The Hurst Chronicles (Book 1): Hurst (19 page)

She was dimly aware of voices behind and beneath her on the stairs. Hands helping them back up. She was barely conscious as they supported her down the stairs. Her head rolled against a supporting shoulder as they half-dragged her down towards ground floor level. She was carried through a conservatory filled with pot plants and acres of glass and finally outside to be lowered gently on to the grass. It felt deliriously cool and moist on the back of her bare arms, soothing the burning sensation on exposed flesh at her wrists and knees through ripped jeans.

One of the last things Riley remembered was Adele hugging her tightly round her neck. She lay there staring up into the night sky, watching clouds drifting lazily over their heads. The flames from two upper windows bathed the trees and grass all around her in light, casting a warming orange glow. She was a spent force, every last ounce of strength gone. At she drifted in and out of consciousness, the upstairs windows began to resemble demonic eyes flaring wildly. The flames licked the outside of the building, making the iron gutters and fixings glow and spark. Alongside her, Zed’s body lay motionless, as one of the women pumped his chest with the palm of her hand, trying to resuscitate him. Riley grasped his hand, squeezing it hard and then passed out.

Chapter Thirty-Six

As dawn broke at the Chewton Glen hotel, the fire had burned itself out. The southern end of the main building was a scarred, smoking wreck, blackened timbers exposed to the pale light of the new day. Laid out on the lawn were a dozen bodies covered in blankets and sheets or whatever they could find to hide their faces. Most of them had been simply overcome by the smoke, waiting to be rescued, trapped in upstairs rooms by the rampaging flames.

Riley sat consoling Stella, her face blackened, hair singed in places. Judging by other people’s reaction to her appearance, she must look a right state. Stella had her head in her hands, sobbing. So many of her friends were gone, their lives extinguished. It seemed so wrong that they should have survived the virus only to be killed by something innocuous like a candle left to burn unattended. Sister Immelda had said that the candle had most probably simply fallen over, out of its saucer and on to a carpet or against a drape and caught alight. In a few minutes, the whole bedroom would have been ablaze and then from there, a fire uncontained would have spread rapidly to the other rooms on the same floor.

Stella looked up, tears streaming down her face. Mila came and joined them sitting cross-legged on the picnic blanket next to her. She threw her arms around Stella and just held her, gently rocking backwards and forwards. There was nothing that anyone could say to make it better, so she said nothing. The three of them stared back at the hotel, as it smouldered quietly, its energy spent.

Sister Theodora was busying herself organizing others, handing round cups of tea, hot buttered toast and blankets for those who had fought so hard throughout the night to save the hotel and rescue the trapped women.

Mila stroked Adele’s hair one last time, kissed her gently on the forehead and rose to go find the others.

The nurse had set up a makeshift surgery in one of the outbuildings that had once been a soft-play gym for toddlers. Its padded floors were bright blues and reds that made for comfortable mattresses to treat the walking wounded and those more seriously injured by the fire. In the corner, on the far side, she found Zed wrapped in a blanket, clutching a steaming hot mug of milky tea. Someone had cleaned his face up, but around his eyes and ears there were streaks of dirt and singed hair and eyebrows that reminded Riley of the 7/7 bombing victims on the London Underground all those years ago. There was a look of terror etched on his face, staring blankly with unseeing eyes. He was alive, but had needed CPR to get him breathing again, overcome by the fumes when Riley and others had dragged him out. He nodded gently at Riley and blinked his eyes rapidly as she approached, a weary smile on his face.

“Looking good Zed. You just can’t stay out of trouble eh?”

Zed tried to sit up but the strain was too much and he slumped back. Mila helped him upright. She put an arm behind his back and he leaned back against the bright red cushion that smelled of hospitals. The disinfectant did a poor job of masking an unmistakeable smell of young children, a heady blend of nappies, rancid milk and an undertone of vomit.

“How are the rest of them? Stella, Adele?”

“Don’t worry, they’re all fine. But there are many that didn’t make it out. Apparently there was a group upstairs in a dorm room on the second floor who died in their sleep. Never woke up. They found all six of them all together in a room full of smoke and fumes. They carried them out but couldn’t resuscitate them. There wasn’t a mark on them.”

She shook her head, still trying to dispel the mental image of those women lying dead in their beds. “If I was going to die, that’s how I’d like to go. In my bed, asleep, dreaming of being with my family on a beach somewhere hot.” Her voice trailed off.

“Where’s Adele?” asked Riley slowly regaining her wits.

“She’s fine. She’s helping in the kitchen, buttering toast with Sister Mel,” said Mila.

Zed’s voice was croaky and he reached for a glass of water by his side, clearing his throat before continuing. “We need to get out of this place. Get back to Hurst, to our own people. They’ll be worried about us. We’ve been gone too long already. What if they sent a rescue party? Followed our trail into town, straight to the hospital? We’ve got to get back.”

“Not till you’re well enough to move. Remember what the nurse said,” said Riley.

“We don’t have time enough to wait around here,” said Zed.

“We can’t just leave these people in their hour of need. Look around you.”

She extended her arm towards the twenty or so people stretched out around them. Some were fighting for breath from smoke inhalation, others in agony from burns being bathed with wet towels, the nurse bustling between them.

“They need us,” continued Riley. “They’ve lost a good number of people. We can’t just ship out after all they’ve done for us.”

“There’s nothing we can do for them. And let’s not forget, they still have Joe locked up like some animal. They got what’s coming to them.”

“Hold on, you’re saying they brought this on themselves? You can’t seriously be suggesting that none of this would have happened if men had been around to save the day?”

“Don’t twist my words Riley. I’m just saying that what comes around goes around. Cosmic forces. Karma. I’ve seen it before.” He glanced up and raised his eyebrows. “What would the Sisters say: ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways.’ Something like that. I’m just saying that natural forces are at work rebalancing.  
Honi soit qui mal y pense 
and all that.”

“What does that even mean?” said Mila puzzled.

“You know, the Order of the Garter. Evil comes to those who think evil. You must have heard that before right? Jack’s forever banging on about it. ”

“Nope. I swear you make this stuff up.”

“It just means that life has a funny sort of way of getting its own back. What comes around goes around. And you can’t say that the Sisters didn’t have this coming.”

“No one deserves to die Zed. Whatever they think or believe. Just because this lot have strong views about men, doesn’t mean they deserve to die?”

“I’m not saying that at all. Don’t misinterpret what the Sisters have done here. Don’t kid yourself that this is the fulfilment of some weird feminist crusade for female empowerment. Whatever happened to sexual equality being the goal? Whoever said that to be happy and prosperous, required that someone else, an entire sex, had to be subjugated.”

“People are entitled to create a new community based on different values. If people don’t like that, then they should leave.”

“You mean, if men don’t like it, they should leave? Careful Riley. You’re beginning to sound like them.”

“Don’t get me wrong. This ethos would not be my choice. I don’t want to stay any more than you do. But you can’t say it’s not refreshing to see the boot on the other foot for a change.”

“Just goes to prove that women can be just as prejudiced as men if you give them half a chance.”

Riley looked back mockingly. “Prejudiced may be, but I wouldn’t say evil, would you? It’s not like we’re depriving you of basic human rights, forcing you to stay indoors and never show your face in public. We're not saying you can’t drive a car, vote, have a job, or any of the other stuff that women were routinely denied in some countries. Women will always have more of a bias towards nurturing than men. Call it oestrogen trumping testosterone any day of the week. You don’t see women slaughtering each other for bragging rights.”

“And I wouldn’t say locking a man up in a stable as part of some cult breeding programme is very progressive either. Would you?”

“I don’t see Joe complaining, do you? He’s like a pig in mud,” added Riley.

“But surely you can’t defend what they’re doing here? This nightmarish version of feminism is abhorrent. It’s like a social experiment gone wrong. It deserves to fail.”

Adele’s head popped round the doorway and spotted the three of them in the corner talking animatedly. She skipped over to Riley and sank down on top of her, wrapping herself in the blanket and snuggling down in its folds. Adele’s arrival defused the escalating hostility between them. Mila shrugged her shoulders watching the pair of them go at it. Riley and Zed were like cat and dog to her. They could fight for hours, going back and forth like this, evenly matched, exploring idea and counter-idea. Mila couldn't see the point, both of them were so stubborn, they were never going to change. 

Riley looked up, her whole face seemed to relax into a smile at the sight of Adele. “How’re you doing kiddo? Heard you’d made yourself useful in the kitchen.”

“Yeah, Sister Mel made me butter like a hundred pieces of toast.” She wriggled round to turn her face to Riley, her eyes wide, her expression melancholy. “Hey, guess what I just heard? Joe and the other men have escaped.”

Riley bolted upright, her fatigue suddenly evaporated. It was like an electric shock had passed through her body. “Escaped where?” She grabbed Adele’s shoulders, a serious look on her face. “This is important Adele. You need to tell me exactly what you heard.”

Adele looked puzzled but realised this was not just another game. She sighed and told her what she knew, which wasn’t all that much.

“Just that when the guard went to check on them in the morning after the fire was put out, the stables were empty, the doors were wide open. Someone must have let them out.”

Riley and Zed looked at each other, confused.

“Why would Joe escape when they promised to release him tomorrow? It doesn’t make any sense. The finger of suspicion is going to point squarely at us,” said Zed.

“They can’t have gone very far. They must be on foot. All the cars are still parked outside,” added Mila.

“Well if it wasn’t one of us who let them out, then who the hell was it?” wondered Zed.

Chapter Thirty-Seven             

As the sun burst through the trees on the far side of the wood, Joe and the other men were already two miles away, putting as much distance as they could from the hotel before the alarm was raised. They were fairly certain that the Sisters wouldn’t send their guards after them, but they were taking no chances. Joe had wanted to stay behind, to wait for his friends. It seemed pointless to escape. He only had another day before Zed was well enough and the Hurst team could go home. Seamus had insisted he came with them. He told Joe that he would get the blame if he stayed behind. Joe suspected he simply didn’t trust him to keep quiet. In the end he felt he had no choice but to go with them. He would bide his time and wait for an opportunity to slip away.

The small group stayed as far as they could from roads, crossing fields and following footpaths through turnstiles and along fences and hedgerows that had grown wild and impassable in places. The dawn chorus of crows and rooks masked any noise they made as they hurried away. Speed was more important than stealth right now. Besides, they reckoned there was no one around to hear them here, heading away from town towards open countryside.

They had Jean to thank for their escape. She was a mousey little thing, small for her age, Joe reckoned no more than sixteen.

She had the responsibility of bringing the men food and water twice a day. Joe had warmed to her immediately, aware of the fact that she was naive and impressionable, sympathetic to their plight. She had agreed to help them should the opportunity arise. All they had needed was a diversion.

It had been Seamus who had talked her into helping. He said he had planted the seed of an idea with Jean almost as soon as he was imprisoned there, nearly four months ago. He was always going on about the injustice of their captivity and how the right thing to do was to release them and help them escape.

He had nurtured this idea almost daily ever since, twisting the conversation, manipulating whatever Jean said and thought, moulding her to his purpose.

Lying on his bed in the evenings, Joe had heard Seamus whispering kindnesses to Jean, engaging her in conversation, trying to build her trust, gain her confidence, then bad mouthing her as soon as she had left, his guile and artifice laid bare. Joe didn’t like Seamus’s methods but figured the end justified the means.

Joe had quickly grown to dislike Seamus but felt intimidated by him, like everyone else. He was always talking others down, playing on their insecurities. His quick wits and dry sense of humour helped cement his position as top dog, at least in his own eyes. Joe mostly ignored him and kept himself to himself, preferring solitude.

Seamus was a burly fellow, the kind of person who wore shorts all year round, whatever the weather, to show off his enormous calf muscles. One calf was emblazoned with a shamrock, the other proudly sported an Irish flag. Despite being in his late twenties, he still wore a baseball cap backwards. He had a full beard, grubby polo shirt that stank of sweat with a number one on the back, and biceps that were so swollen they looked deformed for a man of his height. He was as wide as he was short and said he had been a promising rugby player for his local team back in Shannon.

Seamus had passed the time telling the others stories. He was fond of the sound of his own voice, as if he was afraid of silence. He had been a labourer on a farm just north of New Milton. He told them he was only ever intending to stay in England for the summer months till harvest time. He was trying to earn enough money to travel through Europe to spend the winter in Athens where his two friends from school days were living, doing bar work and sleeping above a fast-food restaurant, near the Acropolis. But he had never made it out of England. When the virus was first reported, he was living on the farm in a caravan with three Polish men. The day of the collapse he had woken at five with a splitting headache from the previous night’s flagon of cider they had shared playing cards. He had found the Polish men gone. His paltry savings he kept under the mattress stolen together with the car keys to his barely serviceable VW Polo. The car was held together with fibreglass, its chassis rewelded in more places than he’d care to admit. He had found the rest of the farm deserted and the building locked, as if the family had left in a hurry. He had stuck around for a couple of days waiting but when it was clear that no-one was coming back, he broke in to the farmhouse and lived there on his own until the food ran out. After that he had moved on to start a nomadic existence, living on his wits, until the day the women from the Chewton Glenn captured him. 

Seamus was a charmer. Of that, there was no question. His friends said he had the gift of the gab, Irish blarney, Gaelic charm, whatever you wanted to call it. He liked to be the centre of attention. Joe had seen that for himself.

He had struck up conversation with Jean at every opportunity, feigning interest in her teenage life, flattering her on the clothes she dressed in, however plain. He complimented her on how she wore her hair, ingratiating himself slowly but surely. He had proven a good listener and conversationalist. Jean would hang around for ages until the guard told her to leave. Seamus reminded Jean of the older brother she had grown up with, who had died many months ago before she came to the Chewton Glen hotel.

In the end Seamus had convinced Jean to make the leap from sympathiser to collaborator, playing an active role in their escape. When the commotion of the fire distracted the guards and drew them from their posts, she crept back to the stable block. She stole the keys from a hook, released the men from their captivity. Together they ran down the drive towards open fields and freedom beyond. Jean had remembered to bring what little food she could conceal over the last few days. In Tupperware containers, she had stored biscuits and leftover bread, already hardened and stale. In her rucksack she had a metal flask for water, a torch and a pocketknife.

Joe wasn’t sure, but he harboured suspicions that the fire was no accident and that Jean had something to do with it. Perhaps Seamus had put her up to it, either that, or it was fortuitous for their purposes to say the least. Judging by the smoke that rose high into the morning half-light as they bounded away across open fields, the fire had got way out of hand. He felt terrible leaving Zed and the rest of them behind, but there was no way he could get them out too. He would wait for an opportunity to slip away. Despite what she’d done, he felt a responsibility to Jean. He feared for her safety amongst these men. He didn’t trust them one bit. If he could, he would take her with him back to Hurst.

When they were several miles from the hotel, Seamus held up his hand and they gathered round a lonely bench next to a country lane where the landscape opened out with a view down over fields of rapeseed, swaying bright yellow in the sunshine. The four men took it in turns to drink from the flask of water Jean had brought, hands on hips, wiping sweat from their brows, before allowing Jean and Joe to share the last drops.

“Where are we heading for?” asked Joe, interrupting a private conversation Seamus was having with one of the others.

“Not much further now. Maybe another mile. There’s a house not far from here I remember. Very secluded. Big place with an orchard and greenhouses, full of vegetables. Delivered animal feed there on a tractor and trailer this one time. Seems like a lifetime ago.”

“Sounds ideal. But how do you know there won’t still be someone there?” challenged Joe.

Seamus chewed his lip and spat on the ground, kicking the earth with his boot. He looked up with a smile, squinting in to the sun.

“I don’t, but I’ve a feeling that the farmer and his daughter will remember me. Either that or they’ll be long gone by now. It was a couple of years ago. If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

There was an edge to his voice that made Joe shake his head and not push the point further. He had no intention of staying with the group once they were installed, but knew from experience that prime sites like farmhouses were normally occupied. If they had stores and food, then they would not welcome the arrival of strangers.

As they approached the farm, they paused at the boundary fence, watching the house and outbuildings for any movement or other signs of life. Seamus told the others to stay hidden while he circled the property. After twenty minutes of waiting, basking in the mid-morning sunshine, lying on a grassy bank under a sycamore tree, they heard footsteps approaching down the lane and readied themselves. Joe grabbed a small log, holding it high above his head gripped firmly in both hands, ready to strike. The others shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, ready to grab whoever emerged from around the corner. The group breathed a collective sigh of relief as Seamus whistled a pre-arranged greeting and Joe lowered the log. He beckoned them on towards the house.

Walking up the rough track that led to the farm, there were no signs of vehicles. A tree had fallen right across the track, blocking the road, meaning no vehicle could get in, or out.

They passed a sign for a local construction firm and immediately understood why. The whole place was mid renovation. Scaffolding framed the far end of the farmhouse, where the original red brick building was being extended. A large modern kitchen with a conservatory, patio area and stone steps led down to a landscaped slope thinly covered with what looked like newly sewn grass, stretching towards a stream that ran through the back of the property. They took a minute to refill their flask in the lazy flow of the cool water, before cautiously approaching the front porch. There was a beaten-up old estate car parked outside with three flat tires, resting on its rims, sagging on its suspension.

They stood outside an old oak panelled front door. Its white paint had mostly peeled away laying bare knotted wood and sturdy iron hinges painted black. Seamus tried the handle but found it locked. He stepped back and put his shoulder into it, grunting as he came off worse for wear. The others stood and watched him, arms crossed, faintly amused by his bravado. The hinges and lock refused to budge. Seamus directed the group to split up, heading in opposite directions. Joe and Jean stayed together, testing each of the shutters on the ground floor windows. No luck, they were all secured from the inside. Jean froze hearing footsteps coming round the house towards them.

They pressed themselves to the wall and crouched down only to see Seamus and the others rounding the corner, checking windows and doors, completing their search. The extension and conservatory proved more rewarding. They found an empty window frame with no glass. Seamus slapped one of the other men on the shoulder and laughed at their good fortune. He wasted no time being the first to climb through.

The group reconvened at the interior door to the old part of the house. Pallets of tiles and flat-packed furniture were stacked by the wall. Tools left out at the end of their shift by workers who must have left in a hurry from the half-finished kitchen. Seamus smashed a small pane of opaque glass with his elbow and reached through, groping for the catch. He found the key still in the lock. Seamus paused as he and Joe had the same thought. If the house was all locked up from the inside, was it possible someone was still living here? Seamus raised his finger to his lips and made sure everyone had understood his instruction before continuing their search.

He wrenched open the door that squeaked in protest on hinges rusted shut and stepped into the cool darkness beyond. The main reception room looked untouched, dust layered grey on every surface. There were no signs of disturbance. A vase in the middle of a long mahogany table held what remained of wilted flowers, the water brown and mouldy in its base. There was a musty smell about the place. Disturbed dust drifted in shafts of sunlight that penetrated through gaps in the shutters. It was like stepping into a tomb, frozen in time, untouched by human hand for months, maybe years.

Next door, there was a snug-room with white washed walls, a large fireplace, its grate covered in grey ash, from a fire long-since cold. Either side there were bookshelves set deep into the wall. Behind the door, Joe could see a large-sided armchair facing an old-fashioned television set. Joe had not seen a TV set like this since his childhood staying at his grandparent’s house up near Scarborough, in north Yorkshire. TVs with cathode-ray tubes predated plasma and flat-screen technologies by some twenty years. 

A sixth sense made the hairs on Joe’s neck prickle. Was his mind playing tricks or was there really someone sitting in the chair? He signalled to the others behind him and leaned his head further round the door. His instincts proved right. He could see a pair of shoes resting on a footstool. He readied himself, gulping air. He picked up a glass paperweight from the side table and advanced further in to the room.

Slumped in the armchair he found the emaciated face of an old man staring lifelessly back at him. His eyes were open, his mouth wide, with prune-like skin drawn tight across his jaw, discoloured and ravaged by time.