UKD3: UK Dark Series Book 3

by Chris Harris

  He knew that his family were aware that he was out there, but the attackers didn’t, and that was his only advantage. One wrong move could squander his only chance of success.

  He watched helplessly as his son again tried to protect his mother and sister. One of the men laughed mockingly and knocked him flying, letting out a torrent of abuse as he did so.

  Finally, his patience was rewarded. The man with the shotgun sent one of his companions to find the other members of their group who, it seemed, were still searching the nearby village of Tanworth in Arden. There had been little left to steal there, so the four of them had set off in search of other victims and better pickings. After all, the leader called after him, as he walked away laughing, the others might not see their bikes and might cycle straight past this place.

  Then they’d miss out on all the fun, he added, a sneering look on his face.

  At this point, Steve realised he was going to have to fight them.

  “Tell the boss I found her first, I get first go!”

  His heart pounding, Steve knew this would be his only chance. He watched as the man walked off, noted the direction he was taking, and using his knowledge of the woods, ran hell for leather to the point where he would appear. The woods were dense and there were few paths through them. He had to head him off.

  Holding his breath, he hid behind a tree as the man walked past. He closed his eyes for a split second, said a silent prayer, stepped out and swung the heavy shovel with all his might at the man’s head. There was no time for subtlety; his family was in danger.

  The man dropped to the ground dead, the back of his head caved in, spraying blood all over Steve.

  Steve, the blood pumping in his ears, turned and sprinted back again.

  He knew he would have to end this situation soon and the only way he could do this was by overpowering the others as quickly as possible. He would have to throw caution to the wind, go for it, and hope for the best. If just one of them escaped, they’d bring all the rest of the gang back with them and there was no way he would be able to fight them all.

  One man, armed only with a shovel and attitude, was about to take on three men, one of whom was armed with a shotgun. The only thing on Steve’s side was the element of surprise. He had to get to the bloke with the gun first.

  He ran full pelt into the clearing with his shovel raised. The man with the gun had his back to him.

  Screaming with an almost primordial rage, he smashed the man’s skull in, spraying more blood over himself.

  The other two men, staring open mouthed, and faced with the prospect of a blood-soaked madman who had come from nowhere and virtually decapitated their leader, were rooted to the ground with shock. Their shock rapidly turned to terror, when Steve turned and ran at them, still screaming and swearing like a man possessed.

  One of them turned and ran into a tree, knocking himself out, but the other, who was lighter on his feet, headed for the trees, screaming for help.

  In the meantime, Toni, who had never held any kind of weapon, let alone fired one before, ran forward and grabbed the gun, which was still lying beside the dead man. Holding it awkwardly, and shaking badly, she pointed it towards the last man as he ran. The single shot almost knocked her off her feet but in spite of her wild aim, some of the pellets hit him in the leg and he stumbled and fell, crying out in pain. His cries abruptly cut off as Steve, who had set off in pursuit, hit him with the shovel.

  Scarcely able to believe what he’d managed to do, he dropped the shovel and fell to his knees panting. His family gathered round him, and they all embraced, crying in fear and relief.

  Three men, and possibly a fourth, had just died by his hand and all he felt was relief that his family were safe.

  The man who had knocked himself out was still unconscious, so they tied him up tightly and gagged him.

  Toni remembered in panic that the rest of the gang would be cycling past at any minute. The men they had overpowered must have had bikes too. Where did they leave them?

  They thought fast. Surely they wouldn’t have hidden them? They might still be in plain sight on the road, advertising where they’d gone to one and all.

  Realising which gate they’d probably used to access the field, Steve set out at a full sprint. There was no time to lose. As he ran down the slope, he spotted four bikes leaning casually up against the gate.

  As he was lifting the first bike over the gate, he thought he heard a sound and stopped, listening.

  His heart missed a beat. He could hear voices in the distance. It had to be the rest of the gang approaching. Panic-stricken, he looked up the lane. They hadn’t come around the corner yet, but they couldn’t be far away.

  He threw the bike he was holding over the gate and quickly followed it with the others.

  Diving over the gate, he just managed to fling the bikes and himself out of sight against the hedge before the first gang member sped past on a bike. Burying his face in the ground and trying to make himself as small as possible he barely breathed, as by his estimation, twenty or so bikes sped past, their owners hollering and cussing each other, like a bunch of rowdy mates out on a leisurely Sunday afternoon ride.

  He was about to stand up when a few stragglers passed, shouting and swearing at the front runners to slow down and let them catch up.

  It took him a few minutes to be sure that there were no more of them, and to get his heart rate to slow down enough for him to stand up and make his way back to his family.

  But there was no time to relax. They had a mess to clean up.

  The bound and gagged man had died as well. Steve didn’t stop to dwell on it, but he suspected that in their panic, they had gagged him too tightly and he had suffocated. Part of him was relieved that he wouldn’t have to decide what to do with him. He didn’t want to think about it.

  All he needed to decide now was where to bury them.

  Exhausted though they were, the rest of the day was spent dragging the bodies to a clearing away from the campsite and digging a hole big enough and deep enough to accommodate them.

  The rucksacks and pockets of the dead gang members had produced a few useful supplies, and tools such as knives, but by far the most valuable addition to their possessions was the shotgun and twenty cartridges.

  Their only means of defence before had been to hide away and avoid drawing attention to themselves. Now that they had a shotgun, Steve felt they would have the upper hand if anyone else approached them.

  It was only later that night, when the children were finally asleep, that the reality of it all caught up with him. He had killed four people. He sobbed quietly, while Toni did her best to comfort him.

  He knew they had been lucky, not only to survive their recent encounter, but also to have the means to survive in this new world that seemed to be emerging. It was now patently clear that no one was coming to rescue them.

  If they were going to live, it was up to them.

  As the months passed, the temperatures dropped and winter set in. Now all their efforts as a family were focused on surviving.

  Cutting, gathering and splitting enough dry wood to keep the fire going was a continual job for one person.

  It was the only way to keep warm, sterilise water and cook the food they had. Without it they would die. The wood needed to be as dry as possible, to keep the smoke to a minimum and avoid attracting unwanted attention.

  It was not possible, with only four people, to keep a lookout at all times, but at most times during daylight one of the family would walk the perimeter of the woods, keeping out of sight.

  As a way of attracting someone’s attention without shouting, Steve used long lengths of wire stripped from the surrounding fences to rig up a crude but effective warning system. At various points around the perimeter, wires suspended between trees stretched back to the camp, terminating at bunches of tin cans tied together. Whichever bunch rattled, indicated what direction a potential threat might be coming from.

  The care the
y had taken to conceal their presence in the woods had paid off. Few people were spotted passing by, and fewer still even glanced at the woods.

  It was rarer still for anyone to approach and if they did, Steve fell back on the technique he’d tried with us: intimidation and threats to scare them away.

  Once or twice it was obvious that the people approaching them were in dire need and they did agree to help them. They offered them the chance to rest and recover for a while, so that they could continue on their journey. The first family they felt compelled to help were a couple carrying their two young children in child backpacks. They were utterly exhausted and at the end of their endurance.

  To begin with Steve tried to drive them away, pretending that they had nothing themselves. But the tears and desperation they showed as they turned dejectedly away, with their children crying on their backs, was more than Toni could bear. She called out to them to stop and they followed them gratefully into the woods.

  Their story was fairly typical.

  They had tried to stay at home for as long as possible and had witnessed their neighbourhood degenerating into a place of violence. They had eked out their diminishing food supplies for as long as possible, and using some knowledge, supplemented what they had by harvesting what they could from their own and other gardens, and the local parks.

  Most of their neighbours had fled in fear, hoping to find help elsewhere, and the whole area had fallen to the gangs, who robbed, terrorised and killed the few who remained. Aware that this was happening, they had secured their house to the best of their abilities, hoping that the gangs would leave them be, in preference to easier targets elsewhere.

  They had known it wouldn’t last.

  A gang of men had eventually broken in and they had barely managed to scare them away after a desperate fight in the hallway of their house. Grabbing the bags they had ready and carrying the children on their backs, they had fled.

  They had family in Devon so they had decided to try to reach them.

  They told them about the horrors they had encountered: of ramshackle camps full of starving people, dead bodies littering the pavements, and of hiding in terror from roving gangs, as they struggled to make their way south. The more they heard, the more Steve and Toni realised how ridiculously lucky they had been to have found this place and to have avoided discovery.

  When they told them this, the couple were quick to warn them that, according to people they had spoken to, they were living in an area controlled by a gang from Redditch. People they had met had warned them about this gang, urging them to keep out of their way at all costs, as they would show them no mercy if they found them.

  With a shock of recognition, I realised that they were almost certainly talking about Gumin and his gang.

  I interrupted Steve at this point, as it seemed like a pertinent time to tell him about them, and explained how they had hopefully been wiped out once we had discovered their base.

  They nodded, saying that they recalled hearing distant explosions and the rattle of automatic gunfire a few months previously. We agreed that that was probably the day of our attack.

  The young family ended up staying with them for several days, as it was clear that they posed no threat and could really do with some help. They did consider asking them to stay, but the couple were determined to try to find their family in Devon, explaining that the place they were aiming for was reasonably remote and hopefully therefore, safer. Their relatives had run the place as a smallholding, growing a lot of their own vegetables and keeping a few chickens and other animals.

  It sounded perfect, and the thought of reaching this potential nirvana had kept them going beyond the point of exhaustion.

  But it was clear that they had reached the limits of their endurance and would need several days of rest and food before they could continue.

  Steve and Toni watched sadly, as they finally set out, carrying their two young children and as much food as they could manage. They hoped fervently that they would make it.

  As winter tightened its grip, they rarely saw other people and all their efforts went into trying to survive the biting and constant cold.

  When the thaw came, their initial joy and relief at having survived the winter, almost immediately gave way to despair. They knew that they couldn’t realistically get through another winter living in the woods. They would need to find a more permanent location for the future.

  Since that time, not one person had passed by the woods. We received this news soberly. It didn’t say much for the fate of the rest of the population.

  They had almost dropped dead with shock at the sight of us approaching, particularly given how intimidating we looked. For the first time, Steve had felt it necessary to order his family into the secret hideaway they had dug. A shelter of last resort.

  He admitted that when he’d hugged them before leaving them behind to confront us, he’d been convinced it was for the last time.

  Stories exchanged, we turned in for the night.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  News received in the morning, from home and from the base, did nothing to raise our spirits.

  More people had died overnight and the ones who were still alive were deteriorating fast. One or two of our group who had lost loved ones, had to be physically restrained from trying to return home. But there was nothing they could do and they still had the family who were with them to look after. Their grief was raw and tangible. All we could do was try to comfort them.

  Until the last of the sickness had passed, no one from home could be allowed to join us without being quarantined first. Despite still being symptom-free, we were sufficiently worried that we had all agreed to wear our masks for at least a few more days. In the meantime, the enforced separation from our friends and family back at the compound, though necessary, was beginning to take its toll.

  The only good news was that none of the volunteers who had stayed behind to care for the sick, or guard the compound, had fallen ill.

  Similar circumstances were being reported from the base, where cases of the plague were on the increase. Although they had taken steps to seal the underground base, this had failed to keep out the disease, and even over the radio, we could tell from Colonel Moore’s voice that the strain was starting to tell.

  Despite all their resources and their eminent qualifications, their doctors were losing the battle to find a cure, or even to stop the spread of the disease.

  The only way to be safe was to avoid being bitten by an infected flea from a rat, or to avoid close contact with someone who was infected. It was highly contagious and virulent and there was no effective treatment. Only the lucky few who appeared to have some natural resistance, had any chance of survival.

  Over at the base, hundreds of soldiers were scouring the place, armed with a variety of weapons, from air rifles to machine guns and grenades, and exterminating every rat they could find.

  To make matters worse, communication had been lost with the other royal family members and their staff at Balmoral and they now feared the worst. An overflight from a drone had not revealed any signs of life and plans for a land mission were currently underway.

  Harry had been told of this in the previous night’s communication, but appeared to be taking the potential loss of his father stoically.

  Chris, in a bid to distract us all from our worries, was working us hard on improving the shelters and had introduced various other projects to make life at the camp more pleasant. One of these related to the building of an aerobic composting toilet.

  To say that the current system of disposing of waste was basic was an understatement. This involved the use of a rudimentary pit which, when it became too obnoxious, was filled in and replaced by another.

  Under Chris’s instruction therefore, a raised platform was built with a hole where the air flowing over the deposits below would dry it out. A simple urine catcher drained the liquid waste away elsewhere. If it was kept dry, it would be unlikely to smell, and ho
pefully, the waste material would rot down over time. A modesty screen and a roof were added for cosmetic reasons and a lattice work of sticks hid the waste from view.

  Harry had thrown himself into improving our security arrangements, and with a few volunteers, was completing the lookout post and defensible positions he had started on the day before.

  From what Steve and Toni had told us, few people had been seen since the winter had ended, and therefore we didn’t expect much trouble, but the work served to keep everyone busy and distracted. Besides, we’d all learned the hard way not to leave ourselves unprotected and vulnerable. It would be a foolish risk to take.

  As a group we were comfortable together and the decision-making process had evolved over time. We now knew who was best qualified to make a judgement on a matter, and often deferred to them on any final decision. But if a discussion on the merits of various options was needed, then we were all agreed that democracy should rule and a simple vote would decide the matter.

  The system wasn’t perfect, of course, and occasionally you had to bite your tongue if you didn’t agree with a chosen option, but as grown-ups we had learned to accept this and move on.

  As Steve and his family had lived there first, and were in our eyes the legitimate “owners”, we considered ourselves to be his guests. For this reason, we tended to defer to him on most things and we usually sought his approval.

  This situation continued for some days until finally he set matters straight.

  He’d had little contact with anyone in senior authority and, understandably, was still struggling with how to relate to Harry. As a result, when Harry approached him one evening by the campfire and attempted to consult him about the two options he was considering for positioning a new lookout post, his reaction left Harry somewhat taken aback.

  He stood up in exasperation and shouted, “Look, just stop it everyone, please!”

  We all stopped what we were doing and gazed at him in astonishment.