by Cole, Robert
Reaching up impulsively, she ran her hand down the side of his face. ‘Oh, Alex, despite the fact that you drive me crazy sometimes...’ Her voice tapered off. She smiled warmly, but the smile could not wipe away the depth of sadness behind.
He leant across and kissed her softly. ‘I understand,’ he said quietly.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think you do.’
Gently he brushed away some of the hair from her face.
‘It's ready, isn't it?’ she asked.
He nodded.
She gave him one final, emotional hug, but the next moment she was out of bed and quickly throwing on clothes from the wardrobe. The tenderness she had shown a minute earlier had vanished. Already she was bracing herself for the coming ordeal.
They reached the garage to find that Cliff and Roy had completed their final checks of the raft. They had also attached two ropes to the front to help drag it to the shore. After a rapid discussion on tactics, they switched off their torches. Alex strapped his rifle to his back and Cliff and Roy swung back the garage doors. In silence they took up their positions on the ropes and pulled the raft out into the freezing night air.
The day, towards its close, had been violent and bloody, but the evil seemed to have worked itself out for now, and sleep had overtaken aggressor and potential victim alike. The raft glided noiselessly through this artificial calm, centimetre by centimetre, metre by metre, across the snow. When five minutes had passed, Alex estimated there was still another thirty metres to go, most of it on the road before they hit the shallow incline of the beach. Then there would be a further ten metres of ice encrusted gravel before they reached the water. Roy and Tina were pulling at one rope, Alex and Cliff at the other. In front was total darkness, with only the sound of small waves breaking on the ice bound shore to guide them. Alex couldn't remember being more frightened. It would only take one torchlight trained on the raft for a few seconds and everyone within hundreds of metres would know what was afoot. They had already agreed what to do if that happened. Only if they were overrun by an armed mob would they desert the raft. Anything less and they were all prepared to fight. After the events of the past afternoon, no one was going to give up the chance to leave these shores without a struggle.
The road surface was safely traversed and the powdery snow gave way to ice as they reached the shallow descent to the water. After a few more metres, Alex's feet struck gravel. Cliff slipped and went down, recovering himself with a volley of curses.
‘Shut up!’ Alex hissed.
Still there was no answering light from the shore, although here and there, far off, a shout or a scream was occasionally heard. Then, further on, the inevitable happened. The raft struck a patch of gravel where the tide had eroded away the ice, and the tin drums produced a rasping sound, which made Alex's hair stand on end. They stopped pulling at once and looked around anxiously. All was quiet. The raft was too heavy to lift, so there was no other choice but to continue. They all strained again at the ropes. The scraping echoed and resonated along the shore, stirring up the tranquil night. Squares of windows were suddenly illuminated only fifty metres away. Then a large spotlight found them. Voices rang out in anger and footsteps could be heard pounding in their direction.
Alex looked around; the sea was no more than five metres away. ‘PULL! PULL!’ he screamed.
The raft lunged forward again. Beads of sweat were pouring off his face. The shouts were much nearer now. The raft gained momentum down the shallow incline to the sea. Three or four smaller lights came bobbing up, held by running figures, waving clubs and yelling as they closed. Alex's feet struck water. His chest was heaving. Cliff fell again, but dragged himself upright quickly. Alex's own feet struck floating ice, which brought him to his knees. The grating stopped as the raft hit water, but the mob was almost on them. With his heart pounding he fumbled for the strap of his rifle and turned to face them.
The leaders were several large youths brandishing what appeared to be carving knives. Alex fired directly over their heads, then dived to the back of the raft to join the others who were already frantically pushing it out to sea. The leaders faltered for a moment, but only to give the rest of the gang time to catch them up. Then they surged forward again, wild, merciless faces in the torchlight.
Alex hesitated for a second, vaguely aware of the shouts of the others behind him imploring him to shoot. Then the rifle came up and he was shooting like a madman, bullets tearing into flesh, bodies jerking backwards, again and again. He saw predation turn to terror as the impetus of the mob was broken. His own body seemed to be on automatic, functioning without his mind's permission. Then there was nothing, his ammunition was spent. He was in total darkness again and the screams of revenge were all about him. Mechanically he dropped back to the others who were still pushing the raft through the knee deep water. A single torchlight, probing the dark, touched his face. The mob sensed that his rifle was empty and renewed their attack. Cliff and Roy turned together at his side, each with a knife in one hand and a lump of wood in the other. Tina had jumped up on the raft and was impotently trying to paddle with one of the oars. The water was now up to their thighs.
A youth about the same height as Alex tried to split his head open with an iron bar. Alex blocked the stroke with his rifle, then rammed the butt into the youth's face. He went down, but two more immediately took his place. Then the dancing torchlight slipped from someone's grasp, and again the mob was thrown into confusion. Arms threshed about in the darkness, people fell, screams and shrieks rang out all around Alex. He weaved to the right and struck into the darkness where he had last seen one of his adversaries. His rifle only found empty space. Lunging back to where he supposed the raft to be, he found nothing. A wave of panic almost paralysed him, then he heard Tina's frantic voice rising above the turmoil. The raft must have been more than five metres away. He dived back further, pushing his way between members of the gang that had surged past him. Something heavy crashed into his shoulder. Swinging round with all his strength, he brought his rifle to bear, this time, with better effect, judging by the thud and cry of pain. Then he discarded the weapon and dived. The freezing sea struck his face and robbed his lungs of air. After a few strokes he was forced to surface. He could hear the waves lapping against the raft and the splashes and agonised screams of a struggle only metres away. Grasping for air, he swam on, dimly registering the frantic voices of his friends. He felt for the corner of the raft, found it and hung on, too exhausted even to cry out. Beside the raft, the battle still raged. The other three were mounting guard, desperately calling to each other, as the mob tried to scramble aboard.
Directly above him he heard Tina scream, then there was an enormous splash as something fell off into the water. To Alex's horror he saw Tina surface next to him, spluttering and screaming hoarsely as though some dead weight were dragging her down. Then her voice vanished completely. Alex nearly went berserk. He felt the head and shoulders of someone and his feet touched another body, Tina’s, being held beneath the waves. He gripped the head of the man who was holding her under and dragged him down. Tina surfaced again, gasping and spluttering, but her agony only reinforced his rage. He dived deep, dragging the struggling man down after him. There in the depths, he put his knee in the man's back and pulled his head back with all his strength.
Nearly a minute later he broke the surface once more and cried for help. Cliff and Roy responded immediately. After a last desperate lunge toward their voices Alex was pulled on board. Tina lay severely winded and exhausted beside him. The last of the attackers had been repelled; the paddles were in the rowlocks, and they were rowing for their lives.
CHAPTER 6
Eleven hours had passed since the battle on the Somerset shore. The raft now lay close to the coast of Wales. There was no wind; it had died with the coming of day, leaving a lumpy, agitated sea, which periodically flung ice onto the deck. Roy, Cliff and Alex were at the oars, stroking mechanically. They had discarded their wet clothing in pref
erence for layers of plastic sheeting, in which, swathed from head to foot, they looked like three monstrous grubs emerging from cocoons. Tina had on the few items of clothing that had not been soaked in the struggle. To these, Alex had added what remained of the sheeting. In spite of this, however, she continued to shiver uncontrollably and her teeth chattered like castanets. Every so often the noise would drive him to her side, where he would wrap himself around her till the shivering eased. But he knew she was growing weaker by the hour, and the urgency to reach Wales and find a place for her to rest soon forced him back to the oars. Each time he returned he would row like a madman till his arms ached and he heaved for breath. Then, exhausted, he would pause momentarily, and begin again in a listless, sullen fashion, silently caught up in his own torturous thoughts.
But now, with the shore so close, their strength seemed to return. The raft was crashing through sloppy seas toward a long spit of land less than two hundred metres away. Fifty metres short of land the front timber stuck a solid sheet of ice and stuck fast. Alex jumped out immediately and tested the strength of the ice. When he found it would bear his weight, he wasted no time in lifting Tina out of the raft and carrying her towards the beach. Roy and Cliff were left to pack up the supplies and hurry after him.
They had gone only a short distance when Tina started to complain. She was not an invalid, she protested, she still had legs and he had no right to assume she had forgotten how to walk. He dumped her so fast that she landed on her backside, where she sat quivering slightly; Alex wasn't sure whether it was from rage or the cold. But she didn't get angry, instead she rose to her feet, brushed away some of the snow and strode on gamely.
Alex hovered round her, noticing the rigid way she held herself, straining for each step. He blamed himself for letting her stay for too long in wet clothes at the beginning of the crossing. They had all been too busy to notice the state she was in. Her clothes had seemed to draw all the heat and strength from her. It was only when she started to shiver violently that he realised that something was wrong. At once he had ordered her to strip and put on the remaining dry clothes from the supplies. He had then cut up the roll of plastic and layered it over her. At Cliff's suggestion she had tried rowing for a while to warm herself up, but it was agony to watch her, so Alex had been reduced to periodically holding her tight. It was like trying to warm a sheet of ice. At times during the night he almost felt she was slipping away. Worst of all had been the moment a few hours past dawn, when she suddenly stopped shivering. He rushed over, rubbed her hands, talked to her and slapped her gently on the face to force her to respond. Finally she did so; and later she began to shiver again. To see her now, actually walking, stubbornly resisting his attempts at assistance, made him feel very proud. But he knew that this effort must have drawn on her last reserves of strength.
He drew alongside her. ‘We'll stop at the first house we reach.’
She nodded. ‘You know what I was dreaming about on the raft?’ she said, her voice taking on a whimsical quality. ‘I was dreaming of falling asleep in front of an excruciatingly hot fire, after consuming a dozen cups of steaming soup and feeling the warmth seep right down to my toes.’
‘That shouldn't be too difficult to arrange,’ Alex said brightly. ‘Even if we have to sacrifice the furniture we'll build a roaring fire just for you. And I’m sure we can cook up something resembling soup from the supplies.’
She managed a faint smile, which slowly faded. ‘Was it you who pulled that brute off me when I fell off the raft?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Yes, it was.’ What he had happened afterwards was something he didn’t care to dwell on.
‘I thought so. I heard you groan, you see…when I surfaced, I mean. I heard you groan, then jump on top of that animal. I've really been getting my money's worth out of you recently, haven't I? It seems to be a full time job just keeping me alive.’
The plaintive note made Alex put his arm around her shoulder, and draw her reassuringly close. ‘You'll be doing the same for me one of these days, I've no doubt.’
‘Yeah,’ she said mournfully, and the single word was so barren of conviction that he knew his attempt at comforting her had failed.
The shore, to which chance had brought them, seemed sparsely inhabited. Houses stood here and there, but with no lights on, and they met no one in the narrow lanes they travelled along. Finally, they selected a two storey place a short distance from the shore. It was a red brick house with a slate roof and beautiful wooden trimmed bay windows. The front door, as expected, and some of the windows, had been kicked in and the place had been ransacked. But the lounge was still intact and it had a large, ornamental fireplace, complete with an intricately woven hearthrug.
They searched the rooms briefly to be sure they would not have company, then the men set about lighting the fire, while Tina rested on one of the lounge chairs. There was no firewood in the house, so Alex poked around picking up anything that looked as if it would burn. The place was bursting with antiques and silverware. The owners seemed to have had very good taste. Ornate cups and candlestick holders, seventeenth and eighteenth century paintings and beautifully carved wooden statuettes adorned every shelf or cabinet space. Alex collected them by the armful and carted them off to the fire. This would surely rank as the most expensive and sacrilegious fire he had ever made, he thought wickedly, but this was no time to be reverential. Roy found some matches and with the aid of some old newspapers, and a generous number of eighteenth century oil paintings, Cliff was soon nursing a few tentative flames. The carvings, which were tinder dry, and a few antique chair legs, quickly built it into a blaze.
Tina discarded her plastic sheeting and curled up on the hearthrug with only her jumper and jeans on. Cliff and Roy wrung out and aired the rest of the clothing, while Alex rummaged through the packs for something to eat. They had run through most of their water, but at Cliff's suggestion he found an uncontaminated supply in the hot water tank in the roof. There was no food at all in the cupboards, but all the culinary equipment that a master chef could require. He mixed flour and water, grated cheese over it, and tipped the concoction into a shallow baking dish. With cans of beans and a packet of noodles, he made a passable soup, which he spiced up with beef stock cubes. Everyone commented on what an excellent meal he had cooked. Nothing was left uneaten.
Afterwards, when the warmth of the fire had penetrated every bone, with their bellies full and out of any immediate danger, they one and all fell fast asleep. They didn't wake up till the morning of the following day.
Several more days were spent at the house regaining their strength. The men recovered quickly, but Tina seemed barely to be holding her own. Although she had partaken of the meal with the others, when they first arrived, she could not be persuaded subsequently to eat much. Her nausea attacks continued and generally culminated in a dry retching that seemed to tear at her insides. She also developed a cough and a sore throat, symptoms not usually associated with radiation sickness.
Alex worried about these most of all because it was obvious that her weakened immune system was allowing secondary infections, which could easily kill her in her enfeebled state.
As her illness continued, he went to extreme lengths in his attempts to try and shield her from any possible source of stress or exertion. He not only searched the house thoroughly, but he persuaded Cliff and Roy to help him rummage through the medical cupboards of the nearby houses for any drugs which might help her.
Their endeavours brought them, time and again, to scenes of tragedy and despair. More than once, in some deserted property, they found the badly hacked corpses of the previous occupants lying in the kitchen or dumped across the entrance to a ransacked larder, their blood frozen in black puddles around them. But at length, in a dusty bathroom cabinet in a partly burnt out cottage, Roy came upon some broad-spectrum antibiotics and Panadol tablets, which made the search worthwhile.
Alex immediately gave them to Tina. He fussed over her at night too, bul
lying her to take her pills, or to go to bed, or to eat all the food he had piled on her plate. By the end of the fourth day his efforts were rewarded. Her fever had subsided, her sore throat had gone and her diarrhoea had eased. Only then did Alex finally listen to the pleas of Cliff and Roy that they resume their journey north. Cliff had estimated that it would take them well over a week to reach North Wales. The food they had with them would be exhausted before then if they did not start soon.
They set out the following day. The war damage was less than in England, although most houses appeared to have been vandalised in some way. The snow also had the same gradation of greys. But this landscape had an altogether different feel; one of desolation, vacancy, abandonment. One had the impression that nothing living, man or beast, existed for hundreds of kilometres.
They also stumbled on scenes of recent conflict; and there were some sights to which they could never be inured. In one place the surface of the snow was interrupted by a large numbers of mounds. When they started to walk across these areas their feet struck many bulky objects under the snow. Cliff and Roy, kicking with their heels, found that the snow was stained with blood. The hard objects were bodies, hacked, shot, even blown apart with missing limbs. One such battleground in particular stayed with them in their minds. The mounds here were scattered over some distance. At their centre a large building had formerly stood, now reduced to a few charred walls. Surrounding its entrance were an array of military trucks, vehicles with machine gun mounts and armoured cars. All these vehicles had been gutted by fire or turned over on their sides. The bodies of soldiers still hung from the windows and doors, the snow heaping on them indifferently.
Alex could not suppress a brutal satisfaction at seeing the military, here at least, overrun. It seemed only right that after all the suffering they had inflicted in other places that somewhere, at least, the tables had been turned. But how costly this victory must have been, that men should be prepared to fight against machine guns and mortars! Surely the building must have been the main food store for this region, and starvation must have driven the people to such desperate courage. Where were they now, the survivors of this carnage, and would they turn their wrath on a group such as themselves? Though the battle was clearly some weeks old, they moved cautiously for several kilometres, determined at the very least to sell their lives dearly, if need be. But houses and streets and roads were as desolate as before; they did not meet a living soul.