“What happened was avoidable,” he yelled, the sudden raw emotion in his voice taking everyone by surprise. He picked up the bottle again and knocked back more booze. Lorna wondered whether this was just the drink talking. Maybe a combination of alcohol and relief that they’d finally escaped the hotel.
“This place is different,” she said, risking his ire. He glared at her, but when he didn’t immediately try shouting her down, she continued. “This place is different and the bodies are much weaker now. Give it a few more months and there won’t be anything left of them but bones.”
“A few months? I don’t know if I can take a few more months of this. I don’t know if I can take another day.”
Jas knocked back the dregs at the bottom of the bottle and hurled it over the battlements. It was a few seconds before he heard it smash.
Lorna, Harte, and Hollis watched him with caution. Suddenly feeling the cold, Lorna wanted to go down. She stood up and helped Hollis to his feet. She was about to disappear down the spiral staircase when Jas turned and spoke to her again.
“You’re right, Lorna,” he said. “This place
13
Within the castle walls now was a community of twenty-one: fifteen men and six women. Jackson, maintaining his position of unelected leader by virtue of the fact that no one complained and no one else seemed to want the role, was keen to try and keep everyone occupied. Boredom was an enemy—it gave people the unwelcome opportunity to think about how much they’d lost and how little they’d still got. Whether it was to keep them occupied, distracted, out of trouble … the reasons were unimportant. Most people willingly took on the duties assigned to them, and completed them to the best of their abilities, despite the blatantly obvious fact that much of the work didn’t actually need to be done.
Caron was an intelligent woman, and she knew when to keep her mouth shut. This was definitely one of those times. She was less than pleased with the duties she’d been allocated, but she carried them out without complaint. Since arriving at Cheetham Castle, she’d done more cleaning than she had in the previous ten years combined. At least it was relatively warm and dry indoors, she thought. Winter had barely begun, but it felt like it had been like this forever.
Working in the museum was particularly sad. They were using parts of it as a storeroom now, and all the exhibits had been shoved into one end of the large, L-shaped space. For a while this morning she’d spent some time hidden around the corner, looking at them all. Valuable antiques now worth nothing. Beautifully restored and preserved artifacts now given less importance than food and water supplies, spare clothes and pretty much everything else. There were a number of wall-mounted displays which had been taken down and stacked against a wall. She flicked through them, avoiding doing any work for a little longer. There were paintings of the castle hundreds of years ago, newly built and full of people. Then there were pictures of the “second stage” buildings within the perimeter wall—a great hall, an armory, stables, living quarters, kitchens … all just ruins now. All those different eras and ages, the lords of the manor, the kings and the generals … all gone now. She couldn’t help but think she was living through the last chapter of this once-great place. If she had any artistic talent—and she was under no illusions because she certainly
This kind of physical work didn’t come naturally to Caron anymore, but she bit her tongue and smiled when she needed to so as not to offend anyone. There were worse jobs to be had around here. She left the museum/storeroom and looked out across the courtyard as she walked. Elsewhere, Jackson had a group of people gathered around him, all trying to assemble some kind of bizarre construction out of wood and ropes close to where, according to some plans she’d been looking at, the kitchens had once been Elsewhere, people were chopping wooden pallets for firewood, making an industry out of something which probably didn’t require such large amounts of effort, grading wood into large, medium, and small pieces and storing them in a dry shelter. Others were cleaning the caravans. Someone else was burning rubbish …
Too busy watching what was happening elsewhere and not concentrating on where she was going, she literally walked into Hollis. He jumped with surprise.
“Sorry, Greg.”
“My fault,” he mumbled apologetically. “I wasn’t looking. You okay?”
“Fine.”
“Been working hard?” he asked with a grin. He knew she hadn’t.
“To all intents and purposes.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She glanced around before putting down a bucketful of cleaning equipment. She moved a pair of unused yellow rubber gloves to reveal a well-thumbed paperback, half a bottle of wine, and some chocolate wrappers.
“Between you and me,” she said secretively, “I’ve been taking it easy.”
“I’m surprised at you,” Hollis said, shaking his head with mock disappointment. “What would our Mr. Jackson say if he found out?”
“You’re not going to rat on me, are you?” she asked, knowing full well that he wasn’t. “Honestly, Greg, I know we didn’t know each other before all this madness, but you know me well enough by now. Dirty, hard, physical work … it’s just not my style.”
“Caron,” he said, grinning, “I know you well enough to understand that you’re probably the person least suited to dirty, physical work I’ve ever met. Just keep your head down and get it done though, eh? A few more months and we’ll be able to stop hiding away like this and you can go wherever you want then. Let your new house get as dirty as you damn well please. Spend your life doing whatever you like. You could live like a pig in shit if it’d make you happy.”
“Quite,” she said, not sure how she was supposed to respond to that.
“Anyway,” Hollis said, excusing himself, “speaking of shit, I’d best get to work myself.”
“Oh, Greg, you’re not?”
“And you thought you’d got it bad, eh?”
Caron laughed and picked up her stuff and walked on, leaving Hollis to head in the opposite direction. He’d have gladly swapped duties with Caron, but he knew she’d have balked at the very idea of slopping out. Someone had to do it, though, and at least working around the chemical toilets kept him away from everyone else. Right now, that was how he liked it.
14
Jackson was standing at the edge of the courtyard, near to where a number of interior walls had once stood. They were just crumbled ruins now, as dilapidated as everything else, but a single feature remained which still interested him—a well. They’d not yet managed to ascertain whether the water source was still there and accessible, but Jackson intended to find out. They had enough bottled water to see them through for a while longer, but having a steady supply on tap would make things immeasurably easier for everyone. Bob Wilkins had some engineering experience, and Charlie Moorehouse had been a Scout leader for a while. Between them they thought they’d be able to improvise a basic rope and pulley system to lower a bucket deep enough down and find out whether or not the well was dry.
A number of other people had been conscripted to help. Lorna, Mark Ainsworth, Paul Field, and Harte were busy digging a series of four holes around the well. Bob and Charlie were constructing two A-frames out of wood
