Ousted: A thrilling debut novel of survival and humanity

by James M Hopkins

  “Yea, I think I can just about do that.”

  “I used to be good with this damn thing,” Leighton started. “During the last couple of summers at school I had this friend, I've probably mentioned him before, Henry. He lived down on this massive commune, just outside the nearby village to where I went to school. He had an air rifle as well, so one day, during the summer holidays, we went out into the surrounding woods. In one clearing, we took a load of random items, our air rifles and lunches from the canteen and spent an entire day shooting.

  “So, we lay prone for about eight hours shooting at anything we could find. We had printed targets, positioned small plastic toys that had been left nearby, basically anything that we could stand up and would fall off a log when hit. I was better than him by some way, we did some scoring rounds and apart from shooting from stood, I tended to win the competitions. I think most of his advantage standing was that he was stronger than me. He played rugby and, as you can tell by my physique now, that mean he was much bigger than I was at that age too.

  “We did this for most of two summers. At the end of the second summer, we had gotten good enough that the targets were getting smaller and smaller and our targets were not that much wider than the pellets were. He took it a bit further and started to leave the clearing to shoot rabbits that were a bit of a problem to the commune’s crops. The rest of the inhabitants didn't mind too much. He was eighteen then and anything that was going to stop their crops getting ravaged was supported by enough and had the fact hidden from those that would be too averse to the idea.

  “Henry kept saying that I should go with him, that because I was better on the targets they would be able to kill loads if we hunted together. I always found excuses not to go out with him. I fantasised about doing it, but I never had the bottle to go out and kill a living creature, even though I desperately tried to convince myself it was more than just sport. There was a human benefit to it.”

  “That makes sense though,” Shannon said. “I don't think you have that killer instinct. I can believe that you are good with that gun, I did see you calibrating it and not many shots missed the tree knots you were aiming for.”

  “You think it’s killer instinct? I don't know.” Leighton sighed. “I would have thought given the need that we have for me to get us some food that I would have gotten over that subconscious desire not to kill by now.”

  “Have you killed anything before? In a car, a mouse, insects, anything at all?” Shannon asked with concern.

  “I've killed insects. I normally trap spiders under a glass, we had mice once when I was younger, but we had 'humane' traps and then a cat,” Leighton said.

  Shannon looked despondent. “You've been in fights thought, yea?”

  “Yes, I have been in a few. I have succumbed to a fit of rage once or twice. Pounded on guys that have messed with my mates. Once, at a pub in Dorset, a load of lads came around messing with one of the girls in our group. That resulted in a chair leg to a man's head and a very swift exit.”

  “You!?” Shannon said, wide eyed.

  “Yes, me,” Leighton said sheepishly. “As hard as that may be to believe.”

  “You need to use the rage and emotion from that, or worse. Imagine that squirrel is ten feet tall and about to scratch my face up, like that guy on your girlfriend or whatever.” Leighton opened his mouth to interject with the fact that it was a female friend, not a girlfriend, but she continued. “Embrace the rage and feast on the beast, we need it. Zeke needs it as much as us.”

  “OK, you are kind of messed up.”

  “You need to be more messed up.”

  “First, I will try town, we need carbs for energy, regardless of how much I can hunt. At first light, I will go down and scout for anything that may prove useful. After that, I hunt and I will kill something for you.”

  Chapter 32

  Tariq reached what appeared to be a busy roundabout near the edge of town. Cars were backed up for around a mile before he reached the blank traffic lights at the front. On his way in between the vehicles, he saw some that were sunken into the soft shoulder of the road where part had collapsed. The cars were all empty and only two pockets along the way showed damage. In those pockets, there were wide spaces with cratered concrete where the metal of vans and cars alike had been twisted apart and Tariq was thankful that all the cars had been empty before that had happened. A footbridge above the roundabout had collapsed and the only way that Tariq could get around it was to walk off to the left along the middle of the road and in between the stopped cars.

  Before Tariq reached the next roundabout, he worked on protecting his mind. He focused on the menial task of stepping over potholes and debris amongst the stationary traffic and whenever his mind bolted towards deeper thoughts, he consciously refocused on the simple task. He knew that before he could get back on the road heading west, it would be likely that he would see some real sights of death that this level of destruction must have caused. He dreaded it to his core.

  He took the third exit off the next roundabout and the dual carriageway gave him hope of finding a route back out of town. It didn’t. Instead of taking him away it seemed to lead towards the centre of the town. Ahead of him, a building that had once stood tall, spilled out across the next roundabout. A massive red beam looked as if it had been peeled back and he saw from one of the remaining beams that it formally stood as one edge of a large pyramid. It was so mesmerising, he didn’t notice the shopping complex that stood to his right until he was about half the distance along the straight road. In the direction he was now travelling the traffic was much lighter. A few abandoned cars lined the left side of the road and he had to force his mind from imagining people leaving them as the first bombs dropped in front of them, tearing a landmark apart in front of their eyes. If he had let his mind think on it more, he perhaps would have realised that they must have made some distance as he had seen no-one.

  Tariq noticed the low sun disappear behind one of the buildings to his right as he went. The feeling of needing escape started to wane as he evaluated his tired body. Deciding on finding somewhere nearby to sleep, he came to a stop and reviewed all the buildings around him. He wanted something that stood complete. Something he could rely on not falling in the middle of the night. He saw a potential target over to his left. It was positioned about ten feet below his current road level. It looked whole from his angle which was better than anything else he could see. He continued towards the torn, formally-pyramidal building looking for a way down to that building.

  Tariq’s heartbeat grew loud in his chest, each note beating heavy with reverb as it seemed to fill his whole being. He darted his eyes around the streets looking for any movement. He felt a presence up ahead. His eyes were tricking him, darting around to follow floaters in his vision that he mistook for people walking at the edges of his sight. He suddenly felt something under his foot and Tariq looked down. He instinctively pulled himself away when he saw legs that had caused it. Then he followed the legs up to the hips, torso and eventually a greyed-out face leant up against a fence that protected the drop to the lower level of road. Tariq twitched and moved back around six feet in one sudden jerk. He went to speak an apology, but his stomach took the opportunity of an open mouth to empty itself onto the path between Tariq and the dead woman.

  Once Tariq could lift himself up from being doubled over, the smell of death and sick wrenching at his gut, he took a last glance at the woman’s face. Images of injured women lining Cairo’s streets flurried through his mind and he wretched loudly once more. The red steel splayed out into the air in front of him and he walked uneasily towards it. He fought the urge to look back again, but managed to keep his eyes straight ahead as he aimed towards a road that went down a hill and to the left of the building, bending its way behind it after a short walk. It seemed to head in the right direction for his continued journey. His desire to rest his limbs was counteracted by the desire to not see any more of the dead bodies that must be lining the
roads and the debris in the town. He wanted out. He would rather sleep in the cold, uncovered, than seek shelter in this cemetery.

  As he moved around the building, he saw that the other side had been hit harder. The glass was smashed completely and the steel and concrete that made its construction poured out onto the street. The red support that originally ended at the apex of the building was split back and now ended deep into the middle of the road, breaking apart a traffic island and making a deep pit with curbs stones thrown up and arranged like many broken teeth that restricted Tariq’s view of the impact. His route would have led him to pass underneath the arc, but a bout of superstition took him around, close instead to the old traffic island in the road. As he passed it he saw a shoe, then jeans and finally realised that the body of a teenager had been impaled and stapled to the concrete. Tariq’s stomach rolled, his head went light and he averted his gaze quickly. As if seeing his second dead body close-up was a catalyst, now Tariq noticed other piles of shaped clothes around the edges of the street, limbs twisting out of rubble and corpses lying directly in the road. He retched, but only a spit of green and vile contents came forth and as soon as he was done with it, he started to run.

  Leighton separated some items into an emptied large rucksack to take with him into the town. He wanted to be able to bring back as much food as possible. He knew he had no choice, but to attempt the trip and hope that there were supplies left that he could get hold of. He wanted to go as close to first light as possible to give him the maximum amount of time to find his way and get back while light remained.

  Tariq kept running for twenty minutes. At first it was flat out, running from death, but he gradually slowed as he moved onto tree-lined roads clear of the problems brought by a high population density in a time of war. If something this one-sided could even be considered such. He was then just running to give himself something else to focus on. He focused on deep breaths, the sound of his pounding heart, the feel of the ground reaching every rhythmical step. The road became dark as the sun was blocked out by the trees and then the rises in the land and he slowed to a walk. He let his feet land heavily as he took big gasps of air to rid his muscles of lactic acid. His head was light and felt about to drop. He diverted his path into the treeline and came across a large fallen branch that could provide a little shelter from the cold of night. He unrolled his sleeping bag and pulled a bag of mix nuts and dried fruit from his bag. He nestled himself against the tree trunk. He ate until the exhaustion took him.

  Chapter 33 - Day 8

  As soon as light came, Leighton dressed and collected his prepared necessities. He was on his way within half an hour of waking, leaving Shannon in half-sleep after he kissed her goodbye.

  Leighton kept his head low and followed his left shoulder along a hedgerow running straight in towards the town. A corner shop towards the centre of town became his target. It was the most obvious food store discernible to him through his telescope. He gauged the roads into and through the town, rubble lay thick in places like snowdrifts and dust coated what else was visible so that even the curbs alongside the road were no longer apparent. He was wary that anyone else that was here would not be of a friendly disposition. The bombs had stopped falling and those left would be out for themselves or their own families. Survivors would have an instinct right now that he didn’t want to come across. For this reason, he stopped often and checked by eye and by telescope in all directions. If there was anyone out here, Leighton wanted to know where they were first.

  Entering the boundary of the town, Leighton stayed low, still constantly stopping to check all directions at each junction in the roads. He often had to divert his path around great mounds of debris that sprawled in front of his path. His knuckles were white with the strength of his grip on the axe in his hand. In the places where rubble was clear, bins had spread their contents into the dust. Bird call rang at the edge of his hearing, interrupting the otherwise silent air, but no more than a solitary pigeon showed itself.

  Across his path lay a three-story building collapsed and laid out all the way to the buildings on the other side of the street. His target lay the other side of the wreckage. He stopped with his back against the fallen structure and used his telescope to check in all other directions, including up into the sky near the horizon. No movement. The windows on the next building were all out, but the walls stood. He pulled himself through, treading carefully over plaster and splintered wood. He followed the path through to the back door which was now merely an opening in the wall and joined the open street via a wide gap in the fence.

  The corner shop stood alone on all sides, though was previously terraced. It was three stories with dormer windows and the heavy metal shutters were down. Leighton walked to view the edge that once joined the adjacent building. A door in the far corner caught his attention, easily the most passable entrance as the other side of the building was piled up to the first floor with remnants of its neighbour. He reluctantly fixed the axe to his bag and clambered on all fours over the rubble. He found the door unlocked and pushed it open, but doing so caused the rubble on which he was precariously perched to slide down into the opening. Leighton grasped the edges of the door frame to reduce the weight on his feet and he pulled against the tide of debris pulling his ankles down. His feet worked quickly against the shifting support beneath him, but a wooden joint pulled his foot down and into the sliding mass of debris. As his foot stopped digging its way deeper, he felt a sharp pain just above his ankle.

  He looked down and carefully replaced all his weight onto his free leg. He found that even small movements in his trapped foot was causing a pain to shoot up his leg. He leant down slowly, wincing against the pain. He could only just see through the pieces of wood and concrete that was currently enclosing his calf, but he could just make out a large nail piercing his trouser leg. He could feel the tip of it and it was certainly breaking his skin, but he couldn’t tell how deeply that might be yet. His heel was being supported from underneath, at least that was good, but his toe was underneath a breeze block. The weight wasn’t down, but its position meant that he would need to move his leg back whilst twisting in order to free it.

  Leighton looked out around him. He heard a scratching sound and quickly refocused on his leg. He felt an urge to hurry. The mound of rubble blocked most of his line of sight except for the street that he had come from. He took a deep breath, he had to get his leg free, but he already knew it was going to hurt as he tried to twist around the immovable s of his trap while ignoring the nails path through his skin. His trapped leg tensed as he imagined the movement he would have to make to free it and as it did so it reminded him with a sharp jolt as why he would need to move quickly.

  He breathed deeply again and shuffled his free leg to ensure it was stable enough. He reached his hands down and grasped his calf as close to the ankle as he could reach. A deep filling of his lungs. Slow breath out, eyes focused. A pull and a twist. Leighton groaned heavily and pulled his leg from the hole. His ankle throbbed, with each pump of blood to the area. The pain caused him to shudder. He sat with his arm over his eyes, at one with the warm pain in his ankle.

  The throbbing subsided quickly though, as Leighton realised again where he was. He decided it would be best to check the injury with Shannon there. His focus returned to his wife and son and the food that they desperately needed. He pulled himself back up to standing using the doorframe, placing as much weight as possible on just the one leg.

  He dropped himself inside the shop, feeling blood trickle down over his ankle as he returned his full weight to his feet. It was dark and he let his eyes adjust with the door as closed as far as it would do behind him before moving further inside. Gradually, shapes formed in the darkness and he saw that the shop was still well stocked.

  He placed his bag down and checked the stiletto dagger in his pocket. The first thing he went for was antiseptic which he found alongside some paracetamol and aspirin. Hurriedly lifting his trouser leg up, he poured so
me antiseptic straight onto his cut and winced, doing everything not to let out a yell.

  He went around grabbing any tins of meat and vegetables he could find and shoved them hastily into his bag. He was smiling on the verge of laughing. Salivating at the thought of his next meal as he packed each item. He ripped open a chocolate bar and exhaled deeply as the sugar hit his tongue and he let the wrapper fall straight to the floor, devouring the rest in just a few quick bites. It felt good. He noticed a rack of papers and rolled up one of the freshest looking papers and shoved it deep inside the rucksack with barely a glance as he was then distracted by a five-kilogram bag of rice. He was eager to get back to Shannon and get a full meal on the go now. His stomach reverberated with a sound of agreement.

  A slowly flashing red light caught his attention on the counter and Leighton moved towards it. It was small and Leighton couldn't work out what it was attached to. As his hand moved forward it stopped. The distance was deceiving him against the contrast of darkness around it. He re-focused, reached again and finally found a mobile phone in his hand. Turning the screen on dazzled his eyes, he clenched them shut quickly and then opened them slowly – bit by bit – to pick out the images on the screen. A photo of a young man took up the screen, the battery was on six percent. He focused again. It seemed that the phone had signal and he swiped across the bottom of the screen to unlock it. His parents at the farm had limited signal at the best of times and calls to a mobile would never work, but a text could get through eventually, at the very least a message would be shared, even if they wouldn’t be able to reply.

  He remained sceptical that the signal message was true, even as he typed,