Basically Frightened: Basically Frightened, #1

By Vasily Pugh

The world is devastated by a pandemic known as 'The Shakes', but one unlikely hero is determined to make the best of it. Leaving his self-imposed isolation, he discovers a fractured country that has divided into numerous groups, all trying to find meagre resources.

 

But this is no ordinary landscape...our hero will meet feisty heroines, sweet old ladies, a range of mildly psychotic antagonists and a group inspired by a particular television show. Behind the scenes the country is in the process of being re-organised by a mysterious body called 'Order', but can they be trusted? And was it really worth leaving isolation for all of the dread, danger and general nonsense? Especially when you promised to finally read 'War & Peace' at the start of this all.

 

A suitably prescient story for our times, 'Basically Frightened' and its sequel 'Outside Looking Out', examines what ordinary people do in the face of isolation, conflict and the utterly absurd.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Midland Monkey
• Release date: Dec 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393647126

Book preview

Yet Another Slice of Post-Apocalyptia

Vasily Pugh

Copyright © 2016/2020 by Vasily Pugh (& re-edit)

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published by Midland Monkey Press.

The title ‘Basically Frightened’ is inspired by the song by Colonel Bruce Hampton but has no connection to the artist’s great work. All quoted song lyrics, product names and film titles referenced are used with due reverence to the artists and titles responsible – no infringement of copyright is in any way intended.

Also from Vasily Pugh:

‘Gusto’

‘The Insomniacs’ Club’

‘Outside Looking Out – Basically Frightened book 2’

‘So You’ve Got Fibromyalgia’

"In the Canyons of your Mind..."

I

I must first apologise for using a slightly unusual font; it turns out that the trusty laptop which travels with me everywhere has some strange bug that has wedged the font firmly on ‘Gadugi’. The more sensitive would claim a conspiracy by the makers of said font and though very little surprises me these days, I hardly think that the theory has the necessary evidence to make it probable. 

I have reached that unenviable stage where the inviting dent my posterior left on the faux leather sofa needs to be ignored, and I have to stir myself to get up and explore the outside world. I had eaten most of the tinned food, the vegetables in the garden had been stolen, and the last Pot Noodle was being saved for a special occasion. Thus, I must put on my boots and leave the confines of the flat in search of sustenance. Of course, not only is leaving the flat a risk in itself but trying to compete for food with the Alpha Males and those who have embraced the lure of the bushy beard is foolhardy. Nevertheless, it’s time to strap the hardy leather boots on (I say hardy though they were actually on sale at SuperShu on the High Street while it was still around and on further inspection are clearly some monstrosity fashioned from man-made materials in some Cambodian sweatshop) and see what is left.

––––––––

Oddly enough, I had just the other day seen looters* leaving a department store with shopping trolleys full of those mighty Caterpillar boots that you used to see modelled by rugged outdoor types in the Sunday supplements; although I have always been morally opposed to the ‘Everyman for Himself’ philosophy of the general looter (how many pairs of boots does one person need?) I did have a twinge of envy in my heart when I saw good quality foot attire leaving the department store via unorthodox means. 

(* most looted items as per my observations:

1. Food and Drink – fairly obvious one this. More on that later.

2. Medication – again, a popular choice. Thankfully, I sensed the wayward Zeitgeist of society before everything went completely downhill and stocked up on all of these necessities.

3. Large Screen Televisions - a strange one this. Many are the times I would look out from my balcony and see someone pushing an absurdly oversized television in a pram with something approaching parental pride. I even saw a group of people coming to blows over a particularly shiny Sony 65" beast that turned the most ordinary person into a slobbering barbarian. It’s not like there was anything to watch – the old stations had collapsed, and there were just a few local authority programmes and public access channels that filled the airwaves. And there was ‘Last of the Summer Wine’. Nothing wrong with OAPs rolling around the Yorkshire Dales in oil drums, but it did seem strange that this of all programmes had avoided destruction and found itself on-air on a constant loop.

4. Designer Goods – again, this one was a little odd. Some people seemed to favour the most opulent designer clothes over food and drink as if Armani still had some cachet and was preferable over a consignment of corned beef. I often saw said persons draped in these glamorous clothes weeks later begging for food. The amount of discarded Louboutins I saw in the ravine on the edge of town would make your head spin.

5. Guns – of course in certain countries where the pump-action shotgun was bought with the sanitary towels this was an item higher up the list and kind of became a ‘deal clincher’ for acquiring the others. That said, the Country Pursuits shop on Alwin Road had a much-admired Purdey in the window, inevitably leading to a scuffle between two prominent gangs (I assume the corresponding tweed jacket was left behind). 

6. Fuel. This should be higher up the list, and I cannot pinpoint precisely why it isn’t. It is true that many have looked to solar power, and there have been numerous mysterious persons who have created ingeniously modded systems to ensure that generating electricity is less reliant on the fuel of the past. Yet – and this is my ‘Mad Max’ brain kicking into gear – there is something reassuring about old fashioned petrol, and I imagine it still acts as an effective form of currency.

7. Dogs. Everyone appears to have allied themselves with a four-legged friend, and as with a particular council estate mentality that used to be so prevalent, the idea is that you acquire the most fearsome beast possible. Well, nearly all of the dogs are wild and wolf-like now; I’ve seen men try to tame the most violent of Bichon Frises with little success. I tried to persuade a lone Jack Russell to join my team but was chased throughout the streets for my trouble).  

––––––––

Although it wasn’t looted per se, hazmat suits became quite the thing to get hold of too. Like queuing up for the new iPhone, people were desperate to get their hands on the full post-apocalyptic look – nothing says ‘protection’ more than bright yellow or intense orange plastic get up. I ordered a few sets from a specific auction site only to get a product so flimsy it could be rent in two by breaking wind too aggressively (that was a hypothetical statement of course). Then all the hazmat suits seemed to disappear and get hoarded somewhere by unknown persons, and we were left to our own devices. That said, there were plenty of those natty pandemic masks that made one look like they were re-spraying a car in an East End garage. The government issued them to everyone while the infrastructure was in place along with small tubes of anti-bacterial gel.    

––––––––

I pull away the barricade from the front door of my flat (old furniture formed into a means of obstruction), put on the burglar alarm (force of habit) and venture out into the city centre. It is, as one would expect, in some disarray with shop windows nearly all smashed and litter wafting along the streets in the gentle wind that has just started. The old order of things is very much gone, and the magnificent posters of old products that are still stuck to the billboards are a bit of a mockery of those of us who see them.

‘Because You’re Worth It’ (should anyone be that happy about their choice of shampoo?).

––––––––

It is at this point that the chronicler needs to make a few things clear before the reader starts imagining the very worst and reaching for the hemlock. The fact is that although things have changed, populations dwindled, services and societies dissolved and civilisation generally fallen into a rut, they are still far better than one could have hoped for. There aren’t plumes of Fall-Out or radiation in the air – despite my purchase of a Geiger counter on eBay nothing nuclear ever happened. Despite the hopes of many, there aren’t hordes of lumbering zombies roaming the earth and brave survivalists shooting them like fish in a barrel. No, this apocalypse was a bit more nuanced. I will allude to it throughout my writings. Still, needless to say, that it started with a virulent pandemic, incorporated a measure of terrorism and thick-eared warfare and settled into general squabbles and selfishness which humans are so good at exhibiting.

––––––––

Animals were decimated by only half, so there are still plenty of chirping in the trees and meowing cats trying to get access to my tinned sardines though these are growing increasingly savage). There was also access to meat and dairy produce in the short term though the lack of infrastructure and order meant that this wasn’t organised and the strongest got the sirloins while the rest had to make do with tins of Meatballs in Gravy. Then there is the problem of storage – with less power to rely on in many parts of the land, meat can become a putrid problem quite quickly. There could be a focus on re-organising some of the roaming creatures so that an elementary form of farming could help. However, it seems that when society collapses, not everyone wants to be a farmer or till the land and therefore, food is a tad more scarce than it needs to be. Everyone wants a big gun rather than a lesson on crop rotation.

––––––––

The streets have an unusual stench infesting them. It is a mix of rotten vegetables (it would appear that even during near-starvation people don’t want to eat sprouts) and overflowing drains, finished off with that smell of fires long since burnt out but eager to be remembered. It’s not quite as unpleasant as it sounds; there is a certain pastoral charm to it after a while. I could imagine birthing a lamb with this aroma filling the air, which probably says much about my knowledge of countryside matters. 

Many shops have been resolutely raided. There has been some first-class looting going on here, and unless I can sustain myself on wet cardboard, I might have to look further afield for sustenance tonight. The rotting sprouts cross my mind very briefly, but I feel that things haven’t quite reached that point yet. 

It is 10.45 am. The largest clock in the town is still working flawlessly and reminding any who cares to glance at it just how similar 10.45 is to 11.45 and, might I add, 12.45. It’s almost as if the hours and minutes have lost their confident identity and merged into a homogenised lump of time that serves minimal purpose. I remember having a watch that told me the time in Bangkok and think how much less use that is now – it even told me how many steps I had walked and rated my night’s sleep out of 10. Next to the large clock is a multi-levelled shop called ‘PoundKing’ which has had the ‘k’ crossed out to amuse someone somewhere I presume. A tip for scavenging here – always look at the shops that people turned their noses up at when life was normal. There is a strange snobbery that people express during even the worst of times, so while the supermarkets and quality stores are targeted, these minor oases remain relatively untouched. I can recall the mumbles and groans of protest when ‘PoundKing’ opened in this town that thought they were a little better than that; the purple and gold sign used to upset the upper middle-classes more than seeing someone drink red wine with a fish course. I was not nearly so judgemental, and so I feel that I have some right to the products therein.

––––––––

Before you launch your invective at me and accuse me of being a hypocrite over the whole looting thing, I must point out two things that I believe separates me from the general bandit. Firstly, I only take what I need – I do not horde items despite the received wisdom telling me I should. Secondly – and perhaps oddly to some – I always leave an IOU with my name and address on it at one of the front tills in the shop I have visited. This is a decidedly strange thing to do I admit, but I feel that should civilisation repair itself, I would like to pay back what I have taken. I have these laminated cards for the occasion:

I’m sorry that I have needed to take some of your goods – I will be happy to pay you back when things get back to normal or do some itinerant work should money have been completely devalued as it probably will be. My regards, Z. Huff.

If I run out of the laminated cards – which I fully expect to soon – I will have to start writing post-it notes to leave at the scene of my ‘crime’. That, of course, will test whether the inherent stickiness of the said notes will outlive the current funk mankind seems to be stuck in; if not, I can imagine the shops of this fair land littered further with gloriously pointless luminous green squares of paper. In my own way, I am contributing to the eerie landscape.

––––––––

‘PoundKing’ is accessed through a large glass door that has been kicked in by over-enthusiastic size ten boots. The metal shutters that would typically protect it are a third of the way down.

These are among the things in favour of ‘PoundKing’:

1. All items are a pound (something that has admittedly lost its lustre since money has become worthless and someone has robbed the £1 Crunchie Bar 4 packs)

2. Access (as mentioned above). No awkward channels to navigate, just the occasional step over shards of broken glass.

3. The second floor has a good vantage point of the town and its surroundings.

4. The lavender and vanilla scented candles have melted onto the shelves and mezzanine flooring, giving the environment a rather pleasant scent that aids the pursuit of acquiring different items.

Obviously, as with most shops stocking food or useful items, much has been taken and even more has been fought over. You might think that searching through ‘PoundKing’ is a quixotic pursuit – a place to stock up on paper plates for the party you’ll never have. However, as the average looter is in such a hurry and invariably avoiding projectiles from tetchy rivals that they are bound to drop something. That is where the patience comes in very handy, a virtue that was one of the first to perish during ‘Mankind’s Stumble’ (I am loathed to say ‘Fall’ despite the evidence around me). I, therefore, get on all-fours and run my hands under the collapsed shelving, carefully avoiding the sharp edges caused by the breakage. Success! A tin of ‘Frey Bentos Corned Beef’ – its unique shape identified by my eager fingers – is dragged from one awkward nook and goes straight into the backpack. A further exploration yields a jar of apricot jam with minor cracks, a few packs of abused Bruschetta that now have the density of a minor Black Hole, a roll of foil, a jar of Marmite which, even post-apocalypse, seems to be disliked by everyone.

I find it very unusual that the majority of Marmite lovers died out. I’m not sure what that says about the demographic of the survivors of if there is any connection, but it does drag my mind back to the past. I was working as a proof-reader for a minor publishing house – mainly horticultural books – when the pandemic started to spread. It started somewhere else, went on somewhere else still and gradually covered the globe with its cheerless effects. About 1 in 1,000 had a degree of immunity to it; I had the earthy cough and the fever, but it never extended beyond that, unlike many of my unfortunate friends. Many of the surviving people decided this would be a good time to fight over whose fault it was, and the population then took another downward turn. There were cover-ups, rebellions and conspiracy theories, all of the staples for a proper end-of-an-epoch kind of event. There were a few mass-migrations through parts of the world that the television news mentions only after all UK news has been exhausted. 

I am finding the lavender and vanilla scented candles have outstayed their welcome, and I decide to venture upstairs. The choking artificial air is strong enough to make me wonder how bad it would have been directly after the shelves were smashed and the Shake N’ Vac dispersed into the air. The said stairs are at the left side of the shop and are difficult to traverse, packed with rubble and dubious bones throughout. I try not to inspect their origins too closely, and rats have consumed most of the flesh or fabric that might be previously on them. I use an old mop handle to create a pathway through the macabre site and consider turning back lest I see something that might permanently disturb my constitution. Yet the promise of homeware and £1 DVDs to watch tonight is too great to ignore. I stumble and cut my ankle on a piece of steel that pokes through a concrete block, but I manage to get to the top floor in relatively good shape. Only the merest hint of blood seeps through my sock, and I put the injury down as an occupational hazard.

After looking around the floor for a good hour or so, I acquire a few items and make my descent. I can still picture the crowds who thronged within the shop on Saturday afternoons. It was one of those places that everyone went to without ever admitting it; the slightly better off would bring their very own Waitrose Bag-For-Life to put their discounted bleach in, the realisation that being spotted among the aisles of cheap cider

and polyester underwear could spell social suicide. There would be toothless shoplifters, people with only a passing connection with soap, OAPs who would engage in long conversations with friends in the middle of the confectionery aisle – it was an ugly carnival of the 21st century, and now it is a grim shell with occasional items of interest hiding in inaccessible places. 

I have flailed an arm or leg under every difficult shelf, used the mop handle to poke into areas that might yield further riches, but, alas, nothing interesting emerges. I hear rats nearby – you learn to recognise the sound of a fat Rattus norvegicus scrabbling around in the spaces nearby. Some have grown to the size of small Chihuahuas, and even someone like me who sat through the film ‘Squirm’ without blinking (while my girlfriend hid behind a Cathy Kidston cushion) can feel the hairs on the back of my neck prick up. It seems a good time to write a list of items taken for the purpose of reimbursement at a later date. 

· One jar of Marmite

· One roll of tin foil

· Three packs of Bruschetta

· One jar of apricot jam

· One tin of corned beef

· Three cream plates 

· Three packs of matches

· Three tubes of disinfectant cream

· Pack of Love Heart sweets

· One tin of hotdogs (meat content questionable)

The following DVDs: 

· ‘The Parent Trap’ (1998 remake)

· ‘Convoy.’

· ‘Best of Silent Comedy.’

· ‘The Carp Fishing Year’

· ‘The Trouble with Girls’

––––––––

I leave the list on the noticeboard along with my card. From time to time I do worry that the bill I am accumulating and the apparent rate of inflation that’ll kick in when things get back to normal is going to make my old student loan look like a mere trifle – I find my dreams are infested with visions of jack-booted law enforcers squeezing every last penny (if that is the currency in the future) out of me and eventually throwing me into prison for that luxury hamper I managed to get four months ago.

Whoosh - as I leave ‘PoundKing’ I am fortunate not to be struck by an arrow that has been fired in my direction by an unseen assailant. While it is always reassuring to meet new people, the arrow implies a certain level of malevolence from the shooter. It seems very unfair to target me without considering what I may or may not have or whether I will or will not share; too many people are happy to turn to violence in these times without relying on a little bit of good old-fashioned communication.

Hello? Who is it? Why are you firing at me? these are the uninspired words I shout out. My voice croaks slightly as I say this and whatever fearsome gravitas I may have wanted to convey is almost immediately diluted. That always appears to be the way when you are in a situation when only your most intimidating roar will do.

No answer.

I don’t have anything worth taking. Unless you like Marmite. Or Elvis Presley films. Do you like Marmite or Elvis Presley films? I’m willing to negotiate safe passage. I raise my hands in a friendly manner, jovial even. I like the ‘safe passage’ line too – very Mad Max. Has my offer of Marmite exacerbated the situation?

No answer.

It’s time to take a few tentative steps away from my current position while trying to locate the archer who was clearly accurate enough to get near to me from some distance. Perhaps if they were exceptionally good, I would have had an arrow through the head, but I try not to contemplate the possibilities. It may have been a warning shot, a nasty ‘that’s my ‘PoundKing’!’ projectile by someone over-protective of a shop that used to be the go-to place for cheap Pringles and out-of-date Disney merchandise. While I make awkward steps away from the doorway, another arrow fires past my neck and hits the wall behind me. I surmise that the archer is not happy with my offer of Marmite and Elvis Presley films (or so desperate for them he or she would commit murder to get them) and it is time to quicken my pace. I do that unintentionally funny zig-zag power walk that is meant to help when anything is being fired at you and feel another arrow pass my ear. I feel vaguely ridiculous and slightly scared.

––––––––

I wonder whether I shoulder upturn my backpack and show the meagre provisions I have got from their ‘PoundKing’. Still, I am very sure that people who fire arrows at strangers would probably be the kind of ones who would take the items and stab you – although this isn’t quite a ‘New Barbarians’ style of monumental tribalism and violence there are some who are quite enjoying the chance to release their inner warrior. In my mind, I picture the perpetrator with a bold Mohican and a sub-human, sloping forehead that keeps a pair of steel toe-capped boots dry in even the most torrential rain.

I’ve turned my zig-zag power walk into an even less aesthetically pleasing jog which never evolves into a full sprint - then another arrow almost strikes me and is clearly from another direction. Two shooters at least. Around the main square of the town, there are numerous collapsed structures and shops that provide adequate shelter to make the act of spotting who the archers are practically impossible. I am also of the mind that the identity of the persons was not that important; it could have been my Auntie Joan and her Bingo friends, and I still wouldn’t feel reassured. This is not the time for detective work. I am, if nothing else, a reasonably athletic male who played Sunday League football for four years. Hence, the run I utilise to avoid impending doom is strong enough the pirouette away from