Grand Theft Planetary & Other Stories
Chapter 6: Man Alone

My boots were falling apart, tortured by the relentless cut and rub of the destroyed motorway. The sun was scorching the back of my neck and my shadow was stretching in front of me, mimicking my staggering pace. There were only a few hours left before sunset, and I needed to find a hole to hide in before the lights started their nightly dance in the sky.

I shrugged off my heavy backpack and rested on a rusting barrier, my legs and back burning with the release of its burden. It was a poor-looking backpack, frayed and threadbare in places but still holding its shape well. If it failed on the journey, then I would fail too. I needed every piece of my luggage to survive, and there was no way I could carry it all without the backpack. Something chirruped in the mass of trees huddled on the other side of the motorway, and I reached for my longbow. I needed to hunt; my food reserves were low, but hunting took up precious time, something I wasn’t willing to give up ever since my father died. However, the situation was becoming more desperate with every passing day. I knew I was slowly starving to death; I didn’t have to feel my gaunt cheeks or my sagging clothes to realise that.

All around me, nature was flourishing in the absence of man. No more industry, no more development, no more pouring concrete over everything in sight or twisting the physical world to make a profit. Everywhere was green and luscious, and given a better set of circumstances, I might have taken more time to enjoy the sight of the earth healing itself. My father’s SA80 slipped around my shoulder and knocked into my leg, reminding me that this new world was more dangerous too.

A plump rabbit broke the treeline; it was dead within seconds, one of my precious arrows strutting from its head. I would be eating something warm tonight.

According to the map on my heavily scratched PDA – a rare tool indeed now society had been thrown back to the dark ages - the next service station was a couple of miles away, so I slid the handset and its solar charger into a dusty pocket and resumed my laborious journey. The road surface was like caltrops, the smashed tarmac spiky and loose underfoot. I would have sacrificed a lot of my belongings for a pair of sturdy gloves; I could ill-afford to lose the use of my hands if I cut them seriously on sharp rocks or rusty metal. They were already heavily-scarred and calloused; so far I’d been lucky. Finally, the motorway levelled out and I was able to pick up some speed, hopping over fallen lamp-posts and squeezing past upended cars with renewed energy. Every stomp of my boots disrupted a swarm of different insects; daddy long-legs, horse flies, ladybirds. There was something odd though about the insects I was seeing lately though; bigger and nastier-looking. A couple of days back, I jumped from a train platform onto the track and I found myself covered in a spider’s web, yet it wasn’t the usual gossamer threads that were soft and easy to break. This was altogether different – gooey and wet, yet a lot harder to pull apart. It also irritated my skin, as if caustic. As I freed myself, a weird chittering noise came from a maintenance shed nearby. Shocked, I brought up my rifle and trained the sights on the pitch-black entrance of the building, willing whatever it was to emerge so I could shoot it. After 5 minutes of silence, I moved off and continued my way down the tracks, unable to shake the feeling that something was creeping up behind me.

On the left, the remains of a blue sign stated FORD SERV, so I hopped over the barrier and ventured through the new forest. Surprisingly, these services weren’t as overgrown as the rest of the world, as if the plants were afraid of something here. The main building seemed intact as I cautiously approached through the massive carpark, again relatively untouched by the disaster five years ago. There was only one car here. I wondered what had happened to the owner..

The dirty glass doors, unwashed and unused for half a decade, were locked but intact. If I could get in without causing too big a breach, I would be a little safer tonight and might actually sleep for once. Unfortunately, a quick reconnaissance of the building showed it to be sealed tight, so deciding on a sheltered and small window, I broke it with a rock. Immediately, a fungal smell wafted from the opening and I retched, completely taken by surprise by the odour. However, the sun was almost down and the lights would be out soon, so against my better judgement, I threw my backpack in and wriggled through.

I found myself inside the public toilets of the services, red tiles and white porcelain untarnished despite their age. I crept into the main foyer with my gun at the ready, and discovered that the smell was coming from a dark green mould covering the walls and ceiling, originating from the various restaurants clustered in a semi-circle. It looked too organic for my liking, and considering the change in the animals I’d seen, I wasn’t sure whether this gunk was benign. I kept my distance and examined the shops, but they were practically empty, only one or two newspapers (collector’s items really, although useless now that survival was key), a few books, and some ancient packets of crisps. There were several packs of batteries though, but they were all dead; I wasn’t totally surprised. All the other shops were cleared out, probably by their proprietors when it was feared the solar flare would last years. Satisfied that there wasn’t any nasty surprises here (apart from the mould, but there was nothing to do about that), I started securing my sleeping area. I unfolded my bag and took out my traps; 5 claymore mines and a handful of fragmentation grenades, courtesy of my father’s preoccupation with the art of warfare. It was strange; before civilisation collapsed, I considered his collection of guns and explosives a sign of a madman. However, I could have kissed him when we finally unearthed his gun cabinet and storage chest from the rubble of his house. In fact, without his guns, we would never have survived the journey to the settlement in Scholes, and I would never have survived after his death.

I laid the claymores at strategic points around the area where I would be sleeping - a small storage room behind a clothes shop on the upper floor - and used fishing wire to make traps of the grenades on the stairs and doorways, putting one across the window where I’d entered the building. The storage room boasted a fairly large window overlooking the area. I had to have a window. Outside, in the dying light of the sun, I could see the extent of nature’s reclamation of the land; nothing but green heads of trees for miles around, the motorway cutting a lighter green slash through the forest. To my right was the grey car park, the lone car a stark alien artefact against the organic feelers and leaves racing across the tarmac to devour it, or would do given enough time.

I pinned up my thickest blanket across the window and then pitched my small dome tent in the middle of the room. Inside the tent, I turned on the electric heater - it started up first time. My luck was changing. Stopping periodically to check for noises (a habit gained from my father, who was ever on-guard), I unwrapped the body of the rabbit, skinned and dissected it, then cooked the tender meat pieces. I discarded the pelt and carcass into the corner of the room and ate the greasy meat quietly. It wasn’t enough to sustain me, yet I wasn’t keen on spending a day to replenish my stock of food. I needed to get to Plymouth as quick as possible, and any delay might be the difference between success and failure; life and death.

With the cooker off and my hunger partially-satisfied for the moment, I sat on a box next to the window and moved the blanket aside to look out. In the darkness – the pure darkness, with not a single artificial light coming from the land – the stars were staggeringly beautiful. It seemed that many more had joined in with the usual constellations to watch the demise of earth, peeking down with curiosity at the total mess below. The first night after the impact of the meteor, I sat with my father on a patch of grass, a crude fire smouldering between us, and cried. He struck me around the face in disgust, and told me to be a man. He said that the UK had suffered some tragedy, a nuclear or missile attack, and that we had to be strong if we were to survive. The embers from the dying fire partially lit up his face, stern and hard, and I remember thinking that something wasn’t right with him. It was then that I realised that he was actually smiling. Millions, if not billions, killed in a nuclear attack, and he was looking forward to the aftermath! That scared me, but also gave me strength. No matter what we faced, one of the scariest bastards I’d ever known was on my side.

Even in death, he’d been composed and controlled. “Don’t you dare cry,” he warned me as I looked at that always-stern face. “You will need to go to Plymouth. Reach the naval base there.”

“Why?”

“They have ships and food and supplies.”

“How do you know this? Plymouth is so far away.” I tried covering the huge gunshot wound in his chest but it was futile.

“You will go there,” he insisted, speaking quickly. “Stick to the motorways, don’t deviate from them. Avoid cars, don’t try driving, walk there. Stay out of sight.” He blinked as if unable to focus. “Get my PDA from the backpack, use the maps on it. He coughed up blood and tried to move. “Promise me! Plymouth. Motorways.”

And then he died. I’d despatched the bandits that had shot my father at point-blank range, taking a little pleasure in putting a bullet in the temple of the biggest guy. I took my father’s weapons and backpack, then sprinted away, fighting the tears and grief away, just like he’d want me to do. That was weeks ago, and since then I’d fought my way south, sticking to the motorways like he’d said, heading for the distant city of Plymouth like he’d made me promise. I had formed a covenant with my dead father, one that only my own death could release me from.

I snapped back from my musings; the lights had appeared in the sky at last, weaving backwards and forwards, zipping randomly about in the night sky. They scared me enough to not camp out in the open anymore. The first night alone without my father, I’d pitched the tent up in the middle of a clearing, and as I lay there deciding my next move, a small white ball of light shot over my head. Then another. Soon, there were dozens of moving pinpricks of light, weaving and hovering far above my head. Had they always been there? I couldn’t remember looking at the night sky when with my father I’d fled into the surrounding forest, fearing some weapon or mutated animal was about to attack me.

Outside, there was a glow in the sky from the north, getting brighter and brighter until it was like daytime, tendrils of lightning arcing and dancing in the light. I gripped my gun tight and stared open-mouthed; I was scared. At times like this, when I couldn’t make sense of the world, or faced something potentially dangerous, I felt my father’s loss keenly. I saw his dying face staring sternly at me, telling me not to cry. I tried not to, but I’d hit the well of tears and they flowed freely. The light in the sky faded slightly, and I saw the trees in the distance start to move as if something was racing through them towards me. Then the pressure wave hit, shaking the windows and making my ears pop painfully as I wailed like a baby. A sudden storm lashed the window hard, and through my tears I found my way into the tent and curled up, hugged my legs, listening to the wind and rain attack the building. During the maelstrom, I fell into a grief-fuelled sleep.

I awoke a lot later than I was used to, by the feel of the sun it was about midday. I crawled out of the tent guiltily and surveyed the storm-hit land outside my window; there was little to see that was different. I carefully disabled the traps, packed up my belongings, then ventured outside, thankful to be rid of the cloying smell of the strange fungus. The abundance of rabbits crawling around the site was a sign to improve my food position, so I crouched at the side of the car park and readied my bow. There was something amiss; it took me a while to realise that the solitary vehicle that had been in the car park had disappeared.

When I put my last arrow into a rabbit, I decided to call it a day. I approached the area where the car had been, and saw that the car was in fact still there; however, it was squashed flat, almost flush with the tarmac. I was confused; what on earth? Had the UFOs done this? Looking around, I saw an area of forest also squashed flat, then some distance away, another. And another. They were like huge footprints leading away from the site. I hefted my prizes – 10 plump rabbits – and built a fire from vines and wood, then skinned and cooked them immediately. I feasted on a couple of them, and saved the rest of the meat in a small cloth pouch. I would be OK for about two days now. My stomach thanked me noisily.

Before I continued down the motorway, I drank greedily from some puddles formed by the storm earlier, then filled my water bottles. Feeling in higher spirits, I ventured forth down the green road once again, wondering if I could reach the next service station before sundown. The GPS signal had disappeared a few years ago but the maps were still useful. I eventually worked out that I’d have to travel 20 miles in seven hours – a big ask to be sure, but like every big journey, it has to start with a single footstep. Apart from the regular buzz and thrum of insects, the occasional bird cry and the sudden rustle of the wind, the journey was uneventful. One thing I did notice was that the giant areas of flattened forest seemed to run parallel with the road I travelled along, sometimes crossing my path, then back again.

The sun was fading when I wearily approached a half-destroyed sign that read KEELE. Finally – only a couple more miles. Heavy clouds raced up behind me, promising another storm like last night no doubt. I took the overgrown sliproad to the services and stopped dead; the entire site was rubble and dust, signalling that the destruction was very recent. I ran to the site’s twin on the other side of the motorway; the same thing, just a pile of twisted metal and smouldering brick. Something had done this – something powerful, but what?

There was a rumble above me; the storm was almost here. I checked the PDA and found no other structures in the area, so I desperately cleared a space within a pile of rubble on the outskirts of the site (I didn’t like camping in the new forest proper) and pitched my tent. Then, I hacked off several large branches and vines, and laid them over the top of my tent. Then, with large thunderdrops hissing around me, I crawled in and watched the storm break. It was the equal of last night’s battering. Rivers formed and, thankfully, streamed past without flooding my sleeping quarters. There was something both exciting and comforting about being in a tent in the rain, and as I chewed on some rabbit meat, was lulled into a fairly content sleep.

A rocking motion jarred me awake; outside, the storm was still beating the land with heavy gusts and massive raindrops. My eyelids went to close again but I noticed something odd; in front of my tent, about 20 metres away, a strange dull disk of metal sat in the mud, about 10 metres wide and 3 metres thick, a thick trunk jutting upwards out of sight. Suddenly, it shot into the air, and I heard it hit the ground some way off. I shuffled forward; in a brief flash of lightning, I saw a huge figure, hundreds of metres high, with red glowing eyes and a skeletal smile of shining teeth. I shuffled back into my tent and held my breath; what the hell?

In the darkness, the light from its eyes panned over the landscape, sometimes illuminating my hiding place. It paced around the demolished site noisily, moving the rubble around, obviously looking for something. Was it looking for me? Eventually, with a deafening electronic whine, it moved off until I could no longer feel the tremor from its footsteps. I didn’t move a muscle for the next hour, fearful that the robot was still within earshot, but eventually my tiredness forced me to sleep.

It was still raining when I awoke, and I stretched in discomfort in the cramped tent. The soil underneath the groundsheet was squidgy, a sign that I’d need to move soon. I waited the storm out for another hour, then donned my thin waterproof jacket and reluctantly braved the wet world. All around was the footprints from the giant robot, leading off in the direction I was going. I relieved myself in the forest, ate some more rabbit, and then set off down the motorway once again, sticking close to the forest edge in fear of the robot’s return. It was madness to be travelling south when its footprints were leading this way, but I promised my father. That’s all there was to it.

In the grey glumness of the afternoon, I leaned up on a piece of rubble, feeling the wetness of the stone on my ass. I didn’t really care – I was too exhausted. The PDA wasn’t charging, my boots were leaking terribly, and my shoulders ached from hauling the backpack. Still, the weather was affording me some cover from the mysterious massive figure – if it was looking for me – and from the UFOs. I needed to keep moving, so I squelched onwards.

The sun started to disappear and yet there was no sign of the services. I hurried on, willing some kind of sign to appear so I could check my location but the area had been scoured clear of anything taller than waist-height. I was considering setting up camp against the side of an enormous rhubarb plant when I saw a most welcome sight; a sign with three slashes on it. I sprinted on, but soon skidded to a halt; the robot had appeared on a hill to my left, his red eyes panning backwards and forwards like a lighthouse. I hunkered down and kept to the trees that flashed red now and again. I came to the edge of the forest, the exposed services’ car park between me and sanctuary. Straight after the forest flashed red, I sprinted to the main entrance and, mercifully, found the doors wide open. I collapsed once inside the main foyer and got my breath back, then flicked on a torch and explored the building, careful not to trip on the ever-present vines which had invaded and grown over every inch of mankind’s creation.

I made my way through the internal forest, the hanging leaves and fruit creating racing shadows around me. I disturbed a bat, and it flapped angrily through the entrance. I crouched defensively until I was calm, then proceeded with my sweep of the services. Rain started hammering on the windows as I ascended the stairs; I was finding nowhere ideal to setup camp. Eventually, I decided upon a room behind the full-glass corridor running across the ex-motorway. I pitched my tent, then laid the claymores and tripwires around the building. My main concern though was the main entrance doors that were open to the elements. I managed to slide them together against the stormy weather, although it took a lot of hacking away at the vines covering the floor in order to get the doors to meet. Without any kind of chain or welding torch, I improvised a piece of metal as a latch and hooked a trip wire onto it, then wedged a grenade amongst the vines. No-one would know it was there until it took off their legs. I hurried back upstairs and gratefully crawled into my bed.

There was a brief flash of red from the doorway and I froze. I’d forgotten about the robot. I crawled out and slowly peeked around the door frame. Through the rain-blasted corridor windows, I saw it standing a few dozen metres away from the services, its skeletal head covered by a giant hood. Its eyes swept backwards and forwards, illuminating everything in a furious red glow. With slender, impossibly long fingers, it tore up a utility shed and examined the debris. I slunk back into the room and readied my gun, although I wasn’t sure what to do against a hundred-metre giant. I felt its footsteps through the floor as it came closer, then there was the smashing of glass from downstairs. Was it trying to get in? Suddenly, there was a loud explosion as the booby-trap on the front door was tripped. The robot screamed and then crashed away into the woods. First blood to me. I kept watch for another hour but the giant did not return, so I slipped into a light sleep.

That morning, I stood and surveyed the damage from the robot’s attempt to trespass during the night, chewing on a piece of deer that I’d bagged earlier. The grenade had blown out most of the windows and demolished the door, spraying glass everywhere. More interestingly though, it had also ripped off one of the giant’s mirrored fingers. It lay just inside the doorway, about as tall as me and oozing a strange black filth that hissed and bubbled. As I went to run my hands over its silver surface, I started to feel odd, as if suddenly fatigued by illness. I concluded that it was probably best that I avoid anything to do with the monster. I lamented the loss of a precious grenade to the giant though. I wouldn’t be able to cover as many areas at night, but still – it had stopped it from whatever it was trying to do, and wasn’t that the idea behind my booby-traps?

It was about midday when I crested the top of a hill and found myself looking down over a flood plain that stretched on for miles in front. The motorway, which had once bridged the fields for about two miles, had been blasted away, the remains lying half-submerged in the plain, meaning that the only way forward was through the wetlands. I could avoid the area entirely and traverse through the forest hills to the right of me, but judging from the distance, it would take me three or four days. I couldn’t afford the additional travel time, not with my dwindling rations, my degrading fitness, and a huge metal monster stalking the land, so I tucked my trousers into my socks, traced out the least-boggiest route, and trudged down the hill. My feet got waterlogged immediately and I soon found myself sploshing through a shin-deep area of shifting shimmering water.

A few minutes in and I noticed the water moving ahead of me. Something large was in the water, so I readied my gun and circled around the spot. Suddenly, the water erupted and an enormous snake-like animal reared itself over me. I stumbled backwards and fell into the water, shocked by the appearance of its head; it was half-man and half-reptile, a man’s face overlaid with thick green scales and studded with ruby-red angry eyes. Half-submerged in the murky water, I was smashed aside by a vicious whip of the beast’s tail. I got up, pain burning through my chest from the impact, and was glad to see the rifle still in my hand. I put a bullet in that unnatural face without a second thought, and it fell forwards with a splash. I waited for the waters to calm before approaching the enormous coiled body of the animal; it must have measured at least thirty metres outstretched, the trunk a meter in diameter at its thickest point. Amazing; in only a few months, animals were mutating and evolving. It dawned on me that the water, the land, even the very air I was breathing might be full of contaminants or radiation from the destruction of man, but then again – should I care? I was living on borrowed time anyway. I should, in all rights, have been killed along with the other three billion human beings during the apocalypse. There was nothing special about me. Radiation was the least of my problems.

I continued the hard slog through the field, watching for any more animal activity until I reached the rise on the other side of the plain. My legs burned and my feet were itching from being submerged for too long, so I sat down and rested for a while, taking the time to dry my socks and feet. Through the ground, I could feel a slight rumble. I laid flat on the ground and glanced around me; there wasn’t a scrap of cover to hide from the giant anywhere, other than the flooded plain, and I wasn’t keen to jump back in. The rumbling got stronger, but then stopped. After ten minutes of listening, I sighed in relief; must have been an earth tremor, or some rampaging horses or something.

The incident did remind me that I was exposed though, so I put my socks back on and continued up the hill, looking out for the source of the tremor. There was another thing that worried me; the condition of my rucksack, or more accurately, its contents. The fight with the serpent had submerged the rucksack for a few seconds, and I assumed that the PDA and my food supply were ruined at the least. I would wait until I settled down for the night before looking at the pack. In a weird way, the fight had energised me. I felt stronger, the burden of the backpack less taxing on my weary muscles. I crested the hill and then dropped to the ground, not believing my eyes.

There was a man.

Below me, standing in the middle of a circle of stones in front of an odd-looking hill, was a person. He started to wave. Unbelievable! I gripped my gun; was it worth the risk? I’d thought of this at length during my travels - what I would do if I met another survivor? On the plus side, they might have skills that would prove useful to me, even some provisions and weapons. And I couldn’t deny the benefits of a second pair of eyes, especially now that strange beasts were hiding in this world. However, another set of eyes came with another mouth that would need feeding, possibly out of my supplies. What if that person was injured, or mad, or violent? All things considered, I had decided to simply shoot anyone I came across, but now that there was a man in front of me, those carefully, considered decisions went to the wind. I stood and waved back, unable to stop the idiot-grin from my lips. I took two steps down the hill, then paused; the man wasn’t waving at me. He was angled slightly, waving somewhere off to my right. I looked, but there was absolutely nothing there. The man lowered his arm, then raised it again. There was something too automated with that wave, three shakes of the hand, then the arm lowered, and then up again, three shakes. And why was he standing in the middle of those stones? They too were odd; long and moss-covered, but there was a hint of metal underneath…

I turned and sprinted away from the trap, desperately hoping that the giant had not seen me yet. I stumbled down the incline and dived into the waters I’d just fought through, and hid behind a half-submerged piece of motorway. For agonising minutes I waited, but nothing appeared behind me. Eventually, I realised that I had gotten away cleanly, but also realised I had to find a detour around the giant. I crawled out of the water and quietly unpacked my sodden rucksack. My fears were thankfully unfounded; the PDA was slightly damp but still worked, and everything else simply needed to be dried. I squinted at the electronic map and noted a small forest to my right. That would have to do. I crawled away, not wanting to make too much noise until I’d put distance between myself and the hiding giant. I still couldn’t figure out whether he was actually hunting me or just looking for humans, but I guess this trap was a direct response to me blowing its finger off the night previously. I managed a slight run for a mile or so, anxious to get into the relative safety of the trees, trying not to think about what would have happened if I’d gotten any closer to the giant’s trap.

I found a path that entered the forest and followed it in. The sun cast shivs of light through the canopy, and I suddenly felt a danger lurking within the dark trees. I stopped and peered into the gloom; within the quiet rustling and birdsong, I could sense something else looking back at me. I raised my gun and considered firing a shot to try and force out whatever was in there. To my right, nestled behind a wall of large oaks, I spotted something very surprising; a window. Still facing the unseen menace, I side-stepped to the area, and was taken aback by what I found. It was a cottage, nestled against the back of a small hill, with white-washed walls and leaded windows. More importantly, it looked intact.

Inside was a dream. The kitchen was tidy, the small living room comfortable and neat, even the two double beds upstairs were made, although the back bedroom was covered in mildew and mould from a leak in the roof. The back garden had been partially-committed to the growing of vegetables, and although the radishes had bolted, there were some shallots and potatos that were fit for eating. A huge blue water butt was a welcome sight, and I filled several pans with water before refilling my own water bottles. Despite the time being mid-afternoon, I decided to stop for the night in the cottage, and quickly secured the ground doors and windows with my traps. I rifled through the cupboards and found a couple of tins of tomato soup, not long past their sell-by date. I setup my camp within the front bedroom and pulled a chest of drawers in front of the door as an added precaution. The room’s window overlooked the front of the house and out into the gloomy forest. Perfect, I thought. I boiled up some of the soup and drank heartily from the pans of water, feeling refreshed for the first time in weeks. The bed was soft and comfortable, and a sudden fatigue overwhelmed me. I turned the burner off, took a few spoonfuls of thick red soup, and then passed out on the luxurious bed.

It was the first time that I had slept properly since leaving the refugee camp in Scholes. I don’t know how long I had actually slept for, but it was midday, maybe early afternoon when I finally managed to raise my head. I could hear birds singing outside, small furtive tweets, but getting braver as the tranquillity of the area persevered. I rolled onto my side, my intention to go back to sleep while I had the luxury for such a thing, but my stomach insisted I got some breakfast. I drank deep from the pan of water next to my abandoned dinner of red soup and put my boots back on. Now that my concentration wasn’t split between my subconscious senses on the lookout for threats, I was able to take stock of the smaller details about myself. My clothes were hideously worn, offering protection against nothing but modesty. The hems of my sleeves were threads that dangled around my wrist. My brown boots were separating from the sole, sagging flatly even with my feet inside them. I opened the wardrobe and found a bounty of rugged clothing and boots, roughly my size too. I stripped off, then sloly closed the mirrored wardrobe door to look at myself, fearful of what I really look like after weeks of surviving. I was too thin, too lean, too emaciated to be of this earth for much longer. I could feel tears of pity gathering at my eyelids. At least I was still alive, I remind myself. My father didn’t have that luxury anymore.

And so began my short residence at the cottage I dubbed The Safehouse, because it was exactly that. Sheltered from the floodplains by a cliff behind the cottage, hidden from view by a dark forest from the front, for the first time in a year I felt secure. My first priorities were to establish a constant supply of food and water, so I clumsily maintained the vegetable garden and hid as many containers as possible in the grass around the cottage. My gardening skills were basic, but I found many books on the subject within the house’s living room. My official intention was to stay until I gained my strength, but there was a smaller, more secret intention; to stay indefinitely. The betrayal to my father’s dying wish was troubling me, but as long as I pretended that I was merely staying over, it gave me time to deal with my conscience.

I busied myself around the garden and The Safehouse during the day while securing the windows and doors to make sure that there was no way to approach my new home without triggering an alarm. I still wouldn’t venture out into the forest proper though; on several occasions I stood on the path leading into the gloom, gun in hand, and simply stared at the darkness, split between walking on and walking off. Eventually, my nerve would give and I’d retreat. There was something unusual about the mass of large trunks and the misty gloom between them, something which my primal senses could see but my eyes could not. Before I went to bed each night, I would sit in the front window and stare out, trying to catch whatever it was moving, maybe even eliminate it so I could live in the cottage without fear. Nothing moved though, and yet I was certain it was there.

After three weeks, I had finally decided to make myself a permanent residence at The Safehouse. I had spent a long night sitting in front of my gas burner, staring into the orange flame, telling the assumed presence of my ever-watchful father that the whole point of going to Plymouth was to survive. If I found a suitable place to survive outside of Plymouth, then the quest had still been successful, hadn’t it? That sounded reasonable to me, and therefore reasonable to my father, so I concluded the covenant had been met and I was released from it. I went to sleep feeling like a great weight had been lifted from my mind – mostly.

The next day, I was overjoyed to see that some potatos I had planted were sprouting. I didn’t have faith in myself as a gardener, but thanks to the books kept by the previous owners of The Safehouse, I had managed to grow something. My future here was assured. I watered the rest of the garden, checked on the traps and alarms, had a modest meal in celebration of my newfound “greenfinger” status, and then spent the rest of the day repairing the roof. It had started to rain during most nights, and if I was to remain here indefinitely – and why not, in the absence of any great upheaval – I needed to make The Safehouse robust against the elements. I worked within the dusty damp loft for a few hours, taking off the tiles and then covering the gap with a large piece of tarpaulin. The damage to most of the rafters was extensive and would require replacing. Still, I had enough spare wood in the tiny shed at the bottom of the garden. It would be no problem, three days’ work at most.

That night, I cooked a rabbit I had caught earlier in the week and served in front of a tiny candle with some small potatos and onions. I would have paid a large price for some gravy but it was a luxury that wasn’t worth the additional effort. I listened to the rain hissing on the windows and hoped the winds wouldn’t blow the tarpaulin off. I had secured it tight though, so I wasn’t overly-concerned. I cleaned up my plate and fork, extinguished the candle and felt my way up to my bedroom. I took up my usual place in the front window and stared into the midnight forest on the off-chance that the doom within would show itself, a ritual that was becoming tiresome. I had tried many times to go to sleep without looking out at the forest, but my sub-conscious mind was very adamant with this point; there was something out there. I needed to make sure it wasn’t coming for me.

In the darkness with my gun propped up against me, I watched the night life of the forest. I was used to seeing badgers snuffle through the grass or a fox trot across the path. I once saw a deer appear in the moonlight, its soft ears and stubby face alert for predators, and I had contemplated taking a shot at it. That much meat would improve my rations by a good factor, and yet I reluctantly let it pass. The threat was out there. I needed to be covert.

Ten minutes had passed and I was about to let the curtain drop and crawl underneath the duvet behind me when something moved, off to the left. I looked at it but it disappeared. I moved my eyes off of the spot – a trick my father had taught me about seeing in low-light – and saw that there was a very faint light, too faint for my fine-vision to pick up. Diffused by the mist in the air, it was a silver-blue glow that glided silently between the trees, disappearing behind the trunks and re-appearing stronger than before. It was getting closer. This was the threat that had been lurking in the woods, and now it was coming for me. I grabbed my gun and quietly opened the windows outwards. What was I going to do though? It looked like a spirit; my bullets would be ineffective, surely. I lined up the glowing orb in my iron sight. There’s no such things as ghosts, I reminded myself – but then there’s no such things as giant metal men, UFOs, or man-headed snakes either. In this post-mankind world, anything was possible. The rules had been rewritten.

The glow came to the path and stopped. It was still about two hundred yards away from the cottage and only just visible to me. It hovered around in my trembling iron sights and I put a little pressure on the trigger, still deciding whether to take a shot or not. If the glow came closer, I would shoot. At the moment, it didn’t pose a threat, so I wouldn’t act.

The seconds became long minutes, and my arms began to tire from the heavy rifle. The glow had not moved from the path, and I suddenly wondered whether the glow was looking back at me, maybe with its own weapon trained on me, deciding whether to shoot or not. It was a possibility, especially considering he glow hadn’t moved since I had aimed at it. Slowly, I brought the rifle inside and propped against the wall next to me. Should I just go to bed and forget about it? I wasn’t sure I would be able to sleep knowing a ghost was wandering outside. However, I was tired, the initial adrenalin completely drained from me and I just wanted to rest. The forest started to hiss; it was raining. I reached out to pull the window closed, and then suddenly my vision was filled by a light, brilliant and golden. The spirit was here, in front of me, mere inches from my face. I stumbled backwards in shock, unable to see anything, and fell.

I awoke on my bed, untouched, and unharmed. My gun was still next to the window, the curtain billowing slightly in the morning breeze. Quickly, I grabbed the gun and peeked out of the window, but all that greeted me was the path and the forest, complete with its menace in the golden daylight. The Safehouse had been compromised and I needed to leave. I rushed downstairs and packed as many things into my dusty backpack as I could, then paused; where was I going to go?

Plymouth, said my father’s voice, where you should have been going.

Risking my life on the broken road of humanity, I thought.

At least you’ll be safe when you get to Plymouth.

How can you be sure of that?

I just am. You must have faith in me.

I shook my head and dropped the backpack. The glow had scared me but it couldn’t have meant me harm. I went around the house and checked the traps and alarms, but they all told the same story; nothing had happened to me other than a good scaring. I boiled some water and dunked a mint leaf into it, wishing (not for the first time) that I had some tea or coffee. Eventually, I convinced myself to stay in The Safehouse for as long as I was safe. Still, I decided not to tempt fate and so refrained from going outside, choosing instead to watch the forest from a variety of windows.

As the sun descended, the wood turned into its shrouded murkiness and the night animals came out to play. Although logic dictated that I was safe, my primal fear was telling me that there was a mysterious enemy out there, one that could potentially harm me. And so, as midnight passed, the glow appeared again and stopped by the path. I stared at it as before, as did it stare at me, until I forced myself to forget it and curled up on my bed, half-expecting the window to shatter inwards and the thing to come in. But the night was still and the curtain remained dark, and eventually I slept.

That morning, I woke up with a faint breeze on my face and the feeling of a bad thing happening in my dreams. The bedroom was undisturbed and intact, and yet I had the strangest sensation that I wasn’t inside a room. I raised the curtain and saw something that made my stomach clench with anxiety and fear, something which I had been afraid of seeing.

Large footprints.

Huge patches of the forest were gone, sunlight in the distance visible between the trunks. The misty gloom was all-but gone, and the path in front of The Safehouse was cracked and smashed. The giant had been here. I stayed completely still, watching for any movement, but the area was silent. Even the birds’ timid songs had been scared off. It was apparent that the giant was not out there anymore, or at least nowhere close. I grinned; the giant had passed right by me without realising I was here. I opened the bedroom door, and my reality changed.

I could see the garden.

The entire back portion of the house – the landing, the bathroom, the kitchen – had been smashed into a pile of debris below me, spread over the vegetable garden in a vomit of brick and wood. The water collectors had been upended, my crops buried, and The Safehouse wasn’t safe to live in anymore. Numbed from the devastation, I sat down with my legs dangling over the edge of the floor. Even in this apocalyptic world, my life was still fraught with bad luck and unfairness. I felt angry. Fuck my father for doing all this to me! He was punishing me for not following his wish. He’d wanted me to go to Plymouth but I’d decided to stay in the cottage instead. He’d sent the glowing orb to frighten me out of The Safehouse, and when that hadn’t worked he’d sent the giant to smash up everything I’d built up, in order to force me to carry on. I jumped onto the rubble and slid down to the garden, the edges of brick hurting my feet. I was tired of living in fear of everything, afraid of the things that might happen to me and having to prepare for the worst of what the world had to offer just to ensure I could live in peace. Something inside me had snapped, disappeared, turned into dust and vaporised on the sight of the destroyed Safehouse. The destruction of my sanctuary had meant the death of me – it was only a matter of time until some weird creature ate me or the metal giant stomped on me. Well, so be it. After all, a coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero only once. I had died enough already.

I collected as much as I could from the rubble; my empty backpack, some unburied crops from the garden, my water flask; my rifle. I had supplies for only three days or so. I was determined to make those three days count.

With some sadness, I looked at The Safehouse one last time, the damage not apparent from the front path, and then marched towards the dangerous forest. I didn’t care what was lurking in the shadows – I was going to choke it with my bare hands if it even so much as bothered me. The sunlight faded away the deeper I got, until all I could see was a green roof above me. The path quickly disappeared underneath creeper vines, forcing me to slow my steps. The feeling of doom enveloped me from all angles, and my nerve began to fray. I jumped as a bird shrieked nearby, and my eyes started to glimpse movement between the trees. I stopped a couple of times, afraid to continue, but the anger I felt before rose up and gave me the strength to carry on. I was unafraid of the future, and I was unafraid of this forest. I was ready to die, but I wasn’t going to make it a cheap death either.

Suddenly, the undergrowth around me exploded in several places, rising up to my height. Completely unprepared, I dropped the rifle in shock. This was it; I was defenceless and vulnerable. Whatever new beast or animal this was would now kill me and eat me. I raised my fists between me and the nearest bush, then realised I could see a pair of eyes nestled within the leaves. And then I noticed a nose. And a couple of ears. And hair.

“Stop!” commanded the bush. “Lie down on the floor now!” The branch sticking out towards me was in fact a gun barrel. Bewildered and confused, I complied.

I gratefully accepted the clean white mug, the smell of the coffee within almost making me faint in pleasure. The army private placed the other mug on the table in front of the Sergeant, saluted, and left through the tent’s canvas flap. The Sergeant took a sip and smiled at me.

“I believe our lads gave you quite a scare,” he said, his moustache dripping unashamedly with coffee. “Please understand that we don’t see strangers much. How you’ve managed to survive out there for so long….” He stood and paced in front of a map littered with photos and pins. “It’s a miracle, really.”

I nodded and savoured the taste of the coffee. I remember thinking that I would give anything to taste coffee again, and I couldn’t help thinking whether such casual promises were the cause of such things as being rescued by the British Army who had been camped out on the other side of the forest for the last few weeks. I tried to speak, but my vocal chords had seized up from not talking for so long. They would return after time, the army medic had said. I recognised one of the photos and pointed at it. “The metal man!” I said hoarsely.

You’ve seen it, huh?” asked the Sergeant. “It’s amazing really. An asteroid ploughs into the earth and suddenly this giant turns up.” He studied the picture carefully. “I wonder what it wants?”

“It has been stalking me. It destroyed my last home. I took its finger off with a claymore. Maybe it wants revenge.” I said.

The Sergeant looked at me incredulously. “We’ve hit it with everything we’ve got without effect, and you’re telling me you took its finger off with a mine?” I nodded. The Sergeant studied me for a moment, and then nodded to himself. “OK then, Mr…?”

Whether it was the trauma of the last few weeks or the amount of time gone without speaking to another human, I simply couldn’t remember my own name. I desperately thought of something, anything, just so the Sergeant wouldn’t think of me as a broken man. “Plymouth,” I whispered eventually. “Mr Plymouth.”

“Mr Plymouth, eh?” The Sergeant tapped something into his laptop and closed the lid. “What a co-incidence. That was our original destination until this morning.”

Plymouth. It surely couldn’t be co-incidence that I had somehow stumbled into a British army detachment going to the place my father had told me to go. My grip on reality was being pushed to the limit and I closed my eyes to stop the world spinning. “So you’re not going to Plymouth anymore?”

“No. We picked up a weak message from GCHQ ordering all remaining units to regroup at Cardiff and await further orders.” He finished stuffing a khaki duffel and shouldered it. “You’re more than welcome to accompany us. We have enough rat-packs to feed an extra mouth, and we sure could do with another soldier.” He gestured to my battered rifle on his desk. “Looks like you’re seen some action. Mr Plymouth, are you OK?”

I unclenched my eyes and nodded. A private came into the room and saluted. Their talk faded off into background chatter as I gazed out through the opening in the tent to the distant forest outside. In this hostile world, being in the company of soldiers seemed like a significant improvement to my survival rate, but it wasn’t a guarantee of my safety, not in this new world. Should I accept their offer of passage to Cardiff, or should I strike out on my own and proceed to Plymouth? Maybe I could follow them but at a distance; if they ran into trouble, I’d melt away and escape. If I ran into trouble, I’d catch up with the army and let them deal with it. However, it was risky, unnecessary, and dangerous. It was also a bit unfair of me too.

The private left the tent. “Yes,” I croaked to the Sergeant, “I’ll come with you to Cardiff.” My promise to my father would have to remain unfulfilled.

Sat on a crate in the bright sunlight, I watched the squaddies decamp with an informal steadiness; we were on our way to a small airfield to the south. It was hoped that there may be operational aircraft still there – I very much doubted it, as did some of the soldiers - but the complex would offer some good cover to setup camp regardless. I counted nine soldiers in the unit, ten with me included. I opened up the ration pack on my lap and tried to stop myself from wolfing down the chocolate bar within. I barely refrained from choking. The Sergeant had allowed me to have my rifle back, together with some magazines for it. Strangely, this made me realise how fucked we were - the army would be willing to allow a citizen to have his weapon back without question. This wasn’t war - a fight over deeply-hidden political reasons against an enemy faction or idea. This was survival. Protocol and laws were suspended until further notice. It made me worry whether the army were going to abide by their principles for the foreseeable future. I would have to be cautious.

In front of me, the soldiers all froze, then scurried for cover in the forest around them. I grabbed my rifle and ran into the nearest bush, convinced that something was going to hit me in the back. I crashed into the bush and rolled onto my front, scanning the area for danger. Nothing appeared. I lay as still as possible and wondered whether the army had simply ran away, leaving me for dead. Maybe this was an elaborate plan to get rid of the stranger. Yeah, right. Trust me to start developing abandonment issues. There was a slight rustle next to me, and then a face appeared.

“Not pissing yourself, are you?” said the squaddie with a wink. “Follow me, stay low, move slow, and don’t make a sound.”

“What’s happening?”

“The giant’s been spotted. We need to get the fuck out of here.”

Each man, myself included, bore the weight of a huge backpack stuffed with a portion of the camp. Trying to move through the thorny knotty undergrowth was painful and draining, the corners of the pack catching on the bush as I struggled through. It was hard to force my way forwards, let-alone remain quiet about it, yet it was the only way to travel. Vehicles were no good in this terrain, especially if we were trying to remain inconspicuous.

According to the scouts, the giant was about five hundred yards to our left, sitting on a hill and simply staring out over the land. The plan was to sneak past it through the undergrowth, skirt the edge of the forest for a mile or so, and then follow a maze of country roads to the aerodrome, safely out of the reach of the giant and a step further onto Cardiff. Five days, the Sergeant had told me. Then we’d be on a ship sailing to somewhere that was a damn sight better than this destroyed land.

I kept pace with the camouflaged man in front of me, a little assured that there was someone following me and so I was sandwiched between professional soldiers. They were trained for this type of work, tactics honed and re-honed through centuries of war and advancements in technology. This kind of thing was just Business As Usual, wasn’t it? I couldn’t help but notice that the pack I was carrying had a lot of useful kit in it, including an old battered set of night vision goggles, a solar charger considerably bigger than my own, and a complete tent with a tiny-but-functional canteen. If things did go pear-shaped and I got separated from the army (though choice or disaster, that option was still in my mind), I would be fairly self-sufficient.

I felt the ground heave and the guy in front of me made a fist in the air. We stopped and crouched low, the backpacks creating the illusion of a line of tortoises nestling in the bushes. The pounding grew stronger and I realised that the giant was coming; had it spotted us? The soldiers remained stationary despite the approaching threat, so I forced myself to do the same. A shadow passed over us and I heard wood splintering to our right as the giant stomped by, thankfully oblivious to our location. As soon as the footsteps had faded away, we resumed our journey, albeit not restrained by our need to remain quiet, and so we hacked our way through the tangled land.

In only a few minutes, I saw trees in front of us; we had reached the edge of the forest at last. The soldier in front of me suddenly disappeared over the lip of a small ledge, swearing as he landed on the floor a little way below. Some of the soldiers jeered him as he struggled to his feet, but it seemed only pride had been hurt. I clambered down carefully, mindful that the heavy pack would probably snap my ankles if I were to jump down. We were in a round recessed clearing surrounded by bushes, and overcast with the branches of trees. With a growing knot of anxiety, I realised the floor was a carpet of dried bloody bones covered in a white residue that clung to our boots and clothes. This was a pit of death. The soldiers had come to the same conclusion as I and had formed a perimeter, scanning the edges of the clearing with their assault rifles. On the other side of the pit, I heard the Sergeant bark out something about “mad creatures”. I took the safety off my rifle and scanned the area too, What did “mad creatures” mean? There was silence in the forest – no bird song, no wind in the trees. It was almost if nature were afraid of whatever was coming. That was a bad sign for us.

Suddenly, I head a sound I’d heard once before; an alien chittering. I remembered the maintenance shed and the strange caustic cobwebs surrounding the area when I’d heard the noise before. I backed away from the edge of the clearing to join the perimeter being held by the squaddies. There was nothing left to do but wait for our foe to reveal itself. I wasn’t disappointed.

Slowly, and incredibly, I saw a huge hairy leg curl around a tree, followed by a couple more. The hairy heaving body of an enormous spider followed the legs, its black eyes shining at us. More appeared around the clearing, waving their legs and chittering as they surrounded us; we were trapped. The noise became a chorus, a war song from these horrific black-and-brown beasts. There was nothing else to wait for, these beasts were not going to negotiate peace or try trading with us. They were hunters, we were prey. We needed to defend ourselves.

As one, the soldiers fired on the spiders, so I drew a bead on the nearest spider and also let loose a volley. A green-black ichor spurted forth and the spider fell to the ground in a mess of goo and thrashing legs. I swept my gun around and fired at another spider that had made it to the pit floor. It too died. Before I could find another target, the battle was over and all the spiders had been killed. Slowly, the soldiers stood down. There was joking and laughing, some squaddies examining their enemy, some kicking the dead beasts, some stroking the smashed bodies experimentally. One guy cut out a beady eye and put it in his bag as a souvenir of the battle. Someone suggested cooking one to see what they taste like. My stomach tightened at the idea. Something that looked so horrific must be evil. Eventually, the Sergeant called everyone to him and we started to arrange our ascent out of the pit. Secretly, I was so glad to be with these guys. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if I had stumbled across the pack of spiders on my own – and considering the proximity to my previous abode, it was very probable I would have either wandered into their territory or they would have discovered me eventually. I felt grateful, and lucky.

I waited in line to get boosted up out of the pit, kicking at the bones around my feet restlessly. I felt a little shaky, probably the adrenalin from the battle catching up with me. Suddenly, I felt a strong jolt through me; the trees above parted and the giant’s metal face thrust downwards. He’d crept up on us! The soldiers spread out and started firing at the giant, the majority still in the pit. I leapt to one side and tried jumping up at the edge of the pit but the backpack was too heavy. I pressed myself against the muddy wall and watched a metal fist slam down onto one of the soldiers. The sound was sickening, a wet crack as blood and bone was flattened into the ground. The soldiers continued firing up at the giant, but they were too exposed and outgunned. Again and again the metal fist came down on each of the squaddies, blood and organs splashing out from underneath the knuckles until only the Sergeant was left. The metal block hovered over him as he fired his small pistol upwards. The gun ran dry, and he stared at me with a strange confused expression before the fist fell on top of him too. I pressed myself harder into the wall as the giant red-eyed face glared directly at me. There was absolutely no way I could escape this. Death was certain. I would be squashed like the others.

The giant watched me for a good few minutes, doing nothing. It simply stared at me in the silence of the forest. “Well?” I croaked. I’d been running from death for so long now, every day was a struggle to escape death or at least prevent injury to my frail body. Straight after the apocalypse, I would have done anything to ensure I survived for another day. After all, life was the only thing I had left, and yet after so long trying to preserve it, I was tired. What was I preserving my life for? The world was fucked, everyone was dead, and my future was going to be one continuous struggle to starve for yet another day. That wasn’t a human existence, it was an animal one. I didn’t want to be an animal any longer. It was too hard living like this. “What are you waiting for?” I yelled. “Come on and kill me already!”

The fist hovered just above me. I winced; would this hurt before I died? I hoped not. I waited until anxiety forced me to look up. The giant had extended his damaged finger and was pointing behind me. What was he pointing at? A mad idea suddenly entered my head. The sun was starting to set to my left, which meant that the giant was pointing south.

Pointing the way to Plymouth.

I stared at the giant’s huge face and, in a state of confusion and reality rejection, turned and tried to lift myself up out of the pit. As I expected, a metal finger soon appeared under my feet and boosted me out of the bloody warzone and into the forest proper. I trudged forward numbly, knowing that the giant would wander off now, knowing that I would see it on top of the nearest hill watching out for me, knowing that it would motivate me to keep on going, to never rest for more than what was necessary, and to never stay put until I reached my journey’s end. It would smash up all the houses on my route to prevent me making a new home, it would lay traps to capture other people that could prevent me from making the trip to Plymouth. I watched the giant stomp off and wondered what would happen to it once I reached Plymouth. I’d have to find out.

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