‘I read it online . . . somewhere. Once.’ He tossed the pills into his mouth and knocked them back with a slug of orange juice. Grace cocked her brow at his casual attitude, but finally followed his lead. ‘If I end up getting poisoned, it’s your fault.’
‘You can sue me, sis.’
They resumed eating in silence, the concrete walls echoing with the sound of scraping tins, and fingers being licked.
‘Leo . . .’ said Grace after a while, ‘I . . . I’m sorry about what I said. I really don’t wish Dad was dead.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘I hope he’s OK.’
He nodded. ‘Me too.’
‘Your dad’s a natural survivor,’ said Mum. ‘I imagine you’d be far safer with him looking after you than me.’
‘You’re doing fine, Mum.’ Leon stretched out a foot and tapped one of hers. ‘You got us out in time . . . just before they locked London down. That was really close.’
‘Do you think we’re better out of London, than in?’ asked Grace. Leon thought she was asking Mum that, but he realized the question was directed at him.
‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. He had no idea at all. Just a guess. ‘Probably,’ he added. ‘There’s millions living in London, right? Even if the virus hasn’t got in there, I guess there won’t be enough food and water for everyone.’
Crisis aftermath . . . that’s when most people die, MonkeyNuts. It’s not the earthquake that kills ’em – it’s the mess left behind after.
Leon recalled news stories from post-disaster shanty towns, people dying of hunger, from drinking polluted water.
You know, son, a wise man once said that modern civilization is just three square meals and an internet connection away from total anarchy.
‘We’re much better off waiting this thing out sitting here, sis. Far better than being stuck in Hammersmith.’
Grace nodded. Then a thought occurred to her. ‘Remember when Dad took us camping in the Rockies?’
‘This –’ he gestured at the concrete walls – ‘reminds you of that?’
‘No, this . . .’ she replied, holding out the tin of baked beans she was pawing her way through. ‘Remember Dad’s totally lame camp stew?’
Mum laughed. ‘God it was awful, wasn’t it?’
He’d insisted on making dinner over a campfire in an old pot. He’d basically emptied a random selection of tinned goods into the pot filled with river water and boiled the lot to a thick porridge-like paste. They’d gone camping with a colleague of Dad’s, and his family. Grace had, of course, got on really well with the other kids, while Leon had kept them at a cool distance. But the one thing that had pulled Leon into the circle was the universal disgust at Dad’s ‘Survival Soup’. It had ended up being chucked into the bushes, no doubt attracting some giant grizzly bear, and they’d all driven into the nearby town for a McDonald’s.
‘Even your dad admitted it tasted disgusting,’ said Mum. She smiled at the memory. Good times . . . there had been one or two.
They heard a heavy metallic clang. It came from above. Leon recognized it for what it was: the heavy door right at the top of the bunker banging closed.
Shit.
Was that the wind outside blowing it shut? The possibility that they might just have very stupidly entombed themselves down here forever hit him like a hard slap.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Then he heard something far more disconcerting: the heavy clack of a pair of boots descending the concrete steps towards them. Mum reached over to snuff out the candle sitting between them.
Leon grabbed her hand to prevent her. He shook his head. ‘Better not be a surprise,’ he whispered. There was nowhere for them to hide. Far better they weren’t a complete shock to whoever that was, especially if they had a gun on them, and a finger resting on the trigger.
She nodded. They listened to the footsteps descending.
‘Hello?’ Mum called out.
The footsteps suddenly ceased.
‘Hello?’ she said again, doing her best to keep her voice sounding confident and steady.
Silence.
‘You might as well come down. We all heard you slam the door!’
Another moment of silence, then they heard the scraping of a boot. A step . . . then another and another. Slowly getting closer and louder until with a scrape of rubber soles on the gritty floor, a dark figure loomed in the doorway at the bottom of the stairwell.
‘That is my food you’re eating.’
‘What? Oh . . .’ Mum placed the tin of fruit salad she was holding down on the ground. I’m really . . . sorry . . . We just—’
‘You may as well eat it. There is much, much more of it.’
The figure, a man, took several steps into the small room. He was holding a cardboard box, which he set on the ground, tins rattling inside it. Closer to the candle, they could see him more clearly. He was dark skinned, with a thick black beard covering the lower half of his face.
‘There’s food like this in every one of these bunkers,’ he said. His brown eyes settled on each of them in turn. ‘If it is just the three of you, then, inshallah, there will be enough food for all.’
CHAPTER 26
11.05.17
Dad, we’re alive and we’re safe and we’ve got food and water. I don’t want to even think what would have happened (or if we’d even still be alive) if Mum hadn’t got us out on pretty much the last train from London. I know you’re alive too. Like Mum said, you’re a born survivor. An ‘alpha male’, right? Unlike me. I’m more your knuckle-dragger type. But I guess I did my bit looking after Grace. Anyway, point is we’re OK. We’re with this guy called Mohammed, we call him ‘Mo’ for short. Yeah, I know . . . before you ask . . . he is. He prays and stuff but he’s OK with us not doing the same. He’s this big Bangladeshi guy, kinda gentle and he speaks really softly like he’s constantly trying not to wake someone sleeping nearby.
We came across this old Cold War missile silo stocked up with supplies that date back to, I kid you not, the eighties! I guess if there’d been a nuclear war, these supplies were meant to last the missile crew until radiation was low enough to come out again. How long’s that meant to be – years, decades? So, none of the tin cans actually have ‘use by’ dates on them. I guess the food was zapped to hell before it was tinned. We’ve got no radios, no working phones, nothing. No power. So right now we’ve got no idea whether the rest of the country or the world has been affected. It’s been two weeks, I think. And the furthest I’ve been from our bunker is a few dozen yards. I spent some time yesterday standing on top of one of the bunker humps, looking across some fields for any signs of life. I didn’t see anything.
For all I know we could be the last four people in the world. (Five, counting you.) It’s weird. Every time I’ve stepped outside it’s been so quiet. No planes in the sky, no sound of distant traffic, obviously. But also no birds in the trees. No buzzy insects. The trees, grass, weeds – the plants – aren’t affected, but everything that isn’t a plant seems to be.
What does that mean for this planet? Can plants get by without animals around? I know some plants need bees to pollinate, right? And other plants need animals to eat their seeds and poop them out, so doesn’t that mean an unsustainable ecosystem? No animals means eventually no plants? And if no plants . . . eventually that means no breathable air, right? Or maybe I’m over-thinking this. I guess that kind of process takes decades, so we’re OK for now. If it really is just us left, there’s probably enough preserved food out there in stores and supermarkets to last us for the rest of our lives. Only if it’s safe to go out and forage, though.
Mo says there’s a high chance we might be immune to the infection. That’s why the four of us are still alive. Some kind of inherited, genetic immunity. Which I guess suggests it must be from Mum’s genes, and not yours, if that’s the case. I’ve been trying to rack my brains to remember if anyone who was infected on that train touched me, or whether any of that pollen stuff landed on me. I don’t remember. I do
n’t think so. So . . . Mo’s theory so far remains to be proven. Maybe we were just very, very lucky.
12.05.17
Why am I even writing this stuff to you? You’re never going to read it.
14.05.17
Dad, is it totally weird of me to kind of ‘know’ you’re still alive even if the odds are against that? It’s just that I keep hearing you butt into my head. If that’s you somewhere using Jedi mind powers . . . don’t stop. It’s mostly good advice you’re giving. So don’t, you know, stop. OK? So, by the way, I guess with your super mind powers you must be able to hear me too? (That would be great wouldn’t it?)
I guess you want to know how Grace is doing? Better than you’d think, I reckon. She’s cried a few times. Mainly because she’s missing her old life, her phone, her friends, Facebook, all that kind of meaningless rubbish. She’s OK, to have bitched to me a few times about being a wimp. So I guess she’s generally OK. Her arm’s still hurting her, though. I think it may have got banged, knocked or re-fractured or something during our escape. Mo thinks it might even be infected, although he’s not sure.
And Mum? I think she’s doing her best to stay strong for us. I know she’s called you an asshole a number of times since we left New York, but deep down I know she still misses you. Maybe even still loves you. And I know she wishes you were here right now. Mo seems all right. But Mum never lets Grace out of her sight when he’s around. I get that. We don’t know anything about him really. I know she wishes you were here, taking charge of things. Because that’s what you’re used to, isn’t it? Being ‘The Guy’ when the shit hits the fan. Taking charge under fire, leading your men into combat. You never did tell me much about your time in Iraq. All I remember you saying was that it wasn’t anything like Call Of Duty. I wish I were more like you. I wish I hadn’t been such a disappointment to you. Been ‘Marine material’, instead of a . . . what was it you called me once? Oh yeah, I remember . . . a ‘whiney little thumbsucker’. Nice.
25.05.17
Dad, I am trying to be better than that. I think I’ve done some growing up.
‘It has gone septic, I think,’ said Mohammed. He studied the inflamed, red skin of Grace’s forearm, scratched his thick beard and frowned deep folds on to his forehead. ‘This is not good.’
‘We’ve got antibiotics,’ said Jennifer. She turned round and picked up several plainly marked boxes of medicines. ‘See? Look? Netromycin. Streptomycin.’
Mohammed shook his head and wagged a finger. ‘Those are thirty years old, Mrs Button. Bacterial resistance has moved on a very long way since those pills were made. They will do nothing to help her.’
‘So?’ She looked at Leon then back to Mohammed. ‘We have to go find some more modern antibiotics, then?’
He nodded. ‘Indeed. Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Little Buntingham.’
She shook her head. The name meant nothing to her.
‘It is nearby. It is where I was working. Just seven or eight miles from here.’
Leon put down the old Marvel comic books he was reading. He’d found a stash of them beneath one of the bunks. ‘Walk eight miles? What about the virus?’
‘Leon?’ His mother stared at him sternly. ‘You do understand if we don’t get some viable antibiotics for Grace she could get really sick?’ She glanced quickly at Grace then back at him. Leon got it – ‘really sick’ meant far worse, but Grace was right there, listening to her. Really Sick meant septicaemia, or worse.
‘We haven’t seen any of those pollen clouds for nearly a week now. I think whatever stage of the plague that was . . . Well, it’s happened. It’s all done.’ She looked to Mohammed to back her up.
He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘We will have to go outside eventually.’
Leon nodded slowly. It wasn’t as if he’d said they shouldn’t go out, he just wanted to be clear that they all understood this meant more than a casual trip round the corner to the local pharmacy.
‘Perhaps we’ll find an abandoned car,’ he said hopefully.
‘I cannot drive,’ said Mohammed.
‘None of us can,’ added Jennifer.
‘I can,’ said Leon. ‘Not, like, legally . . . but I know how it’s done . . . kind of.’
‘It’s not like playing Big Theft Auto, Leo. You can’t just—’
‘Grand Theft Auto, Mum. And, anyway, jeez, it’s not like there’s going to be anything else on the road for me to hit. Or even any cops to pull us over.’
Grace nodded, on his side for once. ‘Mom, just let Leon drive if we find a car. I don’t think we should be walking around outside if we don’t have to be.’
Jennifer stared at her rebellious kids, united on this particular issue, and found herself unable to put together a convincing counterargument. ‘Well, if we find one . . . you take it very slow, Leo. I mean it. Slow!’
CHAPTER 27
They found a white Transit van that had slewed to a halt at the side of the very same road they’d been walking along a fortnight ago. The driver’s side door was open, and a dozen yards away Leon saw a pair of Doc Martin boots and the frayed cuffs of a pair of jeans protruding from the bushes beneath a tree.
Mohammed wandered over and ducked under the tree to get a closer look.
‘Don’t get too near it,’ said Mum.
He nodded, pulled a branch to one side and made a face at what he could see. ‘Just bones and clothes left.’
The driver presumably. It looked as if he’d been infected, come to a halt before he crashed into something and then . . . What did he hope to achieve by clambering out? Help? Leon wondered why the driver had even bothered to unbuckle himself. Perhaps he hadn’t seen up close what Leon had seen – the inevitability of death.
This must have happened after they’d walked this way. He wondered how long after. Carefully he pulled open the passenger side door and peered inside, expecting to see the ghastly stringy remains of some other poor soul. But the interior appeared to be clean and the key was still in the ignition.
‘It looks OK.’
Grace remained several metres away on the other side of the narrow country lane. She stared uncertainly at the van. ‘What if there’s still . . . bits of him inside?’
Leon cautiously climbed up on to the passenger’s side.
‘Please . . . be careful, Leo,’ Mum called out.
He looked around. ‘I can’t see any . . . gooey stuff. It looks totally clean.’
‘I’m not sure it’s worth the risk,’ she added. ‘It just takes one touch from one of those flakes or tendrils and we’ll get it.’
‘Unless we are immune,’ Mohammed reminded her.
Leon backed out and stepped down on to the tarmac. ‘Mum, we’re going into a village and looking around for stuff. We’re gonna end up touching lots of things. And on the way, if we come across one of those spore clouds, we’re going to want something to shield us from it.’
Grace bit her lip, remembering their escape from the cloud on the railway track. She nodded eagerly. ‘Leon’s right.’
‘Then let’s be sure . . . a hundred per cent sure.’ Mum went to the back of the van and gingerly pulled the rear doors open. Something dislodged inside as she slowly opened it. A pot of paint rolled out and thunked on to the road. The back of the van was cluttered with pots, brushes and paint-spattered dust sheets.
Ten minutes later, the rear of the van was completely empty, its contents turfed out on to the road. Mum nodded, satisfied there weren’t any hidden sticky strands of the plague lurking inside.
Leon settled into the driver’s seat, Mum the passenger’s seat and Mohammed and Grace crouched in the back.
‘OK,’ said Leon, turning the ignition key. The van started, grunted, lurched forward a metre and then stalled.
‘Neutral,’ said Mum. ‘Is it in neutral?’
Leon mentally smacked his forehead. He knew about gears and clutches. The basic theory of it all anyway. He pulled the gear column into neutral and tur
ned the ignition again. The van’s engine purred with begrudging approval this time. He glanced down at his feet and tried to identify the three pedals from memory.
Brake . . . clutch . . . accelerator.
He pressed down on the left-most pedal and then pushed the gear stick into first. A grinding, rattling whine came from the engine.
Oh yeah. Clutch . . . brake . . . accelerator.
He tried the correct pedal and waggled the stick into first, this time without the van complaining. He eased his foot off the clutch and the van lurched forward once again, kangaroo-hopping nearly into the tree and the bones beneath it. He spun the steering wheel and the van swung sharply back on to the narrow road and ended up thumping gently against a tree on the far side and stalling.
‘For God’s sake, Leon,’ cried Grace from the back, ‘you’re going to kill us all.’
Half an hour later the Transit van finally crawled into Little Buntingham, the engine grinding and whining at Leon for his heavy-handed and heavy-footed treatment.
An improvised barricade had been set across the road, nothing they couldn’t knock aside: just some wooden packing crates, an old sofa and a hastily painted warning sign on the back of an estate agent’s placard.
WE HAVE THE PLAGUE HERE AS WELL.
‘This will have to do,’ said Mohammed.
Leon brought the van to a staggered halt and turned the engine off. He imagined this rural village was exactly the type of country idyll for which American tourists came to the UK looking: a green, a duck pond with a weeping willow dipping leaves into the water. No ducks now, of course. There was a pub, and next to it a post office and corner shop. A church spire loomed over the top of thatched roofs. Real Wish you were here picture-postcard stuff. But it was deserted and silent except for the gentle soothing whisper of the willow stirring in the breeze.
‘Maybe it’s been evacuated?’ said Mum hopefully.
‘No,’ replied Mohammed. ‘You saw the sign. It reached this place too.’