The Exodus Plague | Book 2 | Imprisoned

by Collingbourne, Huw

“I couldn’t sleep. There’s a loudspeaker outside my room and…”

  “I suppose we’d better go to breakfast then.”

  “I suppose we better had.”

  There were leaflets in every chalet showing a little labelled map of the Camp. The chalets which they were staying in were arranged in eight parallel rows aligned vertically at the top of the map. Beneath the rows of chalets a road ran from left to right. At the far left of the road was the main entrance to the Camp. The road divided the map into two unequal sections. The chalets, above the road, took up about a third of the total area. The remainder of the Camp, below the road, took up the two-thirds of the map; this area contained a car park, an amusement park, a sports field, an outdoor and an indoor swimming pool and a large building called The Jollity Building which, according to the map, contained the Jollity Theatre, a newsagent, an amusement arcade, a coffee bar, a lost property office, a shopping centre, the Jolly Pig & Whistle Bar, a ballroom, a ballroom lounge and a hairdresser. The one thing they couldn’t find any sign of on the map was a dining hall.

  “We could go to the Jolly Pig & Whistle Bar,” Geoff suggested.

  The suggestion horrified Leila – “For breakfast, my dear? I think not.”

  In the end they decided to follow anyone who seemed to know where they were going in the hope that they really did know where they were going and that the place they were going might turn out to be the Dining Hall.

  The first people they saw after leaving the chalet were three young men wearing jeans and tee-shirts. At least there were no clowns about, which relieved Leila. The young men were walking down the paved pathway that separated one line of chalets from another line of chalets. They appeared to be walking in the general direction of the road. Leila, Jonathan and Geoff followed with Bobby the dog padding along a few yards behind them.

  When they arrived at the side of the road, the three young men suddenly stopped. They were looking to the right and to the left along the road but whenever one of them seemed to be about to step into the road, the other two immediately pulled him back again. When Leila, Jonathan and Geoff caught up with the three men, they were still standing at the roadside, unsure what to do.

  “Can we help you, gentlemen?” said Leila.

  All three turned to look at her. All three had the familiar gaunt, pale faces and bloodshot eyes of the infected. They looked at Leila uncertainly as though they couldn’t quite work out whether she was friend or foe and whether they should reply to her question or simply ignore her.

  Eventually one of them – a slim, young, dark-haired man who looked as though he might have been of Italian heritage – said, “We want to cross the road.”

  Geoff said, “So cross it!”

  “Look left, then right, then left again,” said another of the young men, a shorter slightly plump man with unkempt sandy hair.

  “It’s all right,” Leila assured him, “There’s no traffic.”

  “You sure?” said the third young man, a dark curly-haired chap with a slightly skewwhiff nose that looked as though it might have been broken at some time.

  “Look,” said Jonathan, “It’s a straight road. You’d be able to see if there was any traffic. But there isn’t, is there?”

  The Italian-looking man looked to the left and to the right. Then he looked at Jonathan. He was smiling broadly, “No, there isn’t!” It seemed that he considered Jonathan’s reasoning to be brilliant in its simplicity.

  “So it’s safe to cross,” said Leila, gently hooking her arm into the Italian-looking man’s arm. Taking their lead from her, Geoff and Jonathan put their arms around the shoulders of the other two and, looking now like three pairs of intimate friends, they walked to the other side of the road without incident.

  “Are you going to breakfast by any chance?” Leila asked.

  “Bacon and eggs, yum!” said the Italian-looking man.

  “Yum,” agreed Leila, “My name’s Leila, by the way. You are…?”

  “Matteo.”

  They completed the introductions as they strolled on past the Jollity Building towards a building called the King’s Building. Leila took another look at the map. According to that, the King’s Building contained a Rock’n’Roll Ballroom, an Old Time Ballroom, a Games Room, a Sports Stadium, a TV Room, an Amusement Arcade and… oh yes, there it was: a Dining Hall.

  Rise and Shine

  The Dining Hall was vast. Serried ranks of tables stretched along its length. Three sides of the hall were enclosed by walls with doors to enter by and doors exit from. There were also doors to the kitchen areas and doors to the toilets. The fourth side was made of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out upon the sports field and, in the distance, the sea that lay beyond.

  The tables, which were covered in red-checked tablecloths, were all set for breakfast: cutlery, small plates, cups placed upside down on their saucers and small glasses – presumably for water or fruit juice. There must have been more than a hundred tables in the hall, each table capable of seating up to eight people. Not a single table was occupied.

  “Where do you fancy sitting, then?” asked Jonathan.

  “Oh, by the window, I think,” said Leila, “For the breath-taking view.”

  “You got plenty of choice then,” Geoff said, “There’s one, two, three… ten tables next to the windows.”

  “This one has the best view,” said Leila, striding towards the fifth table along, “We shall take it.”

  Leila, Jonathan and Geoff were in the process of seating themselves around the table when they noticed they had company. The three young men whom they’d met at the roadside had trailed along with them and, not waiting for an invitation, had decided to sit at the table that Leila had chosen.

  “Feel free to join us,” Leila said through gritted teeth, “After all, the other tables are crowded, aren’t they.”

  “Crowded,” agreed Matteo, “Yeah.”

  “I was being satirical,” Leila said, glancing meaningfully at the acres of deserted tables.

  Matteo thought about that for a moment then smiled broadly and said, “Crowded, yeah.”

  Geoff turned to Jonathan and whispered in his ear, “He’s a bit simple, I think.”

  The next thing Geoff knew, there was a hand around his throat. It was a hard, strong, hand and it was squeezing.

  “Matteo’s not simple,” it was the dark, curly-haired chap with the broken nose, “Matteo is clever. Matteo is my friend.”

  “All right, all right,” Geoff said with some difficulty, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean, you know…”

  “It’s OK, Fred,” Matteo said to the young man who was strangling Geoff, “They don’t know. You can’t blame someone who doesn’t know.”

  Fred blushed. Then he released his grip on Geoff’s neck. He glanced at Matteo and for a moment it looked as though he might cry. But then he looked back at Geoff and he said, “I’m sorry. You don’t know,” and he sat down again.

  A middle-aged woman was standing by the table now. She was wearing light blue overalls with a stained white pinny over the front. A half-smoked cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth.

  “You can’t have that in here,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Jonathan.

  “That,” she said, “You can’t have it in here. Against regulations.”

  “I’m sorry but I don’t know what…”

  “The dog,” said Leila, “I think she’s referring to Bobby.”

  Jonathan was so used to having Bobby follow wherever he went that he had completely forgotten that the dog was even there. Bobby scurried under the table and tried to look inconspicuous.

  “Health and safety,” explained the waitress, stopping briefly to remove her cigarette, cough a few times and spit on the floor, “More than me job’s worth to allow one o’ them in ’ere. It’ll have to go.”

  “It’s mine,” said the plump, sandy-haired boy, “Doctor says I have to have it. To help with my problem.”

  “Wh
at’s your name, son?”

  The sandy-haired boy glanced uncertainly at Matteo.

  “It’s all right, you can tell her.”

  The sandy-haired boy looked at the waitress and smiled. “My name is Ben. What’s your name?”

  “I’ll have none of your lip!” snapped the waitress, “So where’d you get a dog from, Ben?”

  “Doctor says I have to have it,” the boy repeated, “To help with my…”

  “You lot! You must think I was born yesterday. This’ll have to go on my report, you know,” she took a small pad of paper and a pencil from a pocket of her overall and jotted something down, “Now then, gentlemen, what will you be having for breakfast?”

  “Lady,” Leila said.

  “You what?”

  “Gentlemen and lady,” Leila said.

  “Look, are you lot having breakfast or ain’t you? I’ll give you one more chance and then I’m off. We got tea, we got coffee, we got artificial orange juice and we got Cornflakes. What’s it to be?”

  “What about the porridge, fried tomatoes, bacon, eggs, liver and stewed lungs?” asked Geoff.

  “Oh yes, I can see we’ve got a proper little joker here, haven’t we? Do you want Cornflakes or don’t you want Cornflakes?”

  They settled for Cornflakes. On the advice of Matteo, they decided to go for the tea option which, they were assured, was marginally less toxic than the coffee. Matteo warned them sternly against the artificial orange juice. They took his advice.

  When the waitress had shuffled off towards the kitchen, Jonathan turned to Matteo. “So what exactly don’t we know? You said we can’t be blamed because we don’t know.”

  Matteo’s face broke out into a broad smile. “It’s a long story, my friend, a long story.”

  The Lurking Lad

  “He’s there again.”

  “Who?”

  “The lad. The one who lurks.”

  “A lurking lad? Whatever are you babbling about, Smedley?”

  “Look. On the monitor.”

  Digby leaned across Smedley’s desk, putting on his reading glasses as he did so, in order to get a better look at the computer screen. “Oh yes.” It was clear enough. The boy was standing just beyond the bars of the fence enclosing the Camp. “He appears to be looking at something. Watching something, wouldn’t you say, inside the Camp?”

  “That’s all he ever seems to do. One could almost imagine that he would like to get inside.”

  Digby guffawed. “Get into the Camp! Why on earth should anyone wish to do that? Most of the, er, guests would like to get out, I should think. I can’t imagine why anyone should wish to get in.”

  “No. A bit of a conundrum, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Maybe he’s one of those religious maniacs. One of those pardoners and summoners, holy rollers and Jesuits.”

  “I wondered if he might be a spiv.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, one of those chaps that operates on the black market. Selling items of dubious origin. There were a lot of them about in the Second World War, so I’ve heard. Did a brisk business in lipstick and Nylon stockings.”

  “I hardly think our guests have much use for lipstick and Nylon stockings.”

  “Drugs, perhaps?”

  “Have you seen him passing anything through the bars?”

  “No. I have only seen him standing there. I don’t monitor the security cameras twenty-four hours a day, of course.”

  “Perhaps you should.”

  “With all due respect, sir, I am the Entertainments Officer. I hardly think that security falls within the scope of my responsibilities.”

  “These are unusual times, Smedley. We must all work together, you know. Above and beyond the call of duty and all that.”

  “You want me to stay here and watch him, then, sir?”

  “Oh no, I hardly think that’s called for. The lad is probably a simpleton. I should ignore him if I were you.”

  “Jolly good, sir.”

  “Actually, I was wondering whether we might do a little inspection. Of the Camp facilities. The entertainment facilities, which certainly do fall within your area of responsibility.”

  “Anything in particular, sir?”

  “We could start with the Jolly Pig & Whistle Bar. See if they might be able to rustle up a gin pahit.”

  “Have they Angostura Bitters, do you think?”

  “I should jolly well hope so. But it does no harm to check, does it?”

  “Oh, not at all, sir. A very good idea, if I may say so.”

  “You may, Smedley. You may indeed.”

  The Watchtowers

  Jonathan, Leila, Geoff and Matteo were walking along the fence that bounded the Camp on the seaward side. The fence was made of solid iron bars, about ten feet high, with just a few inches between the bars and a wicked looking spike on top of each of them. It might have been possible to scale the fence with some help and determination were it not for the watchtowers.

  The watchtowers had been erected at strategic points around the boundaries of the Camp. There were seven watchtowers in total. The lookout platform of the watchtowers was about fifteen feet above ground and was supported by a scaffolding made from four wooden columns, one at each corner, about the thickness of a telegraph pole. The columns were braced by wooden planks that had been fixed horizontally between the front, back and side columns and into crosses at the back and front. The structures had clearly been made at short order but they gave every impression of being sturdy and stable. At the top of each tower, built over the platform itself was what looked like a sort of small garden shed with wooden planks forming the walls from the platform base to about half the height of a man. Above the planks on all four sides there was an open area through which a sentry could keep guard or, if necessary, fire a gun. At all times of day and night, an armed soldier stood watch in each of the seven towers.

  “So much for the jollity of Camp Jollity,” said Jonathan, sourly.

  “They kill people,” said Matteo, who had decided to come along for the walk, leaving his two friends, Fred and Ben, playing pinball machines in the amusement arcade.

  “Who do?” said Geoff.

  “The men in the towers. I seen them. Kill someone.”

  “Shit!” said Geoff, “You mean they shot someone?”

  Matteo smiled. “Yes. Shot. They shot my friend.”

  “Why?” said Leila, “Why did they shoot him?”

  “He was trying to escape.”

  “Wait a minute,” Leila said, “Escape? You mean, they won’t let you out? If you wanted to go for a stroll around town, say?”

  “They killed my friend,” Matteo repeated.

  There seemed little point in quizzing Matteo on the details. He was not the most eloquent of conversationalists. So they carried on walking around the perimeter fence, glancing out at the ocean. The ocean looked just as the ocean had always looked apart from the total lack of ships as far as the eye could see. Leila and Jonathan were walking slightly ahead of Geoff and Matteo while Bobby proceeded at his own sweet pace, often scurrying off into the longer grass that was starting to grow up around the sports’ field to take a good long sniff at something that was obviously of keen interest to dogs.

  “Do you think they really shot someone?” Leila asked.

  Jonathan shrugged. “Who knows? In principle they are there to stop the outside world getting in. But in practice… I don’t know. I can’t believe the Colonel would have sent us here if he thought it would be dangerous. On the other hand, we know what the Army is capable of.”

  Jonathan was thinking not only of the oppressive militarisation of Cambridge but also of the atrocities they’d seen in London when tanks had fired upon a crowd of unarmed people.

  “Look! Look!” Leila and Jonathan turned around. Matteo was pointing out to sea, “Dolphins! Look! Dolphins!”

  Leila, Jonathan and Geoff looked where Matteo was pointing. There were no dolphins.

  “They release
d them,” Matteo said, “From the dolphin place. The dolphin, dolphin area.”

  “Dolphinarium?” Geoff suggested.

  Matteo nodded vigorously. “I like dolphins.”

  Cheerful Charlie Rubenstein

  “I say, sir, isn’t that the new girl?”

  “What’s that, Smedley? Which girl would that be?”

  “Over there, sir, on the other side of the sport’s field. The tall girl in the long black coat. Arrived last night, I believe.”

  Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Digby and Captain Archibald Smedley, having satisfied themselves on the quality of pink gin in the Jolly Pig & Whistle Bar (it had taken three glasses each in order to be quite certain of its merits), were doing the rounds of the Camp, as they did every day, to make sure that everything was running smoothly. They’d done a quick inspection of the chalet blocks, they’d dawdled through the Rock’n’Roll Ballroom which was devoid of activity, then they’d looked into the amusement arcade in which a curly-haired boy with a broken nose and a plump, sandy-haired boy without a broken nose were enthusiastically playing a pinball machine.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Digby and Captain Smedley had now arrived at the location of the small stage on the fringes of the sports’ field upon which it was the custom to have competitions to entertain the campers. This afternoon’s knobbly knees competition was preying upon Captain Smedley’s mind. It was the first knobbly knees contest he had ever organised and he wanted it to go off with a bang.

  It was while examining the stage at the side of the sports’ field that Smedley had noticed the tall girl wandering along the perimeter fence at the other side of the field. She appeared to be in the company of three young men and a dog.

  “Didn’t think that would be allowed,” commented Digby absently, since the main focus of his attention at that moment was upon his pipe which, in spite of a disadvantageous breeze, he was attempting to fill with tobacco.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Dogs. I thought they were against Camp rules.”

  “Shall I attend to it, sir?”