After It Happened (Book 2): Humanity

by Devon C. Ford

  He nodded to her, and she announced “CLEAR” loudly to nobody in particular, full of pride. On hearing her call, Ash trotted in betraying the he knew this was just a training exercise and wasn’t taking it seriously.

  “OI!” said Dan loudly “OUT” Ash turned a lazy circle and sat in the doorway of the shop where Dan told him to stay. He was the best early warning system this side of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Dan produced the list and Leah got a basket. As the world had ended in early summer, there were no crackers or Christmas items lining the shelves. If it had been October when it happened then there probably would have been, he thought sourly.

  They quickly gathered what they had come for, and Dan ad-libbed with bags of nuts and all the Pringles tubes he could see. They were still in date until late next year.

  He led Leah back outside where they put the basket on the back seat, called their bored sentry to jump in – he was lay down with his chin on his front paws in protest of being berated – and drove home.

  Bizarrely, he had just made Leah the happiest girl ever, but that came at a price as they walked in through the main doors just as Kyle walked out. He focused on the gun strapped to the chest of a child and went pale. Dan thought he would cry or scream in rage, but he said nothing and walked out with glistening eyes.

  Screw him, he thought. He trusted the kid more than he would ever trust Kyle. He should see if she can manage the shorter G36C soon, in the absence of finding an MP5.

  Christmas Eve came, and Penny had done well organising games and entertainment. Cara had produced a seemingly endless supply of jam tarts and mince pies, and the alcohol supplies took a hit. Presents had been wrapped, and an enormous pile lay under the tree. Cards had been given as though everything were as it used to be, only this time Dan put them on the windowsill in Ops. One read “Dear Ops and Rangers, thank you for keeping us all safe. Lots of love from the Catering department xxx”

  He supposed that counted as normal now.

  He felt bad that he hadn’t ‘bought’ gifts for anyone, and hadn’t even thought to get a small pack of cards to give out, not that he could easily remember everyone’s names. He told himself that he was busy keeping them all alive whilst they shopped like it was a safe activity, but in his heart he knew it was because he was a miserable bugger.

  He tried to excuse himself from the festivities on Christmas morning under the pretence of keeping watch, but nobody would let him. Even Ash was joining in, with the two cockers jumping around with him playfully.

  Dan received an extensive list of presents; an indulgently costly watch with compass and altimeter, a book of jokes (obviously someone else thought he was miserable too), some items of clothing, an action man (someone thought they were funny), a torch mount for his Sig from Steve and a number of bottles of scotch. Leah had got him and Ash matching bandanas with the lower half of a skull on.

  The best present by far, was something that Lexi had retrieved for Ash. Clothing for dogs was a contentious issue for Dan, but there was no doubting the brilliance of this item.

  In khaki green, with a heavy grab handle and tactical loops for attachments like Dan’s vest, Ash stood proudly with his own gear on. It read ‘K-9’ on a Velcro patch on the side, and came with two pouches for him to carry a collapsible bowl and a bottle of water. Dan fitted it to him, and laughed with everyone else as Ash spun in circles trying to figure out with utter futility what they had done to him.

  Christmas dinner was wonderful – even more so if you considered the limited cooking abilities post apocalypse. The food kept coming, as did the cakes and the drinks.

  Everyone went to bed late as the fire burned low. Dan was properly drunk, for the first time since it was just him and Neil. He bid goodnight to the few left up, and took his dog outside for a smoke. He could barely stand upright, let alone still. He rolled into bed, having strewn his clothes across the floor of his room and collapsed naked into the mattress where he cursed the ceiling for spinning. Just as he thought he was going to have to get up and puke, he lost consciousness.

  He woke after what seemed like five minutes to light streaming in through the open curtains. It was impossibly bright, but his still-drunk brain could not compute that it had snowed heavily in the night.

  He was cold, his head hurt, and as he rolled over he realised he was not alone.

  AWKWARD

  She was fast asleep and either he or she, or both of them, stank of alcohol. He couldn’t tell, but he cursed himself silently, and racked his memory for how this happened.

  She stirred, and he didn’t know whether to get dressed quietly and leave or pretend to be asleep. As he was debating this, she groaned and rolled over, snaking a soft, lazy arm over his lower back. He froze, but the hand moved down and squeezed his cheek intimately.

  How the actual fuck did this happen? He thought.

  He lay there in shock, one arse cheek in her hand and his mouth open, just as she opened her eyes and focused on the world. She squinted her face tightly at the bright light, then slowly released his flesh as it dawned on her where she was.

  “Did you? Did we? Oh shit!” she said as she scrabbled the duvet up to cover her bare chest.

  “What the fuck?” asked Dan in a croak, equally mortified.

  It was one of the most awkward moments of his life and combined to a murderous hangover, he wasn’t having a good day already.

  He looked around on the floor and grabbed some clothes. He threw them on in haste and bundled form the room, stopping in the cold hallway to put his coat, hat and boots on as his breath misted in front of his face to further cloud his vision. Ash had not taken the initiative to come with him, so he abandoned the dog to sleep in blissful ignorance of his embarrassment.

  He stole outside silently as the cold hit him. His head swam. He stopped at a patch of trees about twenty metres from the front door and expelled the remaining sour contents of his stomach into the snow.

  He knelt in the bushes, stomach heaving. The crunch of frozen snow underfoot made him turn, his fogged brain trying to make sense of anything and everything.

  The shovel hit him hard in the right side of his head and shoulder, the blow deflecting as he flinched away from it. It sprawled him face down, choking him with a face full of dirty slush.

  “Not better than me now, are you?” whined his attacker in a peevish voice, close to tears as he raised the shovel high above his head again.

  Kyle had been waiting for him. He was going to have one last attempt at convincing him to try him out and see if he could shoot. He had wanted to attend Lexi’s self-defence class but was too bigoted to accept instruction in fighting from a woman, regardless that Lexi was arguably one of the most capable people there.

  Despite being told exactly why, he still thought he could cajole his way into being tested where he could prove himself and finally be a Somebody.

  The final straw was when he saw her go into his room. He realised, as he saw Dan stagger outside, that he was wasting his breath by planning to speak to him. This man, who he saw as a bully, would never let him join his elite. He would never make him one of them. Just like everyone else in Kyle’s life; this man was better than him and he knew it.

  But not today, he had no guns and that bastard dog of his was nowhere to be seen. He would show this man what he could do.

  He picked up the shovel left by the front door to clear snow, and walked behind him. He thought himself stealthy, but in truth he would never have got anywhere near the man if he wasn’t so drunk; he simply wasn’t aware of anything.

  As he retched onto the ground, Kyle swung the shovel like a cricketer aiming to send Dan’s head clear over the boundary. The bastard turned at the last minute, making him miss his face. Kyle recovered himself and started to beat the shovel down on him, over and over. He cried aloud as he did it. He cried for all the years he had been laughed at, rejected, bested, left behind and ignored whilst the Dan’s of the world got the recognition and the women. The people good at sports, the
ones who had muscles, fuck all of them.

  Dan spun onto his back and used his legs. He held off maybe ten or fifteen blows before a slipped footing rewarded him with a stinging blow to his right knee. He involuntarily reached for it, and took a heavy hit to the top of his head. Darkness flashed, and the pain was unbearable.

  Kyle was so enraged; so consumed in his attack that he did not see Ana and Chris coming out of the house on their way to the farm. They saw him, but it took a few seconds to realise that he was attacking a person and not venting frustrations into the snow. Ana shouted and started to run towards him as Chris took the twelve bore shotgun from the slip on his back and fired twice in the air.

  Kyle realised he had been caught. He faced a choice; stay and this bastard would surely kill him, or run.

  He ran.

  Chris and Ana went to help Dan who was covered in blood. He had taken a massive amount of damage and combined with his hangover, he lost consciousness.

  Others ran from the house pulling on clothes as they rushed headlong into the cold. Confusion reigned, and shouts for explanations rang out. Chris handed Ana the gun and went to lift him up, only stopping when Kate screamed a command to leave him. She ran over and saw the injuries to Dan’s head and the discarded shovel on the ground, barking orders for the stretcher and spine-board to be brought from medical immediately. She had to get him off the ground quickly to avoid hypothermia, but carefully so she didn’t aggravate the likely neck injuries he had.

  Penny strode from the house, her commanding voice demanding an explanation for the commotion. She saw Dan, bloodied and battered in the snow, and stopped.

  “Oh dear God!” she said “Who did this?”

  Ana spoke first. “It was Kyle” she still pronounced it ‘Keel’. “He hit him with…” she was lost for the translation although it was obvious, and pointed to the shovel saying “Cobok”

  “We see him, and he run” she finished lamely.

  Dan was brought inside strapped to the stretcher with blocks either side of his head. Heaters were brought in and a fire lit in medical as his body temperature had already fallen dangerously low from the short time on the wet ground. People buzzed around, asking questions until Kate roared at them all to get out.

  “Anybody not medically trained is to leave right now!” she bawled as her temper frayed too far, standing square to stare down the room until they fled. Only she and Lizzie remained.

  Dan was unaware of all this as he lay unresponsive on his back, dripping diluted snowmelt and blood onto the floor.

  WE MUST RETAIN OUR HUMANITY

  Dan was out for most of the morning. When he did come round, he could not move his head. This resulted in him fountaining acidic bile into the air for it to fall in his face. He would have choked had Kate not run over to him and tipped his entire immobile body over for the sick to go with gravity. She cleaned him up and began an in depth top to toe survey where she tested his feeling all over.

  No obvious spinal damage. She turned him the other way and felt down every single segment of his vertebrae asking each time if he had pain or numbness. He didn’t. She checked his skull thoroughly, looking for signs of fractures. After checking his pupil response for the fiftieth time, she finally allowed him to remove the head blocks and move around. Kate was still unhappy.

  “I’m only guessing you realise?” she asked testily “You should have a full spinal x-ray or a CT preferably”

  Dan tried to reassure her that he was fine, and that she was doing a great job without modern machinery. He could barely get the words out from the swollen right side of his jaw.

  “Council members” he mumbled “Please”

  He was soon looking up at the concerned faces of Penny, Andrew, Neil, Jimmy, Cara and Chris. Kate was still flitting around him, but had sent Lizzie to take a break.

  Dan had told a version of events which left out some embarrassingly key details. Where his consciousness ended, so Chris’ story began. He learned how the cowardly bastard Kyle had run into the woods rather than face the consequences.

  Kate reported that Dan was lucky, that one of the blows could easily have paralysed or killed him. Neil reported that Steve, Joe and Lexi had gone after Kyle, but as Ash was too wound up over him being down to go with them, they lost track of him after a mile.

  He wanted to get his dog and his gun and hunt the bastard down. He said as much to the council but even he had to agree he was in no state to move anywhere for a while. He left out the more creative ideas of what he could do when he caught him.

  Kyle’s actions had brought about the difficult question of punishment. The only one internal problem they had ever encountered had resulted in the public humiliation and ejection of Callum some months ago. That was different; that was a fight as such and not a deliberate action by the leaders of a group of people. It wasn’t society punishing a crime.

  Was Kyle to be banished? That held inherent dangers in that he knew where they were and what capabilities they had. He could return with others and be a serious threat to them.

  Someone suggested execution which Dan thought was a good idea at first, but the more he thought of it, the more he knew it was the wrong way to go; killing someone was one thing, executing them for a crime was different. Even if it was the attempted murder of himself.

  Neil pointed out that it was irrelevant as Kyle was in the wind anyway, and was unlikely to live long without shelter and equipment. From what Chris said he ran with just the clothes on his back so would probably die of exposure before the New Year.

  Penny suggested that if he returned or was captured then he should stand trial. Dan wanted to protest that he was seen by three people doing it and then ran away. No mitigation he could offer could excuse his actions, especially as he fled after. He held his tongue though; as anarchical as he felt he still believed in justice. Although his beliefs were in a deeper and purer justice than the world had known before it happened.

  The subject was ended under the cloud of crossing bridges when they came to them, and he was left to sleep by the others. He wasn’t sure how badly hurt he was, as the hangover symptoms seemed worse than the head injuries. Sera brought Ash to him later that day, and the huge dog hurt him again by climbing onto the hospital bed as he had a matter of weeks before. He refused to leave and growled at Kate when she told him to get down, prompting Dan to reprimand him and send him out with Sera.

  He would’ve preferred to go back to his own bed but Kate insisted on twenty-four hours’ observation, especially the way he ‘liked to collect concussions’ she added.

  He was released by lunchtime the next day and walked stiffly to the front door. He let Ash out on the way past, and leaned against his truck to smoke. Steve joined him, told him of the brief hunt for Kyle but without a dog they were too far behind to find him.

  “Pete tried with his girls, but they just put pheasants up instead” he laughed.

  “Ash would’ve caught him and tore the little fucker to pieces” Dan growled, looking at the dog. Sensing he was being discussed he cocked his head over and stared at Dan with his ears up, waiting for food or praise or both. He fussed his head.

  “I don’t fancy his chances though” said Steve “I’ve seen people die in better conditions, and he has no tradecraft at all from what I hear” he reassured Dan. Steve’s eyes glazed over, deep in memory.

  “Where have you gone, mate?” Dan asked, kindly.

  “The cockpit of a Merlin. Kosovo” he replied quietly.

  He put a hand on the pilot’s shoulder as he passed. They all had their history, and post-traumatic stress was probably the only single common denominator for them all.

  Dan had his own skeletons too, just not of the frozen wasteland mass genocide type.

  Steve felt instantly guilty for the lie.

  True, he had seen some awful atrocities during his service in the Balkans and elsewhere but nothing compared to the soldiers actually on the ground. He had really gone back to Snowdon years ago. A sudden s
torm had hit them when walking and he had to lead his wife and kids down before the weather became a danger to them.

  Dan limped back into Ops, where Leah fixed him with a smile of relief. The mangy cat hissed at Ash from its perch; a Sainsbury’s shopping basket with a prison blanket inside on top of a five-foot-tall stack of 5.56 bullets in boxes.

  Ash responded with a whine of fear and frustration as he backed away from the evil thing.

  Lexi blushed and looked at the floor. He wasn’t in the mood, but he had to deal with this soon. Steve walked back in and went straight past Ops, deep in thought. Dan made a show of producing his packet of cigarettes, announcing clearly without words that he was going back outside. As he had hoped, Lexi followed him.

  He lit two cigarettes at once, and handed her one in silence. He walked with some difficulty to the place where Kyle had attacked him.

  He laughed mirthlessly; that was probably the only conceivable circumstances in which Kyle could ever have beaten him.

  But he had, and it was very nearly final.

  “I’ll kill the bastard if I find him” she started.

  “You won’t, because if he’s not already dead I doubt he will last more than a couple of days” he replied tiredly “Any idea what set him off?” he asked, subtly raising the subject.

  “We didn’t do anything” She blurted out, turning crimson “I just…”

  “You just what?” he asked carefully.

  “I just didn’t want to spend Christmas on my own” she said to the floor “I was drunk and I just got in your bed, that’s it”

  He sighed “Lex, we’ve been through this.”

  “I know” she said “Kyle tried it on with me last night and I was” she hesitated, searching for the right word “unkind to him. Cruel actually. Then he probably saw me go to your room. It’s my fault”