The spire of the big church rises above the row of shops to my left and I run in the opposite direction, towards the strains of Christmas music. I skid into the market square. A brass band is playing carols at the foot of the big Christmas tree and a small crowd has gathered. I push my way through it, feeling the safety of being back in a group.
Josh is at the taxi rank, arguing with a taxi driver through the window.
“I’ve already told you, I’m booked,” he’s saying.
“You’re not booked. You just don’t like the look of me,” says Josh. “Your light’s still on.”
“And now it’s off,” says the driver, flicking the orange ‘TAXI’ light. He presses another button and the passenger window starts to rise.
“Leave it. They won’t be far behind me.” I look across the square. There’s a green bus with a queue boarding. “This way! Now.”
I slip on the cobbles and swear loudly. In all the rush I think someone calls my name, but when I turn round I don’t recognize anyone in the crowd. My heart thumps. I scan the faces – just normal people doing their Christmas shopping.
“Josh! Come on!” I shout. I’m ahead of him and bang on the bus door as it starts to close, thrusting my arm into the gap. It opens and I pull a panting Josh on board. The door shuts and the bus moves off as the lads enter the square. We sit slumped down on the back seat until the bus has accelerated out of harm’s way. I have my hood up again, my back to the tiny camera I clocked fixed by the stairs to the top deck.
Josh holds out his shaking hands in front of him. “Pure adrenaline – look at that. It was like being in that TV programme where they’re being chased through the city by hunters. You were amazing.”
I’m still uneasy. Did I hear my name called? I wipe at the window, looking through the grime and condensation. The streets are full of shoppers with piles of bags. Festive capitalism in full swing.
No one is coming after us.
I drink some water and share a bar of chocolate with Josh, who’s still hyper.
“You realize we are actually playing bus roulette after all. Stop twenty-one here we come,” he says, before collapsing in giggles.
I pull out the advent calendar and smooth it down. It’s impossible to keep it neat in a rucksack. I count the days left until Christmas. Two weeks. Julie must be having kittens.
Today’s thumbnail picture is a Christmas pudding. “I hate Christmas pudding. Does anyone like it? If they did, we’d have it more than once a year, right?”
“Disadvantage – tastes like stodgy mess,” says Josh. “Advantage – you can do it in the microwave. Neville the vicar does a nice one.”
“Is that where you’re going for Christmas dinner?”
“It was OK last year. We had paper hats.”
I contemplate the depressing nature of Christmas with a paper hat and a bunch of strangers in the church hall.
“Unless I get a better offer?” says Josh, kicking gently at my foot.
I don’t say anything. I don’t even know where I’ll be by then.
The bus chugs through the town streets, which feel like one big traffic jam. It takes forever, Josh diligently counting stops, but just the ones where people get off, not the ones we sail past. I’m secretly hoping he picked such a high number that stop twenty-one will be back at a depot somewhere and we can abandon this magical mystery tour. But when we reach stop twenty-one, it turns out to be about half a mile beyond a village surrounded by farmland.
When we get off, Josh walks us back towards the village, as if this is exactly what we intended to do. But it’s just another sleepy hamlet with a rundown shop and an old-fashioned pub. He holds his arms wide. “So this is where fate has brought us. Pint?”
“No. Looks like the type of place where everyone stares at you when you go in. Where we’d be noticed.”
“So? With my amazing good looks, it’s an occupational hazard.”
He picks up his bag but I don’t move. “We’ve already taken too many risks with other people. No more towns. No more people.”
“Oh yes. I forget that social services, the police and every survivalist nutter across the land with access to their own mini poo shovel could be part of the search party.”
“If you want to bail on me for the sake of a warm beer, that’s fine. But we’re sort of foster siblings, remember,” I say. “And I got you out of trouble today.”
“Good job we’re in Nowheresville, I suppose. We don’t even know where we are, so I doubt anyone else does either.” He kicks at the loose stones on the path.
“You wanted to play this stupid game,” I say. “Bus roulette. What the hell are you thinking? Who on earth, I mean the whole earth anywhere, who does that?”
Josh starts to laugh. “You’re right. Bus roulette – what the hell? I don’t think it’s going to catch on.”
I laugh too. But I stop when I check the timetable pasted up on the village noticeboard. There aren’t any more buses in either direction until tomorrow. We’re stuck here.
Dad had a twinge of guilt after Mum left. He bought a spinning wheel from a junk shop on one of his rare shopping trips. It took up space in the hall that was needed for other things, but it was a ‘present’ for Mum. To make amends. It was the first time he’d even mentioned her in weeks. No doubt it would soon be followed by a butter churn, I thought. Funny how his plans for a brave new world always seemed to involve strengthening the patriarchy. There was no suggestion that he should learn how to shear sheep, spin wool and make jumpers.
“When your mother gets back from … sorting herself out, she’ll need a project. To keep her busy.”
Mum could barely settle to thread a sewing needle. She was way too twitchy to spin cloth. Another thing she could fail at and be a perpetual disappointment to him.
First thing she can make is a Gilead uniform is what I didn’t say. Instead I said, “We already have enough clothes.”
He sighed and dragged his palm across his eyes in a show of exasperation. “We can manage in the immediate aftermath on the items we have already or can forage from abandoned homes or shops. But after that settling-in period, we will need to build our own civilization anew. Reboot.”
We both stared at the spindly wooden wheel that was going to spearhead the new industrial revolution. If he was counting on Mum to become the provider of jumpers to a new civilization, he really was deluded.
When Mum never returned, the spinning wheel stayed there, gathering dust.
Stuck in that place like me.
Josh and I huddle outside the closed community shop, while he looks longingly at the window display of Pot Noodles and faded cereal boxes.
“Definitely time to get the camping gear out,” I say. “We’re going off-grid. No campsites. Most of them are shut in December anyway.”
“I wonder why. Could it be because nobody else wants to do it?”
“You should have thought of that before your bus bingo. All we need is a building. A farm building – a store, a barn. Anything to keep the wind and rain out. We can make it warm.” I lead the way back out of the village, looking for a footpath or overgrown farm track to follow.
I don’t want to be too close to a house where we could be spotted. We’ll have to light a fire. We haven’t seen anywhere occupied since turning off down this track. It’s rough, pockmarked with potholes filled with muddy water, which we have to dodge. No tyre tracks.
The light’s already failing. We’re edging closer to the shortest day of the year. Josh is doing an ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ in an exaggerated whine. It’s becoming rather annoying. I walk more quickly to open up a gap between us. I get my binoculars from the pocket on my bag, ignoring Josh’s joke that I’m Action Barbie and he’s Librarian Ken. A farm building comes into focus; it might suit.
We climb over the gate, its rusted-up padlock rattling and swaying with our weight. The stone buildings are dilapidated – part filled with plastic-wrapped silage, part with clapped-out farm equipment. I choose
the smallest one for our camp.
Josh takes the shovel and toilet roll for some alone time while I set up our stuff. Whatever its shortcomings, this place wins hands down for me over Mo and Lola’s flat. If it was summer, I could’ve done more sleeping out and not risked any towns at all.
Josh stumbles back and I throw him the hand-cleanser gel.
“Why are you moving everything about?” he says. “Do you have to tidy everywhere we go?”
“It’s full of combustibles and I’m also thinking of ventilation and the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Great. I knew I needed yet another reason to hate camping.” He pulls up a crate to sit on and pads it with a jumper.
“There’s a hole in the roof which should carry away smoke and gases if we keep the door ajar to get the air circulating.”
“Amber. I’m just thinking that maybe you’re not a traffic light warning of danger after all. Maybe you’re moving towards another meaning.”
“Fossilized tree resin?”
“I was going to say a semi-precious gem. I mean, look what you’ve done with the place!”
With my knife, I cut swirls of curled bark from the saplings by the gate to use as dry tinder. I gather the driest sticks I can find and arrange them in a tepee shape to build the fire. Josh hands me the old newspaper he picked up on the bus and I rip off strips.
“You’re so good at all this camping stuff,” says Josh, getting in the way.
“It’s not camping. It’s basic survival. Shelter, water, food. There are multiple ways I can get a fire going and you’d be amazed at my water collection and purification knowledge.”
“Nothing about you surprises me any more. Heard of a tap?”
“For someone with no permanent home, you’re pretty confident that you’ll always have access to a flowing tap. You can manage weeks without food but only three days without water. What about now?”
He waves his water bottle. “This. Rain, streams, tap at a building somewhere.”
“What if the water’s cut off or there’s a dead sheep upstream? You can’t waste fuel and time boiling water to drink. I’ve got purification tablets. My bottle has a built-in carbon filter. At a push, I could use solar disinfection. Pick up a disease or stomach upset with no medical care – that could be fatal.”
“You’re such a little sunbeam.”
“A pragmatist.”
“Pessimist. Can’t you lighten up? I’m beginning to understand why you’re…” He pauses.
“What? What am I?”
“Nothing. Never mind. What else do you know how to do?”
“Basic power generation. Don’t say it – there’s a switch for that.”
Josh smirks back. “There usually is. Granted not in our current deluxe accommodation.”
“Even a mobile diesel generator only lasts as long as you can get the fuel. I could rig something up with an improvised wind or solar source. Big cell batteries – like the ones in golf buggies – are what you’re going to need to store the power.”
“All right, Einstein,” he says. “Do you want me to rub two sticks together to light the fire?”
“If it makes you happy.”
I let him struggle for a few minutes, smiling to myself, before I toss a box of matches from my bag at him. “I don’t want to spoil your fun but I usually use one of these.”
I rig up my mini camp stove on a large stone and hold up two packets of food. “Chilli or curry? They taste the same.”
“I’ll go for chilli. I think I’ve had enough curry after last night. Though I’m not going to lie – I’m glad you’re not trapping and skinning a badger or something else cute and furry for food. I did wonder.”
“I’ve had my eye on that wood pigeon in the rafters. If we were here longer, I’d make a snare. I’ve got the wire.”
Josh is wide-eyed. “To catch the pigeon? You can’t do that. Quit acting like Bear Grylls. It’s freaking me out.”
“You’re about to eat a beef chilli.”
“It’s not the same. You can’t murder a pigeon. That convenience store will open in the village tomorrow.”
“All right. At the moment we don’t need to kill anything.”
“Well then, don’t.”
I could describe in great detail how the first time you kill something is the worst. But I hold back because I don’t want to tell him that the revulsion at trapping a squirrel or gutting a trout wears off. That over time you can learn to butcher a deer without flinching.
That I’ve learned that you can get used to anything at all.
The gas flickers on and heats the water while I tend to the fire. The wood crackles and I fan the smoke from the damp wood.
“I suppose, it’s kind of impressive having all these skills,” says Josh. “Not how to eat a hedgehog so much – but these pre-digital technologies like building a fire.”
“It could save my life. Not just because I can do this survival stuff but because I have a set of skills. I’m the one people will want to keep alive.”
“But you’d still have a massive store of food?”
“Of course, and equipment. That’s the main thing preppers focus on – stockpiling supplies. But you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. You split your supplies, hedge your bets, in case you get raided. Plus, you have somewhere planned to relocate to like Centurion House – a bug-out place, usually remote or well hidden and more secure, where you can survive the emergency. You accept that you’re a potential target for those who haven’t prepared. But you do have a lot of food to eat while you’re waiting for the hordes to attack. That’s a classic prepper joke.”
“Hilarious.”
“The UK doesn’t really have the same ‘escape to the wilderness’ options as the States or Canada. Though over there you’ve got the added danger of well-armed fellow citizens. If you haven’t got your own place, solar panels or wind turbines could all be signs of a bug-out house, which will have a store nearby, possibly underground. Look out for blackout blinds, lack of lights and movement.”
“Weird that all this is going on out there. People preparing for something that might never happen. A strange way to live.”
“And yours isn’t? Why do you live like you do – moving on all the time?”
He shrugs. “I don’t like the alternative much. You should see some of the places they’ve offered me. This is often better. Safer.”
“Mum and I once lived for three days in a multi-storey car park when we thought Dad would be looking for us. There was an overhanging section by the ramp where we sheltered, and we took a load of cardboard from outside the back of Waitrose…”
“Classy.”
“Thank you. And during the day we sat in the library. I washed my hair in the tiny sink in the toilets and used the hand dryers.”
“Love a good library,” nods Josh.
“Mum stopped taking her meds. She…”
I stop. I’m oversharing. Even with someone who’s been there, done that. It’s too personal.
“Anyway, we couldn’t stay there,” I say. I add the boiled water to the dried food and stir. It’s fuel, not a gourmet meal. I give the bulk of it to Josh, the human dustbin. “Eat up. Hot food gets cold quickly in the fresh air.” Sitting here with Josh, looking into the fire, life feels under my control again. Using my skills to keep myself safe. Prepared. Not scared.
Josh speaks through his mouthfuls of food. “I don’t think the rat race is for me. Rubbish job for rubbish wages to live in a rubbish house. What’s the point? Nothing they offered me was anything I wanted to do. This is better, believe me. Freedom.”
“No money.”
He shrugs. “I get by. You need less to live on than you’d think. Might go and work on some eco farms in Europe this summer, for rent and board. Go back down to Somerset to pick a few apples. Or help on a project I know up in the Cairngorms. Read some books. Busk. There’s stuff to do, ways to live that don’t make me feel like I’m suffocating. I prefer that no on
e – except you – knows where I am and what I’m doing tonight. After all those years of feeling I needed to fill out a form in triplicate to take a pee, this is better. I’m not good with people telling me what to do – which rules out most jobs.”
I get it. But I think I do want to belong somewhere. Now I’ve had a taste of it.
“You can always come with me, picking apples or whatever.” He looks down, embarrassed. “Only if, you know, you want to, like.”
We sit around the fire, warming our toes and talk. I get out my wind-up radio and pick up a selection of hits from the nineties. I ask him about his grandma. She looked after him until she became ill and he got taken into care. He shows me a couple of photos and then neatly places them in the pages of his book again. He carries his family history around with him in those pages.
I tell him more about my dad. Not all of it – the edited version.
He gets it. He gets why I haven’t said anything to Julie or Dr Meadows or anyone at school. He gets why it’s more complicated than someone who hasn’t ever walked in our shoes would think. He listens carefully, poking at the fire with a stick. “Sorry if I pushed you into your dad’s event last night. I honestly thought it would help.”
“It was weird. Seeing him but not seeing him. He can be different people. Take on a character when he has to. It wasn’t how I expected.”
“How are you going to stay out of his way? Live wild forever?”
“Says the man who manages to do just that.”
“It wouldn’t suit you. You’ve got things you want to do, I can tell. Mainstream. Try doing anything ‘normal’ without a fixed address, without somewhere to get a good night’s sleep or wash your clothes.”
“I’ll have options, once I’ve dealt with the whole Dad situation.”
“Now I’ve seen him in the flesh, got to admit I was impressed,” he says. “And he didn’t look like a quitter.”
The Rules Page 10
