Death Tide Read online

  All he saw were flashes, glimpses, of the world beyond his control. Sheep in one hilly patch of fenced hillside. Black and white cows in another, a flatter enclosure, a small stream that blinked by, replaced by a pub with a slide and swings in the garden beside it. His journey passed by like this, in reflective loneliness, as he dreaded arriving at school to spend an uncomfortable day in the relative safety of being away from the reach of his parents. As the coach hissed to a jerking stop, he sighed in tired resignation and gathered himself to endure what came next. Stepping down and keeping his eyes on the ground, he made straight for the cover of a massive tree near the entrance, where he just hoped he could avoid any interaction. Kicking his feet in the soft, brown pine needles which had fallen from the high branches, he waited for the bell, but he also waited for what came whenever his sister wasn’t with him.

  “Oi, Pee Wee,” came the voice of the boy who had been his tormentor since his first day in school, “where’s your mummy?” he taunted, meaning his sister. That was one of the vagaries of rural life; schools combined on single sites with some classes only holding a handful of kids. Often, school years even combined if there weren’t enough children of the right age, and that varied greatly due to the fact that half of the kids there were from the military base nearby. Whenever vast numbers shipped out, their kids would often move with them and affect the number of empty seats in the school.

  The boy who approached him now, yelling out in his high-pitched voice the cruel nickname he had branded him with years before, was called Edward.

  And Peter hated him.

  He looked up, unwittingly making eye contact with the small, sunken dull eyes buried in the fat, rosy cheeks of the bully walking his way. As always, Edward was flanked by two more boys who enjoyed the humiliation of others. After all, where was the fun in bullying someone without an audience?

  “I said where’s your mummy, Pee Wee?” he said again, too loud to be just for his victim’s benefit and obviously planning a display.

  “Not coming,” Peter muttered, eyes glued to his shoes as they shuffled uncertainly in the soft, pine-covered dirt.

  “Speak up,” Edward barked, emulating the military bearing he saw in others but possessed none of himself. Edward’s father was another farmer, but pigs instead of dairy like the milk farm he lived on. Everything about the boy seemed to get Edward’s back up, and not a day at school had ever gone by without him hurting him in some way.

  “She’s not coming,” Peter said slightly louder as he began walking away. Coming out of the warm cover of the tree’s shelter he felt the light rain sting his face just as the sound of footsteps echoed behind him. Edward was chasing him down, his followers easily matching pace with the overweight, pugnacious bully.

  “Oi,” he snarled, “where are you going? I haven’t finished talking to you yet!”

  Something in the way he spoke reminded Peter of his parents, of the cruelty of having someone in your power and forcing them to endure the expectation of pain before it came. He stopped and turned, seeing the evil glee in Edward’s fat face before he lined up to hit him.

  He didn’t know if it was the hunger he felt making him angry. He didn’t know if it was the pain of loneliness and seeing his sister taken away, whether it was the air of tingling fear that something bigger was wrong, or whether he had just been pushed too far by a combination of these things.

  Acting on instinct, he kicked out, hitting the fat boy in his shin and dropping him to roll around the concrete wailing in high-pitched agony. His followers stopped, both looking at the boy in shock. Neither of them made a move to do anything, not even to protect their fearless leader and certainly not to step into his place.

  Peter stood rooted to the spot, holding his ground and wearing a teary-eyed look of determined rage as Edward cried at his feet. The others glanced behind him and backed away, melting into obscurity expertly just as Edward sat up and rolled his trouser leg up to expose a graze and bruising which was already beginning to spread.

  “What’s going on here?” said a stern voice from above their heads. The teacher who had seen the altercation, or at least had his attention drawn by the end of it, took one look at the scene he was presented with and grabbed the neck of Peter’s coat roughly. Finding himself hauled round and forced to run on tiptoes to keep pace and not strangle himself, he was whisked away from the danger of instant reprisal towards the school office.

  “Peter,” said the voice above him as he was thrust through the wooden doors, “I’m very disappointed in you.”

  Me? He thought, why do I get the blame for that?

  Those thoughts stayed in Peter’s head, because he had learned long ago never to argue, or the punishments were doubled. He sat in a chair as he was told, eyes fixed on the floor past his dangling shoes which caught the occasional tear falling from his eyes, and he waited for the punishment. He didn’t have to wait long, as he was called in to the headmaster’s office.

  “I don’t have time to deal with this today,” he started before Peter had even closed the door behind him. “You will be punished for that,” he went on distractedly pointing a finger at the wall which eventually led towards the playground and the scene of the crime, “and I will write to your parents. With that said,” he went on in a more careful tone, “I am also informed of the circumstances surrounding your sister. So today, instead of having lunch, you will write a letter of apology to Edward.”

  The indignation of unfairness combined with the knowledge of her fate stung Peter into looking up, a fire burning inside him that made him want to rage against the teachers and the bully, but he managed to suppress that just in time before he earned more punishment.

  “As I have said,” the teacher went on in a lower voice as his eyes darted over papers on the expansive desk, “I have more important things to deal with today, so you can leave now; be back here at lunchtime.”

  Peter stood, taking his dismissal stoically, and walked out of the office to the blessed sound of the bell ringing. He shuffled his way towards his class, climbing the single flight of stairs to the first floor of the huge, square building.

  Something seemed off; just as the bus had been less populated than usual, so was the school almost half-empty. Pushing through the door into the classroom, he saw too many empty chairs, and the buzz of chatter was higher than normal. He feared the consequences of that noise, evidently alone in that fear as everyone else was talking loudly. Edward hobbled in, emphasising the ridiculous limp he had employed for sympathy, and fixed Peter with a glare that spoke of copious amounts of painful revenge. Pushing that unwelcome thought away, he glanced around at the half-filled desks and was struck by a realisation.

  Not one child from the army base was there.

  Not sure what that meant, he sat in silence and waited for the teacher. After five minutes, according to the large wall clock that usually ticked noisily but couldn’t be heard over the din now, they were still without a teacher. That had never happened before, and almost as though the children grew collectively bolder by their lack of overlord, the noise rose once more. Just as anarchy threatened to overcome the group, the door burst open and the headmaster stood in the threshold. He looked drawn and stressed, and he declared loudly that all pupils must attend the assembly hall.

  As with all creatures of habit, they lined up by the door as a class in register order, like they always had done. The thought that nobody was enforcing the rules never even occurred to any of them. As one, they traipsed back down the stairs in a slow-moving caterpillar-like approximation of their inward journey, then waited as they filed in to sit cross-legged on the polished parquet floor. The noise subsided as the headmaster stood in the centre of the stage and called once for hush.

  He spoke only once, then followed his instruction with a glowering look which he fixed on the younger children in the front row. That look silenced them as quickly as his words had, and the silence spread like a disease that rapidly infected the entire room.

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p; Risking a glance around, Peter saw that the back half of the hall was empty when it would normally be full, and that half of the teachers who hovered at tactical points along the outer walls to watch for unruly behaviour were also not there.

  “I have an announcement,” the headmaster said loudly, before a screeching, rumbling sound ripped the air as it grew in intensity. The children were all accustomed to the sounds of heavy tanks moving, but this convoy seemed bigger, louder and longer than any they had ever heard before. The seconds stretched into minutes, until finally the roaring din of heavy metal began to subside and fade into the distance.

  “I have an announcement,” the head master intoned again finally, holding up a piece of paper and restoring his reading glasses to the end of his nose with his right hand. “School will be closed from now until further notice. All children are to go home until the school instructs them to return.”

  The hall erupted into talk, answered by the raised voices and shouts of teachers trying to restore order, which was achieved shortly afterwards. One class at a time they were shepherded out and back to their classes to await their collection from the chilly playground.

  After what seemed like an impossibly long time for Peter, spent avoiding Edward and his accomplices whilst maintaining a watchful eye on his whereabouts, the coach returned with a very confused and annoyed looking driver at the wheel. Grateful for the relative safety from persecution, Peter returned to stare out of the same steamed-up windows on the return leg of his daily journey.

  Unsurprisingly, he found nobody waiting for him at the end of the road. Occasionally, if the mood took either of them or when there was a false sense of affection towards him and his sister, one of them would bring a vehicle to the end of the road and sit smoking until the coach dropped them off on the far side of the fast stretch. Had there been more traffic, his sister had told him, the road would be very dangerous. As it was, only sporadic cars passed that way even if they did drive fast, and they could be easily avoided.

  With a sigh, he looked both ways twice, listened carefully for the sound of any approaching engines, just as his sister had taught him, and carefully stepped across the road to the grass-covered central reservation. Repeating the process for the second road that bore cars coming from his left this time, he crossed again and began the trudge home. Peter hoped that school had telephoned his parents, otherwise he would be accused of missing the bus and lying to get a day off school. Quite why they ever thought he would choose their company over the bullies and the teachers, Peter could never understand.

  Opening his lunchbox on the move, he took out the only food he’d had chance to steal and ate it before he returned home and ran the risk of losing it.

  THREE

  Finally rounding the last bend in the road, the one where his sister had disappeared around, going the other way in the ambulance, Peter came in sight of the farm buildings and the house he called home. Getting to the front door, he put his hand on the handle to turn it, finding it uncharacteristically unyielding.

  The doors are never locked, he told himself, trying to fathom why today he couldn’t get back in. His sister would know what to do, but that thought was as useless as the tears he had shed already. Rolling back the heavy cabinet which held boots and a film of dust and dried mud, Peter found the small leather key fob which was attached to the spare. He wasn’t supposed to know about it, but it had been there for years since his mother had once left her keys in the pub before getting a lift home.

  It wasn’t that she was being responsible by not driving their car back, but more that she was so drunk that she didn’t remember driving there, and so abandoned the car by accident. Instead of addressing the larger problem, she had made sure she had a spare in case his father chose not to let her in like he did that time. Having long given up on drinking in public, she had spent the last year drinking cheaper spirits at home, where nobody dared judge her or pass comment on her, bypassing the glass entirely some nights.

  Sliding the key into the lock, Peter hesitated before opening it in case it attracted punishment. Leaving the door locked, he replaced the key and the cabinet carefully, then walked a lap around the house to look for something, anything, to explain the strange day’s occurrences.

  The car wasn’t on the driveway; not entirely uncommon but less common nowadays since the drinking began at breakfast and carried on through. The dog wasn’t in the house, otherwise she would be barking at his return, but that too wasn’t uncommon as Peter’s father would likely have her at his heel on the farm somewhere. Sitting on the step in the overgrown back garden, Peter tried to think of the best thing to do that wouldn’t get him in trouble.

  Going onto the farm, especially in his school uniform, which was on its first day out of the five that it had to last, was a bad idea. His father would rage at him if he found him playing there when the daily movements were going on. The beating he had taken when he tried to follow him to work one day last summer was still fresh in his mind. He had come face to face that day with a young bull which was being herded in his direction. Peter shuddered at the memory and the feeling of fear; not from the animal who had just demonstrated an alarming aggression, but from his father, who had promised worse injuries than the bull could inflict if he ever disobeyed him again.

  He didn’t know how long he waited, but it was long enough for the slight chill of the morning to creep into his body. Getting up and going into the large shed that was called the workshop, he turned on the electrical breaker to make the power flow to the simple building covered by its wriggly-asbestos panelled roof. Hearing the radio burst into low static as soon as it woke with the fresh feed of power, he stepped towards it and began to turn the dial gently to try and find some music. The fine-tuning of a radio was a skill he had learned but not yet perfected, so when he first heard the voices speaking intently with an edge of stress, Peter struggled to find it again after reversing the direction of the dial too far. Eventually, painstakingly turning it a fraction each time, he found the voices once more.

  “…unconfirmed reports coming from the capital throughout the night, but it is certain that the military has been deployed on the streets of London. Looting and riots have erupted, but eye-witness accounts have stated that the infected are at the heart of the troubles. A spokesperson from the London Metropolitan Police Force has urged all residents of the city and surrounding areas to stay in their homes and not to infringe on the activities of the emergency services.”

  A pause sounded, punctuated only by Peter’s eyebrows meeting in the middle, until the newsreader started again.

  “In other news, after their two-nil victory over Albania last month, the England football team has announced that they are confident of another win ahead of the return leg when Albania travel to Britain next month in the world cup qualification rounds…”

  His attention faded away from the sports news, finding it perverse that people could be so casual as to talk about a football match when, to him at least, it sounded like London was burning to the ground. The sound of a loud engine outside brought him back to reality, making him quickly run from the shed to flick off the electricity breaker on his way out. He stopped running as he rounded the edge of the house to see his parents sitting in the front seats of the car, both smoking and arguing intently, with hands waving to make their points. They hadn’t seen their son yet, and he preferred it that way, so he kept still with just a part of his face showing around the edge of the brick.

  Peter’s mother evidently said something his father didn’t like, because he started hitting the steering wheel with enough force to rock the car on its springs and crush the cigarette between his fingers and burn him; something which his mother seemed to find amusing. That made him rage more at her, evoking an equally savage verbal response that Peter couldn’t hear. The simple fact that they had gone anywhere together, especially in the middle of the day when his father was usually hard at work seven days a week, indicated that something was definitely wrong.
As his mind wandered, some sense of danger penetrated its way into his head, and he looked up to see both of them looking directly at him.

  An escaping gasp made him jump, realising too late that it was his own, and Peter froze as his body decided whether to run or not. His head took over just in time, telling him that he had nowhere to run to. His body reluctantly followed those instructions and he stepped sheepishly out from behind the house to the sound of cars doors opening and slamming.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” his mother screeched at him.

  “Don’t you lie to your mother, boy,” his father warned; his voice heavy with the unspoken threat of physical punishment.

  “School closed,” he blurted out as he retreated, eager to instinctively stay out of striking distance, “they sent us all home.”

  Pater’s parents looked at one another in silence, as though the information made sense to them when it didn’t make any sense to him at all.

  “Get inside,” his father eventually snapped at him, seeming to consider whether to clip him around the head just because. Peter went inside. Following the automated responses for getting in from school, he ran up the stairs to remove his uniform and fold it neatly ready for the next day, failing to understand that there wasn’t ever going to be another day at school. He dressed in some rough clothes and, as much as he hated to be anywhere near them, went downstairs to ask what was going on.

  That evening, sitting in darkness in his room after the reward of an early bedtime yet again, for no reason other than asking questions which remained unanswered, Peter tried to make sense of what he had been told and what he had seen on the news. There was something going on in London, and as of that lunchtime, nobody was reporting from the city at all.

  He had been there once, for a funeral he later realised, but at the time he’d blocked out the arguing from the front seat and stared in awe out of the window at the complete opposite of a world he knew. Everywhere was drab and concrete, with buildings taller than the biggest trees he had ever seen, and the air seemed to have a thicker quality that was totally at odds with the fresh farm breeze he knew. Now, imagining those same streets from the depths of his memories, he struggled to envisage those buildings burning like the ones on the clips of camera footage, and those streets full of people running and screaming. He couldn’t get the images he had seen out of his brain. He knew that sleep just wasn’t going to happen, so he decided to risk the wrath and try to listen to the television, which was still blaring loudly on the ground floor below.