The Darkening Days of John Mann

  The close growing trees made it hard to give chase at speed. Mann dodged around the trunk of another birch and pushed forward, one eye always on the snagging tangles of roots underfoot. Ahead, and to his right, he caught another flash of his quarry's blue jersey zagging away up the hill. He altered his course in pursuit, aware now that his thigh muscles were burning in protest at the effort of scaling the incline. His heart thumped hard in his chest, the blood pumped in his ears, and his body temperature rose despite the damp chill air caught and held in pockets in the woodland around him. The crashing sounds and curses from behind told him that Gunnar was hot on his heels, drawing alongside, pulling ahead, hurdling a fallen, moss covered trunk on the path in front. As Mann saw Gunnar touch down beyond the trunk a single clear gunshot rang out and a cry, faint and far off, reached him through the trees. Mann hit the ground on the nearside of the fallen trunk and the slide of his momentum carried him into the lea of its protection even as he heard Gunnar scramble for shelter on the far side. The screech of a startled, rising bird faded away high above and then an ancient, wood deep silence returned. Mann let moments of the silence mount up, awaiting another gunshot or cry, but neither came.

  'Gunnar,' He called out softly, 'are you hit?'

  'The shot wasn't meant for us.' Gunnar replied in a harsh whisper.

  'The runner?'

  'Seems certain.'

  Mann heard dead leaves rustling as Gunnar shifted his position through them. 'Are we clear?'

  'Only one way to be sure.' Gunnar said.

  They continued their stealthy way up the hill, darting for cover between trees, pressing their backs to the largest trunks, moving one, then the other across open spaces towards the source of the sounds they had heard. Gunnar moved suddenly, sharply to his left and dropped to his haunches behind a rotten stump. He turned to Mann and pointed to something on the ground just out of Mann's sight. Mann edged around the tree at his back to see what Gunnar had found. A crumpled heap beside a broken sapling. Mann couldn't determine a human form in the dark mass but he picked out the blue jersey in the dappled shadows.

  They moved forward to crouch beside the body, and Gunnar rolled it over to expose the pale face of a young man, his full mask had been raked from his head in his sprawl. Leaf mould and shreds of bark stuck to the lad's cheeks and forehead, and twigs tangled through his choppy hair as if the woods were already laying claim to his body. It wouldn't be long before the crawling insects would find him. Mann began to mouth a few words of prayer over the body but a dark taste in his mouth stopped him. He didn't have the right to intercede with God on this boy's behalf when he had earlier, without pause, ended another lad's life. Young Bills at the checkpoint had begged and begged, had soiled himself in fear, and it hadn't stayed Mann's hand a moment. He brushed a dark, wet leaf from this dead youth's face while Gunnar smoothed the blue jersey down over his chest and placed two fingertips softly against the sodden fabric. They came away slick with blood. 'That was a rare shot.' Gunnar said. 'He was moving at a pace, weaving through trees and yet one shot found his heart.' Gunnar turned hard eyes on Mann, 'The bullet wasn't fired close to and it didn't come from a re-bored weapon either.'

  'No poacher then?'

  Gunnar scanned the surrounding woods, 'Trying to bag a badger in a blue jersey?' Gunnar took up a clump of leaves to wipe the gore from his hand as he stood to stare away up the wooded hill. As he took a step forward his foot caught a small, blackened metal can, he studied it a moment before kicking it away into the undergrowth. 'This shot was the work of a trained hand, with a scoped rifle, military grade. The bullet hit him square, he was running towards the gun. Slim chance the shooter chose his vantage point by accident. The lad was intent on reaching the spot where he knew the gunman waited.'

  A short time later, Mann and Gunnar re-emerged from the cover of the tree line at the base of the hill and headed back across the open tufted pasture towards the cluster of farm buildings where Ma May waited beside her car. They passed the very spot where the now dead youth had chosen to hide from them when they'd arrived here. Mann recalled the flash of blue jersey, all that he saw before the chase was joined, and wondered why the lad had decided to break cover and run at all. That behaviour didn't tell of military training even if the shot that felled him did.

  Henwich Gap. They had stopped here en route from the checkpoint because Ma May knew it to be a trading place and they needed food. She had visited once many moons ago. The farm nestled in a valley with wooded hills rising around. A fat river wound its lazy way through the pastures, and the fields around were rich for crops. 'Food enough for a town,' Gunnar had said as he gazed at a field of winter greens, 'never mind one family.'

  'The Harper's were many,' replied Ma May, nodding her head in the direction of all the dead on the floor inside the barn, 'they fed themselves and would trade excess. They charged a keen price but the food was fresh, not market limp.'

  They focused their attention back on Mann in the chill shadows of the barn, he was crouched in the midst of the fallen. He shifted from one body to another studying them closely. Ma May adjusted her muffler and turned to make certain that Pad was still secured in the car. She turned her attention back to Mann to see him gently place the back of his hand against the cheek of a woman in a green dress.

  'He has no fear around the dead.' Ma May said and Gunnar shook his head in reply. 'His Cobra myth is true then?' she said.

  'If people believe it then it's true.' Gunnar said. He himself was thankful that it had been John who'd first entered the barn and found the Harpers and not he who had blundered in on them. He watched Mann stand and remove his hat, and he called out to him, 'How long since the outbreak?' Mann shook his head and beckoned a finger for Gunnar and Ma May to join him. They exchanged a brief, nervous glance and made their way haltingly out of the soft daylight and into the dark depths of the building, giving wide berth to the bodies left and right on the ground around.

  'This wasn't the choke.' Mann said as they came near. Gunnar and Ma May studied the lifeless forms all frozen in twists of torment, bulging eyes in distorted faces, spittle caked around gaping mouths.

  'It's the scene as I read it.' Gunnar said, and Ma May nodded her agreement.

  'For sure.' Mann replied, and then he cleared his throat. 'You'll have seen corpses after the choke blew through a town no doubt but you won't have stared direct into someone's eyes as the choke clamps their throat.' Gunnar shifted uneasily at the reminder of John's close up knowledge of the virus. Mann pointed down at the woman in the green dress 'The look in her eyes is wrong, I can't name exactly how it's wrong, but it is.'

  The three of them stood for moments in silence, scanning the faces of the Harper clan. 'It is odd they fell grouped like this in the barn and didn't scatter in panic.' Gunnar said.

  'And none wear a mask.' Added Ma May.

  'In fact, now that you say it looks wrong I can easily see it.' Gunnar looked from Mann to Ma May. 'Another mystery to add to that of the runner.'

  Ma May cursed quietly, 'Perhaps not.' She said.

  Ma May had led them to a clearing in the woods at the far margin of Henwich Gap, where they now stood. Two bodies lay in a death twist on the ground here too, a chilling echo of the ones back in the barn. Mann turned away from the corpses after only moments of study and joined Gunnar and Ma May. 'What I said of the others holds for these also.' He offered.

  'Well I can't speak to what killed them but I'm sure this will be why they died.' Said Ma May, indicating the large raised trough full of brackish water standing before them. The trough was easily the size of several feed bins joined, and it was elbow deep. It stood on four sturdy legs and was made of a dull dark metal, blackened further all around by heat and smoke. Beneath the trough was a deep fire pit, full of wet ashes, where logs had blazed.

  'What am I seeing?' Gunnar asked.

  Ma May stepped up to the trough and reached in to dislodge a small, dirty grey deposit from a corner seam just above the water line. Sh
e tossed it to Gunnar. He caught it carefully and studied it for a moment, sniffed it and rolled it around between his hands until it had crumbled to a fine powder, then he dabbed a wet finger into the grains in his palm and gingerly transferred them to his tongue. 'Salt.' He said in surprise.

  Ma May nodded, 'There is a brine spring hidden in these woods somewhere near and this trough was the means of boiling away the water to extract the salt.'

  Gunnar blew out his cheeks, 'A treasure anyone would die to defend, or kill to possess. The runner carried none away though, I'm sure of it.'

  'This wasn't a hit for a twist of salt.'

  'The land.' Mann said suddenly, 'The rights to the land and the spring are the prize here.'

  Ma May nodded.

  'But if all the Harper family lay dead here then the rights would revert to the Government. Oh.' The air went out of Gunnar's chest and he looked abashed by his late arrival at the conclusion the others had already reached.

  'The Harpers had rights from generations of ownership.' Ma May said, 'They couldn't be ordered from their home so long as they cleaved to Food Council regulations.'

  'But if by chance the whole family are wiped out, by a calamity, then the Government could step in and requisition the land.' Mann added.

  'They were certainly a stone in the Government's shoe.'

  'Is that what happened here? Are you saying that's what happened? I would call that fanciful,' Gunnar said, 'too brazen even for the military. But still,' he paused for a moment, 'I've heard rumoured the Government orders towns emptied because of their need for labour in the London fields, so why not this? It chimes with an army sniper on the hill. Perhaps that lad was after all a witness to be silenced, the last of the family even.'

  'Or perhaps the author.' Mann said.

  'Really? How though?' Gunnar asked but neither John Mann nor Ma May had an answer for him. And none of them spoke again until they were back on the road.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Keen raised a forkful of crabmeat to her lips and the sweet smell of it turned her stomach. She lowered the fork back to her plate and reached for her beaker. She took long draughts of water and then drew some deep breaths to settle herself. She glanced quickly at Jakob to see if he had witnessed her discomfort and of course he had. The annoyance that had flushed his face when she had appeared at the lunch table, rather than keep to her room, was now replaced by a look of concern so she forced a smile to her lips to let him know all was well.

  She then glanced over at Michael Farmer, the traveller who had arrived earlier. He was intent on his food and seemed not even to notice his surroundings, or the company of twelve eating in silence around him at the long wooden table.

  He was young, 25 at a guess, and looked strong and healthy, perhaps a farmer by occupation too and Keen noticed he wore a jerkin very much like Amir had favoured. Jakob had told her he was looking for long lost relatives, a not uncommon quest still. Many families had yet to reunite after the scatterings of the plague years and the subsequent enforced relocations.

  She knew she was lucky at least to know that her parents were buried and her brother was safe. It was only her current anxiety about John that gave her any inkling as to the weight of unanswered questions about missing family that many people had to tote around.

  She toyed with the food on her plate but knew she couldn't manage any more. She lowered her fork and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. Until the events of last week her family had looked very different. She wondered how Amir would have taken the news of the baby. News she was barely coming to terms with herself. And what terms? Amir had admitted to missing the old running days, though he had all along been double dealing on the sly, and when he asked if she did too she had tossed him a lie, had said not. But of course she chafed against the quiet life they had settled for but she had buried the restlessness deep. It was easily done when she knew that the baby would so completely alter their lives in spite of what they might want. Wasn't that simpler all around? And now, boom, Amir was dead, John's life had exploded into complication and she feared she was in no position to do anything much but watch from the sideline and grow fat.

  She hadn’t realized that she’d been staring but Michael Farmer must have felt the heat of her gaze on him for minutes together as he now looked directly at her and smiled. She felt momentarily flustered to have been caught in her study of him but managed a feint smile in response before he focused back on the last of his food.

  Chapter Twenty

  The smell of roasting pig drew them onwards through the dark winding streets lined by blackened houses. All were watchful while trying not to appear threatening. They had reached the outskirts of the town where Gunnar knew Chenko’s influence would hold sway. Mann was still uneasy that Ma May and Pad were here with them. They had no idea what awaited them and if the reception proved hostile it would be impossible to protect them. Ma May had refused to stay hidden in the car with Pad ‘An old woman and a babe do not arrive in town to start trouble.’ She’d said and Gunnar had had to agree. So they made unlikely kin as they approached the tall church that dominated the scene before them.

  ‘We want no trouble.’ Mann had called when they’d rounded a corner and come into full view of the enormous stone church and the people making merry around the hog spit on the graveyard grass before it. The townsfolk had frozen at the sight of the strangers approaching, their faces, lit by the flames from below, cast into fiery gargoyle grimaces, the match of any on the church roof above. The spell broke when all pulled woollen mufflers up into place.

  Ma May and Gunnar had been right about keeping Pad in their midst, Mann saw any suspicion evaporate from almost every pair of eyes as soon as they settled on the boy. ‘We want only a parcel of food each and we can pay.’ Mann had continued.

  A large man in a stained leather apron, tagging him as the hog butcher, stepped forward and directed them to settle beyond the low flint wall surrounding the church and its graveyard in order to observe the quarantine.

  As they waited out the allotted time, huddled against the cold and their hunger, Mann contemplated the immense church and wondered if it still rang to the sound of bells on a Sunday. Even days ago he would have sought solace in such a place but shrank from the thought now. He contented himself with watching the townsfolk. The hog-roast was obviously being held to mark a celebration, a Fawkes Night feast perhaps, though illegal in most parishes now they were still held in towns where Government influence was weak and that chimed with this being Chenko’s ward. Mann counted five grown men and three youths amongst the gathered townsfolk. It saddened him that he always, instinctively, calculated odds in case of attack or a struggle, but he knew that Gunnar would also have reckoned up the opposition too. Both of them could tell that these people held no threat. ‘But they don’t know that we’re not Chenko’s people.’ Gunnar had reasoned. And being muffled he felt no fear of being recognised either. 'I was brought to his house once and never dealt directly with him or his brothers and I never saw any townsfolk'. He had scoped the locals on their first approach and could recognise none of Chenko’s men that he knew amongst them.

  When finally it came time to haggle with the butcher Gunnar had done the work. After a few minutes he had returned empty handed and told Mann and Ma May that the butcher was wary of feeding them. It could bring much trouble to him if he did. Gunnar had tried to press a rock of salt upon him in exchange for some food and the butcher had told him in a loud voice that they lived hard by the sea and had no need of it.

  'You couldn't shift him from this?' Asked Ma May.

  Gunnar mock frowned at her, 'He pocketed the salt and whispered that he wouldn't see Pad go hungry. But he is clearly fearful of Chenko's retaliation for welcoming strangers.'

  'We should move on then,' Mann said, 'not bring trouble to these people.'

  'Agreed,' Gunnar said, 'the food will be awaiting us in a house down that side street.' and he pointed to a cobbled road behind them. 'Thirty-six.' Gunnar grinned
and hefted Pad off Ma May's lap and into his arms, and headed off and away from the church.

  Ten minutes later, inside a cold but dry and half furnished room in the otherwise empty house, they fell hungrily to a supper of roasted pork and cider, with an apple bun and milk for Pad, and while they ate Gunnar spoke of what he knew to be fact.

  ‘Beyond the streets of this town, to the south, lies a river, perhaps twenty minutes fast walking, beyond the river a spit of land and beyond that the sea. The spit has homes the size of town halls where rich people enjoyed the holiday life once. One of these homes, a glass and steel one, has a jetty and this is where we'll find Chenko.

  Mann looked concerned, ‘You’ve brought us right to his very doorstep?’

  ‘You know a better place from which to enter his house?’ Mann considered Gunnar’s words, he had a hundred misgivings but he voiced none. ‘We are in his heartland here,’ Gunnar continued, ‘and I’d wager that in plain sight we’ve found the best place to hide. And besides, he has no reason to expect us.’ Mann appeared mollified for a moment so Gunnar continued further, ‘Now, I’ll go and sniff out the enemy, factor a plan.’

  ‘Locate the boy David first, I won’t proceed unless I know he is here.’ Mann said.

  Gunnar nodded, ‘Stay in this place and be careful, there may be patrols out.’