Angel

by Jon Grahame

  All was activity outside the manor house as the new arrivals disembarked. In the fields beyond, people worked. In the cemetery they had created on the other side of the barn, lay Kate and Jamie. They had been laid to rest in a communal grave along with Milo, garrulous, warm-hearted Jean Megson, Arif and the rest. His eyes misted but he had to control his emotions. He saw Sandra down below looking up the hill towards him. She, too, would be suffering at her own loss. He drove down the hill and joined her.

  The new arrivals were welcomed and briefed by a reception team that included the Rev Nick Waite, in charge of spiritual guidance, Pete Mack, in charge of acquisitions, Judith, in charge of home comforts, and Ashley, the former Para who was in charge of Haven’s defences. Together, they had achieved so much in such a short time, but at a great cost.

  England might be under-populated, Reaper reflected, but those who had survived the virus included rogues and killers as well as the innocent. It was inevitable that for every two or three communities like Haven, you would get a robber baron with ambitions of empire or a Mad Dog Tyldesley.

  Everyone at Haven had survived not just the end of the world, the virus, the plague, the Happening or whatever anyone chose to call it; they had survived the personal loss of partners, children, parents, friends. Reaper and Sandra did not consider themselves special when it came to the scales of suffering, although Reaper had been a victim even before everything had changed.

  Back when life was normal and people paid taxes and grumbled about work and the price of a pint, his daughter had been the victim of a rape. Even though her attacker had gone to prison, she had been unable to live with the shame. Perhaps it was the derisory jail sentence that seemed to suggest that she had in some way invited the attack, or the way it had been reported in the Press, or the knowing looks of neighbours. Perhaps it had been the memory of what had happened, or a combination of them all, but she had taken her own young life.

  When her rapist was freed from prison, Reaper had killed him. If he had waited a couple of weeks, the pandemic would have done the job for him, but he did not regret his action. It had been righteous and the bastard had died in pain. Reaper had been in a police cell waiting to be sent for trial when the virus took its final grip and the world died.

  Sandra had lost her mother early in the pandemic as the disease started to wreak havoc. Afterwards, she had been a rape victim herself, the plaything of a gang of three. Reaper had killed them, too. This is why they were bonded as closely as father and daughter.

  They had undertaken the recent trip with total disregard for their own lives. Maybe that was why it had been successful. The pair of them had trained hard in the last few months, faced and overcome dangers, and had become extremely proficient and deadly. To all intents and purposes, they were Special Forces. They were far superior to any enemy they had faced thus far.

  Their small commando group could undertake dangerous tasks, escort duties, explorations and special operations, and were always under arms. They had been a team of six: Reaper, Sandra, Arif, Kate, Jenny and James Marshall. Now they were four.

  Reaper and Sandra did not have to look far for new recruits in the following weeks. Tanya, the girl who had put six bullets into the grief-stricken Duncan, volunteered, along with three other women and two men. Reaper and Sandra put them all through basic training. Not all were suited to the role, but those not selected accepted the decision without rancour.

  Tanya was twenty-eight, an IT designer in her previous life, who had lived in Leeds. She had been looking after her parents in a village in the Wolds when the epidemic began to rage. Both died. She stayed, but was captured by the Mad Dog gang during one of their ‘fresh meat’ tours. ‘That’s what they called it,’ she said, with an edge to her voice that could cut steel. ‘I was fresh meat.’ She was dark haired and vividly attractive and Reaper sensed she nursed a deep well of anger. If it could be channelled in the right direction, she would be an undoubted asset.

  Also accepted was Anna, a thirty-four-year-old American. She arrived at Haven alone on a motorbike, with a shotgun strapped to her back and a knife in her belt. Dark brown hair was cut close to her scalp so that small tufts stuck up in an irregular pattern. Reaper couldn’t tell whether it had been professionally coiffured or if she had done it herself.

  ‘I was a personal trainer at a fitness centre in Manchester,’ she said.

  ‘What were you doing in Manchester?’

  ‘I married the guy who owned the gym. We met in Oregon. He was touring up the coast from LA. I was touring down the coast from Seattle. We met in a small place called Cannon Beach. It’s pretty. Six months later, we went back and got married there and I came to Manchester.’

  ‘A bit of a culture shock?’ Reaper said.

  ‘Not really. We get rain in Seattle, too.’

  ‘When was this?’ said Sandra.

  ‘A year ago.’ She pursed her lips. ‘It wasn’t working out. I was going back to California. But then the shit hit the fan.’

  ‘What was it like in Manchester? When it happened?’

  ‘We had an apartment in the middle of town. Opposite the Printworks?’

  They shook their heads. They didn’t know it.

  ‘Great place. Bars, movie theatre, restaurants, clubs. One of those conversions you Brits do well, you know? Old building, new life. Brian – my husband – he got sick in London on a business trip. He never came back. I stocked up with food and stayed put in the apartment. I could see through the windows that it was pretty wild out there at first. Later, I went out. Found a few normal people, a few who seemed to have gone crazy in the head. Bad guys were still about, but I avoided them, mostly.’ She smiled to herself.

  Sandra said, ‘Mostly?’

  ‘Just the one time. It was my own fault. I went in a bar for a drink. Sitting there on a high stool, sipping warm vodka. These two guys came in. Thought I was easy. I did three years in the military, one tour in Afghanistan. I also learned taekwondo. I took the shotgun from them. That’s the only trouble I had, although I saw what the bad guys could do.’

  ‘Did you kill the two men?’ Reaper asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We kill them,’ said Sandra. ‘So they can’t hurt anybody else.’

  ‘Could you do that?’ Reaper said.

  ‘I could do that.’

  She returned his stare with an even gaze. He believed she could.

  Both Anna and Tanya were motivated, had the emotional strength that was essential, and a true sense of reality. They knew this was not a time in history for self doubt or philosophical debate about the right to life and the right to kill. They had to accept justifiable homicide to keep themselves and their fellow citizens safe.

  Both Sandra and Jenny had been rape victims; that knowledge and shared experience helped Tanya’s assimilation into the group. Anna was a natural. During her military service, she had served as a medic in a combat unit, carried a gun and been involved in firefights. She had learned to survive in a man’s world, ignore discrimination and bigotry, and fend off unwanted sexual advances. That was one reason she had learned taekwondo. It was inevitable that she became known affectionately as Yank.

  Reaper had never had any qualms about accepting women into a front line role. They had proved on many occasions already to be deadlier than the male. They might not be as physically strong but they were quick, mentally adept and could be utterly ruthless.

  One man also made the cut. Kev Andrews was fifty, a former electrician, who, like everybody else, had seen his fair share of horror. He had lost his wife and daughter to the virus and had lived alone and on his wits before reaching Haven. He was muscular, six foot tall, had a strong face and a head of tight blond curls that were going grey. He had been in the Royal Navy for twenty-two years, having enlisted as an eighteen-year-old, and his face looked as if it had been lived in by several gener
ations of carousing matelots. ‘All this natural beauty didn’t just happen,’ he said, pointing to his worn features. ‘It was carefully nurtured in some of the worst bars in the worst ports in all the world.’ Kev had a dangerous calmness, a way of using jackspeak – navy slang – and a sense of humour that appealed to Reaper. He had developed the quaint habit of addressing people as ‘me hearty’, as if trying to capture the lost camaraderie of the Navy.

  Tanya, Yank and Kev all donned the distinctive blues and became Special Forces. As well as duties, all undertook daily training that included physical exercise, arms drills and the use of longbow and crossbow, both weapons they had been stockpiling for the day when the bullets ran out.

  After all the action came peace. Sandra stayed in the apartment in the manor house that she had shared, so briefly, with Jamie. Reaper returned to the camper-van-come-guard-post on the far side of the hill.

  Old Bob, the elderly farmer, became estate manager, aided by Cassandra Cairncross, the widow of a Squadron Leader, who they had found at an abandoned RAF station to the north. Cassandra was a refined lady in her forties, a twin-set-and-pearl type from Sussex about whom you made assumptions at your peril. She was used to organising and giving orders, in a quiet, understated manner that brooked no argument. People did what she told them, even though she told them in the nicest possible way. Her father had been a gentleman farmer and she had grown up helping him run the business.

  The roles taken by Bob and Cassandra soon evolved to the satisfaction of both. Cassandra, in effect, ran the place with Bob’s advice, while he gave hands-on practical training in husbandry of the land and animals to Haven’s newcomers. They instructed that as many animals and livestock as possible should be rounded up and saved, and Pete Mack was told to find enough agricultural feed to augment what they had, to see them through the winter.

  Rev Nick kept schedules and inventories, managed the calendar and maintained paperwork that helped organise the widespread activities of the community, aided by Judith, a handsome woman of sixty, who had been a retired vet. Now she was out of retirement and, as well as working with animals, she used her formidable organisational skills to arrange meetings and committees and develop the forward planning that was needed for all aspects of life: school; library; refuse; stocks; health. She arranged for the largely cosmetic fireplaces in the holiday cottages to be converted to burn fuel during the winter to come.

  Pete Mack with his shaved head, big and tough enough to look stocky even though he was five ten and with the tattoo of a bulldog on his forearm, was their quartermaster. He organised the wagons that went out to warehouses and stores to salvage petrol, diesel, tinned food and anything that could be useful. They had commandeered a complex of industrial units in a nearby village close to the A64 for storage and easy access.

  Ashley had virtually saved Haven single handed when he had wielded an M60 machinegun to suppress the attack in which Kate had died, fighting alongside him. He was an Afro-Caribbean former sergeant in the Paras who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, an experience that had left him disillusioned with wars fought for no reason other than politics, but he had realised that the new reality demanded self defence. He had instituted and ran training sessions for part of the population that would form a militia in times of danger.

  Haven would eventually have to hold elections but, at the moment, everyone seemed happy to let the ad hoc committee in charge continue running things. They had professionals, trades people, housewives, students, shop assistants, academics, market gardeners, construction workers and Ronnie Ronaldo from Castleford, a self-confessed reprobate who hadn’t worked in fifteen years, who had become their prime scavenger. They all worked together for a common purpose, cultivating land, caring for sheep, cattle, horses, pigs and hens, and preparing with some trepidation for the winter ahead.

  Cassandra suggested they instigate apprenticeships. Judith helped organise it and, at first, it was done on a voluntary basis, with former townies choosing which new trade or profession they would prefer to follow. The system would later become more complex, and abilities and aptitude had to be taken into account when finding candidates to learn the rudiments of medicine, dentistry, plumbing or bricklaying.

  Haven had become a collective name for the estate and its surrounding villages and was now home for 249 men, women and children. It was part of a wider network of colonies that existed at Scarborough, Filey and Bridlington along the East Coast of Yorkshire and with whom Haven had close ties and agreements covering mutual aid and commerce. They also maintained good relations as far as Driffield in the South, Pickering and Malton in the West and Whitby in the North. Reaper and Sandra had travelled further afield to make more tenuous contacts, but had left the inland area towards York as a natural barrier between them and the major conurbations of Leeds, Bradford and the industrial heartland that nestled on both sides of the Pennine range.

  They tried walkie-talkies for communication but found them unreliable and expensive to maintain; batteries were in short supply and maximum range was from two miles to as little as a quarter of a mile if buildings or hills were in the way. It didn’t help that they had no radio ham or expert among their ranks. The permanent guard at the gate of Haven was equipped with a handheld transceiver – which is what Ashley insisted was the correct terminology – so he could be in communication with the manor house and the Special Forces’ vehicles carried them, but they were not relied upon and were rarely needed in a world where urgency no longer seemed essential.

  Travel was easy because cars were available and petrol was still plentiful, but acquiring it could also be dangerous. No one knew what regimes ruled inland in the major urban centres and they preferred not to advertise their own existence for as along as possible.

  York was a city they avoided. The ancient county capital had attained a disquieting reputation that had been passed on by travellers who had visited and hurried on. The Minster had become the centre of a religious colony led by a cleric named Brother Abraham who proclaimed that the plague had been God’s punishment for allowing Sodom and Gomorrah to flourish across the world. They guarded the city walls to keep out intruders and the rumours included accounts of self-flagellation. Abraham, it seemed, had gone back to basics and had gathered around him a steadily increasing flock of tortured souls.

  Twas ever thus, thought Reaper, who was a born-again atheist. He was happy to blame science and mankind for what had happened, and leave God out of it. Haven tried sending envoys but they were rebuffed. Brother Abraham and his followers wanted to be left alone.

  Reaper was also concerned about what might be happening in the South of England. He and Sandra had visited army and RAF camps looking for survivors, and had heard stories of morse code messages being received by units, asking for service personnel to proceed to Windsor. They had been instructed to take all armaments and ammunition with them. A national government was being formed at Windsor under the aegis of Prince Harry.

  If this was correct, it could be good news, but there were doubts about the veracity of the message. Cassandra and a handful of others had remained behind at RAF Lemington to look after two sick children. Most of the camp survivors had gone south in response to the call and they had intended following later. They had kept a radio watch and had received a brief message from Flight Sergeant Harry Babbington, who had led the convoy south. The message had said: Returning. Stay where you are. Imperative. Stay where you are.

  They had heard nothing more.

  This had led Reaper and the committee to speculate on what exactly waited at Windsor and whether Prince Harry had actually survived. Perhaps someone was simply exploiting his name to attract men and armaments? Perhaps this was being done with the best of intentions: to bring trained men and women together and to give a new embryonic nation the best chance. But if it was a deception, it could be used for baser motives: by someone who wanted to raise an army and seize power in the fr
agmented country that was left.

  The problem of Windsor would not disappear of its own accord but neither was it pressing. Reaper believed that, even if worse case scenario was correct, those behind what was happening would wish to first establish themselves in the south. Conquest of the rest of the country would come later. Still, it was a doubt that needed resolving, and Reaper knew that, before too long, he and other members of his team would have to drive south and investigate.

  Time passed, and travellers tired of an itinerant life that could be all too dangerous joined Haven. Some came looking for somewhere to spend the winter. Their ranks swelled to 480, relationships were formed, new families were created. Children usually stayed with the adults who had found them in the after-days, that bond of attachment often being as strong as the familial one had been before. Two more villages were cleared of bodies; the cottages fumigated and occupied; cats and dogs always part of the new occupancy, to combat rodents. The few academics they had, became a scientific team to help them plan for the future. They became known as the ‘Brains Trust’.

  Dr Greta Malone, who had worked at Scarborough General Hospital, joined them at Haven. She had originally been with a small group based at Scarborough Castle under the leadership of Richard Ferguson, a physicist with plans of regeneration through renewable energy. When the oil supply ran out, we would need, he claimed, solar and wind power. Reaper did not disagree. Greta was black and, as the only doctor Reaper had met during all his travels, she was also gold. She realised her own value and had decided to base herself at the biggest centre of new development, whilst making herself available to all the other communities as a general practitioner.