Tipping Point (Project Renova Book 1)

by Terry Tyler

  Of the cliffs, the sea, and the soldiers with guns at the end of the road.

  And dead teenagers on the beach.

  There was no longer any pretence about cures. For a time the television played old announcements, but then they stopped too, and there was no TV.

  I wondered what the government was doing; I guessed the predictions on YouTube were right, that they were tucked away, in their 'place of safety'.

  I tried the radio, but on all stations the same music played on a loop, interspersed with a voice telling you to wrap dead bodies in bin bags, attach a name, phone the number, and leave them outside, where they would be collected.

  I don't know if I could have done that if anyone I knew had died. I would have wanted to bury them. Some people burned them in their gardens. I suppose that was the most hygienic thing to do. There were no bodies left out in our road. We'd see the dead wagons going up and down and, gradually, all fourteen houses except ours and Tracy's emptied, but we stopped going out, apart from the odd foray to the cliff, to look at the sea. We didn't go down to the beach; the bodies had remained for a couple of days before they were taken away, and a couple of others had been fished out, greyish-purple and bloated. I wondered if they'd waded out into the sea to die; I've heard drowning is the most painless death.

  The guns, they were still around. The soldiers were more relaxed now, though. Lottie got friendly with one of them; they just wanted to go home.

  "Chris says they're lucky, being stuck up here, even though it's boring," she told me.

  "Oh, Chris, is it, now?" I winked at her.

  She blushed. "Well, he's nice. You know, just an ordinary guy. He says it's nice up here 'cause they don't have to get heavy with anyone. Down in the town, it's bad. People breaking into houses to steal food, and some lads got into the Sea View and raided the bar." She giggled. "They were only young; Chris said they were lying all over the place puking up! He says they reckon they'll get some new orders soon, but until they're told otherwise they've got to stay here and stop anyone getting out or, you know, causing unrest."

  "I don't get it, why we've still got this cordon thing. If it's the same everywhere, I mean."

  "Yeah, I said that to Chris, and he thinks it's weird, too. A couple of his mates have gone. Like, deserted. Chris says he's not doing that because they get court martials."

  "Courts martial," I corrected her.

  She laughed. "Yeah, like any of that grammar stuff matters now."

  "It always does," I said. Not that she was listening.

  If someone had told me a few months ago that this would be our life, I would have told them that I couldn't possibly handle it, but when it happens, you just get on with it, because there's no instinct more basic than survival.

  We heard gunshots floating up from the town on the breeze, sometimes. We saw flames and smoke. People stayed in their houses; if you were seen carrying anything vaguely resembling food or drink there was the risk that someone would mug you for it, and you could be stopped by a soldier around any corner.

  Most of them weren't as amiable as Chris.

  In what would have been carnival week the weather was glorious, which was ironic when I thought of all the years in which it had rained. I threw our costumes on the rubbish bonfire in the garden; we all had them since the bin men had stopped coming round. The army had taken over the refuse lorries, but the service wasn't regular, and I didn't like the idea of bin bags warming on the pavements in the August sun.

  I saw none of mine and Dex's friends, not even knowing if they were still alive.

  We were on our own.

  Chapter Eight

  Monday, August 19th

  At the safe house in Elmfield village, Tyne and Wear, Kara looked out of the kitchen window at the garden where she'd buried her aunt two weeks ago, and wondered what it had all been for. All those Unicorn meetings, putting Gia at risk, all those hours of investigation and evidence accumulation, and here they were.

  "It must have got out before they intended it to," Phil had said, the night before, and not for the first time. "This can't have been the plan, surely?" But whether it was by accident or design hardly mattered. The country was going to hell.

  Worst of all, she didn't know where her friends were.

  Three and a half weeks before, on the Friday night when Shipden was cordoned off (the weekend it all began), Phil had not returned from work until late. The hospital had been like Piccadilly Circus all day, he said, with the public flooding in, demanding the vaccine. Chaos. Once the Shipden outbreak was announced it got ten times worse. Instructions on the news, over the loudspeakers in the hospital, notices everywhere, had no effect. Nobody wanted to listen. They all thought they had the right to get the shot before everyone else.

  "If I've heard one person today insisting that they fall within a vulnerable section of society, I've heard five thousand," he said, pulling his boots off. "To be honest, love, I can't face going up to Jeff's tonight. They can manage without us. We'll go tomorrow."

  But they were too late.

  The house was empty. They let themselves in, and found nothing to indicate what had happened aside from a note slipped between the pages of Jeff's copy of Bleak House, the prearranged place for emergency communication.

  K & P

  G never arrived. DNJS gone. Go somewhere SAFE.

  Further investigation revealed that Jeff had left everything aside from his laptop, as if he'd just put on his boots and left, but this was not too alarming; they knew he had a complete life support system in his bunker. Dex's bed hadn't been slept in. Nor had Naomi's (not that she'd been sleeping in it for the past few weeks). The sleeping bag on the sofa where Scott sometimes slept was rolled up.

  Kara rang Sylvia; they weren't at the safe house.

  "Well, we know where Jeff is, at least. I wonder if Dex has gone with him."

  "Hmm, not sure; you know what a funny bugger Jeff is. But he can't have gone home," Phil said. "The cordon."

  "Mm-mm." Kara looked out of the window at the wild Northumberland landscape. She loved the stark beauty of that most northern part of the country; if she narrowed her eyes, she could almost believe she was home. Today it looked so still. As if there was something in the air, waiting to happen. She thought of her family; mobile reception in their remote mountainside village was patchy at best, and would only get worse if this thing had started. Not for the first time, she wished she'd done what Phil wanted, and agreed to go back with them seven years before, when they first saw hints of the trouble to come.

  They only had each other, now, and their friends. In the absence of their parents, brothers and sisters, their friends had become their family.

  She turned round to her husband. "Perhaps Dex has gone with Naomi."

  "I don't know. Would he? Isn't that just a fling?"

  "Not sure. Naomi's pretty keen." She took a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one. "And if he can't get home—poor Vicky. Dex is a shit."

  Phil shrugged. "He's just your average bloke making the most of his opportunities, I s'pose."

  "And that makes it okay, does it?" Kara folded her arms. "So what does that say about you?"

  Phil moved over to the window and put his arm around her shoulder. "Nothing. I'm not looking anywhere else, or ever will be, as you well know." He kissed her cheek, and they smiled at each other. "But Dex—well, we don't know what goes on between him and Vicky, do we? I get the impression he tries to open her eyes but she doesn't want to know. Must be hard to live with."

  "Mm-mm. Naomi told me he's asked her to come up to Jeff's with him a few times, but she won't. Calls him a conspiracy theorist." Kara moved her head away from Phil's, and took another drag of her cigarette. "I don't get that. How can you love someone, but take no interest in what they're most passionate about?"

  "Weird," said Phil, and gazed out of the window. Like most men, he had only minimal interest in speculating on the relationships of their friends; she would say no more on the subje
ct. He pulled out his phone. "I'll try them all."

  "They won't answer."

  She was right.

  "Okay," she said. "Let's try Scott's house, then."

  Scott lived on the southern outskirts of Durham. Kara sighed with relief when they approached his cottage; the curtains were open, his car outside.

  However, there was no one at home.

  Worse, the back door was open, the lock broken.

  "Hello! Scott! Anyone home?" Stupid question. As if there would be, with the door open like that.

  A pitiful 'miaow' broke the silence, and she looked down; a slim ginger cat wound itself around her legs, gazing up at her with pleading green eyes.

  "Yo, Puss," she whispered, bending down to stroke him. "Where's your master, eh?"

  Puss was unable to tell her anything, so, while Phil inspected the rest of the house, Kara opened three tins of cat food and emptied them out onto dinner plates. Poor thing. At least he could get in and out via the cat flap. She slid the bolts across the back door, top and bottom, and crouched down to stroke his head while he ate; he was so hungry he let her. "You'll have to go back to catching birds and mice when this is gone, I'm afraid, matey."

  Phil appeared in the doorway. "There's stuff knocked over in the living room, and his laptop's gone." His face was grim. "Wherever he is, he didn't go willingly."

  "Shit."

  "Shit, indeed."

  Which was when they made the decision to close up their flat in Darlington and go to the safe house.

  "I just hope it really is safe," Phil said, as they drove there. "Naomi has her doubts."

  "It will be." Sylvia, Kara's aunt who owned the house, was not a true relative but a childless friend of her parents who'd treated Kara like her own niece since she was a child. She had no online life to be connected with Kara's, and they rarely spoke on the phone; Kara visited her once a week, every Thursday night, and had done so for years. When she asked her if they could use the house as a safe address, Sylvia had been happy to open her doors. Looked forward to it, even; said it would be fun to have some young people to fuss around.

  But now she was dead, and Kara and Phil were alone in the house.

  It wasn't until Sylvia came down with the fever that she admitted she hadn't used the vaccine Kara gave her.

  "Well, I always refuse the flu jab when they try to make me have it each winter, and I never get poorly," she said, as she lay back on her pillows, her hand cold in Kara's, "so I didn't think I'd get this, either. I'm sorry, sweetheart."

  A fortnight later, there was still no word from Dex, Naomi, Jeff, Scott or Gia.

  The office was located on a floor two above the room in which Travis and Kitson had worked, with access granted to only a select few, via a facial recognition scanner. On Monday, 19th August, two men sat behind the blacked out windows watching live drone feed on a crescent-shaped arrangement of monitors. South London and Manchester looked to be the most out of control, but mayhem hotspots were popping up all over the country.

  Shipden in Norfolk was relatively quiet, despite having the highest ratio of infected versus healthy; both men commented on this.

  "It was an interesting choice," said one, a handsome, dark-haired man with a slightly too orange tan, and Hollywood-white teeth. He gave a half smile. "Though perhaps an unrealistic representation of the British in a time of crisis."

  "I said it would be. We needed the worst case scenario, not the best." The second man—larger, fatter—shifted around in his chair and folded his arms. "It's bloody academic, anyway, now it's all gone to shit."

  "Ah, well, when you factor in human error, it's always a risk," said the first. "I can't help wondering if they knew that; could have been part of it, even. But it'll be done and dusted quicker, at least."

  "Fort Meade's not happy. We're on our own."

  "Between thee and me, I think we always were. Still, a lengthy sojourn on Logan Island won't be so bad, will it? You got your bags packed?"

  The larger man gave a derisive snort. "You think there's going to be anything to come back to? Three more fucking months, we were supposed to have, we didn't have a chance to get everything in place, it's a fucking shambles—"

  "As you've pointed out at least ten times a day, every day this week." His colleague sat back, arms behind his head. "So we're set to lose maybe eighty per cent of the worker bees; well, we'll start smaller, that's all. Plan B, and all that."

  "I didn't know there was a Plan B."

  The first man laughed. "There isn't." He leant forward, drummed his fingers on the table, and zoomed in on some footage of a man being kicked to death outside a branch of Tesco Express. "Have to see what Fort Meade reckons once the dust has settled."

  "When do we ship BDC out?"

  "We're not. Things the way they are, if any of them stick their noses above ground they're going to start bleating about getting home to their families, aren't they? So we'd lose them anyway. They've been written off."

  "But they're an integral part of Renova—the selection process, all that fucking training—"

  "Yes, well, the best laid plans etc. There'll be more where they came from. They're only data input clerks, at the end of the day."

  "Highly trained and specially selected data input clerks, who understand the system."

  The first man said nothing.

  "So what's going to happen to them?"

  "Nothing."

  "What, we're just going to leave them there?"

  "They'll be alright." The first man brought up another screen. "They'll find the way out. See it as a challenge, and give themselves pats on the back when they find it!" His brilliant white smile was broad, his wink amused. "This observation's more interesting than I expected; leaders and followers are already emerging. And the odd dissenter, of course." He clicked onto another screen, his arrow pointing at Travis. "Shame about this one; I liked him at first. But he's no team player. Bit too intelligent. Keeps pondering over stuff he didn't ought to be pondering over! And these two; don't know how the girl got through the psych assessment." He made circular motions around a tall, skinny young man and a girl with long, dark curly hair. "The three of them would've been for the chop, anyway. Never mind. All history now. Onward and upwards to the brave new world, eh?"

  Chapter Nine

  Escape

  It wasn't long until what I'd been dreading happened: the electricity and water went off. Electricity first—that was tough, but workable. We boiled water over a fire pit in the garden, though we soon got used to cold baths; you step into them slowly, going 'ow, ow, ow', and then acclimatise yourself to it. We would boil enough water just to take the chill off, and no more. Hairdryers and straighteners were a thing of the past, of course. My hair fell in ragged waves in its natural state, which I'd loathed since childhood, though I was hardly going to start whining about having messy hair while people were dying.

  I kept going to switch things on, forgetting.

  The evenings were still quite light, and warm, so we'd keep ourselves busy in the day (the jigsaws came in handy) and at night we'd light candles, and read. I drank too much wine sometimes, and I let Lottie have more than I would normally, too. I didn't worry about it; if the world was dying she was unlikely to develop a drink problem.

  When the power first went I suggested cooking food on the barbecue (the burgers, sausages and steaks from the freezer that were about to go off), but Lottie said someone might smell it and break in.

  "I saw this film; there was a massive power failure, and this guy thought he was being dead clever by barbecuing in his garden, and he had a generator so he could have hot water. He did this video diary about how clever he was, but people saw it on YouTube, smelt his food, then broke in and stole all his stuff."

  I was prepared to risk it, and, as far as I was concerned, anyone who came by wanting something to eat was welcome to join us. We had more than enough, and so did Tracy, so we cooked it all up together and took some out to Chris the nice soldier and his ma
te, too; it wasn't their fault they had to be there. Tracy had burger buns in her freezer; it was the last bread we would have for a long time. There was far more than the six of us could eat, so Jason and Lottie took tupperware boxes filled with burgers and hot dogs in rolls, and cold sausages, to the campsite down the road.

  "I felt like I was handing out aid parcels to refugees, Mum," my daughter said. "There aren't many people left, and they're sitting there eating Snickers bars and crisps, it's really sad. They've moved their tents into one corner, away from all the empty ones."

  I sent her and Jason back the next day with cereal bars, biscuits, water, tinned fish and fruit; I didn't know how long it would have to last us, but it still seemed wrong to have plenty when others were hungry. The campers didn't want to move into the empty houses or caravans, Lottie said, in case the disease lingered.

  I wondered how one might obtain a generator. Homebase, perhaps? There was one up Holt Road. It wasn't something I'd ever thought about. To be truthful, I wasn't even sure what one was, or how they worked.

  "I could ask Chris," she said, and went off to do so (as an excuse to talk to him, I suspected), but came back disappointed.

  "He's gone." She flopped down on the sofa, looking most dejected. "There was this big scary bloke, instead. I asked where Chris went but he told me to get back indoors, and said they're not here to make friends! Tosser; it wouldn't have hurt him to be nice, would it?"

  "Perhaps it'll make it easier for him to point a gun at us if he hasn't been accepting hot dogs from us the day before," I said.

  "Oh. Yeah."

  I'd expected to have to deal with Lottie moaning and arguing with me about everything, constantly, but she surprised me. My iDaughter, who'd acted as though her life was over when the internet died, had, it turned out, been looking at survival websites, and found out all sorts of useful information; it was she who showed me how to make the fire pit in the garden. We only had a limited amount of logs for the fire, so this was a great help, especially on hotter days when neither of us could face the idea of a blazing fire in the living room.