Georgia frowned, suddenly remembering the cracking noise that she had heard the night before, had those men been watching them? The thought made her sick. ‘So what happened then?’ she asked.
‘Well, the fad one, he grabbed me, and I kicked him, dook him by surprise and I managed to ged loose and make a rud for it.’
Deedee leaned forward. ‘Why didn’t you run back to the camp?’
‘Maybe id was dumb, but I was trying to draw dem away from the camp, from you…’
‘But I had the shotgun,’ Georgia interrupted.
Yeah, bud when I lefd, you were asleep, and oh I don’d know, I dink in my mind, I was going to oud run dem and circle back. Dupid really.’
Georgia did not say anything for a moment, sometimes Lola really surprised her, and she had not thought Lola would think of saving anything but her own skin. But then, she admonished herself. Hadn’t Lola taken a beating when she had given her that bag of food? Aloud she said, ‘no, not stupid, or dumb, kind of really brave Lola, but next time…’
Lola reached for the cellophane bag, helping herself to a few more slices of dried banana. ‘Dere isn’t going to be a nexd dime, remember? Nexd dime someone will be wid me, and id can’d happen.’
Georgia nodded. ‘That’s true,’
Ant had finished her handful of biscuits and came back to her ‘home away from home’, and began to climb in. Georgia picked her up, kissing her gently on the nose, ‘No, princess, you go play a little, you spend far too much time in there.’ She placed Ant back on the ground, on the other side of her folded legs. Ant stood there for a moment as though she were not sure how she felt about this, and then determinedly clambered back over Georgia’s knees and headed back to her bag. Georgia let her be. Stubborn girl!
‘So does anyone else have any suggestions,’ Georgia asked looking around at the group.
They were all silent for a minute, then Rebecca put up her hand. ‘You know this morning, how you changed directions when you thought we might be followed, well I’ve been thinking…,’
Deedee laughed. ‘Oh no, you thinking, did it give you a headache?’
Rebecca fell silent, glowering at Deedee.
Deedee glared back. ‘Just asking.’
‘Deedee that’s enough,’ Georgia said.
Deedee fell silent, her bottom lip out.
Georgia reached over and touched Rebecca’s hand. ‘Go on Rebecca, what were you going to say?’
‘Just that it made me think of other things that maybe we should be doing, and um, well maybe we should spread out more.’
‘I am not following, what do you mean?’ Georgia asked.
‘Like when we see people, I mean, when we don’t have time to hide, I think we should spread out, so that...,’ she paused, suddenly seeming shy.
‘Yeah,’ Jamie finished for her, ‘so that we are less of a target.’
Georgia took a sip from her water bottle. ‘I think that is an excellent idea.’
It was around one o’clock when they set off once more. They had followed the road for a short while, enjoying the relative shade from the overhanging branches from the trees that lined both sides. Then when it no longer went in the right direction, they cut across country, heading first across a grassy plain, then through another wooded area. They had been walking for two hours when they reached another road and Georgia called another break to check the map.
Suddenly Rebecca exclaimed, ‘we don’t need the map, I know where we are.’
‘You do?’ Georgia asked.
Rebecca nodded. ‘Yes, we are nearly there, if we follow this road up round the hill then the sports field is on the other side, and further along is...,’
Jamie cut in, ‘she’s right, further along is the river and the picnic place.’ He spoke excitedly, his voice becoming higher with each word.
Georgia looked around; she had been so busy relying on the map she hadn’t really even tried to see if she recognized the area. Rebecca and Jamie were right. She also knew the way from here. ‘Okay, let’s go through those trees,’ she said, pointing ahead, ‘that way we can cut off the corner and save ourselves a bit of walking.’
A few moments later, they came to a steep rocky slope, and way down below, through the trees tops they could hear the river.
‘I guess we will have to go back,’ Jamie said.
Lola looked at Georgia somewhat plaintively, ‘Id dere no way down? How bout round dere?’ She pointed to the left of them, it appeared to be a little less steep, but looked almost like a gravel bed tipped on its side, the occasional shrub growing up through the shingly surface.
‘I am so tempted,’ Georgia said, after a studying the area for a moment, ‘but it looks a little risky. Someone could break an ankle or something if they slipped.’
They turned and made their way back to the road. Lola looked near to tears. They wound their way up the hill and down the other side, passing two cars stranded in the road, the owners long gone. Anything of use was also long gone. Down the other side, a car had gone over the edge and judging by the blackened earth, and scorched tree it had crashed into, it had caught fire.
They all saw it, something that might have been a charred body, visible though the crumpled door, blackened twig like fingers reaching upwards, or then again they might not have been. No one said anything.
We never talk about it, we never ever mention the dead. We just seem to move past, move on and forget. Why was that? Was it because they were in survival mode? Or perhaps it was simply too much for the mind to handle? Yes, Georgia decided, that is most likely what it was, it was too much to deal with, so the mind just wrapped it up and tucked it out of sight. Was that the same reason the kids never asked about Nathan, or Lydia, or Maggie? Did they even think about them? Surely they must? Were they waiting for her to talk about them?
‘I can see the picnic hut,’ Rebecca exclaimed, ‘see? Just over there.’
Georgia looked up. ‘Nearly there then,’ she said somewhat unnecessarily, and suddenly they were all walking that little bit faster. They stood on a rise, looking down across the vast lawn that surrounded the picnic hut, a large structure with an iron roof and low open walls all the way round. The grass was dotted with daisies, and dandelions. With no lawnmowers to keep the grass down, the yellow and white flowers were blossoming in abundance.
Further along, about a hundred feet behind the picnic hut was a thick stand of trees, and behind that, just out of sight, the river, nature’s life blood, wound its way. Tomorrow they would cross that river and the pencil line on the map would be just a little longer.
Chapter Twenty Nine
As they walked down the slope towards the picnic hut Georgia noticed that there was a camper van parked next to the public toilets. It had been hidden from their view earlier, by the cinderblock building. She exchanged a glance with Lola, ‘Do you see what I see?’ she asked.
‘De R.V.? I sure do,’ Lola smiled through bruised and cracked lips.
‘I think we might just be sleeping in….’ Georgia’s words faded away for suddenly they heard a child’s laughter. As one they froze. From behind the picnic hut, two children came running. The boy, running a little ahead of a younger girl, was deftly kicking a soccer ball. Judging from the similarity between them, they were obviously brother and sister.
‘Not fair,’ the little girl laughed, flinging herself, down on the ball, missing it.
Georgia just stared; something looked off beam with the imagery before her. She could not quite put her finger on it. Then a man and a woman joined the children, oblivious to the fact, that they were being watched. They seemed, for all the world like some happy, all American family that had just stepped out of a health insurance commercial.
They looked….Georgia furrowed her brow trying to work out what was wrong. Then she had it. They looked so clean, and fresh and relaxed, that is what it was. However, that was not all. There was something else; these people did not seem to be on guard or even the least bit wary. There was l
ess than forty yards separating them now and they still had not even registered that they were no longer alone.
‘Dis is weird,’ Lola said, half under her breath, stepping a little closer to Georgia.
‘You feel it too then?’ Georgia asked, careful to keep her voice low. ‘I can’t quite place it, it’s…,’ she hesitated trying to put it into words, ‘it looks like a scene from before. Before ‘it’…, almost like….’
‘Id’s as dough everyding was back to normal,’ Lola said, her voice breathless, ‘like the power id on and no one died and…,’
Georgia stared wide eyed at Lola.
‘Do you dink…,’ Lola began…,
‘I don’t know,’ Georgia whispered, ‘but I think we should find out.’
As they walked a little closer, Millie began growling softly. Georgia nudged her gently with a knee and Millie stopped abruptly, but now she had her hackles up.
Lola bent down and picked Millie up. ‘Just in case she has ideas.’
Georgia nodded. Good idea.
‘Should we spread out?’ Jamie asked in a low voice.
‘Yes,’ Georgia replied.
Noiselessly the group separated, with Jamie and Deedee fanning out on each side. Georgia stood a little ahead and Rebecca and Lola stood behind her, about four feet apart.
Still unaware of the party watching them, the woman turned to her husband. Her voice sounded thin, annoying and had a, ‘oh I am so sick of you’ tone.
‘Well if you had listened to me, you would have switched the phone off,’ she was saying.
‘Hon, I tell you I did switch it off.’
‘Well in that case it would be working now wouldn’t it?’
‘Whad an uppidy bitch,’ Lola said beneath her breath.
That’s for sure, Georgia thought, but remained silent, watching them.
‘I uh,’ the man began. That was when the young boy noticed them; he plucked at his father’s sleeve, not taking his eyes of their group.
‘Dad.’
‘Not now Jack, Listen Gina, I tell…,’
The boy tugged at his father’s sleeve again, ‘Dad,’ his voice had something akin to desperation in it. ‘Somebody’s here, look.’ This time, the man took note of his son’s words, they all did, the three of them looked up, and their gaze followed the direction Jack was pointing.
At the very least, Georgia had expected them to be startled, but there was no such reaction, instead the man raised his hand in a friendly wave ‘Oh, Hi there.’ he called out. ‘Didn’t uh… see you there, do you think you might um… be able to help us, we seem to um… have a problem, do you have a cell with you?’ As he was talking, he and his wife began walking towards them.
Still Georgia’s group had not said a word. Jamie nocked an arrow into place and drew back the bowstring, standing firm. Out of the corner of her eye, Georgia saw Deedee do the same. This was not something they had talked about, but it was impressive all the same and a surge of pride ran through her.
The Uppity Bitch, as Lola had called her, stared at Deedee. Then in a tone of voice that one would use when talking to a backward toddler, she said. ‘I think you are a bit young to be playing with that, you better put it down, you might hurt someone.’
‘Yes we might,’ Deedee said, not moving.
‘Don’t you give me cheek,’ the woman snapped, and then turned to Georgia. ‘What sort of a moth…’
‘Hon,’ the man said, touching her arm. ‘Let me do the talking, I can manage this.’
She glared at him, angrily brushing his hand away.
Flushing, he turned to Georgia, spreading his hands in front of him as he began talking. ‘We have uh…. been camping in our tents, downstream and...,’ he paused then, as though he had only just noticed their appearance. He looked slowly from Georgia to Lola, his mouth partly open, the last of his flush just faded away, and his skin took on a frighteningly pallid hue.
‘Christ what happened?’ He gasped finally. ‘Have you uh… had a car accident?’
‘Not a car accident,’ Georgia replied, but she could see why had jumped to that conclusion. With all the bruising and blood-spattered clothing, they looked exactly as though they had crawled out from underneath a wrecked vehicle.
He made a move to step closer, concern on his face.
‘Stop right there,’ Georgia said, her voice brittle.
He ignored her and took another step. Only one, because before he could take a further one, Georgia had the shotgun off her shoulder and was leveling it right at him.
‘Whoa,’ he cried, abruptly halting and automatically putting his hands up in the air. His wife gave a little shriek and darted behind him.
Georgia gave a quick glance around. Where were their children? She spied them near the hut, staring at her, transfixed in horror. The soccer ball rolling away, forgotten. Then as one, they turned and ran for the campervan.
She turned her full attention back to the couple. In the distance, she heard the campervan door slam shut.
‘We, I… um… is this a hold up?’ The man seemed genuinely bewildered by their actions.
‘Of course it’s a hold up,’ his wife jabbered behind him, ‘look at them, obviously…’
‘Shut up, Gina,’ he snapped, still holding his hands up.
She began to cry. ‘We are all going to die.’
‘I’ll ask the questions,’ Georgia said, her calmness belying her true feelings. Why were they behaving as though nothing had happened? Was it possible that the power was back up? Or had it only been a localized thing and she and Lola and the kids have been living like savages for nothing? Then Georgia had a terrible thought. Had they, somehow been caught up in some sort of mass hysteria, the events imagined. If that were the case, then they were going to be in a whole lot of shit. She suddenly had visions of a bevy of cop cars screaming down the hill, red and blue lights flashing, sirens wailing. She took a deep breath, calming herself. No, it had all happened! The question was, why these people didn’t appear to know anything about it.
She nodded at the man. ‘You’ve been camping, you said?’
‘Yeah, like uh… we do every summer, Gina and I, we take the kids, teach them to be one with nature and….’
‘So how long have you been out here?’ If he said, ‘only a couple of days’; well then clearly, these people were lying, but why?
She stared at him intently, waiting on tenterhooks for him to answer. How difficult was the question? She felt herself growing more and more on edge.
At last, the man began to speak. ‘We uh….normally stay two weeks, but uh… Gina wanted to get home early to get through the laundry, and she uh…’
She wanted to scream, ‘oh fuck Gina and fuck the laundry,’ but she restrained herself, instead she repeated the question. ‘How long have you been out here?’
The man shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, half lowering his hands then hastily raising them again, ‘um… how long well um,’
Georgia felt a scream building up deep within, somewhat like a pressure cooker with a blocked release valve, the entire pot threatening to blow any minute. Her fingers tightened their grip on the shotgun. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, how long?’ this time she nearly shouted.
‘We came out on uh… sorry, feeling a bit um… nervous right now, making it a bit uh, um… hard to think clearly with that uh… aimed at us.’
She lowered the shotgun slightly, directing the barrel earthwards.
‘It was the eleventh,’ his wife suddenly shrilled, ‘we came here early on in the morning. July the eleventh. Please, just let us go,’ she added in a rush of words, ‘let us go, we won’t tell anyone.’
She heard Lola suddenly curse under her breath. ‘They don’t know.’
‘They have been here since the morning of the power failure,’ Rebecca exclaimed.
Oh good God, these people have absolutely no idea that there isn’t going to be any ‘getting through the laundry’; at least not in the way they were used to.
&nb
sp; ‘Uh… don’t know what?’ The man asked, his head a little to one side quizzically staring at Rebecca. Even so, Georgia still did not trust them. It did not seem possible that they had no idea.
‘So you expect us to believe that you have been camped here for ten days and that you don’t know what has happened?’
They both nodded, then, shook their heads, momentarily making Georgia think of those nodding dogs one sees in the back of cars.
‘Look uh… what is this um… all about,’ the man suddenly asked.
‘Just making sure,’ Georgia sighed, all of a sudden she was sick of all this, it had been a long day, she was hurting, as she was sure Lola must be hurting, and all she really wanted to do was get out of the interminable heat, sit down in the shade and rest for a bit.
On top of that, the man’s stuttered responses were beginning to be as annoying as his wife’s voice. She wished they would just go away; that they had never met them, but it was not that simple. Somehow, she had to bring, this whole situation to an end.
‘Just uh… making sure?’ he repeated, then asked, ‘sure of what?’
She ignored his question. Ant was beginning to squirm around in her bag, poking her head over the edge, stubbornly attempting to get out. If she does not settle, she is going to fall. Georgia withdrew one hand from the shotgun and tried to push Ant back into the bag.
Unexpectedly, the man lowered his hands and folded his arms across his chest, sticking his jaw out defiantly. ‘You know what, I am uh… not going to, um… answer another thing until you tell me what this is uh… all about.’
His wife gave a little shriek. ‘Are you insane?’ she asked him.
Frustrated by the man’s sudden rediscovery of his balls, Georgia raised the shotgun and pumped the action, sending a cartridge sliding into the chamber. The woman shrieked and folded her arms over her head. ‘She is going to shoot us.’
The man obviously thought the same thing, for his hands shot skywards, and he began speaking rapidly. ‘It’s um… like I said, we uh… got back, we washed in the river, uh… um… changed into the uh… clothes that we had um… left in the R.V. so we could drive home clean like and we um… well we um… found the vehicle not working.’
Survivors of the Sun Page 28