The Exodus Plague | Book 1 | The Snow

by Collingbourne, Huw

  I’d given up wondering where everyone had gone. We’d passed a few bodies lying in the streets but they didn’t account for the entire population. I guessed some people had locked themselves away in their houses, waiting for the Government to take control, waiting for the Army to re-establish law and order, waiting for the power to come back on again, along with the radio and the TV. Waiting for life to get back to the way it was. That would be a long wait.

  Others, I guessed, had moved on. Left the area. Gone looking for relatives? Maybe they assumed that the looting and the violence and the killing were just local problems and if they looked further afield they’d find somewhere safe?

  And the young people? We’d already noticed that they tended to group together. Maybe they had migrated into the city centres. For all I knew, they might be living in the luxury suites of five star hotels.

  “Shame there’s no ice,” Leila said, “It seems rather common to drink gin without ice.”

  The gin was so cold it would have made no difference. It had been a long time since there had been any heating in the Miami Nights Cocktail Bar. The three of us were wearing hats and gloves. Our breath made plumes of steam in the air.

  “Who the hell are you, Leila?” I asked.

  “You really don’t know?” she said, her mouth and eyes wide with astonishment, “I might be quite insulted.”

  “What?”

  “‘The Return Of The Native’…”

  “What?”

  “Thomas Hardy. Mini-series. Eustacia Vye, the exotically beautiful but ultimately tragic heroine. It was a smash hit. On the telly last year.”

  “You were in that?” Geoff said, “I saw a bit of it. It was OK. Bit old-fashioned. But OK.”

  “You’re an actress?” I said.

  She put a hand over her breast and nodded in acknowledgment.

  “And you played Eustacia Vye. On the telly?”

  “Ah, well, no, not exactly. That was someone else whose name escapes me. I played a milk maid. I had two lines. ‘It’ll be her up on the heath that you’ll be a-lookin’ for, young sir,’ and ‘Oh, ’tis a terrible hot day today.’ Still, the lines were said in two different episodes and my agent managed to negotiate twice the fee as a consequence.”

  “So how come you know so much about shortwave radio and biological warfare and… well, everything?”

  “That might be because I was researching a part for a TV series all about a glamorous Russian assassin who is trained in the art of survival.”

  “Were you? Researching a part for a TV series all about a glamorous Russian assassin who is trained in the art of survival, I mean?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then?”

  “It might be because there’s much more to me than meets the eye. What’s the time, dearheart?”

  I looked at my watch. “Nearly half past eleven.”

  “Better get going then. We don’t want to be here at midnight.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not a good time to be here, that’s all.”

  “You are superstitious!” I said.

  “Either that or I have premonitions. Either way, we don’t want to be here at midnight.”

  It was about ten to twelve before we finally left the Miami Nights Cocktail Bar. We took a couple of bottles of gin and a box containing twelve bottles of wine with us. In case of an emergency. Geoff drove the Land Rover. Leila sat in the passenger seat. Bobby and I roughed it in the back.

  If you’ve ever ridden in the back of a long wheelbase Land Rover, you will know that when I say we roughed it, I mean it. There are no seats. There are, however, two long box-like ridges, that run along either side of the vehicle from front to back, about the width of the gym benches they have in schools, only much less comfortable. I sat precariously on one of the benches. Bobby stretched out full-length on the other. Every time the Land Rover bounced over a pothole, we got bounced on the benches. Bobby didn’t seem to mind. I wasn’t so keen.

  At first the streets seemed deserted. Geoff drove down the hill that led from the bar towards a roundabout at the edge of the town. There were no street lights and no moon, so he had his headlights on. That may have been a mistake.

  As we approached the bottom of the hill, we saw some shadowy forms moving towards us. A crowd of people. They were staggering slightly as though they were drunk. They reminded me of a crowd of football fans I’d once got caught up with after a big match at Wembley. I’d been visiting friends. I hadn’t even realised there had been a match until I found myself mixed up in the crowd. The Wembley crowd I got mixed up in had been chanting and singing, most of them had been drinking pretty heavily; they had gone staggering down the road, often right down the middle of the road paying no attention to oncoming traffic. It was as though they had stopped being individuals. They had stopped being rational, sensible human beings who paid attention to the laws of the land and who had retained at least some basic concern for their own safety. They had become a single, moving, swaying, chanting creature. Like a massive, human colony of army ants on the march, sweeping away everything in their path.

  The crowd that was lumbering towards the Land Rover had some of that same ant-colony look about it: an animalistic mass that was heading straight for us. At first it was just a dark, amorphous shape bubbling out of the distant night. As we got closer, our headlights illuminated them, picking out individuals. There must have been thirty or more and they were heading towards us with deliberate intent.

  “Turn back!” I yelled, “Geoff, for God’s sake…”

  Geoff slowed the Land Rover and began to turn the wheel. Leila grabbed the steering wheel – “Don’t you dare go back!” she said.

  “They won’t let us through,” I shouted, “If we go that way, we’ll have to stop.”

  “Stop?” said Leila, “I don’t think so! Put your foot on the accelerator, dear boy, we are going through!”

  “Don’t be so bloody…”

  But Geoff had already made a decision. Given contradictory advice from me and Leila, he had clearly decided that Leila had a better grasp of the situation. The Land Rover picked up speed and now we were hurtling towards the approaching crowd. I expected to see shock and horror on their faces. But all I saw was blank determination. I expected to see them jump out of the path of the Land Rover. But they carried on moving towards us, implacably.

  Then came the horror of the collision. Geoff swerved to avoid the first of them but, having done so, he hit another. I remember the sound of impact. A sickening thump. One moment a young man had been standing there, staring through the windscreen at us. The next moment, he was gone, his body collapsing under the moving vehicle.

  But there was worse to come. Because a few yards behind him there was a great mass of people blocking the road. At the speed we were travelling, Geoff wouldn’t have been able to stop even if he’d wanted to. He ploughed straight into them. I closed my eyes. Leila whooped and cheered. Thump, thump, thump! I felt each collision reverberate through the Land Rover. Afterwards, the vehicle bumped up and down, over the fallen bodies, as though travelling over a badly pitted road surface.

  Finally we were past them. Geoff took the left-hand turning from the roundabout, taking the road that led back towards the forest. On the journey there, Leila told us all about the films and TV plays she’d appeared in. She’d been in a detective series on the BBC. She’d played an alien in Doctor Who? She’d played a Viking maiden in a film I’d never heard of. Geoff and I said nothing.

  I was starting to think that Leila might be insane.

  That night, it snowed again.

  13

  When I woke up, Leila had gone.

  Geoff and I sat inside the back of the Land Rover eating Corn Flakes with evaporated milk. We poured milk into a saucer for Bobby. He lapped it up without enthusiasm. Then, as there was nothing else to do, I started messing around with the radio. We were inside the Land Rover, so I hadn’t connected the long wire antenna. Shortwave reception w
as abysmal. I switched it off.

  Geoff wasn’t ready to give up. He turned the radio back on and played around with it for a bit. He tried other wavelengths. In addition to shortwave, the set was supposed to be able to pick up FM, Longwave and Mediumwave. We listened to some old comedy show on the BBC for a while. The BBC was still broadcasting repeats most of the time.

  Every ten minutes or so a pre-recorded voice would interrupt to say: “You are listening to Radio 4. Due to the current emergency situation, we are unable to broadcast our scheduled programs. Normal service will resume as soon as possible.”

  “They’re taking their bleedin’ time,” I said, “To resume normal service.”

  I was about to turn it off when, quite unexpectedly, there were the pips: the electronic beeps that the BBC had always played in the old days to mark the time on the hour. Then a voice said: “It is twelve o’clock. And now the news.”

  I couldn’t believe it. It sounded just the way Radio 4 used to sound. In the old days.

  “The Government has announced plans to make more hospital beds available for emergency treatment during the present emergency. The acting Prime Minister promised that, while the recent problems have been exceptional, the restoration of a fully functioning Health Service is the Government’s top priority.

  “The President of the United States said today that the planned State Visit will go ahead as scheduled. However, the date of the visit has not yet been confirmed and it is expected that it may now be delayed until later in the year.

  “The Met Office has issued an amber weather warning for all of the UK and a red warning for the South West of England. Heavy snow and high winds are expected with the potential to cause damage to property. You are advised to avoid travelling whenever possible.

  “And in sports news. Tottenham Hotspur won 3-2 in their match against Everton. This means that Tottenham will be in the Champions League next season, whatever happens when they face Liverpool.

  “Next on Radio 4. A classic episode of ‘Dad’s Army’ in which Captain Mainwaring…”

  I turned the radio off.

  “It all sounds so bloody normal,” I said.

  “That’s good, ain’t it?” said Geoff.

  “Too bloody normal,” I said, “I don’t believe a word of it. Who’s the ‘acting’ Prime Minister, anyway? Where’s the real Prime Minister?”

  “Could be sick,” said Geoff.

  “Or dead. And what’s all that bollocks about football matches. Tottenham Hotspur, Everton, the Champion’s League. Are we really supposed to believe that the bleedin’ football season is carrying on as if nothing had happened?”

  “Maybe things are all OK in London.”

  “Maybe. And maybe the BBC is lying to us. Maybe the Government is lying to us. Or whatever’s left of the Government. Whoever the acting Prime Minister may be. I don’t believe a word of it. It’s all lies.”

  Later that afternoon, Geoff and I were sitting in the front of the Land Rover with Bobby sleeping in the back, when suddenly something slithered down the windscreen in front of us. It was a dead animal. Grey, furry and bloody. Its blood left a red smear on the glass.

  I looked at Geoff. “Looks like Leila’s back.”

  And sure enough, there she was. She had three more dead animals strung together over her shoulder. Geoff and I got out of the Land Rover. Bobby leapt over the seat and followed us.

  “While you boys were sleeping, I’ve been out getting dinner.”

  “What are they?”

  “What do they look like?”

  “Dead animals.”

  “Was that just a guess or did you work it out?”

  “Worked it out. The only thing I can’t figure out is what sort of dead animals.”

  “Rabbits, darling, rabbits.”

  Bobby was supremely interested in the furry corpses. He was leaping up at Leila, sniffing and licking his lips and woofing and wagging his tail. “Don’t worry, old boy,” she said, “I got one for you too.”

  So we collected some wood and we made a fire in a clearing beneath the trees while Leila explained how she’d caught them. She’d used some of our antenna wire to make a snare. In the weeks she’d been living in the forest, she’d become expert at catching rabbits. The rabbits had some runs in fields and hedgerows nearby. Leila had made little frameworks of branches and set up wire snares that the rabbits would run into. Once snared, they’d start struggling to get away and would end up strangling themselves.

  “I collect them before they are dead, of course. Best to get them when they are still fresh and wriggling. Then one bump over the head with a good stone and they are done for.”

  The way she described it made me feel a bit sick. I felt even sicker when I saw Leila take her knife and skin the poor creatures. She sliced each of them neatly through the belly, then pulled the skin over the rabbit’s head the way you might pull a tight glove off your hand. I kept thinking of the pet rabbit I’d had when I was a kid. Geoff, being a farmer’s boy, wasn’t in the least bit squeamish. Nor was Bobby. In fact, he stood there entranced and drooling.

  Once again, I wondered how Leila knew how to do all these things? I wouldn’t have had a clue how to snare and skin a rabbit. She did it as though it was an everyday activity. I suppose it was possible that she might have been researching a role for a film about Neanderthal hunters or early American settlers – a remake of The Little House On The Prairie, maybe? But that didn’t seem likely.

  “If only we had a gun we could probably catch something a tad bigger,” she said.

  “Bigger? Like what?” I was thinking maybe a hare or a pheasant.

  “A deer maybe. Or a cow.”

  “A cow?”

  “Or maybe a dog.”

  Bobby whimpered. I saw a television documentary once about a dog that understood over a thousand English words. I wondered how many Bobby knew.

  “Don’t worry,” Leila said, “I’m only kidding. About the dog, anyway. I wouldn’t mind trying to kill a cow though.”

  We got one of the saucepans we’d stolen earlier and boiled up some snow over the fire. Meanwhile, Leila swiftly chopped up the rabbits into bite-sized chunks and tossed them into the pot. I searched our store of food and found a bit of salt and some tinned carrots that we added to the mix, then we sat back and waited while the smell was making me and Geoff drool almost as much as the dog.

  Leila made fun of my squeamishness. The day before, we’d run down some people with the Land Rover and yet I was still getting soppy and sentimental over a few dead rabbits. That’s another thing I hadn’t really come to terms with yet. Ploughing into a crowd of people and then just driving away. Leila didn’t seem affected by it. She said it was a case of us or them – kill or be killed.

  “I suppose we could try it with a knife,” she said.

  She looked at her hunting knife speculatively.

  “Try what?”

  “Kill a cow. Or a deer.”

  I laughed. I assumed she was joking. She wasn’t. “Oh, it can be done. If you corner the animal so it can’t get away. Might be doable with a cow. If you two lads chase one into the corner of a field. Or into a milking shed. Then all I’d have to do would be to dispatch it. Fairly straightforward, I should think. A deer would be more difficult. I read once about someone who hid up a tree then leapt onto a deer’s back, reached around its neck and slit its throat. Seems to me there are a few too many things that might go wrong with a deer though. They can be quite lively when they want to be.”

  “Especially when someone had leapt from a tree onto its back, wielding a knife with the intention of cutting its throat?” I suggested.

  “Precisely. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Hmm, a soupçon more salt, I think.” – she had taken a spoon and was sampling the broth – “Such a shame we haven’t any herbs. A bay leaf and a few sprigs of thyme would have made all the difference.”

  All the talk about cutting throats had brought back memories of the murder of Mr Cadwallad
er, his throat sliced open by the madman, Jake. Something must have shown in my face because Leila picked up on my thoughts immediately. “Oh, it wouldn’t be like that if I did it. He didn’t know how to use a knife.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I had previously told her all about Jake and Mr Cadwallader. She referred to the killing obliquely, assuming it was obvious what she was talking about. “That Jake fellow. Untrained. Nobody who knew what they were doing would have done it that way.”

  “What way?”

  She slashed her knife through the air in front of her. “Not a reliable killing cut. The victim could have lived for some time. Had medical attention been available, he might have made a full recovery. At any rate, from your description, he took quite a while to die. His trachea was no doubt severed, possibly a jugular vein. He probably suffocated. Or drowned in his own blood. Whereas that farmer chap, the one you said you’d found in the snow…”

  “Douggie Lampton.”

  “The name is irrelevant. He knew what he was doing. Well, as a farmer, I suppose that’s only to be expected. You said there was a great gush of blood across the snow, stretching away at some distance. That would have happened when a carotid artery was cut. Which is a much more effective means of killing someone. That old farmer did the job professionally, I’d say. Mmmm, that meat smells delicious. Come on, boys, let’s tuck in.”

  Yes, I was becoming increasingly convinced that Leila was insane. But in this mad world, insanity might be the key to survival. I didn’t hold it against her.

  14

  “This is Peter Quinn bringing you all the best hits from the best decade as we go back to the ’80s with Spandau Ballet and ‘To Cut A Long Story Short’.”