Survival: After It Happened Book 1 (8 page)

After an hour walking around the manor grounds and checking all the smaller buildings they returned to the Land Rover just as Leah was starting to flag a little. She got in and started on the sweets.

They decided to recce a bit further afield and drove on towards the next town where Dan had found Kev and Jimmy. They went slow, and twice Leah scared the life out of him by shouting when she saw something. So far they had seen a couple of vehicles they wanted; another lorry with a tail lift and a transit tipper. Dan wanted that for loading dead bodies into and emptying the rotting cargo onto a tennis court where he planned to burn them, but again he thought it best to leave out the details for Leah. The tipper was in a small commercial van lot, which got marked on the map as a priority.

As he was looking through the windows of the small portacabin office, he heard the Defender’s horn sound once. He sprinted back, carbine raised and switched to semi-automatic. He saw Leah pointing frantically ahead of her at two people in the distance. They seemed frozen still, and Dan raised the M4 to see them through the 4x optic.

A man and a woman were squinting towards him, trying to figure out the sound they had heard. The girl obviously had the better eyesight as she made out Dan pointing a gun at them first. She turned and fled, the man confused but following her regardless.

He swore to himself. Mental note; find some small binoculars. He started the Land Rover and sped off in the direction they had ran. Leah was bombarding him with questions, all of which he ignored as he scanned around him for signs of where they went. He reached a T-junction at the end of the road. A choice he’d been faced with many times over his years of chasing people was ahead.

“Left or right? Left or right?” he repeated. Better to make a choice and have a fifty/fifty chance of being right than hesitate too long and guarantee failure.

“Left” said Leah, pointing helpfully left.

“Can you see them?” Dan asked

“Downhill” she said “You don’t run away uphill” she said, explaining basic logic to an experienced hunter of people.

He didn’t have time to be impressed, which he was, but tore off left accelerating hard and kicking himself for missing the obvious. Target focus; schoolboy error. He saw a flash of movement on the left side, just as Leah called out “THERE!”

The girl had sharp eyes. The two had indeed run downhill, and when they heard the car coming after them had decided to jump a garden wall and try to hide.

Dan skidded the Land Rover to a stop and went to get out. Leah stopped him by flapping her right arm at him.

“Don’t scare them. Let me talk” she said, with a maturity that surprised him.

“What?” he asked

“You’re moody and you look a bit scary” she replied, with devastating honesty.

“Fine” he said “just wind the window down though”

Leah held down the electric window button.

“Hi” she tried. It was almost funny, as they could see the shoes of one of them sticking out from behind the bins.

“We are nice! Honestly” she called out again “We want people to come and join our camp. I’m only twelve and they look after me. I know he looks scary; he scared me when I first saw him but he’s the one who protects us.”

Dan held his breath for a while, until his patience snapped and he went to get out. He stopped, seeing the two emerge from their hiding place.

The girl came first, tentatively followed by the male. They both looked mid-twenties and terrified. Leah reassured her, telling her it was ok.

“Please”, the girl said, “my friend, he have accident. Very bad.” Her English was heavily accented, and very Eastern European. He had dark hair in thick curls and a slightly olive skinned complexion. The male behind stepped forward, he looked very nervous.

“It’s true.” He blurted out fast “Our mate got hit on the head by a crate that fell off the shelves” he sounded like a local. He looked thin, a bit scruffy with off the poster tattoos on both forearms. “We were going to the pharmacy to get bandages and stuff”

“Where?” said Dan.

“The shop, down from here” said the girl, pointing back towards where he had first seen them.

“Not the pharmacy, where is your mate?” he knew where the pharmacy was; he had emptied it the other day with Jimmy and Kev.

“We can show you” said the male.

Dan gave this careful consideration as he had Leah with him. He couldn’t ask her to keep a gun on them, nor could he cover them and drive. He had to choose whether to trust them or not.

“Get in” he said, “Throw those bags into the back”

As they climbed in, he unfastened the Velcro strap of the Glock holster for easier access should he need it.

Leah smiled at him, completely unaware of the risk he had just taken for them both.

“I am Ana” said the girl “This Kyle” she said, pointing to the man. Her accent made her pronounce Kyle as Keel.

“Dan. Leah” He said, gesturing to them in turn “Where is your friend?”

They drove for a few minutes, taking lefts and rights on Ana’s direction. They arrived at a small Sainsbury’s store, not a supermarket but a smaller shop. Dan spent as much time watching them in the rear view mirror as he did looking forwards.

“There’s five of us” said Kyle, who seemed either wary or in awe of Dan. “John tried to get something down from the stockroom this morning. We found him out cold after we heard the crash”

Dan stopped the car and the two new passengers got out. He didn’t know whether to make Leah wait in the car again, but decided he wanted her in his sight instead.

They followed Ana and Kyle through the shop to an office where John was laid out on the floor covered with a blanket. He was breathing in short, shallow snores. Two other people, another man and woman, were kneeling either side of him.

“What happened? How long has he been like this?” Dan asked as he walked in. The two unknowns looked shocked to see a heavily armed man burst in and bark questions. He took one look at the head wound on John and turned to Leah, handing her the Land Rover keys.

“My bag in the boot. Open the top, take out the separate bag. Go now.” She ran off taking the keys. Dan looked to Ana who silently followed her.

Kyle answered the questions.

“A box of tins fell and hit him in the head. He’s been like that for about 5 hours” it seemed like they had just dragged him into the office where he now lay and waited for him to wake up.

Dan clipped the torch off the front mount of the M4 and slung it round on his back. He called John’s name loudly in his face and got no response. He opened his right eye, then his left, shining the torch in both before moving it away and repeating.

Bad news. John’s pupils were unevenly dilated, and neither responded to the bright LED light shone into them. He had seen this before, head injuries where people seemed dead drunk or totally sound asleep but they were never going to wake again. He felt down John’s upper body, and stopped when he felt crunching in his spine at the bottom of his neck.

Dan was no consultant, but he was experienced enough to know that John had a possible broken neck, and was likely braindead from the impact. He had no idea how to broach this news to three people he didn’t know, so he busied himself by continuing to check him over. Even a month ago, with CT scans and neurosurgeons, he doubted whether john would have survived this accident. John had wet himself at some point, the smell of dried urine burnt Dan’s throat.

Leah burst back in carrying Dan’s trauma kit, he took it and applied a fresh dressing to John’s head to cover some time.

“Ok, let’s give him some air” he said with authority. He always found that with people who had little or no first aid knowledge; if you give them firm commands they did as they were told.

The six of them who were still alive stepped out into the shop. Dan opened a can of coke from the now useless chiller and drank deeply.

“I’m Dan and this is Leah. We’re from a group a little way away and we’re looking for other survivors. We’ve met Ana and Kyle” he trailed off, looking at the other two who hadn’t been introduced.

The female seemed to wake up first.

“I’m Lexi” she said. Everyone looked at the male, who eventually said “Ian”

Silence hung over them for a few seconds. Dan didn’t know how to tell them that John was effectively dead and would never wake up. Ana started with their story, how she had been wandering around until she met Ian and John. Kyle turned up the day after, and Lexi only last night. He tried to steer the conversation towards their previous lives, feeling a little mercenary as he was trying to find out how useful they were to the group.

Ana immigrated from Romania last year. She spoke Russian and English, and worked in a factory. She loved being in the UK, up until nearly a week ago.

Kyle worked in a supermarket, Lexi was a retail manager. Primark, as it turned out.

Ian was a lorry driver – finally, someone useful – but he seemed almost catatonic.

Most annoyingly, John owned a central heating and electrician company. Just my luck, thought Dan.

He finished his coke and packed up his trauma kit.

“Pop that away for me please?” he asked Leah nicely. She skipped off and Dan straightened to address the four strangers.

“Bad news I’m afraid. John has a broken neck and the head injury has caused permanent damage” he got nothing but blank looks in return.

“John has no brain function. Even if we had a brain surgeon and a fully working hospital, he is still effectively dead”

They seemed to take it well. Nobody seemed really affected at all, but then again none of them had known him for more than a few days.

Dan continued “I want you all to come with us. There are seven of us, maybe more by the time we get back, and we have good supplies. What’s more, we have a permanent site lined up”

Leah walked back in before any of them could answer. She sensed that grown up talk had just happened whilst she was out, and she looked at Dan waiting to be brought up to speed. When no immediate answer came she asked, “How many are coming with us then?”

He liked Leah’s ice breaking techniques.

“I’m in” said Kyle

“I want come with you” Ana said to Leah, smiling.

“Yes” said Lexi

Dan looked at Ian, who still seemed in shock.

“Ian, we really could do with someone who can drive arctics. You coming?”

Ian slowly looked up at Dan, then glanced to where John was.

“Yeah” he croaked, “But what about John?”

They all filled their bags with whatever they could. Dan had to put one of the boot seats down to have enough space to drive the seven of them back. He was the last out of the shop, and thanks to the suppressor nobody had heard the single shot that gave John peace.

Some truths were easy to ignore nowadays.

Their contingent of seven got back to camp in the late afternoon. Lexi was the most alert and capable of them, so she drove the tipper van after Dan had opened the door and got the keys. Introductions were made to Penny and Andrew. Then Neil, and his new recruit, when he rolled back in minus the fanfare he was hoping for. He was towing a small tanker trailer, a thousand litres he bragged, behind another off-road prepared Defender. Both found tucked away on the industrial estate, he was emphatic about their newly acquired fuel storing capability.

Cedric and Maggie had returned and set up not only the toilets, but they had cleared out the covered trolley bay and erected a series of individual tents too. Cedric had left the trailer he had used to carry the equipment by the covered area, hopefully Dan thought this was in preparation of moving.

Amazingly, their numbers had almost doubled in a day; Dan and Leah had brought back Ana, Kyle, Ian and Lexi.

Cedric and Maggie had found a teenage boy and a woman in her thirties, Liam was seen walking along the road, and Kate drove up to them in the most unlikely of vehicles. Liam seemed to only mourn the loss of his Xbox, but Kate was a find of pure platinum. The group now had a paramedic in their own well equipped ambulance. She was fit, a runner Dan reckoned, and shared his sense of rebuilding society. Dan made a point of taking her aside and asking for a second opinion on John’s symptoms, just in case he was wrong. Luckily she agreed, and he gave her the heads up that she may be asked the same question after what he had done.

She had a very pragmatic sense of duty, and now that the law didn’t apply her views on euthanasia were no longer unpopular or deemed too liberal. She was tattooed, pierced and, Dan strongly suspected, a lesbian. Nothing seemed to shock her, which he could only see as a plus point.

Neil had found himself a friend, a lad in his late teens who called himself Jay. Jay’s dad had owned a landscape gardening business and he had seen his fair share of trees felled.

Dan’s mental notepad was being scribbled on furiously.

Jimmy and Kev returned about an hour later in a new lorry. Sandwiched in the middle seat between them was another young man, Adam.

Adam was in the bathroom fitting business. The family business as was, and seemed a fit and healthy addition.

Penny had prepared another large meal of something Dan barely recognised as macaroni cheese. Everyone ate and sat talking. An air of actual happiness had overtaken them with the eight new arrivals. After dinner, Penny called for some hush.

“Welcome to our new members. We are so thoroughly grateful to have you here” noises of agreement came from the group.

“I never thought I’d say this, but we are suddenly short on living space!” a few laughs from the circle “James and Kevin, as agreed you two will move into shared accommodation with Daniel and Neil”

Kev looked at Jimmy and raised his eyebrows, Jimmy said “We’re sleeping in their caravan” quietly to him. Kev smiled and nodded, leaning round to smile at Dan.

“Liam, Jay – you two will take James and Kevin’s former caravan with Adam and Kyle” all those mentioned by name looked around and nodded.

“Andrew, if you could please welcome Ian” nods of agreement exchanged.

“Leah and I will accommodate Lexi and Ana”

“Now, normal business will be suspended tomorrow morning until we have met to discuss our plans. So, everyone must feel free to have a small drink and have a slightly later night. I say we have all earned it to get this far.” She stood, and Dan thought she may have had a couple of those sherries whilst cooking.

“We have all of us lost a great deal. Let us not think of loss, but consider our gains. We have all gained a new family in each other, may that family grow and prosper. Cheers!”

They drank. Leah was asleep in the chair before long, and Dan carried her into her caravan. He loaded and unloaded the magazines for his guns, ran a scrap of oiled cleaning cloth tied to the end of a piece of wire through the M4 and locked the carbine away before joining Neil in another journey to the bottom of a bottle.

He woke early, in desperate need to pee. Despite their new toilet setup, he went to the side of the building as before and pissed noisily against the wall. He decided that Neil was a bad influence which would probably ruin his liver. He was never much of a drinker before, he would drink after rugby matches and always had drinks in at home, but he was never that much of a social drinker. He’d stopped going out to get drunk over fifteen years ago. Maybe the apocalypse was making him alcoholic?

“Who gives a fuck?” he croaked in answer to his own unasked question.

Others were starting to surface, and he saw Penny boiling a kettle and holding her head in obvious discomfort. He knew that look, and he knew that a strong cup of tea would do nothing for it.

When they eventually all gathered, all with the exception of Leah, and sat around eating breakfast bars and drinking hot drinks, Dan decided to rouse his new assistant to help with the presentation. He banged on the door of the caravan and called her “Leah. I need you and your notebook out here”

She surprised him by appearing within ten seconds. She was wearing pyjamas, had her hair mussed over her face, and stomped off to the toilets in her unlaced walking boots. She returned and sat down with a carton of fruit juice, producing her notebook. “Continue” she said to him, sarcastically.

“Ok everyone, listen up. As some of you know, Leah and I went to check out a permanent site yesterday. Leah, what did we learn?”

Leah cleared her throat and said, “A prison. A big posh house prison and not like the telly. It’s got lots of bedrooms and offices and store rooms and a kitchen. There’s a gym and a lake with fish and geese. There’s a farm too, and we let the cows and the pigs and the chickens out.”

Nobody spoke, but some hangovers were shaken a little clearer by the succinct intelligence report coming from the youngest person there.

“There are around eighty bodies to be cleared. Dan thinks we need a trailer and some petrol. The tennis court is the best…”

“Long story short, the location is…” said Dan to cut her off, acutely aware of the cold, furious stare he was receiving from Penny.

“Perfect” interrupted Leah. Dan looked hard at her without speaking.

“Continue” she said again, with a lavish gesture to him.

Cheeky cow, he thought.

“Anyway, yes. It’s perfect. However, it needs a couple of days’ work to clear it and clean it. We have all the materials we need for that right here, but I think this should be our top priority as of now.”

Nobody raised an objection, so he pressed on taking the silence for consent.

“All the food in there that is going off, and all the stuff in the bags over there” he said, gesturing to the store and to the pile of black bags removed over the last few days, need to be taken to the farm where it is feed for the pigs and chickens. We also need as many strong hands, and strong stomachs, as can manage the clearance of the building. The quicker we do this, the quicker we live under a roof again. Any objections?”

There were none, Dan almost forgot that Penny had declared an unofficial bank holiday and was about to set people off to work until he remembered.

“We start tomorrow then!”