Hurst - Robin Crumby (bookreader TXT) 📗

the old man’s house and eating his food, it was a small sign of respect, but an important one. Joe hoped that others would do the same for him when the time came.

It was hard work and within minutes his clothes were soaked in sweat. The resulting hole was only a few inches, but deep enough for its purpose. When he stood back, leaning on the shovel, a half-smile formed on his lips. He felt a glow of respectability.

They sat in silence over dinner, sharing cans of baked beans and chicken curry that Jean had heated up for them over a fire. They washed it down with a full bottle of sherry, the first proper drink the men had had in many months. By way of dessert, they passed round a half-full bottle of Baileys, listening to more of Seamus’s stories of growing up in Ireland and tall tales of personal triumph and good fortune. Joe was sick of hearing them.

Seamus yawned and stretched: “Think I’ll turn in. I’ll take the master bedroom, the rest of you can fight over the rest. I found this place, didn’t I?”

No one argued. He grabbed Jean’s wrist and hauled her up forcefully. She looked confused and tried to snatch back her arm, but he held tight. “Come on, let’s go.”

She pulled away from him, her hand slipping from his moist palms. “What are you doing?” said Jean.

For a moment, she looked like a defenceless animal, caught in the headlights, painfully unaware of the danger right in front of her, but paralysed and unable to move. She looked at the others imploring for their help, but they seemed complicit in whatever was happening here.

Seamus smiled a lascivious smile, his movements were slow and imprecise from the booze. Hunched over in the semi-darkness, the man on the crate grinned back, enjoying the drama. His teeth were a dull yellow, several were missing. He took another long swig from the bottle, never taking his eyes off the girl. Seamus turned back to face Jean. His smile was gone. “Let’s go, I said.”

His tone towards her was different, more insistent somehow. Gone was the charming, affable Seamus who looked out for Jean, cared for her, the man she probably had a secret crush on. The person standing in front of her wanted one thing only. Wide-eyed, she suddenly saw him properly for the first time and was very afraid. How could she have been so blind, thought Joe? He looked like a predator circling his prey.

She backed towards the door, her eyes darting between Joe and Seamus, panic building. She still had time to run if she was quick. She tried to stall. “I’m not tired.”

“Neither am I.” Seamus shook his head, emboldened by the others.

Joe started to intervene: “Listen, Seamus, I don’t think…”

Seamus whipped his head round and silenced him before he could finish. “I don’t give a monkey’s what you think. Stay out of this, fat boy.”

Jean suddenly grasped what was happening and started to cry. “Please, I don’t…I don’t want to. Joe, please, don’t let him.”

Joe rose quickly and stood between them, blocking his path. He raised his hands in front of him to try to defuse the situation, appealing for Seamus to be sensible.

Seamus shook his head. “Don’t be a mug. We all know what’s going to happen here. Don’t try and get in my way. I’m warning you.”

“This has gone far enough. If you do anything to that girl you’ll have me to answer for,” cautioned Joe.

“I thought you were one of us.” Seamus looked around the others, making eye contact with each of them. “Such a disappointment.”

“I’m nothing like you, Seamus.”

“Locking us up in that place, for all that time, they treated us like animals. Sure, you were only there a few days, but us, we were there for weeks on end. Someone has to pay.”

“Doesn’t mean we have to behave like animals. We’re better than that, aren’t we?”

“You may be, Joe, but I’m not. Treat me like an animal and sooner or later that’s what I become. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.”

Jean’s chest was heaving as her terror mounted, adrenaline pumping through her veins, her fists clenched. She made a break for the open doorway, but one of the men grabbed her wrist and pushed her back into the middle of the room.

Seamus nodded at his former cellmate. Joe never heard or saw it coming, and was only vaguely conscious of movement behind him and a severe blow to the back of his head. He collapsed on to the floor and the world went dark. He was dimly aware of voices and snatched fragments of conversations. A strangled scream, hurried footsteps going up the stairs, then nothing.

When he woke, it was dark with only the flickering light of a candle in a saucer. His hands and feet were tied with what felt like bungee cord, lying on a cold limestone floor. Jean and the others were nowhere to be seen.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Joe squinted up into the beam of sunlight that struck the paving stone next to his head. A dirty J-cloth had been stuffed in his mouth to stop him shouting out, which made breathing difficult. There was a metallic taste to the cloth as if it had once been used to clean paint brushes.

He’d been down here for two days now in a state of squalor that made him gag each time he woke. His underwear was heavily soiled and despite his best efforts to wriggle clear of the wet patch on the floor, he had been unable to get any real sleep for the last few hours. He was dangerously dehydrated and exhausted. Conserving his remaining energy, he listened helplessly to the shouting and intermittent screams from above. In part as a subconscious defence mechanism, his thoughts were miles away. He had been filling the interminable hours reflecting on a happier time before the outbreak, escaping from the hopelessness of his current predicament. The smell of paint and the unpleasant taste in his mouth somehow reminded him of his old neighbour Howard and his part-time work for a decorating business run by a friend. Paint brushes left to soak in white spirit on his windowsill overnight. How he wished his best mate was here with him right now. He could have done with the company.

Before coming to Hurst, Joe had spent several months holed up in a tower block in Shirley, on the outskirts of Southampton. The two friends shared a passion for bad sci-fi, Southampton football club, Britpop and video games – the more gore and violence the better. They took it in turns to car share into town to the same multi-story car park down near the docks. Howard was a crane operator, responsible for unloading large shipping containers on tight schedules and rewarded for hitting daily targets. It was dull work, but paid well and it meant he got to spend the day listening to music or daydreaming, with a window on the commercial world overlooking the port. By comparison, Joe’s days were more mundane, working in the kiosk at the local cinema in Ocean Village. After work, they would sneak in and catch the latest releases, enjoying unlimited refills of Coke and popcorn till their bellies were full, belching on the front row in the darkness, laughing together.

When the first news reports of isolated outbreaks of the virus began in earnest, people left the cities in their droves, carrying what they could. Those that remained took full advantage of unprotected stores and shopping centres. When the numbers of rioters swelled, sweeping away the thin blue line of law and order, large segments of the urban population formed ant-trails to electronics and clothing stores for the latest gear. They had staggered home happy with wide-screen televisions and DVD players, unaware that the days of widely available electricity were soon coming to an end. Blackouts swiftly ensued, leaving displays lifeless and obsolete.

Joe had the foresight to borrow a Transit van from his downstairs neighbour, and drove to the local cash and carry a few blocks away. They had avoided the supermarkets. By then larger stores were surrounded by private security guards equipped with riot shields and batons to deter the hungry crowds. With Howard’s help, Joe loaded up on multipacks of fruit juice and mineral water, boxes of biscuits, nuts and crisps, dried fruit and Biltong, sacks of rice and pasta, and anything else that would last without refrigeration. By the time they were done, they had ferried seventeen brim-full shopping trolleys to the van parked in a side alley. It took them the best part of a day to manhandle box after box up the eleven flights of stairs to their bedsits, the lift broken for the third time that month. It was a small block and they shared the floor with two larger flats, both of whose occupants were away on holiday or business, they weren’t sure which.

He remembered the day a convoy of army trucks arrived to reinforce the police. Hundreds of soldiers did their best to wrestle back control with tear gas and rubber bullets, before they were overwhelmed and forced to retreat, leaving gangs of youths to slaughter each other in a mad scramble for what little food and water remained.

Joe and Howard, along with a family from downstairs, watched with increasing alarm. They decided to take matters into their own hands, barricading shut the ground-floor stairwell door with two sofas and a kitchen table hurled from the floor above. They reinforced the metal doors with two heavy-looking curtain rods, top and bottom. It would keep the more curious scavengers away but they both knew it was unlikely to stop any concerted effort. If the gangs thought there was anything of value inside, they would find a way. It was just a matter of time.

The family downstairs got sick first. There was nothing Joe or Howard could do for them. Through the air vents, they heard the children coughing through the night. The next day when they went to check on them, there was no response. Everything was silent.

With a smile, Joe remembered spending their days reading fiction, sometimes aloud. Howard thought it was important to stay fit, so they took it in turns to do press-ups and sit-ups, running relays up and down the stairs. Hours passed slowly, lost in conversation, arguing about the most pointless stuff, like you did when you no longer had TV, work or social media to occupy your every waking thought. Who was the best James Bond villain? Whether there really was extra-terrestrial life? Who was the best English striker of all time? Which members of the latest boy-band sensation could actually carry a tune without the help of a mixing deck?

Joe still treasured the handwritten diary he kept to record what they saw from their eleventh-storey panoramic view of the city. He tracked the movement of police vehicles. Counted the helicopters ferrying personnel in and out. The day the army arrived and started knocking on doors to evacuate whoever remained. He remembered the day they first noticed that passenger jets had stopped taking off from Southampton airport a few miles away. The unrelenting silence, broken only by car alarms set off by the last of the looters. Each event noted with times and approximate locations.

They had debated whether to leave the city, afraid of contracting the sickness. Howard talked of other dangers. Cholera and worse. Too many bodies left unburied, he said. Rats would spread disease. It was only a question of time before things deteriorated further. In the bedsit, they had been safe, rationing their food and water for as long as possible. In a few weeks, they hoped the virus would die out, along with most of those infected, giving them safe passage out of the city. They planned to head south-west towards Lymington where his aunt lived and try to find a fishing boat or a