The Last Chapter E-Book

S. C. Loader

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 657

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The Last Chapter is a contemporary, post-apocalyptic romantic tale. Written in a lighthearted narrative it follows the preparations of the two main characters, not only for their future survival, but also in their desperate hunt for other survivors who may, or may not, prove as deadly as the plague they had survived.

Leseprobe

Also by S.C. Loader

Helping Hands

The Realm

Three Wishes

Remains of The Past

Remains of The Past II

Remains of The Past III

The Last Chapter

Love knows no boundaries.

S. C. Loader

www.tredition.de

© 2021 S. C. Loader 207072-03Coverdesign: RebecacoversISBNPaperback: 978-3-347-38990-8e-Book: 978-3-347-38992-2

Printing and distribution on behalf of the author:tredition GmbH, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg, Germany

The work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. The author is responsible for the contents. Any exploitation is prohibited without his approval. Publication and distribution are carried out on behalf of the author, to be reached at: tredition GmbH, department "Imprint service", Heinz-Beusen-Stieg 5, 22926 Ahrensburg, Germany.

Das Werk, einschließlich seiner Teile, ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Für die Inhalte ist der Autor verantwortlich. Jede Verwertung ist ohne seine Zustimmung unzulässig. Die Publikation und Verbreitung erfolgen im Auftrag des Autors, zu erreichen unter: tredition GmbH, Abteilung "Impressumservice", Heinz-Beusen-Stieg 5, 22926 Ahrensburg, Deutschland.

To Katrin and James

for their patience and support

Chapter 1

'Bugger!'

The pendulum weight escaped its chain and secreted itself in the most inaccessible corner of the clock's casing. Despite the difficulty it presented Adam in its recapture, a wry smile crept onto his face, the first in a very long time.

'I swear my grandmother only bequeathed you to me out of revenge for what I did to her cat with grandad's electric razor.'

Once the pendulum had been returned to captivity and set on its final rhythmical journey through time, Adam stepped back, content to watch its slow hypnotic swing for a while.

'I don't know how many times we've played that game over the years, but this, my old friend, is the last time you'll get the better of me. Now you'll hang in chains for all eternity.'

Satisfied he had done everything within his power to ensure that this final journey would be as long as absolutely possible, Adam closed the tall glass door of the ancient timepiece. As he did so, his grandmother's dire warning sprung to mind about the miserable fate that would befall him should he ever allow the clock to fall silent.

'Sorry, gran, but I can't take it with me, and to be honest, I never really believed you, although now I must admit that maybe there's some truth in it,' then after a moment's reflection, added, 'but I don't think we can really blame it for everything that has happened, can we?'

Using the palm of his hand to gently remove a fine layer of dust from the clock's wooden casing, he confided to it, 'I also start a journey today, one that unfortunately means our paths will never cross again. If I've wound you up correctly, then your work will finally come to an end in seven days. Hopefully, long enough for me to find a good luck charm capable of warding off any malevolence you may wish to cast in my direction once you have ticked your very last tick.' With a final goodbye, three generations of ownership came to an end.

Stepping away, Adam stood on something small and hard hidden beneath the edge of the rug. An investigation revealed a toy, a small white spaceman his five-year-old son had failed to tidy away during happier times. After carefully replacing the white helmet and clipping the green laser sword back into the action figure's hand Adam stood it on his wife's piano. The contrast of the white figure against the pure black of the piano's lacquered surface caught his attention and held his thoughts captive for a moment or two. Happy, colourful memories played out in his mind's eye, memories he would never again be able to share with those who had helped create them. They now only served to renew the heartache and threaten yet more tears, for both happiness and colour had forsaken him, and he seriously doubted whether they would ever again play a role in his life.

An involuntary shudder broke his reverie, and a deep, steadying breath helped Adam regain an upright, self-motivating posture.

'Right! Come on, lad. There's work to be done,' he told himself sternly, mimicking his father's words, and with one last despondent look around the room that was once the heart of his home, he stepped out into the garden, closing the patio doors quietly behind himself.

Having spent some time reassuring his family that he would love them all forever, no matter what fate held in store, he left the garden heavy-hearted via the narrow path that led down the side of the house. Halfway along the path he came face to face for one last time with his gardening Nemesis, or as his wife affectionately called it, The Indestructible Dandelion. As his own epithet for this weed contained several choice expletives, his wife's was more commonly used whenever the children were within earshot. Growing out of a small gap between the concrete path and the house wall this weed had resisted his every attempt to kill it for years. No amount of vile-smelling weed-killer did its job, nor did any other evil concoction created by an annoyed gardener and no amount of poking and prodding would force it to surrender its foothold in this small insignificant patch of earth. Crouching down, Adam was about to remove its leaves just as he always did whenever he passed it, but then a sudden appreciation of what had happened struck him, he was the loser in the long war of attrition that had existed between them. Despite all the advantages evolution had bestowed upon him, he was the one who had to relinquish his home and not the weed. The irony of the situation caused a resigned smile, and the hand that hovered over the leaves slowly withdrew. Adam felt it would be just an act of spite to remove them now.

As he stood up, he spread out his arms to indicate the length and breadth of the pathway, 'It's all yours!' he told the victor. 'Grow as big as you want!'

Before leaving their carport, Adam automatically moved their dustbin back a few centimetres into its rightful position, 'What on earth am I doing?' he rebuked himself. 'My very last act as a husband, father and homeowner is to square up a dustbin that nobody will ever notice is out of place, nor would give a damn if they did.' Catching sight of his reflection in the side window of his wife's car, he asked wearily, 'You don't happen to know a good psychiatrist, do you?'

Parked opposite his house and completely blocking the narrow residential street in which he lived stood what would be, for the foreseeable future, his new home.

Before climbing into the cab, he gave this enormous white and grey motorhome one last check over. With three axles, it was longer than two average-sized family saloon cars, as high as a single-decked bus and nearly as wide. To add to these unnerving dimensions there was also the addition of the largest twin axle trailer he could find, which, like the motorhome itself, was fully loaded with all the necessities needed on his journey towards a new life. After ensuring the security of all the external storage lockers and the tarpaulin that covered the trailer, he climbed into the cab. The pistol tucked into the top of his shorts caused immediate discomfort as he sat down. As he removed it, his thoughts returned to his wife and children, and before he realised what he had done, he was staring down into the darkness of the pistol’s barrel, his thumb resting enticingly on the trigger. Time passed unmeasured while his desire and his conscience wrestled one another for control over a few millimetres of thumb movement. Desire wanted to discard the journey he had so meticulously planned for, and start an altogether different one. A journey that would not only take him into an unknown realm but one that also came without any real guarantee he would arrive at his desired destination. His conscience, however, reminded him of the very last promise he had given his wife, a promise he had sworn to uphold before he ever considered re-joining her and their children.

Conscience won the day, and his thoughts turned to the task of finding a suitable place to stow the weapon. A short deliberation nominated the deep driver's door side pocket as the best place to keep it, readily available should the need to defend himself arise and far enough out of sight to avoid temptation. Desire may have lost this battle, but the war was far from over.

With a turn of the ignition key, the engine sprang readily into life, as did the central display on the dashboard. Set against a black background, its bright orange digits announced the time, the date and the outside temperature, 09:06 19 Aug. 24°

The date immediately caught Adam's attention, amid all the horror that surrounded him, here stood one small piece of comforting normality, a constant which would continue unabated until mankind no longer existed.

After a short twenty metre drive, he came to a T-junction, stopped, performed all the usual visual checks to the left and right, and despite having a clear road in both directions, applied the hand brake. After turning the engine off, he hit his forehead hard against the padded steering wheel. Although it hurt a great deal, it failed to vent the raging anger that he could no longer suppress. Jumping down from the cab, he grabbed the first stone that came to hand and threw it with all his strength against the windscreen of his neighbour's antiquated car, it careened harmlessly off.

'Damn you!' screamed Adam, then he furiously ripped a capstone from a concrete garden wall and hurled it with both hands at the car windscreen. The un-laminated screen exploded, covering the inside of the car, its bonnet and the road immediately around it in thousands of small glass squares. The horrendous noise it made would have been audible throughout the small estate on which he had lived and possibly throughout the entire village. However, with his anger now sated, Adam was fully confident that neither his neighbour nor anyone else would complain about his acts of wanton vandalism because, like his wife, son and daughter, they were all dead.

Less than two weeks previously, the first reports about a large number of unexplained deaths in northern China appeared in the media. It was quickly established that these deaths were in close proximity to an old chemical plant, which had exploded a few months earlier while being decommissioned. As the death rate grew alarmingly fast, the western spy agencies belatedly admitted that the plant was known to be a research establishment for biological weapons. Within two days, not only did the Chinese government announce a state of emergency, but neighbouring countries had also begun to report their first fatalities of what the media had quickly dubbed the Chinese Plague. Three days later, as the plague began claiming its first victims on the west coast of America, China fell ominously silent. A week later, the plague had reached southern and western Europe. On Friday the seventh of August, information concerning the first victims on the western border of his own country made the late evening news bulletins. By Saturday evening, the plague had raced 500 kilometres across the country to reach their neighbouring city, their capital city. Twenty-four hours later, all the national television companies had ceased broadcasting, and the radio stations were only transmitting public service announcements. Amongst the advice to conserve food, water and fuel, there were reminders that all the hospitals were unable to accept any more patients, and there were continuous appeals for anybody with any form of medical experience to report to their nearest hospital as soon as possible. On Sunday evening, his wife, son and daughter fell ill. By Monday morning, all the city-based radio stations had ceased broadcasting. That night the electricity supply had failed, and by Tuesday morning, there was no water and no mobile telephone network either. Just after midday Adam's beloved daughter died, followed less than an hour later by her brother. His wife held on until the early hours of the following morning, and sometime between her death and when he finally managed to avert his eyes from the three lifeless bodies that had once been his family on Thursday evening, the last vestige of modern communications, the telephone network, had ceased to function.

An alcoholic haze reduced his memories of Friday to almost zero, but many of Saturday's memories would be indelibly imprinted into his mind for the rest of his life, for it turned out to be yet another highly distressing day. He had spent the whole morning digging a grave, and in his small garden, this meant his family's final resting place would be in their lawn. The only comfort he could find in his work was that, at the very least, his family would be laid to rest properly, unlike millions of others. Digging the chest-deep grave had been some of the most arduous physical work he had ever undertaken, bringing his family to it was the most harrowing. His son and daughter he could carry, but not his wife. So at great emotional cost, he was forced to drag the woman he loved beyond all others down the stairs and out into the garden by her arms. The grave was lined with the duvet and the pillows from their marital bed, and once the children had been snuggled up on either side of their mother, they were joined by their favourite toys, a soft pink horse for his daughter and a space ranger for his son. After he had said a final goodbye, they were covered with another duvet and finally a large sheet of plastic. Filling in the grave also took an emotional toll. The first few spade's worth of soil caused the plastic to mould itself around those who lay beneath it, this drew tears that remained flowing until he hammered a makeshift wooden cross bearing three names into place.

Adam's two-hour graveside vigil ended with a desperate desire to speak to someone, anyone. With that in mind, he jumped into his car and toured his village, frequently sounding his horn in the vain hope that someone would hear it and come rushing out of their house to greet him. Disappointed, he headed south into the city a mere five kilometres distant. Here the streets reminded him of the Sunday summer mornings when he used to get up especially early to go fishing with his father. The sky was bright and clear, the roads, pavements and parks devoid of people, all the shops were closed, and the cars parked neatly in endless rows at the roadsides. As he toured street after street and row upon row of houses and apartment blocks, he kept his hand on the horn. Occasionally he would wander around a small area on foot, calling out, 'HELLO! CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?' as loud as his failing voice would allow, but the absence of even a single reply succinctly answered that question.

As far as he knew, in less than a few days, the entire population of this city had died, and the strange smell that now lingered in the air laid testimony to the fact that most of those three million victims remained above ground. And, if he had interpreted his car radio correctly, that on the drive into the city had failed to find a single radio station to tune into, not even those at the far end of the country, then there were or would very soon be another six million unburied victims in this country alone.

Adam spent the remaining hours of Saturday evening contemplating his future and for all but one of the questions he asked himself, the list of possible answers grew longer and longer. He knew he had to leave his house, with so many victims of the plague still lying in their open windowed mausoleums, any built-up area, even small villages like his own, would soon not only become a breeding ground for a multitude of life-threatening diseases but also be overrun by those creatures from the animal kingdom that had already begun their own recycling schemes. There was, however, one simple question he could not answer, where should he go?

The only firm decision he had come to before falling asleep was that he needed a gun, there was nothing like a good disaster to rewrite the moral codes of those who had survived. The future was feral, and only the strong, the vicious and the armed would prevail, as he was neither of the first two, he had better ensure he was one of the latter.

On a bright sunny wind still Sunday morning, Adam learnt a very valuable lesson, one that even the youngest of Boy Scouts already knew, be prepared.

With some tools loaded onto the back seat of his car, he headed off to Newhill, not only his local town but one that also conveniently hosted a small army garrison on its northern flank. Although only fully garrisoned when exercises were being held locally, it remained fully equipped and retained a small company of army personnel along with a handful of civilian workers throughout the rest of the year.

Adam felt it was a good omen when nobody challenged him as he drove up to the security barrier at the main entrance. His confidence received another thumbs-up when he caught sight of 'Light Infantry Division' emblazoned across the bottom of the welcome sign.

'Guns are us!' he said quietly under his breath just in case someone should overhear him.

As no one offered to do it for him, Adam raised the barrier himself and drove into the garrison, following the signs that conveniently pointed the way to the armoury, where he would, without doubt, find as many guns as he would ever want, big ones, small ones, long ones and short ones and munitions in every known calibre to match. His confidence evaporated within a split second of his arrival. Buried under a small mountain of earth stood his goal, and all that remained visible of this buried edifice was a massive three-metre high, six-metre wide steel door with the words 'Armoury: Authorised Personal ONLY' printed across it.

Two semi-circular rows of retractable yellow-painted steel bollards ensured he could not get his car anywhere near the door. Parking up against the first row of bollards, Adam grabbed a few tools and went to inspect the door itself. Three impressively sized padlocks were securing it and upon seeing the words 'Titanium Shackle and Casing' on the underside of one of them, gave his hacksaw a derisory look. To cut through just one of these locks, he would need at least an hour with a good-sized angle grinder fitted with a diamond-edged cutting blade, not to mention a generator to power it, unfortunately, he possessed none of these. To add to his dismay, there was also a security keypad, as he deemed a burglar alarm would have been a pointless exercise in the middle of an army garrison, then it probably controlled some electronic locks that had to be overcome as well. In frustration, he hit the door as hard as he could with the two and a half kilo club hammer that he had brought along. The hammer neither dented nor moved the door and the mellow thud provided evidence of the door's thickness.

Looking at the tools in his hands, a crowbar, a hacksaw and a hammer Adam began to laugh at his own stupidity. He had totally failed to appreciate what he would face here and had equipped himself as if expecting to find a simple wooden door fitted with a Yale lock blocking his way.

A thorough search of some Jeeps and armoured personal carriers revealed neither guns nor ammunition of any description. The six small tanks remained unsearched as their hatches were all sealed closed with the same impressive type of padlock used on the armoury door. A tour of the three huge dormitories also drew a blank. The smell outside the fourth and last warned him of what to expect before he went inside. None of the sixteen young men who lay slowly rotting away in their bunks had anything more dangerous about them than a penknife. However, he did discover something that he had not given much thought to before, just how unnerving it felt to be in the presence of so many corpses in a dimly lit room, especially when he had his back turned to one or more of them.

'Too many hours playing zombie apocalypse games on the computer,' he chided himself. The sudden loud screech of a crow outside the open window caused his heart to leap from his chest and an ice-cold shiver to run down the full length of his spine. His heartbeat only began to calm once he had closed the dormitory door firmly behind himself.

Two more bodies were later discovered in the offices that overlooked the main entrance, both were without weapons and despite prising open a multitude of locked doors, drawers, cupboards and lockers, Adam remained empty-handed. The sentry post at the main entrance was the last place to be searched and, at last, provided what he had spent hours looking for. Held in the hand of the dead soldier slumped over the desk was a pistol. Adam wondered whether he had considered using it on himself before falling unconscious. Unfortunately, it was a question the young soldier would never be able to answer. A thorough search of the sentry post failed to locate either another weapon, a spare magazine or any spare ammunition for the weapon he had, but at least he had one and immediately felt far less vulnerable with it held in his hand.

Sunday evening found Adam sat at his dining table drinking lukewarm bottled beer and eating cold soup from a can, without any means to heat food up, this had been his staple diet for the past few days, along with cold baked beans and an odd tin of tuna fish.

Within easy reach lay the Glock 17 he had taken from the young soldier. Adam was unsure whether the 17 stencilled into the barrel referred to a model number or to the number of rounds the magazine held. If it were the latter, then it should now read sixteen as he had test-fired the weapon to get a feel for it. Unfortunately, he had chosen to shoot at a wooden fence post from within his house. The pleasantly light recoil for such a large pistol was a real surprise to him, as was the horrendous noise it made that left mismatched church bells clanging in both ears for a good few minutes afterwards. Despite the noise and missing his target by a good forty centimetres, he was pleased with the weapon, although in future, he should try to remember not to use it in enclosed spaces if he valued his hearing. With that future in mind lay an A4 writing pad and a pen at his side sporting three separate lists. With that morning's fiasco at the armoury still fresh in his memory, Adam was determined it would never be repeated. In future, all of his plans would be properly thought out. However, even though those plans were taking a well-defined shape and took him through until the spring of the following year, there still remained one vital decision he had yet to make, what then?

Chapter 2

His anger sated by two acts of vandalism, Adam stared out over the fields opposite his house and those of his now long dead neighbours. Lying due north and only two kilometres distant was the leading edge of an escarpment, rising up seventy metres over the plain which housed the city and a multitude of towns and villages. From the top, it held some spectacular views not only of the plain below and the northern edge of the city but also of some distant mountains, and on clear days, even the occasional glimpse of the river that split the city into two halves.

The land behind the escarpment gently fell away into a series of valleys over many kilometres, and like the chain of five villages below the escarpment and a town that lay unseen twenty kilometres to the north-east formed the initial part of an area he intended to search for other survivors.

Back in the cab, and with its engine running, Adam glanced at the central display again. It was only after a surreptitious glance at his watch to verify that the displayed time was correct did it occur to him that if they had not matched, then it was no longer possible to know which of the two was correct.

If he had failed to notice the early morning heat haze as he stared out across the fields, or feel the warmth on his skin, then the display's 26° temperature reading only served to confirm that the summer heatwave had not yet abated. A very stable weather pattern had begun a month previously, bringing perfectly clear skies, above-average temperatures and an air rarely disturbed by even the slightest of breezes. The latter of which had puzzled Adam while trying to understand how the plague had moved across the land at such extraordinary speed.

Hoping to cause an accident, rather than trying to avoid one, Adam turned the monstrous mobile home out of the side road and onto the main road without so much a glance in either direction. Unfortunately, there was no life-enriching sound of crunching metal, no horn beeping, angry shouting or any swearword laden threats, just the low hum of his new home's engine.

Having settled for driving in the middle of the road rather than his own carriageway, Adam habitually checked the mirrors to see what was behind him, and caught sight of his past life fading slowly into the background and realised he had finally crossed a line in the sand.

Investigating the shop, he was disappointed to discover that its plate glass windows and the two glazed wooden doors remained undamaged. The doors themselves were also locked, and the inside of the mini supermarket remained perfectly neat and tidy. If anyone had survived in this village, then they had not yet sought out any supplies here. While returning to the mobile home, he became acutely aware for the first time of the unnerving silence. There was not a single man-made sound to be heard anywhere, there were no aeroplanes in the sky, no distant vehicles, no radios, no children, and no machines. Everything had fallen deathly silent around him, and only the flight and call of the birds dispelled the fear that deafness had befallen him. A goosebump raising shiver crept slowly down the length of his spine.

He planned to attract the attention of any survivors with loud music played through the front door speakers of the mobile home. Unfortunately, as is customary with many mobile homes, there was no passenger door, so he had to settle for just an open window on that side of the vehicle. On the driver's side, however, he could leave the door wide open while the CD player made its way through Slade's Greatest Hits at full volume.

While he waited to be found, he cleared himself a place to sit amongst the piles of supplies that various local businesses had donated to his survival and read a manual that he had come across the previous day, creatively entitled A Hirer's Guide to the Hymer ***** Hotel.

'Five stars?' he questioned, casting an eye over what he could see of the luxurious interior, its plush white leather seating, masses of beautifully lacquered wooden surfaces and the fully fitted kitchen. Then he cast a mind's eye over what he could not see, the raised double bed, the quadrant shaped glass shower, the sleek, smooth lines of the bodywork, even the way the three solar panels had been neatly shaped around the skylights and roof vents, 'But there's no swimming pool!' he added jokingly.

When the engine next sprung into life, 13:31 19 Aug. 31° shone out from the display, far later than Adam had anticipated leaving. The reason lay in the Hirer's Guide, it had shown him how to connect the propane gas tank, and this had, in turn, not only brought the large refrigerator/freezer into use but also the stove, and a working stove meant hot food and far more importantly the chance of a hot cup of tea. Hot tinned ravioli followed by two cups of builder's tea may not have appealed to too many patrons of five-star hotels, but to Adam, it was the height of luxury, his first hot food and hot drink since the power failed a week earlier.

His next stop was at the petrol station in Middle Borestead, only two kilometres cross-country. The reason why there was no Lower Borestead occupied his thoughts while he investigated the petrol station. Despite being situated on a major arterial road leading from the city to the north of the country, neither the petrol station, the attached shop, nor the café next door showed any signs of having been visited by any supply seeking survivors.

Apart from those blasting out of the CD player, the only other human voice Adam heard during his hour-long wait was his own, mostly singing off-key and in full voice to Slade's better-known singles. However, it was not an altogether fruitless wait as he had managed to turn on the solar panels and the heat exchanger to produce hot water, thanks once again to the invaluable assistance of the Hirer's Guide.

As the hour came to a close, Adam wandered out into the middle of the deserted road and stared out across the fields in the general direction to where he had once lived, now eight kilometres distant, saddened, he turned his eyes towards the city. Only five kilometres from where he stood was the hire firm where he had swapped an eight-year-old family saloon with dodgy brakes for a luxurious, top-of-the-rage five-star hotel on wheels. Beyond that were all the shops that had so generously donated towards his survival, but how long was that survival destined to be if all he found was silence wherever he visited? In the opposite direction, and on this very road lay his next destination, a large town called Cloudham. There he hoped to find a reason why he should not break the promise he had given to his wife.

Before parking up in the town centre, Adam made five short stops en route to investigate two further petrol stations and three supermarkets. Disappointingly they all remained untouched. While Elvis serenaded the local population at full volume, Adam took to his feet to examine a few shops and a cafe for any signs that someone else had survived the plague. Although downhearted not to find the evidence he was looking for, he was not altogether surprised.

A world map displayed in a travel agent's window drew his attention to one country in particular, Australia. A week before the first news stories about China broke, his parents had flown out there on a long overdue visit to see his sister, her husband and their three children. When he had last spoken to them, they had intended to return home earlier than planned, but shortly afterwards, a worldwide ban on international air travel had been imposed, and he had never been able to contact any of his family again. Had they all died, or had any of them, or even all of them, been spared? Was that a question that could ever be answered, he wondered? Melancholy thoughts were not helping him, so when he reached a large hotel sporting one star less than his current abode, Adam added his voice to that of the King in the vain hope of enticing a response, but as usual, only the birds showed any displeasure in his dreadful signing through their shrill alarm calls. Catching sight of the darkened hotel reception area sent an instant cold shiver down Adam's spine, leaving in its wake a very unsettling feeling that raised every hair on the back of his neck. Only the familiar territory of his own hotel, now affectionately named Five Star, and the presence of a large hunting knife tucked into the back of his shorts managed to ease it.

A glance at his watch revealed it was later than he had appreciated and, if there had been any, long enough for any survivors within earshot to show themselves. Five minutes after leaving the town centre, he reached his intended overnight stop just outside the eastern edge of the town, a bridge spanning a deep cut in the landscape containing a six-lane motorway. Under normal circumstances and at six-thirty in the evening, this motorway would have been alive with the cut and thrust of modern motoring, this evening however, it lay eerily deserted as far as the eye could see in both directions.

Hunger made itself known, and Adam cast an eye over the hoard of cardboard boxes, plastic bags and shrink-wrapped packaged food that lay haphazardly stacked in every available space, but nothing his eye fell upon inspired him to spend an hour in the galley preparing it. He was not a good cook, and if forced to it, he could only put together about a dozen or so meals without the need to refer to a cookbook, but the greater majority of those meals included convenience foods, foods that were inconveniently no longer available. Attempting to clear a little space on the dining table, he knocked over a carton, and its contents spilt out under the table. Ten minutes of his new life were spent on his hands and knees, trying to pick up the spilt packets of part-baked bread rolls from on and behind all the other cases stored under and around the table. Reading the cooking instructions on the last packet ignited the desire for warm buttered rolls filled with a doorstep thick slices of cheddar cheese. Unfortunately, all the dairy products had spoiled by the time he had gone post-apocalypse shopping. Having loaded up Five Star's oven for the very first time with eight finish-them-off-yourself bread rolls and the kettle on the boil, Adam set about trying to locate the last ingredient for his dietitian's nightmare of a meal, extra-thick-cut Seville orange marmalade. The kettle had long boiled before the whereabouts of the shrink-wrapped tray of twenty-four marmalade jars was discovered hiding in the shower under another stack of edible supplies.

In the dining area, Adam sat on the room intruding section of the L shaped seating, thus gaining a perfect view in both directions of the motorway through the side windows and a spectacular panoramic view of the open countryside through the huge windscreen opposite. A long window ran behind the length of the L shaped seating, and because it was behind the driver's seat on a left-hand drive vehicle, the view from it was currently due south, towards the city. On the opposite side to the L shaped seating was a small two-seater bench, and behind that, a window only a third the size of its opposite counterpart, but it still provided a good view of the motorway. Now all Adam had to do was cross his fingers and hope that somebody would use it.

With the last remnants of sunlight fading from the sky, Adam climbed up onto the small roof rack at the back of the vehicle with a pair of binoculars, but there was little to see. Behind him, the vast majority of the town lay hidden behind trees, and the two villages to the east were still too far away to see. As no errant motorists were using the motorway Adam opted to observe the local wildlife instead.

A few unidentifiable birds still flitted about along with a few bats, and he heard the last calls of some sleepless pigeons and the first of newly awoken owls. The bark of a distant fox broke a lengthy quiet spell, and Adam thought how bitterly disappointed any Hollywood disaster movie director would have been with the scene before him.

If a scriptwriter for an apocalyptic disaster movie had presented the scenario that the human race had simply taken to their beds and died, then he would have been looking for a new job the following day, but in reality, this was what had happened. The first symptom of the plague was a niggling medicine-resistant headache, which developed in stages over five to eight hours into an extremely painful, vision depriving migraine. Shortly afterwards, all limb coordination was lost, and the victim fell unconscious. Depending upon their age, death followed between twenty-four to seventy-two hours later. Due to the nature of the plague, most of the victims died in their own homes and in their own beds, so there were no corpses littering the streets and no wrecked cars lying haphazardly up against lampposts. There were no looted shops or smashed windows, no burning buildings and no agonising screams cutting into the night. In reality, the calls of the nightjar and the hooting of owls had replaced the director's favoured sound effect of sporadic gunfire. However, despite missing all the usual trademarks associated with disaster movies one thing did remain, an uneasy edge-of-the-seat feeling that something horrific was about to suddenly burst forth, the popcorn shaker as the film directors referred to it.

Woken by the dawn chorus, Adam stumbled half-dressed and bleary-eyed out of the bedroom, desperate to relieve himself of three cups of tea and a large bottle of mineral water. After an altercation with a case of baked beans and a family-sized tin of chilli con carne, he finally managed to enjoy a pleasure reserved for lone survivors of an apocalyptic event, to urinate over the railing of a bridge onto a motorway a good twenty metres below without fear of either being seen or rebuked.

In collaboration with an open six-pack of mineral water bottles, the family-sized tin of chilli con carne launched a vicious retaliatory attack upon his return. Not only causing great pain to his shin and big toe but also extracting a vow to do some serious tidying up.

As the smaller villages had very little to attract potential survivors and posed serious difficulties manoeuvring such a large vehicle around them, Adam kept to the larger ones. Unfortunately, the next village on his visiting list had nothing to offer, not even a vending machine at the railway station. While Slade was again given the task of trying to wake the dead or entice a travelling companion to join him, Adam set about fulfilling his vow to tidy up his mobile abode. An hour later, and with the early morning sun rapidly turning every flat exposed metal surface into an environmentally friendly hot plate, the next village came under scrutiny. Predictably neither the petrol station nor the two vending machines on the station platform had been tampered with. After an unintentionally long stay, he left in his wake two large recycling containers full of mixed contents, but he doubted anyone would complain. The next village was not particularly large, but he paid it a short courtesy visit to placate the irrational fear that he might just pass through the only village with a survivor in it. Roxy Music entertained the dead while he finalised his housework by giving Five Star a thorough sweeping through followed by a good polish.

The display showed 14:06 20 Aug. 33° as Adam pulled up to the first of two stops in Mansvale. Being almost two kilometres long but only two or three houses deep on either side, it was a classic example of a ribbon settlement and its length, he felt, warranted a second stop. Roxy Music continued to entertain the local population while he wandered through his abode, admiring his handiwork. The raised double bed with separate mattresses at the rear of the camper now donned crisp white cotton fitted sheets for the first time and a complete set of brand new bed linen. The four goose feather pillows and two summer-rated cashmere duvets now wore navy blue pillowcases and duvet covers. The generosity of the bedding company also extended to three further complete changes of bed linen, two more pillows and two winter-rated cashmere duvets. All these were stacked down the right-hand side of the bed as there was no other storage area big enough. Of his clothes, only a light jacket and a couple of pairs of jeans found hangers in the small wardrobe, and some shorts and a small selection of still wrapped T-shirts took up residence beneath them on the floor. The winter necessities like hats, gloves and scarves, his spare shorts and a large selection of heavy shirts all found a home in the overhead lockers at the head end of the bed. His underwear filled the tiny bedside cabinet, and his spare footwear aptly filled a small locker at the foot of the bed. Everything else was either packed into carrier bags or one of the eight fold-out crates, and they all joined the spare bedding, which meant that the bed was no longer accessible from the right-hand side. Despite lacking the water to use the quadrant shaped glass-fronted shower cubical, he had also cleared it of foodstuffs, primarily because it made the whole bedroom look far neater. Much to Adam's dismay, the reason why Five Star's designer had installed the shower in the bedroom was not covered by the question and answer section of the Hirer's Guide. On leaving the bedroom, the toilet on the right had been left untouched, with no water to spare, it seemed a waste of time to tidy it up. Opposite the toilet was the galley, and every one of its generous cupboards had been filled, including the overhead cupboards and a floor-to-ceiling pull out larder. Between the toilet and the side entry door stood a large refrigerator/freezer combination. The refrigerator now sported a large selection of mineral water bottles, six previously unaffordable bottles of white wine and an impressive assortment of soft drinks and beer, the freezer compartment, however, remained unoccupied. The L shaped seating around the dining table now contained all the rice, pasta and three cases of finish-them-off-yourself bread rolls, and under the two-seat bench opposite lay a hefty collection of more than sixty large bottles of mineral water.

Adam broke into a smile as he passed an admiring eye over the tidy, neatly polished interior, finally, he had a home.

A deep hole exposing a water mains pipe and Adam's inquisitiveness helped idle away some time. Two solar-charged warning lamps that marked the roadworks at night sparked an idea. Bolt cutters liberated the lamps from the steel barriers that prevented curious passers-by from falling into the hole. After cleaning the small solar panels and the amber coloured lenses on both sides of the lamps, he felt confident his plan would work. The three controls were easy to understand, the first was a simple on/off switch, and Adam set that to the on position. The next was a dial to set the ambient light level when it should start working, he chose the darkest setting available. The third and last option was to set the time between flashes, he chose the longest in the hope that it would preserve enough battery power to help it last through the night. On Five Star's roof rack, he tied one lamp with its lenses facing front to back and diagonally opposite, the other facing side to side. His night-time home would now automatically turn into a mobile lighthouse making it easily seen by a potential driving companion, even from considerable distances and different viewpoints. A self-congratulatory meal of a family-sized tin of tuna followed, following the tuna, the remaining four tarts from a six-pack he had started the previous evening, which he had to admit, were exceedingly good. The hole in the ground acted as a convenient litter bin and, after assuring himself that he was still alone, a public convenience as well.

The second stop in Mansvale was next to one of the bridges crossing the stream that ran through the entire length of the village. Classics of the sixties now made the playlist, and while he walked back down the road to check out a small nearby grocery store, he accompanied Tom Jones at the top of his voice in rebuking the unfaithful Delilah. Disappointment lay in wait for him, although not in the undisturbed shop or in Delilah's reprehensible behaviour, but in the inefficiency of his mobile disco. This had been the first time he had moved any distance behind Five Star while a CD had been playing, and although at thirty metres the volume on the driver's side was encouragingly loud, it dropped quite noticeably once he moved to the passenger side. Curious to know the sound level in front of the vehicle, he crossed the bridge and headed for a small school and attached kindergarten some fifty metres distant. Another disappointment awaited him, although audible, the weak volume would not have raised an eye of a wary cat, let alone improved his chances of finding someone else to talk to. All this time, he had assumed he had been broadcasting to an entire village only to now discover that two-thirds of his audience had not been receiving his signal.

Despondent, his mind wandered off to find a solution while his body dawdled along the pavement in the general direction of the kindergarten. When his reverie broke, he found himself staring at some children's hand-prints displayed in the kindergarten windows. One particularly small hand-print with a shaky crayon written 'Anja' beneath it suddenly raised a metaphorical blindfold. Cursing himself for his own stupidity, he ran back to Five Star and immediately turned the CD player off, then listened out intently for the slightest of sounds, sounds possibly made by a small child trapped in their own home.

His mistake had been to assume that his driving companion would be an adult, who would, upon hearing his music, either come to investigate when able-bodied or, if not, make their whereabouts known to him. It had never crossed his mind that his driving companion might be a young child, which as a recently bereaved father of two young children, was deplorable.

His own son and daughter were typical children, and their eagerness to explore and their natural curiosity about the world around them forced him to fit child locks to cupboards, windows and especially to outside doors, not only for their own safety but also for both his and his wife's peace of mind. If a child had survived in such a household, they were effectively imprisoned, and the only way they would have to make their whereabouts known would be to scream and shout until someone heard them, but what if that particular someone had been playing music at full volume? Then he had not only missed an opportunity for a much sought after driving companion, but also the chance of saving a young child's life. Accompanied by a large crowbar in case a door needed to be forced open, Adam began walking around all the short side streets and cul-de-sacs. Using the crowbar as a makeshift drum stick, he double rapped it against anything that would make a distinctive noise, garden railings, fences, car body panels or the kerb when nothing else came conveniently to hand. Households that showed evidence of young children having once lived there received a loud 'Hello,' and a hefty rap on the front door with the crowbar, but for all the noise he made, all he managed to awaken were a few dogs and some ghosts. Knowing what lay behind almost every bedroom window he looked at caused the return of that uneasy, spine chilling feeling, a feeling only allayed only by the weight of the crowbar in his hands. Before climbing back into Five Star's cab, Adam took one last despondent look around himself, then casting his eyes skywards, enquired, 'Is it too much to ask for someone to occupy the seat next to me? Young or old, male or female, I don't care,' then after a moment's thought, added the condition, 'but breathing … please!'

Chapter 3

Adam's overnight parking place was a small open car park perched on top of the escarpment, which he considered to be a perfect place to put Five Star's rooftop beacons into use for the first time. A proper evening meal, his first since the plague's arrival almost two weeks earlier of a family-sized tin of chilli con carne on an enormous bed of rice, not only sated a ravenous hunger, but also his desire for retribution on one particular family-sized tin. After washing up the pots and dishes, he checked his water supply. The Hirer's Guide quoted the cold water tank as holding 190 litres, which it pointed out was either three shallow baths or five to six four-minute showers. A little over three-quarters of a tank remained, and of course, there were also twenty litres in the small hot water tank, a result he felt pleased about as he had tried to use as little water from the taps as possible. To fill the tank initially, it had taken a whole night as the water barely dribbled from the taps, without electricity, water could not be pumped up to the local reservoir and had consequently run dry by the time he had come to fill Five Star's tank. It would also be the last time there would be safe, clean drinking water in the tank, from this point on, any water used to fill it would be of far more dubious quality. Following another cup of tea, again made with bottled water, the Hirer's Guide piqued his curiosity about the ‘Fully Automatic/Self Levelling Stabilisers’, four arms that extended out from Five Star's sides like those on a giant mobile crane. Adam flicked the appropriate switch, and after some whirring, Five Star suddenly jerked slightly, and all went quiet. A quick look around outside revealed the four arms were now solidly supporting Five Star and, most importantly, had corrected the unevenness of the car park Five Star was now perfectly level. Adam patted one of Five Star's body panels, 'Okay, I'll admit it, I'm impressed! What's your next trick?'

Adam clambered up onto the roof rack with a rucksack and a cushion from the seating area.

Once comfortable, he turned the two beacons off as their light would cause difficulties with his search later, then emptied the rucksack. A powerful long-range LED torch, a large general torch, a hunting knife, a map and marker pen, a large pair of binoculars, two bottles of beer and a packet of cakes, the last item, his pistol, remained in the rucksack. Despite knowing that it would be of no use against the ghosts that now haunted him, Adam felt better for having it to hand, and he hoped its presence might help suppress those increasingly nervous over-the-shoulder glances.

The brightness of the evening sky caused him to check the time, it was half-past eight, giving him plenty of time before darkness fell to search the entire three hundred and sixty-degree panoramic vista set out around him.

The crest of the escarpment on which he had parked bisected two distinct landscapes. Behind him lay due north, and the one hundred and eighty-degree view in that direction swept across vast swaths of rolling countryside, interspersed with the occasional wood and, more frequently, with huge forests. Within this vista, the majority of the villages lay unseen, nestled in the folds of the beautiful wide valleys. In front of him was due south. In this view lay the vast agricultural plain that surrounded the city, but unlike the northern view, here a large number of villages could easily be seen from his vantage point, including the one that was once his home.

Immediately behind Five Star and only two kilometres distant lay Mansvale, the last village he had visited. Under the escarpment in front of him and less than half a kilometre away was Upper Boarstead, the first village he had visited. Unfortunately, although Upper Boarstead was the nearer of the two, it was the one he could see least of because of some intervening trees. However, with the naked eye, some of the tallest buildings in Cloudham could just about be seen, as could another stopping point, the petrol station in Middle Borestead and the main arterial road which it once served could be easily followed south into the city.

With the binoculars, Adam began his search. First to the south, which held the best prospect of finding someone, then to the east, the north and finally to the west. He commiserated with a beer and two cakes, then packed the binoculars away in the rucksack, the fast-fading light and the ever-deepening shadows made their use very difficult now.

With the map unfolded and the marker pen in hand, Adam began counting the dead. The map's publisher had very helpfully marked each town and village with its population at the time of printing. Although published four years previously, Adam considered it accurate enough for his needs. The pre-plague population of the two towns and seven villages he had travelled through added up to a little over thirty-three thousand. Adding in a conservative guess of another hundred thousand for the largely residential section of the city he had toured through, brought up his estimate of the number of dead to one hundred and thirty-three thousand. A short calculation later, Adam realised that if he had been the sole survivor out of that many people, then in his country of nine million, there were only sixty-five to seventy survivors.

'That,' he said to himself aloud, 'is less than one person per every thousand square kilometres.' After considering this disheartening statistic, he added self-mockingly, 'And I was worried that the music from the CD player wasn't loud enough on the passenger side.'

By the time he had packed everything back into the rucksack, darkness had fallen, and the landscape was now devoid of all shapes and colours, and even the full moon failed to cast light on any definitive point of reference, everything was just inky black. This was why he had turned off the two beacons so that he could scan the entire horizon for a light, either from a house, a vehicle or even a fire, but in this vast expanse he saw nothing to raise his hopes neither the first time he looked nor the fifth. Staring despondently out into the darkness an unsettling thought surfaced, what if he were the sole survivor of the human race? Would he want to live in a world with only ghosts for company, or would he simply turn the pistol on himself? Adam knew the answer before he had even finished asking himself the question. Turning his face skyward, he posed another question, 'My wife believed in you. Do you really want to see the last promise given to the woman I loved broken?'

Having turned the beacons back on, Adam spent a while admiring his own ingenuity as the two slowly flashing lights intermittently bathed small sections of the countryside around him in soft amber light. If there were other survivors out there, he thought to himself, then they would have to be blind not to see either of these signals.

Back on the ground, he sought out a convenient bush to use as a convenience. Having committed himself, a sudden loud burst of alarmed movement behind him caused an immediately missed heartbeat, a panic laden grab for the torch, and very nearly an unsavoury accident in his shorts that were currently keeping his ankles warm. A small group of deer stood some metres away, staring back at him in the torchlight, 'If I had had my pistol to hand, you might have been on tomorrow's menu!' he scolded them in a fright elevated voice. Unimpressed by his threats, they sauntered off into the darkness, leaving Adam hunting for a toilet roll that had mysteriously vanished during the fracas.

Although Adam held no belief in gods, demons, the supernatural, or anything else used to scare little children into behaving themselves, nearly two weeks of solitude had begun to play games with his imagination, and the deer incident now left him feeling rather uneasy. Passing the bedroom mirror, it occurred to him that he ought to cover it, just in case he scared himself to death with his own reflection. A sudden unnatural sound outside made his heart leap and provoked his imagination into suggesting everything, from the implausible to the ridiculous, to explain its cause. With his bravery threatening to mutiny, Adam armed himself with the pistol, his hunting knife and a large torch, after turning on both of Five Star's external floodlights, he threw open the side entry door, ready to confront whatever horror awaited him. A few minutes later, he was knelt beside the litter bin assisting in the delicate operation of removing an empty family sized tin of chilli con carne from the head of a scraggy looking cat with twenty or more razor blades surgically attached to its feet.

'Christ, you must be hungry to stick your head in an empty tin of this stuff. Tell you what, you wait here, and I'll see if I can't find something a little more appetising.'

Adam left the cat trying to remove chilli sauce from its face, returning a short while later with that something he hoped the cat would find a little more appetising, half a large tin of pilchards tipped into a bowl and mashed with a fork just the way he liked them himself. Sitting on the side entry doorstep with the bowl in his hand, Adam swore the cat to secrecy, 'You have to promise not to tell anyone I fed you from this bowl, okay? Some people get upset about these things.' The cat meowed, which Adam took as an agreement, and he put the bowl down at its feet. While the cat hoovered the bowl clean, a teacup full of tap water appeared next to it. Having felt he had done his good deed for the day, Adam put himself to bed, leaving the cat to enjoy the rest of the pilchards.

Adam overslept well past his normal waking time, thanks not only to another uncomfortable hot sticky night but also to a recurring nightmare about Anja that had woken him repeatedly. In this dream, he had a never varying view out of her sitting-room window and would see Five Star pull up outside the house with its music blaring. Inside, Anja's hopes had been raised and too small to reach the window would start franticly waving her arms and calling out as loud as she could to gain attention. Over time she lost the strength to lift her arms, and her voice failed. Unable to attract attention, tears would begin to slide down her face and then Five Star would drive away, leaving her panic-stricken. She had been left behind, he had left her behind.

Now awake and staring at the ceiling, his heart ached for Anja, although logic told him the scene was unreal and that the tiny blonde-haired Anja of his dreams was only imaginary, he could not shake off the feeling that unbeknown to him, it might have actually happened. The thought of which left him desperately wishing he had been one of the nine million.