forming in his head were to work. But they’d also need a lot more people with them to drive and load those trucks.
“I think we should stay here for a while – the weather will be ok for a few months and we’ve got plenty of food and shelter. What we need to do is get out there and get more vehicles and caravans back here, and more people to fill them.” Dan paused, unsure if he should voice his ideas just yet.
“There have to be more people alive; we saw one at the Land Rover garage remember?” he reasoned.
“Ok mate, chill out yeah?” shot back Neil, this time in a convincing Cape Town accent. “Tomorrow. Tonight we rest and continue our prescribed course of Glenfiddich. Chin Chin!” he said, raising an actual glass this time.
LEAH
She felt cold. She’d decided to sleep in the back of the car the men left. She heard them smashing the doors with it and watched them for ages, wanting to go and speak to them. She wanted to burst out in tears and ask for help and tell them she was scared and that her Mum and her little brother hadn’t woken up.
She wasn’t that naïve really; she knew they were dead.
The night before, she listened to her mum coughing all night until she didn’t cough any more. Her brother hadn’t made a noise for hours and she knew in her heart that they were gone, she just wasn’t brave enough to go and check. Everyone had got poorly, then they just died.
She lay there all night in the silent pitch black; the street light outside her window having shut off during the night. She’d been inside the house for two days now because everyone was sick. Before her mobile phone lost wifi and then normal signal, none of her friends would answer her texts or Facetime calls.
She waited in bed until 8:30, as she always did so as not to get in trouble for waking people up. She wasn’t like some other twelve year olds; she wasn’t feeling the need to sleep all morning like a teenager yet.
She loved her makeup, YouTube and she lived never more than two feet away from her iPhone. Just like the family members in the house, everything she loved just no longer existed. She was scared, hungry, traumatised and completely alone.
She couldn’t force herself to check the other two bedrooms; to see what she knew was in there would just make it real.
Leah tried to be logical. She got a bottle of water from the fridge, which wasn’t that cold any more, and helped herself to the secret stash of chocolate for breakfast. She couldn’t quite bring herself to reason that the previous owner had no further need of it.
She sat down and tried the TV. Dead. The laptop. Dead. The Kindle. Dead. Like a typical twelve-year-old she was already bored. She tried her phone. It had no signal or data, but she played games for a while.
She decided that she couldn’t sit there forever with nothing to do, so she got dressed, packed her handbag and another bag with some essentials (makeup, hairbrush, mirror, phone charger) and went downstairs.
She left the house, not bothering with a coat as it was warm and dry, shut the door behind her and probably blocked out the fact that she’d never return there again.
She walked into town, bag in the crook of her elbow, iPhone in hand playing some Taylor Swift, with a small sense of normality. She ignored the dead silence that surrounded her and the sight of abandoned cars. The inactivity of the world seemed alien and frightening.
That’s when she heard the glass breaking. She killed Taylor quickly and crept up to the bushes where there was a car garage. She saw two men, one tall and dark, the other shorter and fatter with no hair. They seemed to be friends and they didn’t look like paedophiles, but as she was told in school all the time; you don’t know what a paedophile looks like and you should never go to strangers without a parent. Well that clearly wasn’t going to happen, and she didn’t trust the look of the men enough so she just watched.
They were in there for
“I think we should stay here for a while – the weather will be ok for a few months and we’ve got plenty of food and shelter. What we need to do is get out there and get more vehicles and caravans back here, and more people to fill them.” Dan paused, unsure if he should voice his ideas just yet.
“There have to be more people alive; we saw one at the Land Rover garage remember?” he reasoned.
“Ok mate, chill out yeah?” shot back Neil, this time in a convincing Cape Town accent. “Tomorrow. Tonight we rest and continue our prescribed course of Glenfiddich. Chin Chin!” he said, raising an actual glass this time.
LEAH
She felt cold. She’d decided to sleep in the back of the car the men left. She heard them smashing the doors with it and watched them for ages, wanting to go and speak to them. She wanted to burst out in tears and ask for help and tell them she was scared and that her Mum and her little brother hadn’t woken up.
She wasn’t that naïve really; she knew they were dead.
The night before, she listened to her mum coughing all night until she didn’t cough any more. Her brother hadn’t made a noise for hours and she knew in her heart that they were gone, she just wasn’t brave enough to go and check. Everyone had got poorly, then they just died.
She lay there all night in the silent pitch black; the street light outside her window having shut off during the night. She’d been inside the house for two days now because everyone was sick. Before her mobile phone lost wifi and then normal signal, none of her friends would answer her texts or Facetime calls.
She waited in bed until 8:30, as she always did so as not to get in trouble for waking people up. She wasn’t like some other twelve year olds; she wasn’t feeling the need to sleep all morning like a teenager yet.
She loved her makeup, YouTube and she lived never more than two feet away from her iPhone. Just like the family members in the house, everything she loved just no longer existed. She was scared, hungry, traumatised and completely alone.
She couldn’t force herself to check the other two bedrooms; to see what she knew was in there would just make it real.
Leah tried to be logical. She got a bottle of water from the fridge, which wasn’t that cold any more, and helped herself to the secret stash of chocolate for breakfast. She couldn’t quite bring herself to reason that the previous owner had no further need of it.
She sat down and tried the TV. Dead. The laptop. Dead. The Kindle. Dead. Like a typical twelve-year-old she was already bored. She tried her phone. It had no signal or data, but she played games for a while.
She decided that she couldn’t sit there forever with nothing to do, so she got dressed, packed her handbag and another bag with some essentials (makeup, hairbrush, mirror, phone charger) and went downstairs.
She left the house, not bothering with a coat as it was warm and dry, shut the door behind her and probably blocked out the fact that she’d never return there again.
She walked into town, bag in the crook of her elbow, iPhone in hand playing some Taylor Swift, with a small sense of normality. She ignored the dead silence that surrounded her and the sight of abandoned cars. The inactivity of the world seemed alien and frightening.
That’s when she heard the glass breaking. She killed Taylor quickly and crept up to the bushes where there was a car garage. She saw two men, one tall and dark, the other shorter and fatter with no hair. They seemed to be friends and they didn’t look like paedophiles, but as she was told in school all the time; you don’t know what a paedophile looks like and you should never go to strangers without a parent. Well that clearly wasn’t going to happen, and she didn’t trust the look of the men enough so she just watched.
They were in there for
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