Nuclear Midnight

by Cole, Robert

  ‘I just want to ask you,’ he said. ‘Did you see a group of workers marching here on your way in?’

  ‘No, I can't say I did,’ Alex replied, trying to sound casual.

  ‘That's funny. They were due back over an hour ago. The sergeant who's in charge of them is a stickler for time. Something bad must have happened.’

  Alex shrugged sympathetically. ‘Hmm, I don't like the sound of it. Well, I'll keep my eyes skinned. If I see any sign of them, I'll let you know.’

  The guard seemed satisfied with Alex's offer. ‘Okay,’ he said, slapping the roof. ‘I won't keep…’ He stopped in mid-sentence and leaned through Alex's open window into the back. Alex knew then that the game was up. With his right hand he gripped the guard around the neck, while he threw the Land Rover in to gear with his left. The wheels spun, then gripped the road, making the vehicle lunge forward. The guard struggled violently, forcing Alex’s head over the back of the seat. Roy suddenly appeared and Alex heard his fist crash into the guard's face. The force of it drove him out of the window like a rag doll. The gate sprang back on impact as Alex jammed his foot down on the accelerator.

  Shouts of alarm and curses sounded through the darkness as the huge searchlights were swung round a hundred and eighty degrees and brought to bear. But a full thirty seconds had elapsed before the guards could open fire on the receding vehicle. Although some shots came close, the Land Rover was already a distant shape, well out of effective range, tearing along the road.

  CHAPTER 5

  Alex brought the Land Rover to a halt by the side of the road. Beyond, the land fell away steeply into the Bristol Channel. He switched off the engine and headlights and turned on the cabin light. Earlier, he had found a number of maps in the glove compartment, one of them showing the county in some detail. He unfolded this on his lap and scratched his cheek thoughtfully. By his estimation, he had driven about thirty kilometres north-west of the camp. Wales was twenty kilometres further north, across freezing, ice laden waters.

  Since escaping from the camp events had taken a distinct turn for the worse. Even with chains, the Land Rover had proved very difficult to manoeuvre above forty kilometres an hour. Twice they had rammed the snow banks piled along the sides of the road, and although there had been no damage, it spelt out just how impossible it would be to leave the cleared tracks and strike across the country by themselves. And by following the roads, they were inevitably going to come across a military checkpoint at some stage. At night they had proceeded without incident, unchallenged by the army vehicles they had passed. But in daylight, when the military reasserted their dominance over the land, they would be required to identify themselves. With only one rifle between them, they were hardly equipped to shoot their way out. So it became clear that, comfortable and reassuring as the Land Rover was, they could not stick with it for very much longer. It would be madness to do, yet difficult to give it up.

  ‘Where are we?’ Tina was looking across at him from the passenger seat. Those were the first words she had spoken to him since they had left the camp.

  Alex sensed that she wanted to repair the bridges between them, but had not found a way to do it. A problem he had also been struggling with. He pointed to the map. ‘Somewhere near Minehead would be my guess.’

  Cliff craned over from the back seat to see. ‘How far west do you intend going?’ he asked.

  Alex had been waiting for that question ever since the escape. He had been turning over the options in his mind and more and more the decision to head north seemed the only wise one. ‘I want to try and cross over into Wales,’ he said bluntly.

  Cliff took the news without any noticeable emotion. ‘I guessed as much,’ he said mildly.

  ‘It's the natural place for people to go,’ Alex continued, warming to his theme. ‘Very little industry, population thinly spread, no obvious military targets.’

  ‘The same could be said for Devon and Cornwall, of course,’ Cliff replied. ‘A community could be forming there right now.’

  ‘But everyone will be going there,’ Alex argued. ‘It's so accessible, that's half the problem. And if the refugees have taken the epidemic with them, as they're likely to have done, that doesn't make it a very inviting prospect.’

  ‘I think Alex is right,’ Tina weighed in enthusiastically. ‘There are bound to be thousands of people heading west and probably very little food for them when they get there. I can't help feeling that Devon and Cornwall wouldn't be able to cope with the numbers.’

  Roy, who had been studying a map of Wales in his quiet, methodical way, broke in at this point. ‘Blaenau Ffestiniog,’ he said, indicating the place to Alex and stumbling over the strange Welsh words. ‘I know the government has a huge underground storage facility there somewhere.’

  ‘Storage facility?’ Alex queried. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I read somewhere…’ Roy sat back in his seat, his large broad features creased in thought. ‘Yes, I'm sure.’ He leaned forward again and drew an imaginary circle around the area of the town with his finger. ‘There's a large disused slate mine, it's government property. They took it over for storage space in case of war.’

  ‘What do they store?’ Alex asked.

  Roy shrugged. ‘In the last war it was British art treasures, but I assume it could be almost anything. Apparently the mine is huge.’

  ‘If the government foresaw what was coming,’ Tina picked up the thread of the argument, ‘they'd have had time to fill it with stores and supplies. There could be tonnes of food there, just waiting to be discovered.’

  ‘It won't have been a very well-kept secret if they did,’ Alex said sourly. ‘I'm sure the local population would know about it and the government would be bound to post a guard.’

  ‘But they might be rationing it out to the survivors,’ Tina persisted.

  ‘Hmm.’ Alex nodded his head slowly. ‘It's certainly a possibility. Anyway, I think there's more hope for us in Wales than further west.’

  ‘So how do we get across?’ Cliff asked.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Alex. ‘Maybe we could find a small boat. Or, if it comes to that, I suppose we could build a raft.’

  Cliff sat back. ‘Do you reckon?’ he said. ‘Oh, don't misunderstand me, guv,’ he went on. ‘It's fine if it can be done, but those are treacherous waters, and with the weather the way it is, well...’

  Alex took the point. Although they had not seen the Channel by daylight, they had been driving along its shores and the sheets of floating ice had shown up in the beams of their headlights. In some places, the ice sheet had appeared complete, solid and glistening as far as they could see.

  ‘But what chance do we have on land?’ Alex turned back to Cliff, his need to reach Wales suddenly becoming paramount. ‘We can't drive on roads which have not first been cleared by the military and by daybreak it will become obvious that we are not an official patrol. They may have even radioed our description ahead, so they'll be looking out for us, which makes the Land Rover a liability. And without it, on foot…we have to go somewhere we're not known, and where no one else is willing to go.’

  The argument for abandoning the Land Rover had obviously not occurred to anyone else, and it met with a number of heated objections, but the logic behind it remained sound. If they wanted to avoid being a sitting target, they had to find some other way. Crossing the Channel, despite its hazards, seemed to offer a real possibility of deliverance. This was the position finally reached; it was agreed they would leave the vehicle in the morning and travel along the coast until they found a crossing point. If necessary, they would venture into the coastal villages to find a suitable craft.

  The discussion ended on a dejected note, exhaustion and depression finally silencing the company. The remainder of the night they spent huddled up against each other for warmth. Without any invitation, Tina curled up in Alex's arms and immediately dozed off. The simplicity of her actions amazed Alex. With one act she had invalidated the barriers that had built up
between them. How could he continue to rage at someone who wrapped her arms around him in such a fashion? She nuzzled up closer to his chest and he found himself watching the gentle lines of her face as she slept. They had taken on a curiously serene appearance, as though her mind was completely at ease. This ability of hers to accept and to go with the flow was a tremendous gift, he thought. She appeared to suffer none of the inner turmoil he always endured. For him, the events of the past twenty four hours were like splinters of horror that jagged at him through the darkness. They kept tumbling out at him the white, terrified faces of the soldiers as they tried to fight off the work party; Dougan with his bloody knife and mad eyes, the corpse of the sergeant, punctured and bleeding. Even on the edge of sleep, another fearful image would leap out at him and jerk him back to consciousness, so that he dozed only in snatches.

  He awoke properly as the shadows drained from the soupy smog, heralding another day. Tina still lay, as she had done for hours, half on his lap with her arms around his waist. He could hear Cliff and Roy conferring quietly, rummaging through the supplies for something suitable for breakfast. He gently eased Tina to one side and climbed outside. More snow had fallen during the night, giving the Land Rover a fresh dusting of powder. Inside again, he exchanged a few words of greeting, but nobody felt much like talking. Tina awoke a few minutes later and they dutifully forced down a breakfast of salted meat and soya beans. Then the remaining food and water was divided amongst the party in makeshift blanket bags, which they slung over their shoulders before they set off.

  A chilling wind had begun to blow from the east. The smog rolled up and fled before it, leaving behind a vista of a shallow, dipping plain, rising to blunted peaks in the distance. Soon the wind brought more snowflakes in its wake, which turned to pellets that stung the exposed skin, forcing the party to avert their faces.

  They began their journey in a westerly direction, hugging the coast, searching each bay and inlet for boats as they went. By mid-morning they had covered nearly five kilometres. By now they were strung out with Alex leading, then Tina, and Roy and Cliff bringing up the rear. All except Alex had their heads tucked into their overcoats for protection against the cold, so it was Alex who first spotted the lines of people. They stood out as black dots, moving against the snow, all in formation like ants on the march. The appearance of order, at a distance, made him think it must be the military abandoning the camps en masse and moving further westward. But a closer view soon revealed that, unwittingly, they had stumbled on one of the main arterial routes westward. These unhappy pilgrims were what were left of the survivors from south eastern England. Not the indirect victims of the bombs, like Alex and the others, but people who had seen and experienced a nuclear explosion at close range. These were the walking dead, hairless, pitiful creatures, covered in heat blisters and lesions. Many nursed blackened limbs bent and twisted into impossible positions. Alex felt his own flesh creep as he watched them pass. By rights most of them should have died weeks ago. Only the numbing effect of the extreme cold had kept the wounds from festering, and the pain from killing them.

  They stopped at the edge of the road and watched. Their presence was ignored. No one paused to ask who they were, or even noticed them, it seemed. The procession of ragged forms just continued unbroken, appearing through the driving snow a hundred metres to the east, and fading back into it a hundred metres to the west.

  Alex grabbed the shoulder of a short, hunched figure who came trudging past. A finely built man, still dressed in the remains of a dark business suit, looked up. His young face was skeletal and the eyes unfocused and dull, as though the passing world had ceased to register on his mind.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Alex asked.

  The man's blank expression didn't alter.

  Alex clung on to him. ‘Did the military tell you there was food and shelter further westward?’

  The man blinked, then moved his head vigorously, as though trying to shake out an answer. ‘No,’ he frowned. ‘Yes, I mean, someone said there was food and shelter in Cornwall.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘I don't know, I don't know.’ The voice faded into a mumble as Alex released him. The man re-joined the flow and shuffled on as if the conversation had never taken place.

  Cliff and Roy were getting a slightly better response a few paces away. They had stopped a young couple whose injuries were not so serious. They had come from a small village north of Southampton and had spent the past two weeks slowly working westward. As one food station had become too crowded they had moved onto the next, hoping eventually to reach a place where the government had complete control and the food and shelter were plentiful. But they had no positive reason for believing that conditions would improve further west; it was just that it could not be as bad as what they had left behind. Several other people said more or less the same thing. No one really knew where they were going, and no one really cared.

  After they had watched them for a while, Tina put one hand in Alex's pocket. ‘We may as well follow them,’ she said gloomily.

  That was the last thing Alex wanted to do, but, the road having been cleared of snow, it was likely to be the quickest route westward. He finally nodded and they reluctantly joined the ranks of the survivors.

  By the afternoon the snow had eased. The land reappeared, its summer beauty irrevocably broken. Every house they passed had its doors kicked in, the windows smashed and its curtains missing; every last item of warmth was gone. Not a single tree had escaped damage, much of it from the burden of the snow snapping the boughs under its weight. Their upper branches, which still clawed the sky, whistled in the wind like a multitude of tuning forks. This sad music, which rose and fell as the wind strengthened or died, seemed somehow appropriate to Alex, like a mournful serenade of the doomed. It would be the last sound that many of the walkers would hear as their strength failed them and they fell over for the last time.

  But Alex did see one hopeful sign in all this destruction. The snow was losing its smoky grey colouring. In places, where the crust had fallen, the different layers stood out like strata, almost black at the bottom, like slate, then merging into a dirty white. Presently the road broadened and dipped through a forest of broken saplings and spiky heath; then, after passing through an open meadow, it brought them to the outskirts of a town. The town was on the water's edge and from the number of wharves and jetties Alex imagined it was a fishing or trading port of some kind. However, he could see no sign of any boats. The main street was lit with rows of roughly slung lights. The road snaked down into this area and its human freight formed ragged black lines, which trailed off into the town centre. The heavily cloaked figures of the military could be discerned, moving alongside them, like dogs patrolling a flock of sheep.

  They reached the town half an hour later and joined the end of one of the long queues. Alex hadn't spoken a word since they had first sighted the military, for a plan was forming in his head. He still had on his military uniform and rifle, concealed under a blanket so as not to tempt the anger of the crowd. Now, it seemed to him, was the time to be a soldier again. All he needed was the nerve to sustain the part.

  After rehearsing his plan several times in his head, he flung off his blanket and turned to Tina. ‘I'm going to find out what this is all about,’ he said. ‘I'll be back as soon as possible.’

  Tina would have objected, but he was gone before she had a chance to do so.

  Alex walked briskly and purposefully towards the centre of town. He was wound up tighter than a spring, firing possible questions at himself and quickly thinking up the answers. He knew that to hesitate, or to sound uncertain in any way, would spell disaster. Many inconsistencies could be concealed by a forcible, authoritarian tone.

  As he advanced, he noticed how the condition of the survivors seemed to deteriorate steadily. A great many had died while queuing for food. The bodies of these had been dragged aside and gathered into neatly stacked piles. Burial details could be seen here and t
here, covering these mounds.

  Further on, Alex came across a large detention camp. Its inmates were the human work horses the military used to haul away the dead. When Alex saw them he felt like weeping. They were worse than caged animals because they were quite clearly starving to death. All hope was gone for them. They would work on until they too fell into the snow, to be added to the cartloads of corpses they had just been dragging. He was thinking this when a horrible choking smell came drifting across from the camp, a foul miasma of unwashed bodies and disease, which affected even the queuing survivors with looks of fear and dread. The stench could mean only one thing; the epidemic was here before them, scything down the weakened and the hopeless. Their suffering would soon be at an end.

  But it made Alex quicken his pace, the need for information becoming even more imperative.

  The food distribution point, when he finally reached it, proved to be only a small makeshift canvas shelter. Four fires were burning with cooking pots simmering on each. Large surly looking men stood behind each pot, ladling out half cupful portions of lumpy fluid. Hardly enough to keep a small child alive, let alone an adult, Alex thought bitterly. He turned back to the lines of survivors and approached one of the patrolling soldiers, a sharp eyed, sharp nosed little man.

  ‘Hello,’ Alex called. ‘Am I glad to see you! My vehicle was ambushed some distance back and my C.O. was killed. I've been on foot ever since.’

  The soldier surveyed him suspiciously, and did not reply.

  ‘We were driving down from our headquarters, near Bristol, when we got bogged. The survivors converged on us like vultures, I was the only one who escaped,’ Alex continued.

  ‘GET BACK IN THE QUEUE!’ the soldier, yelled at a woman who had fallen in the snow. ‘YOU!’ he shouted at a tall, still fleshy man standing behind her. ‘HELP HER UP!’

  The man obeyed grudgingly.

  ‘You'd better report to Captain Shaw,’ he said to Alex in a more listless tone. ‘Don't ask me where he is, though. I haven't seen any officers for over two days.’