Honeybee

Chapter 44

They reached Birmingham city centre without any problems at all, and without seeing a single soul, no human activity and no activity from the Screamers. The trip had been easy and uneventful. Now that they were in the city, things were different. There was still no activity but the city was a mess. Blankets of vine covered the majority of the buildings, slowly eating into the cement and concrete and eventually pulling them to the ground. In time, there would be no buildings left, the cities would no longer exist, and civilisation would be gone.

Jason struggled to keep the van driving in a straight line as his eyes wandered from one building to the next and he imagined what they had once been.

‘There’s nothing left here.’ He said. ‘It’s like it was in Bristol, only here its worse.’

‘There must be other survivors somewhere?’ The Doc said.

Jason looked around, ‘Not in the cities there isn’t. And finding them in the countryside would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.’

The Doc nodded in agreement.

‘We could leave a message. A sign or something.’ Amanda said.

‘We could, but where would we tell them to go?’ Jason said. ‘We don’t really know where we’re going yet.’

‘Ok,’ Amanda said, ‘so we set up a base first and then come back to the towns and cities and leave some sort of sign.’

‘Now, that’s a plan.’ Jason said, smiling.

Leaving the city behind, they joined the M42 motorway, and continued north. Jason had driven this stretch of road many times. It was one of the main routes from north Leicestershire to Birmingham, the other route was to use the M1 and then the M69 but he had never been keen on using that route, somehow, it always seemed longer. They left Warwickshire and entered into Staffordshire, and in about twenty miles they would be entering Leicestershire.

It was getting late in the afternoon and in a few more hours it would be getting dark. They would have to find somewhere safe to stop for the night and only one place kept popping into Jason’s mind, his wrecked house. It was only another thirty minutes away and he often wondered what happened to the place after he had to leave in a hurry. The motorway exit for his hometown was approaching and he was still toying with the idea, fighting in his own mind, trying to make a decision. He swung the van left at the last second and took the slip road off the motorway. At the end of the slip road he turned right and followed a country road for about ten miles until they reached the outskirts of town and then he pulled onto a small lane and then onto his drive, the gates were still wide open, the way he’d left them. At the end of the drive sat the house. From the front it looked fine, it had vines growing over it and the windows were shattered, but it was still standing. Jason climbed out of the van and inspected the grounds. The front was the same, only now it was overgrown with weeds, tall grass and vines. When he got to the rear, the garden was a mass of vegetation, impossible to enter, not even worth trying unless he wanted to get tangled in vines and lost forever. He turned around and viewed the rear of the house, or what was left of it. The whole corner where the kitchen once stood had been blown to pieces. The upstairs was still there, but a chunk of the ground floor was missing, like a giant knife had sliced out a wedge. The vines had quickly found their way in and were probably the only thing holding up that section of the house. Bricks were scattered through the foliage but other than that the kitchen was a charred, empty mess. Walking back around to the front he was met by Amanda and the Doc.

‘So this is Jason Lambert’s house.’ Amanda said, smiling.

‘Yep.’ He said. ‘Or what’s left of it.’

‘It’s nice.’ She said. ‘Peaceful. I thought you said you blew it to pieces?’

‘I did. You’ve not seen the back of it yet.’ He said.

They walked around to the back of the house.

‘Wow.’ Amanda said as she stared in amazement. ‘You weren’t joking.’

‘Come on. Let’s get inside and secure before it gets dark.’ Jason said.

They moved a few supplies from the van that they would need for the night into the house and then set up a temporary base in an upstairs bedroom. By the time Jason had finished securing the door, it was getting dark, so they all decided to have an early night and make some sort of plan about where they were going to go in the morning.