Flare

Chapter 23

“Why don’t they leave?” I asked as we drove past another, smaller group of dispossessed families.

“And where would they go?” Emily demanded. “The ones who could leave, did, I reckon. These are the people left behind. If you didn’t have Melody to think of, what would you have done?”

“Probably died in my bed, but if I’d survived, I don’t know. Maybe headed for somewhere safer.”

“But where?” She persisted. “Where would you have gone and how would you have got there?”

I shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t know.”

She stabbed the dashboard with her index finger.

“And that’s exactly my point. If you’ve got a family, or elderly parents who can’t look after themselves, you’ll stay and try and make the best of what you’ve got. Imagine trying to walk to another town or city with four kids and grandma strapped to your back. It’s not gonna happen. So they sit here instead and wait for someone to come and save them.”

“You’ve seen this sort of thing before, haven’t you?” I said with sudden insight.

She nodded. “Yeah, it’s the same when the Yanks bomb a village, or the Taliban butcher half the population and set fire to the houses. The ones with the will to carry on, well, carry on. The others just sit down and wait to die.”

By the time we got to the far side of Woking we’d passed dozens of groups, none so large as the first we’d encountered but all stamped with that look of helplessness and despair. Two of the groups were fighting over a trolley full of food from a nearby supermarket, and even from the road I could see that the shelves were already bare, stripped by those who had been quicker to seize the advantage.

As we drove through the suburbs we also passed a pair of teenagers, each carrying one end of a boxed, 50” plasma TV, their nervous looks making it clear that they’d stolen it from somewhere.

“Are they fucking stupid?” I said as I pointed them out to Emily.

“About as stupid as that question.”

“Fair point.” And it was. We’d been fortunate in having Jerry with us to explain what was happening. To everyone else, their world had just stopped without reason, the logical assumption being that at some point, someone in command would throw a switch and the world would pick up where it left off. Without news, radio or TV, few people would realise what had happened, and fewer still would have the wherewithal find a way to survive.

The road north of Woking was fairly free of cars and we picked up speed, passing a petrol station with several vehicles abandoned at the pumps and half a dozen people industriously looting what little was left in the shop.

One of them ran out and shouted something at us, but the words were lost as Emily kept going.

“This car makes us a bloody target,” she said as she looked at the vanishing figure in the rear-view mirror.

“We’d be more of a target on foot.”

“Yeah, probably.”

We lapsed into silence, the state of the town enough to make even the most diehard optimist stop and think. Someone had once said that our society was only three meals from barbarism, but I was fairly sure they hadn’t factored in a lack of TV and all the other devices that kept people chained to their sofas. Once again I realised how very lucky we had been to fall in with Ralph, Harriet and Emily.

The couple were tough, self-reliant and practical, and Emily was all of those and army-trained to boot. Without them, I knew, our chances of survival would have plummeted dramatically.

As we got further out from the town, the road cutting through woods and fields with the occasional house here and there, we began to pass walkers, mostly on their own or in couples, but occasionally entire families, all laden with heavy bags as they travelled.

All of them looked tired, haggard and some were nursing injuries, mostly burns. Part of me wanted to stop and see if there was anything we could do, but the sensible part of me knew that there were too many people and all it would take was for someone to try and take advantage and we could lose everything.

Unable to take the stares of the walkers anymore, I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, trying not to think about anything other than getting to Manchester.

The motion of the car lulled me into a half-doze, only broken when Emily hit the brakes and tapped my shoulder at the same time.

“Trouble,” she said, and I looked ahead to see a man and a woman, back to back in the middle of the road while she held a small bundle in her arms. At their feet were two rucksacks, and the man held a claw hammer up, brandishing it at the five men and women that surrounded them.

As we drew closer a couple of the group looked back at us, but quickly returned their attention to the couple when the man darted forward and struck one of them on the shoulder with the hammer.

Emily pulled up several metres short, unable to go around with them spread out across the road.

“What do we do?” I asked nervously, thumb stroking the shotgun again.

Emily looked grim. “We wait. I don’t like it but there are too many of them.”

Just then, the bundle in the woman’s arm let out a wailing cry, the scream of an infant announcing its hunger to the world.

I looked at Emily and our eyes locked. No matter what else I might do before the world righted itself again, I would not, could not stand by and watch a couple protecting their baby and not do something to help.

Emily nodded at the unspoken thought and reached into the back seat, freeing her Bergen and slipping a hand inside.

When it came out it was clutching a small black pistol which she tucked into her waistband, tugging down the hem or her t-shirt so it was out of sight. She looked up at me as if daring to say anything but I just shrugged as I got ready to open the door.

“Don’t use the shotgun unless you have to,” she said warningly, “you might hit the people we’re trying to help. Take some spare cartridges too.”

I scooped a handful from the bag at my feet and slipped them into my pocket. Emily was already out of the car and walking towards the group, and I had to hurry to catch up, my palms slippery on the stock of the shotgun and my mouth horribly dry.

“Ok, that’s enough!” Emily’s shout made them all turn, a couple of them edging back as they saw the shotgun in my hands. “I suggest you leave them alone and go on about your business.”

The group exchanged a few doubtful looks, and a woman in her twenties with a long ponytail and, incongruously, far too much makeup, nodded and motioned to the others to move to the side of the road.

“Ok, ok, we’re leaving. We don’t want any trouble.”

From their clothing, age and hairstyles I guessed the group had found themselves together by chance rather than design, but despite several of them being older they all took the cues from the young woman, moving to the treeline with looks that ranged from fear to frustration.

I approached the couple warily, the baby still shrieking as they eyed me with not a little fear.

“Are you ok?” I asked, and the man nodded. He could only be about twenty, the woman maybe a year older, and he had a blond quiff made me think of Tintin.

“What was that all about?” I directed the question at them both, but the man stepped protectively in front of woman and child, although what he thought he could do with a hammer against a shotgun I couldn’t begin to guess.

“They wanted food, and when we told them we didn’t have any they tried to search our bags. Then one of them made a grab for Sam and Jenny hit her. I managed to get the hammer out and keep them off but I reckon it would have turned really nasty if you hadn’t turned up, so thank you.”

He kept his eyes on the shotgun as he spoke, still unsure whether we were saviours or yet more thieves.

“We’ve got room in the car for the three of you,” I said, voice as calm as I could make it with adrenaline still running through my system like wildfire, “at least let us get you away from here or they’ll just attack you again when we’re out of sight.”

“Really, you’d do that?” He looked at his wife and she shrugged and nodded.

“This is Jenny and our little boy Sam, I’m Tom,” he said, picking up their bags and carrying them to the car, Jenny following in his shadow while I backed away from where the group stood watching at a safe distance.

“I’m Malc and this is Emily. We can talk later, for now let’s get out of here.”

They squeezed into the back seat bags and all, and in a few moments we were off again, the car groaning under the extra weight.

“So,” I said to the couple as we rounded and bend and lost the group from sight, “why were you out here in the middle of nowhere?”

Tom leaned forward to speak to me over the noise of the engine.

“Well,” he said, breathing as if he’d just run a race, “me and my friends needed a car, and this seemed the best way. I’m really sorry and all that, but I think you probably ought to stop before things get messy.”

I felt a sharp prick in my kidney and looked down to see the tip of a kitchen knife held there by the man we’d just rescued. Jenny, if that was indeed her name, was holding a second knife to Emily’s stomach, one arm still clutching the baby while the other snaked between the chairs to keep the blade against my friend.

The shotgun was useless in such close quarters, the barrels now broken and pointing into the footwell in any case, and I ground my teeth together as I realised how well we’d been played.

Emily slowed the car to a stop and turned the engine off, resting her hands on the wheel.

“What now?” She asked through gritted teeth.

“Now,” Tom said as he used his spare hand to pull the shotgun away from me, “we wait for our friends to catch up, and then we’ll see.”