Part of him was excited, as it always was when he encountered a possible source of supplies or aid, but there was also that sickening trepidation that there might be demons around—or unhinged survivors. After barely fleeing with his life intact once already today, did he want to risk exposing himself again? How much longer could his luck hold up?
He should just skirt around the clearing—follow the trees until they reformed on the other side—but what if he missed out on even greater sanctuary? Whatever lay ahead was hidden in the depths of the forest, and perhaps it would remain hidden. A ready-made roof over his head was better than having to fell trees and build one. Or going back out on the road.
With no choice at all, Kamiyo’s curious nature ordered him to at least take a peep at what lay nestled beyond the trees. Perhaps it would be curiosity that killed him in the end, but the thought of acting against his own nature was a death in itself.
Staying low, he traipsed the remaining fifty-metres of woodland and headed for the clearing. The bushes snagged his jeans, and it was difficult to get an unobstructed view of the structure, but once he managed it, there was little doubt of what he saw.
A stone gatehouse marked the bottom of a long elevation leading up to a crumbling castle on a hill. The gatehouse adjoined a single-storey ruin that sat in front of a ten-foot stone wall, thick and old like plaque-hardened teeth. The only part of the fortification not to stand the test of time was the gate itself. Cast from iron, it lay flat in a patch of long grass.
The castle drew his attention, and he floated towards it in a daydream. He had travelled back in time and could imagine colourful knights on horses trotting down the hill to meet him. But in reality, the castle and its courtyards stood deserted. Unlike the lower gatehouse, the large iron portcullis of the upper gatehouse still hung in the recesses of the castle’s front aspect, locked in place by a pair of modern steel cuffs on either side. A bronze plaque adorned the wall on the left side of the gate and read: ‘Portcullis’ derives from a French word meaning ‘sliding door.’ This iron grate can be lowered in an instant if the castle is under attack and has been functional for over four hundred years. It is raised by a pair of interlocking chains housed inside a small room above the gate.
Was this castle a tourist attraction? It made sense, for it was more than a ruin. In fact, it appeared almost whole, and as he passed beneath the portcullis, he briefly feared it might drop like a guillotine and slice him in two. The castle itself wasn’t huge, a large manor house rather than a feudal fortress like Stirling or Edinburgh, but it stood stout and proud. Three-stories high, it was almost square, but slightly wider than it was tall, with a central tower breaking up the uniformity by jutting out in a hexagonal shape. The crenellated roof was the only broken part of the castle. Its right side had fallen away, replaced by thick swaths of ivy that trailed all the way to the ground. Timber frames and glass made up the windows and would not have been part of the original structure, but they didn’t take away from the castle’s antiquity. Defensive walls looped around the castle on every side, the portcullis punctuating the front approach. A small, but very real castle. And it was his!
At least that was what he thought until he felt a poke between his shoulder blades. “Dow yow move!” came a gruff voice in his ear.
Kamiyo was pretty sure it wasn’t a chivalrous knight.
7
TED
Ted groaned when he heard Hannah’s footsteps behind him. He’d expected nothing else, but a slim chance had existed that she might walk the other way. “We should keep to the side of the road,” she warned. “The forest will give us cover if we need it.”
“You know the area?” asked Ted without looking back at her. If he didn’t look at her, she might go away.
“Not really. I was based out of Stafford with 16 Signals but I’m from Durham originally. Only been in the service two years, just made Lance-Corporal. What a time to enlist, huh?”
“Least you had a gun when all this started. You had a better chance than most.”
She was silent for a moment, the only sound their boots on the tarmac. When she spoke again, her voice was pained. “Believe me, guns didn’t make a whole lot of difference.”
Ted huffed. “No kidding. A lot of use you lot turned out to be.”
Hannah surprised Ted then by grabbing his shoulder and whirling him around to face her in the middle of the road. She might have been a tiny bird, but she was stronger than she looked. “Fuck you, pal! You have no idea how hard we fought. I watched hundreds of good men and women run straight into certain death because they knew their duty. We did everything we could…. We… You have no fucking idea, okay?”
Ted was angry at being manhandled, but the fragile fury on Hannah’s face was enough to make him seek peace. He shrugged her off but apologised. “You’re right. I’ve seen enough to know there’s nothing anyone could have done. It wouldn’t have mattered how hard the Army fought. I’m sorry, okay?”
Hannah relaxed her shoulders and stared down the road vacantly. “We were slaughtered.”
“What you talking about?”
“The Army,” she said, looking back at him. “It’s gone. Wiped out. We made our last stand on the outskirts of Derby. Command set up at the Rolls Royce plant there. We had tanks, helicopters, even a few light aircraft scrounged from civilian airstrips and equipped with various armaments. We assembled two-thousand servicemen, and twice as many civilians, the
