AS THE POPULATION OF HAVEN HAD GROWN, volunteer squads had cleared bodies from the homes in the surrounding villages. The buildings had been cleaned and disinfected and occupied by new arrivals. Among their community they now had carpenters, bricklayers, mechanics, an engineer, a plumber, academics, a nurse, teachers, working and professional men and women, even a journalist, whom Reaper avoided in case his prejudices surfaced. One of their unlikeliest success stories was Ronnie Ronaldo from Castleford, which he swore was his real name. He was a chap who confessed he had avoided work for the last fifteen years, yet had become their best ever scavenger. He had led them to an Asda warehouse that had enough stock to service the north of England. For Ronnie to discover his vocation, all it had taken was a plague.
They were in contact with eight other communities, none as big as their own, but all wishing to maintain peaceful and mutually beneficial relationships. The Haven committee was still mainly made up of first arrivals, but they knew it would not be long before they would have to hold elections to create a democratic council. Reaper was pleased that such progress had happened in a relatively short time. Nevertheless, he worried about maintaining the peace, and the possibility of what might be happening in Windsor. As Pete had said, there would come a time when someone would have to take a trip south to find out what was going on. Reaper knew it would be him. First, though, he would try another airforce base, this time in the flatlands of Lincolnshire.
He went the next day. He waited until the others had gone off to their allotted duties. He wanted no arguments about going alone. It had been his ruling that missions should involve at least two people; that everyone should have a back-up. But he was still brooding about the three dead servicemen and knew he would be a poor companion for a field trip. Reaper found Smiffy and asked him where the nearest RAF station was located across the Humber. Smiffy knew of a camp near Brigg because he had once visited the place, but was unsure if it was the closest. Nevertheless, Reaper was happy enough to have a destination and, if he saw signs for any other along the way, he could always divert. He told Arif of his intentions, overrode the young man’s objections, and took the Astra van.
Reaper bypassed Driffield and Beverly on his way to the Humber Bridge. He was used to empty roads with only the occasional crashed car or abandoned vehicle to disrupt his speed, but he slowed as he approached the suspension bridge that crossed the mouth of the estuary. It was a glorious feat of engineering, a beautiful creation, almost a mile long, that had been designed to support a daily load of traffic in each direction, and last for more than a hundred years. It would last a lot longer now, with no traffic at all. Reaper slowed as he went through the tollgates and drove at a sedate pace across the wide expanse of water. Was it his imagination? Perhaps the sun was playing tricks on the surface, but the water seemed clearer, as if the world was healing now that man-made pollution had almost ceased.
He saw no signs of habitation on his journey. Some areas, he had discovered, were like that. The few people who had survived had moved on from sparse rural areas, to come together with others to form small groups. Even Brigg seemed deserted, although he knew only too well that residents might prefer to remain hidden.
The camp was easy to find and was deserted.
Buildings and hangars were ruins and the remains still bore the marks of the fires that had destroyed them.
Had these airmen also gone south? There was no one to ask. He drove in past a gatehouse that was poignantly similar to the one he had stormed, and followed the road to destroyed barracks and office blocks. The Officers’ Mess was one of the few buildings left intact. Reaper got out of the van to explore it and went inside cautiously, his carbine at the ready.
There were no messages on the notice board, no relevant entries in the log in the office. The bar was strangely untouched, neat and tidy. Chairs set around tables that were clear of any clutter, tall stools waiting at attention at the bar.
He put the carbine on the polished bar top, went behind it and took a can of Boddington’s Bitter from what had once been a cold shelf. He flipped the ring-pull and poured the beer into a pint glass. He took a beermat from a pile near the till, placed the mat on the bar and the glass on the mat. He had food in the van but couldn’t be bothered to eat. He sat on a high stool, his back against the bar, and faced the empty room. He raised his glass and drank.
‘Absent friends,’ he said.
He meant Jimmy, Billy and Tommy.
They had been survivors, young decent men that the world needed, with demanding futures ahead of them. Not anymore. He got another can and drank that, too. Then a third. Then decided he was being a prick and drinking alone was doing no one any good.
He should still be making a contribution, even though this trip had failed to find anyone. He had a thought: one of those that he had kept at the back of his mind for future consideration. As he was on the south side of the Humber, he could check out Immingham and the docklands near Grimsby. He would look for the oil refinery there. It would be useful to make contact with whoever held it, because he knew an oil refinery would not be standing empty and unguarded.
In the van, he checked the map. The road ran straight into Grimsby. South of the port was the holiday resort of Cleethorpes. He would head across country and visit Cleethorpes first. When displaced and confused people had gone looking for somewhere to settle, they might easily have chosen a resort rather than a working port. Holiday memories and the seaside were more attractive than the urban sprawl of Grimsby, whose very name might be a deterrent. After visiting Cleethorpes, he would take the road straight up the coast through Grimsby and Immingham to the Humber Bridge. He would be back late, but that didn’t matter.
Kate would understand.
Reaper drove through small villages and hamlets that had no sign of habitation, and looped off the main road into the Lincolnshire Wolds. He stopped to relieve himself and to check the map. He was no longer sure of where he was, but reckoned if he kept going in the same direction, he would eventually reach the coast and the main road. It was almost six and he hadn’t made the progress he had hoped.
He went through Waltham, joined the A16 and turned off at the sign for Cleethorpes along the A1098.
This would bring him to the coast, south of the resort.
He would take a quick drive through the town and be on his way. He went past Peak’s Top Farm Guest House, past a Tesco store, round the roundabout and along a wide highway through a housing area. At the end of this road was the sea. It was liberating to leave the buildings behind and emerge to face the endless freedom of an ocean that held the promise of distant foreign shores. He wondered if there was someone on the coast of mainland Europe looking at England wondering what was happening here. Dismissing the thought, Reaper turned towards the town centre.
The ocean was calming, the promenade deserted.
Ahead was a distinctive block of flats in red brick, with white facings and balconies. It was modern, but its refined lines evoked an earlier and more elegant age. He could imagine Hercule Poirot stepping out from one of the apartments to take the air.
The shot shattered his reverie along with the windscreen.
Reaper pulled the wheel to his left, mounted the pavement and braked, but couldn’t stop the van from ramming into a low wall that fronted the gardens of a row of terraced houses. Another shot, angled down again. ‘Poirot’ was shooting at him from the balcony of one of the flats. Reaper pushed open the nearside door and slid onto the tarmac, pulling the carbine with him. He crawled backwards, keeping the vehicle as cover. Another two shots smashed glass and pinged through metal.
No warning, just shots. Not a great welcome to the seaside. But had the shots been intended to kill? He had made the mistake of assuming that before, to devastating consequences. Had the beers he had drunk blunted his awareness? He was bleeding from a cut on the face but had no other wounds.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Stop shooting!’
‘Fuck off!’ came the reply. Brief, and to the point.
A young male voice. ‘This is our town.’
‘I’m just passing through.’
‘Not anymore.’
Three more shots. The bullets were tearing through the bodywork of the car and coming uncomfortably close. He levelled the carbine, rested his back against what was left of the wall and leaned back so that he could see around the bonnet. The shooter was on a second floor balcony. Reaper fired, deliberately close but not to hit, and the youth ducked back.
‘Let’s talk!’ shouted Reaper. ‘There’s no need for this. There’s no reason!’
More shots hit the car, this time from across the road, from behind railings that protected the start of landscaped gardens that fronted the sea. Another voice shouted.
‘Who needs a reason?’
‘Better than the Waltzer!’ the first voice shouted.
The car was being pinged with bullets from both directions. Reaper cursed. If this was their town, then it seemed as if the resort was in the hands of a gang of delinquents. Bollocks to this.
He rolled behind the rear wheel of the vehicle and pointed the carbine across the road. The youth who didn’t need a reason rose with his rifle levelled. Reaper put two shots into him, sending him sprawling backwards.
‘You bastard!’ shouted the youth on the second floor.
‘You’re dead, mate! Dead!’
The youth kept firing, single shots but rapid fire. As the sound of the last one died, Reaper moved up to a crouch, already knowing his target’s location. He aimed and fired once. The youth screamed and the weapon dropped to the balcony floor. Reaper was up and running up the road and round the corner to enter a neat square, a small car park opposite, shops at ground level beneath flats. He reached the residents’ entrance, and ran in without hesitation, up the stairs to the second floor, along a carpeted corridor that muffled the sound of his steps and round a corner. He came face to face with a youth of about nineteen or twenty – young enough to have to contend with acne – who was wearing a stunned expression, jeans, a black shirt, cowboy boots and a leather Stetson. He looked stunned. He was bleeding from his left arm and it hung uselessly at his side. He was carrying a rifle in his right hand.
The wannabe cowboy said nothing, but came to a sudden stop, his eyes widening and his mouth open.
Reaper already had the carbine raised and didn’t hesitate. He shot him. Survival rules. Reaper went past the body and checked the flat the youth had just left.
Two girls, scantily clad, were sprawled on settees: one in her twenties, the other younger, much younger. Their eyes were wide with a fear that had not been caused by his appearance. Their fear was perpetual, they had seen and been required to do too much. Reaper did not have time for a rescue mission against unknown odds, but their eyes never left his face. Their expressions were slack with abuse.
‘Do you want to come with me?’ he said, but neither reacted. ‘If you want to come with me, you have to come now.’
Even Reaper realised it was not much of an offer.
Frying pan to fire? They knew nothing about him except that he was an older man with blood on his face who killed people. The younger girl moved to the older girl who put her arms around her.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said. But God knows when.
He retraced his steps down the corridor and kicked open the door into another flat that would provide a view down the promenade and into town.
It was a well-furnished sitting room with big windows: the sea to the right, the promenade and the town dead ahead.
About two hundred yards away, four men were leisurely getting into a car as if they had just left a pub, presumably alerted by the gunfire. They probably intended to view the kill or join in the hunt. At least one of them was holding a rifle, another had what looked like an Uzi. Reaper could guess the sort of regime they ran but the odds were wrong for him to take them on and dispense justice. Weren’t they? He glanced down into the square. A row of cars were in the parking bays and a BMW stood right outside the entrance to the flats. If he had to guess, that would belong to the Cowboy, and he didn’t need it anymore.
Reaper went back to Cowboy, took his leather Stetson and patted his pockets, but found no keys. He took the stairs down, three at a time. The keys were in the ignition of the Beamer. He threw the carbine onto the passenger seat and started the car. He lowered the window and put the Stetson on his head. It might help confuse the opposition for a second or two. He took a Glock from its holster, racked the slide, lay it in his lap, and drove slowly onto the promenade.
The men were in a Jaguar, heading towards him.
Reaper picked up the Glock and let his elbow hang out of the window. The sea breeze was pleasant. The two cars got closer and, in the final seconds before they met, the Jaguar slowed, as if the occupants were expecting an explanation. He pointed the handgun and fired it point blank into the limousine, emptying the 17 shot magazine. The Jag slewed onto the nearside pavement and shuddered to a halt. Reaper stopped the BMW and got out, throwing the empty Glock into the car and taking out the second, cocking it as he stepped towards the crashed vehicle.
A man fell from the rear nearside door. He was large, middle-aged and wore a black leather overcoat, even though it was July. He was the man with the Uzi.
Reaper let him stagger to his feet and look round with a dazed expression before he shot him twice. Head and chest. Reaper took three paces closer to the car to improve his line of sight. Three more shots. The occupants of the Jaguar no longer posed a threat. This time he felt no remorse, no doubts. These were thugs running a regime of which he could not approve. They needed to be removed.
He threw the Stetson into the road and hoped acne was not contagious. His mood of self-righteousness was abruptly disturbed by three shots from a handgun. He turned and saw three more men who had exited the same pub as the four who were now dead. They were unsteady on their feet and if their aim hadn’t been off he could have been in serious trouble.
Reaper got back into the Beamer, put it into reverse and started to make his escape when a burst from a sub-machine gun perforated the engine. He turned the car sideways in the road for cover, grabbed his weapons and took to the side streets. Maybe he hadn’t totally removed the bad guys but perhaps he had seeded the start of a revolution. Maybe he would keep his promise to the girls and come back and finish the job. If he did so, it would have to be with more support.
The side streets behind the coast road confused him and he guessed those chasing him would know the points of containment and his possible escape routes.
Perhaps they would have done a better job but for the fact they had apparently been drinking for much of the day. Either that, or they were rank amateurs. Even so, it took him an hour to get clear of what he considered the danger area before he could start looking for another car. But then there was another problem. The folk of Cleethorpes had been very safety conscious; almost all the cars were locked and he didn’t want to risk the noise of breaking glass.
He found an old Ford Fiesta left unlocked outside a guest house in Isaac’s Hill. If he was going to hot-wire a vehicle, it had to be an older car. Newer models had more safety features that made it difficult. He found a flat-blade screwdriver in the glove compartment. He pushed it into the ignition and turned. Nothing. He glanced up and down the street and tried again, ready to pump the accelerator. On the fifth attempt it started. Thank God it had been a warm and dry summer.
Reaper drove out of Cleethorpes warily in case the gang who claimed to hold the town had outposts to the north as well as the south. He encountered no problem. Perhaps any guards had been summoned into the centre to search for him. As he approached Grimsby, he saw a second-hand car dealership. He left the Fiesta running, kicked in the door of the on-site office, and chose the keys for a two-year-old Honda Accord. The engine turned over but did not catch – the battery appeared nearly flat. He opened the bonnet, drove the Fiesta nose to nose, found jump leads and started it on the second attempt. He patted the Fiesta in thanks – it had served him well in a moment of crisis, but he really needed a faster and more powerful car to get home, and besides, the Fiesta needed fuel.
The Honda had half a tank of petrol and Reaper knew it was enough.
Dusk was setting in and a close inspection of the docks and oil refineries could wait for another day.
He drove steadily, alert for danger, and began to feel safer when the road became a dual carriageway. He burst out laughing as he passed a huge dockland area to his right. A short time earlier, he had been desperately looking for a car, now he was passing the massed ranks of thousands of imported new cars that were still waiting to be delivered. They would be waiting forever.
Back into the countryside Reaper felt safer still and increased his speed. Eventually, he turned onto the A15 and headed back to the Humber Bridge. Halfway across, he passed an abandoned Bentley. He speculated that maybe the driver had come here in both style and despair to take a final leap from the bridge.
He was tired but had shed his despondency and reclaimed his positivity. He stopped at a village store that had not been pillaged. He drank a can of Coke and ate some chocolate for the rush of energy he needed.
Almost everybody would be asleep by the time he got back. The community had adopted the old custom of rising with the sun and going to bed with the dusk.
God knows how that would work in the winter when daylight was often reduced to less than eight hours.
The day had been overcast and the night was the same. He continued driving, his mind turning to his arrival back at Haven. He would leave Kate undisturbed and stay in the mobile home. He smiled to himself and allowed another one of those possibilities that had recently begun to lurk in the back of his mind, to surface unchallenged. Maybe it was time.
Sandra had married. Two other couples had done the same, and more were living together, bound by commitment, if not the words of Reverend Nick. Maybe he should make it official and ask Kate to marry him?
His smile got broader. This was a conclusion he could never have imagined a few months ago. Like Ronnie Ronaldo, it had taken a world catastrophe for him to find himself.
It was after ten thirty when he arrived at the gates of Haven. He stopped to remove the chain and push them open, closing them once he was through and replacing the chain. He stopped the car near the guard post. He could see the glow of lights from over the hill and was tempted to go straight to the village to propose to Kate. Although, on reflection, it would be better to wait until the cold clear light of day, when Kate would know he meant it. He got out and stretched.
In any case, he should first check in with whoever was on guard duty.
Arif was sitting out front on the camp chair. Reaper walked towards him softly. The young man, who always prided himself on being alert, was asleep. Reaper would tease him at being caught off guard by an ‘old man’.
A few paces away, he sensed all was not right. It was the way Arif slouched, the tilt of his head. Reaper sensed the presence of death; he had been around it many times and could recognise its posture and its soft aroma. Reaper’s carbine was slung carelessly on his shoulder and, as he reached for a firmer grip, a figure stepped into the doorway of the mobile home, pointing a Mac 10 sub-machine gun. Another figure came round the far corner of the guard post, a pistol levelled.
‘Welcome home, Reaper,’ said the man in the doorway. Jason Houseman. ‘Put the gun down, there’s a good chap. There’s been a change of management.’
What the hell has happened? thought Reaper. Where were Kate and Sandra? Then his fears and anxieties were obliterated by a thump on the back of the head that brought bright pain and then total darkness.