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It was the last thing that John Keel needed – he didn’t want to be lumbered with some teenage kid. So what if they had a connection via a computer game? That didn’t make them best buddies or anything. It wasn’t as if...
Face it, a voice inside his head prompted, you still think you are responsible for the deaths of your wife, your kids and grandkids. There was nothing you could do... nothing at all. ‘So why did I live while they died?’
He thought that he had screamed those last words out loud.
There had been nothing that he could do even if he had known how to.
The world was dying. Those that survived flocked towards city centres where they died at the hands of gangs or diseases spread by decaying corpses that littered the streets. Chaos ensued and he had known that sooner rather than later he would have to get away. He had a destination in mind but had no idea how to get there. Just a childhood memory to hang on to – all those holidays in Cornwall. It made him glad, in a way that his parents had been spared all this.
The trike had been his first find. It had been sitting on a garage forecourt with the owner slumped close to the pumps. Probably had died just after filling up and heading for the pay point. Although he had to make several detours, he made it to Heathrow Airport where he searched for members of the Transport Police. He stripped them of their Heckler & Koch semi-automatic carbines, ammunition and a couple of vests that he carried back to the trike and stored away in the box at the back. After strapping on a holster around his waist he checked that the Glock 17 pistol had a full load. Although he had not handled a gun since his days with the Air Training Corps everything that he knew about guns came flooding back.
But he had not been alone at the airport – there were others around and he knew that there was no time to negotiate. Two men died and he had an extra handgun and a sawn down shotgun. The man with the sawn down double-barrelled shotgun had looked like a movie-style Mexican bandit with crossed bandoliers of shotgun cartridges.
Keel had not hung around after that but took off westward. The only time he stopped after that was to raid a camping shop for a few odds and ends. The journey was not so straight forward for there were roaming gangs around to be avoided. A couple of villages were fortified but whether the defenders were friend or foe he wasn’t prepared to discover. Habitation was to be avoided.
Instead of dwelling on the past he began to think of the present.
One by one he investigated the three cottages by the side of the church. The first was run down and musty smelling but the second had been lived in. There was furniture: table and chairs in front of a small range and a lantern hung from a hook and chain that was nailed to a beam along the ceiling. The sole kitchen cupboard revealed a stash of tinned food most of which was still in date and hinted that someone had lived there. Only the cold embers in the stove bore testament that it had not been used in quite a while.
The end cottage proved to contain a surprise for it revealed itself to be a fully functioning blacksmiths, though the forge was as cold as the stove next door. As he was about to leave he saw a fishing net that brought back childhood memories.
Armed with net, a bucket and a billy can he set off for the beach.