Aftermath: The complete collection

by John Wilkinson

  ‘What’s going on?’ Asked Rhino, as we emerged from behind the tarpaulin. Sergeant Davis approached Keane, who was still working on one of the men. ‘These two will live’ Keane said, pointing at the men, who were unconscious on the floor. Sergeant Davis shot them both through the head where they lay, without a word. He then walked over to the nearest sofa, just as we were joined by the Sergeants of Tangerine, Latics and Claret and Blue Company. He thanked them for their help, but insisted we could handle the clean up. ‘What are we going to do with all these men?’ I asked, pointing at the sofas. ‘They’re alive, most of them.’

  ‘Are they infected?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then they have to be destroyed, as per our orders.’

  I was slightly less comfortable with the killing of these men, it didn’t feel one hundred percent right. The men that had been running this camp deserved to die, of that there was no question, but I’m not sure what to make of these men, had they been taken advantage of? If they were eating human flesh, then they had to be destroyed. The rest of Blue and White Company, dragged the bodies off the sofas, or killed them where they lay, with a bullet to the head. All the bodies of the dead were piled high, by the restricted area, and Rhino torched them. He then moved systematically through the camp, burning all traces of what had been happening here. The whole of Blue and White Company watched from distance, as the whole camp burned, trees collapsed as the fire spread. ‘Let it burn to ash’ remarked Sergeant Davis, as he turned his back on the camp, and continued into the forest. ‘The weather will put the fires out.’ We cleared out the rest of the forest in the next hour, with a further eight kuru carriers destroyed. Soon we were out in the open, where the conditions were much more punishing. We found just one body over the next thirty minutes, half naked, who had frozen to death. The fact many of the kuru sufferers we find dead or nearly dead are half naked, made me wonder if towards the end of the disease, it affected the brain in much the same way as mountaineers, who think they feel too hot. It’s an illusion, so they take off all their clothes thinking they’re overheating, rather than dying of cold. We ate our lunch sat in a concrete bandstand overlooking a duck pond. The water was as black as tar, the rain coming down created patterns as it rippled across the pond. I prepared myself for the next objective, clearing out my farm. I told the men, if any were unaware, that the next farm had been my home, it was information I felt they should all have before we got there. As we ate, we could hear the wild dogs somewhere off in the distance, Sergeant Davis got on the radio, and put out a message stating the dogs were a priority, and when found a message must be sent out asking for help to destroy them. We arrived on the outskirts of my farm at around two twenty in the afternoon, after a short drive in the Viking. The rain had stopped, but was replaced by a perishing blizzard, which cut us to the bone. A few members of the team, including myself, had taken a bit of oxygen in the Viking, with headaches and coughing becoming a problem. We climbed over the barbed wire fence where it had been cut, and headed towards the lake, a good fifteen minute walk from the property. The trees around the lake seemed to have all died, one having toppled over, now lying across the black water. At the edge of the lake, were a few dead fish, in varying degrees of decomposition. There were also three bodies in the water, all face down. Murphy carefully climbed out using the dead tree, and hooked each body with his rifle muzzle, and pulled them ashore. It was hard to tell what they had died from, the bacteria had been working some time on them. Each body we recover, creates panic in me, that this person could be my mother or father, while I don’t know what happened to them, there can never really be any closure. We left the bodies in a pile by the waters edge, and torched everything. We fanned out into formation to search my property and land. With the darkness becoming more of a problem, Sergeant Davis told us to turn our tactical lights on. With a hand signal, he ordered Murphy and Little D to search the two outhouses, while we continued into the property. Rhino waited outside, keeping an eye on the different approaches. The house didn’t feel like my home anymore, I didn’t recognise it. The cobbled drive had a slant, which leaned towards the wooden porch, that was burnt out and black. The door was ajar, so I pushed it open and stepped down into the hallway. The radiator had been ripped off the wall, and lay in pieces on the floor in front of me. I stepped over it and walked to the kitchen door on my left, from where I could see inside the living room, downstairs toilet and the kitchen. Everywhere was filthy, with blood and other human excrement, on the floors and walls. There was rubbish all over the carpet, food wastage, needles, containers and newspapers. I couldn’t walk in a straight line for having to avoid shit on the floor, Sergeant Davis followed behind me, using my footsteps. The kitchen opened out with the units and appliances following along the left wall, with the sink and drainage board across the back. A wooden dining table and chairs take up most of the right side of the room, where there was also a small store cupboard. The kitchen was disgusting, with rubbish of all kinds littering the floor, table and work surfaces’. Half eaten mouldy food, rotting vegetables and fruit, vomit and other human waste. There was blood everywhere, with knives still covered with it, bits of bone, fat and hair in piles. All rotting, and stinking. I covered my nose and mouth with my arm as I got closer to the sink and cooker, that were both covered in blood and bits of bone and skin, so decomposed it was difficult to know where it came from. I turned my attention to the store cupboard, which had been stripped of anything edible, with the odd empty can lying on the floor. I noticed the fridge was ajar, so I opened it. Inside was decomposed food, left from the morning of the attack, but there was also chunks of dead flesh wrapped in plastic bags, black and distorted, bones with black skin still attached and other bits of humans I simply couldn’t recognise. We moved back into the hallway, and through to the living room, still reeling from our discovery. I looked at Sergeant Davis, who himself was white as a sheet, but things weren’t going to get any better. There was a body on the sofa, half naked, I wasn’t sure if he was alive or not, but he looked like he had been eating his own arm, with blood and skin around his face and his right hand barely still attached. I put a couple of bullets into his head to make sure, and moved away, as the smell started to get the better of me. There was a photograph on the floor, that looked like it had been trampled under foot, the glass cracked and broken. I picked it up, and brushed the glass off. It was a picture of my mum and dad, taken at the celebration of their fortieth wedding anniversary, at their favourite restaurant, just six months before all this shit happened. I removed the photograph from the frame and folded it up, putting it in my pocket. There were other photos on the wall including pictures of Jane and Emma together, which I removed and stashed. A noise upstairs startled me, I looked at Sergeant Davis, who signaled for us to investigate. We crept up the stairs, our rifles at the ready, past further memories of my past life, hanging on the walls. The smell upstairs was truly foul, I removed the spare shirt from my rucksack again and tied it tight across my face. At the top of the stairs, Emma’s bedroom was on the left, followed by my bedroom, with the bathroom opposite on the right. My parents bedroom was at the end of the corridor, with the door shut. Inside Emma’s room, was a child’s body on the bed, butchered. Emma’s princess bedding, stained red with blood, and the instruments used to dismember the child still lying on the floor. This could so easily have been Emma, if we hadn’t run when we did, I hoped whoever the child was they didn’t suffer too much, but I expect they did. A picture on the wall drew my attention, it was a drawing Emma had done when she was five, called ‘My family.’ It depicted the two of us, with her grandparents by her side, and her mum floating off to heaven. It was drawn in the months following her mums death, while she was trying to come to terms with it. I removed it from the wall, wiped the blood off, and folded it up, putting it in my pocket. We left the room and went into the bathroom opposite, which had amazingly been spared the horror witnessed in other rooms. The toilet was overflo
wing with human excrement, and the sink and bath were stained with dirt and grime, but no bodies. We went into my bedroom next, which had been used as a dumping ground for anyone staying, bags, coats and other belongings, plus any items deemed essential on the road. I couldn’t see an area I still recognised, besides a couple of pictures on the wall. ‘Is that the last room?’ Sergeant Davis whispered, pointing his rifle at my parents closed bedroom door. I nodded, moving into position so he could breach the door. With his rifle out in front of him, he kicked the door through, in one quick motion, and was inside clearing the room. I followed behind as he whispered ‘Contact’, and put two bullets into a man led on the bed. I looked under the bed, and then in the wardrobe. ‘Clear’ I said, looking at the state the room had been left in. It was disgusting, as was every other room in this house, they’ve absolutely no respect or decency. The amount of depravity these walls had seen horrified me, it made me want to tear these fuckers apart. This was my childhood home, where I’d been brought up, and now where Emma considered home. I don’t remember how it happened, but I found myself smashing my rifle butt into the face of the man on the bed, over and over again. ‘You goddamn mother fucker’ I screamed, smashing his head again and again. All my disgust and hatred came flooding out, as I continued to hit him until his head had disintegrated into mush, and I fell to my knees exhausted. ‘Come on Nathan’ said Sergeant Davis, helping me to my feet. ‘There’s nothing else we can do here.’

  I pulled myself together, and headed back downstairs, through the house and back outside. ‘Burn it to the ground’ I muttered to Rhino as I past him. I walked around the house to the back garden, and sat on the back wall, where I would shoot tin cans as a child. I turned to face the house, and watched as room by room was set alight. Fire came pouring out of the windows, reaching for the sky. Black smoke pumping out of every room, into the dark ash clouds above. The fire lit up the whole garden, I could see the slide Emma would play on, and the flower bed my mum would tend to each Sunday. Sergeant Davis came out and sat with me for a while in silence, as the house burned.

  ‘I never expected it to be this hard’ I said, breaking the silence as I tried to hide a tear.

  ‘I’m sorry Nathan, that was fucked up.’

  ‘It’s just struck me, this is it, everything has now gone. All remnants of my previous life are burning before my eyes, photographs, clothes, all my memories. I’ve got nothing left.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say Nathan, I know it won’t replace what you’ve lost, but you have a new home and family now.’

  I pulled out the picture of my parents, and unfolded it.

  ‘I appreciate that Chris, really I do. But my parents have gone, and I won’t ever see them again. All I have is this one photograph of them, everything else has burnt. I’m glad I managed to get this photo though, at least it’s something.’ I said, folding it back up and putting it in my pocket.

  ‘You know,’ said Sergeant Davis, readjusting his position on the wall. ‘I remember when my old man passed away, my mum took it really hard, for days we couldn’t get through to her, she locked herself away in her room. When she emerged days later, the day of the funeral I think, she’d stripped her bedroom of everything that reminded her of him. Clothes, his glasses, shoes, even his toothbrush. She then went through the house and removed everything else, his favourite cup, coats, shoes, photographs, she even removed his favourite chair, and took it to the charity shop. Ian and I were not happy, we thought she was being disrespectful to his memory, that she was trying to forget him, and their lives together. But it wasn’t the case, I remember her telling me, ‘He will always be in my dreams, and when he is, it’s like it always was. No bad memories, no death, illness or suffering. Just the good times.’ That’s how she wanted to remember him, and that’s how you will, you will always remember them.’

  Keane, Murphy, Rhino and Little D joined us in the back garden, where we all warmed ourselves on the fire as it engulfed my home. They all offered me their sympathy, which I was grateful for. We left the farm in silence, putting a downer on what had been a successful day, mission wise. We had achieved what we set out to, and had a better understanding of what was happening. As we left, Rhino climbed down to check the nuclear shelter, before torching it all. We set off back through the muddy fields with smoke bellowing into the darkening clouds. At the Viking, we loaded our stuff, and set off in silence, no one knowing what to say. When we got back to the farmhouse, Kate had prepared an amazing meal for us, we ate like kings. I explained to Matthew and Kate what had happened at my farm, they could tell I didn’t really want to talk about it too much, and didn’t push me. I wanted to be alone with my own thoughts after tea, so I went back to the barn early, to finish the days diary entry. As I left, Sergeant Davis and Murphy went to higher ground, to send a radio message to the other companies, to find out which of the days objectives had been achieved, and what was still left to be done.

  6/13/2029 - Time 00:20

  I got up early this morning, keen to show my team I was not going to let yesterday’s events affect me. I was up at five am while the other soldiers slept, and walked over to the farmhouse, to see if I could offer any assistance to Matthew and Kate. I found Kate in the kitchen, preparing some bread dough, placing it in two flat bottomed cooking trays. She told me Matthew would appreciate some help, he was chopping wood for the fire, in the wood drying barn. I found him, half way through a pile, loading the logs into a large metal wheelbarrow. I picked up an axe and joined in. ‘This brings back memories’ I said, as I swung the axe, splitting a log in half.

  ‘Did you do a lot of this with your old man?’

  ‘Yeah, many times.’

  ‘Did you ever consider following in his footsteps, and taking over the farm?’

  ‘Not really. I know he would’ve liked me to, but it just wasn’t me.’

  ‘It was a hard life, and getting harder when you were deciding your future.’

  ‘Yeah, the bottom was falling out. But they managed to keep it profitable, just about.’

  Matthew smiled a knowing smile, that told me they’d faced a similar battle. We finished chopping the wood, before pushing it back to the farmhouse in the wheelbarrow. We dropped it off by the back door, where we took an armful each to carry inside. The smell that greeted us was incredible. I might have said it before but there really is no better smell in the world than freshly baked bread. Sergeant Davis and Rhino were sat around the dining table as we walked in, finalising today’s objectives. ‘Put the logs by the side of the fire’ said Kate, cutting up the loaf of bread to toast over the fire. Matthew put a couple on the fire, and we stacked the rest by the side. ‘You boys are just in time’ said Kate, looking out of the window. Keane and Murphy came bounding through the front door, with their arms full of eggs. ‘Eggs Driver’ shouted Keane, bouncing around like a child in a sweet shop. ‘Fucking eggs. Can you believe it? Eggs, I haven’t had a boiled egg for months. I don’t think there is anything I could want more right now, than boiled fucking eggs and soldiers.’

  Keane was right to be excited, my God it tasted amazing, fresh bread toasted soldiers and soft boiled eggs, I have always enjoyed a boiled egg and soldiers, but this really was incredible. Just for a few moments, I completely forgot about the situation we all found ourselves in, and I was transported back to my childhood, on my farm with my mum and dad. As everyone was now present, Sergeant Davis lay the map out on the dining table, and we confirmed the places we still needed to search. Matthew helped us plot the area he believed had been secured by some of the farms, surrounding the Pentland Hills, but we still need to seek confirmation for ourselves. He gave us a contact, Bill Grayson, to approach at Hillend, a name I had heard before, but couldn’t place. As it was the last day of operation, Sergeant Davis sent Little D and Murphy to search through the tunnels, with Matthew guiding them, as the rest of us prepared our belongings for leaving. He wanted to
make sure no sufferers had wondered into the tunnels, and could survive, keeping the disease alive. But they searched and found nothing, and blocked the tunnels at the point of exit. We left the farm around ten am, and thanked Matthew and Kate for their help, and their hospitality. Every member of Blue and White Company hugged the couple, with a few teary eyes among the macho soldiers. The Buchanans made a very kind offer to accommodate The Tangerines Company and The Royal Blues Company, as they continue to observe the Pentland Hills after the mission has finished, which will make their extended stay a bit more bearable. Our first port of call was a small town on the outskirts of the Pentland Hills called Hillend, which Matthew believed was running it’s own operation destroying kuru sufferers. We loaded up the Viking, and followed the A702 towards Hillend, where we found the fields on the right hand side of the road fenced off. The fence was about six foot in height, and had been cobbled together using corrugated metal, aluminium composite signs, wooden posts, anything that could be salvaged and worked with. At the entrance to Hillend, we found a guard post, built on top of a garage that overlooked the road, with a man in dark overalls watching us approach.