Omega (34 page)

By the afternoon of the second day they had found a surprisingly quiet little wood west of Kettering where they decided they must stop and sleep because their exhaustion was beginning to make driving unsafe. Two other refugee families were camped in the wood but t
hey were obviously unaggressive
,
and just as exhausted. And most important of all, none of them had the bronchitic coughing and wheezing they had heard so much since yesterday - the symptoms of a Dust-breather. So there was no danger, from them, of the sudden violent madness which was the terrible secret that Philip's little group nursed.

Since yesterday morning they had seen many thousands of refugees as well as those who clung stubbornly to ruined homes and had had personal contact with dozens of them.

One thing they had found heart-rending and one disturbing.

The heart-rending fact was that, in the face of universal disaster, people had been astonishingly cooperative with each other, astonishingly willing to give and receive help. Frayed tempers there had been, naturally, and the occasional selfish bully; but in general people had seemed eager to prove and to be reassured that even if Nature had turned on them, human nature at least had reserves of unity and ingenuity that might save something from the wreck. What tipped the balance in favour of non-aggression was that at least three-quarters of the refugees were already more or less ill with Dust 'bronchitis'. The healthy ones were anxiously making allowances for them and trying to nurse them through what they had no reason to believe would be more than a bad period of illness - for the Premier's broadcast had not hinted at anything worse. Philip, Betty, and Tonia, only too aware of the truth that all would soon know, found this unwittingly forlorn hope, this doomed tenderness, almost unbearable to watch.

The disturbing fact was that the anti-witch hysteria, which Betty had hoped would be less evident away from the hothouse environment of the Beehive mess, had not been swept aside by the disaster. It was not universal, certainly, but here and there it was virulent. In more than one village, they had passed fanatical street orators (Crusaders, probably, they thought) haranguing listeners on the responsibility of the witches for the visitation of God's wrath - and gathering surprisingly large and sympathetic audiences. Outside Sharnbrook, they had passed the most dreadful sight of all: the bodies of an elderly woman and a teenage girl hanging from a makeshift gallows, with 'WITCH' placards round their necks.
Philip wanted to stop and cut th
em down but Tonia, who was driving at the time, accelerated suddenly past them.

'Hell, we can't just leave them there!' Philip pleaded.

‘
We can, you know,' Tonia said grimly. 'You didn't see what I did - the two guys along the hedge with shotguns. Reception committee for guys like us. . . . It's rough, Phil, but it looks like the human race is sorting itself out into the- living, the mad and the dead. Let's concentrate on Category One, huh? Otherwise we might join Category Three.'

'She's right, you know, darling,' Betty said. 'If there'd been a chance to save them, we might have had a bash. While they were still alive, I mean. But we'll get no thanks for saving corpses.'

Philip had to agree but the vision of the two dangling bodies still haunted him as they settled down to sleep in the quiet wood, huddled under blankets in the car seats. Some time during the hours that followed they invaded his dreams, vividly, and their twisted features were those of Betty and Tonia. He woke gasping, to find himself held tightly in Betty's arms as she tried to soothe him.

'Sorry,' he muttered. 'Nightmare.'

'I know, love,' Betty whispered. 'I've been listening to it. Try not to wake Tonia.... I'm glad she's with us, aren't you? Makes us stronger.'

He drifted back into sleep, wondering confusedly what she meant by that.

They all three woke at first light, having slept the clock round through sheer weariness, but stiff with discomfort. They lit a small fire in a clearing, gathering sticks from the woodland and crouched and stamped round it till they got warm. Betty managed to get. a saucepan of water hot enough to make instant coffee; they had sugar but no milk but the black sweet liquid refreshed them. Breakfast was a strange mixture - a tin of herrings in tomato sauce followed by one of sliced peaches. Tins and jars had been the only usable stores in Betty's ruined kitchen; bread, milk, butter, cheese and vegetables had been a long-decayed mess.

'We're going to have to do better than this,' she said. '. . . Phil - you're the only one who's read the official reports. When does the Madness start?'

'After about three days, in brief fits. By the fifth or sixth day it's continuous.' He felt a new vigour this morning, a new sense of realism; yesterday he could not even have discussed it without tension but today he could answer calmly. 'The violence, that is - there may be bouts of harmless delirium before that. The pattern's pretty uniform, apparently. As I remember, eighty-seven per cent of the cases in the Emergency Units followed that three-day, five-day timetable. The rest took a little longer - up to a week for the whole development.'

'So we've got till tomorrow morning to take cover somewhere.'

'Looks like it.'

'And for looting,' Tonia said. 'Looting?'

"What else? You don't imagine anyone's interested in money any more, do you? And we can't take cover without food.'

Philip sighed. True enough. It's just the word
...
Still, we might as well call a spade a bloody spade.... Not from the living, though. The way the towns collapsed, there must be enough ownerless shops in them.'

'And fields in the country,' Betty pointed out. 'We've passed God knows how many hectares of vegetables. And it's been a good year for blackberries. . . . Another thing -there'll be cows to milk with too few people to milk them, especially as it
'll have to be by hand. I wish I
could.'

'I can,' Tonia said unexpectedly. 'Learned when I was a kid, on vacation on my uncle's farm. Might come in useful at last.'

Other people in the wood had apparently been talking along the same lines. They were still sipping their second cup of black coffee when a delegation of three men and a woman came to their camp-fire from the other two refugee families. They talked cautiously for a few minutes, exchanging experiences, and then the eldest of the men - a tall man in his forties with a middle-class accent - came to the point.

'Look - we need food and I expect you do too. We were thinking of making a sortie into Kettering or Market Harborough to see what we can find; we had a quick look at both yesterday, from the fringes - there's hardly a house left standing, and a lot of the survivors were getting out. There should be pickings without actually having to fight for them.'

'We were talking about it, too,' Philip said.

'Right. Point is, we've got kids with us, and one old woman and two younger ones. And there
might
be fighting, whether we go looking for it or not. If we add your lot, there's six men, five women, and kids. . . . How about five of the men going on the sortie, in one car - and leaving one man to watch over the women and kids, here? We've got a shotgun we can leave with him. The bigger the sortie, the better our chances. Want to join us?'

Kettering was as devastated as the tall man - whose name was Harry - had reported but not quite as empty. They were able to drive the car in as far a
s the railway bridge over the A6
,
half a kilometre from the centre, and park it there facing back the way they had come; then they had to go ahead on foot, keeping close together and watching their flanks. People were busy in the ruins, mostly trying to make parts of them livable and did little more than glance warily at the five strangers.

'What we want's a supermarket,' Harry said. 'Let's go on a bit.'

'There's a noise ahead,' Philip told him. 'Sounds like a crowd arguing.'

'Hell. The last thing we want.'

They rounded the right bend in Lower Street and saw it.

'My God! Troops! First we've run into.'

'Troops' was perhaps an exaggeration. A young lieutenant, a lance-corporal, and four privates were strung out in front of the smashed windows of a big supermarket. The officer had a revolver in his holster and the five soldiers carried their rifles at the port. The crowd of men and women who faced them looked angry and resentful. One of the men was arguing with the officer. As Harry and his group came up behind the crowd, the young officer raised his voice.

'Look, everybody - go home. Until I get new orders, my job's to prevent looting. And that's what I'm going to do. So clear this crowd.'

'Orders from where, sonny?' somebody called, mockingl
y. 'There's no one to give 'em
.'

The officer flushed. 'Don't you count on that. Anyhow, that's my business. Go home.'

'Stupid puppy,' Harry muttered to Philip.

There was a chorus of 'What homes?' and another cry from the mocking voice. 'Stop looting, eh? Six of you? There's dozens of shops, sonny.'

'This is the biggest and it's where the food is. So we'll go on protecting it.'

A woman pushed forward out of the crowd towards him, shouting furiously: 'Too right it's where the food is! And we've got hungry kids! What the hell d'you think you're trying to do? You and your "orders"! Get out of our way!'

She was almost on him and he drew his revolver, taking a hasty step backwards. The crowd sensed his nervousness and at the same time were angered by his threat to the woman. They moved closer.

Harry said, 'Jesus, he's asking for it.'

A moment of poised silence was broken by noises from inside the supermarket. The lance-corporal said, 'They've got in the back way, sir.'

'Hendry - Powers - through the shop! Stop 'em!'

The soldiers never had a chance to obey. As the officer shouted his order, the crowd rushed forward. Two shots rang out and that was all; the crowd was instantly an enraged mob, overwhelming the khaki figures, milling around them for a few seconds and then pouring into the shop.

It was all over before Harry and his group had caught their breath.

They stared down at the six soldiers; the officer was certainly dead, the rest either dead or stunned. The woman who had challenged the officer lay at his side with a bullet through her chest, and another civilian was staggering into the shop after the crowd clutching a bleeding arm.

'Come on!' Harry cried. 'It's done. Might as well get our share.'

They began to run. Philip shouted to Harry: 'The guns! Get the guns
!'
'Christ, yes!'

It took them half a minute, at most, to strip the soldiers of their arms and ammunition. Harry ordered one of his men back to the car with them and the remaining four hurried into the supermarket.

Inside was chaos; displays tumbling as people grabbed at tins and boxes, bottles smashing as they stumbled into each other. Strangely, few had thought of taking a trolley - perhaps fearing it would hamper them. There were still four left and Harry's group seized them, trying to keep calm and work methodically, choosing the most compact goods, remembering small unnoticed valuables such as yeast and sticking plasters and salt and a card of throw-away lighters, trying an unopened door which might, and did, hide more meat (the meat counter had been stripped in seconds), and paying a flying visit to the hardware shelves, where Philip found a treasure they lacked - a camping-gas ring with spare cylinders.

Harry was a natural commander. He managed to keep an eye on all his group, coordinate their efforts without fuss, avoid clashes and order withdrawal at just the right moment.

They must have been a bizarre sight, four grown men careering through Kettering with loaded supermarket trolleys like women in a perambulator race. But nobody stopped them and they reached the car with all their loot. The man who had carried the guns ahead was very relieved to sec them. He was standing guard over the car with the revolver, while a group of young men across the road eyed him speculatively.

They drove back to the wood without incident and were welcomed as returning heroes. But the women had not been idle. Tonia proudly produced a plastic pail of still-warm, frothy milk.

'Found a cow,' she announced. 'Poor old girl was in the hell of a state. Well, we've all got to help each other with our problems, these days - haven't we?'

They never did solve the puzzle of the abandoned farm. It was about a kilometre from the wood and they were led to it by another cow's distressed mooing - Tonia's friend's companion was obviously confined there and equally obviously unattended. Harry and Philip, with Tonia as the nearest they had to an agricultural expert, went to investigate. Tonia's opinion, after administering emergency relief to the cow and examining such tell
-
tale evidence as the hencoops and the kitchen, was that the farm had been empty of humans for at least two days. Beds and clothing suggested that a couple and a young man, perhaps their son, had lived there. Maybe they had been in one of the market towns when the earthquake struck and been killed. Maybe they had taken fright at their isolation and fled to relatives. Whatever the explanation, they had plainly gone, and all the signs were that they would not be back.