The trailer was hitched, he climbed up into the seat. The engine fired first time, belched thick black oily smoke out of its upright exhaust. He revved the engine, thought about the shotgun in the porch. Maybe he should take it. No, he would not be gone long, he could pick it up for the next trip if necessary. If he went back for it now it might alarm Sylvia still further. She was getting to be a real pain in the arse; there were going to be problems with her shortly. I'm bored. I don't like the food here. I'm lonely. That was the difference between a wife and a mistress. The latter you mostly saw the good side of because you didn't have to live with her, the former was the devil you knew and you could compromise with. Except that he hadn't compromised with Jackie.
There was a lump in his throat as he pulled out of the yard on to the rutted track. Oh God, Jackie, if only you were here. But she wasn't and she wouldn't be returning. That was something he had to face up to.
He headed for that strip of pinewoods where the poultry had been perching. Beyond it was a tract of silver birch, part of the Winders' farm. Scrub that was no good to anybody, not even a useful shelter belt. Winder had told him months ago to help himself to any wood he wanted out of it because he was going to get some contractors in to clear it and plough it. Jon hadn't had time to bother up until today. Now he could have taken wood from anywhere he chose and it wouldn't have mattered a damn but he still thought of it as stealing. Maybe in a few weeks he would have got over that psychological hurdle but for the moment he would cut his firewood legitimately. Live for today because there might be no tomorrow. That was a very strong possibility.
He skirted the tall pines, slowed up and tried to look up into their branches but the dark green foliage was too dense to afford him a proper view. He didn't have time to go and see if the hens were still up in the branches. In a far corner of the adjoining field he spied the nanny goats browsing the hawthorn hedge. Later he would try and catch Rosie, maybe milk her by force if necessary. The longer he left it, the more difficult it would be.
The strip of scrub was an untidy two or three acres, silver-birch which had reached their allotted span of a half century, died, rotted, and conceded to the gales. Trunks lay half buried in the bracken; an hour or so with the chainsaw and he would fill the trailer. Two or three trips would last them up until Christmas at least.
He swung round in a half-circle, backed the trailer up as near to the spinney as he could, switched off the engine. He sat there listening. A wood-pigeon was cooing softly in the tall pines, a peaceful summer sound that transcended anything mankind did. A bird that was at peace with the world. Some distance away a carrion crow was calling, magpies answering with their harsh ratchet noises; corvines conversing over what had befallen Man?
Jon climbed down, lifted the chainsaw out of the trailer; so many windblown trees that it was a job to know where to start. Even as he grasped the cord, was about to jerk the saw into life, something caught his eye, made him hesitate. A patch of white showing starkly through the green fronds of bracken, artificiality spoiling the natural scenery.
He almost ignored it. It could have been an empty plastic fertiliser bag blown off Winder's fields (damn the man, he would never understand that he was polluting the environment with his chemicals). Or a discarded bedsheet dumped by selfish Jitterbugs. Or ... he didn't have to go and see, it wasn't even his wood, but he found himself laying down the chainsaw and walking in that direction. A hunch, a very uneasy one.
Realisation came slowly because it took him several seconds to identify the remains of the dead animal. His first thought was that it was a ewe that had wandered in here, got caught up in the briars and died. But the fleece was not woolly enough, the patchy white hairs coarse and strong. A broken neck had twisted the head round at an unnatural angle so that the empty eye sockets watched him. Skeletal, just the hide remaining, the scavengers had done their task well.
Those magpies were still telling the crow all about it, how they had feasted from first light to dusk, and then the foxes had come and taken over; rats, too. Now the meat was all gone.
Long curved horns. Jon tried to tell himself that it was a ram, lied to try and avoid accepting the fact that what was left of the carcass was indisputably goat. Billy goat. Gilbert.'
He wished again that he'd brought the shotgun. Damn it, he's dead, he can't hurt you now. No, but whatever killed him might still be around, lurking in the undergrowth, creeping up on you . . .
He glanced back to where he had left the chainsaw, began edging towards it. A hellish weapon in the right hands. Pull yourself together, Gilbert was probably killed soon after we last saw him, jumped by that dog of Gwyther's in the same way that it killed the calf. It ran before and it'll run again, like a desert jackal. It won't attack a human.
All the same he fetched the saw, kicked it into life and began cutting up a thick trunk, a deafening whine that showered sawdust everywhere. Chainsaws were noisy things, they let all and sundry know exactly where you were . . . and you wouldn't hear if anything crept up on you.
Nervous, working fast, wanting to get the job over and done with. But you're coming back for another load. And a third.
Within an hour the trailer was full of neatly sawn cylindrical birch trunk. He climbed back up to the wheel, started on the bumpy journey back home.
If only Jackie had been there awaiting him.
He was starting to get depressed, a gradual erosion of his positive thinking. That stemmed from spending too much time alone. Maybe Sylvia was right, they had to go and find other survivors, //there were any others. There had to be.
He backed into the yard, tipped the trailer, watched the logs showering out, bumping into a sprawling heap, one or two bowling away as though they sought to escape the splitting axe and the Rayburn. Now it was time to go back to the wood again and . . .
'Jon!' Sylvia appeared in the doorway and his first glance told him that something was wrong. Her features were whiter than usual and she glanced continually about her, 'Jon, there's been somebody here!'
'What! Who?' His mouth went dry and the sweat inside his T-shirt was suddenly cold. 'What on earth are you talking about?'
'There was somebody here about a quarter of an hour ago.'
'Yes, but who? A man? A woman?'
'I ... I didn't see them.'
He closed his eyes momentarily, almost yelled 'Then how the fuck did you know they were here?' Instead he spoke calmly, knew he had to reassure her. 'How do you know then?'
'I heard them. They went in the shed over there, rummaged around, then came out again and left the door swinging open, just like it is now.'
He turned, saw that she spoke the truth. He knew the door had been closed when he left because he had fetched the chainsaw out of there before breakfast and had replaced the stout gate-hook in the 'eye'. It fitted tight, too tight, so that more often than not you had to jerk it free to open the door. It was beyond anything other than a human being to open it.
The shed was not in full view of the cottage windows, a bare stone wall facing in this direction. Without going outside Sylvia would not have been able to see whoever had been in the shed and . . .
'Christ!' He saw the debris on the floor, the spilled contents of his workbench, boxes of screws, nuts, nails scattered over the whole floor so that they overflowed out into the yard. 'Some bugger's been stealing my tools.'
Jon Quinn had a tidy mind, Jackie used to call him obsessional. If you put everything back where you got it from as soon as you've finished with it, you'll know where to find it next time, he used to tell her. Consequently, within a couple of minutes he knew which of his tools were gone, a process of elimination from those still hanging from the nails above the bench. Two screwdrivers, a hammer, a hacksaw, a chisel. . . The Black and Decker toolset Jackie had given him for Christmas was still there, so was his spare chainsaw. It didn't add up. Or did it?
'A thief,' Sylvia's tone was low and frightened.
'It looks that way,' he muttered. And everything they've stolen is something that could be used as a weapon. In addition to that it means that they've now found us, they know exactly where we're holed up.'
'I heard somebody in the shed so I locked the door.' She clung on to his arm. 'I didn't dare go out to look.'
'Just as well,' he answered. Because if you had you'd probably be dead now like Gilbert in the wood. 'We've got to keep a watchful eye out,' Trite, an understatement. If you're not on the alert the whole time you're likely to end up dead, just like Gwyther would have killed me.
He kicked the nails and screws back inside, closed the door and flipped the hook back into place. 'I'm not going to bother getting any more wood today, I've got a pretty good load.'
'Shall we go into the village this afternoon then?' 'I'm just too bloody knackered.' He squeezed her hand, wondered if he'd have to come up with an additional excuse but she did not press the point. Possibly she was not as anxious to make contact with others now that there had been a prowler in the yard. 'Let's have something to eat and then I'll try and think of a way of catching those goats and bringing them down here to the goat-house.'
'I wonder who it was,' she said as they went inside. 'Gwyther?'
Christ no, but maybe it's a good job you didn't set eyes on him if it was anybody like old Bill. 'It could have been just anybody,' he replied casually. 'Like I said before, there are bound to be bands of vagrants roaming the countryside after a holocaust of this nature and well do well to keep out of their way, not advertise our presence.'
But he knew Sylvia wouldn't be satisfied until they had been to the village. Sooner or later she was going to have to witness for herself what the terrible micro-organisms had done to humanity, see these throwbacks with her own eyes.
Rounding up the nanny goats was a comparatively simple operation, an idea that Jon Quinn had hit upon whilst they ate a salad lunch. For once Sylvia did not complain about a plateful of sprouted seed salad and some hard goat cheese. A cheese that Jackie had made; on occasions Jon had difficulty in swallowing.
*I want you to help me this afternoon,' he said, putting his plate in the sink, noting at the same time that she had not yet washed up the breakfast dishes.
'How?' She tensed, was already thinking up a feasible reason to refuse.
'Well, our priority is to get the goats down into the shed in the yard so that they can be milked,' he said. The kids will be a lot easier to catch than the goals and where the kids go, their mothers will follow. Get me?'
'I see.' She pursed her lips and a worried frown creased her forehead. 'But suppose that billy . . .'
'I don't think he'll trouble us,' Jon told her. 'I reckon he's gone off into the woods, myself.'
Within the hour all the goats were safely shut in the shed by the house. The young kids had shown no fear of the approaching humans even though their mothers kept their distance, had come skipping towards Jon and Sylvia. They had been grabbed, carried home, the nannies following reluctantly. Just as Jon had said, they would not desert their offspring.
Now he leaned on the stable door studying the animals at close quarters. Certainly they had undergone a change, the white Saanen hair growing long and coarse, restlessly pacing quarters which had once been familiar but now they appeared not to recognise their surroundings. They eyed Jon Quinn with distrust, no spark of memory showing in their eyes. Distrust. Milking them wasn't going to be easy but he consoled himself that he had successfully got them down here. He was anxious about the calves now. Gwyther's dog . . . no, one dog alone could not have killed and eaten Gilbert like that, the billy was strong and vicious, as dangerous as a bull when he was angered. It would take more than one canine predator to do that.
The electricity was gone now so they had to resort to candles for indoor lighting, small flickering flames casting dancing yellow light, creating shadows that hovered in the corners of the rooms and could have hidden anything depending upon how far you let your imagination run riot. 'We may as well go to bed,' Jon said. 'There are some old oil-lamps out in the shed somewhere. I'll hunt them out tomorrow and you can have a go at cleaning them up. Then we'll have to get some paraffin from somewhere.' From the village garage. Tomorrow.
Sleeping in the same bed as Sylvia was becoming a strained affair. Only a few weeks ago, Jon reflected, it had been exciting, erotic. That was because they hadn't gone to bed to sleep, the difference again between wife and mistress. You stripped off, made love, got dressed again and went your own separate ways, back to another way of life. Just a sexual relationship and now it was falling apart because something more was being asked of it.