Blood on the Motorway

by Paul Stephenson

  'Yeah, well, I can't be too pissed off with you for doing what I didn't have the balls to do. Besides, it was pretty funny trying to watch you fight with all the skills of a four-year-old.' He motioned to Tom's face. 'And it's not like you got off scot-free.'

  'Is it bad?' Tom asked.

  'You'd better hope it's true chicks dig scars.'

  Tom raised his hands to his face. The moment fingers met flesh deep rivulets of pain opened up. It felt like great chasms had opened up across his skin. He groaned. His hand moved to the back of his head, which seemed the source of a lot of his pain. It was a mess of matted hair, blood and more pain.

  'I'm going to really, really kill those fuckers,' he said, almost believing it as he said it.

  'Well you'll get your last chance soon enough,' Leon said, 'I reckon Baxter's going to kill us sooner rather than later.'

  'At least we've got something to look forward to.'

  The van went round a corner and Tom let himself slide across the floor to Leon, watching his friend's face contort with pain as he tried to hold his mangled leg in place.

  'Any thoughts?' Tom asked.

  'On how we survive?'

  Tom nodded.

  'I thought, seeing as my leg is pretty much fucked I might tear it off and use it to bludgeon to death the next person who opens that door.'

  'Well if you do, don't forget to use the shoe end.'

  Leon laughed, then winced in pain.

  'You know,' Tom said, 'I always thought that all those hours of playing Resident Evil, watching zombie films, and box set after box set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meant that, come the apocalypse, I'd be one of the ones who had it sorted. That it wasn't wasted time, because one day all my bullshit survival knowledge might come in useful. But look at us now.'

  He glanced over at his friend. His eyes were closed. Tom worried for a moment that he'd gone unconscious, or into shock or something. Thankfully Leon soon uttered a gentle snore.

  He waited for something to happen, but nothing did. On and on the lorry rolled, pitching and yawing. Tom sailed on, until he too sank into sleep.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SUCH HAWKS, SUCH HOUNDS

  Having pilfered so much camping gear, Jen, Mira, and Sam decided to try a night out in the woods. They left York behind and headed north, stopping off for a quick raid on a sandwich shop. They drove for most of the afternoon, munching on stale sandwiches that Jen hoped they wouldn't regret within the next few hours, until the urban sprawl gave way to rolling fields. They passed a farmer's gate and backed up, took a turn onto the grass, and headed out of sight of the road.

  Jen hadn't been to a festival for a few years, but the tent-building muscle memory was pretty well honed, and soon they had two tents up. She looked at her companions.

  'So do I need to build another tent?' She asked them.

  Sam stuttered for a moment and Mira looked at the ground.

  'We, um…'

  'That's what I thought. Fine. But here's the deal. No sex.'

  Mira flashed a look of indignation.

  'But…'

  'No, Mira. Listen to me. You two can do what the hell you like, I'm not your mother and I'm not about to tell you you're too young. What I will tell you, though, is there's not a fucking chance in hell I'm going to let Mira get pregnant. Not now.'

  Mira looked down again.

  'I mean it. Either you both agree to keep it in your pants or I'm building another tent.'

  'What do you want us to say?' Mira said.

  'I want you to make me a promise and I want you to know, to understand, that if you break this promise and make me not trust you, I will leave and you will be on your own to do whatever the hell you want. Okay?'

  Sam nodded. 'We promise,' he said.

  'Good. Mira?' Jen said.

  Mira nodded.

  'Let's eat.'

  They ate a second round of stale sandwiches with a side order of uncomfortable silence. Jen felt bad, only half of what she had said was true. She didn't think they were ready. In fact, she was already starting to panic about what might happen should their young love turn sour. It had bugged her so much over the preceding hours it made her head throb.

  'These aren't bad,' Sam said, breaking the silence through a mouthful of sandwich.

  'Yeah, we're going to have to learn to fend for ourselves a bit better though.'

  'Might as well use all the food out there first,' Mira said.

  'True.'

  'I haven't slept in a tent for years,' Sam said. 'My mum and dad used to take me all the time. I used to hate it. We'd spend the whole time arguing and sitting out in the rain. Then we'd go home again. I never understood why we did it at the time but, looking back, I think we were so skint it was all we could afford. They were determined to give me a holiday.'

  He stopped, and Jen saw his eyes welling up. She wished she had something profound to say. Mira squeezed his hand.

  'This is my first time camping,' the young girl said. 'I've always wanted to go to Glastonbury, but I guess that won't happen now.'

  'We could go if you want but I doubt the line-up will be any good this year,' Sam said, laughing.

  'I never did Glasto, but I've done my fair share of festivals over the years,' Jen said.

  'Oh yeah, which ones?'

  'Leeds, Reading, V, T, Download, Latitude. Loads.'

  'Wow, you must have seen some great bands,' Mira said.

  'I did, yeah.' She thought of Daniel. 'That's where I met my boyfriend. We were the only ones who turned up to see some nobody band on the bottom of the bill in some tent at Leeds, we'd both read some blog about them and went to check them out. We stood and watched this dreadful emo band playing their hearts out to the two of us. We both felt like if we left the band would burst into tears, so we stayed for the whole set and on the way out he was in fits of giggles. We got talking. Two weeks later, he left Essex and moved to York to be with me.'

  'How long were you together?' Sam asked.

  'Four years,' Jen said. The thought of him, back in their bedroom, came unbidden into her mind and she couldn't help but burst into tears.

  Mira dashed over to her and held her as the tears turned into sobs. The tears dried up and she wiped her face on her sleeve.

  'So what do we do tomorrow?' Sam asked, looking a tad uncomfortable at the sudden appearance of crying women.

  'I don't know,' Jen said.

  They sat up until the darkness around them was total. The night was overcast and there was no light from anywhere. Jen had never known darkness like it. Mira looked terrified, and when they turned in to their tents, Jen was glad and only slightly jealous that Mira would have some company in the dark.

  Sleep didn't come easily. The woods were teaming with sounds, and her head swam with thoughts and fears, half-baked survival notions bumping up against Daniel's dead body in her mind's eye. The night was bitterly cold, even inside three increasingly restrictive sleeping bags she couldn't shake the bitter frost of the night air.

  * * *

  She awoke to a tent filled with bright morning light. Her three sleeping bags were like a furnace now, albeit a not unpleasant one. Mira and Sam were moving about outside, and for a moment she allowed herself a brief moment of relaxation, before the swirling questions returned and she tried to work out what to do next.

  She rose, had a festival shower with baby wipes, dressed into random bits of camping clothes purloined from the shopping village, and exited the tent. Sam was already up and out of his tent.

  'Morning,' she said.

  'Morning,' Sam replied. 'Glad you're up. We've been thinking.'

  'Okay.'

  'Let's never camp again, yeah?'

  Jen laughed and nodded.

  They got back on the road much less burdened with camping gear than before. They salvaged the things they might need and didn't even bother to take down the tents. With all the empty houses out there, the chances of them actually needing to sleep in tents seemed remote, a ludicrous
folly. They were in the countryside now, and felt safer than they had in York. They hadn't seen another survivor since the shopping centre, and after a day in the country they felt more at ease with their surroundings.

  A few hours later, they pulled up into a tiny hamlet. There weren't many bodies, save for the odd ones dotted about by their front doors. The whole hamlet ran to two roads and a local shop.

  'I like the ones who had the good grace to go outside when the storm came,' Sam said as they parked up. 'It means they left their door open behind them, and it means their house is stinky-corpse-free.'

  'Very empathetic, Sam,' Mira said.

  'Oh, so you don't want to go in and see if we can get some food?'

  They entered the first house, stepping over the old man's corpse outside. It was empty.

  'Maybe one of us should stay by the door,' Jen said. 'We don't want any other survivors in the area thinking we're looters or anything.'

  Sam nodded and moved to the door.

  'Even though that's exactly what we are, right?'

  'Yeah, but we're nice looters.'

  The house bore the hallmarks of an old man living alone. It seemed sad, somehow, that the man was lying outside, rather than in his home. The place was drab but tidy. 'Tinned food jackpot!' Mira called from the kitchen. She found a large shopping bag and started to fill it.

  'Grab some plates, cutlery, and a tin opener,' Jen said. Family photographs and beige tones covered the living room walls. 'Make sure you don't do anything to wreck the place.'

  'Why?' Sam asked from the doorway.

  Jen motioned to the photos lining the shelves. 'Family. Could be some of them have survived and are coming to look for him. Don't want them coming in and feeling like their old Dad's house was violated by looters.'

  Sam nodded. 'I'd say this place is pretty dead,' he said. 'No sign of anyone.'

  'Let's not stick around,' Jen said. The house had an odd vibe, and she didn't feel like staying to investigate it.

  'We've got enough food here for a few days anyway,' Mira said, emerging from the kitchen with two full bags.

  Back in the car, Sam started regaling them with his knowledge of human decomposition from biology lessons, and the probable outcome of having endless dead bodies decomposing together. His vivid description of cholera-ridden streets was enough to make Jen never want to head to a city again.

  'We should find a nice little cottage in the country, like a country house or something,' Mira said.

  Jen nodded, but she wondered where. Anywhere too desirable and they wouldn't be alone for long, and once they staked out territory they'd have to either defend it or leave it. Would they stand a chance against anyone wanting to take their home, should they ever be able to make one?

  They drove around for the rest of the day, Jen stalling for time, putting off any eventuality where she might have to commit to a decision.

  As evening fell they pulled into the car park of an empty bed and breakfast, where they found a well-stocked larder and a freezer full of defrosted but edible meat. Jen spent the best two hours since the storm coaxing a gas cooker to life and cooking a roast dinner with all the trimmings while Mira and Sam got up to god-knew-what in one of the bedrooms. She wasn't sure if she trusted them, and remembered back to their age. When she'd had her first proper boyfriend and taken that step, would anyone have been able to stop her?

  The meal itself was delicious, Mira feasting on the plentiful veg while Jen and Sam devoured a huge joint of beef. Together they got merrily drunk in the moonlight streaming through the windows. They were tremendous company, her two charges. Funny and sweet and naive; they had already developed the shared interior monologue only available in the throes of young love, but were sensitive enough to her own loneliness not to be showy about it.

  She stumbled to her room for the evening, wondering if they might stay here for a while, maybe see if they could weather the worst of it here. Surely, some kind of normalcy would come about in the coming weeks? Some kind of authority must be out there right now trying to lift the country up off its knees. If they could wait here until they managed it, that wouldn't be so bad.

  Deep down she knew this to be wishful thinking. There was no government now. If there had been, they'd have seen it. It wasn't a big country. No, they needed to keep mobile, keep moving until they could figure it out. Get too comfortable out here and the new world would punish them for their complacency. At the very least if they were going to stop somewhere, it'd have to be a damn sight further off the beaten track than a B&B on a major road.

  * * *

  They got back on the road the next morning, in a new car whose petrol tank showed as half full. They drove for hours, meandering around villages and towns trying to look for signs of life without alerting anyone to their presence.

  Nothing fits yet.

  Lunchtime came and went. Sam ran into a newsagents and came out laden down with unhealthy snacks that had expiry dates so far into the future as to be a warning, which they wolfed down before they moved on again.

  Soon time started to drag, and Jen's patience wore thin. Several attempts at conversation went nowhere, and Jen started to itch for some time by herself, or company more capable of adult conversation.

  'So bored,' came a call from the back of the car.

  'I think we got it the first dozen times you told us,' Jen replied. 'Perhaps at the next place we stop we should pick you up some crayons and paper, since you seem determined to act like an infant.'

  I've become my mother.

  Mira responded with a sucking sound through her two front teeth, another noise Jen had become all too familiar with over the course of the day. They rode on in uncomfortable silence until they reached a village that had an altogether different vibe to the others they had cruised through.

  'No bodies,' Sam said.

  Jen nodded. Unlike everywhere else, the streets were completely clear of corpses. 'Slow down,' she said.

  'Either no one was outside when the storm came,' Sam said, 'or someone has been clearing up.'

  'Pull up here.'

  They came to a halt in the heart of the village. Jen peered around the houses and the row of shops for any signs of activity. It was eerily quiet, and Jen felt the first rumblings of unease.

  She got out of the car. A fox crossed the street in front of them.

  'Seems dead,' Sam said, getting out his side.

  There was movement in one of the windows. Jen caught it out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked to see what it was there was nothing there. She had a sinking feeling. More movement, on the periphery of her vision. Her heart pounded.

  'Guys,' she whispered.

  Mira gasped.

  Jen wheeled round. In the window next to her was the face of an old woman, staring at them, a blank look on her wrinkled face.

  'Holy shit!' Sam exclaimed.

  'What do we do?' Mira asked.

  'Back in the car,' Jen said, and they backed towards the car, eyes casting around.

  Jen pulled her door open.

  'Jen,' Sam hissed.

  She whirled around. In the road behind her a man stood, hands held out in front of him. 'Stop right there,' she called out, holding her car keys out in some kind of futile threat. The man was in his late fifties or so, dressed in the type of clothes Jen associated with people who either watched or presented Top Gear, which hardly endeared him to her.

  'We aren't going to hurt you,' he called out. 'As long as you're not here to hurt us.'

  Behind them a door opened. Jen whirled round. A little old lady appeared in the doorway, her face a picture of wrinkled kindness.

  'It's okay,' she said. 'You're safe.'

  * * *

  They were using their local post office as a central hub. They were lucky to still have one; Jen had been under the impression they'd been sold off years ago, but here was the epitome of a local store. A local shop for local people. Now Jen and her companions crammed into it with a dozen other survivor
s.

  They referred to it as 'the retirement village of the apocalypse'. There were twelve of them, all pensioners, or as near as made no odds. The youngest of them was Nigel, the man who had attempted to greet them before, and he was well past fifty. Once they established Nigel wasn't an axe murderer, and the residents had established Jen and her charges weren't ASBO hoodlums looking to cause havoc, the two groups warmed to each other pretty quickly.

  Nigel seemed to be the face of the group, and its most enthusiastic member, but it was Joan, the old lady at the window, who seemed to be in charge. Once the other inhabitants of the village had come out to greet them the names flew past in a blur of enthusiastic grins and wrinkled handshakes. More than once Jen had to turn down a cup of tea held out by shaking hands.

  Bloody tea. I could murder a coffee and all I get offered is sodding tea.

  'You three look like you've had a rough time of it,' Nigel said, his face shiny and red from smiling.

  'It's been mad,' Sam replied. He looked more at ease than he had done since Jen had met him, and when he saw the drinks fridge his eyes lit up. 'Irn Bru!'

  'Help yourself,' Nigel said.

  'I've been dying for some Irn Bru for days,' Sam said, scrambling to open the fridge. He took out three cans and thrust two into Jen and Mira's hands, not for one second considering either of them might not share his predilection for Scottish teeth-rotting fizzy pop. Jen opened the can and took a sip. She hadn't drunk it in years, and childhood memories burst into her mind as soon as it hit her taste buds: long summer days in fields covered in wispy dandelions, stolen kisses with cute and not-so-cute boys, arguing the merits of pop music made by blonde twins and American boy bands with her girlfriends.

  I should drink this more often.

  '…so we got out of there as fast as we could.' Sam continued to tell their tale of woe.

  Jen wanted to return to the fields of wispy dandelions, but the second sip tasted of crap pop.

  'We've been driving around ever since, trying to work out what we're going to do. Mostly we've been looking for people who don't want to rob us or kill us or anything.'