Aftermath

16

Hollis screwed up his face with concentration and disgust as he dragged over the last of the chemical toilets and emptied it into the vast cesspit which had been dug in the farthest corner of the enclosed castle grounds. He swilled the bottom of each of the four plastic tubs with a little reclaimed water, tipped them out, then added an inch or so of an acrid-smelling chemical to each before replacing the lids and taking them back over to the area of the castle designated as the lavatory. These few crumbling, half-height walls had apparently been a stable block, many hundreds of years ago. All that progress we made, Hollis thought, smiling wryly, all those years and all those technological advances. Now look at us! Sing in buckets behind a wall, and pissing into a narrow, foot-deep trench lined with stones for drainage. It’s like the last five hundred years or so never happened.

As basic as their conditions were, Hollis recognized the importance of maintaining good sanitation. It had become something of an obsession. After what had happened to Ellie and Anita back at the flats, he’d taken it upon himself to take charge of this side of things, not that anyone else had been vying with him to take on that particular responsibility. Their indifference didn’t bother him. Whatever the cause of the disease which had killed the two girls, he knew they couldn’t afford to take any similar risks here. No one was trapped inside the castle, but getting in or out of the place wasn’t easy—it was practically impossible on foot while the dead outside still retained even the slightest spark of reanimation—and any such outbreak within these walls would inevitably be catastrophic. The risk of such a disease running rampant through these close confines didn’t bare thinking about.

Hollis was preoccupied with his dark thoughts when he returned to the cesspit. It had been almost a day since his last visit here, and he decided to spread a little soil and lime on the pool of waste to try and neutralize the steadily worsening smell. Too tired to do it by hand—strange, he thought, how the less he did, the more tired he felt these days—he started up a small digger and drove it over. He picked up a scoop of earth from the huge pile made while digging the pit out, then swung the digger’s extended arm across and emptied the dirt over the small lake of waste, spreading it as best he could.

After repeating the operation a couple more times, Hollis left the digger running and threw a couple of shovelfuls of pungent-smelling white powder onto the pit. He then returned to the digger, planning to drop another couple of scoops of soil. He swung the arm around, picked up more dirt, then swung back again and smacked it straight into someone walking the other way. It was Steve Morecombe, and the force of the impact knocked him off his feet. Morecombe collapsed to the ground, clutching his right arm and screaming in agony. He tried to get back up but his foot slipped off the edge of the pit and sunk into the foul-smelling waste. Hollis jumped off the digger and ran over to try and help. In his haste to get him away from the edge of the cesspit, he tried to pick Steve up but grabbed him under his injured arm, which made him scream twice as loud.

“Get off me, you fucking idiot!”

Hollis staggered back. Several people pushed past him. They were there before he’d even realized they were close. Jas and Kieran were first, closely followed by Howard and Zoe, then Jackson.

“What the hell happened here?” Jackson demanded, pushing his way to the front of the small crowd.

“He happened,” Steve yelled, nodding at Hollis because he couldn’t move either arm to point. The pain was excruciating. He was drenched with a sickly sweat and he felt nauseous, as if he was about to pass out. Zoe crouched down next to him and gingerly tried to examine his arm. He had on a number of layers of thick winter clothing, but from the unnatural angle of it she could see his arm was badly deformed. She looked into his face, overawed by the obvious seriousness of his injury. This was way past her limited first-aid skills. Steve’s eyelids flutter/p>

“It’s shock, I think,” Zoe said. Jackson took Steve’s weight and lowered him onto his back as he drifted in and out of consciousness. Zoe looked up into the crowd of useless faces which stared back at her. “Well, don’t just stand there,” she shouted, “someone go and get Sue.”

In the melting pot of mismatched skills and redundant past-life occupations within the castle community, Sue Preston had unwillingly found herself promoted to chief medical officer. She’d been a part-time nurse, working, on average, a couple of days a week for the last five years, but she had more medical knowledge than the rest of them put together. To her credit she was on the scene in seconds, more likely as a reaction to the noise and confusion she’d seen than as a result of any sense of duty.

Hollis was trying to get closer to Steve. He was distraught, overcome with guilt. Howard tried to pull him away from the others.

“It was an accident,” Hollis said, tears in his eyes, his voice quieter than ever. “Honest, Howard, I didn’t even know he was there. I just turned around and…”

“I know,” Howard said, trying to lead him back toward the caravans. Jas caught Howard’s arm as he passed him.

“Probably best to keep him away from machinery from now on,” he said, talking to Howard rather than directly to Hollis. “Don’t want to risk anything like this happening again.”

“Bloody hell, Jas,” Howard said, “he didn’t mean for it to happen, you know.”

“It was an accident,” Hollis said, shaking himself free from Howard’s grip.

“Well, we can’t afford to have accidents anymore.”

“I know that. Christ, you make it sound like I did it on purpose.”

“I don’t know what was going on here,” Jas continued, “but there are a couple of things I do know. First, you can hardly hear anything anymore, so we can’t risk having you operating machinery and—”

“I can hear,” Hollis protested. “There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.”

“Spare me the bullshit,” Jas sighed. “You’re lip reading. I know it must be hard for you, but it doesn’t take an idiot to work it out. Christ, I stood right behind you last night trying to get your attention and you didn’t hear me.”

“It’s not that bad…”

“We all know that’s not true.”

Howard tried to drag Hollis away, but Hollis again shook him off.

“Come on, mate,” Howard said.

“There’s no reason why I can’t do anything that—”

“There’s a damn good reason why you can’t be trusted with anything like this anymore,” Jas interrupted, preempting Hollis’s protest. “Thing is, if Steve’s arm is as badly damaged as it looks, then he’s fucked if no one here can fix it. No NHS anymore, no hospitals, remember? A little slip can become a big problem these days.”

“He’s not stupid, Jas,” Howard said, speaking up for Hollis. “He understands.”

“Thing is, I’m not going to risk my neck because your friend here likes playing with diggers.”

“I wasn’t playing,” Hollis tried to say but they both ignored him.

“He was working here,” Howard said. “He was keeping this place in order because no one else ever does. If it wasn’t for Hollis slopping out, we’d all be ankle deep in shit by now.”

“Not interested,” Jas said, making it clear the discussion was over. “He stays away from machinery, right?”

“Who are you to say who does what? If he—”

Their voices were becoming raised. Zoe looked up disapprovingly as Sue tried to treat Steve’s arm. Harte, who, along with several others, had come over to see what all the fuss was about, tried to position himself between Jas and Howard and defuse the tension. Jas simply turned, blocking him.

“You keep him away from machinery,” he said again, pointing threateningly at Hollis, “or I will. Understand?”