Survival: After It Happened Book 1 (10 page)

FLY, THE ENEMY IS UPON US

He drove out of the car park, leaving behind months of food and fuel.

He didn't want to have to try and protect these people with his back to a wall; better to run.

He knew this was risky; he was asking untrained people under extreme stress almost blind with fear to drive unfamiliar large vehicles into the dusk not knowing where they were going.

Better to set a slower pace than risk a pile up.

His convoy crept north, keeping to the smaller roads to avoid pursuit. Mental note, don't leave any more messages about their location until they were stronger.

We wound through cars in the road, once having to use the Land Rover to push a crashed estate car out of the way to give room to the lorries.

After what seemed like an hour of checking the mirrors, expecting to see headlights hunting them down, they came to the prison. There was a large hard standing at the front of the big house, and Dan halted the convoy there. He got out and waved the lorries past him and pointed them to a side area. The cars pulling caravans closed up, and he realised they'd had to leave one behind as there weren't enough tow bars; better to prioritise the fuel over a temporary living space.

He called everyone in and took a knee, resting the butt of his carbine on the floor.

"Well done everyone" he said, looking around at the faces. He realised Kate was missing, probably tending to the man strapped to her stretcher.

"Lexi, Neil and I will keep watch tonight" he said. "Everyone sleep with your boots on, if you hear shooting then run to the back of this building and hide in the woods by the lake" he covered his thinking time by a tactical reload of his weapon, slapping in a full magazine in place of the one he had half emptied into Mad Max. He realised that people were looking at him in horror; he was covered in the man’s blood.

"Try and get some rest, we'll reassess in the morning" they took that as dismissal, and most faded away apart from Penny, Neil, Lexi and Jimmy.

He saw Leah leading a shaking Kev by the hand. Maggie had climbed into the back of his Land Rover to comfort the girl he had completely forgotten about on the drive here. She hadn’t made a sound.

Penny didn't know what to say, so Dan thanked her for getting everyone out safely. He told her to get some rest.

“I’ll help Kate” she said, and turned away.

He turned to Neil and Lexi, "Neil, can you get set up with the GPMG? Take some goggles" Neil nodded and turned away towards the munitions trailer. Jimmy was loitering but Dan waved him away for now.

He took Lexi by the arm and walked her away. He stopped and turned her around.

"Thankyou. You saved the lives of three people by taking that shot. You did the right thing" he said softly.

"I know" she said, looking at the floor "I. I killed someone though"

Dan didn't know the best way to deal with this. If he knew her better, he would know how to approach it. He decided on the hard-line.

"Yes. You did what is expected of you to keep these people safe. You have the skills I need, WE need, to make this work" he said harshly "you'll find a way to cope with what you did but I tell you now it was the right thing. Get yourself squared away, reload and grab a warm coat. I need you ready in five minutes"

He worried that he'd been overly harsh, but didn't have time to talk her through the psychological process of coming to terms with taking a life.

He grabbed his own coat, a foam bedding roll and his small rucksack. He walked up the drive to a small copse of trees to find Neil setting up under the leaves, the bipod on the barrel of the huge machine gun pointing it towards the approach road. He also had a shotgun and his Glock and was fitting batteries into a set of night vision goggles. A curt nod was all Dan got.

"Mate, there aren't enough of us to take it in shifts, we're all going to stay awake tonight" he said, knowing it was the wrong way to do it but he had no choice.

"I can help" said Jimmy, approaching from behind him. He handed a multipack of red bull to Dan and another to Neil.

"I can set up a noise trap" he said "I saw it in a film - empty bottles and string" Dan thought about it for a minute.

"Ok, grab the stuff you need and I'll come with you" he said. Jimmy ran off and Lexi came jogging towards them.

"Ready" she declared. She saw that both Neil and Dan had a foam roll, and cursed herself silently for not bringing insulation to lie on.

"Lex, I have an idea. Grab your sleeping bag, rucksack and a bed roll - there's a spare in the back of my truck. I want you set up over there" he pointed towards a small low structure – probably something to do with electricity - with a flat roof which lay about one hundred metres away from where the broken barrier lay at an oblique angle. "You can cover both approach roads from there. It'll be an uncomfortable night, but if you see anyone who isn't friendly, you shoot. Got it?"

She nodded and jogged off to get set up for the night.

Jimmy returned with some string and a crate of small beer bottles. Dan covered him whilst he tied the string between trees and emptied out the bottles to line them in the road and tie others into the web he had strung. When he had finished, a distorted spider’s web of string obstructed the road with small glass alarms dangling from the lines. It would be hard to see in the dark, but anyone running into it would cause the bottles to fall to the tarmac.

Dan thanked him and sent him back to get some rest. Jimmy tried to argue, but Dan told him he needed him as fresh as possible for a nasty job tomorrow. Jimmy went, and Dan jogged across the field to Lexi's position. She had done well. She'd taken a camouflage net from the side of the trailer and was lay flat on the building in her sleeping bag under a crude but effective shelter. She had her rifle trained on the roads.

"If you hear glass breaking, it's the noise traps Jimmy just set up. If they come, I’ll try to light them up with flares for you" he said, looking over her hide and giving her the red bull Jimmy had given him.

"I'm sure they haven't followed us, but we need to be ready tonight" he considered instructing her in using the night vision goggles, but decided it wouldn't be effective if she didn’t know how they worked.

Dan walked back towards Neil and found him settled in. He told him of the plan to throw some flares if anyone came in which would give them light. His plan was risky because he was close to Neil's field of fire, and would be in Lexi's if she fired to the left side of her field.

He set up in a shallow dip behind an oak tree which was almost as wide as his Defender for a little more security - Neil's weapon could bring a brick built house down with a thousand rounds and the tree wouldn't hold out forever, but this was the best he could do. He needed to be close enough to hear the glass breaking and throw the few flares he had onto the road if they came. He settled down on his bed roll, rested the carbine over his rucksack and like all the others there, he didn't sleep at all.

As day broke Dan shuffled backwards from his hiding place, gathered his gear and walked a long loop back down to the road stretching his cramped muscles as he went. He lit a cigarette, having refrained from smoking all night to save giving away his position.

Neil looked awful, but he was still awake. Dan told him to stow the machine gun, but keep the shotgun with him. He walked over to Lexi’s hiding place and found her asleep face down on the bed roll.

He called her name softly as he approached, not wanting to startle a scared, tired and emotionally unstable girl holding an automatic weapon. She came round with a yelp and brought the weapon up, searching for a target.

“It’s ok” he said “It’s me. We’re safe”

Lexi breathed hard for a few seconds before struggling out of her hide and starting to take it down.

He walked with her back to the makeshift camp to find people emerging from the wobbling caravans. It didn’t look like anyone had slept.

He knocked and stepped into the ambulance where Kate woke with a start from the seat she was slumped in. She had worked tirelessly on the man, and Dan could see dressings covering the exposed parts of the machete victim. He was attached to a drip and was still unconscious. He nodded to Kate, who stood and stretched before checking the man over again.

Dan could hear the sounds of a camp kettle being lit, and realised he was in desperate need of a coffee.

He met Neil at the back of his trailer and thanked him for last night.

“Scary shit, mate” Neil said with a sigh of relief “Think they made us?”

“No” Dan replied “They would’ve been on us like a rash if they had, they didn’t strike me as the recce and dawn raid kind of people”

He did the rounds, accepting thanks and hugs from others. They were all frazzled, but a sense of relief was starting to wake them up – they had survived their flight. He found Maggie leading the girl out of their caravan.

She saw Dan and led the girl gently towards him.

“This is Alice. Her Dad is called Mike. I’ll tell you the rest later” she said quietly. Alice looked at him, he decided her face said thankyou and he didn’t push for anything more.

“Your Dad is alive. Kate worked on him all night by the look of it. He’s lost a lot of blood but…” he stopped, not wanting to say that he might pull through.

Maggie led Alice over to the ambulance where she stared blankly at her father.

Dan called everyone together and accepted a cup of coffee from an unusually dishevelled Penny.

“I’m sure we weren’t followed” he announced loudly “We’ve put well over ten miles between us and them, and I think they were scouting far from home to be where we were” that got some nervous smiles and nods.

“I wanted to do this with a little more ceremony, but welcome to our new home” he said as he gestured towards the ornate front of the big manor house.

“That said,” he continued “we have a lot of work to do before we can move in. It’s something of a fixer-upper”

“In need of modernisation?” asked Neil, attempting to lighten the mood.

“Something like that” Dan replied with a tired smile “I need every adult male – sorry ladies, this is no time to claim sexism or shout about equality…” he said, holding a hand up to ward off the protests “…to be ready for some dirty work as soon as we’ve eaten. Ladies, don’t think there will be easy work for you, you will need to keep an eye out whilst we’re inside.”

Dan walked to the area to the side of the main entrance where the lorries were abandoned. This part was more modern than the old building, a modern attachment to accept large deliveries into the kitchens and stores. He went into the building and opened a cleaning store. He found cleaning products, but not the kind of protective gear he wanted. He thought the farm would provide that.

He walked up, asking Jimmy to come with him. Neil followed with a starter pack, reading his mind again.

“We left our tipper truck, so I’m guessing we need a replacement to move the bodies” he said

“We do, thanks. You should get some rest first though” said Dan.

“I will” Neil replied “When you do”

As Neil got a tractor started, luckily still attached to a large trailer, Jimmy helped Dan load up some rubber overalls and wellington boots. A box of paper facemasks was in the room so they came too. They only had three gas masks.

“Mate...” started Jimmy “Can I ask a favour?”

“You want me to say that Kev doesn’t have to help” said Dan.

Jimmy looked relieved “Yeah, please, it’s just that he gets scared by dead people a bit and I don’t want him freaking out”

“I know, when I said ‘adult’ males I was leaving Kev out in my head. I wouldn’t expect a young kid to do it and Kev’s in that boat in this sense” he replied.

They sat in the muddy trailer on the short ride down to the house, and Neil parked it directly in front of the main doors.

After a mixed breakfast of whatever they had in their personal kit and cars, Dan took his recruits to the tractor. He had left Penny with a shotgun, and offered a weapon to Kate. She flatly refused, saying that she had enough injuries to deal with without causing more.

Dan stood there with Neil, Jimmy, Cedric, Adam, Ian, Kyle – who looked pale – Andrew and Jay. To everyone’s surprise, Liam wandered up in silence to join them.

“Right, this isn’t going to be pleasant but it has to be done. Pair off, and get some protective gear on. We carry them out, clearing rooms from the front door in, put them in the trailer and when it’s full we drive it to the tennis courts and start a fire” Neil helpfully raised a jerrycan of petrol to underline the point.

“When we think it’s clear, we search again. When we’re absolutely sure, we bleach and scrub where the bodies were. Lots of them are in bed, so carry them out on the mattresses with the bedding and burn the lot. Open the windows as we go. The quicker we work, the quicker we are done.”

They worked quickly. In some areas the smell wasn’t too bad, in others it was stomach churning. Dan dragged out large buckets, mops and stiff brushes. He poured bleach liberally into the buckets and asked Liam to fetch bottles of water. The trailer filled quickly, and he called a break for everyone as he and Neil rode down to the tennis courts. Dan sat on the tool box as he rode up front with Neil, not wanting to share the trailer with the rotting load. The gas masks had left deep, red lines in their faces. The trailer was backed in, straight through the fence felling a section of it, and the two set to work unceremoniously dumping the former inhabitants of their new home to the concrete.

“Still a bloody drain on the working man” Neil quipped about the now dead former guests of Her Majesty. Dan was too tired to respond.

They decided to wait setting the flame until all the bodies were out, and rode the tractor back to the house. The others were nowhere to be seen, so they went inside to find a large pile of bodies wrapped in blankets and resting on thin single mattresses in the atrium. They must have decided not to enjoy their break and just get it done. Later it turned out that Jimmy had shamed them all by pointing out that the only two people not taking a break were the ones who had been up all night keeping watch over them.

Liam was scrubbing at the floor where the dead prison officer had sat, the chair he had occupied was by the pile for burning.

They repeated this twice more, until the pile was sickeningly high. Dan called a forced break and suggested lunch, but nobody had the stomach for food. He felt a little callous, but ate a nutty chocolate bar despite the pale looks he received. Truth was, he felt dead on his feet. The adrenaline of the shooting, the panicked flight and a night spent cold, cramped and on edge had taken a toll on him physically and mentally.

He reckoned one more trip would finish it. Liam struggled with the weight of carrying bodies, and by the look of him had also been sick, so had busied himself to the result that the place smelt of bleach – like a swimming pool with too much chlorine in. Bleach was good; bleach killed bacteria from dead people. Bleach didn’t smell like rotten guts.

By late afternoon the last trailer was loaded, and before Dan and Neil set off to burn the bodies he called out to his sweaty, tired group.

“Thankyou. This was hard work that will haunt us for a long time, but it’s nearly done. We can have a proper roof over our heads tonight. Please make another search of every room, every cupboard, and make sure we haven’t missed anything. Open all the windows you can find, and help Liam get the cleaning done. Neil and I will go and get the bodies from the gym and be back after”

They rode the tractor again, carried the men from the gym and went back for the chairs they had leaked into in the week since they last sat down. All of it went onto the bonfire, and Neil stood on the rear of the trailer for added height to pour twenty litres of petrol over the foul pile. It looked like pictures he had seen of mass graves following some foreign genocide.

They stood well clear and stripped off their overalls, adding them to the pile. Dan lit a smoke and the two just stood in silence for a while. He took another cigarette, lit it from the last one and threw the red hot end towards a creeping tendril of petrol heading in his direction.

Even from ten metres away the WHUMPH of the petrol catching sent a shockwave out. The fire caught quickly, and neither had the stomach to wait for the sizzling and crackling of burning humans.

The tractor was driven back to the house, where it was parked ready for any more rubbish to be piled into for burning.

Dan strolled in to the house. The smell of bleach was thick in his throat and he reassessed whether he should move people in tonight. He decided to ask Kate, who said that they should let the place air overnight. The term ‘off-gassing’ leapt into his mind, from a life left far behind.

The workers were subdued as they stripped and washed behind one of the lorries, a thought by Penny who had been boiling water for hours and emptying it onto a large plastic bin with a whole bottle of shower gel. Towels had been brought out of the house; small green ones that didn’t seem to do much in the way of drying them. Dan certainly felt the cloying stink of bodies still clung to him.

Food was cooked, and he ate hungrily. He had barely slept or even closed his eyes in thirty-six hours, and he was starting to feel it. He was worrying that he would have to organise a watch again for the night, and looked around for Lexi. He realised she wasn’t with the group.

Penny saw him looking, and said “I sent her to sleep for the day. She’ll watch tonight” Dan was pleased; he would’ve sorted exactly that if he hadn’t been so tired. He finished his food and found Lexi kitting up for the night. She had dressed warmly and was struggling to loosen her body armour to fit over her coat. He helped her, and had a thought. He unlocked his trailer and searched the box of attachments for the M4’s. He found what he hoped was in there; passive night scope that didn’t require batteries. It amplified ambient light; not as bright as the green glow of the goggles but it would give her an advantage. She set herself up where Neil had been the night before, and told Dan to get some rest.

“I’ve got this. You need to sleep” she instructed him firmly but kindly.

Utterly exhausted, he crawled into his sleeping bag, stretched out in the back of the Land Rover and slept.