“I know that place,” Greg replied. “If home turns out to be a mess, you might find me knocking at your door.”
“Seriously, Greg, be careful, we don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybrook is probably going to look like a war zone, so you need to be prepared,” I said.
“Yeah, stay alert, find out what you can and if you need us, come to the house,” Jack added.
“Okay, thanks.”
We arrived at the exit for Maybrook and Bernie slowed down.
“Pull over guys, I’d like to walk from here and have a look around,” Greg said.
Before he left, Greg thanked us for the ride and promised to visit once he had been home.
He probably didn’t realise I was more thankful for meeting him.
Chapter 7 – The House
“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Bernie said as he pulled away.
“Do you think Greg will be alright?” Lea asked.
“Nice guy, but he’s going to be in for some bad news when he gets home. I can’t imagine he will be in any danger if it’s all over. You know? The killer thing,” Bernie replied.
“After we set ourselves up in the house, why don’t we find a spot closer to town where we can try and draw people in? We can observe from a safe distance just to make sure,” Jack suggested.
“Haven’t you tried this one before guys?” Lea replied.
We had, but hadn’t admitted it to Lea yet.
I ignored Lea and answered Jack. “Yeah, why not. We can also have a drive around and see if we can find anyone.”
We passed the black skeleton of a burnt out property on our right, a number of corpses littered the roadside, but the journey was now relatively quiet.
“Over there. That’s the farm I was telling you about,” Lea said.
I looked across and saw a tree lined road that led down to an impressive house with a large wooden barn by the side of it.
“We can go and have a look later on if you like?” I said.
Lea shrugged and brushed a hand through her hair.
Minutes later, Bernie turned right onto a crunchy gravel drive.
“Here it is!”
The house was stunning. It was the kind of place that I thought I’d only see on television in a period drama. It was a large white two-storey building, with a fantastic old porch around the front. If the danger had really subsided and the owners of the house were not alive, I could definitely be comfortable in these kinds of surroundings.
We parked at the end of the driveway and checked the outside areas first. Jack and Lea headed around the right hand side of the house, Bernie and me to the left. We met at the back having seen nothing to worry us. There was a large shed in the back corner of the garden, I approached, looked through a side window, and saw that it contained gardening tools.
I nodded over to the other three who started looking through the house windows.
“Here, in the kitchen,” Bernie called out.
I walked over to Bernie and looked over his shoulder. Lying on the kitchen floor were two bodies, a woman and man, they must have killed each other with kitchen knives judging by the state of their bodies. It was difficult to know who had killed whom, as both had gaping wounds in their necks.
“These two are probably the owners. Let’s get the bodies out of the house and make sure the rest is clear,” I said.
“What shall we do with the bodies?” Lea asked.
“After we clear the house, Harry and I will bury them in the back garden. You and Bernie secure the windows and doors,” Jack said.
Bernie tried the back door, and it clicked open. We slowly entered the house and crept together from room to room looking for any survivors. This really was a beautiful place, expensive fittings and furniture adorned every corner, upstairs, the bedrooms looked inviting. It felt like a long time since I’d slept in a proper bed, and was looking forward to getting some well deserved rest. We finally returned to the kitchen, which was starting to become a health hazard.
“Change of plan,” I said to Bernie and Lea. “Why don’t you make the kitchen clean and find out what supplies we have first? Jack and I will take care of the bodies.”
Lea started checking the cupboards for cleaning materials, as Jack and I dragged the two corpses out onto the back lawn, and then fetched two shovels from the shed.
“I bet you’d thought you’d dug your last garden,” I said.
“Can’t we just burn the bodies?” He shrugged.
I would have agreed, but was still concerned about drawing attention to our location.
“Come on,” I replied, “let’s get on with it, once we’ve finished, we can relax on those sun loungers over there.”
Jack nodded. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
He thrust his shovel into the ground to pull up a chunk of turf and we both set to work.
Digging a grave was tiring, although it was a good feeling to do some hard, honest work. I made quick progress as the bottled up emotions of the last few days were taken out on the earth.
Jack threw down his spade and stretched his back with a groan.
“I feel like I’ve been in a sauna,” he said, wiping his forehead.
“Me too, we can have a shower and change of clothes when we finish,” I said, as we took a quick break.
Before Jack could answer, Lea called from an upstairs window, “Keep up the good work, boys.”
We finished digging the graves to a depth of around four feet, and then rolled in the bodies.
“Shall we say something?” I said.
“Rest in peace,” he replied, and then began to scrape earth into the grave.
The task became much more palatable once the corpses were finally under a layer of soil. Jack was silently plugging away beside me — we still had work to do and could talk properly once we had time to relax.
We finished at roughly the same time and sat on the two sun loungers for a well-deserved rest.
“Can you hear that?” I said to Jack as I lay back.
“Hear what? I can’t hear anything?”
“Exactly. No gunshots, no screaming, no running.”
We were both lying back now and stayed there in silence for the next five minutes. The only noticeable sound was the muffled chatter from inside the house.
I stood to avoid nodding off and tapped Jack on the arm.
“Come on, let’s get cleaned up and have something to eat.”
“I could sleep for days,” Jack replied, and groaned as he rose from the lounger to follow me.
We entered the kitchen to find out how Lea and Bernie had been progressing. Bernie was standing over a camping stove watching it boil a large pan of water.
“You’re Brits,” he said, “I suppose you two would like a cup of tea. There’s some eggs and bread here that are still edible as well, so I’ll make you a fried egg sandwich afterwards.”
“That’s music to my ears, Bernie, thanks,” Jack replied enthusiastically.
“How are the windows and doors looking?” I asked Lea.
“All of the windows are now locked; I’ve placed piles of coins on each frame.” She smiled, “Saw it on TV; we’ll hear if anyone breaks in, even if they don’t smash the glass. The external doors are all pretty solid. We’ll just have to lock them when we go to sleep.”
“Actually,” I said, “I don’t think that we should all sleep at the same time. With a house this size and an area we all aren’t familiar with, it’s probably best to take turns on watch — two hours each, from midnight until eight. That way we can all get a proper rest for at least a while.”
“Are you sleeping downstairs?” Bernie asked and placed a steaming cup of tea on the table in front of me.
“No, I intend to sleep in a bed tonight, but I’ll take one of the graveyard shifts. If that is alright with everyone?”