The Citadel and the Wolves (27 page)

As I stirred under the thick blankets, Kim murmured in her sleep. She reminded me of a scared, vulnerable child who needed someone older to take care of her. I was older. I removed her hand from my bosom and rose. I shivered as I put on my dressing gown.

When I wandered into the bathroom, I bumped into Wendy. She looked pale and drawn. I was worried about her. She wouldn’t confide in me and tell me what was troubling her. We had drifted apart in recent times. I blamed the other.

“Jade, did you hear them again last night?” asked Wendy with a scared look in her eyes.

“The wolves?”

She nodded.

“They seemed closer than before,” I said.

“Jade, why would they come into town?”

“They’re hungry, Wendy. It’s been a very hard winter so far, and they’re probably finding food scarce in the country now.”

She looked puzzled. “Food?”

“Us.”

Wendy was horrified. “Oh God, Jade, what if-if they get in?”

“They won’t, Wendy. The high wall and the electrified barbed wire will keep them out.” I was confident. “This house is built like a fortress. The wolves prefer easy prey.”

She smiled weakly. “Yeah, you’re right, Jade. We’re safe behind these walls.”

I put my arm around her concerned. “Wendy, is everything all right with you?”

She suddenly seemed upset. “Yeah, why shouldn’t it be, Jade?”

“I thought-”

“Don’t!” snapped Wendy who stormed out of the bathroom.

Something was definitely wrong with my elder sister, behaving this way, yet I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

After a quick wash, Kim and I dressed. We went downstairs.

We fed the rabbits before breakfast in our heavy winter coats, boots and gloves.

Tessa is ‘fat’ again. They didn’t come out to greet us this morning. I knew how they felt.

“Jade, what’s wrong with Wendy?” wondered Kim.

“Wrong?”

“Only when I spoke to her first thing, she bit my head off,” revealed Kim. “Have I done something wrong, Jade?”

I shook my head. I remained troubled by Wendy’s strange behaviour.

The Land-Rover jumped violently as we hit another pothole in the icy road near Streatham Common Woods. Although the chains on the wheels provided some grip on the icy roads, the Land-Rover still slipped occasionally. But the ‘new engine’ was holding up well.

I sat up front with dad who was driving. Mark sat behind us, moaning incessantly about the cold. He wasn’t the only one feeling it.

When I looked back after the last bump, I was horrified. I was wrong. We hadn’t gone over another pothole in the road. The ‘pothole’ was in fact a frozen corpse in the snow. OH, DROKK! It had been half-eaten by the wolves. ZOOTWOSOME! They wouldn’t attack us, for they feared us. We had guns. I patted my rifle, reassuring me.

“It’s freezing,” complained Mark for the umpteenth time.

I groaned inwardly. I was half-tempted to throw him out of the Land-Rover and leave him to the wolves.

The frozen streets remained deserted. The long, freezing winter and the wolves were keeping the people indoors. I didn’t see smoke coming from many chimneys, and I wondered how many people had frozen to death in their sleep. We were surviving because we were resourceful.

The woods came into view.

Although I wore many layers of heavy clothing (looking like an Eskimo) including my fur lined hooded jacket, Kim’s wool scarf, which covered most of my face, fur lined boots with three pairs of socks and fur lined gloves, a freezing cross wind cut right through me, chilling my bones. I thought of Kim and Jenny sitting in front of the blazing fire in the living room to keep me warm. It helped.

We were loading the last of the logs onto the trailer when the blizzard hit us suddenly.

“Jade, we won’t make it back through this,” father cried over the howling winds. “I noticed a park keeper’s lodge when we came in. We’ll leave the load here and shelter there. We’ll come back for it when the blizzard has passed.”

Mark and I didn’t argue with daddy. We temporarily abandoned our load, seeking shelter in the park keeper’s lodge. We forced a door, escaping inside. We discovered an old, boarded-up fireplace in the gloomy rest room. Daddy knocked it out and broke it up for firewood. He used some old newspapers and threw a match on it. We huddled together by the warmth of the crackling flames, drying off, as the winds screamed outside.

Mark thought out aloud, “How long will this one last, I wonder?”

“About three or four hours before the next lull,” I answered, though that was a conservative estimate of mine.

“We could be here till dark then,” said Mark miserably.

I smiled inwardly. I knew what or who was on his mind. He wanted to be somewhere else. He wanted to be with my beautiful sister. Blizzards weren’t all bad after all.

But I wasn’t complaining. We were warm and dry. It could be much worse. We could be out in it.

As I gazed into the flames, I thought of Kim and Jenny. What are they doing right now, worrying about me? I hope the blizzard blows over soon because I don’t want to spend the night here in a gloomy, empty park keeper’s lodge. I was like Mark in many ways. I wanted to be somewhere else too.

An old newspaper headline caught my eye:

COMET STRIKES CALIFORNIA

MANY FEARED DEAD

I picked up the yellowing news sheet, reading the rest of the story. Although it seems long ago now, it’s recent history. Who will write about it in the future if we’re all gone? The presses had stopped rolling. Someone needed to pick up a pen and paper to write about these times. I keep a diary, but I’m not an historian. Historians write after the events. I’m writing as things happen to me. The present is now. The future is tomorrow. I gave up thinking about it. I like to confuse myself sometimes. It masks what I really think and feel. Then Mark Taylor broke into my thoughts.

“Jade, did the comet start all of this?” he wondered curiously.

“The comet may be one of the causes.” I was being wary and cautious because I didn’t have all of the answers. No one did. I might be wrong. “The blanket of thick clouds that has covered a great part of our planet since the comet hit us is probably blocking out some of the sun’s warmth, preventing it from reaching the surface, but other things could be responsible too.” I was using conciliatory language. Perhaps daddy was right.

“Mr Robinson, what do you think?”

I frowned. Sneaky and crafty, I thought.

“Jade, does have a point, Mark,” daddy replied. “We can’t discount the comet in all of this.”

When daddy winked at me past Mark’s shoulder, I smiled.

It was getting a little uncomfortable by the fire. I decided to stretch my legs. I rose and wandered over to the window. I couldn’t see much through the dirty window panes. I felt my father’s presence on my shoulder after some moments.

He spoke, “You’ve grown-up a lot since all of this started not so long ago, Jade.”

“Dad?”

“You were my little girl then.”

I thought daddy sounded sad. He was looking back to another time, almost another age. It could make you sad if you let it.

“We’ve all changed, Daddy.” I bit my lip. “But my feelings haven’t. They remain the same. What has happened has made me, all of us, a little stronger. We’ve got to be.” Was this really me talking? I was beginning to sound like my father. But then, I am his daughter after all.

I shivered when he enclosed me in his strong, protective arms. It had been a long time. I was his little girl again. I remembered another time that had disappeared forever.

I woke with a start by the dying fire when daddy gently shook me.

“Time to go, Jade,” said father quietly. “The storm has passed us by.”

We were returning home with the trailer laden with new firewood, more than before.

“There!” I cried.

We pulled over outside the derelict gun shop. Although it had been ransacked earlier by looters, they hadn’t taken everything. They had missed one or two items. I needed something more mobile than a rifle, something that I could tuck into my belt. I found the handgun and a box of cartridges in the stockroom. I tucked the handgun into my belt. Its smooth hardness reassured me.

We continued our journey home. It was getting late. We didn’t want to be out on the streets after dark.

As we turned the next corner, we saw them for the first time. A pack of hungry wolves were feasting on a frozen corpse in the middle of the road, tearing at dead, cold flesh with their razor sharp teeth. The cities had become ideal hunting grounds for the wolves. The freezing weather had turned the streets into a giant larder of fresh meat. If this was our brave, new world, I didn’t like it at all. As we slowly drove around them, they ignored us. I pulled out my revolver, loading the chamber.

“Leave it, Jade,” said father, “and save your ammunition. We haven’t got time. He’s past caring.”

Father put his foot down.

Christmas Eve Night had always been special in our household, and this year was no exception. The Christmas Eve supper was spicy, chicken soup with mum’s freshly-baked bread that we washed down with daddy’s own homemade cider. Wendy and I had helped earlier putting up the decorations. This was Christmas as it used to be. Although the world had changed beyond the walls that protected us, we wouldn’t allow it to distract us, for we were determined to make this Christmas a special one. It was. We gave one another presents. I’d knitted Kim a sweater. I promised not to open hers till Christmas Day. When she became all tearful, I gave her a reassuring cuddle and a kiss.

After the long supper, we all sat around the big, blazing fire in the living room with our cups of homemade cider. Tommy and Jenny cuddled each other like a couple of lovebirds, amusing the rest of us. They sipped cider that mum had watered down. She also added a little honey to it. We chatted for hours, chasing away the fears that were real enough in our minds. We forgot momentarily.

I helped Kim upstairs later. She couldn’t stop giggling. I blamed daddy’s homemade cider. She had six cups; however, she insisted that she was simply happy and glad to be spending Christmas with her new, adopted family. She called us the nicest family in the world. I was right. It was daddy’s homemade cider. She tripped up the last stair.

As I undressed Kim for bed, she tried to kiss me.

“Behave, Miss,” I mildly admonished.

“But I love you, Jade Robinson,” she declared once more.

I put the covers over her and left her. I threw another log onto the fire before I slipped out of the room.

I paused outside the bathroom when I heard someone being sick. I hesitated a moment or two before I tapped on the door.

Wendy opened it. She was in her nightdress under her open dressing gown. She looked pale and drawn.

“Come in, Jade.”

I stepped into the bathroom. “Dad’s cider?”

She shook her head.

“I didn’t think so, Sis. What’s wrong?” I asked concerned. I already knew the answer.

“I’m…”

“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

She bit her lip. Tears filled her large eyes.

“Aren’t you?”

She finally nodded.

“I needn’t ask who the father is.”

“No.”

“Mark?”

She murmured.

I frowned. “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch the father’s name, Sis.”

“Mark is the father,” she whispered. “But you won’t tell mum or dad, will you, Jade?”

I sighed wearily. “Wendy, you can’t keep something like this a secret for long. It will show soon enough.”

“I want to announce it myself, Jade, and in my own time,” insisted Wendy.

“When will that be, Wendy?”

“Soon.”

“In nine months time?”

She laughed suddenly. Then she burst into tears.

My sister needed reassurance. I reached out to her. I gave her a fond hug and said all the right things, I hoped. I was going to be an auntie. It made me feel old. I needed time to get used to the idea. But what kind of world was he coming into? Was it the beginning of another dark age?

I slipped beneath the warmth of the heavy blankets with Kim in my big bed, drawing her to me. She murmured in her sleep. I needed reassurance too. I fell into a strange dream.

The howling winds and blizzards lashed our fortress home. I heard a distant rumble of thunder.

Kim woke me the following morning. She was behaving like an excitable kid. I was still trying to catch up on my beauty sleep.

“Jade, it’s Christmas Day,” announced Kim happily. “It’s Christmas.”

“Good,” I murmured sleepily as I turned over. It was still dark out, I thought. If it was Christmas morning, it didn’t feel like it. Something was missing.

“Aren’t you excited too, Jade?” asked Kim, who wanted to share her childlike excitement with others.

I remained silent.

“Jade?”

“Give me a chance to wake up first, Kim,” I finally answered.

She giggled, nuzzling my neck like an affectionate puppy. She was demanding.

“Jade, this Christmas is going to be like Christmas used to be in the old days before the comet changed everything and spoilt it.”

I wondered if it could ever be.

I groaned when she stabbed me in the face with her elbow as she climbed over me, slipping out of bed. Then the kids burst into my room, screaming loudly. I slid under the covers, burying my face into my pillow. The others wouldn’t leave me alone.

Kim opened her Christmas present from me excitedly, tearing off the gift wrapping paper, which I’d saved from last Christmas. Or was it the one before?

She took out the sweater. Her eyes lit up. “Oh, it’s lovely, Jade.” She shrugged out of her pyjama top and tried it on immediately. “It fits…It’s perfect…Jade, aren’t you gonna open mine?”

I opened my present and found the gold crucifix that glittered beneath my eyes. I was more than a little surprised.

She revealed, “It belonged to my grandmother. I’ve never worn it…I couldn’t. I want you to have it, Jade.”

I felt awkward. “Kim, I-”

Her eyes were moist. “You’re my very special friend, Jade.”

I wore it.

Kim clung to my neck affectionately, kissing me on the mouth.

When I opened the shutters in the bathroom, I saw it for the first time. The storm had brought down a large tree that had crashed into the south wall in the back, demolishing it completely. Nature had breached
The Citadel.
OH, DROKK! ZOOTWOSOME! VENUS PEBBLES!