Harry Styles and the New York Apocalypse (7 page)

At the Country Club, Mr Ferguson had come up with the inspired idea that everyone should go for a walk in the grounds, every morning before breakfast - and he meant everyone. Some people had politely declined on first hearing of it, then attempted to find it funny when Ferguson’s people had enquired about their tardiness, then gone for the walk when they realised they were not to be left alone over the matter.

Ferguson was at the front of the strange procession, over the golf course and through the nearest woodland. He was dressed in a light blue tracksuit, giving the appearance of power-walking, although he was no faster than the most reluctant rambler at the back, and he actually moved along with a cigar sticking out of his mouth.

The staff grouped together. Jane Flynn and the other junior management, tried to see the positive side, extolling the virtue of exercise during the strange days. Taylor and Kacie thought it ridiculous, but went along, chatting to their chef friends. On the second morning, as the train bent back towards the Club, she joked that they should carry straight on. 'Onwards!'

Ferguson had turned and looked at her through his cigar smoke. Then he had hailed her for having high morale and turned back to his cronies, who agreed that the morning walks were bracing.

***

Steven Ziegler, over on Long Island, felt he could do with some exercise, being holed up in the empty house, waiting for something to happen. He had made a mess of the kitchen with his sloppy cooking and failure to tidy up after himself. The house had been searched for everything from gold bars to cans of soda. Occasionally, he had seen residents moving along the street, sure they had not spotted him, but overall he endured a quiet vigil. He started to read a couple of the home-owner’s books:
Wolf
Hall
and
The Day of the Triffids - c
ould they be any more different he thought? And he fondled his Heckler & Koch machine gun, which he carried on his shoulder by the strap, many times resisting the urge to fire at targets from an upstairs window.

After mulling over the value of putting a round through the useless, massive, plasma TV in the living room, he went into the kitchen to see if his soup was ready, and walked straight into the muzzle of a gun, feeling it press hard between his eyes, making his eyebrows become comically quizzical. He froze. Slowly he focussed along the thick hand and the arm in a leather jacket in front of him and settled on a vaguely familiar face.

‘I thought it was you in here,’ said Martin Ivanovic.

Ziegler tried to acknowledge the man, but decided not to speak while he was facing down a 9mm bullet through the brain.

‘Can I see that?’ asked Ivanovic, indicating the machine-gun, but without removing his pistol.

Ziegler slipped the Heckler & Koch forward until it was in Ivanovic’s free hand.

‘That’s beautifully made. Ziegler, isn’t it, yes?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The pistol came away from the man’s forehead and the machine-gun was handed back. ‘Ziegler, what are you hiding in here for? Come to my house, it’s twice the size and my cook is still in residence. We don’t want any loose cannons on the complex, now, do we?’

Ziegler was taken aback by the offer, instantly impressed by the man. ‘Okay, sir.’

‘Good man. Gather your gear.’

It didn’t take long for Ziegler to do that. He started to follow Ivanovic out of the house.

‘Well, turn off the soup, man,’ said Ivanovic. ‘We don’t want to burn the house down, now do we?’

***

Michael seemed to be walking through never-ending, horizontal rain. He kept telling himself to hunker down somewhere, but then a new road sign would appear, and by then he was fairly close to New Haven. He was hungry, he was tired, he was lonely - people seemed to be always up ahead of him or back down the road, but his path never seemed to cross over any living soul. Not that he wanted it to. Flashbacks of Molly came to him. He tried to block them out and think about his girlfriend in New York, but he was struggling to bring his sweetheart’s beautiful face to mind, while Molly was very current.

His injuries didn’t seem to bother him. In fact, his feet hurt more than his head. The rain seemed to ease the throb of the scalp wound. He wondered whether the last painkillers given to him by Dr Neeson had started to wear off. He had left the doctor’s group in Wallingford, expressing his gratitude, promising to find them one day, but he needed to push on while they were planning on regrouping there with their relatives. They gave him a good meal, filled a haversack with supplies, then he hit the road.

He reckoned it was dusk again, though it was hard to tell under the heavy cloud cover. The wide interstate highway only instigated feelings of hatred within him, with abandoned trucks and cars at random intervals. It was like walking down the middle of a motorway back home and that represented the actions of a madman. Thoughts of his family in England came rushing to him. He was not feeling despair, still mainly pressing on, but it was hard to take it, the sudden and dramatic change to his life.

He had stayed away from the articulated lorries so far, as he would have done back in his real life - truckers were alien to him, only good for cutting up in his car and receiving the bird down from their cab window. Now he approached a big, white, refrigerated unit with a massive cab that incorporated air horns and masses of chrome, very much
Smokey and the Bandit
. That cab would be his sanctuary for the night, assuming it was unoccupied. Before he investigated, something caught his eye, off the highway. There was a construction site, with yellow dumper trucks and cabins. Then there was an eerie railway line, and beyond that the ghostly shapes of a town, sprinkled with random little fires. While he had no wish to investigate small towns, the construction site seemed fair game to see if there was anything useful to him - clothing, or a vending machine. Perhaps a cabin would be cosier than the truck, even though the buildings seemed to be very flimsy. He carefully negotiated a wide slope at the side of the highway, stepped over a small wire fence, then he was onto the clay and earth mounds from whatever they were trying to do. The yellow trucks towered over him, and he decided not to bother climbing into one. The little village of portacabins attracted him, being as there was no light emitting from anywhere within it, and the silence was almost painful. At least on the road he could hear his footsteps.

In the moonlight, he found a door, then another, both padlocked. The third cabin was locked, but the hinge had seen better days. He was sure he could pull it open, but not wanting to add to his worries by cutting his hands, he looked around for an implement to lever it easily. Instead, he picked up a brick and easily smashed the lock off. Inside was Spartan, but at least dry, with a desk and filing cabinets. Ironically there was an electric heater in one corner. He sat in the leather chair, letting his eyes get used to the room. Eventually, things emerged from the gloom. There was some kind of tarpaulin on the floor, which made him think of John Rambo making a poncho in
First Blood
, as he escaped the sheriff up into the woods. Not having a Bowie knife with him, he ignored that idea. But then there was a blanket on another chair. It smelled musty but was dry, so he removed his coat before rubbing his head and trying to alleviate some of the dampness on his shoulders.

The desk drawers brought up useless items such as a stapler machine, pens, envelopes, duct tape. The bottom drawer revealed a half full bottle of whisky. Michael weighed up the health risk, before taking a stiff swig. Gasping a little, he moved about the cabin. He found a long spirit level, which he hefted, wondering if he needed a makeshift club. He picked up some tools, all fiddly things, no hammers, unfortunately. A set of box-cutter blades got him excited - at least now he had something sharp. That went into his trouser pocket. That was about it for the contents of the cabin.

He heard a metallic bang, shocking him into a frozen attitude. Being as tired as he was, his mind took him into another favourite film:
Heat,
with Al Pacino, specifically to where the policeman gives the game away to the robbers under surveillance by sitting down and letting his rifle bang against the inside of a storage container. Michael listened, but heard only his pumping heart. Nothing had touched his own cabin, he knew that. He carefully looked through the small, dirty window. There appeared to be only one more cabin, before the railway line cut across the site. He sensed a threat - adrenalin told him that. But he shook his fingers out and took a deep breath. Then he quietly made a move to leave, go the way he had come, stepping out into the rain, putting distance between himself and whatever had claimed the location before him. Loud gunshots ripped through the rain, making him throw himself to the ground. More shots came, hitting the metal of his cabin. Panic flowed through him at supersonic speed, until he was scrambling to survive, get clear, avoid being murdered in that miserable place. He was up, then stumbling, reaching for those box cutters, knowing how pathetically useless that was. The thing there before him was not prepared to let him just go away, it wanted to defend its lair. It made an appearance, a dark shape in hooded rain gear, its long rifle silhouetted by the moon as reloading took place. Michael was terrified. Fighting outside an English pub was one thing; this was life or death. A vision of being shot in the back flooded his brain, and that was what made him charge the figure. The blade was out of the thin box in his hand, but there was no way that would suffice, so he barged the dark shape and flattened it back into the wet mud. He either heard a great expulsion of air or imagined it. Either way, the attacker was down, beneath him, so Michael lashed out, punching body with his left fist, slashing anything with his right. After a moment of surreal thrashing, both for breath and for freedom, a high-pitched yelp came up - Michael must have cut flesh. He kept attacking. This person had tried to kill him. Kill him! He must not give an inch, he must fight until nothing moved underneath him. More cries sounded, then the attacker tried to defend with knees and hands. Long hair emerged from the attacker’s hood. Desperate squeals emanated from it. Michael kept hitting and kept stabbing with the small blade. He finally realised it was a female as she relaxed her defence, a hand up to her neck where the blade had surpassed itself. Michael, gasping for air, lifted up, surveyed the mess below him. A pretty girl, bloodied from his fists, and now sinking away as blood oozed through her fingers from a neck wound. Michael had severed the girl’s jugular. She was going quickly right before his eyes. He staggered to his feet, his thoughts on first aid, but then going back to the fact that this woman had tried to kill him. There was nothing he could do, anyway. He told himself that as he stepped away, making sure to take the rifle with him. He sloshed away through the mud, deciding not to spend the night in a portacabin, or in the truck up on the highway.

Liam’s now much smaller group was in the Revere area of Boston, or so Julius had reliably informed them, before he left them again for one of his scavenging missions - Liam wouldn’t be surprised if the man came back with a couple of Uzi machine guns. He, Allison and Sabrina were hunkered down in a rain-lashed railway carriage, relatively safe and comfortable. There were other people on board the stranded train, with their cooking aromas emanating from the windows, but nobody was bothering anyone else.

Allison was attempting to make sense of her bedraggled hair. Sabrina sat there watching her, forever fascinated by the gorgeous, yet ugly, Englishwoman. Liam watched the Indonesian girl, thinking her more and more extraordinarily cute - her own hair quite wild, by then.

‘You get bad weather in, wherever you’re from, don’t you?’ Allison suddenly asked.

‘Sometimes,’ replied Sabrina, bringing her knees up to her chest in a defensive reaction to being spoken to. ‘Usually it’s just humid.’

‘We’re used to rain and cold in England. Coughing our guts up. Where are you from, Jakarta? I don’t know the first thing about Jakarta. I don’t think I’d like the heat. We had snow in England last Christmas. I mean really deep snow, where we were, anyway. I had to go through a storm to get the Christmas turkey from
Marks & Spencer
.’

Sabrina looked a bit puzzled. ‘In Jakarta we wouldn’t go through a storm for turkey.’

That made Liam laugh hysterically. When he had calmed down to a spluttering wreck, he repeated, ‘We wouldn’t go through a storm for turkey. Sorry, I’m tired - it just got me, that did.’ He smiled at Sabrina and she smiled back.

‘Liam?’ asked Sabrina, ‘What do you do in London?’

‘I’m a plasterer, by trade. But I also do TV extra work, you know, the people in the back of shot in dramas and soaps.’

‘Really? Do you want to be an actor?’

‘I’m not sure. I had some lines once, on an episode of
Sherlock
.’

Allison’s eyebrows rose slightly, but she had no energy to be mocking.

‘I want to go to London,’ Sabrina said, with great enthusiasm.

‘London is all foreigners,’ said Allison, matter-of-factly, ‘so why shouldn’t you go, too?’

Julius was back, so encumbered with luggage that Liam jumped to his feet and helped the man in with it.

‘What the hell, Julius?’ laughed Liam.

‘Camping gear, my friend.’

‘
What
!?’ asked Allison, horrified.

‘We’re better away from people,’ Julius told her. ‘I’ve just passed dozens of corpses on the streets.’

That stopped any further response from Allison. Julius took off his coat and hat. Sabrina fetched him a drink, once he had sat himself down. Liam sat back down and watched Julius. “Dozens of corpses” had clearly made an effect on the big man.

At the first break in the rain they left the train carriage and set off walking along the track in the direction of central Boston. The plan was to stay away from the roads, and in doing so stay away from other people - to get into Boston and evaluate the situation. Either the Government was in control, or the city was in chaos, in which case they would get beyond it as quickly as possible. Liam decided not to mention how they had seen the burning horizon the other day.

They would camp in the most secluded spot alongside the tracks. Sometime the next day, said Julius, they would get there.

Everyone carried something; the men lugged the new tents and the rucksacks they already possessed, while Sabrina carried a bag of extra supplies and Allison, grudgingly, had been given a small gas stove.

The threat of another rain shower, and the fact that they happened to be alongside the shell of some derelict railway building, had the men deciding to pitch the tents. Allison and Sabrina took shelter while Julius and Liam played happy campers, putting up the tents against a wall.

Julius turned to Allison. ‘Let’s go collect firewood.’

‘Won’t it all be wet?’

‘Not all.’ Then to Liam, ‘Will you arrange the inside of the tents?’

Liam nodded. He watched, amused, as Allison followed Julius out into a slight squall. Then he looked at Sabrina, shivering slightly. ‘Get in, pick a girls’ tent.’

Sabrina entered a tent. ‘Have I got to share with Allison?’

Liam laughed, following her in. He started to unroll the two sleeping bags for that tent. ‘Take off your outer layer. You’ll soon be warm. You can have this tent to yourself. We’ll take Allison in with us, smother her during the night.’

‘I’d prefer to be in with you.’

That was nice, thought Liam. But was it inappropriate? He looked across at Sabrina, now out of her coat. Such a cute babe. Black eyes, pale lips.

‘Lift your butt,’ he told her, sliding a sleeping bag underneath her.

A tear fell from Sabrina’s right eye. It landed on his hand. She was frightened, of course, nine or ten thousand miles from home. He took her into his arms and hugged her tight.

‘I’m sorry, Sabrina. I should have realised how scared you were.’

‘People killing people,’ she whispered to his neck.

‘I know. We’ll get through it. Things will improve. We’ll get to some authorities and they’ll take us away from all this.’

‘I don’t want to be away from you, Liam.’

‘I won’t leave you. Don’t worry. Hey, why don’t you get inside the bag and get warm? I’ll figure out this stove. They’ll be back soon and we’ll have hot tea.’

She grinned, did what he said. He sat on the other sleeping bag and examined the little metal stove.

In the end they all stayed in the same tent - it was large enough. They cooked sausage sandwiches and brewed sweet tea on the portable stove, just outside. As night fell, Liam and Julius agreed to take turns on watch, two hours on, two hours off, leaving the girls to sleep. There had been another brief lesson in handling the gun from Julius, but Liam had been told to wake the big man if he heard anything, rather than to start popping away.

The morning brought clear, blustery weather. They made more tea and all ate biscuits. Then they quickly packed their gear away, ready to push on to what they hoped would be civilisation. Allison distanced herself from having to carry the stove, going out onto the track to breathe deeply and look both ways into the hazy distance. Liam shoved the stove between his knapsack and his shoulders. He looked at Sabrina, her jet black hair being blown about until she trapped it in her coat. She caught him watching her and gave him a grin.

‘Ready?’ called Julius.

‘Ready!’ replied Liam. ‘Let’s continue the yomp, or the tab, whatever it is they call it in the British army.’

‘Ready!’ laughed Sabrina, getting into the spirit.

‘Whatever,’ said Allison, glum-faced.

They talked of family back home, as they walked along. Apparently, Sabrina had the biggest family in the world, taking up most of the Menteng area of Jakarta. Allison’s turn to talk of home was suddenly interrupted, as three figures moved down onto the track, a few hundred yards ahead of them. Julius immediately made the women walk behind him and Liam. It was three men up ahead, in long raincoats - the kind that hide shotguns in the movies. Their movements were so casual that it was obvious they had come down to cut across their route. Julius checked behind them, but it was just the three men.

Liam felt his heart rate increase. A confrontation was inevitable. There was no point trying to divert, the men’s faces were distinguishable by then. One of them called a welcome, but his words were taken by the wind. Julius gestured for his people to stay still, as he moved to approach the men. Liam had his hand on his pistol, in his pocket, sliding off the safety, trying not to shoot himself in the thigh. To him, the men looked frightening, all bearded and equally scruffy. Sabrina moved to hold Liam from behind, but he sent her back to Allison. He tried to hear what was being said up front, but it was difficult. Perhaps he had been wrong, maybe there would be nods and greetings as the two groups passed each other… Julius was suddenly aiming his gun and shooting, simultaneously a black machine gun came up in the hand of the man to the right, blazing orange fire. Liam had never been more explosively terrified, blood rushing to his head and stopping time for a fraction of a second. All at the same time, he thought of bringing out his gun, of reaching back to cover the girls, of seeing the other men bring out hand guns. For some reason he found himself sat on his backside, his gun out in front of him, hearing screams behind, seeing the man with the Uzi fall (because it was an Uzi, that weapon he had thought of earlier, that small box shape, he could clearly see it). Bullets whistled about his head, the other men shooting. It was Julius being knocked backwards that prompted Liam to shoot at human beings for the first time in his life. Shockingly he knew he was aiming properly, and one of his four carefully loosed shots caught one of the remaining men in the left arm. The man screamed and turned away. The third man decided to retreat, pulling his injured colleague with him, glancing at the downed, still form of the man with the Uzi.

It was over. Sabrina had run to kneel beside Julius. Liam stood, his knees knocking, still aiming his gun at the fleeing pair. Liam checked the man with the Uzi; that was a dead man and no mistake. The Uzi now belonged to Liam. Just handling it scared the life out of him.

Sabrina’s wailing told him that Julius was dead, even before he walked back to see for himself. Allison hadn’t moved, that selfish bitch. But maybe he was being harsh, he decided; she was probably scared witless. Sabrina rose and rushed into his arms. Her hair was flowing wild as he clamped her head to his chest. She was his now and it was down to him to protect her.