After it Happened Boxset: 1-6 Omnibus Edition Page 7

  Jimmy sidled up to him with a smirk on his face and two cups of coffee in his hands. Dan looked around, as it was rare to see Jimmy without Kev three paces behind him. He saw Kev playing with Leah, and Leah was helping him make something. The café area indoors would have been better for their purposes now, but the smell inside was unpleasant for any length of time. To settle down here would be a bad move, he thought, so he pushed that out of his head.

  Jimmy asked outright, “Where’d you learn kung fu?” which disarmed the serious nature of the question.

  Dan shrugged, not wanting to sound like a geek and explain the difference between different martial arts disciplines.

  “Well, I’m just glad I never tried to do you with that crowbar when we met. Cheers.” Jimmy raised his coffee cup to Dan’s and left him in peace, realising that he wasn’t going to get any more answers than he already hadn’t.

  Dinner was a quiet affair, with Penny calling order to the evening meeting as they tucked into their tinned peaches straight from the cans.

  “I think we can all agree that today has been a little stressful.” That raised a few chuckles, and Dan thought that the group had accepted what he had done as a part of their new world. “I’d like to formally welcome Cedric and Maggie to our fold.” Nods and smiles all around. “I know this may sound a little official, and the temptation is to break from the bonds of normal life, but I think it very prudent to maintain as much order as we can. We are hoping to build a cooperative society, and not a dictatorship.” She smiled in a self-effacing way to show that she meant it as a joke, but seriously at the same time. “I’d like to hear from everyone as to their progress and ideas if that’s OK? James and Kevin, how are we faring on the scavenging side?” She invested the word with a bit of theatre, again to detract from the seriousness.

  “All good, Penny,” replied Jimmy. “Working our way through the places marked for emptying. More hands would mean quicker work. We could do with another lorry too, if anyone sees one.”

  “Very good,” said Penny. “Everyone keep your eyes peeled for a large goods vehicle we can borrow. Neil,” she said, moving on, “engineering?”

  Never one to miss an opportunity to showcase, Neil stood and saluted lazily. In the languid style of a privileged young military officer educated at Eton, he said, “Yah, I’ve got a few hundred litres of diesel in jerrycans. More fuel cans are needed, but I’d prefer a trailer tanker. Nothing too big, you understand.” A few laughs came from the captive audience for his perfect delivery of the character. Satisfied with having lightened the mood, he continued in his normal voice, sitting down, “Seriously, though, fuel isn’t a problem right now. When we have more people and vehicles on the fleet, so to speak, I’ll need to go further afield. We’ve got plenty of petrol to run the master keys too.”

  The master keys were what Neil referred to as the disc cutters – an accurate description when used in that capacity, Dan thought.

  “Daniel?” Penny invited, unsure whether to mention his excursion.

  Dan decided not to keep too many secrets from the group. “I’ve recovered weapons and ammunition to arm a few people well. My hope is to recruit more people with the necessary skills to do what I do, and to protect the group when I’m not here.” Based on what they’d seen earlier, no arguments were raised. “If anyone has experience with weapons, I’ll consider if they should have a gun.”

  Again, no arguments.

  “OK,” said Penny, “does anyone else have any ideas they would like to suggest?”

  Cedric cleared his throat. “I’d like to suggest that I make a trip to some camping stores. I have an idea to set up some chemical toilets if that’s OK?”

  It was agreed that this was a good idea.

  Dan thought that now was a good time to suggest the idea he had. “I’ve been thinking about a permanent site.” That got everyone’s attention, as he felt that they might be getting accustomed to life in a Morrisons car park. “There are prisons nearby that I think would be a viable option. There is a farm there which could sustain us long term if we had more people. I want to check it out tomorrow and I could do with an extra pair of hands to take notes for me.” He looked at Leah and she beamed, looking to Penny and pleading for permission with her big eyes.

  “Very well, young lady. Early bed for you then.”

  Leah skipped off, happy for the first time ever to be sent to bed early.

  THE GRANGE

  They rose early. Dan emerged to find the water boiling, rain falling gently, and Leah shuffling her feet with excitement.

  “Morning,” he said. “Have you got your bag packed?”

  Leah dashed off and returned with a rucksack. She had bottles of water and snacks to last a few days, as well as a new notepad and pens. She was wearing her new walking boots and trousers, with her waterproof over a T-shirt.

  “OK then, get some breakfast and do your teeth. We’ll set off soon.”

  Dan walked over to see Cedric topping off his tank. Maggie was going with him, which didn’t seem negotiable. Cedric planned to find a trailer and bring back the chemical toilets and associated things. Dan talked him through what to do if they encountered anyone: If they were friendly, then bring them back; if not, stay well clear. He gave them a local map and asked them to mark anything they thought was worth scavenging.

  Neil was planning to stay local again, as agreed; the industrial estate was turning out to be a gold mine, and he was planning to find more vehicles for carrying what he found. He was getting ready to head out with Jimmy and Kev to get them a new lorry for their day’s work.

  Andrew was standing close to Penny, clearly struggling with having to do physical labour but lacking the temperament to argue or complain. Penny was listing off the things he should prioritise loading today. The list was shorter, as he was working alone.

  Dan packed his bag after breakfast and filled his flask with coffee. As an afterthought, he wandered into the shop and grabbed two bags of sweets for the car. He noticed a car charger for an iPhone too and picked one up.

  He donned his vest, checked his weapons, and got into the Land Rover. Leah was there in a flash and jumped in the passenger’s side. He produced the sweets, and her eyes lit up – it hadn’t dawned on her that she no longer had to wait for permission to have things now, and she was happy. He gave her the car charger for her phone and she was so excited that she struggled to open it. Dan had to use his knife to get through the packaging, and she plugged it in, desperately watching the screen for it to come to life.

  As he drove off, he saw Penny. She mouthed Be careful! at him and he nodded in acknowledgement.

  About two miles down the road, Leah’s phone came to life, and she checked for messages. That hadn’t dawned on her yet either.

  “It won’t work, chick. Just leave it plugged in so you can play games later, OK?”

  She reluctantly put it down and paid attention to where they were going. They arrived in about ten minutes at the large pub Dan had painted. He saw that Leah looked at everything, but never seemed to nag with questions. He didn’t know if she was like that before or not.

  They drove into the turning for the prisons, and saw that the landscape opened up. A farm was visible at the top of the hill and looked very promising. Despite having lived on a farm as a child, he didn’t know much about how one should be run. He really could have done with his dad right now.

  He avoided going to the large prison, as he knew it would be sealed up tight without power. Instead, he drove down to the old manor house, converted to a prison years ago. This was the open prison, where the lower-risk people saw out the end of their sentences. He drove slowly down the picturesque driveway until he came to a barrier, and much to Leah’s amusement, he drove straight through it, snapping it off.

  The Grange itself was a lovely building. He knew it had beds for a couple of hundred people, kitchens, stores, and even a gym. Combine that with the farm and the workshop, and they could live comfortably with enough people to do all the necessary jobs. Now for the difficult part.

  “Leah, I need you to wait in the car.” She looked disappointed, like it was the end of the world all over again. “I mean it, doors locked, and you hang on the horn if you see anything. OK?”

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ve seen dead bodies already, you know,” she added petulantly.

  Dan decided a bit more honesty was in order. “Me too. I’ve seen lots, but I didn’t see any until I was a few years older than you, and I’ve never seen – or smelled – two hundred of them in one building. End of.” That got no further argument from her.

  He got out and she locked the doors. He chambered a round in the M4 and applied the safety, then checked the chamber of the Glock and holstered it.

  He walked up to the front door; there was no need for stealth because he didn’t want to surprise anyone. He found it unlocked. He walked in and looked to his right where the security office was. Looking at the in/out ledger there, he saw no activity for nearly a week. He imagined that the virus, or whatever it was that wiped everyone out, would have spread very quickly in here. The whiteboard in the office gave a roll call of one hundred and eighty inmates, written directly above the body of a dead prison officer who was starting to smell.

  He walked through the lower floor, going room to room, and found only another half a dozen bodies. He went back outside to check on Leah and found her playing on her phone. She took a while to notice him and looked guilty when she saw him staring at her from ten feet away.

  “If you’re with me, eyes open. Play later, understood?” She did. He told her he was going back in and to follow the same rules.

  Heading upstairs, he cleared the other rooms, floor by floor. Some were locked, but a set of keys retrieved from the office downstairs let him through everywhere. The bonus was that nearly all the locks fit a certain pattern of key, so there were only really a few to choose from.

  In total, Dan counted fewer than eighty bodies. He imagined that as soon as there wasn’t enough staff to stop the flow, most who weren’t already sick would have abandoned ship at the first opportunity.

  This place will be perfect, he thought. It had everything they needed to sustain them. It just needed clearing, cleaning, and repopulating.

  He jogged back outside to the Land Rover to find Leah doing her best impression of a meerkat.

  He decided to check out the farm, and as he turned the car around in the ornate turning circle in front of the building, Leah asked what notes she should make.

  “Perfect. Kitchens, bedrooms, storage, gym, farm. Needs clearing. Seventy plus. Petrol and a trailer.”

  Leah wrote it all down in neat handwriting, as best as she could in a moving car, and asked Dan to repeat it until she had it all down. He saw a concrete fenced area which looked like an unused tennis court about a quarter mile from the house.

  “Tennis court for fire disposal,” he said to Leah, nodding at her notebook.

  The farm was perfect too. It had a few tractors and trailers, and other heavy equipment like a telescopic forklift as well. Not like the small factory ones, but a huge four-wheel-drive, rough-terrain one.

  He heard pained bellowing from one of the sheds, and saw that a dozen cows were shut in. He looked around and found that the nearest field was empty. He asked Leah if she was OK with animals, and she shrugged, eager to get out of the car. They opened the gates and let the cows into the field. They would be useful in the future, but not if they starved to death in the sheds. The water troughs were full, topped up with the rain, and the cows eagerly pushed in to get a drink. He did the same with the penned pigs – those that still lived – and put them in a muddy pen outside. He found feed and scattered it for the pigs; the cows were happy with the plentiful grass.

  A large chicken shed with outside runs held plenty of birds too. He placed empty buckets in all of the outside pens to collect rainwater. A few chickens had died, and Dan collected them up and threw them into the pigpen. Best not explain that one to Leah. He did the same with all the eggs too.

  It was better than he had hoped for again. He just needed people who knew how to run a small farm. They drove back to the main prison building and took the route behind the manor house. There were sports fields behind, another outbuilding which looked like a classroom, and the remains of the previous manor that looked to have subsided long before he was born. The gym was a separate building set by the large woodland and was well equipped, as he expected a prison gym to be. He asked Leah to note that two needed recovering from there.

  “Two dead bodies in the gym, got it,” she said, writing. So much for shielding her from all this, then.

  They followed a dirt track past the gym that led to a very large lake. Dan didn’t have a fishing permit like the signs stated were mandatory, but he also doubted that anyone around cared any more.

  They sat by the lake, which also had an abundance of Canada geese, and ate their snacks. He moved to sit on the bonnet of the Land Rover and lit a smoke to complement his coffee.

  “What do you think then, kid?” he asked Leah.

  She opened her notebook and said, “Perfect location. Bedrooms, kitchens, storage and a gym. About seventy bodies to carry to the tennis court to be burned. Farm has cows, chickens, and pigs. Gym needs clearing and the lake has fish and geese.” She smiled at Dan, eager for praise.

  “Excellent,” he said, “but do you like it?”

  “It’ll do,” she said with a smile.

  RECRUITMENT DRIVE

  After an hour walking around the manor grounds and checking all the smaller buildings, they returned to the Land Rover just as Leah was starting to flag a little. She got in and started on the sweets.

  They decided to recce a bit further afield and drove on towards the next town where Dan had found Kev and Jimmy. They went slow, and twice Leah scared the life out of him by shouting when she saw something. So far, they had seen a couple of vehicles they wanted – another lorry with a tail lift, and a transit tipper. Dan wanted that for loading dead bodies into and emptying the rotting cargo onto the tennis court where he planned to burn them, but again he thought it best to leave out the details for Leah. The tipper was in a small commercial van lot, which was marked on the map as a priority.

  As he was looking through the windows of the small portacabin office, he heard the Defender’s horn sound once. He sprinted back, carbine raised and switched to semi-automatic. He saw Leah pointing frantically ahead of her at two people in the distance. They seemed frozen still, and Dan raised the M4 to see them through the 4x optic.

  A man and a woman were squinting towards him, trying to figure out the sound they had heard. The girl obviously had the better eyesight, as she made out Dan pointing a gun at them first. She turned and fled, the man confused but following her regardless.

  He swore to himself. Mental note: find some small binoculars. He started the Land Rover and sped off in the direction they had run. Leah was bombarding him with questions, all of which he ignored as he scanned around him for signs of where they went. He reached a T-junction at the end of the road. A choice he’d been faced with many times over his years of chasing people was ahead.

  “Left or right? Left or right?” he repeated. Better to make a choice and have a fifty/fifty chance of being right than hesitate too long and guarantee failure.

  “Left,” said Leah, pointing helpfully left.

  “Can you see them?” Dan asked.

  “Downhill,” she said. “You don’t run away uphill,” she said, explaining basic logic to an experienced hunter of people.

  He didn’t have time to be impressed, which he was, but tore off left, accelerating hard and kicking himself for missing the obvious. Target focus: schoolboy error. He saw a flash of movement on the left side, just as Leah called out, “There!!”

  The girl had sharp eyes. The two had indeed run downhill, and when they had heard the car coming after them, they had decided to jump a garden wall and try to hide.

  Dan skidded the Land Rover to a stop and went to get out. Leah stopped him by flapping her right arm at him.

  “Don’t scare them. Let me talk,” she said with a maturity that surprised him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You’re moody and you look a bit scary,” she replied with devastating honesty.

  “Fine,” he said, “just wind the window down though.”

  Leah held down the electric window button.

  “Hi,” she tried. It was almost funny, as an obvious pair of shoes were visible sticking out from behind the bins.

  “We are nice! Honestly,” she called out again. “We want people to come and join our camp. I’m only twelve and they look after me. I know he looks scary; he scared me when I first saw him, but he’s the one who protects us.”

  Dan held his breath for a while, until his patience snapped and he went to get out. He stopped, seeing the two emerge from their hiding place.

  The girl came first, tentatively followed by the male. They both looked mid-twenties and terrified. Leah reassured her, telling her it was OK.

  “Please,” the girl said, “my friend, he have accident. Very bad.” Her English was heavily accented and sounded Eastern European. She had dark hair in thick curls and a slightly olive-skinned complexion. The male behind stepped forward; he looked very nervous.

  “It’s true,” he blurted out fast, “our mate got hit on the head by a crate that fell off the shelves.” He sounded like a local. He looked thin, a bit scruffy with off-the-poster tattoos on both forearms. “We were going to the pharmacy to get bandages and stuff.”

  “Where?” asked Dan.

  “The shop, down from here,” said the girl, pointing back towards where he had first seen them.

  “Not the pharmacy. Where is your mate?” He knew where the pharmacy was; he had emptied it the other day with Jimmy and Kev.