Safe Haven, page 4
"It was going to be a present for our grandson on his twenty-first birthday, but he got killed by a drunk driver a week before," she said, summoning strength from within to endure the painful memory.
"Your grandson? You and Angus are man and wife?"
"Yes. Why?" she asked a little puzzled.
"I just thought you were his carer or daughter or something," he replied.
"You seem like a pleasant young man, so I won't pass that on to Angus, but let's just say the years have been kinder to me than to him," she said with the beginning of a smile on her face.
"He really won't mind if I use this? I mean with it holding so much sentimental value."
"Angus doesn't say things he doesn't mean," she replied turning to Richard. "It sounds like you could use a vehicle as well. And some food. If you wouldn't mind giving me a hand, I'm sure we can find some new potatoes and a few other bits ready for harvesting."
"Go ahead Richard, I'll make my way down and tell Ruth what's going on before I set off," he said.
"You're going now?"
"The sooner I set off, the more chance I have of finding them. Look after everybody Richard, and thank you Christina." The woman looked down sadly. The young man's bravado did not affect her like it had her husband. She firmly believed, they would never see him or the bike again.
***
Within just a few minutes, Mike had thanked Angus and set off. He had caught up with the group walking the seven miles to his gran's house and explained that Richard would be along directly and would ferry them in the 4 x 4. He had thanked Ruth for taking charge, and they had hugged before he gave David a lift to the cottage.
When they arrived, Jake was still catatonic and Sammy was talking to him softly, having placed a wet face cloth on his head.
"How is he Sammy?" Mike whispered.
She brushed away a tear from the corner of her eye, sniffed and said, "he's still the same."
"Come with me a second," he replied, taking hold of Sammy's hand and leading her out of the room, while David took over sitting vigil. He gave a child friendly account of what he had seen and explained that Ruth and the children were heading to the house. He then went on to tell her his plan. When he had finished, he paused, waiting for her to start crying or screaming.
"Promise me you'll bring them back," she said calmly.
He knelt down in front of her and placed his hands on her shoulders. He looked into his little sister's eyes and saw his own. This was one of those times in life when trying was not enough. This was a time for doing, not trying. He took a deep breath. "Sammy, I promise you, I will bring them back."
CHAPTER FOUR
More and more figures assembled around them pointing rifles in their direction. The tall man with the gruff voice dragged Lucy and Emma from the rest of the group and marched them away. Two other men, their weapons trained on the women, followed them.
Emma and Lucy had a sinking feeling in their stomachs. They had made a dramatic escape from their captors only to wind up captive again, but this time, they had no escape plan.
"Where are you taking us?" Emma demanded.
"Shut up and keep walking," said the tall man as he pushed Lucy through a door. The sign read staff only, and as soon as they walked through, darkness enveloped them in the narrow corridor. The two women gulped. They were pushed through another door and one of the soldiers flicked a torch on revealing a staircase. Although Lucy's impulse was to fight and flee, that wasn't a realistic option. She might be able to save herself and even Emma, but what of the women downstairs? They ascended the steps and then went through another door which led into a large brightly lit room. The windows looked out into the loading bay, which explained why their break-in had not been a surprise.
"Keep walking," barked the gruff man as they headed towards another door at the far end of the room.
Emma thought about Mike, how she wished he was here with her now. Then she thought about how his life had taken on new meaning with Lucy, how he had begun to change because of her. She stopped walking. "Look, let her go, you can do what you want with me, but let her go." Lucy reached out and dug her fingers into Emma's arm.
"I said keep walking," the man shouted this time, and poked both of them in the back with the muzzle of his rifle.
Emma span round in a fury, and grabbed tight hold of the rifle before the gruff man even had time to react. She swung her fist hard, knocking him off his feet. Blood exploded from his nose and lip simultaneously as a look of pure shock swept over his face. Not wanting to lose the impetus, she leapt on top of him and began pounding away at his face, unafraid of what consequences awaited her.
Lucy immediately ducked, grabbing her knife from its ankle holster. She stayed low and lurched towards one of the other men, sinking the blade into his thigh causing him to scream like a hurt child. The third man, very young, panicked; he fumbled with his weapon, pointed at one woman and then the other, then lowered it again. The facade of being a tough guy no longer one he wanted to maintain.
"Jules, Jules," he yelled again, almost crying this time. The door at the end of the large room burst open and four men and four women all wearing military uniforms came running out, pointing their side arms at the skirmishing figures.
Lucy withdrew the blade from the man's thigh and pivoted around, clutching the knife to his neck and taking hold of the rifle pointing it in the general direction of the approaching group.
"Drop your weapons or he buys it, followed by one of you," she barked.
"Jesus fucking Christ!" blurted the woman leading the group. "Lower your weapons," she ordered the others, who obeyed straight away. "Do you mind taking the knife from my brother's throat please?" she asked politely. Her voice had an Irish lilt, and in the space of a couple of sentences had gone from being authoritative to placating.
"Your brother?" Lucy and Emma were both taken aback. They had expected the worse when they had been led away by the three men. They had expected to be raped and tortured, but seeing the assembled group, half men, half women and more conciliatory than aggressive, they were puzzled. "Who are you people and what do you want with us?"
"We don't want anything with you other than to find out why you broke into our place and get you the f... get you out of here," the woman replied. "Now, please take the knife from my brother's throat."
Lucy felt the frightened breathing of the man she was holding at knifepoint. She looked around at the faces behind the Irish woman. Some were older, much older. These weren't raiders, they were survivors. She decided to take a calculated risk. She reached down to the man's belt and unbuckled it.
"What are you doing?" he screamed, terrified this American psycho was going to torture him further.
Lucy looked towards the leader of the group. "Do you have any bandages or medical supplies? I need to see to his wound before he loses too much blood."
"You're a doctor?" the woman asked, amazed.
Lucy nodded while helping the young man onto the floor. She took off the belt and carefully removed his trousers as he let out a whimper. She wrapped the belt around his leg above the wound to stem the flow of blood. "The cut's not too deep, I didn't hit anything major, but I'm going to need to suture it."
"Get her what she needs," the woman said to the others in the group as the room sprang into a hive of activity. She looked towards the unconscious figure with the pummelled face. "And can someone see to Andy?" she asked, looking to one of the older women. "In the meantime, please come with me," she said directly to Emma. "Nice work you did on my brother."
"That was Lucy, not me, and anyway, he had it coming. He was lucky to get away with just a cut," Emma said not feeling the need to justify their actions.
"Not him, the other one," she gestured back to the battered unconscious figure who was being dragged across the floor for Lucy to look at after she had attended to her own victim.
"How many brothers have you got?"
"Three, the third is the one who screamed like a girl when you took out the other two," she replied.
"You must be so proud," Emma said with a smirk.
"You have any brothers?"
"Two."
"I'm guessing you love them more than anything, but that doesn't stop them from being a constant pain in the fuckin’ tits."
"One of them's only six and he's adorable, but it sounds like you've already met the other... My name's Emma," she said extending a hand as they entered the office from where the group had emerged.
"Aren't we fucking formal now," smiled the woman extending her hand and curtseying. "Delighted to meet you, Emma, my name's Julia, but everyone calls me Jules," she said in an affected English accent before falling back into her friendly Belfast one. "So, do you mind telling me, who the fuck are you? And what the fuck are you doing here?"
Like Lucy, Emma got an immediate sense that these people weren't a threat and that they were just like them, floundering in a world that had gone to hell. She told Jules a potted version of the entire story, right from the outset in Leeds up to breaking into the store. Towards the end, Lucy had come in to the office to join her, escorted by an older woman who remained by the door, as if on guard.
"Fuck me," Jules said as Emma finished. "It sounds like you've been through the mill and then some."
Emma and Lucy nodded. "What about you?" Lucy asked. "Were you conscripts?" she asked nodding towards the uniform.
"Fuck, no," Jules replied. "Well a few of the blokes were. I was the deputy manager of this place, and for some reason completely fuckin’ beyond me, everybody thought that was a good enough reason to elect me to be the group leader." She pinched the cloth of her shirt. "The togs and the guns we got from a quartermaster's depot just out of town. That was back when we still had fuel for the vans."
"You didn't think about trying to get out of the city?" Emma asked.
"We thought about it, but we were finding more people every day. There were a lot of innocents just trapped in Inverness, desperately trying to survive. We found them and took them in. We made a conscious decision to give it a week and then head out, maybe up to Wick or Thurso. But then things went from shit to fuckin’ shit. A group was out scavenging when they got hit by a party of raiders. A few made it back, but some of them were badly injured. The night after that, we found that one of the women we had brought in had died in her sleep and turned. She must have been bitten or scratched or something." She looked away from the two women mournfully. "Fuckin stupid. I should have made sure everybody we brought in was checked for bites and scratches." She looked up towards Lucy and Emma. "Just so you know, we'll be checking you and everyone downstairs if you stay." She looked away again. "Anyways, you can imagine what happened. More than a dozen of us were attacked and turned before we got it under control."
Jules looked away and gulped hard. Emma and Lucy both said nothing, but felt terrible for the woman and her group.
"We thought, surely things can only get better,” continued Jules. “Then three nights ago we got attacked by fucking rats. Rats can you believe? Thousands of the little brown fuckers." She looked back towards the two women. "Y'know, you see a man you care for get bitten and come back to life, only to take a bite out of someone else. You think you're never going to see anything more horrific. But let me tell you, watching a friend get picked clean by an army of fuckin’ diseased ridden, shit eating rodents is an image that will haunt me until the day I die."
She paused and the room fell silent. "How did you get rid of them?" Emma asked, wincing as she remembered back to an episode her and Mike had encountered in Skelton involving a horde of vicious rats.
Jules maintained her silence for a moment and then continued. "One thing we're not short of here is household goods. One of my brothers, as fucking stupid as he is, had the idea to use aerosols as flame throwers. Fuckin’ idiot nearly blew one of his friend's hands off with one of those ten years ago. Who'd of thought the same thing would have saved us that night? We managed to beat them back, but they've come every night since. Not in the same numbers, and they haven't killed anyone else, but some have been bitten and fallen ill." Her eyes were heavy as she looked at the two women. "I don't know how much longer we're going to be able to survive."
"You've still got guns, don't you think it's at least worth trying to make a break for it?" Lucy asked.
"A, we've got hardly any bullets for the guns, they're mainly for show, and B, weren't you fuckin’ listening? We've got too many sick people now."
Emma was now the one who looked distant due to something Jules had said. "The people who were bitten by the rats. Where are they?"
"They're in one of the meeting rooms with the rest of the sick and injured, why?"
"When Mike and I were in Skelton, we came across rats that attacked the RAMs." Emma immediately saw Jules's brow crease, "RAMs, that's what we call the infected. If a rat still has flesh or blood from a RAM on its teeth when it attacks a human, it's likely that they'll become infected."
"Oh Jesus fuckin’ Christ!" Jules put her head in her hands, then looked up to the older woman who had been stood by the door. "Get all the rat bite victims separated, get them in another room, now," she ordered. The woman left immediately. "I don't know how much more of this I can take," Jules said, gulping hard.
Lucy walked across to Jules and crouched down in front of her. "Look, you've done something incredible to keep these people safe for as long as you have. The cities are too dangerous to live in now. I'll take a look at your sick and get them ready."
"Get them ready for what?"
"Get them ready to travel. You're coming back with us."
***
The engine cut through the serenity like a chainsaw through butter. Well in advance of the bike's appearance, animals fled to safety in fear of what terrifying beast could make such cacophony. To Mike, the sound was like music. He was tearing through the Scottish countryside at over 140mph and each second brought him closer to the possibility that he might find Lucy and Emma.
It took Mike less than fifty minutes from the beginning of his journey to reach the outskirts of Inverness. He slowed down and stopped, well before reaching the city, wheeling the bike quietly along the road. He halted where the tree line broke. From his elevated position, he had a good view of the once thriving place. He reached into his rucksack for the binoculars and scanned the landscape. His attention was drawn to a plume of black smoke. There had been a multiple vehicle pile-up. Some of the vehicles were reminiscent of the type the raiders had used in Candleton, civilian buses and cars with grills and metal sheets welded on for protection. One thing they couldn't protect the occupants from, though, was fire and the flames were still burning. If anyone had been alive at the time the fire had started, they would have long since been burnt to a crisp.
The pile-up hadn't just caught his attention. As he panned out, he saw several RAMs, milling around hoping something edible would miraculously appear from the wreckage. He angled the binoculars a little further up the road and saw two figures lying dead. He couldn't make out a huge amount of detail, but it looked like there were dark purple patches on their green clothing. He placed the strap of the binoculars over his head, pushed down the kick stand on the bike and stood for a moment, pondering.
In many respects, Lucy and Emma were unrecognisable from the people they had been as little as a few weeks ago. The trials they had endured had made them virtually fearless. They were formidable to say the least. If there were two people who had the ingenuity and capability to escape those raiders, it was them.
Mike brought the binoculars back to his eyes. He counted sixteen RAMs around the wreckage. He couldn't take that many out in one go, but if he could lure a few away, that might give him enough time to take care of the remaining ones and examine the site.
Since arriving at his gran's house, virtually everything had been ruled by committee. His gran was the matriarchal figure who everybody looked to for guidance. If someone wanted to go on a supply run, it had to be discussed and a plan had to be drawn up. If someone wanted to fish a little further out than normal, it had to be discussed and a plan had to be drawn up. Something in the manner of what Mike was about to do would have been discussed over and over, before being flatly turned down. The familiar adrenaline rush made a little smile appear on his face.
Mike fired the engine back to life and began to head towards the crash site at break neck speed. He was still a good distance away when he noticed most of the RAMs had broken their watchful gaze over the wreckage and were beginning to head towards the sound of the engine. He slowed down and readied the bike to head in the other direction. When the RAMs were just a matter of a few feet away he began moving again, this time much slower, tantalising the beasts with the promise of fresh meat. Like the pied piper, he led them away from the wreck. After half a mile, he veered left into a lay-by, the creatures still followed him, it was then that the bike erupted back to its former glory, heading out of the lay-by and tearing back the way it had come, leaving the RAMs almost standing still in comparison.
As he powered back down the hill and to the crash site, he noticed three creatures remained around the burning wreckage. He reached into his backpack and pulled out one of the machetes. As the first beast ran towards him, he veered and swung the shining blade.
Mike remembered back to the first RAM he had seen up close. It had been his stepfather, Alex, his best friend. His first feeling had been fear, but as he looked into the grey dead eyes and felt the cold flesh underneath his fingers while he tried to fend off the creature that was intent on killing him, the fear turned to hatred. It wasn't hatred for Alex, but hatred for the virus, for this disease that had turned Alex and billions like him. The hatred had turned to anger and he vented it through killing these monsters.
The machete sliced through the grey cheeks of the RAM and carved through the brain and skull. The bike was already heading towards the next creature as the top of the first one's head somersaulted through the air, intermittently releasing globules of tissue and congealed blood. The body of the beast collapsed to the floor. Mike repeated the technique for the other two RAMs, the momentum from the bike proving more power than his muscular arms ever could. He veered off the carriageway and up the grassy embankment to avoid the heat of the licking flames, then he re-joined the road at the other side. He stopped at the far end of the large roundabout, knocked down the kickstand and cut the engine.
