light enough to see each other, but with the curtains closed it was pretty dim. They didn’t have any candles, and would have hesitated to light them if they did, but all of their phones were active and providing light. They all wanted to contact their families, but none were succeeding.
After a few minutes of sitting in silence, Lucy made a suggestion, “With the power out, our phones aren’t going to last long. We need to turn them off as much as possible. If we text a time to our families for when to contact us we can save the batteries until the networks are back up. They all did as was suggested. A few minutes of silence followed.
“So what do we do now?” Ruth interrupted the silence, but it immediately returned. She tried again. “How much food have we got in the house? I don’t know about the rest of you, but my cupboards are pretty bare.” She knew that they all generally brought what they needed to eat day to day, but hoped there would at least be a stockpile of rice or pasta lurking somewhere.
Simon walked to his cupboard and looked inside, “I’ve got a potato that’s taken root, a can of tuna that my parents left, and two packs of super noodles.”
“I’ve got quite a bit of pasta, but I don’t know how we can cook it now. And I’ve got some salad in the fridge that won’t last long when it starts getting warm.” Lucy added.
“I’ve got quite a few cans of stuff that my parents left. Mostly fruit and vegetables because they thought I’d get scurvy or something. Should stop us all starving for a couple of days at least.” Paul’s collection was the height of their inventory. Natalie had nothing worth eating except the leftovers of their last take away.
“So between us it looks like we’ve got food for four or five days if we can find a way to cook dry pasta. After that we’d better hope that this has all blown over.” Ruth summarized.
“That didn’t look too promising on the news this morning, but I guess the military will step in and deal with this now.” Simon offered.
“I don’t think we should rely on that. If this infection got loose in the army th
ey’d be in chaos, same as the rest of the country. It would only take a few people going back to service having been bitten and not realizing the danger. They’re all sleeping in shared dorms. Hundreds of them could be infected in no time.” Lucy countered.
“So you think we’re on our own?”
“I really hope not, but I think it would be best to make plans assuming that we are. Rescue could be a long way off.”
“OK. We have food for a few days, then we’re going to have to find more from somewhere. Is the water still running, and if not, how soon will we run out of that?” Simon asked.
They all looked at him thinking for a minute before Ruth got up and tried one of the taps. The pressure was low, but there was still water flowing.
“We’ve got something,” Ruth announced, “Just in case, we should fill everything we have with water. Its sods law that there will be a drought if the taps run dry.”
For the next hour it gave them all something to concentrate on that wasn’t the unknown fate of their families. All suitable containers were located, and held under the slowly dripping taps around the house. As the flow of water dried up they regathered around the kitchen table. All around them were containers of water, but they had no idea what it was worth in survival days. It looked like far more than the food, but the fat reserves in their bodies could hold out far longer than the fluid equivalents. If the crisis didn’t blow over quickly they would be reduced to foraging out in the streets whatever dangers roamed them.
“So, what do we do next?” Lucy asked. There was a full minute of silence.
“”Has anyone taken a look outside in the last couple of hours?” Paul asked. “Are the streets as dangerous as we’re all assuming? With the curtains closed we haven’t seen anything all day. Maybe it’s not so bad around here. We’ve not heard anything from outside.”
“It’s true. If we take a peek out of the curtains upstairs it can’t be too much of a risk.” Simon agreed.
He led the way upstairs, followed by the other four. Without thinking about it they all moved quietly. They did not consider that if their normal movement was audible outside, then their previous conversation would have been as well. Natalie’s bedroom was the best vantage point for the street out front so Simon took them straight there. The room was a mess, with clothes strewn everywhere, dirty cups and plates arrayed on every flat surface, and several stacks of take away boxes dotted around the floor. It was bad enough for Natalie to temporarily be distracted from the fear of what was outside, but none of the others noticed.
Simon walked straight to the window, treading on discarded clothes as he passed, the others following in his wake. Slowly shifting the corner of the curtain he took a look at the street outside.
“What do you see?” Ruth asked.
“Not a lot,” he replied. “There are a couple of people wandering around out there who look a bit lost, but otherwise it’s pretty quiet.”
“Are the people normal, or do they look like they’re infected by whatever it is that’s making people crazy?”
“It’s hard to tell. Usually I’d just assume that they were on something, but now I’d rather not go out for a chat with them. Either way, the street’s far quieter than it should be. A couple of the houses across the street look like they’ve been ransacked.”
“Let me see.” Lucy shouldered her way to the window, and split the curtains in the middle. It was only a small movement, but the timing was enough to catch the eye of one of the two people Simon had seen outside. He turned to face directly toward their house. While he did not seem to focus exactly on the window they were all stood at, he started to lurch directly towards their house. Only Simon and Lucy could see this.
“Idiot.” He muttered. From what they saw outside, it appeared that this utterance was loud enough to be heard, as the second person turned and followed the first towards their house. A third appeared on the scene.
“What’s going on?” Ruth whispered
“They’re on to us. Three of them are coming towards our house.” Simon replied.
“Three? I thought there was only two out there?”
“Now there’s three, and they all seem to know that we’re in here.”
“Get away from the window. Everyone stay silent.” They obeyed, and a spell of absolute quiet stretched out over several seconds before a banging at their front door startled all of them. They maintained their silence as a second and third crash was heard against the door. Evidently it was holding.
“What do we do now?” Paul mouthed. A fourth and fifth crash followed. Ruth responded with a finger to her lips, and they all stood barely breathing. It lasted for another fifteen minutes, but the door held. Something else caught the attention of the trio at their door and they moved away. Simon risked another cautious peek out of the window. The group had expanded to five, now trying to get into a house diagonally opposite to them. This time they had located the large downstairs window, which cracked after a couple of heavy blows, and shattered after a couple more. They clambered through into the house, oblivious to the cuts they were sustaining, and the blood flowing down the windowsill.
“Any idea who lives there?”
“It’s another student house. Bunch of lads in there.”
“Should we try and help them?”
“How? It would be suicide to go out there. We don’t even know if they’re in there.”
“Something caught the attention of those things outside. Someone must be inside.”
“Well they better have some strong doors inside, otherwise they’ve got no chance.”
By then all five of them had made a gap in the curtains to look through. They could see no movement, and no sounds reached them. It was another twenty minutes before the first of the five emerged, crawling back through the window. It was followed by three others, each choosing its own path and wandering away from the scene. The fifth did not re-appear, but an hour later four others climbed through the window and onto the street. By then, Ruth and her house mates were not at the window to see it. They were examining the strength of their own perimeter.
The front door had passed its first test, but the strain that it had been put under was clear to see. It wouldn’t have lasted much longer if the attack had continued. They could see splintering around the lock, and the hinges. Like the house they had just been watching, they also had a large window in the lounge. With the curtains closed it had been ignored first time around, but that didn’t seem like it could be relied upon next time. The double glazing didn’t look like it would be sufficient to withstand a sustained attack. It was probably the same sort of glass that they had just seen shatter after a few heavy blows. They went back to the kitchen to discuss the situation.
“Do we have any way of strengthening the doors and windows?” A complete silence followed.
“We could nail the slats from the beds across them,” was eventually offered.
“Does anyone have a hammer, and nails?” Again, silence. “It would make too much noise anyway. We could pile some furniture in front of the door and window.”
“It won’t hold for long, but it’s better than nothing. I think our only real chance is making sure we’re not noticed.”
Very quietly they set to work. The fridge freezer, hampered in its usual purpose by the lack of electricity, was moved to block the front door. The sofa was moved under the window, and the two armchairs were piled on top of it. A couple of wardrobes were placed behind this construction to hold it in place. Each of the five doubted the effectiveness of this activity, but they kept quiet about it, glad to have something to do other than sit and worry.
With their task completed as well as they could they sat down in the kitchen for a meal from their scant supplies. They focused on the stuff in the fridge and freezer that would not last long with the lack of electricity. It was an odd assortment, not particularly satisfying, but better than nothing. They knew that they would have to forego a lot of luxuries until things got back to normal.<
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Ruth broke the silence, “This food isn’t going to last long. We’re going to have to go out and
get more soon. We should probably think about how we do it now rather than waiting until things get desperate.”
“Do you think there are still people in the houses around us? If not it would be safer to start there than try to get across to the co-op,” Lucy offered.
“If we still have neighbours they must be keeping quiet like us. We know that a couple of houses across the road are now empty, but other than that there’s no way of knowing.”
“We should keep an eye on the street and see if we can learn anything. Take it in turns to watch out of Nat’s window.”
“Do you really think that the rest of the people on our street could be gone? It’s not like we’ve heard a lot of fighting going on.”
“From the news, I think a lot of people were getting bitten, then going home and putting a plaster on it, especially early on. The infection would have come on later, and they’d attack anyone else they lived with. There was probably not much fighting, just a little chew on anyone who tried to play nurse.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It’s what would have happened if any one of us had been bitten when we were in the bar at the start of all this. We’d have all come home and tried to look after whoever was injured. We’d all be out there trying to bite others by now. That’s why it got so dangerous so quickly out there.”
The Farm Page 10
