‘Nina, what happened?’ I asked appalled.
‘There wasn’t any food,’ she said brokenly, ‘we went with them because they had food and I didn’t have very much left in the house, but then a couple of weeks ago they ran out and we were kicked out. We walked and walked; it took us almost a week to get back here, but all the food was gone. I’ve been looking but I haven’t found anything, not even in the gardens. We tried eating the grass but William was sick.’
Leila and Taz were standing in the doorway. Leila looked as horrified as I felt, but Taz looked odd, if anything she looked angry. ‘Would you like to come with us?’ I said gently, ‘We have food,’ I reached forward to pick up William as she nodded. He weighed very little and I could feel how thin he was. Leila moved forward and picked up Rachel.
Taz picked up a bag and stuffed in some toys and blankets and then we all, slowly and carefully, made our way downstairs.
Outside Nina blinked in the sunlight and swayed. ‘Taz!’ I said. I was holding William and couldn’t catch her if she fell.
Taz grabbed hold of her shoulder, a bit roughly ‘useless woman,’ she muttered.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Nothing,’ she replied, guiding Nina up the path to the road.
We made our way back to my bungalow. Nina could only go very slowly, and it took at least twenty minutes. The kids were light, but they were awkward to carry for that length of time. I kicked the door when we arrived ‘Freya,’ I called.
We put them all on the sofa in the living room and I quickly researched starvation on the internet, I had a vague idea that it would be bad to just start feeding them normal food, Wikipedia as usual came up trumps, recommending a glucose syrup solution to avoid something called ‘refeeding syndrome’. I mixed up some sugar and water whilst Freya made some peppermint tea and Nina sat broken, leaning against the sofa and staring into the fireplace.
‘Where are Mark and Alex?’ I asked.
‘They decided to get started in their garden’ she said, ‘digging out some vegetable beds.’ She lowered her voice slightly, ‘Who are they?’ I had no trouble understanding who she was referring to. I explained how I knew Nina. I felt odd; six months ago, I had been determined to conserve resources, now I was quite happy to take in a mother and two small children who couldn’t contribute at all.
Over the next couple of hours, I circled round the estate, calling in at the other two houses that had shown lights the previous night. The inhabitants were both also returnees, Robert and Sheila were in better shape than Nina had been; they had made their way to their daughter who lived in St Albans. They had stayed there for the winter but decided to return a month ago when the soldiers had arrived to turn it into a settlement camp. Their daughter and her family had come with them and they were all doing ok on the food they had left hidden in their house. Robert had started growing the new season’s vegetables in his greenhouse and although they agreed to regularly meet up and collaborate, they decided to stay in their house at the far end of the estate.
The final returnees were Amin and Rabia and their son Adam. They’d had a tough time when the Londoners had arrived, and had been hounded out of their home. They had moved in with friends on the other side of the railway in South Oxhey. Rabia was very enthusiastic about the friendliness of the community there ‘They have allotments where they grow food, it is a communal project, everyone helps out,’ she said. ‘They cook food in the church and then take it round to all the older people.’
‘It sounds nice,’ I said, ‘why did you leave?’
‘The virus returned, people were getting sick again,’ she replied sombrely, ‘we just couldn’t risk Adam.’
This was important news; none of us had known that there was a second wave of the virus. We went online and did some research. It turned out that the virus had mutated again when the weather had warmed up. People who had avoided it first time round were catching it this time, however it seemed only to be spreading in areas where there was still movement between populations, in the cities and larger towns.
I did a quick search to see if there was anything about the Chiltern Camp online, but apart from a single touristy page with the slogan ‘Homes and Jobs for All’ written in a large ornate font across the top, with platitudes and promises beneath, the internet came up blank. As I was about to close down the page Mark stopped me ‘Click there,’ he said. He pointed to a small hyperlink in the top right-hand corner.
The link took us to a simple login page. ‘I recognise this,’ said Mark, ‘Hold on.’ He left the room and I heard the front door open and close.
He came back waving a post-it note and looking more animated than usual ‘I found it!’ he said, ‘I wasn’t sure if I had given it to Ruth.’ he passed the post-it note to me and I saw that it was a username and password.
‘Is this the login?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Mark, ‘From Mr McAteer, it’s what we used to get into the system in the first place.’
I typed it in and pressed enter. A new page loaded with multiple hyperlinks. We were inside their network. I looked up at Mark, then stood up and moved out of the way. ‘Can you find them?’ I asked.
‘I can try,’ he said.
Chapter 18: Researching
After about ten minutes, the others drifted away. The system we had logged into was huge and difficult to navigate. Often clicking on a link would open new windows with searchable databases, but the search terms weren’t obvious, Mark had to guess a lot of the time.
Our examination of the network uncovered some of the things that had been puzzling me about the Chiltern camp. Apart from the articles I had read online, I hadn’t any real idea of how the government in the UK was operating. At national level, there were no political parties, but I had assumed that at local level things would be their normal inefficient self. But in Wendover it had seemed very much as if a small cabal of rich residents were in charge, and not any sort of elected representatives. In my limited experience, pre-outbreak councils were run by members of different parties, and it was the constant bickering between different councillors as they fought to get re-elected that made them so inefficient. However, the Chiltern parish council had seemed well run and organised; and in all the time I had been there, no one had ever mentioned politics or parties.
The databases revealed that the camps were all outside the M25 and were well connected, with constant transfers of resources between them. New camps were being added all the time; towns and villages that had survived the virus with some sort of structure in place. Places like Wendover, where everything still operated as normal. As long as they could produce resources to help support the new government, the government in turn supported whomever was in charge when the town was absorbed into the new system.
I found it odd that everyone seemed to buy into it, into the local currencies and allocated jobs, the use of refugee children to build a compliant workforce, but maybe they were just grateful for the appearance of normal life and didn’t care who was in charge. Grieving for loved ones and shell-shocked from all the changes, they were probably happy to have someone tell them what to do. I know I had appreciated it; had been willing to be sucked in. If it hadn’t been for what happened to Frank, I might never have looked much closer at the system.