Nuclear Midnight (13 page)

Directly above him he heard Tina scream, then there was an enormous splash as something fell off into the water. To Alex's horror he saw Tina surface next to him, spluttering and screaming hoarsely as though some dead weight were dragging her down. Then her voice vanished completely. Alex nearly went berserk. He felt the head and shoulders of someone and his feet touched another body, Tina’s, being held beneath the waves. He gripped the head of the man who was holding her under and dragged him down. Tina surfaced again, gasping and spluttering, but her agony only reinforced his rage. He dived deep, dragging the struggling man down after him. There in the depths, he put his knee in the man's back and pulled his head back with all his strength.

Nearly a minute later he broke the surface once more and cried for help. Cliff and Roy responded immediately. After a last desperate lunge toward their voices Alex was pulled on board. Tina lay severely winded and exhausted beside him. The last of the attackers had been repelled; the paddles were in the rowlocks, and they were rowing for their lives.

CHAPTER 6

Eleven hours had passed since the battle on the Somerset shore. The raft now lay close to the coast of Wales. There was no wind; it had died with the coming of day, leaving a lumpy, agitated sea, which periodically flung ice onto the deck. Roy, Cliff and Alex were at the oars, stroking mechanically. They had discarded their wet clothing in preference for layers of plastic sheeting, in which, swathed from head to foot, they looked like three monstrous grubs emerging from cocoons. Tina had on the few items of clothing that had not been soaked in the struggle. To these, Alex had added what remained of the sheeting. In spite of this, however, she continued to shiver uncontrollably and her teeth chattered like castanets. Every so often the noise would drive him to her side, where he would wrap himself around her till the shivering eased. But he knew she was growing weaker by the hour, and the urgency to reach Wales and find a place for her to rest soon forced him back to the oars. Each time he returned he would row like a madman till his arms ached and he heaved for breath. Then, exhausted, he would pause momentarily, and begin again in a listless, sullen fashion, silently caught up in his own torturous thoughts.

But now, with the shore so close, their strength seemed to return. The raft was crashing through sloppy seas toward a long spit of land less than two hundred metres away. Fifty metres short of land the front timber stuck a solid sheet of ice and stuck fast. Alex jumped out immediately and tested the strength of the ice. When he found it would bear his weight, he wasted no time in lifting Tina out of the raft and carrying her towards the beach. Roy and Cliff were left to pack up the supplies and hurry after him.

They had gone only a short distance when Tina started to complain. She was not an invalid, she protested, she still had legs and he had no right to assume she had forgotten how to walk. He dumped her so fast that she landed on her backside, where she sat quivering slightly; Alex wasn't sure whether it was from rage or the cold. But she didn't get angry, instead she rose to her feet, brushed away some of the snow and strode on gamely.

Alex hovered round her, noticing the rigid way she held herself, straining for each step. He blamed himself for letting her stay for too long in wet clothes at the beginning of the crossing. They had all been too busy to notice the state she was in. Her clothes had seemed to draw all the heat and strength from her. It was only when she started to shiver violently that he realised that something was wrong. At once he had ordered her to strip and put on the remaining dry clothes from the supplies. He had then cut up the roll of plastic and layered it over her. At Cliff's suggestion she had tried rowing for a while to warm herself up, but it was agony to watch her, so Alex had been reduced to periodically holding her tight. It was like trying to warm a sheet of ice. At times during the night he almost felt she was slipping away. Worst of all had been the moment a few hours past dawn, when she suddenly stopped shivering. He rushed over, rubbed her hands, talked to her and slapped her gently on the face to force her to respond. Finally she did so; and later she began to shiver again. To see her now, actually walking, stubbornly resisting his attempts at assistance, made him feel very proud. But he knew that this effort must have drawn on her last reserves of strength.

He drew alongside her. ‘We'll stop at the first house we reach.’

She nodded. ‘You know what I was dreaming about on the raft?’ she said, her voice taking on a whimsical quality. ‘I was dreaming of falling asleep in front of an excruciatingly hot fire, after consuming a dozen cups of steaming soup and feeling the warmth seep right down to my toes.’

‘That shouldn't be too difficult to arrange,’ Alex said brightly. ‘Even if we have to sacrifice the furniture we'll build a roaring fire just for you. And I’m sure we can cook up something resembling soup from the supplies.’

She managed a faint smile, which slowly faded. ‘Was it you who pulled that brute off me when I fell off the raft?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Yes, it was.’ What he had happened afterwards was something he didn’t care to dwell on.

‘I thought so. I heard you groan, you see…when I surfaced, I mean. I heard you groan, then jump on top of that animal. I've really been getting my money's worth out of you recently, haven't I? It seems to be a full time job just keeping me alive.’

The plaintive note made Alex put his arm around her shoulder, and draw her reassuringly close. ‘You'll be doing the same for me one of these days, I've no doubt.’

‘Yeah,’ she said mournfully, and the single word was so barren of conviction that he knew his attempt at comforting her had failed.

The shore, to which chance had brought them, seemed sparsely inhabited. Houses stood here and there, but with no lights on, and they met no one in the narrow lanes they travelled along. Finally, they selected a two storey place a short distance from the shore. It was a red brick house with a slate roof and beautiful wooden trimmed bay windows. The front door, as expected, and some of the windows, had been kicked in and the place had been ransacked. But the lounge was still intact and it had a large, ornamental fireplace, complete with an intricately woven hearthrug.

They searched the rooms briefly to be sure they would not have company, then the men set about lighting the fire, while Tina rested on one of the lounge chairs. There was no firewood in the house, so Alex poked around picking up anything that looked as if it would burn. The place was bursting with antiques and silverware. The owners seemed to have had very good taste. Ornate cups and candlestick holders, seventeenth and eighteenth century paintings and beautifully carved wooden statuettes adorned every shelf or cabinet space. Alex collected them by the armful and carted them off to the fire. This would surely rank as the most expensive and sacrilegious fire he had ever made, he thought wickedly, but this was no time to be reverential. Roy found some matches and with the aid of some old newspapers, and a generous number of eighteenth century oil paintings, Cliff was soon nursing a few tentative flames. The carvings, which were tinder dry, and a few antique chair legs, quickly built it into a blaze.

Tina discarded her plastic sheeting and curled up on the hearthrug with only her jumper and jeans on. Cliff and Roy wrung out and aired the rest of the clothing, while Alex rummaged through the packs for something to eat. They had run through most of their water, but at Cliff's suggestion he found an uncontaminated supply in the hot water tank in the roof. There was no food at all in the cupboards, but all the culinary equipment that a master chef could require. He mixed flour and water, grated cheese over it, and tipped the concoction into a shallow baking dish. With cans of beans and a packet of noodles, he made a passable soup, which he spiced up with beef stock cubes. Everyone commented on what an excellent meal he had cooked. Nothing was left uneaten.

Afterwards, when the warmth of the fire had penetrated every bone, with their bellies full and out of any immediate danger, they one and all fell fast asleep. They didn't wake up till the morning of the following day.

Several more days were spent at the house regaining their strength. The men recovered quickly, but Tina seemed barely to be holding her own. Although she had partaken of the meal with the others, when they first arrived, she could not be persuaded subsequently to eat much. Her nausea attacks continued and generally culminated in a dry retching that seemed to tear at her insides. She also developed a cough and a sore throat, symptoms not usually associated with radiation sickness.

Alex worried about these most of all because it was obvious that her weakened immune system was allowing secondary infections, which could easily kill her in her enfeebled state.

As her illness continued, he went to extreme lengths in his attempts to try and shield her from any possible source of stress or exertion. He not only searched the house thoroughly, but he persuaded Cliff and Roy to help him rummage through the medical cupboards of the nearby houses for any drugs which might help her.

Their endeavours brought them, time and again, to scenes of tragedy and despair. More than once, in some deserted property, they found the badly hacked corpses of the previous occupants lying in the kitchen or dumped across the entrance to a ransacked larder, their blood frozen in black puddles around them. But at length, in a dusty bathroom cabinet in a partly burnt out cottage, Roy came upon some broad-spectrum antibiotics and Panadol tablets, which made the search worthwhile.

Alex immediately gave them to Tina. He fussed over her at night too, bullying her to take her pills, or to go to bed, or to eat all the food he had piled on her plate. By the end of the fourth day his efforts were rewarded. Her fever had subsided, her sore throat had gone and her diarrhoea had eased. Only then did Alex finally listen to the pleas of Cliff and Roy that they resume their journey north. Cliff had estimated that it would take them well over a week to reach North Wales. The food they had with them would be exhausted before then if they did not start soon.

They set out the following day. The war damage was less than in England, although most houses appeared to have been vandalised in some way. The snow also had the same gradation of greys. But this landscape had an altogether different feel; one of desolation, vacancy, abandonment. One had the impression that nothing living, man or beast, existed for hundreds of kilometres.

They also stumbled on scenes of recent conflict; and there were some sights to which they could never be inured. In one place the surface of the snow was interrupted by a large numbers of mounds. When they started to walk across these areas their feet struck many bulky objects under the snow. Cliff and Roy, kicking with their heels, found that the snow was stained with blood. The hard objects were bodies, hacked, shot, even blown apart with missing limbs. One such battleground in particular stayed with them in their minds. The mounds here were scattered over some distance. At their centre a large building had formerly stood, now reduced to a few charred walls. Surrounding its entrance were an array of military trucks, vehicles with machine gun mounts and armoured cars. All these vehicles had been gutted by fire or turned over on their sides. The bodies of soldiers still hung from the windows and doors, the snow heaping on them indifferently.

Alex could not suppress a brutal satisfaction at seeing the military, here at least, overrun. It seemed only right that after all the suffering they had inflicted in other places that somewhere, at least, the tables had been turned. But how costly this victory must have been, that men should be prepared to fight against machine guns and mortars! Surely the building must have been the main food store for this region, and starvation must have driven the people to such desperate courage. Where were they now, the survivors of this carnage, and would they turn their wrath on a group such as themselves? Though the battle was clearly some weeks old, they moved cautiously for several kilometres, determined at the very least to sell their lives dearly, if need be. But houses and streets and roads were as desolate as before; they did not meet a living soul.

Early in the afternoon they came across a sign which read AMMANFORD. This meant they had travelled about twenty kilometres inland from the coast. The huge dark forms rising into the clouds on their right were the foothills of the Welsh hills. Ahead, the first ridges of Black Mountain formed a long tapering wall, like the back of some huge prehistoric monster. Tina was looking very tired and beginning to lag behind, but Cliff and Roy wanted to push ahead until Alex put his foot down and refused to drag her any further. She had not complained, but Alex knew she was walking way beyond her strength.

They took shelter for the night in a small hamlet, close to a river. Tina fell asleep straight after dinner in front of the fire, leaving the men to discuss the best route north. Eventually they decided to avoid the interior of Wales and travel along the coast. This would mean a detour, but it would at least lead them through some of the more populated areas. If some type of organised community had drawn in the population from the south, they would most likely find it on the coast, since that region possessed no obvious military target. If nothing else, it would make easier going than the mountainous interior.

The next day they started out at first light. Snow had fallen during the night, but the increase in temperature it brought more than compensated for the heavier going. They made excellent progress all that morning. Tina seemed to be back to her old self; enthusiastic, talkative, even jovial at times, but by early afternoon she was beginning to lag behind again. By mid-afternoon she was all in and they had to stop for the day. Alex felt that she was growing weaker again and he urged her to take some dinner. Eventually she ate half of her meal, but unlike the previous night she slept only fitfully. Alex lay beside her, also not sleeping, coming awake every time she moved and watching her uneasily.

The following day Tina seemed exhausted from the very outset. She dropped back and began complaining of dizziness and fatigue. By early afternoon they had barely covered five kilometres. Again Alex called a halt. They had reached a small coastal village. After a brief inspection they plumped for a small brick house with a large chimney stack and a steeply sloping slate roof. They chose it because it was completely intact, as though its occupants had just walked out and left it. Many of the houses they had passed that day were in a similar condition. Blast effects in this area appeared to be minimal. The inhabitants, it would seem, had moved away more from lack of food, than threat of attack from other survivors.