They carried on and after nearly two miles there was a track on the right; a hand-written sign said “Logs.” There was a makeshift barrier across the entrance, with another sign that said “PLAGUE- KEEP AWAY!” Jamie got out and moved the barrier aside, then got back in and drove onto the track. It was roughly-made, with many pot-holes, and went on for about three hundred yards before coming to a large concreted yard. A right fork went up a slight incline to another yard and they could see outbuildings up there.
They went forward into the main yard and stopped. On their left by a line of trees an old, rusting Renault Master van was parked. Before them was a huge modern barn with two full-height roller-shutters and a central door that was open. On the right corner of the barn, set back slightly, was a large farmhouse with a single-storey annexe on the side, and an old mobile-home ten yards to the right of that with a small lawn in front. They got out, leaving Max inside the cab, and listened; there was no sound apart from birds.
‘Seems quiet enough,’ said Jane. ‘Let’s have a look in the barn.’
Jamie took a torch from his pocket and they walked up to the barn and in through the central door. A rich smell of sawdust and resin hit them. It was completely dark inside apart from the area by the door, and he shone the torch around. They saw huge piles of sawn logs stacked up high and ready-packed logs in different-sized bags. On the left-hand side were various machines for cutting wood. Everything was neatly arranged by size and it obviously had once been an efficiently-operated business.
‘Well,’ said Jamie, ‘we wanted logs and it looks like we came to the right place!’ Jane smiled.
They’d been inside less than a minute when Max started barking loudly. It wasn’t his usual excited bark, but one of warning. They moved back to the door and stepped out into the light. To their left stood a large man with a thick beard, pointing a shotgun at them. Jamie cursed himself for leaving the guns in the truck.
Fourteen
‘Stay where you are,’ said the man. ‘Who are you and what are you doing on my property?’ Max was still barking angrily from the cab and trying to get through the half-open window.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Jamie replied, ‘we thought the place was deserted or that everyone was dead. We don’t want to cause you any trouble.’
Behind the man a girl poked her head out of the front door to the house. ‘Who is it, Daddy?’ The man spoke over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on them. ‘Go back inside, sweetie, and stay with your mum.’ The girl went back in and closed the door.
‘We’ve come out from Bexhill. I’m Jane Roberts and this is Jamie Parker. We needed seasoned logs for our ranges and stoves and found your details in an old Yellow Pages advert, so we thought we’d drive out here. We weren’t expecting to find anyone alive, to be honest. We’ve seen almost no other survivors in the last two months in Bexhill.
Of course,’ she added with an ironic smile, ‘normally we would have rung first, but my mobile doesn’t appear to have a signal. Damn things; you can never rely on them!’
That broke the ice and the man suddenly smiled and chuckled, lowering his shotgun. ‘Yes, I know what you mean. I’m Bill; Bill Anderson.’ He held his hand out and they both shook it. ‘Sorry about the frosty welcome, but you can’t be too careful these days. We had an incident about six weeks ago when a couple of blokes tried to steal some of our chickens. My daughter surprised them and they threatened her with a knife. They ran off when they saw me coming with my gun and I shot one of them in the arse. Only caught him with a few pellets, but I haven’t seen them since.’
‘That’s okay,’ said Jamie, ‘we understand completely. We’ve had our own share of nasty run-ins. Three blokes attacked Jane just over a week ago, but luckily I was able to step in and help. That was how we met. They won’t be bothering anyone again.’
Bill shook his head. ‘Aargh! Bad times; but good for you! Will you come in for a drink and a snack and meet the family? I’d be interested to hear your news and stories.’
They both agreed and said that would be nice. Max had stopped barking now but was still whining. Jamie went back to the truck to let him out, picked up his rucksack and slung it over his shoulder. He left the guns in the cab as there seemed no need for them and he didn’t want to alarm Bill or make him wary. Max trotted up to Bill, who knelt down and offered his hand for Max to smell and then stroked him. Satisfied, Max went back and stood by Jane. Bill looked back at the house and waved; the girl came outside and ran up to him. She was around twelve with long, dark brown hair and a little shy of the strangers. She pulled her dad’s arm, so he bent down while she whispered in his ear. He stood up, smiling.
‘This is my youngest, Sally. She wants to know if she can stroke your dog.’
‘Hello, Sally. Of course you can,’ Jane replied. ‘His name’s Max and he’s very friendly.’
The girl bent down and stroked Max, who wagged his tail in response. They walked into the house and Bill introduced them to his wife, Emma, and their son, Peter. Emma was well-built, curvy and in her mid-forties, with thick auburn hair and rosy cheeks from the cooking she’d been doing. Peter looked around seventeen and was tall and lean, with reddish hair and glasses. Bill invited them to sit at the big table in the kitchen while Emma made tea for everyone.
‘Whereabouts in Bexhill are you?’ Bill asked.
‘We’ve taken over a house and a bungalow next to each other on South Cliff fairly recently,’ said Jamie. ‘We needed somewhere with good-sized gardens near the sea, as we were both in flats. The family in Jane’s house were dead and my bungalow was empty; I assumed they must have died in hospital early on.’
‘Does it have a Rayburn and a pond in the garden with koi carp?’ asked Bill, which Jamie confirmed.
‘That was Brian and Lisa. I’d been supplying them with logs for years. We were friendly and spoke now and then. You’re right; they died early on, not long after it hit Bexhill. Nice couple; both wanted kids but they couldn’t have them. I haven’t been into town since the plague hit, but I understand it’s terrible and quiet as a graveyard.’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ Jane replied. ‘There’s no one left; well, if there are we haven’t seen them in over two months.’
‘… Apart from the guy I met in B&Q and the other in Tesco’s,’ Jamie added, and related the story to them.
‘Phil and Sophie have been in several times and said it was awful,’ said Emma. ‘They’re a young couple who live here now with us. They worked for us when we had a business, before the plague came. Their car broke down when things were getting really bad everywhere and they got kind of stranded here. We said they could stay with us until the car was fixed, expecting it to be just a few days. By the time we got the car fixed both their families were infected and they had no homes to go back to, so they stayed on here with us. They’ve gone over to Wartling today to see friends of ours who’ve got a smallholding there. They’ve been to the retail park in Bexhill a few times to get clothes and supplies.’
‘Do they drive an old, red Mondeo estate?’ asked Jamie, and Bill confirmed that they did. ‘Ah! That solves that mystery, then. I saw it when I was there getting stuff once, and it was gone the next time. I told Jane about it, but I never saw them.’
Emma brought them tea, along with a plate of fresh cheese, dried apricots and apples. Jane and Jamie looked in amazement at the cheese, and then at Bill and Emma.
Bill smiled. ‘We’ve got three dairy cows and a bull; had them for two years now. We make our own cheese and butter. We’ve also got two goats, six sheep and a ram, plus lots of chickens. We’re pretty much self-sufficient here, and have been for a good while. We grow our own veg’ and have got a small orchard, with apples, apricots, cherries and pears. We’ve got solar panels on the barn roof that charge up a bank of batteries and an inverter, so we’ve got mains power, too. As long as we don’t run too much stuff and overload it, we’re okay. Our water comes from a well fed by an underground spring.’
Jane’
s mouth was watering. ‘Oh my God, I have so missed cheese!’
They tucked into the cheese and dried fruits and were soon making appreciative noises. Bill and Emma watched them with amusement for a second and then joined them. Sally came back in with Max after playing with him and gave him a bowl of water. After they’d eaten Bill led them to some comfy chairs in a conservatory on the back of the house and poured them a brandy each.
‘Don’t tell me you make this yourself?’ Jamie asked with a smile.
Bill chuckled. ‘Sadly, no. This is spoils of war, as you might say.’ He was keen to know how they had survived and what their plans were for the future.
‘To be honest, Bill,’ said Jamie, ‘neither of us has a clue how we survived. We both caught the plague several months ago after it hit Bexhill, slipped into some kind of a coma and woke up days later, weak and half-dead. Things had become deathly-quiet outside and Jane said that, like me, it took her a month to recover enough to go out. It was like a ghost-town by then. Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to stockpile supplies when it started spreading so quickly up north.’
‘And I didn’t!’ said Jane. ‘I struggled for a long while to find enough stuff when I was strong enough to go out.’
‘I saw it coming, too,’ said Bill, shaking his head, ‘and started preparing, just in case. When I was fifteen or so, my granddad told me about the Spanish Flu pandemic between 1918 and ’20, and how people were dropping like flies, with mass graves being dug for all the corpses. He lost a lot of family back then. When I saw on the news about the mortality rate and how quickly it was spreading, I remembered his stories. I closed the business down and started stockpiling things here. We spent a week or two bringing in supplies and then made a makeshift barrier at the bottom of the drive with that sign about plague. After that we kind of just battened down the hatches and laid low for months. Obviously, it hit the urban areas first and then spread out to the villages. Apart from our friends at Wartling, I don’t know of any other survivors around here.’
They sat talking for the rest of the morning. Jane and Jamie took turns in telling them about the things they were doing: the garden work and the seeds they had sown; fishing and snaring rabbits; learning to preserve food, and how they had rescued Max and nursed him back to health. Jamie reached into his pack and gave them some rabbit jerky to taste; they were impressed and congratulated him. Emma asked if they would stay for lunch, which they accepted gratefully. She cooked them a big plate of scrambled eggs with ham, which they devoured with gusto!
‘Some neighbours we knew kept pigs and made their own hams,’ explained Emma. ‘After they died we decided to liberate their hams; I mean, why not? It was all very sad and traumatic, but we were alive and they weren’t. We didn’t really have the means or the inclination to look after their two remaining pigs, so we slaughtered them. We’ve got two big chest freezers full of pork and I’ve made hams and bacons. They’re hanging up in a store-room and won’t be ready for months yet. I just hope our electricity supply holds out, otherwise we’ll lose a lot of meat.’
Eventually it came time for them to leave, which they were reluctant to do as it had been a wonderful surprise meeting Bill and his family. As they were preparing to leave Phil and Sophie pulled up in the Mondeo and introductions were made all round. They were both in their early twenties. Phil was fairly stocky, with a shock of blond curly hair and an open, friendly face. Sophie was short, curvy and pretty, with long dark hair that she tucked behind her ears, and a fringe. They seemed like a nice young couple and were pleased to meet them.
Bill said he would give them a few bags of logs to take back with them, for which they were very grateful. ‘Well, we’ve got more than enough for our needs, for many years to come; the barn’s pretty full and there’s more out back seasoning, too.’
They reversed the Land Rover up to the roller-shutter, which Bill opened, and then he brought out enough bags to fill the load area. He also gave them a jerrycan of red diesel for their truck. Emma came out carrying a cardboard box containing a dozen eggs, a pint of milk and two fresh cheeses wrapped in waxed-paper. Jamie and Jane were moved almost to tears and thanked them several times.
‘Think nothing of it,’ said Bill. ‘Please come out again soon. We’re so happy to see some survivors like you and wish you well. We’d love to see you again and to keep in touch, to see how you’re doing.’ They both assured them that they would and Bill and Jamie shook hands while the women exchanged hugs.
Jamie felt guilty that they didn’t have anything to offer in return, and then had a thought; ‘Bill; how well-off are you for shotgun cartridges?’
‘Not very good, actually; I’m down to my last box of fifty.’
Jamie walked to the cab and came back with the box he’d got from Jane’s attackers and gave them to Bill, who was pleased with the gift and thanked him sincerely. The two kids came out to say goodbye and to stroke Max again, then they got in the truck and drove off down the track, waving goodbye. At the bottom, Jane got out to put the barrier back in place and they drove onto the road, heading home.
They stopped off first at the railway bridge when they got back to Bexhill, and Jane went up to check the snares, coming back with a rabbit and a big grin on her face. Jamie clapped his hands and kissed her on the cheek. They carried on driving and discussed moving the snares to another location. They wondered if the rabbits might get used to them and start avoiding the area, so they thought it best to move them for a while to somewhere else, and then put them back at a later date. They agreed to try the green space around Down Road and also Collington Wood, just past the railway, and to take Max with them to sniff out the burrows.
Their second stop was at the kitchen shop on Devonshire Road, where they came out with several boxes of preserving jars. Jamie had to break the glass with a hammer to get in, but it wasn’t a problem. Back home, they hauled the bags of logs off the truck and dragged them into Jamie’s garage.
They spent the remaining afternoon preparing and cooking the rabbit and pheasant for preserving. Now that they had a good supply of logs they fired up the Rayburn for the first time, so they had the two hotplates and the two ovens to cook with. Jamie played some music on his MP3 player while they were working and they chatted about Bill and Emma, saying how great it was to have met them and that there were other survivors for them to interact with. They roasted the pheasant for that evening and the next day, and cooked up the rabbit meat and sealed it in preserving jars. Max was given the leftovers, which he scoffed out in the garden.
After their evening meal of roast pheasant they sat in the conservatory with a bottle of wine and ate some of the cheese Emma had given them, savouring the taste. They talked for a long while, with Max curled up between them on the sofa, going over plans and ideas, and also resolved to go back soon to see Bill and Emma. They were more realistic by now about the hard times that lay ahead and what they needed to do. They knew that despite their efforts in the garden over the past week and in the future, they would be at the mercy of nature and the weather. They fully expected to have setbacks and failures, and that survival and self-sufficiency were going to be tough. They both agreed, though, that in the scheme of things today had been a good day.
They said goodnight and hugged, then Jane went next door. He filled Max’s water bowl, stroked him and then went to bed, where he lay awake for a long time thinking about many things.
Fifteen
The inclement weather continued for another two days and got worse, peaking early on the Monday, with regular squalls of wind and rain from leaden, overcast skies. It was certainly too rough to think of taking the boat out to do more fishing. They did some more garden work on the Sunday but soon gave up as the soil was difficult to work and they just ended up covered in mud. After getting drenched they went back inside. Jane went next door to change into dry clothes then they lit the stove in the kitchen and hung up their wet things to dry.
Instead, they decided to visit the other areas that t
hey thought might be good for laying snares. It would still mean getting wet, but there was nothing they could do about that, and at least they wouldn’t be constantly scraping clods of mud off their boots, spades and forks. They took Max and visited Collington Wood just the other side of the railway and then went to the green space along Down Road, laying new snares and marking their positions clearly with Christmas ribbon so they could find them again easily. Max seemed almost impossibly jubilant, both with his new tasks and with his new family, and didn’t seem bothered in the least by the weather. His back legs had healed well; he loved the work and being outside with them both, running around like a mad thing when he wasn’t tracking for them.
It took the rest of the morning to locate new burrows and lay the snares, and by the time they’d finished they were drenched again. It made them realise that they needed better outdoor clothing than they currently had if they were to work outside in all weathers. They couldn’t think of anywhere in Bexhill where they would find appropriate clothing as there weren’t any camping or outdoor-type shops, and neither of them fancied going into bigger towns like Eastbourne or Hastings. Jane knew of a country clothing shop in Battle, so they decided to drive over there after lunch and get kitted out with some better coats and maybe trousers also. During lunch Jane mentioned an idea she’d had.
‘I’ve been thinking since yesterday about Bill and Emma, and about what we could give them as a thank-you for their generosity and hospitality to us.’
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Well, I wanted to ask what you thought, and if you had any ideas.’
Jamie thought for a few seconds, recalling what he’d seen at their house. ‘I think treats would be good; they seem to be pretty well set up with the basics and the essential things. So why not get them some nice things they might be lacking? I don’t suppose the kids have had much in the way of treats since this all began. What about things like sweets, crisps, snacks and sodas- stuff like that?’
The Hoffmann Plague Page 13