“No,” said Ruby, “we only met a couple days ago.”
To this, John nodded, a sage look upturning his bottom lip. “Aye,” he said, “aye. Nice place you found. Gonna make it home?”
Nate and Ruby looked at each other, noticing the pulsing veins in their necks and a sharpness in their pin-point pupils; almost hearing the low murmur of each other’s heartbeat surge. It didn’t matter what they said. “Home is where you next lay your head down,” said Ruby. “Home is nowhere.”
“You got water? Most places, they ain’t got the water anymore?”
“No,” said Nate. “We make do with the rain and whatever we can find.” The smoke from the fire swirled upwards to the empty sky.
“Shame. There’s a trail from Birmingham to here of unflushed toilets.” John laughed. “Just can’t bring myself to squeeze one out in the open, you know.”
“Well you wouldn’t wanna attract a zombie,” said Ruby.
“You sure we’re safe? I mean, I ain’t been able to stay out in the open like this, making any kind of noise or palaver, without attracting something.”
“Anything that comes along, we’ll deal,” smiled Nate. “We’ve dealt alright so far. But they ain’t zombies. You see one, you don’t wait for it to shuffle its way over, ‘cause it’ll already be on you.”
“I’ve seen too well, kid,” shook John, shivers in his spine, “I’ve seen too well.”
They sat in silence as the fire burned, John stretching his hands towards it and heating them up, while the wind shook the tops of the poplars but seemed to leave the ground undisturbed. Every now and then, Nate and Ruby would scan what they could see, listen to what they could here, smell what they could smell – overwhelmed by the smoke and ash and residual spice of the sausage-meat.
“Would you mind much if I took a look for that beer?”
“I could look if you like?” asked Nate.
“No, no, it’d be nice to be indoors for a while, if that’s okay?”
“Knock yourself out.”
John rose, leaving his dish on the ground, and headed around to the front of the pub.
“Should we be allowing him?” whispered Ruby, clearly audible over the sizzling embers.
“The door to the upstairs is locked, where all our stuff is… anything else, if we’re not in a position to help the guy out, then who is?” Nate stood and walked around to Ruby, placed his hands around her neck. “I could see your blood pumping up your neck,” he whispered. “I can feel it beneath my fingertips.”
Ruby grabbed one of Nate’s index fingers. “I could break it without even trying,” she said, and Nate released his light grip.
“Just saying,” he smiled, sitting down next to her. “What are we going to do anyway?”
“Did you ever play that game,” asked Ruby, lying a head on his shoulder and letting the collective heat of the fire and his body shroud her, “where you’d choose the items you’d need in an apocalypse?”
“Don’t know. Thought about it probably.”
“Did you ever ask where you’d go?”
“Never really thought about it.”
“Mine was always the library. Like, one of the really big ones. You could never get bored, there’d always be a book to read.”
“Interesting.”
“All those computers… they would just sit there with their blank screens and I’d go round with a hammer, or something, and smash them all.”
“That’s a bit unwarranted.”
“I always hated them, in the library. Not the campus library, because you could study there, but I always remember how the library used to be this quiet place where you could go and read, but now all you hear is that clickety-clack of keyboards – or could hear – and they’d all be people who would never go to a library normally, they just wanna use the internet. And there’d never even be enough computers; you’d get people walking around looking for one and they’d see one that was empty, walk towards it and see someone had bagged it with a coat or something, and they’d just pretend they were gonna browse the bookshelf near it.”
“Get it off your chest now, while you still can.”
“Losers,” she kicked some loose gravel at the fire. “I could totally live in a library,” she laughed.
“No beds, though.”
“Beds are good. Build a bed of books. All good.”
“Did you hear that?” asked Nate, before placing a hand on her mouth. The faint whooshing of a cistern discharging itself came faintly from a rear bathroom window, and water gushed into a drain. Ruby licked Nate’s hand and he pulled it away.
“Guess he knows the water’s running,” she said.
“Just watch for anything sudden.”
When John returned, he was carrying an armload of bottles. “Found these stashed in the manager’s office, hope you don’t mind.” He sat down and opened one, then offered the others out.
“We’re good,” said Nate.
John nodded and took a swig. “Holy shit that’s good. Empty bowels, a fire and a beer,” he looked at Nate, who stared back. What passed between them was short of a contest – it didn’t last long – John did a small shrug and pursed his lips, before raising the beer to them again. “Yep. I toast my gracious hosts, and I won’t keep you any longer,” he said.
“Where you heading?” asked Ruby.
“Umm, south, London. Or as far as the bike will take me, if that’s further, then so be it. I don’t know anything about bikes, but the roads are too crammed in places to make driving a car easy, if you got a working one. Least if you want to get into a town or city.” He stood up, cradling the rest of the beers.
“You can stay longer if you want,” said Nate. “No need to rush.” He stood up and started to follow John around to the front. Ruby tailed them.
“No, I should be one my way. I need to check on my family, or not, maybe head down to Dover, see the sea, one last time,” he put the beers in a compartment on the back of the bike. “Thanks for the grub and all that, and good luck.”
“Hey,” said Ruby, “look. You want water? A bath?”
“Yeah, man. Sorry about the water, it’s just…”
“Hey, kid,” interrupted John, raising his helmet, “don’t worry about it. Water’s a commodity now – make the most of it, I’ll be okay.” He straddled the bike and turned it towards the car park. Without another word, he hiked the bike into life and edged slowly forward, towards the far end of the car park and the raised curb, around the wall of cars. Bumping unceremoniously over the curb, he revved the bike and was on his way.
*****
They watched the motorbike receding, cold vapours circling the air behind it, the sound of the roaring engine echoing in the stillness. Had birds been roosting in the barren capillaries of the trees they would have taken flight; instead the browns and greys stood starkly against the blue sky, starkly empty, and distant houses crenulated the horizon line with squares and rectangles. The rest of us could die tomorrow, thought Nate, but the horizons would never be flat again.
“You know, he could have been a scout, searching for food and water, and he’s off now to tell the bad guys where we are.” Ruby turned back towards the fire, and Nate fell in at her heels.
“But he wasn’t.”
Back at the fire, the logs were petering into grey ash, with some unburned pieces sticking out. Nate kicked them into the action and sat down. “Should we keep it going?” he asked.
“I’m not cold, but the microwave don’t work.”
“We have petrol. We can set it going again later.”
“Yeah.”
“We need a gas camping stove.”
“Must be one nearby.”
“Must be loads of things nearby we need.”
“But are we going to stay nearby?” Ruby asked.
“We have to set up somewhere, right?”
Ruby paced around, but then decided to head for the swings. She sat on the longest chained-seat and rocked to-and-fro. “I don�
��t know, do we?”
“I don’t know.” Nate grabbed a twig that had blown from a nearby conclave of dead branches and held it in the fire.
“Our options are: stay or leave.”
“We stay; we build something – a base, make it protectable. We offer refuge to anyone who comes along maybe. We feed them. Give them water. If they want to stay, they can.” Their eyes met, but neither were convinced.
“We go; we head out, on foot, on bike, in a car – we what?”
“We just keep going,” replied Nate, “until we find somewhere we want to stay.”
“You know, Dover sounded nice,” said Ruby, building up her swing now. “The sea. If there’s anywhere I wanted to stay, it would be the seaside.”
“John wasn’t going to Dover though,” said Nate, joining Ruby on the adjacent swing.
“I figured that one,” she said, giving Nate what her and her friends would have called, unapologetically, the ‘spastic’ look.
Ignoring this, he continued; “Sea sounds nice. To be honest, I’m restless.” He looked to his left, watching Ruby swing higher and higher. “Are you?”
“Yeah.”
“We could get to the sea in one day, you know. Just find a working car and choose a direction and we’d be there in a couple of hours.”
“Fuck the speed cameras,” she half-shouted.
“But, do you have this energy?”
Ruby swung down and landed on the ground like a parachutist. Looking to her right, she said, “I feel like I wanna run – not something I thought I would ever say.”
“So let’s do it,” replied Nate, walking slowly forwards and backwards, still sitting on his swing-seat. “Let’s pack what we need and go.”
*****
“We haven’t really discussed last night yet – not properly,” said Nate.
Ruby sat down next to him. The fire crackled. “It’s okay,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “We were pretty much out of control.”
“That’s not what I’m normally like. I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“I’m not worrying about it – are you?”
“No.”
“Good. If we’re to have any chance, we have to stick together. And if sticking together means more of last night, that’s all good with me, lover.”
“Lover. Weird.”
*****
“What about now?” Nate looked at Ruby. “Do you feel like going back, saying goodbye, burying her?”
“Do you feel like going back to say goodbye to your family?”
“No.”
“No. It won’t help any. Not now.”
*****
Over the next twenty-four hours, Nate and Ruby gathered their supplies, using gaffer-tape to construct extra-large back-packs that they could use to carry everything. As Nate remarked; “What’s the rush, the sea ain’t going anywhere,” so it was that they decided against transportation, against maps, against carrying anything but the essentials and the few mementos they wished to keep, which included Nate’s non-emergency go-bag of books and card games, and the dead mobile phone.
“And we ain’t got a job to get back for,” belatedly added Ruby. “All that time I wasted on my course,” she said, shaking her head. Somewhere in the sitting and tying and filling and organising, Nate commented on “all those people who had done years of training, and were finally, finally ready for the big time – and BAM! Lawyers, doctors, athletes. You know what sometimes I find really hard to take?” he added. “Not being able to watch a Liverpool match again. No more Saturday fixtures!”
“In the grand scheme of things, the thing you’re most bothered about is that there’s no more football. Typical,” said Ruby, giving him a kick. They shared a smile and continued to pack, as the daylight waned, the browns and bright colours in the bar and the bedrooms turning greyer, blacker.
In the darkness of night, they re-set the fire and let the flames climb high, and they were even approached by two of the risen from the south of the wall of cars, disturbed earlier by the motorbike and attracted to the glow of the fire, the sound of their voices, and possibly the smell of the browning meats. But they were dismissed easily – both once middle-aged men by the look of it, memories of a paunch in their bellies where skin hung loosely, their eyes cloudy and insane. Their teeth locked onto air when they tried to bite, and stayed that way as knives plunged into the brain. Nate tossed them into the playground, but upon Ruby’s request, moved them further back and left them beneath the undergrowth of the poplar trees. “You never know,” she said, “some kid may one day use the swing again. You never know.”
Their bellies full, once again their animal instincts were ignited by the sight of skin, their noses touching as they kissed and the inhalation of each other overtook all other senses until it was the depths of the night and they collapsed into sleep on the bed, a thin sheet covering them. Nate woke first, struck by abdominal pain that subsided with a few deep breaths, but their exertions the night before had burned a lot of energy and today, the hunger was acute. Almost prepared for this, he entered the bathroom where they had piled some of the tins of food they weren’t taking with them – hopefully someone in need may find them, as well as a bed for the night – and turned the tap. Water sputtered, the pipes rang clean as air surged, and he managed to get a handful before the water ran out altogether. He gulped it down, and then peeled back the lid of a can of tuna and tipped it into his mouth. He washed this down with yet more water from a bottle.
“The water’s gone,” he said to Ruby as he re-entered the bedroom. She stirred and stretched. “You’ll be hungry.” He casually chucked a couple of tuna tins onto the bed for her and then picked up his clothes. In front of the mirror, he stood tall. He pulled boxer shorts up over legs that seemed leaner, even a little hairier. The top of his head disappeared where the mirror met the wall as he stood straight.
Ruby stretched some more and then sat up, commenting on the pain in her stomach. The early light cut a path across the room that travelled across her bare ankles. She ate. She watched Nate get dressed and felt nothing – the memory of him ached in her groin, but she still felt as though she’d had her fill. The air was cold but her nipples were flaccid – if that’s the word I want to use, she thought – and her skin was clammy with a thin layer of sweat. But she felt heavier, despite the aching void in her stomach. “Are my tits bigger?” she asked.
“I’d say so,” Nate replied. “Is my…” and he laughed. “I’m not going there. I think I’m taller today, though.”
“Oh really?” she stood up next to him. “I think you are, but,” looking into the mirror, “that makes two of us. The water’s gone, you say?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s like it knew! I’m gonna go take a dip in the bath.”
“Okay,” said Nate, now fully dressed. As she bathed, he carried everything they were taking out to the front entrance and piled it, ready to leave. He was sitting on the steps when she appeared, dressed in jeans and brightly coloured coat, damp hair straggling at the collar. “You’re getting a mullet,” she said, tickling the back of his neck.
“Too late, maybe I like it long.”
“Well, if you want me to cut it for you, let me know,” offered Ruby as they picked up their gear and took the first steps out. “This way?” she asked, aiming south.
“As good as any!”
They started on the road to Worcester, the weights on their back small burdens that slowed them down, but they were in no hurry anyway. They had fashioned belts to run across their chest that could carry loose things like bottles of water and knives (though Nate also had a handily weighted table leg in his back-pack within easy reach). They didn’t miss a compass, or a walk-talkie, or a gun; they had protection – themselves – and vague aimlessness was the point.
Yet again they felt the now-familiar, yet strange sensation of walking down the centre of a large road – a dual carriageway – with a grass verge separating each side. S
o they meandered up the verge and walked along this when possible – it was free of vehicles anyway. Not that the occasional car or lorry, or over-turned HGV could stop them on foot. John the motorcyclist must’ve had to make some concession here and there. “Hope he’s getting where he’s going, okay,” mentioned Ruby.
The soft, overgrown grass felt better beneath their feet than the hard tarmac, despite the slightly damp fingers of grass stroking against their trousers. After a while of passing empty house after house, even the burned-out carcass of what was once the best place for a curry between here and Birmingham, Nate noted that they didn’t have to “stick to the roads, you know. We could choose a direction and just see where it takes us, over fields, through hedges, shit like that.”
“Maybe after we’ve crossed the river,” said Ruby. “If we’re going south, and if we’re going to head in the general direction of Wales, or Cornwall, then we’ll need to cross the bridge in Worcester.”
“Or Ombersley.”
“Ah, you know this area better than me,” she laughed. “I think I’ll let you lead the way – do what you want.”
“You’re right. Once over the river, we can go off-road.” And so they continued, seeing signs that perhaps this road wasn’t as deserted as all that. There were road-side houses that were boarded up on the ground floor, but whose curtains twitched on the upper-floors. Most houses remained silent, but every now and then a twitch was followed by the banging of fists on locked or boarded doors and windows, where evidently whatever was inside had become trapped, either too stupid to figure out an escape, or someone had engineered their confinement. Once, closer to Worcester, one such figure flung itself out of an upstairs window at the site of Nate and Ruby walking past. It landed with a snap as both legs broke, and proceeded to pull itself forward through piles of leaves and overgrown grass towards the road, its mouth agape with toothless bleeding gums. They walked on.
The Risen (Book 1): The Risen, Part 1 Page 11