Salt pulled over onto the side of the road in front of the houses.
“Why are we stopping?” asked a sleepy Milo from the back of the vehicle.
“You lazy bastards might have got some kip, but me and Salt are knackered and hungry. Make yourself useful. Wake that lazy twat in the back with you, and go and collect some firewood. It’ll be bloody freezing out there.”
Keelan opened the passenger door and shivered, his prediction proving to be correct.
Salt rubbed his hands together. “There’s no doubt it’s getting colder, Stan. We’ll need to find somewhere to hold up over winter. I reckon it’s only going to get worse.” He clambered down from the driving seat. It was bitterly cold outside. While Todd and Milo gathered some firewood, he and Keelan went to investigate the cottages. It didn’t take long to establish that the properties were unoccupied. Getting in wasn’t a problem: the two front doors were unlocked, their occupants not expecting to return. Salt shuddered. The anticipation of the benefits of being free from prison, although starting off well, appeared to be heading in the wrong direction now. After a thorough search, no food was discovered, but they did manage to gather blankets and bedding from both cottages, dumping them in the lounge of the first one where they could all benefit from the warmth. The group soon had a fire blazing and, wrapped in blankets, squatting on mattresses laid across the floor, the four men settled in to their temporary abode. Food from their supplies stolen from the other house, were passed around, followed by a bottle of wine. Once that was finished, Salt brought out a half-bottle of whisky he had discovered in the house next door. After taking a good slug, he handed it to Keelan. Milo and Todd accepted the pecking order that was. Neither of them would ever think of challenging Keelan, or Salt for that matter.
Keelan, his heavily tattooed hands and arms showing beneath his rolled-up sleeves, was very much a killer. The hulking fanatical bodybuilder was obsessed with lifting weights, pushing his body harder and harder, often seen showing off his bulging biceps. His first taste of prison had been at the age of seventeen. Used as a courier, he would move drugs for the older drug dealers. He quickly earned their trust, and was soon active in actually selling drugs on the street himself. Caught with a large stash of methamphetamine, also known as ice or crystal, and related drug money when he crashed a stolen car, he was put away for three years. Released after one and a half years, he was soon back inside for grievous bodily harm, after beating to a pulp a man who looked at him the wrong way in a pub. He found himself back behind bars for four more years.
Back out again, and after a major fallout with his girlfriend, he literally crushed her windpipe with his bare hands, choking her to death. What happened next horrified even the most hardened of policemen: Keelan then went into the bedrooms of the woman’s three daughters, Nicola, Bridget and Samantha, throttling the two youngest, one after the other, before moving to Samantha’s room where he raped the nine-year-old before strangling her too. Keelan then laid his girlfriend on the bed and propped her three daughters up against the headboard with their feet resting on her body. He received a life sentence. Then, after stabbing a prisoner, he ended up in HMP Wakefield’s Close Supervision Centre in F-Wing.
Salt’s background was not dissimilar from Keelan’s, although he was much smarter than the big man. His immature fifteen-year-old girlfriend Lorraine also came from a dysfunctional family. Salt was twenty-one at the time, Right from the start, they both lived in a world where science fiction and fantasy movies became their lifeblood. They were both infatuated with each other, planning their future together — where they were going to live; the type of home they would have; even the number of children: three boys and a girl. A virgin when they met, Lorraine thought he was the only one for her. On becoming pregnant, and after a huge row with her parents who in the heat of the moment threw her out, she spent the next two nights sleeping rough in Salt’s car. During that time, they plotted the murder of her parents. Sneaking back into the house — she was still in possession of her own key — they crept up the stairs, Salt carrying an eight-inch cook’s knife. They hovered outside the main bedroom where Lorraine’s mother and father were sound asleep. Knowing that her mother was on tranquillisers and her father’s penchant for half a dozen whiskeys before he went to bed, she told Salt that they would be dead to world. That state was soon to turn into reality.
On easing the door open, Salt hovered over the sleeping parents of Lorraine and then stabbed the couple repeatedly. At least thirty wounds were inflicted on the two bodies, with severe knife wounds to the hands and face as they tried desperately to defend themselves. The father, in a state of stupor due to the alcohol in his blood, was the first to go, an early knife wound to his jugular. He surrendered to his fate almost silently and was unconscious in a matter of minutes, dead soon after. The mother though screamed relentlessly, forcing Salt to focus his hate, via the stabbing knife, on her until she too passed into unconsciousness and eventually death. The next-door neighbours heard the screams, but it was nothing new, so they turned over and attempted to recapture their sleep, assuming it was just another row between the mother and her dysfunctional daughter.
Lorraine and Salt left the house, Salt covered in the blood of the two he had just killed. They headed for Salt’s car. A lone policeman came across the couple and, initially thinking the blood soaked man had been injured, went to assist him. The cook’s knife struck again and again, and the police constable, too shocked to fight back, unable to call for help, fell to the ground where Lorraine joined in with Salt. Having picked up a large stone nearby, she helped to beat the policeman until he blacked out. He later died of his wounds, and the couple were caught, curled up asleep in Salt’s car, when a second policeman on patrol casually shone his torch through the window. The two lovers didn’t stir and, seeing the blood on Salt’s clothes, he called for backup before he woke them up. Arrested and tried, Salt received a prison sentence of twenty-five years and, after stabbing a fellow prisoner, ended up in a cell next to Keelan. His girlfriend Lorraine received a more lenient sentence of ten years, the courts believing her to have been under Salt’s influence.
The bottle of whisky now down to a quarter, Milo piped up, “Where do we go from here, Stan? We need to get some more supplies and somewhere decent to hold up.”
“Yeah,” whinged Todd. “There’s no comfort here and no bloody entertainment. We need to get some woman to play with.” A sly grin spread across his face.
Salt looked at Keelan, and both raised their eyebrows.
“You’ll just do as you’re fucking told, Todd,” snapped Keelan. “We need to head south, towards the Smoke,” he added, turning his gaze towards Salt and Milo.
“The Home Counties, Stan,” suggested Salt. “The city will have been pulverised if what we’ve seen so far is anything to go by.”
“Yeah, but we can dip into the city to stock up. Bound to be some skirt there.”
“How many people are left, do you reckon?” asked Milo.
“God knows,” responded Salt. “It must have been pretty bad judging by the number of people we’ve come across.”
“Radiation sickness?” suggested Keelan.
“Probably,” Salt answered. “And major burns, I would have thought.”
“Wouldn’t people have hidden in bunkers and cellars?” blurted Todd.