The Fall Series (Book 3): The Fence Walker

by Cross, Stephen

  Abdul stood up. His eyes betrayed fear, but he stood straight. “I won’t let you down.”

  “I know,” said Allen.

  “I’ll go and pack my bag.”

  Chapter 20

  Grace sucked in the petrol through a tube and spat out the foul liquid as it hit her tongue. She quickly transferred the end of the pipe into the carton, and the sound of the petrol hitting plastic gurgled as the container filled. A worn paper sticker indicated the carton used to hold screen wash - usable in any weather, even frost. Must have been some great fucking stuff.

  She eyed the surroundings of the industrial estate carefully; a concrete arena surrounded by shutter fronted units that used to house the small to medium enterprises that kept the country chugging along, the pride and joy of every Mr. and Mrs. Smith who dreamed of a better life for their loved ones. Working to the bone, no doubt. All for what? The shit prize of a rotten world, literally sick to the core.

  Petrol spilled over her hand. She had been lost in her existential musings again. At least she didn’t think she was the Queen of Persia; she imagined lesser minds, having been completely alone for over a year, would have deteriorated to much worse states than hers.

  She threw the pipe onto the ground and let the remaining liquid spill onto the concrete, the dark grey spreading over the tarmac like a virus. Then she’d know all about that, wouldn’t she?

  It was a beautiful day. Not that these sort of things mattered to her too much. She had managed to teach herself to eschew comfort and its trappings. Comfort led to complacency, which led to death. It also led to feelings of warm things, like happiness, hope, love, friends; all the shit that this shit world had taken from her. Give me sunshine, give me rain, it’s all the same. The same refrain, la la la.

  She chuckled at her borderline craziness.

  A noise from behind.

  She dropped her carton and crouched to the ground, fast, like a cat, or a snake, she liked to think. She spun on her heels to face the source of the sound, pulling her crossbow from her back in one smooth and clean motion. By the time she was facing the business unit behind her, the crossbow was level with her eye, primed and ready to fire. Her finger resting gently on the trigger.

  This unit had no shutter. The bright yellow letters at the top said “Burt & Son Filtering Systems.” Who would need filtering systems? Her old laboratory would have used them. Did Burt and Son supply her lab’s filtering systems, and if they did, had it been Burt or his son? Maybe Burt was dead. His Son was probably dead now, too. Most people were dead. Anyway, she doubted Burt and Son could have handled her government lab’s order. Unless the government had spread the contractors across the county, using hundred’s of small guy operations, hiding their tracks. The sort of thing a secret viral lab would do, she supposed.

  Too much supposing. Focus. Fuck’s sake.

  The noise again, something falling over. Grace remained still as a statue, staring into the darkness of the unit until the insides came into focus, her eyes learning to see in the dark through sheer act of will.

  Shadows of machines. A doorway at the back. Shelves with supplies, metal things. Something moving at the back, something that shouldn’t be there. Too tall for a fox or a dog. That was good; dogs could be even worse than the infected. Harder to shoot. Well, in the beginning at least. Not much she couldn’t kill these days.

  She tracked the figure as it emerged from the darkness of Burt & Son’s Filtering Systems. Not a happy customer, by the look of him. A half-peeled scalp flapped in the wind, the once smart white shirt was no longer white or smart. The remains of the fat business-looking man limped onto the parking lot, its feet scraping on the concrete. It seemed so loud. Everything seemed loud in this world, now the machines had gone.

  Grace fired. Clean and true, the bolt burst from her bow with crazed enthusiasm. Less than a second later and the infected fell like a stupid lump of flesh to the ground. The leg twitched, once, then all was still.

  Grace quickly turned through 360 degrees, still crouched, still low; she saw nothing. She faced the unit again. Her crossbow held another five bolts. She waited. There was not much else to do.

  Except she had friends now if she wanted. The man and his daughter. Big hairy Jack and pretty little Annie. She guessed they had come from a happy family once upon a time, the type of family she had passed over in favor of a career under the ground in a secret government lab. Secret squirrel. Stupid squirrel. The pain of regret; she held onto it. It reminded her of the things she wanted but knew she shouldn’t have.

  At least she had no family to mourn. No children. Jack must be a few years younger than her. How much harder to survive in this world with a child. Easier to be on your own.

  So why had she saved them?

  The scream of the little girl had been hard to resist. Grace; strong, independent, cold-hearted Grace, still in the clutch of her genes. A motherly instinct still lived in her, deep down somewhere.

  Musing again, thinking again, For fuck’s sake woman, focus.

  She pushed her legs up slowly and walked towards the unit. She peered in. No more movement, no sign of any other unhappy customers.

  Satisfied she was on her own, Grace retrieved her bolt from the infected’s corpse. She reloaded it into the bow. She picked up the petrol filled carton. Time to get back; no telling what her new friends were up to.

  Grace’s cabin in the woods had a large Natural Trust banner above the entrance. About thirty foot wide, Grace was amazed daily that the cabin stayed hidden, and that no other travelers had found her little home. Maybe there weren’t that many people left to find it. Perhaps the UK was big again.

  She had found it months ago, while in the grip of a particularly nasty cold. Viruses again. The cabin, overshadowed by massive oak trees at the bottom of the dip of a middle-sized hill, was sufficiently hidden to lead Grace to believe it may be safe enough until she got over the cold.

  It had been safe, so far, and she had notched up several months in its rustic comfort. Comfort, bad Grace. But she had to allow herself something, surely? A roof over her head and some warmth. It wasn’t comfort, it was merely survival.

  She had cleared out all the National Trust pamphlets and kid’s activity books, using them as kindling. She had set herself a soft base of foliage and rubbish (the clean kind) to rest her sleeping bag on. There were three rooms: the toilets, the main room that had housed all the information for the errant hikers that used to visit, and the staff room. Small plastic table and chairs with an unusable microwave, electric kettle, and sink.

  Jack and Annie were sleeping in the main room. By the time she got back from the industrial estate, the sun had risen and birds were singing. Grace had expected her two guests to be awake by now; but then, she had no idea what they had been through, how tired they were, how they reacted to stress, etc. Maybe they were just pretending to sleep and when she got close to check they would jump up and beat her death. But she doubted it.

  The little girl looked so peaceful, the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. It wasn’t fair, was it? None of it was fair.

  Grace watched them for a minute longer, then went out the back of the cabin, being sure to close the door quietly, she didn’t want to wake them. A few yards from the cabin, a small stream bubbled gently. She placed the petrol down and used the scoop hanging up by the back door to fetch some water. She went to the staff room, which had become her de-facto kitchen. Grace filled her old metal kettle and started it boiling with her gas stove. The whistle might wake them, but damn, she needed a coffee.

  It boiled, she poured the boiling water into her Natural Trust mug and sat in silence, enjoying her brew. Black of course; she had no idea how to milk a cow.

  Her liquid breakfast finished, she returned to the back of the cabin. The stream babbled as it had done for thousands of years, and would do for the next thousand, she guessed. What did she know, she was a virologist, not a geologist or whoever the fuck studied streams.

  She also
wasn’t an electrician, and it had taken her months to work out how to intercept the power supply to the cabin and replace it with the generator. The generator had come from the same industrial estate, two hours walk away. It was a heavy bugger, and it and had taken her a week to even get the bastard thing back to the cabin. She was sure that carrying it had finally turned her hair grey. Forty-two and she was grey. Well, grey was better than dead.

  The industrial estate had also housed technical documents, papers, brochures, of which many long nights and days of study had finally revealed to her the magic of repositioning an electrical supply. If she was right, all she needed now was the petrol…

  She poured the clear and smelly liquid into the funnel of the generator. She held her breath and turned the key, pulled the string. The device spluttered like a drunk and let out a belch and a roar. Grace jumped back as it started to vibrate, fast and steady, accompanied by a similar sound. Sound like movement, movement like sound.

  It was working.

  In spite of herself, Grace felt excitement within her. The adrenaline, the rushing blood, the fast breaths. The shaking hands. She allowed herself a small smile. Something that everyone took for granted for a few hundred years had reduced her to a drooling idiot. She laughed, quickly covering her mouth; she didn’t think one should laugh in this world.

  The only thing that lay between her and the twenty-first century was the tangle of cut and tied wires that lay on the floor behind the generator. A deep hole had revealed the main’s supply, to which Grace had connected her generator.

  She went back into the kitchen, her steps unsteady. Why so nervous? Because her life was about to change, or not.

  She plugged in the unusable electric kettle and clicked the plug’s switch to on. She turned on the kettle. A red light blinked at her from its base. Grace stumbled into her chair and stared at the light. The sound of the little amount of water in the kettle boiling bubbled from the magical electrical device of wonder.

  Grace jumped as the door to the kitchen opened. It was Jack.

  “What’s going on? What’s that noise outside?”

  Grace laughed, and Jack just stared at her. She laughed, the sound coming from deep inside her, a sound she hadn’t known she was capable of making anymore.

  “Grace?” said Jack.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” said Grace.

  Jack cuddled Annie as she sat up in bed.

  “Don’t worry about the sound. It’s just a generator.” Just a generator, he thought. Electricity. Out here in the middle of nowhere.

  “What’s a generator?”

  “It makes electricity.”

  “Oh. It’s not the zombies then?”

  “No, don’t worry, there’re no zombies here.” That was a lie. They were everywhere. Like rats. They were probably within ten feet of a thousand of them.

  Annie yawned and rubbed her eyes. The turning on of the generator had given her a fright, woke her up with a jump. It had given Jack a fright too. Everything did, it seemed. He held Annie tight, How close had he been to losing her the previous night in the farmhouse?

  “So we’re safe here?” said Annie.

  “We are,” he said.

  “I think so,” agreed Annie. “That lady will keep us safe.”

  That lady. Not Daddy, but that lady.

  “Her name is Grace,” said Jack.

  “Ok. Grace will keep us safe.”

  “Come on, let’s go and see what she’s doing. You need to say hello properly.”

  They found Grace outside by the generator.

  “Hello,” said the woman, her silver hair waving in the light wind. “You must be Annie?”

  Annie nodded, but stood behind Jack. “I am,” she said in a timid voice.

  “I’m Grace,” she said and held out her hand.

  Annie looked up at Jack, he nodded. Annie took Grace’s hand and shook it gently.

  “We have a stream down there. It has little fish in it, shall we go and have a look?”

  Annie nodded again, and Grace walked Annie down to the stream.

  “Is it safe, out here?” said Jack looking around the trees. Thick foliage, hidden shadows. Lots of places to hide.

  “It’s safe,” said Grace.

  The three of them stood on the shallow bank of the little stream. Crystal clear water rolled over smooth pebbles,

  “There’s one,” said Grace, pointing into the water.

  “I see it!” said Annie, smiling.

  Jack saw it too. A little fish, no longer than one of his fingers.

  “They don’t taste too bad either,” said Grace.

  Annie walked along the bank, pointing out more fish.

  “Annie, don’t go too far,” he said.

  “Don’t worry,” said Grace, pointing to a bell on the corner of the cabin. A thin wire, hardly visible, stretched to a nearby tree, where it was held in a pulley, before disappearing into the trees. “I have a perimeter. No infected getting in here without me knowing.”

  As long as it worked.

  “Look, thanks for last night,” said Jack.

  “You’re lucky your daughter screams so loudly.”

  Jack said nothing.

  “What happened?” said Grace. “There was only a few of them when I got there. Should’ve been easy.”

  “I’m not… I’m not used to them,” said Jack,

  “How have you survived?”

  “We’ve been in a holiday camp. Since the Fall. There was a Fence. I looked after the Fence. They never got in. I hardly ever saw them.”

  “A holiday camp? With a fence? How many people?”

  “Nearly a thousand, I think.”

  Grace was staring at him. “A community, a town?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Why aren’t you still there?”

  “Things have changed… recently. The army came.”

  Grace snorted. “You don’t need to tell me anymore. Anything government, army, fuck ‘em.”

  Jack smiled. “What’s your story? You been out here in the Wilds since the Fall?”

  “The Wilds?”

  “That’s what we call out here, outside the Fence.”

  “The Wilds… I guess that’s about right. I’ve been here since the beginning.”

  “On your own?”

  Grace didn’t answer straight away. Her eyes darted down. The same reaction Jack had when people asked him about his wife. “Yes, on my own.”

  “Daddy, look, a frog!” shouted Annie.

  “You’d better go see to her,” said Grace. “I have a few things to check around here. Animal traps. The perimeter.”

  She was walking away before Jack could say anything more. He watched her disappear into the woods.

  His daughter was crouched by the stream.

  “Let’s see that frog then, Annie,” he said, casting an eye to the surrounding shadows of the trees.

  The first snare had a rabbit. Tongue stuck out, body limp. Grace took the rabbit and put it in her small leather side bag to join the wood pigeon. She might cook it in the microwave, just for the hell of it. It would taste like shit, but she would do it because she could.

  But cooking wasn’t the real reason she had nearly killed herself getting the generator working. Her arm went to her backpack and stroked the strap, without thinking. It was the backpack that she had carried since the Fall, since Harry had died. The backpack that hadn’t left her side. She had carried it, slept with it, went to the toilet with it. Its weight was a familiar pressure on her shoulder, a constant reminder of her task, her purpose.

  The other snares were empty. The perimeter was fine, the unbroken fishing line doing its job well, she had to assume. Time to get back.

  It looked like Grace liked to look after herself. The corner of the room that she had set aside for her bedroom had a nice pile of deodorants, face creams, a mirror, tweezers, a razor, and some scissors. It was the final few items that got his attention.

  “What do you think, Annie.
Time for Daddy to freshen himself up?”

  Annie scrunched up her face. “What you mean?”

  “Come and sit here,” he said, picking up the scissors. He didn’t think Grace would mind. He took one of his long dreadlocks, said a quiet goodbye and snipped it off. He waved it in Annie’s face.

  “Ugh, it’s like a snake,” said the Annie laughing with joy. “Let me do one.”

  “Ok, but be careful. These are sharp.”

  Annie took the scissors and snipped off another dread-lock, giggling as she did so.

  Grace couldn’t help but smile when she saw Jack. He had helped himself to her grooming supplies (not too cool) but had smartened himself up (which was cool). It felt better to not be sharing her cabin with the wild man of the woods. His hair was short, uneven and messy, but short. His beard was no longer a bush, but a tidy growth hugging his chin.

  “It’s an improvement,” she said.

  “I cut all the dreadlocks off,” said Annie, holding up a selection of the knots of hair like a trophy.

  “I can see that,” said Grace. “Good for you. Daddy looks a lot smarter.”

  “Thanks,” said Jack. “I hope you don’t mind me using your stuff?”

  Grace waved him away. “It’s ok. Just ask next time. But no problem.” She placed her leather bag down. “You want to help me gut this?”

  Jack looked at the dead pigeon. She saw the side of his mouth curl up in what she supposed was disgust. Aware he was being watched, Jack pulled his face straight. “Sure,” he said.

  They went outside, and Grace slapped the pigeon down on a large slab of stone, stained dark red from previous operations.

  “Ok, take the pigeon, and hold its head. That’s right. Now wring the neck and pull the head off.”

  “What?”

  “Wring the neck and pull the head off.”

  Jack stared at the pigeon for a moment, then did as she asked. The head came off with a small crunch.

  “Now put your fingers down its neck until you feel a hard piece of bone, that’s the breastplate. Cut down each side with the knife.” She watched as Jack clumsily cut into the bird’s chest. “Peel off the breasts. That’s two fillets there.”