Lambs: World Gone Down (Survivors: Volume 2) E-Book

Ford Benton

• Herausgeber: AMMFA Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Lambs: World Gone Down (Survivors: Volume 2) is an thrilling story of survival in a post apocalypic world where prehistoric monsters are back in control.

Former addict Nikki tries to escape from her coercive captor Egg, a man with a dark secret.

At Carlton Manor, the survivors, aided by a new friend, try to stay hidden as dangerous vigilantes close in.

In the war-torn streets of London, Emily and Kenny try to avoid giant monsters and worse as they try to find safety.

Continue the stories of the survivors of Lambs: World Gone Down (Survivors: Volume 1) as their stories begin to converge in a world gone to hell.

Leseprobe

Lambs: World Gone Down

Survivors Volume 2

Benton Ford

Contents

Survivors

1. Refuge

2. Prisoner

3. Barricade

4. Hunter

5. Scavenger

6. Challenges

7. Wreckage

8. Shellshocked

9. Captive

10. Inside

11. Reconnaissance

12. Intruder

13. Tunnels

14. Escape

15. Assault

16. Rescue

17. Discarded

18. Connection

19. Doctor

20. Overground

21. Comforts

22. Patients

23. Leavetaking

24. Enclosed

25. Chase

26. Battleground

27. Converging

28. Brigands

29. Wasteland

30. Severance

31. Firestarter

32. Alive

33. Fracturing

34. Guard

35. Captor

36. Hunted

37. Goodbye

Acknowledgments

About the Author

“Lambs: World Gone Down (Survivors Volume 2)”

Copyright © Benton Ford 2024

The right of Benton Ford to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Author.

This story is a work of fiction and is a product of the Author’s imagination. All resemblances to actual locations or to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication has been created using A.I and no part of it may be used for training Artificial Intelligence generative software.

For Chris Clancy

Tasty with ketchup and a side of fries

Survivors

Volume 2

1

Refuge

She remembered the day she won her first swimming badge. Ten metres. She’d barely made it to the edge, reaching out with the last of her strength to grip the poolside before the water pulled her down. To accommodate the awkward length, they were swimming diagonally across from the shallow end’s right corner to just under midway along the pool’s far side, and for Emily Grenfell, yet to see a growth spurt, she was out of her depth. As her fingers closed over the edge and she managed to hang on, she had felt something like pure joy for the first time.

The second time had been later that day, when she had taken her newly presented badge home. Mum was still working part-time and Dad was still around. As she came in the door and held the badge aloft, Mum, sitting at the dining room table, had let out a little scream of delight. She had jumped up so quickly she had almost knocked over her coffee, run across to the door, and scooped Emily up in her arms.

The look on Mum’s face was one Emily would never forget. An expression of complete, unfiltered pride and happiness, and even through the darkest periods of Emily’s troubled teenage years, when she had pushed Mum as far as away as she could, sometimes she had come back to that face, remembering that despite her efforts to force her mother away, Mum had always had her back.

Now Mum was a corpse, slowly rotting away in the back seat of an abandoned car, and Emily was all alone, naked, covered in blacked dotted lines drawn with permanent marker, where a sick bastard had planned to cut her up for parts. Where there weren’t the slowly smearing lines, there was blood, bruises, dirt.

The pattering of feet came again, and she dropped to the ground. The snarl of the creature that had been trailing her as it padded among the packed, discordant rows of abandoned cars. She heard the swish of its tail, the low growl. Then, over everything, a desperate shout:

‘Emily!’

She was going to die tonight. She had thought she didn’t care, and had stepped out into the road and waved her arms at the creature as it moved between cars, large, serpentine head filled with serrated teeth picking at the corpses of the drivers. She had banged on the bonnet of the nearest car to attract its attention. With her eyes filled with tears and her mind with hopelessness, she had thought she had the nerve to stand there and let the creature take her. Only when it turned, let out a birdlike squawk, and began racing towards her, did she realise how much she wanted to live.

Rain had made the ground slick, perhaps masking her scent. She had managed to keep away from it by hiding beneath cars in oily spaces too narrow for the creature to reach, but she could still see its feet as it padded up and down, searching for her.

‘Emily!’

She wanted to tell Kenny Green to go away, that she never wanted to see him again. She wanted to blame him for Mum’s death, for putting her in the firing line of the monster who had drawn the lines on her, but she had no energy left for anything but survival. As she lay beneath a transit van parked up on the curb, pressed into the little gap by the pavement’s edge, rainwater pooling around her, she hoped he would overcome his own stupidity and get out of here.

She was a pavement’s width and a short path’s distance from the open door to an abandoned tourist hotel. Shit had gone down too recently for everything to have been looted, so if she could just make it there, she might be able to find clothes, warmth, somewhere to sleep. She twisted, looking for the creature, but there was no sign of it. Perhaps it had given up. Perhaps it had seen Kenny and gone after him instead.

A plane roared overhead, so low the glass blew out of a downstairs window and the transit van above her rocked. Emily pushed herself up over the edge of the pavement and wriggled to the edge of the van. Peering up and down, she looked for the creature’s feet, but saw nothing.

Now.

She rolled out from under the van and pushed herself up. The rain made her feet slick and she slipped a little before gaining purchase. As she bolted for the hotel’s door, however, a deep growl came from behind her.

She turned, heart sinking as she realised her mistake.

The creature stood on the roof of a nearby car. Its tail whipped from side to side and its head lowered as its mouth opened to reveal lines of teeth. The size of a cow or small horse, it would make short work of her.

Helpless, she backed away as it jumped down onto the pavement and closed in. She reached out behind her for something, anything to use as a weapon, finding only the handle of a loaded plastic wheelie bin. She pushed it in front of her, knocking its contents onto the ground. A slew of litter rushed out, a revolting mixture of smells briefly catching the creature’s attention.

As Emily backed away again, her movement caught the creature’s eye. It looked up, lowering itself back onto its haunches, ready to spring. Emily backed sideways, off the path, towards a small patio area. A pair of ornamental tables and chairs lay on the ground. As the creature sprung, she grabbed the back of the nearest chair, holding it in front of her.

The creature leapt. The chair caught it awkwardly, but it was like trying to stop the momentum of a small car. The chair jarred back into Emily’s chest, and she succeeded only in deflecting the creature, knocking it sideways. The chair fell away. Emily clutched at her bruised chest as the creature turned.

It snarled, dropping back onto its haunches, readying itself for a killing strike. Emily, horrorstruck, could only stare, her heart thundering so hard she thought it would burst.

Then, as the creature lunged, something flashed through the air, striking it square in the mouth.

It squealed and fell back as a brick bounced away. A couple of teeth fell amongst the gravel. Another brick struck it hard before it had recovered, this time square in the side of the head, just below the creature’s left eye. It squealed again, retreating a few more steps as a third brick struck it in the side of the neck.

‘Get out of here, you fucking bastard,’ came Kenny’s voice. Emily risked looking away from the creature and saw him approaching up the street, a shopping basket filled with bricks under one shoulder. He walked in front of her, squaring up to the creature as it hissed and snarled. He cocked his shoulder, another brick in his hands, then flung it with all his might.

He caught the creature on the tip of its snout. It squealed and this time turned and fled, tail whipping behind it. With a groan, Kenny dropped the heavy basket and turned to help Emily up.

‘Let’s get inside,’ he said. ‘It’s got to be safer than out here.’

The water was off, but in the hotel kitchens there were large plastic bottles of drinking water designed to fill filter machines. Emily took one into a ground floor ensuite room, locked herself inside, then scrubbed herself in the bath until she got rid of the blood and dirt, and most of the black marker lines.

The only thing she could find to wear was a low-quality hotel dressing gown neatly folded in the bottom of the room’s only cupboard, but it was better than nothing. Clean, dressed, and dry, she went through the hotel rooms one after the other, looking for something better. The ground floor was empty, but on the first floor she came across a room that had been in use. A young couple, judging by the items left behind, and in one suitcase left open on the bed, she found jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweater that were close enough to her size. The girl’s only spare pair of shoes were sandals a size too small, but the man had a spare pair of trainers, and luckily also had small feet. Emily could make them fit if she bunched a little tissue and stuffed it into the toes, then tied the laces extra tight.

Clean, dressed, shoed … the last thing to take care of was her growing, gnawing hunger. As she headed for the room’s door, however, she caught sight of herself in a wall-length mirror hung up outside the ensuite bathroom door.

As she stared at herself in unfamiliar clothes, black marker lines still visible around her eyes and along the sides of her jaw, her attempts to revive herself fell apart. She howled at the mirror, attempting to break it, but all she managed to do was hurt her hand. As more, fresh pain flared, her legs crumpled beneath her, and she found herself lying on the ground in a hunched sobbing ball, one leg kicking out in defiance at the room’s desk, hands pummeling the floor.

She didn’t know how long the madness lasted, only that eventually her strength gave out. She wasn’t sure if she slept or whether she had fallen into a form of catatonia, but she opened her eyes and found everything seemed clear. Her body still felt wretched, her mind worse. She wanted to think everything was a crazy nightmare, but the reality was that she was really, really fucked, and the only way out might be to find some sort of cord and string herself up from the ceiling light. That or throw herself off the stairs, or kick a hole in the window and climb out.

But she had been there. She remembered goading the creature on the street, wanting it to rip her apart and send her into the same place as Mum, but at the last second she had bottled it.

I’m a coward.

Or maybe … she wanted to live.

She lay there on the ground, listening to the sounds of the new world. The hotel room was silent: no buzzing fridge, hum of an air conditioner, muffled voices of other guests, creak of upstairs footfalls. There was only silence, punctuated by occasional distant booms that rattled the windows and made the hanging ceiling light shudder.

And then a light tap-tap-tap on the door.

‘Emily? Are you in there?’

She snapped her head up. Kenny. Her anger bloomed briefly, like a distress flare, then it was gone. Despite everything, she was alive because of him.

She heard his footfalls move on, then a muffled knock on the next door along. His voice, calling for her.

‘I’m here.’

His footfalls padded back. He tapped on the door again. ‘Emily?’

‘Wait.’

She couldn’t let him see her lying on the floor like a broken doll. As she climbed to her feet, her leaden limbs felt like they weighed a thousand tonnes. She leaned against the wall, waiting for a bout of pins and needles in the leg she had been lying on to fade, then she limped to the door and pulled it open.

Kenny stood in the corridor, back against the far wall as though afraid she might attack him with something. He held a tray in his hands and slowly lifted it up towards her.

‘It’s not much, but you have to eat,’ he said. ‘There’s no electric, but the gas stoves in the kitchen still work.’ He gave her a grin that was desperate for praise. ‘I made you some beans on toast.’

She looked down at the tray in his hands. She could tell from the oily half a slice of bread poking out from under the mound of beans that he had fried it.

The urge to start crying all over again began to bubble up inside her. She put a hand over her mouth in an attempt to keep her sobbing under wraps, but it spluttered out of her in a series of embarrassing coughs.

Kenny looked up and flashed another nervous smile. ‘Yeah, I suppose if someone brought me that, I’d be pretty upset, too.’

Emily wanted to hug him and kill him at the same time. Torn between her emotions, she chose to do nothing.

‘I don’t want to die,’ she said.

Kenny shook his head. ‘No. Me neither.’

2

Prisoner

‘You can have the run of the whole place,’ Egg said, his words containing a joviality which his leaden face denied, sweeping his hand through the opulent penthouse apartment with the grace of someone recently moved in to something far above their station in life. ‘Everywhere except this room.’ Fingers lifted to drum against a closed door. ‘This is my room. You stay out.’

Nikki, her hands wrapped protectively around her, the expensive brand clothes unfamiliar under her fingers, nodded. ‘Sure. Whatever you want.’

Egg turned to her and smiled, a hideous fallacy that made him look more like a serial killer than ever. Cold, emotionless eyes watched her. ‘I will keep you in as much luxury as this world now allows. All you have to do is what a woman does. You know. Cook. Clean. The rest.’

Cook, clean … the rest.

Nikki shrugged. During her drug-addled days she had long ago lost count of the number of men who had thrown money at her, money that she had dutifully handed over to her boyfriend Collie on cold, damp mornings. It had been easy when she’d had the thought of a hit to motivate her, but now that her blood ran clean, it would take a lot more effort. Egg wasn’t like a normal punter. He didn’t have the same hungriness in his eyes.

Not for her body, at any rate.

If it was her soul he was after, that was different.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Egg said. ‘You can paint your nails or whatever. The power works because this building is completely run on solar, off the grid. And the water is still on. If that changes, we might have to consider … relocation.’ He stared at her while she nodded, like a schoolteacher waiting for attention. ‘Do you understand the rules? Tell me what you think they are.’

‘I stay out of this room, and I stay in the apartment,’ Nikki said.

That cold, emotionless smile again.

‘B-I-N-G-O spells bingo.’

His fingers closed over the handle of the forbidden door, and he stood waiting for Nikki to turn away. She shrugged, gave a sigh, and turned to face the open-plan living room with its glass-walled view over Clifton. Above the roofs of the nearest houses the green expanse of Clifton Downs stretched away, and beyond it the Avon Gorge, crossed by the dramatic Clifton Suspension Bridge. It was still intact, she noted, even if it was blocked by abandoned cars.

When she turned back, Egg had gone, disappeared into his room. A soft click indicated he had locked the door.

It had taken them three days to get across the dying wasteland of Bristol to make it here, to Egg’s penthouse palace. Three nights of hiding in dingy, lightless basement flats while the sounds of bombs and gunfire rattled the windows and shook the walls.

Nikki had no idea who was fighting whom, nor why. By day, they crept through empty, smoke-filled streets, seemingly on a route Egg had already decided, freezing at any movement or sound. They had seen people, mostly bodies, but other groups huddled together as they bundled into cars or minibuses. At a distance she had seen money change hands, seen people scream as they were refused, watched fists land, watched guns point and fire.

And through it all, Egg seemed unconcerned, as though the sudden mayhem that had come out of nowhere to engulf the city was something expected, planned, even.

It didn’t take much poking around to learn that Egg had assumed tenancy of the penthouse over the last few days. Pictures of a smiling, well-dressed and manicured family had been taken down from shelves but placed in dresser and cabinet drawers. A handful of shockingly high utility bills were addressed to a Mr. Bill Scatsby, a lifestyle magazine subscription to a Mrs. Ellen Scatsby, and a couple of postcards from Tunisa and Spain addressed to a Karen “RB” Scatsby, described by the sender as “Hey Rich Bitch,” and signed off by someone called Lana.

For a long time, Nikki looked around for signs of blood, a struggle, and even hidden bodies, but after she had searched everywhere except the forbidden room, she could presume they had just left of their own accord, leaving the place open for Mitchell Egglesfield to move in.

The kitchen was all shiny chrome, and there was a walk-in larder which Egg described with a hint of pride as a pantry. The Scatsbys had clearly liked to keep stocked up, and the shelves were laden with posh brands of cereal, pasta, coffee, noodles, chocolate, and biscuits. Fresh vegetables that filled a lower fridge compartment were starting to sour and wilt, but a freezer that still worked was packed with enough meat to keep them alive for several weeks. Nikki, who couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten anything that hadn’t come out of a takeaway box, stared at it all in wonder.

The first few nights were the strangest. In late June the days were at their longest, but Egg insisted all lights were switched off after sundown. Nikki, cooking simple dishes which Egg would eat inside his room, sat by the window and watched as darkness fell over the city, whole areas blacked out. Roughly one third of the streetlights seemed to work, presumably those on solar power rather than the grid, but whole city blocks fell dark.

And then the other lights began. Flashes of gunfire, the flare of falling bombs. A battle was being fought around them, but Nikki still had no idea of the identities of the opposing sides, and if Egg knew, he wasn’t saying.

The spectacle became such that Nikki found it almost like theatre, sitting for hours by the window as the battle lights flickered and the thick window glass shuddered. Once, she had even opened the doors and gone out onto a wide balcony, but the noise had been so loud outside the double-glazing that she had quickly gone back inside, maintaining her vigil from the sofa, her legs hooked up beneath her, the only light in the apartment a thin strip below Egg’s closed door.

Waiting for the war to come to their door, at first Nikki would lie awake at night, listening for the sound of someone pounding on the door, demanding entrance. As the days ticked past, however, first one week, then the next, life began to take on a strange, dreamlike quality, as though she were living inside a television screen, watching the world outside from behind a layer of safety glass.

Except for when she took him his food, she rarely saw Egg. He only came out to visit the bathroom a couple of times a day, locking the door behind him each time. Their conversations were brief and functional, barely more than a few stunted phrases. She had asked him what was going on a couple of times and in his cold, emotionless voice he had told her not to worry, before disappearing back into his room.

For the first few nights she had waited for him to visit her bed, but he had never come. At first she had lain awake, waiting for the door to creak open, for a shadow to appear silhouetted in the doorway, for the sound of coarse, desperate breathing. The momentary pause as he looked at her, then a powerful stride forward, his decision made.

After a week of uninterrupted sleep, however, with her body already beginning to recover, her skin to brighten, the track marks to fade, she began to enjoy the thick warmth of the expensive pillows, the comfort of a duvet, when for years her only warmth had come from a sleeping, snoring john.

But the question, the one for which she most craved the answer, continued to raise its head.

Why me?

The question was the only one that ever brought a reaction from Egg, and that was only the briefest of smiles.

Still, though, there was no answer, and at times, when she let her mind wander too far into the wildest of possibilities, and it was there that she found the darkest answers, the ones that made the pull of the junk stronger than ever.

There were johns that she didn’t remember, ones Collie had brought to the flat when she was high. Could one of them have been Egg? But if so, why did he show no interest in her now?

And if he wasn’t a john, what was he? She had pushed her family away, having no contact with them in two years. Could someone from her family have sent him to keep her safe? Was he some kind of private detective?

Again, it made no sense. But the thought that he had just chosen her at random among the wraiths that haunted the darkest corners of Bristol’s streets after dark … that was the worst feeling of all. She ought to feel a sense of gratitude, but she had a growing sense that she was in danger, and that she ought to get away.

But to where? There was a war going on outside. She had barely made it to the park at the end of her street. How would she survive? Where would she go?

So, instead, she sat by the window, watching the flashes of the bombs, and wondering when her life might abruptly change once again.

The worst thing to deal with during the long days when Egg was holed up in his room was the boredom. She read a few of the books she found on the shelves, but the Scatsbys hadn’t been interesting readers—most of the books were either business and finance-related, or saccharine romances. In Karen’s room she found a shelf of young adult science fiction books, but they were far too close to what seemed to be happening for her to get into any of the stories.

In the end, for want of something better to do, she began to search through their things, looking for nothing in particular, just wanting some sort of insight into this new world she found herself in.

The Scatsbys, to her disappointment, had been very much part of the digital generation. Aside from the handful of token photographs Egg had tided away into drawers, there were very few personal items—no calendars or planners, no photo albums, very little paper mail of anything other than circulars. She was pretty much ready to give up when one day she was going through the books in Karen’s room one last time, and nudged the bookshelf with her knee. As it shifted on the pile of the carpet, she felt something slide down the wall along the back.

When she pulled the bookcase out a few inches, she found a thin notebook hidden in the gap between the bookshelf and the wall.

She took it out, turning it over in her hands, then flipped through a few pages. At first it looked like a kind of throwback diary, filled with requisite ink-drawn symbols and sketches of friends, in a hand which had no little skill. Then there were a few obviously teenage moments which made Nikki smile. Beneath a line of five sketches of boys, differentiated by face shape or hairstyle, Karen had written: Today’s top five – Rick Bates, Tim Lander-Field, Alun Ember, Donnie Lucas, Paul Tower. Leaning towards Donnie, but only because he winked at me in maths.

Nikki flicked forwards a few pages. It was more of the same, but the diary dates became further apart, and the detail of each entry to lessen, as though what had started out as fun had become an obligation. Then, just as Nikki was about to put the diary back into its safe place out of honour for the missing girl, the entries started up again. This time, they had a completely different tack.

Jan from 3-1 was passing around her phone today, something she got off the Dark Web. Looked like bullshit to me. And if it wasn’t, it was probably just something given a gen-mod. No way it was a dinosaur, but it was good, I’ll give her that.

Nikki turned the page. Another entry, three days later:

Today in form time, Mrs. Trowers told us to tell our parents to make sure the cupboards were stocked with essentials. I don’t know why, but someone was blabbing and the Head pulled her out of science class to give her a bollocking. We could hear them in the corridor. Not sure what that was about, but she didn’t say anything. Fuck, she looked chastised. Her face was all red and everything. Ashley reckoned he’d given her a slap.

The next page:

Got home to find Dad had packed some cases. Won’t say why. He looks nervous all the time. He reckoned he was trying to find a last-minute deal for half term, but that’s bullshit. Half term was two weeks ago. I know he works for the government and knows stuff, but sometimes I wish he just had a regular job. I feel like we’re going to get the MI5 or whatever knocking on the door, wanting to inspect the plant pots for bugs or whatever lol.

Nikki turned the page, and found herself staring at the last entry, dated one week before Egg had brought her here. She tried to remember if anything had seemed amiss in those days before everything had gone strange, but she couldn’t. It had been the same for her: johns on the street, Collie, the drugs.

Jan had another video today. Something in a cage, and fuck me that was some good CGI. You could literally see it growing. And they’d done that usual fake stuff where they pretend it’s secret footage, all shaky and everything. Not sure what it was, some kind of dinosaur. I mean, AS IF. But Jan was parading it around like she’d just found the Crown Jewels in her mother’s closet.

The most fucked up thing was that Jan’s parents picked her up from school at lunchtime. I don’t know if she got in trouble or not, but her CEO dad came in their Merc and literally wheel-spun out of the car park. What a show-off dick. Got everyone spooked, though. Kate was saying Jan was sharing State secrets and the government was after her. She probably just had the dentist or something.

And after that, the Scatsbys had gone, and Egg and Nikki had moved in.

Nikki put the diary back behind the bookshelf and pushed it back into place.

Her heart was fluttering a little as she went back into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water from a tap that showed no sign of running out, then set some water on a working gas stove to boil some dried spaghetti. In the glare of the working electric lights, she wondered what was going on.

And hiding away in his locked room, Egg, she felt sure, knew an awful lot more than she did.

3

Barricade

Mack Davis lifted his glass, angling it towards Sarah and Gordon Horwood. His jowls wobbled as he smiled, and for a few seconds his eyes swung around the room, taking in the thirty or so gathered people.

‘So, I’d just like to offer a toast to the happy couple.’ He winked at Gordon. ‘Remarkably still happy, even after all these years.’

A few guffaws came from near the back. Gordon, a wide grin on his face, turned to scan the crowd, spotted Jimmy Altner near the back, eyes rolling, fingers in his mouth, and gave him a mock glare.

‘But really, if it isn’t what all of us want, deep down. To stay with the same person, to stay happy, avoid all the drama. At least that’s what I’m told.’

More guffaws as Mack glanced at his own wife, Theresa, sitting on a chair along the wall. She rolled her eyes, grinned, and flapped a hand at him to go on.

‘So, I’d just like to raise this toast to Sarah and Gordon, Gordon and Sarah. My two dear friends all these long years. Forty years together. Something we can all be proud of, but none more than the two of them. To Gordon and Sarah.’

‘Gordon and Sarah!’ came the cry from the crowd, as across Vickley Parish Hall glasses were raised, beer, wine, spirits—and a couple of soft drinks for the drivers—touched lips in celebration of Gordon and Sarah’s fortieth wedding anniversary. Gordon, his arm around his wife’s waist, lifted his eyes to the colourful banner hung across the back of the room, and smiled. Of course, there had been the bad times, but most had been good. And like Mack said, forty years was something of which to be proud.

He leaned towards Sarah, their heads touching. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Here’s to another forty years.’

Sarah laughed. ‘Just like you to keep me alive to claim the pension payments.’

‘I’ll spend them on the best embalming liquid money can buy.’

‘You’re so smooth.’

‘So will you be,’ he said with a grin, kissing her on the side of the face. ‘Right. I’d better go and make sure that Jimmy’s not lacing the punch.’

‘You mean even more than he already has?’

‘I’m hoping he’s left a little of that forty-year-old port Len gave me for tomorrow.’

‘Oh, that?’ Sarah grinned. ‘I hid it under your pillow.’

‘Sweet dreams?’

‘The sweetest.’

He left her to mingle with her friends, the breezy women from the tennis club jostling with the more serious types from Sarah’s quilting class. Sarah was the only crossover despite both occupations being Vickley mainstays, and no doubt the gossip was flowing faster than the wine. He’d always felt blessed to have such a versatile wife, one for whom there was literally nothing she didn’t find interesting, except perhaps some of the 1980s electropop for which Gordon had a peculiar fascination.

In the hall’s kitchen, leaning against the plastic worktop, cans of beer in hand, Mack Davis, fresh from his triumphant speech, had gathered with Jimmy Altner and Len Strange. Jimmy, swaying from side to side, was in the middle of telling them about another classic car he’d found on the internet.

‘It’s like, almost mint condition. Twenty-four grand. It’s a total steal.’

Mack rolled his eyes and nudged Len with his elbow. ‘In mint condition until you get hold of it.’

Len slapped a hand down on the kitchen counter. ‘Yeah, then it won’t be worth shit.’

‘Gordon,’ Mack said, ‘What do you reckon Jimmy’s gonna use that new but old heap of scrap for? Chasing the cows around the field?’

Gordon grinned. ‘If Debbie gets hold of it, she’ll fill it up with soil and plant flowers in it.’

Mack and Len guffawed. ‘It’ll probably go just as fast,’ Mack said.

‘Yeah, never believe any bullshit you read on the internet.’

‘You know,’ Jimmy said, lowering his voice. ‘I was reading something the other day about what they were doing up Stowbridge way, behind that fence. Any of you guys see that? I swear I saw a line of trucks going in there last week, up the lane by Ron Head’s farm, the one they’ve blocked access for.’

‘Yeah, right. Load of crap. Was probably Ron’s poker mates.’

‘Seriously, they were military type.’

Mack looked around at the others. ‘Why don’t we go up and have a look?’ he said. ‘The women have bedded in for a wine gossip. ‘If we go out the back, take Jimmy’s car—’

Jimmy lifted his beer and twisted it from side to side. ‘Yeah, but—’

‘Come on, there won’t be no bacon out on these roads at this time of the night. And you were just saying you were gonna get a new motor anyway—’

‘For display only—’

‘Come on, it’ll be like the old days, back when we were boys being boys, before we all got chained down.’

‘Susan won’t like it.’

‘Come on, Gordon. This is your party. You get to call it.’

He looked around at Jimmy, Mack, and Len. He’d known Len the shortest time, but even that was thirty years if not a day. Jimmy, he’d gone to school with, and Mack he’d been close to since their Parish council days, back when it had started out just the two of them.

And now, even on this occasion, it was tainted by what the future held. Debbie wanted to uproot a sixty-year-old life and drag Jimmy down to Brighton where their daughter lived. Mack’s wife Theresa had recently been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and while she could get around with a stick, within a year she would be wheelchair-bound. And then there was Len’s wife, Audrey, proclaiming loudly from the other room about how he had a life assurance policy due to mature and how she was going to spend it on the kitchen she’d always wanted … she was just a ball buster.

Gordon, all of seventy-three years, felt seventeen again. He looked from one to the other, and smiled.

‘Let’s do it,’ he said. ‘Jimmy, you’ll drive?’

‘Yeah, go on. Why not?’

‘We’d better tell the girls,’ Len said.

Jimmy shook his head. ‘We’ll go out the back. They’re busy discussing handbags and the best way to iron a shirt. Don’t worry, we’ll just have a look. We’ll be back before they realise we’ve gone.’

‘Audrey’ll kill me if she finds out.’

‘She won’t will she? Come on, Len. It’s Gordon’s anniversary. Not going to let us down, are you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Good man.’

The conspiracy stamped and sealed, they headed out through a fire exit at the back of the parish hall. Jimmy’s electric car glided silently through the night, the lights off, until they were safely out of sight of the parish hall. Then he switched on the lights and gunned it.

‘Careful!’

‘Woah, take it easy, hotrod.’

‘Nearly chucked up that last glass of punch, you clown.’

Jimmy sped along the main road, far faster than Gordon would have liked, but somewhere inside of him there was still part of that young tearaway who would have found this thrilling. Now, as Jimmy turned down the lane towards Ron Head’s farm, Gordon couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. They saw the first ACCESS FOR WORKS VEHICLES ONLY sign less than half a mile down, followed by another a hundred metres later. No one had seen Ron Head in months, not since his farm, which straddled the county line, had been fenced off. No one knew what was going on inside, because the fences were fifteen feet high and no one from Ron’s family had been seen in the six months since they had gone up. At first people had tried to drive around, but they had found that the fence didn’t end at the boundary to Ron Head’s farm … it went on and on, cutting off roads, entire villages, right across the neck of the country.

Thing was, nothing much seemed to be happening on the other side. Susan had a cousin living over the hill in Derwich Vale who told her on video call that they’d been given the option to relocate or stay where they were. No information on why, only that they were no longer allowed to make personal trips south of the fence line until further notice. And both being retired, her husband in a wheelchair, they had decided to stay put. Their visitor had told them it was a temporary measure, after all, that when whatever was being done was over, the fence would go as quickly as it appeared.

And then the barbed wire had appeared along the top, and everyone living north of the fence had gone radio silent, including Susan’s cousin. Gordon, at seventy-three, was inclined to just let it ride, but Susan had packed them a couple of bags anyway.

Just in case.

And now, as Jimmy’s headlights illuminated the fence blocking the road, Gordon felt a tingle of fear race down his spine, and wished he had the nerve to tell Jimmy to turn the car around.

Mack and Len, one of them drunk, the other thrilled by being off the leash, were already bouncing out. The headlights stood trained on a towering fence, tall corrugated sheets painted white that rose over their heads, held in place by large wooden posts driven into the ground, each as thick as a telegraph pole.

‘Come on, let’s take a look,’ Jimmy said.

Gordon reluctantly climbed out, hearing Susan’s words in his ear as he did so: You’re an old fool, letting them involve you in some madcap scheme. You should be at home with me.

Len walked up to the fence and gave it a solid kick. ‘Not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘But if we scale that tree there, we can see over.’

A bulldozer had cut space for the fence, but it was haphazard, hastily erected, and in places it looked cobbled together as though whatever government agency had been tasked with its construction had been running on a serious budget. While they had cleared a cut for steel anchoring posts to be embedded in the ground, they had only cut back what vegetation was necessary. Nearby, a large beech tree, its trunk as thick as a water barrel, rose out of an ancient bank severed by the fence, its branches overhanging the field on the other side.

Gordon just grinned at Len. ‘Nice try. You couldn’t have made it up there twenty years ago, let alone now.’

Len walked around to the back of Jimmy’s car and opened the boot. He held up a rope and a handful of climbing gear.

‘What do you think now?’

Gordon stared. ‘You … were planning this all along?’

Jimmy exchanged a look with Len, then gave Gordon a sheepish grin. ‘Not really, just kind of, just in case we felt like going on a man-challenge.’

‘You can’t be seriously planning on climbing up there.’

‘Just high enough to get a look. Come on, we were kids once.’

‘Yeah, a long, long time ago.’

Mack, huffing, climbed up onto the top of the bank and waded through nettles and hawthorn bushes on the top to the tree trunk. ‘Pass up that rope. I reckon I can see us a way up. There’s a couple of knots on this side we can use for handholds.’

Gordon could only stare, complicit, as his three friends, giggling like teenagers, secured the rope around the tree trunk, then slung it up over a higher branch and pulled it tight, creating a mooring that would allow them to climb up. If they could get up into the lower branches, there would be plenty of hand and footholds, and if they really wanted to, they could drop themselves over on the other side.

If they were out of their minds.

‘Come on, guys, it’s twenty feet off the ground,’ Gordon said.

‘You always were the sensible one,’ Jimmy said. ‘That’s how you ended up married to a librarian.’

‘Says the man on his third wife,’ Gordon said, unable to resist a dig. ‘And what did Debbie retire from? Bookkeeping.’

‘I had to flatline after a while,’ Jimmy said. ‘You can marry a stripper, but you can’t stay married to one.’

‘I didn’t realise Melanie was a stripper,’ Len said. ‘I thought she was a ballroom dancer?’

‘Same difference in the bedroom,’ Jimmy quipped.

‘I wonder if her second husband’s saying the same.’

‘Third.’

‘Like one, like the other.’

‘If you girls have finished squabbling, I think we’re ready,’ Mack said from up on top of the bank. ‘Who’s going first? I nominate Jimmy, him being the most sober.’

‘Sober by what standards?’

‘I’ll go,’ Len said. ‘Being the most drunk.’

The others laughed. Jimmy though, wasn’t having it, pushing Len aside to get up onto the bank. The rest of them might have needed a drink to get up there, but Jimmy had always been fearless. Gordon remembered a time some forty years ago now, when they’d gone out to the cinema in York, a boy’s night, watching some horror movie or other. A man had stepped out of an alley and pulled a knife on them. Jimmy had talked the guy down, getting him to leave with nothing. Gordon, on the other hand, had been ready to hand over everything, even his car keys. Jimmy took balls to a level Gordon had never known.

Now he watched as Jimmy clambered monkeylike up the trunk, arms out to the side, the rope fed through a carabiner hooked around a loop on his jeans. It would break if he slipped, but the impression of safety was enough for Jimmy, who made it to the lower branches with embarrassing ease.

From up in the shadows, Jimmy waved down. ‘Who’s next?’

Mack and Len laughed nervously. ‘What can you see from up there, Jim?’ Len called.

‘Fuck all. It’s dark, isn’t it?’

‘No lights, nothing like that? There should be Ron Head’s farmhouse just down the valley, and there’s Treadwell just over the hill. You could always see the pub next to the church because Tim Fernby leaves his outside light on all night.’

Gordon tried to remember. It was incredible how quickly you forgot something you thought you knew so well. He’d lived within five miles of here his whole life, yet as soon as that fence had gone up, he’d started to forget. Were there three trees on that rise, or two? And could you really see old man Miller’s house from here?

It was like a blank line, cutting off your memory, a physical representation of Alzheimer’s. The government be damned for doing this, for building something that was like a mockery of old age. If it was still possible to vote, he would have voted for someone else, but that was another sore point, one it didn’t pay to discuss out loud in public.

‘I still can’t see any lights,’ Jimmy said. ‘But there’s the leaves of the trees in the way, you know.’

‘Who’s going up next?’ Mack said, the inflection of his voice suggesting it should be Len or Gordon.

‘I have my hip,’ Len said, suddenly cowardly. No surprise there, Gordon thought as he stepped forwards, wondering as he looked up at the towering tree, am I still young enough for this?

‘Just keep your arms out wide,’ Jimmy said.

Gordon, his heart thundering, started up. Jimmy, up in the branches, climbed lower, trying to advise him, while Mack and Len offered hollow advice from the ground.

It was one of those things that didn’t look impossible, like surfing, or riding a bicycle without using your hands, one of those things that when you saw someone else doing it, you thought, yeah, no problem. I’ve got this. Except when you’re up there, facing the wave or the top of the hill, you suddenly realise that nope, perhaps this isn’t for me. Perhaps I’m going to screw this up, even get hurt. And the wave is rising, the bike is speeding up, and there’s nothing that you can do but hold on and hope it doesn’t hurt too much.

Like a geriatric squirrel, Gordon shuffled his way up the trunk, determined not to embarrass himself in front of the others. Part of it was pride, part of it was a reluctance to admit he was getting old. He could do this, he really could—

He was within arms’ length of the lower branches when the rope slipped. Gordon’s feet fell out from under him, and he found himself hanging off the underside of the branch, his back aching as his jeans bit into his skin. The belt hook, impressively strong, was the only thing holding him back from a fall into thick, shadowy undergrowth, something that thanks to his stupid vanity, was completely unavoidable—

A hand closed over his. ‘For fuck’s sake, grab that branch to your right and pull your leg up. ‘What are you doing, admiring the view?’

Gordon, heart pounding, reached out and grabbed the nearest branch, which was little more than a bundle of damp leaves. He scrabbled at it, pulling it closer, getting his fingers over something more solid, then hauled himself up, leaning on Jimmy to get up over the bough.

‘Jesus Christ, you made a meal of that.’