My Name is Stab

Chapter Fourteen - Barn Life

Susan had decided that we needed to stay in quarantine for a fortnight. That meant two weeks in an unheated barn in the middle of winter. We shuffled round some of the straw bales and used them to make a small room within the barn and our body heat kept this reasonably comfortable. At least we had a regular supply of food and even warm water.

On a couple of the colder nights they even carried across some lumps of metal that had been heated on the fire in the kitchen. We huddled round them for a while and then put them in our sleeping bags as hot-water bottles.

Though they tried to avoid complaining, I could tell that the others weren't happy about the amount of food but there was much more than I was used to and it was well cooked - and we weren't eating people either so I was more than happy.

We weren't allowed to go on duty in 'the trenches': the permanent defensive structures down around the bridge at the bottom of the valley. Susan judged that the chance of infection was too high. We did, however, take over the 'roaming patrols', checking for people trying to sneak in round the back of the farm. James used these patrols as training sessions for me. Though he was not much older than me, he seemed to have taken over command when we moved as a military unit even though there were older and more experienced people in our group. I mean, we even had Sampson with us and he used to be a real soldier but he was more comfortable letting James make the decisions.

So life, for me, was pretty good in the barn.

There was, however, one problem - a huge, black problem. His name was Sampson.

Other people seemed OK to have me around and to respect my need to keep a safe distance from them. Looking back, I suppose my thinking was that, if I didn't get too close to people, they couldn't hurt me by dying.

But Sampson didn't seem to be prepared to accept that sort of relationship with me. He ignored it when I tried to do the cold and distant thing at him and beamed his enormous smile at me whenever he saw me. He would wink at me or pull funny faces whenever I tried to be rude to him. Given the chance, he would always sit next to me though he never tried to touch me or even get too close.

And, no matter how hard I tried to put him off, no matter how rude I was to him, he never stopped being unbearably, relentlessly nice to me.

At last I couldn't take it anymore. He cornered me in the barn one afternoon when the others were out on patrol. He smiled and came and sat down on the straw bale next to me.

"Why do you keep doing this?" I exploded at him.

"Keep doin' what, lil' white girl?"

That was another thing that got on my nerves - he kept calling me that.

"Why do you keep being nice to me?"

"Cos I sees a lil' white girl who don't smile enough."

"Maybe I haven't got any reasons for smiling any more."

"And maybe I want to show you that that's not true."

That was too much. I stormed across to the far corner of the barn and sulked. He didn't follow me. He never did - he was never creepy like that. He didn't even go out of his way to bump into me.

I mean... we were shut up in a barn together. He was always going to have another chance to show me he was happy to see me.

Then I went down with flu. There was, of course, a big panic because everyone assumed I had the plague but I was pretty sure it wasn't all that serious. After one night with a high temperature, I got a bit better and for a couple of days, I just felt a bit grotty. So I retired to my bed - made of a couple of straw bales - curled up in my sleeping bag and felt sorry for myself.

Then Sampson offered to read to me. I wanted to refuse, of course, but I was bored stupid and it was better than just lying there staring at the walls. I don't exactly remember but I probably wasn't very gracious about it and he was probably amused.

He read some silly Terry Pratchett thing. It was probably a kid's book, really, but that was a good thing because Sampson wasn't exactly the world's best reader and, certainly at the time, I wasn't the world's best listener. At first my attention drifted in and out but I eventually got caught up in that stupid story. Before I knew it, he, too, had manage to slip under my guard and I was silently appreciating the silly jokes.

I even had to explain some of them to Sampson. How do I say this kindly? Sampson is a wonderful, warm, caring guy but he's really not the sharpest tool in the box.

And yes, I would say that to his face. In fact I've said that sort of thing to him on more than one occasion. He agreed with me.

When I got better, he and James started the unarmed combat training again. Ashley and Phil joined in too, probably because life in that barn was so boring.

It was during one of those training sessions that I finally cracked. Sampson was holding the dummy for me and I was practicing keeping my balance as I performed the scrotal kicks against a taller opponent.

After running through a series of ten progressively harder kicks, with all the grunts and shouts and things, Samson gave me a toothy grin over the dummy's shoulder and said, "I's glad dat's not me!"

I couldn't help it; I smiled back.