by RR Haywood
Sweat drips as we marched on, always with Dave and I at the front and always going as fast as I dare to push the others.
We could have gone for cars but then we wouldn’t have the space to stock them full of supplies, so we needed vans or larger vehicles. Which took time.
Now I’m following Roy and it’s taking too much time as he drives slower than I would, he takes more time to navigate the obstacles and pick the safest routes. Time and again my hands grip the steering wheel with growing impatience and I keep staring down at the symbol of the horn on the middle of wheel, longing to whack the shit out of it and yell out the window.
But I’m not an Italian driving a Fiat 500, so I don’t. Instead I do the English thing of stiff upper lip and just glare with increasing fury at the rear of his high sided panel van.
‘He said he knew the way,’ I groan and wipe the sweat from my face.
‘I’m sure he does,’ Blowers replies tactfully from his position of perched on the rear wheel arch on the back of our van, ‘Roy’s a good bloke, Mr Howie.’
I don’t reply but glance up at the sky, willing time to slow so we can get more done. I do not want another night of battling raging zombies. I do not want another mass fight. I want out of here, back at the fort and getting ready to leave. Supplies. Doctors. Equipment. Weapons. Fucking half the day wasted and we’ve got nothing done yet. Roy said he knew a good outdoor supply wholesaler on some industrial estate. Roy said he could take us there. Roy said to follow him while he’s driving like Miss Fucking Daisy.
‘You got any Lucozade back there?’
Rustling noises, a bag being undone. Footsteps thud across the wooden boarded base and a sealed bottle is passed forward, ‘cheers.’
‘You want a smoke?’ Cookey asks softly.
‘Cheers,’ I reply and take the offered smoke too. Energy drinks and nicotine.
‘Boss,’ Cookey points forward.
‘I see it. What now?!’ We pull up behind Roy flashing his hazards and slowing down. He’s out and jogging back towards us before I get my door open, ‘what’s up?’
‘Hospital,’ he calls out still running towards me, ‘not far from here, not the er…military er, navy one but…’
‘It’ll do mate, lead the way. Oh, and Roy?’
‘Yeah?’ He turns quickly from running back to his vehicle.
‘Bit more speed will be good mate.’
He pauses with a long, thoughtful look, nods and goes back to his van. The pace does get faster, not quite fast enough for my liking but a definite improvement and before long we’re pulling up in front of a long, low building with a broken sign collapsed on the ground informing us the hospital is for out-patients only and does not have an Accident and Emergency department.
I’m out the van, sawn off in one hand with my axe in the other.
‘Blowers, you Nick, Cookey, Jagger and Mo Mo cover this entrance. Dave in front with me. Everyone else right behind…’ I march through the ruined doors giving no thought or hesitation to see if everyone else is ready or not. Dave rushes to gain my side. I don’t stop and wait but kick through the debris until we reach the reception desk.
The ground is covered in an inch or so of filthy water and the walls are streaked from the rain pouring down from a roof that must have been heavily damaged. Chairs and tables lie strewn about, light fittings hanging from cables. A vending machine lies smashed to bits with the innards, cables and cogs all scattered about.
Dave and I glare about, determining the layout as we listen for movement or noise. Meredith charges through splashing the water up as she ranges ahead of us. A quick look at Dave, he shakes his head and shrugs.
‘Seems clear, where we going to find the information?’
Paula stares about with a look of distaste, her own sawn-off held ready, ‘main offices, there will be an admin department somewhere.’
‘Any idea where?’ I look to the heavy hospital doors leading off this central foyer area, we’re roughly in the middle so there will be two sides plus the rear to check.
‘Back there I would have thought,’ Roy motions towards the doors leading to the rear, ‘I’ve been in plenty of hospitals before.’ His placid face shows a look of worry and concern with his brow creased, ‘er, I’m going to wait outside…do you need me?’ He quickly adds.
‘No, we’re fine,’ I answer bluntly, already marching across the flooded entrance to the pale blue double doors and kicking one side open. My shotgun’s held at hip height but aimed and ready. Here’s nothing here and the ground is dryer so I walk on, my eyes flicking to the ground as Meredith pushes past me.
‘Waiting room…toilets….phlebotomy? What the fuck is that?’
‘Blood tests?’ Paula hazards a guess, ‘Roy would know but…’
‘Blood tests, or where they take the blood samples,’ Clarence says. ‘We’re going fast,’ he stares at me, ‘maybe we could slow down a little? We might miss something important.’
‘We’ll be alright.’ I’m back off and walking, naming the titles on the doors as we go. All sorts of medical things but nothing that denotes an administration department. We go through another set of doors marked private and this time into a carpeted corridor that looks sound and dry.
‘This’ll be it,’ Paula nods, ‘one of these doors…the executive’s office will be here, finance and human resources and a general admin office somewhere.’
‘What? For this little place?’ A puzzled Lani asks.
‘Bureaucracy at its British best,’ Paula gives a humourless smile, ‘plush and nice while the nurses and doctors get to run around like bloody idiots.’
‘Not any more they don’t,’ Lani mutters.
‘In here,’ Paula states pushing one of the internal doors open, ‘general office…so they’ll either keep some paper records in here or,’ she turns round taking in the tidy array of desks, phones, computers and admin equipment, ‘bloody hell, this feels so weird,’ she says quietly, ‘No one has been in here, Christ, it’s so…so…’
‘Normal,’ Lani completes the sentence. The room is ordered and clean with absolutely no sign of being disturbed for the last two weeks. A very fine layer of dust coats the desks and surfaces but other than that, it’s untouched. It smells clean too, almost fresh and I’m instantly reminded of the offices back in the supermarket and I can see Paula looks pretty much the same.
‘Er, yeah,’ Paula snaps herself to the present, ‘right, paper records then, in here or…in the finance and admin section.’
‘Won’t they be on computer records?’ Clarence asks.
‘They will, but they will keep paper records in case of a power failure. The generators kick in but they only provide power to the essential equipment and not admin computers…that’s probably the best place to start,’ she makes towards a desk at the back, slightly larger and set apart from the others with its own set of filing cabinets and drawers. ‘It’s a supervisors workstation,’ she explains. Resting her shotgun on the desk she starts opening the desk drawers, leafing through the paperwork held within and giving each a quick glance.
‘Paula,’ Lani calls out, ‘is it worth me starting on the finance department now?’ The power dynamics in the group change abruptly. Paula is familiar with environments like this so there is a natural shift to let her lead and direct. A longing from the human mind to always believe there is someone who knows what to do.
‘Can do,’ she casts a grin at Lani who nods, turns and walks straight past me without a glance at my direction. I have an urge to go after her, say something, explain how I’m feeling and why I’m being this way but that world and time has gone. Explaining feelings, talking about why and when, understanding the motives for every action we ever did so we can be dissected, taken apart and put back together and for what reason? What purpose will it serve? Does Dave ever worry that he’s offending people? No. Be more Dave and get the job done.
‘You stay here,’ I say to Dave, ‘I’m going to get a smoke.’
‘Oka
y,’ he nods and only after walking out of the plush corridor do I realise that Dave is the only one who hasn’t been giving me strange looks.
‘Lads,’ I announce my presence a few seconds before arriving at the front and the muted chatter of low voices ceases instantly. Not the cessation that comes from a natural end to a conversation, but that thing people do when they can’t think quick enough to change the subject and suddenly all look a bit startled and awkward.
‘Mr Howie,’ Blowers nods smartly, ‘they find anything yet?’
‘Looking now, you got a…cheers,’ Nick is already digging his packet out to hand one over. I light up and inhale deeply then take a few steps away to survey the surrounding area while Cookey immediately strikes up conversation behind me.
‘Everything okay?’ Blowers says quietly having moved a short distance from the others to stand next to me, ‘you don’t seem the same.’
‘We’ve got to get on mate, everything is happening too slowly now.’ My words come out quickly, rushed, and I can tell the others are listening closely, ‘it doesn't want us here, the infection I mean, it doesn't want us here so we’ve got to step our game up and push on.’
‘Nothing we’ve done then?’ Cookey asks in a worried voice from behind me. I turn and take in his young face, then Nick’s and then the even younger Jagger and Mo Mo. ‘No,’ shaking my head I force myself to swallow the frustration, ‘nothing you’ve done.’
‘Got it!’ Paula runs from the building clutching a hard backed black lever arch folder, ‘names, addresses…er,’ she opens the folder to leaf through the pages, ‘lists the doctors training courses and qualifications…pay scales…nurses too,’ she looks round with a big grin, ‘this is fantastic, we can go and find them now.’
‘Good work…’
‘So?’ Blowers pulls my attention back to him and when I glance round he shifts as though uncomfortable at pursuing the point. ‘What is it then?’ He asks, ‘the er…’
‘What’s up?’ Lani asks staring round at the lads.
‘Blowers asked Mr Howie why the er…the mood change,’ Nick gives me an awkward glance while he explains.
‘Right,’ tilting her head back and fixing her eyes on me she waits with a look of defiance, ‘go on then, please enlighten us’ she prompts when I don’t speak.
‘We’re wasting time,’ harsh words come out of me again, ‘where’s the nearest doctor?’
‘Christ I don’t know,’ Paula exclaims, ‘the addresses don’t mean anything to me, Roy? Do you know the area well?’
‘Not enough for street names,’ he replies, ‘certain places I can get to but we’ll need a street atlas.’
Everyone looks at Dave who pauses, shakes his head, tuts then slips his bag off to dig out a map.
Twenty
Day Fifteen
Weather: Extreme fog throughout the morning with relatively high humidity and warmth. The fog dissipated in a sudden manner which was really rather alarming and it is now exceptionally hot again.
This morning I ate eggs. I scrambled them in a pan over the mini portable gas stove. I never normally have scrambled eggs as I much prefer boiled eggs, but this morning I fancied a change. It was the last of the bread and bacon from the freezer and I still have a few tins of peeled plum tomatoes left so I thought after that hellish storm I would cook myself a proper breakfast, and it’s a good thing I’m about to venture back outside as my attempt at cooking scrambled eggs in a pan has resulted in ruining said pan.
It never ceases to amaze me just how bloody stupid I can be, for a renowned scientist that is. Not to blow smoke up my own bottom but you’d think with the knowledge and expertise I have, that I could cook scrambled eggs without scorching them onto the pan so badly that despite an hour of constant scrubbing the blasted bits of eggs are still there. They appear to be now ingrained in the structure of the metal of the pan, almost fused if you will. Perhaps a new design that NASA could have made use off, a new type of building material harder than diamond. Pity there isn’t a NASA anymore.
I gave up and discarded the pan in the end. It wasn’t that I wanted to admit defeat but priorities have to be made and scrubbing a pan for the next few hours certainly wasn’t one of them. However, the breakfast was quite nice and you really couldn’t tell the bacon had been frozen. The bread of course was toasted, and the toasting process does tend to alleviate any stale or rubberiness of the bread. Orange juice and freshly ground coffee completed my ensemble and a grand time I had eating it, feeling somewhat full and satisfied after. After another cup of coffee, I stepped outside to stare into the awful sight of that thick fog. Never before have I seen such thick fog. Visibility was reduced to an effective six to ten feet at very best, but it was the warmth that surprised me and made me realise just how hot the day would have been without the fog. If the heat from the sun was penetrating that thick, low cloud then without it would be a scorcher of a day. And I am pleased to say that my prediction was right for when the fog did lift it became incredibly hot very quickly.
The air feels clearer too and I can only surmise that the hurricane force winds have swept away any remaining polluting particles left over from humanity. The rain was a downpour of biblical proportions and surely reminded me of the tale of Noah and the Ark. For a minute, I even glanced at Jess and considered if indeed we would have to source higher ground but my selection of a suitable location has proved to be worthy as we remained sound and dry. This old barn was built many years ago and I fancy it would take something stronger than a storm to shift it. Of course my modernisation and work to reinforce the structure has certainly helped but I like to think that it was a combination of the two; solid craftsmanship from the olden days with good use of modern techniques and materials.
That being said, the outside area suffered during the storm and it was lucky I knew just how bad it would be and had the foresight to bring the hens inside the barn where they clucked about quite happily and even left me a fresh egg for this morning’s debacle with the scrambling.
The old weather boffins were correct, maybe a few days out here and there in their predictions but credit to them. They said the resulting storm would be a big one and they weren’t wrong. The fog they predicted too. Yes I grant you that the timings were skewwhiff but as they said at the time, there was no precedent to work from, only educated guess work. Pity they didn’t make it through, although, maybe they have?
I must admit that I have some conflicting emotions about going back out into the world. I have been here for six months now, cooped up, confined and only venturing out when absolutely necessary and even then the effort involved in choosing a route out, then back in in order to ensure I was never seen was an arduous one and soon became tiring.
Yes, I grant you that I was not expecting The Event for another six months at the earliest but still, the last fourteen days have really felt claustrophobic. I knew it was coming, I knew it was going to happen but actually knowing it was happening was very shocking. Really very shocking. To know that billions would perish in the most god awful manner and being unable to do a damned thing about it was mind warping and many a time I contemplated my entire thought processes and decisions to do as I am, each time though it lead me back to doing this. Staying alive and safe and away from everyone until the worst was over.
The list is safe. Committed to memory and the hidden copies are at key locations throughout the country in such places that it would take a stroke of the greatest luck for anyone to stumble across them. Even if they did, they would have no idea what they were reading.
Yes, the confinement has been increasingly difficult and I’ve been longing for this day, but now it is here I feel scared. Really bloody scared. I don’t want to leave this old barn and the luxury I have created here. I could stay here, eat well, survive in comfort and live a healthy life. I know what is out there, I know just how bad it’s going to be. Still, I made this decision a long time ago and I knew this fear would be here at the prospect of leaving. It is just somethin
g I will have to overcome.
I wonder who is left from the old team? Apart from The Rogue Bastards that is. I know they will be safe and tucked up in the complex. Bloody idiots. I kept on hoping they would never actually go through with it but I knew deep down they were set on a course that was already determined. Fanatical zealots the bloody lot of them and even now I struggle to comprehend the ideology of it. Yes it was a good exercise and yes, we all contributed to the plan but it was a table top exercise, entirely theoretical and never to be done.
You know, I often wonder now, having been through it all, whether it really was that small group being bloody fanatical about it or whether they were set-up, or even encouraged. After all, we never saw the organisers or the funding parties, we were only told about them. Mind you, that in itself is understandable and we were told the entire research study was deniable from the point of view of the many countries that provided the funding and resources.
Maybe I was too naïve. A lifetime spent in research surrounded by people of the highest education and ethics and I was wholly unprepared for the deep rooted passions and beliefs we had in that facility.
Don’t get me wrong, the exercise was, without doubt, the most exciting project I have ever been involved in and it was the same for every person there. Not one of us had ever had access to that level of data before, completely unrestricted access to every file, folder, database and information gathering software in the world. Nothing of that level and depth had ever been undertaken before, and now of course, will never happen again.
I’ve just had another coffee and I know I’m dragging my heels but the coffee really is very nice and who knows when I’ll be able to get another after leaving here? I checked the camera feeds too. Camera One on the library went down in the storm. Camera Two has never bloody worked. Three to Seven are all functioning, Six is still fuzzy and unfocussed but I suspect that is from a large cobweb and spider right in front of the lens which is causing the auto-focus some difficulty.