Chapter 6

We’ve never encountered another soul, and we’ve never been bold enough to go back and investigate what’s happening at the camp. We’ve often wondered whether Will, who knew how we’d escaped, had eventually decided to escape himself.

‘Maybe they worked out how we escaped, and blocked the route. Or maybe, perish the thought, he didn’t see the trip wires.’

‘I wonder what they’d do to anyone they caught trying to escape? I doubt they’d do anything much worse than fetch them back, really. As long as they hadn’t killed anyone first, of course.’

‘Or maybe he’d got his eye on some woman or other, and was hoping to escape later, with her. He’d have been worried about them blocking the route though – maybe that’s why he dithered so much. He wasn’t generally a ditherer.’

Unlike me. I didn’t dither then, though. Hmm.

‘I doubt if we’ll ever happen to bump into him, even if he has escaped.’

‘There’s no car at the first farm he’ll get to – assuming he chooses the same route we did, which seems quite likely. It’s quite a walk to the next one – and who knows whether the car there will start. I don’t actually even remember whether we saw one there.’

‘I don’t remember, either.’

‘If he’d got his eye on one of the women with children – and that’s most of them, apart from the au pairs like us – it’d be difficult to persuade them to drag their kids under a bog. Most of the au pairs would probably think he was a bit old for them, although there is a bit of a shortage of men in the camp, and beggars can’t be choosers.’

‘Some of the soldiers seem decent enough sorts, but most of them are pretty revolting. There’s not nearly enough of them for everyone anyway.’

We took a trip down to the coast one day, mostly to see whether shellfish had suffered like mammals and birds, or whether they’d survived, like insects – and spiders. They’d obviously suffered a huge mortality, but we did see a few live winkles.

More impressively, looking down from the harbour wall, we saw lots of fish. We found a shop full of fishing gear, and tried our luck, but we didn’t really know what we were doing, and caught nothing.

Further out onto a headland we saw lots of dead seals, but not a single live one. There were a few seabirds, but nothing like what there would have been before the Big Death.

Persie collected a lot of seaweed. We took it home, and she cooked it. ‘Makes a change from tinned, dried and pickled stuff.’

It was really delicious. She knew exactly what to do with it.

We had everything we needed, and little worry about finding more when we ran out. The only thing Persie was a bit concerned about was vehicle batteries. We’d found a place with a stock of new ones – the same place we got the jerry cans – ‘but even unused they’ve only got a finite shelf life. Eventually we’ll have to start carrying a portable generator and a booster charger around with us if we go far from home, where we’re not sure of finding places to park where we can bump start things.’ With a stock of unused batteries that was years away, but Persie wanted to be sure we’d be able to do it. We went back to the place we’d got the jerry cans and the batteries, and found a powerful booster charger.

‘This’ll deliver enough current to start the engine on its own, no need to charge the battery first at all. And the generator’s big enough to power it.’

The only really portable generator we’d got was the petrol one, so we went down to the petrol station. It took Persie a while to work out how to get the pumps working, but she managed. We had access to thousands of gallons of petrol – and a lot more diesel, too.

‘We could do with some more jerry cans. I expect we’ll find some somewhere eventually. No worries about heating oil ever now. Diesel’s just as good, and there’ll be plenty more petrol stations when we’ve emptied this one.’

Life was actually quite easy.

I slept in a big bed in one room, and Persie and Merly slept in two separate beds in another. One night I heard them giggling in their room. Then they came padding through to my room in their bare feet. ‘It’s not going to happen, is it?’

‘What isn’t?’

‘We’ve been waiting for weeks for you to get so desperate you come pleading to one of us.’

‘Pleading for what?’ I was sure I knew, but I didn’t want to say.

‘You know, you rotter. Sex, of course.’

‘But you don’t fancy me. I know that.’

‘It’s an important principle with me not to fancy someone else’s man. You were Sharon’s man.’

‘Not after I moved to Will’s hut, I wasn’t.’

‘Oh, I knew why Sharon kicked you out. You were still Sharon’s man, even if you didn’t realize it. You’re our man now. Definitely.’

‘I thought maybe you two were lesbians.’

‘Oh, we wouldn’t deny we’ve dabbled in that. But variety is the spice of life, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve never fancied sex with any man, however friendly we’ve been.’

‘Anyway, there are three of us. It’s not fair for someone to get left out.’

‘You don’t want to get pregnant, do you?’

‘Not just now, no. Probably one day. We don’t want to be lonely in our old age, do we? But for one thing, that’s not the only kind of sex. And you remember when I raided the pharmacy for cough mixture? That’s not all I found.’

‘So you found some kind of contraceptives, then.’

‘Condoms. We’ve got one thousand, four hundred and forty of them, to be precise. I only brought one carton, but there’s loads more when we run out.’

‘That might be a year or two! I hope they don’t go off.’

‘They’ve got a use-by date, but it’s a fair way away, and I expect they’re actually good for a lot longer than that anyway.’

‘I thought you’d brought sanitary pads or tampons when you said you’d got something for you and Merly.’

‘Well, I got those too, of course.’

‘You mean you’ve been waiting for me to weaken ever since then?’

‘Well, I wasn’t positively waiting at first. But I wouldn’t have turned you away. Merly wouldn’t, either. You mean far too much to us to want to upset you.’

Matter-of-fact, or what?

After that, we all slept in the big bed together.

Persie helped both Merly and me learn to drive – not expertly, but well enough to manage on the empty roads – so we didn’t have to leave a vehicle behind every time we wanted a different one. We ended up with quite a collection in the road outside the farm.

‘That bothers me a bit. It could be a bit noticeable from the air, if there’s ever a spotter plane.’

‘I don’t think so. Who would know it wasn’t something that was going on during the Big Death? They wouldn’t have before and after pictures.’

The fear that some victorious enemy would arrive, or that bigwigs with technically competent assistance would emerge from longer-term shelters, gradually faded from our minds, and after a couple of years we were pretty sure they didn’t exist – or if they did, they weren’t interested in us, or our area of Norway, at all.

I was worried about my dearest friends giving birth without proper medical support, but Persie and Merly laughed at me.

‘How do think humanity managed for most of its history?’

‘Yes, I know. And some of them died.’

‘You can’t live without risk. And we’ve got big advantages over wild people, even if we don’t have a health service.’

But they made sure they didn’t have babies at nearly the same time, so they’d be available to help each other, and not rely entirely on me.

We’ve got four lovely children now – Persie has Fiona and Sidney and Merly has Gregory and Anna. Persie and Merly insisted that they should have English names. I suggested lots of possible names, and they picked the ones they liked.

They’re planning to have one more each. We’re hoping that we’ll meet some more people before the children grow up, or the next generation is going to be a little bit inbred. We’ve taken to exploring more widely – all over southern Norway – in the hope of meeting people, but so far we’ve found nobody.

We even considered approaching our old camp, but decided that they probably still consider us outlaws, and we’re surely of no particular value to them. The question of whether any other camp would know about us hasn’t arisen, because we’ve never found another camp. We’ve even become brazen enough to explore around Oslo, and there’s no sign of people from any camp doing any raiding there.

The Y chromosome never gets mixed and matched anyway, and we do at least have a little bit of variety of everything else.

More for the fun of it than anything else, we taught ourselves to drive the tractors. We knew that if we tried to farm the land, that would be noticeable from the air, and at first we refrained, but eventually we grew bold enough to try. It hasn’t been easy, but we’re making some progress, especially since we decided to move to a different farm nearer the coast. We got seed from an agricultural suppliers in town, but it was several years old by the time we started trying to farm, and that could have been part of our problem. We’ve also tried getting our own seed from crops that had gone wild, which has had a higher success rate in terms of germination, but the quality of the crops hasn’t been wonderful.

Even at our new place, much of the land is grazing land at best, and we’ve no animals, so that’s all going a bit wild. We’re a bit envious of the camp’s chickens and goats.

Higher up on the hill, there are lots of bilberries, which are very welcome in season. We’ve found lots of preserving jars, and nowadays we pick enough bilberries to keep us supplied all year round.

We’d only seen one rabbit that first year, but we’re overrun with them now. We’ve got rats, too, but not all that many, and a few birds – mostly gulls, but Merly thought she saw a skua the other day. What wildlife has survived elsewhere, who knows? Maybe eventually something else will arrive here, gradually spreading out from some remnant somewhere, but nothing else has got here yet.

Neither Merly nor I ever thought we’d fire a gun, but Persie had had some training. We raided a gunsmith’s. The alarm wasn’t working, but we wouldn’t have cared about a little thing like that if it had been. We’ve become reasonably good shots. At first we found it easier to use shotguns, but now we use rifles. It was a lot of trouble picking the pellets out during the butchering, and we got fed up of finding pellets in our dinner even after my best efforts. It’s harder to hit the rabbits with a rifle, but missing a few isn’t a big deal. The shotguns are good for rats, which we don’t want around the farm. We don’t eat them, although Persie says they’re perfectly good meat.

We all shoot, but I do the butchering and Merly and Persie do the cooking. Back in Burnfield, I knew people who’d have had something to say about that, but we’ve fallen into various roles without worrying about it. They’re not all exactly stereotypical, but to a large extent they follow the stereotypes. Biological, or learned? Who knows? Most likely a bit of both, but that’s pure speculation. I’m aware of it but don’t worry about it, and neither Persie nor Merly have mentioned it. I think they would if it bothered them. We’ll see what happens with the children.

We make occasional trips down to the coast. There are more seabirds than there were on our first visit, but still not the huge numbers there used to be, and whether all the old species are present we don’t know. There’s still no sign of any marine mammals. The freezer – which was pretty nasty to clean, but is fine now – is full of seaweed and fish, which we’ve finally learnt to catch. And rabbits, of course.

We sometimes wonder about moving right down to the coast. We don’t really want to abandon our faltering first steps in farming, but we know that eventually we, or our descendants, will have to manage without motor vehicles, firearms or electricity, and we think that might be easier on the coast.

The roads are beginning to deteriorate, but the four wheel drive vehicles and the trucks should still be able to negotiate them for a good while yet.

We’ve even considered moving much further south, by migrating right around the Baltic since we wouldn’t be able to get across from Sweden to Denmark. The possibility of meeting other people on the way excites but also scares us, particularly if they’re large organized groups.

We’re doing our best to give our children a good education. Persie in particular is determined that technological competence should not die with her, although with no functioning industrial base a lot of it is likely to be of no use to anyone beyond the medium term.

‘But is there an industrial base? The camp we were in seems to specialize in farming, but even with wide ranging raiding, all their equipment won’t last forever unless there’s an industrial base somewhere. Maybe there are other camps somewhere training their serfs in running essential industries.’

‘You’d think the industrial serfs would realize that food stocks wouldn’t last forever without farming.’

‘You’d think the agricultural serfs would realize that machinery wouldn’t last forever without industry. We never heard anyone talk about it, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t.’

‘At least farmers can survive without machinery. Industry’s completely knackered without agriculture.’

‘Surviving without machinery will be damned hard. They’ve not even got horses or bullocks to pull their ploughs, unless some other camp somewhere had the big animals in their shelter. Come to that, where were the chickens and goats while we were in the shelter?’

‘Some other part of the shelter, or their own shelter somewhere. Who knows?’

Speculation leading nowhere again. It would help us to prepare for the future if we’d some idea of what the organized camps were up to. But how the devil could we find out?

Language is another strange issue. Persie and Merly are both polyglots, but apart from a little very poor French, I only know English, which Persie and Merly both know very well, and which is what we always use. Should they teach our children any other language? The only other language Persie or Merly could teach them that has the slightest possibility of being useful is Swedish. Even in the camp in Sweden, with a Swedish military regime, the language in general use is English. Probably the fact of the existence of other languages is all that’s worth our children knowing.

I still owe Mike seventy quid.

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You might want to go on to the sequel, Going Forth!