Read Online Bar None by Tim Lebbon - Free Book Online Page A

the river perhaps, or drawing away.
    I see several large birds perched atop the blackened roof members across the river, and from this far away I cannot recognise the species. Too small , I think, but perception is a dangerous thing.
     
    To begin with, it seems that most people wanted to park their cars properly before they died. Perhaps that sudden final onset of the diseases gave them enough time for a few last moments of lucidity. Going to collapse . . . get off the road . . . last thing I need is a shunt now . . . paperwork, insurance claims, all that time that hassle that expense . . . pull over, pull off . . . everyone else doing it too . . . strange . . .
    Cars sit staggered along the hard shoulder, many of them with noses buried in the rears of those in front of them. Trailers lie on their sides or crushed open from impacts, and suitcases, bags, loose clothing and other personal items are strewn across the road. Most of the clothing is a uniform grey, sun, rain, frost and snow having bleached the material and sucked the colour down into the ground.
    Other cars have been driven or shoved over the edge of the road and down into the ditch, some of them tipping onto their sides or roofs. Here and there they lie two or even three deep, and there are frequent signs of fires having broken out and ignited the fuel tanks.
    I see bodies. I try to look away but cannot. I am the classic road accident rubber-necker, telling myself that I really don't want to see the results of these crashes but looking nonetheless. I thought I'd had my fill of death and suffering in those terrible final weeks of the plagues, but it seems that there is always that deep-set curiosity that can never be assuaged. Many of the cars hold vague shapes behind their windows, but most of the glass is no longer clear. The outside is dusty, and the inside seems to be touched with something as well. I wonder whether the rot of bodies could spread to glass, planting decay in the form of moist moss, greasy fungus, or a film of slickness locked in by windows shut tight.
    Nobody wanted to breathe the air outside. Though it was late summer when the end came, still no one knew for sure how the diseases were carried.
    Other bodies lie in the road and on the verge, splayed alongside open car doors. I see the white of bone through tears in rotten clothing. The smaller the shapes, the more distressing they are.
    Here and there a vehicle has struck the central reservation and ricocheted away, hitting other cars and causing a tangle of wreckage that still sits where it happened. None of them were travelling very fast—the road was packed with people escaping the cities—but damage was exacerbated when vehicles following on behind shoved the shunted cars to the side of the road. They left the occupants trapped inside as they passed by.
    They would have , I think. Can't open those windows, not when there may be germs outside, or infected people inside, disease-carrying flies . . .
    I can barely imagine how bad it must have been. I suppose my own journey had been performed in relative comfort, three days after the end came. Ashley had started to smell badly by then, and I couldn't find the strength of body or mind to bury her. That was way too final. Ashley, my love, could never be below the ground. So I had left, and gone cross-country, and at the end of that first day travelling I had seen Cordell standing at the gates of the Manor.
    I ride the bike slowly along the road, and already I'm trying to calculate how long this trip will take. On a normal day it would be a three hour journey at least, not allowing for any toilet stops or coffee breaks, hold-ups on the Severn Bridge or traffic queues on the perpetually road-worked M5. Now, travelling at thirty instead of eighty miles per hour, it is a day's journey.
    But I know that there would be much more than this to hold us up.
     

Five: Old Empire
    When I drink Marston's Old Empire ale—malty,