“I’m sorry. You’re right. This car will do until we find something better. Let’s get out of here.”
While the conversation was carrying on Paul and Lucy had been busy loading all of their belongings into the boot, and now crowded themselves into the back seat. Oblivious to the debate, Paul said, “Ok, were loaded up, let’s move.”
“Let’s go.” Ruth agreed.
Natalie, on the wrong side of the car to get into the passenger’s seat looked relieved at the decision, and moved across the front of the car to get to the empty seat beside Ruth. As she moved a gunshot rang out in the silence. A spray of blood spread across the windshield, and Natalie’s body collapsed against the bonnet. She didn’t move, and it was immediately clear that she never would again.
Ruth reacted, throwing the car into reverse. The engine screamed as it was over-revved, but it lacked the power to go into much of a wheel spin. The rubber caught, and they lurched backwards. Another bullet slammed into the pavement just in front of them.
It was the last shot they heard. Ruth continued to reverse as fast as she dared until convinced that they were out of range. As she began to feel safe she slowed the car and turned it around. None of them said anything. They drove on for nearly an hour, with none of them breaking the silence. Another village came into view.
“What do we do?” Ruth asked. Her voice was barely loud enough to be heard.
“Is there a road that will take us around it?”
“Doesn’t look like it. We won’t get far without more petrol either.”
“Go slowly. If it looks like there’s any danger we don’t go anywhere near the place.”
There was no need for either of the others to affirm the point. Ruth did as suggested and crept slowly towards the village. In the distance they could see none of the signs of conflict they had witnessed at the previous place.
“Do you think we should park up and wait for the dark so we can’t be seen so easily?” Lucy asked.
“I think it would put us at more of a disadvantage. We don’t know the area, and living or dead, anyone waiting for us probably does.”
As they slowly approached the village there was no sign of the crisis that had hit the rest of the country. There was only about a dozen houses lined up on either side of the road, built of old stone with slate roofs. It was hard to tell if they were genuinely old buildings, or modern reproductions. The powerlines, satellite dishes and cars squeezed in along the road clashed with antiquity of the buildings. Birds moved about in the surrounding trees, and in the tiny gardens to the front of the houses. They could see no other movement.
They drove slowly through the tiny village, peering out of the car windows for any sign of danger. On the first pass they didn’t stop, planning to turn back if it looked safe. It appeared deserted. Safe. But they had convinced themselves that the last village was safe.
They were past the village, still craning their necks back to see if they were being watched. Ruth glanced back at the road in front of her moments before she ran into the woman standing waving frantically at them from the roadside. They weren’t quite on a collision course, the woman backing herself slowly into the hedgerow behind her, but Ruth, without time to judge, flung the car to the left, clipping the dry stone wall on the other side of the road, before bringing the car to a screeching halt. All three of them looked back at the woman, who was already approaching them, at pains to keep her hands in plain sight and look unthreatening. She wore a long white coat, which in a previous life could have belonged in a science lab, but was now dirty and torn. Dishevelled hair and a desperate expression gave every impression of a mad scientist from a cartoon.
“It might be a trap. Should I drive away?” Ruth asked.
“She doesn’t look dangerous.” Simon answered. “She looks like she’s in a worse state than we are.”
“That doesn’t mean there’s no one hiding behind the bushes with a gun.”
They didn’t have any more time to discuss their response to the situation. The woman had reached the car and bent down to look in the drivers’ window. Ruth lowered the window to allow conversation.
“Hi.” The woman said.
“Hi.” Ruth replied. There was silence. Neither knew what to say in the situation.
“I’m Hannah,” the woman eventually added. She was younger than Ruth had first assumed. Probably late twenties. “It’s good to see someone else still alive.”
“Our friend got shot in the last village we stopped in, so I’ve got mixed feelings about the living.” Ruth answered.
“I’m sorry.” Hannah said. “The last guy I met was pretty uncharitable, but at least sent me on my way with a map… I’m trying to get to the coast. Any chance I could travel with you?”
“Why should we take you with us? My sense of charity died with Natalie. What have you got to offer?” Ruth knew that they would be taking the woman with them whatever she answered, but wanted to be in control of the situation. Didn’t want to give up any advantage freely.
“What do you need? There should be more safety in numbers if nothing else… Not much safety I guess. Seeing how these things were able to overrun the military and police…” She looked shell shocked, bereft of ideas.
“We need fuel. Nothing else.” Ruth answered.
“And a safe place to spend the night.” Lucy added.
“…I have a car.” Hannah answered. “It won’t start, but I’m pretty sure the tank is full.” She pulled an OS map out of a pocket in her coat, and pointed at a spot on it, “I was heading here. I don’t know if it’s safe but it’s isolated and it should be enclosed. It doesn’t look secure enough for the serious preppers to be using it, but it’s too hidden for most people to find it. I hope.”
“Where’s the car?” Ruth asked. “We’ll need a way to syphon off the petrol.”
“If you’ve got some jump leads there’s no need. It’s a big Range Rover. It should be safer than this,” she said referring to the car they were sat in.
“How far?” Ruth asked.
“I’ve only been walking a couple of minutes since I found it.”
“Get in.” Ruth said, gesturing to the empty passenger seat. “If this car checks out you can come with us as far as my parent’s farm in Norfolk. The coast isn’t much further from there.”
Hannah thanked her as she climbed into the car. “There’s a left turn just along this road. It’s a one track road, and the car is abandoned in a passing place about a hundred meters along. I think the owner must have been infected, but got out of the car before he died.”
It was hard not to trust her. She seemed so lacking in guile. She kept glancing around like a scared rabbit, always expecting some predator to leap out and try to kill her. It was only on seeing her own reflection in the rear view mirror that Ruth realized that she had the same look, and so did her friends. Maybe it wasn’t as keen in them, but they hadn’t been travelling alone across open ground. This disease had knocked them off their safe perch at the top of the food chain. They were prey now, but to their own kind.
The Range Rover was soon in sight as promised. They sent Hannah ahead to verify its safety. By the time the rest of them got out of their car and walked up to it she had already opened the boot and found a set of jump leads. She turned to the group, “Do any of you know how to use these? Sorry, I’m not much good with cars.”
“Simon, pull our car up next to this one. If it works I should be able to get it started.” Ruth answered.
It only took a few minutes for the Range Rover to kick into life. It was louder than they would have liked, but no engine sounded quiet in the silence of the country side. This at least had a solid feel to it. It gave them the option to go off road if they needed to, or to run the odd person down if they were already dead and posing a threat. They moved their possessions across to the new car, glad of this rare piece of luck.
“So how do we get to this site you were heading for?” Lucy asked Hannah.
“I’m not g
reat at reading maps. I only had the one quick lesson, but I think I know where we are and how to get there.” Simon was sat next to her. She showed him where she thought they were, and how to get to where she had suggested they go, more to reassure herself than explain anything. He nodded as if he understood how to read the map.
“If we follow this road there should be a gate on the right, which will take us onto a public bridleway. We should be able to drive up it. Once we get to the top of the slope we turn right and it should be straight for a couple of kilometres to reach the ruins.”
Ruth followed directions, but she could see Hannah flicking back and forth between the map and out of the windows in a way that suggested she had no real confidence of how to read the map and her directions were more guess work that knowledge. A compass appeared in her hand a couple of times, but was quickly returned to a pocket. It may have been the rough road making it impossible to read, but Hannah never asked Ruth to stop so that she could get a proper bearing. On the plus side she could see no recent tracks on the same route that they were following, which added hope to the idea that they would be isolated and alone where they were headed.
Despite Ruth’s misgivings, Hannah’s directions were accurate. Hannah looked more relieved than vindicated. In the car they took a couple of laps around the old farmstead, now little more than rubble. Three external walls still stood, with a couple of internal dividing walls a few feet high. The roof was entirely gone, and the fourth wall just a pile of rocks rising a couple of feet off the ground. Sheep grazed on the outskirts of the building as they approached, but they scattered at the sight of the vehicle. If they had been tame, they were already turning to wilder ways. Domestication would soon be bred out of them, and with no major predators in the country they would thrive. Foxes would threaten the very young, and would probably grow bigger over time to fill the niche that wolves used to inhabit, but that was a distant threat.
The area looked clear. Ruth pulled the car into the building to keep it out of sight as much as possible. It was still light, but the sun was low on the horizon. They could probably have got another hours driving in before they had to turn the lights on, but they had no way of knowing if they would wind up in a safe place, and the day’s events had left their nerves shattered.
Lucy handed out food from the supplies they had with them. None of them felt hungry, but they all ate as an acknowledgement of its necessity. For twenty minutes there was silence as they all slowly ate cold food. Unlike the three of them who had driven down from Newcastle, Hannah seemed ravenous. Between furtive glances around their makeshift campsite for any signs of danger, she swallowed any food that was passed her way. As her appetite finally started to show signs of abating Rush broke the silence asking, “So how did you wind up out here on your own?”
There was a long pause before she answered. Almost long enough for Ruth to change the subject, before eventually Hannah started speaking. When she did, she erupted into a flow of words that invited no interruption. A lot of what she said didn’t make complete sense to her audience, but there was no way of stopping her to ask for any clarification. The monologue started with, “I am, or was, a medical researcher, working in a lab I don’t know how far from here. As far as I know everyone I worked with is dead now, but all of this started at our lab. We were working on cures for some of the worst diseases affecting mankind, but the tools we were using were dangerous. We kept them under control until we were attacked by terrorists. They blew up part of our lab, and this was created in the firestorm.”
From there her story turned technical, describing biological processes far too advanced for the rest of them to understand. They got that some of the dangerous organisms were brought into contact with each other and created the virus that was killing and re-animating people, and the failure to find a cure. Far more information was offered, but not understood. Ruth assumed that Hannah was not used to mixing outside of specialized academic groups. She assumed the lab must be isolated, and hoped that it was far from where they were camping. Abruptly the monologue slowed and moved away from the rapid flow of technical detail.
“There was a guy in there with me. Another researcher. We were in the same lab when the explosions happened. All around us was smoke and blood and broken glass. I was ready to panic, but he was calm. His legs were wrecked by shards of glass, but he was completely in control. Treated his own injuries while he talked me through how to help the other people in the lab who were hurt until help arrived.
When the facility was over ran by the infected we tried to escape together. When they were chasing us he couldn’t move fast enough because of what happened to his legs. He saved me, but I couldn’t save him. They got him, and there was nothing I could do.
I had to walk away. They were on the other side of a strong fence. They would have got through it if I’d stayed, but it slowed them down for long enough for me to get away, even when I wasn’t thinking straight. When all I knew was that I had to stay alive for Phil. To make sure he hadn’t died for nothing.
I walked through the night and most of the next day. I was just trying to keep in a straight line, with no idea of where I was going. We had talked about going to the coast and finding a boat to get away from all of this. So that’s what I’m trying to do now.
During the day I came across a house. I needed food and water. Somewhere to rest safely and get my wits together. When I tried to get in it turned out that there was someone alive inside. He let me in, not so much because he cared, more that he was worried that I would draw more attention to his location. He’d spent years preparing for whatever kind of apocalypse hit him. The house was stocked with food, medicine, weapons and books to last for years. He’ll still be there long after everyone else is dead.
We talked for a while until he determined that I had nothing to offer him. No information, no resources. No map to a safe zone. Once he had established that I was deadwood, he wasn’t willing to keep me. I wasn’t part of his survival plan. I told him the plan that I had made with Phil. He gave me maps and explained how to read them, gave me some food and water and sanitization pills and sent me on my way. That was about three days ago. I’ve been heading East ever since, trying to get to the coast and avoid any major towns. Been a few close calls with the dead, but you’re the first living people I’ve seen since I left him.”
There was silence after that. It was clear that Hannah was struggling to hold herself together, but was largely succeeding. Ruth broke the silence and shared their story of how they ended up driving through a small village in the middle of nowhere, when everyone else was clearly either dead or in hiding. She skipped over all of the detail, just giving the basic facts, so it didn’t take too long to get through it. With that finished there didn’t seem to be anything left to say. They decided to have two awake keeping watch and two sleeping through the night. It was an uneventful night.
London
The days in the house dragged on without much happening. Jed and the owner of the house weren’t seen much. Once it was established that he was the de-facto leader of the group she latched on to him and would not leave his side. He seemed pretty chuffed with the situation and took full advantage. The two of them spent most of their time in the Master bedroom, and could periodically be heard fucking noisily. Afterwards she would appear in the kitchen to get tea or food to bring back to the bedroom. Whatever trauma she had suffered, Jose assumed that it had broken her and left her a shell of a person, desperately trying to gratify herself to someone stronger. She may have always been like this, but he assumed that leaping into bed with someone else so soon after her husband’s death was not normal behaviour. Not the normal behaviour of anyone he would want in his life at least.
For the rest of the gang it was really crowded in the house. There were three beds and two sofas between them. There were other houses nearby, but no one wanted to separate from the group. To be alone for too long felt like a death sentence. They clustered together for security. For the first cou
ple of days Jose followed the pattern of inactivity that the rest of the group demonstrated, but he soon grew both bored and concerned about their future direction. It was one thing letting the alpha male and female rut endlessly, but the pack still needed to take actions to ensure its survival.
On day three Jose went for a run. It was boredom more than anything, but he felt it made sense to put a bit of effort into his fitness. He didn’t make it far, finding himself out for breath and struggling to move after a few hundred meters. Rather than going straight back he took a walk around the perimeter of their current home. There was very little on the outskirts to keep them safe if anything attacked.
Over the next few days he kept working on his running, making it further each day before his lungs gave up on him. After the first day he was not alone either. On day two Becky joined him in clothes she had borrowed from the homeowner. He had tried to be quiet as he extricated himself from the shared room, but as he reached the door she was right behind him. They didn’t speak, but she followed him as he made his attempt to run. With someone to make an impression on he made it considerably further than the previous day, but still covered little real distance before his lungs gave up on him. Becky seemed relieved when he stopped and started walking back, but had refused to give any ground while he was trying to run. As they walked back towards the house they spoke.
“How long are we going to stay here?” She asked.
“I don’t know. It seems pretty safe for now.”
“I’ve seen you looking around. You know it’s not safe here. Our isolation won’t last.”
“A few barriers wouldn’t hurt, but nothing has attacked us here yet.” She looked angry at his answer.
“For fucks sake, stop acting dumb. Our lives are at stake here. We need to be making some plans, and we shouldn’t be waiting for Jed to finish fucking that slut and panic when the next crisis hits.”
The Farm Page 21
