Keelan tightened his belt, grabbed his jacket, and made his way down the stairs, calling back to the woman as he went through the bedroom door. “Don’t fucking move!”
The other three men greeted him as he entered the lounge, and Salt handed him a half-full mug of coffee.
“Cheers, Doug. We all ready?”
“Yes,” responded Todd. “We’ve left nothing.”
“What about the woman?” asked Milo.
“She can fend for herself,” answered Keelan.
“The soldier boys’ll look after her,” added Salt.
“Plan still the same?” asked Todd.
Keelan looked at Withers slumped in one of the armchairs, the black eye visible in the flickering candlelight, then ignored him.
“Milo.”
“Yes, Stan.”
“Did you find any tools?”
“Yeah. Got me some pliers and a couple of screwdrivers. Not that I need them.”
“Just in case, mate. As soon as we’re out of this dump, the first thing we need is some wheels. A van, if possible.”
“Could be a long search. I doubt there’s much fuel about, and that EMP shit will have fried some of the vehicles.”
“I know, Doug, but we’ve got to try. We ain’t going to walk to the Smoke.”
“When we leaving?” asked Milo.
“Soon. Doug, will you check we got everything? Milo, have a sniff around outside. See if we’re in the clear.”
“Will do. Back in ten.”
Milo, his rat-like face already sniffing, got up from the sofa, his hands held up in front of his body mimicking a rodent, and headed for the back door. An expert car thief, specialising in high-value cars, he had come a cropper when he knifed a punter who had caught him helping himself to the man’s Range Rover Vogue. Although he had stabbed the man seven times, and believing he’d left him for dead, the car owner had dragged himself back into his house and alerted the police before lapsing into unconsciousness. On coming round in hospital, the detective inspector recognised the man he had described instantly, and the hunt was on. The viciousness of the attack ensured a long jail sentence for Milo, and knifing a fellow prisoner two years later ensured he ended up in the CSC Wing at HMP Wakefield.
As the four men left the house, they heard the screams of the mother on discovering the battered body of her daughter. Keelan cursed himself for leaving her alive, or at least unrestrained. It was too late now. He had no intention of going back.
They traipsed in the cold through the outskirts of Wakefield for over three hours, avoiding an army patrol on one occasion and a marauding gang of men on another. It wasn’t from fear that they hid. Keelan just didn’t want the complication of answering the military’s questions or getting into a wasted fight with people who meant nothing to him. The group must have checked over a hundred vehicles, before they eventually found one that Milo could work his magic on. It was just in time as another five minutes of Todd whinging about his feet and the weight of the load he was carrying and Keelan would have happily killed him on the spot.
Now, they were ensconced in an old Commer van, Milo amazed that it still worked regardless of the bombs striking the country. They circled Wakefield to the east before heading south. The further south they went, the greater the devastation. They spent the first few hours of darkness getting out of Wakefield, dodging the wreckage of buildings and cars, before heading south along the A638. They avoided the M1 and the M62. All lanes appeared clogged with abandoned vehicles, and along with that a low profile was preferred. The group eventually found themselves on the B6422, Salt taking a turn with the driving, giving Keelan a breather. Keelan was in the passenger seat, and the other two were asleep in the back. The four men had kept east of Barnsley, and also wanted to avoid Doncaster to their south-east. Whenever they had detoured from their route, taking them closer to larger towns and cities, the more obvious it became that they were moving closer to a Ground Zero, the point at which the nearest nuclear missile or bomb had struck. There was also the distinctive stench of rotting bodies, those killed in the early days, or those having recently died from their wounds or radiation poisoning.
“I reckon we’ll be getting close to the A1 soon, Doug.”
“We don’t want to cross it, not just yet. Need to avoid Doncaster though. Bound to have been hit by something. Be a pile of shit now, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Pile of shit beforehand,” laughed Keelan. “Anyway, everywhere seems to be in a mess. What the hell happened here? Where are the authorities?”
“Remember the build-up on the news?” Salt reminded him. “Bloody Russians ended up not only making a play for the Ukraine but were obviously keen to have a bash at Poland and Germany as well. All hell broke loose.”
“Didn’t do them no good, though.”
“Nor us.” The lights of the van picked out a roundabout ahead. “I reckon we go right here,” suggested Salt.
“Yeah,” responded Keelan. “The sign for the A1 shows straight ahead. Why don’t we just use the bloody A1? Be a darn sight faster.”
“It’ll be chock-a-block with vehicles, Stan. We’ll end up getting bogged down. There would have been a mass panic before the bombs hit. The minute the authorities started their announcements and emergency preparations, the country would have gone crazy. Stocking up with food, packing their cars, and heading out of the cities.”
Salt steered the Commer to the right, not bothering to go the full circle that normal traffic protocol required.
“Watch out for the blue lights,” laughed Keelan.
Salt responded with a chuckle and continued the drive south.
“What’s so funny?” asked Todd.
“Go back to fucking sleep,” snapped Keelan, still pissed with the man for killing the girl. Keelan had considered dumping him but, for the moment at least, they needed the numbers. The road took them slightly west before coming back on track to the south. Salt negotiated the roads, passing between Warmsworth, west of Doncaster, and Conisbrough, crossing the M18 which, like the other main roads, was jammed up with abandoned vehicles, as Salt had predicted. Continuing on, passing between Maltby and Tickhill, more destruction was visible.
Keelan decided it was time for them to make a stop: get some food down them, and then rest up. “Let’s skirt around Worksop. See if we can find somewhere to hold up.”
“We’ll need fuel for tomorrow as well,” added Salt. “This baby,” he said, tapping the dashboard, “has less than sixty miles in the tank.”
Keelan started scanning for somewhere they could pull over. Although dawn was rapidly approaching, the continuously overcast, dust-laden clouds yielded very little light.
“There’s fuck all here, Doug,” cursed Keelan as the vehicle passed house after house on the roadside that were missing windows and with their roofs open to the elements.
“Doncaster, mate, and Sheffield bound to have taken a hit.”
“Contaminated?”
“More than likely. We have to keep away from the big stuff for now.”
“Do you reckon most of the country is like that?”
“What bits I picked up from the screws in Wakefield, prior to it all kicking off, was that if it went nuclear, we’d cop it for 300 megatons.”
“I take it that’s a lot.”
“Shit-hit-the-fan time, mate.”
Keelan thumped the dashboard. “Fuck, we need to find somewhere. I need some food and a decent kip.” He shuffled in his seat in an attempt to get more comfortable. “There’s a dip in the road coming up. Maybe that will have sheltered some of the houses from the worst of it.”
“I’ll keep my eyes peeled.”
They weren’t disappointed: two semi-detached cottages had escaped with little damage, the folds in the land providing them with some form of a shield, the blast wave having travelled overhead. The suction had dislodged a few tiles but, all in all, they had fared pretty well. A couple of the upstairs windows had been shattered and one or two tiles had been knocked out of position but, apart from that, most of the windows and the rest of the roof were intact.