Flare

Chapter 26

I woke to the unfamiliar sound of someone snoring next to me, and rolled over to come immediately face to face with Emily, just visible in the dim light that pierced the canvas.

She looked peaceful in sleep, and years younger with the habitual toughness leeched from her face by slumber.

I sat up quietly, trying not to wake her, and crawled from my sleeping bag to unzip the tent and slip outside.

The morning was surprisingly cool with grey clouds scattered overhead. I hoped that the oppressive heat had broken, it would be far easier to walk without the sun beating down on us from dawn until dusk.

Pulling the bags out behind me I set about making breakfast, putting the stove together and lighting it, then filling a pan with water from our dwindling supply and setting it to boil.

It heated surprisingly fast for such a small stove and within a few minutes I had two bowls of porridge ready, as well as two steaming cups of black coffee.

I leaned into the tent to wake Emily but instead saw her sitting up, smiling as I jumped.

“I was about to wake you, I’ve made breakfast,” I said, gesturing towards the bowls.

“I know,” she said with a tentative smile, “I woke up when you opened the tent but I figured you at least owe me breakfast so I thought I’d wait.”

Her harsh words of the night before still lay between us, but it seemed that we had both resolved not to mention it, and as we ate breakfast and sipped our coffee we began to talk with a little of our former closeness, still a fragile thing when it had been interrupted.

“How’s your ankle?” She pointed at my bare feet, one of them still wrapped in a now-dirty bandage.

I shrugged. “A lot better that I thought it would be but it still hurts like buggery.”

She looked over at my trainers, worn, scuffed and forlorn-looking.

“We need to get you some proper boots, trainers aren’t made for walking long distances. You’ll be lame before we’re halfway there otherwise.”

Without thinking about it my hand went towards my pocket, an ingrained response to any talk of shopping that had me scrambling for Google on my phone to look for the best deals. Emily caught the movement and laughed when I explained, then gestured at the field.

“Even if you still had a phone that worked, I think Amazon would struggle to deliver out here, drones or not. We’ll have to risk heading into the next town or village that we see. Either that, or we need to start looking at the houses we go past, see if there’s anything useful.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “That feels a lot like stealing.”

She nodded. “It does, because it is. But it’s about survival now Malc, everything we’ve seen over the last few days tells us that.”

She paused for a moment, then looked down at her feet when she spoke again.

“Look, about yesterday. I’m sorry I was so harsh with you. It’s easy to forget that most people haven’t been through what I have, and I kind of assume a certain level of competence and practicality in everyone, then I end up surprised when it doesn’t materialise. I think it’s a mix of serving in the army and having a dad as capable as mine is. You know we never bought any furniture when I was a kid? My dad made everything. Tables, chairs, even a sofa, although that leaned to one side and gave everyone back-ache.”

She stopped and took a breath. “What I’m trying to say is that I was too harsh on you, and I said some really nasty things, and I’m sorry. I know this is all new to you, and this is probably turning into the steepest learning curve you’ve ever experienced, but this trip is about your daughter, so I guess I just felt, well, underappreciated.”

I reached out and touched her arm, trying to ignore the electric thrill that ran through me when her fingers brushed mine in return.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” I said, pulling my hand away slowly, unwilling to break the connection but knowing I had to, for my own sanity if nothing else. “I made a stupid assumption based on my own fears, and it wasn’t fair on you. How about we put yesterday down as an off-day and forget about it?”

She nodded and smiled, and I wondered if I imagined her own reluctance as she took her fingers from my arm.

“Let’s do that.” She squinted up at the clouds. “Not going to be quite as hot today, but cloud cover can be deceiving. We need to find somewhere to top up our water, get you some boots and hopefully find a car that works. Best we get cracking, eh?”

It took us about fifteen minutes to break the tent down, scrape the bowls and cups clean and clear everything away before taking turns at the far end of the small copse.

That done, we marched back to the road, my feet sore and my calves burning from the previous day’s walking, but for some reason I felt alive in a way I hadn’t done in years. Even my constant fear for Melody was muted, still very much there, but no longer the insistent gnawing feeling that tried to claw its way out of my stomach every few minutes. I wondered at that as we walked, at first feeling like a bad parent, allowing my relief at re-cementing my growing friendship with Emily to overshadow my concern for my daughter, but then I realised that it was that very friendship that was giving me any real hope that we would be reunited.

Without Emily, I knew, I would never make it, would probably not have made it this far, and I almost felt like the miles were melting away under our feet as we headed north, each step bringing us closer to my little girl.

We’d been walking for about an hour when the trees and fields gave way to houses, just a few at first, large, sprawling things with security gates and high fences, several of which were now little more than burned-out shells, then rows of smaller dwellings, many of which were gutted by fire. Here and there one stood almost untouched, and from at least one of those we were watched by hostile eyes, a man and two women who stared at us until we were out of sight, making my shoulder blades itch until we were well past.

Smoke spiralled into the air from several streets away, and in the distance I could hear shouting, then a scream abruptly cut off.

Emily hefted the shotgun, her eyes darting from tree to hedge to abandoned car, constantly looking for trouble before it got to close. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up and made sure I kept pace, although never crossing into her field of fire.

“I don’t like this,” I muttered to myself, but Emily heard and nodded.

“Me neither. I was going to stop and try and find you some boots, but I think we’ll just keep going. I’m sure another few miles in trainers won’t kill you, but stopping might.”

It wasn’t until we rounded an abandoned supermarket delivery truck that we saw the bodies.

A man and a woman lay on the pavement, his body curled protectively around hers. The pitiful remains of what had been in their rucksacks surrounded them, the bags themselves torn apart and the whole area splashed with blood as if they’d been attacked by an enraged beast.

I could smell that blood, and flies buzzed as they flew around the bodies, looking for a home for their eggs.

“They’re fresh,” Emily said in a low voice, eyes constantly moving.

“How do you know?” I asked, fighting the urge to vomit while trying not to look at the naked fear written all over the dead woman’s face, the blank eyed stare only making it worse.

“If they’d been killed yesterday they’d be bloated by now, and if they’d been killed last night they’d be stiff.” She nudged one of the bodies and the arm flopped lifelessly.

“And the blood is still wet. I reckon an hour, maybe less since they died. Let’s get out of here.”

I nodded and suddenly wished I were holding the shotgun. If we were attacked now I’d be able to do little but get in the way, leaving Emily to defend us both once again.

As we passed the bodies I couldn’t help but look at the wounds, of which there were many. They looked like they had been hacked to death, defensive wounds on the wrists and arms of the man and a huge slice in the back of the woman’s head that turned her golden hair red and laid her skull open to show her brain beneath.

Aside from the buzzing of the flies and my own harsh breathing, the street was eerily silent. Emily took the lead and we pressed on, getting to the end of the road and taking a left, then a right until we were heading north again.

As we put some distance between ourselves and the bodies I began to breathe again, although I was beginning to strain my neck from looking behind us so often to make sure we weren’t being stalked.

“Who do you think did it?” I asked when we were several streets past the gory scene.

Emily shrugged, still looking everywhere she thought there might be a threat, shotgun half-raised as she walked.

“Who knows? Maybe it was someone they knew who had a grudge, maybe complete strangers looking for food. Doesn’t really matter now, does it? Dead is dead.”

“I guess not.”

Emily pointed to a shop at the end of the street, the plastic signs in the window claiming that they sold ‘everything you need in one store’.

“How about we check out their claim?” She said, “see if they have anything useful?”

The door to the shop was wide open, the glass panels above and below the central metal bar both smashed. I felt more than a little fear at entering a place where we could easily be trapped, but I was determined to prove to Emily that I was useful, so I nodded bravely and followed her up to the window.

She peered inside, then pulled a torch from her pocket and passed it to me.

“I’ll go in first,” she whispered, “you follow with the torch. Try and shine it wherever I point the shotgun, but for god’s sake don’t point it in my face, ok?”

I nodded again, and before I could change my mind we were moving, Emily slipping through the door silently while I crunched broken glass under my feet and winced even as I flicked the torch on and followed her in.

The shelves inside were almost empty, the cigarette display behind the till the same. Empty food packets were littered here and there, one bag of rice have split and emptied its contents all over the floor, making it feel like we were walking on sand.

It took a few seconds for the smell to register, and we followed it to the farthest aisle, where a short, fat man in his fifties lay in his pyjamas, the back of his skull caved in while a softball bat lay a few feet from his outstretched hand.

The body was beginning to bloat and more flies were buzzing happily as they explored.

“Poor bastard,” Emily muttered, giving the shop a final look-around to make sure we were alone. There was only one other door, this one leading to a store room at the back. Inside that room were a few boxes of random goods and a desk piled high with paper, but other than that anything of use had been taken.

“I’ll check in here,” she motioned towards the few boxes left, “you look in the shop. Anything we don’t have or we need more of is good. Not sure we’ll have much luck with boots though.”

She dropped her Bergen and pulled out a second torch as I went back into the main shop, running my eyes over the all-but-bare shelves.

All of the food and water had been taken, as well as alcohol, cigarettes and sweets. I found a single packet of polos wedged between two parts of the counter and pocketed them, then began to look in the clothing section, more accurately a corner of the shop that barely took up two shelves.

Several jumpers had been left behind, and holding one up I could see why. Throwing it back on the shelf, I looked for footwear but apart from an empty box it was all gone.

The only other thing I could find was a bottle of washing up liquid, standing on its own on an otherwise empty shelf. Presumably whoever had ransacked the place didn’t feel that washing up should be a part of the apocalypse.

Emily came out of the store room after a couple of minutes clutching several bags of dried fruit and a small box of batteries.

She held them p for me to see. “Not much there, how did you do?”

I held up the mints. “Not exactly going to see us through the winter, but hey.”

She snorted a laugh and went moved to the door, peering out into the street before jerking her head for me to follow.

As we left the village behind, something that had been bothering me finally clicked.

“How many houses do you reckon were in that village?” I asked, looking back at the rows of roofs, some black with char while others stood untouched.

Emily shrugged. “Don’t know, couple of hundred maybe? More a small town than a village.”

“Let’s say two hundred houses then. Times that by three occupants per house as an average, that would mean six hundred people. Take away the three in the house we saw watching us, and the three bodies, that makes, what, five hundred and ninety four people.”

She nodded, seeing where I was going with it.

“So,” she said, looking back herself as the road turned and hid the buildings from view, “where the hell did they all go?”