The Survivors of Bastion (Fall of Earth Book 1) (4 page)

Chapter Four

Disposal and Return

‘Carl. Carl! Are you all right?’

              He stood on the spot, shaking, running his hands over his throat as I bounded towards him.

              ‘Let me see your neck!’ I said hurriedly, pulling his hands away and looking at the blood on his throat. Thankfully it was nothing but a flesh wound.

              ‘Is it okay? Am I gonna die?’

              ‘You’re gonna just be fine,’ I assured him, ‘We’ll get Mae to tidy it up a little, make sure it doesn’t get infected.’

              ‘Wha… What?’ He shuddered, his eyes filling up with tears – not from the cut but from the rushing adrenaline and shock of everything that had just happened. ‘Won’t that sting?’

              ‘It’ll hurt a lot less than an infected oesophagus.’

              ‘What’s an oesophagus?’

              ‘Your throat.’

              ‘Oh.’

              I took a second to calm myself down and let Carl take a breath. An awkward laugh suddenly escaped me as I took in the situation. I looked over at the body of the man on the floor, and my smile fell away.

              Another one dead, and it had been my fault.

              ‘Thanks… Thank you, Tommy. You saved me.’

              ‘Don’t you worry about it… Listen, let’s not tell anybody back at Bastion about this, all right?’

              ‘Why not?’

              ‘We don’t want everybody getting scared, do we? I’m pretty sure this was a one-off, just some straggler out in the wilderness… I’ll keep an eye out anyways, though. Get some of our lot to keep watch later on tonight.’

              ‘Okay…’

              ‘I’ll get rid of the body. Listen, I want you to head back and tell them to get the Ranger to go pick up the deer in the field. Get Mae to have a look at your neck. Tell her you just had an accident. I’ll come back with the crops in a little while, all right? If they ask about the gunshots just say it was the deer.’

              ‘What about the third shot?’

              ‘Tell them it was another accident.’

              ‘Okay… Okay…’

              Carl made a move to set off, taking the steps one at a time, slowly.

              ‘Carl,’ I called after him. He turned and looked down at me. ‘You did good, all right?’

              He forced a smile and nodded, before turning and setting off back up the trail. Eventually he took off out of sight, and I was left alone in the field, wondering how even this place of growth couldn’t avoid the spilling of blood.

              I looked down at the man’s body, lifeless, his mouth hanging open as he laid there spread eagle.

              I had killed before, people and animals, but only for the purposes of survival. It was something I had never gotten used to and I doubted that I ever would, but deep down I knew that that was something I was glad about. All I wanted was to keep to myself, and to look after our community… If that meant killing those that posed a threat, then so be it.

              It didn’t mean I took any pride in it – it was nothing but a necessity, the will to live.

***

My body was one that had been moulded by the environment in which I had had to exist – constant movement, work, and eating whatever I could. I had a raw strength that allowed me to move the man’s body up the hill with little difficulty, and when I reached the top I set off around the edge towards one of the untouched patches of forest that we hardly ever used.

              Desperation with reference to our values allows us to do things that we might not otherwise consider ourselves doing – there are certain extreme situations where we can react with ease because our lives depend on it, and this was one of those for me. Despite the gravitas of all of this, I still carried out the job with quickness and calmness. If it hit me later, I’d just have to deal with it.

              When I was a good way into the forest I dropped the body to the floor, wondering at its limpness, something that I had never gotten used to in my experience of this unfortunately familiar sight. I didn’t have a shovel with me, and if I left the body here too long it would attract all manner of vermin and creature that would then find its way to our farm.

              I would have to return that night to bury it.

              I looked around myself for a moment in the silence of the forest searching for any sign of movement, before heading back towards the farm.

***

Twenty minutes later, by my watch at least, I was making my way back across the field where we had shot the deer with a bag filled to the brim with vegetables. By the two carcasses stood Carl and Leah, and behind them was the Ranger with its trunk wide open and a tarpaulin laid out in the back.

              ‘Let’s get a move on, guys!’ I shouted, heading over to them, ‘Don’t want them to go bad.’

              I winked at Carl, who smiled back at me – he had gotten himself together pretty quickly.

              Leah was due to take over from Larry for the next guard shift. She was something of a tomboy, who took pretty well to the fallen world that we occupied. She had a can-do attitude that suited Bastion effortlessly.

              ‘Only you could get this fucking lucky,’ she laughed, ruffling her short, dark hair. ‘Tell you something, you’re gonna be in everybody’s good books tonight. You seen Carl’s neck?’

              ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘just a little accident while we were in the farm. Take a seat in the Ranger, Carl. We’ll handle this.’

              I handed him the bag of food and he pulled himself into the passenger seat. Leah and I took up the tarpaulin with both of the deer, each finding two corners, and clenching them tightly in our hands.

              ‘You…
All right
…?’ She strained her voice as we lifted the carcasses, only just managing to drop them into the trunk without dropping them on the floor. They were much heavier than the malnourished body I had moved into the forest. ‘You look a little off.’

              ‘No, I’m fine,’ I said, both of us breathing deeply, ‘I’m just a little tired, it’s still early.’

              ‘Well with a haul like this I’d say you’ve earned your right to go take a rest.’

              I jumped on the back and sat upon the open trunk by the deer while Leah drove us back to Bastion. The retrofitted garage door was still open when we returned, and one of our lot pulled it shut as we parked up.

              Leah and Carl both came back around to see me as I jumped from the back.

              ‘I’m heading back home for a little while,’ I said, ‘Carl, you did good this morning, you can take the morning off too. Before you do that, though… Could you two spread the word that we’re having a feast tonight? Let everybody know. We’ll get the park benches out and have a community dinner in the street. It’s been a tough few weeks, and everybody deserves it.’

              ‘That’s what I like to hear, boss,’ Leah said, heading off to retrieve Sam, our designated cook and butcher, all rolled into one package. I had been told by the older one’s in our community that he was one of the only things that hadn’t changed come the end of civilisation – he was just as insane as every chef that had come before him.

              ‘Look after yourself, Carl,’ I said, patting him on the arm as I walked by him, on the way back to my house. ‘Our secret, right?’

              Carl smiled and nodded, placing his fingers to his neck again and wincing as he touched the cut.

Chapter Five

Robbie and Henrietta

After having locked up the front door once again, I opened the footlocker beneath the cabinet in the hallway and carefully replaced the rifle, locking it up once again.

              I looked up at the mirror that resided above the cabinet, staring back at my reflection. For a guy barely into his mid-twenties my face was rugged with stubble, my dark hair kept short, my features sharp. These days we spent so much of the summer outside tending to our duties that my skin had already tanned considerably. Looking at my white t-shirt in the mirror it was a wonder that nobody had asked me about the occasional red spots on it – they could have been put down to the deer, of course.

              We had all devolved into weathered, rugged people, living off of the land in the ruins of the fallen civilisation that we now occupied. This overgrown suburb and the surrounding area was all I knew except for the frequent ventures that some of us made out into the world beyond. Fifty miles in the Ranger was the furthest I had gone, and I knew pretty well that there was nothing out there but empty houses, abandoned towns and cities, and the skeletal remains of those taken by the virus. We scavenged for goods frequently during these treks, crossing off on a map the areas that we had investigated before moving onto the next zone.

              Would it all run out one day? Definitely, but that would be long after my time. Right now, I just wanted us to survive, and we were doing a pretty damn good job of it.

              I headed through the living room and into the kitchen – things were pretty much the same as from when I was a kid, except a little dirtier and lot more faded, kind of like an old photograph that fell beneath the floorboards.

              Robbie sat at the kitchen table, scooping bread into his bag along with a few jugs of water. My brother and I had gotten along perfectly for the longest time, even if we did have back and forths on occasion – not even the fall of mankind could take away sibling rivalry. He was exactly like me at that age, only a little less organised. 19, a good kid, always ready to help out.

              ‘Aren’t you supposed to be on lookout duty on the west gate today?’

              ‘You know I am,’ he said quickly, throwing his rucksack on his back and heading towards the back door, ‘and I’m late.’

              ‘Is mom still asleep?’

              Robbie stopped in the doorway abruptly and turned to look over at me.

              ‘No… She’s gone to see Dad for a while.’

              ‘Okay…’ I said, nodding. ‘Have a good shift.’

              ‘Oh, I will…’ He said sarcastically, his joking demeanour returning as he ran at the garden wall and jumped up on to it’s eight foot height with a single deft movement before vaulting over into the alleyway. While the front door was well-guarded, I didn’t worry about the back door; we were surrounded by walls, and Robbie was the only one who could make that jump out of everybody in Bastion.

              ‘With Dad…’ I muttered to myself, looking about the well-kept garden. In her older years my mother could do less and less – she was in her late 50s, and manual labour wasn’t exactly something she was suited for. She did, however, have an aptitude for helping out with duties around the community and keeping people company, as well as keeping our back yard filled with all manner of plants and flowers.

              That is, except for one small section – a small doorway in the fence that I had built when I was a younger. Well, I say a door, but it was more like a hinge and latch where the fence posts were nailed together and lifted up when you pushed against them.

              I had built it when I was younger, so now it was like stepping into a corridor that got smaller and smaller when you went through, and I had to bend over in order to make my way inside and into the clearing. It reminded me of a part in a book that Henrietta had read to Robbie and I when we were younger called
Alice in Wonderland
.

              Stepping into the pasture was like stepping into a greenhouse, or a setting from another fairytale. It was perhaps only four of five yards in diameter, and aside from the fenced entrance and exit was surrounded in a circle on all sides by thick hedges and trees, the branches of which overhung above, letting just the right amount of sunlight in to allow the grass to grow in abundance.

              It was the kind of place I could have lived out my entire life were it possible – that was how peaceful it was. Even with it being where my Father was buried.

              On the opposite side of the clearing was his gravestone. It was a crude stone section that we had set up with cracked tarmac from the road, the words etched into it with hours upon hours of painstaking work;

Jack Hadley

1987 – 2027

A Loving Father and Husband, and the Founder of Bastion.

The last part wasn’t technically true, but his bravery had kept us going in the early days, when we didn’t know whether or not we would survive the first few weeks, or months… If it hadn’t been for him, I doubted that Bastion would have been founded at all.

              Before the grave, sat a little way before it, was my mother.

              These days we took whatever clothes we could find, and when it came to domestication and cleanliness… Well, that was an improvised act altogether, but we did pretty well. These days Henrietta spent most of her time with her hair tied up in a sharp ponytail when it wasn’t short, something that had become a necessity. She was wrapped up in shawls and gowns, her calm face staring down serenely at the stone.

              In the old world she had been a hairdresser, and my father a waste disposal manager who had a decade of experience hauling trash before having worked his way up through the organisation. They used to joke that there were jobs that would always be needed, even in times of economic collapse – people always needed their hair cutting, and they definitely always needed their trash taking away. Those were two of the last things people would give up.

              I knew she had heard come through the fence, she just didn’t turn around.

              ‘You haven’t been here in a while,’ I said, walking slowly to sit down by her side. I took a long look at the grave before glancing over at her quiet face as the hint of a smile rose to her lips.

              ‘Mmm…’ She started absently, peacefully. ‘He was never really one for shoving his pride aside, your father. Even in death. After it happened I worried for so many nights that you and Robbie would… Would get sick too. I still worry about it sometimes.’

              ‘We’ll be all right,’ I said, ‘we’re fine here. We’ve built something good, and we’ll keep building and looking after our own.’

              ‘I know, Tommy… Your brother looks up to you a lot, you know?’

              ‘What? No, he doesn’t.’

              ‘I’m your mother, trust me. He does. He always has. You were always around to look after him and keep him in line. You’ve been the man of the house ever since we returned to the surface, and now that you lead a place like this… Why wouldn’t he look up to you?’

              ‘He’s a good kid. I just hope he doesn’t let this world get the better of him.’

              ‘That’ll never happen in a million years,’ she laughed, ‘He’s you, just a few years younger. Did you ever let this place get the better of you? No. So he won’t either.’

              A pause.

              ‘Are you okay, mom?’

              ‘Me? I’m fine… As fine as I’ve ever been.’

              ‘Okay.’

              We sat in silence for some time, in the quiet, watching presence of the memory of my father.

              ‘Right,’ Henrietta finally said, pushing herself up to her feet. ‘Can’t mourn all the livelong day. Couple of people need their hair cutting, they’re starting to look like damn savages.’

              ‘Right,’ I smiled.

              ‘You could do with having that beard trimmed, mister,’ she said. ‘Back in the day the guys your age were running around with these unkempt things, looking like you are now. That was the style back then, you see.’

              ‘It’s too hot for that,’ I said, ‘I’m actually starting to get a bit bothered with it. Reckon you could sort it for me?’

              ‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’

              ‘Because I don’t trust myself with a knife.’

              ‘That’s god damn true. All right, hurry it up and get back inside.’

              My mother is the only person on the entire planet that I trust with a knife,
maybe
aside from Robbie, although he lacks the trade skills that she possesses. There are two reasons for this.

              The first is the fact that she’s the person I trust most. She had raised Robbie and I since we were kids, literally through the end of the world, and taught us right from wrong in a place where those lines all too often crossed over. If somebody was going to cut my throat, it certainly wasn’t going to be her.

              The second reason is that when it came to shaving, a cut in the old world could be resolved pretty quickly with some antiseptic formula. Now, though? The tiniest could become infected, and it was something Mae had enough trouble keeping at bay all the time. In short, Henrietta was a pro, and her knife skills certainly wouldn’t bring any harm to me.