‘You all right?’ Brigid asked as he entered the room. His shuffling footsteps on the floorboards above had alerted them to the fact that he was up and awake.
‘I’m okay,’ he answered quietly.
‘Coffee?’
He nodded. The kettle was boiling on a portable gas stove, filling the room with steam and heat.
‘Where are the others?’ he asked, looking around and trying not to yawn.
‘Danny, Tony and Richard are upstairs, Harry and Bruce are outside.’
‘Outside? What the hell are they doing out there?’
‘Keeping watch,’ Gail answered.
‘Why? Has something happened?’
She shook her head.
‘No, we’re not planning on taking any chances, that’s all.’
‘Bloody hell, just being outside would have meant taking a chance where I’ve just come from.’
‘We know. It’s different here, you’ll get used to it.’
Michael took a few steps closer to the window and looked out into the darkness. He could just about make out movement a few metres ahead. It was too quick and purposeful to have been a body. It had to have been either Stayt or Fry.
‘Here you go,’ Brigid said, handing him a mug of coffee.
‘Thank you.’
He could see one of the men outside more clearly now.
Whoever it was they were walking back towards the cottage. Seconds later the door to Michael’s right creaked open and Harry Stayt stepped inside.
‘Okay, Harry?’ Gayle asked. Stayt nodded.
‘Bloody cold out there tonight,’ he complained.
‘What you come back in for? Anything happening out there?’
‘Saw a couple of bodies about half an hour ago, that’s all.’
‘Give you any trouble?’ Michael wondered. ‘I mean, did they go for you or were they like the others earlier?’
‘They went for us.’
‘I don’t understand. Why do some of them still react like that when others don’t?’ asked Harper. A young man, tonight he looked tired and drawn beyond his years.
Michael shrugged his shoulders.
‘Who knows,’ he replied. ‘My guess is that it all depends on what condition their brains and bodies are in.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Some of them are more decayed than others. You’d expect their brains to be decaying at the same rate as the rest of their bodies, so it stands to reason that some will be in a worse mental state than others.’
‘Bloody hell, they’re all in a bad mental state, aren’t they?’ Stayt grinned. ‘Look, sorry to change the subject, but I saw the windows steaming up and guessed you’d put the kettle on. Any chance of a drink?’
Deep in thought, Brigid stood up and spooned coffee into two more mugs. She poured on boiling water, stirred the drinks and then pushed them over towards Stayt who picked them up with one hand. Michael noticed that he was carrying a blade of some description in the other hand.
From where he was standing he couldn’t see whether it was a sword, a machete or just a long-bladed knife. Stayt noticed that he was looking at it.
‘Bloody useful, this is,’ he explained as he lifted the blade up into the dull light. It was a long and ornately decorated sword. The other survivors watched him raise it with cautious eyes. ‘Nicked it from a museum a few weeks back. I tell you, it’s the best thing I’ve found for getting rid of bodies.’
‘Put that damn thing down, will you?’ Brigid sighed.
‘You’re like a bloody kid with a new toy. I used to spend half my time locking up idiots who carried things like that.’
Michael looked puzzled. Stayt explained.
‘Ex-Copper,’ he grinned. He did as he was asked and then turned round to leave the cottage again.
‘Mind if I come out with you?’ Michael wondered. His question seemed to surprise the others, Stayt included.
‘You can if you want to,’ he answered, grinning again.
‘If you’d rather spend your first night here out in the dark with Fry and me instead of here in the warm then be my guest!’
‘Can’t sleep anyway,’ Michael grumbled as he zipped up his jacket and followed Stayt out into the darkness. The two men walked away from the cottage together.
‘Don’t know why they get so wound up about this sword,’ Stayt said quietly once he was sure they were out of earshot. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’d rather carry a weapon like this than a gun.’
‘I’ve never got on with guns,’ Michael agreed. ‘They’re no use anymore. They’re too bloody noisy and you have to be a damn good shot to take the bodies out. Miss the head and they’ll just keep coming at you.’
‘Damn right, and by the time you’ve got rid of one of them there’ll be another couple of hundred following close behind trying to see what all the noise was about.’
‘Stick to your sword,’ Michael grunted.
‘Fry,’ Stayt shouted into the darkness. ‘Oi, Fry, where are you?’
‘Over here,’ a disembodied voice replied from the direction of the small hill which overlooked the pyre Michael had seen earlier. The remains of the fire were still smouldering. He could see the faintest of orange glows in the darkness.
‘Two of us coming over,’ he shouted back. He lowered his voice again to talk to Michael. ‘Didn’t want him thinking you were one of them and trying to take you out!’
Michael managed half a smile.
‘Thanks.’
They found Fry crouched over the embers of the fire, warming his hands. Earlier in the evening they’d fuelled the flames with wood and other general rubbish but the remains of the fire’s original fuel could still clearly be seen.
Michael found it a little unnerving to see so many charred bones. The fact that they were in a natural hollow in the ground gave the area the feeling of being a grotesque mass grave.
‘How you doing, Mike?’ Fry asked cheerfully as they neared.
‘I’m good,’ he answered, ‘just got sick of sitting in there and staring at the walls.’
‘I know what you mean,’ the other man said. ‘Guess we’ve all done enough of that recently to last a lifetime.’
‘That’s why we keep volunteering to come out here,’
Stayt added. ‘I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop and relax until I know that we’ve got rid of all the bodies here and the rest of our people are on their way over from the mainland. I just want to get it done now.’
‘How were they all doing when you saw them?’ Fry asked. ‘Jackie still trying to keep them in line?’
‘Seemed to be.’
‘Give them a week or so and I reckon they’ll all be over here,’ Stayt yawned.
‘Why should it take that long?’
He shrugged his shoulders and yawned again.
‘That’s the timescale we’ve been trying to work towards.’
‘So what’s stopping us from moving things on more quickly?’
Stayt and Fry both became quiet.
‘Apart from getting the village cleared,’ Fry eventually admitted, ‘nothing really.’
‘So we should do it tomorrow, shouldn’t we? What reason have we got for delaying it? I feel the same as you two, I don’t want to be sitting here talking about what we’re going to do when we could be doing it.’
‘I’m not sure. I think we should…’
‘Be honest, Bruce,’ Michael interrupted, ‘everyone instinctively makes excuses and tries to put things off because they’re scared. I understand because I’m the same, but the sooner we do this and get it done, the sooner we can try and get on with our lives.’
‘We know that, but clearing the village is going to be a big job and there’s a lot riding on it. We need to make sure we get it right first time.’
‘There you go again, more excuses. We don’t really have to get it all done on day one, we just have to make sure that things don’t go too wrong. Does that make sense?’