by Jon Grahame
‘I suppose it would.’ Cath looked out of the window. ‘I wonder whatever happened to my children.’ She glanced at Jenny and smiled guiltily. ‘You think of them that way. You are with them for so long that you think of them as yours.’
‘I know,’ said Jenny. ‘I used to be a teacher, too.’
‘Did you?’ She assessed her. ‘But bigger children, I can tell. Not primary.’
‘Yes. Bigger children.’
Jenny smiled but the memories were painful. She still felt that she had let down the three girls who had become her responsibility when the virus had ravaged the public school at which she had been the sole surviving teacher.
‘Anyway,’ Jenny said. ‘It’s something to think about. We’ll be back in two weeks. You can tell us then if you’d like to come back to teaching.’
She stood up and bent down to kiss Cath on the cheek before she left.
‘Thank you,’ Cath said. ‘And don’t hurt Bobby. It was probably my fault.’
‘Cath, it wasn’t your fault. Believe me, it wasn’t your fault. But don’t worry. We won’t hurt him. We’ll just see him on his way.’
When Jenny went downstairs, Marje went back up. Jenny told Rowley that she had offered Cath a teaching post at Haven and he nodded at the sense of the suggestion.
‘Fresh start might be best,’ he said. ‘Everybody likes Cath and no one blames her, but even sympathy can get on your nerves. What will you do with Simpson?’
‘We’ll take him.’
‘You’ll deal with him?’
‘We’ll deal with him,’ said Jenny, returning his meaningful look.
They drove through Malton and Pickering and took the Whitby Road across the North Yorkshire Moors. Simpson sat in the rear of the Range Rover, his hands secured behind his back by plastic cuffs. A bag containing his possessions was alongside him.
The journey restored his confidence. He stopped asking where they were taking him, the anxiety left his voice and he became more conversational.
‘Two good-looking girls like you. I’ll bet you’re not short of blokes. But you get out and about, you see. Meet people. I was stuck there, on the farm. You get used to it. Getting up, working, being looked after. It wouldn’t have been so bad except the one girl I did fancy was a right stuck up piece. Wouldn’t give me the time of day. It was time for me to move on, anyway.’
‘What about Cath?’ Tanya asked.
‘Well, it wasn’t serious with Cath. I mean, come on. She was available and I was missing it. Nice lady though, don’t get me wrong.’
‘She is a nice lady,’ said Jenny.
‘But not my type. Well, not unless you’re desperate and it had been a long time.’
‘I suppose that’s the problem with being a bloke,’ Tanya said. ‘Blokes need it more than women. At least, that’s what I was told. They’d do it with a hole in the wall if there was nothing else. Is that true?’
Simpson laughed. ‘True enough, I suppose. If the hole was padded. With silk panties, say. You haven’t got any spare have you?’
They were well onto the moors when Tanya turned the car off the main road and took a narrow lane to nowhere. Two hundred yards and she stopped.
‘This will do,’ she said.
‘What?’ Simpson was anxious again. ‘You’re going to leave me here? It’s miles from anywhere.’
‘The walk will do you good,’ Tanya said.
The girls got out and Jenny opened the rear door so Simpson could climb down. The sun was shining but the air was fresh so high on the moors. Tanya took the Bowie knife from the sheath on her right leg and cut the plastic cord that held his wrists. He rubbed them to help circulation and looked around at the great expanse of nothingness. Jenny dropped his bag on the floor.
‘So this is it?’ Simpson said. He had regained a little of his cockiness. ‘Whitby’s that way, I suppose? A long walk to a short pier.’ He laughed at his own joke.
Tanya stepped closer to him. He was perhaps an inch taller than her but she held the knife up to his face and he paled at the look in her eyes.
‘You don’t know how close you are to dead,’ she said. ‘Cath begged us not to hurt you but I’m tempted.’
A nervous smile flicked across his face as his eyes went from blade to Tanya.
‘Told you,’ he said. ‘Consensual. She wanted it.’
Tanya spat into his face and he didn’t raise a hand to wipe it away. She turned the blade and the sun caught the steel and flashed a signal in Jenny’s memory. Another blade, three girls she had been unable to protect from the rape and degradation she herself had also suffered. All at the point of a knife like the one that Tanya held in the face of a rapist.
‘Walk,’ Tanya said.
Simpson picked up his bag and walked across the uneven moorland, heading in the general direction of Whitby and the coast. He turned once, when he was perhaps twenty yards away, and raised a hand in farewell, the grin back on his face.
Jenny, the English rose, raised the carbine to her shoulder, aimed carefully, and shot him in the back. The discharge of the gun echoed across the empty moors. Tanya stared at her partner, partly in shock, partly in understanding.
‘He would have done it again,’ Jenny said.
Chapter 12
RONNIE RONALDO CONTINUED TO MAKE HIS SOLO scouting expeditions on his Yamaha trail bike. He had been asked to brief Pete Mack in advance and be more specific about his intended destinations and the expected duration of his trips, so that if he went missing again, his colleagues would know where to look. ‘Of course’, agreed Ronnie. ‘Makes sense.’ Then, three weeks after his rescue from York, he left early enough one morning to avoid having to tell Pete anything.
‘Didn’t he give a hint?’ Reaper asked.
‘The bugger was away before dawn,’ said Pete. ‘You know Ronnie. Ducking and diving are second nature. He had something on his mind when he got back last night, though. He was on edge. Impatient. Kept smiling to himself. He wouldn’t tell me about it. Said he’d heard a rumour that needed checking out. I suppose that’s what he’s doing now.’
‘Where had he been yesterday?’ Reaper asked.
‘Leeds way. Up the M62.’
They all knew that what Ronnie did was dangerous. He went into uncharted territory with nothing more than his wits and a swift off-the-road bike. He knew the dangers but enjoyed the challenge and he often returned with news of untouched warehouses or industrial complexes to which he would then guide Pete, who went armed and took a Special Forces unit for protection. Reaper hoped that whatever Ronnie had gone to check out was worth it.
He returned at one o’clock in the afternoon. He rode down the hill and into the village square and skidded sideways to a halt, throwing up a cloud of dust. Sandra watched him from the steps of the manor house as he jumped off the machine. His skinny frame in black leathers made him look like a large ant.
‘What’s the hurry, Ronnie? You’re riding like the Pony Express.’
‘Where’s Reaper?’ he said, a gleam of excitement in his eye.
‘Inside.’
She took him into the manor house. Reaper was in a small room next to the library. He was studying a map spread on a table.
‘You slipped out early, Ronnie,’ Reaper said. ‘Never told Pete where you were going.’
‘It was too daft to tell. I had to go and see.’
‘And what did you see?’
He handed a pamphlet to Reaper and waited for a reaction, licking his lips, his head vibrating like a nodding dog, waiting to be asked to tell more, to be coaxed into revealing what he obviously thought was a great discovery. Reaper read the cover of the pamphlet. It said: What To Do In The Event Of A Nuclear Attack.
Inside, there were diagrams and instructions about how a family should take cover. It all
seemed a little optimistic for those living in a three bedroomed semi-detached expecting to survive an atom bomb. He passed it to Sandra.
‘It’s probably from the 1960s or 70s when people thought a nuclear war was a possibility,’ Reaper said. ‘Where did you find it?’
Ronnie licked his lips and shot glances at them both.
‘A bunker,’ he said. ‘Underground. In the Pennines. There was a load of them and other pamphlets and leaflets. These, for instance.’
He handed a single sheet to Reaper that said: Declaration of Martial Law by the Regional Seat of Government along with instructions to the civilian population of how they should obey the military authority of the RSG: all curfews, restrictions and rationing. He read the date at the top and passed it to Sandra.
‘Last year,’ he said. ‘What else is in the bunker, Ronnie?’
‘Dead bodies, vehicles, food, medical equipment, guns and ammunition.’
‘Bodies?’
‘They look like they died last year.’
‘Who were they?’
He produced four nametags, which he placed on the desk. One was that of a general, another of an air vice marshal, the third said Sir Peter Proberty, all names Reaper had never heard before. The fourth was that of Giles Lambert.
Sandra was at his shoulder. She touched the Lambert nametag. ‘Is that …?’
‘The Deputy Prime Minister,’ said Reaper.
‘Good God.’
‘It looks like they tried to set up a Regional Government. Move somewhere isolated, lock themselves in, wait till the pandemic was over, then pick up the reins of power.’
Ronnie said, ‘There were women there, too, and children. I saw five women and three children.’
‘Good grief.’ Reaper said, and sat down.
It was a lot to take in. He had read somewhere, years before, that during the Cold War there had been plans to move the seat of Government from London, which had been seen as vulnerable, to a bunker located elsewhere in the country. It seemed they had tried the same thing in the later stages of the plague. It hadn’t worked. He wondered if there had been other sites, other bunkers. If there had been, he had no doubt the occupants had all fallen victim to the virus and the forward planning to save the nation had come to nothing.
Sandra said, ‘Where is it?’
‘High in the hills. Past Leeds along the M62. On the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire. You turn off the motorway, then off the Ripponden road. There’s a transport depot cut into the hills. One snow plough and piles of salt for the winter. You get real winters up there.’ He said it as if winters elsewhere could not compete. ‘There’s a hidden entrance at the back.’
‘How did you find it?’ said Reaper.
‘I’m a good listener,’ he said. ‘Met some people near Bradford. Nice people. They live on a farm. They call it a commune. I’ve visited a few times to make sure they’re all right. They keep to themselves but you never know. Anyway, two of the women had come over the tops from Oldham last year. Gangs were operating over there. They told a strange tale. They were driving on the M62 in the middle of the night, some time in August, and hit a bloke walking down the middle of the motorway. I mean, a Transit can do a lot of damage, and he was badly smacked up.
‘They couldn’t do a lot for him except make him comfortable. They covered him with blankets and sat with him. Gave him whisky, held his hand. He said his name was Robert. They asked if he lived nearby, if there was anyone they could fetch, but he didn’t make a lot of sense. He said, “All gone. They’re all gone.” The women thought he meant his family. Then the bloke said, “We were the last hope. The last government.” And he cried a bit and then said, “Fucking Wombles. We were fucking Wombles.” He was in pain, upset. Full of whisky. And knew he was dying. Then he became a bit more like … rational, and said, “We lived under the hill. The last hope. That hill there,” and he pointed back from where he’d been walking. Then he stared up at the stars in the sky and said, “Snow plough” and he died. The ladies thought he meant the stars. You know, like Sagittarius, or something.
‘Anyway, the commune discussed this tale umpteen times. Not a lot else for them to do during winter. And somebody remembered a vague rumour that there’d been a fall-out shelter under the Pennines, all stocked up with cardboard coffins and tins of baked beans, and they wondered if this is what the bloke meant. And I thought, stranger things have happened. This commune, they’re snug and prefer to stay unnoticed. They don’t do a lot of travelling, but I thought it would be worth a look. So for a couple of days I scouted the hills round there, where they knocked him down, like. And yesterday, I found the snow plough. I didn’t tell Pete because it all sounded so far-fetched until I’d checked it out. But it’s there. Ruddy great underground bunker, full of stuff.’
‘Ronnie, you’re brilliant,’ Reaper said.
Ronnie grinned at the praise but, now his story had been told, he looked a little sad.
‘Ronnie? What’s wrong?’ said Sandra.
He took a deep breath then let it out again in a sigh.
‘I feel a bit guilty. You know, like it was the commune’s discovery but we’ll take it.’
Sandra said, ‘You could invite the commune to join us.’
‘Good idea,’ said Reaper. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think they might.’ Ronnie bucked up at the thought of issuing the invitation. ‘I never told them about us, like. Wherever I’ve been, whoever I’ve talked to, I’ve kept schtum about Haven. But I think those people might like it here. They’re bloody lost souls where they are.’
‘Now we have to work out the best way of collecting the supplies,’ Reaper said.
‘Some of it’s already packed,’ said Ronnie. ‘I think they must have taken it by the lorry load and there are two lorries inside the bunker that were never unloaded. Get them started and we can just drive them away.’
The bunker in the Pennines was momentous news. It gave an insight into what the Government had planned in the final days of the pandemic and, from Ronnie’s description of its interior, it contained a great quantity of supplies. The possibilities were discussed that night at a meeting attended by Cassandra, Judith, the Rev Nick, Ashley, Pete Mack, Dr Greta Malone, Sandra and Reaper, where Ronnie told his story all over again.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Cassandra. ‘I knew there were several bunkers around the country. They were built in the fifties and early sixties but I thought most had been decommissioned. One in stone quarries near Bath was designed as a National Seat of Government and there was another in Wiltshire. Originally, there were five bunkers beneath London itself. But I never heard about the one in the Pennines.’
‘How big were they?’ asked Nick.
‘I’m no expert, but I had some knowledge because of my husband’s position in the RAF and because we had a small bunker on the camp itself that was used for storage. My husband also visited RAF Fylingdale – the early warning radar system on the moors above Whitby. The three dishes are above the ground but everything else is underneath, including the Doomsday Room. That’s where they watched screens for the first sign of a ballistic missile attack. Rodney said the place had its own underground road system and a generator that was big enough to power a town. The idea of these underground bases piqued my curiosity and I did a little research.
‘They could be immense, big enough to house as many as 4,000 people. They had medical centres, hospital wards, canteens. They stocked them with libraries of specially selected books to use as a data base to get the country back on its feet afterwards. There were dormitories, communication centres. They filled acres of space beneath the ground.’
Ronnie said, ‘This one’s not that big. I looked at the dormitories. I don’t think it would have taken more than 500 people.’
Nick asked Cassandra, ‘Were there many of these bu
nkers?’
‘The well known ones, that I mentioned, but I suppose it’s inevitable there would be others that weren’t common knowledge. The threat of nuclear attack didn’t seem quite so relevant by the 1980s and they were expensive to maintain. Most were decommissioned in the eighties and nineties and some were declassified, but I suppose some remained on the secret list, just in case. Like this one.’
Reaper said, ‘Maybe the Pennine bunker wasn’t the only one that was re-activated.’
‘Possibly,’ said Cassandra. ‘But they couldn’t hide from the virus like they thought they could hide from nuclear fall-out.’
‘How long could they survive underground?’ asked Reaper.
‘The usual time period they planned for in case of nuclear attack was three months. By then, they expected the radiation would have fallen to a safe level.’
‘So we might assume that this chap, Robert, lived for three months in the bunker. Surrounded by dead people,’ said Reaper.
Ronnie added, ‘And then, when he stepped outside, he was knocked down by a Transit. Hardly seems fair, does it?’
They visited the bunker in strength to strip it of its supplies. If possible, they wanted to do the job in one trip. The location was isolated but they would be seen en route and might be spotted at the site. This possibility would increase if they made several collections, which could then attract other scavengers and Reaper was determined not to share what Ronnie had discovered.
This assumption of ownership did not sit well with the Rev Nick, who attempted a tentative argument that everyone had equal claims on anything left behind, but it was only half-hearted opposition. He realised that whatever they took would be put to the best use possible by the citizens of the federation.
Ronnie led the convoy and took point on his Yamaha to ensure the roads were safe, travelling well in advance of the following vehicles. Sandra drove the first, a Special Forces Range Rover, in which she was partnered by Keira. This was followed by a military Land Rover with roll bars and a heavy machine gun on a weapons mount on the front passenger side, that was driven by Haven’s chief mechanic, Gavin Price. The gun was manned by Leading Aircraftman Clifford ‘Smiffy’ Smith, a black RAF ex-serviceman. Two lorries followed, Pete Mack in the first with a co-driver, and two men in the back. A driver and co-driver manned the second lorry, again with two men in the back. A Range Rover driven by Kev Andrews, with fifteen-year-old James Marshall alongside him, was tail end Charlie. Reaper, with Yank in the shotgun seat, and Dr Greta Malone and the Rev Nick sitting behind them, was in a third Special Forces vehicle. He had licence to rove alongside the convoy. Everyone was armed, except for Nick and Dr Malone. ‘Blame the Hippocratic oath,’ she’d said.