by Terry Tyler
Once he'd agreed, she was more willing to compromise. Yes, yes, of course it was crazy to go at the onset of winter—they would set off on the tenth of February, her birthday; what a way to celebrate! She became less irritable now she had something to look forward to, and most evenings they would get out maps and his father's splendid selection of coffee table books about the history and geography of the country, and discuss where to go.
"An island," Aria said, eventually. "We should live on an island. Get other people together, grow crops. That would be excellent."
"It's possible," Travis said, and the more he thought about it the more he saw sense in this idea. But how would they find these people? What if they turned out to be like Bateman? He'd seemed perfectly okay at first, just a little boisterous. And how the hell did you grow crops?
"Lundy Island looks good; it'll be warm there, 'cause it's in the Bristol Channel, and it's owned by The National Trust, so it'll probably be up for grabs."
"Too many puffins," said Travis. "A Scottish Island would be better."
"What about the soil? Can you grow stuff?"
Travis laughed. "How the hell do I know? I'm an IT statistician, not an agricultural consultant!"
Aria shut the atlas. "Isn't it a pig not having the internet to look stuff up on?"
"I know, I still reach for my tablet every time I want to know something. The age of the book is back; it's a nice thought, really, isn't it?"
She wasn't listening; she'd opened the atlas again. "Doesn't have to be an island. Could just be a coastal outpost. There'll be people by the sea, I bet." She flopped down onto her stomach, flicking through the pages of one of the late Travis Senior's glossy books.
"I like the sound of that." He smiled. "A coastal outpost. With a lighthouse."
"Rewind. I'm back on the island idea." She tapped the page in front of her, looked up at him and smiled. In the warmth from the flames, her face shone with excitement. "I've found it," she said. "I know where I want to go."
Chapter Nineteen
Vicky
December
Autumn withers into winter, and we up our game when it comes to food, warmth and keeping well. I scavenge vitamin supplements, lots of them, even though Ozzy tells me I shouldn't put synthetic crap into my body. This philosophy does not, however, stop him asking Heath if those bikers over at Tynemouth might have any decent pharmaceuticals.
"They probably have," he tells me, "but he talks enough crap as it is; I don't want to listen to him when he's off his face."
I tell Ozzy that in the absence of fresh fish, meat, poultry, bread, fruit and vegetables, I'm willing to give a few bottles of Seven Seas a try.
The new cookhouse in the garden is a success, my only worry being that food smells might attract unwanted visitors; I remember what Lottie told me about the barbecue man in that film, especially when Heath and Ozzy manage to shoot down a couple of pheasants. The stew smells amazing. We can make bread now, too, which is wonderful. Our first attempts are hopeless, as we have no idea how hot the oven needs to be or how long anything should cook for, but we're getting the hang of it.
Makes a change from noodles.
Rowan and I have taken over food preparation while Kara concentrates on scavenging. My fellow cook complains a great deal and treats me as if I'm her kitchen maid half the time ("Vicky, I'll put you in charge of cooking the pasta while I try to make something edible out of this"), but at least she's fastidious about hygiene.
Lottie and Jax help out where and when required. As for Ozzy, aside from trips out to the countryside to catch wildlife, he spends a lot of time saying things like, "Yeah, totally eco and self-sufficient, this rocks," but doesn't actually do a great deal.
There are so many vague ideas and emotions whirling around in my head that I can't encapsulate or articulate in words, all sorts of random thoughts that hadn't occurred to me before. It was so easy, back then, to be passively entertained rather than use your head. Now, I lie on my bed and just think, sometimes, or I volunteer for the daily bag duty (which is what we call the removal of waste to our homemade pits in the field, via shopping trolley), then leave the trolley, carry on walking across the field, and think some more.
At the end of the field is the dual carriageway that used to roar with traffic day in, day out, but is now silent. I like this.
Heath and I stop at St Paul's Church in Jarrow one morning, when we're out. Investigating old buildings is an interest we have in common. Parts of the church are as old as the seventh century, and in the grounds I find the remains of the domestic buildings of the old monastery.
The day is grey, windy, and I leave Heath in the church so I can explore outside on my own.
When I stand amongst the ruins and touch the stone walls, I think, maybe this isn't the big disaster to end all disasters, but just another episode in the history of this island. We've suffered fires and plagues, wars, riots and invasions, but we get through it all, we adapt, and carry on. Civilisation went backwards after the Romans left, after all, but it built back up again. Maybe it just seems like the end of the world because we became so spoiled, in the last seventy years or so. Thought it was our right to have an excess of all we could possibly need, and complained if we had to go without the most insignificant luxury. No instant hot water, heating, rubbish disposal? Disaster! Not being able to communicate with everyone, all over the world, at a moment's notice? Disaster! No choice of a million and one different things to eat, wear, read, watch? Disaster! But ordinary people of, say, the Middle Ages (yes, I've been reading that book again), would have considered themselves fortunate to live in our house in Elmfield, even now.
It's all just outlook, really.
I know it's going to get much harder, if no one comes to our rescue. No food and no law enforcement is a recipe for dangerous times, I know that. But I feel optimistic when we drive back. I don't express my thoughts to Heath, even though I know he would understand and agree. I want to mull it around in my head a bit first.
And because every time we talk about what Lottie calls 'profound shit', we become closer.
He's driving, and he keeps looking straight ahead when he says, "It's good, being out here with you. Having some time, just us, without the kids, and the others."
"It is." Too good.
He puts his hand over mine and he's smiling, but he doesn't look at me. Then he has to take it off to swerve out of the way of an army truck, hurtling towards us.
I'm scared of my feelings for him, and I don't understand them, because I don't believe you can be in love with two people. Unless I find out that Dex has abandoned me by choice, I can't encourage someone else. If that makes me an idiot, so be it.
I don't know how Heath feels about me, anyway, whatever my daughter and his son think; I may just be kidding myself it's more than friendship, because I have feelings towards him. He's warm and generous towards everyone. He's even nice to Rowan when she's being super snooty.
Our new life is changing us; I notice it when we sit around talking in the evening. Sometimes we peel off and do our own thing, but other times we all sit round the fire together, usually when Ozzy has been out 'gathering the grape' as he calls it; keeping us supplied with alcohol is something he's proved very good at.
I love these evenings. I notice how we all listen to each other, properly, in a way that perhaps we didn't so much, before. There is time to listen. Lottie and Jax join in, instead of scrolling through phones; no one is distracted by those wretched things anymore, or by music, the TV, or even other sounds.
I used to be a listener rather than a talker, because I wasn't confident; I didn't think I had much of interest to say. Then, being with Dex for six years, I got used to not expressing myself, because I couldn't do so as eloquently as he could, and I didn't know as much about the world. When we were with groups of friends I hid behind his charisma. He's not to blame; it was me being lazy. If Dex said lots of fascinating stuff and made people laugh, entered into heated discussions and ge
nerally proved himself to be great company, I didn't have to do much.
Now, my protective armour has fallen away.
It's frightening. It's just me. But these people have only known me as Vicky, not half of Dex-and-Vicky.
Tonight, the second Saturday in December, I tell them about Claire, Tracy, Lawrie and Gemma, all those friends in Shipden that we lost.
"What struck me most was how everyone wanted to believe the best case scenario. They'd cling on to phrases like 'isolated cases' and hope for the best."
"It's the way of the zombies," says Phil. "Believe what you're told, and have faith that the big parent—the government, 'the authorities', the church, whatever—will come and save you."
Phil has his Dexalike moments, you notice (smiley face with wink). See, I still think in emojis; it'll take a while to shrug off.
I'm ready, now, to tell them about that day at the church, when those two teenagers were gunned down. Grace and Sam. Remembering their names is important to me.
"That was when I realised that nothing was the same as it had been, and may never be again."
"You were in the red zone, in Shipden, though, right?" says Ozzy. "Everywhere else, it just crept up on us. Like, one moment you're reading about vaccinations for this illness, on Twitter—"
"Which must have been hard, seeing as he was an Offliner," Lottie mutters to me.
"—then you start hearing about a few cases near where you live, then the next moment a mate says there are fucking riot police at the vaccination units, then the TV is no more, shops are being looted and it's every motherfucker for himself." He shakes his head, and grabs another bottle of red from the alcove behind the hearth, where he keeps it; except for Heath, who's lying on the sofa behind Lottie and me, we're all sitting on the floor, our backs against the sofas and chairs, drawn round into a circle. It's lovely, relaxed and cosy.
"I did my looting first thing in the morning, 'fore all the lunatics got up." Ozzy's grinning, thinking back. Then his face falls. "No one came down with it in our house at first, and we were thinking maybe weed had an immunising effect, you know? But then we never went out much, 'cept when there was no one about. The rioting started to peter out, and it got quieter everywhere; we were talking about being, like, pioneers in the new world, right? Getting back to basics, cutting through all the twenty-first century crap." He shakes his head. "But then Cathy went out to see some friends of hers who were dying, all except one of 'em. We took that one girl in, and after that they all got it. 'Cept me. I watched 'em all die."
"Hard," says Heath, behind me.
"What was it like?" Lottie asks. "We never saw anyone actually die."
"It was total shit. They'd get weak and feverish, burning hot. Then there'd be sickness—and, believe me, I never want to clear up anyone's puke, ever again—and then they'd just fail. They'd yell out in pain; I s'pose that was when the organs were packing up. There was nothing I could do 'cept try to make them as comfortable as I could. Y'know."
I feel a new respect for him. He could have left them, but he didn't.
"Worst of all, that girl—I forget her name—she never came down with it. I gotta admit, I wasn't too friendly towards her, 'cause she got Cathy round there, and thanks to her all my mates were brown bread. She sneaked off in the middle of the night." He looks up at the ceiling, remembering. "Took our stash, and my tins of chick peas and aduki beans. Like, my staples. That's just not in the spirit of community, is it? I would have shared with her, if she'd asked. Even the home-grown, and that was the best."
"I wouldn't, I'd have slapped her upside the head if she'd killed all my mates," says Jax.
"Well, the announcements did tell us to stay in our homes for a reason," Rowan says. "Pass that red over, Ozzy, don't hog it." She fills her bucket sized glass and swirls the wine around. "I admit, I tried going out to find friends after Jonathan died—and yes, it was bloody awful watching him fade, it was like Ozzy said. It was just too depressing, everyone gone, houses with their windows broken. I mean, Wymondsley, it's in the Domesday Book, and all it takes is some horrid little virus to destroy it."
"It can be rebuilt," I say. I'm thinking of those ruins in Jarrow.
"Not if there's no one there, it can't. Some families had been there for two centuries, and they're wiped out."
"Was the village evacuated?"
"Oh, yes. And those nearby. But the places never lasted long. One man in the village just came back home; he was taken to a school, but he said there were drunken fights over rations. And that was in Surrey! But I don't fancy anyone's chances by themselves in their own homes, these days, do you? Not when you think of the animals roaming around outside."
"Yes, I think we were better off, staying put," Heath says. "We stuck together; everyone helped everyone else. The way most of us looked at it was, if you're going to get it, you're going to get it, wherever you are."
Lottie sits up. "Okay, now can we get off the morbid talk? Why don't we make some plans? Think about what we're going to do!"
I touch her hand. "We're okay here, love."
"For now," Phil says.
Lottie nods. "Yes, for now, exactly. But we don't have to stay here, do we? With, like, just us? There must be other places with people who've survived."
"We could send out messengers, like in olden days," I say. "They'd send out the best riders on the fastest horses, and that news would get spread around the country."
"I like that idea." Heath touches my hair, behind me. It feels lovely. "Except now they'd be on bikes, not horses."
"Well, you can bet one thing," Kara says. "The PM, his 'yes' men and the privileged few will be safe, probably somewhere in the world that hasn't been infected." She stretched. "An island, I'm thinking."
"That's where we ought to go." Lottie sighs, and for a moment looks like a child again; I love it when I get these glimpses, less and less these days. "Let's go and live on a tropical island!"
We all laugh.
"I'm serious," she says. "Why are we living here? It's totally drab round here, and England's not the most thrilling place in the world, is it? We can go anywhere." She shrugs. "We could get a bus, travel around, find somewhere really cool."
Jax grins. "I'd rather go somewhere hot."
"Travelling's not all it's cracked up to be, if you haven't got decent places to make pit stops." Heath slithers off the sofa and down onto the floor, beside me. He looks like that medieval messenger, raising his wine glass in the firelight. I imagine that we're sitting around the hearth in a fifteenth-century nobleman's hall, listening to his news of raids on the Welsh borders.
Lottie laughs. "Decent places to make pit stops? I thought you were a cool, adventurous biker!"
He laughs. "I'm cool and I'm a biker, but you can't just take off, not any more. What if you get ill? You won't find medical facilities anywhere. You won't be able to stop off in the next town and nip into a launderette, either."
"Come on! Since when have you cared about washing your clothes? Mum said she was going to cut that jumper off you in your sleep if you don't take it off soon!"
I blush.
Heath turns to me, and opens his arms out. "Cut away, Vick!"
I blush even more.
"The man, he speaks the truth," Ozzy chips in. "Here, we can cook food, we got beds to sleep in, safe walls. Security, that's the important thing."
"I thought you was supposed to be a hippie," says Jax. "You sound more like my nan."
Everyone laughs; Jax looks pleased.
"They're right, kids," I say. "Think about it. Say we set off to travel round the country tomorrow. We sleep in our vehicle, we can't make hot food, and after a week we'd all stink."
"Ew," says Lottie. "Well, let's go abroad, then. It might be better over there, and at least we could go somewhere warm." She shivers. "We'll wash in the sea!"
"How?" Phil leans over to poke the fire. "How do we get there? Hands up anyone who knows how to fly, or sail?"
"On telly they just
nick a boat." She grins, a child again. "How hard can it be?"
"A lot harder than it looks!" Phil strokes his beard; he looks like one of the nobleman's wise counsellors. I'm kind of stuck on this medieval thing. "And it could be worse abroad; well, no one's come to help us, have they? Looks like we've been left to rot."
"Maybe they're waiting for it all to be over, then the Americans will come in and clean up. Like in 28 Weeks Later."
"Aye. It's a possibility. Or maybe this is it. For everyone."
This sobering thought shuts us all up.
It's morning and I'm scrubbing down and disinfecting the toilet area behind the plastic sheeting, when through the gap I see Heath come out to start on the second work surface for the cookhouse; he was talking about it at breakfast. I'm just about to lift the sheet when Ozzy comes out, behind him.
Can't be doing with Ozzy this early in the morning.
I step back, and immerse my rubber-gloved hands in the bowl of wonderful hot water. I hear them chatting about what Heath is doing ("working with your hands, there's nothing more satisfying," says the person who is, I presume, standing there watching), but then Ozzy starts bemoaning the lack of available women in our house.
Evidently there is greater satisfaction to be had than working with one's hands. Seems Ozzy is experiencing neither.
"My balls are turning blue, man!"
They both laugh at this. I stop, mid scrub, to listen.
"Kara, she's my type," Ozzy says, "but she's into this monogamy thang, isn't she? Typical, right?"
"Ah, well, you know what they say. Anyone worth having is usually taken."
"Ain't that the truth? Rowan hits the spot, too, but she's got issues. Strikes me as one of those chicks who doesn't really like it. You know, don't do that, it's dirty!" Ozzy's impression sounds more like the mum out of Family Guy than Rowan.
"Yeah, well, don't forget, her husband died not so long ago."