Allan had returned from making sure his team of workers were continuing the defences in the back gardens, and was trying to design a gate that would be solid enough to match the wall, but could be opened without too much effort. I told him to have a chat with Russell and see if they could come up with something using his welder. They were soon sitting at a table having a lively discussion about it.
I went home to catch up with Becky, and found her sitting at the kitchen table with Fiona, Michelle, Kim and Mandy. They seemed to be having a group counselling session, helping the women to adjust to their freedom and get over the horrors they had experienced. Not wanting to intrude, I grabbed a quick cup of coffee and left to find Pete and Jerry.
Jerry was finalising his list of residents of the road. He wanted to give everyone a complete health check and start regularly monitoring us all, in the hope that he would spot any health problems early and if possible, prevent them from becoming serious.
He said that Fiona was going to do the same with our teeth. Prevention would be better than cure and as Jerry and Fiona were the experts, Pete was giving them all the help he could so that they could start as soon as possible.
The foraging party had checked in a few times. They were having a few successes and were finding food in most of the empty houses, hidden in the back of cupboards or, using the torches I’d given them, in cellars. They had also seen some terrible things. In a few houses, they’d discovered people who had apparently starved to death in their beds. You could tell from their voices that it had been a harrowing experience, discovering people who had been too afraid to leave their houses to find help, and then when it was too late, not having the energy to move.
Most had probably gone to bed to try to keep warm and then died. In another house a whole family had committed suicide. A note had been left saying that they were overdosing on sleeping tablets, rather than face slowly starving to death. The smell from all the decomposing corpses had been horrendous and you knew if there were any dead bodies in a house as soon as you opened the door. After the first few dreadful discoveries, as soon as the front door was opened and the smell of death was released, they didn’t enter the house. Instead, the front door was marked with a cross and the foraging party moved on.
They had encountered only one occupied house. The man had been unwilling to open the door, but had spoken to them out of an upstairs window. He claimed that he had enough food, as they had been preparing for years for an event like this, so when the event had happened he and his family had secured their house and sat tight. A few people had tried to break in, but had failed to gain entry, so he hadn’t had to use any of his weapons. He had thanked them for the offer of medical help, but hadn’t wanted to go foraging for supplies as he had enough. It was agreed that as the house was reasonably close to our road, we would check on them whenever a foraging party was passing, in case they needed any help.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Over the next week or so, the community settled down to a routine. Allan announced that his defences were as good as he could make them, and gave the whole community the grand tour. Most of us had assisted in building them and I had helped Allan design and build a few of the features, but this was the first time most people had had the theory behind it all explained. We were surrounded by a sturdy high fence, bristling with nails and barbed wire. Fortified positions had been created and trees and bushes cut down and removed to create open spaces and remove hiding places for attackers. In the road we had three layers of defence: the barricades of cars, the wire fence and finally, the solid barrier of bulk bags, with a hinged metal gate made by Russell from car bonnets. Wooden planks had been laid to make a walkway on the bulk bags.
It was all very impressive and gave us the look of a frontier fort, with soldiers huddling behind the barricades, waiting for the next onslaught from hostile natives.
But so far we had not been tested again. A few people, either singly, or in groups, had been spotted, but as yet no one had approached us. Most of the community were starting to relax, thinking that the worst was over.
Realising this, Allan kept up his training schedule, reminding everyone about the potential dangers that lurked beyond our walls and fences.
The foraging parties continued to gather food from abandoned houses, but this was getting harder as the search radius increased and the pickings became more difficult to find, with only the occasional great discovery in the form of a fully stocked pantry.
Most of the people they encountered were in a desperate state, starving and becoming weaker by the day. In fact most of the food that was collected ended up being given to those poor souls.
It seemed wrong that our community, all with full stomachs, should only give a small amount to the starving people we came across and so, by unwritten agreement, we began to take food out on the foraging missions in order to give it to anyone we found who needed it. Logically and practically, it was the wrong thing to do. We couldn’t help these people on a permanent basis, we just didn’t have the supplies. We were probably only extending their suffering by giving them food. But when we came across a starving family, who had not eaten properly for weeks and who reminded us of old news footage of starving families in Africa, it was impossible not to offer them what help we could. We hoped that what little we could give them would give them the strength to start looking for food themselves, or maybe enable them to leave to find help elsewhere.
A few unfriendly or hostile groups were encountered. Some didn’t want any help and told us in no uncertain terms to leave them alone, which we did.
We noted where they lived and Pete marked them on the large-scale map he had found of South Birmingham, as houses to avoid. Sometimes the foraging parties were attacked, usually by people wrongly thinking that we wanted to take what they had (in which case we tried to reassure them that this was not our intention to try to defuse the situation and prevent anyone getting hurt). The foraging parties did look quite intimidating, dressed in body armour and helmets and carrying weapons, so it was probably quite understandable that people were initially afraid of us and thought they needed to defend themselves.
Most of the time we were able to prevent any conflict from escalating and reassure them of our peaceful intentions.
On one occasion when I was with a foraging party, we came across another group out looking for food. They were all armed with a variety of weapons, including one shotgun and a few air rifles.
There were twelve of them, all men, and I had a bad feeling almost immediately. I quietly called Pete on the walkie-talkie and told him to send out as many armed reinforcements as he could spare. As we stood there, five of us and twelve of them, I noticed the man with the shotgun give a hand signal.
The rest of them started to spread out in an attempt to encircle us. I raised my MP5, aimed it at the man with the shotgun and shouted for the rest of them to stand still. As I raised my weapon, Allan’s training kicked in and the rest of my group quickly responded by raising their weapons and running for the nearest cover. A stand-off ensued, with nobody wanting to make the next move. A tense few minutes went by until the reinforcements, pedalling madly, came round the corner behind them. The leader, realising he was now surrounded himself, and considerably out-gunned, decided to try to make a run for it. He turned and fired his gun at one of the cyclists, shouting to the rest of his men to attack. To my horror, I saw Bob fall from his bike screaming, having been hit by both barrels of the shotgun. We automatically opened fire. Caught in the crossfire between us, they didn’t stand a chance. In a short while every one of them was either dead or dying on the road.
Ignoring them all we rushed over to Bob, who was writhing around in the road. His body armour had taken most of the blast, but quite a few pellets had hit him in one arm and both legs.
Jerry had given us all some basic First Aid training and we quickly cut away his sleeve and trouser legs to inspect the damage. He was in a lot of pain, but removing shotgun pellets was beyond our medi
cal skills.
We needed to get him back to Jerry as a matter of urgency. I selected four people, escorted by three more, to start carrying Bob back home. I called Pete on the walkie-talkie, quickly explained what had happened and told him to get Jerry ready. Pete, thinking quickly as usual, said he would dispatch a few more people with a wheelbarrow to meet them so they could get Bob back as quickly as possible.
Although in a lot of pain, Bob managed to make us all chuckle by swearing repeatedly and telling the four who were carrying him that in about one hundred yards they would wish it was one of the skinny ones who’d been shot. One of them retorted that the skinny ones were harder to hit and the man had obviously chosen the largest and therefore easiest target to aim at. This prompted another torrent of abuse from Bob, directed at everyone around him, as the men carried him home.
Once they’d left, we looked around at all the dead bodies. Allan’s training had clearly paid off. Not one of us had panicked and all the dead had been hit more than once, by well-aimed shots, either to the head or the trunk. I checked that everyone was OK, and they all agreed that they were going to attack us and therefore deserved their fate. They’d picked the wrong fight and paid the ultimate price.
Not wanting to leave a pile of rotting corpses in the road, we decided that, once again, burning the bodies would be the quickest and most hygienic way of disposing of them. We gathered up the weapons and searched their belongings for anything useful.
They’d been carrying a fair amount of food and we transferred this to our rucksacks. Everyone helped to build the pyre by gathering what timber we could from the surrounding houses and piling the bodies on top of it. I gave them a good soaking with petrol taken from the fuel tank of a nearby car and after setting it alight, we made our way home, not looking back once at the burning bodies we’d left behind.
Bob was being cared for by his wife, Jo, and Jerry when we got back. Jerry had removed all the pellets and stitched up the wounds. The patient was on good form, and under the influence of strong painkillers, was regaling all his visitors with stories of his bravery and the sacrifices he had made for the sake of the road.
The one good thing about the incident was that it reminded us all of the constant need for vigilance. We would only be safe if we worked and stayed together, protected by our defences.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
The weather was turning colder. Pete organised work parties to cut and gather wood, and gave the children the job of delivering logs to everyone’s house on a daily basis. Some of us had log burners and this was the most efficient way to heat your house, so for those who didn’t have one, we searched nearby properties, removed all the log burners we could find and fitted them for those who were without them. The installations might not have passed regulations, but they worked, and heated at least a few rooms in every house. The wood, having just been cut, was not seasoned, and therefore didn't burn as easily, but as long as the log burners were hot enough, they were fine. We knew the wood cutting would have to carry on all year round, to give us all a large enough supply of seasoned wood to last the following winter.
Mary was slowly recovering from the shock of Ian’s death and decided that she wanted to contribute to our community.
She was a retired school teacher and, to all the children’s dismay, they were made to attend her “school” every morning for a few hours, before being released to play and carry out the tasks that Pete kept finding for them. She worked hard on setting a curriculum that was appropriate for every child.
We were starting to operate as an independent little nation, amidst all the suffering and chaos that was happening around us. We had a form of government and a health service, providing free health and dental services, a school, a defence force and provisions, supplemented by the foragers searching properties for food, the fishermen who regularly caught fish from the lake and a team of hunters who, most days, provided us with ducks, geese, pigeons and squirrels.
Apart from Pete, who allocated the daily tasks at the morning meetings, and Jerry and Fiona, our doctor and dentist, not one of us had a specific job, but some of us were more proficient or enjoyed doing one task more than another.
Pete tried to be fair and keep us all happy by giving people jobs that they would enjoy, where possible. Our food situation was improving, as on a regular basis, more food was found per day than was consumed. We had fresh fish and meat most days and the only fresh ingredients missing from meals were vegetables. The vegetable patches we had between us couldn’t supply us with anywhere near what we needed. Pete said that if we were still here in the spring we would need to start planning to plant more vegetables.
He told the foraging parties to check garden sheds for packets of seeds so that we could start building up a supply ready for planting. Becky had a sack of seed potatoes and she’d already planted most of them in cleared flower beds. It was not the best time to plant them, but if the weather was favourable, they could provide us with an early harvest.
We discovered another food source while working in the back gardens, which were all now connected.
I noticed Harriet, a neighbour’s little girl, feeding her rabbits in their hutch. To pass the time, I went to have a chat with her and ask how she was getting on. I asked her the names of her rabbits, (they all had girls’ names), and then it hit me. Rabbits breed like rabbits! If we could find some male rabbits, then pretty soon we would have plenty of them, and rabbit stew tasted pretty good. A quick check revealed that Russell’s son, Oliver, had a rabbit called Butch which they thought was male. After promising Harriet and Oliver that we wouldn’t eat their pets, we put Butch out to stud with the lady rabbits and eagerly waited to see if he would live up to his name.
We tied ribbons around the necks of the two pets, so that in the event of a population explosion, we could identify them and so avoid putting the wrong rabbit in the pot.
My chickens were still providing eggs every day, but not nearly enough for everyone, so we were on the lookout for a cockerel so that we could start getting fertilized eggs.
Then we would start building up the population to provide more eggs, and eventually chickens, to eat.
The rabbits, vegetable gardens and, hopefully, the chickens (once a cockerel was found), were all longer-term projects. It was a good psychological boost for all of us to think that we were planning for the future and not just finding food for the next meal.
In the meantime, Allan and Michelle were becoming close friends. He made a habit of “just popping in”, to see if she was doing well and needed anything. They spent a lot of their spare time talking quietly in a corner or walking around outside. You could tell that they were attracted to each other, but Allan knew what she had been through and respected the fact that it would be a long time before she was ready for an intimate relationship. They were both content to be friends and get to know each other. We were all very happy for him, as everyone on the road had family or friends they had known for years around them, and at times, he must have felt like an outsider.
But it didn’t stop me or some of the others from taking the mickey out of him, in a juvenile way, when the women were out of earshot.
Pete had held back from giving Michelle, Kim or Mandy jobs to do yet, as we all wanted to give them time to recover and we had enough people to get all the daily chores and tasks done.
But in the end they told us that they wanted to contribute and were bored with sitting around all day. Michelle had worked as a PA to the boss of a large firm of accountants in the city, so Pete told her that when she was ready, she could help him in his role as community leader. He was always producing lists and rotas, so someone with Michelle’s administrative expertise would be a real help to him. Kim had been a massage therapist and when she felt able to, Pete arranged for her to be Jerry’s medical assistant. They set up a therapy room, where she could offer massage therapy to alleviate the aching backs and muscles we were all getting from the unaccustomed physical exercise.
&
nbsp; Mandy had been a teaching assistant in a local primary school and settled gladly into helping Mary in the schoolroom. Becky joked that she wasn’t happy about the idea of me receiving a massage from an attractive twenty one year-old, so I responded by complaining about my aching back and muscles and the fact that I couldn’t wait for Kim to relieve me of the constant pain I was in. After all, I grinned, if only my wife would give me a massage every night I wouldn’t feel the need to use her!
Russell revealed his latest invention. He had designed a water filtration system which, he assured us, would enable the stream water, once it had passed through it, to be drunk without boiling. I’d allowed him to take apart one of the filters for my water filtering system and he’d cleverly reverse engineered it and reproduced it on a bigger scale. Boiling enough water for drinking was a tedious chore and Russ’s oven was kept going virtually all day, boiling pots of water to provide us all with enough to drink.
This created a lot of work, as a couple of people had to stand there and watch water boil all day, and it used up a great deal of wood for fuel, which took a lot of labour to provide. He was also working on a pump, with a system of pipes constructed from garden hoses joined together, to get the water from the stream up to the road, without the tedious and back-breaking work of carrying it up in buckets. Who would have thought, that in 2014, we would all be so excited about the imminent arrival of running water on the street?
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
A couple of times a week now we had people, either as individuals, or in groups, approaching our barricades and begging for help. It appeared that even those who’d had plenty of food stored at home, or had had the foresight, when the power went out, to gather as much as they could, were starting to run low or had run out completely. After a full community meeting, we agreed on a procedure to follow. If they claimed that they were just passing by and were trying to get somewhere, we would offer them help. We would give them a hot meal and water, and Jerry would offer what medical assistance he could. If they lived locally, we would question them about how they had survived so long and why we had not come across them on our foraging trips which, by this time, had covered most of the immediate surrounding area.
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