In fact, I thought wryly, the weaker ones among them would probably be their next meal.
Pete quickly organised a work party to dispose of the dogs’ carcasses.
Within an hour, the rising plume of smoke from their funeral pyre marked the passing of another eventful day. Most of the working party complained that they’d been virtually eaten alive by fleas from the dogs, and scratched at the irritating bites around the exposed skin of their wrists and necks for some hours afterwards.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A day or two later, I was on early morning guard duty, patrolling the perimeter fence and watching the sun rise in the eastern sky. It looked as if it was going to be a fine day. Suddenly the silence was broken by shouts of dismay and annoyance from the garden area I’d been making for. I picked up my pace to investigate.
Russ’s wife, Jo and Mary were running up towards the houses, so I called out to them.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Bloody rats are eating everything!” shouted Jo, a look of disgust on her face. They came to a halt and waited for me to catch up with them. “There must be thousands of them!” she panted.
“We went to let the chickens out and see if there were any eggs for breakfast. Since most of them have had their first chicks, they’ve hardly been laying any, but now the chicks are starting to look after themselves we were hoping to start getting the odd one or two.
Anyway, that’s irrelevant now, because the chicken run’s overrun with rats and most of the small chicks have disappeared.”
I made my way hastily towards the chicken coop with Jo and Mary following close behind.
It was true. The coop and the area around it was literally crawling with squirming rats.
The chickens were perched anywhere they could find to get away from them and were squawking and clucking loudly in protest. The rats were jumping over each other to get at them and the chickens were flapping their wings in alarm and pecking at them as soon as they came anywhere near them.
I turned to Jo, “Go and get some help while I try to get the chickens out of there." Handing Mary my gun to hold, I picked up a broom that was leaning up against the mesh side of the coop. Swallowing my disgust at the sight of the tangle of seething bodies, I opened the door to the coop and began knocking them out of the way with the broom.
The chickens and McQueen had spotted my approach and their volume increased, as if they knew that help was at hand. As soon as I opened the door, they all flapped past me and made their way comically up the garden and away from the rats, squawking indignantly as they went.
A quick look round convinced me that none of the chicks had survived, so I backed out of the chicken run, angrily swiping at the rats to clear a path. I felt a great sense of satisfaction when the broom head made contact with one, hurling it into the side of the coop and killing it stone dead, but watched, sickened, as the other rats immediately pounced on it and began ripping it apart.
More people were arriving now to see what the commotion was about, and we all looked on helplessly as the rats scurried here and there, devouring everything in their path. Even the vegetables we had planted, which had been pushing up green shoots, had been nibbled away to nothing and destroyed.
We tried everything we could think of to scare them away, but they just moved en masse to another place and carried on voraciously feeding. Every able-bodied man, woman and child was mustered, and armed with anything we could find that might kill them or scare them away, but in the end, there were just too many of them. After an hour of frantic smashing and bashing we were all exhausted. It had been a futile exercise and we were forced to call a halt to it.
We had no idea what to do. No one had experienced anything like this before. Pete shouted to everyone that a meeting would be held in the kitchen area to discuss the next step, and we all began to make our way there.
As we walked into the kitchen, it became clear that things were getting worse.
Rats were running in all directions. They’d entered the houses unnoticed when everyone had gone outside to help. Panic struck me. “The food!” I screamed. “They’ll eat the lot!”
Quickly, Pete ordered everyone who was present to head either to the kitchen area or to the main food store, which was in his house. He then ran off to raise the alarm with everyone else. Allan, Jerry and I, followed by a few others, made straight for my basement and garage area.
Although there were a few rats skittering about, to my immense relief they hadn’t managed to get into my garage storeroom and they hadn’t yet discovered the basement room, where we kept the rest of our supplies. Silently patting myself on the back for doing such a good job of building it in the first place, I began to look for all the places they might be able to get in through, with a view to blocking these up.
As only a few of us were needed for this task, I sent everyone else to find Pete and see if they could help elsewhere.
Pete was in a much worse predicament. The rats had been all over the supplies in his house and the place was a mess.
Thinking quickly, he organised a chain of people to empty the rooms of any supplies that hadn’t been chewed and spoiled. In the meantime, a second group worked furiously to kill and clear out as many rats as possible.
The military supplies had fared better, as most were stored in purpose-built sealed containers, so once the soldiers had secured the supplies they had in the compound, they mucked in with everyone else to help.
Finally, the supplies that they’d managed to salvage were stacked neatly on Pete’s drive, protected by a determined ring of club-wielding residents and soldiers.
Satisfied that my own supplies were as safe as I could make them, I joined the others.
Now began the difficult process of clearing all the houses of the rodent invaders. Most of them were concentrated around any potential food sources, but we checked everywhere we could think, just in case they’d found somewhere else to use as a nest.
Every drawer, cupboard and hidey-hole was investigated. All the houses were turn of the century: Edwardian or Victorian, and not the modern, badly-built sealed boxes of more recent times, so it was virtually impossible to keep them out. They were full of gaps and holes that provided ideal access points for rats.
It took many hours of painstaking work before we were satisfied that all the houses were as clear as we could make them. The odd rat could still be seen scurrying about, but we were satisfied that we’d done as much as we could.
Exhausted and grubby, we all gathered together again in the kitchen area. The whole cooking area had had to be scrubbed clean, but even now the cooks, who were trying to keep us all fuelled with drinks and food, needed constant protection to keep the rats away from the food they were handling.
If the situation hadn’t been so serious it would have been comical.
I watched people running back and forth, waving whatever weapon came to hand, cursing the rat in question and shouting at it to show itself.
Realising that we couldn’t possibly leave the food stacked on Pete’s front drive, we wearily set about transferring it to my storage area. Once that was full, we used my trailer and wheelbarrows to transport them up the road and squeezed the rest into the container the soldiers had.
In the gathering gloom, everyone apart from the people on guard duty slumped down exhausted in the communal kitchen.
Pete called for silence and stood on a table so that everyone could see him.
“Thanks, everyone. You’ve all worked damn hard today. And if I may say so, this has been a heck of a day! I’m not sure what other challenges are going to be thrown at us, but once again this community has proved its worth. We’ve worked together and we’ve saved most of our supplies. I haven’t managed to carry out a full inventory yet, but fortunately we got to them in time. All things considered, very little was damaged. And anything the rats did get into won’t be wasted; we’ll feed it to the animals.
The bad news is that all the chicks have g
one, and we’ll have to wait for daylight to assess the extent of the damage to our crops. But we can grow more crops and the chickens will continue to lay eggs.”
He looked round at our tired, dirt-streaked faces. “We’ll recover from this. It’s just a small blip. Yes, we’re tired and discouraged, but try not to worry. Hopefully, the rats won’t be a problem for long. I’ve just had a long conversation with people back at the base, and they’re in the same situation. There’s been an unprecedented rise in the rat population due to a glut of food.
They’ve been feeding off the dead, just like the dogs. But it’s important to bear in mind that as this food source diminishes, and it is starting to, so will the rat population.
We don’t know how long that will take, but as most of the cadavers have been picked clean, they’ve moved on to us: the closest available food source. But if they can’t get food from us they should, in theory, move on. We just need to be vigilant from now on. So, until this crisis has passed, all work apart from guard duty will be cancelled, and for want of a better phrase, we’ll all be on ‘rat patrol’.”
He waited to see if anyone disagreed or had anything else to add, but by now most people were too tired to even think. Some people nodded but otherwise no one made any comment.
Pete nodded, satisfied, “Great. Thank you, all of you. I’ll be round with a revised rota soon. I think it would be best for now if we all eat in our homes. It’ll be easier to keep the rats away, and if there’s less food outside it’ll hopefully discourage them.”
Tired as I was that night, I swear I could hear tiny scurrying feet everywhere.
It was very hard to get to sleep.
CHAPTER NINE
Over the following week, we kept fires burning continuously at various points around the compound so that we could dispose of the dead rats quickly and easily. If you didn’t pick one up and throw it on to the nearest fire as soon as you’d killed it, it was soon eaten by another. And that would just keep them around for longer.
The packs of dogs had finally dispersed, the rats having proved to be a much easier source of food for them. We spotted the odd one or two chasing rats, but as we weren’t leaving the compound much, we had other things to worry about.
The base in Herefordshire had been overrun as well, but they’d been able to protect most of the food they had stored. The crops in the fields and the polytunnels had been ruined, but plans were in progress to replant as soon as the rat population had diminished enough. Paul and I undertook a tour of the groups closest to us in an armoured car. The group at the food warehouse in Redditch had fared the best. As all their food was stored on racking, they’d been better able to protect it. One particularly inventive resident had fabricated a cone-shaped collar that prevented the rats from climbing the racking.
The others had been less fortunate. To a greater or lesser degree, they’d all been invaded by the rats and had lost most of their meagre supplies.
We distributed the supplies we’d brought with us, in the hope that these would keep them going.
For most of them, this had been the final straw. Although they’d hoped to remain independent, they just didn’t feel that this was possible any more. They announced their intention of heading for the base, where they would do all they could to aid the recovery from there.
Paul and I tried to talk them round and we did manage to persuade some of them to change their minds, but few could see a way past the difficulty of having lost most of the food they’d worked so hard to gather or grow. I can’t say I blamed them.
After discussing the issue with Jerry’s brother, Jon, we decided that the best course of action would be to use every vehicle we had and orchestrate one large convoy to transport everyone who wanted to return to the base in one go. We didn’t have enough supplies to feed them all, and as some had virtually no food left at all, it would be best to start out as soon as possible.
Of course, that would leave us without any transport other than my Land Rover, but we decided that wouldn’t matter. It would only be one or two days until the convoy returned.
The following day we re-visited the groups that wanted to go and instructed them to pack what they needed and wait for transport, which would be arriving the day after.
As we were planning to use all the vehicles and would therefore have sufficient space, we advised them to bring anything they thought would be useful as it was unlikely that they’d be able to return.
Once all the vehicles had left, the road seemed deserted. Most of the soldiers had also now gone and weren’t due to be replaced until the convoy returned in a day or so. Paul and Harry, as always, had been reluctant to return home and once again had managed to find a reason not to go back to the base. Paul felt that his skills as an SAS Captain were needed here. Harry clearly didn’t want to be too far from Kim.
Except for Paul, Harry and Chris, and two soldiers who’d elected to remain as they had no family back at the base, for the first time in months, only the original inhabitants of the road were left. To mark the occasion, Pete announced a day of rest.
We’d all been working furiously “rat-bashing” (this had had become something of a local sport) and putting everything back in order after the rat invasion, or the “chickapocalypse”, as some of us were referring to it, given its catastrophic effect on our chick population.
Thankfully, the number of rats was diminishing day by day, although the ones that remained, presumably the “ninjas” of the rat race, seemed infuriatingly adept at evading capture.
The easiest way to kill them was from a distance, using an air rifle, and Stanley and the other children on the road had proved such good shots that they had taken the job over from the adults. Every day they would set themselves up at various positions around the compound and run a competition to see who got the biggest “bag” of the day.
It was typical of our community to use humour to get us through the tough times, and I was reminded of a story I’d heard from Paul about the terrible war in Afghanistan.
When the British and American forces had been attacking the heavily defended Tora Bora cave complex, they’d suffered horrendous casualties. The Americans had referred to them as: “Tora Bora: caves of death!” whereas the British had called them “Tora Bora Tomkinson”, after the well-known socialite.
Our community now consisted of thirty-nine adults and fifteen children.
The children quickly dispersed for the day, either to play or to continue rat hunting, an activity they never seemed to tire of. In the meantime, Pete adjusted the guard rota so that it changed regularly, and no one was kept away for too long, then we all settled down to a day of relaxation and laughter.
Some hours later, I noticed Jerry looking thoughtfully at Jo. Since her husband had been killed at the barricade at the time of the kidnapping, she’d understandably been left heartbroken.
She’d always been quite a frail woman and her husband’s death had left her very low. We were hopeful that time and the friendship we could offer her would help her to recover, and it had been nice to see her smile and join in with some of the conversations that were taking place in the kitchen.
“Jo, do you feel OK?” asked Jerry. “You look a bit hot and flushed.”
Leaning forward, he felt her forehead.
He quickly withdrew his hand. “You’re running a bit of a temperature. Have you had plenty of water today?”
Jo said she hadn’t and that, yes, she was feeling a bit warm, but she would drink a few glasses of water, take a paracetamol and would soon feel better.
An hour later, she stood up, looking a little pale, and said she was still feeling a bit under the weather and would go for a lie down.
Jerry nodded and promised to pop in and check on her in half an hour.
She took two steps forward and fainted.
Jerry and the people closest to her ran forward to help, while the rest of us stood up uncertainly, in case we were needed. At Jerry’s request, we all stood back to give him t
he space to examine her.
After a quick examination, I could see the concern growing on his face and he quickly began to check various parts of her body. Then he stood up abruptly, and took a step back.
“Stay back, everyone!”
Turning to Fiona, he said urgently, “Go and get my bag, and bring the box of gloves and masks with you, please.” Without asking questions, Fiona sped off.
He turned to the rest of us and said, “I need to examine her further and I don’t want to frighten anyone, but unless I’m mistaken, she has some sort of virus. Don’t worry, she’ll be OK, but until we know what it is, I think it’s best if you all keep your distance.”
I looked at him carefully. He was worried but he wasn’t giving anything away.
He asked me to fetch the wheeled stretcher we’d acquired on one of our scavenging trips. Then donning masks and gloves, some of us helped him take her into his “surgery”.
Jo’s illness had cast a shadow over the day. As we waited anxiously for news, the children piled in, looking hot and bothered after their games. Two of them, Laura and Ben, approached their mother.
“Mummy,” said Laura, her face puckering up as she started to cry, “I don’t feel very well.” As she sat them both down Ben, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet, vomited and passed out.
Everyone took an involuntary step backwards. Three people falling ill and fainting in such a short space of time. Something was going on.
As someone ran off to fetch Jerry, we stood in silence, exchanging nervous glances.
CHAPTER TEN
“They’ve got the bubonic plague. I’m absolutely certain. The symptoms are easily identifiable.”
Silence. We all stared at him in shock. The bubonic plague: The Black Death. We weren’t in medieval England! Nobody caught the Black Death anymore.
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