Autumn

16

After fighting for survival virtually every second of the way since the disaster had begun, a slice of good luck finally came the way of Michael, Carl and Emma. It really was nothing more than an unexpected chance. A welcome fluke.

They had been on the road again for just over an hour since leaving the cafe. Michael had certainly been right about the isolation of the house in the woods as it had proved impossible to find. It had taken them the best part of the last sixty minutes just to find the road which crossed the valley and their brief euphoria at finally seeming to have made some progress had once again quickly given way to desperation and melancholy.

The sides of the seemingly endless, twisting roads along which they travelled were lined with tall trees which made it virtually impossible to see very far into the distance in any direction. Irritation inside the van was rapidly mounting.

‘This is bloody ridiculous,’ Michael sighed. ‘There must be something around here somewhere.’

Michael was driving again with Emma sitting directly behind. She leant forward and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He instinctively pulled away, a

‘Calm down,’ she sighed, trying hard to soothe her companion’s nerves despite the fact that her own were tattered and torn. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get there.’

‘Get where? Fucking hell, all I can see are trees. I haven’t got a clue where we are. We’re probably driving in the wrong direction…’

‘Got it!’ Carl shouted.

‘Got what?’ Michael snapped.

Carl had been poring over the pages of a road atlas.

‘I think I’ve found where we are on the map.’

‘Well done,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Now can you find that bloody house?’

‘I’m trying,’ he replied. ‘It’s not easy. I can’t see any landmarks or anything to check against.’

‘So can you see any buildings round here?’

‘Hold on…’

Carl struggled to focus his eyes on the map. He was being thrown from side to side as Michael followed the winding route of the narrow road.

‘Anything?’ Michael pressed impatiently.

‘I don’t think so,’ Carl eventually replied. ‘Look, can you slow down a bit? I’m having trouble…’

‘Look, if you can’t find any buildings on this road,’ the other man interrupted angrily, ‘do you think you could tell us how to get to another road that might actually lead somewhere?’

Another pause as Carl again studied the map.

‘There’s not very much round here at all…’

‘Shit,’ Michael cursed. ‘There must be something…’

‘Will you take it easy,’ Emma said from the back. ‘We’ll get there.’

Michael thumped the steering wheel in frustration and then swung the van around a sharp bend in the road. He had to fight to keep control of the vehicle and then was forced to steer hard in the other direction to avoid driving into the back end of a car which had crashed into the hedge.

‘If I’ve got this right then we should reach another bend in the road soon,’ Carl said, sensing that they needed some definite direction. ‘Just after the bend there’s a junction. Take a right there and we’ll be on a main road in a couple of miles.’

‘What good’s a main road? I just want a road with buildings on.’

‘And I’m trying to find you one,’ Carl shouted. ‘Fucking hell, do you want to swap places ‘cause all you’ve done is criticise everything I’ve tried to…’

‘Bend coming,’ Emma sighed, cutting right through their argument.

Without slowing down at all Michael steered round the sharp turn.

‘Okay, here’s the junction,’ he said. ‘Was it right or left here?’

‘Right…’ Carl replied. He wasn’t completely sure but he didn’t dare admit it. He turned the map round in his hands and then turned it back again.

‘You’re positive?’

‘Of course I’m positive,’ he yelled. ‘Just bloody well turn right.’

Seething with anger and not thinking straight, in the heat of the moment Michael screwed up and turned left.

‘Shit,’ he hissed under his breath.

‘You idiot, what the hell did you do that for?’ Carl screamed. ‘You ask me which way to go, I tell you, and then you go in the opposite bloody direction. Why bother asking? Why don’t I throw this fucking book out of the window?’

‘I’ll throw you out of the fucking window,’ Michael threatened. He became quiet as the road narrowed dramatically.

‘Keep going,’ suggested Emma. ‘There’s no way you’re going to be able to turn the van around here.’

The width of the road narrowed alarmingly, and the tarmac beneath their wheels became potted and uneven.

‘What the hell is this?’ Carl demanded, still livid. ‘You’re driving us down a fucking dirt track!’

Rather than stop and admit defeat, Michael instead slammed his foot down harder on the accelerator, forcing the van up a sudden steep rise. The front right wheel clattered through a deep pothole filled with dark rain water which splashed up, showering the front of the van. He switched on the wipers to clear the muddy windscreen but, rather than clear the glass, they instead did little more than smear the greasy mud right across his field of vision, reducing his already limited visibility further still.

‘There,’ he said, squinting into the distance and looking a little further down the track. ‘There’s a clearing up ahead. I’ll try and turn round there.’

It wasn’t so much a clearing, rather a length of track where there was no hedgerow on one side and where there had once been a gate into an adjacent field. Michael slowed the van down to almost a dead stop and put it into first gear.

‘Wait!’ Carl shouted. ‘Down there!’

He pointed through a gap in the trees on the other side of the road. Michael again used the wipers to clear the windscreen.

‘What?’ he asked, a little calmer now that they had stopped.

‘I can see it,’ Emma said. ‘There’s a house.’

Michael’s tired and wandering eyes finally settled on the isolated building. He turned and looked at both Carl and Emma.

‘What do you think?’ Carl asked.

Rather than bother to answer he instead slammed his foot down on the accelerator again and sent the van flying down the track. Like a ru

A staggering body appeared from the darkness of the trees at the side of the track (only the fifth they’d seen since leaving the cafe) and wandered into the path of the van. His reflexes slowed by fatigue, Michael yanked the steering wheel to the left and swerved around the miserable creature, scraping the van against the hedge on the other side. For a fraction of a second he watched in the rear view mirror. The corpse stumbled on across the track and through the undergrowth on the other side, completely oblivious to the van which had just thundered past, missing it by inches.

Michael forced the van over another slight rise. Once over the top the survivors had a clear view of the building in the near distance. The track which they were following led directly to the front door of the large house.

‘Looks perfect,’ Emma said softly.

The uneven road became less defined with each passing metre. It swooped down through a dense forest in a gentle arc and then crossed over a little humped-back stone bridge. The bridge itself spa

‘It’s a farm,’ Carl mumbled with remarkable perceptiveness as they passed an abandoned tractor and plough.

‘Can’t see any animals though,’ Emma muttered, thinking out loud.

Michael wound down the window and sniffed the cool air. She was right – he couldn’t see or smell a single cow, pig, sheep, chicken, duck or horse.

‘Must have been an arable farm,’ he said as he stopped the van in the centre of a large gravel yard, right in front of the house. Without saying anything else he climbed out and stretched, glad to finally be out of the driving seat.