Reaper

by Jon Grahame

  He stopped the car and they got out. Fishing boats swayed at their moorings and the gulls swooped and screeched. The water sparkled in the sun and the air was free of the aroma of burgers, fried onions, fish and death. This had been a happy feeding ground for the gulls when fishermen, anglers and leisure sailors had used the harbour and tourists had used the resort.

  Now they had to fend for themselves.

  The Harbour Office and Port Control were located on this, the main and broader of the three stone piers.

  Between the fingers of the other two were the pleasure craft, still at rest. Perhaps forever at rest. In the far corner were the tower of the helter-skelter and the Ferris wheel of the small Luna Park amusements. Rising behind the harbour, the steep hillsides of the headland were ringed by the walls of Scarborough Castle. The bay that spread to their left, as they faced the shore, was lined with deserted shops, restaurants, pubs and amusement arcades facing an empty beach. The clifftops above were filled with hotels, their sightless eyes staring out to sea.

  Reaper and Kate still carried their carbines as they stretched their legs in the sun. The more they all got used to handling the guns the better. They were ten minutes early. He had been to the town three times on holiday as a child with his parents, who had an affinity for the place despite living so far away. He had resisted doing the same when he had his own family, but his choice of the Haven one summer had been influenced by its close proximity, and they had visited and enjoyed its typical English seaside robust-ness. He looked along the Foreshore and tried to pick out the fish and chip shop they had visited. He was brought back to the present by the arrival of Sandra and Jenny in the red Astra van. He was grateful. He had avoided sweet memories for such a long time that he didn’t know how he might react if once more confronted by them.

  The back of the van was full. The girls climbed out.

  ‘Any problems?’ he asked.

  ‘No problems,’ said Sandra. ‘We met a couple of people. They were wary but okay.’

  Jenny said, ‘They seemed disorientated.’

  ‘They are waiting for the Yanks to arrive,’ said Sandra.

  ‘No, really! They think America is still okay and that before long they’ll send troops to clear everything up.’

  He took the holdall from the back of the MPV and put it on the low harbour wall.

  ‘Two flasks of coffee, black, no sugar,’ he said, taking them out of the bag and placing them on the wall, along with plastic mugs. He also took out a tin of coffee whitener and a plastic container of sugar.

  ‘There’s also bottles of fruit juice and Lucozade. And the menu for today is cheese, corned beef and salmon spread.’ He lifted out handfuls of baguettes, individually wrapped in kitchen foil.

  ‘When did you do all this?’ asked Kate.

  ‘I baked the bread during the night. Made up the sandwiches first thing. We could have had fish and chips but . . .’

  The poor joke hung in the air for a second.

  ‘But these are better,’ said Sandra. ‘Which are which?’

  ‘Do you know,’ he said. ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  They unwrapped the sandwiches, took their choice, poured coffee and had a picnic. Kate and Jenny sat on the harbour wall and Sandra opened the passenger door of the Astra and perched sideways on the seat with her feet on the ground. They exchanged information about where they had been and what they had done, although Reaper left out the details of the hospital.

  It was enough to tell them they had found no doctor.

  As they were finishing, a Range Rover appeared from a street leading onto the harbour side over to the right.

  ‘’We’ve got company,’ Reaper said. They put down the coffee mugs and the girls swiftly got to their feet.

  ‘Stay behind the cars,’ he said. ‘Don’t threaten with the guns, but be alert.’

  He walked forward between the two vehicles until he was clear of them. He glanced back as the Range Rover approached slowly along the Sandside road.

  Sandra was closest to the sea wall, Kate directly behind him and Jenny to the beach side of their vehicles. At least they looked the part: all dressed alike; the baseball caps aggressive beaks upon their heads; the carbines cradled in their arms; their trigger fingers in the correct position alongside the finger guards of the guns. All looked determined and capable. He hoped that if whoever was approaching wanted trouble, looks would not be deceiving.

  The Range Rover turned onto the pier and stopped twenty yards away. A woman was driving and a man was in the passenger seat. They both got out and held their hands high before they approached. The man was about fifty, tall athletic build, craggy good looks. He was wearing jeans and an open neck blue shirt. The woman was in her thirties, black, big eyes behind big glasses, with a striking angular face. She wore shorts that displayed long smooth legs, and a T-shirt that hugged small breasts.

  Reaper looked past them at the Range Rover.

  ‘It’s just the two of us,’ the man said, and Reaper nodded, but he looked back along the Foreshore and the Sandside. He saw no one else. ‘You’re careful,’ said the man.

  ‘You have to be,’ said Reaper. ‘Why don’t you put your hands down?’

  ‘I’m Richard Ferguson.’ He offered his hand and Reaper shook it.

  The woman said, ‘Greta Malone,’ and he shook hers too.

  ‘I’m Reaper,’ he said.

  ‘Unusual name,’ she said.

  He tipped his head to indicate the girls. ‘Sandra, Kate and Jenny.’

  The two new arrivals lifted hands in acknowledgement.

  ‘You seem to be well organised,’ Ferguson said. His voice was cultured.

  ‘We are.’

  ‘We have a group in the castle.’

  Reaper glanced up at the ramparts on the headland.

  ‘Good spot,’ he said.

  ‘Are you part of a group?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve taken over farms inland.’

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ said Ferguson. ‘A new start.’

  ‘We intend to try.’

  ‘So do we. There are eight of us in the castle and we know there are more in town, but people are still in shock. Give them time and they’ll join us.’

  ‘What then?’ asked Reaper. ‘Will you stay there?’

  ‘We could for a while. The supermarkets are well stocked, there’s some arable land where we could grow things. Nothing ambitious. Allotments, that sort of thing. And there is, of course, fishing. If we did stay, we might redevelop the fishing industry and trade with inland communities like yours.’

  ‘That’s a long term plan,’ Reaper said.

  ‘Nothing is decided yet,’ Ferguson said. ‘But it could be one way forward.’

  Greta Malone said, ‘Richard has plans for regeneration.’

  Ferguson snorted. ‘I’m a physicist, which isn’t exactly the best qualification, but I want us to use what we have and what we can sustain. I mean, everything went when we lost electricity. Communication, internet, gas services, the water supplies. Everything relied on electric power. One switch failed, it triggered more, and before you knew it, we had lost the lot. I want to use the technology we were developing then that can help us now. We don’t have the expertise to build and run power stations, but we can put solar panels on roofs and use wind power.’

  ‘I like your ideas,’ said Reaper. ‘Count us in.’

  Greta had been looking at the girls. ‘Are you some kind of military force?’ she said.

  ‘Something like that,’ Reaper said, ‘Some of our people have suffered. We want to make sure they don’t suffer again.’

  ‘There was a wild group in town,’ Ferguson said.

  ‘Then another lot moved in and left bodies all over the Imperial Hotel.’ He shook his head. ‘You would think there’d been enough death already, wouldn’t you?

  But no, it carries on.’

  Greta had been watching Reaper’s reaction and she said, ‘That was you.’

  ‘Yes. That was us
. That was Sandra and me.’

  Greta glanced past him at the slim shape of the youngest girl of the three behind him, the one who looked her steadily in the eye, and then back to Reaper.

  ‘Just the two of you?’ she said.

  He nodded.

  Ferguson also looked at Sandra before switching his gaze back to Reaper, as if assessing them and the carnage they had left at the Imperial.

  ‘There were six bodies,’ he said, as if disputing the odds.

  ‘They were all bad guys,’ Reaper said.

  ‘You killed all six?’ Ferguson said.

  ‘They had to be dealt with.’

  ‘Dealt with?’

  Reaper sensed Ferguson did not approve and so chose his words with provocation in mind.

  ‘They needed to be put down.’

  ‘Put down?’ The physicist shook his head, as if horrified. ‘Who made you judge and jury?’

  ‘Somebody had to be.’

  ‘Why? They might just have gone away when they got bored. People like that have a short term attention span.’

  ‘People like that?’ said Reaper. ‘Did you know them?’

  ‘Of course not. We’ve heard rumours since. They were wild.’

  ‘Wild?’ Jenny’s voice was tense with emotion. ‘Do you know what they did?’

  Ferguson shrugged as if what they did would have been no concern to him, as long as they stayed away from his group at the castle.

  ‘They took three schoolgirls,’ Jenny said. ‘They killed one. What would you have done? Let them go somewhere else when they got bored, to rape and kill again?’

  The academic was surprised by Jenny’s vociferous attack. ‘I don’t know what I would have done. Tried to negotiate, talk to them.’

  Sandra said, ‘There’s no police any more. No courts, no prisons.’ She paused. ‘They needed killing or they would have done it again. We killed them.’ The statement was cold and impassive. Coming from a teenage girl, it had all the more impact.

  Ferguson could think of no reply. He shook his head in despair and said, ‘Why does it have to be like this after all we’ve gone through?’

  Greta said, ‘Richard is an idealist.’ She smiled in an effort to lighten a sombre mood that could turn hostile.

  ‘He’s an old hippy at heart.’

  Reaper said, ‘How do you feel about it?’

  ‘I think they needed stopping.’

  Ferguson glanced at Greta, clearly surprised by her response, and then seemed to take fresh stock of the situation. He looked at the three determined women behind Reaper and perhaps he guessed the reasons behind their determination. He nodded reluctantly.

  ‘You’re probably right.’ He looked back at Reaper.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I abhor violence. I believe in jaw, jaw, rather than war, war.’

  ‘Churchill also said we’ll fight them on the beaches, said Reaper. ‘And we’ll fight them anywhere.’

  ‘I just find it so frustrating. After all that’s happened.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Reaper, offering the meagrest of olive branches.

  Greta accepted it and asked, ‘How many in your group?’

  ‘A dozen plus and getting bigger every day.’

  ‘I expect it will take a long time for people to organise,’ she said.

  ‘Our people were escaping the cities,’ he said. ‘They weren’t nice places to be. When people get over the shock, they’ll organise. They’ll come to you and they’ll come to us and other groups will form. There’ll be a future.’

  Ferguson said, ‘I believe that to be true.’

  Greta said, ‘What are you doing in Scarborough?’

  ‘Scouting. Getting supplies. Looking for a doctor.’

  ‘Do you need a doctor?’ she asked.

  ‘We will do, eventually.’

  Ferguson said, ‘We’ve got a doctor.’

  ‘You have? That’s great.’

  ‘You’re looking at her. Dr Malone.’

  ‘ Dr Malone?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I was at Scarborough General.’

  ‘We were there this morning,’ he said.

  Their eyes met and her look became a little glazed.

  ‘At the end, there was nothing I could do,’ she said.

  ‘We could see that.’

  Ferguson, glad to have moved on from their abrasive conversation of a few moments ago, said, ‘Would you like to visit the castle? You’d be welcome.’

  ‘Not this time,’ said Reaper. ‘But thanks for the invitation. We will visit, and we hope you’ll visit us.’

  Ferguson held out his hand again and they shook.

  ‘This is our first alliance of mutual cooperation,’ he said.

  Reaper nodded and Ferguson went on to shake the hands of Kate and Jenny who had moved forward while they had been talking. Sandra had stayed back in guard position and Reaper, when he glanced behind, saw she was still watching the Sandside and the Foreshore roads.

  Greta shook his hand and said, ‘He gets intense but he’s a good man. Till we meet again.’

  ‘We’ll be back,’ said Reaper.

  They watched the couple get back in the Range Rover and drive off the pier and back the way they had come.

  First there had been only their group, and now here was another. As Ferguson had said, the first alliance.

  Sandra took the lead in the Astra van while Jenny directed her to Rutford School, four miles out of town.

  They drove through high gates, up a sloping drive between trees, and came out before an impressive Victorian building: a large frontage with an added west wing and more modern single-storey structures to the east connected by covered walkways. Over to the left was a separate clutch of houses and beyond them a sports pavilion and games fields.

  Half a dozen cars and a minibus were parked on the gravel. They stopped their cars, got out and took stock of their surroundings. The place was as quiet as the grave, Reaper thought grimly, aware that that was what it had become.

  ‘I’ll go inside,’ said Reaper. ‘Kate, you stay by the cars. Sandra, you and Jenny take a look at the classrooms round the back. They look like science labs.

  Look through the windows but don’t go in. Call out and see if anyone answers. Do it carefully. This place probably had an army cadet unit. If anyone is alive, they might have a gun.’

  Sandra and Jenny moved off and Kate said, ‘Why are you leaving me outside? I saw what was in the hospital. This can’t be worse.’

  ‘It can,’ he said. ‘It’s kids.’

  ‘I can handle it.’

  They exchanged a look.

  Reaper said, ‘I know you can handle it, Kate, but I also want somebody out front.’

  The look continued until she nodded her head.

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ‘Stay behind the cars,’ he said. ‘Use them as cover.’

  She nodded and he went up the steps, paused to pull on a surgical mask, and entered the school. He was in a large hall, corridors running off it, offices, and a wide wooden staircase leading to upper floors.

  He lifted the mask for a second and tested the air. It was musty but did not have the rich aroma of death.

  He replaced the mask and explored. This was a ground floor administrative centre plus classrooms. He toured them. All were clear. He went upstairs to investigate more classrooms.

  Reaper looked out of a window at the back and spotted Sandra and Jenny working their way carefully around the outer classroom buildings. He heard them shout, asking if anyone was there. He returned to the ground floor and found an entrance into the west wing from one of the corridors. He lifted the mask again: the smell was here.

  The bodies of the former students of Rutford School lay in shared rooms and small dormitories. Most lay in bed. As always, the flies were in attendance but he was almost used to them by now. Two young boys, aged perhaps eleven, were in the same bed together for comfort and to share the journey into the terri-fying unknown. He found the bodies of fou
r masters in different dorms and that of a clergyman who seemed to have collapsed across the bed of a youth whilst kneeling by its side, a prayer book still clasped in his hand. Maybe this is what it had been like at St Hilda’s?

  Those who could still cope, caring for those who couldn’t, until they, too, crawled into bed, collapsed into armchairs or fell to the floor, still trying to do their human duty for their fellows. Four bodies occupied the beds of the small infirmary. They had been there some time. The matron, a large motherly figure, lay slumped in a chair, still watching her charges with eyes that writhed with maggots.

  He went back into the corridors and pulled off the mask and damn the smell. He shouted, ‘Anyone?

  Anyone?’ but knew there would be no answer in this public school charnel house. He clattered downstairs, took a side door and walked into the fresh air. He stood for a moment to regain his senses and then walked round to the front of the house. Kate stiffened at his appearance and raised a hand when she realised it was him. He joined her by the cars and she said,

  ‘Was it bad?’

  He nodded but avoided her gaze, staring instead towards the houses and the sports pavilion.

  ‘Here’s Sandra and Jenny,’ Kate said.

  ‘Nothing!’ called Sandra. ‘A few bodies, that’s all!’

  Jenny asked Reaper, ‘What was it like? Inside?’

  He knew she would have experienced the death of her own school but somehow, it seemed more acceptable to have been part of it, helping others, putting them to bed and then quietly closing a door. But he had opened the doors and the dead had been waiting.

  ‘It was very . . .’ he grasped for a word that might be adequate ‘. . . organised. They had cared for each other. It was very peaceful.’ It had been awful, but what was the point in telling her that, when she probably guessed anyway. Her face closed on her own memories. ‘Let’s check the houses,’ he said.

  They spread out and walked towards the houses that he guessed had belonged to senior masters. He noted that Sandra periodically turned and walked backwards for a few paces at a time, to keep a watch to the rear.