UK2

by Terry Tyler

  "Stop it." Mac takes the bottle from me and shoves it into the canvas satchel slung across his torso that he always carries when we go out; it contains stuff to eat while we're on the move, his tabs, and bottles of water. I take the piss, and call it his Willmott bag. He laughs, but says I'm disrespectful. I say, what the fuck? I'm not going to pretend Marcus wasn't a dick, just because he's six feet under.

  We're walking up the road to meet the others at the van when these two lads walk round the corner. I'm good at sussing out trouble, and we're about to bump into some. They're seriously dirty. One wears a khaki cagoule, the other a royal blue fleece with what looks like shit on it, though it might be mud. They glance at each other, and their pace slows down. Cagoule puts his hand in his pocket.

  Here we go.

  "Stay calm, pet," Mac whispers, squeezing my hand.

  We stroll closer, and they stop dead, in front of us. Mac takes my arm and guides me out into the road, to pass them, but I'm already feeling in my pocket, too. It's going to start, it's going to start, it's going to start and yes, three-two-one, it starts—

  —Fleece grabs my arm as I pass him and tries to pull off my backpack, Mac goes to shove him off me and Cagoule leaps on his back, pulling him away, but I'm not scared, we know how to deal with this crap—I turn and knee Fleece in the crotch, kick him down; he's doubled up in pain, yelling and clutching at his nuts, and then I'm on top of him with my knife at his grubby throat and I'm shouting out at Cagoule, "You get your fucking hands off him or I'll use it!"

  He was only a second away from being thrown off, anyway. Mac's stronger than he looks and you don't mess with the Hadrian. Cagoule falls back, and puts up his hands. He's red in the face, scared and breathless.

  "Okay, okay. Leave him. Please." Looks like he's going to cry, the big pussy. "We're going. We're sorry, okay?"

  I let him sweat for a couple of seconds before I take the knife from Fleece's throat, and give him a little kick in the kidneys just to make sure they knows who's boss.

  "We're leaving, it's all good," says Cagoule, and he edges over to his mate, now scrambling up and looking shaken, like I've done him some serious damage.

  They scoot off down the road and Mac puts his arm around me.

  "You okay?"

  "Course I am." We're used to this. It's not the first time. In fact, it's such a normal occurrence that we probably won't even mention it to the others when we get to the van. I won't, anyway, in case Kara tells Mum. No point worrying her.

  Why can't people just ask if you've got a bit of food they can have? I'd have given them some, if they'd asked. Some do, but not many.

  We're the first back; we sit on a wall, Mac lights a tab and I breathe in the smoke. Can't decide if I want to start smoking or not. I have the odd one but I don't want to get addicted to anything. I drink a lot at the moment, but if I didn't I'd run around screaming.

  I take the Jack out of the Willmott bag and manage a good slurp before Mac takes it off me.

  "Y'cannit go on like this," he says, softly.

  I put my head on his shoulder. "I know."

  Thing is, we're all starting to recover from Heath's death, but as soon as I tell Mum (and everyone else) the truth, we're going right back to Day One.

  I won't have to tell Aria. She's gone. Good bloody riddance, too.

  She played the grieving girlfriend for a while, which was a load of crap because she knew Heath didn't love her, but Mum said I should be kind to her. So I was. I used to go round and see if she was okay, make her stuff to eat. And how did she repay me? By trying it on with Mac, that's how.

  She'd started hanging round the Monk's Head, which none of the Hadrian minded because she's so fit, and I thought she would cop off with Parks—also fit—but no. It was at the end of May; I'd been out on a run, Mac had been on the fishing boats, it was a nice evening, dead warm and summery, and I fancied going over to the dunes for a bit of fun in the sand, a few beers and some of that weed they get from Club Trop. I'd had a tepid bath to get rid of the smell of people's stinky houses and found a clean t-shirt and leggings out of the clothes pile in my room, and I actually felt okay, for the first time in weeks—whatever else was going on, I decided that Mac and I were going to have a good night.

  So, I walked into the bar, all smiles—and there I saw them.

  Mac was sitting at a table with Zoot and Parks, beers in front of them, and Aria was there too. She was wearing this khaki t-shirt with her tits falling out of it and had her arm across the back of Mac's chair, acting super-flirty and whispering in his ear.

  Parks and Zoot were laughing, but Mac looked well embarrassed, holding his head away, grinning; like, dead nervous. Then I saw her touch his cheek, swoop in and give his earlobe a little bite. I'm not a fucking idiot, and if I thought he'd been encouraging her in any way I'd have chucked a drink over him and walked straight out, but he wasn't. It was all her.

  I stormed over and yanked her back by the hair. She didn't half scream. Her chair tipped over, and then she was grabbing my wrist and yelling at me to let go, and the guys were standing up and separating us before I did her serious damage.

  I won't tell you what I shouted at her, 'cause it doesn't do me any favours. I must've sounded like a mad chav off The Jeremy Kyle Show.

  She shouted, "I hate the lot of you, you and your slag mother, and I hate this fucking island!" and stormed out. I watched her from the window; she stopped and looked back and I thought, aha, she's waiting to see if anyone rushes after her to make sure she's okay. But no one did. Ha!

  The guys got me a drink and made me calm down.

  "It wasn't Mac, pet, it was her coming on to him," Zoot said.

  "Aye, she's mad, that one," Parks said. "Lasses like her, y'best off stepping back and waiting for y'boner to go down."

  Next morning I knocked on Aria's door. When she opened it, I said, "Why would you do that? Try it on with my boyfriend when I've helped you?"

  She screeched, "I don't need your help, I don't need any of you, you took away the only person I cared about!" and slammed the door in my face. Couple of days later she took Heath's bike and left. Parks was on the gate and assumed she was just off scavenging, but she never came back.

  We went round to her house and she'd smashed up most of it, and had a bonfire in her garden. She'd burned Heath's things, clothes and odds and sods, which upset Mum and Jax; Jax was especially gutted that she'd taken the bike. He went off his trolley at Parks for letting her go, and Mac had to step in to stop a punch-up, then Jax smashed a glass on the floor and zoomed off on his own.

  What a bitch, to burn his dad's things. I hate her.

  I don't know what to do for Jax. I talk about it to the other guys, but of course only Mac knows the whole story.

  "He'll get over it at his own pace," Parks says, and yeah, okay, he will, but I don't think he can get to the next stage until I spill the beans about Dex.

  My head aches with it. Often. I'm so glad I've got Mac. There wasn't a definite time when we started to be boyfriend and girlfriend; we were spending more and more time together, and started having drunken snogs, and then one night we were getting stoned in the priory and ended up having a mega shag. He told me he loved me, and that was that.

  I wonder what it's like just to be normal and happy with someone. I think that's still possible, even now, but when, at the beginning of the relationship, you have to say, "By the way, I may act a bit random sometimes because I found out that my mum's partner hired your mate to murder her lover, and I daren't tell her 'cause I'm scared she'll lose her mind", it tends to cast a cloud over the first flush of romance. Lol.

  I wish Mum could fall in love with someone else. I was hoping she might ditch Scum Features for Travis, who she gets on really well with, but she says that all she can manage is going home to Dex, because he takes care of her.

  Sure he does.

  Mac told me he was always scared of Wedge and suspected he was a psycho, but thought that, as the president of the Hadria
n, he kind of needed to be.

  Some days, I don't know who Lottie Keating is any more. I don't recognise me. If I stop and think about it (which I don't very often), I wonder how on earth I can do stuff like I did in Berwick.

  I remember the month after the virus kicked off, so clearly, but before that it's all a bit sketchy. Like it was a long, long time ago. I don't know her, that kid Lottie who ate ice cream watching dumb teen series on Netflix and arsed around online with her mates. I'm jealous of her for having nothing to make her feel overwhelmed and sick with fear. But I despise her, too, for thinking that all the trivial crap that went on in her little life actually mattered.

  She's not me.

  I miss Heath, and Granny and Grandad, and our old friends, but I don't miss before.

  Kid Lottie had never seen a dead body, let alone a murder, and she never had to contemplate not having enough to eat. We have less now. We grow as many spuds as we can; Rowan puts a load in the brick oven outside the hotel every day at four o'clock, for anyone who wants a jacket spud with baked beans, tinned curry or tuna (no butter or cheese!); there's more nutrition if you eat the skin too, so every evening at about five-thirty the dining room is packed. She's had to start a take-a-ticket system, like you used to at the blood testing place in the hospital, and people get there early to wait for them.

  We still find lots of rice, flour and pasta, but cereal is often too stale to eat now. Guess one day we'll be glad to find stale Cheerios. We're going to grow wheat, and Travis and Martin have rigged up this apparatus to mill it, but everything is so basic. Flora makes cakes and biscuits with no butter. They're nice, but I want big soggy sponges with jam and cream! We have fish, and crabs, and meat, but not much; Mum says it's like in medieval times, when a pig was slaughtered in a village on a special day. One worry is that some breeds might carry the virus, which would be totally not awesome; when we first brought in the pigs and chickens a few brave souls volunteered to be testers, because about a quarter of the people here have not had the vaccine. Phil said it's possible that if the virus is lying dormant it could mutate, and those immune to the original might not be immune to a new strain.

  Scary!

  General disease is another problem. A nurse called Abbie arrived in April, and she can diagnose illnesses, take blood pressure and detect infection. We have antibiotics, but one day they will all be gone. This couple called Tom and Alice bang on about plant remedies, but my guess is that the main reason people stopped using them is because they don't really work. Their kids are called Leif and Fern. Nuff said.

  If people get ill, they stay indoors. This is a rule, as per Dex's charter. Nurse Abbie says our immune systems won't work so well because of having worse nutrition and a more physically demanding lifestyle, so mild illness could turn into something worse. One day last month, Ray and Will ate a fish that must have been dead when it was caught and for two whole days their guts were on a mission to evacuate their entire internal organs. Ruby made them sleep in tents outside so that nothing contaminated the house; she started puking up herself, with the smell and the sound of it. Then there's tooth decay. The whole island knew about Ozzy having his tooth pulled out. Sounded like Wedge was claiming another victim. And the blood—Myra totally freaked, and said it's the last time he has an M&M munchie-fest.

  I don't know all the people here any more. I don't bother to learn their names; if I get to know them, fine, but if I don't, they're just the noobs. I hang with Mac, Nicole and a few others. Flora gets right up my nose, which is a bit of a bummer as she lives in our house. Now she's got over being gang-banged and her friend Adam getting killed, she's started to act like one of those girly-girls in my class at school who went all pursed-lipped if someone said 'fuck', which I'm guessing is the real her. Every time I see her mincing around with a cloth and the Mr Muscle, I feel like slapping her.

  I feel like slapping people a lot of the time.

  Two nights after nearly stabbing Fleece in the throat on a street in Berwick-on-Tweed, I wake up in the middle of the night screaming.

  "You've got to tell your mam," Mac says, as he holds me close.

  "I know." I push my face into his warm chest, shut my eyes tight, and try to stop shaking.

  "No one will blame you for not coming clean about it straight away."

  See what I mean? He knows I'm worried about that, too, without me even saying so. He gets me. That's why I love him.

  Even if I can't manage to say it.

  Chapter Three

  Flora

  July 2026

  There has to be more than this, somewhere.

  A place that's more like the old world. Somewhere less primitive.

  Today I go to my friends the Lincolns' house for a cup of tea after Davina and I finish the day's baking, and, during our chat, I tell them how Maxlo employees and their families, like us, were given the vaccination early, before the programme began.

  "Seems reasonable, seeing as they invented it," says Paul. "Without them, there would be hundreds more dead."

  Davina says, "I wonder if the Maxlo bigwigs had some sort of bolthole? The government, too? I can't imagine posh company directors or the Prime Minister living in a place like this!"

  Paul laughs. "Too right! You can bet your bottom dollar they're not digging up spuds with their bare hands like something out of the Middle Ages, or boiling rainwater just so they can have a bloody shave in the mornings." He folds his arms and nods his head, like he's agreeing with himself. "And they must be thinking about what comes next, mustn't they? I mean, like, putting civilisation back together."

  "Do you think so?" That thought raises my spirits so much.

  At the hotel this afternoon, Lottie and her rowdy feminist friend, Nicole, had just come back from a supply run. They were laughing about Lucas punching someone in the face for trying to siphon petrol out of their van. Like it was something to brag about. This isn't my world. I want to live in a place where people treat each other decently, like before.

  Paul nods. "Gotta be, I reckon. I mean, all them MPs—they'll have made provision for, like, states of emergency, won't they? And they'll want to get the world back to how it used to be."

  Their little boy, Sam, runs in from the garden covered in muck.

  "Just to be somewhere with hot running water would be enough!" Davina grabs hold of Sam and pulls off his shoes. "And schools—don't get me wrong, Suzanne and Naomi are great, but Avery benefitted so much from her after-school activities, all those art classes and dancing, and Sam's missing out, completely."

  To be honest, I don't see any evidence that Avery has benefitted from any aspect of her education; all she does is chase boys. But obviously I don't say that.

  "Well, I'll tell you this, for nothing," Paul says. "If I hear about a bit of civilisation somewhere, I'll be the first blooming person out of here, I don't care where it is."

  "Down south, maybe." Davina has a dreamy look on her face. "It's always better down south." They're not from round here; they lived near Morpeth, but they moved up from Hertfordshire to be close to her sister.

  "You're not wrong there, love," said Paul. "Anything's got to be better than living like animals for the rest of our lives. I'd take a car and do a recce if I could, but Phil would never allow the petrol."

  Until now I'd accepted that this was our lot, and tried to make the best of it, but Paul's absolutely right. I can't imagine people like Daddy's bosses living like we do. And the Home Secretary must be making plans to help survivors, because that's his job.

  There's a silly story going round about the virus having been man-made, at the instruction of the government, to cull the population. Lottie and her friends say it's true, but some people always want to believe the worst or the most sensational. It's rubbish; the government are elected by us to work for us, for goodness sake.

  I can see this clearly, now that I'm no longer depressed.

  I feel embarrassed about the state I was in when I came here, but Suzanne says it's not surprisin
g after all I went through. She's a qualified psychologist and says that when I was first here I was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and I might also have had General Adaptation Syndrome.

  It's a relief to find out that I was suffering from actual psychological syndromes.

  Lottie says I've just had some bad experiences and need time to get over them, and that psychologists give everything stupid names to make themselves and their patients feel more important.

  Lottie is often rude these days.

  She's changed from the girl I first met; she's always been outspoken, but she was kinder before. More patient, understanding.

  Well, all I know is that I feel like Flora Holden again, not the violated rag doll who could not have survived without Adam.

  Rest in peace, Adam.

  Daddy taught me to shut out the bad stuff and only think about happy things, so now, with Suzanne's help, that's what I do.

  She and Naomi have been wonderful. Lottie is rude about Naomi's holistic therapies, too, but I think that's because her life force energy is out of balance.

  Before the virus I had a lovely life. I was so contented; my only ambition was to find a man like my father, and be the perfect wife and mother, like Mummy. Suzanne says I can still fulfil my dreams. I hope so. She says I am on a potentially soul-enriching journey.

  I was all alone after my parents were killed three months after the outbreak. I lived in deserted houses and just survived somehow, telling myself that all I had to do was hold on until the end of January, because Daddy said Maxlo had promised it would all be over in six months, but January came and went and it got worse, not better.

  I don't think Daddy lied to me, or that Maxlo lied to him, I think it all just escalated so fast that nobody could stop it. Suzanne says it's a part of my personal development to understand that the best laid plans can fall through.