After It Happened (Book 2): Humanity

by Devon C. Ford

  Penny stuttered for words, unable to admit that she had never given a thought to relinquishing power.

  “They must be allowed to present their case to everyone, others would present their own and the people will decide. If another person wanted my job they could have it; but they would have to prove to everyone that they are better at it than I am. I will not retain power by force, nor will I wield it to keep you on your damned pedestal” he finished angrily.

  Penny was fuming, but silent. He knew he had said some things which shocked her, mostly because they were true and she would not admit it to herself. She was also angry that he knew more than she thought he did. Obviously her quiet plays for power amongst the wider group had reached ears sympathetic to Dan’s popularity.

  Dan stood, slowly and carefully pushing his chair back under the table, before fixing Penny with his good eye.

  “Please, Penny” he said softly “Remember how we all started this journey together. I don’t want overall control but I will challenge you for it if needs be. Please, this is about all of us and not just one person. There’s no throne, no crown here. It’s survival or death; and if we fight amongst ourselves then there won’t be much in the way of survival.”

  He walked out, wanting to lie down again for a very long time but feeling too wound up to stay still. He walked slowly outside and sat heavily on a felled tree trunk some distance away, deep in thought.

  It was there that Leah found him. He had no idea how long he’d been there until his trance was interrupted by the girl and his dog. She sat next to him in silence.

  “What we do now will inevitably change us” he said softly to her. To himself.

  “What we see and do will take whatever innocence we have left, and our humanity with it. To survive we have to adapt; to adopt the same behaviour as the people we fight.”

  He hung his head with a sigh and continued the introspection.

  “We have to become capable of rage and the sickening violence we see them use but there is a difference”

  The last word he said with savage passion. He turned to the silent girl, seeing his own bright eyes mirrored in hers as she let his words soak in.

  “The difference is that we keep our evil locked away deep inside us until we need it, then we let it out of the cage to protect what we have. We let it out to get the job done and then we lock it away again.”

  He hung his head again and sighed; the sudden fire now extinguished.

  “But there is a cost to us. We’re not monsters but we have to act like monsters, and that takes a toll on us. We are willing to make that sacrifice to keep people safe. To make life peaceful”

  He got up, dizzy for a second with a wave of pain and exhaustion.

  “You’re right” he said to Leah who still hadn’t spoken a word.

  “Ok. I’ll talk to Penny again” he said as he rose with difficulty, leaving her sat there.

  WHY’S AND WHEREFORES

  Penny returned to her room and paced, restlessly. She had been so scared when Dan had gone, and felt awful for relishing the thought that he might not come back alive or at all. She imagined herself moulding his replacement into a more malleable version of him; a controllable leader of her personal honour guard.

  Dan’s words had cut her deeply. Her temper was high, and made worse when she realised that he was right about her behaviour. The truth was, she was enjoying the power.

  It started as happiness to have other people, then swelled into pride to have people working for her. The routine of giving orders and thinking of jobs for people to do, then choosing who should do them had taken over her every waking thought. So much so, that without realising it she had accrued a staff to follow her around and annotate those orders for distribution.

  She had grown power hungry, and she was suddenly ashamed at the realisation.

  It wasn’t intentional she convinced herself. It was the situation; it does things to people. From the very beginning she had busied herself every day, and when more people joined them she had more to organise and so on and so forth. She told herself that they all needed her to plan their every day. They wouldn’t be on the firm ground they were had it not been for her leadership.

  Sometimes that leadership took away the choices of the people, but it was for their own good. People came to her with ideas, with suggestions, and she politely listened at first. Lately she was so busy that she started to turn them away.

  Since Karen arrived she had issued a standing order not to be disturbed directly, and to take the details of those wanting to see her. She had become obsessive, almost fanatical in her thoughts of the future for reasons she hadn’t shared with anyone she now knew.

  She stopped pacing and stood still. She started to cry. She was suddenly so very tired, she thought, as she lay down on her bed to submit to the sobs coming from deep inside her. She felt sick, and the waves of pain that had affected her recently started again.

  A while later, Dan found her still in that position. He sat gently on the edge of her bed, and rested his left hand lightly on her shoulder. She woke to see him watching her, and for once did not have the energy to straighten her appearance.

  “I am so sorry” she said “Things just, took on a momentum that I couldn’t’…”

  “It’s ok.” He said “We need you to be you, nothing more”

  She smiled and closed her eyes again.

  RUMOUR CONTROL

  All thirty-eight of them sat together for dinner on the tables. They ate, and afterward Dan told them the sanitised version of events at the hospital. He thanked the people he wanted to thank, and laid out some ground rules with a heavy olive branch.

  “Penny’s direction to have those on the farm and gardens carrying shotguns is to remain in place. Anyone wanting training is to make themselves known” He said.

  “On that note” he continued “suggestions and questions are more commonplace now that there are lots of us” he paused to scan the room, having to raise his voice for all of them to hear him.

  “These will be written down – we have plenty of paper – and placed in the box that Karen will organise. We will bring these to the council every week. Concerns about every day work are to be brought to your head of department, but this provides another route which should be available as we have agreed” he nodded to Penny, who graciously accepted the mention even though nothing of the sort was decided until Dan said it now.

  “We are locking down things for the winter, so everyone is going to have more time on their hands. There will be three hours of electricity after dinner from the generators. My advice is not to let Leah choose the film every night” that got the laughs he hoped for.

  “Over the next week, everyone is to find a time to report to Kate so that the medical unit have a full history and everyone gets an MOT” another ripple of low laughter. He had discussed this with Kate, Lizzie and Alice and they had been preparing a filing system to keep medical notes of them all.

  “Nobody will go off site unless with permission, not counting those working on the farms and gardens. Or Pete, obviously” he added

  “There will only be a couple of trips made a month during the worst weather, and until our wounds are healed there won’t be any. So, everyone take some time to relax. Those of you organised to help with the farm know who you are, this gives farm workers time off to make it fair.”

  He asked Leah what the film was tonight, and she said a title he didn’t recognise which prompted a mixture of different noises from the rest of them. The group took that as dismissal, and he nodded to his operations department when he got their eye contact. He had to call Leah over, and she came reluctantly holding a DVD which he could only describe as ‘pink’. He decided to deal with her job first so she could get on with having a life.

  “Any applications coming in to Ops go to you, you record them in a ledger and keep them ready to discuss. Ok?” he said

  “Ok. What’s a ledger?” she asked

  “A book used to kee
p lists” he said, keeping it simple to avoid the trademark, ‘wait, what?’ from her again.

  She ran off hoping to get to the TV before someone overrode her film choice. He sat down to look around his Rangers, and what he saw was almost pitiful. He still had half of his face bandaged, and had not yet seen the damage. He had, however, seen the grimace on Kate’s face when she changed the dressings. Steve was still bandaged but he had lost the sling. Joe was uninjured but was still the weakest link, as bad as Dan felt by thinking it. Lexi was badly bruised over her head and face. Her eyes were ringed with purple and yellow, and she moved stiffly under a loose sweatshirt. He knew the cuts on her chest were worse than she made out. It would probably be weeks before they were all fully fit, and he had to look at a rehabilitation program for them. They needed to stay fit and lean; there was no off-season training or warmup games – when they went out they had to be at one hundred per cent or people would die.

  “Sidearms at all times, we’ll take a day at a time each in Ops. Joe, Me, Steve, Lex, in that order. When we are physically capable, we are making a trip that will require some heavy machinery.” Eyebrows were raised “Police armoury – hopefully more Glocks, MP5’s, G36’s. If we’re really lucky they’ve upgraded to the HK416’s. Either way we need more guns that aren’t for pheasant shooting.”

  Agreement all round, although there were some questioning looks about his knowledge. Dan stayed to help clear the plates as he realised that Cara was waiting behind in the kitchen, heating the water to wash up and not wanting to interrupt. He apologised, and helped her. They talked as they worked; Dan washed and Cara dried up, and she promised to make a lemon drizzle cake for him. One of the small echoes of sentimentality which he felt mattered.

  He walked outside the front door and lit a cigarette as Ash limped around in circles looking for the best place to empty his bladder. Lexi joined him, as he suspected she would. He offered her a cigarette, which she took.

  “Doing ok?” he asked her

  She inhaled, held it, and let it out slowly. “Yeah. No more bikinis, but yeah”

  Leah was turning out to be a very useful spy; Dan had heard that Mark had tried hard with her when she got out of the hospital wing but she seemed to have shut that door in his face.

  “What about Penny” she said. He knew this was coming from someone, and knew that whatever he said would probably become common knowledge within a day.

  There’s the truth, and then there’s the truth they all needed to move on together.

  “She’s been under a bit of pressure – the stress of us lot getting put through a blender didn’t help I should imagine. She’s done well getting everyone organised for the winter though, don’t you think?” he said, turning to Lexi for her turn.

  “Yep. She’s not, you know, planning on changing things or anything?” She asked innocently.

  Dan matched her innocence. “Like what?”

  “Well. We still work for you, don’t we?” she said, trailing off in uncertainty at the boundaries she was pushing.

  Rumour really did spread fast he thought.

  “Yes. You do. Why, did you hear that she was planning on any changes?” he challenged.

  “No, no” said Lexi “I was just checking”

  Dan finished his cigarette, called his dog and went to watch the film. Luckily, Leah missed out. He settled down with his thoughts spinning, pretending to watch a film with the others.

  WINTER WONDERLAND

  Days rolled into weeks. Frosts came and it tried to snow a few times. Everyone was wrapped up well; the boxes of thermal sports base layers lifted from the camping store were a good buy.

  Dan went with black under armour under his standard black clothes. He had got a black arctic waterproof and windproof pullover from one of their scavenging trips during the hot weather. He had dug it out and now pretty much lived in it.

  Curiously, he noticed that the other Rangers had followed suit in style noir, which adorably included Leah. Her black boots had her black combat trousers tucked in, and she added about four layers of tops and fleeces topped off with a black woollen hat.

  Dan had kept the beard and hair a little longer, but still the same length all over, which both Joe and Steve had adopted. Dan’s bandaging had come off, exposing the straight line of delicate stitching running through the puckered skin from below his left eye and up into his hairline. Luckily the blade had cut through his eyebrow and missed the recess of his eye socket. It itched like hell, which he knew was a good sign. Kate gave him painkillers which he stopped taking before she recommended, much to her annoyance. He did complete the course of antibiotics which had been given to all of them. Ash had even had a course, courtesy of Sera’s small medicinal stock.

  He donned his own black woolly hat and went outside, pulling on his thermal gloves. The fresh, pink skin of his scarred face feeling the icy stab of the cold more than the rest of him.

  Ash bounded with him, fully healed long before the human casualties. He smoked as he walked, passing a couple of the others as they went. Ash even let the others touch him now. Dan had worked hard to have him in the house to get used to people. It was Sera’s suggestion, after she had been bitten trying to stop Ash’s bleeding. He was still developing and double the size as when he was first found. He had a coarse short coat which had darkened only slightly as he matured. He glided effortlessly; loping on all fours with a casual ease that did not betray the savage speed he could employ. It’s not the size of the dog that make the hits big; it’s the speed it hits you at. Well, Ash was big and fast.

  He walked up to the farm and back, talking with people he met as he walked. He went into Ops and Ash stalked to Leah’s side where he practically searched her for food. His snout was almost the same size of her torso.

  Leah pushed the animal out of her face and produced a sheaf of papers, clearing her throat and giving Ash a polo which he crunched once and swallowed, looking expectantly for more.

  “Applications” she announced. Dan picked up a plastic wrapped pack of biscuits and poured coffee from a flask left by Steve – it was his day on duty – who was studying maps.

  “Give me the highlights” he said as he sat and invited Steve to join them with a wave.

  “Request for specialist item recovery” she read, then scanned her eyes along the rest of the text. “Christmas presents, actually”

  Dan smiled. That kind of humanity made him happy and he would be glad to do those runs himself, even though he bloody hated Christmas.

  “A suggestion that the Rangers run a self-defence class” she said. He thought of Lexi, with her martial arts background “Lexi might like that”. Dan was well qualified to teach also, but didn’t want another commitment on his time.

  “Kyle wants to be a Ranger” she said with a smile. Dan coughed and spat coffee as he controlled himself.

  “This again?” he said, annoyed. Steve gave him a questioning look and he explained.

  “Kyle is a complaining, cowardly, weak, selfish, chinless mewling little boy who wants people to fear and respect him. He wants a gun. The answer is the same as when he asked the first time; no fucking chance.”

  Leah muttered “language” not quite under her breath and made a note, but Dan told her “I’ll tell him myself though”

  “Any more?” he asked

  “Request from Cedric and Maggie to run through training with people working away from the house” she said “What to do if someone turns up, basically” Dan looked to Steve, who nodded his agreement to the silent request.

  “I can throw in a bit of E&E for flavour too” he said. Dan was glad to have him; even with the six-inch scar across his forearm he had got for putting his eggs in Dan’s basket. It was still angry and swollen, as was the stripe down his own face.

  “Ok, link up with Chris and find a day when the farm is covered by Logistics. Reckon you could do it within the week?” he asked.

  Steve did. There were no more requests of interest, and the few more that were for
Christmas presents went on the pile for a one-hit shopping trip.

  He decided that there had been a long enough wait, that he was healed enough to take Joe on a trip. He went to tell Penny what he planned before finding Neil and the others he needed.

  He had rounded everyone up and Ops was full. Neil, Mike, Jimmy, Ian and Joe sat to listen.

  “I want to raid a police armoury.” He let that hang for effect.

  “I need Jimmy to bring a crew under Mike and Ian’s direction to use heavy machinery to breach it. Neil, there’s a diesel tank in need of emptying too so we may as well have all that while we’re there.” He said.

  “Ideas” he announced, inviting the selected group to join in.

  Mike was the first to speak. “I assume we are talking stressed concrete, probably reinforced with steel?” he asked.

  “I think so, and no windows” Dan replied.

  “So we attack the weakest point. The lock” he said confidently. “Jackhammer around the door housing and a Stihl saw with a diamond tipped blade. It won’t be pretty but it will be open”

  “We’ve got the kit” said Neil

  “Kev can use the jackhammer, he’s big enough” said Jimmy not hiding his pride in his giant sidekick.

  All in agreement, they planned to leave in an hour.

  Dan and Joe went in the new Discovery, Neil went in his Defender with Ian and Mike towing the mobile tanker with its attached pump. Jimmy and Kev borrowed Lexi’s Defender, carrying a generator and the tools they needed.

  Dan and Joe cleared the building, driving into the yard he had left months ago after his first burglary. There was some evidence of scavenging since he had been there last, but he highly doubted anyone could have got into the armoury. He paused to look at the now unrecognisable corpse that lay unburied in the car park where he had dumped him out of his BMW.