Reaper

by Jon Grahame

  Reaper waited for night to descend. He ate and drank and watched. Buildings in the old town were lit by lanterns. Street illumination was provided by a car’s headlights that shone down Church Street. When they dimmed, they could fit a new battery. He listened to the sounds of revelry get louder as more drink was consumed, the forced hilarity of women, the occasional scream and yelp of pain, the macho laughter of beasts at play.

  He had seen all he needed to see. He packed his bag and left the building, slipping through the silent streets of West Cliff, back to his motorcycle and the ride home.

  Chapter 15

  REAPER HAD NOT LIKED WHAT HE HAD witnessed in Whitby, but did not see how he could change it. Such a change would require direct action – a war, and Muldane had a black-clad army of forty or more well-armed men who raped and killed without compunction. To stand any chance of removing Muldane from power, he would not only have to mobilise and arm all the able-bodied citizens of Haven, but would need to persuade members of other peaceful settlements to join them in the fight. He knew he would find sympathy, but few would be eager to join such a crusade and, to be honest, he did not want to put the lives of his friends in such danger.

  There would come a time when Muldane, or someone like him, would move against them and then there would be no choice but to fight. He would concentrate on training and preparation for when that happened. In the meantime, he would make everyone aware of the danger and, perhaps, as they grew stronger, they would become confident enough to take the fight to the enemy and liberate those he enslaved.

  As he drove back through the night, he thought again about the Royal Air Force bases along the East Coast flatlands, and the army base at Catterick. They held the possibility of both hope and danger. An officer commanding even a small group of trained soldiers could be a force for good or evil. Is that where Muldane had come from?

  Fiefdoms and robber barons were inevitable. But an officer with trained troops might restore order, or impose it. The trouble was, having achieved power, the officer might be reluctant to relinquish it. History taught that.

  How swiftly civilisation had crumbled, reflected Reaper.

  He reported all he had witnessed and his fears for the future to the ad hoc committee at Haven. Even the Reverend Nick took it seriously, and they all agreed to maintain training, periodically review their defences and to inform all neighbouring groups with whom they had contact.

  Their community, that now included two farms and a nearby village, numbered 176. New arrivals were now infrequent. The first wave of settlers had been looking for somewhere else – anywhere else – in the belief that it had to be better than what they had left behind. A few travellers still passed through on the main roads, but they were itinerants who were unlikely to ever settle down; some were too emotionally scarred to start a new life, others preferred to drift rather than face the new reality.

  Haven also had close contacts with the groups in Scarborough, Filey and Bridlington, and looser arrangements with those in Malton, Pickering and Driffield.

  Through them, they were aware of others in more distant areas. There were also smaller groups, sometimes consisting only of a handful of folk in villages or on farms, who preferred independence while accepting mutual cooperation.

  On his travels, Pete had requisitioned a thousand-litre mobile fuel bowser with an electric pump. He and Gavin now made regular trips to petrol stations to fill up with petrol and diesel for their expanding settlement. The Haven farm had a fixed diesel bowser, and the manor house a diesel generator. An extra petrol bowser was brought to Haven and both were kept topped up, the first for farm and domestic use, and the second to supply their small fleet of vehicles. The mobile bowsers were also used to stock up the underground tanks of Taylor’s Garage in the nearby village.

  There was a great deal of fuel still available with so few survivors but, eventually, it would run out. As they travelled greater distances to drain the tanks of vehicles and filling stations, they would inevitably come into territorial conflict with other groups. But that was a problem for the future. The time would come when everybody might have to revert to horse drawn transport and, with that in mind, the farm had a growing stock of ponies and shire horses.

  They had also collected books for teaching, trade and engineering, as well as a fiction section. One of the rooms in the manor house had become a library.

  Before long, they would have to start civilisation from almost scratch. Ferguson at Scarborough had agreed to help them install solar panels and erect a windmill at Haven, as first ventures into harnessing the power of nature.

  A week after his Whitby excursion, Reaper undertook another mission beyond their usual parameters of travel and salvage: to Catterick army camp. He and Sandra went north in the MPV through Pickering and Thirsk. They had contacts in Pickering but did not stop. They knew there was a group at Thirsk but bypassed the town. An awful lot of the countryside was empty. Animals lay dead in fields, vehicles abandoned in villages and on highways. They also passed though areas where crops and livestock were obviously being tended, but they did not stop to look for people and neither did people attempt to stop them.

  The towns closest to the army camp were Northallerton, five or six miles to the southeast, and Richmond, two or three miles to the northwest. Reaper figured they were the ones that might have benefited or suffered most from any military presence that still existed. Sandra and he approached the market town of Northallerton along the Thirsk Road. A pole resting on oil drums provided a flimsy barrier or checkpoint at the bottom of the High Street, where other roads met at a roundabout. Sandra was driving and stopped before the roundabout, Reaper got out of the vehicle and walked towards the pole with his hands raised.

  He stopped ten feet short of it. A woman came out of a white painted building on the right. She was middle aged and wearing a tracksuit. She carried no weapons, which made Reaper feel slightly overdressed.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, in a breezy and welcoming way.

  He lowered his arms and said, ‘Hello. We’re passing through, if that’s all right?’

  ‘Of course.’ She motioned towards the pole. ‘It’s just a formality to give us warning of visitors. It’s become quieter now but, at the beginning, there were one or two incidents until we got properly organised.’

  Reaper looked at the pole.

  ‘It doesn’t seem very substantial.’

  ‘It isn’t.’ She smiled. ‘But I have a colleague in the building behind me who has a rifle trained on you, and a young chap with an anti-tank gun across the street.’

  Reaper nodded.

  ‘That’s substantial enough,’ he said.

  ‘Our market day is Friday so you haven’t come to trade. Or . . . have you?’

  ‘Not this time, but maybe in the future. We’re on a scouting trip. We’re from a place near Scarborough.

  Haven. Population about two hundred. We’re doing okay, growing crops, keeping animals.’

  ‘It’s good farming country there,’ she said.

  He looked around but could see neither the man with the rifle or the one with the anti-tank gun.

  ‘This trip is outside our usual territory. We have contact with groups in our area, but don’t usually go any further than Pickering in this direction.’

  ‘There’s not much point. I suppose everywhere is pretty much the same. Struggling to make a new start.

  Become self-sufficient.’

  ‘That’s the ideal. But not everybody is doing it. Do you know about the man called Muldane in Whitby?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He has a private army and lives off plunder. He takes captives, uses them as slave labour and sex workers. You should be aware of him. Before long he’ll want to expand.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning. But you haven’t travelled all this way to tell us that, have you?’

  ‘No. We came because of the army camp. We thought there might be martial law or some kind of local government.’

  The
woman smiled again. ‘You’d better come in.’

  Reaper waved Sandra forward in the car and helped the woman lift off the pole so she could drive through.

  ‘Come on. I’ll go with you,’ she said, and held her hand out for Reaper to shake. ‘I’m Mavis Wilburn.’

  ‘Reaper. That’s Sandra.’

  They drove into Northallerton along a wide handsome street with a large pedestrianised area designed for markets. The town was neat and tidy. Abandoned vehicles had been moved. No bodies were in evidence.

  Mavis directed them to stop outside the Black Bull, then led them inside. Reaper still didn’t know if she had had the cover she claimed at the barrier. They went into a lounge area while she went behind the bar and lit the gas flames of a camping stove, shook a kettle to confirm it contained water and placed it to boil.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Coffee.’ Sandra and Reaper said it together. Reaper added, ‘Please.’

  ‘Please, sit down,’ she said. ‘There’s only me here at the moment. We take turns at being the welcoming committee. There’s a school in the back.’ She indicated the rear of the building with a nod of her head. ‘Six children. We have people working in allotments and on the golf course, which we cultivated.’ She smiled.

  ‘We really have returned to a rural economy. We keep some livestock, too, although not enough. We rely on trade with a farm a few miles away that is functioning quite well. We have a small engineering shed that we operate with generators. They’ve been making ploughshares and farm implements for when the petrol runs out.’

  ‘That’s enterprising,’ said Reaper. ‘Something we haven’t done. Something we’d be interested in.’

  ‘We manage. But it’s been a struggle.’ She smiled.

  ‘But you wanted to know about Catterick.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Catterick Garrison, the biggest military garrison in Europe with more than 9,000 soldiers. signals, mechanical engineers, artillery, mechanised brigade, infantry, guards, is entirely gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ Reaper was surprised.

  ‘The most senior officer who survived was Colonel Owen. We believe he had about a hundred men gathered under his command when the plague ended.’

  Reaper noted her use of the term plague. Every district probably had its own terminology for what had happened. ‘There were some other survivors, but many just upped and left. You can’t really call them deserters, can you? I mean, after what happened. There were about fifty wives and dependants – sons, daughters, infants. The colonel visited us. He said he had been in touch with the Ministry of Defence. A new government was being formed at Windsor under Prince Harry.’

  She shrugged. ‘Anyway, that’s where forces were being concentrated for a new beginning. The plan, Colonel Owen said, was to regenerate from Windsor with legal authority.’

  ‘So we may already have a government in Windsor?’

  Reaper said.

  ‘Maybe. Who knows? Catterick camp covered a wide area. Catterick village itself is in the middle of it, as well as several other villages. The colonel visited them all, as well as Richmond, speaking to those who were left. He offered transportation, welfare and medical care for all who wanted to go south with him. Many went. On the face of it, it wasn’t a bad offer. A safe environment and a new start. They went in a convoy of trucks. Soldiers, dependants, locals. They took guns and equipment. What armaments they couldn’t take, they destroyed. The explosions went on for two days.’

  She looked at Reaper. ‘Was it the guns you came for?’

  ‘We came to see if there was law and order here but, if guns had been available, we’d have taken them.’

  The kettle whistled and Mavis made coffee. Sandra got up to help, added whitener to her own mug, and left Reaper’s black.

  They sat and sipped in silence.

  Mavis said, ‘Thinking of going south?’

  ‘No,’ Reaper said. ‘We’re good as we are. Although it might be worth travelling down there to make contact. Find out what’s what. Strange though, that we’ve not heard any radio broadcast. We keep a listening watch.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘We’ll come to your next market.’

  ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘But don’t go getting your hopes up. It’s not a huge market, but it is a chance for people to meet, exchange news and advice, as well as buy ploughshares.’

  ‘Are there people in Richmond?’

  ‘Yes. There is a small community of sorts, but it’s a bit . . . odd. The leader is a chap called Arthur Dobson. He hasn’t come out and said it yet, but it seems he thinks he’s a reincarnation of King Arthur.

  Do you know the legend?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘King Arthur and his knights are supposed to sleep beneath Richmond Castle, waiting to be called again in time of England’s greatest need.’

  ‘Maybe someone should call him.’

  ‘Arthur keeps hinting they already have. He’s a benign chap, really. He was a librarian, local historian and chairman of the Civic Society. Maybe what happened turned his mind. It didn’t do a lot of good to mine.

  Anyway, he’s a big chap and he’s taken to wearing a sword and they have meetings at a round table. But, give him his due, he has combined the different groups that formed in the area afterwards, into one community. They are about fifty of them. And he seems to be a good administrator, so they are putting up with him.’

  ‘Who knows. Maybe he is King Arthur.’

  ‘Stranger things have happened.’

  ‘Haven’t they just,’ said Sandra.

  They left Northallerton and drove unopposed into the environs of Catterick Garrison. Most of the barracks remained standing, although military buildings, trucks, tanks and other vehicles had been demolished by explosives. Three large holes in the ground, surrounded by debris and broken concrete, suggested where munitions might have been disposed of.

  ‘Where now?’ said Sandra.

  It was noon and, while one mission was over, they had time to pursue another. Reaper took a map from the glove compartment.

  ‘Let’s check out RAF Lemington.’

  They drove to the A1 and turned south. An hour later, they turned left and followed the sign for the camp.

  The flatlands made it ideal country for airfields and aerodromes. Many had been sited here during the Second World War. Since then, a couple had been converted into commercial airports and some had survived to remain operational with the RAF.

  The village of Lemington seemed deserted; thirty or forty houses, some substantial, a row of cottages, a village store and the White Horse pub. They continued without stopping for another five miles, the road running through fields, until they could see the main gate of the camp ahead. The road they were travelling along formed the trunk of a T-junction. The other road, that crossed it to form the bar, ran parallel to the camp fence. Where the two highways met was a roundabout. At the other side was the entrance to the camp. A scrub of woodland was to their right.

  Sandra stopped the car. A Range Rover had been abandoned on this side of the roundabout and a white van partially blocked the left hand curve. The perimeter fence of the camp was six-foot high chain link attached to concrete posts. Razor wire ran along the top. The gate was closed. The entrance was marked by two short stretches of three-foot high wall. Inside was a gatehouse and a checkpoint with the barrier down.

  The gatehouse was half brick and half glass.

  Sandra took the right hand curve of the roundabout slowly to negotiate past the abandoned vehicles. They were only part way round, when someone opened fire from the gatehouse. A three-round burst shattered the windscreen. She screamed and braked, slammed the car into reverse and tried to retreat. More shots: into the engine and then to take out the tyres. The car slew sideways.

  ‘Out!’ shouted Reaper, throwing himself into the back of the vehicle and pushing open the back door.

  Sandra did the same with her door and they both fell ou
t onto the road. The car was broadside in the road and now both curves of the roundabout were blocked.

  More three-round bursts hit the car and glass showered around them. He glanced at Sandra who met his gaze. She was shaking from being under fire but keeping a grip on herself.

  ‘I’ll make for the van.’ he said. ‘When I start, you make for the trees.’

  She nodded. He hoped he had calculated correctly and that the person firing at them might soon need to change magazines. He got up and ran. A three-round burst hit the tarmac by the rear of the car and then he was haring across the grass of the roundabout, and the gun fell silent. New magazine.

  He got behind the van and looked across at the trees beyond their now shattered MPV. From their cover, Sandra waved to him, attracting gunfire. Reaper took the opportunity to run again, keeping low, across the road to the perimeter fence. Before he got there, he heard Sandra returning fire with three, single-spaced shots that broke windows, which would at least give their opponent something to think about.

  For a few seconds he lay in the grass and got his breath back. They had been fired on with three round bursts, which meant a military weapon. Police carbines were modified so they only fired single shots. Military were fully automatic. Was the camp being defended?

  Or had it been looted? The military, he reasoned, would not fire at ordinary citizens without warning. Unless they were a rogue element.

  The camp entrance was fifty feet away. The gatehouse was on the far side and he was now protected from sight by the three-foot wall. He crawled until he was midway between two of the concrete posts that held the fence and tugged at the base of the chain link.

  It lifted slightly and the ground was uneven. He pulled the Bowie knife from his right boot, and began digging into a depression in the turf. The ground was soft because it had rained recently. He heard Sandra maintaining occasional fire, which brought more bursts from the gatehouse.