to a tall, narrow-shouldered guy called Bill Laithwaite who pushed scuffed glasses up the bridge of his nose and grimaced uncomfortably as he took possession of the gun.
‘Bill, you can take young Kevin with you.’
Kevin pulled a face. ‘Can’t I go with one of them?’ he whined, pointing towards Jacob and Nathan. Kevin was just thirteen, yet considered himself to be one of the ‘big boys’. The last thing he wanted was to be paired up with Bill who fretted and worried like an old woman.
Walter scowled. ‘Excuse me, you’ll do as you’re told. You’re with Bill.’
‘Great,’ Kevin pouted.
Walter picked up the second gun. ‘Jacob and Nathan, you can have the SA80.’ He passed it over to Nathan, who took a moment to pose with the army assault rifle like some urban gangster.
Jacob snorted.
‘For Christ’s sake, Nathan! It’s not a frigging toy!’ snapped Walter irritably.
Chastened, but still flashing a conspiratorial grin at Jacob, Nathan passed it carefully over before hopping across to join him on the quayside.
‘Howard and Dennis . . .’ Both men were old, older even than Walter. The three of them regularly played cribbage together in the mess during the evening lights-on hours. ‘You chaps can have the HK carbine.’
Walter picked up the remaining weapon and looked at David Cudmore. ‘And we’ll have the MP5.’
‘Righto,’ replied David, running a hand through the thin wisps of hair on his head.
‘Okay then,’ said Walter impatiently, ‘you’ve all got your lists?’
They nodded.
‘Back here no later than eight this evening, please. We should have supper on the go by then.’
Jacob pushed the shopping trolley down the aisle. The wheels squeaked with an irritating metronome regularity. However, unlike most of the other trolleys discarded outside in the high street, exposed to ten wet English summers and ten even wetter winters, at least the wheels hadn’t seized up with rust.
It was piled almost to overflowing with medicines requested; antibiotics, antiseptics and a variety of painkillers. This particular chemist had weathered the looting better than most stores. Of course, the windows had gone in and all the energy drinks, fruit juices and bottled water had vanished a decade ago within the first few days. But most of the rest of the shop’s stock was still patiently sitting on shelves or scattered across the floor collecting dust. For those who needed to dye their hair, wax their legs, or colour their nails this was going to be the place to visit for many more years to come.
Jacob looked down at the list. They’d ticked off most of the items, mostly the different branded painkillers. Of the four hundred and fifty-three members of their community, a large proportion were women between the ages of sixteen and fifty. On any given day there were at least half a dozen of them reporting to Dr Gupta - once upon a time a GP - for something to ease stomach cramps.
Jacob wheeled the trolley through the checkout, Nathan walking behind him with the SA80 held casually in both hands, the muzzle pointing safely at the ground, just as Walter warned them, ad nauseam, to do.
‘Nah, it was definitely a game on me PlayStation,’ said Nathan, continuing a conversation Jacob had almost forgotten they’d been having. ‘I know it was. I think it was the last game me dad got me.’
Jacob shook his head. ‘But I’m sure I played it on my Nintendo, though.’
‘Nope, you didn’t . . . couldn’t have, Jay. Was a PlayStation-only, man.’
They emerged outside onto the high street. The sun was just dipping behind the flat roof of the multi-storey car-park opposite; the dark shadow it cast slowly creeping across the thoroughfare of weed-strewn paving.
Jacob stepped through tufts of waist-high nettles, the trolley squeaking and rattling before him, the small wheels juddering over a broken paving slab.
He let go of the trolley and rested for a moment.
‘’Sup, Jake?’
He shrugged. ‘You ever stop and pretend?’
‘Pretend what?’
‘That the street’s still alive.’
Nathan looked around at the overgrown pedestrian way, the dark shop entrances, the jagged window frames, cars resting on flat tyres, many of them displaying tell-tale bubbles of rust beneath the paintwork.
‘Used to. Sort of gets harder to imagine each time we come ashore, though. You know what I’m saying?’
Jacob looked at the signs above the shop doorways. Most of them - the homogenous chain stores - were plastic façades, perfectly well preserved, some still bright and colourful. Here and there, fractures in the moulded lettering had allowed thin veins of moss to take hold and spread bacilli-like