After it Happened Boxset: 1-6 Omnibus Edition Page 5

  “I want to help Dan,” Leah said.

  An air of awkwardness shadowed the group. Penny didn’t know how to squash Leah’s ambition without hurting her feelings and embarrassing her publicly.

  “Leah, how about you come with me after I’m back?” said Dan, trying to rescue the situation from the possibility of a teenage strop.

  Leah thought about this for a few seconds before saying, with a beaming smile, “OK, but you promised, so you have to take me.”

  That seemed fair.

  Penny came to find Dan a short time later, and saw him in conversation with Neil. “Gentlemen, I do hope you don’t think me too forward?” she asked hopefully.

  “Not at all, Penny,” said Dan. “We were just saying how glad we are that you are taking control; we need your organisational skills to keep this group together and moving with a purpose. I didn’t want to say in front of everyone, but I’m going to an army camp I know, and it’s a couple of hours away at least. To do this properly, I’ll need time to recce the area and make sure it’s safe.”

  Both Penny and Neil started to raise objections simultaneously, but Dan held up his hands.

  “Trust me, I’m capable. And I’m going to be very careful,” Dan reasoned. “We need to be aware that people may want to take what we have, and until we are strong enough as a group, then we need to consider some kind of guard. I’d like Neil to stay home for now, unless we find someone able to protect the camp when I’m away. In the interim, I don’t want him far from the camp. If someone turns up again like Andrew did, then I want you two,” he pointed at Neil and Penny in turn, “to stay in radio contact using the walkie-talkies. If you can’t get him, Penny, blast the horn on the truck and he’ll come back.”

  Neil had already run through this with Dan before Penny showed up, and he nodded his agreement to her.

  “Very well, that seems sensible. However, I want you to think of excuses for not taking Leah with you. I don’t want her seeing things that she shouldn’t.”

  Dan wanted to say that Leah had already seen things that no young girl should have to see, but he gently deferred that conversation.

  Neil again tried to reason with Dan that he should come with him, but he flatly refused. “If we’re both away until tomorrow night, there’s no way of knowing that we would come back to anyone here. It’s too risky to have us both leave. Face it, until we get more people here we can trust to protect the camp, then you have to stay here or very nearby. End of.”

  No objections. Penny deftly changed the subject.

  “As we recruit more, we won’t be able to give everyone jobs over breakfast. We need to have departmental heads and delegate as we see fit. As Chief Engineer and First Ranger, I expect you to consider this seriously.”

  First Ranger, thought Dan. Well, that job title didn’t work out well in Game of Thrones, did it? A glance at Neil told him that he would have to suffer some film-referenced jokes and impressions after he had been dubbed that.

  He stayed where he was and lit a smoke as the other two walked back, talking. Dan wanted the group to be protected and organised. At the same time, he craved some solitude.

  He finished his smoke and went to his Defender. He topped off the tank, loaded two extra jerrycans, and checked his equipment. He took extra food and water – obviously, there would be plenty of places to loot on the way – a camp cooker, and his sleeping bag. Sleeping in the back of a Land Rover didn’t qualify as a hardship to Dan. His dad used to call it a “night in the Mootel.” Farming joke.

  As he went to set off, he found Leah standing by his car door. She seemed to want to say something, but just stood there.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said.

  “Promise?” she asked, her eyes full of innocence.

  Dan was raised never to make a promise he couldn’t keep, and there were just too many variables. “I said I’d take you out on a trip. You can be Second Ranger as soon as I can make it happen.” That would have to do.

  “What did you used to be?” she asked, surprising him.

  “Tell you what,” Dan replied, “when you can figure it out, I’ll take you with me.” She frowned at him, clearly thinking this was unfair, but he drove away before she could say anything else.

  “Take care beyond the wall, Stark,” Neil called solemnly as Dan drove past.

  “Knob,” replied Dan with a smile, leaving the camp behind. He felt better. Better to be out on his own, unburdened by the responsibility of protecting them even for a short time, but more confident that they would be safe without him.

  GETTING OUTSOLDIERED

  Dan moved along the roads steadily and with confidence as he had driven them many times before. He passed bodies, days-old car crashes, and even evidence of a house fire. Not a sign of anybody. He didn’t stop to paint the messages he had the day before; he had a purpose, a goal, and he needed a plan to do this safely. The payday he was after was serious. Military armouries were likely to be far more popular than a Morrisons, and would probably be defended if anyone was still alive around there.

  As he drove, he thought of the society that Penny envisaged based on the thoughts they shared. He was obviously marked as the head of operations.

  Ops Commander, Dan: First Ranger – it sounded a little too grand for his liking. He had a Society Leader: Head of Base Camp in Penny. She could assess new recruits and set work tasks, keep everyone busy.

  Head of Engineering was now Neil, although he wasn’t really interested in a leadership role, it seemed. Maybe he could get Neil to teach some of the younger ones in the future. Maybe some science geeks survived, and they could work out things like manufacturing biodiesel and using solar panels to heat water.

  Scavenging teams needed to be beefed up; Dan liked Jimmy and Kev, but he just needed more like them.

  He needed to find farmers, people who could grow crops as well as rear animals. He needed animals, for that matter. He needed people who knew how to cut down trees for firewood, people who knew how to hunt and fish – not just for now, but to teach people in the future. Dan could teach the basics of shooting and fishing, but he already had too little time.

  He needed to find people who could cook large meals from limited supplies. He needed people with medical expertise, as his own training was good for first aid and bullet wounds. A surgeon would be good.

  He needed to find people with skills like his own; what good was a First Ranger without other Rangers?

  So many mental notes were made that he had to stop for a break and make actual ones. Coffee and smoke time. There was a time not too long ago, five days in fact, when he called that breakfast.

  The more he thought about it, the more rabbit holes he fell down. He would need hundreds of people with a range of experience and expertise to get this easy idea of a new society going. It seemed an impossible task at the time, so he tried to push it all from his mind and concentrate on the immediate.

  Go and get some serious weaponry – three clips for a Glock and a small-calibre rifle weren’t going to protect much. After that, worry about recruitment and training.

  He thought about where they were going to set up this utopian cooperative society. He had an idea forming but this would require an in-depth local recce when he was back at camp, and probably a lot more bodies to make it happen.

  OK, maybe bodies wasn’t the best choice of words.

  He arrived in the area of the camp after three hours, and decided to scout around slowly. He marked a huge camping store on his map for a priority clearance sale, and doubted whether Jimmy and Kev could fit it all in one truck – maybe a group outing soon?

  He parked well away from the base and walked a long way round to approach it from higher ground. He’d brought a small rucksack of gear and the hard-wearing waterproof sleeping bag with him. He didn’t think it was going to rain, but realised it had been years since he had really studied the weather and not checked a forecast app.

  Damn technology – it had made him soft and lazy.

  He settled in, watching the base from the scope, at around four in the afternoon. He figured that if he watched from now until daybreak and saw nobody, then the camp was safe to approach.

  Just as the sun dropped behind him, he reconsidered waiting through the night. There was no sign of movement at all, and the place definitely looked deserted. He could clearly make out the shape of the now deceased Ministry of Defence police officer in the small booth on the closed gate, and was impatient to get more in the way of munitions.

  He shuffled back from the small ridge, collected his gear, and slung his rifle on his back. He decided to use the last of the light to get into the base.

  Too many thoughts must have been going through his head. He was complacent. Lazy. Foolish to have insisted he went alone.

  “Stop right there, laddie,” called a gravelly Scottish voice from nowhere, heavily punctuated by the sound of a large round being chambered. “Guns on the ground and I’ll be knowing your business here.”

  “OK, let’s just take it easy,” said Dan slowly as he held the rifle away from his body by the barrel with his left hand and lowered his body. This was intentional, as it freed the right hand to be near the gun holstered on his right leg. He couldn’t see the owner of the voice and thought that there may still be a chance to get the drop on him.

  That idea was quickly crushed when the man appeared behind his right shoulder. “Don’t. Finger and thumb, on the ground.”

  Dan slowly removed his sidearm using only his thumb and forefinger as instructed. Either this guy knew his business, or he’d seen lots of films. Dan worryingly suspected the former, as the man wouldn’t come within ten feet of him – too far away to rush him, too close to move and have him miss with the first shots. He was carrying an
automatic rifle and was dressed in camouflage clothing.

  Dan slowly turned to face him. Everything about the man screamed professional soldier. Early forties he would guess, lean, not very big, but something behind the eyes made him believe this guy was figuring out whether to kill him now or later.

  “Talk,” he barked.

  Dan decided that nothing other than full disclosure would get him out of this. “I’m from a group of survivors; we have women and children and they need protecting. I came here to try and find better weapons and hopefully more people to join us,” Dan rattled off. “We need your help.”

  The man considered this for a time, and gestured with the muzzle of his rifle for Dan to walk. Dan went slowly and kept his hands up and away from the knife visible on his rucksack strap. He tried a few times to get the man to speak, but he was just ignored. Dan found himself back at his Land Rover, where he was ordered to produce the keys. He was sure he was going to be robbed, and faced a cold night with an uncertain journey back, but to his surprise he was told, “Wait here. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “What?” said Dan, and he looked back over his shoulder but the man was gone. Where he was standing were his rifle and pistol.

  He considered the situation he was in, and decided that it was worth the risk to wait. If an ambush were planned, nobody would take the risk of arming their intended victim. It made no logical sense, so Dan stowed his gear, poured a lukewarm coffee, and lit a cigarette.

  Just under an hour later, he heard an engine. He put himself on the other side of his Defender and waited. A roofless military version of his own car arrived towing a small covered box trailer painted in military colours with netting tied up on the sides. The man got out of his own vehicle, which was left running, quickly scanned a 360-degree sweep, and unhitched the trailer in silence.

  He climbed back into his own Land Rover, looked at Dan, and said, “You’ll not come back here again.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Dan hitched up the trailer and made his way down the road, not wanting to consider the consequences of attempting a refund or exchange.

  THE SOLITARY SENTRY

  For someone who had spent twenty years surrounded by fellow soldiers, the sergeant now felt so terribly alone. There were three squadrons based at the barracks, along with permanent support staff attached. Usually only one squadron was there at a time in full, the others either being deployed overseas or away somewhere training.

  Some days there were very few people around, and permanent training staff like him could do as they pleased. It was one of those places that ran itself, and officers were lucky to be there, not like most camps where the officers dictated everything.

  When it happened, there were fewer than thirty people on site. Many of the married soldiers had houses nearby, and only the singles really stayed in the base. Of the thirty, only he had survived. He didn’t understand any of it. He went into the intelligence cell for answers and found only bodies. He armed himself and set a patrol routine as he waited for orders to come. He watched a few people pass by, never stopping or threatening his post.

  He was a man of conscience; he would never allow the sanctity of his base to be breached by any outsider, and he would defend it with his life, but the man who came had said something that had affected him deep down.

  He had women and children to protect.

  The sergeant couldn’t ignore that, but he couldn’t abandon his post or invite outsiders in. He decided to offer what little assistance he could without breaking the rules too much. After he was alone again, he lapsed into the start of a depressive cycle that he could not escape.

  He was a professional soldier, a trained killer, and he had seen active service on four continents and taken a fair toll on the enemies of Her Majesty.

  None of that made a damned bit of difference anymore, because he was alone.

  BIG BOY TOYS

  Dan had set up for the night in a small roadside fuel station. He had to put on his gloves and mask to drag two bodies out of the back door, followed by three bin bags of rotting food. He wound up two of his camping lights and hung them on the open doors of his new trailer. If this was a payoff to keep him away from the camp, it certainly worked.

  He saw four modified M4 carbines, multitudes of magazines and boxes of 5.56mm rounds. Two pump-action shotguns, one with a full-length stock and the other had a pistol grip, with three boxes of cartridges. These weren’t the normal cartridges he’d scavenged for hunting; these were heavy-duty slugs. People killers.

  There was also a belt-fed support weapon, an old general-purpose machine gun with three whole crates of heavy belted ammunition for it. Another crate contained six Sig Sauer 9mm handguns, spare clips, and boxes of ammo. A Peli case contained two sets of night-vision goggles. There was another box of attachments for the M4s and shotguns. Reflex red dot sights, 4x zoom wide optics, torch mounts, and even a couple of suppressors.

  Dan could hardly believe it: He’d gone to scavenge what he could find and had been gifted enough weaponry to start a war. He had more guns than he had people to use them.

  He put the hunting rifle in the back, along with the box of .22 rounds for it, and selected himself an M4: short-barreled with a front vertical grip, full-length rail, and no carry handle. He took a mid-range combat scope, a box of magazines, and a box of ammo inside. As he moved the contents of the trailer around, he uncovered a dark tan vest. He pulled this out to find it was body armour, and had large and small magazine pouches and a pistol holster high on the front of the chest. The pouches were removable and could be put anywhere on the vest. A pipe was showing on the right shoulder strap, which turned out to be a water bladder.

  He closed up the trailer and went inside. He found what he was looking for quickly, and returned with a heavy padlock, which he locked the trailer with.

  He found a multi-tool thing that had Torx bits and Allen keys. With this, he fitted the scope, suppressor, and a right-side torch mount to his new toy. Mental note: Find somewhere to sight the scope.

  He now carried four spare magazines for the M4 and one in the carbine. Overkill, he realised, but didn’t really care. He loaded them all with fewer rounds than they would take at full capacity to minimise the risk of the weapon jamming. The spare clips for the Glock went on the vest too, after he unloaded and loaded them to ease the springs, and the pistol went into the chest holder. The leg holster wasn’t that comfortable and kept catching on things, plus Neil always took the piss out of it and called him Lara Croft.

  The M4 had a sling that he played around with, fixing it to the vest until he got it right. He could drop the weapon and it would hang vertically down from his chest and remove it by a clip if he wanted to. His smaller fixed blade knife went onto the left shoulder strap, and he considered fixing the machete to the back but decided not to. Definitely overkill.

  He settled down on his makeshift bed after eating, happier.

  He woke early, cold and slightly confused by a tapping noise. He rolled from the sleeping bag onto one knee and raised the M4 in search of the source. The few seconds of brain fog from waking cleared and he realised he was hearing a crow on the tin roof of the small forecourt.

  He rubbed his face and went about his post-apocalyptic morning routine: Brush teeth, wash face, dream of a hot shower and a shave. He was starting to look homeless, as he hadn’t shaved for a week.

  Shaking himself out of his grogginess, he packed his gear and took all the batteries and other consumables into the Land Rover. He boiled some water from a bottle he emptied off the shelf into the pan on his camp stove and drank the rest as he looked around some more.

  Medicines, spirits, cigarettes all went into the car. He poured the boiling water into his rinsed thermos, tipped in some expensive instant coffee, and packed it. He made himself a cup with the leftover water and took a sip. It was good, so he threw in the four tins of coffee he found on the shelf.

  The rest of the gear was stowed, and Dan set off towards his temporary home. He was sure the stress levels of some of the group would lower drastically if he got back sooner than expected.

  He wound along the country roads much slower, as he wasn’t very confident towing, and saw a woman standing with a horse behind the hedge on a small farm.