I do hope everyone enjoyed their celebrations on the 4th, for England itself it was a bit of a “super saturday” as a whole host of restrictions were eased, including the great british pastime of going to the pub.Amanda and Emma had barely taken in the train ride, the locomotive huffed and clattered along, shrilly letting out its whistle every time an old roadway, or a new one, crossed paths with it. A wooden platform bearing the name “Willington Marina” shot by, and in the distance
A beautiful pre-plague building rose, looking like a brief hive of activity before vanishing behind yet more railway wagons that were being filled with goods from the boats, or unloaded Amanda couldn’t tell.
The train thundered on, near silent due to the well maintained rails and only the thunderous beat of the steam engine and the occasional muttering from the medical staff on the other side of the thick curtains breaking the lul.
Suddenly, houses appeared, then warehouses all of them built post-plague, concrete streets ran alongside the railway line filled with people, people on bikes, cargo bikes piled high with goods and vehicles both horse drawn and powered. Amanda stood a little and turned around, looking out the window and her jaw dropped.
She’d never seen this many people amassed into one place before, her own community was a few thousand, maybe more. But this? This looked like a strange mass of people, just so many all living lives and doing things. There were even adverts extolling the virtues of products, homes to be built, food. Why advertise food? Everyone needed it, so it's not like you had to say it existed, right? Why build new houses? There were many around already that lay empty and useless otherwise. Why build new? Why not go where the houses already were?
She stepped back suddenly when another platform came into view and the whole area to the side of the train was packed entirely with people, some reading papers, others checking watches or talking with each other. So many people all packed into one space. More advertisements for things that she’d never even heard of shot past. An advertisement to join the Central Processing Company loomed large from a yard just across the river, filled with items, building materials and piles of furniture stacked high, but exposed to the outside world.
Up on a hill, a castle loomed through the slight haze the industry and activity of so many people produced. She caught only a brief glimpse of it, it was made of stone and concrete all reinforced with bits of metal stuck almost at random within it.
The castle vanished behind a large shed, where more locomotives waited, many steam all different to the one she was behind. The city, because that’s what it was, stretched on either side of a gently winding river. The train began to slow, and turned away from the city slightly before coming to a halt in front of a wooden platform with a low wall behind it.
Foston Hall Hospital It read.
The carriage door burst open and yet more clothed people shot in, the curtain whisked open and a heavily bandaged, seemingly nude Welch was wheeled back out, his modesty covered by a sheet. His clothing lay in cut tatters on the floor, covered in blood.
The medical personnel began babbling a whole reel of things neither Emma, nor Amanda understood, one nurse spotted that Amanda moved with a slight limp and took her by the arm through the gate into the Hall itself.
The inside was pleasant, flowers and bushes were neatly trimmed in a small, formal garden with benches and other seating set out to allow visitors and patients some time outside while also being safe. The Hall, now hospital itself, was a pleasing and
very old brick building which had a front tower like part sticking out from the main building, and it was there that Welch was being wheeled in, with Emma in tow. The stairs leading up had been covered at some point in concrete to create a single, smooth ramp.
The nurse, a non-nonsense older woman bustled Amanda away into a clean white tiled room with cupboards all set on the walls. She began pulling out some things, and turned to look at her.
“Now, are you allergic to penicillin my dear?” She asked briskly.
“Uh, I don’t know?” Amanda replied.
The Nurse sighed. “It’s fine, it’s fine, most folks don’t know when they’re younger and not from around here. Just let me…” She got a needle, jabbed it into a small bottle of liquid then asked for Amanda’s arm, she pricked her skin for a moment, then waited.
Nothing happened and this seemed to satisfy the nurse.
“Ok, so you’re not allergic, so let’s sort out that bandage of yours, and then I’ll give you some tablets of penicillin that you need to take for the next few days, ok? Make sure nothing bad happens to that leg. Got it?”
Amanda nodded, slightly confused and looked down to see the bandage had soaked through a little with blood also, she wondered when that had happened as everything had kind of whisked around and away after they’d found Welch had been hurt.
The bandage was quickly changed and checked over, before she was handed a small cardboard box which rattled. On it was stamped “Nodens Pharmaceuticals Penicillin Tablets”. She turned the box slowly over in her hands, and then was left alone in the room for a short while.
She felt a little too cold in here, the tiles and the thick brick walls of the main hall building had that strange effect despite the pleasant afternoon sun just outside, she limped her way back out into the garden and sat down on a bench next to some pleasant smelling mint plants, still turning the box over in her hand. She looked down at it again and stared at the wizened man on the box. He looked a little like Welch, if he were even older.
The boots in her peripheral vision barely registered as the figure spoke to her. She continued to stare at the face before finally a slight tap on the shoulder jolted her back into the present.
Stood above her was The Duke, smiling slightly. “First time seeing someone you know hurt, huh?”
Amanda jumped a little at the realisation, and the way people had acted previously and automatically went to stand only for the older man to place a gentle hand on her shoulder.
A few of the walking wounded from the fight had arrived by train and were being moved through and tended to by nurses and white coat clad doctors. The civilians too.
“So, heard any news about Welch yet?” The Duke asked.
Amanda shook her head slowly. “Why did he leave all this? This place… it's amazing. When the train passed through the town… the, the city. Nobody looked hungry, or haggard, you've got enough food going about to actually advertise it. Transport for everyone” She laughed bitterly. “Why leave such a paradise?”
The Duke ran his hand over his chin, then sat down on the bench next to her, taking a long slow sniff of the mint plants around them as he gathered his thoughts.
“What did he tell you about himself?” The Duke asked as he put his arms over the back of the bench to relax.
“Uh…” Amanda took a moment to think. “That he was a chemistry teacher, before the plague… that he taught all he knew to people here, and that there was an incident. A cure worse than the disease?”
The Duke’s face pulled a slightly surprised look before he nodded solemnly.
“That sounds about right. I’m not the only one running things here. I look after the military side, make some of the big decisions politically and such, but a lot of the development you see around you,” he gestured towards the city, where a pair of chimneys pushed out white steam. “Is handled by my Chancellor. He and Welch did not see eye to eye on dealing with a problem we had… ten years ago. To the point Welch only came back briefly to his new home every now and then.”
“Remember the Bluebells?” Amanda asked and Langley, the Duke nodded. “So, what happened?”
Edward scratched his nose and sighed. “Well, it was fourteen years ago…”
Village of Cold Meece, 27 Miles from Tutbury, Post Plague Year 2Daniel Thompson took off his black bowler hat and ran his fingers through his brown, sweat soaked hair. The clunky metal and leather armour he was wearing creaked as he moved. The sporting rifle slung to his side and large, crudely forged warhammer he rested on.
“Explains how they always had so many damn cars.” He muttered. “But not how they fueled them.”
The Company they stood before was part of a wider complex of Fleet Solutions and Second Hand Cars, with the tools to hand it had provided the gang that had moved in, a coalition of former city street gangs called “The Bruvs” nearly all the vehicles and spare parts they could ever need. In comparison, the Villages of the Castle as they were known, barely had functional vehicles between them, and of those no fuel by this point. Experiments with traction engines and steam locomotives were limited to the amount of charcoal they could produce, and that stuff was in high demand for water filters.
“Ethanol, most likely.” The Professor as he was known then ventured, he was clean shaven and only the first wisps of grey had appeared on his temples. “They either have a facility in their headquarters, or somewhere else.” His own weapon was a finely crafted Halberd that he also leant on slightly.
Daniel Thompson rubbed his chin and his piercing green eyes flicked down the road, where thumping bass ridden music continued to blare.
Hanging from the lamp posts were bodies in tattered, pre-plague clothing. Cardboard had been stuck into their bodies. “Selfish” had been scrawled onto the cardboard segments.
“These people are sickening... or sick.” He finally said, raising his warhammer and turned to walk back northwards. “If we let them go at all they’ll only spread their cancer elsewhere.”
The Professor sighed and stood up straight, putting his Halberd on one shoulder, it clanking on a pauldron. “I’m not having this argument again, Dan. There’s not as many of us left, every life should mat-”
Thompson spun around and jabbed a finger at one of the bodies hanging from a lamppost. “Why don’t you lecture them, Prof? They might listen to your fluffy nonsense. We do not need poisoned people. We didn’t do this, we rebuilt, we helped, we brought with us knowledge. What do these guys do? Why don’t you ask that lady there?” He jabbed another finger at the body swinging lifelessly in the slight breeze.
The Prof looked to the body and sighed. “Sometimes I worry you enjoy this world too much, Dan. The lack of law unless its yours suits you.”
“Enjoy?” Dan stopped and laughed bitterly. “You think I enjoy this? I wanted to open a trendy little craft brewery before all this crap began, now I stare up at those who survived only to come to this… All that potential
wasted.” He began pointing to people. “Who could they have helped? Who could they have become?” He shook his head. “No, these people have to pay for everything they’ve done, and everything that’s been impacted by them. All of it. All of them.”
“So, what? Collective punishment? For all we know some of these people have people they support. They’re doing what they know. They could surely be educated. Integrated.”
“Where? There’s nobody around here for 50 miles that would accept these looters and murderers, and they seem a bit too comfortable down the road there to want to move somewhere with a bunch of tools and a hearty hand shake. Stop pretending we can rebuild the old world with its old sensibilities, Prof.” Dan shouldered his Warhammer again and continued walking back towards their encampment, which was inside a former military training camp which had become derelict in the 1980s and now turned into a summer camp.
It already looked like the perfect place to further train people in the future, but was some 8 hours walk away from Tutbury, so was impractical for now. Here however, was around 70 people from Tutbury, pretty much the entire group of the families from the Castle, as well as some locals. All were armed in various ways, Crossbows, pikes, halberds and sporting rifles in .22 calibre taken from local sporting clubs and the most common firearm they could get their hands on. The fire rate was slow, but the rifles were nice and accurate which was the main aim for the time being.
Rather than worry about Dan’s attitude, the Professor instead headed over to the small open fire and was handed a bowl of stew and a small roll of fresh bread that a lot of the locals called a “cob” on account of it being typically baked in batches of 12 which looked like a small cobble stone street. He grabbed a smooth, wooden spoon and dug in, looking around at the people he’d come to know over the past 6 years. They were his family, his people.
He felt he belonged here.