After the Fall

by Stephen Cross

  The man stepped forward. She felt Adam’s hands wriggling beside hers, was he trying to loosen his binds? She needed to calm everything down, give him time.

  “What’s your name?” she said.

  The man stopped walking, “What?”

  “What’s your name? Mine’s Harriet. This is Arthur, and this is Adam.”

  “I don’t care what your names are.”

  Adam’s hands were still wriggling, faster, like she was tied to a furious rodent squirming behind her.

  “But I care what yours is,” she said.

  “Fucking shut it. I’ve told you.” He walked forward and raised the butt of his gun. Harriet squeezed her eyes shut, involuntarily taking a huge intake of breath, preparing for the strike. A huge thump and a cry of pain from beside her. She opened her eyes. The man stepped back.

  She heard Arthur breathing fast, small groans of pain. His body slid from left to right.

  “Arthur!” She tried to turn to see him, but she couldn’t, his head had disappeared.

  “Is he ok Adam?”

  “I think so,” said the boy, his squirming hands had stopped.

  “I’m ok,” moaned Arthur

  Harriet turned to the man, furious. “What the fuck’s wrong with you, you could’ve killed him.”

  The man laughed this time. “I told you to fucking shut your mouth. Problem with women is they always fucking yap yap fucking yap. Shut the fuck up, I told you. Next time, I’ll clock that little fucking boy of yours.”

  Adam squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. She looked away from the man, fear starting to override her anger.

  “You need to get him some help,” she said.

  “I told you to shut up.” But his eyes gave him away as he cast a glance at Arthur. A micro second of worry threaded across his brow. He edged to the door that led down the stairs and shouted. “Hey, who’s down there?”

  “It’s me, John.”

  “John, go get Caroline will ya. One of these fucking pricks banged his head.”

  “You fucking idiot, Mark,” came the reply.

  “Fuck off,” said Mark. “You gonna get her or what?”

  There was a sigh and a mumble from the bottom of the stairs, followed by the sound of boots stomping. A shout for Caroline rose up.

  Mark shook his head and walked back to where he had been standing, and staring.

  Harriet felt Arthur’s hand squeeze against hers. She let out an inward sigh of relief. Adam’s hand slowly began to squirm again.

  Footsteps on the stairwell and a woman appeared. Somewhere in her late forties, portly and with greying tied back hair. She wore a parker jacket and looked every inch the farmer’s wife with her ruddy complexion and thick legs tucked into wellies.

  “What you done Mark?” she said “Kyle never said nowt about battering them.”

  “I never battered no one, just knocked him on the head a bit. Stupid cow wouldn’t shut up.”

  “Can’t handle a woman? Jesus, Mark…” Caroline shook her head and walked over. She ignored Harriet and went to stand in front of Arthur. She stood with her hands on her hips.

  “Bloody hell, big fella, aren’t you? Let’s have a look then.”

  Caroline pulled out a cloth and dabbed on Arthur’s forehead.

  “You’ll survive,” she said. She looked at Mark again and shook her head. Mark pretended to find something of interest down the stairwell.

  “Where you lot come from then?” said Caroline standing up and moving to the front of the room, facing Harriet.

  “We’ve been traveling,” said Harriet. “Just walking. Finding places to stay.”

  “You’ve been here a few nights have you?”

  “Just the one. Lucky us.”

  Caroline smiled at Harriet. “Oh don’t worry about all this. Kyle is a bit over the top. We’ve had some trouble with groups of people, you know, getting at us. He’s just got paranoid.”

  “Who’s Kyle? Is he the charmer who captured us at gun point?”

  “Like I said, he ain’t that bad. And this ain’t too bad, the deal we have here. You won’t survive long on your own.”

  “We’ll take our chances, if you don’t mind.”

  Caroline shook her head, but there was no malice in her expression. “No telling some people.”

  Mark sauntered up behind her. “Told you she was a dickhead.”

  “Oh, pack it in Mark.”

  Caroline walked down the stairs.

  “Are you ok?” said Harriet to Arthur, eyeing Mark from the corner of her eye, daring him to tell her to shut up. He didn’t. He looked away.

  “I am,” said Arthur quietly. “But how’s our big man?” he said, managing to inject a bit more volume into his words.

  “I’m good,” said Adam, then he added cryptically, “I’m nearly done.”

  Harriet squeezed his hand. She felt loose binds being passed to her.

  “Well, let’s just wait and see what happens,” said Harriet.

  “What you lot talking about?” said Mark.

  “I thought Caroline told you to shut it?” said Harriet.

  Mark looked like he wanted to punch her in the face as hard as he could, and that it took all his restraint not to. He turned to look down the stairs again, red faced.

  Chapter 6

  Harriet must have dozed off, for suddenly it was bright, natural daylight beaming in through the wide windows. Mark was gone, and another man stood by the door. He was taller and wider than Mark.

  “Morning, how are you? I’m Kyle.” he said.

  “Let us go,” said Harriet.

  “I will do,” said Kyle with a strange smile. “We just need to find out a bit about you first, find out if you’re a threat.”

  Arthur snorted from beside her. “Do we look like a threat? Three of us, a young boy, a woman and a nurse?”

  “Well, you’re the biggest bloody nurse I’ve ever seen,” said Kyle. He put his gun against the wall and sat down cross legged in the corner of the room so that he could be seen by Arthur and Harriet. “Look, I’m sorry about all this. It must make us all seem pretty terrible people, but after what’s happened…” He waved his hand around as if brushing away butterflies. “I’m sure you appreciate that we can’t just trust people. We have to make sure they aren’t a threat.”

  “Then why didn’t you just let us run away?”

  Kyle ran his hand through his hair. He looked tired. He let out a sigh. “We have built this little group over the past few months. There are fifteen of us, and three weeks ago, two of our people where killed. It was by the army, of all people. The ones who we thought were meant to protect us.”

  Harriet straightened. She felt Arthur and Adam’s attention shift also. Talk of the army struck a chord, given that all three of them had nearly been killed by army too.

  Kyle gave Harriet a quizzical look, “I say something interesting?”

  No one said anything.

  Kyle stood up. He walked to the window and looked out. “Lovely here, isn’t it. Would have been a lovely place to live before all this…” he did the hand waving thing again, “…nonsense.”

  He lifted up on his tip toes and stared to the left and right. Harriet felt Adam stir. She grabbed his hand, willing him not to move, but he pulled against it.

  “They’re out there you know,” said Kyle. “Not just the deads, but the soldiers, the police, the security guards, all the power hungry. All the ones who want to run their own little empires, the ones who see this as an opportunity to be the ‘people they were always meant to be’.”

  Harriet felt Adam pull against the rope that had them tied together. She tried to grab his hand, but there was no way to stop him without alerting Kyle.

  “You know the type,” he continued, “the little Hitlers in the office, silly people who work for the council and the civil service. Traffic wardens, government officials, and then the real authoritarians… the military, the spies, the scum.” Kyle scrunched up his face and turned back to
face his prisoners. “Well, they’re right that things have changed. What they don’t realise is that it’s their lives that’ll be changing. The old orders have been broken down. Just because you have some seat on some imaginary council that doesn’t follow natural law, doesn’t mean you can tell people what to do anymore.”

  Harriet quickly glanced at the gun still sitting on the floor. “What happened with the soldiers?”

  Kyle stared at her for a moment. “I’m building a new type of living here. We all get along and live by our own rules. We believe in strength and one strong leader. That’s me, but you know that. Everyone here realises that and is happy to pass the responsibility to me. That’s all people want, to be safe and to have no responsibility for their own safety. Most people are still children. Including the army. You want to know what happened with the army?”

  “I do,” said Harriet.

  “We found a few of them,” said Kyle in a low voice, “down by one of the shops that we reclaim supplies from. They were taking what we had decreed ours.” He shook his head and turned back to the window.

  Adam began his squirming again. Harriet felt Arthur’s hands joining her’s in trying to contain him.

  Kyle grabbed the top of the window frame and rested his forehead against the glass. “We took them to a field and had to have them shot. They didn’t want to join us, and in that case we had to perceive them as a threat. You understand that little people like that can’t be allowed to run, to scurry around full of resentments against those of us that are succeeding. They’d come back and try to take what’s ours. So we had to shoot them.” He sighed,. “Then more came. We got away, but we lost two of our number. You understand what’s at stake now?”

  He turned just as Harriet felt the rope around her go slack. Kyle’s eyes opened wide. He stared at the quick form of Adam for a split second too long, his face caught in incomprehension at a young boy running through the attic room.

  Adam leapt for the gun.

  Kyle suddenly realised what was happening, and fell for the gun himself, a few feet to his left, but he was too late. Adam rolled away to the far wall and spun round. He sat against the wall, the shotgun pointing at Kyle. Adam breathed deeply, his eyes wide open, but with a steely focus, fixed on Kyle.

  Arthur dropped to the ground and started wiggling from under the rope. Kyle looked from Adam to Arthur, he held up his hands to Adam and opened his mouth to shout, but Adam held the gun higher, the sight up against his eye. He placed a finger on his lips. Kyle closed his mouth and remained still. His face had gone white, a glistening bead of sweat rolling down his tall forehead.

  Harriet stood up, her hands still tied behind her. Arthur, his hands also tied, moved to the door of the attic. He looked down carefully and turned to Harriet,Ok, he mouthed.

  Kyle held up a hand. “Ok, you got the drop on me, not bad.” he smiled nervously, moving his gaze across all three, looking for sanctuary in a returned look, but not finding any. “I was going to let you go, I just had to let you know how things go around here. I can see you are some of the good guys…”

  Arthur kneeled down beside Kyle, close.

  “What are you doing?” said Kyle, now scared. “Look, we need a nurse, a good strong nurse, how about I give you a-”

  Arthur never found out what Kyle was going to give him. He threw his head back and then forward as fast as he could, his body following to add to the force of the bull-like head butt he delivered to Kyle. There was a sickening thump, like a metal ball landing on tiles, and Kyle’s eyes crossed before he wobbled and fell to the ground, face first.

  Arthur let out a low moan. “Bloody hell, that hurt.”

  Adam jumped up and untied Arthur, who immediately held his head in his hands. “I didn’t think that would hurt so much.” He had a pained smile, and Harriet couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. Relief flooded her system, and Arthur looked wonderful, sitting there holding his head with his big toothy grin.

  Adam undid her ties. She hugged Adam. “Well done, well done Adam, but you gave me the fright of my life. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “You don’t mean that,” said Adam from buried in by her neck.

  Arthur picked up the gun, still rubbing his head. “Right, how do we get out of here. I don’t think we’ve got long.”

  “And we need to find my crossbow,” said Adam.

  “That’s a bonus,” said Harriet. “Let’s just stay alive first. If Kyle is anything to go by, this lot are bloody nuts.”

  Chapter 7

  “We won’t have long,” said Arthur, glancing down the stairwell.

  “Do we have a plan?” said Harriet, racking her brain for some startlingly intelligent escape plan, something fool proof that would dazzle and get them out safe and sound. But nothing came.

  Voices from below. Sounded like Mark and Caroline. Harriet couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were getting louder.

  “If we go down there,” said Harriet, “it’s likely that trigger happy prick will start shooting. You ready to kill someone with that?” She motioned to the shotgun Arthur was carrying.

  He shook his head. “Are you?”

  Harriet shook her head too. She had already killed one person - the man who had killed Adam’s mother - and she didn’t want to start making a habit of it. Not yet.

  “I’ll do it,” said Adam.

  Harriet and Arthur looked at each other, than at Adam. “No you won’t,” said Arthur. “You stick to the zombies for now.”

  The voices got louder. Harriet could hear what they were saying. They were talking about supply runs and how unhappy Kyle would be about something.

  Harriet looked at the large velux window.

  “The window,” she said. She opened it and looked out. The roof was new, well tiled and at a reasonable slant, not terrifying, but not exactly enticing either. It ended about ten feet below in a plastic drain. To the right was a tall chimney stack, to the left was an extension to the main building, flat roofed and about a fifteen foot jump from this roof. From there it was another fifteen foot again to the ground. Get to that roof and they would have a chance of escaping.

  They would just have to hope that no-one saw them.

  She turned back to the others, “We can do it.”

  Arthur grabbed Adam and lifted him, pushing him out the window, so quickly that Adam had barely a chance to wipe the shocked look off his face.

  “You next,” said Arthur. He pushed Harriet up through the window. His hands were strong around her waist and she felt herself being lifted with ease. She placed her elbows on the roof top and clambered through the window. Her feet slipped a little, and a tile went tumbling down the roof to be caught in the drain.

  Adam as already scurrying across the roof, like some sort of spider-kid. He reached the end of the roof and ducked down. He motioned to Harriet to follow, but to keep low. She pushed herself flat against the roof and moved gingerly across the tiles.

  There was a heavy sound of movement behind her as Arthur pulled himself through the open window.

  Harriet joined Adam at the edge. Below them the flat felt roof of the extension spread out for a square twenty by twenty feet. On the ground to the left, a group of three people stood, talking. Three men in camo gear, bedraggled and tired looking, as if dredged from the bottom of the sea. One of them had a rifle.

  Arthur shuffled into place beside Harriet.

  “What now?” he said, looking below. “We jump and they’re bound to hear us.”

  “I guess we just risk it,” said Harriet. “We can’t do anything else.”

  Adam nodded. “I agree, they’ll be wondering were Kyle is any minute now.”

  It turned out it was that minute.

  A shout came from behind them. Harriet turned and saw Caroline’s head popping out of the roof. “Get back here!” she shouted.

  Her head disappeared to be replaced by Mark’s.

  “Go!” shouted Harriet to Adam, who, with no hesitation, jumped onto th
e extension below and landed with a thud.

  Mark pulled up his gun onto the roof and pointed it at Harriet and Arthur. A sharp and heavy bang echoed from right beside her. Arthur had fired his shotgun. Tiles just before the velux shattered and Mark dropped back into the attic room with a cry.

  There was another shot. A tile right next to Harriet exploded and she felt a sharp sting in her shoulder. She let out a cry. The man on the ground was aiming up for another shot.

  Arthur grabbed her by the arms and threw her onto the flat roof below.

  Another shot.

  She landed heavily on the injured shoulder. A throbbing pain rang through her arm, clanging like a bell.

  Arthur landed beside her.

  “This way!” shouted Adam. He was about to leap off the far side of the roof. Harriet pulled herself up, and her and Arthur ran across the roof. The felt below them burst open like blooming flowers, in time with bangs from below.

  “They’re shooting through the roof,” shouted Arthur.

  The two of them jumped off the extension. Harriet flew through the air and landed hard on her feet, tumbling to the ground, rolling. A pain burst in her ankle.

  Another shot, the sound of smashing glass.

  Windows lined the side of the extension behind them. Arthur rolled onto his back and fired his gun at the window. Two of the windows exploded in a cloud of shards and dust.

  They jumped up and ran towards a wooden fence that ran parallel to the farmhouse. A truck sat in the gap between the building and the fence. Adam was already on his way to it.

  “Adam, wait!” shouted Harriet as she limped behind.

  Arthur threw the shotgun on the ground, both shells used.

  Adam reached the truck and pulled at the door. It opened. He climbed in.

  A shot from behind.

  Arthur fell.

  “Arthur!” shouted Harriet. She wanted to run, and she wanted to stop. She wanted to press pause and stop the world. She carried on running, tears in her eyes.

  The truck roared into life. Sparks bounced off the back of the truck, ringing like a fairground ride. Bullets.