MJ Marshall

THE END IS NIGH

For Steve.

1

I LOOKED UP from the blue shirt on the ironing board to stare at the radio in disbelief as Radio 2 was interrupted by an emergency broadcast. Dumbstruck, I stood there waiting with my mouth open. A shiver slid down my back.

“Attention! This is an emergency broadcast. We have received information warning of an attack against the United Kingdom.” My skin turned cold. The stern voice of an unfamiliar newsreader resonated around my kitchen, bouncing off the walls as it bounced around my head. What on earth was going on?

“Take shelter indoors immediately. Gather what supplies you are able to and stay inside until further notice. Emergency personnel currently within a thirty-minute radius of their nearest facility must report for duty immediately.” I attempted to make sense of the newsreader’s bulletin but failed. The room began to sway before me as I became incapable of doing anything but continuing to listen. “Citizens currently further than thirty minutes from home do not attempt the journey. Stay where you are and find immediate shelter. First strike expected within the hour. Further information to follow.”

Stupidly I turned around to check the calendar on the back of the kitchen door. It’s not April 1st… it’s June. This is real. What did I just hear? Leaving the ironing where it was, I ran into the lounge, picked up the remote and turned on the television. Sky News flashed up on the screen. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“Shit.”

I flicked up through the channels, CNN, BBC. It was all over them. Emergency bulletins were broadcasting on every channel. Everything around me seemed to hold still in time, including myself. In slow motion I sank to the floor. My eyes glued to the screen in front of me. My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. I was trying to follow what the Sky News presenter was telling me in between reminding myself to breathe, but when I did, the sound of it rattled around my ears. I needed to calm myself, or I was going to have a panic attack.

“Breaking News. A missile attack has been launched on the United Kingdom. At this time it is believed that the UK is among several countries under attack. The source of the attack is currently unknown. The warheads have entered our atmosphere from what we believe to be a launch station in our orbit. It is unclear how destructive this attack may be, but we have been told to prepare for the possibility of nuclear war.”

I dropped the remote to the floor, my hands shaking. I shook them out in an attempt to regain control, but the shaking persisted. I reached behind me into the back pocket of my Levis and pulled out my phone to call Matt, but the call wouldn’t go through. Everyone would be freaking out and making telephone calls. Does that even stop calls going through? Call traffic? Hold on. I forced myself to focus.

Bollocks, what the fuck do I do now? Don’t panic, that would be a start. It was hard to think straight. Both the television in the lounge and the radio in the kitchen were spitting out warnings at a rate I was struggling to keep up with. I was trying to collect myself when I caught something that the brightly dressed, red-faced presenter was saying. It was the official government advice coming from the TV.

“If you are watching in a secure building, you need to make your way to a safe room at the centre of the structure, one without windows and preferably underground. Take as many provisions as you can, it is likely that emergency services will be severely stretched. You may need to survive for several days on your own without going outside.”

This triggered something in my memory. A school history lesson popped into my head. History had always been my favourite subject, so thankfully I had paid particular attention. I remembered a class project once where we were shown a safety instruction film used during the Cold War between America and Russia. ‘How to survive a nuclear attack.’ or something similar. If we were stuck in a situation on which our survival had depended upon something I had learned in maths class I would have just lain down where I was and waited for death to claim me. But now, thanks to all things historical, I felt like I had a bit of a head start.

Without really knowing why I was doing it I ran around the house filling all of the sinks, buckets and bathtubs with water. I remembered something about being low to the ground and to keep away from windows, or was it barricade the windows?

I was sweating. Beads of it trickled down my spine and soaked into the inside of my t-shirt. I wrestled with the king-sized mattress trying to pin it up against the bedroom window. I startled when I heard the piercing cry which came from the next room. On autopilot I moved to the door ready to run in, then I realised what I was doing and ran back to my task. She’ll have to cry. This is more important.

For the next thirty minutes, I was a crazy whirling mess. I locked up and sealed as much of the house as possible, covering windows with sheets, blankets and duck tape. The house was beginning to resemble a child’s fort, each time I glimpsed a blanket dropping from the window because the duck tape wouldn’t hold it the sinking feeling in my chest grew heavier. There was a good chance we were going to die.

Closing the interior doors as I left each room I somehow managed to get the single mattress from the spare room on the third floor down to the bottom of the house. I swept up blankets and spare clothes as I went, all of which were kicked down the steps and into the kitchen pantry. There are no windows down there and enough tins and water - not to mention wine - to last at least a month. I figured that this is as close as I would be able to get to a shelter at short notice. Plus it had the benefit of being built under the central stairway of the house. I recalled hearing somewhere that in an earthquake that it was the safest place to be as it’s the strongest part of a building.

Well, I mean not that we’d ever had an earthquake in Lewes. Typically we’re known for being popular with old age pensioners and coach trips as they pass through to Eastbourne. Apart from the town going mad with pyromaniacs every 5th of November, it’s an uneventful place. Until now.

I grabbed my phone up from the floor in the lounge shoving it back into my jeans pocket and headed out to the garage. A red Land Rover Discovery took up most of the garage space, which meant Matt had taken his motorbike this morning. At least he would find it easier to make his way through the traffic to get home to us. He needed to get himself away from the city as quickly as possible. But Matt would know that. He wasn’t an idiot.

I took my time as I scanned the cold space for the large torch I knew was somewhere in here. The sight of our tent bag under the workbench jogged my memory, and I remembered our camping trip earlier in the spring. Matt had packed the torch, which meant it was probably still in his kit bag. He wasn’t one for unpacking anything. I ran over to the far corner of the garage and seized his bag, pulled it open and started rifling through it. I found the torch at the bottom along with a can of his favourite instant coffee, his fishing knives and a flare gun. He does like to be prepared for anything. The thought of him made me try his mobile again.

“Shit!” Still no service. I need to speak to him. Placating myself, I knew that if he was riding now, as I hoped he was, he wouldn’t be able to pick up his phone anyway.

“Just worry about yourself.” I still had work to do.

On the way out of the garage, I rummaged around in the cupboard where we kept the spare batteries and took as many as I could find. It wasn’t as many as I’d have liked. It was at that moment I heard the siren. Instantly recognisable as something from one of Dad’s old war movies. It was an air raid siren. “Shit, shit, shit! That’s not good.”

My ears were thumping in time with my heart. I knew that I was on the verge of a panic attack and in the back of my mind something was telling me to stop what I was doing and take cover.

I hurried to leave the garage, locking the joining door and moved back into the house to deposit the torch in the pantry. My efforts now focused on getting us into that small space as quickly as possible. The air raid siren seemed to be getting louder and was only contributing to my rising panic.

I turned to run up the stairs and in my rush, caught my foot on Matt’s surfboard. I went sprawling forwards and fell like a sack of potatoes. I heard the crunch beneath me before I felt the pain. Shooting, agonising, red-hot pain through my left foot.

“Fucking idiot!” I’m not sure if I was saying it to myself for being such a clutz or if I was blaming Matt for leaving his board in such a stupid place. Upstairs Rosa was still screaming. I could hear her little arms and legs crashing against the bars of her cot.

“I need to move.” I tried my weight on the damaged ankle. “Jesus! AGH! I can’t do this. I can’t.” The feeling of dread I had been ignoring began to engulf me. I let out a sob as I recognised the surge of anxiety building, threatening to engulf me. I fought to hold off the attack, forcing myself to face the duty I had to the screaming child upstairs. I was better than this.

My anxiety made way for a new feeling of shame as I shook my head and worked hard to ignore the fact that I was in such pain.

“Yes, it’s ok. Come on. Up!” With a determination which felt totally unfamiliar, I ground my teeth and hauled myself up. Using the wooden bannister as support, I half limped, half hopped up the stairs and around the corner of the landing. Each step on the injured foot seemed more painful than the last. Muttering a string of profanities under my breath, I kept going until I reached her.

As soon as I limped into the nursery, the crying stopped. She heard me and I began soothing her. Humming a familiar nursery rhyme, singing it on repeat as I scrambled around getting her things together. I grabbed the changing bag and ripped Ewan the sheep off the cot railings, a dummy and Sophie her favourite stuffed toy rabbit and remembering we had bought multipacks of wipes. I shoved all of them in the bag which was now bulging, along with anything else I came across. All the while trying to keep the weight off my left foot and failing, miserably.

“Thank God!” I found another full pack of nappies and threw them onto the landing ready to chuck down the stairs. I could barely walk and was unsure of how I was going to get us downstairs. I was still consumed by this problem as I peered over the side of the cot. Rosa, who had stopped her crying now and oblivious to my problems stared up at me, and the most beautiful wide smile transformed her face.

How can all this be happening? I took a deep breath and pushed back the sob that I had been unable to hold in downstairs to smile back at her. Finding strength in that tiny face, I got the motivation I needed and knew that we must move quickly.

“Hello, angel. Let’s go.” I scooped her up. The added weight of carrying her sent a new jolt of agony through my ankle. I realised then that the only safe way back down the stairs would be on my bum. So with my leg in the air I clutched Rosa tightly to me with her arms and legs flailing out all over, we finally made it down to the pantry. Unceremoniously I plonked Rosa down onto a pile of blankets and pulled the door shut with a slam. We were plunged into darkness.

I found Rosa in the black and sat her on my knee. I pulled out my phone again and flicked on my BBC News app to check on the status of the attack. The screen flashed to life illuminating the small space in which we huddled together. I was looking for something to confirm to me that this attack was a genuine threat. Pushing aside the persistent worry that I had forgotten to grab something important I set to the task of calming myself down.

It was interesting that no government official had been seen to make a statement. So far the only government advice which had been filtered down to the general public was via the media. Which to me seemed odd. It was also a topic of conversation on the comments thread of one BBC article. It quickly became clear that the conspiracy fanatics had crawled out of the woodwork. Posting images of themselves outdoors playing football or standing in a field defying all warnings. They claimed that it was all an elaborate hoax by the ruling classes. I shook my head at their idiocy. There would be an announcement by the prime minister on the radio once he had been secured underground. That was the protocol.

Wait! I had forgotten to pick up the radio and the stuff I’d thrown to the bottom of the stairs. The radio was still on top of the fridge in the kitchen. How would I know what was going on without it? It’s just at the top of the steps, and on the other side of the door.

“You’ve got time.” I made my way back up the steps into the kitchen crawling on my hands and knees. We should have carpeted this bit of the house. It is ridiculous the things you think of in these situations. Seeing the number of people disbelieving of the warnings had lifted my anxiety a little. Opening the kitchen door, I went out into the hallway scurrying on all fours being mindful of my rapidly swelling foot.

A part of me was beginning to cling to the hope that this was some elaborate joke. Fantasising that Matt could have planned it. Maybe he’d signed me up on one of those prank shows on MTV or something. No, he wouldn’t do that, he knows that I would kill him. Not my idea of a fucking joke. Pretty elaborate though. Maybe it’s a government drill or something. My mind was wandering.

I wonder if other mothers were crawling around on their hands and knees at this moment across the nation? Perhaps it’s just me. I’m just an idiot, and everyone else is sat on the sofa knowing that it’s a load of crap, just a drill. Knowing the state of the world and the problems we face from my time working in government it wasn’t unthinkable that this was the real thing. I wonder if they were ready for this. I certainly was not. I couldn’t even move around my own house without almost killing myself. If this really is the end of the world and we’re on our own, I’ve had it.

I grabbed the extra bag of nappies and the overflowing changing bag throwing them carefully down the pantry steps, aiming away from where I had left Rosa nestled in her mountain of blankets. I could hear her chirping away to herself down there. This was so surreal.

I moved back to the kitchen and held on to the side of the worktop as I struggled to get to my feet. As soon as I put weight on my ankle pain seared through me. I pressed my lips together holding back a yelp. I stood tall and reached up on top of the refrigerator for the radio. My ankle’s was going to be the size of a football at this rate. No rest for me. The second my fingers closed around the radio everything went a horrifyingly bright white.

With the shock I stumbled, my arms shot up to cover my face, and I fell backwards, hitting my head on the edge of the kitchen table. My eyes were burning. I blinked and squeezed them shut, but it didn’t help. Everything remained white, rendering my eyelids useless. Before I could get my bearings on the kitchen floor, a huge wall of sound hit me and rocked the house. It felt like a clap of thunder had gone off right inside my head. Blind and now deaf as well. Brilliant. Keeping my eyes tightly shut I groped around struggling for breath, trying to find the doorway to the pantry. I cried out in frustration but heard nothing except a slight ringing.

By the time I realised the ground was moving I was on my hands and knees again, still searching for the bloody doorway. Lurching forward I found the wall and ran my hands along it until finally, I clawed at the door frame. I threw myself through it and spun onto my knees to reach up and find the handle to pull the door closed. I fell back against the door and the panic attack I had successfully managed to hold off earlier now took hold and racked through me. I couldn’t see, I could barely hear and now I was struggling to catch my breath. Convinced I was going to die, I crumpled in the doorway. Selfish to my own needs I didn’t even reach out to Rosa who was somewhere just feet in front of me. It may as well have been a mile. I was no good to anyone right now.

2

AFTER WHAT SEEMED like hours but must have been minutes I could just about make out the sound of Rosa screaming above the ringing in my ears and the apocalyptic soundtrack coming from outside. I reminded myself to breathe and willed myself to get a grip. Slowly I sat up with my back against the door, hugging the radio tight to my chest. I didn’t even remember bringing it out of the kitchen with me, don’t ask me how I was able to keep a hold of it. I slowly blew out the air from my aching lungs and released my white-knuckled grip on the radio. It clunked to the floor beside my swollen ankle. Dread washed over me as I began to comprehend what had just happened. I felt the overwhelming urge to throw up.

Rosa, who would likely now be almost purple with crying was my first concern. Pushing down the feeling of nausea I tried my best to make her out in the dark. I couldn’t. I couldn’t see anything. I started to feel the panic rising in me again. I knew that I was opening my eyes, but there didn’t seem to be a difference. Just take one thing at a time. It’s totally natural for your eyes to take time to adjust. Think about when you moved from one unbearably bright room to a tiny dark one with no light. Right?

Calming myself I began to fumble around my legs for the floor and then out in front of me, feeling for the edge of the top step leading down into the small pantry. There was not much to the room itself. It was more of a cupboard which sat in the space under the stairs, built down into the foundations of the house. There were three deep steps going down from the small raised area by the door. The steps led down into a two-meter wide space, with shelves stacked full of food either side.

Using my hands as a guide, I was able to crawl my way down the steps and over to her without too much trouble, managing to keep my throbbing foot away from the ground. I followed the muffled sound of her screeching. I didn’t know if it was the effect of the explosion on my ears or whether she was screaming out while buried under tangled blankets. The single mattress was pushed right to the back of the room against the wine rack which covered the back wall of the space. In front of the mattress, there was just about enough room on the floor before the steps for me to sit with my injured leg outstretched comfortably. That was it.

I took some comfort in my ability to get down the steps without further injury. My hands outstretched, still searching blindly when the coarse material of the bare mattress came into contact with the tips of my roaming fingers. I scooted on my knee to the edge of it and leaned over. Being as careful as possible I felt for Rosa. She flinched as I touched her cheek with the back of my hand. Just as I thought. She was red hot. Her cheeks soaked with tears. She was unused to being left to cry, and she wasn’t taking it well.

Pulling her to me, I cradled her in my arms and tried my best to soothe her. I could hear the blasts coming from outside further in the distance. The first one which had left me hard of hearing had felt so close. The way the house shook it left me wondering where it had hit. To have an effect like that it must have been close to us, maybe within 10 miles or something. I had no idea about the radius of damage a bomb like that could cause. Would it have been London or as close as Brighton? The fact that there were still rumblings going on around us confused me further still. At first, I feared that it was more bombs going off around us. As the volume of the ringing in my ears began to subside I tried to make it out, could it be the sound of buildings falling down?

Rosa was clearly as distressed as I was by the rumblings coming from outside. Then I remembered that I hadn’t closed the pantry door behind me when I went into the kitchen to retrieve the radio. Which meant that the bright blast of light which had caused me such discomfort had shone in down here. I sighed at my mistake. If that were true, I prayed that it hadn’t done any lasting damage to her young eyes.

At eleven months old Rosa was becoming a little person in her own right, not just “the baby” anymore. She had started saying her first words just last month and wasn’t that far from toddling around without us to support her. The reality of how difficult this was going to be with her in tow hit me. Even if we survived the initial bombardment, then there was the fallout. That would make everything around us a hazard. Something I recalled from that history lesson on the Cold War told me it was usually in the form of radioactive rain and that it was important to stay inside for at least two weeks. But to be honest, it had been over twenty years since I had left school and more recently after having Rosa my brain felt like it had gone to mush. More from lack of use and not enough sleep than anything else. I didn’t have a great deal of faith in my knowledge of what to do after a nuclear attack. But it would have to do.

Sitting there in the darkness my thoughts drifted to wondering how long it would be until we would be safe to go outside. Two weeks didn’t seem long enough. Without knowing the extent of the damage out there and the area closest to us which had been hit, it could be anybody’s guess. I made a mental note of what pieces of information I had. It seemed like common sense to me that London would have been hit pretty badly. My heart ached. Matt had been in the city today. I had no way of knowing if he was alive. My head swam with images of him trapped beneath a falling building, lying by the side of the road somewhere burnt from an explosion.

I pushed the distressing images away instead prompting my brain to think of what a resourceful man I had married. He would be alive somewhere. I needed to believe that. Today he had been visiting the building site of a new high rise just East of Wembley stadium. It was his latest passion project. Matthew was an architect and a top-notch one at that. It was how we’d met.

Before the days of being on maternity, I had worked in the Houses of Parliament. Just as I fell pregnant with Rosa, we had been due an election and after careful consideration I had decided to step aside for another candidate. Which allowed me to take some guilt-free time to concentrate on my child. I always had the full intention of getting back into government once she had started school. Not that that seemed likely now.

I spent the majority of my time as an MP working on the housing committee. A few years ago Matthew had been brought in as an expert to consult on a project which I had been asked to oversee. We were trying to build affordable housing on the marshlands around the Thames estuary. Looking back it seems odd now, but the moment we shook hands at that first meeting I had felt a little uncomfortable, but in a good way. Sweaty palms, the works and for some reason, I couldn’t stop touching my face. I had been transported back to my awkward days at school, my bumbling teenage self.

It was ridiculous. I was a successful, well-appointed government minister. He was an up and coming city architect in a snappy suit with broad shoulders and a playful smile. But I felt fifteen again.

It wasn’t long after we met that he had asked me out for a drink after a meeting and by the time the next one rolled around we were playing footsie under the conference table. Amongst other things. There’s an awful lot of closets in that building. Not very professional on my part really, but there we are.

Rosa had quietened down now and so had the din from outside. The ringing in my ears was still there although I could feel it dissipating. If I was going to get through the next stage of this thing, I needed to believe that Matt was fine somewhere and that he was coming here for me. For us. So that’s what I told myself. I was sure that he would be holed up somewhere safe outside the city. But the question was where?

If London was hit, that wouldn’t be close enough to cause the flash of light that we had seen here. Therefore it stands to reason that Brighton had to have also been hit. And if that was the case then it would follow suit that similar cities would have also been a target. Why would they single out just Brighton? It’s not even that big as large cities go.

Cities larger than Brighton… Bristol, Cambridge, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle. Shit, thinking of it like this then it’s reasonable to think that most cities in the UK big enough to have their own hospital and university would have been a target. This may be the first time I feel grateful for living in such a quiet place.

If this was the rule, then that meant other small towns and villages far enough from the city would have also been spared. Granted there wasn’t as many people in the suburbs, but in this country, there were some pretty remote places which might have been spared and could be safe from the effects of fallout. Maybe? The Peak District, large parts of Yorkshire and the Lakes! Taking a breath and letting this sink in brought an unexpected wave of relief as I thought of my sister, Kate.

“Please let Auntie Kate be ok,” I whispered into Rosa’s little shoulder as she slept slumped over my chest, her dainty blonde head of curls lolled over towards my chin.

Kate lived in a beautiful old farmhouse up in the Lake district in the middle of nowhere. She had moved there in the mid-noughties after our parents had died. We’d both been living at home when it had happened. Neither of us had left even for university. We didn’t need to. She had been my best friend from the first day that I could remember. Collecting me from school everyday and making dinner for us when Mum worked a late shift. As a child, she was full of imagination and fun. In the evenings Kate would keep her bedroom door open, reading allowed her favourite books by C.S. Lewis. I would listen across the hall to her voicing different magical characters as I fell asleep.

We were happy, all four of us in that small Victorian terraced house. It was a lovely cosy memory and brought some momentary solace to my current dark hole of hell.

My older sister had never enjoyed the rat race of the city. She was far more spiritual and non-conforming than I ever was. Kate had, quite wisely as it transpires, used her half of the sale of our parents’ house to buy the old farm in which she still lived. It was a short ramble from Lake Buttermere in Cumbria where she ran a successful yoga retreat. I missed her but the place made her happy, and I was happy for that.

My moment of relief faded as quickly as it had arrived when I thought about our old street. It had probably been reduced to dust, along with the rest of Earlsfield. Very Probably. That area of South West London was most likely too close to the centre of the city to be safe. I would never be able to show Rosa where her Aunt and I had grown up. The iconic sights of London would all be gone. Nothing left to show her of our history, of our culture. Gone in the blink of an eye. Or the blinding of mine.

Stroking her hair I wondered how Rosa’s life would look now? I had no idea. First of all, we would need to make it through the next few weeks and stay alive. My brain was working on overtime, the throbbing in my ankle caused me to shift into a better position. Every bone in my body ached from the madness of the last few hours. I willed Rosa to be still as I laid her down so that we could get some rest. Her body was rigid and full of tension, but to my relief she remained fast asleep.

Exhausted, it played on my mind. Her bleak and impossible future stuck with me as I sunk into the mattress beneath us. Tears silently rolled down my face, my eyes stinging. I took my daughter’s small hand in mine and held on to her until I retreated into some semblance of sleep.

3

A SMALL COLD hand grabbed my face waking me with a start. I reached up and caught hold of Rosa’s hand pushing it down to her side and turned on her dream sheep to lull her back to sleep. Her hand stopped waving around, and the previous sounds of angry grunting turned into a gentle snore. It worked. With a sigh of thanks, I turned over onto my front.

I somehow needed to get my phone working and check if there was any news on the radio. I fanned out my fingers and being mindful of the tiny sleeping ball of rage beside me I combed the area with my fingers searching for the torch. Hopefully, it would be more useful now. I was only just getting my sight back after the explosion. Little good a torch would have done me last night.

I had no idea what time it was but felt rested as if it was morning. For that reason I assumed that we had slept for at least six hours. I really needed to pee. Having not thought about that side of things yesterday, the only thing for me to do was venture back into the main house and use the ground floor bathroom. I flicked on the torch, simultaneously draping a t-shirt over the beam so as not to wake Rosa. The t-shirt cast a red glow over the small space, and I felt a fleeting flutter of joy at being able to see again. I was grateful to the t-shirt’s thick cotton as it helped to protect my newly sensitive eyes from the glare of the torch.

The light flickered the cramped space to life, I looked down at the elephant’s foot that had replaced my usually slender ankle. Bollocks, it looked terrible. I pulled up the hem of my Levi’s until the leg of my jeans was gathered above my knee and pointed the torch down at my swollen foot to get a better look. I squinted, in this light I could see the colour of it was pretty impressive. Parts of it almost seemed green. I winced at the sight of it. It would be useful to know how seriously injured it was. I tested the movement in my ankle, I began to point and flex my foot. As soon as I had started, it was something I wished that I hadn’t. I had to slap my hand over my mouth to stop myself from shouting out and waking Rosa.

Well, it’s going to have to fix itself. Otherwise, we’re not going to be getting anywhere. Folding my good leg underneath me and hanging onto the shelf on my left I pulled myself up to standing with all of my weight supported by my good foot. Slowly I began to transfer my weight on to the injured leg. Very slowly.

“Nope.” I gritted my teeth. “That’s not going to work.” I hissed to myself.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an old wooden handled mop leaning against the wall and stretched across to claim it. With the cotton mop head crammed under my armpit and the handle acting as a crutch I hopped as best I could up the steps to the door. Placing my hand on the door handle, I took a moment to steel myself for what might be waiting for me on the other side. I wasn’t sure if the windows had managed to bear the force of the blast, they could have been blown out. If that was the case, we would need to move to find better shelter. Images flashed through my mind of what the world would look like now.

Like ripping off a plaster I slung open the door and thrust out my head to stare into the kitchen before me. It looked almost normal. In fact, if it wasn’t for the blankets hanging, draped over half of the window it would have looked just as it should. That in itself didn’t seem right for some reason. Shouldn’t there have been some visible damage with a blast that loud?

A high pitched shriek came from the front of the house. I immediately froze.

I could hear a voice outside, right outside the kitchen window coming from the street. No. Not a voice. Voices. The pessimist in me said that our emergency services couldn’t possibly be this fast or this organised. The next day? The warnings had said to prepare without aid for at least a week. Curiosity got the better of me and caused me to completely forget how much I needed to use the bathroom. I crept towards the window to see who was out there. Lifting the bottom of one of the blankets covering the kitchen window I peered out noticing there was a crack in the outer pane of glass. Well, the glass had stayed secure on the inside at least.

I looked out, and my heart sank. It was kids, Joanne’s kids from up the top of the street. They were playing football. She must be mad letting them outside.

“What the hell is she thinking?” Just as the words left my mouth I saw her walking past with her youngest in his pushchair. “What the…” Banging on the window to get her attention I started to shout.

“Hey, Joanne! Get the kids inside. It’s not safe! There will be fallout. You need to get back indoors right now!” Seeing me but not hearing a word I said, clearly. The woman smiled and waved. High on the joys of life she must have thought she had survived World War III. “I can’t believe this.” I rubbed my forehead. I was trying to get my head around this crazy woman’s logic. Perfectly relaxed she turned around to say something to her six-year-old girl who had been traipsing along behind her just in time to see her trip and fall into a puddle. This is too much. Banging again

“Hello! Joanne! I’m serious the kids will get sick, you need to stay inside. It’s not safe yet. Get out of the street! At least keep them out of the puddles for God’s sake. Are you mad?” This time she must have heard something because she walks up to the window and shouts

“Alright love, we made it! The whole street’s in one piece not like the rest of ‘em poor bastards. Blew to smithereens up the country I bet.” She must have clocked the look on my face as I stared back at her through the broken window. “There’s nothing wrong with celebrating being alive sweetheart. Come on out. We can go and have a drink. There’s a bunch of us going over the Gardener’s Arms. Andy’s got the Landlord to open the bar.” I shook my head and continued to gape at her.

“Oh sorry, darling I forgot, it’s your fella innit. He’ll be all in amongst it. Works in London, doesn’t he? Shit, sorry love. If you need anything, you just come and find me or Andy we’ll take care of you and that little one you got.”

I didn’t know what to do. This woman was an idiot. I just stared at her I couldn’t think of anything to say. This woman was putting her family’s lives at risk. She mustn’t have heard the warnings to stay inside. But I just heard everything she said so she must have heard me warning her. Why wasn’t she getting inside? She wheeled the pushchair around and started down our garden path and back into the street.

“It’s not safe,” I repeated calling after her as I watched on. Her eldest son splashed around on the street kicking his football against the brick wall of the garage opposite.

That moment will stick with me until the day I die. I should have done more for those children.

On my way back from the bathroom I questioned my actions, was I being overly cautious? Perhaps those with working radios knew something I didn’t. Perhaps it was safe to go outside. Maybe it wasn’t a nuclear attack but just a bombardment of some kind. Like in the blitz? I really needed to get that radio going.

As I moved back towards the pantry I could hear Rosa stirring. Luckily I had a huge stash of baby food down here which we bulk bought at a Carrefour on the way back from our trip to France last month. We used to stock up at the last supermarket before the ferry. You know the drill, red wine, cheese, baby stuff. All the essentials. I went about on my hands and knees as it was just so much easier getting things done by crawling with my foot out of action.

Trying to keep Rosa to some sort of routine was impossible but I tried. I could at least rely on meal times to bring her contentment. She loved to eat. Once Rosa had food in front of her I knew I had about twenty minutes to myself. Now was my time to try and get this thing working before she would call out and need me again.

I turned the dial on the radio, and nothing greeted me but white noise. That was probably to be expected, it was still too soon after the fact for the stations to be up and running. If it had been a nuclear attack it would have messed with anything which used electricity. To my dismay that did seem to be happening because I had tried the bathroom light just now and it hadn’t worked. Neither had the phone charger had any effect on my phone’s battery life.

I felt more in the dark than I had last night. The house was still intact but it would be wise to get an understanding of the state of things outside. I still didn’t think going anywhere outside the house would be a good idea. If we could manage with what we had, then we wouldn’t need to go outside for weeks. Better to be sure than to risk it. People walking around out there just now did not make any sense.

Fortunately, we had one of the tallest houses in the area as we were on a terrace of old townhouses. There was a pretty good view from the spare room at the top of the house. Grabbing the mop handle I headed up the steps for the second time. About five minutes later and I had hoisted myself up on to the top step on the third floor. I looked around. Everything seems normal to me here. Not really sure that I had been expecting to find it otherwise.

I moved into the spare room and over to the larger window, which was situated at the back of the house. It’s a small but light room with a single bed and a short, double chest of drawers. There’s a second window in the slope of the roof above it too, a skylight. Using the crutch to get to my feet, I peered out of the back window into a smokey mist. The soft, billowing smog seemed to be descending at a rapid pace from the North-Western side of town.

My eyes weren’t at all yet back to normal, so it took some time to adjust to the light and focus on the scene unfolding in the distance. Plumes of smoke bigger than I had ever seen rose from fires raging on the horizon. Total areas which I knew to be there were completely cloaked in a dark haze. The sunlight was fighting to break through the murky atmosphere. I sat myself down on the floor. I was struggling to comprehend the extent of the destruction. The magnitude of this. What it meant for the country, for my local community. The loss of life.

“Just think about you and Rosa. Concentrate on helping yourself first.” I needed to stay on task.

This meant that the wind was blowing in the direction of the South-East because the smoke was headed this way. Which would also mean that the fallout from the explosions would be coming our way. And depending on how many bombs there had been and which locations had been hit we could be getting half of the country’s share of fallout. Is that how it worked? I buried my head in my hands trying to remember something, anything that would help us.

As I left the little bedroom I noticed that next doors skylight had been left open.

“It’s a good job they’re in France,” I said to myself. I wondered if France had been a target.

As I thumped my way back down the stairs to the pantry, I resolved that we would have no choice but to stay put. Either until Matt made his way here or the emergency services arrived to evacuate us. I didn’t want to think about a scenario where neither of those outcomes was a possibility. I made a promise to myself that we would stay inside for one month from today and re-evaluate the situation then. What was it Mum used to say? Better safe than sorry.

4

I LOOKED OVER at Rosa who was sat babbling away to herself at the far end of the pantry engrossed in a collection of her favourite toys. Sophie the rabbit in a choke hold, tucked firmly in her armpit. Blankets and cushions were piled all around her. I mused at how content she was, just sat there. In her own little world. I envied her. How simple her life was, not knowing anything about how completely screwed we were.

Me, on the other hand. I felt lost. I’d been staring at the back of the door for the past hour. My fingers continued to toy with the tuning dial on the side of the radio. Methodically sifting back and forth through what used to be well-known stations. The white noise which had been a familiar bookend now engulfed every channel. I’d taken to doing this every few hours, just in case some saviour of my solitude deigned to address the nation and inform us of what the hell was happening out there.

On the second morning, I had decided that with us having to stay inside for a month that it would be a smart idea to make a tally of the nights since the bombs went off. Partly so that I could make sure the 30 days had passed before daring to venture outside and partly for my own sanity. This room was so small, and I was struggling.

Maybe it hadn’t been such a clever idea to make the tally in my line of vision. It was a tormenting reminder of how long we had to go to get to our target. The 8 crudely etched marks in the cheap veneered door glared back at me. Who’s to say that when we do leave it’s going to be any safer when we get out there? This had crossed my mind more times over the past few days than I would care to admit.

It was usually about this time of day when I would reach over Rosa’s head and grab a bottle of wine from the rack behind us.

“God bless the man who invented the screw top.”

I had started drinking on the 4th day. More to give me something to do. To keep me warm. I was saving the water for Rosa. The excuses came easily. I knew It was wrong to drink when I had to care for Rosa. But, bloody hell. It’s a small room.

“Attention! This is an emergency broadcast!”

I dropped the radio in shock at hearing a voice. I almost jumped out of my skin the white box which I had been thumbing absentmindedly for the best part of a week sprung to life. It was a male voice, a deep one. He sounded older, middle-aged maybe. It didn’t sound to me like a professional news reader. Could it be a civilian with their own station?

“If you are receiving this message please listen carefully.”  I clasped it up and brought it in close to my ear.

“If you are hearing this then you have survived what we believe may have been a nationwide and possibly worldwide nuclear attack. Judging by the lack of aid from our allies overseas at this point, it is reasonable to think that they are in a similar state of humanitarian…” The transmission crackled and began to fade. Something was interfering with the signal.

My thumb pushed the dial very slightly back and forward making sure to be careful so that I wouldn’t lose the place where I had found the channel. I held my breath, listening. Consumed by my desperation not to miss anything important. This was what I had been waiting for. Over a week had gone by with nothing, no news at all. I was determined not to miss any of this, even if it wasn’t official. Just as I was losing faith, the radio fizzed, and the voice continued:

“Stay in your shelter. It is important to stay inside for as long as you can - providing you have enough food and clean water. We are broadcasting to you from a safe place, an out of service Bunker in the South-East of England. I will aim to update you as and when we get any new information. We are sadly unaware of any official effort to evacuate or gather survivors at this time. Remember bottled water and tinned food are essential for survival. If possible and only when safe to do so, please try to gather a good supply. It is important to stay away from the cities. They have been worst hit. At this time you must aim to put as much concrete between yourself and the atmosphere as possible.”

Well, at least there I felt I had done something right. My mind flickered to the images of the kids I’d seen outside, playing in the street the day after it had happened. I shook my head. I hoped they would be alright. Something in my gut knew that it was unlikely that they would be.

“Tune into this channel regularly around midday, and we will aim to broadcast as often as we can with information. This is the Bunker broadcasting to any and all survivors of the atomic world war. I wish you the best of luck. Over and out.”

Well, thank goodness someone out there had their shit together and reached out to the nation. But where the hell was the Government? We had a plan for this sort of thing. I knew that. Not to mention a hugely expensive and well equipped nuclear Bunker somewhere in West London.

Surely if it was possible to get a radio signal out then they should have been the first to address the public? I wondered where the Royal Family would have been. Let’s hope safely tucked away in Balmoral. I didn’t like to think too much about why it may have been that they hadn’t yet made themselves known.

No one knew the extent of the bombardment which had shaken London. I shoved the idea away to the back of my head, but it would not stay there. I felt myself falling deeper into a dark pit of despair whenever my mind drifted. What had become of all the people and places I had once known? Matt was constantly in the corner of my mind. Every moment.

With a nervous stomach, I picked up my mobile phone and tried the power switch. I had been trying to preserve the battery life, but this announcement could mean that it would work again. Finally. In the first few days, I had checked every few hours to see if I could get a signal, which naturally had worn my battery down to a pitiful 6%. On top of that, the electricity to the house had been out since the initial blast, with no hopes of charging it up again I needed to be quick.

The familiar logo popped up on screen as I waited for the home screen to load. The second the picture of Lake Garda appeared as my background I hit the call button. I’d taken that picture on the last day of our honeymoon. My eyes began to fill with tears. Continuing on, I scrolled down to call Matt. I had done this countless times in the last eight days. I waited… Nothing.

Clamping my jaw in my fury. It took all of my willpower not to smash the thing against the closest wall. I was about to lose the battle when it beeped.

“YES!!” I glared down to see my voicemail icon flashing at the top of the screen, I stabbed at it with my finger, and the familiar sounds of that monotonous woman started to speak.

“You have… 2 voice messages. Message 1, from an unknown caller: “Lizzy, I’m on my way home, stay where you are. Stay inside with Rosa, just don’t go outside and you should be safe, I love you so much. I will be with you as soon as I can. Please stay safe for me. Tell Rosa I love her.” Message 2 is from Kate “Liz I’m trying to get hold of you, where are you today? Please be at home. Listen to me, if it isn’t safe where you are and you need to get out, just drive to me. I’m staying here. Come here, please. Oh just call me back when you get this. OK?” You have no further messages. I quickly opened my calling app and tried to call Matt again… Still no dial tone. I then tried to call Kate… No dial tone.

“SHIT!” Rosa jumped startled and looked up at me her bottom lip began to quiver, oh crap. Bad parenting, I am a bad parent.

“Sorry baby, Mummy didn’t mean to scare you. Everything is going to be fine.” Pulling her to my side we cuddled until she started smiling again she looked up at me and made the sign with her hand for milk. She was hungry. Even living through a nuclear war couldn’t affect this girl’s appetite. It’s understandable - she’s a tall kid. She gets that from me I imagine. I’m 5ft 10, and she’s got that gene sure enough.

I prepared her formula from the water supply which I had been bringing down to us in a bucket. We had a good supply from the filled tubs in both bathrooms, but no electricity meant that I had to make it cold. Not the easiest task. Then there was the washing of her bottles which had to be done straight away. To conserve water I had taken to using antibacterial cleaning wipes. How she wasn’t getting sick I didn’t know. Something which had just happened over the last week was that I could now give her the bottle and she could feed herself. She prefers it that way, little Miss Independent.

That’s not so much from me, maybe Matt or Kate but not me. I’m not really a fan of going it alone. In fact, I can’t even sit in another room if Matt is at home. I sit with him. Even if he’s in his study working, I’ll happily curl up in his armchair and read a book. Pathetic really.

Snuggling down into the blankets behind her Rosa lay there gulping down her bottle with one eye watching me. I wonder what she’s making of all this.

I hurried to switch off my phone to reserve the remaining 4% of it’s fading battery. Rosa hadn’t really made much noise in the last few days apart from a few bouts of crying. Nowhere near as much baby talk as we were used to. I’ve been attempting to keep things as normal and light-hearted around her as I could, obviously keeping that pretence up in such a situation as this one was proving difficult. It was bound to affect her. I had no choice but to accept that fact. Silently I worried that she would be missing her Dad as much as I was.

Once Rosa was settled I directed my attention to the voicemails which had been left by my husband and sister. What had I been able to glean from the message Matt had left me? One. He was on his way out of London, hopefully going around the M25 staying outside of the city to stay away from the danger, but would have had to stop and find shelter surely. Two. He asked us to stay here.

Kate’s message was typical of her, no sentiment, she’s nothing if not direct that girl. I thought about her plea for us to come and stay with her. An unexpected pang of guilt hit me that she was facing this alone and with her living in the middle of nowhere that’s likely how she would stay. At least she was used to it, being alone that is. Before Rosa was born I would make a point of visiting every other month for a long weekend. Once I became pregnant it began to feel as if we were drifting apart. I hadn’t seen Kate at all in the last 6 months. She’s never really been into kids. She doesn’t visit. I’m not sure of the last time she left Cumbria.

Hold on, didn’t Matt say he say he was on his way home? Did that mean our home or home to his parents who lived in Northeast London? Well, Essex.

Matt was an Essex boy, which made me cringe whenever I heard him say it out loud. It did explain a lot. His parents were adorable. Both of whom were in their sixties so it would make sense him going there to hunker down and at the same time check to see that they’re alright. After all, it was so much closer to the site in Wembley where he’d been when the warning was issued.

Maybe what he meant was he was finding somewhere safe to wait it out and then he was coming to get me. Thinking about it, that made much more sense. So wherever he was he may have to wait a month before going outside too, then he would make his way here. My hope sunk. I now realised what he had meant in his message.

“Stay where you are, stay inside…” It’s going to be at least a month before he can get to us. I reached up and dragged out a bottle of my own from the wine rack above Rosa’s head and sunk back down beside her.

5

A LOUD BANGING from the front of the house made me catch my breath as I looked up from the picture book I had been entertaining Rosa with. It would be Matt. I jumped up and took the steps up to the kitchen as fast as I could manage on my tender ankle and hobbled out into the hallway.

Just as I was about to put my hand on the key to unlock the door I stopped short. I hadn’t heard the bike. Usually, when he would come home I could hear him from 3 streets away.

“Hello?” I called out through the door. The banging stopped. “Matt? Is that you?” Silence. If it had been Matt at the door he would have said so. Who the hell was it? “Who is it?” My voice cracking with fear as I called out moving my ear closer to the door. I jumped with fright as the banging started again right next to my ear.

Why weren’t they saying anything? Red hot fear started up from the centre of my chest and seemed to spread over the rest of my body in a great wave until my hands started to shake. Whoever it was banging on my door was clearly determined to get in. I shouted out again. “What do you want?” The banging continued, it almost sounded like they were kicking the door, the whole thing was shaking. Please, God, don’t break down the door. Shit.

I ran into the kitchen and sat on the floor, avoiding the window. What could I use to protect myself if they get inside? Kitchen knife? I would probably end up being stabbed by my own chopping knife in my own kitchen! Thankfully it was a strong door. We’d been keen on going for the safest option when it came to preventing burglaries. That’s what comes of spending years of your life living in London. You become paranoid. How could I get this person to leave us alone, I know that opening the door is not an option. I can’t open the door.

If they wanted our food and water supplies then I doubted that I would be able to fight them off. Before I had time to answer my own thought, the banging stopped. Just as it had started. I held my breath and listened for any signs of movement.

It had been ten minutes, and I had not heard a sound coming from the other side of the front door. I got to my feet and leaned over the worktop towards the kitchen window to peek past the coverings and see out onto the driveway and further into the street. It was turning dark. Which meant that it was after 9 pm. The whole place was deserted. Not a soul on the street outside. Who the hell was trying to get into my house and why hadn’t they answered when I called out?

I felt foolish. I hadn’t been expecting it, but I should have known that this sort of thing would happen. Thinking about it now, I’m surprised that it’s taken this long. If we had been in a city centre there would probably be riots and looting, but obviously, that wouldn’t be going on. There were no cities left.

So it’s every man for himself out there. The thing that really concerned me was that this would probably get much worse in the weeks and months to come. Unless the Government were assembling themselves to help the general public, we would have to fend for ourselves. Which led me to one frightening conclusion: I needed to find a way to protect myself and Rosa.

That night I was so on edge, I stared up into the darkness, listening to the soft hum of Rosa’s snore.  I lay there all night thinking of what I could do to make us safer here in our own home. Matt’s fishing knives were in the garage, but that required getting pretty close to your attacker, and I didn’t want to actually hurt someone. I just wanted to show them that I wasn’t to be messed with. A way to scare them off.

I could understand why someone might think a lone woman with a child would be an easy target. I had to make sure that was not true.

The next morning the feeling of being unsafe and unable to defend Rosa gnawed away at me. I gouged another line into the back of the door.

“Another day.” Marking yet another day of dwindling rations and another day in here since the attack. Quite the tally I was making. It had been almost four weeks now. The water supplies which I had rationed out would last at least another two days, but after that I was going to have to find more. Her baby food had run out last week. She had been on a tinned food diet with me for the last few days. At least she could break it up with her milk feeds. Meanwhile, my little hoard of tinned goods was down to two tins of Branston’s baked beans and a lone tin of tomato soup.

As I put down the steak knife I’d been using to carve the door I shivered as I felt a black cloud come over me. I needed to go outside, and soon. We required supplies and that was that. Water and food had to be found from somewhere otherwise we were going to starve. We’d done really well staying inside so long on what we had. The danger from the fallout would be over now as long as we didn’t eat fresh produce or anything which had been directly exposed to the air. We should be ok.

I was so sure that it was Matt at the door last night but knowing now that it wasn’t him had sent me spiralling into a depression. A mixture of fear for our safety and panicking that he wasn’t coming back to us at all. Perhaps he was stuck somewhere? Or it was possible that he hadn’t even made it to his parents in time for the first blast. He could be dead.

My mind was running off in a direction I couldn’t face again. I had been so scared of someone trying to break in. I didn’t relish the idea of going out into the street, it was going to be very difficult to keep Rosa with me. If only there was a safe way I could leave her here while I went looking for supplies.

There was a travel cot in the garage. Certainly, that would keep her out of any mischief while I was gone but she wouldn’t take kindly to being hemmed in like that. I laughed at myself for being so stupid. If she cried for an hour or two it was better than starving to death. I would need to set it up so that I knew she would be okay if I was gone for a few hours.

I had no idea what state the rest of the town was in. Had people stayed or moved on? It was obvious to me that resources here would be limited for our long-term survival. It may take me awhile to find what we needed. I imagined looting would have started just after the attack. That was a month ago now. I’d be lucky if I found anything worth bringing home at all.

With the last idea weighing on my mind, I walked down the hallway, into the utility room and unlocked the door which led to the garage. I had only been in there a couple of times in the last month, mainly looking for batteries for that stupid dream sheep of Rosa’s. I didn’t like to hang around in there. The garage door was letting in a draft and whatever else was in the air would be coming in too. Each time I came in here the stale air felt colder, which struck me as odd given that by now it should be almost August. I spied the travel cot in the corner with our camping gear and dragged it over to the utility doorway. I saw Matt’s kit bag again in the corner and it gave me an idea. I reached down and my fingers curled around the smooth, cool leather wrap containing his fishing knives from the bottom of the bag.

6

I LEFT THE house by the back door which led from the utility room into the backyard. It brought me out just behind the garage. It was better to leave that way in case anyone had been watching us. I kept myself as unnoticeable as possible. They didn’t need to know my baby was all alone inside. Ridiculous really, in this situation, to care about what people thought of me as a mother. It could also be because I hadn’t quite managed to convince myself that this was the right thing to do, but what choice did I have?

It had been my instinct to do this at night. Influenced mainly by the fact that Rosa was asleep and she is fairly consistent at sleeping through these days. It should be around one in the morning now. The dark would be helpful for hiding me if I got into any trouble and I could leave my headlights off if I needed to.

My old VW Golf was still on the drive where I had left it over a month ago. I squeezed my eyes and said a silent prayer as I turned the key in the ignition. It started straight away.

“Thank you!” It had been a trusty little thing since I had bought it, even though it was almost a decade old. I’d traded in my BMW for it when I had left the role in Parliament. It was much too expensive for me to keep on my maternity allowance and there’s no way I could have gotten Rosa’s pushchair in the boot of that car.

The decision to leave my job and have Rosa had saved my life. From the state of the rescue effort and the lack of emergency response, I would hazard a guess that there was very little government left.

The Golf wasn’t anywhere near as high brow as my previous car but it was quick and quiet and that’s all I needed right now. I pulled into reverse and backed off the driveway keeping my lights off for now. I got out into the road and pushed into gear heading in the direction of the town. I left the street behind me at a steady pace and kept the headlights off, flicking them on only when I was out of view.

I lent over the steering column, my eyes straining in the dark to pick out the familiar landmarks heading down towards the centre of Lewes. I felt a little reassured each time the reflecting moonlight hinted at their existence as I drove. I knew this journey well. The lane was lined with thick hedges towering up and over the road. Without the street lights working, it felt like they loomed over the car in a way that was almost threatening. The lane stopped at a T junction. Right took you up towards the dual carriageway and out of town. Left brought you nearer to the town centre with a group of supermarkets conveniently close to one another. There was a large Waitrose on the other side of the river, and on this side Tesco and Aldi were within a short walking distance. If there was something to be found it was going to be here.

As I drove closer to my destination I switched off the headlights. Peering through the window making out the road markings, I noted how quiet it was. Not a single person outside, not another car coming in either direction. I slowed the car to crawl.

All around me I could see the buildings were intact, there had been a few fires here and there but apart from that most of the structures seemed untouched. The people who had taken shelter from them would have survived, but where were they now?

Looking for oncoming traffic as best I could, I turned the corner which led into one of the larger car parks for the supermarkets. Just as the car came out of the corner appearing around a cluster of bushes blocking my view, I saw them. From this safe distance, it looked like a group of kids. Teenagers maybe, but not much older than fifteen if I had to guess. They were gathered together, huddled around a fire they’d managed to get going in a shopping trolley. I sniggered grimly to myself. It looked like something straight out of a film. I mean seriously this was getting too much. Where were their families? Have people just given up and gone off on their own? I know I wouldn’t be letting Rosa out at this time at fifteen, Armageddon or not!

I crept around the corner and slowed the car down further until it came to a stop, just far enough away to keep the engine sound out of their earshot. It was obvious that they’d been drinking anyway, they were busy entertaining each other. Bottles glistening in the firelight, clinking on the ground each time one was knocked over. They probably wouldn’t notice me at all if I stayed to the edges of the car park and kept quiet.

I took one of the long curved fishing knives out of the leather wrap and jammed it underneath my leather belt at my side. As I did it I knew I was being idiotic because I didn’t know how to use a knife. Unless it was a giant onion coming at me. The alternative was walking around defenceless and after the position I found myself in last night I wasn’t prepared to take that risk.

I had emptied out Matt’s kit bag and brought it along with me. I had also packed a hammer, flat head screwdriver and a crowbar from the garage to attempt to jimmy the lock. I soon realised that I needn’t have bothered because as I approached the first store I could see that the windows had all been smashed out. By the looks of it it had been that way for some time, the doors were still locked but the windows of the whole building had been reduced to a row of sharply jagged picture frames.

Cautiously I stepped through a frame. I winced, as the pieces of glass crackled under my feet. I was in but needed to work harder to be quiet. I moved down towards my right. Past the checkouts in front of me, I continued to edge my way along the outside of the store.

I knew what I was heading for. The baby aisle was my priority. If I could find formula it would make my life much easier, Rosa’s biggest comfort came from her morning and bedtime doses of milk.

There was a surprising amount of light in the building it looked like there was an emergency lighting system which was still in operation. There must have been some kind of generator onsite.

I reached the back of the store where the baby formula was usually stacked. Scanning down the aisle I froze, the shelves in front of me were bare. There was not a single item left on the whole aisle. “Fuck!”

I started up towards the other end, checking again as I moved along the row. Caring less now about the noise I was making, finding these items for Rosa was essential for our survival. I moved to the back of the store.

I found what I was looking for and slammed through the double doors. In here it was pitch black, this was the storeroom, where they wheeled out cages full of food to be stacked on the shelves in the store. I felt around in my backpack for the torch and keeping it pointed at the floor it lit up the room. Crap, it was much brighter than I had expected, I just hoped it wasn’t drawing the attention of the group in the carpark. I was relieved to see that at least in here there were still some items left in the cages.

I moved from section to section looking for the baby formula, passed a cage on my right filled with what smelt like soured milk. Another stood beside it filled with flowers which had once been fresh and beautiful but now were dry and crisp, their beautifully coloured blooms now a mouldy brown. I passed more empty cages, once they would have been piled to the top with boxes of food. I spied a stack of cardboard boxes which lined the rear wall of the store.

“Ok, now we’re getting somewhere!” I ran over to the section nearest to me and began scanning the labels with my torchlight. Toilet rolls, Tea bags, Tunnocks Teacakes. What! Ok, that’s the first bit of food I’d seen, I’ll just take a small box out to the car if I didn’t find anything more nutritionally balanced. Then it dawned on me. I was looking in the section that starts with T, they’ve been stored in alphabetical order.

I kept scanning through the boxes of produce, which were for the most part non-edible. I kept moving along to my left praying that there was a baby section in this stacking system. Almost when I was on the opposite side of the store I came across a box which said Heinz Baby Biscotti, and my hopes started to build. About 10 seconds later I found one which read Aptamil baby formula. I could have kissed the ground where I stood. I was over the moon. The box said it had twelve cartons of formula and it looked like there were two of them left. That was enough if properly rationed to last us the better part of a year.

The first thing I would do was get this into the car then I could always come back to look for food, lifting the box up balancing the torch on top I made my way out of the storage area and back down to the front of the supermarket. When I got to back to the car and had the box of formula safely on the back seat I dared to look over at where I had seen the group of teenagers earlier. There seemed to be less of them now, huddling around the fire they sat in pairs quietly talking among themselves.

Feeling bolder this time I jogged back to the store and equipped with an abandoned trolley started moving down the aisles to see if there was anything worth taking. This store had been hit quite badly by looting that was easy enough to see, most of the shelves were totally bare and the ones which weren’t held things which were no good to me.

There seemed to be an abundance of cleaning products and bin liners. I had to chuckle at that, the last thing we were likely to do when someone tells you the world is ending is the spring cleaning.

Finding nothing of any worth in the main store, I turned my attention back to the storeroom where I had had some luck earlier.

“These teacakes can come home with me.” But what I really needed to find was some tinned food or jars of baby food. Anything which was sealed would be safe to eat and could last long enough for me not to have to do this mission again. Maybe if I found enough we could make it last us until Matt came home. Combing through the boxes in the storeroom I didn’t have much more luck, apart from a couple of rogue tins I had found on the floor which must have fallen and been missed during the looting I had nothing in my trolley but the box of baby biscotti and Tunnocks teacakes.

I was just about to turn the corner to leave the storeroom when I heard a couple of the kids from the carpark entering the building. I could hear them, two boys. They were arguing with what sounded like a much older male voice. Something about not watching the shop entrance properly.

“What’s the point in putting you lot out here if you’re going to let people wander in and take what’s ours eh? You’re useless. Piss off and leave this to us. Looks like they must still be in ‘ere Jack ’cos their car’s still outside.”

Oh crap, they’ve found my car. They sounded pissed off. They’d seen the box, the one I’d just stolen on the backseat. I needed to get out of here and back to the car, but how was I going to manage that? They could be watching the car. I left the trolley and turned off my torchlight. I could just about make out two beams of light darting across the ceiling near the entrance of the shop. They were looking for me. Looking around for a way to divert them away from where I needed to be I slammed the doors which led to the back storage room and silently ran to the front of the shop.

“Jack, they’re in the back of the store, that was the doors shutting behind them. Go and take a look, give me a shout if there’s more than two of ’em and I’ll get Andy to come and give us a hand.”

With that, I moved as fast as I could in the darkness. I managed to slip past the burly guy stood in what was the fruit and veg section. He was busy shouting orders to his mate at the back of the store. When I got outside I crashed straight into two young boys who looked almost as petrified as I was. They were two of the kids I had seen earlier from the carpark. In a whisper, the smallest of the two started to speak

“Run quickly. He’ll kill you if he catches you. We won’t say anything, just don’t come back. It’s not a safe place for a woman on her own.” The tall one hissed something at him. I didn’t wait around to hear what it was, my keys were already in my hand and I was backing out of the car park by the time I saw the fruit and veg guy run out into the moonlight. I rounded the corner and once I was a sensible distance from the shop I pulled over and burst into tears. I couldn’t go home, I didn’t even have any water. The formula was useless without clean water. I had left the only food available back in the trolley when I had to make my quick exit. I punched the steering wheel in frustration!

“Shit!” Feeling like a failure was not something I was used to. I didn’t like it. I used to pride myself on being able to face things head on and most of the time I could do what needed to be done. But this. This was something else.

The country has gone mad, gangs of people laying claim on a whole supermarket. One with barely any food inside and forcing young kids to keep watch, beating each other up over a box of baby formula. I wondered just what sort of scenes I’d been lucky enough to miss whilst we had been safely holed up in our shelter for the last month. It didn’t appear to me like many people had taken that advice. If they had, how had they formed gangs so quickly? Questions, without answers, swirled around my head so quickly it almost made me feel dizzy.

Giving myself a stern look in the rearview mirror, I was fleetingly reminded of my mother. I wiped my face and started up the engine keeping the lights off. I needed to move to a different part of town. I knew there were other places I could look. I wouldn’t allow myself to be scared off. I must find water before I could go home.

I looked down at the clock on the dashboard. I had been out of the house for almost two hours already. Silently I prayed that my daughter was still at home asleep. Safe.

7

I SAT IN the car watching the front of the store from across the street. I had been there for almost fifteen minutes watching for any signs of life. The last attempt had taught me to be extra cautious this time.

The thought of anything happening to me and Rosa being left alone in the house to starve made me feel sick. I needed to get food and from what I had seen so far I’d made the right decision leaving her at home.

Once I was confident that the place was deserted, I got out of the car and moved over to the opposite side of the street. Moving along only in the shadows cast by the side of the building I reached the front entrance. There was much less damage here. It wasn’t exactly what you would call an upmarket place. I suppose that it made sense that if you were going to be looting, you would hit the best stores first. I wasn’t fussy, and at this point as long as I wasn’t eating cat food from a tin I would be happy to take anything edible home. Providing I got there in one piece.

The door was smashed, but I could see from here that there was much more on the store’s shelves than in the previous one. I moved towards the back. I figured that way if I heard anyone coming in again, I could avoid bumping into them by dashing down an aisle and get back out into the street. I grabbed up a roll of heavy duty bin liners from a shelf on the far right, pulled one out and moved along tossing things in. When I reached the nappies, I could have wept with joy.

I had run out of nappies around the middle of week three after the explosion. Wipes a little after that. Potty training a child under two years old is hard work. Never mind one who was only just one year. It was messy. It stunk. We had not been having the best time toilet wise. I took out two more of the bin bags, filled them up and dragged them along behind me to the front entrance of the store to take outside later.

Not wanting to miss anything it took me a little while to find the canned food section. What was left of it. I was shocked to find half a tray of tinned fruit. In disbelief, I bent over to get a closer look at the label. Careful to keep the beam of my torchlight down.

“Prunes!” Well, no wonder. “Bloody typical.” The one fruit that would make my child poop even more than she already did. That’s fabulous.

Reluctantly I picked them up and moved over the rest of the shelf. In the end I had another two bags full of food ranging from crackers to corned beef and some sort of chunky vegetable stew. I was particularly pleased with the armful of tinned carrots I had managed to find in the back of the store. They had been Rosa’s favourite when we were weaning her. At least I knew she’d be happy to eat something I brought home.

I dragged the bags one at a time along the floor and out into the street. I looked around and decided to hide them behind a thick bushy plant about three metres away from the entrance. Going back inside, I needed to pick up some water before I could go home but still hadn’t managed to find any.

“OK, this is a problem. Where would you find water?” Thinking on my feet out of the corner of my eye I spied a ‘no entry’ sign on a door beside the freezer section and pushed my way through. Inside I flicked on my flashlight to see what was on the other side. There was two doors infant of me. One which read ‘STAFF’ and another which had a ‘WC’ sign. I chose the option closest to me.

The moment I opened the door to the staff room I heard a high pitched whine coming from the far end of the black space. It sounded like a child crying, but the foul smell of the room led me to think that whatever was making the noise was not human. The beam of my torch swung over the room, and the whine became a bark. Crap. The sound of a chain clinking reached my ears, and I directed my light over to the side of the room where the barking was coming from.

In front of me cowering at the side of a battered sofa was a very unhappy dog. I was surprised that in the light it didn’t seem to be vicious. It had its hindquarters pressed against the wall behind it and had used the arm of the sofa as a barrier between us. Someone must have tied him up in here thinking he would be useful, guarding something perhaps? If that was true then whoever it was would be coming back here and would not be too pleased to see me here. Feeling the pressure of time on my back, I had to get moving.

Searching for something of value I looked around me. There it was, just within reach of the dog and furthest from the door, staring everyone right in the face. A water cooler, complete with a huge bottle of water on top and no-one had touched it.  I bet that somewhere in here if I looked hard enough, there would also be a refill. Probably close to where the dog was chained up. Sure enough, as I once again passed the light over the room, behind the sofa was a storage cupboard.

“I will give you 3 guesses what’s in there buddy.” I needed to give something to this dog in order to befriend it.

I ran back out into the main store and found the pet food section. Grabbing the nearest can of dog food with a ring pull, I returned to the staffroom and opened the tin. I propped up the torch on the wall so that it shone a dim light across the whole room. Giving the dog a better view of what I was doing. “Hi buddy, I think you might be hungry. Would you like some food?” Kneeling down I unsheathed the fishing knife from my belt and began to break up the dog food and scooped it out onto the floor in front of me. Picking up a few chunks in my hand I crawled over towards the dog.

I knew it was a German Shepherd by the shape of him. The tell tail ears standing to attention and the thick bushy coat. As I inched closer, I saw that he was jet black from his nose down to his paws. His eyes shining back at me reflected the little light in the room just enough to give him a sinister profile. Feeling brave I held out my hand in front of me and offered the dog some of the food.

“Here you go. Good boy.” The dog stopped whimpering and pricked up his ears, his nose rising up at the scent of the meal before him. I just had to hope that he knew the meal wasn’t me.

Never taking his eyes off me or the food held outstretched in my hand he moved closer to nuzzle my hand and lick up the food. “Good boy.” From where I knelt I saw that the chain was restricting his movement. The dog whimpered as the chain pulled tighter. From his reaction, I guessed that the chain had begun to cut into his neck. He was leaning slightly to one side as if to elevate some of the pressure of the collar on his throat. The stench coming from the floor in this part of the room was revolting, it must have been weeks since this animal was let outside. I shook my head, disgusted at the cruelty of my fellow humans.

I took the time to establish myself as a friend and brought more of the tinned food over for him to eat. While he was busy eating, I walked behind him to get a better look at the contents of the storage cupboard. Opening the door was simple, and there was no lock. Scanning the inside with my torchlight, there was one full refill bottle for the water cooler. Tucked behind that in the corner there was also a stack of multipack cans of iced tea! Jackpot! This was amazing. Now I just needed to get it all out to the car.

I felt the dog join me by sticking his head into the cupboard at my side, which meant that the food I had used as a distraction had run out. I was nervous but tried not to show it as I spoke to the animal.

“Hello buddy, how are you?” I knelt down beside him, picked up the chain and looked at how it was attached to the wall.  As I did so as if he understood what I was thinking the dog began to wag his tail and barked his encouragement. “Whoah. Shhh! I can help you, but you need to be quiet. There’s a good boy.” I reached up and scratched under his chin. I became more confident that he knew what I was trying to do and started to worry a little less about him snapping at me.

This new trust which had begun to grow between us gave me the chance to take a better look at the collar attaching the chain to his neck. Slowly I reached up to touch the material buried in his black fur. My fingers recognised the rough coil of thick rope which had been carelessly knotted, far too tightly around this poor creatures head. A chain link had been looped through the rope making it impossible to get the dog untied.

There was no way I could leave him here. I hooked a finger under the rope which caused the dog to yelp in pain. I could feel a sticky area of his coat where the fur was much thinner on his neck. In his thrashing against his restraints the rope had pulled at his fur and burned into his neck. Parts of it were raw I moved my fingers along to avoid them.

“Shhh, it’s okay. We’re going to get you out. Don’t worry.” As I soothed him, I picked up my knife and slid it under by my hooked finger, the blade facing out against the fibres of the rope and began to work away at cutting him free. It took less than ten seconds for the knife to cut through the makeshift collar, and the chain fell with a clatter to the floor.

The moment the dog saw he was free he ran over to the door and barked excitedly desperate to be let out of his prison. “Okay. Okay. Shhhh.” I opened the door and let him run past me, out into the store. My task completed, I turned back around and walked into the stinking room to empty the storage cupboard.

Rolling the refill bottle out was easy, the bottle which sat on top of the cooler, however, not so much. It took me fifteen minutes to work out how to get the damn thing off the base unit and even then I ended up spilling about a third of the contents all over the carpet. Carrying it between my legs like an oversized kettlebell out to the car was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. Sweat was running down my back and soaking into the waistband of my jeans, my t-shirt was so damp it clung to me like I’d just stepped out of the shower. Desperately trying not to waste another drop, I hid it with the rest of my stash behind the bushes and ran over to get the car. It had started to rain heavily while I was inside. I needed to get out of it. The smells which were being washed up by the rainwater were disgusting, excrement and rotting meat. I didn’t dare to think what kind. Why did it smell so close?

8

ONCE I HAD pulled the car up to the side of the building I got out and began the process of loading it up. I had to move quickly and was painfully aware that I would easily be spotted if someone were to walk out into the street. A few times, while my head was tucked inside the car stacking my spoils I froze stiff with fear that I could hear footsteps behind me. I waited ready to dive into the driver’s seat and set off leaving whatever I hadn’t already packed in the bushes.

I remembered the cans of iced tea just as I was loading the second bottle of water into the back of the car. I locked the car manually as the key fob hadn’t been working and dashed back inside the store. I jogged back to the staff room door and arrived just in time to watch it swing shut in front of me. Could it be the dog?

No… I paused. The cans weren’t worth the risk. I turned to go back out to the car, but before I had managed to clear the store entrance, I heard a man bellowing.

“Where the hell is that useless dog!” I broke into a run. Heading for the car I dug my fingers into my front pocket for my keys. Fingers fumbling in my hurry to find the key and get into the safe haven of a locked car.

Just as I felt the key slide into the lock, I felt a hand grab my shoulder and swung me around sending my back crashing into the car door.

“You!” He was a short man, overweight with a filthy face and horrible beady eyes which seemed to pop out of his head almost as if someone had squeezed his head a little too hard.

“Spot of shopping was it? Where is the dog?” The hand not holding my shoulder against the car moved up to curl around my throat pushing my head against the cold, hard surface of the car.

I tried to scream, but his grip on my neck was getting tighter, stopping the sound from escaping. He didn’t care.

“More to the point, who the fuck said you could take my stuff?” My vision began to fade. I didn’t see what happened next but felt the hot spray of liquid hit me in the face. It covered one side of my cheek, and I squeezed my eyes shut. It was only when I tasted iron that I recognised that it was blood. But whose?

My brain was working away checking on my pain, but it was slow to react. The lack of oxygen from the throttling by the man had caused me to nearly pass out. I was lucky he had let go of me when he did. Wait. He’d let go!

I needed to get into the car. My vision was blurred, but I could make out the metal of my cluster of keys, shining against the wet, black concrete pavement. I grabbed them up off the floor and yanked at the handle of the car door. It flew open and I jumped inside slamming it closed behind me. I pushed down the locks. I looked outside but could barely see a thing. The rain hammered against my window. Not wishing to tempt fate I jammed my key in the ignition and drove until I was out of the sight of the building.

Once I was far enough away, I stopped the car. I didn’t think that I could drive safely just yet. Making sure the car was still locked, I pulled down my sun visor to check my face in the mirror. My eyes took longer than they should have to focus on the sight before me. My blonde hair was plastered to my face slick with a mixture of rain and grease having not washed it since the attack. My right ear and chin were covered in bright red blood. My hands shot up to examine my face. Looking for a wound, a cut perhaps but I found nothing. The blood wiped away with the back of my sleeve. It wasn’t mine.

It was almost morning now. The rain started to clear as the sunlight shone over the tops of the hills on the east side of town. Rosa would be awake now and screaming. Thankfully it wasn’t more than five minutes until I would be home and pulling into our driveway. I turned the key in the ignition and making sure the doors were locked I began the journey back. Realising in the light brought by the dawn that I was facing the wrong way out of town. I turned the car around and steeled myself to go back the way I had just come.

I hadn’t got very far when I saw the silhouette of a dog standing in the middle of the road. I slowed the car and began to weave around it. The dog seeing the vehicle had started to run alongside it. This was getting weird. Why was this creature following me? Could it be the same dog? I took the turn which would lead me back to my home. In the rearview mirror, something black caught my attention. It moved steadily in the distance. My suspicion that it could be the German Shepherd from earlier forced me to stop and take a closer look.

The animal which I had freed from the store less than an hour before, was now attempting to follow me home. I rolled down my window and looked back as the animal approached my side of the Golf. In the emerging daylight, I could see now just how bad the rope burns around his neck had been. It took me a moment to notice that his muzzle was covered in blood.

It had been him who had stopped the man from killing me outside the store. I looked down bewildered at this poorly treated creature as he sat patiently tilting his head to one side. Tentatively he reached up and pawed at the car door. An overwhelming feeling of gratitude brushed aside my caution, and I opened up the car door. We stood there looking at each other in the road for a moment. He walked to the back of the car and sat down again. I noticed that he had a nasty limp on one of his back legs. Possibly an injury from the fight with his captor? The fight which saved my life.

The least I could do was give this dog some food and water, maybe I could keep him in the garage until he was well healed enough to fend for himself. I owed him that. Without much more thought on the matter, I opened the back door, and he jumped up onto the back seat. Nestling himself between the formula and the black bags. He was too big to lie down back there, but he seemed to settle himself and rested his muzzle on the headrest of the passenger seat in front of him.

“I must be mad.” He looked over at me as I spoke, I smiled to myself. “No offence.” He was the first animal I had seen since the bombings.

Our street seemed a little eerie deserted like this. It felt like no one lived on it anymore, but there must have been ten houses on this stretch of road, and I had seen so many people on the street just after the attacks. I wondered where they were now. Maybe they’d left for a safer place to wait it out until the emergency services arrived.

As I neared our house and the road began to fill with sunlight, I noticed that a couple of the houses had been damaged, broken windows and scorch marks from a fire. That struck me as odd when most of the homes looked as perfect as they always had. On the whole, it was a lovely street. The houses with the damage had belonged to migrant families. I felt ashamed that people could be so stupid. I hoped that they were somewhere safe. I didn’t allow my mind to take me to where I thought they may be if they weren’t.

On our driveway I opened up the car, obediently the dog jumped out and ran over to the front door and sat down on the mat.

“Erm, actually buddy, you’re going to stay in the garage. Sorry.” The dog’s head tilted up to look at me and then followed my finger towards the garage door. His thick fur coat brushed my legs as he walked in front of me and sat down again this time in front of the garage. “Good boy.” I opened the garage door and piled everything from the car inside. I was as quick as I could then closed the door once the dog had sauntered in. I turned to lock the car and was about to go back towards the house when I heard a high pitched cry over my shoulder.

“You!”

Fear rose up in me and closed off my throat. Not again! I hadn’t recovered from the previous encounter with a fellow survivor.

Planting my feet as I turned, I came face to face with a very drunk, very angry, Joanne. I tried to speak, but I was so taken by surprise that I knew this woman that I couldn’t think what to say to her. Joanne, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have that problem.

“You self-righteous bitch tucked up nicely in your big house. Where’s your little baby eh?” I looked at her properly, she looked ill. There was something seriously wrong here.

My stomach turned as I realised what could have happened to cause her to act in such a crazy way. “Wanna know about mine? About my babies?”

“Joanne, I am so sorry.”

“You already know, don’t you? I can tell by the look on your face!” She shoved her hand up and tried to grab my face. I was lucky she was drunk. Her balance was off, and she didn’t manage to touch me. I twisted away from her, and she fell into a large planter by the side of the driveway.

I needed to try to calm her down and get her away from my house. I did not know how to handle this situation but knew that I must get her talking. Rationally. God this was turning out to be the worst day of my life, and it wasn’t even 9 am.

“Joanne, how can I help you? Is there anything you need? Maybe I can get you something? Or for the children?” I should not have mentioned her family. That was my mistake. Her eyes burned into me.

“What children?” she spat in my face. “I’ve got none left. They’re all dead. Andy’s left me. I haven’t seen him for over a fortnight. Jimmy was the only one left. My baby. It’s been just him and me for the past week, and then in the night, he started coughing up blood.” She sobbed. “This morning he won’t wake up. He’s always awake before me.”

Listening to her my eyes filled with tears. I was horrified at what she had told me. How was I supposed to comfort this woman?

“You knew this was going to happen didn’t you? That’s why you stayed tucked up in your big house.”

“Joanne, I tried to tell you when I saw you out on the street. All the warnings had said to stay inside for-”

“You knew we were all going to die and you did nothing,” she interrupted. Spitting the words at me like a vicious cat. She lunged at me again. This time her fist connected with the side of my face causing me to stumble back towards the garage. The dog barked from inside. I was stupid for locking him in there. He’d already been caged up for so long, and he would have been pretty useful about now.

Gathering myself up I stood tall and looked at the broken woman across from me. I had never been a fighter. I certainly didn’t relish the idea of hitting someone who was already in a great deal of pain. Something my mum had said to me when I was small popped into my head:

“If someone hits you, Lizzy, then you hit ‘em back twice as hard.” It was something I had never done. I had always been proud of that.

Looking Joanne in the eye, I turned on my heels and started to walk calmly back towards the side of the house. I hadn’t walked more than three steps when I heard a feral scream escape from Joanne’s lips. I tried to turn, but it was too late.

My hair was snatched up by her furious fingers. With deadly violence, she dragged it down towards the floor. As the back of my skull connected with the concrete of my driveway, the last thing I remember thinking to myself, grimly, was that my mother had been right.

9

A LARGE DROP of rain bounced off my forehead. The sound of a dog barking in the distance brought my attention back from unconsciousness. I lay sprawled out on the cold, grey concrete. My eyes opened. Why am I lying on the ground outside my house? For a moment, I thought that I was back in the supermarket car park about to be killed. But then, the barking. I scrunched up my brow and delicately cradled my head. The dog is in my garage. It came back to me. Joanne. Fuck. Her kids.

Moving my hand around to check my face, I could see that the ground was covered in blood. The sight of it gave me a shock and jolted me back to reality. Rosa. I felt my back pocket and relief soared through me. The house keys were still there. Joanne hadn’t gone into the house. Unless she’s broken in.

Unsure of how long I had spent lying there, I got to my feet and started in the direction of the back door. I was soaked, the rain had gone through my clothes and felt like it was now seeping into my skin. It took all of my energy just to get the key in the lock of the back door. I struggled to keep my balance. Waves of dizziness kept washing over me. That blood on the drive must have been mine, I had fallen back. No, I had been pulled back and hit my head. With one hand on the door and the other reaching up to touch the back of my head I found a sticky mass of hair, which would also explain the thumping pain.

“Crazy bitch!” She had just left me on the ground. I could be dead.

Once inside I locked the door behind me and stumbled into the utility room. Before going on into the house, I stuck my head in the doorway at the back of the garage. The dog had been lying at the shutters nose to the floor, got up and bounded over to me. Tail wagging and tongue out.

“Hey buddy! Ok let me sort myself out and then I will come and see you. Good boy.” Patting him on the head, I was relieved to see that on the floor by the doors were the supplies I had brought inside on my arrival, untouched. The relief I had felt was quickly dashed away when I realised that I couldn’t hear anything coming from the house. The crying I had expected didn’t happen. Shit!

I made my way through the utility room and down the hall into the kitchen. She had to be awake. Why wasn’t she crying? It must have been mid-morning by now. I swung open the door to the pantry where I had left her sleeping in her fabric prison.

She stood silently looking up at the door. Her arms hanging over the side of her travel cot, her face unsure. It was the look she gave when trying to decide between a laugh or a cry. Slowly the edges of her mouth turned upwards into a smile. I felt terrible. I was overjoyed that she had survived the night without me, but felt terrible that I had left her in the first place.

Rosa looked a mess, her face was covered with dried tears and phlegm, her hair usually a tidy mop of curls looked something more akin to Albert Einstein’s. I tried to hold back tears. One betrayed me and rolled down my cheek. I rushed to wipe it away not wanting her to see me upset. I picked her up, and her little arms surrounded my neck and squeezed so hard that I almost fell over from the pain. I grabbed the door frame for support.

“Ok baby you need to be careful because Mummy has a poorly head.” She looked straight at me.

“Mumum” This was the first thing which resembled a word she had said since the bombings. I pulled her to my chest and smiled.

Even in my battered state, it felt amazing to be home. After seeing the way things were outside, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to bring myself to leave it again. So much had happened in such a small distance and less than half a day. What must the rest of the country be like? I pushed the images out of my head as I sat quietly rocking my daughter to sleep.

Days turned into weeks which passed by in a blur. The bump on my head had given me some painful headaches since that morning when I had woken up in the driveway. But apart from that my injuries had healed well. The dog had made himself at home in the utility room, his wounds were healing well. He had even allowed me to get close enough to see that they hadn’t become infected.

Each morning I would open up the back door for him and showed him the gate which led out onto farmland at the back of our garden. At first I thought this would be the last time we would see him, his shaggy black coat of fur fading in the distance as he chased his dinner across the fields and out of sight. But to my surprise, like clockwork, each afternoon he came back. Pawing at the back door to be let back in. The first day he had returned, it was so unexpected that I had been scared someone was trying to break in again.

I opened the door to see him wagging his tail in his excitement. I had been keeping him at arm’s length. I hadn’t even let him into the house. It was a strange dog after all. I was startled when he jumped up to greet me, but he repeated the ritual every afternoon. Soon I felt my hesitation evaporating as I was adding to this routine myself. Kneeling down I stroked the dog’s head and scratched behind his ear.

“What’s your name? We can’t just keep calling you buddy.” I had resisted the urge to give the dog a name. Something in me had felt that once you named a dog, it became yours. This dog had saved my life, he could do as he pleased. He wasn’t mine to keep. If he wanted to leave, then that was his choice. I lent over to take a look at his neck, and he delivered a slobbery lick to the side of my face. It was the first bit of loving contact I’d had from anyone but Rosa in so long that it made up my mind for me.

“Sod it, come in then if you’re coming in.” I stood to the side of the door, and he ran straight past me and settled himself in his bed of sheets and blankets on the utility room floor. “Let’s call you Shadow shall we? Since we can’t seem to get rid of you.”

The supplies which I had managed to gather were keeping Rosa and me going but they would soon run out and finding the next batch was only going to get harder. If we hadn’t been evacuated by then I would have no choice but to make the same trip again, this time it was likely that I would be forced to look further afield. I knew that I couldn’t keep leaving Rosa alone. It wasn’t safe, but then it wasn’t safe for her out there with me either. I could barely look after myself as Shadow had proven.

In truth, I had expected Matt and some kind of evacuation effort to have arrived after our first month in the shelter. When that didn’t happen, I told myself it would be any day now. As the days turned into weeks, I began to doubt the likelihood of anyone coming for us at all. Matt would have been here by now if he was alive. Each day that past without his appearance was another blow to the hope I still held in my heart.

I listened in to the radio broadcast from the Bunker at noon each day, but It had changed to a pre recorded message which didn’t tell us anything new. Instead of inspiring hope it had now become a taunting reminder that things had not progressed in all of these weeks.

Gradually I realised that I needed to be better prepared for what lay ahead. I knew now that I was not able to protect us. In the mornings while Rosa drank her bottle, I did body strengthening exercises on the kitchen floor. She looked on giggling and would often mimic my movements. I needed to be ready to fight someone off, and right now I wasn’t.

The rationing of food had meant that I had lost some of the weight I had still been carrying from my pregnancy. However, the lack of exercise and staying indoors had made me lose strength. Discovering a rack of weights at the back of the garage encouraged me to do more. I began to use them each night once Rosa was asleep. Goading myself each time to work harder and at the same time watching our rationed food supply depleting.

On fine days when the air felt safe I took Rosa out into the fields behind our house and walked with her on my back and Shadow by my side. I took heart from my body gaining in strength. I was determined that I was going to be ready for my next trip to find our food. It had become a matter of survival. Of life or death.

10

I LAY MY head back on the cushion beside Rosa who slept soundly in the pantry. I wasn’t sure why we were still down here, apart from that it felt like the safest place in the house. Above me in the torchlight, I could see the crude marks on the back of the door. A fresh one scratched at the end each night. I was developing a permanent blister on my right hand from the constant effort of carving them. The back of the door was beginning to look like a never-ending picket fence, I stared at it until my eyes closed and finally, I drifted off to sleep.

I woke with a jolt. I sat up and heard a smash coming from the top of the house. The noise was come from inside one of the bedrooms upstairs. Fear invaded my body. I stood being careful enough not to wake Rosa, picked up the roll of fishing knives and slid out a long slightly curved thin blade. I left the pantry and closed the door firmly behind me. My heart was in my mouth. I made my way to the foot of the stairs and stood to listen.

The noise sounded too muffled to be coming from the first floor, so it had to be the spare room on the roof. Maybe an animal had gotten in? I told myself that I was being foolish, no animal could have broken a window and got into the house. It was someone looking for something, water or food.

I needed to protect Rosa downstairs. I weighed up my choices. We could have fled but this was our home and the only safe place I knew. I felt I had no option but to defend it. I began to take the stairs up to the first floor. Just as I reached the top step I froze, invisible in the darkness of the stairwell. I looked ahead just in time to see a large figure stalk from upstairs and across into the bedroom in front of me. That’s when I knew he was looking for people, not for food. If he was looking for food, he would have broken into the kitchen, or at least be heading down there. Not checking to see if anyone was in the bedrooms.

My mind raced. I was breathing so hard I am surprised he hadn’t already heard me standing on the other side of the wall in the dark. As I waited for him to leave the bedroom I felt paralysed, I had no plan. Although I felt much stronger than a month ago, I had no illusions that I was a match for this guy, and I was right in his path. Waking me from my panic he appeared again on the landing and moved across to the opposite room, I seized my chance and swift as a cat stepped into the doorway of the room he had just exited.

Once inside I looked around for something heavy I could use to knock him out; there wasn’t much which suited my requirements, and in the end I picked up the door stop by my feet. Holding it above my head poised to strike, he moved past the doorway and headed past me towards the staircase. It had to be now.

I jumped out behind him and with both hands brought down the door stop as hard as I could onto the back of his head. Feeling the object in my hands connecting with his skull went through me. He didn’t even look around he lurched forward bouncing his shoulder off the wall in front of him on his way down. Crumpled, the intruder lay in a heap at the top of my stairway.

I dropped the door stop and whipped out the fishing knife from my back pocket.

“Who the fuck are you? And why are you in my house?” He didn’t move, my voice sounded strange like it wasn’t mine. “Answer me.” Still nothing. Shit, had I killed him?

I was horrified. I ran away, back down the stairs. As I reached the hall, I jumped at a loud scratching sound coming from the utility room. I had forgotten entirely about Shadow, who had been scratching at the door to get out and see what was causing such a commotion. I opened the door and felt safer the instant he was at my side.

I needed to check that the man upstairs was dead. The idea of it made me gag. I turned to Shadow and whispered “By me” and then tapped the side of my leg. Please let him understand. I made my way back up the stairs to the place where I had left the intruder. He hadn’t moved from where he had fallen.

I had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I wanted him to be dead, on the other I wasn’t sure that I could face the reality that I had killed another human being. Bending forward over his body I reached down to check his pulse. I closed my fingers around his wrist and he sprung to life. He twisted his arm away from me and grabbed me firmly around the waist throwing me over and slammed me hard into the floor.

“There you are. I knew you were in here somewhere.” As soon as he spoke I knew who it was. Andy, Joanne’s husband. He was on top of me now, pinning my hips down with his weight. Where was Shadow? Fuck.

“Andy? Look I’m sorry I don’t know what you and your wife think I did to hurt your family. I was just trying to keep my daughter safe. I tried to warn Joanne that it might be dangerous…”

“Are you stupid? Family doesn’t exist for us anymore, everyone is alone. If you want something, you have to take it yourself. But you know that don’t you?” He was glaring down at me. Confused, my eyes searched for Shadow, but I was struggling to make anything out in the darkness. I still held the knife in my right hand, but he had both of my forearms pinned to my sides.

“The kids are gone. Joanne’s gone mad with the grief. There’s nothing left to live for now, so I reckon - life’s short. I’d better find a way to amuse myself with the time I got left - make sure I keep my pecker up if you know what I mean.” With a horrifying grin he looked down at my chest and ripped open the neck of my shirt. He positioned his groin so that I could feel him pushing against the inside of my thigh. Bile rose up in my throat as it sunk in what it was that he had been looking for and my legs turned to jelly.

Then I heard him. A low growl behind my head came closer. Andy’s face looked aghast. “You don’t have a dog. What the fuck is that?”

He let go of one of my forearms and reached down to take something out of his belt, but before he could touch it, Shadow leapt out of the black hallway with his teeth bared. In his efforts to get away from the snarling dog Andy had rolled off me and was now on his back with the dog backing him into the corner. I knew that Andy was dangerous, even with Shadow on my side. I gripped the wooden handle of the knife in my hand and looked for a way to help.

I watched in horror as Andy’s foot shot out and hit Shadow’s flank, a frightened cry came from the dog as he was thrown against the wall at the opposite side of the landing. I had to move.

I dived forward and used both hands to slam the angled knife up and into his unguarded side. I felt the pressure against the knife give way, as my blade pierced his skin and sunk deep between his ribs.

“You really should be more careful who you decide to amuse yourself with.” I hissed in his ear. Paranoid that one wound wouldn’t be enough to stop him, I pulled the knife out, found another target and slid it back in. I don’t like to think how many times I stabbed him. I kept going until I couldn’t feel him moving anymore.

Grabbing at a small table beside me I struggled to get to my feet, my legs were unsteady and my hands shook violently. I backed up until I fell against a wall. My hands dripped with his warm blood. I didn’t recognise myself. Unable to walk, I slid down the wall to the floor. Letting out a silent scream I felt my confidence crumble away and my body began to heave out great sobs of relief. I heard Shadow whining on the floor to my right, and I made my way over to check on him.

“Thank you” I sobbed as I reached him. “Thank you so much.” I stroked his head, and he dropped it on to my lap. What I had been faced with doing to protect myself I had done without thinking, without fully understanding what it meant. But Shadow had known. He had waited for the right moment. He was protecting people he barely knew and had risked his own life to save mine. I had never had a dog before, but I was beginning to understand people’s devotion to their animals.

“Can you stand?” I ran my hand over Shadow’s flank and checked each of his paws to see if they were hurt. Shadow flinched when I passed my hand over his ribs. “You might have cracked one. That was quite a blow you took for me.” Tears were streaming down my face unchecked. I stood.

I was still clutching the fishing knife firmly in my hand. I loosened my grip and it fell to the carpet with a soft thud. I mustered my strength and supported Shadow down the stairs, helping him as best I could into the kitchen. “You’ve been upgraded, buddy. You can stay with us in the house now if you like?” Shadow barely lifted his head. I gathered his bedding from the utility room and brought it through for him.

Gaining enough composure to go back, for my own peace of mind I knew I must feel for a pulse. I pressed the side of his neck and held my breath while waiting for the rhythm of his heartbeat. There was nothing, my skin prickled and I felt cold all over. I had murdered someone.

11

THE SHOWER WAS cold. I had been expecting it to be, but I barely noticed as the water trickled over me. I was going into shock. I started taking off my clothes, letting them fall to my feet in the bathtub until I was naked. His blood was everywhere. I took a flannel and began scrubbing at my skin where I could see the trailing stains of red. Washing my hair for the first time in almost two months should have been something to rejoice in. Any joy I might have taken from it before was lost on me now. I didn’t want to risk using the water in case it had been contaminated with radiation, but after what had just happened I didn’t feel that I had any other choice. I couldn’t hold my baby covered in the blood of a man I had just murdered.

My teeth chattered noisily as I rinsed the soap off my hair and stepped over the side of the bath and onto the blood-spattered bath mat. I pulled a towel off the rail to my left and wrapped it around myself. The soft fibres rubbed against my cold wet skin and it made me realise how much I missed Matt. I felt my legs give way and I stumbled, managing to catch the toilet lid and used it to support my weight before I fell.

My legs were shaking so much it would be a while before I could stand. I needed to think. What in the name of Christ was I going to do with my twenty stone neighbour lying dead on my staircase? He was definitely dead. After checking his pulse I had sat and watched him for over an hour. I had been paranoid that he would wake up, not trusting my pulse taking capabilities.

I had killed him, no person could lose that much blood and live. Dripping soapy water on to the bloodstained carpet I stepped over the body and into my bedroom. I pulled open a drawer on Matt’s side of the wardrobe, finding some small comfort in wearing his clothes. I pulled on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a large jumper, which reached the middle of my thighs. I plucked a hair band from my dressing table and tied my soaking wet hair back into a high ponytail and sighed. I would have to investigate the damage he had caused when he broke in.

I walked into the room across the landing and saw the bits of broken glass, glittering on the pretty pink carpet. He must have gotten in by standing on the garage roof and had smashed one of Rosa’s windows and climbed through. Thank God we had stayed down at the bottom of the house. I would need to board it up with something to keep the rain out, but more frightening was that it meant our shelter was no longer safe. If a man of his size was able to get in then what was there to stop anyone else from doing the same thing? We couldn’t kill everyone.

I pushed the mattress back up against the broken window, not that it made much of a difference. I walked out of the room, closed the door behind me and was confronted with the slightly more pressing problem. I had a dead man in my house.

I knew from being pinned under his weight that I had no chance of being able to lift him. I couldn’t face getting his blood all over me again. I decided.

“This is all a little too much for me right now. I’ll deal with you later” and stepped over his leg to get down the stairs. It was nearly time for breakfast.

The smell coming from upstairs was getting more and more putrid by the hour. The hot weather hadn’t helped. Today it seemed to be so much worse than the day before. I hadn’t gone up there since the break-in. Even Shadow hadn’t gone up there. I wasn’t sure that I could face it and so told myself that I didn’t need to. We were running low on supplies again, but I was so afraid of going outside. The rational side of my brain told me that we couldn’t stay here with a dead body upstairs, so I was going to have to face up to it soon.

My phone had been out of battery for well over a month now, and the last remaining batteries for the radio had died 3 days ago. There may be some more up in the spare room at the top of the house, but that meant walking past a dead guy, so… Understandably I hadn’t looked. The day went on, Rosa and I went through our usual routine, but the smell invaded my nostrils, acting as a constant reminder of the rotting corpse on the floor above me. I knew what I needed to do. If I couldn’t move the body, then we would need to be the ones to move.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. Some days I felt sure that Matt was dead. It had been far too long now. He was either dead, or he thought we were and wasn’t coming here. I had waited as he had told me to in his message, but I felt sure that if he could see how we were living, the danger we were in, he would tell us to get out and find help.

I started thinking about what that would entail. Rosa and I would need a car and supplies. We were almost out of water and food again so we could try to find some on our way. Would Shadow come too? I looked over at him sleeping by the foot of Rosa’s travel cot in the kitchen.

Shadow had taken a nasty beating that night. He was still not back to his usual self and his old limp had returned. I was worried about him. The only thing that interested him at the moment was sleeping. I had to cross my fingers that it was just his way of healing his injuries. The ones I could see I kept an eye on but it was the pain in his ribs that I couldn’t see which scared me the most.

“Where do you think we should go?” I asked Shadow. He lifted his head and settled it back down on his front paws and heaved out a great sigh.

The Bunker broadcast on the radio had said that it was in the south-east, the recorded message had said something about a meeting point. The last time I had listened to that was about a week ago. I needed to go up and look in the spare room for new batteries. Peering over at Rosa in her travel cot in the kitchen she looked so peaceful, Shadow glanced up at me again and sensing that I was about to leave them he started to get to his feet.

“No. Stay.” I knelt down to scratch his ears and looked into his dark amber eyes. “You stay here. Look after Rosa. Good boy.” He let out a low whine and placed his muzzle back over his paws.

I felt each muscle in my body tensing as I walked towards the first flight of stairs which would lead me up to the top of the house. I covered my mouth and nose with the baggy jumper I had been wearing for the past two days trying to breathe as little as possible. The smell. I reached the first landing and kept my eyes away from the floor, not so much so that I would risk stepping on the body. I didn’t waste time.

Finally, I reached the room I was after. I settled myself on the floor in front of the chest of drawers and pulled out the bottom one where we kept odd electrical bits and bobs. I raked through it. No luck.

“Bugger!”  I stood up dreading the sight that awaited me in the stairway. I saw the open skylight on our next door neighbour’s roof. I had an idea. There could be batteries maybe even some tinned food and water in there. What if we moved into their house? No dead body on the stairs, just an empty house.

Still thinking the possibilities through in my head I pulled the empty bed frame over to line up with the bottom of the window and swung it open as wide as it would go. I had my knee and first leg out of the window, and before I knew it, I was pulling my other leg out on to the roof. I turned behind me and caught the skylight with my fingers before it could shut behind me. Looking around for something to keep the window open, I took off one of my trainers and jammed it into the side of the skylight wedging it open.

I needed to be able to get back inside when I was done. I’d just take a quick look and see if this idea could work.  A couple of steps down the slope of our roof and I was met with the rising pitch of the one next door. It wasn’t difficult at all to get in, I surprised myself at how much my core strength had improved. I was able to lower myself down from the skylight to the room below. Landing with a heavy thud, I noticed how light the house seemed, all of our windows were covered up. It felt almost like stepping back in time to what life was like before the attack. Looking around I saw the beautifully made bed with matching folded towels at the foot of it.

As I walked through the house It felt strange, I knew that in a way it was wrong what I was doing, but they had been camping in France. I knew that because Rick and Emma had mentioned it before they left, we often kept an eye out for each other when we went on holidays. Walking down to the kitchen and checking the cupboards for tinned food was my first priority. On my way down I couldn’t help but notice the dozens of family photos on the stairway walls. The faces staring out at me looked so happy, they always had seemed close. You never saw them arguing, even with their two teenage daughters. I hoped they were safe, somewhere, wherever they were now.

I found the bottom stair and turned to my right through the hallway I could smell the kitchen before I saw it. Something had gone bad during the time the house had stood empty and was giving off a sickly odour. I walked through the doorway to the room which mirrored mine next door and saw the offending item instantly. The fruit bowl in the middle of the dining table. It had been left pretty full. Obviously, they hadn’t planned on being away for such a length of time. Two weeks away and they would have returned to it being mouldy, but now the thing was crawling. I gagged. It reminded me of the dead body lying in my house, next-door.

I tried to put the smell to the back of my mind and set to work opening each cupboard and making a mental note of anything which could be salvaged for my purposes. I was pleasantly surprised by their tinned food collection, although no meat and way more lentils than I deemed to be normal. But who am I to judge. In the pantry they didn’t have as much as we had, but I counted about 8 bottles of sparkling water which I supposed I could just leave to go flat for Rosa’s formula. There was a huge sack of rice alongside a sizeable stash of tuna fish, doing the rationing in my head this could keep us going for at least another couple of weeks if we were careful. On a table in the hallway, I found a key for the front door which might be handy for bringing in Rosa. I would have been able to use it right then if I had thought to bring my keys with me. Each room I passed I entered scanning for things which we could use. In the living room, I had taken the batteries out of every remote control, which would get the radio working again. Methodically I searched until began to make my way back up the stairs to the top of the house. It wasn’t until I had gone through one of the daughters’ bedrooms that I struck gold. A charging brick.

Providing the network was back up and running I could get in touch with my sister. It would be so good to hear her voice. My thoughts drifted to Matt and if he was alive.

“Well all I can do is try.” Maybe they’d been trying to get in touch with me and hadn’t known if we had survived the initial blast.

With the charging brick and batteries stuffed safely in the pockets of my husband’s oversized joggers, I dragged a chair over to give me a boost up to the skylight. It was much harder to get out than it was getting in. After a couple of attempts, I finally managed to haul myself up and tipped my torso forward over the lintel, falling out onto the roof. The smell hit me like a wall as I dropped back into my house through the skylight. Remembering that I still needed to walk past the body on the stairs made my stomach lurch, keeping my eyes ahead I held my breath and raced down into the kitchen.

Shadow was startled as I ran into the kitchen but settled as soon as he realised it was only me. Clutching a charging brick and without so much as a look at Rosa in her cot, I started looking for my phone. Throwing things behind me out of the pantry door until I found it tucked under the side of the mattress. I had left it there so many weeks ago. As I waited for it to power up, I turned my attention to the radio, popping out the dead batteries, discarding them and pushing in the new ones. I thumbed the tuning dial and waited. After a few seconds, the radio hissed and I moved the dial to the frequency which had been broadcasting the Bunker’s recorded message.

“We have begun gathering survivors, our priority is to create safe communities and work together to bring back order. If you are currently south of the Watford Gap and East of Croydon and if you feel it is safe to do so, make your way to the nuclear Bunker in Kelvedon, Essex. There are signposts which will guide you in from the surrounding areas.”

Finally, someone had a plan, we could leave this place and go to relative safety, where like-minded survivors had banded together. But if I left now and Matt was still alive somewhere, how would he find us? I looked down at my phone charging on the kitchen table, the home screen was idle. There were no unread messages and no voicemails waiting for me to listen to. I had to face up to the fact that we couldn’t survive here alone. Waiting for him indefinitely was not an option. This was it. It was time to leave.

12

I STARTED LOADING up the Discovery that evening. I packed the food and water from next-door along with Rosa’s supply of formula, and a few books and toys to keep her entertained. One thing that had been useful about being shut up indoors together for such a long time was that we had started potty training! Nappies had been amazing but trying to make them last longer meant that Rosa was uncomfortable and when they ran out things got pretty disgusting. Without an endless supply available to us I didn’t have much of a choice. But as I knew we would be in the car for some time, I packed the last of the nappies we had managed to get hold of. I folded down her travel cot and wedged it in the footwell of the back seat covering it with two sleeping bags and a couple of pillows.

Thinking about what we might encounter on the journey made me break out in sweat. After what I had seen of the outside world so far, I was petrified. To get to the Bunker, we might have to walk. I would be able to carry Rosa in a sling. It would be sensible to pack one large backpack with any essential items we needed. I could always return to the car for anything I was unable to carry.

Rooting around in a drawer I had managed to find a road atlas of the United Kingdom. Very handy. In Matt’s cupboards in the garage, I also found an old tattered London A-Z map from 1999. I tucked the maps in front of the leather roll of knives in the side compartment of the driver side door. I didn’t want to use them, but it did feel safer having the knives close at hand. The kit had been expensive. They were an anniversary gift for Matt. Leather. He’d been so keen and thrown himself into his hunter-gatherer phase. The set had been kept in pristine condition. They still were if you didn’t count the one I had used to kill someone. I’d left that on the floor upstairs where I’d dropped it. I hadn’t the stomach to retrieve it. I had absolutely no desire to go upstairs again.

There was so much useful stuff in amongst our camping equipment. I loaded them into the back of the car as Shadow sat watching me intently. I could tell he knew something was going on and tried my best to reassure him with lots of fuss, taking time to sit and scratch his ear every now and again.

“Don’t worry we won’t leave you.” He jumped up and sat in the boot of the Land Rover for a while and watched me work. He sat there brooding but had to jump down again as I loaded in the tent. throwing a brew kit in the footwell of the passenger seat and the flare gun which I placed on the dashboard. Sorting through the things which were Matt’s made me feel uneasy. I think it was guilt that we were leaving without him. I had played through every scenario in my head, and there was no logical reason for me to stay here. If he had been able-bodied, there was nothing that would have stopped him coming to find us. Nevertheless with an old tin of blue paint I wrote in bold letters on the kitchen wall: “GONE TO KELVEDON BUNKER.”

At least this way if he does make it here he’ll know where we’re heading and he can make his own way there to meet us. Even with the odds stacked against him, there was a part of me which couldn’t accept that he was dead. The thought was too much for me to deal with right now. I needed to pack and leave. Putting down the paintbrush I made a promise to myself.

“This is the last night we will spend here, Shadow.” He turned at the sound of my voice and came to sit by Rosa’s cot. As soon as it was light, we would begin our journey to the Bunker and then somehow try to piece together whatever family we had left.

13

WE HAD BEEN on the road for about ten minutes when I saw the first body. It was laid out by the side of the road and covered in a blanket. Why would someone leave the body of someone they cared about on the street like that? I slowed down as we drove past. It felt wrong. To drive by and not acknowledge it. It was only a few miles further until I saw the next one.

This time there wasn’t just one. There could have been a dozen bodies. All different sizes laid side by side in the field by the edge of the road. My eyes stung as I fought to keep them on the road in front of me. There were children laid out in that barren grass field. By the size of them, they could have been no more than 8 years old.

I caught my breath.

A small bundle.

A pale pink coat, two skinny white legs her toes pointing down buried in the dirt.

I passed the section of road and had to pull over into a layby to collect myself.

Staying tucked up in the village and keeping to the house as much as possible had kept us hidden from this new reality that now surrounded us. I reminded myself to keep calm. I had a long drive ahead of me, and this was probably going to get much worse. We weren’t even five miles from home yet, and already I was dreading the journey. We moved out of the quieter country lanes and onto the main roads leading up to London. Shadow had been sat bolt upright on the back seat since leaving our driveway. His nose hadn’t left the glass of the window as he carefully examined the landscape before him, creating a foggy mist of hot air on the glass in circles around his mouth. Sometimes when I looked at him, I imagined the cogs turning in his head. It was like you could hear him thinking.

Every mile or so there were cars at the side of the road, pulled over on the hard shoulder or grassy verge. The first one we saw I had assumed that the occupants were still inside. Thinking they had stopped driving for a break I slowed the Land Rover down and had crawled past to see if there were other people nearby, but when I looked in the car was empty.

We’d been driving for about twenty minutes before I saw another moving vehicle. It sped up when it saw us coming. Even though we were approaching from the opposite direction. It struck me as strange. Perhaps survivors coming from the London area had thought it best to make their way to the coast? They might be thinking of ways to get across the channel to France. If it was unharmed, then that would be a sensible idea. The fact that we hadn’t seen any foreign aid sent across to us led me to think that France was probably in a similar situation to ours.

Where would we find food now? Britain’s farmland would have been contaminated by the radioactive fallout. Soon we would run out of supermarkets and warehouses to plunder, and that would lead to even more violence. After recent events it was getting easier to imagine.

As we drove closer to the motorway, I began to notice the trees, standing like skeletons. Their leaves were gone. Some were completely bare as though it were late Autumn not the middle of Summer. If my tallying of the days had been correct, then it should be the middle of August right now, despite the temperature outside being much colder. I had put that down to the after-effects of the explosions. Further on I could see trees had been uprooted and were lying scattered across the road. Cars had been abandoned in the middle of lanes. I took my foot off the accelerator and began to weave my way around the stationary traffic. I passed a small blue Vauxhall which had been hit by part of a falling tree. To my horror, I saw that the driver was still inside crushed to his seat by the fallen log and unable to get help, there was no way an ambulance could have gotten out to them. I hoped that whoever it was hadn’t had to wait long for their death.

I drove on. The sights before me were like something out of a film. Something Matt and I would watch on a Saturday night, frightened and curled up together on the sofa. You don’t imagine for one second that you would ever live through a nightmare like the one on the screen. Staring out ahead in a daze, I tried hard not to give too much attention to the upsetting scenes all around me. I concentrated instead on the gaps I could get the car through.

Purposefully distracting my brain, I tried to think of something good. Something happy. My thoughts drifted off to Kate. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to make our way up the country to her place, at least we would be out of the way up there. I knew the area well, I had loved visiting her when she’d moved. There was a time when I’d even considered moving up there myself in the days before my role in Parliament and of course before I had met Matt. Back then, she was all I had.

Funny to think that she may be all Rosa and I had left now, the not knowing was all I could think about. I decided that the only way to know would be to go to his parents’ house and see if there was any evidence that he had been holed up there. Yes, that’s what I would do. It was only another ten miles or so out of my way, and if there was still no sign of him, I would carry on to the Bunker or up to Kate. Imagine if I found him in the Bunker. This could even be what he was hoping we would do.

If his parents were in a desperate situation I knew he wouldn’t leave them on their own, it’s certainly not as if he could have brought them down to us on his motorbike. I felt the heat from the sun coming up in the distance behind me and my spirits rose with it. There was a chance he was still alive out there. There was still hope and hope was all I needed.

The M25 was a mess, the lanes were jam-packed full of cars those people who must have thought they were only twenty minutes away from their destination and had been caught in the traffic, out in the open when the bombs fell. The smell coming from the roadside was the worst I had encountered. There were accidents all over the place, bad ones. Drivers speeding to get to where they needed to be colliding with other drivers desperately phoning loved ones. I could easily imagine it, of course, there was going to be accidents on the road. I just hadn’t been prepared for the aftermath two months after the fact. I kept my mind on finding gaps and moving on from one to the next one methodically. I should be better at this, more prepared. I had seen dead bodies up close before. Two in fact. Mum and Dad.

Mum and Dad had been due to catch a train from London Kings Cross up to see our Aunt in York the day of the London Underground bombings. I remember that day like it was etched on the back of my eyelids, I had been in Kensington prepping for a meeting when I heard what had happened. They opened the pubs early that day. The widescreen TVs which were usually reserved for football were now playing the News instead. Landlords invited people in from the street to watch, giving out free cups of coffee laced with spirits.

I had been in The Hereford Arms in Gloucester Road when my sister called. I had been so absorbed in myself that morning that I hadn’t clocked it, but she had. Kate was like that. She often thought of others before herself. My mobile which had been sitting on top of a beer mat beside me started to vibrate, I picked it up.

“Hi, Kate.”

“I can’t get hold of Mum. Do you know what time their train was to York?” Kate’s words sent a bolt of fear straight through me.

“No I have no idea, I thought they were going up tomorrow?”

“No, it was today, this morning I think.”

“Fuck!”

“Yeah…” My head pounded, my parents could be stuck underground. “Ok listen, I’m taking a black cab up to Kings Cross to see if they’re there. Maybe they had to leave their bags on the train or something, that could be why she isn’t answering her phone.” I listened to my sister reasoning with herself, unable to think of something equally as reasonable. I heard myself say,

“Yes of course. I will meet you there.” She hung up, and I stared blankly at the phone in my hand.

We waited for days before we were able to identify them. We did it together although Kate took charge. She handled everything, I was just in shock existing only as a silent witness. I hoped that I had brought her some comfort just by being there, but I was so trapped in my own head that I’m not sure that I did.

So seeing death and disaster wasn’t totally new to me but the scale of this was unthinkable. It was hard to imagine how the country was going to be able to pull itself back together.

From the corner of my eye, I saw in the distance. Something moving at the side of the road which brought me out of my reverie. We moved closer, and I could make out a group of people. It looked like a family. A woman and two young children. They could have been no older than eight and ten. The mother was stood waving both hands as though to flag down oncoming traffic.

I looked back at the seat behind me, and it was fairly empty except for Shadow, but he could sit in the boot. They could squeeze in with the travel cot and a few sleeping bags. After seeing so much death already today, leaving them by the side of the road wasn’t something I had in me to do. They could also be heading to the Bunker, and it would be good to have some company. Helping out a woman on her own with two kids seemed the like the right thing to do.

I lifted my foot off the accelerator and began to brake. I pulled over on to the grassy verge just a few meters before where they were. The mother ran over and I could see that they were in a bad way before I had stepped a foot out of the car.

“Thank you. Oh God thank you so much.” She gushed. “We’ve been out here for almost two days, and you’re the only person to stop.” She looked very emotional. I noticed a fresh cut over her right eye and bruising on the side of her face. She had clearly not had it easy.

“I’m happy to help, but it will be a bit cramped.” I gestured to the back of the car. “Don’t worry the dog can travel in the boot. If we do a little repacking I think I can just about fit all three of you on the back seat if you would like to come with my daughter and me?”

As I spoke, I scanned their faces. Trying to get a better look at this family. Their clothes were torn, and their faces were dirty. The woman was by far the worst. It looked as if she had suffered a heavy nosebleed or actually on closer inspection she may have had her nose broken. That would tally with the bruising in her face and arms. She caught me staring at her injuries and shot back a strange, wild glare. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Something was definitely off with this woman.

Her children, two young boys, were in a sorry state. They had mud caked all over their clothes which hung off their skinny frames. They looked like they hadn’t eaten a proper meal in two months. “Where are you trying to get to?”

“We’re on our way to Cambridge. My sister lives there.”

“Ah ok, well I can give you a lift to Essex.” Silence. “That’s as far as I’m going.”

“Oh, yeah right of course. We’ll just ride along as far as we can.”

“There’s a nuclear bunker there with supplies and a safe place to sleep. You sure you don’t want to come with us and stay a night or two?” The woman looked at her two boys who were glaring pleadingly up at her. They looked like they were in such need of food. “You could get a hot meal and cleaned up, maybe, before continuing up to Cambridge?” Still, she said nothing but kept glancing behind her into the treeline.

These two kids needed to eat and rest more than anything else. In my heart I knew that if Brighton had been bombed, then Cambridge would have also been a target. Unfortunately, it made good sense. I chose not to point that out. Instead, thinking of another way I could be helpful.

“Maybe before we set off you would like some food? I’ve got a little with me, and you all look like you could eat?”

The mother looked up at me open-mouthed. While her two children ran forward and broke the silence

“Do you have crisps?”

“Any chocolate?”

I laughed for the first time in ages as I looked down upon the two young pairs of eager shining eyes.

“Actually yes. I have a tiny bit of chocolate. It’s cooking chocolate I’m afraid. I hope that’s still alright?” They nodded so hard I thought their heads might roll off. “And unfortunately no crisps. Sorry. Hold on.” I turned back to the Land Rover and opened the front passenger door to see Rosa stretching her neck out of the car seat to see what was going on. “Hello, my little angel. Would you like some food?” I made the sign for food, and she replied.

“Nom, nom,” She could probably do with stretching her legs and something to eat anyway. There was still a long way to travel. As I leaned over to release the straps over her shoulders, I noticed the clock on the dash, which told me that it was almost 2 pm.

A journey that would usually have taken no more than two or three hours had taken us the best part of the day. I opened up the back door of the car and Shadow jumped down to the grass. He headed off towards the bushes. Toilet break.

I took out Rosa’s changing bag which contained her formula for the day as well as changing supplies. I also grabbed a small box of food, the stove we used on our camping trips and the sleeping bags from the backseat. I walked over to the family and laid out the sleeping bags on the grass inviting them to sit, the two children started raking through the box of food. I pulled Rosa out of her car seat and sat her on a sleeping bag next to me.

“There should be two tins of baked beans in there, I can warm them up if you’d like? I can pop a tin of corned beef in with it too. Sorry not very appetising I know.”

“This is very kind of you, we haven’t eaten in days.” She flashed me a smile before turning away again to look back into the trees.

“And I can’t remember the last time we ate something hot.” The taller of the boys offered. His younger brother was sitting cross-legged reading the label of a tin of baked beans almost moved to tears. This was all so crazy. A few months ago he was probably staring that way at the latest smartphone, and now here we were thanking our lucky stars for beans! It was good to help someone other than myself and Rosa for a change. It had been a long time since I had been around people.

“Do you know anything about the attacks? Where were you when the bombs hit?” I asked as I stirred the pot slowly heating up the mixture of beans and corned beef.

“We were in our basement!” said one of the boys, the two squares of cooking chocolate I had given them each had definitely worked at loosening their tongues. “We stayed down there for a whole month, didn’t we Mum?”

His mother looked up from the stirring pot of food for a brief second to give me a faint smile, then returned her gaze back to the food.

As I dished up the beans, I gave them each a portion in a plastic cup

“No spoons I’m afraid.” I had spoons for Rosa but kept them tucked away in her bag, I didn’t want to risk losing them by the roadside. Everyone ate in silence, the two young boys grew more content with each warm mouthful, it was obvious that these people had experienced a harsh life since the attack. Any noise made them startle and raise their heads to look around for… well I’m not sure what they were looking for, but they were afraid of something. That much was clear.

The family had finished theirs long before Rosa, and I had. I was helping Rosa get the last of hers in her mouth when I heard a clatter behind me. It was the sound of her car seat crashing on to the tarmac. I turned to see a man ripping things out of our car. In shock I looked back at the woman. She stood staring straight ahead, her two boys cowered one tucked behind each of her arms. They looked on.

“Do you know this man?” I had the feeling this was something they had seen before.

“I’m sorry,” the woman whispered, barely moving her lips. This man rifling through our possessions was no stranger to her.

“Does he have a weapon?” I asked.

“He doesn’t need one.” She looked pitiful, lowering her face. The blood smeared over her shirt and face was not from a nosebleed. They were visibly afraid of him.

“Hey what are you doing? We need that if we’re going anywhere. I know that it’s cramped in the back for you all, but I’m-”

“You’re not going anywhere sweetheart, and neither is your kid. It’s bad enough me carting around her two little bastards, but I’m not taking on another woman and her brat.” The man staring back at me was on another planet. His eyes darted from side to side, he kept hitting the side of his forehead with the heel of his hand and shaking his head. As if attempting to remove something from it. I had not seen anything like it, he looked through me with pure hatred. I looked around to see where Shadow was, but there was no sign of him. He must have been out of earshot chasing rabbits somewhere no doubt.

I was aghast. Instinctively I picked up Rosa and moved her and the things around her over to a safe place away from the man ripping our belongings out of our car. I could see the car keys were in his hand he must have grabbed them while I was putting away the stove. Damn. What a trusting fool I had been.

“What is it you’re planning to do? Just leave us here?” I began to walk up to him. Getting closer I sped up and stooping low closed my fingers around the fabric handle of the cooking stove, I swung it up towards him aiming for his face. The lack of resistance meant that I had missed. Before I was able to recover my footing from the swing he ducked and dove into me.

I had underestimated him. For all his rolling eyes and giving the impression of being mentally unstable, he was far quicker than he looked. After being rugby tackled to the floor, he grabbed my shoulders and slammed me into the ground. Knocking the air out of my lungs. I clamoured for a breath. Upon seeing me struggling the man saw his chance and landed a punch so hard that I felt sure he had broken my cheekbone. Without pausing both of his hands grabbed my throat, and he began to choke me.

I used my hands and nails to tear at his face and chest. My mind kept going back to the same question. What would happen to my daughter if this man killed me here? No-one would find her. Thankfully the woman had now decided to get involved, although reluctantly and not really in my favour.

“Come on not in front of the kids.” I felt his weight shift on top of me “We need to go, someone could pass any minute. Get our stuff into the car and drive away. Come on. Leave her, come on. She’s got a kid.” I felt his hands leave my throat but the burning sensation lingered and I didn’t get up. I rolled on to my side and turned to where I could see Rosa who was attempting to get to her feet. Just as she was about to gain her balance Shadow appeared from behind the tree where I had left her. Smiling she turned to Shadow, and he sat down encouraging her to join him.

I didn’t move again until I heard my car’s engine start-up and fade into the distance without us. My eyes were trained on Rosa as she followed Shadow and toddled over to reach me her little eyes were filled with tears. I lay there on the grass not moving.

“Mumum. Wakey!” She fell on top of me and grasped handfuls of my jacket in her little hands. I looked up at that small, beautiful face. In trying to do the right thing, I had almost certainly condemned her to death.

14

I COULDN’T BELIEVE how stupid I had been. I should have known what a risk it would be to stop and help strangers in the middle of nowhere. Kicking myself, I rubbed my throat which still burned from where his hands had been clamped around my neck. I bet there would be some colourful bruising there by the morning.

I had been stranded with nothing but the things I had taken out of the car, although I noticed that they had picked up the small box of tinned food and taken it with them. Luckily I had spied a couple of tins of tuna fish which must have escaped at some point and rolled underneath a stationary car. Crawling over to them I rolled up the sleeping bags and picked up the car seat they had left upside-down on the tarmac.

“It’s not much fucking good to me without a car,” I shouted into the empty carriageway.

I turned to look around at the section of road where we were, I could see that there were four cars. I fastened Rosa into her car seat. I plonked her down in the tree line where she could watch me as I ran from one car to the next looking for something to get us away from this place.

The first two cars had been in quite a serious fender bender. It was going to be unlikely that either one of them would be useful. The next one to me was over the central reservation travelling in the opposite direction. I jumped over the barrier and headed towards it. I looked over into the front seat and was relieved to see it empty.

The moment my hand touched the car door I heard something coming up the road. It sounded like something large, a diesel engine like a truck. I crouched down unsure of which direction the sound was coming from. I didn’t feel like I wanted to risk another chance meeting today so I stayed hidden. I had taken care to make sure that Rosa was neatly tucked away out of plain sight in the tree line. A bus sped past us, heading for the south coast. I could see that it was full of people! Seeing it gave me a tiny spark of hope. Somewhere out there a group of survivors had been able to get along and work together.

Once the bus had passed, I tugged on the door handle and the car opened without a struggle. I searched around for some keys, but there were none left in or around the car. I made the decision that if the fourth car didn’t have keys, then I would come back and attempt to hot-wire it. The thought of attempting it made me cringe. The only knowledge I had of stealing a car was a Nicholas Cage film which I had seen about twenty years earlier. How I was going to hot-wire a Volkswagen UP from that, I had no clue.

The sun was getting low in the sky. I had to get a move on. I ran over to the fourth and final car in the section, the smell hit me before I got too close. Inside sitting at the wheel was the body of what I assumed to be a man. It was difficult to know for sure, the facial features had been so swollen up. I had heard this was an effect on a body which had been left to purify on its own. I felt my stomach lurch as I realised that this car would almost certainly have it’s key in the ignition. The driver had never left. Bracing myself for the smell I tried the door handle, it was locked. Crap. I would need to smash a window to get in.

So here I was faced with a choice, a car with a rotting dead body (that would need to be forcibly removed) or hotwire a car. Not knowing what to do I started to walk back to the tree line where I had left Rosa. Getting closer, I heard laughing. What a time to laugh. I skirted around the first two damaged cars and saw what it was she had been laughing at. Sitting at her feet Shadow entertaining her. Rosa would begin to whimper, and the dog would roll over and then sit up waiting patiently for her approving little chuckle. This was the first time Shadow had been left alone with Rosa, I was amazed that he knew what to do. Maybe he came from a family with young children and knew from experience what to do to make them laugh.

Slowly I approached the tree line not wanting to startle them, I bent down to sit beside Rosa. Shadow stuck to his position in front of Rosa, she turned to greet me with her arms outstretched and smiling. Shadow wagged his tail and came over to join us. He lay down by Rosa’s feet. Reaching over to scratch his head I rubbed under his chin and he closed his eyes leaning into my hand.

“Thank you for looking after Rosa for me Shadow.” He licked my hand as I pulled it away from his chin. Rosa giggled.

I unfastened the car seat and picked Rosa up out of it. I took her with me over to the Volkswagen, sure enough as I had walked away with her the dog stood and followed behind me. Rosa laughed and kicked her legs wanting to be down so that she could play with her new friend. “You can play with Shadow later hunny.” When we reached the hatchback, I opened the door and shut her in the back seat leaving the dog to sit patiently watching her through the window. I started to get to work on the steering column.

There will be a section somewhere that would pop out and reveal a load of wires. I ran my hands around the plastic of the column. I needed to connect two of those wires to connect the battery and then spark the ignition wire to start the car. However, I knew there would be lots of wires, and I had no clue what colour the right wires would be, and if I got this wrong, I could end up getting electrocuted. The idea of becoming a rotting corpse slumped over the steering wheel of the car for some other person to discover made me shudder.

The casing from the steering column came off with ease. I even managed to find the bundles of wires pretty easily and pulled them down so that I could try to identify which one went to the ignition. Sticking my head in between my knees so that I could try to get a better look at what it was I doing. From this angle I could see a bundle of wires grouped together, heading up the steering column towards the ignition. Common sense told me that I should start with that. Two of them were red which I assumed meant they were the power, I needed something to strip the wire casing off the wires so that I could join the two together.

I had used one of Matt’s multitools to open the tins earlier. I ran back over to the grass verge to scan the ground and look for it. Shadow stayed by the side of the car, barking his disapproval that I had left Rosa inside. I could see him pawing at the car window trying to get into Rosa, I could hear his claws on the car paintwork from the other side of the carriageway.

Just as I was about to give up on finding the tin opener, a glint of metal caught my eye shining in the sunlight on the grass.

“Bingo!” It took less than a dozen strides until I had it safely in my hand. Right beside it was the Trangia camping stove I had thrown at the man. The memory of it made me wince. I reached up to touch my cheekbone, it felt like my eye was swollen too. I bet I looked just great. Poor Rosa, I didn’t want to scare her, but there was nothing I could do about my face right now. I would have to try to let it go.

Armed with the multi-tool, I focused on my task. I had managed to strip the red wires and somehow was able to twist the two red ones together without electrocuting myself. Now for the hard part. I had to find the right wire to start up the car. This was the part I remember seeing in films, the spark of the live wire on the battery would start the car.

My luck changed, and the car sputtered into life. Relief flooded through me as if I too was somehow connected to the energy now racing through the Volkswagen. I had been dreading the idea of having to deal with the rotting body in the other car. In less than a few minutes I had packed the car with our meagre belongings.

With a glum thought as I packed the few items we had left to our name I remembered that the bag containing Rosa’s supplies only had enough formula to last the next 2 days. The hoard I had found at the store that night had been boxed up and tucked away in the boot of the Land Rover, which was now long gone.

“Bastards!” I muttered under my breath.

During this routine Shadow sat watching me with interest. Tilting his head, he followed me as I removed Rosa from the backseat of the car and carried her around to the passenger side and installed her car seat.

Then I walked back to the driver’s side, and Shadow continued to follow behind me, the dog sat looking up into the car.

“Don’t worry we won’t leave you.” He pawed at the door and looked up at me again. I opened the door, and he jumped on to the back seat, moving to sit directly behind Rosa.

I took the handbrake off and allowed the car to crawl forwards. The car was facing in the opposite direction to where we needed to go, we were trapped on the wrong side of the carriageway. But as I wanted to find shelter before nightfall I decided that I didn’t have the time to get on to the right side and began to turn the car around. I drove off leaving that wretched place behind me. If only I could have left the memories as easily as the scene. Stopping myself from looking in the rearview mirror I forced my mind to stop dwelling on how close we had come to death and thought only about what lay ahead.

Within a few short minutes of setting off, we came to a part of the road which had been totally blocked by a truck. It had jackknifed across all three lanes. Slowing down to a stop I got out of the car to see if there was any way around it. There was a small gap just wide enough between the central barrier and the cab of the truck. I got out of the car and walked over to the side of the road. It was either try the small gap or go around the back of the truck and off the edge of the hard shoulder. The grassy verge was beginning to look like a quagmire from the traffic of passing vehicles. If I went in there, I wasn’t at all sure that I would come out again. Had we been in the Land Rover right now this wouldn’t have been an issue. But here I was. After the efforts I’d gone to in order to get us another one, getting this little car stuck in the mud was the last thing I wanted.

Turning back to get into the driver’s side I made my decision.

“Tiny gap it is.”

15

WE HADN’T SEEN anyone since we had been back on the road. Which was both a mercy and a torment. Where was everyone? Were we too close to London for anyone to have survived here?

The sun was getting much lower than I would have liked which made the anxiety burning in my chest begin to grow. I guessed at the time. It could be about 7 pm. Unfortunately a good portion of the car’s dashboard hadn’t connected to the electrics when I had started the car. So the clock and the radio weren’t working. It was probably another wire that would need to be connected, but I didn’t want to push my luck, and I hadn’t the time to stop and fiddle about with it anyway.

My main priority was getting us off the M25 and to Matt’s parents’ house before it got dark. However, judging how long it had taken us to get to this point, I wasn’t that hopeful that we would be making it today. I wasn’t even sure if the lights were working ok, so if it did get dark, we could continue, but the question of was it safe was another matter.

My experience so far of being outside after dark hadn’t been good ones. We still had the sleeping bags with us which had been left on the grass where we had eaten our meal, but I wasn’t sure how low the temperatures would dip after the sun went in. Glancing back over my shoulder I saw Shadow fast asleep in the back seat. Similarly, Rosa was snoring away softly beside me. I started to feel like we were finally getting somewhere when I made out a sign on the other side of the carriageway indicating the Dartford crossing was coming up. It had been damaged and was barely legible, but I recognised it from our previous journeys up to visit Matt’s parents. I had stayed on the clockwise carriageway hoping to cross over the bridge at Dartford.

Ahead I could see the traffic getting worse, it was beginning to look impossible to get anywhere near the bridge. Some careful weaving in and out of the ghostly traffic jam of abandoned cars made it possible for us to reach where the toll booths had once stood.

I looked out of the windscreen on to the scene before me. Shadow must have sensed my growing tension, I heard movement from the back seat, and I felt his muzzle land lightly on my shoulder.

“Shit,” I whispered into the stale air.

Wanting a better look, I opened the door and stepped out on to the tarmac. From here I could see whole sections of the bridge had crumbled away and fallen into the river below us. The riverbanks were barren. Where factories and warehouses had once bustled with life and industry, the buildings had gone. They had been destroyed completely. An entire central hub of proud British manufacturing was now completely flattened.

My lungs felt tight and my heart heavy. I had no choice but to turn around and try another way. The only other option available to me was the tunnel.

It was getting dark now the tunnel was down to my left. I walked over to the side of the carriageway to look down at the queues of empty cars blocking the entrance to Dartford tunnel. There was absolutely no chance of getting a car through it. In fact, there was no chance of me getting a car anywhere near it.

“Bugger. It’ll be quicker to walk!” If that was still possible. It could easily have flooded if the structure hadn’t been compromised by the impact of the bombings. If it wasn’t accessible, then the next crossing which might be undamaged would be over in Richmond maybe or even further west. I had to try.

I sucked it up, and without enough space to turn the car around I reversed back until I was had the room to manoeuvre. Now weaving my way back through the traffic to the slip road which would lead me to the other side of the carriageway. I held my breath as the car crawled towards the end of the queue approaching the tunnel.

“Well, that’s karma for you. Fuckers!” I laughed out loud.

I recognised the car in front of us. I recognised it because it was mine. My beautiful old red Land Rover. There was no sign of the family who had left us at the side of the road. I assumed that they must have been headed in the same direction and had taken to the road on foot too.

I jumped out of the little car and ran around to the driver’s side of the land rover. They had left it unlocked at least. Remembering the leather roll of Matt’s fishing knives which I had stashed in the driver’s side door. Grateful for the London A-Z map which had been hiding it from view. With my hopes raised, I immediately checked to see if they had discarded any of our other belongings when they had left the car.

Opening the back of the Discovery a moment of gratitude hit me when I saw that the box of Rosa’s formula was still there. Other than that cardboard container, however, the back of the car was bare. I then turned my attention to the back seat. Wedged under Rosa’s Travel cot behind the passenger seat I found a bottle of water and pulled it up out of the footwell to look under the foot passenger seat. Matt’s flare gun but other than that they had taken everything we had. Warm clothes and food we could probably find again, it might be difficult, but we would manage. As I scrabbled out backwards from the floor of the back of my car I saw a white round shape near the gear stick.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” It was Rosa’s dream sheep.

The thing that I wouldn’t get back was the family photos. Of Matt, of my parents. Then I remembered that my sister would have pictures. They, along with her, would be safe up in the Lakes. I was sure of it. It would be so good to see Kate. Once I had found Matt at his parents’ place and seen what the Bunker had to offer us perhaps we could make our way up to her.

In Rosa’s bag which I had kept with me, there was a long piece of thick cotton. We had used it as a sling when she’d been small. We needed to get to the other side of the river and now that the bridge was no longer a viable option. I would need a way of carrying her. This would have to do.

Opening the back door to let Shadow out of the car he jumped down and immediately began to walk a circle around where we had parked. His pointing ears and bushy tail reminded me so much of a police dog, but something about the way he moved made me think of him as being more athletic. He might have been a mixed breed. A German Shepherd crossed with a Labrador or something. Sniffing the air above his head his ears twitched in one direction and then another. Eventually, when he had made his full assessment, he lay down staring back at the road which we had just come by and away from the entrance of the tunnel.

I began sorting through what we had left to us and packed it into the only bags we had. Rosa’s changing bag and using one of the sleeping bags as a sack slung over my shoulder. I was able to attach one of the rolled up sleeping bags to Shadow’s back, hooking the drawstrings around his front. The cooking stove hung from one of Rosa’s bag straps. Carefully I hoisted it up onto my back. I had stuffed as many packs of formula as I could manage into the sleeping bag over my shoulder. I tucked one of the knives from the leather wrap into the side of my belt. The action made me feel uneasy. I tried to put it down to the fact that the last time I had done so, I had used it to kill a man.

Taking Rosa out of the car seat I noticed her head bobbing and her eyes were struggling to stay open. It was certainly past her bedtime now. I was confident that once she was in her sling, she would fall asleep with the rocking motion of my walking.

Rosa hated the dark, and if I was honest, I didn’t like it much either. Once we got inside the tunnel, it would be pitch black, and the torch from my mobile phone which was still safely tucked in the back pocket of my jeans would only be used in emergencies as I really needed to save the battery. I hadn’t turned it on much at all since I had charged it from the charging block. There didn’t seem to be any point with no network service running. Once I got to Matt’s parent’s place I would try again. With the phone networks down, radio waves were likely to be the best chance of any long distance communication at the moment. The radio! I had put it in the glove box of my car. I hadn’t checked, but when I went back to look it was gone.

Shadow true to his name stuck faithfully by my side as we walked through rows of empty cars down towards the entrance of the tunnel. I looked ahead. The last of the daylight fading behind us. I could see that very soon the tunnel turned into total darkness. Nausea rose up from the pit of my stomach, and with a mixture of dread and determination, I steeled myself for what might be waiting ahead.

As if calling him to me in my time of need, I recalled something my Dad used to say to us whenever we faced something unpleasant. I heard him in my head now. Like I was back there, with him crowing at us from his recliner. His gritty, yet melodic cockney tone imparting his endless pearls of wisdom.

“Lizzy darling, sometimes the only way out is through.”

16

MY LEFT HAND gripped at the damp stone wall along the outside of the tunnel. Shadow had moved in front of us as soon as we had walked through the entrance of the tunnel. Very soon it had gotten too dark for me to see what was ahead of us. I didn’t know if dogs could see in the dark, but he must have been able to see much better than me. Guided by the running of my hand along the wall beside me and the swish of Shadow’s tail against my outstretched hand we were making painfully slow progress.

I walked with my heart in my mouth. Every time my foot touched something I had to remind myself to hold it together. It was too dark for me to see my feet and I had no desire to find out what it was down there that I was trampling over. Shadow would stop for a moment to sniff at something and then continue going forward, usually warning me that there was going to be some obstacle in my path. The smell of death and urine mingled together in my nostrils and grew stronger the further we descended into the tunnel. The only thing keeping me from gagging was Rosa sleeping peacefully on my chest, I ducked my head so that my nose was pressed firmly into her hair and tried to focus on her.

The hand outstretched in front of me feeling for Shadow landed on something cold and sticky. Whipping my hand back I held in a scream. The hand I was using to feel for the wall shot to my mouth.

“Sh.. Shadow.” I pleaded through clenched teeth. In my panic I had lost Shadow’s tail.

If I didn’t get control of myself, I was going to lose it in here. My hand was covered in something wet and sticky. Realising that something was on my skin, I rubbed my hand on the side of my leg.

“Shadow…” Tentatively I closed my hand into a fist and pushed it out in front of me until I felt the object in front of me. Something was wedged in between a car to my right and the wall to my left.

How had the dog gotten past it? “Shadow.” I needed to get past this thing so that I didn’t lose Shadow in here. I raised my foot and brought the knee up as high as I could then stretched out my leg until I felt the object against my foot. Holding on to the wall and the car beside me for support I pushed it away from me moving it away from me until I felt the resistance against my foot disappear and heard it drop with a thump to the ground. I shuffled forwards and felt that whatever it was now laid flat against the edge of the tunnel wall. Still holding on to the side of the car I sidled past and further on into the black nothingness ahead.

After a few steps, a wet nose touched the back of my outstretched hand, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Not again. It took me a second to calm myself down enough to realise that it was Shadow. I fumbled down into the dark where I thought his head would be and scratched his ear, my way of thanking him. I was surprised he hadn’t left me here. He would have been out the other side already if it wasn’t for me.

My breathing began to return to a more normal rate. Although in here nothing felt normal. The reassuring, steady swish of Shadow’s tail against my hand kept me moving forward and towards the exit. As my eyes began to adjust, I was seeing small flashes of light bouncing off car bonnets and windows. Optimism stirred within me. Surely now we had reached the middle of the tunnel? This must be the moonlight shining in from the entrance on the north side of the River Thames.

We got closer, and my eyes could see the light was too small and too bright to be coming from the entrance of the tunnel. The reflections flickered orange light all around the tunnel as it seemed to ricochet off one car windscreen to then appear on the next. It reminded me of a candle. Yes, that is exactly what it was. As soon as my eyes made the connection, my brain clicked into action, and I could smell the smoke. Perhaps someone had made a campfire down here.

As the tunnel began to fill with the flickering orange light, I was able to see a small clearing had been made. I could see the fire in the distance. It was only small and appeared to be controlled, but the fact that we were surrounded by hundreds of cars filled with highly flammable fuel made me want to get out of there now.

Shadow had stopped moving forward and sat down directly at my feet. In the flickering light, I could just about make out his wet muzzle poking upwards, sniffing for something in the smoky air which was getting thicker by the second. It would only take one of these cars to be leaking fuel and for that fire to throw out a spark which would hit it. I couldn’t protect Rosa from a fire in here. We would all be dead in an instant.

In a moment of desperation, I started to back away from the light. We needed to go back but were pinned in a small space between the tunnel wall and a transit van. Shadow gave out a low growl as if protesting my decision but I ignored him. I couldn’t stay here this was too dangerous. I would take my chances crossing the river some other way. Maybe if we slept in the car tonight, we could try again tomorrow when the tunnel would be empty. I began inching my way backwards out of the small space we found ourselves in.

Gingerly stepping backwards through the small gap between the wing mirror of the van and the wall the heel of my foot moved back into something. A large hand came over my head and down to cover my mouth, and another grabbed me around the hips underneath Rosa’s sleeping body. A gruff male voice whispered close to my ear.

“Shhhhhh. Don’t scream and I won’t hurt you. See the fire over there, there are men around it. There’s a very good chance that they will kill us if they find us here.” Shadow’s growling was getting louder and more vicious as he heard the confrontation going on behind me.

“Can you shut your dog up? If they hear him, he’ll be on the menu for the next week.” I tried to turn my head to look at him but couldn’t. “I promise I don’t want to hurt you. I’m letting you go now, okay? Do not scream.” I nodded my head in agreement before he lifted his hand away from my mouth. Petrified I lent over and patted Shadow on the head bringing my finger up to my lips showing him that we needed to be quiet.

“No barking.” This was a command I had started giving to him when Rosa was sleeping. I could only pray that he understood what I meant by it now. My attempts to calm him worked, enough to stop him from growling anyway.

“We need to try and get past them, there are three men in the clearing over there right now. Usually, there’s six but three of them went off somewhere before the sunset. I’ve been watching them for the best part of a day so don’t go blowing it for me by drawing attention to yourself and we’ll make it out together.” So much information. Such a shock. I couldn’t take it all in. I nodded my head.

It was like something from a horror film. I couldn’t see him. I wasn’t even able to turn and look at him standing behind me, but I felt the warmth of his breath on the back of my neck as he spoke. I was still reeling from the fright he’d given me. “Okay now walk forward and keep as low to the ground as you can and for God’s sake keep your dog from barking, or we’re screwed.” I grabbed hold of the sleeping bag attached to Shadow’s back and let him guide me. Hoping the grip I had would be strong enough to hold him back should he want to investigate where the smoke was coming from. My other hand was placed protectively over the back of Rosa’s head. Silently we shuffled past the cars in the dim, flickering light.

It was some time before we passed the fire and the three sleeping men around it. Being careful not to make any noise at all and also moving with speed was impossible. At one point just as we had got a few metres in front of the fire Rosa stirred and let out a sleepy groan. One of the men woke ,

“You say something?”

“What?”

“I heard you say something?”

“Nah, sleeping.”

We stood like statues for the next five minutes willing them to forget about it and fall back to sleep. When we felt sure that they had, I continued to shuffle on towards the moonlight at the end of the tunnel.

We were almost at the exit on the other side of the river when Shadow broke off from us, leaving me behind to run ahead. I wondered if that was the last that we would see of him, perhaps he’d had enough of babysitting humans and figured out he was better off alone. I wouldn’t blame him, he probably was.

The first taste of fresh air hit my senses, and I felt able to breathe properly since entering the tunnel. Never in my life had I experienced anything as horrifying as that.

“I’m sorry if I scared you in there.” I had been so relieved to be back into the open air I hadn’t even turned to look behind me. “I was just worried that you hadn’t seen them in the tunnel. I didn’t know how to warn you without letting them know we were there.” Hearing his voice from much further away this time it seemed safer. Less threatening.

He came up alongside me as he spoke and for the first time since meeting, I was able to see his face. He was younger than I had imagined and much taller. The depth of his voice had me picturing a man in his fifties, but actually, he looked to be about ten years younger than that. His dark hair fell in a tattered mess across the front of his forehead. I could see from this distance that he badly needed to wash. Awkward to think that due to the assault on my nostrils earlier in the tunnel, his musky body odour was a welcome distraction.

There was a growth of thick stubble around his jawline which was silhouetted in the moonlight. It was so dark outside now that it was becoming difficult for me to make out his face.

“That’s okay. I just… Well, I hadn’t been expecting to bump into anyone in there. I think I almost died of fright when you put your hand over my mouth.” I replied.

“Yeah, I suppose you would. Who’s that then? Sleeping Beauty there, strapped to your chest?” He pointed at Rosa, and I laughed. “I didn’t realise you had her there until the moment when she almost woke them up.”

“Yes, that would be my daughter. She has a useful habit of sleeping through the most horrendous things. I should be thankful for that I suppose.” I looked back as we got further away from the tunnel. I needed to get us into another car, but we would have to wait until the congestion on the road thinned out first. We would struggle to get anywhere in this lot. “I’m Elizabeth, and my little sleeping beauty here is called Rosa.” He stuck out his hand to shake. A little odd given the situation but the politician in me still lived because my hand shot out automatically to greet his.

“I’m Liam. Do you want some help with that thing?” He pointed to the sleeping bag I was using as a sack over my shoulder. I looked at him and then at the bag. I didn’t want to risk him running off with the contents.

“Thanks, that’s very kind but really I’m ok.”

“Okay, if you’re sure. I’m not going to mug you for your sleeping bag, even I wouldn’t steal from a woman on her own with a kid.”

“Ha! You’d be surprised how many people would. You must have missed the announcement. Everyone is fair game these days apparently.” For a while, we walked in silence. I began to scan the road for Shadow. I glanced back to see if he was following us but couldn’t see him anywhere. Liam had noticed me looking.

“Umm… Sorry about your dog running off. I hope that wasn’t because of me.” The apology was genuine. His brow knitted together with concern, which annoyed me a little. He didn’t even know us, what did he care? He must want something.

“Don’t worry, he wasn’t our dog, he just sort of adopted us. I found him tied up guarding someone’s water supply.” Liam moved over to walk closer to me as the gap between the cars began to widen. Each time he looked at my face I could feel his eyes on me like he was looking for something.

“Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of that recently. The nukes didn’t just destroy the country. It’s messed with people’s heads. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen in the last two months…”

I bet I would. I stayed quiet, he didn’t need to know. I felt a little ashamed for judging him so harshly. He was turning out to be a pretty nice guy. He was certainly the most normal human being that I’d met since the attacks, but then again that wasn’t very hard.

We continued walking along the roadside until we reached a point where we could get a good look at the carriageway ahead. I wasn’t looking forward to hot-wiring another car, but unless we were planning on walking to Essex, I wouldn’t have much of a choice.

“Looks like you’ve got a fan.” Liam nodded over on the opposite side of the road. “And he comes bringing gifts. Aren’t you lucky.” The man laughed.

It took a moment for Shadow to come into view. Weaving in between the empty vehicles he hurried over flanking us. I looked down. Shadow was holding something in his mouth. Getting in between myself and Liam, proudly he nudged at my calf with his head waving his prize from side to side for my attention.

“He knows the way to a girls heart, a nice juicy rat for you.” Liam chuckled.  I grimaced but lent over to stroke my hand over Shadow’s head.

It surprised me how much comfort I was awarded by his return. I hadn’t really stopped to think that the brief time in our company would have earned us any loyalty from him. I wasn’t able to shelter him any longer. We had nothing to offer him in return for his loyalty.

Strange that an animal would seek out human companionship. But then, of course, I reminded myself he is a pack animal and so, at our core, were we. Rewarding his gift by scratching behind his ear. It was a very thoughtful gesture, but we weren’t that desperate yet. I didn’t look forward to when there came a day that we would be.

17

“SO WHAT ARE your plans? I’m heading over to one of the assembly points. You should come with me. I’d be grateful of some company actually. It’s been some time since I’ve had a conversation,” said Liam.

“That’s kind of you Liam, thanks. I’d like to, but first, we’re headed to my husband’s parents place to see if we can find him.”

“Oh right, so you’ve arranged to meet someone. Sure, no problem just thought I would offer you know.”

“Well no, not arranged.” Liam stopped and turned to look at me. I tried to explain. “He was working in the city when the bombs dropped. So I figured he might have taken shelter there. His Mum’s is in Essex. He mustn’t have thought he would have made it to us in Brighton.”

“Ah right…” He looked away and started walking again. I could feel the pity oozing out of him, and I couldn’t stand it.

“You think I’m mad don’t you?”

“No. No, I don’t actually. You’re a good woman, I hope you find him. Funnily enough, the assembly point I’m heading for is in Essex.”

“Do you mean the Bunker? From the radio transmission?”

“Yes. You heard it? Why aren’t you heading there? It’s be much safer for you with a kid than being out here with all this going on.” He looked back at the tunnel. I wondered what it was he had seen while he had been watching the men. I remembered how afraid he had been of being discovered by them and my curiosity got the better of me.

“I don’t understand. Why are they stopping people from travelling through the tunnel?” Without looking away from the ground in front of him, Liam began to tell me some of the things which had happened to him in the first month after the attacks. He explained that the survivors from some of the areas around the city had grouped together to create an alliance. “You’re talking about gangs? They wouldn’t have organised themselves this quickly. That’s impossible.”

“You can tell you don’t live in a city anymore.”

“Thank God for that if I did I would be dead right now.”

“London already had its fair share of gang culture before the attacks. It was rife, even in Zone 6 there were problems. You can’t be surprised that without the government to step in, it’s taking over the streets. Back there in the tunnel, they weren’t letting anyone into the city because they don’t want to have to share any of their supplies.”

“Surely the damage in the city must be horrific, why would people want to stay in such a devastated place?”

“Most people are just passing through like we are. Either to get out of the south or to look for surviving family but I’ve also heard rumours that people have been taken  and stopped from leaving.” I was horrified.

“Why?”

“Anyone with a useful skill has become a high-value target and can be exchanged for food. People who are medically trained. Even teachers have been stopped from leaving. It’s not a city I recognise anymore.” The idea of being held against my will was something I had never had to contemplate.

We needed to get out of London as quickly as possible. God only knows what they would do with an ex-MP. Upping my pace I walked down the line of thinning traffic and stopped by the next easily accessible SUV. I tried the door, it was unlocked

“That’s no good to us unless you know how to pull a car key from thin air…” He kept walking. Smiling to myself in the dark I started to unload the bags and Rosa from her sling lying her down on the backseat of the SUV. Rolling on to her side she mumbled something into the fabric of the car seats in her sleep. At some point, Liam must have noticed that we were no longer walking with him because he came back to talk to me through the open car door. “What are you doing? You won’t find a key.”

“I know,” I replied with my head between my knees trying to find the section of plastic to pop off the steering column.

Once I had found it, I used Matt’s multi tool to prise the compartment open enough to get my fingers in under the plastic and pulled the section out. Next, I needed to find the group of wires. Sitting up again. I dug into my back pocket for my phone. I didn’t want to waste the battery on lighting up the footwell of the car, but it was either that or electrocute myself.

“Here. Use this.” Sensing what it was, I was trying to do Liam pulled out a tiny Mag light from his jacket pocket and shone it onto the area where my hands had been.

“Thanks.”

“You’ve done this before?” My fingers closed around the bunch of wires I had been searching for, and I tilted my head up to look at his face and grinned. It took me by surprise. His eyes were so blue. Probably intensified by the torchlight.

Realising I’d been staring into a stranger’s illuminated face for just a little too long than was comfortable. My cheeks flushed, and I quickly hid my embarrassment back under the steering wheel. I yanked the wires out into a position where I would be able to strip and reattach them. It took me a little longer than the last time. The pressure of being watched didn’t help.

“OK. The moment of truth. Let’s see if it worked.” The car growled into life. “Thank fuck for that.” Liam looked pretty impressed. I wasn’t sure if it was at my hotwiring skills or the bad language but either way it gave me an unexpected thrill.

“Here I was thinking I would be the one looking out for you. I can see that you’re quite the survivor yourself.” he said.

I shrugged. “You should have seen me a month ago. This isn’t really me,” I confessed.

“Well, it certainly looks like you now.” He smiled and shut off the torch.

“Do you want to ride with us to check my in-laws’ place? I’d planned to head out to the Bunker afterwards. I mean if there was no sign of my family.”

“Okay, but only if you let me drive. You look like you could use some sleep. Why don’t you jump in the back with Rosa. Will your Shadow be coming too do you think?”

I looked down, and sure enough there he was sat at my feet. Hunkering down so I was on his level and wondered if he could understand anything that was going on. “You can come with us if you like buddy or you can stay here it’s up to you.”

Liam shook his head and walked around to the back and opened the boot of the car. No sooner had it opened than Shadow had jumped in.

We transferred the bags into the boot, arranging them around the dog. I unravelled the sleeping bags, and Liam was able to get the back seats down creating a flatbed for Rosa and me to sleep on as he drove. As I packed, it felt good to be part of a team, travelling together. This was the most kindness I had received from another person in some time. Well, at least he hadn’t tried to kill me yet. It was nice not to feel so totally alone.

Shadow padded around in the back unsteady on his feet he finally sat and then curled himself up in the crook of my legs. I assumed my usual sleeping position around Rosa snuggled up warm in the sleeping bags. I drifted off into a deep sleep without much difficulty. Lulled by the vibrating motion of tyres against tarmac. The throaty hum of the engine soothed me, knowing that with every moment we drew closer to finding Matt. That and finding comfort in the knowledge that I was no longer the only grown up.

I wasn’t sure how long we had been asleep when I woke. I guessed that it couldn’t have been more than a few hours from the look of the sky. Looking out of the window above my head it looked like we’d parked up in woodland somewhere. I sat up there was no sign of the road.

I peered into the front of the car and was relieved to see that Liam hadn’t left us. There he was with his seat reclined and his head lolled to the side. I could see the black outline of his profile against the forest beyond us through the windscreen. He probably got tired himself and pulled over to sleep.

Lying there staring up at the roof of the SUV I felt the tension leave my shoulders. In just a few hours Rosa and I would be reunited with Matt. Everything would seem better, it made living seem more worth it. Not long now until we would be together again.

“Are you awake?” Liam whispered from the front. Jerked back to reality, I sat up on my elbows and cleared my throat.

“Yes. Are you?” I laughed. “Sorry, that was a stupid question. Did you get some sleep?” He turned in his seat to face me, I could just about make out his features in the light. I didn’t think he looked very rested at all, but he smiled anyway and nodded.

“It’s getting light. I think it’s about 5 am we should make our way to your family’s place. We’re in a part of Epping Forest I think. I thought it best to let you sleep for as long as possible. I forgot where you said they lived. Your in-laws?”

“Thanks. No, that was amazing I feel much better. Erm… Yes, sorry. They live in Loughton just a few streets up from the tube station. I’m sure that Matt would have driven there, he could have made it on the bike.” Rosa’s arm flew up in the air to let us know that she was also awake. She sat up and looked around when he saw Liam she stopped and glared at him open-mouthed.

“Rosa, this is Liam. We met him last night while you were fast asleep.”

“Hello, little miss.” Liam held out his hand and waved like a child. It was quite sweet really. Alerted by all of our movement Shadow picked up his head, his ears pricking up. I let Shadow out of the car, and he promptly disappeared for a stroll in the woods.

Keen to make ourselves presentable for when we got to Matt I hurried to change Rosa and get her into a clean nappy. I fed her and Liam joked. “Mmmm that milk looks like the best thing I’ve seen in weeks.”

“We can get some breakfast there. I’ll bet they’ve got quite a stash of supplies. They’ll all be so happy that we’re finally here. I wish we’d tried to come them sooner, but I was so sure Matt would have made his way down to us.”

I noticed as I spoke that Liam wouldn’t look me in the eye. He turned away to fiddle with something on the dash, and I suddenly wondered if he had any family of his own. It was cruel of me to make him watch as my family were reunited if his own had been permanently separated. I didn’t really know that much about him. Liam hadn’t been forthcoming in talking about himself. Thinking about it I really knew nothing about him. “You don’t have to come with us you know. I mean if you wanted to go straight on to the Bunker I would totally understand.”

“No, I would like to see you safely somewhere, as you say. You might end up going on to the Bunker anyway. Anyway, if there’s the vaguest chance of a cuppa at your in-laws I’m in. I would give my left arm for a coffee.”

“That’s very kind. I’m pretty sure that they’ll have coffee and it’s the least we can do for all you’ve done. I wouldn’t mind one myself actually.” The idea of hot coffee made me impatient suddenly the urge to see Matt became too much, I needed to see him. “Ok then let’s go now. I don’t want to wait anymore.” We got out and reorganised the car. The breaking dawn cast just enough light to see a small way into the forest. Shadow was nowhere to be seen. I gave out a low whistle and waited, watching the trees. I couldn’t leave without him. “Shadow!”

“He doesn’t know his name surely?” asked Liam.

“I have no idea. Shadow!” I shouted again.

After another minute or so I saw him. He came trotting across the forest floor towards us, true to form bringing a prize. This time it was a big hare he carried in his mouth. Unlike the last time I decided it might be worth keeping to cook at Matt’s parents’ later. It would be better than another can of beans. It would be good to show his usefulness to Matt. He never did like dogs.

Before setting off, I shared the last bit of our cooking chocolate with Liam and positioned Rosa on my knee as I buckled up my seatbelt in the front seat. Shadow laid himself on the back with our bags.

We would reach our destination in less than an hour.

18

IT TOOK US forty-five minutes to get to Loughton from where we were. The woodland had begun to thin out the closer we had got to Loughton. I was surprised at the damage to the buildings around us considering how far away from London we were.

“I didn’t think that there would have been anything this far out of the city which would make a worthy enough target for an attack.” I looked over at Liam who was also looking out at the ravaged environment we now found ourselves in.

“I’m not sure they thought about it like that. I really don’t know enough about where the bombs did or didn’t hit. Do you?” I shook my head.

There was nothing out there of note that I was aware of. Then again, as a lowly housing minister, there was a great deal of information regarding national security which I was not a party to.

“Who knows what they had stashed out here.” I thought aloud.

We pulled off the main road and onto one of the smaller roads leading into the town centre. I felt a knot forming in my stomach. The buildings here were badly damaged. The high street and the west part of the town had been devastated by a blast which must have caught the town in its radius of destruction. Whole sides of buildings had crumbled away. Most of the high street was left in ruins, flattened except for a few staircases standing up like sentry towers peeking out of the rubble.

My hand flew over my mouth in shock. I couldn’t speak. I had expected damage but not this. Not all the way out here. I could feel Liam’s eyes on me as he drove further through the town. Had he expected this?

“Are you sure he would have come here? It’s not that close to North London you know. He sounds like an intelligent man your fella. I’ll bet he got on his motorbike and drove North, out of range.” I just stared out of the front window.

There was no movement, not one flicker of life left in the town. It was early, and the sun was coming up to give what was left of the high street a golden wash of colour. The sky was so orange it almost looked red as the sun highlighted the edges of the staggered lines of clouds above us. Contrasting in its beauty to the carnage below. “Elizabeth, I don’t think that anyone is living here now. Even if he was here, I’m not sure he’d have stayed. There are not any safe buildings left. They couldn’t have used any of these for shelter from the fallout.” I looked into his eyes they were full of concern and something else. Understanding.

Did he know what it was I was feeling? Maybe he had already gone through this. Was this the reason why he had insisted on staying with me earlier when I had suggested he went on to the Bunker? I felt a fool then as I understood that he had already suspected that this would be the scene to greet us.

“I need to see it. Their house. It’s a few streets from here so it could be fine.” As the words left my mouth, I knew in my heart that it would be impossible for it to have survived unscathed. The scale of the damage here, in this part of the town, was too much.

It was difficult to tell where we were as we pulled off the high street. Most of the rows of terraced housing had been reduced to rubble. The debris of roof tiles and bricks covered the road. Where normally you wouldn’t be able to see past the first row of houses you could now see at least four rows back. Towards the East side of the street, the few houses which had managed to escape losing their second floor stood up like rotten teeth in an old woman’s grin.

I burst into tears. “I’m lost. I have no idea where we are. I know that we’re on the right side of the high street, but I can’t see a thing I recognise.” Liam stopped the car and leaned over to take my hand.

“Hey, it’s okay. We don’t know he was here. Take a minute. Look around for any landmarks you might remember.” I had only been here a few times in the last three years since Matt and I were married. Since we had Rosa, they visited us.

Liam squeezed my fingers together. He looked so concerned. I didn’t understand why he was still here, surely all of this was just slowing his journey getting to the Bunker. I tried to explain to him that with all of the destruction I couldn’t find the right house. “What we need to do is get a closer look. Otherwise you won’t be able to let it rest. Do you want to get out and see if you can find something you recognise to use as a reference point? That way we can work our way from there and figure out where his house should be.” I nodded and silently slid out of the car and closed the door. Rosa sat up in my seat and placed her hands on the window looking out at me walking away from her. She began to cry, and I ignored her.

My feet crunched down on to the surface of the road. Hearing the sound had made me look at what it was underneath my feet. There, lying in the road crushed into tiny little pieces were all of the ingredients to the people’s lives on this street. A piece of lego, a picture frame and so much dust. Dust flew up with every step I took.

I should have covered my mouth when I got out the car. I grabbed my t-shirt and pulled it over my nose and mouth as I walked. I needed to make sure that this was not the street I was looking for. I needed to find something I recognised. Liam joined me.

“I left Rosa in the back of the SUV and gave her a bag of those baby biscuit things to amuse herself with.” I didn’t even acknowledge him. I was glad she was in the car. I couldn’t let her see this.

Stuck in a dream, I walked away from the car. Shadow and Liam followed at a respectable distance. Neither of us were sure of what we would find. Shadow stayed close when normally he would have been running ahead looking for food. Smart boy, he’d learnt that to survive in this new world he must feed himself.

It took me a good ten minutes of walking around the area we had parked before I was able to spot the royal blue and white sign of the local corner shop. I had seen it on our previous visits. I knew it was where Matt’s Dad collected his morning paper, something Matt used to say he bought more for the pictures than the words. I remembered how we’d laughed together the first time he had told me that.

His Dad had blushed such a shade of red that his mother had told him to go and splash cold water on his face. I would have given just about anything to be back at that breakfast table now. Awkward as it had been. They were a lovely family, such kind-hearted people with nothing but the very best intentions.

Seeing something I knew from before meant that I could tell where we were. This had been the right street after all, although Matt’s parent’s house was down the far end of the terrace. It was easy to see that we weren’t going to get the car down there.

“It’s down here. At the end of this street. Maybe you should wait with Rosa.” Liam nodded in silent agreement choosing to stay quiet.

Shadow had obviously decided that for him being close felt best. He kept pace with me, his nose in line with my right knee. You could just about make out where one house ended and where the next began by the way the piles of rubble had fallen and where the odd parts of the structure still stood. Without having to get close to the house, I knew it was going to be a miracle to find Matt here. Liam could be right. He may not have been here at all. As I walked closer to the place where I recognised as their house, my body went numb.

Under a pile of rubble was Matt’s Kawasaki. The motorbike he had ridden to work, on the day of the attacks. The sight of it knocked the wind out of me, and I dropped to my knees next to the bike. Frantic I started shovelling rubble away from it as best I could with my bare hands. I wasn’t fully aware of what I was doing until Liam grabbed hold of my shoulders and pulled me up. He held both sides of my face with his hands as he spoke to me waking me from the desperation of my task.

“What is it? Is the bike his?” Unable to answer I fell into Liam’s chest and heaved out heavy sobs.

“He’s here.” I cried. My hopes that he had been elsewhere had been dashed away. There was no way he would have gone anywhere without his bike. I knew that, in my heart. He loved that stupid thing.

I looked around pulling away from Liam’s arms and started combing through the piles of rubble nearby. There was rubble covering what would have been the centre of the road. I was looking for the house or anything that was left of it, stumbling I moved towards what was left of the row of houses I could see a wall which still stood. A pattern that I had seen before. It was the wallpaper from his Mum’s back kitchen. That was the back wall of their house, how could it be possible that I was seeing it now from the street?

My mind was racing. Was he under this? The body of my husband was buried underneath the place where I stood, the idea made me retch. My world was crashing in around me. I stared hopelessly at the ground.

“Even if I could move all of this-” The words died in my throat.

The mountain of rubble tormented me but what could I do? It had happened so long ago that there was no chance of me finding him alive. If I found his body, what then? I wasn’t sure I would be able to stomach the task of burying him.

That’s when I saw it, staring up at me half covered by the dust and stones. A picture of Rosa, it was the photo he had taken of her in the hospital the day after she had been born. It had been protected from dirt and the grit because he had kept it in the plastic photo holder of his leather wallet. In a daze, slowly I sat down on the floor and picked up Matt’s wallet. It had all of the usual items inside. After a moment I tucked it into the pocket of my jacket and stood. My legs shaking. I turned from the rubble of my family’s home to walk slowly back to the car.

I knew now. He wouldn’t have left his wallet even if he had left his bike. That was it. My husband was dead.

19

I DON’T REMEMBER much about what happened in the hours after visiting that destroyed place in Loughton. I sat in the back seat with my daughter on my knee, while a dog I didn’t know licked away tears streaming down my face and a man I’d only just met drove us all away.

I don’t know why I had been so convinced that Matt had lived. I’d always assumed he was more of a survivor than I was. That if I had somehow managed to make it through the events of the last few months, then he surely would have too. The grief that I had so far been denying myself was thrown over me like a shock of cold water.

Rosa cried. Not because she knew her father was dead but because I cried. I couldn’t give her the attention that she needed, and so she joined in. I didn’t care. When Liam stopped the car and opened the back door to get in beside us, I barely noticed. He lifted Rosa off my lap and cuddled her until she calmed down, then he put an arm around me.

“I’m so sorry. I know it hurts more than anything, but it will ease after a time. It does. I promise you.” Numbness engulfed me. I sat there. Wedged between strangers not caring what happened to me and totally forgot my responsibilities as a mother.

My senses were awakened by my nose prickling back to life. The smell of meat cooking, it brought me out of the numb state I had been in. I forced myself to look around. I got out of the back seat of the car and saw Rosa on the ground with Shadow who sat patiently on a sleeping bag. Beside them, Liam was cooking the rabbit Shadow had caught earlier that morning. He had made a spit out of tree branches and had it balanced over a small fire.

We were back in the wooded area where we had spent the night before. I walked over to sit down on the sleeping bag, and Rosa turned and smiled brightly, raising her arms to be cuddled. I obliged, she was all I had left of him now. I had to be better.

“Thought you might be hungry. You’ll have to show me how to make Rosa’s formula apparently I didn’t get it right. Either that or she was just mad because it was me and not you.” I looked over and saw that Liam hadn’t taken his eyes off the rabbit the whole time that he spoke. Except to glance periodically over at Rosa, Shadow also stared mesmerised by the turning rabbit. Shadow was probably even more hungry than I was. Poor guy probably wasn’t going to get much of a look in. Rosa let go of me and moved to sit down next to Shadow.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know how to thank you for everything you’ve done for us.” It was unbelievable really. This person I hardly knew had taken over looking after my daughter while I had been staring into space, grieving for my husband.

“You’re joking aren’t you? I haven’t had hot fresh meat in over two months things are on the up since I met you and your gang.” He smiled nodding in the direction of Shadow who was quietly curled around Rosa’s back like a chair. “Do you think you’re up to eating yet?”

“I think I can try. Thank you.” I gave him the best smile I could manage but my heart wasn’t in it, and I think he could tell, he kept a respectful distance, and we ate.

After a while, he broke the silence. “I was hoping that we would make it to the Bunker before nightfall. I don’t want to presume that’s where you’ll go next, but it’d certainly make me sleep better knowing that you are both safe.” I bristled a little at that. We had managed to look after ourselves pretty well so far. It seemed odd to me that he would be so concerned with our welfare. I didn’t need a guy to protect me, although I would be lying if I didn’t say I felt a weight lift from my shoulders when he was around. Another set of eyes looking out for one another. It wasn’t something I should take for granted and deep down I knew it.

“We’ll go with you, but I’m not sure how long we’ll stay. I have a sister. I want to find her. She’s the only family we’ve got left now, and I don’t intend to lose her.” I picked myself up off the forest floor acting with more confidence than I felt. I looked away from him as I spoke, he didn’t need to see the tears streaming down my cheeks. I concentrated on loading things back into the car. Liam followed my lead and started packing away too.

Shadow had been gorging himself on the bones of the rabbit ran over to the side of the SUV as soon as he realised what was happening. “How many times do we need to bring you along until you understand that we won’t leave without you?”

I bent down to reassure him, scratching his ear and then opened the back door and patted the seat, inviting him to jump in.

Within less than an hour of driving, we reached the area where we suspected the nuclear bunker to be. I had been vaguely aware of its existence before hearing the radio broadcasts. Liam was convinced that it was somewhere in this area.

“Look at all of the abandoned cars around here. We must be close.” I searched the side of the road that he pointed out to me, but all I could see was an old bungalow set far back from the road along a small private driveway.

“Really you think that is a nuclear bunker?”

“It looks like something out of a horror film doesn’t it?” He smiled and held out his hands pretending to be a zombie. I cocked a disapproving eyebrow and glared in his direction. “Sorry.”

Looking around I couldn’t help but feel miserable. The scene before us was bleak. If I was honest with myself, I was glad I wasn’t arriving here on my own.

“Maybe we should get out and have a look, you’re right. There must be some reason for all of the empty cars around here. There are no other buildings for miles.” There must have been over thirty cars scattered around the field by the bungalow, but there wasn’t any sign of human life outside of our car.

Liam parked up the SUV, jumped down from the driver’s seat and walked towards the bungalow. The nerves really kicked in when he walked straight through the front door. He didn’t even glance back before he did. He was unlike anyone I think I had ever met. I watched at the edge of my seat waiting for him to return to the door.

Around five minutes later he did. I was just about to go after him when I saw the door swing open and he emerged. He was followed by a tall, heavy set woman in a green flannel shirt. They talked among themselves as they walked over to the car. Liam gave me a nod letting me know that we had found what it was we had been searching for. He walked over and let Shadow out. Shadow jumped down and promptly walked over to the stranger.

“Shadow,” I called him to me aware that the woman didn’t look too comfortable about it.

“I’m afraid your dog will need to be on a lead. We don’t really allow pets down in the bunker.” The woman was looking at Liam warily.

“Oh, actually Shadow is with me. I suppose I could put him on a lead, but if he isn’t able to stay with us, then my daughter and I won’t be staying.” Liam looked at me shocked he hadn’t expected such a strong response but Shadow had become a part of our family.

“Ah sorry, I had assumed you were all family. That’s no problem the dog can stay on the upper level. The women ’s quarters are more suitable for a dog. If you could just make sure to keep a close eye on him. We don’t want any trouble.” The woman smiled at me and seemed to change tack.

I knew that I should have felt relief upon our arrival. We were finally in the safety of an organised security compound, but I didn’t. Instead, I was hit with an overwhelming sadness. We should have been arriving here with Matt. I tried my best to hide the feeling away, now wasn’t the time. It was important that I paid attention. I needed to keep a clear head, not drown in my own self-pity.

I carried Rosa over to the bungalow, and we walked through the same door I had watched so intently. The woman in the flannel shirt led us down through a concrete tunnel which was hidden inside the building. Immediately I noted how quiet it was. I suppose I had imagined lines of people trying desperately to be admitted.

“My name is Lynda. I’ve been down here since the beginning. I work on the committee that runs this place.”

“How is it that there aren’t more of us here?” I asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“I mean I had expected there to be hoards of survivors here trying to get in. I heard the radio message.”

“So many people have come and gone, we’re stopping the transmission any day now. We have a good variety of people these days anyway. Many of the survivors who weren’t ready to settle here caused too much disruption. It got too much for them, you know? Four weeks of being locked up in a Bunker. We had a vote and those who wanted to leave to find the missing members of their family did.” Her brow furrowed and she rubbed sweat away from her forehead with a piece of cloth. “How could we stop them? After all, we’re not running a prison down here.” I smiled at the woman and thanked her for allowing us to enter.

I had always imagined that what with the radio broadcast they would have been inundated with people wanting food and shelter. I was very surprised to hear that the Bunker wasn’t already at maximum capacity.

After being given a tour of the facilities, we finally got a moment to ourselves as we were given standard issue towels and bed linen. We were guided into a room where we could leave our belongings.

“You okay? You haven’t said much since we arrived.” Liam put a hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “I hate that there are separate living quarters for the men and women. A little old fashioned I think.”

“Yeah, it’s weird, right? I think it was a museum for a while. It’s probably a little behind the times.”

“I’m not sure that I’m keen on staying either now that I’ve seen it. Let’s see how we feel tomorrow after some sleep and go from there?”

“Sure. Goodnight.” Liam grasped my hand and squeezed before letting go and walking away to find the men’s sleeping quarters.

Maybe he was right. Rosa and I had been on a roller coaster journey since we had left our home on the south coast. So much had happened since then. We would certainly benefit from a few nights rest before deciding where to go next.

20

THE FEW NIGHTS we had decided to spend in the bunker quickly turned into a week. Everything was so accessible in here. So easy, compared to the struggles we had experienced outside. There were two hot meals per day provided in the canteen, and everyone had a job to do which gave a new sense of purpose. They had even set up a nursery facility.

Aside from Rosa, there were five other children under the age of ten. The kids over ten years old were all included in the work rota with the rest of the survivors. That’s what everyone called themselves down here. And we were.

Being the new kids, people were keen to talk to us. The other inhabitant’s seemed amazed that we had managed to exist above ground for as long as we had. There was a strong opinion down here that those on the surface wouldn’t be alive for much longer. I’d heard so many disturbing stories regarding radiation poisoning. It sounded like they had lost a lot of people down here which could have been to blame for their morbid way of thinking.

There were so many more women in the bunker than men. It was strange, but then I remembered that I was here without a man. Well, I had Liam, but he wasn’t with me. Within a few days of being here, I also noticed that the people in a position of authority. The committee as Lynda called it were all female. Refreshing. It shouldn’t have surprised me. I supposed It was sexist in a way, but it did.

The men in the Bunker were all quite young, under forty-five. I wasn’t aware of what their work rota entailed, but I assumed it was quite labour intensive as they all looked in good physical condition. It would have been nice to get to talk to some of them, but they didn’t appear to get much free time. If any. When I thought about it, the times that I did see guys around the communal areas of the compound they were always exhausted.

Even Liam was more subdued, and as the days went on I began to see less and less of him too. I supposed that was fair enough I don’t know why I had expected him to stay with us once we had arrived. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was hurt that he hadn’t been more interested in how we were doing.

I had been assigned to work in the nursery facility, probably down to me telling Lynda that I was a stay at home mum. After what Liam had revealed to me about some professions becoming a form of currency I had decided that keeping the fact that I used to work in government quiet was probably the safest thing to do; I was just Elizabeth here. Nothing complicated. I spoke about myself as little as I could reasonably get away with, instead choosing to talk about my daughter. It was easy to draw attention away from myself. Repelling unwanted questions by boring people with repetitive stories of my beautiful child worked. Mostly my days were filled up by Rosa and looking after the other children in the bunker, and I enjoyed it.

Shadow had been allowed to stay with me too although I had to keep him in a section of the tunnel up near the entrance when I worked my shifts at the nursery. It had been made clear that he was not allowed in the communal living areas without me. However, twice a day we were granted special clearance to walk the tunnels in a section near an old emergency fire exit. I learned it had been bored into the thick concrete wall of the bunker to provide easier access to the emergency services after the site had become a public museum.

Each night Shadow slept at the foot of the bed which Rosa and I shared. We had been given a small space of our own, an alcove in the shared female dorm room. They went to such trouble to keep the men and women separate which was something I thought of as being unusual.

While working in the nursery with a girl called Emma, I voiced my confusion. Emma shared most of my shifts since I had started in the bunker and was the closest thing to a friend I had down here.

“Even families? What reason could there possibly be to keep them separate?” She laughed.

“What makes you think there are any families down here? None of the women has any connection with the men who work here.” Something about the way she had said it made me feel uncomfortable.

“What do you mean the men who work here?”

“Just that. The men who work here. They don’t have any personal ties with any of us, they work they get fed, and that’s it. No one actually knows any of them.” I was getting more and more confused.

“So you don’t have any contact with any of the men down here then?” Thinking about it, I hadn’t seen anyone except for authority figures in the Bunker speaking to any of the men.

“Not me. Only girls who are in the BNW program spend any time down in the men’s quarters and then it’s one to one obviously.” I gave her a blank look. She chuckled. “Hasn’t anyone tried to recruit you yet?” Confused I shook my head. “Normally they’re all over the new girls.”

She took my arm and guided me away from the door leading to the cafeteria and further towards the back of the playroom so that we couldn’t be overheard.

“It’s called the Brave New World program, BNW. Apparently, it was something which the government has ordered to be put into action. In a nutshell, it says that if there is a significant loss of life, the survivors need to put all of their efforts into re-population.” She glanced over in the direction of her son who was playing quietly on the floor beside Rosa “Possibly because we already have young children they tend to lay off us. The women without kids though. Well, let’s just say they’re starting to pile on the pressure.”

“What? You’re kidding? There is no government policy which would order that.”

“How would you know?” I sensed that she didn’t like me disagreeing with her. “Anyway, how long have you been here? I’m surprised no one has said anything before now. Some of the women are getting uncomfortable and have been asking to leave, but Lynda and her cronies keep the supplies under lock and key. You can’t leave without food, so they’re stuck. Most of us have been down here since the attacks and have no idea what it’s really like above ground. We’ve all heard the stories, but since you arrived people have started to talk. They are saying that it may not be as bad up there as they are trying to make out.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing it was hard for me to understand how they had got the men to agree to such a situation. Although the cynical part of me felt that it probably wasn’t a hard sell.

“I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying that the people running this place are forcing men and women to have sex to get them pregnant? How do they get them to go agree?” I hadn’t imagined for one moment that Liam would be the type of guy to go along with it. Well, I hoped not. It didn’t seem to fit with what I knew of his character.

Emma eyeballed me cheekily and smirked.

“I don’t think they mind, and the ones that do disagree with it don’t get much of choice. There’s a rumour going around that some of the men are sedated.” I was horrified.

It must have shown on my face because Emma was quick to beg me not to repeat what she had told me. I got the impression that she was afraid of some of the committee in here. It sounded like they were the ones calling the shots no matter what the resident’s wishes were. She stopped talking altogether when anyone in the cafeteria area came within earshot of our conversation.

The next day I went about the routine which had began to bring me some comfort, but now made me feel like I was suffocating. I needed to speak to Liam and check that he was okay. If the rumours were true, then we needed to leave immediately. It didn’t feel safe to be living amongst any group of people who thought this behaviour was acceptable. Even if it was ran by women.

I looked all day to find Liam, I checked in all of the places I thought I might catch him and kept roaming until I needed to walk Shadow. The Bunker wasn’t that big. I wondered where they were holding the men and how are they keeping them compliant? I had so many questions about the set up of this place. It had been all that I could think about since my conversation with Emma the day before.

I needed to find out for myself if what she had told me was true. I was sure that it was going to be a stupid lie created by a group of bored girls to see which idiot would think it true. Emma had said something about an administration hall. If this place had been used for an official evacuation as it had been intended, the government would have moved a skeleton staff to support the Prime Minister. The administration hall part at least made sense. I would need to get in there. I wanted to see if there was any proof that this BNW program existed.

There was a hall which had been sectioned off to use as a classroom to teach survivors new skills. Just yesterday I had attended a workshop ran by a retired midwife about assisting in childbirth and what to do if you are alone when you go into labour. Things were beginning to click; I would have to do another class and see if I could get any information to prove my theory. There was a class teaching survivors how to build a water filtration system which was being run by two men who had previously been in the construction business. It seemed highly unlikely to me that they would have been drugged.

I signed up to take part in the class and was given a slot in the next day’s session. I mentioned to Emma that I was interested in learning about it in case we decided to leave and asked her to cover for me. She agreed and offered to take care of Rosa for me.

I walked into the administration hall and took a seat towards the back of a column of desks facing an old-fashioned chalkboard. Sometimes it was easy to forget that this place had been a museum.

Only one man was giving the workshop, and he did look exhausted. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he was visibly feverish. He stopping every few minutes to take a drink of the water which sat on the desk in front of him. I watched his hand shake as it clutched the plastic beaker. His eyes would dart to the back of the hall every now and again, and continually he lost his train of thought. He looked to the back of the hall like he was waiting for something or someone to come in. No one did.

During the workshop, we were given a break for lunch. I used the crowd waiting to move out of the hall and into the canteen to skim around the edge of the room. It did give me a better look at the unused part of the hall but I found nothing. I needed to get going anyway, Shadow would be waiting for his walk. I followed the crowds out of the hall and walked towards the part of the tunnel system which was now a home to Shadow. I would need to think of another way to work out just what exactly was going on down here.

21

WALKING THROUGH THE canteen, I felt eyes on the back of my head as I neared the table where Lynda sat. Since our first meeting, I hadn’t had much to do with her, although she had checked that I had settled in well and that I was happy with my situation there had been no further contact. I knew that if I were going to get anywhere near the truth of what was happening with the men in the Bunker, then it would be through her. I managed to catch her eye as I walked towards her and she smiled.

“Sorry to bother you Lynda but I wondered if I would be able to have a quiet word? I need some advice really and thought it best to come to you first. I hope you don’t mind.” Lynda looked pleasantly surprised and motioned for me to sit on the side of her furthest away from the others at her table.

“Sure, I would be happy to help you, what can I do for you?” I swallowed hard. I wasn’t sure how I was going to say this, but I just let it fall out of my mouth and hoped I wasn’t going to sound crazy.

“I was wondering if there were any possibility of having time to meet with some of the men?” I blushed. “I was hoping for… Well some companionship really, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve felt so lonely since arriving. Perhaps if we were allowed to mingle, I might feel better.” Lynda’s eyes lit up. She had taken the bait. I had just plastered Slut on my forehead for her, and she smelt victory.

“Well, we do run a program so that like-minded survivors can get together and serve a need for each other. Is that what you are asking for Elizabeth?” I lowered my gaze momentarily. Just long enough to seem contrite. Inwardly I baulked at the idea but knew I must go along with it to get to the bottom of what was happening down here.

“Yes, I think you understand. I was wondering if the guy I came in here with was still here?” I gave her a look which implied I was only interested in one reason, the last thing I wanted her to think was that I had an emotional connection to him.

“He is.” She studied my face and then smirked. “I suggest you come to see me this evening in the administration hall and we can discuss the details in private.” I gave her my best shy smile and thanked her for her discretion. After wolfing down my lunch beside her, I shared some friendly small talk and then returned to my shift in the nursery for the remainder of the afternoon.

The thought of what I was doing made my skin crawl but it was the best way I could think of to be able to speak to Liam alone. The real difficulty would be getting him to understand my warnings if he were sedated. He may not have much of an opinion on anything.

I waited in the administration hall alone for around fifteen minutes before Lynda appeared with another member of staff, Debbie.

Debbie worked in safety and security; we didn’t see her very often in the communal areas. Her reputation as an enforcer of rules in here was spoken about although not in a particularly harsh way. She was approachable, but at the same time she liked being in a position of authority that much was obvious. Lynda pulled up a chair and sat beside me as Debbie stood by the side of the entrance. She reminded me of a bodyguard which made me feel uneasy. I was paranoid that she had already figured out what it was I was trying to do.

“We run an important program in here which was to be implemented in the case of extreme loss of life. Its purpose is to increase the country’s population once we are able to rebuild.” I nodded, showing her my most earnest listening face. “Women are of course an essential part of that rebuilding and naturally re-population. Which is one of the many reasons why you will find that, in here, we prioritise the welfare and point of view of the female.” I looked at her with my best solemn expression.

“You’ve expressed a wish to spend time with a certain male survivor. May I ask you bluntly if this is because you are sexually attracted to him?” I was shocked that she had got to the point so quickly, but it saved time. It was the purpose of this charade, so I made sure to look purposefully abashed and then agreed that I was indeed attracted to him.

“I was hoping he would still be here so that we might get together on our own but I assume he has been assigned to work in a different part of the bunker?” Lynda concurred.

“He has. The men don’t tend to get assigned any work within proximity to the living quarters of the women. The BNW program allows women access to the men, but it’s purpose is to repopulate the country after the nation has been all but wiped out by some sort of disaster. If you feel that you are ready to consider contributing to that cause then you would gain access to the program.” She went on. “Every woman is allowed two meetings with their potential mate before they commit to the program.”

“I see. Should I agree to take part then I would need to eventually become pregnant?” Lynda looked me squarely in the eye as she spoke.

“Yes you would need to fall pregnant within three months otherwise we would have to stop your visits and give the slot to someone else.” I took a moment to let what she was telling me sink in.

“I see.”

“It is vital that the program remains discreet. For that reason, we ask that you do not under any circumstances reveal the true meaning of your visits to the men.”

“To the other women, you mean? I take it that the men know about the program?” I had to ask. I had a hunch that they didn’t but wanted to come across as naive to Lynda. She looked over at Debbie and then back at me weighing up whether or not to trust me with the information she was about to offer.

“The men know nothing of the programme and that’s how we would like it to stay. It’s much simpler this way.”

“But if they didn’t know then how does it work?”

“We would like you to approach Liam simply as a friend visiting, perhaps you can get a better response then some of the other women we have tried him with.” I was shocked.

This could only mean that they had already been introducing Liam to some of the other women in the program. I felt ill.

“We do what we can to keep the men compliant and ready to receive such invitations, but Liam has proven a little more resistant than what we are used to. He has been asking about you and Rosa almost daily. I do believe that he will be more open to this match. It may be just what he needs. Debbie can watch your first meeting to see how you get on.” She smiled at me then, revealing a mouth full of tobacco-stained and crooked teeth. “But please don’t be disheartened if there isn’t any sign of him being sexually attracted to you. We can always increase his medications for your second visit.”

My brain overflowed with information. I tried to keep my face straight as I wondered what I should say I was taking too long to respond. Debbie chipped in.

“I think perhaps you need to have an initial visit and then we can all meet again for a chat afterwards when we’ve seen his reaction. You look like you may need to do some thinking yourself, are you happy to go ahead with the first visit?” She was surprisingly comforting and almost supportive, I hadn’t been expecting that from her, of all people. I was grateful she had given me enough to time to collect myself. I needed to play my part if I was going to be convincing. I smiled shyly and agreed.

“Thank you, Debbie. That would be helpful I appreciate the support.”

The task was set. I was to be escorted down to a private area in the medical quarters to meet Liam the following afternoon. Debbie told me that we would be given four hours together to see if we were a suitable match for the program.

“Don’t worry we will be monitoring the situation from outside to make sure things are going to plan.”

“Great.” Shit. That was going to be an issue.

Walking back to the sleeping quarters I stopped on the way to collect Rosa. How was I going to be able to talk to him without them hearing everything we said? At such short notice planning an escape wasn’t going to be easy. I cringed to myself thinking about what I had signed myself up for. Wouldn’t he think it odd? Me coming on to him when he knew I was grieving for my husband.

I was painfully aware of the fact that I hadn’t thought this through correctly. Or at all actually. Worse still, I was not very good at playing the seductress. I’d even go as far as to say that I was pretty bad at it. The first time I’d gone home with Matt I fell over the end of his bed trying to get my foot out of the bottom of my jeans.

My heart wasn’t in this and I was seriously out of practice.

22

THE NEXT MORNING my time in the nursery came and went much faster than any other shift I’d done since arriving here. Typical. I was not prepared for this. After signing out on the shift sheet, I rushed back to my quarters and got changed into the only clean clothes I owned. The pair of Levi’s I had on when we’d entered the bunker and a pretty sleeveless vest top which I had asked to borrow from Emma. It was a little low cut for my taste, but I needed all the help I could get.

In my mind, there were the beginnings of a plan. It was vital that I tried to get as much information out of this first visit as possible. My plan wasn’t a great one, but I had concluded that the best way to get a message to him would be a note explaining everything. That meant however that I would need to get close enough to Liam to slip a note into one of his pockets without being seen on the camera.

In the note, I explained what I knew about the BNW program. What I suspected that meant for him. I told him that Rosa and I were leaving and if he needed to get out, then I was working on the way to do that. Awkwardly I explained that we needed to be seen to be interested in each other sexually on my next visit otherwise they wouldn’t allow us to meet again. I paused a moment after writing it. What he would think of me after reading this? If the situation were reversed, I’d want him to get me out. So I would try.

Debbie put a reassuring hand on my shoulder and tried to put me at ease as I waited outside a locked door at the far end of the medical corridor.

“Don’t look so nervous, you met him above ground didn’t you?” I nodded. “Well, at least you aren’t total strangers. Don’t feel awkward that I’m watching. If things start getting intimate, I immediately switch off the monitor. We aren’t interested in the method, only the end product.” She winked and laughed at my reaction. “Relax!”

“Oh okay, that makes me feel better. Thanks.”

“Just be grateful I’m not a bloke. I don’t think they would afford us the same courtesy.” She gave me a stern look then and flicked the sign on the door to occupied. “There’s a clock inside at 6 pm you’ll need to leave and report back up to the canteen for dinner. You remember the way back to the living quarters from here?” I nodded.

Interesting. They would just leave me to find my own way back with no escort. “He obviously must stay in here when you leave. So be sure to lock the door behind you. He can not come up with you under any circumstances and most importantly remember that you don’t mention anything about the real reason you are visiting the men’s quarters. To anyone.”

“Even to him?”

“Especially to him.” I nodded again to show that I had understood and Debbie unlocked the door pushed down the handle and gestured for me to walk inside.

Closing the door behind me, my eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the change in the light. Mood lighting I thought grimly. This whole thing felt wrong on so many levels. Everything depended on me being able to deceive Liam into thinking I was propositioning him. I had the note stashed safely in the cup of my bra, that seemed the safest place for it. I wasn’t sure if they were planning on searching me before allowing me inside, but they hadn’t. I needn’t have bothered. Now I just needed to get it from my bra into his pocket without him or anyone else seeing. Crap.

“Long time no see.” The sound of his voice woke me from the thoughts whizzing around in my head; I glanced up from the floor where my eyes had been fixed since entering.

Liam was sitting on the edge of a single hospital gurney in the far corner of the room. He looked directly at me; between us, there was a table and two chairs. An old battered sofa was rushed up against the wall to my right. I took a step forward towards the couch but before I could sit Liam was in front of me.

“Wow, you shaved. I almost didn’t recognise you.” It made a big difference. He looked much less like the scrappy survivor who had grabbed me in the tunnel and more like a tidy school teacher. His tattered clothing had been taken away, and in their place, he wore pale green scrubs. Everything in the room was so clinical, including him. If it hadn’t been for the familiar blue eyes searching mine, I would have thought that I’d got the wrong person. I preferred the previous version. This guy creeped me out.

He placed his hands gently on to my shoulders and held me out in front of him at arm’s length and continued to stare. I felt so uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to see you sooner, but we have so much to do to keep the bunker running down here. I’ve met a few good people since we arrived but was hoping I would get to see you again and Rosa. Where is Rosa?” His speech was slurred.

The words forming in his mouth sounded all wrong like he was fighting to get out what he wanted to say. There was no doubt that he been drugged.

“She’s upstairs in the playroom. How are you feeling?” He didn’t look great. Even in this low light, I could see beads of sweat on his temples, and the circles under his eyes were much darker now than they had been when we had arrived.

“I’m great. Lonely at times but…” His hands dropped from my shoulders, and his fingertips lightly traced the outline of my figure down to the hands at my sides. He was too close and acting wildly out of character. This was scary. What the hell had they given him? He had never been this friendly with me before. I had only just walked into the room.

I sided away from him to sit down on the sofa; I needed some space. This was too intense. It didn’t feel right to be close to another man that wasn’t Matt; it had been almost two weeks since we found his motorbike buried under his parents house.

For all his understanding at the time, Liam seemed to have forgotten all about it. Despite being right there beside me when I made the devastating discovery of my husband’s death. He inched over towards my end of the sofa and began telling me about his time in the Bunker.

“When I first arrived here every day was more exhausting than the last, so much so that I must sleep for almost 12 hours a day. Things have gotten better lately since they’ve put us on a daily dose of vitamins to keep us going. Hopefully, it should reverse any effects of radiation poisoning. I was above ground for a long time it was bound to affect me sooner or later. I’m just glad we were here when I started to get sick.”

“You think you might be sick? Weren’t you feeling well when we arrived here?”

“I’m not sure now. It’s hard to remember that far back.”

“Liam. It’s been two weeks.” I needed to get him out of here and fast. Whatever medication it was they were feeding him was having some terrifying effects. “You, me and Rosa arrived here over two weeks ago. Shadow isn’t a big fan of it down here. Every day when we go into the upper tunnels for his walks, he barks at the exit to be let outside.”

“Who is Shadow? Did you meet him after coming down here?” My blood went cold, and it took me a second or two to compose myself. He had forgotten something so quickly. Shadow had been a big part of our journey here there was no way he would have totally erased him from his memory himself.

“Shadow is my dog. Don’t you remember?”

“No, I don’t.” He turned away and rested his head in his hands. “Sorry. I keep forgetting things; It’s the effects of the fallout I’m all over the place.” Turning back to look up at me from where he sat I could see that he was afraid. “Do you mind if I hold your hand?” He held out his hand, and I gave him mine. We sat in silence with my hand firmly clasped in his. “Thank you for coming to see me. I know that when I’m better, I’ll be able to visit you and Rosa too.”

I couldn’t bear it. They had taken this kind and strong person and made him believe himself to be weak and ill. I knew now that there was no way I could leave him here.

With my determination bolstered I threw myself into what needed to be done. I leaned over and brushed a piece of his hair away from his forehead. Positioning myself so that our lips were almost touching. I closed my eyes and moved in to kiss him.

With a passion I hadn’t expected his mouth closed in on mine he slipped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer. His warm tongue caressed mine in soft waves. I would be lying if I said that it didn’t feel good. I’d expected this to be much more difficult. The eagerness with which he responded to my advance took my breath away. I tried to concentrate on what it was that I’d come here to do and ignore the feelings stirring in my body. Struggling to focus, his hands were already in my hair. Bloody hell.

I pulled an arm free from the tight hold of his embrace and slid it up underneath my top to retrieve the note from my bra. Liam must have felt my hand moving around and seeing that it was inside of my top he took it as an invitation to follow suit. Shit.

As fast as I could, I palmed the note and pulled out my hand, but it was too late. His hand traced my spine and up the back of my top. He must have thought I was trying to take my top off. His hand fingers found the fastening of my bra under the delicate material. My cheeks burned.

This was getting out of control, and I still needed to get the note into Liam’s pocket for him to find later. I dove the hand holding it into the back pocket of his jeans which were snug fitting against his muscular body. Once my hand was in there I had to struggle to get it back out. With each kiss, he leaned towards me, while I reached down to keep shoving the note down inside his pocket as I pulled out my hand. I would have laughed if I could have, this situation was so ridiculous, but my mouth was otherwise engaged. Liam had noticed my hand in his jeans and on his ass and groaned his approval into my neck.

“I’ve wanted to do this since the moment I met you.”

I was dying inside. How could I explain to him that I was a fraud? I dreaded what he would think of me after he had read the note. I should have been grieving for the husband I had lost. Instead, I was acting like I didn’t give a crap about him or the life we had spent together. I had hit a new low. Fumbling around in a dimly lit room with an above average looking man. Liam’s fingers worked deftly to relieve me of my bra. I felt his fingertips run around the side of my ribs and over my navel to my front and then up to cup my breast which fitted perfectly into his rough and calloused hand.

“Liam…”

His kisses began moving further down my neck towards my collarbone. I felt my body betraying me, and my guilt started to melt away into the sensations he was creating within me; no-one had touched me the way he was doing. Not even Matt. There was an animalistic hunger in his kisses but yet his touch remained gentle.

I was on fire. Forgetting my agenda, I moved towards his kisses pressing myself further against him. Teasing he pulled back and rolled my nipple expertly between his fingers my chest tingled with pleasure under the soft material of my top.

He grabbed the bottom of the vest to pull it over my head, but the action brought me out of our passionate whirlwind. “Liam.” I moved away from him. His face was a picture of concern.

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t have done that. I had thought… I mean. I was sure you wanted to.” Aware that Debbie might still be watching us outside I went back to his side. Seeing the clock on the wall reminded me of the time it was already ten to 6 pm. We’d been sat talking for nearly four hours; I blushed - not just talking.

I needed to give him a clue so he would know to find the note later, I lent in towards him and placed a hand on the side of his face. I kissed him softly and pulled back to make eye contact. I needed him to listen carefully to what I was about to say. When I knew I had his full attention, I turned my focus to his ear in the hope that it would look like I was kissing it if Debbie was watching us.

“I will come again. I need you to stop taking your meds, the pills they are giving you aren’t what you think. Do not tell a soul. Read the note in your back pocket tonight when you’re alone. Then destroy it.”

I sat on his lap and pulled his face up to mine. He seemed confused. Well, he had a good right to be I supposed. He had heard me, and I got up to leave. I wasn’t sure if that last kiss was for his benefit, Debbie’s or mine.

I offered up a silent prayer that once he found the note, he would understand what it was I was trying to do. Only time would tell.

23

I LEFT THE room without looking back. The door closed and I fell back against it and crouched on the floor. My senses were still so heightened from what had just passed between Liam and I that I needed a minute just to focus.

As Debbie had said there would be, there was no sign of her or anyone else watching the corridor. I wondered at what point she had left us on our own.

I walked towards the staircase at the opposite end of the hallway which would lead me up to the women quarters, but as I was about to pass the last door on the right, I noticed that it was open. All of the other doors in the corridor had been locked when I had tried their handles, but this one hadn’t been closed properly.

I crept up to the gap in the door to peer through into the room. As I got closer I heard a noise. It sounded like machines beeping in a steady rhythm. After waiting to listen for other people in the room, I decided that it was safe to look inside. I pushed the door opening it further and peeked around the door to look at the room.

Against the wall were eight hospital beds surrounded by machines. Six of them were occupied. Curious to see more I took a step into the room and the beds came into better view. I was horrified to see that the six occupants were all women in different stages of pregnancy. Each one was unconscious and hooked up to a drip containing a strange yellow liquid. The two beds which were empty at the end of the row had been stripped of their bedding. The shock of what I was seeing drew me further into the room.

I heard footsteps out in the corridor and ducked in between the two end beds tucking myself underneath and out of sight. Two female voices floated down from the corridor, their chatting got louder. I held my breath as I waited for the door I had just come through to open, but to my relief, the voices began to fade away. I heard a door slam at the far end of the corridor and immediately jumped up from my hiding place. I wasn’t sure how long I would have before they would be coming back and this time I might not be so lucky.

I looked over at the women covered in strange wires and wondered how the hell had they already got women this pregnant here? Two of them were definitely past their second trimester. Then I remembered the message from the radio calling for survivors to come here. These women must have been pregnant before they came to the bunker. They probably came looking for a safe haven in response to the radio message, but instead, the people here had stopped them from leaving. Surely no sane woman would volunteer to be hooked up to a machine in a comatose state like this?

Is this what they had planned to do with me if I had got pregnant? What the fuck is this place?

Feeling like I might faint I grabbed the side of one of the beds to steady myself. My hand felt damp. I looked down and snatched my hand back, the two stripped beds either side of me were soaked with blood. I needed to get out of there before someone saw me. I ran back over to the door and stood behind it to listen for approaching footsteps after waiting ten seconds I shot out of the room and closed the door back the way it had been when I had found it. I ran to the stairs at the end of the corridor and took them two at a time to get back up to Rosa.

24

THE NEXT DAY came and went without any word from the BNW program. I waited, but still no summons to the administration hall came. Perhaps they had decided that we weren’t a good match. Or worse they knew about the note and had decided to ban me from future visits. I had been so careful not to leave any trace when I had left the medical corridor, but I didn’t check for cameras in the room with the of the women. Could they know that I had found it? No that couldn’t be true if they knew about it I would have been kicked out surely? I hated this, the waiting. I was becoming paranoid.

I spent the next three days reliving the four hours I had spent down in that medical corridor over and over. I’d slipped up somehow and made my true intentions known, there was no other explanation. But the more I relived it in my mind, the more I felt we had been convincing. So much so that I had even fooled myself into thinking something was going on between us and I knew that wasn’t true. It had to have been a mistake I’d made in the other room. Each day that passed with no word made me more fearful. What was there to stop them hooking anyone of us up to those machines? It had all appeared so relaxed when I had met with Lynda. Nothing at all like this. Who else knew about the women downstairs? Someone had to.

In going over the details of our meeting it was clear to me that Liam had been slipped something in his daily medication. A hormone to make him amorous. He was so docile and compliant and nothing like himself. I wondered if he had been able to stop taking the drugs without anyone noticing.

Shadow had been a great excuse to get away from the bunker dwellers. They were often so full of hysteria that it became grating to be around them. Shadow greeted me each time by standing on his back legs with his front paws hovering in the air. I hated leaving him there during the day, but there wasn’t much of an option. I wasn’t allowed to bring him down into the playroom with me. It had been enough of a struggle to get him accepted in our sleeping quarters.

With all of this business weighing heavily on my mind I looked forward to the peace and quiet of the tunnels where Shadow and I would spend our evening. I had found a tennis ball in the nursery which we would play with in the tunnels. It wasn’t the same as him being able to run around outside, but we were able to tire ourselves out. I had maintained my fitness levels since arriving here and had used the old gym facilities on a few occasions. My body was changing into a useful asset rather than the slow out of practice liability I had been before.

Shortly after our arrival here I had asked the bunker’s committee if it would be possible to gain access to the outside. Even once a week for Shadow, but so far I hadn’t had much luck in convincing them. Soon it wouldn’t be a problem. We were leaving as soon as I could figure out a way to get Liam out.

Shadow and I walked around the section which led up to the emergency exit, I could see the light shining in bright red letters at the end of the tunnel. As usual, I threw the ball up towards the light and Shadow bounded after it but today there was something different. Instead of picking up the ball when he reached the place that it had stopped Shadow raised his head and sniffed the air, looking back towards the exit he ran straight to the door.

“Shadow. Hey, come back. Shadow, don’t get too close to that door you don’t want to set off the alarm.” We had all been told that any breach of the outside doors would cause an alarm to sound within the Bunker and an internal door connecting the tunnels would then be sealed. I certainly didn’t want to be separated from Rosa, and the thought of having to explain myself to the committee for our breach was not something that I wanted to experience.

I ran and caught up with Shadow who was sniffing excitedly at the bottom of the exit door. I felt a chill and realised that it was a breeze hitting the side of my face. It came from the door. I could make out a chink of light. Evening light and a beautiful fresh breeze was coming in from outside. This was unbelievable, the door had been left unlocked and had moved into a position where the locks no longer lined up with one another. Meaning that when the locks were operated it didn’t hold the door in place any longer. Even more remarkably it hadn’t set off the alarm system.

This was it. Our way out. We could leave through this door, and no one would know. I removed my shoe and took off a sock. Carefully I slid the small piece of fabric between the door, and its locking mechanism just in case it was blown shut again. I didn’t want it securing itself before we had the chance to escape. Now I just had to work out how we were going to get Liam up to this level to make a break for it.

On the fourth day I had been heading back from Shadow’s morning walk carrying Rosa in her sling when I saw Debbie walking towards me. In accordance with the rules I stopped and bent down to leash Shadow.

“Stay.” I walked down to meet her at the end of the tunnel.

“What’s the matter with you?” She called out. I panicked.

“Me? Nothing. Why?”

“You look worried.” She laughed. I didn’t see how that was very funny. “I thought things went very well the other day. Lynda wants to see you. Can you go now and drop Rosa off with Emma in the playroom and then come up to the admin hall?” It wasn’t a question. I had no choice but to comply.

“Of course. See you there.”

In a few short minutes, I was able to drop off Rosa and hurried over to the admin hall. Lynda was sitting at an old wooden desk at the back of the space. She reminded me of an evil sort of unkempt headmistress, peering at me over the tops of her glasses. Her hands stretched out either side of her across the surface as she spoke.

“Good morning Elizabeth. Take a seat. I hear we have an acceptable match. From what Debbie tells me Liam is a very happy boy when in your company.” She made him sound like a puppy. “We were starting to worry the elixir wasn’t working. He’d already refused three of the girls before your visit.” She gave a look of approval to Debbie. “I’m glad to see we are finally getting it right.” So many things about what just came out of her mouth were wrong.

“Nice for you to able to spend time with a man like that. I’m sure.” Wait. Was she saying I wouldn’t be able to get a guy like Liam without him being heavily drugged? Cheeky bitch. I balled my hands into tight fists under the desk and pressed my fingernails into the palms of my hands. It was all I could do to stop myself reaching out to smash her ugly white face against the desk.

“Yes, he was very friendly.” I purred back at her, forcing a smile and ignored the comment. “Will we be having a second visit before I sign up to the Brave New World programme?” I smiled innocently.

“Oh yes, I think so. We could arrange it for tonight. Debbie would that work?”

“Yes, it would.” She replied. Shit, shit, shit! I wasn’t prepared to leave tonight.

“I just need to make sure that Emma can take care of Rosa for me but that would be wonderful. Thank you.” I hadn’t even worked out how to get Liam up to the tunnel unnoticed yet.

It was a good thing that I already had an excuse to go up into the tunnels, but how was I going to sneak Liam up here and at the same time collect Rosa? No one watched that tunnel entrance. Not many bunker dwellers knew about its existence as far as I had seen. But the real issue would be getting Liam past Debbie. Then I remembered what she had said about turning off the monitor.

“Sorry if you felt uncomfortable watching us the other day Debbie.”

“Yes, it got a little more heated than I had expected for a first date.” She admitted. I tried to appear abashed. It wasn’t hard to be convincing, inside I was mortified.

“It was a little. I’m so embarrassed.”

“Honestly it’s fine. After watching him trying to get your top off I decided that it was time to turn off. Things were obviously going in the right direction. No need for me to be a Peeping Tom. I went to join a friend of mine for dinner; you were alright I expect.” She grinned and then looked over at Lynda for approval. Lynda wasn’t paying much attention to our conversation. She was busy reading from a spreadsheet in front of her which had a list of names and dates on it. Using a green highlighter to mark out a section she put down the pen, took off her glasses and looked up.

“Right, so if all goes to plan we’ll have your baby arrive around June. Early summer I think. We’ll confirm with a full examination every month.”

“Right, and where will I be spending my time while pregnant?”

“You’ll be kept up here until you reach your third trimester and then you will have a nice private area in the medical corridor to rest as much as possible before the birth.” I think I knew what that part meant.

“Great.” I gulped.

“You need to start tracking your cycle and report to us with any changes. At least we know you’ve done it all before so the equipment all works fine.” She looked me up and down and then stood up and without another word walked out. I felt like a piece of meat.

25

I RAN DOWN the corridor to the nursery where I knew Emma would be. She agreed to look after Rosa without hesitation.

“When I come back, I will need to take Shadow for his walk, and Rosa can come with me, so would you mind making sure that you’re in the dorm room when you finish so that I can easily collect her?”

Emma looked at me strangely. “Yeah, but does it matter if she misses the walk with Shadow? It’s not a big deal I don’t mind looking after her until you come back with Shadow.” She was getting suspicious.

It was widely known how close Rosa and Shadow were, they were glued to each other at every available opportunity, so it knocked me off guard when she questioned my request.

“It’s just important that I can pick her up before I see Shadow. Alright?” I shouldn’t have been so forceful with Emma she had been good to me. She didn’t know what I was planning, she was just trying to be helpful. I made my excuses and left.

I ran to my dorm and changed my top and stuffed our meagre belongings into a bag for what seemed like the umpteenth time. I made sure to keep Rosa’s things on the top and handed it over to Emma for me to pick up when I came to collect Rosa later that night. She had been a good friend to me, and I would miss spending time with her. Part of me wanted to tell her what it was that I was planning, but I didn’t dare to risk it. I could leave something with her maybe. Discreetly give her a way to find me if she wanted to get out too.

It wasn’t long before I was stood outside the room again in the medical corridor with Debbie. I was more nervous than the last time. Seeing Liam after what had happened in this room just a few days ago. My stomach flipped over when Debbie turned the sign to occupied. I stopped her hand before she turned the doorknob and very quietly I said,

“Sorry I just, can I just have a second.” I took a deep audible breath in.

“Would you like me to get you some water?” She wasn’t an unkind woman.

“Sorry Debbie, I don’t know what came over me. I think it must be the nerves.”

“You’ll be fine and stop worrying. Liam likes you very much; you should have seen him with the other girls, he more or less kicked them out.” I questioned if it would be Debbie that would get the blame for our escape. We were technically her responsibility down here but I tried not to dwell on it. No decent person could condone what was going on down here. “Don’t forget if it gets too steamy I switch off. If you want me to keep an eye on things just keep it to heavy petting.” She winked at me and opened the door.

What the hell constituted heavy petting? I walked through and into the familiar dimly lit room. This time Liam was stood over by the bed. I felt self-conscious. What if he hadn’t read the note? I knew that there was a good chance that he hadn’t been able to avoid taking the drugs which could mean that he was still not himself.

Liam didn’t move or walk towards me like before, and unlike last time he didn’t speak either. Knowing that we were being watched, I moved towards him. Aware that every minute after Debbie had switched off her monitor was time we could be using to put more distance in between ourselves and this hellish place.

He waited until I was almost touching him before he looked up at me and smiled.

“I was wondering when you would come calling again.” Something in his face seemed off. He looked alert, more alive certainly but there was something else. Then I realised what it was. The smile on his face didn’t reach his eyes, he was angry. His eyes blazed with it, his smile was edged with it. Shit. He had got my note, and now he was pissed off.

Slightly afraid of the strength of the venom emanating from him I began to step back. I lifted my foot off the floor to move, but he caught hold of the waistband of my Levi’s and pulled me towards him. Planting one hand at the base of my spine and using the other to grab my chin and turn my head. He whispered in my ear.

“Better make it look convincing.”

He slid his hand down from my spine and grabbed hold of my ass. His other hand combed through my hair until he closed his fist around it and tugged until he had tilted my head up towards his giving him full access to my lips. His mouth fell upon mine with such fury that my lips sent sparks of electricity through my skin reaching all the way up to the roots of the hair that he was still holding in his fist. Unable to move he held me exactly where he wanted me.

I was stunned. I had expected him to be different on this visit. Standoffish perhaps, shy, but not this. Anger poured out of him. I wasn’t sure what to do. I tried to pull away from him, but his lips were locked on mine. Had I put myself in a dangerous situation? I didn’t know this man. Sure he’d been kind to me and helped us out when he didn’t have to, but that didn’t mean he was harmless.

He must have felt my body stiffen under his hold. I felt the tension leave his arms as one after the other they dropped down to his side and he casually hooked his fingers into the belt loops at the front of my jeans. Leaning down into me Liam buried his face into my shoulder; a sigh escaped from his lips. For a moment I feared that he was about to get emotional on me, thankfully he was able to hold himself together. Thinking of Debbie watching us from her post I leaned my head forward and put my arms around him. Softly he began to speak into my hair.

“I’m sorry, you need to take the lead here. My head is fucked. I don’t know how to be with you, how to touch you. I want to hurt them so badly, but I know I shouldn’t be rough with you.” I felt for him he had been put in a helpless position and for a guy like Liam that was a difficult thing to swallow.

“Alright.” I looked up at him and moved my hand to his neck, lightly touching the side of his chin I guided his face towards me. I opened my lips and caught his lower one in mine, gently sucking at it and then let go to move in for a more passionate kiss, using my tongue I traced the outline of his upper lip and automatically his lips parted. This was a trick I used to use on first dates back in uni when I wanted to make sure I got a second one; I had been good at dating back then I remembered. How hard could it be to relive it?

And I tried. I ran my fingers around from the backs of his ears to the nape of his neck and let my lips explore every part of his. From the raging fire which had burned so fiercely within him at the beginning, there remained a small flicker in his response. If he didn’t get a little more into this, I was worried that Debbie wouldn’t feel the need to switch off. Hoping to move things along a little faster I took hold of his top and started to lift it over his head. He looked at me, shocked. I had to stifle a laugh, his reaction was almost comical in comparison to the last time we were in this situation, and he was trying his best to get me naked.

Liam allowed me to take off the pale green top and I threw it on the floor. I didn’t need to pretend to be attracted to Liam. Physically he was beautiful. Tall with a muscular frame and it showed that he had taken great care over the shape of his body. I hadn’t a clue what his profession had been before we met but someone this fit had to be a personal trainer or a gym bunny at the very least.

I was awkwardly aware of my own post-baby body as I reached up to touch his chest and ached a little that this was all just an act. Last time it had felt real. This time it needed to look convincing, and that was all. I must have paused, too much thinking going on for my part. Liam put a finger under my chin and tilted my head up to look at him. As his eyes scanned my face, looking for something, they softened.

“Shall we lie on the bed?” Unable to speak I moved over to lie on the bed pushed up against the wall. As I lowered myself down, I noted the small camera positioned above the door. Debbie would have a perfect view.

He lay down next to me, and I took the opportunity to whisper what Debbie had said about heavy petting. He raised an eyebrow and whispered back.

“I’m going to do my thing, tell me when to stop or if I do something you’re not comfortable with. Okay?” I couldn’t think of what to reply, and so I just nodded. Argh, he’ll think I’m a nodding dog at this rate. “Let’s make things a little more even I think.”

He pushed my top up and pulled it off over my head to reveal my bra. The same one he had almost taken off completely at our last meeting. Not giving anything away he ran his hands along the waistband of my jeans until he reached the zipper and checked to see my reaction. Once he could see that I was on board he slid them off so quickly I hardly knew it had happened.

Without warning, he hooked his thick forearms under the back of each one of my legs and pulled my knees up to my chest and explored the skin on the inside of my thighs with his fingertips. He made a big show of pushing them apart for the camera before he fell in between them, leaning over the top of me he brushed away the hair covering my mouth. He lowered his face to mine and whispered in my ear “They only need to think we’re having sex, we don’t have to do it. Don’t look so scared.”

“Sorry.” I felt like a rabbit caught between the headlights. This was so weird.

He began kissing me and lowered one hand down by his waist to mime the action of fumbling with his crotch and slowly Liam began to move his hips against mine. Just as I was attempting to deal with what was happening above me Liam’s movements started to pick up speed sending my mind off again as I tried to pull it back. I needed to focus on something else.

Remember this is a charade Lizzy. I wrapped my legs around his waist hoping to make it look more authentic. But in doing so, it brought the sensitive part of my groin directly in line with the fold of his fly. He moved harder against me, and my body started to respond. In the heat of the moment, I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to tell him when to stop. Until Liam’s thick voice broke the spell when he spoke gruffly into the mattress beside my head.

“Do you think we’ve convinced them yet? Because if not I might need to rip off the rest of your clothes.” Some of the fury from earlier had returned to his face, but this time it felt much less like anger and more like lust. He swung his legs over mine and got off the bed to stand and straightened himself out.

“Yes, sorry.” I stuttered “Ready to go, very convincing. Yep… Let’s go.” I jumped up and wriggled back into my jeans as quickly as physically possible, but the fact that my legs were slick with sweat made it more difficult. My heart was pounding in my chest. I tried my best to hurry as I worked to ignore the tingling sensations travelling down the inside of my legs.

26

LISTENING AT THE door to check for Debbie outside we waited in silence. Liam looked down at me straightening my top and shook his head in disbelief at our circumstances.

“I’m still struggling to get my head around this. How are we supposed to get out?” His stern expression earlier had now given way to a more natural look of concentration as he listened for sounds of life out in the corridor.

“Let me go first and check there isn’t anyone there. The last time I came to see you I left this room and saw no-one. I know a quiet route to the tunnel once we get up to the women’s quarters, but I will need to send you on ahead to meet Shadow and then I’ll follow with Rosa.” He nodded and I opened the door to step out into the corridor.

I was able to see along the length of it. The set of steel stairs at the end would lead to another set of corridors. Those went past the canteen area and women’s dorms until there was a sharp right turn which would lead up a steep incline to the part of the bunker which had been adjusted when it had become a museum. At the top of that steep incline, Shadow would be sat patiently waiting for his evening walk beside the fire exit. Once we were through that we would have about 2 hours to get as far away as possible before anyone realised that we were missing. That was the best case scenario.

“What do we say if anyone sees me on the wrong floor?” It was the first time he had sounded afraid; he had a right to be. I was. We were going to be in serious shit if someone caught us trying to leave without permission and he wasn’t even supposed to leave the room. I needed to collect Rosa asap and get out of here before that happened.

“We’ll say you’ve been called to a meeting in the administration room.” It sounded much more confident coming out of my mouth than It felt in my head. We could easily be proved wrong depending on who we bumped into.

I reached the bottom of the steel staircase and glanced up checking that it was empty. I signalled over my shoulder and beckoned for Liam to follow. He was at my side instantly and stayed there as we ascended the stairs. In a matter of seconds we were passing the canteen and then the dorm rooms.

So far so good. We hadn’t seen a soul. Now I needed to send him up to wait with Shadow while I doubled back to collect Rosa.

“You go up this tunnel and take the first right turn, it’s dark to begin with, but you will see the red EXIT light up ahead. Shadow is waiting for us there. You need to wait with him by the door until I can join you. I shouldn’t be more than two minutes but if I’m more than five leave without me.”

“I’m not leaving you here!” He grabbed my forearms and positioned me so that I was forced to look at him; I brushed him off.

“There isn’t time for this. Go now. I won’t be long.” I turned away from him then my job was done where he was concerned. He was more than capable of looking after himself now. The drugged up, slow-witted Liam I had met last week had gone. My daughter, however, was unable to get herself out and that was my primary concern.

I virtually skidded into the doorway of Emma’s dorm to find her sitting on the bed with her son, frantically I looked around her.

“Where’s Rosa?” I had to stop myself from screaming the question; I needed to keep calm, the last thing I needed was to draw unwanted attention. I allowed a smile to creep onto my face as I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands.

“Oh, she was so tired after playing this afternoon that she fell asleep in the nursery so I just wrapped her up in a blanket and Lynda said she would watch over her. We didn’t like to move her; she looks so peaceful when she sleeps, don’t you think?” She barely looked up from the book she had been reading to her son.

I smelled a rat. Had she suspected my plan to leave? She must have told Lynda. If she had, we were buggered.

“Oh, that was kind of you both. Have you still got the bag with her stuff in? I’ll just pop along and collect her now.” I spoke through gritted teeth. I fought the urge to throttle her, both Rosa and I were now in a situation I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get us out of.

“I thought you were going to walk Shadow? Where is he?” She looked at me then her eyes narrowed and suddenly I knew I had confided in the wrong person. She wasn’t my friend at all. She knew exactly what I had been planning and wasn’t happy about it. I needed to tread carefully with my next move.

“Alright, I can collect the bag later, no big deal. See you tomorrow.” I left her and walked straight to the canteen area next door to the playroom. As I drew nearer I could see Debbie sitting outside the nursery on a chair. She stood when she saw me and walked over.

“That was quicker than expected. Everything alright?” She weighed me up. Did she know something too? Either way, she now knew I was out of the room. When she went to check on Liam and he was gone that would mean our getaway time would have gone from two hours to about two minutes. I still needed to get Rosa past Lynda before that could even start.

“Everything is amazing”, I gushed. “I just didn’t want to be late putting Rosa to bed, but I hear that I was a little late for that anyway.” Just as I finished speaking Lynda stuck her head out of the door.

“We’re in here Elizabeth. Rosa is fast asleep. Why don’t you come in for a chat.” Thinking on my feet to distract Debbie I turned to her.

“Debbie, would you grab us both a cup of tea from the canteen? You are joining us aren’t you?” Debbie smiled and turned towards the tea urn; she had taken the bait. Years of working in Government had given me specific people skills. I knew that making her feel as important as Lynda would guarantee that she would stay to hear our conversation.

I walked into the nursery past Lynda and straight to Rosa’s side. I wasted no time in picking her up and placed her sleeping weight on my shoulder. True to form, this kid slept through anything. Liam and Shadow should have already left. I was going to be here a while. Lynda eyed me suspiciously from the doorway.

“You could have let her sleep.”

“Ha, you don’t know her like I do. She sleeps through anything, and I need to get her into a proper bed, can’t have her catching a cold.” We stood there with so much not being said; it was Lynda who broke the silence.

“If you want to leave you are welcome to, we don’t keep people against their will here, as you know.”

“I know.” I needed to act like this was all a misunderstanding until I could get out of this room.

“We only ask that you leave Rosa here with us so that she can get the care that she needs.” I stared blankly at her, confused. What the fuck was this psycho talking about? The way she was looking at Rosa made me feel uncomfortable. Instinctively I moved a hand over her head and was shocked to feel the amount of heat coming from her.

“What’s wrong with her? Why is she so hot?” As I said this Debbie walked in with the tea, she put it down on a table by the door and walked over to where I stood holding my child.

“She’s sick? Did you give her any untreated water before she arrived?” Debbie looked genuinely concerned. Lynda hadn’t moved and didn’t seem surprised to hear of Rosa’s condition.

“You know Elizabeth; Rosa is very important to us here. She will be instrumental in the new world. Our children are the future of this country. We can make sure that she has the best possible care, perhaps we already have the right medicine available for her downstairs.” My stomach turned. Had this twisted bitch poisoned my daughter?

“What have you done to her?” My head started to thump as blood rushed from every part of my body and I went dizzy.

“I don’t know what you mean. Here let me take her down to the medical suite for you.” She walked forward and held out her hands to take Rosa from me. “You can see her again when she is feeling better.”

There was no way I was giving this psychopath my baby. She moved away from the door and I saw my opportunity. I dashed for the exit. Debbie who had been stood in between us sidestepped out of our way and looked on at Lynda with her mouth open. Apparently, she wasn’t involved in this little plot and was equally appalled.

“I’m leaving. If anything happens to her Lynda, I will come back here and by God, I will kill every one of you in this fucking hole.”

I walked over to the door Lynda grabbed the back of my top. I swung around and snatched up a cup of the hot tea in my free hand and threw it in her face. Then I began to run. Rosa woke up and started screaming. I ran back the way I came; past the dorm where Emma had watched me holding her perfectly healthy son. I didn’t stop until I saw the red EXIT sign on the fire door ahead of us. I squinted up into the dark tunnel trying to see if I could make out a figure crouching in the dark. It was empty. Liam had left and taken Shadow with him; I couldn’t blame him I told him to.

I pushed open the heavy door to the outside world. I could hear footsteps getting louder pounding towards us up the concrete of the tunnel. I slammed it behind me and threw Rosa further up onto my shoulder. She cried for me to stop but I couldn’t. Instead, I ran for the nearest tree line. My shoes sank into the mud and with every new step, my legs were caked in more of it. It was slowing me down.

I heard the door I had just closed open behind me. Lynda hurtled towards us. I was blinded by a white light coming straight at me from the opposite direction. Not knowing what it was I dove to the floor and covered Rosa’s body with mine.

“Get up here!” It was Liam. He threw something at me and it landed in the mud in front of Rosa’ head. It was my flare gun. Without hesitation, I picked up the gun, aimed and pulled the trigger. The flare flashed and I heard a scream. Lynda held her burning face in her hands as two others from the Bunker ran out of the exit into the night.

I threw my head from left to right to search for Liam. Shadow’s bark came from directly behind me and I turned to see Liam who hung out of the door of the SUV with his arms outstretched. They had found the car we had arrived in. That must have been how he’d got the flare gun. I had left it in the car when we entered the bunker. I cried out, picked myself up out of the mud and scooped up Rosa. I threw her in to Liam across the passenger seat. Rosa cried, heaving for breath between her screaming sobs. We were both covered from head to toe in cold, wet mud. Scrabbling into the car to join them I felt the SUV moving underneath me.

“Elizabeth get in, they’re coming!” I pulled the door shut with all of my strength just in time to hit one of Lynda’s cronies in the shoulder. I kicked out my leg and felt it connect with her hip successfully managing to boot her off the car and watched as she rolled back on to the sodden dirt beneath her.

We drove off down the dirt track and away from the Bunker as fast as that car would take us. The only thing I could think about was Rosa and the danger I had put her in.

What had I done?

27

IT WAS A long drive from Essex to the Lake District, and it would be even longer with a sick child to look after. Rosa was seriously ill. The parent in me was losing their shit. Rosa was burning up. She fought against sleep and squirmed constantly on my knee.

“What’s wrong with her?” Liam looked down at her.  When she did close her eyes, she was restless and unsettled, thrashing around like she was having nightmares.

“I don’t know. I think they gave her something to make me stay in the Bunker. They said they had medicine for her there, so it has to be something which has an easy fix. But what?” They valued children in that place far too much to murder one. Didn’t they?

“Shit.” Liam’s face fell. I could tell that he felt partly responsible for the situation. I shouldn’t have risked so much to help him.

“We need to find something to bring down her temperature.” All of Rosa’s things I had kept in the bag which I had left with Emma, but of course that was long gone. Left behind us with the rest of the Bunker. Apart from the few boxes of formula, which I had kept stashed in the back of the SUV, I had nothing for her. Unless you counted the mud covered clothes she had on her back. In my heart, I knew that I had let her down. Instead of worrying about a complete stranger I should have been putting her safety first. What I had done ate away at me and turned into resentment towards the man sitting beside me. Who the hell was he anyway?

“Why don’t I know anything about you? You seem to know everything there is to know about me.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the road to reply. “Well, I certainly know a lot more about you after the last week.” I watched as the corners of his mouth turned up, and he suppressed a grin.

“Not funny.” I wasn’t in the mood, we’d just almost been mobbed getting away from that crazy place. I was beginning to wish I’d left quietly with Rosa and left him there to rot.

“What would you like to know? I didn’t have a fairytale life. I doubt that you would have been seen with the likes of me before all of this.” I narrowed my eyes and looked at him. What an ungrateful prick.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to know anything about Liam if that was his attitude. As soon as Rosa was sorted I would leave him to sort himself out and go to find Kate on my own. We could start again there and be a family. Rosa cried. “What does she need?”

“Like I said. She needs something to bring down her temperature, paracetamol or something for kids and we need clothes, clean water. Everything. She needs everything.” I shouted at him. I was angry. With him, with myself. “Everything that we haven’t got because we just risked it all breaking you out of a place you didn’t even look that sad to leave. I should have left you down there. I’m sure you could have laid back and thought of England over and over again without any complaints.” He pressed heavily and suddenly on the brakes and we stopped in the road. He pulled on the handbrake and turned in his seat to look at me.

“Elizabeth, I am very grateful that you got me out of that place. I’m aware that you didn’t have to and I am sure that it was difficult for you to do what we did after losing your husband.” I prayed that he couldn’t read my face because that part really wasn’t as difficult as he suspected. I shook the thought out of my head.

“If you had been the only one visiting me I might have been able to live quite happily.” I scowled. “Okay, I’m joking. I would have hated it. The pills they gave me had a strange effect on my memory and there is a huge amount of time that I can’t account for.”

I felt like he had reprimanded me like a little girl, which only served to make me more pissed off with him. I rested my gaze on top of Rosa’s head who was staring up at us listening mesmerised to our conversation. Her face full of confusion looked up at us, her body was limp and exhausted. She lay still on my lap.

“Can we just keep going?”

“Will you listen!” He turned my face forcing me to look at him. The touch wasn’t unkind, but it did demand compliance. “Despite what you think, I did not enjoy my time in there. I’m not the kind of man who gets kicks out of being forced to get women pregnant. I never wanted any more kids.” That got my attention.

Beneath the frustration of his situation I saw a great deal of sadness which I hadn’t noticed before, or maybe I just hadn’t been looking. It was sexist and a little idiotic of me to think that every man would enjoy being held captive by a group of women, even if they weren’t very appealing. I forced myself to admit that I had needed someone to blame for the position in which we found ourselves. Liam was my patsy.

“I didn’t realise you had kids. Sorry.” He said nothing. “They’re dead?” I didn’t dare look at him as he answered.

“I don’t know if the kids are alive. I tell myself they are.”

Liam released the handbrake and pulled back onto the road.

“I didn’t live with my family. My ex-wife left me for an American banker four years ago. She left and took the boys with her. Connor was ten and Jason almost thirteen when she moved. I didn’t have the money to pay for a decent lawyer.” I was speechless. My heart went out to him.

“Surely that was illegal.”

“Everyone had said it was no good to try and fight her. The mother always wins custody. The last I heard from them, they were living in Seattle. I have no way of getting in touch with them now to check if they’re alright.”

“Why didn’t you follow them over there?” He looked down at his hands on the wheel as he drove and shifted in his seat. He cleared his throat.

“I was in prison when she left me.” I was stunned. He was the good guy. That was the last thing I had expected to hear him say. We spent the next few moments in silence, and then he began to talk. “You think differently about me now. Don’t you?”

“No… I’m surprised. But-”

“You seem like a nice well brought up girl. You’ve never met someone like me before have you?” I was confused. Liam seemed rough around the edges. Just like all of us who survived.

As we continued on our journey North, he told me about his life. Of course, I understood why he hadn’t been so eager to share his story with me. Over the next two hours, he told me about the person he used to be before the events on the 21st of June. The afternoon when everything in the country stopped, and we tried to run or hide from death in those thirty precious minutes before everything in our world exploded.

Liam came from a family of Irish travellers and grew up living in a caravan around Ireland before his family had moved to Manchester.

“I guess I had what smug people with nice tidy childhood memories would call a tough life. My parents died when I was thirteen. I was pushed from one foster home to another. Eventually, I landed in a sort of halfway house for homeless kids.”

“But you had a family?”

“Yeah. It all started when I began to make some pretty good money from fighting.”

“Boxing?”

“Bare-knuckle mostly. It’s a traveller thing. In the back room of a pub, a cellar or something. You can make a lot of money if you don’t get yourself killed, but I was good. Runs in my family.” He puffed out his chest. This claim was apparently something, of which he was quite proud.

“Jesus.” I was appalled. Liam laughed at my reaction.

“I told you. There’s no way you’d have spent five minutes in a bar with me before this.”

“I was married. So I wouldn’t have done that anyway.” I retorted.

“Wouldn’t you now?” He shot a smile over his shoulder, and his eyes sparkled. Full of mischief. “I got myself a place and started arranging fights, taking in some serious cash. That’s when my ex found me. She liked the money, didn’t mind the blood. But when I got locked up she found someone else to pay for her fake tits and blow drys.”

“So you were in prison because of that? Organising illegal boxing matches?”

“No love. I knocked the lights out of a bloke who grabbed my wife’s arse in front of me. Sent him into a coma and when he woke up, he was blind. I also broke the jaw of one of the prison guards at Elmley which didn’t help my case.”

I listened in rapture at the stories coming out of Liam as he drove. Some things I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear, but he told me them anyway. Realising that he had been speaking without a sound from me for some time, he looked for my reaction. The break in his storytelling gave me the chance to ask him a question.

“When did you get out?” He didn’t answer. I shifted in my seat. Rosa weighed heavily in my arms.

“I would never hurt you or Rosa, Elizabeth. That’s not what I’m about, never have been. I did what I needed to do to survive.” I could hardly blame the man when somewhere in the south of England a dead body lay rotting on my stairway carpet.

I believed him when he said he wouldn’t hurt us. Although I had no real reason to trust him, something about him had claimed it. I’d never met anyone like him.

“You want to go our separate ways now you know who I am?” He looked straight ahead as he asked the question.

“No. I don’t. But if we’re going to be honest with each other you should probably know. I killed a man. So don’t ever try anything funny with me.” He turned to look at me then, mouth open in shock. “Yes, It’s true.”

“Not in the bunker?”

“No! God no.” I wasn’t ready to talk about it, but it felt better to say it out loud. I had carried the guilt around like a weight around my neck since it happened. Admitting it to another person felt freeing. I knew that if I had explained it to Liam, he would say that I’d done the right thing. The only thing I could have at the time, but for now, that conversation would wait.

“There is a children’s nursery up this road somewhere we passed a sign about a minute ago. I bet they’ll have stuff for Rosa.” I was impressed that he had kept her in mind and was grateful for his suggestion.

“Great, put your foot down.” It would be easier than trying to find a chemist or a store which still had what she needed. Liam pulled the car into the drive leading up to the nursery and parked the car towards the back of the building, hiding it from the main road.

Shadow jumped down from the back seat and stretched his legs. Liam took Rosa from me and together all four of us walked through the cool night air towards the entrance of the deserted building.

28

LIAM BROKE INTO the building using a brick from the crumbling wall in the garden. It was one of the first buildings I’d seen that hadn’t been touched since the bombings. Everything was as it had been left. Tiny little pegs and shoe racks lined the wall in front of us. There was a square hatch with a sign which read “reception” above it where staff would greet parents as they dropped off their kids off before dashing into work.

I wasn’t sure where we were. It was apparent that we were in the sticks somewhere, every window looking out of the nursery was filled with views of lush green fields and tall leafy trees. If we hadn’t been in such a hurry it would have been a smart place to hole up for a few days while Rosa recovered. Liam said as much.

“I can think of worse places for us to stay.”

“It’s only for tonight Liam. I just want to get to Kate as fast as I can. I need to get Rosa settled.” I remembered seeing signs for Leicester before we had been forced to turn off the motorway due to a section of the road which had been torn up. It was a scene that neither of us felt able to get any closer to. There had been more damaged vehicles than I cared to count, and from where we had stopped it was easy to see that they weren’t empty.

I walked through to the back of the hallway and found a small office, on the wall above a storage unit there were rows of passport photos. Each one had a name beneath it of the child who had attended the pre-school. I started to rake through drawers and opened every cupboard I could find until I came across one which was locked.

“Liam, can you pick locks?” I shouted out to him. He popped his head around the doorframe.

“No, darling. I’m a fighter, not a thief.”

“Fuck!” I slammed my hand against the cupboard door.

“Easy. I thought breaking in and out of stuff was your skillset. You’ll figure it out.” He flashed me a smile and a part of me felt grateful that at least I wasn’t doing this alone, for now anyway. After a minute he reappeared. “Here. Give it a crack with this?” He handed me a hammer.

“Makes no sense. They lock up the medical stuff but not a deadly weapon? Where was it?”

“Under the sink in the staff bathroom.” He waited, watching me as I pulled back the hammer. It only took three good swings at bashing the lock on the front of the cupboard to get access to the medical supplies inside.

He gave out a low whistle. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

“It’s a bit late for that statement.” He raised his eyebrows at my cheeky reply and gave me a dirty look. I stifled a grin. Even if he had been to prison, I knew enough of him now to say that he was a good guy.

Inside the cupboard there was a blue inhaler, an epi pen and a whole little box full of children’s medication. Calpol, liquid Nurofen, chamomile lotion and lots of other paper packets and bottles. I didn’t have time to read them right now, but I took the whole case. We had plenty of room in the SUV.

Liam had carried Rosa over to the area of the large playroom which had sleeping mats and placed her down on one, closely following at Rosa’s side was Shadow. He must have sensed that she was sick. I had to tell him several times to stop trying to lick her hands and face. In the end he gave up and lay at her feet and gave the toe of her shoe the odd lick when he thought I wasn’t watching.

I ripped open the box of Calpol and using the syringe fed a double dose to my daughter. Liam had propped her up using cuddly toys he’d found in the playroom and covered her legs with soft knitted blankets that we had plucked from the shelving unit at the back of the room. The nursery had a water dispenser which I had pointed out to Liam. I used the water to make Rosa a bottle of formula.

The medicine must have helped to soothe her because she took much more of her bottle than I had expected her to. What she needed was a doctor to tell us what was making her so sick. Our chances of finding one when there were no hospitals. It was everyone for themselves now. No-one cared about other people’s suffering kids anymore, there were too many of them.

Then there was the point Liam had made when we first met, any doctors who had survived might not be so keen to advertise their skills because people like that were a valuable commodity now. I took Rosa’s temperature with a thermometer I’d found in the box with the medicines. It had gone down slightly since we had arrived but I hadn’t been convinced that the paracetamol would be enough. Within half an hour of giving her the Calpol, she fell asleep. Rosa was snuggled up in the blankets. Her little hands tightly grasped at the cuddly toys keeping her company.

I don’t know how long I had sat watching her sleep when Liam came and sat down beside me. My nose alerted me to a familiar smell. I couldn’t place it at first, but then Liam held out a mug and waved it under my chin. He had one for himself in his other hand.

“Remember this? You won’t believe it, but all of the sockets in that back kitchen are working. They must have a backup generator or something.” The smell wafting up from the mug was hot chocolate. I was so grateful to him that I threw my arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his cheek which I don’t think he had been expecting.

“I think that this might be the best gift I’ve ever had! How did you know to try the kettle?” He smiled broadly at my praise and handed me the mug. Then shrugged it off as if the act of kindness was nothing to him.

“I saw a light on the toaster and decided to investigate. I also found some more blankets although they are a size more suited to Rosa than us.” I looked out of the nearest window and realised that it was now the middle of the night. “With the streetlights not working, I haven’t got a clue where we are. I would feel better if we started our trek up North in the daylight. Do you mind?” He looked hopeful that I would agree, and I did. I was loath to wake Rosa while she slept so peacefully we had had a horrendous day, and I was shattered.

“Okay. I’m so tired I could sleep for a week. I’m going to stay here with Rosa; I want her to be able to see me when she wakes up.” After I had finished the hot chocolate, I moved Shadow over slightly from his spot by Rosa’s feet and lay down. Liam took my mug and disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a second cup for himself and some more blankets. He threw one down to me and then nestled himself on the other side of Rosa into a tiny mountain of soft play equipment stacked against the corner of the room.

“If you get cold in the night feel free to join me by the way. For the body heat I mean.” I laughed. “Hey I’m serious, It’s freezing. Aren’t you cold?” I smiled to myself in the darkness.

“I have my own little furnace to keep me warm.” I could see his giant frame tossing and turning about on the oversized, PVC covered shapes and had to stifle a giggle.

“Well, you could at least send that great big dog over my way. I mean you’ve got it all over there.”

“You can always move closer. I’m sure Shadow would be thrilled to be your little spoon. Goodnight.” I was so tired that I didn’t hear anything else and had nearly drifted off to sleep before I heard:

“Goodnight Elizabeth.”

I hadn’t been joking about the heat coming off Rosa. She was still far too hot. I woke in the night my back was freezing I could see my breath when I breathed out.

“I told you it was cold.”

“Jesus! You scared the crap out of me Liam. How long have you been lying there awake?” I tried to make out his outline in the dark.

“I told you I’m freezing my chops off over here. I can’t sleep, and you snore by the way.” I felt myself going red and felt grateful for the lack of light.

“Right. Fine. Come here then. I’m cold now too. Bring your blanket with you and be careful you don’t tread on Shadow he’s somewhere near Rosa’s feet.” Listening, I could hear him rustling in the black, but my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the room yet. It reminded me of that first night in the pantry after I’d damaged my eyes.

I felt him lie down behind me and he moved his arm over my shoulder to cover me up with part of his blanket. But instead of pulling back his arm he left it there, draped over me. He was spooning me, but I had already started to feel warmer so I didn’t protest. It was quite comforting lying there with his arms around me.

“Do you think they have given her a mild dose of radiation poisoning?” He asked.

“I don’t know. I hope not. Whatever it was Lynda implied that she had the cure in the Bunker’s medical corridor. She knew that I was leaving, I think that she was using it as a way to try and make me stay.” He was silent. “Does that exist?”

“Huh? Sorry, what?” He was falling asleep.

“Is there a cure for it? If you were exposed to a small dose of radiation?” I elbowed him for an answer. He grabbed my elbow and pinned it under his arm to stop me and nuzzled into the back of my neck.

“I don’t know kid. You’re asking the wrong person. Try to get some sleep.”

29

BEFORE OPENING MY eyes there was a brief, magical moment when I could have forgotten that any of this had started. I stirred with Matt’s arms holding me from behind, and my hand clutched onto Rosa’s. All three of us waking up in our bed at home. Rosa had often managed to end up with us in our room. Usually on the sleepless nights when we’d been too tired to let her cry it out.

I woke instead as the sunlight spread its warmth like an extra blanket covering all four of us lying on the floor of the nursery. When I opened my eyes, Rosa was lying there stroking Shadows nose as he watched over her faithfully like a strange kind of four-legged guardian angel. When he noticed that I was awake too, he leaned forward and covered my face from chin to forehead with his tongue.

“Ergh. Nice. Good morning Shadow.” I stretched my arm out and affectionately rubbed his head. “Good boy.” Rosa smiled at the sound of my voice and turned on her side towards me for a cuddle. “Good morning sweetheart.”

“Good morning! How’s the patient?” Liam threaded his arms around my waist and squeezed me to him.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Oh. Shame.” He joked. I felt his chin on my shoulder as he leaned over me to get a better look at Rosa. It was the closest we’d been all night, and it felt so good that I wanted to stay there. Maybe if I had been another version of myself, I might have been more responsive. As if he knew what was on my mind he lifted his chin and sat up on his elbow.

“Sorry. Still cold I think.” He felt my head with the back of his hand. I got the feeling that he was interested in me which brought up some conflicting emotions. But I couldn’t think about it. I had more important things to deal with. After all of the crazy things that had happened, I could be reading him all wrong.

“You sure you’re cold? You’ve been keeping me warm all night. You aren’t getting ill too are you?”

“No, no I’m fine. Did you say there was a bathroom? Does it have a bath or a shower?” Getting embarrassed I got up and brushed down my jeans. They were still covered in mud, and so was Rosa. We needed a change of clothes and a wash badly.

“Yes, there’s an electric shower which looks like it might work and the kettle works. Would you like me to attempt to run you both a bath?” He gave me a boyish grin. Good God, but he was attractive when he said things like that.

“Yes please!”

“I could always hop in with you if you needed some help scrubbing your back?” He winked. I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“That’s awfully kind of you, but I think we’ll manage. I tell you what, since you’re so thoughtful I’ll leave you the water in the tub if you want to get in after us?” I laughed out loud at the thought.

“You tease!” Liam threw back over his shoulder. Playfully flicking me his middle finger as he left to go and run the bath.

What a charmer.

I managed to find Rosa a whole new outfit made up mostly from items out of a box labelled “Lost and Found.” I’d remembered seeing a lovely warm fleece last night hanging on one of the pegs in the hallway. At least she was clean. Her temperature had spiked again when she had come out of the bath, but after another dose of paracetamol, it was on its way back down. We needed to find a doctor.

We got back into the car and set off in the direction that we thought was most likely to take us to a motorway. Life without GPS was not much fun. With that thought, I remembered that my phone had also been in the bag left in the Bunker.

“Liam! My phone was in the bunker. I left it.”

“Hey don’t sound so upset love. Who would you be calling with it? No networks are running. Haven’t been for months.”

“The only person I’ve got is Kate.”

“And we’re on our way to her now. Don’t worry.” He touched the side of my chin affectionately and winked.

Even a nuclear bomb wouldn’t have been able to get her out of the Lake District. In fact, she was probably sat on her cosy living room sofa in front of a log fire right this minute. The idea that we would soon be sitting next to her warmed me from the inside out.

The feeling didn’t last long. Liam swore under his breath.

“What is it?” I watched him shaking his head at the dashboard and leaned over to take a look at what it was making him react in such a way. The petrol gauge.

“I’m not sure this is going to get us to Cumbria. It’s only got just over half a tank, and we’re still at least 3 hours drive away from your sisters.”

“Bollocks. What do we do? Will the fuel pumps work?”

“Not without electricity they won’t. We might have to syphon it. I guess that most of the cars on the roads are empty because of this very reason. We were lucky to find one with enough fuel the first time.” I tried to think about where we would have better luck.

“Let’s not worry about it yet. Wait until the fuel light comes on.” He rolled his eyes and blew out his frustration in a snigger.

“Typical woman, you, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?” He didn’t repeat it.

Rosa squirmed in the back seat. We’d laid her out flat and belted her in as best we could. We hadn’t seen anyone else driving on the roads since we’d left the Bunker, so I didn’t mind too much about her not being in a car seat.

For the next two hours, I focused on Rosa. Her temperature had risen again, but the paracetamol was no longer having any effect. We’d had to pull over twice for her to be physically sick, each time she retched so much that she could barely catch her breath.

To my dismay the bottle I had fed her that morning and the one she had half finished after her bath had both come back up. She became weak and floppy. I ended up with her lying across my lap and supported her head. I sang to her and stroked her hair, but there was no respite from her restlessness.

It tore me up; I didn’t know what I should do. We were getting so close to Kate now but perhaps our time would have been better spent going back to find a doctor. Or to the Bunker to string up Lynda and find out what they had done to my baby. I would kill her without hesitation if I ever saw her again. I tried to keep my breath steady for Rosa so that she could take her comfort from my stillness but tears were beginning to roll down my face. She had been ill before. A sickness bug, all kids got them, and they’re awful, but this was something else. I knew that she was fighting whatever it was that attacked her body which was what made her so lethargic.

When she started to shake violently, I shouted at Liam to pull over. Never in all my life had I felt so utterly useless. I tried to cover her body in blankets and keep her warm, but it didn’t help. All I could do was try to soothe her with my voice and hold her. She wasn’t communicating with me anymore, her eyes were rolling back into her head, and she became unresponsive. I took her pulse and realising how weak it was I readied myself to start CPR.

“How far away are we from your sisters?” Liam asked.

“I’m not sure maybe 40 minutes, an hour? I think we are right on the edge of the national park boundary.” I tried to concentrate. What could I give her to get her to Kate’s? She would know any local hospitals or a doctor that was still practising. If it were happening anywhere, it would be up there, surely. That place was crawling with rich doctors.

I gathered Rosa up in my arms and handed her into Liam’s.

“Hold her and check her pulse if it gets any slower shout me.” I ran round to the boot and pulled out the medical box I had taken from the nursery cupboard. I rifled through it, desperately searching for something, anything that would save my little girl’s life out here. Then I saw it on the floor of the car; it had fallen out of my pocket. The Jnr. Epi-pen. I had no idea if it would help her or not I assumed the Jnr meant that it was designed for children it was in a pre-school after all.

“Elizabeth!” Shit. “She isn’t breathing.” Shit. “What should I do?” In a split second, he was beside me, holding my daughter who lay across his arms like a tiny lifeless doll. You inject it into the thigh for adults; it might be the bum for kids?

“Lie her face down in the boot.” He did it, I pulled down her little leggings and shoved the Epi-pen needle into the fleshy cheek of her bottom. “Please, Please, Please!” I begged whichever higher being that would listen to let my baby live. I flipped her over and waited to hear her breathe and psyched myself up to begin CPR on her tiny chest. Until a sharp intake of breath and then an almighty scream escaped from Rosa’s mouth. I grabbed her and rolled her into the recovery position.

I had no idea what I was doing. Tears streaming down my face blurred my vision. I spoke to Rosa trying to get her to focus on my voice, but her eyes darted all over the place. She shivered from the rush of adrenaline surging through her.

Too late I realised, that even a junior dose from an Epi-Pen was probably far too large for her small body. It had done what I needed it to, and frankly, that was all I cared about.

“We need to get her to a hospital. If you see a sign for a medical centre or something on the way to Kate’s, then we need to go there.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere Elizabeth. We won’t find one. Your sister’s our best bet now but you’ll have to guide me. I’ve never been here before.” I picked up Rosa and lay her down across the backseat and then ran around to the driver’s side slamming the boot shut as I went.

“Shadow. In. Liam. In with Rosa.” They both did as they were directed and I drove. I remembered the route to Kate’s as soon as we were at the right junction and things started to become familiar. I knew where I was. Thankfully it hadn’t changed. Nothing seemed to change drastically here. The beautiful scenery and rolling hills were in stark contrast to the flurry of dark thoughts taking over my head.

“How much time will that thing buy us?” I didn’t dare to answer; I didn’t even look at him. The truth was I didn’t know.

30

I FELT SICK with fear as we turned up yet another country lane, leading away from the towns and further into Lakeland. Deep down I knew Liam was right. We were only getting further away from the medical centres. With each turn into the drystone walled lanes we risked Rosa’s life, but I had no way of knowing where else to take her. I only knew where Kate lived and how to get there. I knew very little about the local area. We didn’t tend to venture into the towns when I visited. Kate actively avoided them, instead insisting that she preferred the tranquillity of living off the beaten track.

Out of nowhere with a stutter and a lurch, the SUV spluttered and then finally ground to a halt in the middle of the road.

“Fuck!” I slammed the heels of my hands into the steering wheel. I looked across at Liam. He was struggling to think of something to say that would make me feel better and I knew it. There was nothing he could say to make this less of a disaster than it already was. I didn’t have time to be comforted. I didn’t need it. This wasn’t about me. We needed to keep moving.

“Get out.” I bellowed as I flew out and around the car, opening all of the doors as I went. I quickly considered Liam and made a judgement. “How fast can you run?”

“Er, I dunno. I can run but I dunno how fast. Ten miles in an hour or something.” He held out Rosa to me and glared back utterly baffled. I took Rosa from him.

“That will do. I need you to run up this lane. In about a mile there’s a fork in the road, keep left. After about another mile or so you will see a gravelled lane at a 90-degree angle to the road, it’s opposite a postbox. Take the turn and run straight until you see a big farmhouse on your right. It’s called Chakra House. There’ll be signs.” He looked shocked. “Liam! Are you taking this in?” He nodded. “My sister’s name is Kate tell her you are here with Lizzy and Rosa. Tell her I need her to get a doctor or bring a car to take us to a doctor. I will start making my way to you, but I’ll be much slower carrying Rosa. When you find her come back and collect us as quickly as you can.” He stood there with his mouth open. “RUN!” And he did.

Shadow was confused he wasn’t sure if he should be running away from us with Liam or staying by our side. He kept starting off up the road where he could still see Liam in the distance but then would change his mind and trot back. I gathered any useful bits from what was left of the medical kit and shoved them in my pockets.

Shadow seemed relieved when I began to jog with Rosa. He ran ahead of us. Probably hoping that he would be able to catch up with Liam. When I looked, I couldn’t see him. That was a good thing I reminded myself. Rosa was still awake and breathing heavily in my arms. I noted that her legs had developed a twitch. I tried not to panic over it. Right now we needed to get her to my sisters. It could be the effects of the adrenaline wearing off, but just in case I passed my hand over her head. Worryingly her temperature had started to rise again.

Shadow trotted ahead with his tail rhythmically swaying side to side as he went. My arms were in agony. They ached so much from holding Rosa. I stole glances at her face as we moved and tried to steer my mind away from how close I was coming to losing her.

My heart was in my mouth. I had taken a considerable risk bringing her here, so far from everything. I was a fool not to take her straight to an emergency centre. There had to be one somewhere that we could have driven to. I hadn’t tried hard enough.

I had to keep stopping and slowing down. Shifting Rosa’s weight to my other hip and catching my breath it felt like we’d been on the road for half an hour when I saw the old blue pick up truck driving towards us over the crest of the hill ahead. I could make out that Liam was driving, but he was alone. Kate wasn’t with him. My heart sank. She must have already left.

I didn’t know any of her friends up here. We hadn’t been very close in the time since I had fallen pregnant. It had been weeks since the last time we had spoken on the phone.

Liam pulled up the truck at the side of the Road and jumped out quickly taking Rosa out of my hands and putting her in the cab with him. He was in such a rush he didn’t speak until we were both in the front.

“You were much closer than I expected you to be.” He turned the car so fast I thought we were going to reverse into the dry stone wall behind us. “You need to see this house. She has everything. Is she a prepper?”

“A What? Liam, where is Kate?”

“She said that we need something. I told her that Rosa was sick and she asked me a bunch of questions about what was wrong with her. I said that we didn’t know what she had but that we thought she might have been poisoned by radiation.” I watched him intently as he said his piece and then looked around and realised that Shadow wasn’t in the car.

“Shadow! He isn’t here. We left him.” I turned to get a look behind us but couldn’t see much through the back of the cab’s window. Liam did the same.

“I don’t believe it. What a champ!” He said. “He’s running behind us I can see him all the way back down the lane. Look in the wing mirror.” I looked back trying to make him out, and there he was trotting along in the distance behind us.

That dog had grown on me faster than any other living thing. Shadow’s loyalty to us was touching. He’d adopted Rosa and me as his family. He hadn’t even left us when we were stranded at the side of the road and had nothing but our company to give him.

I watched him in the distance until we were turning up the gravel track towards Kate’s house. It amazed me to see that it too hadn’t changed. I jumped down from the pickup and cradled Rosa turning to make towards the house. Liam shouted to me from the driver’s window.

“I’m going back for Shadow. She said it wouldn’t take very long. I’m worried he’ll miss the turn and get lost.”

“Okay.” Liam skidded back out of the driveway and disappeared while I carried Rosa towards the house. It turns out that Shadow had been busy growing on someone else too.

“Where the hell has Aunty Katie gone?” I could smell the fire in the sitting room before I walked through the front door. The logs crackled as I walked through and lay Rosa down on the sofa. I retook her temperature and monitored her pulse. I had to steady myself as I discovered that she was showing the same signs as before when she had stopped breathing. Leaving her semi-unconscious on the sofa. I ran into the kitchen to get her a glass of water. I racked my brain to think if there would be anything in the house that I could use to help her.

She had already had double the maximum dose of liquid paracetamol I couldn’t give her anymore. The Epi-Pen was now useless. Utterly beside myself, I filled a glass of water and rushed back to the place where I had left her. She was beginning to shake again. I watched over my daughter, unable to help her. Silently I begged Kate to hurry back with someone that could save her.

31

“WHERE IS SHE?” It was Kate. Finally. I let out some of the tension that I’d been holding since we arrived. I could hear her voice floating towards us through the front door. She was barking questions at Liam who walked in with Shadow behind her.

I’m not sure how long I’d sat there rocking Rosa on my lap. She hadn’t got much worse but was still in pretty bad shape. Kate barged in through the doorway of the sitting room, shoving her way towards me. I stood up to greet her.

“Did you bring a doctor?” She was on her own. Kate handed me a bottle of pills and hugged me so hard around the neck I thought I would choke.

“There is no one like that out here Liz. She needs to take these. They work. I had to do it myself last month.” I stared stupidly at the bottle which she had thrust into my hand. “It’s potassium iodide. If it’s only a mild case of poisoning, then those will soak up any of the radiation in her thyroid. Her body will excrete it safely through her urine.”

I sprang to my feet and ran into the kitchen, slamming all of the drawers around the kitchen before I remembered where Kate kept the cutlery. I grabbed two spoons and crushed four of the pills between them until they were a powder which I could mix into a small measure of water. That was the only way I could think of which would encourage her to swallow the medication. I squirted another 5 ml dose of Calpol in there. I needed to bring her temperature back down, and this was the only way I knew how. These were extraordinary circumstances. I tried not to think how much of the stuff she had taken in the past 24 hours.

I darted back through to the sitting room where Liam was holding Rosa upright over his shoulder, trying to rouse her from her sleepy state physically. Seeing her like this was excruciating. I was petrified. We kept her in a sitting position, propped up on pillows and opened her mouth. Carefully I used the syringe to give her the mixture. It took her a while to swallow the strange tasting substance. It must have been disgusting because she used the little energy she still had to turn her face away. Something she usually did when I was trying to make her eat anything green. It took us a few minutes, but eventually, the syringe which I held over her mouth was empty. I looked over to Liam and then at Kate.

“What do we do now?” Kate shook her head and forced a tiny smile.

“We wait, Lizzy.” I closed my eyes and moved so that I was sitting on the sofa with Rosa laid over my chest so that I could keep a close eye on her breathing. I wanted her close to me in case this stuff had an adverse effect. I had just given my child drugs recommended by a yoga instructor.

“Katie, where exactly did you get these and how did you know what she needed?”

“One of my private yoga clients has hyperthyroidism.” I had no clue what she was talking about and stared blankly back at her. “I got caught out in the rain just as I was finishing work on the polytunnels. As a result, I had a mild case of radiation poisoning. When I looked it up, it said that I needed to get potassium iodide. A medicine which is also commonly prescribed for people with an overactive thyroid.”

“You have the internet?” Kate gave me a look. “You said you looked it up?” She laughed at me. Shadow got up sensing my excitement.

“In a book Lizzy. I looked it up in a book. Remember those?” She pointed to the wall surrounding the fireplace which was covered end to end by bookshelves.

“So that’s where you went. To your client’s house?” feeling sheepish I needed to change the subject. Kate continued to sit on the arm of her chair and stare into the fire.

I hated it when she made me feel like her kid sister, which of course I was but that didn’t mean I had to like it. She was a yoga teacher, and I was a government minister for God’s sake! Well, I used to be. I suppose now both of us were out of a job.

It was the first chance I had to look at her properly since she had bounded in with the pills. Kate looked good considering what the rest of us had gone through. She was well fed and seemed to be perfectly healthy. But then, she always had glowed with health. Apparently, that’s what happens to you when you spend five hours a day sweating in a yoga studio. It was a bit annoying. I was reasonably sure that if I bothered to look in a mirror something resembling a bag of shit would be staring back at me.

“How is she?” Liam looked over at us from his spot on the floor by the fire. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Rosa since he had walked in.

“She seems much calmer and her temperature is coming down, but it’s hard to know if that was the paracetamol or the other stuff.” Shadow was still pacing the floor between the three of us. Unsure of where his place was. In a sort of strange show of loyalty, he had compromised by alternating between sitting at Liam’s feet and then walking over to lick the bottom of Rosa’s.

Liam got up off the floor and moved to sit beside me on the sofa, which pleased Shadow, who came to rest on the floor in between our legs.

“Good boy Shadow. Poor thing he must be exhausted after the last couple of days.” Liam scratched behind the dog’s ear. Shadow showing his gratitude rolled over to rest his head on Liam’s knee.

Kate walked out to the kitchen and reappeared holding a bottle of red wine and three glasses.

“Lizzy you look like you need a drink.” I laughed.

“You say the sweetest things.” I agreed and took a glass without a second thought. The three of us spent most of the evening talking about what had happened in the days after the bombings. We shared stories of the things we had seen that couldn’t be unseen. Spoke of the choices we had been forced to make to ensure our survival. Ones which we would carry with us for the rest of our lives.

Kate told us about an army which was forming up here in the northern counties. She had some connection to one of the officers in command and knew quite a bit about their operation. She told us that there had been a massive influx of people travelling up from the South in the first few weeks after the bombings.

Whole families who had managed to get out of the cities in the thirty-minute evacuation window had made their way up to the North of England and Scotland. Thinking probably that here the bombings would have been less severe. They’d been wrong. Every large city across the country had was devastated by the attacks. Because of the amount of farmland and livestock here in the lake district, the local people were keen to defend it. Until they quickly realised that those eating the crops were dying. Then they started rationing food from the stores, the supermarkets and barns which were full of produce. People who had been caught looting were hung from trees in Cumbria.

I shivered as I recalled the night in the supermarket. I had been so close to being caught stealing the box of Rosa’s formula. That could have been me hanging from a tree. I wondered how many babies might have depended on that baby formula I had taken.

“Where are the government? I don’t understand it. We were all briefed on the plans in place for this sort of thing. This radio silence, it doesn’t make any sense.” Liam looked at me confused.

“What do you mean we were briefed?” My sister jumped in before I could correct my mistake.

“Didn’t she tell you what she does? She’s a member of parliament! Sorry I mean, she was. Now she’s on sabbatical to have a baby. She was the shadow housing minister for the Labour Party.”

“Is she joking?” He sounded angry. His eyes bore a hole into the side of my head. I turned my head slowly and looked at him. “After everything I’ve told you, and you couldn’t tell me that? What else don’t I know?” I was surprised that he sounded so hurt.

“You can hardly blame me for keeping it quiet; you’re the one who told me to. Remember you said that anyone with a useful profession would be used as currency in the capital.”

“Well yes, but I didn’t think you…” Kate interrupted him.

“Ah no you didn’t think she would be useful, did you? This late thirties washed up stay at home mum, carting a baby around the country. She couldn’t be worth anything. Showing your true colours now!” The wine was going to Kate’s head.

“Oi, watch your mouth.” I threw a cushion at her head and just narrowly missed her wine glass. Shame. “Less of the late thirties thank you.”

“Lizzy, 37 is late.”

“I’m 36 you cow, and it is most definitely mid.” Liam opened his mouth to speak, but I held up my hand in a warning. “Don’t you say a word.” He motioned zipping his mouth shut and just looked at me. His stare lasted longer than was comfortable and I had to look away. I was beginning to think he might be drunk.

Maybe he would be making plans to leave us tomorrow once he knew that Rosa would be alright. I was starting to believe that she was on the mend. It had been nearly six hours since giving her the first dose of potassium iodide and her fever hadn’t returned. I had given her a second syringe four hours later. I was planning to provide her with another treatment for the night just to be on the safe side.

“Kate can I make up a bed for Rosa and I down here? I need to give her another dose in two hours and I don’t want to leave her.” Kate shook her head and bent down to haul me up off the floor. I had forgotten how strong she was.

“No. Come on, let me stay with Rosa. I’ve still got the stamina to stay up all night. You guys go and get some sleep. You both look like you’re about to collapse. The spare room hasn’t been touched since you were last here Liz so just go ahead and use that. You remember how to pull out the sofa bed right?” It felt so good to have an entirely regular conversation.

“Yes. Thank you so much, Kate. No more wine!” She held up her hand in a girl guide’s salute and hugged me.

Shadow walked over to lie on the floor under the sofa where Rosa lay sleeping peacefully. I went over to check her pulse it had finally returned to normal. I bent down to stroke Shadow’s head and kissed Rosa on the forehead.

I had been right to come here. My sister would look out for Rosa and me, and in return we would look out for her. That’s what we needed to survive this, a family. That’s all we need.

32

I REACHED THE top of the stairs and saw that Liam was following behind me. I smiled at him over the top of my shoulder.

“Where are you going?”

“Well, I’m doing as I’m told. Coming to check out that sofa bed.” I laughed.

“We’ve got to set it up first. I’ll warn you now it’s a bit of a bastard.”

“Well, we could always not bother. I heard your sister mention that it’s right next to a nice big double bed. I suppose that one’s yours?” I could tell he was a little drunk by the way he spoke, but I’d be lying if I said that I felt sober. Luckily for me, I had two months stuck in a tiny room filled with wine to build up my tolerance. The way Liam was acting it didn’t look like he’d had a drink in years.

“Are you drunk Mr…” I stopped. I had realised that I didn’t know his last name. “Mr? I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” I held out my hand. “Elizabeth Clarke” Liam swatted my hand away as we stumbled through the doorway into Kate’s spare room.

“Liar!” I was shocked. His face crumpled into a sad little boys. “Everyone who knows you calls you Lizzy.” I laughed out loud realising why he’d looked so hurt.

“Sorry. How do you do? My name is Elizabeth Clarke, but you may call me Lizzy.” We shook hands.

“Is that better?”

“Yes. I like Lizzy.” He grinned.

“A-hem, so? What’s your name?” He sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed his legs. Wiggling his eyebrow in a mocked attempt at seduction, he turned to me and responded.

“What do you want it to be?” I burst out laughing and fell on to the sofa opposite him.

“That’s my favourite film! You like it?”

“Love it.” He sat up and crooked his finger. “come here and I’ll whisper it to you.” My stomach flipped. It might have been the wine or the relief that Rosa seemed to be getting better. Or only that we were safely tucked away in my sister’s home, but I didn’t feel guilty as I slunk over to join him.

When I got within his reach, he scooped his arm behind me and pulled me on to his lap. I felt nervous but at the same time a feeling of excitement bubbled up inside me. This moment felt so different to the awkwardness of our contrived meetings in the Bunker. He was so at ease and cheeky, not at all what he had been like before. For that reason, I wondered if he was messing around. That any minute he’d get up and pull out the sofa bed to go to sleep.

Pulling me closer, he placed a hand behind my head and leaned me back towards the bed. Slowly lowering his lips down to whisper in my ear. The fresh stubble on his chin roughly scraped my neck as he moved his mouth to speak.

“My name is Liam Finnegan. Pleased to make your acquaintance Lizzy.” He said my name in his now familiar, melodic Irish tone and his mouth moved around to kiss my neck.

Extending his leg out behind him, he kicked the door shut with his foot. He stood up and threw me into the middle of the bed as easily as if I were a sack of flour. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me all night and now they sparkled with his desire. I didn’t need any prompting this time. My t-shirt was on the floor within seconds. He started to laugh.

“Well, that was much easier than the first time.” My eagerness had taken me by surprise. I blushed but don’t think he noticed. The room was lit naturally by the fading daylight which shone in through the window.

Liam crawled over and knelt up on the bed in front of me. He dropped his hands to his waist and grabbed the hem of his t-shirt. I sniggered to myself as it joined mine on the floor. The view in this room was only getting better.

His hands lightly cupped my face and drew my lips up to meet his so that I was kneeling too. Our bodies pressed together. The naked skin of my stomach was touching his. At first, very softly, he gently brushed his lips against mine and then kissed me hungrily. As though remembering himself he pulled away and lay down beside me. He lent up on his elbow and looked down at me.

“I need to know something.” He said.

“What is it?”

“In the bunker. You kissed me, I’ve never been kissed like that and ever since I haven’t been able to get you out of my head. You blew me away. I wanted you to kiss me like that again every time I looked at you.” I was flattered and a little surprised that I had left such an impression on him at all with everything that had gone on.

I knew the kiss. It was the one I had perfected in college, and I had known what I was doing when I had done it. Back in the Bunker, it got the reaction we needed.

“You mean like this?” I ran my fingernails from behind the top of his ears to the nape of his neck and gently pulled his head towards mine letting our noses touch. Very slowly I tilted my chin up so that I could grab the fattest part of his bottom lip between my teeth and very gently tugged as I let it slip out of my grasp. I kissed his mouth. Then with a flicker of my tongue, I wet my lips and parted his. He began to join my rhythm and I pulled away again. This time running the tip of my tongue along the inside edge of his top lip. Liam groaned with wanting and I was empowered.

It could have been the wine or the good-looking man that was holding me, but a part of me which I had thought of as forgotten woke up. Emboldened I bit his lower lip again. He responded with the same animalistic lust I had seen in him that first time.

He rolled me on top of him with my legs either side. Both of his hands clasped my ass and pulled me down on top of his crotch. Furiously he kissed me until my lips tingled with overuse. His tongue danced inside my mouth moving in time with mine. Stopping only to snatch breaths in between.

His hands moved up past my waist, and he trailed them up my bare sides leaving a trail of invisible fireworks as he went. I caught my breath as his fingers reached my bra. Quickly deciding that over the bra action just wasn’t good enough for him. He leaned up to unfasten the back. As he pulled it away, he caught my nipple in his mouth and sent a shiver down my spine which resonated all the way down to my toes.

Desperately not wanting to miss a thing. I tried to take in the sensations echoing inside of my body. Liam’s hands were everywhere. He stroked my skin like he had been reunited with a lost love. From the way he touched me I knew that Liam was an experienced lover, and yet he drank me in. His mouth explored every curve, every crease of my torso closely following his gliding fingers. I was both overwhelmed and in awe of him.

I had never had someone pore over my body the way that Liam did. I felt like a million dollars. My hands gripped the meaty part of his broad shoulders as he playfully nibbled my skin getting lower and lower. As he worked his way over every part of my upper body, I could feel him underneath me. His crotch was getting harder and began to strain against the material of his jeans.

By the time Liam tossed me over on to my back, I was desperate to get him out of his clothes. He undid the top button of my Levi’s and teasing, pulled the waistband apart to let the zipper slowly open.

The action brought me back to reality. I remembered the pants I had on were not particularly flattering ones and decided that they would be better off than on. The second Liam turned around to throw my jeans on the floor I scrabbled out of them and flung them behind the headboard of the bed. Never to be seen again.

“Woah! I was planning to take my time. Is someone getting impatient? You like getting your own way don’t you?” My cheeks flushed, but everything he did felt so amazing that I knew I would quickly get over the shame.

Affirming his earlier statement, I grabbed for the buckle of his belt and began to unthread it. Taking back control, he snatched the end of his belt out of my hands and pulled it. With one swift movement, it slid out of the remaining belt loops. He hung it over the back of the headboard behind me. My hands were already busy with the buttons of his fly as he discarded his belt. They popped open with ease, and his jeans were off in one fluid motion.

He tugged at my hair winding it playfully between his fingers as his mouth caressed my neck and chest. With his weight on top of me, I could feel his erection pressing into my stomach. The heat of it burned through his boxers which made me whimper in anticipation. I couldn’t wait anymore. The ferocity of my lust for him was alarming. He was a man I had known for less than a month. Yet, I ached for him in a way I never had for anyone. What’s more, he knew the effect he was having on me. I could tell by the expression on his face.

Liam got up on all fours above me on the bed and looked down.

“I need to even the playing field. I’ve been thinking; you’ve already had me at your mercy twice. In fact that first time I’d been drugged.” He reached up for his belt from the headboard.

“Well that wasn’t my fault!” I giggled. A shiver ran through me as I saw what he was about to do.

“I don’t like to be interrupted while I’m working.” Taking both of my wrists easy in his one hand he looped the belt around them and then around the frame of the bed. I lay there, bound and speechless.

He scooted down the bed until he reached my navel. Then began kissing softly and occasionally sucking on the flesh of my stomach. With every new movement, he inched down, growing closer to the one place he had not yet touched. His breath warmed my skin as his mouth brushed over my curves and tingled as his breath caressed it.

The anticipation of his touch made goosebumps raise up on my skin, like a path of pleasure which guided him across my body. His hands ran down the insides of my thighs all the way down to my feet. Making each tiny hair on my body stand on end.

As the lusty heat of his mouth reached the part of my body that was so desperate for his attention. I gasped. It was only a matter of seconds before waves of pleasure began to build, rolling through my body. I threw my head back and used the end of the belt restricting my hands to bite down as I held back the sound of my release.

He could feel the tension in my body as my orgasm built but it only served to spur him on. He hooked his wrists around my hips and held me down. Increasing the pressure of his warm circling tongue until I was bucking against him. The intensity was too much. I wasn’t sure that I could take any more of this and keep our passion discreet.

I was thinking about kicking him off to get some relief when he knelt up and grabbed my waist positioning me in the centre of the bed. In his gruff Irish accent, he whispered.

“I wanted you all this time. And now you want me, so I’m going to fuck you like I should have done when I found you.” My body twitched with excitement; this was it. He lunged up towards the headboard above me, and in an instant, he had released my hands. As soon as they were free, I clawed at his boxers removing the final obstacle in our way. Hungrily he pushed up against the throbbing between my legs and obediently I opened them for him. He looked into my eyes as the length of him slid deliciously inside me, radiating heat throughout my body.

There was fire between us. Both of us were covered in sweat as we moved against each other. Starting off slowly he plunged into me over and over, but always with meaning and worked up to a steady pace. My legs now out of my control began to shake as I found myself coming for the second time. Inviting it, I clamped my legs around his waist as he drove into me, each time never losing eye contact. With each movement he slid deeper and held me closer than the last. Until just as I felt my orgasm fading, he exploded into me. He held on to me so tightly that his fingers pressed down hard into my flesh. I was sure there would be bruises the next day.

An evil thrill shivered through me. Knowing in that moment, I didn’t care if Liam got me pregnant. Sex like that was worth the risk.

33

I WOKE UP early. Being as careful as possible to be quiet, I rolled out of the double bed and left Liam where he slept. A horrible knot had begun to form in the pit of my stomach since the moment I had opened my eyes and saw him lying beside me. Last night. Holy crap.

I had to get out of there. Pulling my t-shirt over my head, I left the room and turned to close the door, willing it not to creak and wake everyone up. I almost jumped out of my skin when I turned back to see Kate who sat watching me from the top of the stairs.

“Good morning. Sleep well?” Raising an eyebrow, she smirked and gave me a look that let me know that in no uncertain terms, she knew what we had got up to last night.

“Shhh.” I grabbed the back of her shirt and escorted her forcibly down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Where is Rosa?”

“Don’t worry she’s fine. She was in with me last night. I told you I’d keep an eye on her. You’ll be relieved to know her temperature is back to normal and has been since midnight. But I think we should keep her on the iodide solution for a few days until she is back to her normal self. She’s fast asleep upstairs. Shadow hasn’t left her side all night.” Kate picked up a mug from the kitchen worktop and looked back at me. “She looks like you.” Cradling the mug in both hands, she walked out onto the front porch.

“What’s that smell? Is that coffee?” Kate smiled and nodded. “Please, I’m desperate,” I begged her. “I can’t remember the last time I had a proper coffee.”

“Only if you promise to spill the beans on the dish of the decade upstairs.” She giggled.

“Shut up Katie. It’s not funny. I feel awful.” She scowled at me and shook her head turning to go back into the house. Hopefully, to bring me coffee.

With everything that had gone on I had expected there to be some change as I walked down from the veranda at the front of the house. It wasn’t until I got out of the front driveway and along to the side of the farmhouse that I was able to see the additions to the surrounding garden. There was now a somewhat haphazard but recent looking construction of a chicken coop complete with chickens. And near to the old barn a couple of polytunnels over raised beds lined up side by side. Kate always did like to be a step ahead of things. I could just imagine her braving the dangers of radiation poisoning to get these set up before the fallout had reached her over here.

“Here you are hussy.” Kate handed me the coffee and nodded over to a couple of old chairs around by the kitchen door. We walked over to them as I sipped my mug of sweet tasting black coffee. How well she knew me. “So why do you feel bad? I take it you hadn’t done that before last night?”

I thought about what I should say before I said it and then I remembered who it was I was speaking to.

“I found out Matt was dead less than two weeks ago Katie. I’m going straight to hell.”

“Don’t be ridiculous Liz. Look around. We’re already there. I’d assumed you two were a thing. If I’d known he was a free agent, I would have set him up a bed in my room!” I looked at her and we both giggled. “You’ve been on your own for the best part of three months. Looking after Rosa, keeping you both alive. You’ve done an amazing job. You need something. Something to keep you going. You know? Give yourself a break.”

I stared into my coffee.

“I know all that, but then I think about Matt. I mean a part of me knew that he could be dead, but I had to try to believe he was out there somewhere. Looking for us. Then this happened.” Without realising it, my hand moved to my heart and rested on my chest.

“When I had to break Liam out of the bunker. We were forced into a position that I would never have put myself in, but It changed me. The way I feel about him.”

“In a good way though right?” I nodded. “Oh, Lizzy. I know that look. You’ve got it bad haven’t you?” She sniggered.

“Yes. I think I have. But I still shouldn’t have slept with him last night. It was that bloody wine. We were both a bit drunk. Him more than me I think. Oh God.”

“What?”

“What if he regrets it? I feel so stupid. I should’ve known better.” I put my head in my hands.

“Was it bad?” I looked up at her. She began to laugh.

“From the look on your face right now I would say that it wasn’t bad at all!” I punched her in the arm playfully, and she returned the favour but twice as hard.

“Oww!”

“Ladies! Please, can someone explain to me where you found coffee? I could smell it from all the way upstairs.” Liam stuck his head around the back door from the kitchen. Both Kate and I looked flustered at one another. How long had he been stood there listening to our conversation without us noticing? Kate recovered first.

“Come and Sit down and I will bring you out a mug.” Kate patted her chair inviting him to take it as she got up and gave me a sly wink as she turned to walk past me and back into the house. I sipped my coffee and held it up close to my nose using it to cover the bottom half of my face.

“So…” Liam sat down beside me. “Last night.” He glanced over at me. He furrowed his forehead.

“I know-” Our eyes met and then immediately he turned away. I couldn’t bear it, the knot in my stomach tightened. He regretted it. I wouldn’t allow myself to be made a fool of.

“I’m sorry. I was drunk. I don’t know what came over me. It won’t happen again.”

“Oh right. Me too.” I couldn’t look him in the eye.

Instead, I stared down at the hands fidgeting in his lap. All of a sudden I found him hugely annoying. His inability to end the awkward silence infuriated me. Where was the confident guy who’d been so in control last night? I don’t know what I wanted to happen between us, but it wasn’t this.

“I’m going to check on Rosa.” I drained my cup and swung it in the crook of my finger as I walked back into the kitchen and left him outside.

When I walked back into the house, there was a noticeable breeze coming from the hall. I walked through the kitchen and could see that the front door had been left open. I moved closer. I could hear the sharp tone of Kate’s voice drifting in from the outside.

“Come on she’s just got here! Can’t she have a few more days to rest? Her daughter is ill. She needs some time.” Standing slightly back from the doorway, I peered out onto the drive. Kate stood in-between two official-looking men dressed in khaki combat uniforms.

“There isn’t any time Kate, you know the situation we’re in. You told me that you would inform us as soon as she had made contact.” The taller of the two men looked pissed off.

“And how am I supposed to do that Ben, start a bushfire? You didn’t even leave me a radio.”

They were all quite animated. Kate was upset. It sounded an awful lot like they had been referring to me. The shortest of the two soldiers pointed towards the house and started heading straight towards me. Seeing me in the hallway, they didn’t seem at all surprised.

“Good morning Mrs Clarke. I am Major Benjamin Bradley. If you would care to join me in the sitting room. I need to speak with you. It is quite urgent. I believe you are new to the area?” I was confused this stranger I had never seen before in my life was speaking to me by name. This Ben character had just walked into my sister’s house as though he owned it. My sister followed behind him and gave me an apologetic look.

“Best to do as he says Liz. Ben will explain everything. Sorry. Shall I get Liam?” The man looked at Kate and signalled his agreement. What the actual fuck was going on here? I stared after Kate as she went out to find Liam leaving me with Ben.

“You arrived yesterday? We were informed by your sister when we did the census that you were in the government. Is this correct?” The man sat down in the armchair beside the unlit fire and gestured for me to sit down on the sofa opposite him.

I did.

“It is.” My muscle memory from hundreds of political meetings was beginning to kick in. I sat upright with my legs crossed at the ankle and tucked them neatly to the side of the sofa. Hands clasped politely in my lap. Old habits.

I began to weigh up this soldier before me. He was a well-set man in his mid 40’s with an olive complexion which reminded me of a Greek. His eyes were so dark brown they almost looked black. A sombre expression cemented on his face. I wondered if he had ever known a moment of joy in his life.

“Are you well? Kate said your daughter is sick?”

“I am thank you, and my daughter seems to be recovering well now thanks to my sister.”

“Yes. Kate is a most resourceful woman. It’s a damn shame there aren’t more out there like her.” I was surprised by the fondness with which he spoke about my sister. This man must be the soldier she had alluded to a connection with yesterday, although he didn’t seem to be anything like her type at all. Too old for a start.

His companion stood by the front door and kept looking out onto the road. He was visibly straining his neck to keep one ear on what was going on here in the sitting room.

Just then Liam and Kate walked through the door and came to sit with us and gave their full attention to the man my sister knew as Ben.

“Coffee?” Kate asked him. He looked over at her smiled and shook his head. So he was capable of some happiness then.

“Elizabeth. I’m afraid I am here to ask for your assistance. I take it that your sister has not yet fully explained the system which we are implementing in this part of the county?” I shook my head. I felt like an idiot and probably looked like one. I needed to think of something to say.

“Ah, yes. I mean no. Sorry.” I looked over at Kate. She rolled her eyes. “She hasn’t explained anything to me about the local effort to mobilise society. We only arrived yesterday, and as my daughter had been taken ill. Well as you can imagine that has kept us all busy.” I caught Liam’s gaze as I looked over at Kate and felt my skin turning pink.

“I did say that if she arrived, I would contact you, Major. Quite honestly I had expected you would give her a few days to allow her some time to recover from the journey.” Kate’s behaviour towards Ben baffled me slightly she appeared flustered in his presence. My sister didn’t get flustered usually she was the calm one.

“Ben is it?” He nodded. “Why don’t you begin by explaining to me what it is you have organised and how exactly I can help you?”

“My purpose here is simply this. You Madam, are the highest-ranking government official we have been able to confirm as alive. We do not know of any other members of parliament surviving the nuclear strike. We have received intel via a group of surviving British army officers in the southern region of the country, which I am afraid, has brought us to the understanding that the nuclear bunker in the city has been taken over by armed civilians. It should have housed the Prime Minister and other government officials from Westminster.”

“How would that be possible? Surely there were officers stationed at the site?”

“There should have been, but it appears they may also have taken refuge inside. The civilians locked it down before the official personnel had arrived. There wasn’t enough time to get them to safety before the first bombs dropped.”

“Are you telling me that every bunker available to the government was shut down by civilians within the first 10 minutes of an Emergency Evacuation warning? I’m sorry but that is quite a stretch of the imagination.”

“Indeed Madam, I quite agree. We believe that the groups of civilians who have overtaken the bunkers in the capital had prior knowledge of the attacks. With each new piece of information, we are concluding that this has been a planned effort to disable the country’s government. Terrorism by an invisible hand as it were.”

“Interesting. I had assumed that this had all started because of some overzealous idiot overseas pressing a button which triggered other countries to retaliate.” And thus causing worldwide destruction. The thought that this could have been the responsibility of an organisation was extremely disturbing.

Ben continued.

“It appears not. With the lack of government and with our countries defences on their knees it has fallen to those of us remaining to forge a way through.” He gave me a stern look. “So far it appears that the only Army base to have been left undamaged is mine. Here in Cumbria. It is unclear how they have missed us, but for whatever reason, they did.”

“I see.” He paused before continuing.

“Which of course means that it has fallen to me as the commander of our remaining army to take control of the country until I can find the highest ranking politician.”

“Well I’m not sure that I can help you with that Major, I wouldn’t know where you could find them. If the representatives were unable to get into the bunker or out of the city, it’s unlikely that they survived. I passed through the outskirts of London myself. It’s hard to believe that a soul inside the M25 survived that day.”

“Yes Madam. That is why we are here. Speaking with you.” He fell silent. Kate and Liam were staring at me, I couldn’t get my head around what it was the Major was trying to say.

“I don’t follow.”

“There were twelve members of parliament not in the capital that day, nine of them are confirmed dead or missing. You are the only one alive to my knowledge and is at this moment, available.” My jaw dropped.

“You can’t be serious? I haven’t stepped foot in parliament in over a year. There must be someone more suited to the job?”

“Madam I am afraid that you are the only elected official available to us at this time. By rights you are the one obligated to lead us through this, albeit difficult time, as a country.” Kate placed a fresh cup of coffee in my hands. I could smell the sugar before I had even brought it to my lips. She had sweetened it to help me deal with the shock. Yes, my sister knew me very well. Perhaps better than I did myself. I can’t believe that she hadn’t mentioned this! Annoyed, I looked over at her before I responded to the Major’s request.

“I may have been elected by my constituents Major, but the country did not elect my party. I was on the side of the opposition.” Major Benjamin Bradley shrugged and looked me squarely in the face.

“Elizabeth, this is not something I ask of you lightly. If I may speak freely?”

“Please do.”

“I would have much preferred a candidate who had the knowledge and experience which a position like this requires. However, in my opinion, someone who must be convinced to take up the task of leadership is preferable to those who have volunteered their service due to the alluring attraction of power. It will not be an easy title to carry. You need to think very carefully about what this will mean for you going forward.”

It had been over a year since I had left my position on the shadow cabinet to have Rosa. If I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t sure that I would have returned.

Before I had met Matt I had my sights set on becoming the leader of the party one day. It was something which Kate knew all too well. She would tease me about it when I was starting out. She believed that the power to make any significant change to the state of affairs in Britain was far out of my reach and that I was wasting my time in politics. Something which I too had begun to see myself before long.

Now, this. How could I possibly say no? This man was right. It is my duty, at least until another politician came forward who was better suited to the position of leader. It was a lot to take in.

“I believe there is only one answer I can give. In light of the information which you have received regarding the fate of my peers. It is, as you say quite rightly my responsibility.”

I stood to shake Major Bradley’s hand. “I accept.”

34

EVERY DAY FOR the next week a car was sent from the Army base to pick me up in the morning at 6 am. Shadow accompanied me on each trip which gave me some sense of comfort. I was presented to endlessly. I received daily reports from many high ranking army officers. Their sleeves adorned with brand new insignia.

There had been a great many promotions in the past three months. Some of these officers had moved up to ranks that they had previously expected to take them a lifetime to achieve in just a few short days. We had lost almost all of our country’s defences in the attacks. Along with the Army base which was now also the hub of central government, there was one RAF base in Cumbria which had survived unscathed. The entire Royal Navy was currently MIA. It would be difficult to determine which of our overseas battalions were still operational without working comms.

No one knew if this was the first phase at the beginning of a war or the end of an unpredicted one. Without knowing the full details of what had occurred on that afternoon in June, it was impossible to prepare an intelligent defence.

“I believe our efforts now are best spent trying to keep as many of the survivors alive. It’s not a kind environment out there. We must restore order and public utilities.” Major Bradley and I worked through the night as we mapped out areas to begin these projects. Communication with the public was proving difficult. Sending the available troops into the local towns to help restore shelter and provide those who were sick or wounded with aid sometimes proved impossible. The demand was too high for the meagre number of men.

In the evenings I arrived home exhausted from listening to the wide-eyed accounts of soldiers reporting one after another of what they knew of the hardships facing different sections of the country. I wasn’t sure how much more I could hear and still retain my sanity. I had thought that I knew what was going on out there. I saw so much first hand on my journey here from the south coast but what I heard now chilled me to my very core. Along with destroying the towns and cities of our nation, the attacks had laid waste to our people’s decency and humanity.

Stories of murder, rape and slavery were only too commonplace at these briefings.

I had been avoiding Kate to an extent. She spent her days looking after Rosa. It seemed whenever I came home Rosa was asleep and I was always leaving as she was waking up. Some days we managed to have breakfast together which was a happy relief from the horrifying reality which awaited me on the army base.

Liam had joined Kate in caring for the garden and local animals which would be our family’s food supply. Rosa tried to muck in too which was heartening. Liam had developed a sort of contempt for me since I had accepted my role in the rebuilding of our country. We hadn’t so much as spoken alone since the night we had shared a bed. I got the feeling whenever we were together that he wanted to talk to me privately, but with everything going on I hadn’t had the time.

One afternoon I had returned early from the base and saw him working in one of the barns by the farmhouse. Shadow had immediately run over to greet him and he’d walked over to take my bag.

“Thanks. How’s everything here?” I made an effort to smile at him.

“Rosa’s just getting washed up. She fell in the chicken coop and Kate had to go in after her. They were both a bit of a mess.” I smiled.

“I can imagine. I’m sad to have missed it.”

“I wanted to talk to you. Can we?” Before giving me time to reply he placed his open palm on the base of my spine and guided me over to the barn that he’d just walked out of. “I tried to tell you this the day after, in the morning. But then all of this happened and I feel like you should hear it.” I listened. There hadn’t been a day since that I hadn’t thought about that night. I hadn’t imagined that he would have been thinking about it too.

“What is it? You want to apologise?”

“For God’s sake Elizabeth.” He hit the wall behind my head and moved his body so that he was directly in front of me. “No, I don’t want to apologise. Unless it’s to say that I’m sorry it hasn’t happened every night since and that you’re a pain in the arse. I wanted you to hear this from me before one of your new army buddies find out for you.” I looked at him. His eyes locked on mine. “I didn’t tell you the truth about my situation when we met.”

“What do you mean your situation?”

“ I hadn’t just got out of prison.”

“What? Why would you tell someone you’d been in prison if you hadn’t?” He wasn’t making any sense. His hand slid down the wall behind me and fell on to my shoulder.

“I was still in prison when the bombs fell Lizzy. I had a life sentence. I was never supposed to get out. When I was with you the other night, it was amazing. But I didn’t know how to tell you the next day. I woke up and you were gone. I thought I’d screwed up. I hadn’t touched a woman like that in over ten years.” I was stunned.

“So you didn’t regret it?”

“No. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done, allowing you to seduce me.” I scowled up at him and he laughed. He tilted my head up towards him and bend down to kiss me. His lips brushed against mine before I pushed him off.

“You lied about being in prison? Why?” He turned away. “You said you’d hit someone.”

“Yeah. I did, I killed him. So what? I had a longer sentence than I said, but that doesn’t make me a different guy from the one you were screwing last week.” I looked at him shocked at his change of mood. He grabbed my waist and pulled me to him.

“A longer sentence, Liam? You just said life! Get off me.” I could see he was getting angry. What did he expect me to say?

“You aren’t who you said you were either. You’ve been replaced by a cold woman. I don’t even recognise you anymore.” It struck a chord. I shoved the heel of my hand up into his face. I hadn’t intended to do it, but I heard his nose pop under the force of the blow. He let go of his hold on me. “What the fuck?” He was bleeding, but I was too angry to care.

“Who do you think you are talking to? You don’t just come over here and pull me around like a piece of property. You should learn some fucking manners now that you’ve escaped from prison, they’ll help you blend in.” I spat back at him and walked away.

He grabbed the side of my jacket and yanked me backwards ripping my top in the process. He caught me in his arms to stop me from crashing into the wall of the barn. Before I could recover, he grabbed both sides of my head and kissed me. His unshaven chin scraped against my face. I tried to pull away but he was too strong. His tongue invaded my mouth and one of his arms looped around my back giving me just enough space to pull my head away from his. Then he grabbed my chin and turned my head so that his mouth was right by my ear.

“This murdering piece of shit is in love with you. You scrappy bitch. What do you think your army friends would think about that?” He let me go then and slapped me hard on the ass. I stumbled away from him and back towards the house. I looked over my shoulder to check he hadn’t followed me. I ran inside and slammed the door falling in to a stunned heap on the floor behind it.

I avoided him after that. I was so confused that It was the only thing I could do. I was pretty sure that I’d hurt him that night but for him to say that he was in love with me. I couldn’t decide if I was still angry with him or not. The churning feeling in my gut whenever I saw him told me that as much as I would like to deny it, I had feelings for him.

Another week went by and I would come home from the army base late. I was so tired that I’d sometimes fall asleep in the armchair by the fire. Waking up to find Shadow curled up by my feet and that someone had thrown a blanket over me. A couple of times I would wish that Liam would come down and talk to me. I missed his company more than anything, but I was beginning to wonder if we would be any good for each other.

I’d fallen asleep like that when I was woken by Kate tapping me on the shoulder.

“Liz, Lizzy. Wake up.” I opened my eyes and saw her crouched on the floor in front of me with tears in her eyes. Thinking there was something wrong I sat up and looked around the room.

“What? What is it?” As I looked past Kate, I thought I saw Liam’s dark figure standing in the doorway. The fire flickered and reflected light off his skin. The hairs on the back of my neck rose up. Shadow sensing my change of mood stood by my feet and growled at the stranger watching us in the dark.

“Well, I had hoped you would be more pleased to see me.”

Matt walked into the light of the room and knelt down in front of me, his arms enveloped me and held me so tightly that for a moment I struggled to breathe. He pulled away from me. “I can’t believe it’s really you. I’ve scoured the entire length of the country trying to find you.” I started to go into shock. I wanted to scream but my throat wouldn’t make the sound.

“I.. I thought you were dead. I saw you under the rubble. Your parent’s house?” He pulled me forwards over his shoulder and stroked my hair as I tried to suppress the urge to throw up.

“Oh, Baby I’m so sorry. My parents and I weren’t there when it collapsed. One of Dad’s old drinking buddy’s owns a car garage down at the end of their street. They had all been rushing out to take shelter in the basement just as I arrived on my bike. It was amazing that I caught them when I did. I didn’t even have time to put on my jacket before they were out the back door.” As his words sunk in, I began to understand what had happened. We had missed each other somewhere.

“I found your wallet. I thought you were dead. I’m sorry.”

He had no idea that I had slept with someone else and not just anyone. Someone who lived in this house. Shit. I looked up at Kate over Matt’s shoulder her eyes were wide. She looked as shocked to see him as I was.

“I see I’ve been replaced.” He already knew?

“What? I didn’t know that you were coming back.” He was taking it better than I had expected.

“That’s okay we can keep him.”

“What?”

“You’ve obviously grown quite attached to your four-legged guard dog.” I gulped as I realised he had been talking about Shadow. Who was still sat with his ears pinned back and grumbling at my feet. That was close.

“Where’s Rosa? How did you manage the trek up here with a baby all on your own?” Still dumbstruck it took me a few seconds to answer.

“I wasn’t alone. I met someone.” I felt my face flush red. Scared that he would see right through me, I bent over to disguise myself and scratched Shadows ear “This is Shadow. He and Rosa are best friends.”

“Don’t forget the other stray dog you found on your travels.” Liam stood with his arms folded across his chest taking up most of the space in the doorway. He was intrigued to learn more about the man who held me so closely. “I’m Liam; I take it you knew each other from before?” Liam held out his hand to shake Matt’s hand. I swallowed hard.

“You could say that mate. She’s my wife.”

Kate looked horrified. I could only imagine what expression was on my face. Liam’s smile died in his eyes. He dropped his hand to his side and stood a little taller. Without missing a beat, he fired back.

“We thought you were dead. You should have seen the state of your old street. A bit late to the party aren’t you?” Matt bristled and released his hold on me. He squared up to face Liam.

“Yes, I suppose I am.” Then neither of them spoke for a moment. It was so quiet I could hear Shadow breathing at my feet. “Lizzy, I want to see Rosa. Would you like to show me where she is?” I stood up and without saying a word walked past them both. Keeping my eyes straight ahead, I went through the doorway and into the hall.

35

THE NEXT MORNING when the car came to collect me at 6 am Matt lay sleeping in the bed upstairs beside Rosa. He’d insisted last night that he hadn’t wanted to leave her side. Which had allowed me some time to compose myself.

When the car arrived I jumped into it before it had stopped moving. I wanted to get as far away from this brewing situation as I could. I needed some time alone to figure out how to deal with it.

It had felt lonely walking to the car this morning. Shadow had stayed behind. Choosing to watch over Rosa instead of accompanying me as usual. I had expected that Shadow would be protective over Rosa since Matt arrived. He was wary of him, to Shadow it must seem like a stranger had walked in out of the blue. We’d all accepted him into our home without any explanation. Which is actually what had happened. I’m not sure that I felt that much different from Shadow. After what had happened to me over these last few months I wasn’t confident that I knew myself, let alone my husband.

Just as I was about to close the car door behind me a hand stopped it from shutting and pulled it open, it was Liam.

“Move over.” It wasn’t a request. I moved. Liam sat down beside me and closed the door He motioned to the driver that he could set off.

He looked smarter than usual; I noticed that he’d even shaved. In a bid to break the silence I smiled across the back seat at him. Wishing to seem less nervous than I felt.

“Well, that was an eventful night.”

“Which one?” He shot the question at me and watched my face for a reaction.

“I… Liam. I thought he was dead. I haven’t told him anything yet.” I looked at my feet.

“And you shouldn’t. I’m moving on to the Army base. I think your sister’s might be a little crowded with me there too.” I was grateful to him for his kindness.

“Thank you.” I was disappointed he wouldn’t be with us at Kate’s anymore. At the same time, I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to see him and Matt in the same room together again.

“So did he explain himself? Let’s hear it?” Liam demanded.

“What?”

“Where the hell was he for all this time? It doesn’t take three months to travel down to Sussex and back. So where was he?”

“I dunno. Matt didn’t talk much about himself. He asked me so many questions about you last night. When he stopped I didn’t feel like asking him anything.”

“Felt threatened, did he? Good.”

“Liam. Behave.” He had his old glint back.

“I should warn him what a firecracker his wife is. I’ve got the broken nose to prove it.” I tried not to laugh, but it was funny.

“I’m sorry about that it was an accident.”

“Don’t be sorry. I deserved it. You would have been a tidy little boxer you know.” Liam ran his finger over my knuckles.

“Very funny. I couldn’t say boo to a mirror not so long ago.”

“Good job you found me then wasn’t it?”

“You found me. Remember?” I smiled at him and he took it as an invitation. He moved over the back seat to be nearer to me.

“Even though you’re the most frustrating woman I’ve ever known I could never leave you and Rosa on your own for three months.” His hand grazed my thigh as he clasped a hold of mine in my lap. “It’s been hard enough keeping my distance from your moody self for the past few weeks.” I tried to ignore him, but despite myself, I was pleased by what he said. I decided not to let it show.

“You’re leaving me now.” I retorted. He looked confused.

“Oh no my darling you misunderstand. I’m going to be speaking to the Major this morning and asking him if I can be on your personal staff. If that’s alright with you?”

“How personal?” I countered suppressing a grin. That’s why he looked so smart. He was trying to make a good impression.

“As personal as it gets. If you need anything from me, day or night. I will, of course, make myself available. But if you don’t want me to then I can ask to be put somewhere out of sight if that’s what you would prefer.” The look he gave me back was one I had seen before. He had a wicked streak, and I knew it. He was asking my permission to continue our affair.

I wasn’t sure, but the feelings I had for him stirred at the suggestion. I was going to say yes. Perhaps not today, but if he was persistent, I couldn’t guarantee my willpower would hold out. We had some gruelling days ahead. It would be good to have a friend beside me.

“That would be a comfort, Liam. Thank you.”

We arrived late at the Army base to find Major Bradley waiting for me in the car park.

“I’m afraid we have some urgent business that needs your attention Prime Minister.” The Major looked over at Liam and eyed me carefully. He obviously didn’t want to tell me in front of Liam what the urgent business was.

“It’s alright Major. Liam has come to assist me in my work. As my private secretary. I trust him implicitly. Anything you wish to say to me you can say in front of him.” The Major looked surprised.

“Very well Madam. Welcome to the team.” The Major offered Liam his hand to shake. Liam looked like he had always belonged in the role as he took the Majors hand.

“Thanks, Major. I look forward to helping in any way I can.”

I gestured to the Men to accompany me over to the building which contained my office. I walked in and sat down at my desk offering both men a seat in front of me.

“What is the problem, Major?”

“We have a briefing from some of the men returning from the east section at 0800. You should prepare yourself. The men who have been cleared to return to the base are in some distress.”

“Why only some of the men? Did we lose many?” Our numbers were already low, every man who didn’t return to the base after a mission was a blow.

“Not exactly Prime Minister. There’s been an outbreak.”

AUTHOR NOTES

WOW. I CAN’T believe you read this whole thing. My first book. And you read it all the way to the end! Thank you so much.

I really hope that you enjoyed it or at least parts of it! Writing was something which I had always done privately in journals. Never thinking that anyone but me would be interested in the crazy stories which my over active imagination would think up. My bias towards the land of make believe started in the theatre, working as an actress. I’ve spent my whole life telling other people’s stories. But to say that there is now something out there of my own blows my mind a little bit.

I live in Brighton on the south coast of England with my husband (the lunatic who challenged me to write) and our 10 month old son, Jackson. I’ve been very lucky to live in and visit some amazing places in my life but Brighton is my favourite.

I started writing this book in November 2017 when I was challenged to take part in Nanowrimo. Let me tell you. When you’ve never written creatively in your life before, writing 50,000 words in 30 days is no mean feat. Especially with a 7 month old baby to look after and a part time job.

Something happened to me in those 30 days. I went slightly insane from lack of sleep and exhaustion but I also reconnected with a part of my brain which had been dormant for a long time. As an actor you learn lines which someone else has written, for someone else to say. But as a writer you become every character in their creation. The world is your blank page and you can do with it whatever you desire.

I’m aware that being a novice I have a lot to learn and am really looking forward to getting started on that. I have a new project. One that I’ve actually outlined this time. If you like this book and would like to know more about me and what I am working on next there is a link to my mailing list below. Any feedback is good feedback when you’re learning (and I am!) So please leave me a review and let me know what you liked and what you didn’t. I also have a Facebook page where I can interact with my readers. If any of you crazies fancy being on my round table and giving advice regarding what you would like to see me writing then please get in touch!

The End is Nigh was written by the seat of my pants and all I really knew was that I wanted to write an adventure story with a strong woman and a steamy sex scene. (Mostly because it pisses me off when people chicken out of the sex scenes in a book.) I don’t know what genre I am or where I will end up yet but I’m fairly sure that each story will contain a bit of romance, because well, why not! Life is short. Make it sexy!

And here we have the finished article. Start to finish it took under 3 months to get this into the ebook store. Although I’m sure that I will cringe a lot in a few years time when reading it back, I am proud of it.

I feel privileged that you have taken the time to read this and thank you wholeheartedly for your super kind support.

Until next time.

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Copyright

The End is Nigh by MJ Marshall

Published by MJ Marshall & KDP

mjmarshallbooks.com

© 2018 MJ Marshall

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

mj@mjmarshallbooks.com

Cover by Steve Marshall