Nuclear Midnight (18 page)

‘It’s puzzling,’ Alex admitted. ‘Some may have deserted. But I suspect many more must have died in the flu epidemic. Their work camps were a perfect breeding ground for the virus.’

‘And no drivers have found any organised communities?’

‘None larger than a few hundred people.’

‘But no drivers ever came back from Scotland,’ Marcus broke in.

Alex nodded his agreement. ‘We've lost six drivers in five months. It's possible some group there is capturing or killing them, or, more likely, they have been caught by exiles.’

‘Would you be willing to find out for us?’ Marcus asked.

The question startled Alex and he stared at Marcus with his mouth open, then looking around at the other members of the committee, he suddenly realised what the previous discussion had been leading up to.

‘I suppose you have thought all this out beforehand?’ It annoyed Alex that he should be asked to go out again so soon.

‘Yes, we discussed it before you arrived,’ Marcus replied. ‘We’d not be sending you out on your own,’ he added quickly, seeing Alex's grim expression. ‘You would have at least three or four of our best men with you and extra guns and ammunition. It is essential that we know what is going on up there as soon as possible. If there is another community of comparable size to our own, we need to find how advanced they are and whether they are friendly. If they are not, we may have to divert more of our resources to defence. They may already know about us from the drivers who have disappeared.’

Alex nodded slowly. He could see the logic of it. All the drivers had gone missing in the same general area of north England. Parts of Scotland, even more than Wales, were likely to have escaped direct bombardment, and it was quite possible that a large community could be extending its influence there.

‘Why not send a large armed force up there instead of me?’ he asked.

Marcus frowned at that. ‘How do you think they'd react if they saw a small army marching towards them? We want their friendship, Alex, not another war on our doorstep. We've discussed this matter at length and decided that with six successful missions under your belt you have the necessary expertise and good judgement we need for such an assignment.’

That endorsement, Alex well knew, left him with no escape route. ‘When would you want me to start?’ he asked wearily.

‘Within a week.’

‘A week!’

‘We’ve already delayed this trip till your return,’ Marcus replied. ‘We can't afford to set it back any further.’

Alex leaned back, closing his eyes briefly. If he didn't agree, he would be sent under orders anyway, and that way he would lose any leverage he might have had. Besides, he had known some of the missing drivers personally. Their disappearance, coupled with what he already knew about the area, left an intriguing puzzle. Something very strange was happening in Northern England.

‘All right, I'll take the job,’ he said, ‘but only under certain conditions. Firstly, I want to pick all the food and supplies myself.’

Marcus nodded.

‘I want the use of that new long base Land Rover you have recently repaired, and I want to choose my own team.’

‘Marcus looked as if he was going to challenge this last demand, but then seemed to change his mind. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘as long as I have the final say on whom you select.’

Alex shook his head. ‘I want total charge of this one. You said just now that you trusted my judgement. It's important to me, Marcus.’

‘Very well, you win,’ Marcus agreed reluctantly. ‘Choose who you want, but if they don’t want to come with you I won't have them forced. If they drop out, you'll go with the men of my choice. ‘

Alex finally agreed to this arrangement.

The engine of the Land Rover was still rough idling. Terry figured it was the spark plugs misfiring. After scavenging another set of spark plugs from a second Land Rover that was now used for spare parts, the engine idled much more evenly. 

Terry had only recently been placed in charge of the mine's workshop facilities. He was now responsible for the service and maintenance of the mine's fleet of transport vehicles, a job he did well and enjoyed immensely. This was a man who, on the surface, struck most people as hard working and intelligent with more than his fair share of initiative and ambition. Just the type of person the community was crying out for. But underneath the ostentatious goodwill and community spirit, there lurked a darker side. He came from a depressed area of London and from his school days onwards he had been a natural rebel.

His father was a mechanic, who stimulated his son’s interest in cars from an early age. By the time Terry was thirteen, he was already a practised craftsman. By fourteen he was dodging school to steal parts off cars to fence. By eighteen, by which time he had taken an electronics course, his talents extended to burglar alarms and home wall safes. But Terry was too smart to continue stealing and he set himself up as a fence and made a comfortable living for several years. At the age of twenty three, however, his chequered past had caught up with him and he was jailed for three years for burglary, car stealing and receiving stolen goods. But with the holocaust, the slate had been wiped clean. Terry and a group of inmates had struck out for the west in the immediate aftermath, but by the time he had reached northern Wales all the members of the gang had either died or disappeared. He had stumbled across the community by himself. With his knowledge of electronics and mechanics he had been eagerly accepted.

‘Hey, Terry!’ one of the mechanics called. ‘I’ve bypassed the ignition, but this truck still doesn't start.’

It was that idiot Jefferson, a former sales clerk who was all at sea in this field. ‘Just a minute!’ Terry finished wiping his hands, then walked over. He was now in charge of eleven somewhat dubiously qualified mechanics. Although he could have occupied himself entirely with administration work, he liked to get involved.

The man removed his head from under the dashboard of a Toyota truck as Terry came up and gave him a cheery grin. Terry did not respond in kind.

‘This looks okay, but have you checked the battery?’

‘No,’ said the other man sheepishly.

‘Then don't bother me until you've checked everything,’ Terry said angrily.

The man gave another stupid grin and quickly shuffled out of sight around the front of the vehicle. Terry returned in disgust to completing his checks on the Land Rover. He was no longer the wild youth he had been before the war. He had learned how to conceal his impulses and channel negative feelings to more useful ends. His reward had been the responsibility for this workshop. He was making himself indispensable to the community now; one day, he reckoned, he would be almost immune from its laws. He would control and rule, rather than be controlled and ruled. This power over people, he found exciting and he wanted it more than anything. Only individuals like Alex fathomed his true nature, and not always consciously. In Alex's case, it manifested itself as a clash of character, Alex's painfully honest, uncompromising approach to life, against Terry's subtle scheming. They saw in each other everything they inwardly loathed; everything that was at variance with what they were. Two such opposites could never be friends. The peace between them often bordered on open conflict.

In the afternoon of the following day, Alex persuaded Cliff to accompany him to Anglesey where he hoped to find Roy and another man called Wayne Fletcher. Cliff adopted his usual wry expression when Alex said he would explain matters when they were all together. Roy had been living on the island for nearly a year now and had recently been placed in charge of a large wheat crop. He had been brought up on a farm and liked the idea of combining his building work with farming. Wayne had been a farm labourer before the war and was now Roy's right hand man.

It was close to sunset when they reached the island, and they passed hundreds of hooded figures plodding back to the settlements after spending all day in the green-houses. An alarming increase in skin cancer had made such garments essential for all outdoor workers. Probably there had not been such a concentration of hoods on the island since the Druids lived here, a couple of civilisations before, Alex mused.

Alex shifted into second gear and drove through the outskirts of a recently completed village. Only four months before it had been deserted land now it was filled with rows of clay brick houses. According to Roy, each of these buildings had been designed to have one large dormitory containing twenty beds, a communal living room with a log fire and a communal bathroom. The larger and longer buildings were the kitchens and mess halls where food was rationed out three times a day.

This village was typical of a new breed of settlement under construction by the committee, part of its master plan to enshrine its socialist based system in bricks and mortar. No favouritism, no luxuries, everyone working the same hours for the same food and shelter; the only concession was that families with children were placed on a short list for a separate room. Another of this world's ironies, Alex thought. A war against such a system had created the perfect conditions for its implementation.

Roy and Wayne were living in one of the few pre-war houses near the centre of the settlement, along with eighteen other men and women. Cliff knocked on the door and a small West Indian girl let them in. The two men were in the living room talking to several members of the household. They sprang up with delight when they saw Cliff and Alex. Roy hadn't changed, unless perhaps he was even stronger and larger than when Alex had seen him last. His thick, brown beard and brawny arms gave the impression more of a bear than a human. Wayne was very different; small and wiry, with a wispy beard and matted brown hair that had probably not seen a comb since the war. Always gaunt in appearance, with a triangular shaped face that tapered to a cleft jaw, his appearance was almost sinister, yet he possessed a warm nature and his mind was quick and sharp.

After a few minutes of discussing pleasantries, they all trooped upstairs to a small bedroom overlooking the street where they could be alone. Wayne stepped up to a small, highly polished cabinet and produced four glasses and an old wine bottle filled with a clear liquid.

‘Freshly distilled potato wine,’ he announced, proudly waving the object in front of them. ‘A bit rough, but the best our local stills have been able to produce.’

He filled each glass half-full and handed them around.

The wine turned out to be considerably worse than anyone had anticipated. Coughing and a burning sensation right down to the stomach seemed to be the usual result of taking a medium sip. In spite of this, however, no one's thirst seemed to be impaired.

With the opening of the bottle a more light hearted mood descended on the company, diverting them from Alex’s request for a serious talk. Cliff embarked on his favourite pastime of running down the committee; acting out, with some exaggeration, the mannerisms of the various members as they went about making their decisions. Wayne joined in with his own sharp wit, spicing the absurdity of the situations Cliff conjured before them. The men laughed long and hard as all the strain and frustration of their lives seeped then blasted forth in unrestrained guffaws. The pompous, the petty minded, the bureaucrats were all ridiculed in turn, the laughter acting like some huge emotional sink. Before the war Alex would have frowned on such a scene and thought it bordered on hysteria, but most social gatherings these days had this slightly frantic air about them. When criticism could earn expulsion, laughter behind closed doors was the only outlet for freedom left.

Finally, when they had settled down a little and Wayne was searching for a second bottle, Cliff introduced a graver note.

‘Well, guv,’ he said softly, ‘you still haven't mentioned anything about your trip yet, or why it was you wanted to come down here all of a sudden.’

‘No, I haven't.’ Alex smiled thinly, and the light-hearted mood of his companions suddenly dissipated. ‘Perhaps I'd better start by going back a bit,’ he went on, when he saw he had their attention. ‘About eighteen months ago, I was asked by the committee to do a survey of the radiation levels in Newcastle. So off I went, taking the old M6, when I began to notice a large number of corpses, none of them more than a few weeks old, extending in what seemed to be a continuous trail towards the north. On my return from Newcastle, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to follow the trail.’ He took another sip of wine. ‘At the time I kept expecting it just to peter out or end in some vast community like our own, but it never did. I stopped at some towns along the way and found they also were littered with bodies about the same age as the ones on the motorway. But the towns themselves were largely intact, with very little blast damage and numerous signs of recent occupation. Not a soul about, however. It looked as though this whole region had supported a large population and that something had driven them northwards only a few weeks before I found them.’ He paused and glanced at the faces of the others. ‘I never found the end of the trail,’ he said, shaking his head solemnly. ‘My fuel reserves were running low and I was forced to turn back.’

‘How far north did you go?’ asked Wayne.

‘Oh… a fair way, within twenty kilometres of Glasgow and Edinburgh.’

‘And you've never reported this to anyone?’ Cliff asked.

‘You're the first.’

‘But why us? Why not the committee?’