“This is Anthony, Daniel and Sol,” he said indicating the three men. “I’m Aaron and this is Sandra.”
Ben looked at the Daniel and Sol. Daniel was a few years older than him, his blond hair starting to thin. Sol had shoulder length dark hair and didn’t look older than twenty.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” said Ben. He should have been at home by now, the twins would be waking up and Mary would be wondering where he was.
“We saw the dam today,” said Aaron. “We spoke to the General about going to London again but he refused.”
“We knew he would,” said the man Daniel, his voice was gruff with a slightly northern accent that Ben couldn’t place.
“But it was the right thing to do,” said Aaron. “Now we have to decide what happens next.”
“What’s to decide?” said Daniel. “We take the boats and go, just like we planned.”
There were no objections. Ben felt as if he was agreeing to go just by being there. Plans and arrangements were thrown around the room so quickly that he couldn’t keep up. When he came to leave with Aaron he was tired and confused but aware that he had agreed to be ready the following morning before sunrise.
“And don’t tell anyone,” said Aaron as he climbed off the little raft onto the jetty outside his own home. He nodded his agreement but truthfully the only thing he was thinking about was a warm bed.
6
He slept fitfully throughout the day, waking frequently fearing that he had overslept and missed the morning. He had no idea whether they would wait for him or simply leave him behind. He did know that he wanted to go.
It would be hard leaving Mary and the twins, harder still because he couldn’t tell them what he was really doing. There seemed little chance that the vamps would complete the dam in the two weeks he expected to be gone but before leaving he reminded Mary that there were weapons under the bed.
When morning came he carried his bag onto the deck and stood at the end of the pier waiting for them to come. It was still dark but he could see a few boats with lights on and hear some muttered voices.
Aaron arrived a few minutes later aboard a frequently patched rubber dingy. It made little sound as it skimmed through the water and none at all when Ben climbed in. He nodded at Aaron but they made their escape in silence.
He leaned back and watched the village slip away behind him. They would be back in two weeks, armed and ready to defend themselves but it didn’t seem like that. It seemed as if he were saying goodbye for the last time and he didn’t know what that meant. He would be back and the village would still be there but it wouldn’t be the same.
An old narrow boat was waiting for them at the abandoned mill. When Ben had first arrived the mill had been occupied by a couple of pensioners who kept chickens and gave the village boys eggs for doing chores. As far as he knew no one had lived in it for years. The contents had been looted and the windows broken.
Ben threw his bag onto the barge and followed it across. He could hear the others talking in hushed voices, an argument about whether to bring something or other. When he walked in he found Kris by the door.
“What’s that about?” he said.
Daniel, Sol, Anthony and Sandra were talking in low voices but there was no mistaking the anger in them.
“Sandra told her mum where we’re going,” said Kris.
“I had to,” Sandra shouted across the room defensively. “I needed her to take Louise.”
Ben wondered, not for the first time, whether so many people were needed. Someone was bound to notice that six people were missing from Sanctuary, even if they didn’t know where they had gone, Nicholas was bound to work it out.
“It’s done now,” said Aaron walking in behind them. “Are we ready to move?”
Everyone agreed that they were ready and begrudgingly left the argument to simmer. The engine was started and Aaron turned them around to face down the river.
Ben stared out the grubby little window above the sink as the sun rose and the outside chugged by at a steady ten miles an hour. Soon he saw the lands where he had hunted as a boy and later gone salvaging, first with his dad and Frank and then just his dad. A few years on and it had just been him by himself.
He tensed uncontrollably. He knew what was coming up but he didn’t know how he would feel seeing it again after so many years. Ben had gone on wandering even after his fathers death but he had made a conscious choice to avoid seeing the place it had happened.
Around him the others fussed around putting things in drawers and cupboards and checking lists of supplies. No one asked him to help and if they wondered what he was doing they didn’t say so. It was hardly a secret what had happened to his dad. Quite the opposite, his death had made him something of a celebrity.
The long grass parted in seeming mockery and Ben could almost hear his father screaming. He didn’t think he would forget that sound if he lived to be a hundred.
It had happened on a day like any other. Father and son had taken the dug out canoe down river to a spot near the road. Ben had been fifteen years old, the only reason his mum had let him go was because his father had insisted it was safe. And it had been safe, past-tense, they had been going into the village for months and never seen so much as a hint that vamps had been there.
It hadn’t been vamps that had got his dad though. They had gone into the market and they had realised too late that they weren’t alone.
Ben shook his head and stepped away from the window. He didn’t want to be thinking about that, not when he had work to do.
He found Aaron on deck at the tiller.
“How are we doing?” said Ben.
“We’re making good time. We’ll need to stop before the end of tomorrow to get more fuel,” said Aaron.
“You know somewhere?”
Aaron shook his head. “You’re the only one I know who’s been out this far. Do you know anywhere?”
Ben thought about the days he’d spent travelling up and down the river. They called it wandering, ostensibly it was to look for salvage but there was more to it than that. It had been a time when he was alone, a time when the world felt like it was his. He loved the excitement of mooring on some foreign bank and spending the night looking at the stars from a new location. He would pitch his tent in a field but he didn’t sleep. He stayed up all night with a crossbow in his lap hoping to see a vamp.
The vamps were the reason everything had changed. Because of the vamps he couldn’t live a normal life, because of the vamps, indirectly his dad was dead. On those nights he prayed for a vamp to come his way so that he could kill it. But not slowly, not with any measure of mercy. A part of him wanted them to suffer, maybe just to see if they were capable of suffering, or maybe because he thought they deserved it.
He shook his head. “I always took the raft.”
“You rowed all the way out here?” said Aaron, he sounded impressed.
Ben shrugged. “It’s not that far really.”
“I guess we’ll have to try our luck. There’s some jerry cans inside, a couple of us could head into town.”
Ben nodded and they carried on in silence. Most nights his prayers had gone unanswered and he spent another sleepless night waiting for vamps that never came. He began to think they were dying. It made sense; they had wiped out most of their food supply, the few humans that remained must have fled to secure communities like Sanctuary. It seemed possible and filled him with a cautious kind of hope. If the vamps were dying then they just had to wait, when they were all gone humans could return to the land.
Of course that was not the case at all as he had discovered on one of his last trips when he’d found the farm. As far as he knew it was still there. As far as he knew there were a hundred other farms across the country.