Nuclear Midnight (11 page)

They reached the town half an hour later and joined the end of one of the long queues. Alex hadn't spoken a word since they had first sighted the military, for a plan was forming in his head. He still had on his military uniform and rifle, concealed under a blanket so as not to tempt the anger of the crowd. Now, it seemed to him, was the time to be a soldier again. All he needed was the nerve to sustain the part.

After rehearsing his plan several times in his head, he flung off his blanket and turned to Tina. ‘I'm going to find out what this is all about,’ he said. ‘I'll be back as soon as possible.’

Tina would have objected, but he was gone before she had a chance to do so.

Alex walked briskly and purposefully towards the centre of town. He was wound up tighter than a spring, firing possible questions at himself and quickly thinking up the answers. He knew that to hesitate, or to sound uncertain in any way, would spell disaster. Many inconsistencies could be concealed by a forcible, authoritarian tone.

As he advanced, he noticed how the condition of the survivors seemed to deteriorate steadily. A great many had died while queuing for food. The bodies of these had been dragged aside and gathered into neatly stacked piles. Burial details could be seen here and there, covering these mounds.

Further on, Alex came across a large detention camp. Its inmates were the human work horses the military used to haul away the dead. When Alex saw them he felt like weeping. They were worse than caged animals because they were quite clearly starving to death. All hope was gone for them. They would work on until they too fell into the snow, to be added to the cartloads of corpses they had just been dragging. He was thinking this when a horrible choking smell came drifting across from the camp, a foul miasma of unwashed bodies and disease, which affected even the queuing survivors with looks of fear and dread. The stench could mean only one thing; the epidemic was here before them, scything down the weakened and the hopeless. Their suffering would soon be at an end.

But it made Alex quicken his pace, the need for information becoming even more imperative.

The food distribution point, when he finally reached it, proved to be only a small makeshift canvas shelter. Four fires were burning with cooking pots simmering on each. Large surly looking men stood behind each pot, ladling out half cupful portions of lumpy fluid. Hardly enough to keep a small child alive, let alone an adult, Alex thought bitterly. He turned back to the lines of survivors and approached one of the patrolling soldiers, a sharp eyed, sharp nosed little man.

‘Hello,’ Alex called. ‘Am I glad to see you! My vehicle was ambushed some distance back and my C.O. was killed. I've been on foot ever since.’

The soldier surveyed him suspiciously, and did not reply.

‘We were driving down from our headquarters, near Bristol, when we got bogged. The survivors converged on us like vultures, I was the only one who escaped,’ Alex continued.

‘GET BACK IN THE QUEUE!’ the soldier, yelled at a woman who had fallen in the snow. ‘YOU!’ he shouted at a tall, still fleshy man standing behind her. ‘HELP HER UP!’

The man obeyed grudgingly.

‘You'd better report to Captain Shaw,’ he said to Alex in a more listless tone. ‘Don't ask me where he is, though. I haven't seen any officers for over two days.’

‘Why’s that?’ Alex asked, trying to sound concerned.

‘Why? Why do you think? The place is falling apart. We’ve barely enough men to control the crowds.’

An old man nearby, who had been supporting himself on a roughly cut stave, suddenly collapsed into the snow. The soldier crossed over to him and rolled him onto his back. The elderly face was disfigured with purple blotches, the eyes glazing over, and with each breath he let out a raucous whining sound like an asthmatic wheeze.

The soldier gave a satisfied grunt. ‘He’s finished,’ he concluded. ‘You and you,’ he pointed towards a man wearing a balaclava and a youth no older than twenty. ‘Drag him over to the side of the road.’

The dying man was unceremoniously hauled over to a group of bodies and dumped on top. While he lay there, still rasping for breath, the two detailed to remove him proceeded to strip him of his clothes.

Alex was appalled. In a couple of strides he was beside the man with the balaclava, grabbing him by the collar and throwing him back across the snow. ‘At least wait for him to die!’ he shouted.

The youth, seeing him coming, ducked out of the way and meekly re-joined the queue.

‘What did you do that for? He was virtually dead, anyway,’ the soldier asked.

‘Aren't you supposed to be setting an example?’ Alex retorted, stalking over to him and stopping in front of him, deliberately using his height to intimidate the man. If you let them behave like animals,’ he continued forcibly, ‘you'll lose what little control you have. They won't think twice about doing the same thing to you.’

The soldier seemed momentarily taken aback by this show of anger, and hesitated before he replied. ‘Ah, and how would you know?’ he said finally. ‘Animals are what they are. The only way to control them is to give in to them occasionally.’

The fact that the soldier had not seen through Alex’s façade spurred him on. He decided to continue his attack. ‘We have exactly the same problems as you, ye know,’ he stormed. ‘We control them by discipline. Once that goes, so will you.’

‘Well you’ve probably got better conditions than us,’ the soldier replied defensively, waving his hand toward the lines of people.

‘Our work camps are collapsing, our food is almost gone,’ Alex lied. ‘That's why my C.O. was coming here personally. He wanted to assess how bad the conditions were. I’m sure if he had seen all this,’ Alex gestured vaguely, ‘he would have ordered the abandonment of this distribution station immediately.’

This last statement had its desired effect. The soldier's eyes narrowed and a look of pure astonishment swept over his face. ‘You mean your C.O. was coming here to tell us to clear out?’

‘More than likely.’

‘And he's dead?’

‘I told you. I barely escaped with my own life. There was no time to think about him.’

‘Shit!’ the soldier hissed, something close to a snarl appearing on his face. ‘It's useless hanging on here as it is. We'll be out of food in a day or so, anyway, and rumour has it there's a flu epidemic.’

Alex nodded. ‘That's right. Over half the inmates in the camp I come from have gone down with the flu.’

‘Yeah, I hear a lot of the camps east of here are pretty bad. This lot are carrying it west with them.’ The soldier unslung his rifle and leaned closer to Alex, lowering his voice. ‘In my opinion we have to abandon this whole food campaign,’ he muttered. ‘Just guard the food stocks instead.’

‘What? And let the population starve?’

‘They're dying anyway, what's the use of a few more days of life to them? With the weather the way it is there won't be any food grown for a long time. The remaining stocks will have to last for years.’

Alex opened his mouth to speak but then shut it again. The man was talking sense, in a way. The weather hadn't altered appreciably since the holocaust, and even if it cleared overnight the land had suffered enormous volumes of fallout. It would be madness, from the military point of view, to waste their food supplies on people who couldn't possibly last the first winter. He frowned and decided to change the conversation.

‘Have you heard anything about the conditions in the south east?’ he asked. ‘It must be pretty dire.’

The soldier nodded gravely. ‘I've heard a few things from some of the refugees. Apparently London was hit many times. Some said as many as five. Not much was left standing. The fallout was enormous over the whole sector. There's nothing doing there. People were too badly contaminated to live for long. I understand the nearest distribution point was forty kilometres out.’

Alex shook his head in disbelief.

‘And that's not the worst of it,’ the soldier continued. ‘All transport was knocked out, along with everything else of any use. All the survivors were on foot. Within days of setting up food distribution points they were overrun. We had to pull out and re-establish them further and further west. But that was in the first days; we're down to this trickle now, and they won't last much longer. This is the third distribution point I've been posted to and we're receiving very few people from around London anymore.’

‘How about further west?’ Alex asked.

‘Na, we're one of the last. This lot aren't going anywhere.’

Alex’s eyes went from the soldier to the lines of the starving, shuffling forward. The will to help them was almost gone. Soon the military would be withdrawing and then even this nightmare would grow horribly worse. The thought made him suddenly feel very cold and frightened.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You've told me all I need to know.’ He turned and strode off.

‘Hey, where are you going?’ the soldier called after him.

‘Wales,’ Alex shouted back without turning his head.

‘So there's no choice but to cross the Channel,’ Cliff concluded, after Alex had related his grim tale.

‘None,’ Alex replied. ‘Otherwise we'll be caught in the carnage that is sure to follow once the survivors realise there's no more food.’

‘But are we likely to find a suitable boat to take us? Anything that can float will surely have been taken by now,’ Tina added. ‘I suggest we should consider building one of our own.’

‘We've certainly got the skills,’ Cliff said, ‘but it wouldn't be easy, just the same. Not only would such a craft have to carry us all, it would need to have enough clearance to stop the waves lapping over the top in a storm. In this weather, adrift for five or six hours or more, it could be fatal if we became soaked with water.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Alex put in, ‘that's what we'll have to do unless we can find something we can use soon.’

The discussion continued, with Cliff and Roy remaining unconvinced of the need for urgency. They both felt that any trouble which might flare up would be directed at the military, rather than toward other survivors. Alex, however, did not share their optimism.

After pushing their way out of the queue they set off at a brisk pace towards the shore. The lanes, as they left the centre of the town, showed little sign of life. But if the streets were empty, lanterns and shadowy forms at the windows indicated that many of the houses were still inhabited, whether or not by their original occupants, they could not be sure. On the water's edge, however, away from the distribution point, the empty derelict properties seemed to increase.

Roy and Cliff forced their way into one, a large brick house with a garage cum workshop attached. Alex and Tina took over its exploration as soon as it became clear that the house was empty. Meanwhile Roy and Cliff scoured the shoreline for materials for the raft. Alex wanted to find some clothes to replace his military uniform and, though the house had been ransacked, it appeared that the looters had only been after food, as the upstairs rooms were untouched.

Alex took several woollen jumpers, a down jacket and a woollen based pair of trousers from a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms. Tina, meanwhile, went to the dressing table and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her actions were so deliberate that Alex could not help watching her. She licked her fingers and gently wiped away the smudges of dirt from her cheeks, carefully examining her skin for purple blotches   the tell-tale signs of radiation sickness. Then she tugged gently on her hair. A large clump came out in her hand. She let the strands of hair fall through her fingers onto the dressing table and stood staring blankly at them.

Alex stopped what he was doing and went straight to her. She remained motionless, staring down at the table. He placed his arm around her shoulder. ‘Mine's the same,’ he said softly. He pulled hard at his hair and emptied a handful of it over the table. The strands drifted down and settled amongst Tina’s hair.

‘We're turning into monsters,’ she said sadly. ‘Like those poor creatures back at the work camp. Hideous, hairless monsters.’

‘Just because we have lost some hair,’ Alex said firmly, ‘doesn't mean we're going to die.’

‘I don't feel well,’ she said flatly, and suddenly her eyes were soft and moist. ‘It's more than just nausea. I have stomach cramps and I get so weak and tired. I just want to lie down and not get up, ever.’

He put a hand over her forehead. She felt hot, not burning up, but she definitely had a temperature. His heart began to pound at once. ‘How long has this been going on?’ he demanded. ‘Why didn't you tell me earlier?’

‘I'm not about to drop dead,’ she said quietly. ‘I just don't feel very well.’

Her voice was sad, filled with a weariness he had never heard before. She walked past him and sat on the bed. Alex followed, and took both her hands in his. They were freezing.

‘Are you getting worse?’

‘No…not really. Just very tired.’

He switched on his torch and examined her more closely. Her face was deathly pale, the lines of exhaustion etched under her eyes. She looked dreadful.

‘Lie down,’ he ordered. ‘I noticed some medicines in the bathroom.’ He darted out and returned a few minutes later with some tablets and a flask full of water from their supplies. Tina had climbed under the blankets and was curled up into a tight ball. The fact that she had obeyed him so meekly sent a new wave of unease through him. He gave her two aspirins, then sat on the bed beside her, watching her anxiously.