by Terry Tyler
"I need batteries for my music," drawled Christian, flicking his dark fringe from his eyes; it promptly fell back, covering half his face.
"We need clean clothes, too," said Lacey. "Changes of underwear."
"I just want to sleep," said Jodie.
Doyle shut his eyes. Eric seemed like a decent guy. Pity about the father and son duo. And Lacey reminded him of girlfriends of the past, who wouldn't walk down a country lane because it would ruin their shoes, or set off on a spur of the moment trip without going home to pack a sack of make-up and hair products.
He looked out of the window.
"I've got an idea," he said. "Eric, how about your wife and the others get settled in that hotel over the way, there, do what they've got to do, get a good couple of nights' sleep, and you and I take a drive down country and see what's what?"
He was surprised they agreed to his plan without question, though it was only the Fosters who actually said so; he sensed, in the others, too much apathy to care.
They agreed to meet back at the hotel in three days.
"You'll be back by no later than one p.m. on Friday," Lacey said, tapping her watch. "That's when I'll officially start to worry, okay?"
They drove across East Anglia, bypassing London, then on to the South Downs, on the lookout for any signs of communities. On the way, Eric suggested Doyle took a turn at the wheel, and he was forced to admit that he couldn't drive.
"Oh, I see, you're just after a free ride, then."
"No, I—"
"Never mind." Big sigh. "Lacey wouldn't have let me go on my own, anyway."
Stopping along the road to eat, Doyle heard the sound of cranes and diggers in the distance.
"I don't know, I'd rather push on," said Eric, when he suggested they detour to take a look. "It'll be military demolition. Saw some of that in Yorkshire."
"That's not demolition noise," Doyle said. "It's building site noise. I know, I've worked on them."
"Whatever. We've only got three days, and we've come out to look for communities, not building sites. I've got a family to take care of."
He kept looking at his watch, which annoyed the fuck out of Doyle. What did he need to know the time for, every bloody half hour? So they pushed on, and spent the night on comfortable sofas in a pub near Portsmouth. Looking for supplies the next morning, they came across a young couple who were on their way to the Midlands; they'd come from a community in Perranporth in Cornwall, and had seen one in Devon, too.
"Lots of kids at Perranporth, it's quite 'alternative', but family orientated and very easy-going. You'll be fine there, long as you're prepared to muck in."
Doyle noticed that the girl kept scratching herself, and they both looked thin and undernourished, but he hadn't looked in a mirror in days; he was sure he didn't look much better, and Eric was cheered by these stories.
"Well, we know where we're going now. Let's get back."
"Don't you want to check it out first?"
"I'm a bit worried about fuel. If we get stuck, we might not make it back by Friday lunch, and Lacey will fret."
"I want to explore some more," Doyle said. "We might as well, we've got time. Let's go back to the Downs, see what that was all about."
Eric gripped the steering wheel. "But I don't care, and you can't share in the driving. I just want to get back, and take my family to safety."
The words 'take my family to safety' filled Doyle with gloom; all of a sudden, the prospect of being stuck in a community with Eric, his family and others like them seemed most unappealing.
They parted company with a handshake and good wishes, belied by the fact that, as soon Doyle said he'd decided not to return with him, Eric dropped him by the side of a lonely road.
"Got to conserve petrol, mate, sorry."
Doyle found a ten-speed, and two days later he was back at the Downs, but he couldn't get near; every time he followed his ears he'd come up against rolls of barbed wire in the road and soldiers holding guns.
Several days and a pair of binoculars later, he found his watching post.
Chapter Eighteen
Vicky
November
Nobody talked about it, but some left.
I imagine they'll be unpleasantly surprised when they see life on the mainland. This world can bring out the worst side of the most law-abiding worker bee. But I get why they went. Some days I wish I was anywhere but here.
Heather the teacher jumped ship soon after the night of the bonfire; she went off with Louise, we don't know where. Avery's little brother is the only small child left, and Avery and Davina school him between them. Lottie's academic education is over; she goes out on supply runs now. She loves it. She's learned to drive, she's handy with a wrench and a knife, and walks about in sturdy Goth type boots with buckles up the sides, and jeggings with leather patches on the knees. A proper tough new world warrior. Kara said she can handle herself with any unfriendly types they come across; that scares the hell out of me, but I have to let her be.
She and Jax hang around with Nicole and her friends, who are older than her, but I guess there are only so many bad ways they can lead her into that she wouldn't seek out on her own. She's an adult, and I was pregnant when I was her age, so who am I to talk?
The fragile threads of our community have begun to stretch and snap.
Heather and Louise were followed by Laksha's family, which means we now have no medical professionals at all aside from Phil. The Fosters left a few weeks back after Jez laughed at Lacey's insistence that he didn't smoke spliffs in the Hudson Arms; he called her a whining slag, Eric charged in, and it ended up in fisticuffs. Richard and Christian went with them because Dex refused to ban the Hadrian from 'our' pub; they and the Fosters announced their departure at a meeting, their cars packed up and ready to go. I wasn't surprised when Jodie asked if there was room for one more; I don't think I could live in the same place as someone who'd killed a member of my family.
Bette has stayed, and she's back with Wedge. I saw her one day, recently, down this little lane behind the old school house. It's quiet; I suppose she thought she wouldn't bump into anyone, as I'd thought, too. It was a dull, dank day, and we walked down the narrow little track to the water's edge, then wandered on. I looked across the stretch of still, silver-grey water to the mainland, and I wondered if anyone could see us.
I still get that feeling of being watched, sometimes.
Bette pulled a half-bottle of Scotch from her pocket and offered it to me; I declined. She was already a little unsteady on her feet. I longed to ask her how she could bear to be with Wedge after what he'd done, but to do so would have been to criticise. People do what they have to do, now.
"I bet you think I'm the softest shite in the world for going back with Wedge," she said, out of the blue, and laughed.
"It's not my place to wonder." The newly outspoken me has gone back into her shell, of late.
"Howay, you must be thinking it. I bet everyone is." She stopped, swigged from her bottle, smacked her lips and looked out onto the horizon. "Thing is, I understood what he did. It's the club, you know? He loves me, Wedge, and I loved him, too, before I fell for Kai." She turned to look at me. Her eyes were sooty with black and purple make-up that looked as though she'd been adding layers for several days without taking the original off; her hair was greasy, her teeth yellow. "I don't want to be on me own. Not now. Wedge looks after me, so I put up with the bad."
"I get that." I smiled.
"Aye. I suppose you do. Dex can be a cunt, 'n' all, can't he?"
We both laughed and walked on.
I haven't see her around much since then, but each time I do, usually in the Hudson, she's in various stages of drunkenness. Perhaps she isn't as reconciled to her situation as she likes to think. Or perhaps she's just sad. I don't know how many other people she's lost, I've never asked her. We tend not to. Maybe it's so we don't spend our time wailing about the past instead of getting on with the future.
We've
moved the barricade to the causeway’s entrance, with five or six on guard at a time, then we have two more at the entrance to the village. If there's any trouble, the first group sounds a horn, to alert them, then they sound one back, which also alerts the rest of us. The theory is that this will give everyone time to get to safety, get dressed, arm themselves, whatever. The five at the first entrance always include at least two of the Hadrian, because when you're stopping people invading your home you need something other than mild-mannered John offering an audience with Marcus Willmott.
Potential danger has already arrived—four army yobs who thought they had a right to take over simply because they were army, and another motley band from Scotland escaping the virus as it continued to rage around the Highlands and islands, effing and blinding and demanding to be let through. Parks and Jez saw them all off. We've let others in: Lewis and Rosie, a father and daughter from a North Yorkshire village who lost the rest of their family, two green wrist-banded young laboratory technicians from Manchester, Nish and Ian. A couple around my age called Becky and Jamie, with a teenage girl called Dakota; they all met somewhere along the road. A man of about sixty: Martin. He was an online political journalist, quite well known, I gather. I thought Dex would chum up with him straight away, but his only reaction was to be scathing about the sites he'd worked for.
I'm saying nothing.
The scavenging groups look for weapons as well, now. Lottie found rifles and ammo at an abandoned refugee camp the other day. Told me about one with an 'illuminated scope', about which she was most excited. How does she know about stuff like that?
Mostly, our concern is the ongoing problem of finding enough food for three meals each, per day. That's a hundred and eighty meals, every day. Over a thousand a week. It's a lot of food. It's so different from last winter; I can't believe we ever thought we had a problem back then. The shops are empty, mostly. Much that was edible a year ago now isn't. Now, Kara's teams seek out warehouses, wholesalers, and methodically go through houses street by street. She plans it like a military operation, with maps, plans, charts and whiteboards, crossing off houses and areas as they're covered.
One day, it will all be gone. Or just gone off.
As for the farm, Phil said, cheerily, that they will learn by their mistakes. We had a good crop of potatoes, but some failed. We have peas, beans, tomatoes, apples, pears, strawberries and raspberries, carrots, broccoli, kale, turnips, but there is not enough, and he says we need to find out how to rear animals for food, too. We have rabbits, chickens, ducks and eggs, but, again, not enough. There's just not enough, of anything. We make bread, but what do we do when all the flour is gone? We can grow wheat, but milling it is another matter.
We fish, we pickle, we smoke, we dry. Our first attempts at the latter two were laughable, but we're getting the hang of it. A group goes out to hunt game: Ozzy, Jax, Sean and Janek. Phil says that if we have meat and game, nuts, rice, fish, pulses, fruit and vegetables we have all the nutrition we need, but it's quantity that's always going to be the problem. Rowan has been forced to do something she never wanted to: ration supplies.
I don't think about what our lives will be like in a few years' time. I daren't.
Everything comes down to these necessities: food, fuel and medicine. We lost original island inhabitant Graham Woolley last month; he'd had heart problems before the virus, and was on medication that we managed to find, but when he had another attack there was no way of treating him. He's buried in the churchyard, with his tree. Mrs Woolley has come out of her shell a little, now, and has joined Audrey's pickling, smoking and drying team.
The other necessity is weapons. Some don't want to accept that we've got to have them, but it's a fact of life. Some of Dex's decisions are unpopular, particularly with what remains of Marcus's original group, but no one else wants to step up and lead. The Council fell apart. Lottie may be nearly an adult, but I put my foot down when the time came to discuss the fate of Wedge. He stayed, unpunished, because, Dex said, it was a matter for his club to decide upon, not us. I said I didn't want Lottie involved, and, for once, Dex agreed with me. Then Richard left, so there were only six. Kara and Phil are always so busy, and Nicole stalked out after Suzanne called her a bimbo, so now Dex runs any problems past whoever happens to be around, tells them they're wrong if they don't agree with him, then does whatever he was going to do in the first place.
Including the meting out of punishment.
He made his most unpopular decision last month. Jonas had been up at the castle doing carpentry, and he'd been heard around the village complaining that Dex was living like a fucking king up there; he said that the place ought to be for everyone to enjoy, not just him.
People agreed. I could see their point. I could see Dex's as well, though, because I see what they don't. In order to be fair and keep an eye on the months to come, he has to make decisions that aren't always popular, like the rationing of food. He made his 'charter', with the rules of the island spelled out in black and white, mostly to do with the distribution of duties, and general social behaviours that should be common sense. All residents are required to sign the book to say they agree to abide by them, and understand that failure to do so could mean eviction, depending on the severity of the 'crime'.
Some think the charter is a step too far, others think it's a necessary evil.
Jonas was one of the most vocal in his disapproval of it, and his gripes reached boiling point one evening. He camped out below the castle with his girlfriend, Siobhan, built a fire, and the two of them got rat-arsed on liqueurs that Rowan was saving for everyone, for New Year, that he'd nicked from the stores. Hip-hop blared out into the silent night; Dex was working on his book, and he went out and asked him to keep the noise down. Jonas gave him a load of abuse, then hurled up a half-filled bottle, smashing an ancient stained glass window and splattering sticky drink all over Dex's manuscript.
Everyone expected him to get a severe ticking off and that’d be that, because, after all, he hadn't slit anyone's throat or had sex with their underage daughter, but Dex ruled to exile him.
To my surprise, a few sided with him: Naomi and Suzanne, the Lincolns, the Willmotts, Rowan. But most thought he was way out of line.
Some of us went to see Jonas off; it was awful, he was begging, saying he was sorry, and Siobhan was crying and pleading with Dex to give him one more chance, but Dex was adamant.
"If I let this go, what do we do next time? Dole out another slapped wrist? Don't think I don't know he's been spreading ill-will in the village; word gets back. Sorry, Siobhan, you know the rules. No stealing, no abusive behaviour, and vandalism is completely unacceptable, aside from the fact that he's destroyed a window that dates back hundreds of years."
"It was only a few bottles!" she kept wailing. "And I drank all the Baileys!"
"It's a slippery slope," Dex said. "I devised the charter for the good of all; if I allow him to stay, it sends the message that this place is a free-for-all. Wrong. Jonas signed to say he understood the possible consequences of breaking the rules; now he has to be man enough to stand by that signature."
Siobhan was beside herself. In the end she shouted out the thoughts of many. "So it's okay to murder someone, but not to nick a bottle of Tia Maria and break a window?"
No doubt this was her trump card, but Dex was unmoved and unrepentant. "Irrelevant. The Hadrian club accepted what occurred last May, so we must, too."
The upshot was that Siobhan went back to their cottage, packed up her belongings and left with Jonas.
"He was a lazy little sod, anyway," Dex said, as we walked back up to the castle. "He only agreed to work at the castle because he thought it was an easy option, and his work's a bit crap. He's no loss."
"Yeah, but still; I can see what they mean about Wedge getting away with murder—"
He stopped. "Can you? Can you really?"
I looked at him. "Can't you?"
"No." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "It wasn't my
decision to make. And the bikers were here first."
"I know. I didn't say you were wrong, I just said I can see what they mean."
"Ah, well, they don't see the bigger picture, because they're not that bright. We need Wedge and his mates here, and people need to know where they stand. If they won't play fair, they're out. No exceptions."
"What if it was Lottie?"
He stopped again. "For Christ's sake, Vicky, stop creating problems where none exist. Jonas was dead wood, he's gone, and that's the end of it."
"His friends won't think so. And Nicole's always got plenty to say."
She had, too. She stirred people up, just in time for the next meeting.
"Tell you what I'm going to do, next time someone pisses me off," Gareth said, "I'll go and slit his throat. What I won't do, though, is break his window. 'Cause that'll get me exiled, won't it?" He nodded and looked around, and few nodded; Nicole's group clapped.
Dex refused to be riled. "So what do you think I should have done?"
Gareth looked stumped. "I dunno. Given him extra duties. Or a warning. D' you think he'd've done it if he knew what would happen?"
"Course he wouldn't!" shouted Nicole.
"He said he was sorry, too!" called out Sean.
"It wouldn't be so bad if you hadn't allowed the murderer to stay put!" called Zoe.
The room filled with chatter.
Dex picked up his gavel, another accessory he'd found in the museum shop, and thumped it down on his table, three times.
"Can we have some quiet?" He looked around, as the chatter petered out. "Does anyone else want to run this place? Organise groups, always be working six months ahead to predict future problems, worry about defence? Maintain a smooth relationship with the bikers, work out rations by assessing produce and stores versus calories needed per person?" He folded his arms. "If you do, step right up, and I'll be happy to pass on the crown, if I think I can rely on you to do everything required to keep this place running relatively smoothly. Anyone?"