Here's Chapter Three. I think the rest of it probably needs a bit more beating into shape before I show it to folks...
The first thing we heard was the baby crying, that awful, desperate, shatteringly loud sound of a baby communicating major distress. Then, over it, came a woman's voice, shouting 'Help! Anyone there! Somebody help! Help us!' My arms tightened on Mikey but at least he didn't wake, I'd thought before he could probably sleep through an earthquake. It was Deb who leapt to her feet and took a few hurried steps towards the bottom of the T, where the noise was coming from.
'Fucking shit!' she muttered, then to me,' Put the kid in the buggy, quick!' I could see what she meant ? that we might have to run ? but at the same time I was frozen with panic. But then the woman came into sight, past the other entrance to the precinct, where the big Marks and Spencer was, and she wasn't running or behaving like someone who was being chased, but stumbling almost dazedly, looking around and shouting at the top of her voice.
She was probably pretty if scrubbed up nicely; youngish, reasonably slim, with a lot of curly red hair. Right now, though, wearing nothing but a scruffy nightie and a scruffier towelling robe, clutching the still-howling baby to her and with her face streaked with dirt and what was almost certainly blood, she wasn't going to win any prizes.
She spotted us around the same time we spotted her, and came to a hesitant stop, bending her head to the baby and trying to hush it. With one eye still on her, I lowered my sleeping boy into his buggy and did up the straps, just in case.
'We're harmless,' Deb called out to her. 'Are you? Are they coming after you?'
'No,' the woman said. 'No no, he's not after me. I've killed him. Poor Nicky, I've killed him,' and then she started crying, as well.
Her name was Joanna Finton-Scott, her ten-month-old daughter was Rosemary, and she wasn't actually entirely sure she'd killed her husband, but she'd hit him hard enough that he wasn't moving when she'd left their house. She hadn't been chased, she didn't think so anyway, and there had certainly been no one after her by the time she'd crossed the bridge at the end of Twilsdon Park, but there had been noises from the other houses when she ran from hers, crashes and screaming, so she'd headed straight here thinking there would be people who could help, and only started yelling herself when she saw the shops were all closed.
We got this much out of her in the first few minutes, during which we sat her down and Deb pretty much forced her to take a couple of swallows from the bottle of Jack Daniels. Joanna had a cut lip and her nose had been bleeding, but she was more upset about the fact that Rosemary's nappy and little pink sleepsuit were soaked with pee. She didn't seem aware of the state her bare feet were in after her panicked journey this far.
While Deb gently pressed her for more details, I went back into the minimarket and got a pack of nappies in Rosemary's size, plus a couple of jars of baby food. The damn place didn't stock baby clothes, or footwear, but one of Mikey's t-shirts would do the poor little sod for the moment. I dithered for a moment as to whether to take the buggy in with me, but somehow I had already accepted, deep down, that Deb was to be trusted, and Mikey didn't wake during my rapid foraging.
Joanna accepted both nappies and t-shirt with tearful gratitude, and insisted on seeing to Rosemary and changing her before she'd let us clean her own face up a bit, for which my packet of wipes came in useful.
She thanked me again for the baby food, but said that Rosemary wasn't used to it, and unbuttoned her nightie to feed the baby herself. While Rosemary fed, she told us a bit more of her story, and though Deb nodded understandingly through most of it, I kept quiet, trying to absorb how much I'd missed of what had been happening recently. She'd come from the upmarket estate at the other side of the park, a gated development of about a hundred or more households, where they had a very active neighbourhood watch type group. In the last few weeks, there had been talk about dividing it into a men's group and a women's group, and though neither she nor her husband had been wild about the idea, he'd gone along to a couple of the men-only meetings on the grounds that he'd have to know about it to object to it. But he hadn't wanted to talk about what went on when he came home, and Joanna had been preoccupied with Rosemary having a cold, and worrying about her job at the end of her maternity leave. The news had been getting worse all over, rumours of a nasty virus, of violent gangs roaming the streets, and other stuff only hinted at. Then some of the neighbours got ill, and one man apparently went mad and killed his wife and children. A few of the other neighbours loaded their families into their cars and just left.
'Well, you know, last Thursday,' Joanna said. 'Some of the news reports were saying head to your nearest assembly point if you've got any strange symptoms, some were saying everyone stay home and stay calm...'
Deb looked at me, and I looked away; Joanna, absorbed in reliving her experience, didn't appear to notice.
'Nicky went and bought a load of bottled water and tins, he went with Paul and Harley and their wives and they all said that there was nothing like as many people as you'd expect stocking up, which is weird when you think about it. But we agreed we'd stay put for the time being, things would probably settle down.'
Rosemary, not seeming to mind the fact that she was almost swamped in a bright blue t-shirt printed with helicopters, had fallen asleep against her mother's breast. Joanna looked at her lovingly for a moment and adjusted her nightie. Then her lips trembled and she struggled not to cry as she carried on.
'We were all right until this morning We'd been having a bit of a lie in as Nicky wasn't going to work. Then I got up and went to the bathroom, and when I came out, Nicky was on the landing and he just came at me and started hitting me. I ? I managed to kick him in the balls, but he got up and came after me again. Rosemary was screaming in her cot and he took no notice of her at all, he was just all over me, I ran back into the bedroom to get to her and... and I grabbed the little lamp off the table and hit him with it. It was like it woke him up for a moment, he said 'Jo, run! Take Rosie and get out quick!' And then his face changed and he was roaring at me and hitting out, I was kicking and punching him and I knocked him backwards into the dressing table, he whacked his head on it and fell down, so I just grabbed Rosemary... He wasn't moving. I was trying to find a pair of shoes but I couldn't see them, and then I heard all this screaming from next door and I just lost it, I ran down the stairs and across into the park. And there was no one around, no one anywhere. And then I found you two.'
Silence fell. Deb picked up the Jack Daniels and took a drink from it, but didn't offer it around.
'Right.' she said. 'We need to get ourselves a bit sorted out now.'
She got up and went across to the charity shop, which was closed, lights off, but didn't have anything in the way of shutters or grilles. She peered inside for a few minutes, hands up to the glass and gazing through them. 'Brilliant. OK, that's great. There's a pushchair in there.'
Joanna and I watched her, both of us equally bemused as she pulled a roll of banknotes out of her pocket, examined it and shrugged. She turned back to us with a wry grin. 'I'd feel bad about ripping off a charity shop, but I'll stick some of this on the counter ? just in case.'
Then she went to the nearest bin, lugged out its metal inner container and rammed it hard through the shop's big window. Mikey and Rosemary woke up at this and began to howl, Deb shook her head, used the metal bin to clear some big shards of glass and clambered into the shop.
'Is she nuts?' I said, even though I had started to accept that pretty much all the normal rules had gone by the board today. Joanna, rocking her screaming daughter, looked up at me and tightened her lips.
'I don't care, she can help us,' was what she said, and then Deb was thrusting an unfolded and rather grubby looking stroller out through the broken glass.
'Oi, Joanna!' she called. 'What size are your feet?'
'Fives' Joanna replied, standing up, Rosemary's cries tapering off as her mother jiggled her gently, murmuring to her. I picked Mikey up as well but sat back down on the bench with him to soothe him, trying to avoid getting too many thumps from his flailing little fists, so I missed whatever negotiations Joanna and Deb had been engaging in. By the time I'd thought of giving Mikey Bida to cuddle and Bida had worked its usual eight-legged magic on him, Joanna had got Rosemary strapped in the stroller and Deb was re-emerging from the shattered window with a lurid straw beachbag rammed with garments in one hand, and a pair of green wellies in the other.
'There is fuck all there apart from stilettos in a five, girl,' she was saying to Jo. 'But I've grabbed all the kids' clothes, and something for you, too.'
They both came back to where I was sitting just as Mikey closed his eyes again.
'Right,' Deb said again. 'We'll go back to mine in a minute. I've got triple locks and bars on the windows, so we'll all be safe enough in there for now, while we work out what to do next. As long as the power's not been cut, we can go online and find out where it's all at. Can either of you cook much, by the way?'
The question was no more or less incongruous than anything else that was happening, but somehow it made me want to laugh, particularly as Joanna said 'A bit,' just as I said 'Yeah, a bit.'
The upshot of this was me making my third and final trip round the minimarket, this time with Mikey in his buggy, filling a wire basket with meat, pasta and vegetables and various tins. With an internal shrug, I threw in a couple of bottles of the best red wine they had and then, with a half-guilty impulse, peeled off two of my banknotes and pushed them under a corner of the locked till.
I almost carted the whole lot out in the basket, but then I saw the pile of cotton eco-shoppers and spent another minute or two transferring my haul to a couple of these on the grounds that they'd be easier to hang off the buggy.
When I emerged, Deb was gently wheeling Rosemary to and fro. Before I could panic about Joanna, she re-appeared from the other arm of the T, in powder-blue tracksuit bottoms, what appeared to be a man's grey and white striped shirt and the wellies. She'd obviously braved the loos to change, or at least nipped into one of the accessible doorways down there. She had her nightie and robe in a bundle, which she tossed into the bin Deb hadn't used as a ramraiding tool.
Deb was clearly relieved to have us all in view again.
'Time to move on, I think,' she said. 'Kizzy, you want to grab any of that picnic stuff? Joanna, you hungry?'
Joanna shuddered. 'No. Really, no, let's get out.' She hurried across to Rosemary's stroller and took the handles from Deb while I scooped up the debris from the lunch, everything but the stripped chicken carcass, which I slung into the bin and the last beer, which Deb picked up and opened, and bundled it into the shopping compartment under Mikey's buggy. He was still asleep, Bida clutched tightly in his lap, but I knew he would be wide awake fairly soon, and wondered briefly how kid-friendly Deb's home might be. I was beginning to feel a nasty creeping unease again, and I had the impression the other two were of a similar mind.
OK, so we were burglars and shoplifters even though we had put some money down in the shops from which we'd met our needs, but it wasn't just that. I suppose it was the noise Deb had made breaking through that huge glass window, but whether it was that no one had come along to investigate, or that someone would come along any minute that was worrying me, I couldn't honestly say. I flashed back in my mind to the playground between the towers of Midwell Heights, and that sensation of being watched by hostile eyes, and needed no more urging at all.
We went down the stem of the T, the way Joanna had come, and turned along the line of lesser shops. On the other side of the road, the primary school and the rows of office buildings were all equally, obviously unoccupied. We were moving at a steady pace, Joanna and I both with buggies and bags ? she had taken charge of whatever else Deb had looted. Deb herself had nothing heavier than the beer she was swigging from, but at least she wasn't haring off without us.
We were almost at the traffic lights ? still functioning, I noticed, even without traffic to instruct ? when a car appeared out of a sidestreet and turned towards us, not speeding but not dawdling either.
'Oh fuck,' Deb breathed and then glanced from Jo to me and hissed furiously, 'Don't say a word, either of you. Let me handle it.'
That was fine by me, particularly as Mikey chose that moment to wake up and demand a drink, and Joanna seemed equally happy to let Deb handle things. The car pulled over while I was dealing with Mikey, and the man in the passenger seat got out, holding a clipboard. The driver, who was much bigger, took a little longer to emerge. When I saw that they were both wearing yellow hi-vis waistcoats with Real World scrawled across the front in marker pen, I felt shivers go down my spine. This was mainly due to having another moment of being convinced I was having a very long, very lucid dream, but that if these two were the emissaries of my uncoonscious, what I was going to wake up to wasn't going to be all that good.
Clipboard Man, who looked like any amiable slight nerd, with thinning ginger hair, jacket on over a white shirt, and glasses, tried a friendly smile.
'Well ladies, are you making your way to a pick-up point?' he asked.
'We're fine, thanks. ' Deb said. Joanna bent down and fiddled with the straps on Rosemary's buggy, I think checking that her daughter was strapped in tightly enough to cope if we were going to run.
'We have a pick-up point on London Road,' the man said, still smiling. 'It's probably better for you if you make your way there. We could give you a lift.'
'What, with the children and the buggies? Have you got car seats?' Joanna demanded, and though Deb looked appalled I could see Jo's point instantly. We were three adult women with two small kids in the most basic of strollers, the car that these men were driving was your bog standard suburban vehicle, without room for all of us.
'Shut up, cunt,' the driver said, stepping round the front of the car. I grabbed the handles of Mikey's buggy, bracing myself to run, suddenly flashing back to the man in the playground the day before. That same weird grating voice, that same slow heavy stepping... The other man, the clipboard wielder, swung round and looked at his mate with genuine alarm. 'It's OK, Nelson,' he said. It's OK, they can walk there if I give them directions. They will do, they know it's for the best.'
'Yes ,yeah, we'll get there by ourselves,' Deb volunteered. Rosemary had woken up too and begun to kick and yelp,softly but definitely demanding some attention.
'Cunts!' Nelson said again, and made a kind of stumbling rush at the lot of us. It was Joanna who moved the fastest: she swivelled the buggy round away from him and did a kind of sideways kick at his knee. It didn't work and his hands came up and grabbed her leg, and he flung her down on the pavement. Somehow the buggy tipped over and fell on its side, and Rosemary's screams of terror and pain added to the whole mayhem. Deb jumped in with her hands locked together and landed a good hard hammer punch to the back of his neck, and he fell, but he fell onto Joanna's legs., grabbing at her, ripping at her shirt. Clipboard dropped his clipboard and danced about on the spot, shouting 'No, no, no!' Mikey was shouting 'No, no!' as well,and I thought of just wheelying the buggy and running like I had done when I saw the dead woman in the garden, but then Joanna kicked Nelson off, and the sun came out from the clouds and beamed sudden bright rays over the street and Nelson went into convulsions. He'd rolled over on his back and he started roaring and thrashing and jerking, and the other man, the clipboard wielder, rushed over and knelt down beside him. Joanna had scrambled to her feet and dived for Rosemary, hauling the buggy upright and and and making vague patting soothing gestures. Deb glanced from her to me and said, 'Move on up, let's go, let's go right now,come on.' We hurried after her, not in desperate flight but shifting quickly, despite the kids screaming and raging in the buggies, and when we reached the next junction we were just about to make a smart right turn and go on. I risked one look back and saw Nelson bucking where he had fallen and suddenly releasing the most amazing jet of red vomit, his feet drumming on the road.
'Bida, mummy, BIDA!'
Mikey's yells suddenly penetrated my brain, not the fact of his screaming but the content, and I came to an instant stop, realising that he'd lost his beloved toy. I looked round and saw it, about ten feet away from the men who'd intercepted us.
'No,' Deb snapped as she saw me stop. 'No, girl, no, come on!'
'No. NO!' I shouted back at her. 'Look after Mikey,' and I thrust the buggy, burdened with my son and the stuff we'd looted, practically into her crotch and ran back the way we'd come. At the time all I could think was that Mikey wanted Bida and I couldn't bear to deprive him; it was only a bit later on that it sank in, why I stupidly ran back to get a manky, battered, pointless cuddly toy. Bida was home, safety, our normal quiet lives, and Mikey had lost his home and his father and his grandparents and his comfy cot and I wasn't going to let him lose anything else.
It wasn't actually very far, we hadn't got very far away, but going any closer to Nelson's dying than I had to was not much fun. Yes, Nelson was dying ? he vomited another massive glut of blood when I was almost within touching distance. Bida, a bright splat of orange fabric, lay in the middle of the pavement, limbs sprawled out like a blighted drawing of a sun. Clipboard saw me, or became aware of me, and turned properly round, getting to his feet from the crouch he'd been in. 'I just want Bida,' I babbled, 'Bida's Mikey's , he needs him.' I made a grab at the thing and fumbled, grabbed again and got it by one rotten orange leg. Nelson groaned, and started slamming his head into the pavement; Clipboard focussed on me. He was splattered with blood, not too badly, but not all of it was Nelson's. 'This is all absolutely fucked,' he said, quite calmly. 'All of it. Absolutely fucked.' And then he turned his back, shaking his head. I had Bida, so I turned and ran, seeing that Joanna was well ahead with Rosemary and Deb was pushing Mikey's buggy further away slowly, turning round every step or two to look for me. Mikey was yelling for me as well, I covered those last few steps faster than an Olympic runner, and then I was back with them, my hand on the buggy handle.
'I should have shot you, but no one ever does that,' Deb observed, relinquishing the buggy to me as I gave Bida back to Mikey and and got moving. I wasn't really listening to her words, more the tone of them, which was friendly concern rather than threat.
We caught up with Joanna fairly quickly, she had stopped at the next turning, unsure of whether to bolt off into the random future or wait and see if we were still with her.
'It's fine, it really is this way,' said Deb, and a few minutes and a couple more junctions later, we were at her place.
It was the basement of a late Victorian semi, and she'd not been lying about the window bars, or the locks ? it took her a couple of minutes of swearing and key-counting to get the lot of us inside. Getting the buggies, particularly laden as they were, down the dogleg of steps, was no fun either. However, once we were in, I felt a huge sense of relief. Deb's flat had electricity, as proved by the fact that a light was on in the front room, and it was reasonably clean and comfortable. One large room, that same front room, opened off the hallway, with a big squashy sofa and small table, a desk with a computer on and bookshelves piled high with books. I could see a kitchen through an archway, and another couple of rooms on the other side.
We hauled some of the furniture around and turned the coffee table on its side and managed to make a kind of pen for the kids. Joanna propped Rosemary up on some cushions and Mikey, who was used to babies after our year of well meaning church hall groups, was happy to show her his trains or play with them himself. Joanna and I flopped on the sofa and both of us looked up at Deb.
'This is more than just us,' said Joanna, bluntly. 'It's more than just Twilsdon, or even London, isn't it?'
Deb pulled the bottle of whisky out of her coat pocket and took a swig.' Yup. Don't know how far it's got, though She had sat down in the computer chair, now she swivelled it round, picked up a remote and fired up the TV. Most of the channels she flicked through showed Not On Air At Present signs, even those that would normally be broadcasting endless repeats of quiz shows. The kid channels were off as well. Finally she found the 24-hour news, which showed a single presenter sitting on the edge of a desk.'It has not been confirmed that the Prime Minister is showing any symptoms, ' she said. 'Some Cabinet ministers appear to have been taken ill or otherwise be unable to be present at these meetings. The Queen is going to be making a statement shortly from Balmoral, where the Royal Family have been staying for the past few weeks. For the moment, you are advised to stay at home or, if you feel you are in danger or anyone in your household is showing unusual symptoms, make your way to the nearest Government control point.' The bottom of the screen showed a constantly-scrolling invitation to view their website for futher information.
'What do they mean, control point? ' Joanna asked. Deb snorted. 'Fuck all. Not even sure there ever were any. Well some people seem to have been put up in church halls and gyms and that, but nothing else. But that's a recording anyway. It's been on for three days.'
'Did the Queen make a speech? We were watching the news, well Nicky was, and he didn't say anything about the Queen.'
Deb shrugged. 'I don't think so. Maybe the servants went mad and ate her before she could do it ? or maybe there weren't enough people still functioning at the Beeb to get it on the air.'
'So what are we going to do?' I said. 'No offence, but we can't stay here forever. What about the kids?' Joanna got up immediately and leaned over the barricade to pick Rosemary up.
'She's wet, I need to change her,' she said.
'I got you nappies, but I don't know about clothes,' I was on my feet too, remembering the shopping that had been dumped in the hallway with the buggies. Deb let us get on with it, after telling us that she'd just pulled everything off the kids' clothes rail in the charity shop, along with the random selection of clothing Joanna was wearing. To Joanna's delight, Deb's haul included a couple of Rosemary-sized baby grows and a little white dress, and I was pleased to find a pair of dungarees that would fit Mikey, along with a pile of assorted t-shirts, leggings and jackets the kids could probably be put into if there was nothing else. Joanna bore the baby off to the bathroom and Deb turned her slightly squinting eyes on me. 'You said you were going to get to your parents. Did you phone them? Or do you want to?' I suddenly thought of Mum and Dad, comfortably pottering around their house, and then I thought of the smashed windows, the dead woman in her own front garden, the way the world had slipped out of focus,
'Yes, yes please,' I stammered.'I was out of credit, I was going to get some - '
'Not sure the mobile networks are working,' Deb observed. 'I couldn't get much on mine earlier, but good old BT seems to be holding up.'
She waved me into the kitchen, where there was a landline handset stuck on the wall and I dialled the Brighton number. It just rang and rang, and I looked at my watch and saw it was nearly 6 pm. They were always home then. That was weak gin and tonic time, while Mum slung the frozen veg into a pan and checked the pie or the stew or whatever. I hung up and dialled again, with the same result. I put the phone back in it's cradle and went to the sitting room. Joanna had come back with Rosemary kicking happily in her arms in one of the babygrows.
'There's no answer,' I said.
'Maybe they cleared off,' Joanna suggested. 'Loads of people were taking off abroad, when it started getting bad. After all the riots, and then when everyone started getting ill.' I winced a bit, remembering how I'd dismissed the reports of rioting as the usual old bollocks and nothing worth worrying about, even though, as people had been saying on Facebook and on the blogs, it wasn't the right time of year for riots.
I honestly wasn't sure what bothered me more; Mum and Dad fleeing whatever kind of cataclysm this was without at least trying to take me and Mikey with them, or Mum and Dad struck down in their home, beaten and killed, vanished forever.
'At this point, we're supposed to go and look for them,' Deb said and I winced. 'How about you, Joanna, where are your parents? Any siblings who might be lost and wandering around somewhere?' Joanna looked as bemused as I felt at Deb's carefree tone. She seemed to pick this up, because she waved a hand at the book cases, which were stacked with as many DVDs as book. 'This is what I do, review horror fims, People generally want to go and look for someone when it's really not a good idea' she said, and glanced at me. 'Well, reviewing is what I do when I'm not singing. Anyway, Kizzy, weren't you going to cook? Mut be getting on towards dinnertime.' I looked at the clock and reaslied it was almost 6pm, Mikey at least was going to be announcing his hunger soon. If nothing else, I could at least make a good meal for him, one involving fresh vegetables, properly cooked.
Cooking soothed me.It was like one of those evenings I'd occasionally spent getting together with friends before all this whatever it was; a few of the girls in our shabby little flat passing the drinks around, cuddling Mikey abd their own kids, chatting about something and nothing ? Deb even put some music on, an undemanding 70s compilation. I'd grabbed the basics for a scratch spaghetti bolognese, which I threw together on Deb's battered but clean stove, and both Joanna and Deb ate appreciatively. Mikey also demolished the bowlful he was given, and even Rosemary, brought out to sit on her mum's knee like Mikey was sitting on mine, ate some of the spaghetti and a spoonful of sauce. When we'd finished, both kids were turning a bit sleepy so Joanna and I held them on our laps.Having wiped Mikey's hands and face, I dug his red blanket out and wrapped him up.
'Do you want to put them to bed?' Deb asked, and Joanna and I glanced at each other. 'For me, and probably for her, it was another of those little moments that are a dislocating shock: here we are in a strange place, limited provisions, limited facilities and it's bedtime for our little loves with no familiar bed or cot or storybook.
Deb got to her feet and went into the hallway. After a few minutes of thumping and shuffling, during which Joanna soothed Rosemary with a breastfeed and I cradled Mikey to me, gently stroking his ruffled curls, she reappeared looking rather pleased with herself.
'OK I think this might do for tonight,' she announced. In what was clearly her spare room, she'd spread out and inflated a double airbed, chucked an unzipped sleeping bag on top of it and surrounded it with filled boxes of books, just enough to confine little people safely and leave room for Joanna and I as well. I said it was great, and noted Joanna taking a bit of a deep breath before agreeing: maybe Rosemary had been used to a solid gold cot or something. More likely she was uneasy about the prospect of sleeping with either me, Mikey or both of us. Still, we took turns in the ungenerously sized bathroom to deal with things like washing, nappies, and , in my case, cleaning Mikey's teeth and in Joanna's, fretting a little about the fact that she couldn't do the same for Rosemary's two and a half pearly-whites.
Deb also offered a big clean bathtowel to do duty as a blanket for Rosemary, and her mother wrapped her in it before lowering her down with a kiss on the forehead. 'She might wake up,' Joanna said uneasily. If she does, I'm picking her up, I mean it.'
Mikey wanted Bida, and clutched the thing tightly to him as I rearranged his blanket round him and, not giving a toss what either of the other two thought, sang 'Dream a little dream' to him until his eyes closed. As it was, Joanna sat quietly beside me while I was singing, though Rosemary had fallen asleep almost instantly. Once Mikey was over as well, we both got up in silent accord and crept out of the room and across the hall. Deb had fired up her computer and was tapping away at it. She turned round with a slight frown as we approached her.
'It's not looking good,' she said.