Blood Crazy Page 22

‘You’ve enough diesel for the winter. There’s a hundred-gallon reserve tank out back.’

  He breathed out heavily, sending a booze stench into my nostrils. ‘Nick … Come with me. No, Doc. You stay here. I want a private word with Nick.’

  Bad tempered, Boss marched out of the farmhouse round the back of the barn to the reserve tank. He walked up to it and kicked it savagely.

  ‘Did you hear that, Nick? Did you hear that echo?’

  ‘I was told there was a hundred gallons in there.’

  ‘And that’s what everyone believes. The truth of it is, old son, I filled it myself in the days when we had diesel coming out of our ears – but I never bothered to check the damn tank first. It leaks. The fucking thing leaked and leaked, week after week, the ground soaking up the diesel so no one noticed.’ Tears leaked now from the black eyeholes in his face. ‘That’s why you get the echo, Nick. The damn thing’s empty …’

  ‘Shit …’ Realization oozed through me. No diesel. No Creosote culls. When they reached that critical number they’d come tramping across the fields, crush down the fences and overrun the place.

  Boss looked like Dave Middleton in the days before his suicide. He was a walking corpse, going through the motions, and knowing he had failed.

  ‘What am I going to do, Nick? Those kids in there are relying on me. They think I’m going to save their skins. I know I could do it, if it wasn’t for those murdering psychopaths out there. We’ve got a good thing going here. We can grow crops, we’ve learned to look after livestock … But I’ve killed us. My fault, my bastard fault.’ He sat down with his head in his hands. Tears dripped onto the soil.

  ‘Boss.’ I crouched beside him. ‘How much fuel is there left?’

  ‘The four trucks we use for the culls … They’ve probably got quarter of a tank apiece. And there’s five gallons in the drum in the garage.’

  ‘Let’s see … There’s the little Honda car. That’s diesel, isn’t it? Those things will get you to Timbuctoo and back on a ladleful of fuel.’

  Boss looked up. I could see suspicion and hope working in his face. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Listen, I’ve got a proposition. Give me the car and two gallons of diesel.’

  ‘No way, Nick. Every gallon we have gives us another week of life.’

  ‘No. Listen to what I have to say. What I’m going to do is give you all the diesel you need for the next six months. In return I get the car and a full tank which will be enough to get me home.’

  ‘And how you going to pull that off? Work another miracle? Like when you found the new generator?’

  ‘Come on, we’ll grab a coffee and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  Doc and Jigsaw volunteered to come with me. Sheila wanted to as well but I persuaded her to drive the truck.

  I climbed in behind the wheel of the car. It seemed in good nick. The only things that didn’t work were the indicators and the fuel gauge. I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over that. Jigsaw sat at my side, nursing a sawn-off shotgun on his knee. In the back Doc, armed with a machine pistol, fired questions at me.

  ‘The plan is this,’ I told them. ‘Sheila will lead us out through the Kaybees in the truck. I don’t trust this go-cart of a car to get us through. We’ve got two gallons in our tank. That’s enough to take us where we’re going.’

  ‘But not back,’ said Doc.

  ‘That’s right. It just makes us look harder for fuel.’

  ‘But where will we find it? The whole area’s been picked clean now by us and other communities.’

  I pointed to a dot on the map. ‘Weybeach. I remember it from when I was a kid. It’s a little town on the coast where folk retired to – you know the kind of place, one of God’s waiting rooms. There will have been very few kids there when the sanity-crash came. So there’ll probably be no colonies of kids. In turn, that means there will be no reason for the Kaybees to hang around. They’ll have quit Weybeach to go and gang up on survivors in other areas.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right.’

  ‘Pray that I’m right, Doc. It’s a long walk back … Right, here we go.’

  I kept the car close to the truck as we drove out through the gates. There were no adults this close to the camp. Sheila put her foot down and I had to do the same to keep up with her. She was good. She flew that truck down the roads, ripping up the green fuzz from the road in a spray.

  ‘I only hope she doesn’t brake,’ I said, ‘otherwise we’ll disappear under her back axle.’

  ‘That’s right,’ grunted Doc from the back seat. ‘Cheer us up.’

  We took the bend to find a line of Creosotes across the road. Sheila didn’t even slow down. The truck parted them like a cleaver through cabbage.

  At a crossroads Sheila turned the truck round and brought it alongside us.

  ‘There’s no more Kaybees now. Not our lot, anyway.’ She looked down at me in an intense way that made me uncomfortable. ‘Take care, sunshine.’

  A sudden rush of affection for her swept through me. I climbed out of the car and jumped up onto the step beneath the truck’s door.

  ‘Thanks, Sheila. You look after yourself. We should only be a couple of days.’

  ‘I’m glad they brought you to us, Nick Aten. You’re special, you know that?’

  She kissed me on the lips. Jigsaw whistled.

  ‘There …’ She smiled. ‘Remember, there’s more where that came from. A lot more …’ She squeezed my hand where it rested on the door. ‘Nick. When you come back I’m going to do all that I can to make you want to stay with us.’

  She kissed me again, holding my face with her hands. I stood on the step not knowing what to say. She looked so beautiful as she sat there, hair blowing in the breeze.

  ‘Now, get off my truck, Nick Aten. You’ve got a journey to make.’

  Wiping her eyes, she hit the pedal and the truck went off, swaying down the road back to camp.

  The road to Weybeach is long, flat and boring. We drove for sixty miles non-stop. We saw no Creosotes and no camps of survivors. Although we did see in the distance something that looked like a huge doughnut in the middle of a field.

  Through the binoculars I could make out that the doughnut ring consisted of dead Creosotes – hundreds of them, lying heaped one on top of the other. In the centre of the ring were a few buildings that had been burnt to shells.

  The ring had formed where the Creosotes had pressed up tight against fences before they had died. A sick feeling ran up through my stomach as I handed back the binoculars to Doc.

  We drove on. Doc and Jigsaw were quiet. I knew what they were thinking. How long before the Creosotes attacked their camp?

  Five miles from Weybeach we cruised by ten geriatric Creosotes limping down the road away from the town. Their hair had grown into white manes. These were probably too infirm to have kept up with the earlier mass migrations of adults.

  Weybeach was a ghost town. The beach was as I remembered, complete with a pier that ran out over the sands. Dad took John and me out onto it when we were little kids.

  ‘It looks as if God loves us today,’ I said. ‘He’s given us one hell of a peach.’

  The town was untouched. Even the supermarket was locked up and looked as if it was only waiting for the manager to come whistling down the street to open up as if nothing had happened.

  We found a truck in a nearby coal depot and I began work getting it running. More than six months had gone by since the big DAY 1. The vehicles were still there but tyres and batteries were flat. In most cases the hot summer had evaporated the fuel. Another year or two and cars’d be running to rust.

  It was time-consuming but straightforward. Within three days we’d got the truck running, and hitched a huge trailer to the back. We loaded that with enough drums of diesel to see the Leyburn Croppers through the winter. From the supermarket we took food and clothing. I even found space in the car for some bottles of perfume for Sheila.

  ‘When we tell Boss about t
his,’ said Doc, heaving sacks of rice into the trailer, ‘he’s going to come back mob-handed to pick the town clean.’

  On the fourth day we left Weybeach. The truck led the way; I followed in the car. Piled high around me in the passenger seats were cases of canned food and cartons of chocolate.

  As I drove I couldn’t stop smiling as I imagined the happy faces of the kids as we drove back into the camp. I grinned at myself in the rearview mirror. ‘So, Nick old son, this is what it feels like to be Santa Claus.’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Stairway to Heaven

  I drove back singing to the REM tape on the car stereo. A chocolate box sat open next to me and I stuffed my face. The truck in front, carrying Doc and Jigsaw, lumbered along under its axle-cracking load.

  Shiny, Happy People … Count me in! I sang so loud the steering wheel vibrated against my palms. ‘Shy-nee! Happ-pee …’

  Nearly back at the ranch. Ahead blue smoke billowed from the truck. ‘Hey, slow down, guys. We haven’t got a ferry to catch … shit.’

  Something was wrong. The truck speeded, whipping by trees, shearing branches.

  The road was so narrow I could see nothing but hedge and speeding truck.

  Jesus. The brakes had failed on the truck. My hands gripped tight around the car’s steering wheel as I followed, tyres slipping on the muck. We were running down hill. A hundred more yards and the road levelled out for the last half-mile to camp.

  If Jigsaw kept his cool he could just ride the hill out and slow down using the gears on the flat.

  No, was it shit. It wasn’t the brakes. Jigsaw was hammering the truck’s engine, powering the thing faster than it was safe to go, even if you had St Christopher himself in the driving seat.

  Jigsaw wasn’t running away from something either. He was running toward it. My mouth turned dry.

  I powered after the truck hoping I wouldn’t skid off into the ditch. Wherever Jigsaw wanted to go, he wanted to be there yesterday.

  Down the hill, splash through flood water in the dip, onto the flat, ground opening out into fields – and then I saw what Jigsaw had seen.

  ‘No. No. I don’t damn well believe it. You bastards … You bastards!’

  We’d set off five days before, leaving a camp of more than forty people. From a few weeks old to nineteen years old.

  We came back to no camp and no people.

  The truck skidded to a stop. Doc and Jigsaw jumped out and ran toward the torn fences. I stopped the car and ran after them.

  Crows flew up, wild dogs scrambled out of our way. I ran across a carpet of bodies. These were adults pocked with gunshot wounds.

  When I reached Jigsaw in the compound he was crying uncontrollably, beating his forehead with the palm of his hand like he wanted to knock out his brains.

  Doc stood still, face white, panting, ‘How did they do it? How did they do it? Boss could have used the trucks to crop them … If – if the numbers were reduced below … They wouldn’t attack … They.’ He looked round, winded by what he saw.

  Dead Creosotes littered the compound. Here and there were the bodies of people from the community. I ran from outbuilding to barn to house shouting.

  ‘Sheila … Sheila!’

  Sheila lay on the stairs. She’d died trying to stop the madmen reaching the attic room where the baby was. I knelt on the step and held her broken face to mine.

  I whispered. ‘I want to die now. Jesus, let me die. Let me die.’

  After a couple of hours we were in a state where we could actually make a search of the camp.

  We found Boss’s body beneath some Creosotes by the gate. He must have been one of the first to fall. Spent cartridges and guns littered the place in a shining carpet. The Creosotes themselves hadn’t used any weapons, other than a single-minded drive to push their way into the camp. In the end that had been the most devastating weapon of all.

  A few of the Creosotes had survived their injuries and lay or sat silently in the carnage. They ignored us. Jigsaw loaded a rifle.

  As I continued my search for survivors I heard the slow crack of the rifle echoing round the dead buildings.

  Doc found me hunting through the stable. ‘They’re all dead, Nick. You don’t have to check each one. The Kaybees were thorough. They weren’t going to spare a single one of us.’

  ‘You’re right … But I’m not leaving here until I’ve accounted for everyone.’

  ‘I found out why they didn’t use the trucks to crop back the psychos,’ Doc said. ‘The trucks’ tanks were empty. Apart from the one truck Sheila used to escort us out there wasn’t a drop of diesel left in the camp. Boss had given us the last few gallons for the car.’

  Blood thudded through my ears. ‘Jesus, I only asked him for two.’

  ‘He gave us eight. He told me not to tell you. He even disconnected the fuel gauge on the car.’ Doc shrugged. ‘Boss wanted to make sure we, and particularly you, Nick, made it back here in case we couldn’t find any supplies.’

  ‘Damn … Damn him!’ I roared every obscenity I could think of. ‘Boss has made me responsible for all these deaths. If I’d thought that bit harder maybe we wouldn’t have needed the fuel. Boss could have cropped back the lunatics … These kids would still be alive!’

  I looked round at the fields. They were a bleak wasteland now. A cold wind ripped across the grass. Family Creosote had moved on now. Their work here was complete. One by one we, their children, were dying.

  I breathed in sharply, struck by an idea that felt as if it had come whistling from out of the cosmos like a bullet. The sensation was the same as when I was looking through the stores before I found the generator.

  ‘Where you going?’ shouted Jigsaw.

  I ran back to the house, then up the stairs to where Sheila lay. ‘I know, sunshine,’ I said gently. ‘I know what you did.’

  I went to the cot where the youngest baby slept. Cold lumps twisting in my stomach, I pulled back the blood-soaked quilt.

  Then I turned over the tiny figure on the mattress. It felt stiff … I pulled back the bonnet.

  ‘Sheila … Whatever they did to you, you won in the end.’

  In my hands, in baby clothes, was a plastic doll.

  I pushed back the hatch in the ceiling where the water tank sat in the roof void. After climbing up, I lifted the lid of the tank. The water had long gone. Inside it now was a thick layer of blankets. On the blankets was the baby. It opened its eyes and smiled at me.

  ‘How did you know? Nick …’ Doc followed me as I carried the baby across to the truck. ‘How could you possibly know the baby was there? There was no note. Nothing.’

  ‘Sixth sense. When you’ve survived in hell this long you develop one. Jigsaw, stop wasting bullets … That won’t turn the clock back.’

  ‘Sixth sense my arse. What made you look for the baby?’

  ‘To be honest I don’t really know. I just felt, here inside, that Sheila would do something to protect it. By the time they broke into the compound she must have known no one would escape. And that even though she could slow them down as they came up the stairs to the nursery, she couldn’t stop them. And that they’d find the baby.’

  Doc nodded. ‘So she hid it in the empty water tank and just hoped we’d return and find it before it starved.’

  I said, ‘Look. You can see where the Creosotes have pulled out all the stores across the yard: they searched this place meticulously. They were going to make sure no one that was under nineteen walked out of here. I reckon our people managed to hold out in the house for a little while. Sheila must have watched the murdering bastards from the window. She saw they were counting our dead. Sure, they’ve been watching us for weeks to see how we behave, but the bastards have been counting us too. They knew we were away from camp. But if they counted even one short they’d have torn the camp apart until they found the baby. Sarah dressed the doll in baby clothes and covered it in blood to make them think the baby was dead … Jigsaw, put the gun down and feed the
baby. Here’s the bottle. You’re going to have to give it plenty of fluids. It’s dehydrated.’

  Doc shook his head. ‘Messiah syndrome, Nick. I know it’s delusional crap … but I look at you and, Christ, do I wonder.’

  ‘Let’s get back to reality.’ I said briskly. ‘Doc, help me move the bodies into the house … No, not the adults. Let the bastards rot. Then you two’ve got to find somewhere new to live.’

  ‘We’ve decided.’ He nodded at Jigsaw who clumsily held the baby in one arm while holding the bottle for it to drink from. ‘We’re going on to the community in Harmby. They might let us join them.’

  ‘When they see you with that truckful of supplies they’ll welcome you with open arms.’

  ‘You’re going back to Eskdale?’

  I nodded. ‘You two take the truck and the car. There’s a motorbike in the garage. I’ll be able to get home on one tankful of fuel.’

  Doc nodded grimly. Then we moved the bodies back into the house.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Doc pulling out his cigarette lighter.

  For half an hour we stood the way mourners stand at gravesides and watched the flames engulf the house. Then I said goodbye to Jigsaw, Doc, and the baby who was gurgling happily now, slung a rifle across my back and climbed onto the bike. It started first time. I waved, then rode away in the direction of home.

  In front of me I saw the road stretching out into the distance. In my head I saw Sheila: her bright smile that always made me smile, and the way she looked at me with those eyes that flashed like black diamonds.

  And behind me the smoke column from the burning house rose into the sky like a stairway to heaven.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Heartbreak Highway

  That’s the point, I think, when I stopped feeling horror or shock. Perhaps I was in a kind of psychological withdrawal.

  I rode the motorbike hour after hour. Sometimes the road was blocked by floods or land slips and I’d have to find another route.

  That night I slept in a barn. I found a diary there. It told the story of a sixteen-year-old, Mark Woodley, and how he’d survived the first days of the sanity crash.