An Empty World - 2 - The Road to Aberystwyth

The morning they left the farmhouse was a bit too quiet, it was not with dread or with doubt, but with the kind of hush, that new quiet they were not quite used to yet, and with a sense of trepidation of what there was yet to come. Patsy stood by the kitchen door, her backpack snug against her shoulders, one hand resting on the weathered handle. Callum was already outside tightening the straps around the old camping gear from her father's bedroom. They had bundled it up and tied it together with some frayed rope they found in the barn. This was the final addition to the already overloaded trolley they had started the night before.

“You ready?” he asked, not looking at her, still bent over the cart. His voice was soft, but there was something underneath it, a quiet thread of fear he didn’t want her to hear.

She nodded, then realised he couldn’t see her. “Yeah. I think so. About as ready as I am likely to be when two pre-teens are about the oldest people in this world now.”

He glanced up. “We don’t have to rush. We could stay another day if you want. I don’t mind. It’s not as if we are in a hurry to get somewhere.”

Patsy shook her head and stepped off the porch. “No. If we wait any longer, we’ll never leave here.”

The wind was gentle, whispering among the tall grasses, turning them into a slow wave across the field, while the rising sun stretched their shadows far behind them, like soft reminders of everything they were leaving behind.

They didn’t talk, they just started walking, the wheels of the cart squeaking faintly on the tarmac as they pulled the carts behind them, their whole life now wrapped up in a garden trolly.

It took them nearly three hours to reach the village, not that they had been in any hurry. They had travelled the same stretch of lonely road that wound through fields that now felt wider than she had remembered, every fence post and empty sign like a quiet ghost watching them pass. When they reached the two shops at the edge of the village, the silence was evident, the kind that settled in deep, like it knew it wasn’t temporary anymore. A single crow squawking in the distance, added a note of eeriness to the scene.

Inside the store, dust had settled like a second skin over everything still left. The shop had been ransacked, but there were items still on the shelves. Rats and mice had taken their fill, leaving a trail of destruction behind them. The crackle of their footsteps evident on the wasted food scattering the floor as they moved through the aisles. Patsy took a moment to stare at a row of chocolate bars that had long passed their sell-by dates, her fingers hesitating before she reached out and grabbed a handful, slipping them into her bag.

"Take anything with sugar,” Callum said softly. “We don’t know how long it'll last. We’ll need the energy."

Patsey smiled to herself.

They loaded the last few tins of beans, soup, and a solitary jar of powdered milk into the supermarket style trolly, along with anything that didn’t need cooking or need water to eat. Callum found another garden cart behind the hardware shop next door, smaller than theirs but sturdier, with thick tyres that looked like they would survive the long road ahead without issue.

Before they moved off, Patsey took out the red spray can and put a large “X” over her previous message and yellow arrow, then painted a fresh yellow arrow in the direction they were heading, repeating the process every mile.

Twelve-miles later, in a small village without a name, stood a petrol station, just two pumps and a kiosk, but the kiosk had been stripped bare, nothing edible had been left on the shelf. However, behind the counter stood a solitary six pack of sparkling water, the only item worth having.

They were just fastening the water to one of the trollies when they heard it. A shuffle of feet. Slow, tentative, as if unsure whether the person wanted to show themselves or not.

Both of them stepped back into the shadows, Callum’s hand dropping instinctively to the hammer from the hardware shop he kept looped through his belt. Patsy turned toward the sound, not knowing what to expect.

A boy stood at the edge of the road just beyond the fuel pumps He was maybe a few years older than them, thirteen, maybe fourteen at most. His jeans were too long for him, fraying at the legs where he had tried to shorten them, and a battered hoodie hung loose on his frame. There was dirt on his face and something in his eyes, like he’d been watching them for a while.

He lifted his hands slowly. “Hey. I’m not… I’m not gonna hurt you… I’m all alone.”

Callum moved slightly in front of Patsy, protective of her without thinking about it. “Who are you?” He called out.

“My name’s Jamie,” the boy said. “I’ve been walking for days. I saw the yellow arrows. That was you, wasn’t it?”

Patsy felt herself twitch. That yellow spray paint, the one thing that had felt like shouting into the void, someone had listened. But had it been a good idea though? “You’re alone?”

Jamie nodded. “Yeah. I was with a group once. Couple of older kids, and some our age. We stayed near the old rail yard, not far from the coast. But… we got separated when some of them went looking for food. They never came back, and I couldn’t find them again.”

There was a long pause. The kind that hung like the edge of a decision.

Callum glanced at her. “What do you think?”

Patsy stepped forward, just a little. “We’re heading to Aberystwyth. Looking for… well, I don’t know really, anything, something. More people, I suppose, or answers maybe.”

Jamie brightened at that revelation. “I heard of a group there. Someone came through weeks back. He said there was a bigger group setting up near the university. Something about a safe place, he said. Clean water, and even solar power.”

His eyes searched theirs, pleading. “I can take you there if you like.”

They stood there for a while longer, measuring him, not by what he said, but by what they felt. He wasn’t trying too hard, and he wasn’t pushing to join them; it was more like hope. He looked tired, like them. He also looked lost, something they also felt.

It was Callum who made the call in the end. “Alright. We will go together then.”

Jamie gave a quiet, relieved nod. “Together. Thank you.”

That night, they found an empty cottage on the far side of the next village they came to. It had ivy growing up the side and cracked flowerpots by the steps, like the people who lived there had gone out to tend the garden and simply never returned.

They didn’t break in so much as slip through the back door, which had already been forced open long ago. The house smelled of old wood and forgotten dinners, but there were no bodies to deal with. The lounge still had a working fireplace, but the cupboards were stripped of food. Callum found wood and lit the fire, while the others dragged in mattresses from upstairs rooms, making a little nest of warmth near the fire after pushing the furniture to one side.

Patsy shared a packet of crackers with Jamie, watching him eat slowly, even though he looked like he wanted to inhale them.

“Are you okay?” she asked gently.

He nodded. “It’s just I haven’t sat down in a warm place for days. I forgot what that feels like. Thank you for letting me team up with you. It was so lonely out there by myself. It was starting to get to me in ways you couldn’t believe.”

They talked for a bit that night. About small things. Jamie told them about his sister, how they used to race bikes down the back hill near their house. He didn’t say where she was now, and they didn’t ask. They all had loss to deal with. Callum told a story about the time he and Patsy tried to trap a rabbit but caught a squirrel instead, and how it screamed like a banshee until they let it go.

Patsy laughed. Really laughed, for the first time in what felt like months. Jamie smiled too, his eyes soft and tired.

That night, Patsey and Callum rolled out their sleeping bags on top of the mattresses in the lounge, just a few feet apart. Jamie laid his further away, near the bottom of the stairs, curled up beneath a thick wool blanket he’d found on the landing. The fire had died down to a glow, and outside, the wind whispered through the broken chimney.

Patsy lay awake for a while, staring at the ceiling. Her mind felt strangely full, not with worry, but with the flickering warmth of human voices, of belonging to, as Jamie put it, “a team”, however fragile. They were a team of three. Soon there would be more.

She turned her head slightly and saw Callum’s silhouette just across from her, still and quiet. He was awake, too.

“You trust him?” she whispered.

There was a pause before his answer.

“I want to.”

She nodded. That was enough.

She closed her eyes, and the world stayed quiet.

When Patsy opened her eyes, the light creeping through the dust-smeared windows was thin and pale, the kind of light that came just before the dawn, when the world still hadn’t decided whether it wanted to wake up or stay asleep for a little longer.

As she stretched slightly, the cold of the dawn seeping through her sleeping bag, she turned to look across the room. Callum was still curled on his side, fast asleep, one arm draped over his pack, but Jamie’s blanket lay empty.

At first, it didn’t register. Maybe he’d gone to the toilet. Maybe he was upstairs looking for cleaner clothes that fit him a little better. But then she noticed the fire was dead. The air was colder than it had any right to be. A chill crept through her as she sat up.

“Callum,” she said, her voice louder than she had intended.

He stirred immediately, blinked blearily at her, and followed her gaze to the empty spot by the stairs. Then to the door, that hung slightly open. Just enough to let in the early light and a cool breeze. Just enough to make her stomach twist. She knew something was wrong but hesitated to put a name to it.

They didn’t speak, but instead they scrambled to their feet, pushing past scattered blankets and packs, stepping into the kitchen.

The carts were gone. Both of their carts, all their food, all their water. Even the emergency jar of powdered milk that Callum had hidden under some spare clothes in the bottom of his bag had gone.

All that remained were their camping gear, a spare blanket, and Jamie’s much older trolley, with the squeaky wheel that always pulled to the left, and announced their arrival long before they got there.

Patsy stood there, staring at the empty space like her brain couldn’t quite catch up. “No… no, no, no,” she whispered, barely audible. “No, he wouldn’t…”

Callum didn’t move. His anger was obvious, but silent. His hands clenched at his sides. He was staring straight ahead, like if he blinked, he’d scream.

“I trusted him,” she said again, and this time it cracked something inside her. “I trusted him. Why would I do that? He took everything from us.” She growled.

It wasn’t the food, not really. It wasn’t even the water. It was the fact that she had believed; she had truly believed they weren’t alone in the good ways anymore. That someone had chosen to walk beside them not just out of necessity, but out of something real. He even called them a team.

She turned away from the doorway and hit the side of the cabinet with the flat of her palm in frustration. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to feel the sting of it. “Why would he do that to us? Why would anyone do that when we were prepared to share what we had? Why lie like that? It’s not… fair.”

Callum finally spoke, bitter and with gritted teeth, his anger evident. “Because we had what he needed. No, what he wanted. Like you said, we would have shared with him, so he didn’t need to steal it.”

Patsy turned to him. “Yes, he could’ve stayed. We thought we wanted him to stay, especially when he referred to us as a team. That’s why it does not make sense.”

He nodded slowly. “But some people… they stop believing that sharing works. That kindness means anything.”

The weight of it all hung between them, heavy and mean.

They sat on the cold floor of that kitchen for a long time, knees tucked to their chests, backs pressed against the cabinets, the silence too loud.

Eventually, Callum stood and wiped the back of his arm across his face. “We have to move. We’ll find something. We have to.”

Patsy nodded, but she didn’t feel anything. Not hope and not fear. Just an emptiness she wasn’t ready to give a name to.

The village was quieter than she remembered. Not in sound, but in feeling. Before, there’d been a kind of hush, like the world was sleeping. But now, it felt stripped, raw and sharp, like a bone picked clean. Was there more out there watching? Waiting to take anything they can from us, or others? It hurt to think that way, but it didn’t make it less true though.

They started with the houses closest to them. Callum broke in through a side door while Patsy stood watch, then she would squeeze through after him, their breaths shallow and quiet, just in case someone was still lurking inside.

The first house had nothing but dusty books and the heavy smell of damp. The house had been empty for a long time, most likely a holiday home. It had that air about it.

The second was more promising: tins in the cupboard, a pack of rice in the pantry in a rodent proof container, and a box of matches tucked behind a flower-patterned candle holder, but no candles to be found.

They loaded what they could into the remaining cart. Every small discovery they found, a jar of jam, a bottle of water, an unopened packet of crackers or biscuits, felt like a win. Patsy tucked each item away with a kind of reverence, like she was trying to build a shrine to trust.

They found a house near the edge of the village that hadn’t been broken into yet. The windows were intact, and the door was still locked. Callum glanced around making sure no one was watching, then picked up a flat stone from the path.

“You sure?” he asked her, one eyebrow raised, still working on old world values.

Patsy gave a tiny nod. “Yeah. If we don’t, someone else will.”

The crash of glass startled even the birds. But inside, the house was warm, or at least warmer than outside. The curtains were still drawn, a soft yellow fabric that diffused the light into something close to comforting.

There was an old chipped brown enamelled kettle still sitting atop the old cast-iron stove. An old armchair with a half-knitted scarf still hanging from its arm, never to be finished. It looked like the kind of place where someone had once baked scones and listened to the radio in the afternoons. An older person's home, where grandchildren once visited, maybe.

They decided to stay there for a few nights to rest and recuperate. Have time to think.

Callum walked in. “I found something,” he said.

She turned. “What is it?”

He handed her a thin, leather-bound notebook. On the first page, in tidy, looping handwriting, it read:

“If you find this, please read carefully. I don’t know if anyone is still out there. But if you are, you need to know what’s happening.”

Patsy’s eyes flicked up to his. “It’s from the people who lived here?”

Callum nodded.

She opened to the next page.

“We were twenty-three when we started. Survivors. all from nearby. The virus didn’t touch the kids, but it changed some of the older ones. Made them paranoid and violent. We lost three people before we realised it wasn’t just the sickness, it was something about how it rewired their thinking. They didn’t care about survival, they only cared about control.”

It went on.

“We tried to help them, but they took what we had, then left. Said they’d come back. Not to join us, but to take it all.”

There was a map on the last page. A red X marked the village. Arrows spiralled outward toward places they’d never been.

In the corner, beneath a line drawn toward Aberystwyth, someone had written:

"If they find you first, don’t follow. Don’t trust their kindness."

Patsy stared at the page.

And all at once, Jamie’s soft voice came rushing back. How easily he’d said “I can take you.” The practiced ease of it. The hunger, yes… but not just in his belly, but in his eyes.

“What if he wasn’t alone?”

“Then he’s not done yet,” Callum stated.

Patsy ran her fingers over the ink. A different kind of fear settled into them, and it was not the fear of being alone.

It was the fear that someone was trying to make sure they stayed that way. But why?