The Path to Destruction

by Rebecca Fernfield

  As he reaches the lower end of the street he turns, and is faced by the familiar houses of the street he’d walked up a thousand times to get to school and back, or meet his mates. A dog trots across the road, realises their presence, cowers, then disappears between the passageway of a row of terraces. Ignoring it, he leads the convoy through the town until they reach a road lined with parked cars and slows to a stop. Home. It doesn’t look any different, and he wonders who lives in the house now. He turns to the biker at his side and jabs his gloved finger at the gravelled entrance to the left. This is what he’d been banking on when he suggested they come here. Riding up the gravelled driveway, the tall iron gates are open and through them sits the squat building of the local football club. He rides up to the ramp in front of the double doors, switches off his engine, flips out the bike’s stand and waits for Trina to get off. Swinging his leg over the bike he looks around. The buildings seem undamaged and the fence that surrounds the compound is intact—at least where he can see it, and the gates look sturdy—galvanised steel by the look of it. Above the door is a metal casing holding the rolled-up shutters. The same casing sits above each of the windows. The area to the front and side is gravelled and to the back, of course, is the football field. Perfect!

  He pulls off his helmet as Trina shakes out her dark hair and flicks at it to combat the helmet-hair she hates. That’s another thing he likes about this woman—she always makes an effort, even if the world has gone to shit.

  “Like it?” he asks, eager for her response.

  “It’s perfect, Jackson. Just bloody perfect.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron agrees as he saunters up to them, helmet in hand, his short hair choppy, but flattened. “This is the business, bro.”

  “You did good, Jackson,” Ryan adds, pushing his hands through his hair as he looks around.

  Jackson smiles, hiding the relief he feels at their approval, careful not to let them see he had any doubts.

  “Yeah,” he agrees. “This is the place. We can be safe here—the windows and doors have metal shutters, the fence is strong, the gates are good, and there’s a huge field out back where we can start growing food.”

  “And it looks like there’s plenty of room inside,” Trina adds.

  “Sure is, babe. We’ll get some privacy later, eh?” he says with a hopeful lift of his brows and pats the cheeks of her arse.

  She turns to him, slips her arm across his back and pulls him forward. “You bet,” she smiles. Oh, those come-to-bed eyes! Life was good, even if it was in the shit.

  “Shall we?” he asks sweeping his arm towards the doors.

  “Certainly, sir,” she jokes and walks with him to the entrance. “I hope it’s not locked.”

  Jackson walks up the steps, the concrete edges hard against his boots, and reaches for the long metal door-pull. The door vibrates. He flinches. Get a grip! It’s just the wind. And pulls. The door opens with ease and the smell of mildew, masked by stale lemon, wafts out.

  “Phew! Bit whiffy,” Trina exclaims.

  “Just needs the windows opening,” Ryan says.

  “And the bodies taking out,” Aaron adds.

  “You never know, there might not be any.”

  “Yeah, right. There’s always bodies, man.”

  “Depends. It’s a club. Most people died at home, or at work.”

  Trina shudders.

  “You ok, babe?” Jackson asks.

  “Sure, hun. Just someone walked over my grave.”

  “Do you want to wait outside whilst I check the place over?” Jackson offers

  “That’s an idea, Trina. Why don’t you wait out there with Sally and the others whilst me and Jackson do a reccy?” Aaron suggests.

  “Sure,” she replies with a look of relief then turns and walks back out into the sun.

  “Where do we start?”

  “There’s a big function room and a bar through there,” Jackson says nodding to the right. “I don’t know what the other rooms are. I’ve only ever been here to a party. I’ll take this side,” he says nodding towards the corridor with its row of doors. “You take the function room and bar. OK?”

  “Sure,” Aaron replies and disappears through the double doors to the right.

  Chapter 6

  Jackson turns, notices how small and neat Trina is against the towering Sally, and heads for the corridor. He opens the first door. A toilet. Nothing to see here. The second is an office. Only one small window high on the wall gives light to the box of a room, but even in the dinge he can see that it is uninhabited. He sighs with relief, his shoulders knotted with tension. He’d never get used to seeing the dead—there were just so many of them littered about the city - every house or apartment they’d scavenged, the shops they’d taken from – they all had their share of bodies. He doubted that the club would be any different.

  To his right is a door with a sign, a cookie-cutter style figure of a man in black—the men’s toilet. He opens the door. The room remains dark—no window here. It smells fine though—the tell-tale stench of rotting flesh is absent. It even smells quite pleasant, with a lemony freshness. He steps back into the corridor and checks in the ladies’ toilet. Again, the room is dark, but in here the smell is rank. He steps back and lets the door close. It slams against its frame with a bang. They’d have to go in later and clear it out. He wipes at his brow, the tension in his shoulders spreading to his neck and the back of his head. Before him are double doors—the changing rooms for the teams no doubt. Pushing through, the stench hits him—mould and mildew and something else—a stench like the pits they’d had to dig to take a dump in back in the city. Once the water had stopped working so had the toilets and eventually he’d realised that you couldn’t just take a dump in them because it didn’t flush away, just built up and up until the stench was unbearable. Coming to the countryside, even if it was a small town, was better than being stuck in the godforsaken city. His only regret was that he hadn’t suggested it sooner.

  Light shines in through another set of doors that lead out to the wide field behind the club—the football pitch, not that you could play football on it. Most of the snow had thawed, leaving behind a mass of browned and wilted grass. Though green underneath, it was more of a meadow than a football pitch. The doors behind him clat.

  “All clear through there,” Aaron calls.

  “Not clear in here,” Jackson replies. “In the ladies—I couldn’t see, but it smells of death.”

  “Ugh! Shame. It stinks in here too—like a sewer!”

  “Yeah, I think it might be the drains. I haven’t checked the rooms yet,” he says and steps into the changing room. Team shirts hang from individual pegs along the wall. The floor is covered in sods of earth, and littered with water bottles, lengths of used plastic tape, and chocolate wrappers.

  “What a mess!” Aaron mutters as he follows behind.

  Jackson steps forward, stands on a sod of earth, lifts his foot to shake it off, and groans as a length of sticky tape rises with his boot.

  “Messy buggers!” he says picking off the tape and throwing it to the floor.

  Communal showers stand at the far end of the room and either side are toilet stalls. Deacon walks through the room to the stalls and peers in. “There’s the stench,” he says with disgust as he looks at the mess of brown and orange stained paper filling the base of the toilet’s bowl. “Looks like someone took a dump and didn’t flush it. Been here since The Death by the look of it.”

  “I won’t if you don’t mind,” Aaron jokes though and steps back out into the corridor.

  Jackson checks the smaller rooms of the changing room suite, and is relieved to find them empty of bodies.

  “Looks like this side is clear,” he says with relief.

  “There’s this room too,” Aaron says pointing to the Away Team’s changing room. “And it’s not empty.”

  In the middle of the room sits a mobile massage trolley complete with rotting corpse. Jackson nods his head as he takes in the
scene, but doesn’t enter the room. “That’s two then,” he says matter of fact, pushing away the horror he feels. If he can just be matter of fact about it he can cope—perhaps then the nightmares won’t come.

  “Two,” Aaron agrees. “I’ll get the lads in,” he says turning. “We hit the jackpot here, Jackson” he grins pushing the doors open.

  “I think we did,” Jackson agrees.

  “Yep. And, in the kitchen, there’s a cooker with gas.”

  “But the gas doesn’t work.”

  “Should do—it’s bottled!”

  “That has just made my day,” he says with pleasure. “If we can find some water we can even make a brew.”

  “Hah! You and your brews.”

  “Well, a man’s got to have some pleasure in life and I loved having my cups of tea first off. Morning’s just not right without it.”

  “I think your mornings are sorted,” Aaron returns. “That Trina’s a bit of all right.”

  “Hah!” Jackson laughs. “Good job you’ve got Sally to keep you in check or I’d lamp you for that.”

  “No fear, mate. Bros before hoes.”

  “Don’t let Trina hear you say that, she’ll be lamping you.”

  He laughs as they reach the outer doors where Sally and Trina are stood, deep in conversation as the others check over their bikes and walk around the compound.

  “Yep, we’re some lucky sons of bitches,” Aaron says as Jackson opens the door.

  “We are that,” he agrees as Trina turns to smile at him. “We are that.”

  Trina steps forward to join him, the winter’s sun dancing among her hair, leather jacket zipped up against the cold, her jeans tight around her slim waist and rounded backside. He looks her over, wants to hold her body tight and feel the comfort of it next to his. She’s the only thing that’s saved him these past months.

  “Is it clear?” she asks

  Trina waits for Jackson’s response as he steps down from the club. She hopes the building is clean; she’s had a gutful of the bodies that clog up the houses and the shops. And the smell! Well, that was something she’d never get used to.

  “Nope!” he replies and she sags a little.

  “How many?”

  “Two.”

  “Not so bad then,” she replies brightening.

  “No.”

  “Let’s get a cleaning crew in there,” she suggests. They were practiced at this now—moving the dead—clearing them out to make space for themselves in each place they had to move on to. It seemed, though, that each time they got somewhere cleared out all hell would break loose and they’ve have to leave. There may not be many people left around now, but those that were, were bloody vicious. “How long do you think we’ll be staying here?” she asks looking up at the low building and its row of rectangular windows.

  “I think we’ll stay for good.”

  “Hah! You hope,” Sally interjects.

  “I do, Sal. I do.”

  “We can dream, I guess. Seems everywhere we go there’s someone wants us to move on.”

  “Sure,” Jackson replies as they walk towards the door. He turns back to the men and women standing about in the yard. “Abe, Tom. I need you in here,” he calls then continues. “Sure, but this place is different. We’re out of the city now. This is a small town. There won’t be so many survivors scrapping over supplies, and this club,” he says with obvious pride, “is safe. Look at the windows and doors—they’ve got shutters. We’ll be able to pull them down at night and be safe inside. The gates too—we can close them at night. Set up a patrol if we do find other survivors and we’re sorted.”

  “We should search them out,” Ryan suggests. “Be the ones on the offensive—get them before they get us this time.”

  “Perhaps we should,” Jackson agrees.

  “I guess,” Sally says though her voice is hesitant.

  “Jackson’s right, Sal,” Trina adds. “This is the safest place we’ve found, and there’s a field back there for growing stuff if we can’t find enough in the houses.”

  “We sure can,” Jacks replies with enthusiasm. “Once spring comes we might find there’s stuff growing in the gardens round about too.”

  As Trina walks through the door held open by Jackson, he pats her arse and she slaps at his thigh with pretended indignation, but she can’t help smiling. He laughs and she’s thankful the day she found him—her protector, her man. Inside, she’s greeted by the waft of death masked by the chemical undertones of lemon.

  “I can smell them,” she says looking through the glass panes of a pair of doors. “Are they in here?” she asks and gestures to the large, empty room beyond.

  “No. One’s in the bog, the other’s laid out on a massage table in the changing rooms. That through there is a kitchen and function room,” Jackson replies. “There’s a couple of other rooms in there too.”

  “Kitchen? I’ll go check for some rubber gloves—at least that way we won’t have to touch them.” She’s moved enough bodies now that they don’t bother her, but touching them, feeling the rotting flesh beneath her skin—that is something she cannot stomach.

  Five minutes later, their hands protected by thin, clear rubber gloves she stands with Sally, Ryan, and Jackson looking down at the dead man laid out on the massage table.

  “Do you think he was having a massage when he died?” she asks trying not to look too close at his bare and blackened back.

  “Looks like it. He’s only got a towel on, and he’s lying on his belly.”

  “Must have hit him hard then,” Sally exclaims. “If he was well enough one minute to be playing football and next he’s dead!”

  “Yeah,” Sally agrees. “It did for some. Take my Aunty Julie. She came round when Mum died and seemed fine, no hint of infection. Sure she was sad and scared obviously, but full-on healthy, like me. I noticed it though,”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. She laid her hand on the covers to look at Mum’s face better and I saw a black line under her nail—just the one mind—all the others were clear. She got half way down the stairs and dropped down dead.”

  “She was lucky then,” Trina responds looking at the massage table, trying to figure out how they’re going to get the long and heavy carcass out.

  “Lucky? How’d you figure that?”

  “She didn’t suffer—not like the rest.”

  A common murmur of assent goes around the group.

  “Wheels,” Trina says. “This thing’s got wheels. We can trolley him out.”

  “Makes it easy. Then we can trolley him somewhere away from here.”

  “We should bury him.”

  “Sure.”

  “Away from here though. If there’s only two bodies here and we take them right up the road or something, we can have a clean area to live in,” Sally suggests.

  Trina smiles at the thought. “Now that would be nice.”

  “You know, if we’re going to stay here, we could do that.”

  “What?”

  “Clear the bodies—make the town clean again.”

  “I think we should,” Trina agrees. “But let’s get settled first,” she says as she pulls at the corners of the massage table. It rolls towards her. “Ryan. Can you hold the doors open, please? We’ll take this one out.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “We’ll come back for that.”

  “Good idea,” Sally agrees. “Right, lads. Get them doors open, we’re coming through.”

  Chapter 7

  Saskia struts down the wide aisle of the warehouse, her breath billowing white in the cold. She shivers and pulls the thick scarf around her neck and sneezes. Damn this cold. Her throat was sore, her muscles ached, and she just felt fragile. She looks over to the men sitting huddled around the gas fire on the mismatched collection of chairs and leather settee. Not that they’d care—selfish is what they were.

  Murray looks up and grimaces as she approaches. She ignores the hate-filled stare.

&n
bsp; “What are you doing?” she asks. Her voice croaks from her throat, and she coughs.

  “You got the plague?” Murray scoffs.

  She sneers back at him. “No!”

  “Shame.”

  She ignores his spite and turns instead to Carl. “Did you check down Burgate? Have those houses been cleared yet?” she rasps pulling at the map laid out on the table at the side of the fire. She scrutinizes it. Each street is marked off, each house that they’ve checked through and gathered the supplies from, is crossed out. There aren’t many available white spaces left.

  “No, we didn’t,” he says quietly, his hand in a bag of potato crisps. He pulls out a finger-pinch full, pops them into his mouth, then wipes the salt off his fingers against his trousers.

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to wipe your hands on your clothes?”

  “She did.”

  Saskia ignores the glint of defiance in his eyes. Ever since Murray had taken against her - after the fire - Carl and Loz hadn’t been so easy to … bully was a strong word, but manipulate, yes, manipulate. She had to find a way of getting them under her thumb again, but at this point quite how eluded her, and she was tired of the fight. “Well, don’t do it then,” she says with a gentler tone and tries to pull her lips into a smile. Carl frowns in return. She drops the pretence and turns her attention back to the map. “Here,” she says stabbing at the map. “This is where we’ll work tomorrow.”