Surviving The Evacuation (Book 1): London (27 page)

I could probably have squeezed passed the coach, but I had no idea why it had stopped there or whether the doors at the front were open. As They started hammering on the window I turned and headed back the way I'd come.

I guess it was sort of inevitable really. I'd been heading in a roughly south-westerly direction all day, and I'd been waking the undead up, getting their attention and They'd started following me. There were certainly more on the road this time, far too many to get off and deal with individually. Five times I was almost dragged off the bike, before I got back onto a road I'd not travelled on before. Then I just pedalled and kept pedalling until I was alone once more.

I’m thoroughly lost now, in an old barn at the edge of a field.
Possibly in Surrey, possibly in Hampshire.
I've my rabbit for dinner, enough water that I don't need to find more tonight, and a strong door to keep me safe whilst I sleep. Who could ask for anything more?

Day 73. Brazely Abbey, Hampshire.

I think I have found my sanctuary, Brazely Abbey. After an hour of cycling this morning with no greater aim than heading toward the coast I spotted a sign for Brazely. It is a small hamlet in the Hampshire Downs consisting of five houses, a bus stop and a phone booth and little more. It's name was one I remembered from the address book. It took another hour to find the Abbey, a secluded ruin hidden down an unpaved track a good quarter mile from the road.

It's not at all what I thought an Abbey would look like. The old Abbey had been burnt down during the Reformation, but the land had been bought back and, according to the information board, they've been restoring it for the past fifty years. The old part, at least as far as I’m concerned, has only two important features, a stone wall that has survived centuries and a well. A well! Fresh, clean water!

The ancient stone walls form two sides of a square. On the other sides are the newer buildings, a chapel, a dormitory and a kitchen/shower room.
It is the very epitome of the renouncing of worldly goods.
Very medieval, almost perfect. Other than the well there are bee hives, an orchard with most of the clear land given over to growing vegetables.

This is exactly, exactly what I've been looking for. There's food in the storeroom, enough for at least a couple of weeks. Plenty of building materials too. Those must have been brought here after the Outbreak. Someone has already blocked the windows and barricaded the gaps between the buildings. I think this is as best a place to live as I've found so far.

Now. Time to wash. Then to eat.

Day 75, Brazely Abbey, Hampshire.

Yesterday was spent filling in the gaps around the wall. Now I can sleep knowing I won't wake to find the dormitory surrounded. That in itself has given me great peace of mind. It's a beautiful spot here, tranquil, quiet. Attracted no doubt by the sound of my labours, twice I’ve heard Them coming, slouching through the woods, scattering leaf mould, breaking branches, disturbing the thousands of birds nesting in the trees. Twice I've dispatched Them, then continued with my work.

What I didn't notice until yesterday evening, when it was getting too dark to see were the tyre tracks. Someone has been here, and as recently as last week. I'd assumed the building materials were here as part of the restoration work, but of course, the boarded up windows are signs of work being done since the outbreak. For some reason they left, I could say I hope they're coming back, but I don't know if I do. Who are these people? Are they the monks or locals? Will we get along? I know that sounds childish, but I really do feel like the kid at a new school, they were here first, after all.

Will they like me? Will they let me stay? Will they blame me for the evacuation? I could lie. I could burn this journal, but it's become part of me over the past few months, my only connection to the past and to the idea that there will be some kind of future.

The truth of it is that I can leave here and find somewhere else before they come back, or I can set to and help make this place a safe haven, a community from which a new society can be formed. I’m tired of running. This is where I stand.

Day 77, Brazely Abbey, Hampshire.

Today is the 28
th
May, the day I originally thought the cast should have come off. It seems like such a long time ago that I set that arbitrary milestone and started counting the days. At the time the sole pur
pose of the adoption of such a distant goal was nothing more than to provide some kind of daily reassurance that there would be a tomorrow and a tomorrow after that. And now? It is seventy seven days since the power went out in London. Seventy seven days of this new era, seventy seven days since my life truly changed beyond what it would have been had outbreak not occurred. I imagine I've become a different person, but have I really?

I've spent the last few days working on the defences and I've begun to
wonder
whether those who were here so recently, who began the work on this place, whether they may not be coming back.

As best as I can estimate come harvest there will be enough fruit and vegetables here for at least a dozen people for perhaps six months. It's a very rough estimate, but even so I've far more than I can possibly eat and no way to store any of it.

With no freezers, no sugar to make jam, nor vinegar for pickling, the food here will rot on the trees and I will starve come the winter. To that end, tomorrow, I will go out once more. I need to find a way of becoming self-sufficient and if I find others on my way then so be it.

Day 78, The Grange Farm Estate, Hampshire.

I left at dawn, the clouds grew heavy by lunchtime. It started raining before dusk, whilst the sun was still above the skyline. It's rain like I've never seen it before. The sky ahead was clear but I felt the pressure changing. I turned around in my saddle and saw ominous black clouds galloping towards me.

I've found refuge in “The Grange Farm Estate”. It's a grand title for a collection of unprepossessing barns recently converted to holiday cottages. The path outside is under two inches of water. I'll be stuck here tonight and will have to wait until mid-morning before this dries out. If it stops.

Day 79, Grange Farm Estate, Hampshire.

Still raining. Still almost pitch black outside, but I’m sure it's morning. I've not seen anything like this except on TV, and then only as a special effect.

It's impossible to know if the undead are out there, and that's more terrifying than the idea of a storm that seems to be going on forever.

There is no escape outside. The fields will have turned to mud and that mud will cover the roads. No more writing for a while. Must conserve the torch batteries.

Day 80, Grange Farm Estate, Hampshire.

I was getting bored looking at the same walls so I went to check the other cottages. The first was empty, much like this one, the second had two bodies in it, both dead. On the table was a note.

“The vaccine was a lie. The evacuation was a lie. I think, deep down, I knew that from the start. Where was the food going to come from to feed everyone? I know they said that it would be a tough few years but we'd manage it, that The Indomitable Island Spirit would prevail. That's what they said. It was a lie. The numbers just didn’t add up. Food is energy, and it would take too much energy to move all those people, all those useless people with their suddenly
antiquated
skills they were nothing but mouths to feed in a world of hunger.

I worked for the police. I was a sergeant, stuck in an admin job, collating and cataloguing evidence. It wasn't a bad life, now I look back on it, though I didn't think so at the time. A pension, a salary, and I didn’t have to see anything that kept me up at night. No, it wasn't a bad life at all.

It was about three am, on the 21
st
of February, the night after we started getting word in from the US, I was told to lock up the evidence room and report upstairs. I got a set of riot gear and a lift to a big Sainsbury's out near Balham. I was alone until about five am when another van turned up and two constables got out. Neither had even finished their training but they were decked out like me, just a bunch of coppers, you see. The Thin Blue Line.

Then the army came. Three of them, armed like this was Afghanistan, acting like it too. I don't know what they'd been told, they kept it between themselves.

We turned people away all day, told them it'd be re-opening soon, that there'd be rationing, but that they'd get their food. Just like we'd been told to say. For now they should go home, watch the TV, listen to the radio and keep calm. Keep calm, Christ, wasn't that ironic.

But it did stay calm, at least for us. Over the Squaddie's radio we kept hearing about disturbances and calls for reinforcements, but we were OK. People came, and they left, grumbling, annoyed, put out, but, I think, glad that someone seemed to be in control.

It stayed calm right up until that night. That's when the crowd came. I don't know where they came from. Maybe they all had the same idea at the same time. At first I thought it might be from the estate near the station, but the clothes were wrong. About a hundred and fifty of them came marching into the car park, all demanding food.

I tried to talk to them, tried to reason with them, tried to get them to go home. One of them just laughed at me. Then she spoke in this loud clear voice that carried far beyond the car park. She said she knew the soldiers wouldn't fire. She said they weren't allowed to, not in England. She said that meant it was just three of us cops and a hundred and fifty of them. They were taking the food and it'd be easier if we just got out of the way. She said they wouldn't hurt us.

That's when her head exploded. I don't know which of the soldiers fired that first shot, it doesn't matter, I just dived to the ground as all three of them opened fire into the crowd. I lay there, waiting for it to stop as this constant, endless staccato bam-bam-bam went on and on.

When it finally stopped, when I dared open my eyes there were at least thirty bodies lying there in the car park. The others had run. I could just make out the last one limping away.

I stood up. I don't know what I was going to do, whether I even knew. Not all the people lying there had stopped moving. Some were sobbing, some crying for help, some just screaming unintelligibly.

I started to walk towards the three soldiers. One of them, the one in charge though he wasn't wearing any insignia, he was on the radio, one of the others, the youngest, still had his rifle raised, moving it from side to side as if he was looking for a new target. The third was sobbing. As I walked back towards them he dropped the rifle pulled out his side arm and shot himself in the head.

That stopped me. I was still staring at his body when three lorries arrived. A squad of soldiers got out of the first and half of them headed towards us. They spoke in low tones to our two soldiers, took their weapons from them and escorted them back to the truck. Two of them picked up the one who'd committed suicide and took his body as well.

That's when I thought that actually it was OK, that they'd acted without orders, that they'd been arrested, and that this would go down as a horrible tragedy. I managed to hold onto that shred of sanity for another four seconds or so, until the next shot rang out.

The other half of that group, the soldiers who'd not relieved the two who'd been with us, they'd started walking amongst the crowd and were shooting each of them in the head. Wounded and dead alike, they each got a bullet.

When it was over the one in charge walked over to the second lorry and slapped his hand on the side. Out came a dozen people. One of them I recognised, Chester Carson, a petty thief who'd been on his way to graduating as a full time fence before he'd been arrested. They'd not charged him, that I knew, they were trying to get him to do a deal.

I watched as he and the others, all wearing thick rubber gloves, picked up the bodies and threw them into the third lorry. I watched as it drove away when it was full. I waited until another one came, and I watched as they finished the job. I watched as that fourth lorry drive off, then the one with the prisoners. Then I watched as the final lorry left, taking half the soldiers with them. And I stood there watching the soldiers that remained until I was relieved at eight o'clock the next morning.

I got a few hours sleep in the station, we weren't allowed to go home, before being woken to be told we were being armed. A few hours after that a new order came in, we were all going to be kitted out in military camouflage. It was necessary to make it appear that there were more of us than there were.

I’m not military. I’m a policeman. I believe in law and order and as tatty as it's become I still believe in justice. I’m a civilian in a democracy, not an executioner in a police state. I took the gun and I ran.

That's Elsie on the floor over there, I met her about a week after the “evacuation”. I was holding up in a flat in Vauxhall, I knew there'd be no one there, since its owners had been arrested the month before. I met her in the lobby of the building, her entering as I was about to leave. We decided to travel together. She didn’t trust the government. That's why she stayed. That's what saved her life.