Lucy looked at me. “What do you think?”
“He’s probably right. If we went back to the cars now, it’d get dark before we got anywhere near them. I don’t fancy walking over the mountains in the pitch black.”
“Me either.”
We set off after Mike and Elena. Lucy was quiet for a while, lost in her own thoughts, but then she asked, ‘Alex, what do you think has happened?”
“I don’t know. If it’s a virus, how could it spread so quickly? I heard a news report earlier that mentioned a hospital in London and a doctor in quarantine. But when we left home this morning, there was no mention of anything on the news.”
She went quiet again then said, “I’m scared.”
I looked at the darkening sky.
Something told me this was the end of the last normal day ever.
Life was never going to be the same again.
three
We set the tents up quickly. The trail led us around the side of the mountain Mike called the Cribyn then to a flat area of grass where we would spend the night. Mountains surrounded us and a rocky ravine ran off down a steep slope. It felt isolated. If the world had gone to hell, isolated could be good.
As we put together the steel poles and threaded them through the nylon loops as quickly as we could, I tried to piece together the fragments of knowledge I had. A viral outbreak. All media dead except for the emergency broadcast. A warning to lock all doors and windows.
It was that last fragment that scared me.
If a virus had somehow broken out from a London hospital, even if that virus were deadly, why were they telling people to lock their doors?
My mind went to places I didn’t want it to even consider going.
The infected.
Whatever this virus was, it had already spread enough to take out the radio stations and the internet. Was it worldwide? None of us could get any internet on our phones. In theory, that might just mean that the service providers in this area were down.
Or it could mean that the whole world was affected by the virus.
We erected the first tent and I looked at the flimsy fabric dome held together by hollow steel tubes. No protection. Not from the infected.
Jesus Christ, Alex, stop scaring yourself.
But even Mike had gone silent. He moved on to the next tent and started fitting the poles together. He had brought two tents, one for the boys and one for the girls. We placed them close together. It doesn’t matter how close they are, I thought, if someone comes up that ravine and attacks us, we’re as good as dead. Huddling together like frightened animals won’t help us.
I imagined a horde of infected men and women with blue skin ripping at the tents with sharp nails and teeth. Not stopping even when those nails and teeth were ripping flesh.
“Alex.”
I looked up. “Yeah?”
“Let’s get inside. It’s starting to rain.”
I nodded.
We shoved our rucksacks in one tent and the girls’ in the other. Mike and I climbed into ours and zipped up the door just as heavy drops of rain hit the tent. Slowly at first, then faster. Like a thousand fingers drumming on the fabric.
We unrolled the sleeping bags and laid them out on the tent floor. Mike lit a kerosene lamp and hung it from a hook on the ceiling.
“You girls OK in there?” he shouted.
“We’re fine,” Elena replied.
He looked at me. “Alex, I don’t think there’s really anything wrong. There’s something wrong with the internet, yeah. And the radio. But we’re in the middle of nowhere out here, man. That’s life in the sticks for you. Fuck all communication.”
“What about the emergency broadcast?”
“You must have tuned in to some military test channel or something. I told you, the army train up here all the time. We’re probably in the middle of one of their war games or something. Yeah, that makes sense. That explains the media blackout. There’s like a jammer or something to simulate a war.” The more he thought about it, the more he seemed to convince himself.
I thought about what he was saying. Was it plausible? The army did come to these mountains to train, particularly the SAS who were based at Hereford not too far from here. But surely even they would put up signs telling hikers they were blocking the local phone towers, wouldn’t they? Maybe not. My knowledge of military matters was limited to video games. I had no idea if they would even consider how their training protocols affected civilians.
“I think you could be right,” I told Mike. After all, even my game-addicted mind acknowledged that scenario was more likely than some sort of zombie outbreak. It was the army. We had seen their choppers earlier so they were definitely in the area. I breathed a little easier. It made sense.
“Hey, girls,” Mike called, “I’ve figured it out. The world isn’t ending after all. It’s the fucking army playing around.”
“What do you mean?”
A smirk crossed his face. “I’ll come in there and explain it to Elena. Alex will explain it to Lucy.”
“What?” I whispered.
“Hey, man, I spent the last few hours thinking the world was ending. Now I know it’s not; I need to do something life-affirming, if you know what I mean.”
“Mike, no.” I didn’t care what he did with Elena, it was the fact that Lucy was going to come into this tent that scared me.
He patted me on the shoulder as he left the tent. “Just talk to Lucy. She likes you, man.”
I sat back on my sleeping bag, leaning against my rucksack. I had agreed to come on this trip in a moment of weakness, thinking I would get to know Lucy Hoffmeister and maybe have a chance to go out with her. That moment had long since passed and I knew in the cold light of reality that I didn’t have a chance with Lucy. I wasn’t good at talking to any girls, particularly good-looking ones. I wasn’t scared of them or anything like that, I just got tongue-tied and embarrassed around them. So I went quiet. Then they thought I disliked them because I wouldn’t speak to them.
On my twentieth birthday, Mike had taken me to Amsterdam with a couple of his friends and they had paid for a certain lady in the red light district to help me become a man. She didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Dutch so my communication problem didn’t become a factor.
Mike thought the experience would help me overcome my shyness with women when we returned back home but as soon as we got off the plane, I was back to my old self. The worst thing about it was, I didn’t want to be this way. I wanted normal relationships with girls. I wasn’t proud that I had lost my virginity to a prostitute. I would rather have a real girlfriend.
The door unzipped and Lucy climbed into the tent. She looked as embarrassed as I felt. She would probably rather be anywhere than in a tent with me.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” She sat on Mike’s sleeping bag, facing me. She had tied her hair up into a ponytail and taken off her jacket. Sitting there in beige cargo pants and a black sweater, she looked even sexier because I had the impression she didn’t acknowledge her own sexiness. The understated makeup, tied-up hair and curves refusing to be hidden by the loose sweater accentuated the beauty Lucy was either unaware of or was trying to play down. The pale light from the lamp made her look ethereal.
“Mike said he’s figured out what’s happening?” she prompted, probably aware of my eyes on her.
“He came up with an explanation and it makes sense. We’re probably in the middle of some war game. The SAS train up here all the time. The emergency broadcast, the lack of signal, it’s probably part of their training.”
“What about the man who attacked you?”