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The Rules

Page 11

by Tracy Darnton


  And that’s what’s been unsettling me. Josh is right. Dad looked like someone who gets what he wants.

  A noise wakes me and I and sit up quickly. The light from my camping lantern shows Josh thrashing around in a nightmare. He shouts out again.

  “No, no, no.” Josh bangs the side of his head with his palms. “Stop. No, no.”

  I wriggle over in my sleeping bag and grab his hands. “Josh, it’s fine. It’s a bad dream, that’s all.”

  But he’s sobbing. Gasping for air like a small child. It scares me. I don’t know how to make it better.

  “Shh. I’m here with you,” I say quietly. I wrap my arms around him and lay my head against his chest, feeling him trembling. I’ve been so focused on my own past, I haven’t paid any attention to his and how come he’s in this situation. He’s bone-brittle beneath his normal bluster and non-stop talking.

  “Shh. I’m here. It’s OK,” I say and slowly he calms down and his breathing steadies. His sobs subside and eventually he relaxes.

  “Don’t leave me,” he blurts out.

  “I’m not going to leave you,” I say. “I’m right here.”

  He hugs me back, resting his chin on the top of my head.

  “Promise? Do you promise me?” he whispers. “You won’t let me down?”

  I nod, hoping that I’m not the latest in the long line of people who’ve broken promises to Josh.

  But knowing that I am.

  Our Grab-and-Go Bags had to be checked every Sunday. Ordinary people play football or have a lie-in. My Sunday morning began in front of my unpacked kitbag arranged in rows exactly the way Dad liked it. He went through his checklist and made ticks in his notebook.

  So long as I was within an hour of it, I could leave my bag in my room. Dad’s lived in the back of the van. The petrol tank was always at least two thirds full.

  I was pitifully grateful at the time that I only had to go through that rigmarole on Sunday mornings and could then slide the bag back into the wardrobe where I couldn’t see it. It was a reminder of all the bad SHTF stuff awaiting me in the future.

  At least I didn’t have to lug it around school. Because nothing screams social suicide more than carrying a camo kitbag everywhere.

  Dad split the world into preppers and non-preppers, like wizards and Muggles in Harry Potter. He said the fewer locals who knew we were preppers, the better. I didn’t argue with that. My cool rating was low to begin with. I didn’t want kids from school to see how I lived, to tell everyone. I was already the odd girl in the class, always reluctant to accept any invitations because I didn’t want to have to return them. What if they saw the spare room lined with neat shelves of provisions when the rest of the house was a dump? Or if Dad suddenly required me to pluck a roadkill pheasant on the kitchen table? Or he screamed at Mum for not being able to operate a CB radio? Because even though it was our normal, I increasingly knew it wasn’t other people’s.

  Nothing about us was normal.

  Dad’s reason for seclusion was a paranoid one: having other people over was too risky. They’d be bashing our door down after the apocalypse if word got out that we were the only household for miles around with a clean water source, fuel or antibiotics. And, worse, who knew what would happen if we had visitors at the exact moment that we had to go, go, go. We couldn’t take them with us, share our vital food resources, jeopardize ourselves.

  Dad had a small list of other people he was prepared to help, but when he pulled me out of school and we moved to the farm, we lost the few people I was still allowed to see. I was just fifteen and had no one any more. Dad’s list grew even shorter.

  Mum got struck off the list shortly afterwards when she had to get her head together away from him and didn’t come back. She was a liability rather than an asset. A colossal overhead. Her neediness could compromise our security. He sat me down and said all that.

  That was his big excuse for not getting her back. I guess he really meant all that stuff about blood being thicker than water. I was his flesh and blood. Mum was just a failed relationship. A reminder of his failure.

  I kept myself going by repeating that it would pass. All this would pass.

  The list had got shorter until it was whittled down to him and me.

  Possibly just him.

  The cold wakes me up. I start the fire for warmth and set up the stove to boil water for tea. My head’s throbbing and I’m shivery. I want to crawl back into my sleeping bag. After a quick wet-wipe wash, I put on my warmest clothes. They all feel damp. I’m burning up. Hot and clammy. I can’t be ill. Not out here.

  Josh hears me groaning and feels my forehead with the back of his hand. “Your face is the warmest thing in here.” He makes no mention of his nightmare or night terrors, whatever the hell they were. Maybe he doesn’t even remember them. “Let’s check the all-seeing advent calendar,” he says. “If it’s something alive like a reindeer, you’re going to live. But if it’s another urn of ashes like the day before yesterday…” He draws a finger across his neck and makes a gurgling sound. “And the winner is…” He fumbles with the card and laughs. “Uh-oh. It’s a wreath.”

  “Great. Like you’d put on a grave.”

  “This one is jolly – with a bow and ribbons and pinecones. More for a front door. A festive front door. Definitely not a grave. Or a coffin. Much.”

  I build up the fire, hoping I’ll feel better with some heat. I scrunch up pages from the newspaper again. My eye is caught by the photo on page five. It shows a man in a hospital bed with two black eyes and a face so swollen even his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.

  WARLEYDALE vicar Rev Neville Shipley is recovering in hospital after being callously beaten by two men who broke into the vicarage next to St Cuthbert’s church.

  The popular local clergyman was attacked when he confronted the two masked men on the evening of 9th December. They took personal items including his laptop and family valuables.

  “I forgive them,” said Rev Shipley from his hospital bed in Royal Victoria Infirmary. “They must have been desperate to do such a thing.”

  The clergyman could have been further injured if the thieves hadn’t been disturbed by the arrival of four choir members.

  Rev Shipley refused to speculate as to whether the perpetrators could be users of the popular drop-in service for those in need that he runs every week. It has previously attracted criticism as a ‘magnet for undesirables’, according to a local resident who wished to remain anonymous.

  I inspect the beaten-up face in the photograph. It is him. It’s Neville the vicar. So much for God and the angels helping him out in his hour of need. I pass it to Josh.

  “Lowlifes,” he says. “I’ll have to visit him when he’s home. Do you think he’ll still be hosting Christmas dinner?”

  “You’re all heart. Your first thought is your own stomach.”

  “There are some messed-up characters at his drop-ins but I’d never have thought they’d do that to him. Poor sod.”

  “You don’t think…” I begin. “Never mind.”

  I stand up but sway and sit down quickly.

  “You look rough,” says Josh. “Maybe the balti the other night didn’t agree with you? My guts were a bit ropey yesterday.”

  “That curry was over a day ago, though food poisoning can manifest within any period from hours to many days depending on the kind of infection.”

  “What’s that? Page thirty-two of the prepper’s first-aid manual? I thought the place looked a touch dodgy but you were in such a state after the talk you obviously needed comfort calories quick.”

  “I don’t have the symptoms. It’s just the start of a cold or a bug.”

  “Luckily we don’t have to be anywhere today,” he says. “That’s the beauty of life on the open road – we can please ourselves.”

  “By hanging out in a random cowshed, with a temperature.”

  “I’ll go through the freebie leaflets and maps I picked up at the tourist office. They cover th
e national park area and Kielder Water north of Hadrian’s Wall. Who needs Google when you’ve got your own brain? They’re not as detailed as a commercial map, and are obsessed with where you can go for a cream tea, but I should be able to narrow down the search area. You can be on bed rest. Haven’t you got enough food in that bag of yours to keep us going?”

  Is it all right to step down for a day? To let someone else ‘look after’ me? Survivors are meant to have a positive mental attitude at all times, however they’re ‘feeling’, but I so want to sleep and get rid of this fever.

  “There’s no way your dad or social services or Father Christmas himself is going to know you’re here. We don’t even know exactly where we are, says Josh, plumping up my pillow. “I’ll do a walk back to the village, get the name of the place, work out the bus routes. You take the day to feel better. Get rid of the temperature. Pop a pill from your massive first-aid bag.”

  He zips me back in my sleeping bag and is generally ten times more helpful than he’s been since I met him – which makes me think he does remember what happened last night and he’s trying to repay the favour.

  I was the only fourteen-year-old kid expected to do car maintenance on a school night, and one time I caught my hand with the wrench when doing an oil change on the van. I instinctively cleaned the cut, sprayed it with antiseptic and inspected it. In a post-antibiotic world, this kind of injury could kill you. So I took it seriously. Dad had trained me to take it seriously. When the SHTF, we’d be the end of the line for our own medical care. I’d done ‘courses’ in treating injuries and hygiene-related issues like rehydration and food poisoning. Mum was meant to have a handle on midwifery and natural pain relief, and Dad had nailed emergency dentistry and medication. So now I welded my cut together with steri-strips. Neatly done.

  We had a supply of antibiotics and other prescription drugs if I needed them. Dad had methods for getting them prescribed when they shouldn’t have been so he could build up a stock. We switched between doctors, made appointments with the most junior ones or locums. Dad picked appointments when they’d be tired and rushed at the end of the day. At the slightest sign of a sore throat, Dad had me screaming myself hoarse into a folded towel to inflame my tonsils ready for inspection. I’d lie to the doctor that I had a fever, that it had lasted for days.

  The antibiotic, or whatever, would be added to the refrigerated drugs store or to the locked drugs box, depending on type; job done.

  Looking back, it’s odd, right? If I had told any one of those doctors what was really happening, maybe they’d have taken me away from it all, way before Dad dragged me to the farm in Wales and I wasn’t allowed to see anyone any more, let alone a health professional who worked for the state. The doctor could have ushered me into the arms of someone like Julie. Got my dad locked up.

  I could have saved Mum.

  I could have saved myself.

  I feel better when I wake up. Hungry. Feeble, but with no temperature. I take it slowly getting ready but I know I can move today – I’ll be able to head further towards Centurion House.

  To his credit, Josh is already up, keen to show me his ‘homework’ as he calls it. He’s identified a large area between the dark-skies observatory and a massive reservoir, and worked out how we get there.

  I set about brewing nettle-leaf tea as a thank you. But I don’t think he’s impressed.

  “Nettle tea and soup are my signature dishes. Nature’s free superfood. Better if we had some honey to add. They’re not as sweet this time of year and a bit withered, but there’s still enough of them out there.”

  “Yes, waiting to sting me when I went for a pee.”

  “Dad used it like a test. Whether Mum believed him enough to pick the nettles. By that stage living on the farm, she was scared of everything. The funny thing about nettles is, if you grasp them firmly and quickly, they don’t sting.” I mash at the green clump in the kettle. “But if you try to avoid getting stung and are too timid, they’ll get you. It’ll sting like hell.”

  “So happy my own cuddly little Bear Grylls is back,” says Josh. “Any idea how boring it is out here with no one to talk to? And nothing but freeze-dried camp rations. Any longer and I’d have had to eat you.” His scraggly beard has sneaked up on his chin over the last couple of days and his hair could do with a cut, but I kind of like it as it is.

  “Boredom is a danger after the SHTF,” I say. “You need to stay switched on. That’s why you should keep learning stuff, play cards, whatever. And we’ve only been here two nights. Not a long stress test.”

  “If you mean, am I stressed? Yes. I don’t like looking after a sick person in a cowshed. That’s beyond my pay grade. Especially in December. We should splash the cash on a B&B tonight. Use my busking money.”

  “Some preppers say we should all be stress-testing regularly, like, spend twelve to twenty-four hours without power and try out what you’d do. There was a Swedish experiment a while back that tried it with a bunch of people.” I hand him a mug, which he sniffs hesitantly.

  “Gran talked about the power cuts in the seventies and how they sat around with candles and sang songs by the piano,” he says. “She made it sound quite cosy.”

  “The novelty would soon wear off in the modern world. Things you take for granted simply wouldn’t function. Petrol station pumps don’t work, or banking and cash tills. Nothing can be recharged. All those people addicted to smartphones that you go on about, they’d be stuffed. Air conditioning, heating, life-support machines, operating-theatre lighting, sterilizers – what would you like to live without? Even for twenty-four hours.”

  “But they have back-up systems and generators, right? Hospitals would be OK.”

  “Maybe. Back-ups are only directed at the vital services – not at keeping you and your home ticking over. And they’ve found they can’t really run stress tests in real time – too risky. They use simulations, war-game scenarios on paper or with algorithms. And that British Blitz spirit they like to bang on about, turns out to be in short supply.”

  I pick up the advent calendar. It’s the thirteenth – unlucky for some.

  “Remember the Asda riots over discounted televisions on a Black Friday sales day?” I say. “That showed the hard truth of the modern-day Blitz spirit. Every man for himself. Or for a cheap TV set. Anything longer than twelve hours without services runs the risk of major civil unrest.” I pick at the thirteenth door, located on the tummy of the largest polar bear. Today reveals two bells and I flick it over to Josh so he can see.

  “I suppose half a day is how long people last before going nuts about not having access to their Instagram,” says Josh.

  “That Swedish group went from cheerfully eating pickled herring sandwiches together to Lord of the Flies really quickly,” I say. “Some think a major change would be a chance to rebuild a common urban future, sharing skills to make a new happy-clappy community life. There’s some overlap between green activists and preppers, for sure. But Dad always taught me that when the chips were down it would be all about self-preservation and anything else was hippy fantasy. That’s why he wanted us to be ready to fight off anyone. Prepared. Not scared.”

  I lay out my kit ready to pack it back in the bag neatly. Everything has its place. And bag up our rubbish. Leave no trace.

  Josh picks up the leaflet from St Cuthbert’s, and looks at Dad’s talk dates that I scribbled on the back.

  “We should see where all these other places he’s going are. It’s an easy way to keep track of him.”

  “I’m not going to another of his talks, thanks. Though you’re right, it means we know he’s not in this area. We’re not going to find him arranging cans of baked beans at Centurion House.”

  “Ah – I’ve been thinking while you’ve been poorly. I got to pondering what you said about your dad taking on a character. It’s funny how he’s doing all this in a short space of time. Intensive. Looking at all these dates now, there’s nothing before mid-November. Nothing after Dece
mber twentieth, or scheduled for next year. Why?”

  “Maybe he’s going back to the States for Christmas,” I say hopefully. “Doing more over there again.”

  “We didn’t see that on the social media stuff. He didn’t mention it at the talk. And if he’s such a big cheese and he plainly enjoys whipping up a crowd, seems funny that he’s not doing more of it. Pass me your map of the UK.”

  I give Josh the map and he pins it up by pushing it on to a couple of rusty nails on the wall. He circles the locations of Dad’s visits in red pen.

  “This is a waste of time. You’re mucking up my map.” I try to take the pen off him, but he holds it high above his head.

  “I’m Sherlock Holmes and you’re Dr Watson in this scenario,” says Josh. “You’re the sidekick, doubting my brilliance. Now stand back. Look at all the red marks. What do you see?”

  “An expensive map you’ve just ruined.”

  He turns his head from one side to the other. “Looks like they’re in clusters. Circles of events in certain parts of the country. Why group them so close to each other? Wouldn’t he get a bigger and better audience if he spread them out across the country, or went to bigger cities?”

  “True. Whole regions of the country are missed out,” I say, tracing lines between places with my finger. “This bit in Carmarthenshire, that’s where Eden Farm was, the last place we lived together. This cluster in South Wales – that’s where we lived before the farm. The school I went to until Year 10 is just about here.” He marks it with an ‘S’ on the map.

  “He definitely knows other preppers in that area,” says Josh. “Makes sense to go back there. He’s got a network, people who will attend a talk. But what about all these talks in Somerset?”

  The dots are more scattered there. “We lived in this place when I was little. And here when Dad moved back from the US before we went to Wales.” Josh marks more ‘S’s for the schools I attended and draws little houses where we’ve lived. “Bath’s where Mum and I ended up sleeping in the car park.” That gets a tiny drawing of a house.

 

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