Pete, Jerry, Allan and I ran up to the barricade, shouting at the people who were out on the street, trying to find out what had happened.
“It was Rick and the Coles!” one of them shouted back. “They were on patrol at the barricade. I saw them push the car out of the way, then they ran to the car, got all their families inside it and drove off. It happened so quickly we couldn’t stop them.”
Jerry was kneeling on the floor next to Ian, who looked in a bad way. “Go and get my Trauma Kit; it’s in the hall of your house. You can’t miss it, it’s a green rucksack with a white cross on it!” he shouted at me. I ran back to my house, grabbed the bag and brought it back to Jerry.
“He’s dead,” Pete said softly as I returned, “Jerry thinks his neck is broken.”
Mary, Ian’s wife, ran up and knelt next to him, screaming for Jerry to do something. Jerry put a hand on her shoulder, said something quietly to her, stood up and walked over to us.
“I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do. I think he died as soon as he hit the road. He landed badly and broke his neck.” He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Who did it? Did we know them?”
“Yes!” I replied angrily, “But let’s try and help Mary. I’ll tell you later.”
More of the wives had arrived. The men all took a step back and stood there watching the tragedy, as emotions spilled over and the women tried to comfort Mary. Everybody had a tear in their eye and a big lump in their throat. Ian had been a lovely man. He’d been retired, and had always had time to chat to everybody on the road, and was a regular at the social occasions the Residents Committee organised throughout the year. They’d celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary earlier in the year by holding a big party in a marquee in their back garden and most of us had been invited.
The children had started to gather round as well. I indicated to a few people standing close by to take them away.
It wasn’t right that they should have to witness the grief and agony that was unfolding out in the road. A thoughtful neighbour arrived with a sheet and Jerry draped it over Ian’s body.
A group of us walked past the barricade to the junction of our road and the High Street. We stood around, waiting to be needed by our wives, who were trying to comfort an obviously inconsolable Mary. A noise caught our attention. Looking up, we saw a large group of about thirty men approaching.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Most were carrying weapons of some sort, but about five were carrying shotguns. We all turned and ran back to the barricade and I screamed at the women, “Move it NOW! There’s a group of thugs approaching. They must have heard the Land Rover leaving. You must leave now. Gather all the children, go to my house and lock the door.”
I watched the now distraught women run down the road, dragging or carrying the children with them, towards my house. I suddenly realised that apart from the hand guns Jerry and I were carrying, nobody else had any weapons on them. We’d all just reacted and run to the barricade when Rick had driven through it, leaving the MP5s and shotguns leaning up against the wall in the kitchen. I ran back to my house hoping that the door wasn’t already locked. It wasn’t and Becky, having seen our guns in the kitchen, was already carrying them through the house.
I threw my gun safe keys at her and told her to go and unlock it and bring them all up along with some more ammunition. I ran back to the barricade loaded down with the guns. I gave Jerry his MP5 and handed the pump-action shotgun to Allan. Looking round, I noticed that most of the other men now had a weapon of some sort in their hands.
The car had been pushed back to complete the barricade and I was glad that at least someone was thinking. The gang had now arrived at the top of the road and were looking at us crouched behind the line of cars. There were only about fifteen of us.
“Where is everybody else?” I asked.
“A few will be at the other barricade, but I don’t know where the others are,” Pete replied. Becky and another neighbour arrived, carrying five shotguns and a bag of cartridges. I asked who knew how to use them and keeping one, passed them over to the ones who had said they could, telling them to grab a handful of cartridges from the bag, but to keep out of sight and not to show the guns yet.
One of the gang walked towards the barricade, carrying a shotgun over his shoulder. Pete stood up unarmed and shouted, “Stop right there, we’ve got nothing for you and if you attack, we’ll defend ourselves.”
“Defend yourselves with what?” he sneered. “You’re just a bunch of old men, you can’t stop us! I’m going to give you one minute to move away and show us what food you have and you won’t get hurt. Or we’ll just come over and take it from you. If we have to do that, we’re going to hurt you all badly.” He turned and walked back up to his men.
It was like a scene from a movie with a bad script, but it was happening right on our road. Crouching behind the car, I spoke to all the men holding guns. “Look, those people are going to attack and if they get through us, who knows what they’ll do to our families? I’ve already been attacked once today over at Jerry’s and words aren’t going to stop them. Only these,” I held up my shotgun. “You have to be prepared to use them to protect yourself and your family…”
I was stopped by the leader shouting, “Time’s up!” The gang started to walk towards us. Pete again bravely stood up, shouting, “We have guns! Don’t come any closer!” This caused a few of them to falter, but the leader raised his shotgun and shouted “So do we!” and fired both barrels at Pete, who just managed to duck behind the car.
“NOW!” I yelled. We all stood up and those of us with guns pointed them at the now running mob. Another one fired his gun at us, but because he was running, the shot went high. At the sound of the shot we all instinctively pulled our triggers. Our first shots ripped into the rapidly approaching mob. I had a second to notice that even at that range a few shots must have missed, because a lot of them still seemed to be coming at us.
I fired my second barrel and realising I wouldn’t have time to reload, reached for the MP5 slung across my back. Allan was blazing away with the pump-action and Jerry was shooting his gun in three-shot bursts. All the others were frantically trying to reload the unfamiliar shotguns and firing wildly at the attackers, or were swinging whatever weapon they had at the men who were beginning to climb over the barricade. I fired at the man nearest to me and watched him fall. I shot again and again until my gun clicked empty. I reloaded as quickly as my shaking hands would let me.
Looking back on it now, at that moment, when we were being attacked for the first time and were using deadly force to protect ourselves and our loved ones, we were aware that people were being killed, but in the terror of the situation, we knew it was either them or us, and we did what we had to do. We would all look back with a sick feeling about what we’d had to do, and most of us would have nightmares or sleepless nights reliving the moment.
But at the time it felt right; the only course of action to take. We had to survive and if someone was trying to kill us, the natural thing to do was to kill them first, if we could.
They couldn’t take the punishment we were giving them, and after about thirty seconds (although it seemed like a lifetime), the survivors turned and ran. One of them swung round and aimed his shotgun at us, and both Jerry and I raised our guns and fired. He was flung backwards as six bullets hit him.
Silence settled over the road as the gunfire ceased. As the ringing in our ears slowly subsided, we could hear the screams and groans of wounded men. Looking around, we all seemed to be OK. There were a few cuts and bruises and Pete was holding his arm awkwardly after being hit by a rock. But we were all alive. The bodies of our attackers were on the cars of the barricade and on the road before it, most with horrific gunshot wounds. Shotguns at close range are devastating.
We stood there in a daze, trying to take in what we had done and the fact that we had survived. Jerry, standing beside me with tears streaming down his face, looked at the dead and dying, a
nd said softly, “I’m a bloody doctor, I’m meant to save people not kill them.”
“Look mate, we had to do it. Do you think they would have been happy just taking our food? No, they had guns and fired first. They’d probably have killed us all, and taken our wives and children as sex slaves while they continued terrorising whoever is left around here. We’ve done the area a favour by getting rid of them.
That’s the way I’m going to look at it and you should too. We all should. It’s the only way we’ll cope with what we’ve just had to do.” I felt myself changing as I said the words. I’d just killed people who were trying to kill me and my friends. I’d probably have to do it again and, strangely, it didn’t feel wrong.
Allan walked over to us, blood from a wound running down his face.
He was very calm, possibly because of his training, or perhaps because it hadn’t been his family or his home he had just saved. He snapped us out of it by taking control and issuing orders. “Doc, check our people and make sure no one’s badly wounded. Look at Pete first. His arm looks pretty bad.”
“But what about them?” replied Jerry, waving his arm at the wounded in front of the barricade.
“NO! Our people first, then see if you can help any of those scum,” came the blunt reply. He was trying to separate our emotions. They were the enemy. Just a few minutes before, they had been shooting at us and trying to kill us. We needed to look after ourselves first.
Allan sent Bob back down the road to tell the families sheltering in our house that we were all OK, but they were to stay inside until we told them it was safe to come out.
Standing by the barricade, he looked at the dead and wounded and turned back to us, looking horrified. “Ian’s under that lot, we didn’t move him!” That galvanised us into action. We pulled a few dead bodies out of the way until we reached Ian’s body. Four of us passed him gently over the barricade and laid him on the pavement next to Pete, who was sitting against the wall with his arm in a makeshift splint. He was white faced and clearly in shock. After a quick assessment, Jerry confirmed that his arm was broken.
We began checking the attackers. We moved the dead to one side and the injured to the other, where Jerry got to work on helping them. In total, there were fifteen dead and ten wounded, some seriously and some with a few shotgun pellets in their arms or legs. Those that appeared to have the least life threatening injuries seemed to be moaning the loudest, swearing and shouting for us to help them.
Jerry stood up from checking the most seriously injured and said he didn’t think he could save most of them. They needed surgery and he just didn’t have the expertise or equipment to do it. “What are we going to do with them?” asked one of the neighbours. This started a heated discussion, with some people saying we should let them die and others saying that if we didn’t try to help them, we risked losing our humanity and would be just as bad as them.
I didn’t know which side I agreed with, as I could see both points of view and couldn’t decide until Jerry spoke up saying:
“Stop it! Shut up everybody! Look, I’m the only one here with medical experience and I’ll do my best to save them but if, in my opinion, I can’t and they’re too far gone to help, and extending their life will only increase their suffering, then God forgive me, I’ll give them an overdose of morphine. It’s all I can think to do.”
That stopped the discussion immediately. I think we were all glad that the decision had been taken out of our hands, and we left Jerry to treat them. We had to restrain the less severely injured, as Jerry injected local anaesthetic and removed lead shot gun pellets from arms, legs and bodies. Once they were treated, Allan plasti-cuffed their arms and legs to stop them trying to escape and to prevent them from attacking us. Looking at the demoralised survivors, I think the fight had gone out of them.
Becky arrived. I thought about telling her off, but as she was carrying a shotgun I decided not to. “Is everyone OK?” she asked anxiously.
“Yes, my love, we’re all fine. Pete’s broken his arm and there are a few cuts and bruises. What are you doing here anyway? We sent Bob to tell you it’s over and we’re OK.” I took her to one side and continued.
“The point is, my love, there are quite a few dead bodies we need to move and we haven’t decided what to do with the injured yet. I need you to keep everyone in our house until I come and get you. We’ll try and sort this bloody mess out.”
“But what happened? How did this happen?” she asked, looking around at our shocked looking faces and the dead and the wounded lying on and beyond our barricade.
“We had no choice. They must have been attracted by that idiot Rick, stealing the Land Rover. They probably knew we were here, but when they saw the car leaving, they decided to see what else we were hiding. They had guns and fired first, so we had to defend ourselves. If you hadn’t been fantastic and brought up my extra guns, I don’t know if we’d have been able to stop them. I can’t believe that bloody fool killed Ian in his desperation to get away. And the Coles going with him! They were meant to be our friends!”
Becky looked at me, took my hands in hers and said, “You’ve done the right thing, you’ve kept us alive and those people were going to take it all away from us. I’ll go back and try to calm everybody down. We need to let Mary grieve after what that bastard did to Ian. I’ll try to keep everybody busy.” As she turned to walk away another thought came to me, so I called her back.
Quietly, I said, “A few of the men seem to have gone missing. Can you do a headcount when you get back and try and work out who they are? I’ll do the same here and we’ll talk later.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because the rest of us risked our lives to protect their families, and if people think they can hide at the first sign of trouble, then the way I’m feeling at the moment, they can bloody well leave.” Becky nodded and turned to walk back home.
Allan was still doing an excellent job. He had sent a few men to relieve the ones at the other barricade and had others picking up the guns and other weapons dropped by our attackers.
He knew that keeping us all busy was the best way, in the short term, to help us deal with what we had just experienced. He came over to me and asked if I would give him a hand questioning the survivors.
“Of course,” I said, “but why me?”
“Well,” he replied, “if I don’t seem to be getting anywhere, I’m sure if you pull that big pistol of yours out and look a bit crazy, it’ll help loosen their tongues. A bit more bad cop, worse cop than good cop, bad cop. We need to find out about this gang and if there are any more of them.”
As it turned out I didn’t need to intimidate them, as Allan did a great job of extracting all the information. It was good to see some old-fashioned policing, with the odd slap round the head and a threat of something more painful to get most of them talking. Cowards, the lot of them. As a group, they’d felt big and strong, but separated from their comrades and questioned individually, they soon broke down and were begging Allan to stop so that they could tell him everything.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They appeared to be the main gang that had been terrorising the neighbourhood, stealing from shops and houses as soon as the EMP hit. The gang had grown in strength as more like-minded people had joined them, and as the food became scarcer, they started breaking into people’s houses to find provisions. As each robbery went by, they became more confident and dangerous. Realising that they could get away with any crime they committed, it hadn’t taken them long to start killing anyone who put up any resistance, and soon after that, killing just for fun.
The previous week, as their numbers had increased, they had taken over a large house on St Agnes Road, killing the starving family who were living there. They had been systematically breaking into every house on most of the roads in the neighbourhood, killing the occupants and taking whatever supplies they had.
Sometimes they kept the prettier women and girls as playthings, replacing them as soon as
fresher ones were found. The shotguns had been picked up at various houses they had raided.
They knew about us and had avoided us, because there were easier pickings to be had.
When they’d seen the car driving away, as I’d suggested to Becky earlier, we’d become too tempting a target not to attack.
There were still a few of them left at the house, guarding the women they were keeping as sex slaves. The group that had attacked us made up the rest of them. We need to rescue those women, was my first thought. I proposed a rescue mission to Allan.
“No!” he said immediately, “We’re in a mess here and the ones who ran off will have got back to their base by now. Are any of us up for another fight at the moment? Yes, I agree we should help them, but we need to look after ourselves first and then get a plan together.”
He was speaking sense, and we definitely had a lot of work to do before we could let our children back out on the street. We discussed what we would do with the dead and the prisoners. Allan suggested that we take the ones who could walk up to the police station, where we could lock them in the cells until we decided what to do with them. It was a sensible idea, so a few neighbours acted as sentries, following Allan and the hobbling, pathetic murderers up to the police station. I helped Pete to walk back down to my house so that the women could look after him. Jerry had told him to rest and take some of the painkillers he had given him.
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