Brother in the Land (13 page)

‘Why Purples, Mr Branwell?' He was busy. We all were, but I couldn't get it out of my mind. Of all the things I'd seen since the nukes, that was the most loathsome. I knew now why Rhodes had gone on firing long after they were all dead. He'd been trying to shoot the whole scene out of existence, like there never were any Purples.

Branwell answered me, pouring petrol into the car's tank. ‘There was a song. A long time ago. A pop song. The Purple People-Eater. It was about a monster that went round eating people. It was a kids' song really but I believe it topped the charts. I suppose somebody remembered it and started calling cannibals Purples. I'd try to forget it now, if I were you; you're going to need all your mind to get through the next few hours.'

We were going. Tonight. The past twenty-four hours had been hectic, so hectic I'd scarcely had time to feel scared. We'd got Ben back to the house, fixed the bump on his head and started right in getting ready. Now most of the work was done. The time was approaching and I was frightened. I kept thinking about the Purples, but in between I thought about dying, and it had me a lot more scared than when Booth was leading me out to be shot. Crazy.

We'd all gathered in the big room at the house, and Branwell had talked to us. I kept remembering that, too. ‘We have to
succeed,' he'd said. ‘We'll only get this one chance. If they beat us off, they'll come after us and wipe us out.' Great.

He'd sent some people up to the camp to try and organize a rising among the inmates to coincide with our assault. They were people who'd continued to live in the ruins of Skipley right through the winter. Kim's sister's husband was one of them. They'd pretend to have had enough, and give themselves up at the camp in exchange for a bunk and clean water to drink. Nobody up there would suspect anything. It happened all the time.

We'd set off up the road at one-thirty a.m. There was a truck of theirs out along the Branford road with an APC. A party of our guys would ambush these vehicles as they tried to return to Kershaw Farm. When the sentries at the road-block heard our motors, they'd think it was the truck coming back, and by the time they rumbled us we'd be on them. Car One, with the rocket-launcher, would be in front. It would fire its rocket into the roadblock, and then go through with the Land-Rover right behind, up towards the main gate. There they would park across the gateway, blocking it.

Meanwhile, Car Two and Car Three would have left the road further down, where the camp started. The inmates would have cut the wire at the bottom corner, right where Booth had led me to be shot. Car Two was to drive through the gap in the wire and race up towards the farm, using the rows of huts for cover. Car Three, with me in it as well as some others, would go round the bottom of the camp, outside the fence, and drop us off halfway up the other side. We were to go on foot the rest of the way, knock out the watch-towers at the back of the farm, and cut the wire there. The car would then crash through the gate that led from the camp to the new farmland, and join up with Car Two in its assault on the Farm.

It was Rhodes' plan. He'd had his spies out. There was a lot more to it than I've said – something about a diversionary disturbance inside the camp and a lot of men on foot with various jobs to do, but I never knew it all. I had a big wire-cutter which someone showed me how to use, and I'd have to get through a double fence with it while people shot at
me. That was enough. When it was nearly time, I went and spoke to Branwell again.

‘If I don't make it, will you look after Ben for me?' I knew it sounded corny, like something in a war film, but I wanted to think of him being okay if something happened. He was staying there at the house till next day, along with the sick and Kate and a few of the men.

He didn't laugh at me like he might have, he just grinned and ruffled my hair and said, ‘Of course I will, lad. Don't worry about it.' He didn't say, ‘Nothing's going to happen to you.' He was a very straight old guy.

Anyway, when everything was ready we sort of hung around, waiting till it was time to go. That was the worst part. I tried to talk to Kim, but she had her sister with her. Maureen. Maureen was worried about her husband Mike, who was up at the camp. Neither of them wanted to talk or anything. Kim looked strange with her face blacked up and a submachine-gun on her back, like somebody else.

Rhodes got on my nerves. He kept moving round from group to group as we stood about the factory floor, urging us in a loud whisper to remember our roles and wait for his signal. We'd been over it loads of times but he was like a cat on hot bricks.

I was sitting with my back against the wall and my head between my knees, half-asleep, when the signal came to move out. The people who were going on foot were to leave first. Kim was one of them. I sort of jerked awake and sat watching them all pile out through the door; searching for her with my eyes. In their rags and equipment and black-face they all looked the same but I spotted her. I got up and went over, shoving my way through the jostling crowd.

She was on her way out; part of the thick surge converging on the doorway, and I had to reach out and grab her arm to stop her. She turned, holding the sling of her weapon with one hand. People banged against us as soon as we stopped and I pulled her to one side, out of the crush. She glared at me from behind her paint.

‘What is it, Danny? What d'you want?'

‘I – I wanted to say something. Good luck or something. I mean, we don't know if we'll...' I broke off, aware that my voice was wavering; not knowing really why I'd pulled her from the crowd. She scowled fiercely.

‘Listen: I told you. We've got to be hard, harder than them. Cavemen rule, okay?' She broke my grip and turned, back into the stream. I stood and watched her head among all the others till it disappeared. She didn't look back.

When they'd all gone, Rhodes stood by the door with a couple of his cronies, peering at his watch. We were to give them ten minutes' start, then follow with the cars. We were standing there, nervous as hell, when we heard the sound of a truck. Rhodes swore, rapped out some orders and ran out into the dark with two guys following. The rest of us moved forward but old Branwell stood in the doorway and held us back with an upraised arm. There was a shout from the yard, and a squeal of brakes, and some cheering. Branwell turned, peered out and said, ‘It's the ambush party – they've brought a truck!'

It was a terrific boost to our morale. Usually, trucks were damaged or destroyed in ambushes, but these guys had captured one intact. There was some hurried adjustment of plans. The truck would go in front of Car One, so that the sentries at the barricade would be fooled into opening up for it. The car and the Land-Rover would dash through after it, and some guys in the back of the truck would deal with the sentries from behind. By the time all this had been worked out, it was time to go.

We left the factory and got into our vehicles. Car Three was packed. Besides the driver and myself, there were three men with submachine-guns and a woman with the crossbow. It was her own crossbow and she was reckoned to be an expert at it. She was to deal with the sentries in the towers behind the farm. We set off, with bits of each other's gear sticking into us; bumping along to the moor road and swinging right to begin the long climb. The armour on the windshield, and all the extra passengers put a strain on the engine and we whined and jerked our way up the steep twisting road. We showed no
lights and, though all the other vehicles were in front of us somewhere, we couldn't see them.

I sat, squashed between two men, hugging my big wire-cutters and thinking about Ben. I wished for the thousandth time that things had worked out better for him; that no nukes had fallen and he was just a little lad at school, learning to read. They used to say we had nukes to protect our way of life but where was it now?

I was busy with these Spacer-like thoughts when there came a sound of shooting from somewhere up ahead and we stopped briefly. There were flashes in the sky. I could see the others' faces by their light and knew they were scared like me. It had begun, and soon now we'd be safe, or dead.

We jerked forward suddenly, swerved right and then I could see the wire of the camp on my left as we bounced over the rough ground. There was a fire somewhere inside the compound and I caught a brief glimpse of Car Two in silhouette against it with weapons bristling in the windows. Our vehicle did a screaming left-turn, flinging us all into one-another and then we were climbing; racing up the perimeter of the camp towards the farm, skidding to a halt by a wire-strung gate between towers.

‘Out!' This mate of Rhodes' was with us. He more or less bundled us out onto the bumpy turf. A beam of light from one of the towers came swinging down, glancing off the car. We flung ourselves flat. One of the men fired off a burst and the light went out.

‘Come on!' The man who was giving all the orders jumped up and started running up the slope. We all followed, clutching tools and weapons. Car Three roared into motion behind us, heading for the gate. We heard the impact as it rammed the wire.

After that, things followed so quickly that it's all a bit of a blur, looking back. We were shot at from the towers but there was little light and nobody got hit. When we arrived at the back of the farm there was already a lot of commotion inside the wire, with flares and gunfire and shouting. It wasn't as bad as I'd thought it would be for me; the sentries in the towers
here were looking, and shooting, inwards, and I was able to get right up to the wire without drawing any fire. As I started to cut, the woman with the crossbow got busy, and the firing from the towers became sporadic. I snipped away furiously, sweating and gritting my teeth and feeling that maybe things were going our way. The purpose of the gap I was making was twofold – for our forces to retreat through if they were driven back, and for us to advance through if we were winning.

We were winning. I was through the outer fence before anybody shot at me. When they did, I never heard it above all the other racket. There was just a cluster of little impacts on the ground by my feet and a sort of pinging. Somebody yelled ‘Get down!', and then I was struck a terrific blow on the forearm, as though somebody had thumped me. I lost my grip on the cutters and staggered to one side, and somebody did a rugby-tackle on me from behind. I fell down in the track between the fences, catching my cheek on a barb as I did so. The guy who'd tackled me grabbed the cutters and began snipping at the taut strands while two others shot the lights out. Something felt wet and, exploring with my fingers, I discovered to my surprise that I was bleeding. Inside the compound the racket was beginning to subside. There was a terrific bang and a blinding light, followed by submachine-gun fire and a lot of shouting.

The guy with the cutters looked round at one of the others and shouted, ‘That's the rocket. They're storming the front gate!'

It was quickly over after that. Finding themselves attacked in the rear, the soldiers who'd been pressing Rhodes' men around the house threw down their arms and surrendered, so that by the time the men I'd come with went in through the gap, it was finished. I didn't see any of it myself, because I had a flesh-wound in my arm and lost some blood and passed out, and it was only when they were going round picking up the wounded that they found me and carried me into the house. It's funny how undramatic getting shot can be.

There were about seventy prisoners when it was over. Most of them were soldiers, though there were four policemen, six Civil Defence guys and some women and kids as well. Booth had died in the fighting. Finch was dead too; killed by a stray bullet, but most of his top-dogs had survived. There was Councillor Mrs Walker, his Food Officer. She'd been responsible for the slop doled out in Ramsden Park and had probably poisoned the Spacers. There was Lightowler, Chairman of the Hospital Management Committee before the nukes, who'd been the Health Officer, and Stroud, the Information Officer, who'd written the lying instructions about the non-existent hospital and all that. Captain Laycock, the TA officer in command of the troops was alive, and so was the MO, Lieutenant Renton.

Rhodes wanted to shoot them all, except Renton, who was a doctor. He said they didn't deserve to live, and that some of them were war criminals. Branwell argued with him, pointing out that the soldiers had had to do as they were told, and that you can't have war criminals when you're not at war. Rhodes wanted to know how he could say we weren't at war when we'd just attacked and captured their stronghold, and how had these pipsqueaks, as he called them, swung places for themselves in the deep shelter in the first place? There was this deep shelter under Kershaw Farm, which must have been built on the quiet
long before. Nobody in Skipley knew it was there. Some pal of Rhodes's had found Finch hiding in it when the fighting was over, and had fired the stray bullet that ended his life.

Anyway, most people were on Branwell's side, so Rhodes had to be content for the moment. I missed all this of course, but Kim filled me in after, when she visited me in the hospital hut.

Two days later they started fetching the sick up from Branwell's place. They needed my bed, so they kicked me out with my arm in a sling. Ben had come up with the first batch. It was nice to see him again.

The place was a mess because of the fighting, and everybody was busy clearing up. The civilian prisoners were helping, but the soldiers were shut up in two of their own huts till it was decided what to do with them. I couldn't do much because of my arm, so I was given the job of keeping Ben and the other kids occupied and out from under everybody's feet. We played at football between the huts of the camp, which wasn't easy because of the slope; or tag and hide-and-seek. It was warm, and there was a feeling of optimism in the April air.

When the house and its surroundings were in order and everybody had been allocated a place to sleep, old Branwell turned his attention to our long-term future. Among the great heaps of stores and provisions we'd found about the place were a lot of seeds of various kinds – beans, potatoes, swedes, stuff like that. Branwell had been a smallholder. He knew all there was to know about growing stuff, and he started organizing us into working parties to take over the farm Finch had started. Everybody set to work with a will, because Branwell saw to it we were decently fed and there were no rifle-butts. My arm was mending, and soon I was able to dispense with the sling and take my place in the field. The kids were handed over to Kate, which suited Ben down to the ground.

We didn't take the wire down, mainly because we were all too busy, but we didn't mend it either, and nobody manned the gates. As soon as they learned of Finch's overthrow, the remaining inhabitants of the ruins started coming in. Within three weeks or so there were four hundred of us, including the
prisoners, and rations became meagre. Rhodes kept on chipping away, grumbling about taking all comers, but the success of the attack, coupled with everybody's optimism now, made Branwell a popular leader and nobody took much notice of him. He never lost an opportunity to be unpleasant with me, but I didn't care. It was spring. Things were stirring in the soil and Kim, now that the immediate dangers had receded, was beginning to lose her hard shell. One day, as I was hoeing between some rows of new-sprung radish, she came over to me with a rare light in her eyes.

‘Hey, Danny, guess what?'

I looked up, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. ‘What?'

‘Maureen's going to have a baby.'

‘Oh. Wow.' I didn't know what to say. I mean, if I'd been a woman, living like we were living, I don't think I'd have wanted a baby. It didn't seem much of a world to bring a kid into. Kim looked highly chuffed though. She put her hands on her hips.

‘Is that all you can say, Danny Lodge?'

‘No. I mean, it's great, Kim. If that's what Maureen and Mike want. It's not going to be easy though, is it? Bringing a kid up in all this?'

She looked at me hard. ‘No, Danny. It won't be easy. But it's what people will have to do, isn't it, if the human race isn't to die out?'

I hadn't an answer to that, and, as time went by, and it seemed everybody in the settlement was talking about nothing else, I got quite excited myself. It was all part of the feeling we had of things coming back to life; the phoenix rising from the ashes and all that.

One of the guys found this carved stone in a smashed church. A Green Man, Branwell said it was. A pagan god with trees sprouting out of its mouth and leaves all round its head: a symbol of Spring, when life comes out of death. We set it up by the farmhouse door because it seemed appropriate. That's how optimistic we were.

June came. Branwell had this calendar he made himself. It
started from the day after the battle, which he reckoned was April 15th. He didn't know for sure of course, but he said it was only days out if it was out at all. So forty-six days after we took Kershaw it was June. We'd cleared a lot of land, twenty acres according to Branwell, and it was all planted. Swedes, potatoes, beans, radish, lettuce and cabbage. We'd rounded up a few scraggy chickens, too, that scratched about in a coop in the yard. So far, they'd laid no eggs at all.

There were generators for electricity, and quite a stock of fuel to run them on. Some of the guys were looking at ways to preserve vegetables by freezing and even canning, if they could get the metal. There was some pretty good radio equipment in one of the rooms upstairs and this was manned round the clock by people who knew what they were doing. They listened out for any transmissions from elsewhere, and transmitted themselves at frequent intervals in the hope of making contact with other settlements or even the Government or something. We were always talking about the Government, and how it must have survived in its own deep shelter, but all they ever got was static.

Branwell let the soldiers out. Their CO, Laycock, gave an assurance that they'd co-operate in the running of the settlement and give no trouble. The civvy prisoners were released too, except Mrs Walker the poisoner, whom several people had sworn to get.

After the soldiers got out, some of them took to keeping watch at night. Habit, I suppose, but nobody came near. If there were Goths or Purples about they stayed well away. Rhodes got pally with the troops and would spend hours with them in their huts, laughing and playing cards.

Kate and some others organized a school for the kids. They'd been running wild long enough, and were in danger of turning into little savages. I expected protestations and tears, but as it turned out Ben seemed only too happy to go, and that went for the others, too. There were about fourteen of them altogether, aged between five and eleven. The older kids in the settlement, those over eleven or so, had long ago adopted adult roles. They'd had to. They had the rudiments of an education
already, and were certainly not going to start going to school with the little ones. I asked Kate what sort of things she was going to teach.

‘Reading,' she said. ‘And writing.'

‘What for?' I asked. ‘There's nothing to read, and who are they going to write to?' She laughed and called me a pessimist. These skills have to be preserved, she said. Branwell talked to them a lot about morals, loving one another and not fighting and all that, and I could see some sense in that. They spent a lot of time outside, too, watching and helping in the field, so that when their turn came they'd know how to grow their food.

Another thing Branwell did was to set up a chapel. At least, he called it a chapel, though it was only one of the huts on the slope. New chapels are supposed to be consecrated or something but there was no clergyman in the settlement and nobody else knew how to do it. He nailed a wooden cross he'd made on the door, and said that would have to do.

He announced a thanksgiving meeting in the chapel. After all the horrible things that had happened to us, I didn't think anybody would go, but the place was packed. Ben and the other kids went with Kate, but I didn't go myself. I didn't see how things like nukes could happen if there was somebody up there looking after us.

Kim didn't go either. We'd talked about it, and she felt the same as me. It was a bright morning that promised a hot day, and we went down to the edge of the field and sat looking out over the ruins of Skipley to the bluish hills beyond. We talked, and then the singing started and we fell silent, listening, and when it stopped there were tears in Kim's eyes and I had to swallow hard a few times too. Neither of us believed, yet I think we both sensed that the chapel and the singing sort of completed our settlement, changed it from a camp to a village, like the village out of which Skipley had grown. I think we felt ourselves at the beginning of something, a new Skipley perhaps, or a new world, peopled with our children. Branwell's children, who would love and laugh and give no thought
to war. I think it was something like that, and whatever it was it was beautiful. I wish we could have halted time right then, and stayed like that forever.