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  PROJECT - 16

  BY

  MARTYN J. PASS

  Copyright © 2016 By Martyn J. Pass

  Twitter: @martynjpass

  Email: [email protected]

  The right of Martyn J. Pass to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

  AT THE DAWN OF THE RUINED SUN

  WAITING FOR RED (With Dani Pass)

  SOUL AT WAR

  THE WOLF AND THE BEAR

  HAGGART'S DAWN

  For the lonely...

  1.

  3 days to live. That's all I’d given them when I tried to look out of the fogged up windscreen at the mass of angry black clouds rolling in from the south. 4 kids, barely over 17 with the worst gear for this type of country and terrain.

  It was late December and the first whispers of winter were in the pines and the brush and the pike already had a light dusting of snow on its peak.

  72 hours. Then after that it would be hunger and thirst. I guessed they'd head for the old US army base and try to hold up there. That's if they were a little bit smarter than I'd given them credit for. If they weren't then they'd head for the city. Then it would be a quick end. I didn't fancy their chances against the dogs and I sure as hell wasn't going to go in there after them unless it got desperate.

  I hammered the Land Rover up to the top of Hangman's Hill and parked on a small grass verge that overlooked the valley. It was tough going and the weeds were quickly taking back the thin vein of tarmac that marked the last piece of man-made influence in the otherwise wild woodlands. There were plenty of blowdowns too - pine trees knocked over in last week's storm and three of them had splintered and split in the middle of the road.

  I climbed down from the 'Rover and looked about. It was cool outside and my breath formed foggy white clouds in front of my face as I searched the landscape for any signs of the kids. For miles in all directions the predominate colours were green and grey and they were there in abundance. I was looking for something else though; a flash of yellow or orange, a patch of synthetic fibre or a streak of bright fabric that broke up the monotony. My eyes had long since forgotten what 'Outdoor' equipment looked like in the wild and any deviation from the uniform earthy colours should have attracted my attention straight away.

  On this occasion there was nothing. Nothing to break up the natural face of the English landscape under its usual dull grey canopy. I went back to the cab just as a light drizzle began to fall and found my map. I located the hill I was on, then turned the map in my hands and orientated it to where I was stood. To the north-west was the last estimated position of the kids. Four clicks or so. It was hilly stuff that way but flatter to the west. I traced a line of least resistance between the tightly packed contour lines and guessed their journey would take them through the valley below. The issue was timing. Would they show up soon, or had they already passed through?

  I got back into the cab and reversed the 'Rover until it couldn't be seen from the valley. Then I went and got my pack from the boot, taking a litre bottle of water from between the toolbox and the spare wheel and drinking about half of it in one go. As I was putting on the pack I drank the rest, adjusting the straps and buckles until my hips took the bulk of the weight. Then I locked up the vehicle, put on my woollen hat and gloves and set off down the side of the hill and into the valley.

  3 days.

  I thought about their flight over as I tramped through the knee-high ferns that splashed against my gaiters. It would have been pretty tough flying all that way in one of those little birds they still used. The weather along the coast had been bad enough over the last few weeks and I'd have hated to have been up there in that little tin can, risking my life just to get to an empty island like mine. But from speaking to the others I'd had to send back, the lure of easy money from English relics buried in the cities was too difficult to resist. There'd been a number of success stories - those who'd managed to find gold or silver in the ruins, the rare ones who had found a priceless piece of art missed by the recovery teams and which had sold for a King's ransom back in the States. Still they came and still they died despite being told that the majority of the ones who did find something often never returned. What lay in the ruins wasn't just sitting there waiting to be found. Often enough the 'success stories' were far more horrible than what made it to the TV. Of the two 'celebrities' I'd known myself, both had taken their prizes from the cold, stiff fingers of another seeker who'd done all the hard work for them, only to succumb to hypothermia. One had even found a priceless painting rolled up and stained with the blood and brain matter of a young girl who'd had her skull caved in by a collapsing column. I'd enjoyed burning the painting in front of his eyes when I'd captured him. I heard that part of the story hadn't made the TV.

  When I reached the valley floor I began looking around for any signs that I was too late. The benefit of doing my job in England was that there was little or no human spoor unless it had been made fresh by myself or the treasure hunters. Any that I'd find in this spot wouldn't be mine; I hadn't been this way for over three years and the last group had landed near London. I knelt down and began looking at the long grass, watching as the wind caused it to sway and looking for any breaks in the pattern. After a few careful steps I saw flats in the field - depressions and patches of trampled weeds. I moved slowly over to them, looking back the way they would have come, then looked in the direction they were heading. I'd been right about them coming this way, but wrong about the timing. These tracks were a day old and already the grass was starting to spring back up.

  I went a little way into the scrub on either side just to eliminate the possibility of missing something, then turned to follow. At least, I thought, I wouldn't overtake them any time soon.

  I strode through the grass, following the tracks which were quite uniform in that they were clearly walking in a line and not in one wide row. I followed along the valley floor for an hour or so until the tracks turned sharply north. Here I stopped. Further on I saw a triangle of markings - they'd diverted to a tarn across the way, then come back to the path. The tarn wasn't visible from where I was standing and I knew from my map that it was at least four clicks away - an hour at their pace. It told me quite a bit about them: they had a map, they had a route and they had a plan. I just hoped it involved the army base and not the city.

  I followed the tracks north and reached the tarn in half an hour. The grass gave way to stone and I lost their spoor almost at once. I walked carefully across the mass of slippery broken rocks and reached the waters edge, kneeling down and sniffing without getting too close. It was still there, that strong, pungent smell of sewerage and chemicals and I found myself shaking my head; this tarn had been contaminated for as long as I could remember and although I wasn't sure how, I could guess that a pipe had burst somewhere and was feeding raw, foetid filth into it. Had they filled their bottles from it? Had they realised the danger? I wasn't even sure a water filter would have worked on that deadly liquid. Surely the smell would have been enough warning?

  I walked back to the edge of the grass where it met the stone and walked back and forth until I found their second set of tracks, the ones that led away from the tarn. I needn't have put much effort into the search - the
re was a blue plastic chocolate bar wrapper on the floor and I picked it up, smelling that awful American substance they called 'candy' which had never managed to come close to what we'd used to make. I had to confess that the wrapper still smelt better than the handful of dried berries and nuts I was eating for a snack and which required a great deal of water to wash them down with.

  I took up the trail again and carried on, scanning the ground for further clues and often stopping just to listen and breathe the air. I could smell the rain coming and I knew it wouldn't be long off. The clouds were massing overhead now and I tried to put myself into their shoes, tried to imagine where they were and what they were feeling. Shelter? There was none for miles, none that I knew of. Did they have tents? The wrapper was a bit of a clue in itself; it was a plain candy bar, nothing but empty calories, not the food of choice for a seasoned hiker or survival expert. I should know - I'd taught it to US soldiers for long enough. It should have been an energy bar at least, nuts, fruit, sugar, carbs and protein. Not just an instant buzz on flat land. It might have been useful to scale a mountain but not for prolonged walking like they were doing. My hopes of finding them in one piece were diminished.

  I walked on for another few hours. In my head I went over what had once been my basic curriculum for the troops sent my way since I started teaching wilderness survival. Where had the stuff on food types been? Early on, I expected, though a lot of the structure changed to suit my students and what conflict they were involved in. For the Regiment it was a totally different class. I worked through a few old lectures in my mind, imagined them being played out again, what I would say differently after nearly 30 years of practising what I preached. It was okay to tell soldiers what to do when they were on a week long mission with access to the best kit, but what about this? What about when the kit fails and you have to adapt? What about when you have to grow your own food and hunt your own game? What does a long-term survival plan look like when the cities are contaminated wastes and 9 out of 10 water supplies are poisoned? That was my world and it had been since the Panic. Since I was born, as far back as I could remember.

  I stopped for a break as the land began to climb and sat down on a rock that jutted out from the junction of a trickling stream. I'd packed a weeks worth of dried meals I'd made myself, breakfast and tea, but for dinner I'd have to settle for strips of dried beef and some water. I thought about that candy bar and found it in my pocket. I took it out and sniffed it again and put it back. It'd been a long time since I'd smelled something so sweet. The lads in London hadn't been carrying much kit when I'd found them and all I'd managed to loot out of their packs were some ready-meals and half a bag of jelly babies. I'd eaten one a night for two weeks before they were all gone. I missed those babies.

  One of the benefits of being the last Englishman was the silence. I sat there with my legs crossed at the ankles and just enjoyed listening to the 'nothing' that comes from a country devoid of human life. Of course, there were still sounds - birds singing, the splash and crash of the stream, the gentle whistling of the easterly wind and the occasional sound of a small animal moving through the brush. But you couldn't call it noise, really. Noise was aeroplanes and mobile phones and incessant talking with empty words - noise for the sake of making noise, of fighting the silence and filling it with white-noise, just pointless static. As far back as I could remember I'd never felt the need to put on a TV, even if I had a signal, just to give me company. Nor did I walk around talking to myself to fight the growing loneliness as if the silence could somehow smother me like water to a drowning man. No, I often did narrate my own actions but that was a habit of old age. 35 years did that to you as if you had an audience who needed to know what you were thinking.

  I got up before my legs got too stiff and resumed my hunt. The tracks continued on until I reached a bend in the valley that eventually began to flatten as they reached a stretch of walled farmland that had once bred sheep and cattle. The trampled grass became shorter where wild animals grazed, but the footprints were still visible here. They carried on to a breach in the dry stone wall before splitting in a dramatic fashion.

  I stopped and looked closely at the trail. The more violent tracks, the ones that had crushed the grass the most, had broken off towards the north-east, the direction of the city. A single track - just a few depressions that could barely be seen, had gone north-west to another break in the wall of the next field along. A lone walker had broken away from the group. Why? I didn't know at that point but the rest of the team, three of them I estimated, had gone on towards the city.

  I checked my map and marked this split in red ink before looking to see where this solitary seeker could be heading. It wasn't the US army base, that was for sure. From this point they would have had to turn south, cut across six or seven fields and come back on themselves to join the east road. Those going to the city could only have gone to the city - there was nothing else on that path worth noticing. But as for the lone walker, I didn't have a clue where he or she was going.

  I put the map away just as the first heavy drops of rain began to fall and reached into my pack for my poncho. Then I made up my mind, leaving the others for now and began to follow the lonely set of footprints that led north-west.

  The stride of this walker was about a third shorter than my own. The grass wasn't as trampled either which led me to believe that the person was a bit smaller than I - a fact confirmed after half an hour when I came across a patch of mud and saw a clear footprint in the soft earth. I bent down to take a look. It was about a size UK 6, maybe 7 - a lot smaller than my UK 11 and it had the tread pattern of a pair of trainers. I couldn't make out a brand or anything but they certainly weren't hiking boots or even trail runners. Also, the depression wasn't anywhere near as deep as my own. This person was light, more than likely small in height - unlike my own 6 feet 2 inches, and he or she walked in careful, deliberate little strides. He or she had tried to avoid stepping in the mud directly but had stumbled and planted one foot in the slop. In my head I saw a muddy left trainer and an angry expression.

  I carried on as the path began to rise, hand-railing the stone wall to the top of a long, flat hill where the steps broke away a little more westerly towards a stile in the next field. I went to my map again, still unable to find a clue to where this person was going. I still had the tracks so I pressed on, aware that it would be going dark soon and I'd have to look for somewhere to pitch up for the night. Ahead the pines grew thick where a plantation had sprung its wire fence and begun branching out in all directions. Had this person camped there?

  The rain was falling heavily now and it splattered against the hood of my poncho with increasing violence and I found myself leaning forward to protect myself from it. I had two walking poles on my pack and I unclipped one and adjusted its length as the stony path began to get wet and even more slippery. Occasionally there were more footprints and at some point the walker had given up avoiding the puddles and mud slides and just waded through them. Wet trainers. Wet socks. Blisters. Pain. Moral lost.

  A lot of students had the opinion that walking was easy. A large number of them boasted they could walk for miles. I can tell you now that by the time I'd finished with them their opinions had changed. People walk around all day long, but give them twenty or thirty miles of plodding along, of endless paths in hot or wet or cold weather and they soon want to give up. Walking long-distance was a mind game, not a physical one. More often than not boredom is the enemy and it wants to take every pain, every blister, every bit of chafe or sore joint you have and turn them on you like a wailing siren. Eight hours. Twelve hours. Your mind breaks before your body ever does. I wondered where in that torment this walker I was following had got to.

  As the twilight crept across the damp moorland I lost the trail. It came to an abrupt end somewhere near the last dry stone wall three hours from where the tracks had split earlier. It made no sense to me. The paths in all directions were muddy and couldn't have been crossed without le
aving some kind of mark. But there were none despite my best efforts to find them. I climbed over the wall and saw nothing where I might have expected to see two large prints from a small person dropping down on the other side. I back tracked a little, wondering if I'd missed a turn or something. Then I saw it - a patch that had drawn the fat blue bottles from where ever they live when they're not feeding on the piles of stinking cow shit. I waded through the tall grass off to one side of the path and in the quickly fading light I saw that it was a splatter of vomit. It was definitely puke because it had the tell-tale chunks, the variety of colours and something far more worrying - it was swirled with blood like a bad ice cream.

  I knelt down and rooted in the small pouch on my hip belt for a torch. I gave the winder a few turns and pressed the button, shining the beam down into the mess. I realised I'd stopped breathing through my nose in anticipation of the smell.

  On closer inspection I could see that there was more blood beneath the surface and it clung in thick, dry globules to the grass as if scattered with some force. I poked it a bit with a twig and found nothing more. It was congealed, except where the rain had moistened it, and at least 12 hours old. I got up and began looking around until I found exactly what I expected to find. It was just visible when my torch played over its metal lid and I went over to the bottle, picking it up with my index finger and thumb. I sniffed the open mouth and smelled the same stench I'd smelled at the tarn. The bottle had been led on its side and leaning down towards the mouth so most of the contents had emptied into the soil. Still, I reckoned the walker had drunk enough before realising it was contaminated and the damage had been done.