The Forever Man: PULSE

by Craig Zerf

  Nathaniel inhaled with great pleasure and nodded his thanks.

  ‘Dere be a huge number of dees in da cellar,’ said the priest. ‘Most be fifty cartons at least. Now, boyo, what brings you here? Tell da father yourn story and den, if dere be time, I shall regale you wid mine.’

  So Nathaniel told his story. He didn’t mean to go into the details that he did, but the father was a professional listener and knew exactly when and how to keep the marine talking. Within a few hours he had extracted Nathaniel’s entire life story up until the killing in the church and the second bottle of wine was almost empty and the priest had collected a carton of cigarettes. The room was blue with smoke and the two candles flickered their orange light across the walls and chased shadows across the wood beamed ceiling.

  ‘So, Father,’ said the marine. ‘Do you think that God is punishing us?’

  ‘No, Nathaniel. He’ll not be punishing us, He is testing us. Oh, to be sure, ours is a vengeful God and humanity is, when it comes down to it, a fairly useless fecking bunch. But our Lord he does love us, worthless sinners dat we be. Now you get yourself some shuteye, marine. The good father will keep a lookout for yez.’

  Nathaniel pulled a blanket from the pile, lay on the carpet and went to sleep.

  The next morning Nathaniel rose before the sun. Father O’Hara hadn’t slept and sat where he had been the night before. Two empty packs of cigarettes and three empty wine bottles bore testament to his cast iron constitution.

  ‘Top of the morning to yez, marine,’ he greeted. Nathaniel nodded a greeting, scrabbled for a cigarette and lit up. Then he went through to the sitting room and woke the teenagers up. They awoke bright eyed and bushy tailed as only the young can.

  They breakfasted on tinned beans heated up in the fireplace, washed down with mineral water and strong black coffee.

  Afterwards Father O’Hara took them to the stables. All in all there were six horses. The feed bins were full of oats and there was plenty of hay. The tack room had sufficient saddlery for all of the mounts. Around the back of the stables were two old, reconditioned Dray wagons. Open tops with four tyres and leaf suspension. Probably ten foot by five foot, each with a set of harnesses for two horses.

  Tom and Louise saddled five of the horses, one for each of them, excluding O’Hara who was staying to guard the stash, and two extra for their parents.

  They mounted up and set off at a fast walk. After half an hour or so Nathaniel spoke.

  ‘Listen up, guys,’ he said. ‘I want you both to be prepared for the worst. I don’t want to be the kiss of death or anything, I hope and pray that all will be fine. But just in case, anything could have happened. Your folks may not be there, they could have moved on, gotten ill, hurt themselves. Just prepare and be strong.’

  They both nodded solemnly at him and he could see that they held no false hopes.

  It took them a little under four hours to travel the twenty miles to the teenager’s parent’s house. It was a massive Georgian pile set well back on a country road. Steel gates that looked as if they had never been shut, a marble chip driveway and no perceivable neighbours.

  The house itself was white, covered in ivy and in need of some repair. Old money on a slow genteel slide to ruin.

  They dismounted and tied the horses to the stone balustrade that ran along the front of the house. Nathaniel waved the two teenagers behind him as they mounted the steps. The front door was closed but unlocked and they walked in, pausing for a second or so in order to let their eyes adjust to the dim interior.

  The two teenagers pushed past Nathaniel, calling out for their parents. The marine followed them as they went from room to room, a sitting room, drawing room, dining room. They found the mother in the library. She was lying on the floor, on her side.

  She was alive. Nathaniel knelt down next to her, lifted her head and put his water bottle to her lips. She sipped, swallowed, gagged and then drank fervently. Her eyes flickered open and a smile spread across her face.

  ‘My darlings,’ she whispered. ‘Is this real?’

  Tom grabbed her hand and Louise started weeping.

  ‘Mummy,’ said Tom. ‘We’re here. You’ll be safe now.’

  ‘Where’s daddy?’ Asked Louise.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my darlings,’ she said. ‘So sorry.’

  ‘What, mummy?’ Demanded Louise. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Daddy died last week,’ she said. ‘His asthma. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘But what’s wrong with you, mummy?’ Asked Tom.

  ‘Silly me. All my fault. Daddy had an attack and his pump had run out. So I ran upstairs to look for another. But I slipped. Fell. I think that I’ve broken my hips. It’s taken me two days to crawl here from the bottom of the steps and now that I’m here I do wonder why I bothered. No water here. No water there.’

  Nathaniel held the bottle to her lips again and she drank greedily. Then she held out her hand to the marine. ‘Marjorie Stepford,’ she said.

  Nathaniel took her hand and squeezed it slightly. ‘Pleased to meet you, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Master gunnery sergeant Nathaniel Hogan, United States Marine Corp, at your service.’

  She smiled through her pain and Nathaniel felt his heart go out to her. To her bravery, her composure. Her essential Britishness.

  ‘Well, master sergeant, I’ve always said, if you want something done then call on a non-commissioned officer, preferably a sergeant. So, taking care of my children are you?’

  The marine nodded. ‘I am, ma’am.’

  ‘Good,’ she nodded. ‘Well done.’

  Tom started to weep, silently.

  ‘No, no,’ Marjorie admonished him. ‘That simply won’t do, Thomas. Can’t go around weeping at everything, goodness me, what would people think?’

  Tom held his chin up. ‘Sorry, mummy.’

  ‘Now, give mummy a hug, both of you, and then I want you to leave me alone with the master sergeant for a while. Okay?’

  The two teenagers hugged their mother and kissed her and then left the room, obeying her wishes.

  Nathaniel knelt down next to her again.

  ‘Sergeant Hogan,’ she said. ‘I have broken both of my hips. I cannot move my legs and I can feel that some sort of infection has set in. Now, I’m not sure what has happened to the civilized world but I do know that it seems to no longer exist. Am I correct in that assumption?’

  Nathaniel nodded. ‘There has been some sort of solar flare. The electromagnetic waves caused by it have destroyed the world’s electrical and electronic goods. Essentially, ma’am, we are back in the dark ages.’

  Marjorie nodded. ‘Thought as much. So, the only thing left for me would be a long, slow, agonising death.’

  Nathaniel showed her the respect of not lying. ‘Yes, ma’am. At best case scenario. Might not be so long. We cannot operate, cannot replace the hips, don’t even have a decent supply of painkillers.’

  ‘Fine. Now, sergeant, be an absolute sweetheart. Go upstairs, third door on the left you will find a bedroom. Go inside, the next door is a bathroom en suite. Medicine cabinet inside. Take a look and you will find a bottle of Xanax. After that, go to the drawing room, in the corner you will see a liquor cabinet. Bring a bottle of Cognac.’ She patted Nathaniel on the hand. ‘Hurry now, sergeant. No time for dilly-dallying.’

  The marine did as he was asked, opening the bottle of cognac as he walked back into the room. He handed both the pills and the alcohol over to Marjorie. She prized the cap off the unopened bottle of Xanax and proceeded to swallow them with the cognac, taking five or so at a time until the bottle was finished, breathing deeply as she did so in order to not cough from the spirit intake.

  When the pills were finished she struggled her way through half of the bottle of cognac and then beckoned Nathaniel to her.

  ‘My husband died in the kitchen a few days back. Don’t let the children see the body, I’m sure that he looks well past his best by now.’ Nathaniel nodded. ‘I’m not sure how quickly this cockt
ail works so, please send the children in. It’s time for me to say goodbye.’

  Nathaniel stood up, faced the lady of the house and saluted. ‘I wish that we could have met under better circumstances, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘As do I, master sergeant,’ she replied. ‘As do I.’

  Nathaniel went through to the entrance hall and told the two teenagers that their mother wanted to see them. Then he went outside, sat on the balustrade, lit a cigarette and waited.

  After half an hour the two siblings walked out of the front door.

  Louise strode up to the marine and slapped him, hard, across the face. Nathaniel saw it coming but didn’t move.

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Louise. ‘She’s dead and you could have prevented it. You gave her the pills, you killed her.’ She slapped the marine again.

  Nathaniel shook his head. ‘She was a very brave lady, Louise. She knew that she was beyond cure and she did the right thing. Seeing you and Tom before she went was a gift beyond all that she could have hoped for. I am really, really sorry for your loss, but I did not kill your mother and I would never do anything to hurt either of you.’ He stepped forward and put his arms around Louise and hugged her. She burst into tears and clung to him, her breath coming in short ragged bursts.

  Tom stood to the side, his eyes red rimmed but tearless, obeying his mother’s last wishes. No tears, no crying, after all, what would people think.

  Nathaniel reached out and pulled Tom into an embrace with his sister.

  ‘It’s alright, my boy,’ he said. ‘You can cry. There’s no shame in tears. None at all.’

  So the two teenagers cried for the loss of their family. And their world and all that they had ever known.

  And the big marine held them tight and kept them safe.

  Chapter 29

  Janice had been sleeping rough for five days now and then, last night, she had lost her blanket. She had been sleeping next to a thin hedge alongside the road when two men had grabbed her, waking her as they pulled her from the blanket and started to tear her shirt off. She had kicked out, twisting and screaming and then she had run, pausing only briefly to snatch up her doctors bag.

  Now she had no idea where she was as the map book had been lying next to her when she slept. During the day she had come across a village that had been burned to the ground. She had thought to search it for food but as she got closer she could see that the ground was covered in bodies and she couldn’t force herself to go any closer. She searched every car that she came across and, in the late afternoon, she found a tin of sweetcorn and a box of Tampons under the passenger seat of an old Rover. She put the Tampons into her bag and opened the tin using one of her scalpels. It was one of the finest meals that she could ever remember eating.

  She was constantly thirsty, although she filled her water bottle whenever she could, water butts, streams and even puddles, but she knew that she was slowly dehydrating, her heartbeat was up, she hadn’t urinated for over six hours and her mouth and lips were constantly dry.

  The sun was going down and she had to find shelter for the night. Preferably some sort of natural protection, as a barn or house would attract people. And Janice no longer trusted people. After walking for a while she saw what looked like a good spot. A clump of thick bushes in amongst a copse of trees, the vegetation thick enough to dull the cutting wind and to conceal from prying eyes.

  She only noticed the gray sheet of plastic once she had worked her way into the middle of the thick patch of greenery. It had been artfully concealed with mud and leaves, low to the ground but skillfully erected so as to provide maximum shelter.

  She froze, unsure as whether to turn and run or to investigate further. She squatted down and waited for a while. The minutes ticked by and she heard nothing so she edged forward, slowly, and peeked inside the bivouac.

  Lying on his back was a young man dressed in a dirty army uniform. Next to him was a plastic shopping bag containing a couple of full water bottles and three cans of food. She couldn’t see exactly what the cans contained because their labels were burned off. The right side of the soldier’s face was covered with a blood soaked bandage that had been roughly applied. Janice couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

  She crawled over to him and took his pulse, feeling for it in the side of his neck. He was alive but the pulse was weak and ragged. His breathing so shallow as to be almost impossible to detect.

  Janice opened one of the water bottles and drank deeply from it. Her eyes started to water and the sheer pleasure of imbibing the pure liquid made her feel giddy. She drank almost half of the bottle before her thirst was slaked.

  Then she opened her doctor’s bag and started to lay out her instruments. First, she removed the bloodied bandage from the soldier’s head, shuddering as it revealed his wound.

  He had obviously taken a shotgun round from close range. The pellets had torn out his eye and lacerated the flesh on the right side of his face. She could see four or five of the pellets were still embedded in him, and bits of skin and flesh hung in ragged strips from his cheek, like pieces of red ribbon. The fact that he was still alive was proof of an almost inhuman fortitude.

  So Janice set to work, knowing that she had to do what she could, but also knowing that there was less than little chance that this brave young man would last the night.

  She worked as fast as she could and by the time the light had failed she had removed the pellets, stitched and glued the tattered flesh, given him a shot of broad-spectrum antibiotics and bandaged the wound. Then she tilted his head forward and spent a while dribbling water into his mouth and ensuring that he swallowed it.

  Finally, she lay down next to him, spread her jacket over the both of them and moved as close as she could to keep him warm. She was asleep within minutes secure that she was well hidden from passers by.

  When she awoke the next morning the young man was sitting up next to her, sipping water from one of the bottles.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘So, I’m not dead.’

  Janice smiled. ‘It would appear so,’ she replied.

  ‘I can feel that you’ve done some work on my face. Are you a nurse?’

  ‘Doctor,’ said Janice. ‘I cleaned your wound, took the shot out, stitched and made good. But I’m afraid that your eye is gone. And I’m no plastic surgeon, you aren’t going to be entering any more beauty pageants.’

  The soldier grinned. ‘Damn, there goes my dream of becoming miss universe.’ He held out his hand. ‘Thank you. My name is Axel.’

  She took it. ‘Janice. Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘I wonder if I could bother you for some pain killers, doc?’ Asked Axel. ‘I must say, the old face hurts like buggery.’

  Janice scrambled through her bag, pulled out a bottle and offered Axel some codeine capsules.

  ‘Right,’ he said after swallowing them. ‘Not sure what your plan is but we need to keep moving. First we breakfast on a tin of beans then keep searching, foraging. To stay is to die.’

  ‘I’m looking for my parents,’ said Janice. ‘They live in Tempsford.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  Janice waved her hand in a vague Northerly direction. ‘Lost my map. Not that sure. Whenever I drove to see them I had a satnav. So I simply followed instructions, never really took in the actual directions themselves.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Axel. ‘We head that way,’ he also waved towards the North.

  They both laughed. Then he opened the can of beans using the ring-pull on the top. He fished a spoon out of his pocket and offered Janice, who ate first. She allowed herself a third of the can. The soldier finished off the rest. Then he packed his plastic sheet, water bottles and empty tin into his rucksack and they set off across the fields. At times they saw individuals or couples roaming the countryside and they simply ignored them and kept walking.

  However, the one time they saw a large group in the distance and Axel made them hide in a depression in the landscape, gray plastic covering the
m. Invisible. Discretion was the better part of valor, he told her. And bands of any size were best avoided.

  Late afternoon they found a tiny trickle of a steam, filled their water bottles up and drank until their stomachs felt distended. Axel also spent some time pulling tender leaves off a Hawthorn tree. Next he attacked a patch of pretty white flowers, pulling them up by the roots and washing them off in the stream. When Janice got closer he showed her what looked like a handful of anemic carrots.

  ‘Queen Anne’s lace,’ he said. ‘Wild carrots. Also, Hawthorn leaves instead of bread. Now there’s two of us, we need to substantially increase our supply of food.’ He pushed the forage into his rucksack. ‘Come on. Let’s keep moving.’

  They continued north until the sky began to darken. Janice noticed that Axel was starting to stumble a little as he walked, grimacing at the pain. Once again, with a soldier’s feel, he found a spot that they could conceal themselves for the night.

  He built his small bivouac and opened a tin of beans. He used the other empty tin to halve the supply and then he chopped the wild carrot up small and mixed it in. Then, using his spoon, he showed Janice to put a spoonful of the bean and carrot onto a Hawthorn leaf, roll it like a mini fajita and eat. Janice was impressed, the leaves were slightly peppery and the carrots imparted a fresh crunch.

  Before the light faded she changed his bandage and injected him with the last of her antibiotics. She didn’t say anything to him but the wound wasn’t looking good. Despite her best efforts an infection had started to set in and, already, the stitches were pulled tight, the ruined flesh red and puffy. She needed more antibiotics, much more. Also antibiotic powder and fresh sterile bandages.

  The next morning when they awoke, Axel was shivering with the onset of fever. She gave him water and paracetemol and they started to walk, but Janice could see that the young soldier was taking immense strain. Every couple of steps he would stop and shiver uncontrollably and the side of his face had swollen alarmingly.