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Chapter 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fortified by two cups of tea and a bowl of cornflakes soaked in UHT milk Adam opened the side entry door intending to take a stroll around the car park and stretch his legs a little, but on each of the two fold-out steps below him lay a dead mouse. Although never a cat owner himself he had often heard his cat-owning neighbour complain about surprises such as this, gifts of love and appreciation from the cat she called them.

The empty, spotlessly clean pilchard tin lay nearby and became a makeshift coffin for two dead mice and the litter bin their final resting place. After picking up the cup and the bowl that the cat had used he spotted the unkempt tawny coloured animal itself, curled up in a dip in the tarpaulin which covered the trailer, one weary eye following his every move.

'Christ! In daylight you look even uglier and what's happened to your ear? It looks like a rat's chewed it!' Unsurprisingly the cat did not furnish him with an answer, but it did treat him to a vicious spat warning and a dentist's view of a full set of razor-sharp looking teeth when he tried to stroke it.

'I see you're not out to make friends.' Assured that its peace would not be disturbed again the cat turned nonchalantly away and settled back down. Adam, still marvelling at the cat's arrogance returned to Five Star to put the cup and bowl into the sink, but a casual glance out of the galley window sent him running for his binoculars. The view from the roof rack only confirmed what he already knew; there was smoke rising from the village below the escarpment, but the intervening trees made it impossible to see exactly where it was coming from.

In his rush, Adam failed to notice his new driving companion sat on the passenger seat until Five Star swung out of the car park, the cat.

'How on earth did you get in here?' he demanded before remembering that in his haste to get up onto the roof he had failed to pull the fly screen across the open side entry door, 'Oh never mind, we'll discuss this later.' Then after a momentary skyward glance he protested, 'I know I said young or old, I know I said male or female and I know I also said breathing, but I also meant HUMAN! Do I have to draw you a picture?'

Halfway down the hill Adam pulled over once the vision blocking trees were no longer a problem and jabbed a finger in the cat's direction, 'You! You bag of rags, if you make any mess in here,' and he pointed ominously towards his foot, 'you'll be wearing a size forty-three imprint! Understand?' The cat lazily flexed a paw to expose a full set of bloodletting claws then closed its weary eye and snuggled back down, leaving Adam wondering whether he had just received the feline version of the stinky finger.

Having returned from a rooftop reconnaissance mission, Adam soon got them underway again. From the roof, he could see the smoke rising from a back garden in the left-hand row of houses immediately after the bridge.

Moments later Five Star drew to a halt on the bridge that crossed the small stream and from his vantage point he could see that there was a pathway behind the gardens, but access from this end was out of the question. A twometre high side fence of the last house practically overhung the steep bank of the stream and that was covered in some of Mother Nature's best burglar deterrents, wild brambles, metre high nettles and young thorn laden acacias. Hoping to find another way through to the back gardens Adam jumped out of the cab and after issuing another ignored warning to the cat set off across the road. From the opposite side of the street, he could clearly see the smoke rising from either the fourth or fifth house in the row of eight, he could also see that it was not possible to access any of the rear gardens from the front of the properties, but at the far end, he spotted an entrance to the pathway. As soon as he reached it the source of the smoke became evident, a barbecue. Adam heaved himself up to look over the side fence of the last house hoping for a view through the whole row of gardens, but the fleeting glimpse he had was blocked by more fencing, shrubs and small trees. All the houses had this high, awkward to scale the fence at the back of their gardens Adam noted, including the two that interested him the most, but as he got closer to the fourth and fifth houses he could clearly see the smoke was rising from the garden of the fifth.

'Hello! Is anyone there?' he called out while trying to conceal the pistol jammed into the back of his shorts with his T-shirt, as no one answered he tried again, 'is there anyone there?' Again there was no answer and he stepped up to the tall garden gate intent on opening it, but a loud crunch underfoot drew his attention to the previously unnoticed glass of at least two deliberately broken bottles, a burglar alarm and judging by the hurried shuffling on the other side of the fence it was not hard to guess who had set it.

Lifting the latch Adam tentatively pushed the gate open until it had swung back as far as the long grass would allow it, almost one hundred and eighty degrees. Stepping cautiously into the garden he immediately noticed a lit barbecue heating up a tin of soup, this really impressed him as he would never have thought to do this himself. He also noticed that whoever had lit the barbecue was no longer around to accept a compliment on their ingenuity.

The garden was oblong in shape, bordered on all three sides by a tall fence and mostly laid to grass with the exception of two small fruit trees, one on either side of a path that ran from the garden gate to the rear door of the house. To his left, there was nothing apart from a few flowers growing up against the bordering fence. To his right there was a windowless garden shed tucked tightly into the corner, leaving no potential hiding place either behind it or down the side. The inside of the shed contained all the usual garden implements and to his surprise, an old decorator's dust sheet laid out on the floor as a makeshift bed, at one end next to a small rucksack and a pillow of a rolled-up jumper or cardigan was a jar with a candle in it and at the other end a pair of shoes, woman's shoes. As there was no sign of the shoes' owner in the shed and no hiding place in the garden Adam assumed she must have gone into the house, but after checking he found the rear door of the house and all the windows were securely locked. Was she still hiding in the house or had she escaped through the front door and ran away? To some extent he understood her reticence; before the plague arrived the world was not always a safe and secure place to live in if you were female.

Returning down the garden path Adam mulled over his options, should he wait for the woman to return for her belongings and risk scaring her away again, perhaps permanently this time or should he simply leave her a note telling her where to find him just in case the sudden appearance of a monstrous five-ton mobile home had not made that plainly obvious, or should he, in the hope that she was still within earshot, shout out an invitation for her to join him? A little short of the gate he realised none of these options were necessary, under the bottom edge of the gate and hidden by the overgrown grass he could just make out ten little toes. Not wishing to cause any undue alarm he forewarned her that she had been found.

'I know you're behind the gate. Please don't panic, I mean you no harm.'

As he slowly withdrew the gate he was surprised to see the owner of the toes was not a woman, but a young girl of about twelve years of age. His emotions surged and he wanted to wrap her up tightly in his arms and jump up and down with the sheer joy of finally having found another living breathing human being, but they were immediately checked by her huge fear-filled eyes and the large kitchen knife held in her shaking hands. Adam took a nonchalant step back to give her a larger personal space and to put himself out of the knife's striking range.

'Oh! Hello!' he said feigning more surprise than he really felt, 'I must admit I was expecting someone a little older,' and while he waited for a reply he passed a curious eye over her. Her bare legs, face and hair had obviously not been washed in a long while and her knee-length grey skirt and white blouse likewise, although ideally the blouse now belonged in the dustbin as it had a large tear down the side seam, a rip in the left shoulder and at least two missing buttons judging by the way it gaped at the navel. As the young girl seemed unable, or more probable unwilling to speak Adam felt unsure about how he should proceed or even what to say. An idea struck and he pointed a finger in the vague direction of the bridge, 'I'm your new neighbour, that's my motor home parked on the bridge over there and I wondered whether you would like to join me in a cup of coffee…' a thought suddenly crossed his mind, 'sorry, it'll have to be a cup of tea, I don't have any coffee, but I do have some nice cakes and some cola too if you'd prefer that.' With the realisation he was rambling he shut up and waited for the girl to say something.

Noting the barbecue out of the corner of his eye he glanced at his watch, it showed almost midday. As the young girl still refused to say anything he opted to fill the awkward silence, 'Shall we say in an hour, that'll give you plenty of time to eat your lunch' adding as he turned to leave, 'oh! Before I forget, don't forget to bring your friend along,' pointing at the knife to avoid any ambiguity, 'you never know when you're going to bump into some weirdo these days, do you?'

With a parting, 'See you at about one o'clockish,' he pulled the gate closed behind himself and felt his heart crash into the pit of his stomach. He was letting the only living person he had seen for an entire week or more out of his sight and there was no guarantee he would ever lay eyes on her again. 'Adam, what on earth are you doing?' he asked himself reproachfully, 'when all you really want to do is wrap her up in your arms and never let her go.'

All the way back to the bridge he questioned the wisdom of his decision to leave her, but not even the image of her fearful eyes allayed that uneasy feeling that he had just made one of the biggest mistakes of his life. On the other hand, what was he supposed to do, live in a garden shed for the rest of his life just so that he had someone else to talk to besides himself?

As she did not show even the vaguest of interest in meeting another living breathing person, he resigned himself to the idea that she had already made good her escape and in an hour it would probably be a pot of tea for one, as usual.

Passing the last car before reaching the bridge Adam caught sight of his own reflection in its side window and was appalled at what he saw. When was the last time he had shaved, was it three days or four since his mains charged electric razor fell silent? Looking at his matted hair that stood out at all angles and his dirt-smudged face he wondered why he had not thought to wash anything other than his hands in all that time? And why was he wearing this filthy food-stained T-shirt when he had a pile of brand new ones waiting to be unwrapped in his bedroom? Looking himself up and down he felt ashamed that he had presented himself to the young girl looking like a tramp and gave some serious consideration as to whether or not it was this that had caused the look in her eyes. How could he have allowed himself to do this when before the plague he was adamant in his refusal not to step outside his own front door without at least having shaved and brushed his hair?

Idly staring at the stream below the bridge he was now confronted with that classic catch twenty-two question, knowing what he had to face should he bother tidying himself up for someone who he might never see again, or stay as he was and risk utter humiliation if she did turn up.

Shortly, with a bucket in hand containing a large brand new towel and as yet unused bottle of shampoo he stood naked before the shower longing to use it, but he valued his most precious asset above having to take what promised to be a very uncomfortable experience of a standing bath in the stream.

Luckily for him the banks immediately on either side of the bridge were concrete, presumably to protect the bridge foundations if the stream flooded, this made it relatively easy to clamber down to the slow-flowing water. Assured he was out of sight of the young girl he gingerly entered the stream which was barely a metre wide, came midway up his calves once he was in the centre and as he had feared had the temperature of melted ice. Having scooped up a bucketful of the crystal clear water he gritted his teeth and poured it over his head, after regaining his breath and a heartbeat he shampooed his hair then risked heart failure again by repeating the procedure. After shampooing his hair the second time he used the shampoo suds as soap and washed himself down, he felt sure the final two buckets of water poured over his head actually did contain ice. Despite thirty-three degrees of heat under a blazing sun, it still took him ages before he finally stopped shaking.

After passing a comb through his hair and wrapping the towel around his waist he took a saucepan of hot water, shaving gel and a razor outside and placed them on a small folding table under the huge wing mirror on the passenger side. Although the mirror swivelled and tilted he could only see to shave himself properly if he stretched upon the tips of his toes. Smoothed faced again he rinsed off the last of the shaving gel in the now lukewarm water and ran the palm of his hand over his face to make sure he had not missed anything, satisfied he picked up the shaving gel and razor, but as he was about to empty out the saucepan he felt an icy chill run down his spine. A slight glance to his right caused an instant missed heartbeat and he felt he must have visibly started, for not more than three metres away stood the young girl, motionless and watching his every move.