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ENGLISH VILLAGE - WEEK 19 - A GRUESOME WEEK |
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 Warning: I have started to carry
my camera at all times,
and have taken some very blunt photographs this week ... do NOT read further if you are of a nervous disposition! |
INTRODUCTION Last week was quite pleasant - the family had a picnic and things weren't too bad. However this week has been very grim - surely this isn't the way the future will be? MONDAY I woke up very early to a hammering on the door. It was a local farmer, David Frostrup, looking very upset. "Get up, come quickly ... and take this. I think there is a problem down the road." David was carrying a shotgun and pushed another one into my hands. I threw some work clothes on and ran out to his small pickup. He told me to get in and then we roared off into the countryside. The only thing he said during the drive was "I can't do this alone." A couple of minutes later we pulled up about one hundred yards from the gate of Glebe Farm. David jumped out of the car and indicated that I should follow him as he walked along the road towards the farm gate. The farm is owned by a nice hard working family called the Greshams. They have 3 children, several dogs & cats ... the perfect family. However today the situation was less than perfect - I immediately saw a bloodstained body - Mr Gresham - lying on the drive leading up to the farm. David said "Careful, it may not be safe. Whoever did this may still be around." I cocked both barrels of the shotgun and we both ran quietly up to the house. We both saw a strange car parked alongside the building, and so proceeded very carefully. As we entered the already open front door we could hear clattering sounds from the kitchen at the rear of the house. The hallway and stairs were littered with the maimed bodies of Mrs Gresham, the children and at least two of their dogs. All had been shot at close range. It looked like an abattoir ... I nearly vomited.  We crept up to the kitchen door - there were two men in grubby business suits emptying out the contents of the fridge and the food cupboards into large plastic sacks. We must have made some sort of noise because both of the men suddenly dropped the plastic sacks and pulled out large handguns. Before I could even blink David fired his shotgun at one of the men, hitting him. The other man opened fire on David who then dropped to the floor. I suddenly "woke up" and managed to fire my shotgun just as the surviving gunman turned towards me. Luckily I was quicker, and he flew backwards having been hit by the blast. I simply stood there for a minute or so, with my ears ringing from the gunshots, surrounded by dead bodies. It was clear that David was dead - the bullet damage to his head was horrific. I didn't vomit then - but when I got back home to my wife and children I started shaking and crying and was very sick. Delayed shock I assume. The Police came very quickly when I called to explain what happened - I suppose it takes a major incident to raise their interest in these dark times. The two looters David & I killed were carrying some ID. They were "Marketing Consultants" who had worked for the same well known - but now bankrupt - company in the city. The Police took a very brief statement and told me that I had been very lucky. Apparently the local cities are beginning to implode and many "townies" have starting looting & pillaging the countryside. Several remote farmhouses each day are being attacked, with the owners being killed ... or worse. The Police said that I would hear no more of the incident from them. They left me to organise the burial of the bodies and the cleaning up of the farmhouse. TUESDAY I had to call in a few of my hardier friends to help clean up the horrific scene in the Gresham's farmhouse. It took most of the day and was not a pleasant task.  Dealing with the smashed lifeless bodies of the children was especially sad and gruesome. The local Vicar has agreed to organise a burial service for David & the Gresham family. He is however refusing to have anything to do with the bodies of the looters - "the spawn of the Devil" - so we buried them without ceremony on a piece of waste land a few miles away. Once during the day we had to pull off the road as a convoy of military vehicles came past at speed - an unusual sight around here.  WEDNESDAY I wandered down to the village shop today to buy a newspaper .. but there weren't any, and no more are expected ... ever. An end of an era. We'll need to rely on electronically distributed news from now on - the Internet, radio and TV. Whilst I was at the shop, some large blue vans pulled up and several unformed men entered the shop.  At first I thought that it was some sort of "police raid" but then I realised that the men were simply buying a large number of bottles of alcohol. I then recognised the uniforms - they were prison staff from the Maximum Security Prison just outside the next village. Although the men didn't look very friendly, I still tried to strike up a conversation: "How's life at the prison during all these problems?" One of the warders tuned to me and said "What prison? It's over. We're all being sent for retraining as police officers." They then all left. A bit later on in the day I needed to drive past the prison, so I slowed down to see what was going on. The car park was empty and the main metal gates were wide open. It all looked most strange, so I diverted into the car park, expecting to be "shooed away" at any moment ... but there was no movement of any sort anywhere. I pulled up outside the open gates and got out to have a look. The whole place was quiet - not a sound. Being brave - or more likely stupid - I strolled into the main prison yard. Again, no sign of life. It took me a few minutes of exploring but I managed to find an open door leading into the main cell block. Every internal security door & grille was open ... and the tiny high security steel cells were ... empty!  As I was walking around in the gloom of the cell block I realised that I was stepping on small glass objects - small medical syringes! I carefully picked up an intact syringe - it had no markings or labels of any sort. For a moment I assumed that the prison had a worse drugs problem that I had thought .. but then I realised that the prisoners must have been sedated before they had been taken to heaven knows where. Whoever took them away must have been in a hurry because each cell still contained the prisoner's personal bits & pieces: toothbrushes, books, photos etc. Oh well, at least that mob of terrorists, serial killers & psychos are no longer in our area ... so I thought. It was only as I walked back to my car that I noticed the mechanical digger standing in the corner of the prison yard ... and the mound of freshly dug earth. I'm not going to dig to check ... but I bet that the 950 prisoners are still in the area after all. I wonder where the military convoy that we saw yesterday is "working" today? THURSDAY Having discussed the prison incident with my wife, we decided to go back and photograph everything there ... although we decided not to do any digging! At least we will have at least some evidence for any enquiry in the future. Because of the poor light in the cell block we had to use "flash" with the digital camera. The pictures showed more detail than we had seen initially: blood stains on the walls & floors, some fired brass cartridge cases, many drag marks on the floors, pools of urine & excrement.  The prisoners had not gone quietly. To be honest it's not very pleasant living near a possible "crime against humanity" site. I don't want our village to become known as another My Lai or Srebenica. FRIDAY A car towing a small trailer came through the village today. We noticed that they were hauling lots of food cans and jars. The two couples in the car were friendly as we spoke to them at our checkpoint and everything seemed fine. Suddenly all hell broke loose. David Frostrup's wife Katrin stepped forward holding a jar of honey she had taken from the stack of food in the trailer. She was shouting "Look, look, this honey comes from Willow Farm. She wouldn't sell any! How did they get it? How did they get it?" The car driver suddenly tried to drive off - but was too slow. Katrin emptied her 5-shot Browning shotgun into the car before anyone had time to react. She killed all four of them on the spot - and then collapsed weeping.  She was right of course - we soon heard that these two couples had wiped out the family at Willow Farm - and also another family in a mobile home - in order to get the food. They had killed the poor people with axes and hammers ... and had even made Bonny & Clyde style photos.  We didn't bother calling the Police this time. We made no attempt to clean out the car - we simply disconnected the trailer and towed the car out of the village and using a digger we buried the whole vehicle, complete with mangled bodies, in a hole. We all have had enough of cleaning up bits of skull, teeth & flesh. I just hope that this incident gives poor Katrin "closure" as the Americans would say. Perhaps now she will find it easier to move on after the death of her husband. SATURDAY I had a bad start to the day. Just before dawn I was on foot patrol with Damian, the teenage son of a neighbour. Damian insisted on taking a firearm so I lent him a small .410 shotgun to keep him happy. As we finished the patrol and made our way back for a very welcome breakfast, the .410 went off! The little moron had accidentally fired it as he came through the doorway of my house. The pellets mostly went into the wall - but some took off the top of my right little finger. It hurt like heck and I had to disturb the local doctor at home whilst he was having his breakfast. He dressed the wound and gave me some antibiotics so I should be OK quite soon - but minus part of a finger. I got quite upset whilst speaking to the doctor - it has been a dreadful week. He then gave me some Prozac or similar pills to help me get over the shock of killing someone and seeing so many dead people in such a short time. I hope the pills work - I haven't been sleeping at all well - the gruesome scenes in the Gresham's farmhouse keep replaying themselves in my head as "flashbacks". SUNDAY I was having a quiet day reading a book and trying to ignore the pain from my damaged finger, when I received a visitor. It was the old guy who had been in charge of the Army unit sorting out our Ration Cards a couple of weeks ago. He was accompanied by a huge young bodyguard who waited in their car whilst we talked indoors. He produced his ID - and yes, he was a "spook" as I had guessed. His ID showed him to be "Colonel Jarmain (retired)" now attached to the "Internal Monitoring Division" of GCHQ, one of the the British intelligence services. Their HQ is only about 20 miles away from the village.  He produced a huge paper file which seemed to contain paperwork relating mainly to me. I glimpsed printouts of some of my blog postings made to peakoil.com, The Oil Drum, worldwithoutoil.org and to some "green" websites too. No doubt all results of the ECHELON email & Web monitoring system run by the UK & USA. He also mentioned my "reliable & robust service" in the Falklands War back in 1982. This was a bit over the top - I simply got dragged to the war zone because I was a civilian contractor reprogramming the software of a radar system on board HMS Illustrious when the flipping ship set sail for the South Atlantic without any warning. They wouldn't let me off the ship, so I had to continue working on the software in a tiny technical cabin for several weeks, most of which were spent vomiting from sea sickness or shaking with fear. I really thought my time had come when an Argentine Super Etendard plane hit the ship with an Exocet missile... but the warhead failed to explode. Nevertheless, several crew members were killed by the impact and I was trapped by bent & blasted metal panels in my little technical cabin for nearly 24 hours before they realised that I was still alive. I still have the scars as a memento. The missile attack was never made public and we returned to the UK with a huge sheet of canvas covering the damaged rear section of the ship. Once the "spook" had convinced me that he knew more about me that I did, and that I was believed to be "trustworthy" and also fully aware about Peak Oil he got to the main point of his visit. He wanted to know how the village society was made up, so I explained how we had the very separate social groups of "farmers", "townie commuters", "druggie & alcoholic undesirables", "retired rich pensioners from London", "local farmhands" and so on. He was not surprised at the way the village society was fragmented - I assume he had heard similar stories several times already. He then asked about Lord & Lady XXX, so I explained how Lady XXX and her civil service friends had "borrowed" my generator for their own personal use, back when we had an initial powercut. Colonel Jarmain become rather agitated at that point: "Well, we'll put a stop to THAT sort of behaviour, I can assure you". (I was too nervous to ask him exactly who the "we" might be). He then asked me to invite a representative from each of the key groups in the village to a meeting he was arranging next Wednesday evening at The Village Hall. The Colonel made it clear that if I invited someone then that person really would be wise to attend ... he left the unspoken threat hanging in the air ... Before he left, Colonel Jarmain gave me a mobile phone (with two spare charged batteries) which he said could be used to reach him at anytime - even if the main networks failed. He wants me to call him with a list of the people I invite at least 24 hours before the meeting. (Curiously, the Colonel didn't mention any of the horrible events which have taken place in the village during the past week - perhaps his knowledge isn't 100% perfect after all?) Anyway, I now have the task of inviting a set of people I hardly know to a meeting about which I know nothing. My powers of persuasion are going to be severely tested. Nevertheless the meeting next week should be interesting - although I do feel that Colonel Jarmain may be holding all the cards ... |