Reaper

by Jon Grahame

  He poured the coffee, added milk to one of the mugs and handed it to her. Their fingers touched as she took it. He stroked her hair and looked guiltlessly at her nakedness.

  ‘I want you, too, Kate.’

  ‘That’s good,’ she said and moved her head against his hand.

  When she was dressed, he walked her back over the hill. They did not hold hands and he cradled the carbine.

  The sun was blazing light horizontally across the land, birds were singing and the world was coming to life.

  ‘We never did drink the wine,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll save it for next time.’

  ‘You still know nothing about me.’

  ‘You’ll tell me when you’re ready. And maybe I’ll tell you about me.’

  He had been so obsessed with his own past that he only now realised he knew nothing about Kate’s.

  They walked down the hill, the village peaceful ahead of them. No drunken bodies lay by the side of the road or on the benches outside the pub. The social evening had apparently ended with decorum. The Reverend Nick stepped out of the manor house onto the steps and stretched his arms behind him in the morning air. He stopped mid-stretch when he saw them together and smiled.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Reaper, and Kate smiled.

  Reaper kissed her, she went into the pub and he walked back over the hill.

  Jason Houseman volunteered for the defence force, but Reaper told him he would have to go onto a waiting list. Houseman was not pleased. Reaper suspected he thought driving around the countryside was preferable to working in the fields or the barns.

  Milo, on the other hand, seemed to take to the rural life. He shed excess weight and had an air of contentment. His previous career may have given him a fine salary and an apartment facing the sea, but it hadn’t included job satisfaction.

  Pete Mack and James Marshall returned from a scavenging and scouting trip to the town of Driffield in the south with three more new people. Manjit was a Sikh lady in her late thirties who had been a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Bradford. Her husband had also been a lecturer and had died in the pandemic. She had gone onto the campus looking for students out of a sense of duty. That was where she had found Cheryl, a twenty-year-old psychology student. Cheryl had lived with her family in the city and, when they died, she had gravitated to the campus looking for fellow students.

  They had met Arif, an eighteen-year-old Muslim youth when he ran into the building they were staying in. He claimed he had been attempting to evade three white men who had been hunting him. He suggested the men’s animosity towards him had been racially motivated.

  When Reaper spoke with Arif, he found him street-wise and hip, a young gangsta in a hoodie and black leather jacket who used a lot of hand movements with pointed fingers to articulate his speech. He was sharp and had quick eyes. Reaper liked him. The three men who had chased him might have been racists but, having talked to Arif, it was just as likely that he had pissed them off. He was carrying a Beretta 9mm handgun and had a Mac-10 submachine gun in the Transit in which the party were travelling. The van also contained 10,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition which would fit either weapon. It was also compatible with the Glock handguns they had at Haven.

  ‘Where did you get the guns and the ammunition?’

  Reaper asked.

  ‘I knew a man, right?’ His hands worked, fingers pointing. ‘A man in the business, the drugs business, know what I mean? I knew him, right, but I didn’t work for him. I wouldn’t work any shit like that. But I knew him. Where he lived and that. And when everything went tits up, I thought he wouldn’t mind, right, if I called round and collected a few things like. Him being dead and that, right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Reaper. ‘Do you know how to fire the guns?’

  Arif gave him a look of incredulity as if he had asked if he knew which end was up.

  ‘What you think?’

  ‘Right,’ said Reaper.

  When Arif saw the girls and James all dressed like Reaper and carrying guns, he went straight back to Reaper and volunteered to serve.

  ‘Look. I’ve got my own gun, right. Although like one of those Glocks might be an improvement on the Beretta. Know what I mean? That’s an old gun, right.

  It might jam in a jam. Get it? But I’m cool to keep the machinegun. Right? And where do I get the uniform?’

  Reaper delayed making a decision for four days but took him out on trips and came to like him even more.

  He had a lot of front, but behind the flash he was a young boy who had survived a hard background even before the pandemic. Manjit and Cheryl both spoke highly on his behalf. He had tried being Mr Cool at first and had made a pass at both of them but had apologised after Manjit had beaten him about the head and told him that some rules never change, even after an apocalypse. Since then he had been considerate, protective and cunning. They had been together four weeks and had got here without mishap.

  Finally Reaper allowed him to join, and issued him with the body armour and kit, minus the carbine. The set of combat trousers and T-shirt he had got for Helen in Scarborough fitted Arif, because he was a slight youth, although Reaper didn’t tell him they had belonged to a girl. He could replenish the kit, as they all did, on their trips to town.

  The appointment was welcomed by the others in the growing troop, who quickly took to Arif, but it did not go down well with Jason Houseman.

  ‘Why him and not me?’ he asked bluntly, after trekking over the hill to confront Reaper as he sat at the table in the mobile home.

  ‘He was more suited,’ Reaper said.

  ‘He’s a Paki! You give a gun to a Paki and not to me?’

  Reaper stood up and slapped Houseman hard across the face. ‘Leave,’ he said.

  Houseman was flushed, Reaper’s hand mark visible on his flesh. He clearly burned with rage, and for a moment Reaper thought he might strike back, but he saw the cowardice in Houseman’s eyes. If he were to strike back it would be from behind when no one was looking. Houseman tried to control himself.

  ‘Look, I apologise. I didn’t mean anything by what I said. It was heat of the moment.’

  ‘I want you to leave.’

  ‘Leave?’

  The glint of cowardice and fear in again. Clearly Houseman didn’t know if Reaper meant the van or Haven itself.

  ‘Get out of my van. Go back to work.’

  Reaper saw the relief in his face.

  ‘Yes . . . yes, of course. And look . . . what I said. . . I didn’t mean anything by it. There’s no point telling anyone else . . . is there?’

  ‘Just leave,’ Reaper said, wearily, and Houseman left.

  Reaper took a deep breath and marvelled at the human race. A pandemic had wiped out almost all of it but still left prejudice and racism behind. He would have to watch Houseman. Maybe he should go to Filey and talk to Crackpot Charlie Miller and find out why Houseman had left. Or would Milo know?

  Milo didn’t know. The two men had met after Houseman had left Charlie Miller’s enclave. The next time he went to Filey, Reaper was determined to have a proper talk with Miller rather than exchanging shouts across a barricade. But he had a lot to do before then. He wanted to travel to nearby military camps. There were many RAF camps within reach, as well as the army base at Catterick, where there might be organised groups of airmen and soldiers.

  Perhaps someone with the training to organise the restructuring that was happening on a community basis. If not, he could always look for more guns and ammunition, even if only to put it beyond the reach of any local despot.

  He wondered if he was becoming obsessed about weaponry? He wouldn’t be surprised. He had become obsessed about many things in the last three years.

  Thank God Kate had made the first move in what had become a continued relationship that everyone now knew about. If she hadn’t, he might have developed another obsession. He smiled at the thought he might one day have to approach the Revere
nd Nick and ask him to marry them. He might be dubious about God but he did believe in order.

  He and Kate exchanged stories. He was as honest with her as he had been with Sandra. He showed her the photograph he had kept of Emily. She listened and made few comments. Her sympathy and sorrow for what had happened to his daughter was genuine and unforced. Her understanding of his actions was unspoken but obvious. He listened, in turn, to her story.

  ‘Nothing very dramatic,’ she said. ‘A marriage that didn’t work, a divorce and getting on with life.’

  She hadn’t been bruised by marriage. They had both been too young, she said; she had only been eighteen, for goodness sake – a mother at nineteen. Neither of them had expected parenthood to be so demanding and their relationship had floundered.

  ‘Not surprising, really. It had been based on Saturday nights in the Blue Lagoon and lots of sex.’

  She said it without embarrassment and when he widened his eyes, she added, ‘What? You weren’t mad for it at eighteen?’

  The marriage had ended when their daughter Amy was four. Her ex-husband became a weekend father every fortnight, and he helped with the finances.

  ‘When Amy was ten, he died. Car crash. I felt I should have been sadder, but I wasn’t. I was devastated when my dad died of cancer the year before, but this was different. It didn’t compare.’

  Kate and Amy had moved in with her widowed mother.

  ‘It gave my mum a new lease of life. A kid to look after. I was working in an office and hated it but, with my mum helping with Amy, I looked for something else. I worked in a local bar in the evenings. It was a safe way to have a social life with no commitment. I was one side of the bar, they were the other.’

  ‘You must have had offers,’ said Reaper.

  ‘Plenty of offers. I had a couple of boyfriends, no one serious. Then I applied for the job as manager of The White Swan and was surprised when I got it. It was a nice pub, in an old part of town and had a great crowd of regulars.’ She smiled and said, ‘The sort of bar where everyone knows your name.’

  ‘Like the TV show?’ he said.

  ‘Exactly like that,’ she said with a smile. ‘I met someone. Thought this time it might be serious, but it didn’t work out. My choice.’ She took a breath and changed tack. ‘When Amy reached eighteen, she inherited money left by her dad and set off trekking the world, like teenagers do. Did. She met a bloke in Australia and settled there. He seemed good for her and she seemed happy. Then it happened. The pandemic hit Australia before it reached here. The bloke was called Sean. He phoned me to say she’d died. We cried on the phone together, I don’t know how long. Soon after, everybody started dying. My mum died.’

  Kate took another deep breath, perhaps to keep the memories under control.

  ‘I don’t know what I would have done if Ash hadn’t shown up. Jane turned up first. We were frightened. Didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know what to do. Then Ash turned up and looked after us.’

  Reaper continued to live in the mobile home. He went out every day, if only to patrol the lanes and villages and drive as far as the outskirts of Hull or past York along the deserted highways to see if anything was moving on the road from Leeds. Another project he had in mind was visiting Humberside, where he was sure there was an oil refinery. A tanker-load of fuel would help the settlement.

  The other members of his special forces went out as and when they were required, for particular missions or to escort members of the growing community who wanted specific items. They also acted as escorts if a group wanted to visit the town or coast on Sundays for recreation and a change of scenery.

  On another fine summer day, when he and Arif were due to go out, Reaper walked over the hill and down into the village. He called into the pub where Kate greeted him with a kiss and gave him breakfast. They were baking their own bread now and had moved pigs onto a neighbouring farm. He had bacon and eggs and fresh bread and tea. They had come a long way in a short time.

  Arif stopped the MPV outside and put his head round the door.

  ‘I’m out here, right Reaper?’

  ‘Right.’

  Kate smiled at Reaper, enigmatic again.

  As he was finishing the food, Jamie Hinchliffe came in.

  ‘Morning, Reaper. Got a minute?’

  ‘Of course.’ Jamie sat down opposite and Kate left the bar. ‘What is it?’ he said, sipping the last of the tea.

  ‘It’s Sandra and I,’ he said. ‘I want to get straight to the point about this, Reaper. I mean . . . you know we have been seeing each other . . .’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘And, well . . . our relationship has become . . .intimate.’ His face flushed as he continued his mission to get straight to the point.

  ‘Intimate?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Reaper picked up the carbine from the chair next to him and slipped the strap over his head.

  ‘We are, of course, both consenting adults and we both have great affection for each other.’

  ‘I should hope so.’ Reaper checked the mechanism of the gun.

  ‘So I thought it only right that I inform you of our intentions and ask your permission.’

  ‘Ask my permission?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For what? You mean you want my permission to move in together?’

  ‘Good God, no! To get married!’

  Reaper was stunned. ‘Married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The silence lengthened because Reaper didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Do you give your permission?’

  ‘What would you do if I didn’t?’

  ‘We’d still get married.’ Jamie had transcended nervous and had now reached stubborn.

  ‘Good for you.’ He put his hand across the table and Jamie shook it in surprise. ‘Of course you have my permission. Who put you up to this? Did Sandra tell you to ask me?’

  ‘Of course not. But it is the form, sir – I mean, Reaper.

  ‘Of course it is, Jamie. And I thank you for the consideration.’ He got up. ‘Now, where is she?’

  ‘I’m here,’ she said, stepping into the room.

  They embraced and he gave her a big squeeze and a kiss and whispered into her ear, ‘Asking my permission?’ and she giggled.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘I know you’ll both be very happy.’

  ‘Will next Sunday be okay?’ she said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘The wedding?’

  And when he thought about it, there was absolutely no reason at all for a long engagement. Why not Sunday?

  ‘Sounds great.’

  He hugged her again and shook Jamie’s hand again and felt moisture at the back of his eyes.

  ‘Reaper?’ she said. He had moved to the door, eager to be away. He paused and looked back.

  ‘You need anything?’ he said.

  ‘I thought I’d go into Scarborough tomorrow and choose a dress with Kate.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll ride shotgun,’ he said.

  Chapter 12

  THEY WENT INTO TOWN IN TWO CARS. Reaper and Kate in the MPV and Sandra and Jenny in the Astra van. They hadn’t encountered trouble for some weeks but they were still alert in case of danger. Reaper drove to the Alma Inn. He hadn’t seen Shaggy in a while and wondered whether he was ready yet to join the growing group at Haven. Sandra and Jenny went to a vintage fashion shop on Northgate that Jenny recommended and they promised to meet up outside the Brunswick Centre in half an hour. The day was wet and squally and they all wore their weatherproofs.

  He stopped across the road from the Alma and hesitated before getting out. A body lay on the pavement outside the pub.

  ‘Stay behind the car and keep me covered,’ he said.

  Kate obeyed without question, leaning against the rear of the MPV, her carbine pointing across the road.

  Reaper held his carbine at the ready and took a long look at the buildings opposite. If someone had collapsed and died outside the pub,
Shaggy would have moved the body.

  He crossed the road and nobody shot him. He sensed the pub was empty, abandoned. He crouched next to the body and saw it was that of Mr Windsor, the solicitor, who had blocked his grief by maintaining a routine of silent visits to the hostelry, as he probably had done before the pandemic. Now he had joined his family in death. He had been shot.

  Reaper stood up and went to the pub door, took a breath, and went in quickly. He had been right; it had been abandoned, although two of its recent residents were still there. Dolores, the middle aged woman, was crumpled in the corner of a bench seat. Ernie, the stage doorman from the town’s theatre, was face down on the floor, arms wide, the black velvet cloak spread like wings. They were both dead, and had not been dead very long.

  ‘Shaggy,’ he shouted. ‘Elaine.’

  No one answered and he left the place to run back across the street in a sudden panic. People with guns who shot harmless people for no reason were on the loose, and so were Sandra and Jenny, blithely choosing frocks whilst unaware of the danger.

  ‘Three dead,’ he called to Kate. ‘We need to tell the others.’

  They got back in the car and he drove onto Northgate but the Astra was not where he expected it to be. A smashed window was the obvious reason; the shop they had been going to visit had been vandalised and partly burnt out. He changed direction for the Brunswick Centre, the sense of dread increasing.

  The Astra was on the opposite side of the road from the Brunswick Centre and the girls were in the act of getting out of the vehicle. Reaper braked to a halt and jumped out, relieved at having found them safe. He and Kate approached and they met the group on the pavement. They sensed something was wrong from the way both Reaper and Kate were holding their guns and scanning the buildings.

  ‘There’s been trouble,’ he called. ‘Three shot dead at the Alma.’

  ‘Shaggy?’ asked Sandra.

  ‘Shaggy’s not there.’

  All four were now on high alert. The perpetrators could have left Scarborough and taken their killing spree on down the coast. Reaper wondered if the community in the Castle were okay? They would check on their safety later.