‘Thanks for everything, Mike. We really needed the days’ rest and you’ve been more than generous with your food and time. I appreciate it.’
Mike just smiled and wished them both good luck. They shook hands and briefly hugged.
‘And you,’ replied Brady, ‘take care of yourself and good luck. See you after the thaw! Farewell, matey.’
And with that, Brady climbed up the ladder and into the snow. He stood up and surveyed the landscape. It was astonishing. Almost all buildings had now disappeared completely. As far as he could see, everything was white. He was glad that they had good tinted goggles, as snow blindness was a real possibility in these conditions.
After hugging and thanking Mike, Jane followed Brady onto the roof and Mike passed up the two rucksacks, skis and poles. They donned their equipment, waved goodbye to Mike and his son, and skied across the snow without looking back. He didn’t expect to see them ever again, but consoled himself that if anyone could survive this nightmare – then Mike could.
Brady had taken a bearing from the compass and after crosschecking with the Sat Nav, they set off eastwards towards Hubberts Bridge. It was about seven kilometres distant and Brady had decided to go in a straight line since there were no features, except the odd distant church steeple to follow. Every fifteen minutes they stopped and checked the Sat Nav and bearing, using their tracks in the snow as a guide to check that they weren’t going around in circles. They made really good time and after ninety minutes were abeam their first checkpoint – a large hangar-like farm building. The roof had caved in and Brady was making a decision. He checked with Jane.
‘How are you doing? We are going really well and I reckon we can make the edge of Boston in another ninety minutes or so. Shall we stop or go for it? The Sat Nav is showing 5.8 kms to the ‘Downtown’ superstore, where we can shelter for the night. What do you say – how is the frostbite – any re-occurrence?’
Jane was quick to reply.
‘I feel fine. I'm not cold and feel strong enough to carry on. Better to keep going than stop and cool down. Let's keep skiing.’
Mike grinned and turned back towards Boston. He set a modest pace and made sure that Jane stayed abeam him, so that he could monitor her progress. The snow was falling, but seemed to be moderating somewhat, which made the going a lot easier. They continued towards their target and after another eighty-five minutes, Jane cried out.
‘Brady, what's that? There, just to the left – sticking out of the snow!’
Brady stopped and peered in the direction Jane was pointing at with her ski pole. There was a mound in the snow and Brady could make out one end of a large building, partially, but not completely buried. He could also make out a giant ‘Downtown’ sign emblazoned under the eaves. It, also, was mostly covered in snow – but it was definitely the place they had been aiming for.
‘Well done, Jane. It's ‘Downtown’ alright. Let's try and find a way in.’
They headed straight for the hump in the snow and reached it in less than five minutes. It was almost 1pm, so they had about two hours of good daylight remaining. The building must have been at least forty feet tall but only the top ten feet was still accessible. They skied around the building, twice, trying to find a way in. Brady knew that there was a row of admin offices down one side, on the top floor, but he couldn’t find them. So they chose one corner and started to clear the snow away. After about ten minutes of digging with the shovels they carried, they reached a brick wall, but no glass. They were looking for the windows, which would give them a way in to the store. So, they continued digging along the wall and clearing snow, until after another fifteen minutes they hit paydirt. A large office window.
They spent another ten minutes clearing snow and then Brady addressed himself to the task of breaking in. He banged on the glass with the shovel to try to attract the attention of anyone inside.
Nobody came.
So he motioned for Jane to stand back whilst he swung his shovel. It was a large pane of single glazing and shattered spectacularly. Luckily for Brady he was wearing thick protective clothing, as several slivers of glass fell outside the window space. He loosened and broke off any protruding shards, discarded them carefully, and stepped through the gap into the office. He turned and helped Jane through and they both stood motionless – listening for any signs of life. Brady approached the door to the office cautiously. He remembered his previous experiences at the ASDA store in Grantham. He did not want to rush headlong into a dangerous situation. Putting his shovel down and shaking off his rucksack, he grabbed his shotgun and extracted it from its protective sheath, and loaded it with a shell he carried in his anorak. He then gestured to Jane to move back into a corner whilst he gently opened the door. It squeaked horrendously. Brady grimaced and held his breath as he poked his head out into the corridor. Looking both ways - there was no one in sight. Exhaling with relief, he motioned for Jane to follow him out of the office and to bring his rucksack and the shovel.
They tiptoed along the corridor and opened the door to the next office, where they dumped the haversacks, goggles, balaclavas and skis.
‘Right, so far so good. We should make a full search of the office area, and if possible the entire shop,’ suggested Brady.
‘OK, you lead and I’ll keep an eye out for an ambush.’ Jane hadn’t forgotten her experience at the farmhouse either.
They searched each office methodically and in the fourth one, they experienced profound shock. Laid out on the floor were at least a dozen bodies. Brady touched one and it was frozen stiff.
‘My god, a makeshift mortuary. These poor devils must have been caught in the store – and they died here.’
‘But who put them in here? There must be someone else in the building,’ commented Jane logically.
‘You're absolutely right,’ agreed Brady, ‘let's proceed with extreme caution. I’ll lead you through the other offices and then down the stairs into the main shop. Aren't you cold? It seems to be bloody freezing in here. Those bodies were solid.’
‘Yes I am. It seems to be just as cold in here as outside,’ replied Jane.
The remainder of the offices were ‘uninhabited’, so they approached the stairs that led down to the first floor shopping area. They both peered down into the void, and instantly realised why it was so cold in the building. The roof had collapsed in the far corner of the store. A large area of the floor was covered in debris and snow – as it poured in through the breach.
‘Jesus – no wonder it's so cold. I can't believe anyone is still alive in here.’
Jane called out:
‘Hello, HELLO, is anybody there?’
Brady joined her and, after a couple of minutes of silence, concluded that they were alone, and so proceeded down the stairs. There were signs that people had been living in the building. The café/restaurant had been ransacked and the evidence of eating and drinking lay all around. They found fourteen more bodies in the kitchen area, including five children. They had also frozen to death where they sat. Attempts had been made to keep warm, but it was amateurish and clearly ineffective. The cold had been just too much to bear.
‘Poor bastards,’ whispered Brady, as if trying not to wake them from their icy sleep.
They continued up past the roof failure and found yet more bodies. It appeared that some people had been killed or trapped by the roof collapse and others had perished trying to rescue them. None were alive and all rock solid.
They continued to the escalators that led down to the ground floor, which housed electrical goods, bedroom furniture and floor coverings. There was also a large clothing department, if Brady remembered correctly from his visits here in the past.
Strangely, both escalators, up and down, were blocked with stacks of furniture, preventing free access between floors.
‘Looks like there were problems here,’ guessed Brady; ‘it could be that two factions grew up and didn’t want to mix. Maybe upstairs was protecting the food, and downstairs the beddi
ng. Who knows? Let's take a look.’
After a further minute of shouting to elicit if anyone was downstairs, they dismantled the barricades and tossed the furniture from one stairway onto the other. It only took a couple of minutes and they proceeded down the immobile escalator to the ground floor, which felt even colder than upstairs.
Suddenly, Jane let out a small involuntary gasp. Brady turned to where she was pointing. A man was hanging from a girder which ran along the ceiling.
‘Oh dear God, what the hell has happened here?’ Brady breathed, eyeing the shop carefully to ensure that they were alone. They appeared to be, so they approached the hanged man and found a note pinned roughly to his leg.
‘THIEF’, it read.
Jane put her hands to her mouth in horror.
‘He's been murdered,’ she gasped.
Brady quickly recovered his composure and was circumspect.
‘You’re right, probably a lynch mob! These people must have been really frantic. I can only assume that there is no one alive down here, as they surely would have gone back up to the kitchen area – and the stairs wouldn't still be blocked, would they?’
He examined all four corners of the store again and decided to make doubly sure they were alone.
‘Come on, I’ll cut him down in a minute. Let's check out this floor properly first.’
They moved around the ground floor with extra caution, Brady holding his shotgun at the ready with Jane behind him, watching his back. The scenes they found were nothing short of appalling, but truly tragic.
They counted one hundred and forty seven bodies, scattered in disparate groups around the floor. Twenty-two were lying in neat rows, covered in sheets, in a similar fashion to those poor souls in the office above. Most shoppers had constructed makeshift shelters from furniture and bedding, but none afforded any real protection from the cold. Most victims had probably just died in their sleep. There were forty-three children amongst the dead.
They found two dead men in the floor-covering department. One had a large kitchen knife sticking out of his neck and the rival had another in his stomach. Both men had bled out and lay where they died.
‘Another turf war, by the looks of it,’ Brady surmised.
‘These poor people, it must have been terrifying. The children! How could they behave like this? It's horrible!’ Jane now had tears streaming down her face and Brady comforted her as best he could by putting his arms around her.
‘Look, let's get out of here and back to the office. Everyone is clearly dead. We’ll erect the tent, and I'll get a couple of mattresses and a load of blankets to help keep us warm. We don’t really want to spend the night down here, do we?’
Jane nodded her head and said nothing. Brady led her back upstairs to a vacant office, after cutting down the lynch mob’s victim and laying him on a bed. They erected the tent, lit a GAZ heater, a GAZ cooker, heated some water, and drank some Cup-a-Soups. The small office soon warmed up and the hot drink revitalised them. Brady was now ready to go on his scavenger hunt, but Jane definitely did not want to be left alone.
‘I’ll come with you, Andrew, I'm frightened. This morgue is giving me the creeps. Anyway, two sets of eyes and arms will get the job done more quickly. I can hold the gun just in case someone is hiding down there.’
‘Good idea,’ replied Brady, ‘you're right. Someone might be lurking down there waiting for a chance. After what's happened here, they have a right to be cautious and could be waiting for a chance to attack us. Do you know how to fire this shotgun, and more importantly, would you use it if you have to?’
Jane’s eyes widened.
‘Thanks Brady, that's really cheered me up – I’ll never bloody sleep now! But, make no mistake – I’ll use the gun if we are put in peril – don’t worry about that!’
Half an hour later, they were back in the now cosy office with a single mattress, half a dozen blankets and four pillows. Jane crammed the mattress into the tent and hung up the blankets to air and defrost.
They had thoroughly searched the store’s kitchen area but nothing edible remained. Every single scrap of food had been eaten. Empty tins and packets were scattered everywhere.
‘At least they didn’t go hungry – until the last few days I suspect,’ said Brady, ‘but that doesn’t help us. We’ll have to feed ourselves. Let's have one more walk around to see if there's anything else we can use. One thing I can't understand is why there are so many people here?’
Brady took a guess:
‘Christmas shoppers, staff and people from the other stores close by. You’re guess is as good as mine.’
They scouted round the shop looking out for anything they might need. All Brady found was a snow shovel. He took it up to the office with a handsaw and cut it in half. Then using a short length of piping from the small plumbing department, he fashioned a joint. This would make it far easier to carry. When Jane saw the finished article, she asked Brady why he had only made one. Brady groaned and rolled his eyes to the ceiling, but promptly trotted off to assemble a second shovel for Jane, realising that she was probably correct.
It was dark by now, so the couple prepared and ate their evening meal from their own stocks. The office was snug and warm thanks to the GAZ heater, and Brady ensured that the door stayed ajar to facilitate air circulation. He assessed that there was no threat from any stray survivors in the shop. He was convinced that everyone was dead. It must be minus twenty degrees C in the main store and he just didn’t think that anyone could have survived. He was not surprised that so many people had been caught by surprise by the snow and found themselves trapped in the store. The blizzard on that first Monday would have meant that cars could not exit the car park and walking home would have been almost suicidal. He supposed that most of the victims were staff members imprisoned in the store at the end of the day. Conditions in the shop must have been awful and it looked as if the two factions had brought about each other’s demise. Instead of co-operating, they had clearly fought each other for food and heat. A sort of anarchy must have eventually broken out and summary punishment for infractions reached unspeakable levels. He was mildly surprised that no one had set fire to the furniture to provide heat. In any event, Brady was relieved that he had evaded this type of situation and he was convinced, more than ever, to avoid all contact with other people. His renewed priority was to protect Jane and escape safely across the water to Europe.
They settled down for the night, cosily ensconced in their tent, on warm mattresses and covered with blankets. It was a really eerie experience, knowing that over one hundred dead bodies lay within metres of their safe haven.
They had a restless Christmas night.
Day 12
Thursday 26 December
Boston – 4:00pm
They overslept.
Because of the restive night spent tossing and turning, they didn’t drop off to sleep until the wee small hours. As a result, it was past 9am when Jane woke Brady from his slumbers.
‘Damn,’ exclaimed Brady, ‘we’re late!’
The next hour was spent with Jane cooking a quick breakfast, whilst Brady packed the equipment into the two rucksacks. It was just after 10am when they stepped through the broken window into the white landscape on the edge of Boston. They cleared away from the building and Brady scanned the horizon for his aiming point. He was looking for St Botolphs’ Church – more commonly known as the Boston Stump. A fifteenth century church tower which could be seen from many miles away on a clear day. However, today wasn’t clear by any stretch of the imagination. He had put the ‘Stump’ into the Sat Nav and it showed a distance of two kilometres on a heading of zero eight zero degrees. Therefore, they had little option but to set off on a heading and hope that they spotted the ‘Stump’ proudly protruding up through the snow. It was probably the only building in Boston not completely buried.
After twenty minutes of trudging across the town, the ‘Stump’ came into view. It was indeed the only building of note on the
skyline. There were other humps and bumps in the snow, but essentially everything was now buried. It must have been nearly thirty feet or more deep! He knew the tower was at least two hundred and fifty feet high, so there was a good chance of getting in through one of the stained-glass windows, via the main church roof.
They plodded on through the now light snow towards the church tower. He continuously scanned the route for signs of life. Once he thought he saw another skier off to his right, so they had stopped and crouched until the vague shape disappeared again into the blizzard. They continued for another fifteen minutes until they reached the base of the tower. Brady knew that a river ran alongside the church, but there was no sign of it. The only slight evidence of the watercourse was a dip in the level of the snow, as it had settled onto the running water. Brady concluded, correctly, that the river was now frozen solid, but he could still follow its course to the sea; but that would come later - now they had to find a way into the church.
Snow! The Series [Books 1-4] Page 38
