Aftermath: The complete collection

by John Wilkinson

  ‘Did Father Wilson give you any idea what to expect from the journey?’

  ‘He walked it before the storms really set in, and in the comfort of a large group so his knowledge is somewhat dated. The storms are not as common any more, although they still get some. Vast areas are flooded, sometimes up to six feet deep, and will create a different kind of obstacle, I suppose we won’t really know until we see it first hand. My only worry about the camp is the possibility it will be attacked by either Torriero’s men or the creatures.’

  ‘It’s definitely a possibility,’ said Bernard. ‘But I’ve not heard any stories about the creatures flying around in offensive spacecraft, just the odd people carrier, and even they seem to be struggling in the conditions. You remember around twenty years ago, when pretty much all the world’s planes were grounded by the ash from one volcano, was it in Iceland?’

  ‘Yeah I think it was.’

  ‘Well if the creatures machines are based on anything like a similar technology, just imagine what it’s going to be like trying to keep an engine running with all this ash and dust about.’

  ‘You cannot help it can you?’ I interrupted.

  ‘Help what?’

  ‘Trying to work out how to defeat them, looking for their weaknesses, no such thing as an ex soldier. You might just fit in at this camp better than us.’

  ‘Maybe’ said Bernard, with a smile. ‘How are you coping with everything Nathan? I know you, I can tell you are trying to stay strong for Emma, but it’s eating away at you.’

  ‘I cannot explain what its like, the worry I am permanently under is suffocating me. There’s just no escaping from it, every day I have been forced into doing things I never thought I could.’

  ‘And how are you dealing with that?’

  ‘I’m exhausted, physically and mentally. I have had to ask myself some serious questions, about decisions I’ve made, and I’m not sure my actions were always justified’ I said, finishing my first glass of whisky.

  Bernard stood up, finished his glass and walked over to the drinks cabinet in the kitchenette. ‘You cannot question the decisions you have made under these circumstances, with this kind of pressure. You were protecting your daughter like anyone else would’ said Bernard, trying to reassure me, while refilling our glasses. He walked back to the sofa, handed me mine, and sat down. ‘Are you referring to the man you killed in the shelter?’ He asked.

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘Emma mentioned something about it.’

  ‘Oh bloody hell, this is what I mean, she hasn’t really spoken to me about what happened. What did she say?’

  ‘Not a lot really, she just said you had told her he was a friend, and then shot him.’

  ‘I should have talked to her about it, I just didn’t want to deal with it.’

  ‘You are going to have to talk to her, but you also need to come to terms with it as well, and stop punishing yourself. I know all to well how these kind of things can effect you mentally, I’ve had to deal with similar things.’ Bernard had never really gone into much detail about his final tour of Iraq but I had known something of significance had happened, but no more than that. I think my dad had been told, but I hadn’t wanted to pry. Today seemed as good a day as any for the story to be told, Bernard’s voice slowed as he opened the door to memories he had long since locked away. ‘In 2004 I was on my final operation serving in Iraq,’ he said, pouring himself another glass of whiskey. ‘Saddam had been caught six months before, the whole of Baghdad was on high alert with his trial due to start in July. We were on a highly sensitive mission to capture or kill a high ranking officer of a pro Saddam local faction we believed were planning to sabotage the trial, he had just organised and executed a plan to blow up a hotel in Fallujah, killing seventy three people. I was coming to the end of my time as an active soldier, having served in the first Iraq war, I was really too old for a role such as this, but they wanted a mixture of nationalities and ages, six muscular twenty five year old skin heads would have looked slightly out of place in a run down old café in the heart of Baghdad. Our team consisted of two Americans, two British including myself, one French and one Spanish. It all seemed a little rushed, as many jobs like that were, always on the edge of collapse, like it could fall apart at the seams. When our source dropped us the intel, where and when the meeting would take place, we had very little time to get there. We could only carry handguns, so I had my trusty Glock, other than that we were naked, wired up with an ear piece. The idea was simple, we waited until the target was confirmed by our contact, the order would be given, we would surround them as an undercover car arrived and we would all exit via the vehicle. It needed to be done with as little commotion as possible, if the people of Baghdad didn’t like what was going down, they could make the situation very uncomfortable, and with no back up team, we would be in a whole lot of trouble. The first thing I remember about that day was the heat, it was blistering, the sweat was pouring down my face, I kept wiping it away with my arm, to keep it from going into my eyes, which were stinging. This added to the bright sunlight that was aimed directly at me, I was struggling. I shuffled my chair around the table to try and get out of it, using American Sergeant Max Ryan to block it. The waiter appeared and asked our table what we wanted, we ordered three coffees and three glasses of water. I was always searching for anything that didn’t look right, people, faces, vehicles, always looking. But nothing looked out of the ordinary, the city was bustling. Old battered looking cars and mopeds were moving in and out of lanes, trying to find a space, rushing pedestrians would run in between them, risking their lives. We were in constant contact with our superiors, they were updating us all the time, where the vehicle carrying our target was as it made its way towards the centre. In these kind of situations, you always hear people say, ‘I knew something wasn’t right’ but I honestly didn’t. I didn’t see what was about to happen, until it unfolded in front of me. There was a long period of silence over the wire, I heard the sound of car horns beeping in the distance. I strained to see what was causing the commotion, just as the words ‘Abort the mission’ were heard over the wire. I moved to get up and it was then I noticed the boy standing ten yards from our table, I will never forget the look on his face, he was emotionless, his eyes were black and dead. He had a large white dishdasha on, down to his ankles. He stood motionless looking past us, at that moment, I thought I was about to die. There followed a bright blue and white flash, and then nothing. When I came too, I could hear gun shots, I opened my eyes and felt around on the floor, through all the debris and glass. There was a body next to me, or half of one, it was Sergeant Ryan, who was sat directly in front of me. He had taken the brunt of the impact, killing him instantly, but saving me. Of the six of us, I couldn’t see anyone else alive, I scrambled around on my front, trying to find my team. I could see people running for cover all around, I rolled the next body over and found Officer Anton Bedel, he had lost his right arm and leg but more significantly, he had bullet holes in his back, which made me aware I was still in danger. Identifying anyone was difficult, there were only body parts remaining in most cases, I could see disorientated people walking in circles with limbs missing, people scrambling around on the floor with legs missing. I felt around under my shirt for my gun belt, but the weapon was missing. I searched amongst the debris but couldn’t find it, it must have come off with the explosion, and could have been anywhere. I searched the rooftops, looking for any snipers, but couldn’t find one, I did see a young boy in the street who was walking against the tide of escaping people, a sight that worried me. While I had my head above the wall, another shot rang out, allowing me to identify the snipers location, fortunately the bullet tore into the pillar in front of me, white dust spraying into my eyes. The sniper was positioned on top of a building, five hundred yards due west from my location, he was covering the front of the café and the road, my only
way out was through the shop. I caught sight of the boy again, he was just a hundred yards away, and still walking towards me. The white stone pillar in front of me was covering my position, but if I tried to run, it would leave the sniper with a free shot. I rolled over Officer Bedel and removed his gun from its holster, checking it was loaded, and taking the safety off. As I cowered behind the pillar from the snipers sight, the boy came into view again, he looked disorientated, but he was still walking in my direction. The following decision I made, was one I have struggled with for over thirty years, I didn’t know if he was carrying a bomb or not, but I had no time to decide. I pulled the gun across my body and aimed at him, using the floor to help steady my arm I shot him twice in the chest, he dropped instantly to the floor motionless. I lay there looking at him, I don’t really know what I was hoping for, maybe his body to explode so I would be able to justify my actions, but it didn’t.’

  ‘Do you think he was carrying a bomb?’

  ‘In hindsight, I don’t think he was, I think he was in shock after the explosion, disorientated, just walking around.’

  ‘But you couldn’t know.’

  ‘I had been trained in facing situations like that, I didn’t do the right thing. I made a decision in the moment, just like you did.’

  ‘I understand what you are saying, I do, but it doesn’t make it easier.’

  ‘It doesn’t make it easier Nathan, only time does, and Emma is going to be exposed to worse in the future. But you cannot let it effect your judgement, the next time you have to make a decision like that, you cannot be in two minds.’

  ‘I know, I won’t be. How did you escape from the café, and the sniper?’

  ‘After I had shot the boy, I turned Officer Bedel’s body over, got onto my hands and knees and pushed the body along the floor into the snipers sight, hoping he would think it was someone crawling. Fortunately it worked, when the bullet rang out, I got to my feet and ran at the café doors as fast as I could. I don’t remember much after that, I ended up turned around, running through the kitchen and onto the back street. I just stumbled down the alleyway, confused, searching for something but didn’t know what. A door opened and a man appeared, grabbing me and forcing me into his house. I owe that man, and his family my life, and I still have no idea who he was. Government officers arrived with forty eight hours to take me back home, until they arrived his family fed and nursed me.’

  ‘You were deserving of that bit of luck, half the reason I want you to come is I feel I have used all mine up, Emma has had to kill someone to keep us alive.’

  ‘Emma killed someone? When did that happen?’

  ‘Just before we reached your flat we were confronted by one of Torriero’s men in a flat overlooking Edinburgh Road. They were searching all the houses, there was nowhere we could hide. She put a bullet into the magazine clip, inserted it into the gun and shot him, all the while I was rolling around on the floor fighting with him. He had got the better of me, I don’t want to think what would have happened if she hadn’t shot him.’

  ‘Really? Who the hell would have thought that?’

  ‘I know, I had only shown her how to load the gun a few days before.’

  ‘She is a feisty little thing, just like Jane was.’

  Bernard picked up the whisky bottle and rolled it in his hand, highlighting the little amount left, ‘There’s no point taking it with us’ he said.

  ‘Pour it out then,’ I said, putting my glass on the table. He stood up and emptied the remaining whisky as evenly as he could ‘I wonder what Maureen and Jane would have made of all of this?’ I said, taking a swig and putting the glass back on the table.

  ‘I think they would have been as surprised as everyone else. I remember when you both came to visit us here, around six months before Maureen died, do you remember?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so, we were just dating I think.’

  ‘Yes you were, I remember the girls sat at this dining table, laughing at us, talking about the possibility of a world ending war.’

  ‘That was Maureen for you, she always had something to say about your outlandish theories. It’s a shame they never really got time to get to know each other, I think they would have become great friends.’

  ‘Sharing a mutual enjoyment in taking the piss out of us.’

  ‘Perhaps it was for the best anyway, at least they don’t have to deal with this, they’ve been spared the horror. I don’t think I could have coped with having Jane to protect as well as Emma, it would have been too much.’

  ‘You would have done what you had to. Anyway, we have an early morning planned, best get some shut eye. Don’t spend too long writing up your diary, you need to get some good quality sleep, I don’t know when we’ll be sleeping in a bed again.’I said good night to Bernard and left him to make his bed on the sofa, while I got our stuff ready. I packed up my rucksack, taking my mobile phone out and putting it on the bedside table, I took my clothes off and climbed into the warm bed beside Emma. I lifted one of the pillows up to lean against while I wrote this diary entry. Before I started, I turned my phone on for the first time in weeks, it still had half its battery life left. I waited as it tried to find a signal, after a few seconds it stopped, and I put the alarm on for two a.m.

  Chapter TEN

  23/11/2027 - Time 20:30

  I must have been lying awake, waiting for my alarm to go off, because when it did I was on it in a flash. Emma stirred, so I caressed her hair for a few seconds, until she dropped back off again. Her feet and hands were ice cold, so I got up and put an extra blanket over the top of her. I turned my phone off and put it in my rucksack, carried it into the living area and closed the door quietly behind me. Bernard was already up, and had made a cup of hot tea, which he handed to me. We stood facing each other, talking about how odd it seemed, being up at this time. It reminded me of past holidays when my parents would get me up early to go on our yearly break, I actually had that excited holiday feeling. I had a few gulps of tea and put the cup on the dining table, took my Welrod out of my rucksack and placed it next to it. I carried the rucksack down the stairs and into the garage, opened the back doors to Bernard’s truck and threw it on the floor. Before I went back upstairs, I checked the clothes I had hung up were dry before putting Emma’s in my rucksack and taking mine upstairs. I put them on the table and got dressed while finishing my cup of tea, the house was deadly silent, we were almost ready to leave. I put my coat on and pushed my Welrod down to the bottom of my pocket, Bernard was standing by his kitchen with his back to me, I walked over and stood beside him, he had a tear in his eye which he tried to hide. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh you know, a bit strange. It’s been ten years but I still remember her pottering around this kitchen. I always thought this would be my home, until I died.’

  ‘I know how you feel, the world as we knew it has gone, replaced with an unfamiliar, unpredictable existence. It’s going to be a big change for everyone.’

  ‘But it’s for the right reason, let’s get Emma up and put her into the car.’ We walked into the bedroom where she was still fast asleep, I picked her up along with all the blankets and carried her through the bedroom door, that Bernard held open for us. I don’t think I had held her in this position since she was a baby, now her gangly legs were dangling over my arms. She never made a noise as I carried her through the flat and down the stairs to the garage, each door held open by Bernard. When we reached the truck, he opened the door and I climbed into the back to lay her down across the seats. She was slightly too big, so I bent her legs a bit and made her comfortable. I took the pieces of plastic that had accompanied me since the attack, and placed them over the top of her, hiding her from any trouble we could face. The rain outside was hitting the garage door, chiming off the metal. Bernard asked me if we were ready to go, but I told him I had forgotten something. I ran up the sta
irs and back into the bedroom were I found Ella still in the bed, I put her in my coat pocket and went back downstairs to meet Bernard in the garage. He was sat in the cab pointing at the garage door, and started the engine as I walked over to open it. It rattled as I lifted it up two handed, unveiling the wall of rain that was going to accompany us on our drive. Bernard gently drove the truck into the rain and I stepped out to pull the door back down, the cold rain was pouring off the guttering, cascading onto the floor beside me. I quickly ran to the cab and climbed in, Bernard had the windscreen wipers going already, throwing water off the sides of the screen. ‘I had to change the old battery’ he said as we set off. ‘It was dead, fortunately I had one in the garage.’ As we drove down Edinburgh Road, he turned the headlights on, lighting up the rain soaked streets, reflecting the deserted buildings. The darkness emanating from the black ash clouds was covering everything, the headlights only highlighting debris in the road and abandoned vehicles. The ash cloud is always there, like God has thrown a black cover over the whole planet, wherever you look, wherever you go, it’s always there strangling every living thing. We were soon out of Dumfries, heading south down the M6, the motorway was less affected with debris, allowing us to keep to a higher speed. The first few miles went fairly smoothly, with little cause for us to slow down. A couple of miles outside of Gretna, we approached some vehicles abandoned in the road. We slowed right down, nervous it could be an ambush, and crawled in between them. There was just enough room to fit the truck through, the headlights of our car struggled to reveal anything more than the lashing rain, but we kept our eyes peeled. When we had got past, Bernard started to accelerate away towards a huge motorway bridge, twenty yards ahead, but he slammed the breaks on just before we reached it, the car came to a shuddering stop. There were bodies hanging from the underside of the bridge, that had been hidden by the torrential rain. It was dark inside, making it difficult to gauge how many there were. Bernard rolled the car to the edge of the bridge, where the wall of rain in front of us stopped, and the bodies started. Both sides of the motorway had been used to house the morbid scene, I assume to scare anyone from using this route. There was no way around it, the bodies were hung no more than a yard apart, and too low to be avoided. As the truck rolled forward, the stone like feet of the first body bounced along the bonnet, followed by the second, and the third. They would move up and over the windscreen, across the roof before shaking off the back, and relaxing back into their previous position. The first ones we past looked recently deceased, with faces still full of pain and anguish, but the further through we got, the more shrivelled and decomposed they became. There were hundreds of bodies, maybe more than a thousand, I couldn’t help but look up at them, the slow pace Bernard had to drive through made it hard not to look. There was a disturbing atmosphere, the whole thing was like an real life ghost train from an amusement park, with bodies banging against the truck. By the time we reached the outer edge of the bridge, we were driving over the top of the remains, their rotting necks having snapped with the weight on their decomposing bodies. The sound of the driving rain then took over, as the wall of water in front of us emerged out of the darkness, and we continued into it. After a few miles, the rain and the motion of the windscreen wipers started to send me to sleep, and I was having a hard time trying to counteract it. My head kept dropping as I lapsed back into sleep, so I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I looked out of the passenger window in hope of some inspiration, but the dying countryside had nothing to offer. I noticed a sign for Carlisle before I dozed off, thirteen miles. The next thing I remembered was Bernard waking me up, ‘Nathan, wake up, we’ve got company.’ I sat up and strained my tired eyes, rubbing them, trying to evaluate the situation. There was five cars in front of us, parked boot to bonnet across the motorway. There was no way around the blockade, it covered both sides of the road. Bernard slowed down as we approached, and torch lights turned on inside a couple of vehicles, shining out of the windscreen into the darkness. ‘Just follow my lead,’ he said. ‘Don’t panic and keep focused.’ He pulled the truck over around thirty yards from the cars, it was hard to tell exactly how many men there were, I thought I could see movement in three cars. Then the figure of two men appeared in the headlights of our car walking towards us. They were shouting something but I couldn’t hear, I wound down the window, but the sound of the rain was muffling the man’s voice. ‘Turn your headlights off’ he shouted, ‘Or I’ll shoot them out.’ Bernard flicked the lights off and wound down his window. The two men approached either side of the car, shining their torches in our faces. They were both wearing long grey raincoats with hoods, the rain was pouring off them into pools by their feet. ‘Welcome to Carlisle’ said the man by Bernard’s window. ‘We haven’t seen any cars on here for some time, are you planning on staying long?’