Allan and I had designed them so that they were virtually impossible for someone to climb over, without becoming caught in the barbed wire or injured on the nails that protruded from everywhere along the fence. They normally left after a fruity exchange of words through the fence and were never seen again. Some were more persistent and tried to use ladders to scale the fences or barricades. It was not difficult to spot them, because it was pitch black at night and they either had to use torches to find their way in, or the tin can alarms all along the fence alerted us to their attempts before they’d managed to scale it. If they did succeed in breaching our perimeter, then for the safety of everyone, we were forced to treat them as a serious threat and adopted a “shoot first, ask questions later” policy. They could have accepted our offer of help, but they chose not to and were trying to take what we had by force. We had no sympathy for them if they were killed as a result of their folly. Allan kept a record of every incident and, if possible, the identities of the people we’d had to kill. If in the future someone tried to hold us accountable for our actions, we hoped Allan’s record of the events would prove that we’d done the best we could.
From speaking to the people who approached the barricades, and the others we encountered on our foraging trips, we were steadily building up a picture of what was happening to our once great city of Birmingham. By our calculations, in the areas we had covered, aside from our group, no more than one hundred people were still alive. Whole streets had nothing but empty abandoned houses, or houses with corpses in them. Doing a rough tally of the corpses we found, hundreds of thousands of people must have fled the city, hoping to find either government-run refugee camps, if they existed, or at least food in the countryside. If this scenario had been repeated all over the country, swarms of people must had spread out from the cities to find food. What the conditions must now be like, or how many of them had even survived, didn’t bear thinking about.
We didn’t know exactly how many people had lived in the area before the event, but there must easily have been two hundred thousand and now we only knew of one hundred people, plus our group of fifty five, who were still alive.
People who were escaping the city and had approached us for help, had reported that other areas of the city were just as empty. Most of it had been abandoned.
Occasionally we’d come across signs of cannibalism on our trips. We found bones that were definitely human, near abandoned camp-fires, and rotting corpses with missing limbs, which looked as if they had been removed with a saw or knife. None of us really talked about this, but the fact that people had been desperate enough to eat a fellow human being was a grim reminder of what you might be reduced to in order to survive. I fervently hoped I’d never be faced with such a decision.
It was now the middle of December and becoming much colder, with a sharp frost most nights. Even with the log burners going full time it was hard to keep warm in the houses, so I started to dispense the coal I’d bought before the event. Coal burns much hotter and for longer than logs, so it helped to keep the cold at bay. As I only had a limited amount, Pete rationed it and distributed it when it looked as if it was going to be a particularly cold night. We were conscious that January was normally the coldest month and wanted to conserve as much of it as possible for then. We’d found some portable gas heaters and these were given to the older members of the community so that, using the gas bottles I had, they could be made more comfortable. The cooking marquee had been extended and fully enclosed, using a wooden frame and tarpaulins, and even on the coldest day the Beast became a focal point, as we gathered round it to absorb the warmth radiating from it, and tried not to get in the way of the cooks.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
I was on a foraging trip just before Christmas. The parties were now often as large as twenty people, as most of the survivors we met were keen to join us in the continual search for food. Pete called me on the walkie-talkie and asked me to return urgently. He assured me that nothing bad had happened, but I needed to get back straightaway. Luckily, we hadn’t long started the trip so I was only a fifteen minute jog away from home. As I returned, out of breath from the run, I was met by an incredible sight. My sister Jane, her husband Michael and her children were sitting at my kitchen table, filthy, on the edge of exhaustion and starvation, but alive. I stood for a moment, not believing what I was seeing. Jane stood up, rushed over to me and we hugged each other, tears streaming down our cheeks. “How are you here?”
I asked. “Where have you been all this time?” I had so many questions and in my excitement, I just kept asking them, not giving my sister or Michael a chance to reply. Becky gently told me to calm down and give Jane a chance to speak.
This is their story.
They had turned up at the campsite in the middle of the Friday morning on the day of the event. The campsite was in a remote part of the country on the English/Welsh border, about eighty miles from Birmingham. By the time they’d set up their tents, most of their friends from school had arrived and they were all busy helping each other set up the camp. They’d only realised that something had happened when another friend turned up on foot, saying that his car had broken down about a mile down the road. He wanted someone to give him a lift back, so that he could get the rest of the family to the campsite and set up while he waited for the recovery services to arrive. He asked to borrow a mobile phone as his was strangely out of battery.
It was only when everybody had taken out their own phones, and found that they weren’t working either, and then discovered that nobody’s car would start, that Jane had remembered my phone call of a few days before.
She apologised to me at this point for not taking my warning seriously.
When she’d told them all what I had told her nobody had believed her. One of her friends had even declared himself to be an expert on the subject, and had categorically stated that any event would only be localised, if it had happened at all. If they just stayed put and enjoyed the weekend, everything would be put right by Monday. Over the course of the day, more weary people had arrived at the campsite, having abandoned their now useless cars and walked the rest of the way. The farmer had been very understanding and had apologised that, as all his vehicles were out of order, he couldn’t offer any help in that way, but he did have some spare camping equipment which he gave out to those who turned up without.
In spite of everything they’d all had a great weekend and hadn’t really given any of it much more thought until the Sunday, when they’d realised that as their mobile phones still weren’t working, they weren’t going to be able to call the recovery services. They’d gone to see the farmer, who explained that even his land line wasn’t working and he’d had no electricity since Friday lunchtime. They were stuck on the side of a Welsh mountain and there was no easy way for any of them to get home.
“But what about the bikes I made you promise to take with you?” I asked. She looked at me, on the verge of tears again, saying,
“I’m sorry, I only said that to keep you happy. We didn’t have enough room to put them on the car because we had our roof box, and we’d got so much stuff to take with us.” I was about to say something else, but noticed the warning look Becky was giving me over their heads. I clamped my mouth shut and listened to the rest of their story.
The mood at the campsite had changed, and tempers had begun to fray, when people realised that they stood no chance of getting to work on Monday. They’d had no choice but to wait another day and see what happened. On Monday the farmer reported that his son had cycled the ten miles to the nearest village and found that everything was the same there. About half of the families decided to walk home and left, but Jane and the rest decided to wait another day or so, instead of attempting the long gruelling walk home. They ended up staying at the farm for over two weeks. By then, the farmer’s son had cycled to all the nearest towns in the area and found terrible conditions, with people fighting over whatever food was left, so they all decided to stay ra
ther than risk the walk home. The farm was very isolated, up a long track, and quite a distance away from the next house, so the farmer locked the gate at the bottom of the drive and removed all the signs advertising its presence, in the hope that they would avoid any trouble that might come their way. It worked, because in all the time they were there nobody else found them.
The farmer had been very generous and had given everyone food to eat from the small abattoir and meat processing business he ran from his farm, supplying bacon, sausages and other meat products to local farm shops. After about two weeks though, things had changed. He’d stopped giving out food, saying that he only had enough now for himself and his family. He was apologetic, but he needed to look after his family because, by now, everybody had realised that no help was coming. He had given them all enough supplies to last a few days and advised them all to try to make it home.
They had been left with no option but to leave, if not for home, then at least somewhere that they could get help.
They had left as a group, but after walking for a couple of hours, they had been attacked by a large group of armed men who had tried to take everything they were carrying.
Two of the men had been killed when they’d tried to resist. Terrified, they’d all split up and run in any direction they could to escape.
My sister, Michael and their children and two other families, had spent two terrible weeks, slowly making their way home, living off any food they could find growing in the fields and hedgerows, and avoiding any roads or villages. Often they were forced to hide from gangs roaming the countryside, and they came across many houses that had been ransacked and the occupants murdered. On one occasion they’d witnessed, from a distance, a gun battle between two gangs. Not stopping to find out the cause, they’d headed in the opposite direction as quickly as they could. Eventually, starving and suffering from diarrhoea from drinking untreated stream water, they came across an army roadblock just outside Kidderminster, twenty miles from Birmingham.
The armed forces had set up a refugee camp and were attempting to feed and control the growing number of people who were arriving from the city on a daily basis. Grateful, and believing that they were now safe, they had entered the camp. A huge area had been surrounded by a high fence and a tented village had been erected inside. Conditions had been appalling in the camp, but initially at least, there had been basic washing facilities and medical care and two meals a day. Thousands more people had arrived on a daily basis and the camp had soon become overcrowded. The toilet and washing facilities had been unable to cope and had overflowed. The army was doing its best, but there were just too many people to cope with. The information the soldiers had given them had been sketchy at best, or non-existent and there was no way of contacting anybody in charge to find out what was going on. At meal times the portions were becoming smaller and smaller and sometimes no food was given out at all. The army spokesman had assured them that they were waiting for supplies to arrive. Nobody was allowed to leave the camp. They were told that it was safer for them to stay and order gradually broke down. There were not enough beds or blankets to go around and fights over sleeping spaces became commonplace. Jane and Michael were desperate to leave, but were terrified to, after their experiences on their journey. The soldiers, unable to keep the peace inside the camp, had retreated to the other side of the fence. Michael talked to a few of them to try to get information. They knew very little other than the fact that quite a few of these camps had been set up around the country, and conditions were bad there too. Not one of the soldiers had received any news about their own families, and their rations had also been cut due to the supplies not being delivered. The camp descended into chaos.
About three days before, they had announced that there would no meals that day due to supply problems.
A serious riot had been started by a large group of troublemakers, who been terrorising the rest of the camp’s inhabitants since the soldiers had retreated behind the fences. The fences had been rushed by the angry mob and the main gate had broken under the sheer weight of numbers. A few soldiers had been attacked and the other soldiers, either in panic or desperation to help their mates, had opened fire. The rioters had snatched up the weapons from the soldiers they’d already overcome, and fired back. In the ensuing madness the soldiers had opened up with everything they had. After about thirty seconds, the firing had ceased and the soldiers had regained control, but hundreds had been killed or wounded. In the panic to get away from the firing, many more had been crushed or trampled to death. As soon as the mood had turned ugly following the announcement about the food, Jane and Michael had taken the children as far away from the trouble as possible, sheltering with hundreds of other families who’d had the same idea at the far edge of the camp.
After it was all over and the rioters had been killed or run away, the army had made a sweep of the camp and gathered up all the remaining occupants. The senior officer, a Captain, addressed the remaining refugees. He looked pale and shocked, but he stoutly defended the actions of his soldiers, stating that they had acted in self-defence and under the standing orders he had issued. He deeply regretted the loss of life. He was aware that many of the dead had been innocent and was sorry that he had been unable to protect them. The situation they’d all found themselves in was unique and, as he had not heard from his superiors at all for two days and did not think that they were going to receive any more supplies, the only option remaining to him, was to close the camp and attempt to return to his barracks. They would have to travel on foot, as any working vehicle he had, had been requisitioned for use by other units.
He gave the camp occupants two options: they could either return to the barracks with the soldiers, where they would continue to try to protect them and share what supplies were available, or they could leave and go where they chose. He had enough MREs to give at least a few meals to everybody who wanted to leave, but then they would be on their own and they’d have to fend for themselves. He warned that from the few reports he had received, the whole country appeared to be in chaos, with the government having ceased to exist and military and police units unable to cope with the gangs roaming wild and leaving death and destruction in their wake. All the units he’d had contact with were basically operating independently, as the army leaders had either been overrun or had disappeared.
Jane and Michael had decided to leave and head for home.
The bleak picture painted by the Captain, and everything they had witnessed on their journey so far, had made them realise that he couldn’t guarantee their safety and in any case, how long would the supplies he claimed to have back at the barracks last? It was too risky to put their safety in his hands and they knew that they had a lot of food at home, if it was still there.
They had passed the end of our road on the last leg of their journey and seeing the barricade of cars, had stopped to see if we were still there. My neighbours knew my sister, so they’d immediately let them through the barricade, taken them to my house and asked Pete to call me on the walkie-talkie.
While they were eating their first decent meal for weeks, I filled them in on what had happened locally and what we had been doing to survive. I explained that their house had been ransacked, but that the food stored in the cellar was still there, (every time I had passed the house I’d given it a quick check over and the cellar door was still locked).
I don’t know why I hadn’t taken the food yet; maybe I’d sensed that she was OK and would need it someday. Jane confirmed that she’d had her monthly shop delivered just before they’d left, but a few weeks before she’d also done a big shop at Costco where, two or three times a year, she’d stocked up on things like rice, pasta and tinned tomatoes, because it saved her the hassle of getting them on the monthly shop and it worked out much cheaper. I jokingly accused her of being a secret prepper. She denied it, saying that she was just a lazy shopper.
She already knew that Michelle was living with us, as they’d met before I’d arrive
d, but I didn’t tell Jane what she had been through. That would be Michelle’s story to tell in her own words.
Of course I insisted that they stay with us. The house would be very crowded, with every bedroom now occupied, but the cousins could bunk up together and Jane and Michael could have the last spare room to themselves.
In the future Michelle, Kim or Mandy might decide to move to another house, but that would be their decision and I wasn’t going to ask them to leave. I’d already told them that they would be welcome for as long as they wanted to stay.
I told Pete that I was going to take the rest of the day off to spend it with my family and to start getting them used to our new communal way of living. I suspected that after what they’d been through, it would be bliss.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
In the evening, once my sister and her family had all had showers to wash the grime off, and got the kids settled down to sleep, all the nine adults in the house sat in the lounge, relaxing and enjoying a couple of specially released bottles of wine in celebration of the new arrivals. The log burner blazed and Jane and Michael went back over their experiences with us. As soon as Michael mentioned that the army officers had been unable to contact their superiors, Jerry sat up straight, made a strange noise and looked pained. All conversation stopped as we wondered what was wrong with him.
“The radio my brother gave us! We haven’t even tried to turn it on since we looked at it at my house. He could have been trying to contact me.” As everybody else, with the exception of Fiona, was looking a little confused, I explained about the military radio in the crate, and the weapons that Jerry’s brother, Colonel Moore, had sent him.
UK Dark Series (Book 1): UKD1 Page 16