She nodded and smiled, and I wondered if I imagined her own reluctance as she took her fingers from my arm.
“Let’s do that.” She squinted up at the clouds. “Not going to be quite as hot today, but cloud cover can be deceiving. We need to find somewhere to top up our water, get you some boots and hopefully find a car that works. Best we get cracking, eh?”
It took us about fifteen minutes to break the tent down, scrape the bowls and cups clean and clear everything away before taking turns at the far end of the small copse.
That done, we marched back to the road, my feet sore and my calves burning from the previous day’s walking, but for some reason I felt alive in a way I hadn’t done in years. Even my constant fear for Melody was muted, still very much there, but no longer the insistent gnawing feeling that tried to claw its way out of my stomach every few minutes. I wondered at that as we walked, at first feeling like a bad parent, allowing my relief at re-cementing my growing friendship with Emily to overshadow my concern for my daughter, but then I realised that it was that very friendship that was giving me any real hope that we would be reunited.
Without Emily, I knew, I would never make it, would probably not have made it this far, and I almost felt like the miles were melting away under our feet as we headed north, each step bringing us closer to my little girl.
We’d been walking for about an hour when the trees and fields gave way to houses, just a few at first, large, sprawling things with security gates and high fences, several of which were now little more than burned-out shells, then rows of smaller dwellings, many of which were gutted by fire. Here and there one stood almost untouched, and from at least one of those we were watched by hostile eyes, a man and two women who stared at us until we were out of sight, making my shoulder blades itch until we were well past.
Smoke spiralled into the air from several streets away, and in the distance I could hear shouting, then a scream abruptly cut off.
Emily hefted the shotgun, her eyes darting from tree to hedge to abandoned car, constantly looking for trouble before it got to close. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up and made sure I kept pace, although never crossing into her field of fire.
“I don’t like this,” I muttered to myself, but Emily heard and nodded.
“Me neither. I was going to stop and try and find you some boots, but I think we’ll just keep going. I’m sure another few miles in trainers won’t kill you, but stopping might.”
It wasn’t until we rounded an abandoned supermarket delivery truck that we saw the bodies.
A man and a woman lay on the pavement, his body curled protectively around hers. The pitiful remains of what had been in their rucksacks surrounded them, the bags themselves torn apart and the whole area splashed with blood as if they’d been attacked by an enraged beast.
I could smell that blood, and flies buzzed as they flew around the bodies, looking for a home for their eggs.
“They’re fresh,” Emily said in a low voice, eyes constantly moving.
“How do you know?” I asked, fighting the urge to vomit while trying not to look at the naked fear written all over the dead woman’s face, the blank eyed stare only making it worse.
“If they’d been killed yesterday they’d be bloated by now, and if they’d been killed last night they’d be stiff.” She nudged one of the bodies and the arm flopped lifelessly.
“And the blood is still wet. I reckon an hour, maybe less since they died. Let’s get out of here.”
I nodded and suddenly wished I were holding the shotgun. If we were attacked now I’d be able to do little but get in the way, leaving Emily to defend us both once again.
As we passed the bodies I couldn’t help but look at the wounds, of which there were many. They looked like they had been hacked to death, defensive wounds on the wrists and arms of the man and a huge slice in the back of the woman’s head that turned her golden hair red and laid her skull open to show her brain beneath.
Aside from the buzzing of the flies and my own harsh breathing, the street was eerily silent. Emily took the lead and we pressed on, getting to the end of the road and taking a left, then a right until we were heading north again.
As we put some distance between ourselves and the bodies I began to breathe again, although I was beginning to strain my neck from looking behind us so often to make sure we weren’t being stalked.
“Who do you think did it?” I asked when we were several streets past the gory scene.
Emily shrugged, still looking everywhere she thought there might be a threat, shotgun half-raised as she walked.
“Who knows? Maybe it was someone they knew who had a grudge, maybe complete strangers looking for food. Doesn’t really matter now, does it? Dead is dead.”
“I guess not.”
Emily pointed to a shop at the end of the street, the plastic signs in the window claiming that they sold ‘everything you need in one store’.
“How about we check out their claim?” She said, “see if they have anything useful?”
The door to the shop was wide open, the glass panels above and below the central metal bar both smashed. I felt more than a little fear at entering a place where we could easily be trapped, but I was determined to prove to Emily that I was useful, so I nodded bravely and followed her up to the window.
She peered inside, then pulled a torch from her pocket and passed it to me.
“I’ll go in first,” she whispered, “you follow with the torch. Try and shine it wherever I point the shotgun, but for god’s sake don’t point it in my face, ok?”
I nodded again, and before I could change my mind we were moving, Emily slipping through the door silently while I crunched broken glass under my feet and winced even as I flicked the torch on and followed her in.
The shelves inside were almost empty, the cigarette display behind the till the same. Empty food packets were littered here and there, one bag of rice have split and emptied its contents all over the floor, making it feel like we were walking on sand.
It took a few seconds for the smell to register, and we followed it to the farthest aisle, where a short, fat man in his fifties lay in his pyjamas, the back of his skull caved in while a softball bat lay a few feet from his outstretched hand.
The body was beginning to bloat and more flies were buzzing happily as they explored.
“Poor bastard,” Emily muttered, giving the shop a final look-around to make sure we were alone. There was only one other door, this one leading to a store room at the back. Inside that room were a few boxes of random goods and a desk piled high with paper, but other than that anything of use had been taken.
“I’ll check in here,” she motioned towards the few boxes left, “you look in the shop. Anything we don’t have or we need more of is good. Not sure we’ll have much luck with boots though.”
She dropped her Bergen and pulled out a second torch as I went back into the main shop, running my eyes over the all-but-bare shelves.
All of the food and water had been taken, as well as alcohol, cigarettes and sweets. I found a single packet of polos wedged between two parts of the counter and pocketed them, then began to look in the clothing section, more accurately a corner of the shop that barely took up two shelves.
Several jumpers had been left behind, and holding one up I could see why. Throwing it back on the shelf, I looked for footwear but apart from an empty box it was all gone.
The only other thing I could find was a bottle of washing up liquid, standing on its own on an otherwise empty shelf. Presumably whoever had ransacked the place didn’t feel that washing up should be a part of the apocalypse.