Rebellion: After It Happened Book 6

by Devon Ford

  The windowless circular room with impossibly thick, stone walls and a heavy wooden door was the powder magazine for the gatehouse and would have served the cannon defending the approach. There was no better place to store the arms they had recovered, either practically or metaphorically.

  Instructing everyone to get some food and rest, thanking them for their efforts, he asked for three volunteers to remove the vehicles from blocking the gatehouse and walk back; the return journey they had made that morning.

  Leah offered herself, obviously itching to get outside where she could find some form of danger to prove herself against. Dan asked her instead to take Ash and feed him. Any normal teenager may have argued with him, or at least made her displeasure well known, but Leah simply regarded his expression for a second before deciding that he clearly had other ‘volunteers’ in mind for a reason. Walking away with a small nod she patted his body armour affectionately as she passed, clicking her fingers for the dog’s attention.

  Scanning the group, his eyes rested on Olivier. His fixed gaze, conveying no malice but simple expectation, gained the result he wanted.

  “I will go,” he said, with obvious reluctance.

  Two others volunteered themselves, a man and woman who appeared to be a couple. Mitch caught Dan’s eye and shot him a look of concern. Dan knew what he meant, but wouldn’t entertain a warning of going outside at night with three of ‘them’ and none of ‘us’ to back him up. Not even his dog.

  Dan intended this, partly to offer a display of vulnerability to his allies, but mostly to show that he trusted them. He wasn’t one to accept the offer of a bodyguard on a bad day, let alone now.

  A guard was placed on the door, Adam teaming up with a young Frenchman and trying to communicate with a bizarre hybrid of speaking slowly and pointing, to keep the newly amassed arsenal safe from causal interest. As he prepared to leave, Dan noticed that Mitch took a significantly larger bag to his room than he had brought with him that morning.

  Kid in a sweet shop, he thought to himself with a smile.

  Leading his small group back to the large hanger-type building where the vehicles were to be stored, Dan drove the awkward and ungainly French military transport truck, it’s six wheels making easy but slow progress on the rutted tracks which used to be roads. Checking his mirrors to ensure that three sets of sidelights were snaking along behind him, Dan’s attention was grabbed by the dials and switches on the upper section of the cab. Never having been a radio expert, he ignored its presence and concentrated on the road as he reminded himself to ask someone smarter than himself to check it out.

  The vehicles were stored without any fuss and in relative silence, and the careful walk back in the dark began. Luckily the moon was high and bright, shooting a wavering line along the rippling water out to sea. Dan wished he could have had Ash with him, his superhero level sense of smell and hearing always reassured Dan in the dark, but he knew with absolute certainty that the dog would not allow Olivier close enough to him without inspiring fear in the diminutive Frenchman, so he had insisted he stayed behind.

  Now, feeling slightly under-equipped, Olivier made his move.

  “We did a good job today, no?” he asked in English, the flash of white teeth reflecting the moonlight betraying the faked smile he wore.

  “We did very well,” Dan agreed, speaking slowly to assist his understanding; too often he was accused of mumbling and didn’t want the language barrier to be worsened for this conversation.

  A silence hung for a dozen strides, their footfalls in sync but with Olivier taking uncomfortably longer paces to match the taller Englishman. Dan kept this pace intentionally, forcing a subconscious superiority on the man.

  “Have you been to war, Olivier?” Dan asked simply.

  A pause of three paces, before he replied, “Yes and no.”

  “Meaning you went to war but never fought?” Dan enquired, prompting another three step delay.

  “Yes,” he said, shame and embarrassment heavy in his voice.

  Dan let the answer swirl around his head, as though savouring an expensive drink in his mouth. Behind him he could hear the muffled conversation between the others.

  “Why did you tell people you were a soldier?” Dan asked him, again the simplicity of his questions carried the brutality of truth. Olivier wanted to protest, to say that he had been a soldier, even if he lied about having seen action. His shame stung his eyes, and he realised that he had thought so long he had forgotten to answer.

  “To be more…” he struggled over the word, “…better?” he tried.

  “To look good to the others?” Dan asked, keeping his rising anger in check more easily than he had expected given Olivier’s disarming honesty.

  “Yes,” came the simple answer.

  Dan paused, maintaining his pace which Olivier had to take extra skipping steps to match.

  “You won’t be guarding the gate any more. You’ll be putting everyone in danger,” Dan said. It wasn’t a question, or even an instruction. He was simply stating fact. He expected Olivier to argue, but instead the man surprised him.

  “Send me to the fort. I can be better there,” he pleaded.

  Dan suspected he meant that he could be useful as another defender in the sky fort, and that would also mean that Dan would barely see the man as the stone steps were not something anyone wanted to take as a daily commute. He hadn’t thought of this as an option, but he saw no downsides to the suggestion.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said, allowing the smaller man to drop behind and walk at a more sustainable pace.

  Guessing he was maybe twenty metres out in front, Dan muttered to himself, “I’ve you have any balls, little man, now is the time to shoot me in the back.”

  No shot came, instead the ground dropped away steeply into the approach to Sanctuary, where he walked through the gates, climbed the steps and slept soundly in his own bed.

  ~

  The night’s sleep was short, as most people were eager to see the results of the previous day’s efforts. So many people were milling around to see what exciting treats were in store that Dan had to hand pick a team to help and send everyone else away as politely as possible.

  Mitch went to work sorting and storing the HK416 assault rifles, creating stockpiles of different parts and interchangeable barrels. As he worked, he kept small sections clear for what seemed to be a personal project. Any interruption to his thought process was greeted by grunts and a dismissive wave, usually followed by some swearing.

  Dan organised one of the .50cal heavy machine guns to be carried up the spiral stairs to the walkway above the gate, taking three people to safely manhandle the beast of a gun without damaging it. Neil, flanked by what seemed to be his French counterpart and understudy, sorted out the necessary tools and fixings they would need to secure the thing in place and hope that it didn’t shake itself loose. He said as much to Neil, who returned a big grin in his direction.

  “Remember Thunderbird 2?” he said.

  “How could I forget?!” Dan answered, and, how could he? The big machine gun – although still far smaller than the ones they now had in their possession – had been mounted into the back of a Land Rover and used twice to devastating and deadly effect.

  “Rubber mounts,” Neil declared, oblivious to the fact that nobody had subtitles to his thought process. “Mike developed them, remember? They took the shaking and absorbed it so the fixings weren’t ripped out of the metal.”

  “Rubber mounts,” Dan agreed before adding, “Scotty, make it so.” and walking away to leave this project in Neil’s capable hands.

  Ignoring the fact that Dan had murdered two Star Trek references into one, Neil shouted a reply to his friend’s back.

  “Ah cannae do it, Captain! She does’ne have the power!” he called in his best Scottish approximation.

  Smiling, Dan skipped down the stone steps with ease, almost colliding with Leah at the base.

  She was heavily laden with two
large skeletal rifles, almost as big as she had been when he first found her, and a bag which the sight of the straining strap over her slim shoulder made Dan guess was loaded with ammunition.

  The rifles were the HK417, so the ammunition would have to be the heavier 7.62 than the rounds she carried for her M4. Her own vest would be unlikely to stop two of these projectiles, but he didn’t think she needed to know; not to protect her youthful innocence, but more that he was certain she knew the capability of the rounds used, having fired them at people herself with lethal effect.

  “Who are we putting in the tower?” she asked, evidently having allocated herself as the person organising snipers.

  “No idea yet,” Dan answered honestly; the best shots he knew at distance were himself, Mitch and Leah and he knew he couldn’t do without any of them for an extended period. “Someone local if they can shoot well enough and stay awake.”

  “Roger,” she said, turning and walking away, no doubt to seek out someone qualified. Continuing down to the makeshift armoury he was greeted by a kneeling Mitch holding out a gleaming new rifle to him under a big smile.

  “To replace the one you lost,” he announced simply before adding with a smirk, “not that you could hit a barn door with it.”

  Dan ignored the goading slight, mostly as he knew it was complete rubbish, and regarded the gun offered to him as he took it.

  To him, although this would probably have been a very strange concept to anyone from their old lives, it was beautiful. The shortened 10-inch barrel sprouted a fat suppressor from the end, whilst an angled grip sat neatly underneath with a torch mounted on the left side. Dan felt with his left hand and saw that Mitch had placed it just right so his left thumb could flick up to engage the powerful LED beam. On the top sat a similar configuration to his old gun, in that a small telescopic sight could be flipped to the side to reveal a clear optic with a single red dot in the middle, enabling him to shoot both at mid-range and up close and personal. The short barrel meant it could be used in confined spaces where he would normally have had to resort to his sidearm or the brutal shotgun.

  Turning it over in his hands, marvelling at the lightweight yet balanced feel of the gun, he looked back to Mitch with genuine thanks. Lost for words, he merely nodded his satisfaction which pleased the soldier.

  “This bugger’s mine!” Mitch said with relish, climbing to his feet and lifting a longer version of the gun up for inspection. It was almost identical to Dan’s, although the added few inches of barrel made the gun look far more deadly somehow but the item that caught Dan’s attention was there in place of the angled foregrip of his own. It was a different shade of black metal, and somehow looked older than the rest of the gun, but its purpose was unmistakable.

  “Expecting trouble, Herr Schwarzenegger?” Dan asked him with raised eyebrows.

  “Oh!” Mitch said in mock indignation clutching one hand to his chest as though Dan had wounded him. “You think my new grenade launcher is excessive?”

  They both laughed and Dan slapped a hand onto the man’s shoulder with an accompanying good-natured insult. If anyone knew how best to use their limited supply of the small, flying bombs that thing could fire, then he had the utmost faith in Mitch’s abilities. He had never fired one personally, or even seen one fired for that matter, but he knew enough to realise that the destructive power of that one man’s rifle alone would be devastating.

  “Just you!” Dan said, making it clear that he didn’t want just anyone lobbing 40mm grenades around the town.

  “Yes boss,” Mitch answered, turning back to his duties of sorting out the remainder of the armoury and preparing to equip a militia if and when the need arose.

  Turning away he had that familiar feeling of having set the wheels of a plan in motion and now found himself at a loss for gainful employment. Everyone was working, doing the tasks he had delegated under specific supervision, and now he was not immediately required. As he always did in these moments, he found somewhere to light a cigarette and take a brief pause to fill the time. Wandering back up the stone steps he saw that the mounting of the huge machine gun was well underway and needed no input from him, so he stood a way off and enjoyed the solitary smoke as Neil encouraged, cajoled and generally yelled and pointed his way through the process. Dan had yet to fix a sling for his new weapon, so he rested it, barrel pointing upwards, against the stone wall as he watched Neil’s team drill holes in the ancient stone and carefully pour in a concrete mix to embed the heavy metal mounts. Dan knew he would then somehow attach the thick rubber mounts he spoke of to cushion the violent vibration of the big gun, and that would serve to keep it safely in place.

  Taking a final drag and squeezing the filter of his unfamiliar tasting French cigarette between thumb and forefinger before flicking away over the wall, he turned and saw Marie approaching, flanked by a few others including Kate and Polly. The former watched his pregnant woman out of the corner of her eye, wary of the uneven footing and her delicate condition, and the latter smiled at something Neil was shouting in an appalling French accent which sounded more like an impression than a literal translation.

  “Report!” Marie barked at the father of her unborn child in mockery of his old, old life. Catching on to the joke immediately, Dan snapped to attention.

  “Ma’am,” he said, snapping off a crisp salute with his eyes facing resolutely forward. “Gun emplacement underway, small arms are being organised and sniper arrangement for the watchtower has been delegated to junior ranks. Ma’am,” he finished, relaxing to the collection of amused grins at the couple’s interaction.

  The matriarchal parade had collective faith in Dan and the others to organise the specifics of their defence, but the unsaid fact remained that no fighter is effective for more than a few hours without a support network. Dan mused on this to himself as the others talked, half listening to them, and tried to recall the statistics he had been taught so many years ago. It was something along the lines of; having one fighting soldier at the front line required ten others in supporting roles. That fighter had to be fed, had to be armed and equipped, had to have somewhere to be fixed up if he was hurt, had to have someone able to organise getting him home if needed, had to have people maintaining the radio sets he relied upon for real time information, and needed others to provide that up to date intelligence. Something he thought of stung a memory he couldn’t quite place – couldn’t recall if it was something in his subconscious from before or after the fall of the modern world. Just as quickly, he was snapped out of his reverie by the sound of his name.

  “Sorry?” he said, looking at the assembled faces all staring at him.

  “I asked if you had chance to speak to Olivier?” Polly enquired again, a placatory look of hope on her face.

  “Yes,” Dan answered, the conversation from the previous night returning to him easily, “and I’ve agreed he can move up to the fort as he’s asked. I haven’t told him yet.” He looked around, for the first time mindful that he hadn’t seen the man since they had returned by moonlight the previous night.

  The response seemed to satisfy Polly, who exchanged a brief look with Marie. No doubt the two women had already discussed this, and he suspected, had he not provided the correct answer, then he assumed he would have had his mind changed for him.

  Leah reappeared without her previous burden of heavy weaponry, and Dan waved her over to spare him having to talk to too many people – the thought still lingered at the back of his mind and knew it would stay there, lurking, if he couldn’t concentrate on whatever it was that had nudged his subconscious.

  “Leah, you might want to ask Polly about the personnel you need,” he said, waiting for the penny to drop and then walking away with a gentle touch of Marie’s elbow as the teenager launched into her requirements for a vigilant person who could shoot a rifle.

  Marie walked with him and, a few paces away from the conversation, turned to face her.

  “How are you feeling now?” he asked, as the last
time he had seen her this morning was when she was repelling her breakfast.

  “Better,” she said, “hungry now though! I thought the bloody morning sickness was supposed to pass?”

  Dan had no answer for that; Marie had suffered daily from shortly after they had arrived at Sanctuary and the morning routine of vomiting hadn’t abated since. She was maybe eight weeks away from giving birth and now the medication she was being given didn’t help things. The blood thinners caused her to feel nauseous and dizzy, and combined with livid bruising from the slightest of knocks, she also suffered from bleeding gums every time she cleaned her teeth. She often joked about him loving her even though she looked awful, and he would always deftly deflect her goading. As a result of her frailty, Kate took it upon herself to either watch her personally, or have someone with her at all times. Their erstwhile paramedic was initially against the theory of using such aggressive medication on an otherwise healthy woman, even more so that she was pregnant, but eventually agreed that it was the only course of action available given the circumstances. She had studied the results of the town’s only woman to have had a baby born alive, and agreed that, although unorthodox, there was no other way to ensure Marie and Dan’s baby survived.

  Dan knew that Marie was putting on a brave exterior, but deeper down he knew that, more than the sickness, she felt impotent and useless. She was weak, she tired easily, and she suffered bouts of confusion which dulled her sharpest weapon; her intellect. Finally, and reluctantly, she allowed herself to be cared for and although Dan’s absence sometimes upset her, she knew that he was doing what he did best to ensure her – and their baby’s – survival.