David Moody - Autumn

‘I don’t know,’ the other man replied, equally agitated. ‘How the hell should I know that?’

‘Shut up!’ Emma yelled, immediately silencing the other two. ‘For Christ’s sake, if neither of you can say anything without arguing then don’t bother saying anything at all.’

‘Sorry,’ Michael mumbled, running his fingers through his matted hair.

‘So what are we going to do?’ she asked.

Rather than answer or take any further part in the increasingly difficult conversation, Carl walked away.

‘Where are you going? Carl, come back here. We need to talk about this.’

Halfway up the stairs he stopped and turned back around to face her.

‘What’s left to talk about? What’s the point.’

‘The point is we’ve got to do something and I think we should do it now,’ Michael said. ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen next, do we? Things could be a hundred times worse tomorrow.’

‘He’s right,’ agreed Emma. ‘We’ve got enough stuff here to last us for a few days but we need enough to last us weeks. I think we should get out now and barricade ourselves in when we get back.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Carl, now much quieter and calmer. He sat down on the stair he’d been standing on. ‘I don’t want to shut myself away in here…’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t,’ Michael said. ‘Maybe we should try it a different way, try and seal off the farm from the outside.’

‘And how are we supposed to do that?’ Emma wondered.

‘Build a fence,’ he replied, simply.

‘It’d have to be a fucking strong fence,’ Carl added.

‘Then we’ll build a fucking strong fence,’ Michael explained. ‘We’ll get whatever materials we need today and make a start. Face it we’re not going to find anywhere better to stay than this place. We need to protect it.’

‘We need to protect ourselves,’ said Emma, correcting him.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, picking up the keys to the van from a hook on the wall by the front door.

‘Now?’ said Carl.

‘Now,’ he replied.

Michael opened the door and made his way to the van, stopping only to pick up the rifle from where Carl had left it in the yard in front of the house.

Carl drove the van while Michael and Emma sat in the back together drawing up a list of everything they could think they might need. It had been a conscious move by Michael to hand the keys over to the other man. He hadn’t liked the way Carl had been acting this morning. Sure all three of them were right on the edge at the moment, but his position seemed more precarious than that of the other two. There was an undeniable air of uncertainty and fear in his voice every time he spoke. Michael’s logic was that by distracting him and giving him a definite role to concentrate on, his mind would be occupied and any problems could be temporarily avoided. He could sympathise with the poor bastard entirely. He knew that he personally could just about handle what was going on around him at the moment, but if anything else happened he wasn’t so sure that he’d be able to cope.

Less than two minutes trying to draw up the list and the two survivors stopped, both of them quickly realising that it was a waste of their precious time and that they couldn’t afford to even try and be specific anymore. Truth was they couldn’t risk wasting time trying to find the things they thought they might need, instead they had no option but to fill the van with whatever they could lay their hands on and only stop when there wasn’t space for anything else.

Carl drove towards the village of Byster at a phenomenal speed. Michael silently wished that he would slow down but he knew that he wouldn’t. He’d found himself accelerating at a similar rate whenever he’d driven recently. Driving was deceptively difficult because although silent, every road was strewn with hundreds upon hundreds of random obstacles – crashed and abandoned cars, burnt out wrecks and the remains of collapsed buildings. There were scattered, motionless corpses and scores of other wandering bodies everywhere. When Michael had driven he’d found that a nervous pressure had forced him to keep accelerating. He felt sure that Carl was feeling that same clammy, noxious fear too.

Before they reached the village they passed a vast, warehouse-like supermarket, brightly painted and completely at odds with the lush green countryside which surrounded it. Carl slammed his foot on the brake, quickly turned the van around and drove back towards the large building. It was a crucial find. They guessed that pretty much everything they needed would be inside. More importantly, filling the van with supplies there meant that they didn’t need to get any closer to the centre of the village. More to the point, it meant that they could keep their distance from the sick and diseased remains of the local population.

‘Brilliant,’ Carl said under his breath as he pulled into the car park and slowed the van down. ‘This is fucking brilliant.’

He gently turned the steering wheel and guided their vehicle round in a wide and careful arc. Other than four stationary cars (two empty, one containing three motionless bodies and the other a charred wreck) and a single body which tripped and stumbled towards them they seemed to be alone.

‘You want to get as close as you can to the main doors,’ Michael advised from his position behind Carl. ‘We want to be out in the open as little as possible.’

Carl’s immediate response was to do and say nothing. After thinking for a couple of seconds he put the van into first gear and pulled away again. He turned away from the building and then stopped when the glass entrance doors were directly behind him.

‘What’s he doing?’ Emma asked quietly.

‘I think he’s going to reverse back,’ Michael replied, his voice equally low. ‘It’s what I’d do. If I was driving I’d try and get us almost touching the doors so that…’

He stopped speaking suddenly when Carl jammed the van into reverse gear and slammed his foot down on the accelerator pedal. The force of the sudden and unexpected movement threw Emma and Michael forward in their seats.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Michael screamed over the screeching of tyres tearing across the car park. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

The other man didn’t answer. He was looking back over his shoulder, looking past Emma and Michael and towards the supermarket doors. The engine whined as the van hurtled back towards the silent building.

‘Carl!’ Emma protested uselessly. She turned to look behind her and then crouched down with her hands over her head as she braced herself for impact. The van smashed into the plate glass doors and then stopped suddenly – the ear splitting noise of the engine immediately replaced by the deafening crash of shattering glass and the ominous groan of metal on metal. Carl pressed hard on the brake and Michael looked out of the window to his side. The van had stopped a third inside the building and two thirds out in the car park. They were virtually wedged in the doorway.

‘You stupid fucking idiot!’ Emma screamed.

Ignoring her, Carl turned off the engine, opened the tailgate using a control lever by his right foot, took the keys from the ignition and then clambered out over the back seats. He stepped out into the supermarket, his boots crunching and grinding jagged shards of glass into the marble floor.

‘Good move,’ Michael mumbled under his breath as he watched Carl. He quietly acknowledged that the other man’s unorthodox parking, whilst battering the exterior of their van, had made their situation infinitely easier. Not only had he got them safely inside the building, he’d also managed to block the entrance at the same time, and the entrance would stay blocked until they decided to leave. He was impressed, but he didn’t want Carl to know that he approved. Michael felt sure that he was having real difficulty in coming to terms with recent events and he thought it was important to keep his feet firmly planted on the ground. If he boosted his confidence by applauding his risky and very direct actions what would he do next?