Foreword

Near the end of this novelette appear these words, as the fugitive ragtag, driven from their homeland, find a temporary haven.

This below is one big “spoiler”, should you wish not to know ahead of time.

…….

The news clippings of what now seemed alien events out there in the 'real' world, the handwritten notes here and there ... told of a world gone totally, evilly insane which had been allowed to happen ... they could not take their eyes from the table. 

 That was reality, was it?

‘All right,’ Cam addressed them, ‘we’re down to taking stock of our situation. Faye has faith we’ll be looked after from Above if we believe we can be … interesting perspective … ancient. Our reality is that sooner or later, we’re going to be down to the chickens and fish …’

‘Provided no disease gets to them,’ put in Lee. ‘Provided we’re not found by these bands of crazed marauders, provided the shadow state psychos don’t get it into their heads to suddenly go to WW3 … use up the last of the arsenals … all that.’

Said Cam: ‘That’s the long and short of it … ‘civilisation’ as we knew it was already on the way out but all orderly govt is now over … just strongarm gangs with warlords and Viking type violence. 

Thing is … to protect Cait’s baby, all our girls’ babies … look, let me put it this way. There’s a view, often called male but many women agree … you do whatever it takes … lionesses do, mother ducks do …’

Said Cait: ‘But there are those always thinking appeasing the monster will work.’

‘All right,’ said Cam. ‘We’re an unusual six … we have a long history of dealing out summary justice … we’re not known for holding back … but now we hold fire … we just add to the defences of this place … but the best defence is a passive, calm attitude … but trained to instantly swap to full force.’

Just silence, but not in disagreement.

‘So that’s our strategy … anticipate different types of trouble, prepare, be ready to act instinctively … drills, practice … spring into action once we see what needs action … the locusts were a perfect example.  Still no objection?’

Not a word.

‘So there it is.  Every single possible threat contained in those news clippings … the notes on that table too … we train, people, we train, we have kids.’

Said Sven, ‘I get this feeling that we’re not going to be in huge danger now from overwhelming force, by bombings, armies, not even by mercenaries … we seem to have moved onto that last stage … I agree that, except maybe from marauders … well … all of us would do what we had to, no qualms … but we’re going to find ourselves creating a little colony … we’d be breeding the chickens and fish, we’d be sick of it, even with creative ways to stave off the boredom, we’d be back to dark age village things … that’s if the poisoned world didn’t get here …’

Said Cait, ‘I’m thinking there’s a thing called overplanning … I’m thinking that Faye’s not wrong in that calm way she has … don’t despair but equally don’t kid ourselves. Have a bit of faith, hope, pray no one gets really ill.’

‘That’s peace of mind,’ mused Cleo. ‘Speaking personally, I need that most just now.’

‘Don’t we all,’ said Cam. ‘So there it is.’

…….

A big thank you to the ever patient and unsung Toodles who has proofed all of my scribblings to date and this is no exception …