Project - 16 (4 page)

As the land rose steeply I began to see what I was looking
for. The road, littered with rusting heaps of old cars, ran in a
straight line up to the top of the rise, then banked down and to
the south right into the heart of the old city. The cars had long
since been picked clean of fabric or plastic and now all that was
left were dirty brown scrap heaps sat on oxidised aluminium rims.
They'd been abandoned in a neat line of traffic, all nose to
bumper, more than likely when the first of the sirens began to
sound all that time ago. I imagined it was a panicked affair,
people jumping out of their little metal boxes to try and outrun
the first of the missile strikes. Where would they be running to? I
wondered. A shelter? The army? Dad had never gone into any details
about how our country ended up like this but he sometimes talked
about The Great Panic and the time the sky rained dust for months.
He warned me that it hadn't been a nuclear attack. “No son, if it
had then we'd all be dead now. Not just you and me, but the world.
Scorched into death like wood on a fire.”

I'd left it at that and never really cared to find out more.
I'd grown up in it and I was happy. It was those who visited it who
looked the most shocked by what they saw, those who could see their
own cities across the sea and wondered with amazement whether it
could happen there too.

I found a hand print on the bonnet of an old Ford and the
drying puddle of urine beneath it, soaking into the crumbling
tarmac. It was smaller than my own hand and it was the man's left,
used to steady himself while he pissed up against the car. There
was no band on the third finger.

I walked on and found more disturbances in the dust. One of
them had stepped in a patch of mud that had risen through a crack
in the road and left a dry footprint a pace onwards. A third was to
the far left hand side of the road meaning they'd spread out in a
line. All three had been here. All three had gone over the hill and
down into the city and I'd have to follow. I didn't want to, that
was for certain, and I checked the magazine on my pistol, flicking
the safety off. It was insanity to go there given that any number
of the buildings were on the verge of collapsing and the roads
themselves were prone to caving into the sewers below. On top of
that great packs of dogs roamed the streets, living in the hollowed
out shells of shops and pubs, eager to sniff out their next meal
and track it down. Why they stayed there instead of going out into
the country was beyond me, but they were there all
right.

Cautiously I followed the tracks down a long street lined
with crumbling houses, brick and concrete cracking with age, some
even falling apart to expose dust filled insides like a thousand
year old corpse. More cars. More rusting heaps still parked where
they'd always been parked. Children's push bikes, the bones of a
bygone age scattered around overgrown graveyard lawns. A skeleton
of some large animal. It was all the detritus of a man-made
sepulchre and I hated it. I wanted out the moment I started heading
in. It was oppressive and stifling and stunk of death - namely my
own death.

I pressed on, following the patterns in the dirt that became
fewer and far between but were still easy to follow. They'd kept
along this road in a uniform line, perhaps breaking away here and
there to examine a house or a car, but more or less they kept on
until they reached a junction marked by the mangled wrecks of two
large transport trucks. They'd collided bang in the centre of the
cross roads, one coming down the road, the other coming from the
right. The door of one had been wrenched open and the brittle
remains of the driver had been dragged out. The cab was empty and I
climbed up to look inside, confirming my suspicion that the three
of them had looked inside. The dust had been disturbed around the
glove box and there were hand prints all over the dashboard. I
guess that there was always a chance that others had missed
something, especially in an unlikely place like a glove
box.

The tracks went on down the road to the city centre. I
followed, gathering pace a little as I went, eager to get it over
with and get out. I descended another sloping street, turned right
and followed the traffic of a dozen smashed cars until the tall
high-rise office blocks could be seen between the towering oaks
that had once lined a quaint street that was now overgrown. It was
here that I really did consider turning back.

There were cars blocking the entire tarmac strip leaving only
the pavement on the left hand side to walk on. I found their spoor
and it was clear that they'd walked in single file, but on top of
their muddy footprints were another set, another cluster of
markings - that of a dozen padded feet.

I fought the feeling to just turn tail and run, to never look
back. It froze me on the spot and I realised I was holding my
breath - and the grip of the pistol. It was an agonising time of
deciding between doing the sensible thing and doing the right
thing, the choice that best fit with my own ethos. But was it my
ethos, or the ethos passed down to me by my Dad? What would he have
done and what should I do? All this fired through my mind in
moments but to me they felt like years.

Finally I returned to my senses, took a deep breath and set
off along the tracks, still following and still hoping that somehow
I'd find them alive.

The paw prints of the dogs were a far easier spoor to follow
and they must have followed the scent for a while before moving to
act. I walked for another twenty minutes before I came across my
first signs that the three of them had engaged the animals and
faired reasonably well. Where a section of road leading to the very
centre of the high street widened there'd been a violent struggle
near two wrecked cars and a motorcycle. There were three dead dogs
littered across the tarmac - two had been shot through the chest,
the other had had its throat cut. There was plenty of dry blood
splattered around the area and it didn't seem that old when I
touched a little with my fingertip. There were also no obvious
human casualties either, which was a good sign. The only blood was
clearly that of the dogs. But how come I hadn't heard the shots?
Silenced weapons? If so, what were they really after? How well
trained were they?

As I neared the large indoor shopping precinct I got my
answer. There, disembowelled and half eaten, was the remains of the
first of the treasure hunters. He'd taken his own life with a
silenced Gloch which sat loosely in his lifeless hand - the exit
wound at the back of his skull painting a blossom of pink on the
stonework behind him. He was young, early 20's perhaps, and his
face was pale and expressionless save for where blood and brain
matter leaked out over his blue lips from the bullet hole in the
roof of his mouth. Nearby there were two more dead dogs, each one
hit in the head and chest. The boy'd been a good shot.

I wanted to check his body, to get some I.D, but it was too
dangerous to stay still. I suspected the worse now and if any of
the dogs had survived, which I was sure they had, then they'd be
looking for me next. So instead I looked inside the shopping
precinct as far as the shuttered doors before coming back and,
finding nothing, I looked for spoor around the corpse.

To the left near an alley that ran behind the shops I saw a
few drops of blood near a rusty bin. I might have missed them had
the light been a little worse, but I just caught a glimmer of them
as I was looking around. I peered down the mouth of the alley and
saw some more further on and followed. It was darker there and I
held my pistol out in front of me, cocked and ready in case I had
to react quickly. There was no need. Lying across the flagged
street was my second corpse. He had the expression of a man deep in
sleep and I might have tried to wake him up if it hadn't been for
the lack of anything inside his open chest cavity. There was an
enormous pile of half-chewed intestines and blood and fleshy bits
and I leaned against the wall with a hand over my nose. The stench
was vile and even breathing through my open mouth was a
struggle.

His pack was on the floor near some bins and I grabbed it
before walking away into fresher air. At the mouth of the alley I
took a deep breath and listened. Nothing. I didn't like it. My
scent would have been as strong to them as that rotting corpse had
been to me yet there were no dogs here, not even the sound of them
in the distance and I still had one more corpse to find. I resumed
my search, leaving the pack near the first body and finding another
on the other side of some railings towards the bus station. It was
a woman's pack, small with pink trim and a 'Hello Kitty' fob
hanging from a zip.

Rebecca's pack.

I took it back to the others before following the trail
Rebecca's pack had put me on. Still there were no sounds, no barks,
nothing. I felt like time was in a glass and the last few grains
were about to fall. I sped up, scanning the ground as quickly as I
could. A shoe. A piece of clothing. A bone. The clues led me
towards the railway station where I found a pack dropped in haste.
It must have been the pack belonging to the first body I'd found.
The steel shutters had been prised upwards and then forced back
down but something had got between the concrete floor and the door.
There was blood all over the place and the remains of a dog with
mangled front paws lay off to one side.

I tried the shutters but they weren't for budging. Then I
heard something on the other side and I stopped breathing to hear
it better. It was like a scurrying sound, like rats on a hard
floor, but it was coming closer, getting louder and I took a step
back, raised my pistol and took a deep breath. Then the shutters
suddenly shook as something huge slammed into them from the other
side. I heard snarling and barking, then the sounds multiplied and
I realised with both horror and joy that the dogs were trapped
inside the railway station and unable to get out.

I ran round the side and found a window to peak in through,
looking all over for a sign that the last treasure hunter might
have survived. I peered into the gloom, seeing the six dogs behind
the shutters trying to get at me. Then I looked towards the ticket
booth and noticed an odd shape near the desk. Then I realised that
it was the upper body of my last man, his legs a few feet away and
wedged in between the supports of a steel bench. His pack was near
his head but I had no intentions of going after it.

The dog with the mangled paws must have managed to get under
the shutters before it slammed down on him, crushing his chest.
This had given the others the gap they needed to get in and have
their feast but the dog had managed to free himself, allowing the
shutters to close and trap the others inside. I realised how lucky
I'd been. If it hadn't been for this turn of events I might have
been dog kibble by now.

I returned to the other two bodies and did a quick search of
their pockets, turning up two wallets and the maps they'd brought
with them plus a number of other useful things. In their packs were
meals-ready-to-eat, chocolate bars, tools and plenty of climbing
equipment. I planned to take it all for myself but when I came to
Rebecca's pack I stopped before I'd even opened the zip. It felt
like I was betraying someone, like I was guilty of something and so
I simply put it with the others, unopened.

The recovery of their bodies would have been much more
difficult if it hadn't been for the shopping trolley I found down
the alley where the second boy had died. I loaded it with the
corpses first, then built up a pile of packs and loot on top. It
looked macabre in the reflections from the perspex safety windows
of the shops but it was highly practical. I wanted to get them back
to the 'Rover as quickly as possible because the odds of there
being more dogs drawn to the noise was rising as I heard the
shutters rattling even from where I was. I also wondered how much
damage they could take before they made a gap big enough to get
through.

I wheeled the trolley down the pavements, trying my best to
counter the broken wheel it had which caused it to drift sideways
as I pushed. I was leaving a trail of blood that was dripping
between the mesh bottom and it left bright pink spots as I went. I
felt like a fool, like a bone collector of old in a Jester's
costume. What part of my life had gone wrong to reach the point
where I was pushing a trolley of dead kids down a road whilst
trying to escape a band of savage hounds?

It took a while but I managed to get to the 'Rover and I was
panting from the effort. I opened the back and shuffled the body of
Rebecca along to make room for the others. Then I sat the packs on
top of them before closing the door. I kicked the trolley away and
got into the cab, eager to put something solid between me and the
ever-present threat of the dogs.

I sat there sucking air into my lungs and taking swigs from
my bottle as the night came in. I'd been out too long and I was
eager to get back home, to carry on getting the poly-tunnels ready
for the spring, to find one of the roaming cows and kill it for
winter meat. There was so much to do back at home that I was glad
I'd finished the job and could now return to it.

I thought about driving through the night but decided against
it. I'd drive out of the city and find somewhere to hang the
hammock. One last night, then on to the South to debrief at Fort
Washington before heading home. I'd resupply there while I was at
it. I was eager to relieve myself of my macabre cargo and the
thoughts of a young girl slowly dying as the sun sank into the
horizon.