The Brink Read Free

at first we were scared until we put a kind of posse together and saw them off. But then they came back. Stronger and better armed and in greater numbers. Some of us knew it was escalating but others thought that help would come before it got out of hand.
    “People started going missing during the night. They’d be out hunting for supplies and never come home. We built walls and barricades but still they came and it was then that we realised that it was over. We’d come out of the disaster alive but we were in shock all that time. When the reality began to set in we knew that help wasn’t coming, that we’d die or worse and so-”
    “You got out of there,” finished Alan. Henry nodded, his eyes glistening.
    “Me, Carol, Mikey, a couple of others went out on a hunting patrol and just ran. I had to think of my family, I had to think of them. If they-”
    “It’s okay,” he said. “I get it.”
    “We could’ve stayed there; we could’ve made it work if it hadn’t been for those bastards. Vultures. Feeding off the corpse of the old world.”
    Henry fell quiet and, as with many of the stories that were coming out of the ashes of the disaster, Alan had nothing to say. People often asked him what his own story was and he’d always avoided the question. He had to. Not even Teague knew where he’d spent those 12 months when the eclipse - if that’s what it’d been - had brought the entire planet to its knees rendering all mankind’s works powerless, plunging them back into the dark ages.
    A year, that’s all. But a year without warmth, without power to run the sun-dependent machines that kept the man-made world alive, might as well have been a century. He didn’t want to know how many had died and were still dying. And all that time he’d been buried alive in a steel and plastcrete tomb until the dawn came and the doors had opened and-
    “You okay?” asked Henry, looking directly at him.
    “Yeah, sorry. I was somewhere else. What did you say?”
    “I asked how you made it.”
    “Oh.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yeah. Let’s just leave it at that.”
    “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
    The road meandered a little, passing between the ruins of two small detached houses and Alan gave them a wide berth. Then he saw the roadblock ahead made from the blackened wrecks of two trucks and swerved around it, driving right through the gap he’d made earlier on his way down.
    “What were you doing so far south?” asked Alan when the road levelled out and he was happy he’d left the worst of the Scavenger gang behind.
    “We were supposed to be meeting up with a solar collector crew who’d volunteered to restart the plant on the coast a few miles west of where you found us,” said Henry.
    “What went wrong?”
    “It was an ambush. No sooner had we showed up than those bastards came down in their cars and-”
    “They had vehicles?” asked Alan. He noticed that the silent Mikey had stretched his hand over the seat and was stroking Moll’s belly.
    “Yeah. Cars.”
    “How many?”
    He hesitated. “Three? Four?”
    “Models?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t get reg plates, pal. Is it really important?”
    Alan pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the engine. He passed the fob to Henry and took his rifle, calling to Moll who jumped out of the jeep and onto the road.
    “Where are you going?” cried Henry.
    “Drive north and follow the map on the dash. You’re about three hours from the edge of the camp. When you get there, radio to Teague and he’ll send a team out to get you.”
    Alan slung his rifle and took a bedroll off the racking, throwing it over his shoulder.
    “Stop for no one, not even a child. Do you understand?” he said.
    “Yes. But-”
    “Go. Now . Tell Teague I’ll be back in a few days.”
    Henry moved into the driving seat and started the engine. Carol and Mikey looked back and Alan smiled. The boy was waving at Moll.
     
    When they’d disappeared