Inside, she got as far as the small couch that lined the back wall of the kitchen diner and she sat heavily then lay down on her side. She curled her knees tightly into her chest, bare feet hanging off the edge in front of her were kept from slipping by hands gripped to her shins. Images of Drew flooded her mind’s eye as she remembered him at his worst, high and dishevelled and at his best, caring for Rebecca in her early months of life. These images were replaced by those of Rebecca, her sweet and loving daughter. Her immediate feelings of pride quickly turned to fear for her safety. Mina urged her body to move, but it refused. Immobile, she sobbed into the crook of her arm.
Mina lay hours later in the same position, her tears long dried up and her body drained. She craved sleep again already, to escape the rotation of images and fear that passed through her mind. She needed to escape it. Slowly, she let go of her legs and stretched them out. Twinges of cramp started to flare in her calves, but she couldn’t move any faster and let the pain take hold until she could lift herself up on weak, tingling arms. She took down a glass and poured water, taking a sip to sooth her parched throat. Popping out a new cocktail of medication onto the counter top took effort against her shaking hands. She realised that she hadn’t eaten since this morning, but the mere thought of eating was too much and her stomach rolled sickeningly. The last packet read ‘Flurazepam’. With that she would surely be able to sleep through a dreamless night, even from this early. She took the eight tablets in quick succession. She felt as though she could feel them run down into her stomach, her dry and contracted throat held the memory of them for long after she took a cigarette whilst sat on the kitchen floor.
Her body shut down before her mind could. She leant herself against the corner of two kitchen cupboards listening to the dripping of the tap above her head. Grey edges closed around her vision, feeling like they were pressing dully against the insides of her head. It hurt, but she took solace in the haze as it overwhelmed her completely.
Tariq’s sickness lingered after he ate and continued his walk across the fields. At the next rise in the land, he saw a narrow road heading west and cut through the centre of an unplanted field to reach it. He felt happier being back on his bike. Throughout the hour that he ate and walked with his bike on his shoulder, he couldn’t stop himself from turning to look back over his shoulder as if he would be able to see the fallout tearing through the air to hunt him down. In reality, he had no idea whether he would know if he was safe or not. He could see on his reddened skin that he was certainly not far enough away from the blast at the time to escape all the ill effects. Maybe he wouldn’t know for years to come exactly how badly affected he would be.
He shook those thoughts away, focusing on the rhythm of his legs. He pushed hard until his legs were again burning, which didn’t take long. He focused on that dull pain and kept to his pace forcing himself to look only forward. He listened attentively for any sound of vehicles behind him, but all was quiet except for the wind rushing past his ears. He realised he was pushing into the wind as he rode over the top of a shallow rise and it occurred to him that it should be reassuring, but it didn’t settle the persistent nervousness that followed him as surely as he felt the fallout would be.
Gradually slowing, in part due to tiredness and in part due to feeling more self-assured, the dark settled around him equally as gradually. Tariq realised that he would need to find somewhere to stop soon. He fancied getting some shelter now that he had ridden so far. Being out in the open was not as appealing as it had been this morning when he was still full of the adrenaline that beginning an adventure brought. He was still well out into the countryside which is exactly where he wanted to be. He didn’t like the idea of being caught in a large crowd surrounded by riots and other humans reacting in inhuman ways, trying to cram in as much life as possible before the end came. He hoped that he was wrong, that instead he would see human compassion, but too many years living in a capital city such as London as a journalist had tainted his outlook. The previous protests that inevitably turned violent, the riots and looting that seemed to be growing in regularity, confirmed the way he should feel. It was entirely a nurtured feeling and deep down he wanted to trust humanity.
Ahead he saw a small strip of land separated from a larger field by a low hedgerow. Tariq slowed and saw that it looked like an allotment of sorts, though why it should be out here made no sense to him. The shed looked poorly built and no doubt easy enough to break into so he dismounted and walked over to the iron gate that blocked the larger field from the road. A smaller wooden gate, tucked into the corner allowed him access to the smaller. The shed was padlocked, but it was not heavy. Tariq pulled out one of his bike tools and simply unscrewed the rusting staple from the shed wall. The walls were mostly lined with old, rusty tools, those that were new amongst them were shorter or smaller than the older counterparts and Tariq supposed a farmer must have given this patch to a child or their children to tend. The idea warmed Tariq as he dusted out the floor of the shelter just enough to slump down and take a drink. His legs were tired beyond anything he had felt before, his mind was too tired to reprocess any of what had happened today and those thoughts lingered out of reach like the fading memories of a dream in the minutes after waking.
He laid out his light sleeping bag and a thought dawned on him. At first it came with feelings of pride. He was right. At the very least there were some people out there that were right and he put his faith in those people to guide the last few weeks of his actions. After a small time, however, the pride waned and anger and disappointment rose. He could have saved others. He had no idea what the death toll would be for sure, but maybe, just maybe, if he had got that article out there, some would have escaped the country or spread out into the countryside and lowered the death toll. The last thing that stayed with him in the moments before sleep was a dash of concern at the sickness that he felt in his stomach.
Darkness set in and the couple and their son took refuge in the tent. Shannon and Leighton ate a little of their army supply food, protein and vitamins compressed into something like a toothpaste tube. It gave more sustenance than satisfaction, but it would keep them going till they could set up and start catching fish or game as was the plan. After an hour of darkness, the noise began. Rumbling started en masse, seemingly from all directions, turning into distant explosions.
Most of the precise noises must have been at least two miles away, but still shook the trees and startled them away from the edges of sleep. They lay in the tent with Zeke in between them to keep him away from any of the cool condensation that was formed on the inside of the tent wall. They had a four-person tent that split into two rooms and separated from a central area leading to the opening flap. The opposite room held their jackets bags and tools. The room they set up as the sleep room was simply laid with a thick roll up sleeping bag atop a blanket. Leighton slept the side nearest the edge so that Shannon and Zeke were nearer the centre of the tent.
Zeke always loved coming into bed with his parents and in the tent, it was no different. He felt the warmth of his parents’ bodies next to him and was comforted, falling asleep quickly. It was said that white noise was reminiscent of the sounds of the womb. In this case it was the sound of jet engines that provided an audio backdrop for his ease into sleep.
Shannon was more than adept at sleeping still with Zeke able to hug onto her in the night. Leighton, however was a restless sleeper at the best of times and struggled with knowing that if he rolled over the wrong way he could crush his own tiny son. He lay rigidly on his back staring at the dark roof of the tent. He tried to calm his thoughts, focusing on the sounds around them. With open ears, he tried to determine every scratch and scrape of the creatures, desperately listening for anything to indicate danger heading towards them. Even though the most obvious dangers were from the skies, it was the possibility of the footsteps of men that worried him most. That’s what he listened for with fear.
Before he was fully asleep, Zeke awoke, throwing
his legs and arms against the ground. Shannon seamlessly awoke and rolled him towards her to allow him to take hold, instantly receiving a soothed response. Shannon fell asleep again almost instantly, the sound of Zeke's cheeks sucking in milk was soothing and finally led Leighton to his own sleep.
Strive
Chapter 18 - Day 1
Tariq awoke to the sight of dust motes dancing through thin beams of light entering the shed from the gaps in its construction. The air was thick with them and perhaps it was the sight alone that caused Tariq to cough and hack wildly for a few moments before pushing the door wide open and stepping – squinting – into the light.
It was bright, but he could only see a dull yellow circle blurred behind the clouds low to the horizon. “Well, at least I know which direction not to travel,” he said to no-one. As he took in his surroundings of flat fields lined by hedgerows and his eyes adjusted to the light of day, he realised that whichever direction he faced, the same haze resided. It was like fog, but had a certain dirty quality to it that distorted the image of the horizon. It was thicker to the south and that concerned him.
He packed away his things quickly and was wearing his bag and supplies ready to go as he walked back out, eating a dense granola bar that he had saved for this very occasion. There was something about the landscape and the fog that urged him to get away from it as quickly as he could, but as far as he knew he had been sleeping in it all night and a few minutes to get his bearings was probably much more valuable to him in the moment. He pulled from his jacket’s pocket - that also contained his recorder - a small scrap of paper. It had on it a list of towns in the order that he should follow them to attempt to meet up with AH. Unfortunately, it had been written with starting from home in mind and the first few names on the list would be too far south and west for him go searching for by them by road signs. He placed the paper back in the pocket and pulled out the recorder. “Day one,” he said. He thought for a moment for what to say next. For once in his life, he had no further words.
He looked down at the last bite of the snack bar and imagined the brown dust settling on it and wrapped it up, returning it to a pocket along with the paper of directions. Hopefully when he came back to it later he would forget the image and eat it anyway. He had to dust off the handlebars and seat before he pushed his bike across the long grass to the road. Tariq took another glance toward the ill-looking, dust stricken sun before he started away in the opposite direction.
The sun shone through the leaves and cast mottled shadows on the side of the tent. Leighton and Shannon felt unslept, but at least in having a young baby they weren't unused to the feeling. Leighton crawled out of the tent and stretched deeply in the cool low sun. The axe in his hand cleanly reflected the light back along the arc of its blade and a thick plastic canteen draped its tubing around his forearm. Shannon joined him, placing her hand against his bare back to let him know she was there. The night wasn’t too cool and they were easily warm enough with the body heat of all three of them in a double sleeping bag.
Shannon was wearing one of Leighton’s thick shirts that she had borrowed to sleep in and the hem hung halfway down her thigh as she shook the blood into her legs. She watched Leighton trudge onwards through the brown earth under the broad-leaved trees that covered their tent and eventually out into the field that met it at its edge. Once the drop of the land took him out of sight she crawled back into the tent to see to Zeke.
The walk to the stream was around half a kilometre and trying to get used to the new environment, Leighton stopped regularly to get his bearings, making sure to keep the route back to the tent obvious. That was clear from a half-broken branch that bobbed listlessly with the wind. At the top of a low rise between the camp and the water, he stopped to take his small telescope from one of his deep pockets. He caught sight of the edge of a town in the distance, he could tell even at that distance that it would be as decimated as his home town now was. He folded the telescope away quickly and thrust it back into his pocket before the macabre urge to keep looking overwhelmed him. A chill wind pricked his skin and he shuddered before continuing.
Shannon and Zeke both drank well upon Leighton’s return. He realised that he should have taken a rucksack and all the bottles the first time as he saw that half of what he had collected had already been off. A lesson for his imminent second journey. Shannon oversaw rationing and did so carefully for their breakfast meal.
The rations they had would last a week, so long as the temptation of overeating was kept at bay, they would certainly have to get used to the feeling of hunger. Trips to a nearby stream were to become a regular excursion for Leighton. It was very close to a spring that he took it from and it was as clear and clean, perhaps more so, than their tap water at home. Both adults were numb, barely speaking to each other and certainly not about anything that may conjure up any more harrowing imagery than they were already battling. They both knew each other felt the same and both fought it themselves. Energy was conserved whenever and wherever possible, the only excursions were that of Leighton for water and a short walk to the edge of the treeline by Shannon and Zeke. It was too soon to have a plan when they couldn’t speak more than a few words to each other without welling up or shedding tears.
Mina awoke with a terrible migraine firing off in the side of her head. She pushed herself away from the kitchen cabinet and an equally sudden pain in her neck joined it as the weight of her head pulled down suddenly. She had slept with her chin on her chest as the back of her head was held aloft by the cupboard doors. Rolling on to her side she clasped the side of her head and tried to stretch her neck against the crick which caused her to gasp for a breath. She stretched her legs straight, her ankle rubbing against the wooden floor, and managed to fight off a cramp in her calf before it managed to manifest fully. “Bastard,” she called out into the air.
A few moments of rolling around trying to get the various pains through her body under control, she realised that she was going to have to get up. The order of the day was to be coffee, painkillers and cigarettes. The electric kettle stood out against the thick hardwood counter tops that fitted the style of the building, but she counted herself lucky to see that it still held enough water and she turned it on. She fumbled around the kitchen wildly, catching herself from falling several times and having to offer up a blind flurry of hands to stop a cascade of mugs from reaching the hard-tiled floor. Eventually, the kitchen gave up its bounty and she left a fragmented trail of coffee on her way to the porch outside.
Leaving the porch with the dark ringed coffee mug and fresh cigarette butts in the ashtray, she felt clearer and the smells of her garden drew her down to check on progress. The sun kept the heat of the coffee inside her and she walked slowly down the middle of the garden, occasionally brushing her hands against plants and smelling their effect on her finger tips. She bent down to check the leaves of one of the potato plants and decided before she fully rose again, that lying down in the long grass would be much more beneficial than the rising headache that would have afflicted her had she done so.
When she did eventually stand up, the sun had moved significantly across the sky. She felt the need to get herself moving again and spent time slowly weeding through the patches of earth, pulling the broad vegetable leaves aside as she recreated space between each of the plants that she wanted. By the mid-afternoon, she took to going over the grass with her hand-push lawn mower. Twenty minutes into it a whisper of a thought came to her mind. Drew.
She brushed it off as she turned herself and the mower around, but only made it halfway across the strip before the whisper returned. This time it carried more force and the images and memory of the day before came flooding through every part of her conscious mind. She let herself down to the ground, her head coming to rest in a deep covering of cut grass. Her inner voice screamed and the vision of the inside of her eyelids was peppered with bright pinpricks of light.
She lay still for the best part of an hour before she returned to t
he house, barely having even a curtesy brush down of her clothes that were clung to by dry clumps of grass. Her clothes were left in the hallway before she ventured – with tablets and a glass of water in hand – up to her carpeted bedroom. As tired as her mind was, it was still proving to be unbearably full of noise and she needed her escape. She needed sleep and she wasn’t going to make the same mistake as last night for the benefit of just a few moments between her and her bed. The darkness enveloped her again and a reprieving silence overwhelmed her thoughts.
Chapter 19
After riding west for an hour - quickly at first, but slowing as he realised his stomach couldn’t stand up to his usual pace – he came across a sign towards one of the place names on the list. This meant that he must have drifted south a fair way, but at least he had joined on the right path a third of the way down the list. Coming from the other direction meant that he was diverted off towards the next town before he reached the town itself. This pleased Tariq as it made it feel like he was ahead and able to mentally cross the names off quicker and quicker as he wound along tight roads into deeper countryside.
Tariq rarely looked far beyond the stretch of road just ahead and the direction signs at any interchanges. He kept a steady pace, fighting down the feeling of sickness that surged whenever his pace did and as time went on he had to slow more and more to do so. At each point, he stopped and had his breath back, he filled in the gaps in his recorder’s timeline piece by piece. By the time he had just two names on his list above the street address, he felt decidedly light headed. He knew he was close and moving slowly was far better than stopping, especially as only a small percentage of what had been a three-hour journey so far remained ahead.
Ousted: A thrilling debut novel of survival and humanity Page 10