The Citadel and the Wolves (26 page)

Kim kissed my cheek.

“Behave,” I sighed.

Staying in bed all day I admitted was a tempting idea; however, I had other responsibilities. I quickly reminded myself that we had a bit of a crisis on our hands.

I gave in to the younger girl briefly. I closed my eyes, letting her kiss my face. It was childlike. It was her way of showing affection. She confessed to me once that she never got much love from her parents when she was a small girl. They were cold and distant. She had Jenny because she wanted to give her the affection that she never had as a kid. I felt her explore my face with her fingertips in my purple universe.

“928,” she declared after awhile.

I opened my eyes puzzled. “Pardon?”

She smirked. “Freckles on your face.”

“You.”

Kim laughed when I playfully pulled her under me. We wrestled for a moment or two. I was the stronger one and wore her down. I pinned her beneath me.

“Will you behave?” I asked breathlessly.

She giggled, shaking her head. She was in a playful, mischievous mood this morning.

“You’re incorrigible, Kim Taylor,” I remarked.

She looked baffled.

“Fun time is over,” I said. “It’s time to rise and shine, Kim Taylor.”

She murmured.

I could hear the kids in the next room. They were already up.

I became conscious of something else; the howling winds had stopped. I padded across the room in my red socks, which I wear to bed in the freezing weather. I opened the shutters. Although the blizzards had died down, it was still snowing quite heavily out. I wondered who was getting it now. We had a lull.

I tried to get the BBC on my radio for Kim. Although it’s only news, she likes listening to the radio. We both do. We’re clinging to a little bit of our past. I couldn’t find them, disappointing us. I blamed the atrocious weather conditions.

When Kim and I stepped out of our room in dressing gowns, Tommy and Jenny ran by us on the landing giggling loudly. They vanished into the bathroom.

I filled the wash basin after we had chased the kids out of the bathroom. We dropped our dressing gowns. We sponged down.

“I was wrong, Jade.”

“Pardon?”

“Ten thousand and one.”

I threw my wet sponge at her as she laughed.

I sat on the bed patiently as my little helper Kim Taylor sewed another patch into my old jeans. I’m a scientist’s daughter, and I’m hopeless at that sort of thing. Kim is a little mother.

“There, all finished, Jade,” said Kim, holding up the old patchwork jeans. “Okay?”

I nodded.

I thanked her with a kiss on the cheek. I pulled on my jeans. Most of the patches come from my other old pair, which I’d cut up. All of my clothes are old. Of course, I’d love to go shopping again like the old days. We drove through the Croydon Town Centre some months back. It was a sad sight. Most of the shops and stores there including my favourite one
Allders
were blackened shells. I was depressing myself again. I thought of other things.

As I buckled my pair of patchwork jeans, Kim clung to my neck affectionately, demanding my attention.

“Jade, do you still love me?” asked Kim, seeking reassurance.

“Of course.” I kissed her mouth and fondly patted her rear. “You’d better get dressed now or you’ll miss breakfast.”

I waited for Kim as she dressed, and we went downstairs together.

We sat around the breakfast table. The kitchen was the warmest place in the house. I glanced at Wendy and Mark who sat together. I knew how they kept warm at night. Surely mum must know by now? Kim and I know. It’s an open secret in our house. When Mark put his arm around my sister, I noticed the expression on mum’s face. She knew. I grinned when Jenny and Tommy playfully gripped my leg under the table.

“Things look pretty bad,” said daddy, stating the obvious. “The woodpile and the fuel oil are low. We haven’t been able to get out for weeks owing to the severe weather conditions.”

“Blizzards,” I uttered unhelpfully, drinking something hot and spicy that mum had prepared earlier.

Daddy added, “And the Land-Rover is out.”

I put my hot drink down on the table. “There’s a lull in the weather, Dad, although it’s still snowing.”

“The circle theory?”

I nodded.

“That doesn’t alter the fact that we’re without transport, Jade,” remind daddy. “We’ve got the trailer but nothing to pull it with.”

When I almost fell off my chair, the others looked at me oddly.

“Jade?”

“The electric van,” I declared.

Why had we forgotten about the electric van? Since the accident a long time ago, we had kept it locked in our disused garage in the front yard.

“The Roamers?” wondered mum concerned.

I wasn’t put off. “This freezing weather is keeping the Roamers under cover. They’ve got enough problems of their own without worrying about a few individuals out collecting some firewood. I just wonder how many will survive this bad weather?”

“And the blizzards?” asked daddy.

“I’ve been doing some calculations on that, Dad,” I answered.

Daddy chuckled. “Would you care to share them with us, Jade?”

“The circle of the storm seems to have a radius of about one hundred kilometres or so, and it moves quite slowly, which means we’ve got approximately three hours before it hits us again,” I expounded.

“We’ll need every single minute of those three hours,” warned daddy.

“Snow’s stopped, Jade,” announced Kim, looking on the kitchen window.

“That will be a help.”

There was still the small problem of fixing the transmission on the electric van. We were all surprised when Mark volunteered. He revealed that he had done a training course in automotive electrics at college.

Father quick-charged the batteries on the electric van, and we were almost ready to go.

I sat on the bed, putting some cartridges into my pockets. If we did meet any
Roamers
out there, we had to be ready for them.

Kim took my rifle down from the top of the wardrobe and gave it to me.

She bit her lip. “Be careful out there, Jade. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”

“It won’t.”

“I know,” whispered Kim.

I drew the slim, pretty, dark-haired girl to me and kissed her. She laid her head on my shoulder.

“I love you, Jade.”

We dressed up warmly, looking like Eskimos.

Daddy and I left the safety of our citadel into the
Ice World
that London had become. I sat behind the wheel of the electric van. It was like driving an old friend rediscovered. The chains on the wheels helped us through the deep, compacted snow and ice. We had hitched up the trailer with two, large, empty oil drums earlier. We prayed that the weather would hold off until we returned.

When we spotted the frozen bodies in the snow, we were troubled. They had lost the struggle.

We pulled over by an abandoned lorry. I stepped out of the electric van. Although Kim’s thick scarf covered most of my face, I still felt the icy cold. I walked forward and opened the cab door on the driver’s side. VENUS PEBBLES!! I almost jumped out of my skin when his skeletal remains fell out into the road. He hadn’t abandoned his vehicle. He had simply died at the wheel. Shaking off my fright, I checked the fuel gauge. The fuel tanks were half-empty or half-full. For a big lorry, that was a lot of litres of diesel oil for our thirsty generator in the back yard.

We siphoned it off. It took some minutes.

“This should keep us going till after Christmas,” said daddy hopefully.

We parked the electric van and the trailer near the edge of the woods out of sight of the road.

Our boots crunched on the frozen ground as we headed for the trees. Father carried the long, double handled cutting saw for our task ahead. We would choose only the small trees for our logs. We entered the woods.

As we made our way further into the woods, the winter trees began to embrace us with their myths and stories of childhood. Fairies came to mind. I pointed it out to father when I first noticed it; the grey smoke from someone’s campfire on the far side of the woods. We were not alone in this frozen, wooded landscape, and they weren’t fairies.

ZOOTWOSOME!! I was startled when daddy pushed me in the back knocking me down in the snow. He dropped down beside me a moment later. Then I heard the sharp crack of a rifle above us. Someone was shooting at us. OH, DROKK!!!

The hard snow was wet and cold. I frowned, for I lay on my rifle which pressed into my abdomen. It was beginning to sting, so I moved my position slightly to release the rifle beneath me. I gripped it tightly, for I would need it very soon.

As I looked up cautiously, I caught a glimpse of two men in old, fading VPF
uniforms hiding behind the near trees. One was armed with a rifle. The other had some kind of sidearm.

“What do you want here?” shouted the one with the rifle.

“We’re not looking for trouble,” answered father, shouting back. “We’re looking for firewood.”

“These are private woods now,” said the other with the sidearm. “If you want wood, you gotta pay. What have you got?”

I noticed that the two men were moving between the trees. I realised what they were doing. They were trying to get behind us.

“These woods are on common land,” pointed out father. “Anyone is free to take the wood here.”

The rifleman laughed raucously. “It ain’t free no more.”

Something was wrong. The one with the sidearm was missing.

His hard, unshaven face cracked into a smile briefly when he saw my father lying on the ground, for he had silently crept up behind him. He raised his handgun. The back of his head exploded in crimson as my rifle cracked once.

The rifleman burst from his cover firing his weapon wildly. He had just made a fatal mistake. “You murdering-”

Father’s rifle spat flame. The bullet tore through the rifleman’s throat, spraying a fountain of blood. He fell to the ground dead.

We took only the wood that we needed. We had kept the woods free for others who would come after us.

As father and I gratefully turned into Crown Dale Close with our load on the trailer and in the back of the electric van, we noticed a group of people standing outside our gates, puzzling us. One or two had guns, making us feel uneasy. Although they looked dishevelled and ragged, they weren’t
Roamers.
I recognised some of the faces in the group. They were our neighbours. What did they want?

We stopped and climbed out of the van warily. They approached us through the deep snow. They looked unfriendly. It was a tense moment as they surrounded our little electric van and trailer.

Father addressed them: “What’s this all about?”

“You’ve got plenty of firewood on the trailer, Frank,” remarked one obliquely.

Was it Mr Martin? Father was blocking my view.

“So?”

“How about sharing some of it with your neighbours, Frank?” replied the other. “We’re freezing too.”

So that was it, I thought. I slid my rifle off my shoulder.

Father shook his head. “We worked damn hard to bring this firewood in. We took risks, but we brought it in nevertheless. If you want firewood, there’s plenty of it in the woods on the common and elsewhere.”

“If you ain’t gonna share it with us willingly, Frank, then maybe we ought to take it off you instead,” threatened another.

“Don’t talk bloody daft.”

One or two who had the guns made a threatening move towards us. I heard a rifle crack, but it wasn’t mine. Someone fell into the snow. I think it was Mr Martin. He didn’t get up again. The white snow turned red. I looked past dad’s broad shoulder and saw mother by the big gates with a rifle.

“Back off!” barked mum, keeping the rifle trained on the others.

They obeyed sheepishly, melting into the evening gloom.

I ran up to her. I gave her a big hug and a kiss. “You were brilliant, Mum.”

She blushed. “Jade.”

Daddy checked Mr Martin who was lying face down in the snow. I think mum shot him through the heart.

“Frank, is that poor man dead?” asked mother concerned.

He nodded.

She looked troubled. “I didn’t have any choice, did I, Frank?”

“No, love, you didn’t have any choice.”

We took the firewood and fuel oil inside. It had cost three lives to bring it back. It started snowing again. Another blizzard was on its way to us, I thought.

We had heat once more in the house. It was wonderful. After I’d changed out of my damp things, I dried out in front of the big fire in the sitting room with the others, drinking something hot and spicy that mother had prepared earlier. I put my arm around Kim. She smiled and laid her head in my shoulder affectionately. We gazed into the orange flames before the novelty of it wore off. We felt its warmth on our faces. The orange flames held strange dreams for us. If you stared hard enough into them, you could see a dancing ballerina. How very odd, I thought.

“Do you see it too, Wendy?” I asked curiously after awhile.

“What?”

“The dancing ballerina.”

When Jenny pointed at something in the flames, we laughed.

Later, around the big fire in the sitting room, we ate mother’s homemade cream cheese in jacket potatoes, which she had sprinkled with herbs and spices from our big garden. Then we sang an old
ELO
song
‘Wild West Hero,’
(from daddy’s time) filling our hearts with hope for the future. We drowned out the howling winds from the thick walls beyond. We forgot briefly.

I woke in the middle of the night. I listened intently. The faint, ghostly glow from the dying fire created eerie shadows in our room. Then I heard them again.

“What was that, Jade?” asked Kim in a frightened whisper, drawing closer to me.

“Wolves!”

15. WOLVES ON CROWN DALE CLOSE

Christmas Eve is upon us once more.

I shivered beneath the blankets. It was always freezing first thing in my room before I got the fire going to warm things up; however, we were running low on firewood again, so we needed to make a trip outside before we got snowed in for the winter.

We were all looking forward to Christmas and the New Year despite everything. It was going to be a white Christmas this year, no surprise.