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  ‘There’s too many,’ he said.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Maybe twenty.’

  ‘That’s not too many.’

  ‘Maybe more. Then there are the hangers-on. The gofers.’ He blinked and glanced away before looking back. ‘And the girls. The women. When they get bored, they go looking for new ones. That’s why we keep to ourselves, Meg and me. Nobody knows where we live. Nobody knows about Meg. They beat information out of people. If someone knew where we were, they would find and take Meg. That’s why …’

  Reaper raised a finger. ‘Is there a leader?’

  ‘There’s a biker, a sort of Hell’s Angel. He’s the leader.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Mad Dog. His real name is Bob Tyldesley.’ He grinned nervously. ‘I knew him before.’ He meant before the virus. ‘I taught him ten years ago. Nobody liked him. His nickname was Tilly. He was one of life’s losers. Until now. Now he’s in charge.’ Bradley shook his head. ‘He couldn’t hold down a job before, didn’t want to. Now he can do whatever he wants. And he does.’

  ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘They move from one hotel or pub to another. Drink them dry then move on. At the moment, Mad Dog and half a dozen of them are staying in a place called Bits and Pieces.’ Reaper remembered the song by the Dave Clark Five from the early days of rock and roll. ‘The pub was like a nostalgia thing. Swinging Sixties? It used to be the “in” place when things were normal. Bits was a young persons bar. It’s attached to Pieces, which was a hotel with seven or eight bedrooms and a restaurant. It’s the second time they’ve been there. He likes it because he used to be banned from it. They re-stocked it with booze and set up a generator. Sometimes, you would think everything was normal, you know, with the lights and the music. They don’t do it every night. Only when they’re in the mood.’

  ‘Where do the rest stay?’

  ‘Most of them sleep nearby. Wherever they like … guest houses, hotels. They have two other places. Sort of guard posts. One is a block of flats on the promenade near The Smugglers Inn. The other is a guesthouse on Isaac’s Hill – the main road into town. It faces down the hill. There are always a couple of his gang in both places.’

  Guard posts to the north and south guarding what? Anybody could enter the town along any of its other roads and avoid them, as Reaper and Sandra had done. Mad Dog – or Tilly, as Reaper preferred to think of him – didn’t seem very bright.

  ‘Has the gang killed anybody?’

  Bradley laughed bitterly and said, ‘Oh yes. Who’s to stop them? They do what they like. They hang people from lampposts for fun. Have hunts. Let a bloke go, give him a start, and then shoot him down.’

  ‘Why do they hang people?’

  ‘Because they can.’

  ‘Have any got away in the hunts?’

  ‘No one has a chance. They let them go on the beach and take pot shots from the promenade. Have you seen the size of the beach? One bloke annoyed them, an old chap. He refused to run, just walked into the sea and drowned. Mad Dog was so angry, he pulled his body out of the water and shot him anyway, even though he was dead. I saw it happen. I was in a promenade hotel, looking for food.’

  ‘And the women? Do they have a choice?’

  Bradley shook his head. ‘They do as they’re told. They only keep the good-looking ones and a couple of older ones who can cook. And anyone is fair game if they catch you looking for food. Or even if they see you on the street. They just open up, like it’s open season.’ Bradley looked to be on the brink of tears.

  ‘Why not move away?’

  Bradley shook his head as if trying to shake his reasons together so they would make sense, even to himself. ‘Some have. Some have been caught trying. It’s more sport for them if they see you. They chase the cars and shoot them up.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I thought we could wait it out until it settled down, until … I don’t know … something happened … like a diversion … and then perhaps we could sneak away. So far it hasn’t happened.’

  ‘It has now. Me and Sandra? We’re the diversion.’ He opened the town centre map on the bed. ‘Now, show me where they are.’

  Bradley marked the location of the flats on the promenade, the guesthouse on Isaac’s Hill and the bar and hotel called Bits and Pieces. Reaper also had him draw a rough sketch of the floor plan of Bits and Pieces, so that he had an idea of the internal layout.

  Bradley and Meg ate cold food from foraged cans. It was a diet they appeared to be used to. They had a camping stove but had run out of gas canisters. Reaper suspected it would be a major undertaking for Bradley to venture far enough to collect more, and that might never happen as the former teacher’s nerves were on the verge of collapse. The house had fireplaces downstairs that could have been used for cooking, but the couple hadn’t dared use them for fear the chimney smoke would give them away. Water still ran from the taps but, wisely they didn’t drink it; purification systems had undoubtedly failed a long time ago. So they’d survived on lemonade.

  Reaper and Sandra had flasks of coffee, bottled water and sandwiches. They shared their supplies and Bradley and Meg sipped the coffee as if it were nectar and ate the fresh bread with their eyes closed to savour what was, for them, a delicacy. Reaper and Sandra retired to the front bedroom to plan their moves; he sat in a chair and she sat cross-legged on the bed. Once behind the closed door, he looked at her quizzically.

  ‘One bed,’ she said. ‘Meg hasn’t said it, but they’re sleeping together.’

  ‘For comfort or sex?’

  ‘Probably both.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe it started as the first and became the second.’

  Reaper stared at the floor. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Thirteen and seven months.’ He looked at her and Sandra added, ‘The months are important. They take her closer to being an adult.’

  ‘She’s still a child.’

  ‘She was a child. When it happened, people had to grow up quick. I was a child when you found me.’

  Reaper looked at her. ‘You were eighteen.’

  ‘I still am. I’m also a widow and I feel I’m eighteen, going on death. How old do you feel Reaper? Like Methuselah? Forget the age of consent. This is the age of terror.’

  He held her gaze. ‘Before this happened Bradley would have been labelled, put on a register and sent to jail and we would all have said good riddance,’ he said.

  ‘That was then and this is now. Would it have been better if she had gone to the gangs?’

  ‘It would have been better if he hadn’t touched her.’

  ‘But he did.’ They continued looking into each other’s eyes. ‘Two lonely people.’

  He began to snort his derision.

  ‘Bradley’s not strong,’ Sandra said. ‘He gave in to temptation. Maybe the girl needed the comfort? Maybe she instigated the comfort? Not everybody is like you, Reaper.’

  ‘So he gets away with it? When this is done, we take them back to Haven as if it’s all right? They set up home together? How does that fit in with our brave new world? What will the Reverend Nick say?’

  ‘Nick won’t be pleased. But these are new realities. The social order has shifted.’

  ‘Morality hasn’t. I can understand how it happened, but she is still a child and he shouldn’t have crossed the line.’

  ‘What are we going to do? Leave them behind? Take her and leave him? She’s dependent on him, Reaper.’

  ‘Stockholm Syndrome,’ he said. ‘Patty Hearst. She’ll get over it.’

  He could tell she didn’t fully understand the references but she caught the drift.

  ‘Girls who are nearly fourteen are not necessarily children,’ she said. ‘They weren’t before it happened and they sure as hell are not now. Childhood is an endangered species, like polar bears used to be. I
n the wild, childhood doesn’t exist, and this is the wild.’

  He shrugged, uncomfortable with the situation and her words, and stared at the carpet again. Young people needed protection from older people until they could form their own opinions and thirteen – or fourteen – was no age for a girl to be seduced by a much older man. The knowledge of what had been going on between the teacher and the girl during their long days of isolation made his skin crawl. But was he being unreasonable, as Sandra suggested? Had times changed that much? What had happened had happened and the girl was, at least, physically safe and seemed content in Bradley’s company.

  If this had happened before the plague, the law would not have been understanding. And if Reaper had sensed the girl had been forced in any way into acquiescence, he would have had no compunction in taking Bradley downstairs and slitting his throat. But, of course, there were different types of persuasion and the girl had been in fear of her life … Stockholm Syndrome … Patty Hearst … He might still slit Bradley’s throat. It also left them with the problem of what to do with the couple when their mission was accomplished. How would they explain the arrangement to the ordered regime at Haven where childhood was still protected?

  In the Middle Ages, marriages and liaisons with girls of thirteen had been considered normal. Sex was legal with girls that age until Victorian times. Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin for chrissake, and still became a rock and roll legend. But that still didn’t make it right. They hadn’t slipped back to the middle ages yet, surely? And Victorian England had been a sexual cesspit. And this was not backwoods Louisiana.

  ‘We’ll have a problem when we’ve finished,’ he said, and looked up into her face again. He left the words hanging there for a moment: when we’ve finished. They both knew the challenge that faced them; they both knew one or the other of them might not make it to the finish. ‘You sure?’ He meant the mission.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  After devastation had swept the world, Reaper had been given a chance in a new life. A chance to make up for all the inadequacies he had displayed in the old. He had found and saved Sandra and taught her the skills of self-protection and she had become a warrior. They had gathered other shell-shocked survivors and led them to Haven, a former holiday village in a Yorkshire country estate between York and Scarborough that had offered them all a new beginning; the best chance for normality for two hundred souls in the cottages of the grounds and in the surrounding farms.

  Once Haven had been established, he had allowed himself to fall in love again. This had been unexpected. He hadn’t thought he deserved the right to fall in love. This wasn’t part of the deal he had made for salvation with a god in whom he didn’t believe. Kate had made the first move and he had finally accepted they really were in love. For a short time, he had found happiness again, even though it was tinged with guilt. He and Kate had planned to marry but, only three nights ago, she had been killed by marauders as wild and untamed as the gang led by Mad Dog. The new despair had changed his outlook.

  He no longer believed in salvation. He was now motivated by anger and revenge.

  Sandra’s joys had also been crushed in the same murderous incident, with the slaying of the husband she had married only weeks before. She, too, had taken refuge in the dark emotions that now ruled Reaper.

  Maybe they were both suffering from survivor syndrome, the guilt of still living. For they had survived, not just the cataclysm that had changed the world, but the vacuous violence that had killed those with whom they had found love and hope for the future. Now, together, they were intent on removing violators wherever they found them, both to give the world a chance and because they wanted to wash their grief in blood. It was Mad Dog’s misfortune that only a few days previously, Reaper had travelled through this town and discovered his regime.

  Sandra looked at the map on the bed next to her.

  ‘How are we going to do it?’ she said.

  Chapter 2

  THEY DECIDED TO TAKE OUT THE GUARD POSTS FIRST and hope that any shots might be drowned by the noise of the disco in Bits and Pieces. Just their bad luck if Mad Dog decided to have a quiet night. Bradley was co-opted into their scheme, even though the teacher showed extreme reluctance. It was his bad luck that he’d admitted he had a car parked outside.

  While Reaper and Sandra had been discussing their plans, Meg had changed into jeans and a tee shirt. The androgynous clothes made her look older and yet somehow less sexualised. The dress, Reaper realised, had been too similar to school uniform. Unsavoury suspicions lingered in his mind and he found it difficult to look at the girl without embarrassment. He sensed she felt the same, preferring to address any comments to Sandra rather than Reaper, and perhaps already distancing herself, ever so slightly, from Bradley.

  They persuaded Bradley to help by giving him no option, even when he cited Meg’s safety as a reason why he should remain in the house to protect her. As protection, Reaper thought he would be as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike. The teacher surrendered the car keys and they bump-started his Ford Focus down the gentle slope of the road to avoid what might have been several noisy attempts to fire the ignition by key. It had been a warm summer. The car started sluggishly and with a groan, as if it resented the disturbance, but soon picked up to tick over quietly.

  Sandra spent a few minutes with Meg alone before they left shortly before ten pm. The town was shrouded in dusk, the streets valleys of shadow. The lights from the generator-fed Bits and Pieces a glow above the roof tops to their left. Behind them, the front door to Bradley’s house closed as Meg retreated to her sanctuary on the first floor. Bradley drove Reaper and Sandra towards the apartment block on the sea front. He parked two streets back and Reaper instructed him.

  ‘You wait here. We will try and do this quietly but there may be gunshots. Whatever happens, you wait here. It’s ten now. If we don’t return, you can leave at eleven. Go back to Meg, look after her and try to leave town.’ He held his arm in a strong grip that made the teacher wince. ‘But we will be back. And you had better be here. Clear?’

  ‘Clear,’ he said, nodding his head.

  Sandra and Reaper left the car and slid into the shadows, one covering while the other gained ground, then reversing the process so that they ‘leap-frogged’ each other silently towards the flat expanse of the sea, which sighed and gleamed in the soft moonlight. The previous occasion Reaper had been here, the doors to the apartment block had been open and unlocked. He wondered if they had improved their security. They had; the doors were locked.

  The apartment block stood proudly overlooking the sea at a point where the main road kinked. It was a white-painted confection that, on first sight, had reminded Reaper of the sort of seaside accommodation where Hercule Poirot might have stayed in the 1920s or 30s. Tonight, he suspected it would not be occupied by anyone as cultured as the Belgian detective. The balconies at the front provided a clear view of any vehicles approaching from the south, while the corner windows of its upper floors had unrestricted views towards the town centre.

  Light spilled from a flat on the second floor. Not electric light, but the dimmer cast of battery-operated camping lamps. They went round the front of the building and saw that the lighting extended to a French window and balcony. Reaper pointed and twirled his finger. ‘Round the back,’ he mouthed, and they retraced their steps past the locked entrance and shop windows, until they found a narrow alley, as dark as a cave. The service entrance was unlocked.

  Reaper used the torch that hung on his belt to light their way along a corridor and through a door that led into the ground floor vestibule of the flats. There was a lift that was out of use without power and carpeted stairs. Dim light came in through the glass of the front doors and an even dimmer light could be seen from above. He switched off the torch and they went up quietly, carbines at the ready.

  They had agreed what they would
attempt but knew it might be difficult to achieve. No loud gunshots if at all possible. And, as they had no sound suppressors for their guns, that meant knives. Reaper felt his heart pounding as they climbed and wondered if steel was such a good idea. He had killed several times with the knife but Sandra? The eighteen-year-old had also wielded a blade with desperate efficiency when it had been essential, but in cold blood? He stopped himself glancing in her direction in case she thought he was questioning her commitment. That was never in doubt.

  The light grew brighter as they climbed. The guards, it appeared, were afraid of the dark. They had left a camping light in the corridor on the second floor. From behind the closed doors, came the soundtrack of a film. Shots, tyres screaming. An action movie? Maybe a film; maybe a video game. Somebody in the room laughed. ‘Look, look!’ he yelled. Someone else shouted, ‘Twat!’ An item of furniture was kicked over.

  A settee sat incongruously halfway along the corridor. Reaper put his carbine on the cushions; Sandra did the same. He removed the Glock handgun from the holster on his left hip and pulled back the slide to arm it. The safety was in the double action trigger. He depressed the trigger one click so the safety was off. Sandra did the same with her side arm and transferred it to her left hand. They took the Bowie knives from the ankle sheaths and held them in their right hands. No gunshots if possible but, once through the door, they would be relying on surprise and improvisation.

  They exchanged a last look and Sandra nodded. Reaper kicked the door in with one well-placed boot at the level of the lock and led the way inside. Images came swiftly; actions were swifter.

  Two men had been playing a video game on a laptop that sat on a coffee table. One was sitting on a sofa that faced it, controls still in his hand; the other was on his feet, a side table upended on the floor, where he had kicked it. Since the man on his feet was closer, Reaper stepped straight up to him and stuck the knife hard into his stomach, angling it upwards to dig beneath the rib cage and penetrate the heart. The man staggered backwards and crashed over the coffee table. The sound of the video game ended abruptly. Reaper followed the man to the floor, pushing hard. He realised that the man’s breathing was heavy and that there was blood on his hand. He pulled the knife free and got to his feet. His victim hadn’t made a sound.