Otherwise: An Apocalypse Tale

By Kay Inglis

Travelling back from a trip to Bruges, a group of amateur artists are unlikely survivors in a post-apocalypse world. This is the story of how they try to come to terms with the sudden change to the world they were used to living in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kay Inglis
• Release date: Jun 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223820598

Book preview

Otherwise

Ishould describe Otherwise as I see it now, as I am sitting out the front of Ye Olde St George pub with a cheese and pickle sandwich on slightly stale bread and a pint of best bitter in front of me on the wooden trestle table.  Josh, Binny and Cherry are sitting at the other table on the cobbled area at the front of the pub eating a rather uninspiring meal of droopy salad, bread and chutney. It’s a pleasant temperature of around twenty-two degrees centigrade, the sky blue with a few little white clouds. Across the lane from us is a row of four small stone-built cottages. There is the friendly noise of chickens clucking from behind the pub and a few birds singing in the trees. A goat bleats plaintively. At first sight it is a charmingly bucolic scene, typically English in a rather old-fashioned way. The sleek silver coach pulled up in the lane looks incongruous, like something out of another world. For all the reassuring familiarity of a pub and a pint, the place still feels artificial and slightly sinister to me. Philip’s theory is that we have ended up on a deserted old Ministry of Defence site, which leaves one wondering what sort of experiments or exercise it was, or is, being used for. But that is only one of the theories currently doing the rounds amongst our small group.

The cluster of buildings – it is barely a hamlet – is set at the bottom of a valley with low hills rising around us, so that it feels rather like we are in a wide green basin. There are wooded areas, made up of familiar trees such as oak, elder, blackthorn and beech, as well as an apple orchard and some cherry trees behind the cottages. On the side of the lane where the pub is, the only other buildings are some stone outhouses and a wooden barn. There isn’t a river or a stream, but there is a large spring-fed pond complete with ducks, and an old-fashioned water well by the cottages. The whole area – roughly circular – has a diameter of maybe just over half a mile.

This is our fourth day in Otherwise. We arrived tired, confused, irascible and, in some cases, downright hysterical, on the Sunday evening. The sight of a pub sign outside the first building we saw was reassuring, the fact that there were no lights on inside less so. Stuart had gone and knocked on the door but got no response. But when he turned the handle to the wooden door it opened and he went in, followed by Liz, Bert and me. It was rather dark inside, the windows being small and the daylight fading outside, and it was faintly dusty with a musty smell about the place. But there were casks of beer and bottles behind the bar and a couple of hand pumps, which looked promising. Stuart hailed any barman, but no one appeared.

To hell with this, said Stuart, his face flushed red beneath his shock of blond hair. I’m barman enough for us lot. We can make it straight with the publican when he deigns to return. And he promptly went behind the bar and poured himself a measure of whisky. I hesitated, feeling that we should be a bit patient and respect the niceties until the publican turned up and served us or kicked us out. So I went and sat by one of the wooden tables.

Are there loos? asked Ruth, entering the pub looking quite flustered and not at all her normal neat, composed self. Margaret, twice the size of the diminutive Ruth, followed on her heels.

There were. One labelled Gents. One labelled Ladies. As each consisted of a single toilet in a cubicle and a single hand basin with a rather tarnished mirror above it, a bit of a queue formed outside each.

No soap, grumbled Ruth when she eventually emerged, rubbing her hands on her skirt to dry them in a manner which suggested that there was no hand towel either. A bit sub-standard this place. Why are there no lights? I could hardly see what I was up to in there!

There doesn’t appear to be any electricity, I observed. Liz has found candles and is going to light some. I expect she’ll put one in the toilets.

Ruth looked perplexed. She was a smart, fastidious woman in her late forties, and unlikely to see the romantic side of being marooned in a candle-lit pub in the middle of nowhere.

I hope Stuart is going to get the show back on the road and have us home tonight, she said. I didn’t see a petrol station. Is there a phone in here? No one seems to have a signal on their mobile.

I don’t think so, I replied. But there is some food. Liz found some in the kitchen behind the bar.

Margaret, plump and grey-haired was now emerging from the toilets, also wiping her hands on her clothes.

Well, better than having to go behind a bush, she observed, ruefully. Are we going to eat here? And how can I contact Sandra? She’s going to be mad at me. Unless she can get Theresa next door round to babysit at short notice she and Joe are going to have to cancel their dinner. Not that it’s my fault. She plumped herself down heavily in a chair next to Ruth and it emitted a creak and a puff of dust.

Bert came and sat down with us, still looking anxious, but carrying a tankard of beer for himself and a glass of white wine for me. This effectively by-passed my initial instinct to wait for the proprietor to turn up. Apparently we had taken over the place for the evening, Stuart confidently pulling a pint for Philip, who had just come in to join us, and looking set to be host for the evening.

Bert was just my art club friend, but we had been to enough pubs, on days out painting and weekend trips with the club, for him to know that white wine was my drink of choice, although I was also partial to the odd pint at lunch time. He was in his early fifties, middle height and stocky with a broad, attractive face. I liked his gentle sense of humour and relaxed, friendly manner, although on this occasion he looked far from relaxed and was obviously uncomfortable with the unexpected turn of events.

The bar was gradually filling up with the passengers from the coach, although Adrian, Alice and Fran sat in it, as if determined that the journey was about to resume, for about an hour longer than the rest of us, and it took Liz going out to them and spelling out the fact that we weren’t going anywhere that night before they gave up and came in to have something to eat and drink.

By about nine o’clock that first evening a sense of near normality had been restored. Everything would be sorted out in the morning. It helped that we were a familiar group, used to an evening together in a pub. Stuart – our Chairman – seemed to be in control as usual, and nobody was inclined to blame him for the detour and the fuel crisis whilst the drinks flowed.

Not that there weren’t a few unhappy people amongst us. Fran was one of them. She wasn’t someone I knew very well, despite the fact we had both been club members for a few years. She painted in pastels, I preferred oils. She was a married woman in her fifties. I was single and in my thirties. To be honest, I had always found her rather dull and never sought her company. She could be abrasive in manner, and that wasn’t a trait I much cared for either. She was also teetotal, which could have explained why she didn’t relax and accept that everything would be OK as readily as the rest of us did after a bit of a tipple.

There was a moon last night. I couldn’t see it when I came in. I looked out again; I still can’t see it, she said to me, when we found ourselves standing at the bar together, me to renew drinks for Bert and myself, her to ask Liz for a cup of tea, although she had to settle for water as there was nowhere to boil a kettle that evening.

I expect it’s cloudy, I said.

It isn’t. It’s a clear night. I expected to see the moon.

Given the more pressing problems of no fuel and no working phones, it struck me as of little importance that Fran couldn’t see the moon.

Perhaps it has gone behind the hills or the trees, I suggested, waving my empty glass at Stuart who obliged by taking it to be refilled.

I have tablets to take, continued Fran, still off on her own tack. I only brought enough for a few days. I need my medication. Stuart better get us home tomorrow.

I’m sure he will, I said. We can go up the hill and find a signal or someone can walk to the nearest town. I guess we are stuck here tonight, but we’ll be home tomorrow.

Fran looked slightly reassured, and I may even have believed what I was saying myself.

We slept – or some did – in various places that first night. It turned out that there were three bedrooms upstairs in the pub. They were quite basic – beds with sheets and candlewick bed spreads, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a rug on the wooden floors. There was a bathroom with running water – but no hot water. Stuart and Liz took one room, Liz confiding in me that she felt like she was in the story of the three little bears, wondering who would turn up and demand to know why she was sleeping in their bed. Josh and Binny, his pregnant wife, had another and Margaret and Ruth took the third.

For some reason Adrian and Alice, Fran and Philip preferred to return to the coach and sleep in the reclining chairs. In fact this was probably a more comfortable arrangement than those of us who stayed in the downstairs of Ye Olde St George. There were two high-backed easy chairs in the bar which Bert and I bagged, leaving Simon to sleep on the floor with a cushion as a pillow and his jacket over him. Cherry retired to the kitchen where there was also a reasonably comfortable chair. I don’t think I got more than an hour’s sleep and a bit of a doze. Bert claimed not to have slept a wink, although I pointed out that he had been snoring for some of the night at least. Simon had apparently slept soundly, but he is a robust thirty-six year old who enjoys camping, so perhaps it was home-from-home for him.

Cherry was the first up and set to work on lighting the kitchen range with wood that was stacked outside the kitchen door which opened out the back of the pub. It had certainly been a cold night, and we were all stiff and ready to complain, so walking into the kitchen and feeling the heat from the stove was welcome. It also meant we could have a cooked breakfast and hot coffee and tea