There were at least six more aid stops that day, before parking up at the last one for the night. The morning brought a second wave of trucks to join the first, before we set off again on our broadly northern way of motorways and A-roads. At one point we came under fire from a couple of distant guns; though neither the Captain or anyone else paid very much attention, I guessing it must have been a fairly common occurrence.
None of the subsequent stops we saw were any more eventful than the first, I counting three deaths in all. We were present for maybe half a dozen more aid stops that second day; before the Captain took up the radio and advised he was making his ‘special drop’ now. Our vehicle pulled out of the train and over to the hard shoulder of the freeway, as the others thundered past. A soldier in the frontseat half-got out and swept the surrounding countryside with his aim; as the Captain, shaking our hands, gave us one last look, and said,
‘I’ve marked this point on the map, your target’s five miles that-a-way,’ before he and the Land Rover were gone to rejoin the tail of the passing pack.
Wareing though was clearly not thankful of these directions. I guessed at first that he resented the Captain knowing our destination, after going through his papers. Yet we weren’t walking for long before he stopped to study the map again and say,
‘I don’t get this. He’s dropped us off five miles too early.’
We had already climbed over the barrier and were walking down the motorway embankment in the direction that the Captain had given us.
‘The motorway turns away here,’ continued Wareing, gesturing toward the countryside behind us, ‘but comes right back around nearer the town. Look, it even has its own turn off!’ He pointed it out on the map.
‘Perhaps the town’s too sensitive to drop us by?’ I ventured.
‘And half a mile away wasn’t sufficient to dissociate us from his convoy?’
‘Then shall we keep on the motorway?’
‘No, we’ll go as the crow flies. But keep your eyes open.’
This latest cause for distrust hardly helped my journeymate’s mood, the short walk thankfully not taking us very long, over rough ground and riverbank, before we stumbled on suburban houses; one of whose back gardens I lay out in, as he again studied the papers, saying,
‘We should get closer, scout out the Council House, before we go in after dark.’ (It was afternoon now.) Yet no sooner were we back on the well-ordered suburban streets, than we saw two people, both in overalls and strolling relaxedly with tools over their shoulders. We ducked behind a garden wall as they turned onto a different road.
‘Were they carrying those garden forks as weapons?’ asked Wareing quietly,
‘Their faces were clean,’ I recalled, I seeing them better, ‘their hair washed, no blood or bruises on them. They looked like they were just going off to do some digging.’
We went to rise; then quickly fell back down behind the wall again, as the sound of an engine approached.
‘Is that the convoy come back?’ I asked. Bar those just departed, the only other engine I’d heard recently had been Tommy’s tractor all those days ago. The new noise got louder, until the engine went into idle at what could only have been the junction that the gardeners turned off at.
‘Hello,’ called a new voice. ‘You’re around here somewhere, aren’t you?’
I rolled over (on my bad rib) to view between two trees, then rolled right back again, whispering to Wareing,
‘Man with a handgun, on the back of a civvie four-by-four.’
‘We can’t move, he’s too close.’
‘Don’t mind the gun,’ the man continued from the end of the road, ‘we only carry it to frighten off raiders: you’re not raiders, are you?’ There was a note of smugness and superiority in the man’s voice.
‘They’re over here, Zak.’
We hadn’t noticed the footsteps of the gardeners, who had come back around in a circle and were now looking right at us from two houses away. Like idiots, we rose with hands raised.
‘No need for that,’ said the smug man. ‘Welcome. You’ll come into town, won’t you? We like to greet our visitors personally.’
We sat in the back of the four-by-four unrestrained, the man keeping his pistol on his lap. The two others had been left to return to their gardening. The vehicle, I had noticed as we got in, was marked with the logo of a local tree surgeon, nothing more unusual than that; yet in that silent world its engine cut the air like the roar of a dragon.
From recent experiences, I think I took for granted that the houses we drove past would be empty, or at least their occupants hidden; yet as we neared the town centre there were people on their driveways or opening windows that fine afternoon. In another age we might have even waved ‘Good morning’ to them from the back of the truck; but to us at that moment they were only so many sentries.
We pulled up in town outside a large building that I guessed to be the Council House, again little different to how such a place would surely have been before E-Day, bar the boarded up ground-floor windows and sand bags at the vehicle entrance. People were milling about outside talking, laughing… relaxing! Vehicles were being loaded or unloaded, while people in sturdy clothing – often with garden tools – were leaving or returning. The building seemed to be the hub of some large agricultural enterprise.
‘Come on,’ gestured Zak. ‘I’ll take you to see Jack and Mill.’ We entered past the sandbags through an archway leading to a courtyard carpark, the building enclosing it on almost all sides. From the carpark was a door into the building itself, a flight of stairs leading up towards an open-plan first floor office. This had been cleared to serve as a kind of operations room. Further hardily-dressed people were up here, in discussions and drinking mugs of tea. In the centre, for the two longest sides of the room were windowed, stood noticeboards on castors with the County maps pinned to them. This was clearly where they plotted whatever they were up to.
‘Jack, two new faces in town.’
The man who turned from the board he had been studying was an older, more serious man, who I felt instantly at ease with as he stuck out a hand to shake,
‘Jack Berne.’
‘Crofts.’
‘Wareing.’
‘Zak, won’t you fetch them a cup of cocoa? So, new in town? Where’re you from?’
Wareing did the talking,
‘Just passing through, looking for game.’
‘Yes, you look like trappers. Well, it’s mostly farming around here. We’re just perfect, you see: a good-sized town but surrounded by farmland within walking distance.’
‘We didn’t mean to cause any trouble back there.’
(I could hardly contain myself as this, mine and Wareing’s bags being full of charges and timers which, if needed, then he meant to use to blow the place apart.)
‘Oh, Zak just has to be careful in his role,’ replied Jack Berne. ‘People see what we’ve got here and they think there’s something to steal. Well, they’re welcome to all the vegetables they can eat, just so long as they help us to grow them! And that’s an offer open to anyone passing this way, yourselves included. But here’s the person to talk to about all that.’
Zak had come back with two mugs, beside him a young woman carrying two more. Zak handed one of his to Wareing.
‘And this one’s for you,’ she said, his partner handing me one of hers.
‘This is Mill,’ beaned Jack Berne. ‘We’re not big on giving ourselves titles around here, but you could call her our Head Grower.’
‘Ah, new recruits?’ she asked.
‘Well I’ve made them the offer. Come on, let’s find you somewhere to throw down those bags for the night. You’re welcome to eat with us at six, and decide what you want to do in the morning. It’s nearly evening and we turn in early here.’
‘The old reception’s free. I’ll show them down there,’ offered Mill, who then led us along low-lit corridors and down the central stairs.
‘How many of you are there?’ I asked
her as we walked.
‘We must be nearly five hundred, and growing every day. Zak’s a wonderful organiser, and people trust Jack. A lot of the town are here still, some even keep their houses if they’re near the centre; though its safer to sleep in the Council House, and easier for meals.’
We arrived at a double-height room, empty but for a fitted counter and a large semicircular window that arced above our heads. Within the window were glass doors that led back onto the courtyard.
‘This used to be the main reception,’ she explained, ‘back when the building was only half the size, before they built the newer part in front of it, and this became just a staff door leading to the carpark. People have slept in here before, but they don’t tend to stay for long, what with everyone seeing in: too busy by day and too open at night. The doors are locked, of course – I’ll do them for you now – but it’s the high windows you see, too much sky getting in. Anyway, I shouldn’t think that that would bother men like you, used to the wild. I like it actually, but I tend to sleep in my office.
‘Well, drink up, and come back to the main room at six. Dinner’s on us!’
The room was indeed exposed, the windows reaching from the ceiling almost to floor level. We threw our bedding down – she had picked up sleeping bags for us along the way – and I was just unhooking by pack from my shoulders, when I heard Wareing speak. I had sensed he was tense before, and almost as soon as we were alone it poured out,
‘We’re not going to be able to get down to the basement, they’ve got this place sewn up.’
‘But think about it,’ I suggested. ‘This is the perfect result for us. Who’s going to be able to get into the basement to cause trouble with them guarding it?’
‘But these aren’t the Councillors, Crofts, this isn’t the emergency committee. These are employees, locals, anyone wandering by with a hoe! What if they stumble over those rooms in the basement, find a code book, find a telephone, start babbling any old thing over the radio? Who knows what chaos they could cause.’
For me, whose understanding of why we were even on this mission had sometimes been shaky, I couldn’t see the damage that the building’s current occupants could do. Even if by some fluke they did find a code or phone and made a call, then who would they get through to but a command station or Whitehall bunkers, who would likely be mighty glad to hear from them?
‘No,’ he continued, ‘tonight we’ve got to sneak out of here and blow it up.’
‘Blow what up?’
‘The whole place.’
‘What? A building full of people? You’re mad!’
‘Crofts, our trying to get down to the bunker rooms themselves in such a busy building will be impossible. They’re bound to find us, they might think us thieves or saboteurs, shoot us. Or worse, lock us down there! Do you want to die in one of these places..?’
But those last words were not his, if indeed any of them had been. He was babbling, speaking in tongues; and then he went down. I falling quickly to his side to aid him, he was already curling into the foetal position atop his sleeping bag. At first I thought his ankle had given way, but he was far from in pain, instead seeming in a dazed, quite comfortable state. Moments later he was fast asleep.
‘They’ve drugged us!’ I called out to no one. ‘There was something in the drinks.’
What a trick they’d pulled. No wonder she’d rushed us down there, I thought, as I tried the doors to the courtyard that I’d already seen her lock, then turning to the smaller ones leading back to the staircases; but she’d managed to secure those ones behind her as she’d left. I pulled at the ancient counter but it was fixed, the draws behind it locked. I looked for things to hurl at the glass – a chair, a fire extinguisher – but what was the point? I lay down so as not to fall badly. But why was I still conscious, when both our mugs were drained? Eventually the feeling came over me too, and though I fought it I lost; the last sound I heard being that of others entering the room.
Chapter 19 – Waking with Mill