Chapter 7

The remainder of the trip was largely uneventful. We found building supplies and filled the trailer with as much as we could. We also found some of the other things we needed, notably the seeds and plants from a garden centre. We also ransacked a library.

Well, perhaps ransacked is putting it a bit too harshly since we didn't leave the place in a mess or destroy anything, but there were few useful books, if any, left in the library by the time we had finished with it. We found a second 18 wheeler to use just for the books. We didn't worry about books on tax law or politics or stuff like that, but anything else was fair game. History, English, science, geography, language and even fiction. We took all the children's books, audio tapes and DVDs. We also took 20 computers from a computer shop in the town and all the spares from their workshops, hard drives, network cards and the like.

The girls also raided the nearby BlockBuster and stripped it of every DVD and computer game they had there.

This sort of stuff wasn't going to last long if we didn't get it first. Things don't last if they are not looked after and I don't doubt that certain disruptive elements would happily set fire to, or vandalise any building they fancied.

Needless to say, we had too much to put on Spirit. In the end we stowed as many of the books and DVD's as we could. The computer, monitors and spares were not too much problem nor were the seeds, but we could only manage a fraction of the building supplies and what we could take had to be lashed on deck, not really an ideal solution.

We left all the vehicles in the quarry parked neatly as far out of sight as possible and hoped that no-one would find them before we were able to return.

The three girls, George, Ames and their families decided to join us but only after they had seen the rest of the crew. I think the children running around naked on deck having so much fun and how we adults obviously loved each other in our families and the kids was the thing that persuaded them.

All in all, it took three trips to get the supplies back to the island. The longest time was taken unloading at the island since we didn't have a loading dock big enough to get Spirit alongside and I wasn't going to try taking her into the cavern. Not yet. Instead we utilised every small boat we had. Even so, it was hard work.

Over the next year we made many trips back to the mainland and retrieved all the things that were on the lists of things to get as well as many more. We loaded up on books, computers and computer accessories and spares whenever we could find them. Our library grew to ten times its former size and we set up a computer network in the main buildings. The building supplies continued to be our biggest headache, not because we couldn't find any more, but because of the problem of transporting them on Spirit. She just wasn't set up to be a cargo vessel.

Our community grew over this time until we had nearly 800 people, around 600 of which were adults, the rest being children.

We found ham radios and some of our people knew how to use them. Amanda and Priscilla knew how to use them, not surprisingly, and some of the equipment in the hidden radio room could be used to transmit on ham bands, so we were able to keep in contact with Bart and his group. In fact, we took anyone that didn't want to join our community down to see the group at Heston Manor, as they called their community, and let them join there if they wanted to and if the Hestons allowed. Like us, the Hestons had their own rules and while there were common areas, they were not comfortable with our nudity rules and I have to say that one or two of their rules made me uncomfortable. But that didn't stop them from being fine people.

We even had people from their community join us, not many from within the Hestons themselves, but when new people arrived at Heston Manor, they were told about our community as well as the Heston's. We were able to do the same thing and it was nice to be able to give people the choice.

The Hestons grew to about the same size, slightly more I think, before both communities stopped growing. I suppose that after nearly two years anyone that hadn't found or formed a community was probably dead. Anyway, the number of people we found or who found us steadily grew less and less.

There were many that we both turned away, mainly those with bigoted or racist outlooks, but some people, mostly men I'm ashamed to say, were wife-beaters, their women were cowed and beaten. We gave people the choice to join us on an individual basis not as a family group and this caused more than one fight. The sergeants had to shoot a number of people that we refused entry to while offering their wives the chance to join us and the sergeants don't shoot to disable, only to kill. Not that it is our policy to do this, but when the men in question either pull guns or try to make the women go with them, well, we react, fatally for them.

We did meet our share of crazies but none were as crazy as the religious nuts. Believe me they were in a league of their own. Our worst encounter was one time when we had ventured quite a long way inland.

We'd taken to leaving messages wherever we went. We printed out a brief message about our goals and suggested that anyone interested should meet up with us. As a meeting area we gave the name of a large car park by a fairly well known theme park. It was not somewhere that we were in the habit of going except to see if people were there, so we didn't worry about un-wanted folks following us. The messages were laminated in clear plastic and then fixed to wooden broom handles that we'd found for the purpose. We sharpened one end and then hammered the handle into the ground in an obvious place. We hadn't met anyone at the meeting area for the last two months, but we always stopped there on the days that we said we would in the messages.

Normally our forays by this point lasted about a week. On this occasion we were had decided to turn around and head back to our quarry via the meeting area. As a group we numbered just over twenty so we had a number of motor homes so that we were comfortable and we had three 18 wheelers to carry whatever we found.

We'd just finished our breakfast and were packing up ready to leave when our lookouts spotted a convoy of vehicles moving towards us. Amanda, as usual, was by my side and in contact with the lookouts.

"Ruth says it looks like a bunch of religious people and we might want to be very careful with this lot."

"How does she know that they're religious at this distance?"

"Because they have a huge crucifix standing in the back of the lead vehicle." Came the answer.

"I guess that is a fairly obvious sign. How many?"

"Seven small trucks, including the one with the crucifix and two motor homes, one of which is big. She estimates 20 people in the trucks but can't tell about how many are in the RVs."

I turned around and gave a loud whistle. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me and watched as I raised my arms and began to sign.

I have to digress a little at this point. Some months before this we had four unusual people join us, three women and one man. The man was mute and the women were deaf mutes. They had, between them, 5 children all under ten years of age. These children could hear and speak but could also sign. The ladies currently worked in the creche with the children and the man in the gardens with Pete and Moe. He was a landscape gardener as they were. Anyway, I noticed several days after they had joined us that Eve and Adam had started to sign to the women and shortly after that, even the shyest of the children was picking up sign language.

Somewhat chastened by this I called a community meeting and suggested that we were being very discriminating by not learning to sign. It didn't take much discussion for the consensus to agree with me. I then dropped another bombshell and suggested that by only speaking English we were, in fact, also discriminating against non-native English speakers. We had, I pointed out, nearly a dozen Spanish speakers, 4 Germans, 3 Italians and 3 Koreans and should we not be learning their languages as well?

We argued around that one for some time before agreeing that although we should really be learning these languages as well it just wasn't practical, especially if more non-English speakers joined us. We could end up speaking too many languages, or trying to. That brought me to my final point, which caused a long discussion, nearly three weeks of discussions, in fact. I suggested that, in fairness to everyone, perhaps our community language should not be one that any of us already spoke as our native language.

In the end we all agreed, after some spirited discussions, that this was completely within the principles of our community, but which language? Alison came up with the best suggestion, Esperanto, a synthetic language spoken by no nation. Good old Dr Zamenhof! I suppose that this discussion took us about a month, all in all. and at the end we decided that Esperanto was going to be our official language and that we would also use English and Sign. We did discuss Swahili but it was too complicated for us. The other languages would be taught by those that spoke them for those that wanted to learn to speak them, but for Esperanto, we would just have to learn from our books.

I have to say that I pushed quite hard to have us all learn another language. I'd been brought up in England where foreign languages were not taught at school because "everyone speaks English, so what's the point", an arrogant attitude that really grated on my nerves. Hence I was very keen not only that we should speak another language, but that at least the children should learn to speak more than one and what better way to do that than for the adults to lead by example? Personally I also learnt Spanish and Korean. After all, I had two Korean speaking wives, and I try not to be hypocritical. As for Spanish, well I just like it. Korean is quite a difficult language to get your head around but with two loving tutors I made significant progress there as well.

Learning these extra languages was hilarious. Once we got going we decided to speak English on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, sign on Friday and speak Esperanto at the weekend. It was the simplest way of remembering which language you were learning that day. Once we were better at Esperanto we'd switch more of the English days to speaking Esperanto instead of English. The kids and grand parents, as we called the senior citizens, loved it. The rest of us had to work really hard to make it work, but work it did. Have you ever tried to hold a square or line dance using a language that you don't know very well? We had so much fun. We had dances and barbecues every week, even providing our own music since we had brought musical instruments over from the mainland. We were never short of musicians and we were fast becoming a very socially oriented community.

Anyway, by the time that we met the religious people I'm talking about we were all fairly fluent in our languages, including Sign, which is what I used now, since most people were out of speaking range.

I quickly brought everyone up to date and then asked the sergeants what they advised. They Signed that they would keep out of sight and scout the area for possible trouble while the rest of us carried on packing up and getting ready to leave.

Ruth was correct, no sooner had the trucks drawn up in a rough semi-circle in front of us when a tall, gaunt man got out of the larger RV and strode towards us, his white gown swirling around him. I would have given him ten out of ten for effect. Until he opened his mouth, that is, and that was much too soon.

"I have come to you my children", he declaimed spreading his arms wide, "that you might know the one true God. It is He Himself that has spoken to me and given to me this Holy Task. Listen to the words of the one true God revealed to me after He struck down the evils of the past civilisation, smiting the evildoers."

Now, I don't know about you but there is nothing guaranteed to get right up my nose than for some ignorant prick to call me "his child" when he is obviously at least half my age.

As he ranted on I watched the men in the trucks get out and arm themselves, finally standing in a semi-circle behind the preacher, or whatever he fancied himself as.

"God has shown me the way that we must go. Follow me and I will lead you to his glory..."

He went on in this fashion for a good five minutes before pausing his sermon. Behind him and his cohorts, standing behind the vehicles, Sid caught my eye and Signed that they had intercepted and caught 6 men armed with sniper rifles that had been trying to creep into position where they could get a clear line of fire. I surreptitiously gave him the okay sign and he disappeared again.

Meanwhile, our preacher man had continued on with his words beaming all the while as he "spread the word of the one true God" to us.

"These my followers", he swept his arm to encompass the men standing behind him, "have traveled the land with me seeking high and low as God directs us to seek out those who are lost and to offer them salvation. Come to me, my children, and I will take the cares of this world from you. Join with me and I will show you wonders beyond your imagining. Accept the word of the one true God and know peace and joy in this world of sin and shame."

I Signed to two of the women and asked them to get the children out of sight. Then I looked over towards Tanya, a magnificent coloured woman married to Tricky Dicky and nodded to her.

She smiled and stepped forward to stand in front of the still preaching demagogue. She stood there staring at him until he drew breath.

"And what makes you think that we are, in the slightest bit, interested in you and your words?" Her voice was mocking and I could see a flush of anger in his face.

"Here, my children," he called out to the rest of us, "here is an example of the evil we must beware of. I tell you in truth that our task is to subjugate and, if necessary, eradicate such. Here before me stands, not a woman, not a human, but an evil animal trying to deceive you."

"Are you calling my wife evil and an animal?"

The man started as Tricky's voice rang out and his sermon stuttered as his thought processes were side tracked from his main train of thought. Tricky walked up and stood beside his wife.

"My son...", the preacher began.

"You are not my father. I am not your son." stated Tricky in a firm and slightly menacing voice.

"In the eyes of the one true God..."

Tricky chose this moment to show just how fast he could draw his hand gun and nearly before he could blink the preacher was looking into the business end of the gun.

"Shut up, idiot."

The man spluttered for a moment then recovered some of his poise.

"God will protect me from harm." He flung his arms heavenward and called out "Show this unbeliever, oh God! Strike him down that the others may see the fruits of evil."

Nothing happened. He called out in a louder voice.

"Smite this man, oh God! Demonstrate your power that none might doubt that your loving grace surrounds us."

Still nothing happened and the preacher and his men started to look around them nervously. The preacher drew in a breath to try again but this time I cut him off.

"If you're waiting for one of your snipers to take a pot shot you're going to be in for a long wait."

He turned his head to look at me.

"My son..."

"Shut the fuck up, dick head!" I deliberately used the coarse words, not my normal manner of speaking.

"As you've been told, we are not your children. Hell, I'm way older than you are so keep your mouth shut and listen. The men you sent out to surround us have been captured and relieved of their weapons, so your promised retribution from God just isn't going to happen." I smiled at him insincerely. "Isn't that a shame?

"You and your men are surrounded and covered by a number of weapons so you will command your cohorts to carefully lay down their arms and step away from them. Then you and they will get back into your vehicles and drive away. If we see you again we won't stop to talk before shooting you."

I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. "Is that clear?"

His face turned ugly as he snarled "You're bluffing. You and your pitiful people are no match for real men. Let me tell you what is really going to happen. We're going to kill you and the rest of the men slowly, but not before we've taken your women and played with them in front of you, where you can see but do nothing about it."

I looked around and Signed "Any doubts?" There were none.

"Tricky." was all that I needed to say and almost before the words were out of my mouth Tricky put a single bullet between the eyes of the preacher. At the same time we all drew our weapons from where we kept them, all easily accessible as the sergeants had taught us over the months. As a result, the men standing behind the still twitching body of the preacher were suddenly faced with an armed and ready people rather than the cowed people they had expected. For the moment it was a stand off.

"Put down your weapons, all of your weapons, and step back towards your trucks." Tricky spoke slowly and clearly. For a moment nothing happened. Then one young hot head raised his rifle and started to point it at Tricky. A shot sounded from somewhere before he even had the chance to do much else and a hole appeared between his eyes, brains and gore spreading out behind him as the back of his head was blown away. One of the sergeants, I surmised. That was not a hand gun.

Frantically, the rest of the men tried to bring their guns into play. All of them failed to do more than raise them half-way. We all shot at them, myself included and it was not more than fifteen seconds before they all lay on the ground dead or dying.

Tricky didn't waste any time but started running towards the RVs the preacher had arrived with. I saw a number of the sergeants doing the same thing. They quickly found that the larger RV was unoccupied and they turned their attention to the smaller RV. We watched as they surrounded it and then opened all the doors simultaneously and went inside. There was silence. Sid put his head out the door.

"Sharon. Medical bag." Then he looked over to me.

"Search the bodies for keys. Failing that we need bolt-cutters."

"George!" I called, "Get the bolt cutters to Tricky, now, the rest of you start searching for keys." Obeying my own instructions I started searching the preacher's body. Nothing. I went to the next body and searched that.

"Here, I've found them." Called one of the searchers. He went to the RV carrying the keys and went inside. Seconds later he was out the door on his knees throwing up everything he had eaten in the last 24 hours. The sound of his retching was loud in the still air.

I walked over and took the keys carefully from his shaking hand, then slowly moved to the RV. Sid was standing in the doorway as I approached.

"You might not want to see this." he said quietly. "It's not a pretty sight." I looked him straight in the eyes for a long moment and then moved forward again. Saying nothing further, he backed away, allowing me to enter the RV.

The sight of what was in that RV will haunt me until the day I die. I could see naked women hanging by their arms from rails set into the roof of the RV like so many sides of beef in a butcher's shop, every one of them bearing horrendous welts and bruises. That, in itself, was bad but the shocker was arms and legs and other body parts piled into a large basket like meat in a supermarket. All the parts that I could see were obviously female and all of them were fresh. The stench of blood was everywhere.

Sharon was checking the hanging women. Tricky was trying to cut the chain of the handcuffs holding the next woman up whilst simultaneously trying to stop her from falling as he cut. I moved over to him and held the body of the woman as he used the bolt cutter to free her. She sagged into my arms, a dead weight. Lifting her as carefully as I could, I carried her to the door and passed her to one of the others waiting outside.

"Sharon," I called, "go outside and treat the injured, we'll bring them out to you." She nodded and went outside. Tricky and I freed the women one by one and passed them outside. Fifteen times we repeated this until all the rest were freed. I looked at Tricky and he at me.

"Bloody Hell." He muttered. "I need a drink."

"You and me both." I agreed.

"I'm not going to be able to come back in here again." I told him. "Let's see if there's anything here before we leave."

He nodded and we searched the interior of the RV, finding nothing. Then we left. I took large gulps of the clean air outside the RV noticing Tricky beside me doing the same. He looked very green and I dare say I didn't look any better.

We looked at each other for a long moment. "No good," I said, "I'm going to blow."

Tricky said nothing but turned to the RV and together we sank to our knees vomiting the contents of our stomachs against the side of the van. I retched and retched until there was nothing left to bring up but still I retched. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to find Ames kneeling beside me, in his hand a glass of water. Gratefully I took it and rinsed my mouth out. Then I took a few tentative sips to see if it was going to stay down. I dragged the sleeve of my shirt across my eyes to dry them.

"Bad?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

"Can you get up?" He held out his arm.

Using that to brace myself I rose to my feet. "What's the tally?"

Beside me Sid spoke. "Sixteen brought out, three already dead, five not expected to live and the rest marginal."

"Where are the snipers?"

"Ruth and Penny are guarding them over there." He pointed.

Unsteadily I walked over to the six men that had been caught by our scouts. I looked at them, wondering just how it was possible for people to do such a thing. Then one of them sneered.

"Too much for you, Granddad? Can't take a little blood? You're a wimp. Real men don't have that problem."

The others chuckled. I looked at the speaker for a long moment while he continued to sneer. Then I took out my hand gun and checked that I had enough rounds in it.

"Does the gun make you feel like a man? You're too chicken to take on real men."

I said nothing. I took off the safety, the snick loud. I chambered a round and pointed the gun at the head of the man who had spoken.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing? Point that thing somewhere else."

I pulled the trigger, a head shot. Then I pointed it at the next and shot him and then the next, until they were all dead. I made the gun safe, holstered it and walked away.

"Leave the bodies there, the wildlife can have them."

Are you shocked? Don't be. None of the group were in the slightest bit concerned at my actions. You kill vermin. No muss, no fuss, just a bullet in the brain and let the dogs have the rest.

Between us, with Sharon telling us what to do, we saved ten of the ones that came out of the RV alive, three died, their wounds too severe for their battered bodies to cope with. The ones we couldn't save were put in the small RV and burnt. The large RV that the reverend had so thoughtfully provided us with we turned into a hospital. It was incredibly opulent inside, soft furnishings and satin sheets and even two heads with showers. Mainly though, it had enough room for the ten survivors to lay down and rest and, hopefully, recover.

So much for religious crazies.

All of the ten women we managed to save stayed with the Heston Manor group. They had been so badly treated that the thought of anyone going naked was abhorrent to them. They all healed physically, but mentally and emotionally? I don't know. One of the doctors at Heston Manor is a psychologist and worked with them. They seem to be productive and happy members of the community, all now married. But I wonder, sometimes, when the nightmares leave me weak and shaking. I wonder, as my wives hold me in their arms comforting me, just what those women went through before we rescued them and I am deeply thankful that I don't know.

It was one of the lowest points I'd had in my life both before and after IT happened. Fortunately, such events were rare and there were many more happy times.

Later on in the year we also solved our building supplies problem. We'd decided to venture much further to the North than we had previously and found, in our travels, a port. Two things were immediately apparent to us. There were many containers there as well as timber and other building supplies that are not usually shipped in containers and there were a number of cargo ships.

All the accessible containers had been broken into, but that left a large number stacked that had not been touched. Strangely, none of the building supplies had been touched. I suppose that the people searching here were still looking for food and not thinking any further ahead. I left George, Ames and a few of the others trying to figure out a way of getting to the untouched containers while I had a look at the cargo ships. Most were much too large but there was one that looked like it could be suitable if we could operate it. I wandered over to the vessel looking very small beside her much larger sisters, wondering what we could do with her.

As I stood there looking at her, something about her bothered me and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. Finally I looked around at the port and wondered if we should sail Spirit up here. Then I realised just what it was that had been bothering me. All the cargo ships were in poor condition. Rust everywhere with paint flaking off. All, that is, except the small cargo ship that had first caught my eye. I turned to the ever present Amanda.

"Would you ask one or two of the sergeants to join us? That cargo ship is being looked after."

She talked into her microphone and I saw Amelia and Leslie turn towards us and jog over. Once they had reached us, I walked over to the stern of the ship where the bridge and living quarters were. Cupping my hands around my mouth I called out.

"Ahoy Elsie May." Elsie May being the name that was painted on the bow of the ship. I waited a few moments before calling again. Finally, after a third call, a man appeared on one of the bridge wings.

He spat something into the water before talking.

"What is it you want?"

"Permission to come aboard."

"Why?"

"We have a problem that we are hoping you might be able to help us with."

There was silence for a moment. Then the man turned to someone else that we couldn't see. "Run out the plank, we've visitors."

Two women appeared on deck and opened a gate in the bulwarks. After a few moments, a long gang plank was lowered into position and we went aboard. I led, although I felt disapproval from all three sergeants at this.

At the top of the gang plank we were met by the man that had spoke before. He looked to be a typical, stereotyped sea dog and was, like me, armed with a hand gun holstered at his side. The two women that had lowered the gang plank stood behind him holding rifles.

"I'm Captain James of the 'Spirit of the Dolphin', a 45 metre, two masted, schooner rigged sailing vessel operating in more southerly waters."

"Captain Steven of the Elsie May." We shook hands.

"Now, what is it that I can be helping you with?"

"Well, as you have probably already noticed, we are part of a larger group, most of whom are over there trying to figure out a way of getting into the untouched containers. We have a small community some way south of here and we are looking for building supplies. We seem to have found those, but our problem is shipping. Spirit is a sailing vessel and can only take small amounts of building materials to our community. We were looking for a small cargo vessel that could do the job for us and I spotted the Elsie May. You know the rest."

One of the ladies spoke up.

"How did you know we were aboard?"

"The Elsie May had obviously been looked after. Little or no rust and no flaking paint."

"You're the first to notice."

"Well, I suspect that the many previous visitors to the port were more interested in finding food."

Captain Steven looked at me before asking. "What's in it for us?"

"Good question. Food, protection and I expect we could probably rustle up a crew for you." I paused for effect. "And, unless you're happy just to sit here tied to the quay for the rest of your lives, a sense of purpose and belonging."

I could see that this was of great interest to them. I continued "We have a community and we know of one other where like minded individuals have banded together to start afresh after IT happened. We can offer you a place in these communities if you like what we are trying to do, or you could decide to remain outside the groups but affiliated with them, trading goods back and forward to our groups and any others we find. In the meantime, we need to get building supplies to our community and we'd like for you to ship them. What you do after that can wait."