The Border Reiver

by Nick Christofides

  He looked across at his friend, “That is no accident.”

  “It looks like war is here, my friend.”

  “Aye, I thought the paper factory was kids or even the NSO, but it must be rebels…I can see it now…take out the employment centres and the NSO will soon lose support if they can’t provide people with work.”

  “Let’s go into town and see if we can make contact with the rebels, it may be we can help one another…” said Stuart.

  “Agreed,” called Amber with enthusiasm.

  After brief contemplation, Nat nodded, and the three started walking down the hill. Each a few yards apart and in a line, half force of habit, half to spread themselves as a target, just in case.

  By the house, there was an ever-increasing choice of cars. Stuart called out “keys in this one,” Nat nodded and held up the carcasses of the rabbits Stuart had passed to him. He turned towards the barn.

  No sooner had he stepped into the darkness of the barn than he knew. He smelled the tea and the sweet oats of porridge or flapjack. He didn’t flinch with the realisation; he carried on as though it were normal, moving between the farm equipment. It was a route he had trodden a thousand times before to where the rafters of the mezzanine offered him the hooks to hang the kill. He tied the animals from their hind legs to the two thick rusted meat hooks that he presumed had hung meat for centuries.

  He knew the feeling of being watched; and, it wasn’t Esme from beyond the grave. It was the plastic pop in the trees he’d heard the other night; the shots which had killed the two Regime troops who were themselves about to take his own life; the smell of tea and oats in the air. ‘Ghosts don’t need night sights and they certainly don’t need breakfast,’ he thought to himself as he went back to join the others. The only question lingering in his mind was why the ghost had saved his life.

  * * * * *

  The spectre had enjoyed the relative lap of luxury the barn had offered. He had even felt comfortable enough to make himself a brew and eat his beloved flapjack there right where he had slept. As his teeth plunged into the rich oats, the barn had shaken under the seismic waves of the explosion then the boom had hit. He jumped up knocking his brew over in the process; he cursed himself as this was a trail and the reason why he should have left the barn before eating.

  He looked out of the cracks in the barn’s timber cladding and he could see the inferno that was the chipboard factory. He knew the farmer would be stirred by the kerfuffle so he eked his view around in a small slit he had found, his cheek pressed hard against the dusty wood and he waited. Like clockwork, his subject appeared at the edge of the wood. As he watched them begin walking down the hill, his mind found its gear and he turned to his predetermined plan.

  The tea was now spilt, so he stood his cup on the floor and looked up at the metal frames hung from the roof on which the farmer had stored planks of wood. The ghost then reached up and grabbed the end of the wooden planks and athletically he kicked his legs up and over his head and onto the planks where he lay on his front. He then drew his handgun and quietly screwed the silencer onto it and pressed it to the plank next to his head. He lined up the shot so that should someone discover his cup and walk over to pick it up, his bullet would hit his target. He controlled his breathing and waited. Watching, as he always did.

  It was a few minutes before he heard the footsteps at the entrance to the barn. There was no pause as the man weaved his way through the machinery, he hung rabbits almost directly below and then left without inkling there was someone else in the barn. The dark figure left in the barn, silenced weapon at the ready, could not understand. He had highly overestimated the man he was watching: the old farmer had been oblivious to his presence.

  * * * * *

  Nat squeezed into the cramped passenger side of a fifteen-year-old Japanese sports car. His knees pulled up tight to his chest, he looked across at Stuart as if to say ‘great choice!’

  Stuart smiled, turned the key and gunned the accelerator, and they raced down the long drive. As they descended the hill, Nat surveyed his livestock grazing either side of the driveway. The numbers looked right and they all looked healthy at a glance. As they came to the end of his land, the little car vibrated violently over the cattle grid and they sped out into the country road.

  The thick black smoke rose in plumes up into the vast sky and drifted high along the valley creating a menacing darkness to the day. Stuart drove fast; the little car responded well, flying over the undulations of the military road with Hadrian’s Wall snaking along the wild country to their right. Every drop and dip in the road sent Amber’s stomach through her mouth, she felt sick but knew better than to mention it: any mention of slowing the car to Stuart would have the opposite effect. So she sucked it up and concentrated on the horizon.

  It was no time before they all lurched to the right absorbing no insignificant g-force as the little car took a sharp turn without losing speed onto the narrow road leading into Oakwood. Nat’s hand grabbed the dashboard; Amber knew the driving was making her father nervous too, but he would never give his friend the pleasure of asking him to slow down.

  They were about two hundred yards out from Rowell’s driveway where Nat had seen the articulated truck barricading the entrance before. Now there was the familiar blue bus belonging to a local bus company parked at the end of the drive. The bus had rudimentary grills attached to the windows and metal skirts over the wheel arches. They knew this must be NSO. Stuart slowed the car aggressively, Nat’s arm took the strain against the dashboard and Amber pressed tight against her taut seat belt. He cruised past the end of the drive at about ten miles an hour giving them all a chance to assess the situation.

  Rowell’s trailer had been rammed out of the way by a JCB digger, both vehicles now sat dormant on the grass to the side of the drive. In the distance they could see ten to twenty men swarming around the farmhouse which had been set on fire - smoke was billowing out of the first floor. The men around the house were armed and were, on the whole merely watching the blaze unfold. As the view of the house was eclipsed by the NSO bus, three heavily armed men stood in front of it. Their stares were long and hard, their three heads following the car in unison as it slowly passed them by. Their weapons hung across their chests. Nat noted that the beaten up black market weapons had gone; they were carrying shiny new semi-automatic assault rifles. The NSO were getting organised.

  Stuart turned to Nat. “Do we need to go see the factory?” he asked.

  “No, turn around down here. Amber, you stay put. Make sure the car is side-on to them, Stuart.”

  Stuart drifted into the side of the road and then spun the wheel to full lock and the car turned easily. Heading back towards Rowell’s farm, they drifted slowly into the entrance. Nat lowered his window as they pulled into the driveway. He leaned his head out of the window as if to ask what was going on. Two of the guards began walking towards them waving them on and shouting ‘move away’. Nat pretended he couldn’t hear; he gripped the handgun tight as he watched the men approach. He watched the distance decrease with every step making the target larger, the fresh air from the open window doused his face, the adrenaline making the moments feel like slow motion. Like so much of his life recently, these moments of reality were so surreal, no time for thought processes or questions, just actions. Simple, decisive, deadly actions.

  The little car was still rolling slightly. Nat could hear the purr of the engine and the crunch of gravel under the tyres, there was a slight squeak of the breaks as the car pulled to a stop. The man leading the advance raised his gun pointing it at the car as he approached; he was ten feet from the vehicle at this point. Nat was about to raise his weapon against the man when he noticed a wave of recognition. A lightening in the face of realisation, as the guy on the right, grasped the fact that he was face to face with the ‘killer from the hills’.

  The man who recognised Nat did not have a killer’s instinct: rather than pointing his gun at the car and squeezing the trigger
he lurched toward his comrade, grabbing his arm to warn him of the danger. In that instant of distraction, the killer inside Nat took his chance. He raised his handgun out of the open window, firing two rounds into the nearby body mass of the lead guard. As he fell onto his backside, looking at Nat stunned by the brutal reality, the third man came directly into Nat’s angle of fire and he squeezed the trigger again twice.

  This time, he missed with the first shot but hit the man in the cheek bone with the second, the small round ripped through his skull. The man was dead before his head bounced on the gravel with a dull crunch. The guard on the right was left now, he was paralysed with fear trying to click the safety off his weapon but his thumb couldn’t flick the switch. Nat trained his gun on the nameless man and shot him in the chest. He fell backwards until he was sitting slumped on the drive, staring blankly at the car. As the three stepped out of the car, the life drifted from the third man, his lurid figure remained hunched in a sitting position as the last rakish breath passed his blood-soaked lips.

  Nat marched over to the body and kicked it to the ground with a fleeting glance over to Amber, as though a dead body lying down was more palatable than one in a sitting position. He bent down and picked up an assault rifle and handed it to Amber. Stuart had grabbed one for himself and Nat took the third.

  He told Amber to stay by the car and cover their rear, and Nat opened fire on the bus, peppering the wheels and engine compartment with bullets. Stuart had positioned himself at the gates to the house and was taking single shots at the NSO men at the house. They began falling to the ground - one, two, three were down - when the confusion set in.

  At first, the NSO began setting positions directed at the house thinking that shots were coming from that direction. As Nat joined Stuart at the other side of the gate, between them they felled another four before the NSO fighters realised the shots were coming from behind them.

  There must have been twenty men to begin with, now it was closer to ten, and Nat and Stuart had the protection of the ostentatious stone gate posts that Rowell had built. Nat had laughed when he had seen them for the first time, now he rejoiced in their presence as the NSO rounds whizzed and whistled in ricochet off the gaudy stone. Only a few of the enemy dug into positions, the rest ran aimlessly for cover or straight at Nat and Stuart in panic. It was a massacre. Nat counted five NSO still breathing and dug in by the time Stuart was able to attract his attention:

  “What are we doing? We need to get out of here!”

  “I want those dead, what if Rowell is in that house?” Nat responded wild-eyed.

  “Well, we can’t just sit here, there could be others coming! Amber’s back there, think Nat, think!” Stuart shouted over the sporadic fizzing rounds, chaos all around even in such a relatively small fire fight.

  The clang of shots hitting the bus behind them rang in their ears. Nat knew they had to do something; it was only a matter of time before one of the stray bullets was fired true. Nat took the lead, bursting from cover as best he could and leaping behind the trailer which had been barged away from the gates by the NSO.

  He lay on his belly between the rear wheels of the trailer and the corrugated iron sheeting which skirted the length of it. He had a good open view over the gardens in front of the house; he could see only the lower back of an NSO soldier lying flat behind a raised flower bed. He lined up the shot and tapped the trigger twice; the red mist of a hit rose from the target.

  He raised his eye from the sights and scanned the gardens once again. He saw the muzzle flash of a weapon from within the darkness of a small shed to the far left of the garden. Nat’s gun swung the small arc with the accuracy of a machine and he pumped four rounds into the dark space without hesitation. He watched patiently for a few minutes, no response.

  Then he saw a flash of movement, two men running towards the burning house, a desperate attempt to escape this hell. Both bodies dropped to the floor as three shots cracked across the countryside from Stuart's weapon. Now the area went silent of gun shots, their ears were filled with the creaking and snapping of the burning building. The breeze pulled the thick black smoke low over the little theatre of war. At least fourteen bodies lay in the dirt.

  “Psst,” he heard to his left; Stuart had joined him at the trailer and pointed over to the right where a white rag had been tied around the end of a weapon. It was being waved from behind the stone wall that separated the drive and front gardens from the field to the north. Nat looked at his friend, the two men shook their heads, and Nat rested his chin on his rifle for a spell as he pondered the situation.

  After a few moments, he raised his head and shouted, “What you doing boy?”

  Then he pulled the weapon in tight and focussed his eye down the sights on the rag; Stuart scanned the rest of the area for a double cross.

  “We want to surrender. There’s three of us - none wants to fight, please.”

  “You should have thought about that before burning down that farm! Was there anyone in there?”

  “No, no one, I swear,” came the desperate voice from behind the wall.

  “How old are you, boy?”

  “We’re all seventeen.”

  “What are you doing out here?” Nat could hear the boy was not local: his accent was from the Midlands.

  “Conscripts. We finished two months’ training two days ago and we were brought up here - we don’t want to fight you!” the voice cracking with fear.

  “Ok, all three of you take your weapons and turn them so that the barrel, the shooting end, is pointing at your stomach. One hand on the weapon, the other in the air, then walk slowly towards us.” Nat tensed as the three figures appeared from behind the wall. “We have two of you lined up, so no gambling with any sudden movements, two of you would definitely die.”

  In the background, the farmhouse was a raging inferno; Nat was all too aware that they needed to get out of there and he could hear the tuck, tuck, tuck of a choppers rotor blades. It was not the heavy, dull thudding of a military helicopter but, guessing it was a news crew, he wanted to get away before he was beamed across the world again.

  “Get a move on!” he shouted.

  The fearful young men skipped a step as they heard him; trying to walk faster but without making any sudden movements. Nat had no intention of killing these boys; his blood lust was not for innocents. The three young men drew closer, timidly stepping towards the two giants with weapons shouldered and trained on them. Stuart lowered his gun and walked over to them grabbing each of their guns with fast fluid motions, keeping the kids on edge and under control. Once their rifles were safe he checked them for any other useful items, but barring a couple of lighters they had nothing.

  Nat kept his weapon trained on the three men and said, “Keep walking back to town and on home from there; if we see you again we kill you, no questions asked, no second chance.”

  The three young men did not need to be told twice; they walked quickly past Nat and Stuart, past the mangled bus and on past Amber, their speed increasing if anything. Nat watched them as they started out down the narrow country road, they moved in single file, their hands had now dropped and were swinging to aid the pace of their march. The pretty road fell away lazily to the left, the tarmac was an elephant's grey, there were grass ditches to either side thick with brambles. The eastern side of the road was flanked by dense coniferous woodland. To the Western side was a thick hawthorn hedge sitting raised above the ditch on an overgrown grass bank. In the distance, the spire of St John Lee church could be seen rising out of the beautiful ancient trees that gave Oakwood its name. The sun was streaming through the cracks in the clouds and illuminated all before them with a golden glow.

  The three NSO conscripts were a hundred yards away when the three loud cracks reverberated across the fell. Nat and Stuart hit the floor, but the shots were not fired in their direction. As they looked, the boys were falling into the ditch to their right scragged by the brambles. Nat looked into the trees where the shots must
have come from; Amber sat in the small car between him and the trees. Between him and the sniper. Amber looked at him nervously.

  “Get out this side of the car and keep low. Sit on the floor with your back to the vehicle,” he shouted to his daughter as his eyes scanned the woodland for any sign of the sniper. Amber shuffled quickly across the front seats of the idling car and fell out of the passenger side door onto the cold dirt where she lay still.

  The helicopter was overhead now, the rapid repetitive thud of the rotors pulsed sound waves which washed over them from head to toe. The downdraft whipped up dust and debris all around them and the smoke from the house curled in arcs up into the sky.

  The situation was getting worse, they had no idea who or how many people were in the trees beyond their car. To all intents and purposes they were pinned down which was inextricably linking them to the carnage that lay behind them. Something the news crew above them could easily paint as a massacre.

  Amber covered her eyes from the whirlwind, and Stuart looked at Nat, who pointed to the car and got to his feet staying low he ran a curving run to the car. As Nat’s back slapped against the cold metal of the vehicle, he sat next to his daughter. Stuart pushed himself to his feet and followed suit.

  All three were now sitting; backs against the small car looking up at the circling helicopter which suddenly banked to the right and set off back towards Hexham. As the din died down and the dust began to settle, their attention once again turned to the trees on the other side of the car. Both men turned slowly and looked through the car into the thick wall of foliage.