Sanders left and I could see him poring over a map with the three drivers, plotting a route.
“Where are you lot based, Barker?”
“Operation Motherland HQ is at Salisbury Plain,” he replied.
“Operation Motherland? What’s that?” I asked.
“Top secret,” he replied, tapping the side of his nose. “Look, I was expecting you to get some pretty rough treatment, but the Lieutenant was all pally. You got really lucky, knowing him, otherwise you’d be on the floor, in shackles with a sack over your head.”
“I know. I can’t quite believe it myself.”
“My point is that it isn’t always going to be like this. The C.O. is not a very flexible boss, if you know what I mean. Me and the Lieutenant speaking up for you might not make a lot of difference.”
And with that happy thought, the engine sputtered into life and we rumbled away.
I looked out the back of the truck at my beloved school. I’d worked so hard to build something special, to make it a safe, happy place. It was my home and the people who lived there were my family.
I wondered if I’d ever see it again. Probably not. I shed a tear as it receded into the distance. Not for myself, but for the loss of a dream. Nowadays it seemed like every good, clean thing had to end up covered in blood.
As we slowed to turn the corner at the end of the drive I saw two small figures burst from the bushes by the side of the road and leap quickly over the duckboard of the third and final truck.
I didn’t know whether to curse or smile. It seemed like I still had two psychotic guardian angels looking after me.
IN THE EIGHTEEN months since The Cull had burned itself out I’d not moved outside a twenty mile radius. With one notable exception, who was now God knew where, people just stayed put. The days of travelling long distances for work or pleasure were long gone. This was a parochial world of small, paranoid communities. Apart from some mad American religious broadcasts, which I wouldn’t allow anyone at school to watch, there was no TV, no newspapers to keep people up to date with events taking place outside their immediate circle of family, friends and neighbours. Horizons had narrowed, and life had focused on the local and familiar. So it felt weird to pass a battered metal sign at the side of the road which read ‘You are now leaving Kent’.
It might as well have said ‘Here Be Monsters!’
We moved down quiet country roads, deserted for the most part, until we came to the A272. Barker told me this had been cleared about a month ago, which was why the soldiers had only just shown up at my school. Their sphere of influence was expanding along reclaimed A-roads and motorways. But this road still ran through large unswept areas, which I took to mean places not yet brought under military control. This, it turned out, was not entirely correct.
The A272 had once been a nice wide road, but now there was only a narrow path through the thousands of abandoned vehicles. Londoners had fled the capital as The Cull took hold, hoping to hide away in the country until things calmed down. Soon all the main roads and motorways were gridlocked. Of course many of those fleeing were already infected, and they began dying in their cars. It soon became clear that the traffic was never going to move again, so those still alive just got out of their cars, vans and trucks, and walked away.
The path through the debris, which Barker told me had been cleared by huge diggers salvaged from a quarry, was wide enough that we could get up to a reasonable speed, but with so much raw material available for use as obstacles, the risk of ambush was great.
We travelled this graveyard highway for about an hour until we pulled off the road and into a small market town, empty and forgotten, slowly decaying. The convoy stopped in the middle of the narrow high street, littered with abandoned cars, and Sanders gathered everyone together at the bonnet of the lead truck.
“Change of orders,” he told us. “Since we’ve got more room than expected, the Colonel wants us to recce a site near here and sweep it if possible.”
Barker sighed softly and shook his head, but when I tried to ask him why he just rolled his eyes.
“The site is half a mile south-east of here,” continued Sanders. “I’m going to take Patel here and we’ll scout around. The rest of you stay here and stay alert. If we’re not back by oh-two-hundred hours, I want you to radio for support and then come looking for us.”
“Sir, isn’t this Midhurst?” asked one of the squaddies.
Sanders nodded.
“But we swept here. Remember, the gang war we sorted out? Bossy bloke with red hair running things.”
“I remember,” said Sanders. “But this new site was top secret, apparently. All hush hush. HQ have only just identified it. We went right past it last time.”
The squaddie shook his head. “That’s not my point, Sir. This town’s inhabited and we made it safe. So where is everyone?”
Sanders shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “Moved on somewhere better? It’s not our problem. Just stay close to the trucks and keep an eye out for trouble, all right?”
Sanders and his colleague checked their weapons and left, leaving me with Barker and five soldiers whose idea of staying alert turned out to be lighting up and playing cards. Barker was not invited to join them.
“They don’t trust me,” he explained.
“Well I need to pee, and I trust you not to peek, so that’s something, eh?” I said, and I linked my arm through his and led him towards Woolies in search of privacy.
“Ooh,” said Barker as we approached the ruined store. “I wonder if they still have any Stephen Kings.”
We heard a jeer from behind us.
“Great,” moaned Barker. “Now they think we’re shagging.”
Woolies had been comprehensively looted, and there was crap all over the place. Literally – someone had smeared their own shit on the windows.
“Euw, that’s gross,” I said, looking around for a quiet spot. “I’m going over there.” I pointed to a brick flower bed that housed a large ugly bush. Barker nodded and walked into the shop while I scurried behind the bush.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling especially morbid, I wonder what my last words might be. I picture myself lying in some grand four-poster bed, surrounded by fat, happy grandchildren as I fade away, elegant to the last, imparting pearls of wisdom gleaned from a long, fulfilling life. I bet that Barker, if he ever gave it a second’s thought, never considered “great, now they think we’re shagging,” as particularly likely or desirable last words.
But we don’t get to choose, do we?
As I started to unbuckle my belt I heard a tiny metallic ‘sprang’ and a soft grunt. I assumed Barker had trodden on a toy car or something, and I sighed gratefully as I emptied my bladder.
When I emerged a minute later I went towards the shattered doors of Woolies and peered into the gloom.
“Find anything good?” I shouted.
No reply.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness of the shop interior and it became clear why that was.
The metallic twang had been poor old Barker stepping on a tripwire. The grunt, the only sound he’d managed to make as the six foot long spring-loaded metal spike had leapt free of its housing and swung down from the ceiling, skewering him and lifting him off his feet. And there he remained, dangling in mid-air, a huge sharpened girder sticking out of his back, blood everywhere.
Dammit, I liked him.
I staggered back with an involuntary scream and the next thing I knew someone slammed into my back, shoving me hard up against the store window, pushing my right arm up behind my back, and grazing my stitched cheek on a streak of hard, dried shit.
“You fucking do, cunt?” yelled a squaddie in my ear.
It would have been impossible to reply with my face pressed against the glass, so I didn’t even try to respond.
“Easy, Col,” said one of his mates. “It’s a booby trap.”
Col wasn’t inclined to let me go, though, and he kept me pinned there for another few se
conds, pressed up against me. He let me go by pushing himself away from me with his groin, so I could feel his erection, snorting his disgust as he did so.
The wise thing to do would have been to let it go. But I turned like a flash and slapped him as hard as I could.
He snarled and raised his hand to hit me, but his mate intervened, grabbing his wrist and staring him down.
“Fuck’s sake, Col, get a grip,” he said. My assailant gave a sick laugh, pulled his arm free and walked away backwards, giving me the evil eye.
“Thanks,” I said as I spat on my sleeve and wiped the shit and blood off my face.
“Shut the fuck up,” replied my rescuer, “and get back in the fucking truck before I shoot you myself. And don’t even think of doing a runner.”
Leaving the squaddies to their grim task I stepped away and walked back to the trucks. Before stepping out into the road I instinctively looked left and right for oncoming traffic, then paused, realised what I’d done, and laughed at my own stupidity. Then something registered, and I looked right again.
At the far end of the street stood a figure. I think it was a man but it was hard to be sure because they were dressed in a bright yellow hazmat suit, their glass visor glinting in the sun, hiding their face. The figure just stood there looking at us, seemingly content just to watch.
I looked back at the soldiers. Two of them had taken up positions in cover and were scanning the opposite buildings. I was pleased to notice that Col had chosen the bush to hide behind, which meant he was kneeling in my piss. Ha. The other three were inside the shop attempting to pull Barker down. None of them had seen our visitor. I looked back and now there were two of them, both in the bright yellow suits. And I could see that they both carried shotguns.
“Um, guys,” I said quietly, but they didn’t hear me. Snatches of their conversation floated across to where I stood.
“No, not that arm, dipshit...”
“Jesus, now I’m covered in guts...”
“Oi, careful I just washed this bloody uniform...”
I spoke more clearly. “Guys, we have company.”
The nearest man on watch heard me and called the others. They dropped what they were doing and I heard Barker hit the floor with a thud. Weapons raised, they scattered to positions of cover and vantage, all the while keeping their eyes on our two – no, three, now – visitors.
I turned to see where the soldiers were taking up positions, about to move myself, and over their shoulders I saw four more of the yellow-clad figures standing motionless outside a ruined hardware store at the other end of the road. Before I could shout a warning, one of them raised a megaphone to his visor and a tinny voice echoed up the wrecked street.
“You shall be cleansed,” he said flatly, his voice altered by a distorter that made him sound like a Dalek. “All shall be cleansed.”
“Ah shit, cleaners,” yelled the squaddie nearest to me. “Masks!”
“They’re in the bloody trucks,” yelled someone else.
Then there was a dull pop, I heard something metal hit the tarmac, and then a soft hiss.
There was a second’s silence before I heard Col shout “gas!” and then I ran like hell for the truck where Rowles and Caroline were hiding. A cloud of thick yellow smoke billowed out from the area where the soldiers had taken up positions. I heard screams and then indiscriminate gunfire. A burst of rounds whipped past my head, punching holes in the nearest truck’s canvas covering.
The hazmat guys just remained where they were.
Staying just ahead of the drifting cloud, I reached the truck and looked inside. Empty. They must have slipped away. No time to look any closer, the thick yellow cloud was nearly at me. I ran for the opposite side of the road and straight through the shattered doors of a branch of Lloyd’s Bank. I was so panicked that it was only once I was inside that it occurred to me to look for tripwires. And there one was, about a centimetre from my right toe. Unfortunately I was still moving and my left foot was just about to hit the thin metal strip. I dived forward, clipping the wire as I did so. I hit the damp, mouldy carpet hard and heard the clang of something big and metal above my head. I rolled on to my back and saw enormous metal jaws, cut from what looked like car bonnets. It was a sort of huge, upside down mantrap and it would have taken my head clean off.
“They really don’t like giving overdrafts,” said a boy’s voice to my right.
“You armed?” I asked.
“Natch,” said a girl’s voice to my left.
“Spare?”
“Catch.”
I caught the Browning semi-automatic handgun, chambered a round and sprang to my feet.
“There a back way out of here?”
“Nope,” replied Rowles. “Already checked. How d’you know we were in here?”
“I didn’t.”
“Cool, woman’s intuition,” said Caroline.
“Yeah, right,” Rowles laughed.
“Enough,” I snapped. “Quiet.”
We listened but could hear no noise at all from the street outside. The shooting was over. Through the door I could see the cloud of gas had nearly dispersed and was being blown towards the other side of the road. As the mist cleared a figure emerged. It was Col, with his hands over his face, staggering like a blind man. He walked into a car and his hands came away from his face. taking most of the flesh with them. His cheekbones shone white in the sunlight as he slumped forward across the car and lay still.
“I think I’m gonna puke,” said Caroline.
“Are they all dead?” asked Rowles.
“Looks like it,” I replied. “But Sanders and another one, Patel, they’re off doing a recce. They should have heard the gunfire. They’ll be back any minute.”
“And do they have gasmasks?” asked Caroline. “’Cause if not...”
“Sanders is SAS. He’ll sort it. We just have to sit tight and wait for...”
A yellow suited figure stepped into the doorway holding a gas grenade in his left hand.
“You shall be cleansed,” he said.
And he pulled the pin.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE MEN IN yellow suits had come to the school during The Culling Year, a month after we closed the gates and instituted quarantine.
They pulled up to the gate in their trucks and got out, sealed inside their protective shells, eyes hidden in shadow beneath Perspex visors, mouths covered by bulbous gas masks. There were four of them, and two had cylinders strapped to their backs. Long tubes snaked out of the cylinders to metal spray guns with tiny pilot lights flickering beneath the nozzles. Flamethrowers.
We’d heard reports of their activities. They were roaming the country in teams, burning any houses that contained dead bodies, carting away anyone they found alive. We’d been waiting for them. Bates was still running the school then, so he and I went down to the gate to talk to them. We took guns.
“We hear you’ve got kids cooped up in there. Any of them blood type O-Neg?” asked the spokesman, his voice distorted by the mask.
“A couple, why?” I replied.
“They’ll need to come with us, Miss. Government orders. All O-Neg citizens are to be taken to special hospitals. They’re immune, you see.”
“These children are under our protection,” said Bates. “They’re going nowhere.”
“Look, don’t make us get rough, mate,” said the weary official. “They won’t be harmed, they’re immune, ain’t they? We just need to take some blood samples and then take them to a special camp where all the O-Negs we round up are being looked after. We keep ’em safe, okay? Either of you O-Neg?”
Neither of us replied.
“If you’re not, then you’re going to die unless you got one of these,” he gestured to his suit. “Simple as that. It’s airborne. Animals carry it, birds carry it, it’s in the water, and it’s in the rain. There’s no escape. Quarantine won’t work. And who’ll look after the kids then, eh? Best thing for everyone if you just hand ’em over to us.�
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“And if we don’t?” said Bates, nervously levelling his rifle at the quartet.
“We have the authority to take them by force.”
“There are two of us with guns, and there are more back in the main building,” I said. “There are only four of you and two flamethrowers, which don’t reach as far as bullets. I don’t fancy your chances.”
We stood there, facing each other.
“You really don’t want to pick a fight with us,” said the spokesman eventually. His voice was quiet, the threat clear.
“I think we just did,” I replied.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Miss.”
I gripped my gun harder, waiting for the inevitable fight. But it never came.
“We’ll be back,” said the spokesman. “You can count on it.”
And they got back in the truck and drove away.
We spent that night and the whole of the next day erecting defences at the main gate, breaking the weapons out of the armoury and rallying the few boys still not sick.
But they never returned. They were the final representatives of bureaucracy and government we ever encountered. When they left, they took the last traces of the old order with them. Or so we thought.
We weren’t sure whether they encountered some other group who gunned them down, or they succumbed to the virus.
But as I stood in that bank another possibility occurred to me.
Maybe they just went mad.
THE CLEANER WHO stood in the doorway had seen one unarmed woman run into the building. He wasn’t prepared for three of us, with guns. We all opened fire at once. The blood flowed slickly down his yellow protective suit as he jerked and shook, then he collapsed in a heap. The grenade rolled forward a few inches then stopped on the threshold.
Without thinking I jumped up, ran forward, and kicked it as hard as I could. I was always more of a netball girl, but Johnny Wilkinson would have been proud of me. The grenade soared away across the street and landed in a bin. It popped and a column of evil poison smoke rose up, only for the wind to take it and blow it away from us.
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