by Terry Tyler
Those were strange days, as if we were waiting for something to happen. Hanging on, until it got worse. I felt we were clinging to the end of something that was over, kidding ourselves, until someone said, 'okay, it really is time to go now', and switched out the lights, like in the supermarket that first week.
When the end came, I recognised it. Thank God.
At around nine-thirty on the evening of Monday, 26th August (which would have been Bank Holiday Monday), I turned on the tap in the kitchen and nothing came out.
I knew the end of the water was on the cards, because, for days now, there had been only a slow trickle.
We had water. Bottles and bottles of it for drinking, courtesy of Dex, and we'd filled as many other containers as we could find, and the bath for washing water, but it wouldn't last long.
I wasn't sure what to do for the best.
Around midnight I was trying to temporarily take my mind off it with an old Philippa Gregory paperback, and Lottie was snoozing on the settee. As it led nowhere but the cliffs, Beach Lane had always been quiet, but I'd hear Jason Mathis returning home after nights out; the slamming of car doors, the vroom of his bike, shouting and laughing. So for a moment the noise didn't even register, until I realised there was only shouting, without the laughter.
And Tracy screaming.
I blew out my candles and crept over to the window, quietly, so as not to wake Lottie.
Through the darkness I could make out two young men emerging from Tracy's front door. One of them held two bike helmets, while the other one had Jason by the scruff of his neck. He was yelling at him, and Jason yelled back; Tracy tried to pull the antagonist off her son, but he kicked her off.
Then it all happened at once. I saw the flash of a knife as Jason wrenched himself from his assailant, then he fell to the ground.
The stranger wasted no time; he foraged in Jason's pockets, and the next minute he and his friend were astride the motorbike, zooming off down the road and away, while the soldiers at the end of the road ran forward, firing, and Tracy collapsed to her knees, sobbing and wailing.
I ran out.
"He's dead, he's dead!" Tracy cried, falling over her son. "Vicky, they've killed my boy!"
I knelt beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. One of the soldiers appeared; he put his hand to Jason's neck.
"You're okay, love, he's still alive. We'll get him to the hospital. Andy, d'you want to call them up?"
Poor Tracy stretched out on the grass, hugging her son, hysterical.
I was slightly worried by Andy's words on the radio. We've got a body. Beach Lane. Knife wound. A 'body'. That didn't sound good.
"You need to step away, madam," said the first soldier. "He mustn't be moved; it could increase internal bleeding."
He and I peeled Tracy off him, and her wails filled the quiet night.
"Don't we have to put something over the wound to stop the bleeding?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah. Do that." He spoke as if it was an afterthought.
As there was nothing else, I took off my cardigan.
"He's going to die, he's going to die!" Tracy clutched at me, covered in her son's blood, digging her nails into my upper arms. "He's all I've got!"
"Tracy, they're going to take him to hospital," I said, and did my best to unhook her fingernails while still holding the cardigan in place.
"Shouldn't be too long," said the first soldier, and we all knelt in silence, aside from Tracy's whimpering. The night felt cool on my bare arms, and I shivered.
"Here it is," said Andy, after a couple of minutes.
Looming out of the darkness at the end of the road I saw a white van.
A dead wagon.
"I want to go with him!" cried Tracy. "Vicky, come with me, please come with me, I can't do this on my own!"
"Sure." It was the last thing I wanted to do, but—
"Sorry, love," said the first soldier. "Not allowed. Hospitals are chaos right now. Best we stay here and let the experts do their stuff, eh?" He looked at me. "How about you get her in the house and let us deal with it?"
I watched as the two drivers, in their white suits, got out a basic canvas stretcher and loaded him onto the van. I tried to look in to see if there were any bodies inside, but one of them was watching me, and moved the door to block my view. "Where are you taking him?"
"Nearest hospital, love," said Andy, but he sounded neither convinced nor convincing.
"Well, can Tracy visit him tomorrow?"
"Not possible, I'm afraid. Outside the cordon."
"Aren't you taking him to Shipden hospital?"
"Full up. Got to drive him up to the Norfolk and Norwich."
"Why won't you let her go? Come on; the virus is all over the country, what difference will it make?"
"Yeah, well, rules are rules."
"So how will she find out how he is? When can she go and see him?"
The first soldier turned to me. "Madam. You know what the situation is right now. We've got our orders, and we can't allow anyone outside. But we can radio through tomorrow for her, how about that?"
He was lying. Trying to shut me up, I knew he was.
I took Tracy into her house, sat her down in the dark, lit candles and found brandy.
"That's left over from last Christmas," she said, blankly. "I don't know if I like it much."
"It's good for shock," I said, pouring her a large glass. "It really is, it's not just an old wives' tale."
She sat back, her eyes glassy. "He'd been down the town to see what was what. He brought them back with him, said he knew them from the pub."
"What? They're friends of his, and they did that to him?" But I thought of the kid in the churchyard, and his friend, Sam.
"They're rounding everyone up. They must've wanted his bike to escape, them lads. They turned nasty as soon as they'd finished their beers."
What? "Rounding everyone up? Who is? Tracy, what do you mean?"
She gulped at her brandy. "The soldiers. Going from house to house. Jase went down to take a look. They won't be up here for a bit, they're still down the other end of the town. It'll take 'em ages to get up here. Jase, he said we ought to hide in the greenhouse." She gave a horrible, harsh, manic giggle. "He said, 'make like a tomato plant'."
The moonlight shining through the window made her look wild-eyed, a bit demented. I closed the curtains and knelt at her feet.
"Tracy," I said, as gently as possible, "what exactly did Jason see? Are they ordering people out of their houses? Taking them away? Where?"
"Refugee camps. They've got these vans. White for anyone what's ill, and an army coloured one for healthy people. Some people are glad to go but others aren't, and they point their guns at you if you won't. Jase said that Caz down the Dolphin, her husband wouldn't go, he tried to fight them, came out swinging a baseball bat, and they shot him in the shoulder, then loaded him into one of the white vans, and Caz was screaming blue murder. Jase saw it."
"They put him in the white van with the people who are ill?"
"Yeah. And they said that anyone else who wouldn't go would get the same. That fella who knifed Jase, he said he'd seen them shoot people dead."
I fell back. This was what Dex meant. He didn't know how, when or why it would happen, but he knew the day would come.
Keep the backpacks by the front door at all times, in case you need to leave in a hurry.
They were still in the spare room. Because I thought he was being paranoid.
"Jase said it was well scary," Tracy went on. "He asked a soldier what was happening and he said we've got to go to a refugee camp near Bacton, so they can fumigate the town, or summat. But they're demolishing the houses up the Northstrand Road. With explosives."
Refugee camps? What was this, the Middle East? How safe could they be, if they were prepared to shoot anyone who wouldn't go? Injure them, and shove them in with the dying?
My head was spinning. You think you live in a civilised society, where you have
rights, and things like this can't happen, but—
We had to go. I felt the panic rise in my chest. "I've got to get back and see Lottie," I said, standing up and squeezing her shoulder. "I'll be back, I won't be long." But I don't think she heard me.
I flew back across the road, dragged Lottie up and booted her into action.
Thank goodness, my daughter is much better than me at times like this. She doesn't protest or ask stupid questions. You know when the hero in a film says 'we've got to leave now', and you're on the edge of your seat because you know the baddies are just round the corner, but his ditzy girlfriend keeps saying 'but why, what's going on?' Well, that's me, or that was me, anyway. Not now, not these days, not now that I understand danger, but I'm ashamed of how I dithered that night. Lottie, thank God, whipped round the house collecting everything she thought we'd need, in the space of about ten minutes.
I started hovering over stuff of sentimental value.
"There's no time to get slushy, Mum," she said. "It's just a house. I know Grandad gave you that paperweight, but it's only a paperweight, and we don't want to get rounded up, do we? Come on! I'm not getting shoved into a dead wagon just because you can't decide which photo of Dex to take. We'll come back, won't we, afterwards?"
I pulled myself together. Outside, all was still quiet. Down by the cliff, the soldiers were chatting, smoking.
"I've got to see if Tracy wants to come," I said. Yes, Lottie complained, but I had to give her the option. I waved to the soldiers as I crossed the road. "Just checking on her!" I called out, and they waved me on.
"Anyway," Tracy said, after she'd told me that she wasn't coming, "the soldier told me that when Jason's out of the hospital they'll take him to the refugee camp. So I'll need to be there for him. He said the camp is basic but clean and safe. And it's only temporary."
I didn't say that I thought her chances of seeing Jason again were roughly zero. People believe what they want to believe.
I might have been wrong, but there was something about the way those two soldiers looked at each other.
There was something else I remembered, when I was scrabbling through my clothes for the most sensible few garments to take. Dex said that the whole zombie thing was symbolic, that zombies were a metaphor for the masses who believed what they were told, had no nose for danger, didn't have the survival instinct and believed that the authorities would save them.
I knew what he meant, now. Tracy was a zombie. So were Claire and her family. Even Lawrie and Gemma, maybe. My parents. But we weren't. We were getting out.
"Up the cliff it is, then," Lottie said to me when I got back.
I drew my breath in. "Sure is."
"We'll keep watch. See when they're not looking."
"Uh-huh." My heart was thudding. I had one last zoom around the house to make sure there were no candles still alight, and then said a silent goodbye to it, as Lottie eased open the front door.
As we rolled and slid down the sandy slope, I heard shots in the distance.
We were out. We'd done it. No refugee camp for us.
"Fuck," said Lottie, as we picked ourselves up at the bottom.
I stood up, and followed her gaze. Fuck indeed. We were on the beach, but we'd come down on the Shipden side of the fence.
The fence that was twelve or fifteen feet high, with barbed wire on the top.
Yep, that one.
"It's low tide," Lottie said, peering out into the darkness. "I reckon we can get round it, down the bottom."
"No way. It'll be much deeper than it looks."
(Daddy, warning me, at least ten times every year when we came here on holiday, how treacherous the east coast could be).
"Okay. So we chuck our stuff over, and swim round."
I looked out at the dark, dark sea. "Lottie. I can't swim."
"I know, but you can cling on to me while I do."
"They'll hear us chucking our stuff over. And what if it gets caught on the barbed wire?" Risk-taking and I are not natural bedfellows.
"So let’s climb the fence."
"They'll hear us, or we'll get stuck in the barbed wire."
"We've got cutters."
"If they shine their flashlights on us while we're getting over the top, we're dead."
I said 'we're dead' as a figure of speech, like Lottie might say 'my mum's going to kill me', but a terrifying realisation shot through me: I was probably right.
"Du-uh," Lottie said. "How stupid are we? Stay here a minute."
And she clambered back up the sandy slope, above the top of the fence, where she crouched down for a moment, quite still. I heard rather than saw her take off her backpack and gently slide it down the other side.
It landed with a quiet thump on the sand, and I looked up at the cliff.
"Can we get down there?" I hissed up at her. I could only see her in silhouette.
"I think it's a sheer drop."
"How many feet?"
"I don't know, do I? I haven't got a bloody tape measure! A bit higher than the fence, however high that is."
"Well, do you think we can slide down?"
"No. There's nothing to slide on. We'll have to jump."
"If one of us sprains our ankle we're in trouble."
"Well, what do you want to do?" she hissed, and I could hear the impatience in her voice. Not panic. Impatience, with me.
"It's a better idea than trying to swim round."
"Yeah. 'Spose that was a bit nuts."
"Okay." I climbed back up, and we let go of my pack. I didn't see it land, but it made a loud flump noise. Oh dear. "I'll go first."
Dizzy with fear, I jumped. The fact that I was doing so into almost complete darkness was probably a good thing; the distance was further than I'd thought, and if I'd seen it I'm sure I wouldn't have found the courage.
Just as I leapt off, I remembered something about parachutists rolling over the second they hit the ground, so I tried to do just that. Jump, and roll.
I was okay. Pain shot through my ankles, and my arm hurt where I'd rolled inexpertly, but I bounced up and rocked back and forth; yes, I was fine. Hadn't twisted anything.
"I'm okay!" I whispered. I could just see my daughter's hair, blowing back in that easterly wind; the moon shone from behind a thin cloud. "Jump after three, jump and roll, and I'll try to break your fall."
Whump! Lottie was down too, and we scrabbled about in the sand for our bags. Her face was close to mine as we stood up, and I looked into her eyes. She smiled at me. She didn't look scared, she looked excited, and that made me not scared, too.
"We've done it!" she hissed. "Mum, we've fucking done it!"
This time, I didn't bother to tell her off for her language. She was an adult; she'd just proved that to me. Tonight, she could use whatever language she wanted. We set off, hurrying across the sand.
In the background, shots rang out; we jogged until we were winded (i.e. not very far), putting distance between us and the danger.
I sensed light behind me; I glanced back, and saw an orange glow in the sky. I didn't want to think what it might mean.
Five or six miles to Cadeby. An hour and a half, walking briskly along the coast road. Three hours across sand, in the dark with heavy packs we weren't used to carrying, allowing for rests. But we'd done it.
Thank you, Dex, for the protein bars and bottles of water in the backpacks. You knew, all the time.
Still wasn't sure what the rubber tubing was for, though.
We'd been closed off from the rest of the world in Shipden for so long (only a month, but it felt like much longer) that I was unable to imagine how the rest of the country was faring. We knew that the virus was out of control, but I hadn't given too much thought to what this would actually mean.
Life in Shipden was eventful because of the heavy military presence; I hadn't realised how quiet everywhere else would be. The sense of stillness was what struck me most, as we walked up the steps set into the sea wall at Cadeby.
Th
e time was around five-thirty am (we'd allowed ourselves a short sleep each, halfway along, while the other kept watch), but at this time in the summer, back when the world was normal, you'd see a few people about. The odd person going to work, early dog walkers, bin men, fishermen taking their boats out. Now, even without the normal early morning activity, an air of desolation hung over the town. I wouldn't have been surprised to see tumbleweed rolling down the main high street.
Shop windows were smashed, as expected, there was rubbish everywhere, knocked over market stalls, the pulp of rotted vegetables. With every step, new and disgusting smells wafted into my nostrils, including some unfamiliar ones. Cars were burned, or abandoned.
We walked up Main Street just looking; the sky was only just starting to get light, and those smells made me glad I couldn't see much. I was sure I saw the odd small scurrying animal, too, and my stomach turned over. Then Lottie stopped by a small clothes shop with a smashed plate glass window, and whispered, "Mum. We could help ourselves, couldn't we?"
"For Christ's sake, Lottie; we've just escaped with our lives, and you're thinking about clothes?"
She bit her lip. "I was just thinking, you know, that we could."
I'd been enjoying my warm glow about how grown up and capable she was; I didn't want to argue with her. "Yes, we could, apart from the fact that in my book it's still stealing," I said, "but life's going to be a lot different now, at least for a while, and it might get harder; when you're hungry, thirsty and dirty, you might not care so much about half-inching a cute pair of boots."
"Hmm." She nodded. "Can I just have a look, though?"
"No," I said. "It's someone's stock, for their shop. When everything goes back to normal, if the owner survived he'll need it to start up again."
"Oh. Okay." She sniffed. "I don't rate my chances of finding a hot selection of steampunk retro in Cadeby Fashion Centre, anyway."
I pointed to the turn off for Morgan Street. "This way, and keep your voice down."
"There's no soldiers here, Mum. And we aren't doing anything wrong."