Autumn a-1 Read online

  She spied a lone figure staggering aimlessly across a recently ploughed field just north of the farmhouse. She had seen thousands of the pitiful creatures over the last few days but she instantly decided that this one particular stumbling bastard was the one she hated the most. Her heart had sunk like a stone when she’d first spotted it tripping clumsily through the mist. If she hadn’t seen it then perhaps she’d have been able to prolong the illusion of normality for a few minutes longer. But that was all it was – an illusion of a normality that was long gone and which would never be restored. And there she was, trapped in the same desperate and incomprehensible nightmare that she’d been stuck in last night and the night before that and the night before that… She began to cry and wiped her eyes, upset and annoyed. For a blissful few seconds everything had felt normal but now she felt like hell. She felt as cold, empty and lifeless as the body in the field.

  ‘Everything okay?’ a voice suddenly asked from the darkness behind her. Startled, Emma caught her breath and quickly span around. Michael stood in front of her, his normally bright eyes still dulled with sleep and his short hair matted and unruly.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she mumbled in reply, her heart still thumping.

  ‘Did I scare you?’ he wondered apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, I tried to make as much noise getting up as I could but you…’

  Emma shook her head, making it clear that it didn’t matter. Her thoughts had been elsewhere. He could have screamed in her face and she wouldn’t have noticed.

  Michael took another step closer to her and she noticed that he too had slept in his clothes. She turned back to look out of the window and continued to scan the misty horizon, desperately hoping that she might catch sight of more movement. God, she hoped that they would see something else this morning. Not another one of the loathsome bodies though, she wanted to see something that moved with reason, purpose and direction like she did. She wanted to find someone else that was truly alive.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Michael asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t want to answer him honestly.

  ‘Nothing,’ she grunted. ‘There’s no fucking point, is there? There’s nothing left.’

  Michael turned and walked silently out of the room, leaving her alone to look out over the dead world.

  19

  It was twenty past nine before Michael, Carl and Emma actually sat down together in the same room. They were in the kitchen. Carl and Emma sat in stony silence opposite each other around a circular pine table while Michael struggled to scrape together some breakfast from the meagre scraps remaining of the limited supplies they’d brought with them from the city.

  The atmosphere at Penn Farm was heavy and subdued. Michael felt low – perhaps lower than he had done at any time during the last few days – and he was struggling to understand why. He’d expected to feel a little better today. The three of them had, after all, stumbled upon a place where they could shelter safely for a while. A place which offered isolation and protection and yet which was still comfortable and spacious. He looked out through the wide kitchen window and down onto the farmyard below and decided that it must have been the slight elation they’d felt last night that was making the cold reality of this morning so hard to accept.

  The baked beans he had been cooking had started to stick to the bottom of the pan and spoil.

  ‘Something burning?’ Carl mumbled perceptively.

  Michael grunted and stirred and scraped the beans with a wooden spoon. He hated cooking. The reason he was preparing the meal this morning was the same reason he’d been the first to cook food at the community centre back in Northwich. He had no community spirit and no real desire to please the others. Cooking was nothing more than a brief distraction. Rescuing the burning beans somehow stopped him from thinking about the world outside and all that he had lost for a few precious seconds.

  Dejected and distant, he served up the food and carried the first two plates over to the table. Emma and Carl looked at the breakfasts which clattered down in front of them with disdain and disinterest as neither was feeling at all hungry. Each plate had on it a large serving of baked beans, a dollop of stodgy scrambled egg (prepared from a dehydrated mix usually used by mountaineers) and three hot dog sausages which had been boiled in brine. Emma managed half a smile in acknowledgement but Carl did not. He sniffed and stared at his food feeling exhausted and nauseous.

  Emma picked up a fork and began to poke and prod gingerly at the food. She looked across at the other two and noticed that they were both doing the same. Each one of the survivors seemed to be trying their damnedest not to say or do anything that might result in them having to talk to or even look at the others. All three of them were being gripped tight and suffocated by a now familiar paradox – they each craved the security and normality of conversation, but they knew that such a conversation would inevitably lead to them talking about things that they were each doing their best to try and forget.

  As the long minutes dragged on, Emma’s patience wore thin. Eventually she cracked.

  ‘Look,’ she sighed, ‘are we just going to sit here or should we actually think about doing something constructive today?’

  Michael looked up and rubbed his tired eyes. Carl started to eat his food. Filling his mouth with burnt beans, undercooked sausage and powdered egg gave him an excuse not to have to talk.

  ‘Well?’ Emma pressed angrily.

  ‘We’ve got to do something,’ Michael quietly agreed. ‘I don’t know what yet, but we’ve got to do something…’

  ‘We need some decent food,’ she said, pushing her untouched breakfast away.

  Michael thought for a moment.

  ‘There’s bound to be other things we need too.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know…clothes, tools, petrol…’

  ‘We need to know what we’ve got here first.’

  Carl watched Emma and Michael intently as they spoke, following the conversation, looking from face to face.

  ‘You’re right. First thing we should do is go through this house from top to bottom and see exactly what we’ve got. Space is going to be limited in the van so we don’t want to be doubling up on anything.’ Michael paused to take a breath. ‘Carl, do you know what you’ll need for the generator?’

  Startled by the sudden mention of his name, Carl dropped his fork.

  ‘What?’

  Michael frowned.

  ‘Do you know what you need to get the generator sorted?’ he repeated, annoyed that the other man hadn’t been listening.

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, not yet. I’ll have a look later and try and work it out.’

  ‘We should get it done straight after breakfast,’ Emma suggested. ‘I think we should check the house out from top to bottom then get out, get what we need and get back as quickly as we can.’

  ‘The sooner we get started,’ Michael added, ‘the sooner we get back.’

  He didn’t need to say anything else. Emma was already up and out of her seat. She scraped her untouched food into a black plastic rubbish sack and swilled the plate in a bowl of cold water in the sink. Without saying another word she quickly smiled at the two men still sitting at the table and ran upstairs to start working, cleaning and searching her way through the farmhouse.

  Prompted to move by Emma’s sudden actions, Michael too jumped up and started to busy himself. Carl on the other hand was in no rush. He stayed sat at the table toying with – and occasionally eating – the cold food on his plate.

  Last night the three survivors had made an unspoken agreement to stay at Penn Farm for the time being. It seemed relatively safe, secure and comfortable and had the potential to be much, much more. It was only as they scoured the house for supplies that the true potential of their location finally became apparent to Emma and Michael. Carl acknowledged it too, but he was still unsure. He wasn’t yet completely convinced that they were safe anywhere.

  Emm
a began at the top of the house and worked her way down. She started in an odd-shaped attic bedroom which Carl had quickly claimed as his own yesterday. The dull room was lit only by the light which trickled in through a small window at the front of the house. Other than a bed, a wardrobe and a couple of other items of furniture there was little of note to be found there.

  Michael worked his way through the rooms on the second floor. Three more reasonably sized bedrooms and an old-fashioned but practical bathroom. He uncovered little that he didn’t expect to find. Clothes (far too old, large and worn for any of them to consider wearing), personal possessions and trinkets and little else. As he sat on the edge of the large double bed that Emma had slept on last night and looked through an obviously antique jewellery box he found himself suddenly fascinated by the value of the items it held. Less than a month ago the rings, earrings, necklaces, bracelets and brooches (which, he presumed, had belonged to Mrs Jones – what had happened to her?) would have been worth a small fortune. Today they were worth nothing. Conversely the comfort of the wooden-framed bed he was sitting on made it worth millions in his eyes.

  By the time Carl forced himself to get up and go outside the other two had almost finished. They met in the hallway and walked to the back door where they stood together and planned their next move. Buoyed by the unexpected novelty of finally having had something constructive and purposeful to do for a short while, Emma and Michael talked with what could almost have been classed as enthusiasm about the rest of the day which lay ahead of them. Michael had a grand plan to fill the van with supplies, make themselves safe in the grounds of the house and get the generator working. Much as it still reminded him of everything he’d lost, his aim was to get a television or stereo working by the time darkness fell. He wanted to bring beer back to the house so that he could drink and forget. He knew that it would only be an illusion of normality, and he also knew that when it finished the pain of reality would be almost unbearable, but that didn’t seem to matter. He knew that the three of them were mentally and physically exhausted. If they didn’t force themselves to stop soon then it would only be a matter of time before someone cracked. He was damn sure that, having survived so far, he wasn’t about to go under.

  20

  Less than an hour later and Michael, Carl and Emma were ready to leave Penn Farm. Wrapped in as many layers of clothing as they could find, the three of them stood together at the side of the van and winced as a cold and blustery autumn wind gusted into their exposed and unprotected faces.

  Doubt and uncertainty.

  Their emotions had begun to take on an almost cyclical pattern. In turn they each felt utter desperation and fear and then sudden, short-lived elation and hope. They had spent the last week lurching from crisis to crisis. Since leaving the city those nightmare situations had been punctuated by brief moments of success and real achievement such as finding the house yesterday and realising its full potential this morning. As Michael had already discovered to his emotional cost, the temporary respite that those successes presented to them made the dark reality of their shattered lives all the more difficult to accept. No-one dared to think about what might happen next. No-one dared to think about what might happen tonight, tomorrow or the next day. As uncertain as anyone’s future had always been, the survivors now seemed unable to look forward to their next breath of air with any certainty.

  They had been standing in silence for almost five minutes when Michael managed to snap himself out of his trance and get into the van. Each one of them had a thousand and one unanswerable questions flying round their tired heads, and that constant barrage of questions seemed to prevent them from saying anything. Someone would think of something to say or something to ask, only to be distracted and thrown off track by another bleak and painful random thought.

  Following Michael’s lead Carl and Emma climbed into the van and sat down. Michael turned the key and started the engine. The noise made by the powerful machine echoed through the desolate countryside.

  ‘Any idea where we’re going?’ Emma asked from the back of the van. She shuffled in her seat as she slid the precious key to the farmhouse into the pocket of her tight jeans.

  ‘No,’ Michael replied with admirable honesty. ‘Have you?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted.

  ‘Fucking brilliant,’ Carl cursed under his breath as he leant against the window to his side.

  Michael decided that whatever they did they weren’t going to achieve anything by waiting. He slammed the van into gear and moved away down the long rough track which led to the road.

  ‘I’m sure I used to come round here on holiday with my mum and dad when I was younger,’ he sighed five minutes and three quarters of a mile further on.

  ‘So do you know your way around?’ Emma asked hopefully.

  He shook his head and pulled out onto the smooth tarmac.

  ‘No. What I do remember though is that there were loads of little towns and villages round here, all linked up by roads like this. If we keep driving in any one direction we’re sure to find something somewhere.’

  He began to push his foot down on the accelerator pedal, forcing the van along the twisting track.

  ‘Hope we can remember the way back after this,’ Emma mumbled.

  ‘Course we will,’ he replied confidently. ‘I’ll just keep going in one direction. We won’t turn left or right unless we have to, we’ll just go straight. We’ll get to a village, get what we need, and then just turn around and come back home.’

  Home. Strange word to use thought Carl because this definitely didn’t feel like home to him. Home was a hundred or so miles away. Home was his modest three bedroom semi-detached house on a council estate in Northwich. Home was where he’d left Sarah and Gemma. Home was definitely not some empty fucking farmhouse in the middle of the fucking countryside.

  Carl closed his eyes and rested his head against the cold glass. He tried to concentrate on the sound of the van’s engine. For a few seconds the noise stopped him thinking about anything else.

  Michael was right.

  Within fifteen minutes of reaching the road they’d stumbled upon the small village of Pennmyre. As they approached they saw that it was not so much a village, more a short row of modest shops with a few car parking spaces and a pelican crossing. The silent hamlet was so small that the sign which said ‘Welcome to Pennmyre – Please Drive Carefully’ was just over a hundred meters from the one which read ‘Thank You for Visiting Pennmyre – Have a Safe Journey’. But the compact size of the village was comforting. They could see it all from the main road. There weren’t any dark corners or hidden alleys to explore.

  Michael stopped the van halfway down the main street and climbed out, leaving the engine running in case they needed to get away at speed. On first impressions the sight that greeted them was disappointingly familiar. It was just what they had expected to find – a few bodies scattered on the pavement, a couple of cars crashed into buildings, pedestrians and each other, and the odd walking body, tripping and stumbling around aimlessly.

  ‘Look at their faces,’ Carl said as he stepped out into the cold morning air. It was the first time he’d said more than two words since they’d left the farmhouse. He stood on the broken white line in the middle of the road with his hands on his hips, just staring at the pitiful creatures that staggered by. ‘Christ,’ he hissed, ‘they look fucking awful…’

  ‘Which ones?’ Emma wondered as she walked around the front of the van to stand close to him. ‘The ones on the ground or the ones that are moving?’

  He thought for a second and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Both,’ he eventually replied. ‘Doesn’t seem to be much difference between them anymore, does there?’

  Emma shook her head slowly and looked down at a body in the gutter by her feet. The poor thing’s lifeless face bore an expression of frozen, suffocated pain and fear. Its skin was tight and drawn and she noticed a peculiarly greenish tinge to its cold flesh. The first signs
, she decided, of decomposition. Strange that the other bodies – those still moving around – had the same unnatural tinge to their skin too.

  There was a sudden dull thump behind Carl and he span around anxiously to see that one of the awkward stumbling figures had walked into the side of the van. Painfully slowly it lurched around and then, quite by chance, began to walk towards the startled survivor. For a few long seconds Carl didn’t react. He just stood there and stared into its cold emotionless eyes, feeling an icy chill run the entire length of his body.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he hissed. ‘Look at its eyes. Just look at its fucking eyes…’

  Emma recoiled at the sight of the pathetic figure. It was a man who, she guessed, must have been about fifty years old when he’d died (although the unnatural tightness and hue of his skin made it difficult to be certain). The body staggered forward with stilted, uncoordinated and listless movements.

  Carl was transfixed – his attention captured by a deadly combination of morbid curiosity and uneasy fear. As the cadaver approached he could see that both of the man’s pupils had dilated to such an extent that the dull iris of each eye seemed almost to have disappeared. The eyes moved continually, never settling on any one object, and yet it seemed that whatever information was being sent from the dead eyes to the dead brain was not registering at all. The body moved ever closer to Carl, looking straight past him. It didn’t even know he was there.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Michael cursed. ‘Watch out will you?’