Imprisoned
The Exodus Plague
Book 2
They thought they had escaped. But freedom is an illusion.
Jonathan, Geoff and Leila think they’ve found sanctuary when they arrive in Cambridge. So why are there armed soldiers preventing them from leaving?
In this second book of The Exodus Plague series, Britain is reeling from the anarchy caused by the devastating global pandemic. The military are trying to enforce law and order. They have established safe enclaves aimed at keeping the uninfected safe from the bands of violent semi-humans that roam across the country.
But safe at what cost?
Are the Army protecting the people or imprisoning them? When Jonathan makes a break for freedom, he little thinks that things can get any worse.
But they can and they do.
Welcome to the Prison Camp…
Huw Collingbourne
dark neon
Copyright © 2020 by Huw Collingbourne
ISBN: 978-1-913132-11-8
Published by: dark neon
The right of Huw Collingbourne to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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Also by Huw Collingbourne
The Exodus Plague
Book 1: The Snow
Book 2: Imprisoned
Book 3: Escape
The 1980s Murder Mysteries
Book 1: Killers In Mascara
Book 2: The Glam Assassin
Book 3: Death Wears Sequins
Table Of Contents
Imprisoned
Download Free Stories
Table Of Contents
Camp Jollity – Map
Arrival
Perkins The Pardoner
Acceptance
Sebastian
The Argument
The Letter
Snowbound
The Sickness
Spring Awakening
Loss
Gloria
Keith
Helen
Dave
Five Against The World
Freedom
Outsiders
Botch, Scab and Emerods
Tea and Geometry
High Table
Project Exodus
The Mathematical Bridge
The Precentor’s Punch
Radio True Britain
The Pardoner’s Tale
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
Out Of Bounds
An Old Friend
Safety In Numbers
Two Men and a Woman In A Boat
And Is There Honey Still For Tea?
Ham and Eggs
Sea Breezes
Internment
Camp Jollity
Wakey! Wakey!
Rise and Shine
The Lurking Lad
The Watchtowers
Cheerful Charlie Rubenstein
Toffee Apples
Knobbly Knees
Roll Call
The Loneliness of the Short-distance Runner
Blood, Swabs and Biscuits
Escape Committee
Whispers In The Dark
Matteo
Resistance
Last Christmas
Cold Front
Let There Be Light
The Gang Of Five
The Watcher
Escape
The Plan
Teddy
Calm Before The Storm
Into The Dark
The Great Escape
Knickerbocker Glory
The Might Of The British Army
Sandy Dunes
The Day They Came
Matteo’s Tale
Radio True Britain
Departure
The Journey Begins
The Rose-Covered Cottage
An Unexpected Meeting
Absent Friends
Twilight
A Message from the Author
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Escape
1
But wait, there’s more…
Camp Jollity – Map
Arrival
Cambridge: April
Perkins The Pardoner
“He’s still there. By the gates.”
“Are you sure it’s the same chap?”
“There can’t be two of them, surely.” Sir Eric Martingdale poured another sherry. He’d had a tiring morning discussing college discipline with the Dean and, as a consequence, he now had a slight headache. He did not, as a rule, take sherry before lunch but he knew that his friend Dr. Ampleside was fond of sherry so he’d sent down for a bottle of amontillado from the Fellows’ Cellars.
“You should get old Pipply to send him away.”
Pipply was the college porter. He represented the third generation of Pipply porters at St. Dunstan’s college.
“Pipply’s no good,” said Sir Eric, “I think he’s afraid of the chap.”
“Possibly you could get one of the bulldogs…”
Sir Eric laughed. “Ha! You are indulging in nostalgia, my dear chap. The days of University bulldogs are long gone. There’s been no University Constabulary since the Great Snow.”
“Ah, that had not occurred to me. What do you propose to do about the blasted fellow then?”
“Not much one can do. I suppose I could give old Pipply a call and tell him to round up a few undergrads to sort him out?”
“Give the man a good kicking, you mean? Good idea. He has no business lurking at the gates. A good thrashing would do him the world of good.”
“I suppose it’s worth a try, at any rate.”
*
When the phone in the porter’s lodge began ringing, Augustus Pipply had the distinct impression that it did not bode well. “This doesn’t bode well,” he said to the junior porter, Samuel Parker. Pipply picked up the phone and answered in his most porterly voice, “Good morning, Master. Oh, yes, sir. I had noticed him. He’s been there all morning. What’s that? Get rid of him? How am I to…? With the help of some undergraduates, sir? Ah, well, now… I suppose… yes, yes, of course, Sir Eric. As you say, sir, nothing is impossible. When you put your mind to it.”
Pipply slammed down the phone and scowled at Sam Parker who, at that moment, was leaning back in a chair with his feet resting on the porter’s reception desk – a slovenly habit that Augustus Pipply particularly disliked. He swiped Sam’s feet off his desk brusquely and said, “Sam, my lad, we got some business to attend to, me and you. The Master wants us to get rid of Perkins the Pardoner.”
“’Ow we gonna do that, Mr Pipply?” said Sam.
“That’s a good question, Sam. And one to which I ain’t got an answer. He’s mad as a hatter is that Pardoner. But he’s just a skinny old fella’, when all’s said and done. I’m sure a young man of your strength and vigour won’t have no problems seeing him off.”
“Oh, I’m not gonna risk crossing the Pardoner, Mr Pipply. Not for all the tea in China, I won’t.”
“And why is that,
Sam?”
“Don’t you know, Mr Pipply? The Pardoner curses people. He’s been touched by God, they say. And so his curses are good ones that always work.”
*
Sam Parker was in his early thirties. He’d always kept fit. He cycled every day, played football on weekends, never drank more than three or four pints of beer when he was down the pub. It was thanks to his fitness that he had survived the Great Plague, so he reckoned, though some doctors from the University had their own ideas on that matter. Sam Parker was not, however, much inclined to acts of physical violence. On the contrary, he suffered from a marked aversion to it. Which is why he was not at all enthusiastic about getting into an argument with Perkins the Pardoner. Because Perkins the Pardoner believed that the spreading of the Word Of God was his sacred duty. And if anything came between him and his duty, God didn’t in the least object to a bit of good, old fashioned, proselytising violence. Only a few days ago, Perkins the Pardoner had knocked the Master of Christ’s to the ground when the latter had informed Perkins that he was not entitled to be strolling barefoot over the grass of the college quad. The week before, Perkins had given the Praelector of Gonville & Caius a black eye following an altercation over an obscure element of doctrine.
No, all things being equal, Sam Parker did not at all relish the prospect of telling Perkins The Pardoner to go away from the college gates. Which is why Sam Parker strolled over to the college bar which, at ten o’clock in the morning, resounded to the sounds of snooker balls ricocheting off the walls.
“Morning, lads,” said Sam Parker, “The Master’s got a bit of business as needs doin’ and I was thinking to myself you’d be just the lads for the job. Yow!”
The concluding “Yow!” was in response to a ricocheting snooker ball that made sudden and forceful contact with the tibia of Sam Parker’s right leg. He knew it was the tibia and not, for example, the fibula because Terrence Farquhar (a student of medicine) informed him of the fact – “Got a nasty whack to the tibia just then, Sam,” he said, “Want me to take a look at it?”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary,” replied Sam, who would no more trust his leg to a St Dunstan’s medical student than he would trust his pet cat to a hungry Timber Wolf, “Why are you lot chucking billiard balls around the bar anyhow?”
“Snooker balls,” corrected Angus Whitley-Stanton (a third year physics student), “And the reason we are doing it is to put to the test a theory of mine that Newton’s third law of motion contains an error.”
“Yes, well, be that as it may. I have important work for you, lads.”
“Lads! Lads!” boomed a female voice (belonging, as it happens, to Fiona Chitterton-Ruddle, a second-year student of English), “I trust you intend that word in the mediaeval sense!”
Sam was starting to feel confused. When the undergrads got jabbering at him, it wasn’t long before he started to feel as though his head was spinning. He decided the best thing to do would be to come straight to the point – “Perkins The Pardoner is at the gates again and the Master wants him got rid of.”
“Oh, OK,” said Angus, “I think we can do that. Can’t we lads?”
“Oh, rath-errrr!” Fiona cried with enthusiasm.
When Sam had left the bar, Angus asked Fiona, “By the way, old girl, what is the mediaeval sense of the word ‘lad’?”
“No idea, old man. The etymology is what is known in the business, as ‘uncertain’. Come on, let’s go and give this Pardoner fellow a jolly good thrashing.”
Acceptance
Stony Cove: January
Sebastian
Sebastian had been planning to kill himself. He had considered throwing himself from the cliffs into the sea and he had considered jumping in front of a train but both of those methods seemed quite messy and might easily go wrong. In the end he’d settled on a couple of razor blades, a few bottles of cider and a hot bath. He’d heard somewhere that you could bleed out quite peacefully in a hot bath; a few bottles of cider would ease the process. But after the first bottle of cider, the razor blades started to seem less and less of an attraction. After the second bottle of cider, he couldn’t even remember what he’d been planning to do. After the third bottle of cider, all he could think about was drinking a fourth bottle of cider. After that, he couldn’t recall what exactly happened. All he could remember was waking up feeling very cold, very sick and with a head that felt as though it had been battered against a stone wall with a cricket bat.
In fact, it was another two days before he felt well enough to get up off the sofa and go and get a shower. He needed a shower to wash away the smell of stale sweat and vomit. He looked at himself with shame. He had never been so drunk that he’d vomited before. Why had he done it? He dried himself off and looked at his face in the bathroom mirror. His eyes were bloodshot and couldn’t focus properly. Even after taking a shower, he looked a mess. He shaved and put on a clean tee-shirt and a fresh pair of jeans. It was only then that he remembered that he had planned to kill himself.
“Why would I do that?”
And then it all came flooding back. Freddie. He’d had the biggest ever argument with Freddie.
The Argument
They’d been wasting time down at the Salty Sailor Amusement Arcade between Frier Tuck’s Fish’n’Chip Shop and Inky Eric’s Tattoo Parlour. There is something peculiarly depressing about a seaside resort out of season. On a cold, windy day in January, Stony Cove was about as depressing as you could get.
Sebastian had met Freddie the previous summer when they had both been working in the canteen of Jollity’s Holiday Camp. The holiday Camp was the only reason anyone came to Stony Cove and it was well past its best. People didn’t bother with holiday camps any more. It was cheaper to go abroad. You could get last-minute deals to Tunisia or Morocco for less than a week at Jollity’s. And you were guaranteed sunshine in those places, which you certainly weren’t in Stony Cove.
But still, the holiday Camp struggled along. Old people came because it’s where they used to go when they were young people. Families came because the entertainments were all laid on and they could leave the kids with the crèche attendants when they wanted a night out on their own. But the old people and the families only came in summer. In January, the Camp was deserted. The only sounds that came from it were the rhythmical slapping of the wind-blown ropes against the flagpoles.
Freddie was playing the pinball machine that night. It was one of the old ones. A classic, so they said. It was decorated with paintings of leggy blonde women who looked as though they might have been the height of fashion some time in the 1950s. The pinball machine was so old it was retro. And in Freddie’s vocabulary. ‘retro’ was the ultimate term of praise.
“Fancy going down the pub after?” Sebastian said.
“Yeah, if you like.” Freddie flipped the flippers and the silver ball bounced wildly, banging into columns, making lights flash and sound-effects warble.
“You still seeing that Jennie?”
“Who?” said Freddie.
“Jennie. The redhead with the big…”
Suddenly the pinball table went wild – bells rang, lights flashed. Some extra balls rumbled down into the chute, ready to be fired into the heart of the machine. “See that! That’s a SuperBonus. A thousand points and five more balls!”
Sebastian had no idea how the pinball machine worked or what a SuperBonus was. As far as he could figure out, Freddie never won any money. He just scored points.
“Jennie?” Freddie said, “What was you saying about Jennie?”
“I haven’t seen her around lately. I thought you and her was…”
“Jennie!” Freddie laughed and fired off another ball, “Me and her? Nah. We was never like that, mate. She’s a bit of a laugh, that’s all.”
“So you’ll be coming down the pub then?”
“I said so, didn’t I. Let me just finish this game and I’ll be right with you.”
There was no rushing Freddie when he was playing the
pinball. A game could last for ten minutes. If he won extra balls it could go on for twenty. There had been times when he’d been on that damned machine for more than an hour as though he was glued to the bloody thing.
Sebastian leant against a column and watched. There were columns all over the place in that arcade. Like the columns they have on Greek temples only smaller. They were painted the same hideous shade of pale green as the walls. There wasn’t much to watch in the Salty Sailor Amusement Arcade out of season. There was an old woman playing the one-armed bandits. She was wearing a long red evening dress and a thick woollen cardigan. She had a tight perm and an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. A lot of the older folks had never got used to the laws forbidding smoking in public places. The old woman kept sucking on the ciggy as if it was alight. Maybe she was hoping that if she sucked long enough the law would be repealed and she’d get a chance to light up again.
The Exodus Plague | Book 2 | Imprisoned Page 1