In the Darkness

"Damn!" she cursed under her breath as once again the lights flickered then went out as, once again, the generator ground to a halt. It left a pressing silence as well as the gloom.

"This could get really tedious", she thought, not bothering to move immediately, her senses adjusting to the change. Thankfully it wasn't quite night fall and the windup powered torch was in its usual place. She cast a quick sideways glance away from the door to check the large yellow light, next to her rifle, then back again. There were no sounds other than the wind which had reduced to a gentle moan and occasional whistle around the corner of this old house.

With a sigh, she got to her feet. The genny had to be checked and hopefully restarted, the novelty of hot water not having worn off. In the few years since the event, surviving had meant her weather sense had sharpened. There had been a big storm on the horizon earlier, the sky heavy with snow and where she was, on the high ground, well... she knew she wouldn't get off lightly. But up here was safe.

"Safer anyway", she said aloud as she put on the deeply padded coat she had scavenged. The storm might not be here yet but the temperature outside was already showing an unpleasant minus figure. Shouldering the rifle ( there was no point in being careless even if it wasn't full dark) and grabbing the torch, she cautiously unbolted the door.

The wind felt like a smack around the face as a gust caught her as she stepped out. There was already a dusting of crisp snow cover and sparkling ice patterns everywhere, a prelude to the dumping she expected. The sparse trees were bending gracefully at present. She hoped they would withstand the coming onslaught. They made the house look less obvious in the landscape. No sound from the birds.

"They have more sense than me, they are already hunkered down", she thought as she crunched over the stone gravel to the battered lean to that housed the genny. The door to what passed as the outbuilding, was just about holding it together. Much of the bottom was broken away and bore signs of having been repeatedly kicked, gnawed and beaten by the weather. A few flakes of green paint still stubbornly clung to the planks and a rusted metal latch. The walls though were solid, built of the same stone as her refuge. She had seen similar buildings nearby, some ruins, some starting to loose their roofs. Those houses erected in times closer to the event, had seemingly been made of less resilient materials and had virtually been reclaimed by nature.

She never usually stayed long in one place, no more than a few days. Enough time to rest, recover and replenish her gear if needed but always moving northward. Where this need had come from, she was unaware but she had learnt to trust her instincts. She wasn't sure if she had reached goal yet, there was no neon sign flashing 'You are here!" No flashing lights anywhere since the power went down. Here was as good a place as any to ride out the winter. The fact that the former occupant had lived off grid was like hitting the jackpot.

She had often wondered since arriving here, what had happened to them. There had been no sign of a recently dug grave or signs of violence within the cottage. Maybe they were like her, always moving on or perhaps one of the thousands who went into the hospitals before they were overflowing and just never come home. It had been a bonus to find no putrefied corpse in the house though. She had seen more than her fair share of them. When the thousands became millions.

"Lets not think about than now, lets get this power back on", she thought, gritting her teeth at the biting wind. The shabby door gave the obligatory squeak as she lifted the latch and pulled it open, wrestling against the gusts. It blew shut behind her instantly and continued to rattle. The gloomy storeroom ran the depth of the house from front to back but was only three feet wide. She swung the beam of light around. Nobody hiding. A few rodents scattered away from the intruding torch into small spaces in the moss covered stones. A freestanding shelf unit held a few empty paint cans and the fuel for the generator.

Checking it, she topped up the fuel though it wasn't at a level to be responsible for the failure. She would have preferred a nice obvious solution but the luck wasn't in this time. Just in case, she turned the fuel valve off then on again and the same with the choke rod. Grasping the recoil cord, she flipped the engine switch and pulled. Nothing.

Six attempts later the cord snapped, her momentum throwing her backwards against the wall, her head striking the stone. Pain reverberated down her neck. She sat, slightly stunned with the useless cord still clutched in her hand. Examining the end of it, it showed definite signs of being chewed. She glared down the end of the building where she had seen the mice, turning her head a bit too quickly.

"Owww!" She tenderly felt her scalp and neck, closing her eyes and biting her bottom lip in pain. Bringing her hand back in front, she gingerly opened one eye and saw blood on her glove.

"Fantastic", she thought, "No power and wounded". Not the end to the day she had planned. She carefully turned onto her knees and put one hand on to the rough stone wall for support. As she raised herself from the floor, the protruding stone she was using to lever herself up suddenly came away from the wall causing her to collapse to the ground again.

"Ok this isn't funny anymore".

She sat back on her behind and stared accusingly at the offending stone then up to the dark void left by its exit. All the other stones making up the house side of the lean to were fixed with mortar. This one seemed to have been loosened deliberately. She didn't like things out of the ordinary, well her ordinary anyway. Had there been an unwelcome visitor or had it been the previous occupant. Grabbing the torch again, she swung it round, illuminating every nook and cranny then swung it back to the hole.

"Now don't go imagining all kinds of stuff, you know that does you no good," she remonstrated. Calm and practical had kept her safe so far but she felt for her rifle anyway just for comfort. She peered into the hole with the torch. There seemed to something stuffed far back into it. The gap was too small for the torch and her hand at the same time so she had to reach in blind. Her fingers touched something smooth and for a moment it startled her into pulling her hand back sharply, shining the torch back in there.

There was no movement, no retreating from the light. The object appeared to be grey with dust, small and fat. Putting her hand in again, she got her fingers around the end and extricated it gently from its hiding place. Brushing and blowing the crumbled mortar from its surface, she could see it was a black leather notebook, bound with what looked like a bootlace in addition to the usual fastening. This was in order to keep it closed as it appeared to be wanting to burst open, the original creamy leaves of the book having been greatly added to over its life. The edges of the pages were wrinkled with damp and spotted with dark mould. She turned it over in her hands, there was nothing on the outside indicating its purpose or its owner. There was something almost comforting to the touch. It brought her a bit closer to another person even though they were likely long gone.

Her head snapped up, sending another shooting pain up her neck. She remained motionless, listening and waiting for whatever had disturbed her to repeat itself.

Howling. Distant, but howling none the less. She became aware that darkness had well and truly fallen and the door of the lean to was not sufficient discouragement for hungry wolves. The wind had also quickened but between the gusts, she could here the howling call was being answered.

Tucking the notebook inside her coat, she scrambled to her feet, ignoring the sweeping dizziness from the blow to her head. The snow was falling heavily, already obscuring her earlier footprints. Head down against the blizzard, she followed the front wall of the cottage, keeping the torch off to avoid being spotted from a far.

Closing the heavy wooden door, the sound of the storm and the wolves diminished. She leant against it, getting her breath and heaving a sigh of relief in the darkness. Without waiting for her eyes to adjust, she turned and shot home the bolts. Clearly who ever lived here before was not keen on visitors either. In a storm like this, she could really appreciate the thick stone walls. No creaking. There were shutters on the inside of the windows and thick curtains reaching the floor, both permanently shut to the outside.

Tonight she would be laying the fire by candlelight,

"Very romantic", smiling to herself ruefully as she heated an open can of beans in the burning logs. Whilst her meagre supper was warming, she slipped off the coat, the fat notebook falling to the floor with it.

After finding a couple of antiseptic wipes in the ever present first aid kit, she sat near the fire, picked up notebook in one hand and cleaned the cut to her head with the other. Pulling the damp shoe lace and the overstretched elastic, the pages tried to fan open. Many were stuck together in clumps. She could see black writing in a loose slanting style, old fashioned ink pen, faded in places. This wasn't what held her attention though. She could see now why the notebook had to be tied together. Between the pages, there were notes. Pink ones. Many, many fifty pound notes. She had seen a few when she had worked in her local supermarket, before the sickness, but never had one in her purse.

The beans forgotten, carefully, she began to pull them out, separating the wrinkly pages delicately, piling the notes up with slightly trembling hands. There was that feeling of excitement in the pit of her stomach as she counted.

Twenty thousand pounds. She stared at the pink paper in shock.

"Twenty thousand pounds!" she squealed, "oh what I could have done with this!" For her, it would have been game changing money, a get out of jail free card, presents for her niece and nephew, a dream holiday for her mum!

She laughed ironically to herself as she watched the paper curl at the edges, blue and green flames from the inks. One by one, she placed them in the fire as she thought of the twenty thousand things she couldn't have anymore. Twenty thousand pounds wouldn't keep the wolves from the door anymore.