Autumn: The Human Condition (26 page)

I sat out in the garden shed again that afternoon and read a book and occasionally dozed lightly. My sleep was punctuated with desperate dreams and twisted nightmares about my dead daughter and wife. It was almost dark when I woke up properly and went back inside. The low light increased my unease. I regretted having slept. I tossed and turned all night in bed.

As the situation outside continued to change I made a conscious effort to try and find things to do to try and keep myself positive and motivated. I had left the car parked on the drive and had stored the provisions I'd taken at the far end of the garage. In fact I had collected such an impressive volume of supplies that they filled almost the entire length of the cold, rectangular room. On the morning of the fourth day, when there was finally enough light to see clearly, I sat at my desk in the study and made a list of my daily dietary requirements. I used reference books, our family medical dictionary and the encyclopaedia to calculate the minimum I would need to eat each day to survive. I then spent the entire day in the garage, dividing the numerous boxes and bags of food into equal-sized daily rations, making sure there were sufficient levels of the necessary vitamins, proteins and whatever other chemicals I needed for each day. I also allowed myself a daily luxury � a can of beer or a packet of sweets for example. It quickly became apparent that I wouldn't be able to get quite everything I needed from my provisions. I decided I would have to look at fetching vitamin and mineral supplements when I next went out, if they proved necessary. During the day I also became very aware that none of the food I had was fresh. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I could start trying to grow my own vegetables if my situation remained unchanged for any length of time. Janice and I had always maintained a small vegetable plot, but perhaps I would need to expand the operation over the coming year. Sitting there on the garage floor surrounded by packages of food I found the idea of having to fend for myself on such a basic level strangely exciting.

I worked long and hard that day and, by eight o'clock when the light had all but disappeared again, I was finished. On the garage floor lay forty-three separate food parcels for the next forty-three days. I tried not to think of them as rations but that, in effect, was what they were. Talk of rationing made it sound like it was wartime, but it most certainly wasn't. For me to have been at war I needed an enemy, and at that moment in time I was very definitely alone. I locked the side garage door and walked around to the back door and let myself back into the house.

Things changed again on the morning of day five.

I woke up and threw back the curtains to find myself looking down on a street scene very different to the one I had last seen the previous evening. Outside my house was a vast and continually growing crowd of people. Initially elated I quickly got dressed and readied myself to go outside to see what they wanted. These people � although similar in appearance to the empty souls who had been dragging themselves along the streets for the last two days � behaved differently. They were definitely gravitating around my house with a purpose, not just drifting by. I stood out there with them, separated from the crowd by only the metal gate across the end of the drive, and for what felt like an eternity I said nothing. My heart sank as I got closer to them. Their faces were blank and empty and they seemed to look through me as if I wasn't there. The nearest few figures were being continually jostled and pushed against the gate by those immediately behind them and yet they failed to react or stand their ground. I tried to speak to them but they didn't acknowledge my words. Every time I opened my mouth to address them there was a ripple of sudden movement (bordering on muted excitement) throughout the crowd, but none of them seemed capable of responding to me properly. I began to lose my temper. Perhaps it was just the frustration of my increasingly confusing situation getting the better of me. Whatever the reason, I stood there at the end of the drive shouting and screaming at them to answer me. It was an embarrassing show of uncontrolled emotion which I immediately began to regret.

I returned to the house and stood at the bedroom window hoping to make sense of what was happening. Although the behaviour of the bodies outside had changed, it occurred to me that my overall situation remained much the same. What the people on the other side of the gate did or didn't do had no bearing on my fight for survival. Ultimately there had been no substantial change in my situation or my priorities � I had to continue to fight and fend for myself. As the government booklet had said, I needed to sit and wait.

I could see more and more of the bodies approaching from various directions, perhaps drawn to the house as a result of my undignified rant in the street earlier. Whatever the reason, with little else happening in the neighbourhood it seemed that my home was rapidly becoming the centre of attention. It slowly dawned on me that, with everything else dead and silent around me, there was nothing else to distract them. More and more of them would undoubtedly keep coming. I decided that I had few options. I could lock the doors, close the curtains and sit and wait until they disappeared, or I could pack up now and run. After having worked so long and so hard for everything I owned I knew there was no way I could bring myself to leave home, especially not now that my family were buried in the back garden. I knew immediately that I was going to stay there. It was now just a question of how comfortable and safe I could make myself.

Although accountancy was my chosen vocation, I have always had a talent for working with my hands and have prided myself on some of the improvements I have made around the house over the years. I made furniture for Maddy's room, I decorated throughout (several times), I re-glazed a few windows and I laid the patio and built a low brick wall around it. On top of that I devised and constructed storage areas in the attic, the garage, the study, the utility room and the shed. I approached the strengthening of the house with real relish and I planned it carefully. If nothing else, the project would keep me occupied for a few days at least and would help the dragging, lonely hours pass with more speed than they had so far been.

I needed to go out to the hardware store and get materials. Timber, fixings, tools and numerous other bits and pieces were necessary to protect the house as I wanted. I had to leave but I couldn't get the car off the drive. The crowd around the front of the house was, by now, more that fifty bodies deep in places. Even if I had been able to get the car onto the road, in doing so I would inevitably have opened up the drive and the front of my property would have been surrounded. With still more of them arriving by the minute I didn't fancy the prospect of trying to herd the unresponsive throng away from my house and back onto the street.

When we'd first moved into Baker Road West there had been a large expanse of grassland beyond the fence at the bottom of our garden. Five and a half years ago the council sold the land to a housing developer who built more than double the sensible number of houses they should have on it. I certainly would never have considered buying a plot there. They were crammed together and their gardens were virtually non-existent. I had an acquaintance who lived there and I dropped him back home after golf on a number of occasions. The estate was like a rabbit warren, a sprawling maze of cul-de-sacs, groves and avenues. To squeeze more homes in, many of the later phases were built with garages at the bottom of their gardens with access from a track which led along the back of their properties and, by default, across the back of mine also. Although I hadn't yet solved the problem of getting to the hardware store, the track provided me with a convenient means of getting close to the house with the equipment I'd collected when I returned.

I decided to walk. As risky and dangerous as it may have sounded, it strangely seemed the most sensible way to leave. I could climb over the back fence, creep down the track and then quietly and carefully make my way along the main road to the hardware centre at the bottom of the hill. The store catered for trade as well as the general public. There were trucks and vans which could be hired to help transport bulky loads. I'd hired one previously when I'd built the patio. I decided I would use one again to bring back whatever it was I decided to take.

In five minutes under two hours I was back. My trip out progressed with little incident, save for a few uncomfortable moments in the hardware store car park when I found that another crowd of ragged, dishevelled people had gathered around the front of the building after I had disappeared inside. I took my time and moved around quietly, hoping that they wouldn't notice me. I used a trade entrance at the rear of the building to load up a small truck and was able to load everything before any of them had seen me. Once I got home I parked the truck at the back of my house and threw the timber and other items I'd taken over the fence. I left the truck where it was just in case I needed to use it again.

The figures in the streets had become increasingly inquisitive and, for want of a better word, nosy. I couldn't move without huge swathes of shuffling, lethargic bodies tripping towards me. They appeared washed out and empty and, although they were easy to brush to the side, their unwanted attention made me feel uncomfortable. If they continued to come, I thought to myself, the house might end up surrounded by incalculable numbers of them and I might end up using the hardware store truck as a means of escape. I couldn't imagine leaving. I decided that it was more important than ever to make my property as strong and secure as possible. I set about barricading and strengthening every door and window, even every vent, no matter how small, insignificant or unreachable it appeared.

I began with the front of the house. My property is already separated from the road by a knee-high brick wall with a low iron railing on top and a strong iron gate. It seemed sensible to try and increase the height of the barrier, to completely block the house and myself from view as far as was possible. I sank a row of six-foot concrete posts and fence panels into the flower bed directly behind the wall and I used nylon rope and chains to secure a split panel onto the gate (which I also locked with a hefty padlock I had taken from the store). The front of the house was the hardest place to work. The relentless interest of the people on the street was unsettling and disturbing. On more than one occasion I had to push them back to get them out of the way. I asked them to move back but the bloody things were incapable of any positive response. In the end I just shoved them off my drive and back into the crowd.

I did a beautiful job on the ground floor doors. In a moment of inspiration I decided to build a second timber frame around each entrance and fitted new doors on top of the existing ones. Solid wooden fire doors, separately hinged and able to open independently. Perfect. I did something similar with the windows, making wooden shutters that completely blocked out the light. I couldn't help but make a terrific amount of noise as I fitted them. I had no option but to drill into the masonry around the windows and doors. From the top of the ladder working on the front of the house I could see over the newly raised fence and I was able to see the dramatic effect the noise was having on the crowd of people in the street. Some of them began to bang and hammer angrily on my new gate. At times the noise they made threatened to drown out the sound of my drill. I was almost relieved when the battery pack ran out.

It took the best part of two days to make the house as secure as I wanted it. By the time I'd finished I was exhausted. I worked whenever it was light, knowing that I would have plenty of time to stop and rest once the job was complete. At six-thirty on Tuesday evening � more than a week since all of this had started � I sat out on the lawn next to Maddy and her mother and looked back at the house with pride. They would have been impressed with what I'd achieved, I was sure. If nothing else they would have been proud of the fact that I had survived when so many others had fallen. Perhaps Janice wouldn't have been too keen on the aesthetic side of the alterations, but she'd have surely appreciated their functionality. I sat between the graves of my wife and my daughter with a can of beer and the remainder of my daily rations and finally allowed myself to relax. The food and drink tasted better than ever. I had a normal appetite for the first time in days. Rationed food wasn't so bad after all, I decided. I had a fairly wide selection of tastes and flavours in each day's supply. I fully appreciated that my choices might lessen and become substantially more limited as time progressed but, for now, I was doing fine. Tired, but fine.

I slept well last night.

This morning I found that the situation had deteriorated again. Things have suddenly become much less certain and I feel increasingly unsure. Although the house is now secure, today I feel scared and the enormity of what has happened to the world has again become painfully apparent.

I lay lazily in bed for a while, resting after the efforts of the last two days. When I finally got up I went to the front of the house and opened up the new wooden shutters which cover the spare bedroom and bathroom windows. I immediately saw that the crowd outside had more than doubled in size. It now stretched from one end of the street to the other � filling the entire length of Baker Road West � and I couldn't understand why. Surely once I had finished work on the house and was out of sight the people outside should have drifted away, shouldn't they? I cautiously prised the bathroom window open and listened. Although not one of them spoke, there was a constant and very definite noise coming from the unwanted gathering. The sound of shuffling feet, bodies tripping and falling, things being knocked over in the street and smashed, tired hands being slammed against my fence... Individually the sounds were insignificant and indistinct but together they were uncomfortably loud. It was obvious that this was no longer a crowd which would simply drift away again. I could see even more people arriving and joining the edges of the huge gathering.