Old World (The Green and Pleasant Land) Read Online Free Page B

enough, the maws have been sated in their lust by the blood of their own bodies, they will not feast again, they will join the earth as they were meant to. I look at Mac, once I have assessed him from head to toe for any hint of a bite or scratch then I allow the pride to show in my smile. “Well done” he returns the smile and the compliment with a nod of recognition at my own violent endeavours.
    Then I remember the old man, the purpose of our heroism. He is of an age, which would explain why such slow shuffling enemies had been able to keep up with him. Where he had come from I could not guess, his clothes were soiled tatters, flecked with as much dirt as blood.
    “Can you hear me?” I ask him. He is struggling to breath and I fear it unlikely that he has the energy for words. I roll him onto his back with his head resting on my knees, I give him some water from my canteen before questioning him again.
    “Does that feel better?” Wrong question. I cannot think why but asking him that seems to have terrified him, what little strength he has left is wasted as he thrashes on the floor. I shush and calm him as best as I can. I look up at Mac. A look of acknowledgment passes between us, this man is at the end of his path. But as his breaths become shallow and intermittent he manages once last interaction with the world. The old man reaches up a calloused hand to my head and pulls it closer to him.
    He smells almost as bad as the decayed ones, his defeat at the harshness of the world is embedded in every bloody contour of his old wrinkled face. With my own face but inches from his own he whispers his last words, words which struggle to escape him, words which threaten to be carried away without a recipient even by the calm air on a day like this. “Ravensburg, the hospital at Ravensburg, it is...”
    Whatever it is I will not find out from him. The sentence remains unfinished. The last breath and the last words rattle from him entwined in one another and never to reveal what may have come after.

    We did not bury the body, nor did we set it alight for we had not the tools to dig or burn. We left him there, leaning against the trunk of an old oak tree, there he may lay still, or maybe he is walking by now. The fate of the old man's corpse is less of a concern to me than his final words, as we walk home in silence I dwell upon them, examining them from this way and that.
    Back at out requisitioned homestead Sue can tell that something is amiss, as if the blood on our clothes is not enough of a give away the darkness in our eyes speaks volumes. But I have not the time for lengthy explanations, I ask the family to gather around the kitchen table. As Mac regales them with the story of what happened I am hunting through the pages of Mrs Robinsons old map of the UK.
    They are so gathered and as Mac finishes his recollections I stride into the room. Zaks eyes are brown like mine, Mac has the green gaze of her mother, but it is to my blue eyed girl that I look, my pale Ellie, wrapped up in one of Mrs Robinsons hand sewn blankets, it is for her that this must be done. I put that map book down on the table and point at a circled place upon the old yellowed pages. “We are going to Ravensburg”
     

Chapter 4, On the road

    Mrs Robinsons car was a tiny old beetle. It was a lurid green and though we could all fit into it, it was a squeeze. It was not the kind of automobile that you would want to be driving through a dead world in, it was not the kind of car which you would desire to sail up the deserted highways of the apocalypse in. It was not the kind of rig which you could mow down large numbers of cadavers with, it wasn't the car for us.
    Fortunately there were a number of remote neighbours dotted about the hillside around the lake who had more suitable means of transport. I shopped around like a common car thief before pulling up to the homestead in a heavy duty range rover I'd relieved the owner of which would be our chariot as