“Are you ready to go then?” he asked him.
“I sure am!” he cried.
“Have you got your tractor?”
Tim reached round and patted the shape that bulged from the pocket of his pack. “Okay then. Let’s get going.”
10
They walked out of the estate in the early hours of the morning, closing the door to the substation behind them and leaving a note pinned to it, sealed inside a plastic bag. It contained a handwritten list of the names of the people who’d died there, where they were buried and where they’d come from. It was a copy of the same list he had in a small, leather bound notebook that he’d found in one of the desk drawers in a car hire office near the sandwich bar.
At first he’d thought to make a start on a diary of some kind with it, but when the first deaths occurred he decided to start recording their names instead, maybe in the hopes of passing them on to other survivors who may have wondered what’d become of their family members and friends. He’d written as many names as he could remember from Teague’s camp but included notes that he hadn’t seen them die, only assumed that they might have done so when the storm came. Then there was Gary and Reb and the others. Martha and Rachel. The Miller family. The old man. He didn’t mention the manner of their deaths, only that they died and that, he believed, was enough.
So they set off down the road, deciding against continuing south for the time being and instead heading west, deeper into the countryside and avoiding the main roads. By this time Alan was convinced that sooner or later a band of scavengers might come upon them and he wanted to avoid anywhere that might be an obvious place for them to roam. Main roads, city centres, even large towns might be a hunting ground for any number of these carrion and though he couldn’t be harmed himself, he had a new concern and one he intended to protect as best he could.
People had survived the initial wave of death that the storm had brought. Not everyone would die from the rads or the cold. Not everyone would starve to death. It was a dire warning that sounded every hour like the chime of a clock - if they’d survived, then the chances were high that so had the scum that had plagued them since the disaster began.
He thought about his decision to leave the XC10 behind. Had it been wrong? At first the excess weight had been a concern, but what about now? He had Tim to think of and how could he hope to protect him with only his bare hands and the jaws of the dog?
After an hour of reflection and some slow miles, he reasoned with himself that it’d been the right choice and that, had the truck seen him armed, it might have driven on, fearing him and they’d have never met. How many more people would look at him in terror or viewed the trinket of the past with envious eyes?
So instead he looked amongst the struggling woodland they came across in search of a suitable tree with which to cut a fair sized pole from. It took some time but in the end he found it and, putting his bag down, began to cut it from the trunk with a compact folding saw he carried.
“What are you doing?” asked Tim as he set to work. It was mid-afternoon and still only barely above zero. The warmth they’d gained from the walk soon left him and he stood there, shivering and stamping his feet.
“I’m going to make us some walking sticks,” he said. “This thick, stout one will be mine and that one,” he said, pointing with the end of the saw blade at another tree, “will be yours.”
“Really? Wow.”
Alan stopped for a moment and looked around. They’d walked a number of miles and the small belt of woodland they’d found seemed suitable enough for a camp. So he gave Tim orders to find sticks and start making a fire pit while he made their poles. Happy to be busy, he and Moll walked off, leaving his pack behind.
“Tim!” he shouted after him.
“What?”
“Always carry your pack, mate. Only take it off at night but keep it with you. If we ever need to get away in a hurry, you need to be able to grab it.”
Tim came back, snatched his kit and ran off, grinning.
When the fire was nicely burning away at his feet, Alan stripped the pole of bark and began smoothing its bumps and knots with his knife, throwing the shavings into a bag as he did so. Tim sat watching him, fixated by the motion of the blade and smiling to himself as he saw his own walking pole taking shape.
“What do I do with it?” he asked when he passed it to him.
“You use it to help you walk, Tim,” he said. “Like this.”
Alan got up and, using his own pole, demonstrated how best to walk with it. He’d cut Tim’s pole to the right height, somewhere near his shoulder, but his own was almost as tall as he was and perfect for fighting with. It would take some practice but it was better than carrying nothing and at least it didn’t look too aggressive.
Tim got up and mirrored his movements, tramping up and down until he got the hang of it.
“It works best when going up or down hills,” said Alan. “You can stab the ground and pull yourself up steep steps or help yourself down them.”
“Do you do lots of walking?” he asked, sitting back down and cradling the pole in his lap.
“I used to and I think we’ll be doing lots soon.”
“And did you have a pole like this?”
“Yeah, a bit like yours.”
“And did Moll walk with you too?”
“I didn’t know Moll back then.”
“Oh.” He seemed disappointed and looked across at her as she laid at his feet.
“Me and Moll met after the disaster. We’ve been friends ever since.”
“I like Moll,” he said.
“She likes you too,” said Alan, leaning back against a tree. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”
“I’m not tired,” he said. “I don’t like it out here.”
“What, under the stars?” He looked up at the sky, still thick with dust. “Okay, I guess there aren’t any stars right now.”
“What if it rains?” he asked.
Alan looked and realised he had a point. For the weeks he’d been walking with Moll he’d never thought about shelter, always finding somewhere to rest that had some kind of cover to it. Now, as he sat there under the dirty brown clouds made more ominous by the setting sun, he realised he might have to do something about it.
In his pack was an old army poncho and, taking some cord, he strung it across two trees and made crude pegs to tie down the four corners with. Then he gestured for Tim to try it and he wriggled through the gap he’d made, settling down in the dry leaves. Alan made a few adjustments to the guy ropes he’d fashioned and smiled.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I like it,” he said. “It’s like the dens we used to make back when-”
He didn’t finish the sentence and Alan chose not to push him for the remainder. It was clearly still too hard for him to come to grips with his past and he could decide how much, or how little, he wanted to share in his own time. It was obviously painful for him and Alan suspected it had something to do with his parents, now missing and presumed dead.
Poking his head out from under the shelter, he smiled.
“What are you going to do?” asked Tim.
“I’ll sleep under this tree,” he replied, sitting back down. “I don’t sleep that much anyway.”
“Are you still sad?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Alan. “I guess I am.”
He poked the fire and let the sparks dance up into the air.
“Will you ever be happy again?” asked Tim. “So you can sleep properly like me?”
He shrugged. “It’s hard to say. The world is a sad place at the moment.”
“I don’t feel sad,” he said. “I have my tractor and Moll and you and my new boots and my stick.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“And you have Moll and me and...” He screwed up his face in concentration. “...stuff.”
Alan laughed. “Thanks, Tim.”
“Do you think we’ll be alright?”
“You’ll stay with me, won’t you?”
Alan looked at him, feeling the same pangs of guilt that followed on the heels of Martha and Rachel. They’d asked that question too and now they were dead. Where they went he couldn’t follow anymore.
“Of course,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering, that’s all.”
“Don’t forget our promise, Tim.”
“I won’t. Goodnight, Alan Harding.”
“Goodnight, mate.”
Tim rustled his way back into his shelter and Alan stared into the fire, watching the coals glow and pulse with the heat and the westerly breeze that came in gentle gusts. It blew in through the gaps in the trees like the faint breath of the dying and chilled him to the core, sending his thoughts down dark paths he couldn’t find escape from. He saw the world struggling for air. He saw the branches and the leaves of the woodland withering and dying, curling in on themselves and giving up any hope of living again. It was as if the time had come for everything to end, for the ground beneath his feet to yield up its last burst of hope before turning ashen grey and dry as dust and as he prodded the last embers of the fire he felt the tears roll down his cheeks, hot and wet until they fell onto his lap.
His thoughts drifted back to his old life, the one that now felt unfamiliar to him like it was someone else’s and he was just an observer to it. He saw himself working in the garden in early spring, caring for the saplings and the buds, planting new seed into small pots, trimming hedges and cutting grass. He saw himself sweating despite the cold; frosty mornings with their clear blue skies and golden sunlight that dappled the dew sprinkled lawns. He tasted his first cup of coffee in the morning, his lunch wrapped in tin foil, the last cup of tea given to him by the little old lady at number 6, Sea View Crescent.
He saw it all in high definition, yet it wasn’t his anymore. His world was now ash and sorrow and hunger and thirst. His was cold and lifeless and lonely. The dirt on his hands was from burying the dead. He tasted nothing but dust in the morning and his lunch was memory wrapped in darkness. The last thing on his lips was tears, salty and bitter before he sat down without even sleep to comfort him.
How long he stared into the past, he didn’t recall. It felt timeless, never ending, but the pale, dust-darkened morning finally came, recognisable only by the single birdsong that sounded somewhere far off.
At first he didn’t notice it. There was something so familiar to the sound that his mind ignored the first notes until it broke through his torment and shattered it like glass. As the sharp fragments fell to the recesses of his mind, he looked up and saw the bird perched on a branch, taking in the morning air before diving to the ground for a tasty worm. It plucked its breakfast from the soil and leapt back into the air, flying north and out of Alan’s sight.
He stared after it in wonder. Had he imagined it? It’d been weeks since the cloud of radioactive dust had hit England, yet here was this bird, still alive and finding food in the earth.
He stood up and stretched his stiff legs, still unable to take his eyes off the sky to which the bird had flown. Something stirred inside him. Hope? A chance of life? Was it too much to put the last remnants of his fragile faith in the wings of that little creature?
Tim, stirring from his shelter, broke his concentration and he turned from looking to see him crawl into the meagre daylight and smile.
“Good morning Alan Harding,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“You know what, Tim? I think it is.”
After taking a light breakfast, they walked on, continuing west but turning off a little to the south in order to avoid a town signposted as being several miles down the road. When Tim asked him why they weren’t going there, Alan answered that he was worried there might be bad people there.
“Bad people?” he asked.
“Yeah. Some people aren’t always friendly so we must be careful when we travel.”
“Why wouldn’t they be friendly?”
“That’s a good question but sometimes people just don’t want to be nice. I don’t know why.”
“But there could be nice people there too. What if we miss them?”
Alan stopped walking and turned to look at him, mildly irritated that Tim had once again hit the truth.
“Okay. Do you think we should check it out?” he asked. Tim nodded. “But they might not be friendly so I think you and Moll should wait here while I take a look.”
“But what if-?”
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take. Can you do that for me? Wait there and not move at all? Not until I get back?”
Tim looked nervous and he played with the zip of his coat, running it up and down the teeth, avoiding looking directly at him.
“I think so,” he whispered.
“I won’t be long. Moll will stay with you while I take a look. Okay?”
He nodded but it was clear that he regretted suggesting the idea in the first place. Alan walked over to a decrepit garage that stood alone on a plot of land by the roadside and indicated that Tim should wait behind it until he returned.
“Stay out of sight and I’ll come back here. Don’t leave or wander off, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, the tears starting to well up in his eyes.
He was about to walk off but when he turned his back he heard a small sob escape from Tim’s lips. Alan sighed.
“Okay, change of plan. We’ll risk it together.” Tim leapt to his feet and grinned.
“I’ll be really quiet!” he cried. “I promise.”
“You’ll have to be,” instructed Alan. “This is really dangerous. If there are bad people there then we don’t want them to know where we are, do we?”
“No! Never!”
“Okay, we’ll walk down this road here,” he said, pointing. “Then climb higher up onto that hill and see if one of the houses has windows we can look out of. Okay?”
“Okay!”
They set off, following a small road lined with parked cars that would never set off again, never be taken on the school run, never see another garage for a service or a sea-side holiday. Their windows were all frosted up as if given a liberal amount of silver spray-snow and made to look like Christmas baubles of reds and greens and blues. They were all undisturbed and by now their solar cells would be dry and irreparable, nothing more than scrapyard parts and fit only for decoration to break up the monotonous tarmac roads.
At the top of the hill was a housing estate that overlooked the town below and there couldn’t have been more than 20 buildings, arranged in three cul-de-sacs that branched off from the main road that led up the rise and which were coated in a thick layer of dust from the storm. Most of the windows had been smashed and a great number of roofs had caved in, yet only a few hundred feet further down the road the storm seemed to have missed everything, leaving it all untouched.
“This one should do,” said Alan as he gazed at the skeletal dwellings. “I can’t see beyond it because of the fence.”
The door to number 4 was hanging off its hinges so entry was easy enough, though the floor creaked and groaned beneath their feet as they trod a path through the carpet of red dust that littered the hallway. Alan took the steps to the next floor, avoiding the dirty banister rail and catching a glimpse of the empty rooms which yawned open with the draft from a hole in the roof, showing the damage caused by the elements.
In a back room, bare but for a metal bed frame stripped of its bedding, there was a shattered, double glazed window that still had large jagged slabs of glass poking out from it. From here he could see the tops of the buildings that made up the small town in the valley below and which stretched away to the north to where an industrial block, dotted here and there with tall chimney stacks and pre-fab roofing, was planted near the motorway.
Alan scanned the area, looking for any signs that people were down there and what he might expect to find if he
approached them. He didn’t think he’d see anything substantial from this far away, but camp fires or activated machinery would tell him something by their smoke or lights.
“Can you see anyone?” asked Tim, standing next to him in the window and squinting out upon the town with his goggles raised. “I can’t see anything.”
Alan looked this way and that, spotting a tiny little stream of something rising up from the east near a church spire.
“There,” he said, pointing for Tim to follow. After a few seconds he saw it and grinned.
“People!” he said.
“Well, the smoke of someone’s camp fire I think.”
“Can we go and meet them?” asked Tim, barely able to contain his excitement.
“Not yet,” he said. “We’ll sit in here until it goes dark and see what else happens. Then I’ll think about what to do in the morning.”
“They might leave though and we’ll never find them again!” he cried.
“We’re going to have to take that risk,” he said, clearing a patch of dust so that he could sit down. “We can’t go running in there without being sure first. They could be bad people and we don’t want to try and make friends with them, do we?”
“No,” he whimpered. “I guess not.”
“Let’s take a look around these houses and see if there’s anything left for us to use.”
With renewed excitement, Tim grinned and, leading Moll back down the stairs, started to leave to go in search of treasure.
“Tim!” called Alan.
“Yeah?”
“Be careful. Only bring back useful things, okay? Food, water, that kind of thing.”
“I will!”
As the two of them ran off across the cul-de-sac, Alan took a more methodical approach to number 4 and searched each room in turn, moving the dusty furniture and opening every cupboard and drawer until he was convinced that there were no secrets to be found, no missed caches of food or lost items, overlooked by the scavengers and waiting to be found by him. It was clear though that this house, and perhaps all the others, hadn’t been abandoned but in fact evacuated either during or after the eclipse. The lack of bedding, the lack of any kind of family mementos and trinkets, the empty cupboards and drawers weren’t just signs of scavengers but also clear indications that the house had been systematically emptied prior to closing the door and any subsequent searches had turned up nothing.
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