The Royal Family had been safely transferred to the top-security underground headquarters in Hertfordshire. Helicopters were being used to air-lift survivors from urban areas, and 'safety regions' were being set up away from the towns, mostly fairly remote villages taken over by the army with defences erected to repel primitive hostile forces. Modern man had to be protected from the 'throwbacks' at all costs if civilisation was to survive.
Gradually, painstakingly, Rod Savage pieced together an overall picture. After radio transmission had petered out, and his CB went dead, he had to rely on forays into London itself. A fugitive, he dodged both the hate—and fear-crazed crowds as well as the rescue patrols. The last thing he wanted was to be forcibly hauled out of here. He would go when he was ready and not until.
Returning to his basement refuge at night he typed up his notes by candlelight, developed the photographs which he had taken. One bulging pseudo-leather briefcase contained the whole inside story and he slept with it in his sleeping bag.
The crowds were gradually leaving the city, dispersing into the home counties, an exodus from the concrete battlefields where flies swarmed on the bodies of the stain, where the stench of death and blood was overpowering.
The night he heard them rattling the door of his basement hideout, Rod Savage knew that it was time for him to be leaving, too. He left the next day, moving cautiously along deserted streets, a fugitive who would become a beast of the chase if he was spotted, clutching his briefcase to him for he owed its contents to the remnants of a civilised society. It was also worth an awful lot of money.
It was towards midday that he spied the low-flying helicopter, managed to attract the pilot's attention. Half an hour later he was gratefully breathing in the fresh sweet Essex air of Roydon, a picturesque village that now resembled a fortress, surrounded by barbed-wire fortifications and electric fences, the houses rehabilitation centres for the rescued, shocked men, women and children who were faced with the task of rebuilding society. It was going to be a long process, perhaps generations, always under the threat of attack from the wild tribes which inhabited the fields and hills.
Rod Savage had no intention of remaining here. The information he was busily gathering was far from complete. There was very little news of what was happening in Wales and he was determined to go back to his cottage and find out. It would be a long and dangerous trek, almost two hundred miles across terrain as it might have been thousands of years ago, with death an everyday occurrence.
He checked his roadmap again; the area to the west of the Midlands was virtually blank, terra incognita. The borderlands, hiils and tracts of moorland which would surely be teeming with squat hairy people who had gone back in time. But he would go all the same.
A week later Rod left the Roydon camp, a POW making an escape bid, for nobody was allowed to venture outside the perimeter. He cut a strand of barbed-wire, crawled on his stomach for over a hundred yards, dragging his briefcase with him. He had had second thoughts about taking it along; he might be killed, it might get stolen, but nevertheless it was unfinished work, his work, and, unlike his Falklands mission, there was nobody he could entrust it to. In all probability he would never return to Roydon. So he took it with him.
A warm moonless night, reaching the motorway and following the hard shoulder, ready to dive into the undergrowth at the first sign of anybody approaching. Multiple crashes, the stink of rotting flesh from the victims who had not been taken away. Carnage, prowling foxes slinking in to feed on the bodies under the cover of darkness; rats scurrying in and out of the battered vehicles.
This was Britain in the eighties, the start of the apocalypse, the New Stone Age.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JACKIE COULD not get the prisoner out of her mind that night. She listened to Kuz's breathing; knew that he slept heavily. Instinctively she edged away from him, afraid of him. So fierce, so possessive, she had witnessed his anger amongst the others, seen how he had frightened them into subservience. They all lived in dread of him, not so much for what he had done but because of what he might do. There was no way of guessing that until it happened, and when it did she hoped she wasn't around.
A new side of him had emerged today although she had long been aware of its existence. Cruelty! He was more than cruel, sadistic; enjoyed inflicting pain on others. He hadn't needed to jab the prisoner with the sharp fork but he had done it because he liked doing it, had laughed behind his thick beard when the other had winced, half cried out. And she knew now that he liked hurting her too. He had done so only a very short time ago.
There was no gentleness in Kuz's advances. When lust was upon him he took her, neither expected nor accepted any response. His personal pleasure was all that mattered to him, she was an object to fulfil his primitive desires, nothing else. Her body screamed for orgasm but all too often he cast her roughly to one side seconds after he had climaxed. Let me sleep, woman, for I am tired. I will teli you when I need you again.
That was how it had been tonight. Kuz had sat up late by the dying embers of the fire, his clouded expression that of a man who needed to be alone, to think his own thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. So she had retired to bed, was almost asleep when he came for her.
He jerked her into wakefulness by her long hair, pulled her up into a sitting position and by the glow of the last embers she saw his expression, twisted animal lust that transcended fury. She choked back a scream as he dragged her down on to the floor, threw her forcibly over into a kneeling position. My pleasure, not yours, woman!
She hadn't been ready, tensed herself as he stabbed at her, knew it would hurt. It did. It could have been a roughly hewn wooden dildo that bored into her, drew back, thrust again. And again.
She would have fallen forward had he not been supporting her, his arms around her from behind in a crushing grip, his fingers twisting and gouging her soft breasts, pinching and scraping, screwing up her soft nipples. But she dared not cry out aloud for he would surely have beaten her, perhaps worse.
Jackie felt the thick warm liquid filling her up, knew that Kuz was almost finished. His withdrawal was followed by a vicious thrust, the force of it throwing her against the side of the stone bed. Blinding pain as her forehead took the impact, red spotted blackness. His hands sought her again; roughly, angrily pulling her up, hurling her back on to the pile of hides. She rolled, bounced off the stone wall, lay still.
Then he was beside her, stretching out, turning away from her. Another need had to be satisfied—sleep.
Kuz was sleeping very deeply. Her pain simmered to a dull ache and then she found herself thinking about the prisoner in the pit again. A strange creature, so different; flesh that was white and soft, hairless. An absence of muscle. Clothes that stifled his body, barely allowed it to breathe. And yet she found him fascinating. So ... gentle, harmless.
Something flickered in her brain like a spent torch bulb trying to reignite itself. A dim flash, then it went out. A spark, a faint memory stirring for a fraction of a second, showing her a face then cutting out before she could recognise it. Her pulses raced, her heart speeded up a beat. Features similar to those of the one the menfolk had brought home from their hunting trip, deep blue eyes that pleaded with her, lips that moved, formed words she understood. / need you, Jackie. Please come back to me. Disturbed, she jerked back into full wakefulness, thought about the captive again and her eyes filled with tears. Pity was a new experience for her, one that she had had no use for before. Strength predominated amongst her people, one did not show weakness because there was no place for it. She had never cried before, the threat of tears made her afraid because she did not understand them, only her feelings. That man down in the deep hole meant more to her than any of those around her, more than Kuz. Fear, in case her slumbering man so much as guessed her thoughts. He would do more than just beat her, she was certain, he would kill her!