UK2

by Terry Tyler

  "I believe so, yes. The only person they considered at risk is in quarantine; soldier called Grimes."

  "That's good. We've got time to plan, then."

  "Why haven't you left already? Storm gets to go out most days—she could just knock Dawson on the head and disappear."

  "And go where? We've got more here than we would have anywhere else. It's a hard life the other side of these walls, as I assume you know, and I don't think I'd be great at survival; I'm a city boy. Plus, here I can help people. If the virus spreads round Central there will be mass panic, and everyone's life will be in the lap of the gods, anyway. Right, you're done." He stuck a pad over my stitches. "You'll need to be more careful than you've ever been in your life. Andy Dawson is a moron, but he's the sort of moron who follows orders to the letter, and if he smells a rat you and Storm are both up shit creek. I'll speak to Storm, and later tonight you'll get word. Don't look so worried. Just sit tight, and you'll have your instructions before ten."

  I didn't stop panicking until a quarter to nine, when I had a call from the guard on the Hub Residential security gate to say he had a letter for me.

  I was to meet Storm in the car park outside the Hub stores, at 6.15am, when it would still be dark.

  I had no business being out at that time, so I would have to dart around like a shadow. Variation from routine is always questioned in Central. But the beauty of the plan was that my chip would remain in my flat. My red light would not be anywhere it shouldn't be. As long as I was not seen by the guards, no one would suspect a thing until I failed to turn up for work, and I doubted anyone would investigate much before lunchtime.

  As soon as I'd read the note I went up to the Juno complex and delivered my letter to Grant, the guard. I told him it was to be delivered to Flora Odenkirk after eight o'clock the next morning, and that it was strictly for her eyes only. He said nothing, just gave me a single nod, and put it in his inside pocket.

  Flora has been on my mind since I saw her at the meeting. If she's already scared, she'll be careful. A risk, but a necessary one. I'm sure she will put the safety of her unborn child before any sense of duty to Verlander.

  I slept well, which surprised me, and left my flat at ten to six, carrying only a miniature backpack underneath my hoodie, containing water, an energy drink and some protein bars. And my toothbrush, antibiotics, wet wipes, spare dressings and a knife. The only other thing I made sure to take was this diary and a pen.

  That fucking microchip stayed on the table, and I shut the door without a backward glance.

  I kept close to the walls as I walked round to the car park; the only guard who saw me just gave me a cheery wave and made some remark about me being up early, and I made one back about nipping up to the bakery to get some bread fresh from the oven, and hoped he didn't notice my humped back.

  I found Storm already loading the van; she arranged a place for me to lie flat, behind a stack of boxes, and covered me in a blanket.

  "You're going to have to lie still for four or five hours." She handed me a small, empty bottle. "You need to pee, do it in that, do it quietly and take it with you."

  "When do I get out?"

  "Not sure yet. Before we get to Mercia. When the time's right, you'll know."

  She didn't smile, or make any other conversation, which made me feel even more nervous. No reassurances, not like Jared.

  I lay there for ages, and the bottom of the van become colder and more uncomfortable with each minute. Eventually, I heard voices. Andy Dawson, asking why she'd loaded the van without him.

  "Couldn't sleep. Thought I might as well get up and do something useful."

  I was in that van for three more hours, being rattled around and bounced up and down, and the terror of discovery was with me all the time, but if the worst came to the worst, it would be two against one—unless Storm decided to save her own skin and deny all knowledge of me—and every time I looked at my watch I smiled. I smiled when I should have been starting work, I smiled at the thought of Verlander wondering where the hell I was. And then, just when I was starting to doze off, the back door opened.

  I heard Storm's voice, calling out to Andy.

  "It's okay, it's just a case not secured properly. No, you stay there, I can do it. Fucking bumping's driving me up the wall."

  I heard him, too. Saying he couldn't feel anything.

  "No, you wouldn't, it's on my side." And all the time she was pulling off my blanket, shoving the boxes out of the way and gesturing to me to be quick and quiet.

  I slithered, noiselessly, onto a grass verge.

  She put a hand on my shoulder and whispered, "Down there," pointing to a dip that looked suspiciously like a ditch. "Good luck, don't get caught." I rolled down the grassy slope, she shut the van doors and climbed back into the passenger seat, and they were gone.

  I was free.

  The ditch was damp, I was damp, but I didn't care. The day was dull and cold, and yet I smiled. I lay there for a while and looked at the sky. I swear, I have never felt happier in my entire life than I did at that moment.

  I set off. I had no idea where I was, but it turned out to be South Lincolnshire. My biggest fear was getting spotted by a UK2 vehicle, being near UK Mercia as I was, so my first job was to find one of my own. I turned into the first village, and it took me over two hours to find a car with some petrol in the tank. I don't know how to hot-wire, so I had to find one with keys, which meant entering many, many houses, and encountering a number of rats and mice, the odd skeleton and some seriously puke-making smells.

  I never saw another human being. It was like before, when I was always alone, but this time I wasn't lonely; this time I loved the solitude, and, even more than that, I loved that not one person in the world knew where I was.

  I found some tinned ravioli, and took a tin opener and a spoon to add to my survival stash.

  The petrol lasted only just past Newark, i.e. not very far at all, and I walked as far as I could; about ten miles, I think, just to put more distance between myself and Mercia.

  I wanted to walk; I wanted to run. Not out of fear, but out of elation.

  A couple of vehicles drove past; I hid, but I think they were just random survivors.

  I walked through that grey afternoon, along B roads, past fields that nobody had tended for two and a half years, past broken down, rusty old vehicles, buildings with broken windows and fire damage. I was walking alone at the end of the world, but I was a happy man.

  I imagine I will always remember the joy I felt on that walk; it was truly one of the best afternoons of my life. Never again will I sacrifice my freedom for creature comforts that mean bugger all, because without it you have nothing.

  When I could put one foot in front of the other no more, I stopped at a village and tried a few houses until I found one with a bed with no revolting stains on the sheets, with a door that shut and without broken windows. I did a recce first to make sure there were no bodies or rats, and avoided the kitchen and the bathroom, which were a bit on the whiffy side. I found a spade and dug a hole in the garden for lavatorial purposes, took candles from the living room and made my home upstairs, where I sat in the bed, rested my aching legs and back, and where I sit now, recording the details of my glorious escape.

  Thank you once more, Jared and Storm. May good luck be yours.

  And, Flora, please do the right thing.

  Now, I sleep, for I have many more miles to travel.

  The journey to Lindisfarne takes me two days, via car, bicycle and on foot; the last part is by bicycle. It's almost an anti-climax when I arrive; the water is still over the causeway so I can't cross, but it appears to be on its way out. I approach the barricade, where the men standing on the lookout posts recognise me, of course, and it takes me some time to convince a fearsome-looking character called Jez that I am alone.

  "Y'see the burnt buildings and fields back there?" he says.

  "Yeah—yes, I did." I'd seen them, but they had only semi-registered; my
mind was miles away. "That used to be your farm, didn't it?"

  "Aye. Y'man Barney put a torch to it."

  So that was how he did it.

  "Figures. I'm not with him now, though. I swear. And I need to talk to whoever is in charge. It's urgent."

  "If you're telling the truth, you won't mind us taking precautions." He disappears behind the high wall, then he and another guy reappear through an entrance door and tell me to get in a car with them. We drive slowly across to the island, splashing through the retreating water. They don't speak. The other fella drives, while Jez keeps a gun on me. I don't mind. I ponder on how normal it is to have a gun in your face, these days. I hardly even notice it.

  We reach another barricade at the entrance to the village, and Jez gets out to talk to four other men. I am offered coffee from a flask; it's tepid, but wonderful.

  "So y'sure he's sound?" says one called Parks.

  "Aye. Seems so."

  Parks turns to me. "What's it like down there, then?"

  Where do I start? I give them a potted version, and they listen, with scarcely any interruption.

  "I was fucking right, then, I knew I was," says Parks. "So y'going to join us?"

  "Hope so," I say, "but that's not the only reason I'm here." And I tell them about the mutated virus. It's so hard, bringing news like this to people who have already been through so much and are clinging on to some sort of decent life, but it's the reason I escaped, why I made this journey, why Jared and Storm risked their own safety.

  "You best come see Kara," says Jez.

  A couple of them shed tears when I tell them about Abbie.

  I tell them about Erika, Grimes and Walsh, and their mouths drop open.

  "We have to leave now," says Lottie. "We can't wait any longer, can we?"

  I tell them about Code Red Containment last of all, and the terror on their faces makes me want to hustle them out to the nearest boat and get us all far, far away.

  "They only do it when it's actually spreading," I say. "It's contained in the UK, so far. Just four cases, all dead, and one possible in quarantine."

  "It only takes one slip-up," says a chap I remember from before, called Martin. "Look how quickly the original virus spread."

  "And Dex—he was part of all this?" Kara says. "He agreed to send Abbie in with the infected woman?"

  I nod. "He's Verlander's right-hand man."

  "He's a monster. He's worse than we ever could have imagined," says Lottie's mum, Vicky. I remember; she was with Dex the last time I came up. Her and Storm: I admire his taste, if nothing else.

  "Oh yeah, he is that," I say.

  "It's worse than you think," she says, with a shiver, and that's when I discover what Mr Dex Northam is truly capable of. Having seen how readily he agreed to using Abbie and Mandy as lab rats, I have to feign more surprise than I feel; his actions are heinous beyond belief, but I am a stranger to his alleged good side.

  Phil laughs at my expression; I never was a very good actor. "No, and I wasn't surprised by this Code Red Containment, either," he says, and at last my suspicions about the vaccine are confirmed, as I hear how the virus was a targeted depopulation plan from the very start.

  I hear about Project Renova.

  "Some people have brushed it off as a conspiracy theory," says a quiet chap called Scott, who was the first to learn about it. "But I believed every word I was told."

  Finally I have the whole picture. That Dex knows what the Renova Group is really all about explains why he was welcomed into the UK2 inner circle as soon as he arrived; Verlander would not have wanted to make an enemy of him.

  The final pieces of the jigsaw slot into place.

  "I felt sick for days when I first heard about it," says Travis. "The thought that I'd been blithely slipping people into those blue, red and green folders was pretty hard to come to terms with."

  We have so much information to exchange. The room is completely silent as I tell them about the microchips, about the plan to clear every settlement and get every last person living in a UK2 colony.

  "We need to leave as soon as we can," I say. "I was thinking a Scottish island, or—"

  "We have somewhere." Travis takes the hand of his gorgeous Scandinavian girlfriend (he's got the luck of the devil, that one), and kisses it. "Tell him about Baldur."

  And it's my turn to sit and listen.

  Ten minutes later, I say, "What are we waiting for? You all need to be packing your bags now, don't you?"

  "It's not that simple," Kara says. "Not everyone wants to leave."

  Now my mouth drops open. "Why the hell not? Super-fucked-up bat fever is heading this way, and—"

  "We don't know it's heading this way," puts in an older woman, Audrey. "There's a good chance it won't spread like before; there are fewer people, and most stay close to wherever they've made home. It may never get any further than your quarantine rooms. Lindisfarne is my home. I'm not leaving."

  "People have all sorts of reasons for staying," Vicky says. "We're attached to this place, and as far as infection is concerned, we're prepared. We have guns and the barricade." She smiles straight at me, and I sense an awkward stirring in the groin area. It's been a while; I've been too scared, angry and depressed to have anything more than vague thoughts about sex for ages. She's cute, though, Vicky. A bit older than me, not sure how much, but she's just my type, and I'm so damn relieved to be away from the hell-hole of Central that, for a moment, I push the whole bloody fiasco to one side, and imagine we're just two normal people in a normal pub on a normal day. I'm going to buy her a drink, see what transpires. Ask her if she wants to go for a bite to eat later, or see a film tomorrow night. For a brief moment I smile back, and freeze the fantasy. It works, for a few seconds. Then reality waves at me through the window. The Grim Reaper hovers over the causeway, grinning his stupid face off. He has an orange suntan, Hollywood white teeth and a designer scythe.

  "Well, you won't have to worry about Barney and his thugs turning up for some time," I say. "Not now Central's on total lockdown. But in the future—"

  "I doubt they'll be back," says Martin. "They're not going to use gallons of petrol to come all the way up here just to root out the few that are left."

  "They're talking about invading Scotland this spring, so they might pop in on their way back." I frown, thinking. "Though obviously that's all on hold, too."

  "Well, maybe Lindisfarne will become allies with those north of the border." Martin smiles. "Nobody can predict the future; you just have to do what feels right in the present."

  "And we've got a fucking castle," says Jez. "If that fortress was good enough for the Saxons, it's good enough for us!"

  I'm sure the castle was built hundreds of years after the Saxon period, but Jez doesn't look like someone you want to make feel silly; I say nothing.

  "Phil and I will stay," Kara is saying, to a chorus of protestation, but she won't be moved. "If anyone else wants to, we must. Phil has far more agricultural savvy than the rest of us put together, and all these tough guys will need someone to keep them in order, won't they?"

  Phil stands up. "We'll call everyone in. Make decisions."

  "And then we gotta be on our way, we really have," says Seren's friend from Baldur Island, Hawk. "We can't risk taking it back, however much of a long shot that is."

  His American accent makes me think of Erika. Poor Erika. Verlander didn't shed a tear. He didn't even look sad. The guy's not human. I really, really hope he dies slowly and in horrific pain.

  They're making plans, talking about taking supplies to the boat, and I'm just deciding which one of my naff chat up lines to try on Vicky when the door bursts open.

  It's one of the guys from the barricade, Dan, and he's laughing.

  "You'll never fucking guess who's just turned up!"

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Flora

  Three days earlier

  Chester declared that he was turning over a new leaf, but only lasted a week or so. H
e's been sweet enough, but I don't suppose it's too hard to fake it for a just a couple of evenings a week. This week he's been out three nights running, and tonight I see red. It might be just a job to him—and a part of me is still hanging on to the love I thought was real, I can't help it—but I hate being made a fool of as much as the next person. And this time I won't ask Nish to look for him.

  I'm not a spoilt child, like Alex said. I'm a grown-up woman who will soon be a mother, and I must take care of myself.

  I go to Spritz bar to find him, and there he is, smooching with a girl. There's no way on earth she's a prospective Juno mum—if she is, he's looking to be the father. They're sitting on a cosy, semi-circular banquette; he has his arm around her and she has her hand on his thigh.

  While I stand there with my seven months pregnant bulge. His child.

  That last conversation with Alex changed everything. I see the truth, and protecting my baby is all that matters. So I won't march up to Chester and his girl, tear into him, scream, shout and make an idiot of myself, because my baby needs me to be calm. I just stand, and look. He is too involved with his girl to see me, but everyone else does. The barman stops polishing glasses. They're all waiting for the big scene; they must know I'm Chester's partner. But I'm not providing the entertainment for the night. I have all the information I need.

  I turn, and I walk away.

  I walk back to our apartment, slowly, and I'm thinking so clearly I hardly recognise myself.

  I can no longer rely on Chester for anything.

  My fairy tale life was a stupid fantasy.

  I believed them. I believed all of them, and they lied to me, they saw how childlike and vain I was, and they used this to get what they wanted. To turn me into a baby machine and persuade other girls to do the same. But I'm not staying here, locked up in this complex. I've got to go, and I have to take Bronte and Nish with me. I want Bronte and me to have our babies away from these horrible people, even if it's hard and dangerous.