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find. If I'd had a calendar with me, I would have checked to see if it
was my birthday.
     
    Five minutes later
I had a chicken soup sachet cooking in the pot. The smell was salty and about
as far away from chicken as you could get, but the aroma of warm food was
enough to make my mouth water. I could almost hear my stomach thanking me in
anticipation.
     
    While the soup
simmered I reached into my bag and took out my GPRS. I turned it round in my
hand looking for nicks or scratches, and once I was satisfied there were none I
rotated the screen toward me. It was time to see just how much further I had
left to go. I thought of the detour of the past two days, and I clenched my
jaw. I knew I must have at least four hundred miles left, and I could cover
about twenty five a day if I got my arse in gear. This had been was two whole
days wasted, fifty miles not walked.
     
    I pressed in
the rubber ON button and waited. It usually took a moment and then the screen
turned blue, but now it was completely blank. I left it a few more seconds, but
the tight feeling in my chest made it hard to be patient.
     
    I pressed it
again. And again. This time I pressed the button in deeper, held it in longer.
The screen stayed black.
     
    I ran my
fingers through my hair. If the GPRS was broken, I was absolutely screwed. The
farm was so far away that I would never get there without directions, and though
I'd been told where it was, I had never been there myself. My only link was the
GPRS, into which years ago Clara had programmed the coordinates ready for a
trip that we never got to make.
     
    The idea of the
farm and carving out a life there was a dream, really, because there was no
telling what kind of state it was going to be in. But I had to make it. I owed
it to Clara, because I'd promised I'd get us there once. I promised her that no
matter how run-down it had gotten, we would put the work in and make it our
own; that we’d make a safe home in a world where death stared in from all
sides.
     
    And now the
screen was black. I twisted the unit in my hands again looking for signs of
damage. In my haste I dropped it to the floor. I snatched it up again, held my breath,
and pressed the button.
     
    Nothing.
     
    I stood up. I
put my hands behind my head and paced the room. It was broken, that much I was
sure of, and the chances of getting the parts to fix it, even if I had the
know-how, were slim.
     
    I couldn't
breathe, but I couldn't stay still. Everything was ruined.
     
    The door of the
shack burst open. I snapped my head to the doorway and felt every nerve in my
body fire. Within a second I tensed my muscles ready to snap on anything that
moved toward me.
     
    A thin figure
appeared in the doorway and stepped out of the night. It was Justin. He looked
at me, and then looked at the GPRS on the floor.
     
    "Damn,
that's too bad," he said, his voice hollow, his lips curled into a smile.
     
    That was when I
knew it was him.

 
    Chapter
5
     
    Before I could
even recognise my actions I had stomped across the room. I towered over Justin,
my nostrils flaring as I took big breaths. I knew that he had done something
with the GPRS but I just didn’t know what, and I knew it was going to take
every ounce of my self-control not to beat it out of him.
     
     I wasn’t a
violent man, and he was just a kid, but if he had broken the GPRS then I was
screwed. Stupidly, I didn't know the way to the farm by heart; I relied on the
machine to tell me. I’d once tried to learn the way so that I’d have a back-up
in case the worst happened, but after two days of straining I had to give it
up. I guess my brain just doesn’t work that way. It’s not like I could just ask
someone where it was either; of the two people in the post-infected world who
knew the farm, one of them was dead and I never wanted to see the other again.
     
    I poked a
finger into Justin's chest. His body was so soft that my finger seemed to sink
in, and he took a faltering step back