Waiting For The Flyers (The First Village Search)

News of the fight filled me with foreboding. Anger came later. We hadn’t even got to Burnalham and already we were threatened by dispute. Hardly a surprise it involved Jess. However, even if it were possible, I didn’t want to tame his enthusiasm. Wild, yet intelligent I needed him on my side. Fortunately Rachael’s time nursing Jess’s injury yielded a potential reign on Jess, albeit tentative.

The meeting with Jess and Jack was heavy. Attempts at making them feel guilty and embarrassed only went so far – same story getting the two headstrong guys to make up.

After insisting on a (somewhat surly) handshake I played my card. I would lead a walk-about in Burnalham without Terry and Jess, they needed to finish the path to the village ensuring it was strong enough to carry loaded bot cars. When that was done their job was coordinating the collecting any useful material and carrying out further searches.

The response was the opposite of what I expected. Terry, furious stomped out. Jess avoided eye contact saying, ‘I guess we had that coming.’ He kissed me on the cheek and strolled out of the room with a smile on his face.

 

Twenty were invited. Three sons and four daughters: Alan, Jack, Alex, Janey, Mandy, Inga and Doc. Sophie. The boys who found the village would go: Nick and Danny with Alan and Jack, Young Roy with me. The remaining ten consisted five women and five men from the gebiets. I wanted a balanced response from the sexes.

We set off at six on a clear cool morning. A few birds twittered in the trees, but no dawn chorus, the mating season being over. Young Roy, who had a way with horses, led Little Jon with me in the saddle. I was seventy at the time and felt pretty fit, but Doc. Sophie insisted it was too far for me to go on foot.

The journey was cheery, folks were excited. One guy, Toby, brought his guitar and we sang along to the jokey songs he sometimes played at moots. Alan and Jack walked on about fifty metres ahead to scare off any wild pigs or dogs that might be about. The noise we made probably kept them away. Alex took up the rear to spot any who tried to follow us. All three carried a gun.

After about two hours at a leisurely pace we reached the outskirts of Burnalham. At the sight of roofs the music stopped. Awed wows preceded a babble of excited voices. Continuing around a bend in the lane we arrived at a grassy area dotted with mature trees next to a wide road. The short grass appeared to be grazed by feral sheep. There was no scrub just a few tufts of recent weed growth which I guessed the sheep avoided. It appeared to have been kept well-groomed until fairly recently. A perfect spot for everyone to have a rest while Alan, Jack and I consulted the OS map to get our bearings.

According to our OS map Burnalham had been a fairy densely populated village over about a square kilometre almost square in shape. A footnote on the map said in 1995 the population was 4800 living in 2390 households. Our whole community could easily fit inside it with houses to spare, but I was more interested in what we could find there.

We divided the village into quarters and split our group into fours to cover each area. Alex, Mandy, Janey and Inga headed one each. The location of anything of interest was noted by the group leaders for future collection on wheeled vehicles. Any small stuff carried back in a couple of hand carts we brought with us. Alan, Jack and I walked around checking progress in each area. Doc Sophie stayed with us, on hand in case of any injuries. Young Roy led Little Jon around next to me and made sure he had food and water. The map showed a large open space called the recreation ground almost in the centre of the village. We arranged to group together at three in the afternoon before setting off home. Looking back on that day it was a mistake to take so many along on the first visit and I will forever regret preventing Alan and Jess from being there.

Excitement took over everybody, amazed at the eclectic styles of the houses which varied in size from tiny to very large. Most of them either on two floors or one level spread over a ground floor. There were rows all joined together and others standing alone. Generally they were finished in terracotta coloured brick, often in an identical design. Some, mostly big, were white with dark wooden beams embedded into the walls. The appearance of the place oozed “cozy.”

About half the buildings were boarded up or the entrances blocked. The condition of the boarding showed they had been closed up at different times the wood varying from poor to almost new. In the ones we could see inside the interiors were bare.

Others homes seem to have been abandoned in a hurry (or perhaps despair) leaving them filled with belongings. The bric-a-brac many of these contained made it difficult for Alex and his three sisters to keep a control. Members of their groups ran about in and out of buildings like excited toddlers picking up stuff and shouting, ‘Look at this,’ and ‘I want to keep that.’  Being overawed themselves to a degree, it was hard to make any kind of sensible inventory.

Doc Sophie was called to a house where one of the girls found a skeletal body in a bedroom tucked up under a cover. While Doc inspected it she told the girl to send for me. The poor soul had been an elderly man living alone who’d decided he wanted to die in his own home. Photographs of family groups and several of a woman we assumed was his wife were all displayed next to the bed on a small table – the whole ensemble draped with spider web.

When I arrived Sophie had a strange look on her face. ‘Ma this is rather weird. From what I learned about pathology the state of this man’s body indicated he’s only been dead about two years max.’

‘How old do you reckon he was?’

‘Difficult without an autopsy, but judging by arthritis on the joints, eighty plus.’

At first I felt disbelief until I realised he was only around ten years my elder. That made him born around 2022. My skin shivered. He was one of the last babies before the virus. A child, like so many others with no future.

A vision entered my mind – he would have died around the time of the solar storm. There would be no electricity, no heating. The reason he was wrapped up so well because he was cold. He never made it through the winter. Another shiver when it occurred to me at eighty-years-old there could still be hundreds of frail old people around the country dead or dying from a slow cold death. Tears welled up.

‘Sophie, I want this house sealed today. No one must come here, we must respect him. Later when we have transport we’ll bury him and give him a proper funeral.’

‘Yes of course, Ma. I’ll do it with Jack.’

On the south-east edge there was what appeared to be a complex of buildings for supplying goods. They were all boarded up except for a very large building with a weather-beaten sign over the entrance saying “Spar Supermarkets.com.” However, a large official looking board in good condition nailed to the wall stated, “Home Supplies Collection Point.”  Whatever it supplied was mostly gone. Inside there were rows of empty shelves except for one or two with cups and plates of different sizes. A large store room at the back contained dozens of boxes full of tinned food, kitchen utensils and clothing. Some of the boxes of food and fabrics had been ripped open. I thought of the old man dying alone in his home.

The complex was built around a large open space. At the back, next to the supermarket was a row of fifteen charging points like the ones we used for botcars, but smaller. One had an odd looking machine plugged onto it which looked like a miniature botcar with a seat on top and an open box attached to the rear. Under an open sided shelter next to the charger a whole line of them sat in dust covered silence.

One of Inga’s group called out, ‘Hey come and see this.’

Following the sound of his voice we found a gap between buildings with a large bot-truck slammed up against a wall. Inside the severely damaged cab shattered pieces of two droids were lying all around. The sight of droids shocked us all. We stood in silence trying to grasp the implication. It was then we noticed the large circle painted on the floor of the open area. It was the same sign as the one for landing cargo drone at the Tech Centre.

Clearly any remaining people living in the village were getting support from the same AI set up as ours. The question was: are there any still alive and where are they? I feared they had probably met the same fate as the poor man we found. There was no sign of any other folks, but it did mean we would have to search for any remaining bodies during the next full scale search of Burnalham and the surrounding area.

 

We found a pharmacy. Sophie got excited. She insisted any pharmacy found should be sealed off until she and her assistants could check them out for hazardous materials. Apart from the houses we found pubs and restaurants; a garage full of equipment even a showroom for selling cars although there were no cars inside, however, there were a few vehicles in house driveways and private garages. Both electric and fuel powered.

There were several much larger buildings. Most of them were sealed up. We decided since it was getting late we wouldn’t have enough time to find ways to get into them. A list of interesting large properties were marked on our list for special attention on the next visit. These included buildings with signs saying: a social club; a village hall; a post office; library and a residential home (we didn’t know that was). Also a couple of sealed off schools – they must have been a very sad sight for the people living there.

For me the entire village was a sad reminder of a slowly diminishing world population devastated by a virus that caused almost 100% infertility.

At three, as arranged we all gathered ready for the walk home. The mood was sombre and yet hopeful for the future. The headcount caused alarm. A young woman called Heather was missing. Last seen on the south eastern quarter, Alex, Janey and Mandy went off to look for her while we waited in the overgrown recreation ground.

 An hour passed, people were getting restless, but to our relief Alex and his sister turned up with Heather looking rather shaken but unharmed. Alex told all of us to, “give Heather space” and don’t bother her with questions on the way back.

As we were preparing to leave, Alex took me to one side.

‘We found her in a church, Ma. She was awestruck by the atmosphere inside. She seemed to be possessed by it. Pretty creepy place we all thought. Heather stood right in the front of a big table covered in white cloth under a painted window. There was a big gold cross thing in the centre and a couple of candles like the ones in the big house. She was in a kind if trance staring at a hand written notice pinned to the cloth.’

‘What did the note say?’

‘It said, “I pray to God with all my heart that someday eyes other than mine feast on this house erected nine centuries ago to celebrate God’s love for his children.” It was signed by Rev. Paul Etherington last Vicar of this parish. We had to drag Heather way from it.’

On the way home my head was full of questions about why we only found two droids; what was in the big buildings; how many people were in the village when the solar storm hit; what happened to them. Even more concerning – the effect of Heather’s encounter in the church might have on the rest of our community.

The education they received from me and my family had always avoided religious doctrine. I’d never hidden religions from them, but just outlined religion around the World briefly explaining the each one and where it was followed. I also explained in rather more detail how religion of all kinds had led to many wars and bloodshed for thousands of years of human history. Maybe mistakenly, I never criticised religion thinking folks would form their own judgement on the subject.

With this going around in my mind I must have been distracted when three-quarters of the way home a group of yapping feral dogs ran out from the trees frightening Little Jon. Even with Roy’s considerable skill he couldn’t stop the pony from rearing up and throwing me from the saddle. There was a white flash in my eyes and then . . . nothing.