The Border Reiver

by Nick Christofides

  His breath was faster but under control. He sat and looked at the blank white painted wall opposite. It was not white now as the room was dark, but he could see it reflecting the scraps of glow that entered the space. There was silence now, no movement to discern; he heard the occasional crack of sporadic firing from outside and within the building. But it was all outside his microcosm. His backside ached on the concrete floor as his tail bone rested hard on it. He shifted onto one cheek as he contemplated his total lack of a plan. The red mist had undone him - how could he really think that he could enter the building on his own and survive? He looked to the front door and immediately went off the idea of running the gauntlet of ‘friendly fire’ as he exited the building and NSO shots at his rear.

  Thinking of Esme's smile, he was at peace with death as he sat in the silence, his weapon resting vertical between his legs, his forehead leaning against the hot metal of the barrel. The pain of her loss was unbearable in the moments of calm and solitude; it would be a mercy to be released from his grief. Then he thought of Amber and his stomach turned, she was only eighteen.

  The doors behind the desk opened with a slight metallic creak of the hinges and the squeal of wood against wood on the floor. Then he heard the soft steps of a number of men stepping into the room with their weapons leading the way and their eyes firmly down the sights.

  He sat with his head lowered as eight men rounded the desk with their weapons trained on his head and body. They had torches mounted on their guns and his sight was compromised by the lights shining directly in his face. He kept his head down, figuring that either someone would kill him. Or, they wouldn't. Yet.

  * * * * *

  “Looks like he's had enough,” said one of Truter’s soldiers as the South African joined them in the hall with Bell slumped on the floor in front of the desk. Truter was not as quick to write the old farmer off, so he kept behind his troops and their blinding torches, safer for him to be unseen, but not unheard,

  “If I had known then what a pain in the arse you would become, Bell, I would have tortured your wife. As well as let those dogs rape her; they were horrible boys those - poor woman. You should have been there, Bell.”

  As he heard Truter's accent, the farmer's head rose, his white hair and teeth glowing in the bright lights. His sweating brow wrinkled around those cobalt eyes. Every man with a weapon trained on him tensed as his eyes blinked in the blinding beams of the torches. The farmer didn't speak; he simply grimaced into the light, and searched it for his prey.

  Truter opened his mouth to give the order to shoot the cornered man when a deafening clap resonated through the building; the sound was enough to drop the men to their knees. Then an instant passed before flame leapt from the doors behind the desk and a wave of energy carried debris, bricks, and the rafters’ steel beams through the air towards the men. The ceiling collapsed and no sooner had dust filled their lungs than the weight of the building was upon them.

  * * * * *

  Nat stuck fast to the desk as hell broke free above him. The explosion tore at the solid wooden structure, but it held and for the most part protected him. As the ceiling came down he got on his hands and knees, covered his head and pulled in tight along the bottom of the desk. The joists of the ceiling came down in one and lay across the desk sloping down to the floor, saving Nat’s life as he nestled in the suffocating dust of his lucky capsule. His face and mouth and nostrils were caked in masonry obliterated by the blast. He tried to wipe it away and take a lung full of air, but it felt as though he was inhaling cement. He choked violently as he pulled a rag from the t-shirt he was wearing under his coat and tied it over his mouth and nose.

  He crawled through the rubble and squeezed between the fallen ceiling joists and desk, as he stood in the glowing dust ridden space he saw nothing but carnage in front of him. His mind registered the destruction, the earth shook again and another deafening boom dropped him to his knees. As he began to get up again another explosion shook the world; Hexham was being flattened by artillery. The gauntlet thrown down by the rebels had been taken up by the NSO in no half measure. War was upon them and the farmer realised he was in the eye of the storm. That, however, was not enough to make him run just yet. He checked his weapon and moved through the rubble. He saw some of the NSO troops - mangled bodies, arms and legs sticking out of the rubble. There was only one in which he was interested: the South African.

  The heavy dust born of the demolished building and pulverised masonry was thick in the air and the flames that roared from the impact zone created ample currents within the air to keep the particles airborne. The same flames gave off a flickering orange glow which provided Nat some sort of vision in the confusion. The stench of burning materials and flesh hung heavy in the air. Nat was thankful that he could see the dawn sky when he looked up as he feared he would have asphyxiated by now had the explosion not taken the roof off the building.

  He climbed through the rubble as it tore at his limbs; the splintered timbers were the claws of mythical beasts and the rubble the knuckles of giants beating at some part of his body with every step. He could see the white painted wall he had stared at earlier. Now it was mostly a Jackson Pollock of charcoal black, dusty brown and bloody red. But it was the same wall that the South African had been standing in front of so if he were alive that is where he would be.

  Nat found him unconscious but alive. His skin was caked in the thick dust, he had a gash on his skull and his leg had been badly crushed. Nat grabbed the back of his black jacket and pulled hard, tearing his leg away from the rubble that pinned him down. Truter came to immediately screaming out in pain as the bloody mass of his leg came free, his arms flailing at Nat’s grip in a futile attempt to fight. As they reached some relatively bare ground, Nat threw the man against the same white painted wall; Truter slumped against it, his eyes shone in the orange light. He looked up at Nat; the fear reduced his years, Nat could see him as a little boy now, innocent and vulnerable.

  “Those weren't the eyes that looked at my wife when you had your fucking hands on her. When you took everything she had and replaced it with filth and misery, and then you left her to bleed.”

  “I...I...” he attempted, but stopped as Nat, a face as harsh as the north wind, lowered himself down onto his haunches and drew his hunting knife.

  Those sapphire eyes connected by an invisible force to Truter’s. Puncturing deep into those fear-filled orbs, he swamped the injured man's mind. Without a word and without wavering eye contact Nat raised his hunting knife high above his head. Truter screamed and covered his eyes with his forearms. Nat shouted over the din of pulverising mortars.

  “Look at me! Look at the fucking man whose wife you killed.”

  Truter’s arms came away from his head, palms up pleading for mercy. As their eyes connected once again, Nat brought the blade down hard on the South Africans leg as though he were stabbing the knife into a block of wood. The steel split the knee cap and tore through ligament and skin before hitting the concrete floor. Truter screamed again in agony and clenched his knee with his hands, one already in a plaster cast from his broken arm. He sat up as he grabbed his knee and Nat grabbed his head as it came close to his. He held it between hand and forearm and brought it in tight so Truter’s ear was next to his mouth,

  “You won't be walking anywhere now.”

  As he spoke he held the man close and pulled the knife from his knee, Truter screamed once more. Then Nat whispered in his ear again.

  “You know my wife was still alive when I got back.” He drove the blade deep into Truter’s stomach.

  “She was drowning on the blood which was entering her lungs, caused by the bullet which hit her back.”

  He now rested Truter back against the wall and those sapphires found the South African’s soul again.

  “You even shot her in the back - was that before or after you raped her?”

  He spat the words in the dying man's face as he watched the blood rise up into his mouth. He w
atched the uncontrollable fear in his eyes dull to a fading grey. Truter;s vision diminished, tunnelled, soon to be left with just a white light that Nat would wait and make sure he went towards and through.

  Truter writhed in agony as his bile mixed with blood and burned his insides. Even with access to the best medical teams there was no saving him from such a severe knife wound to the stomach. But that did not mean that he would bleed out quickly; Nat crouched next to the South African for eternal minutes.

  At first he begged Nat to finish him off, but Nat told him to look into his eyes and see the man that would make him suffer to the end. Then he tried to move but Nat pinned him to the wall. Then he screamed and spat and cried. Then he fainted. Nat slapped his face until he came around but now much more subdued, and as the breaths became shallower, faster, Nat knew he was on the way out, he couldn't feel the pain anymore. Reality would be a blur of consciousness with little lucidity. So the farmer stood, wiped his bloody knife on Truter’s blood-soaked clothes, and turned towards the entrance of the building.

  Leaving the last of the men who murdered his wife to die and burn in the belly of the police station.

  * * * * *

  General Beeston stood on the ridge south of town admiring the carnage he had caused. Although he understood all too well that had the rebels carried on attacking up the hill through the night he may well have been routed. Victories are won on small margins and, as he watched with marvel the carnage that lay before him, he knew how close he had come to ruin.

  It was a crisp morning. Flames leapt from piles of rubble along the centre and southern reaches of Hexham where the rebel army had paused its advance. The buildings were flattened - it was unrecognisable - and Beaston was certain that the rebel army was decimated. His phone rang:

  “General Beaston, it’s Ben Baines. How are you getting on up there?”

  “I think we've finished this little uprising already, but the troops will be entering the town shortly so consider the mission a success.”

  “And the farmer?”

  “Which farmer? They're all farmers.”

  “Bell. The one that's been in the news...”

  “I have no idea. We've just pulverised the town with artillery - he could be lying in there waiting for us or he could be an unrecognisable jam, who knows!”

  “Well, you better put it on your list, I want a body; you get me proof that that bastard is dead or you hunt him down and bring him in. You hear me?” Baines lost his usual calm, his charisma dissipated, and Beaston was left listening to the bare bones of desperation and anguish.

  “I'll get him for you, sir.”

  “I'll be waiting...” replied Baines as he hung up.

  As Beaston looked out over the devastation he had caused, he mumbled to himself ironically, “Thank you, General Beaston, for solving our problems up north.”

  As he spoke, he turned and walked casually back to his vehicle. Climbing into the RV, he picked up the radio and ordered the troops to enter the town. He explained that their mission was clearance of all rebels by whatever means and their primary target was the recovery of the body of Nat Bell: dead or alive. He climbed back down from the vehicle and counted the minutes. Eight had passed in eerie silence before the crack of high-velocity rifles signalled the snipers opening fire on rebel positions. It was fifteen minutes before the heavy diesel engines could be heard thundering into the ruins of Hexham. The sporadic rapid fire of his troops clearing buildings drifted up the valley sides like the thick black smoke from the bombing.

  Beaston knew that the slaughter of innocents was occurring, but he also understood that the theatre of war was hell and a 'humanitarian' conflict was impossible. He had experienced the enemy taking advantage of the passive population in so many conflicts that even when ordered otherwise his armies treated everyone in the conflict zone as the enemy. Something successive governments had turned a blind eye towards in preference of getting the job done. The NSO were no different; in fact, they encouraged his hard line.

  * * * * *

  Nat squeezed his way through the rubble and out into the bright morning. He found himself standing on the steps of the police station; he stood up to his full height and took in the scene. In that single moment, it dawned on him: the futility of war. Conflict was ever escalating destruction which inherently starts to enslave the defeated. It had no place in the natural order of the world.

  As his eyes ripped right to left across the devastation, the deep wrinkles in his skin hardened and his gritted jaw fell slightly ajar. The town he had known all his life was gone; to his right the terrace of houses had been levelled, burning debris piled high in their place. In front of him, a lone facia remained standing but everything behind it had gone and the same hell stretched off to his left. Where his view had previously been four-storey terraced houses from the station steps, he could now see over the piles of rubble and onto Hexham Abbey half a mile to the North East. As his brain acclimatised to this new topographical reality, the details began to pounce like demons from the wreckage: the gruesome hand lying on the tarmac at the foot of the steps; the old lady staggering aimlessly through the carnage, covered head to foot in a coagulating mass of blood and masonry dust; the countless bodies strewn in the street.

  His feet were stuck to the hard concrete and his lungs felt like they were filling with a fine porridge as he inhaled the dust and smoke that hung thick in the air. Unconsciously, he moved to run his fingers through his hair, but he could not push them through the matted mass. He was covered in the thick white dust from head to toe, as much a ghoul as the old lady who still wandered from nowhere to nowhere.

  After long minutes of horrified awe, Nat recovered his composure and forced his legs to move. He knew all too well that after the area was flattened the troops would flood in to secure the NSO victory. He had to move north, quickly.

  SIXTEEN

  He measured and staggered through the rubble and death that blocked his path. He was heading the same way out of town as that which he had entered. The going was just as difficult now; instead of the wall of gunfire, he now had bodies and mangled cars and crumbled buildings lying in his path.

  It was not the death which disturbed him most but the fact that every other face intact enough to recognise was someone that he knew. And his horror was that the next one would be Amber’s. He hoped to God that they had escaped before the bombing and that he would meet them back at the farm.

  Thick smoke wafted across the scene every so often, blanketing his view with a hellish acerbic blackness. As one such cloud cleared, his boot caught on some jagged brickwork lying in the middle of the road. He struggled to maintain his footing. His hands went down towards the ground where he saw a shock of auburn curls matted and spilling from a pile of rubble that banked steeply up to his right. He caught his breath as shock paralysed his muscles. Then he fell to his knees and began to rip the debris away to find the head that belonged to the locks of hair and the confirmation that his daughter had been killed as well.

  As his hand touched the back of a bloody scalp, a bullet whistled passed his nose and thudded into the masonry to his left. The velocity and size of the snipers round told him that the well-armed NSO troops were closing in, and fast. He rested his hand on his daughter's head for a short moment, then he was gone.

  With agility and speed he traversed the rubble, putting the pile between himself and the approaching force. He found himself at the top of Westbourne Grove, a small steep road which would take him down the valley side onto the flood plain of the river Tyne. Then into the industrial sector of the town where he would be able to find a vehicle in one of the many garages there.

  He jogged down the middle of the street. He was not alone; there were other rebel survivors beating the same retreat, many wounded, others shell-shocked and crazy with the chaos. Nat was once more as focussed as a thrown stone, his heart was now destroyed and his trajectory was already being calculated as his heavy feet stamped down the hard concrete.

/>   He heard the crack of small arms fire behind him; he realised the army was already coming down the hill, killing whoever stood before them. His heart pounded and his lungs burned as his legs kept pace with the incline of the hill. He had not run so fast in years, but the swarm of troops was too close for comfort. Just out of sight up the hill but he could hear rounds whistling through the morning air, and he could feel the Reaper walking by his side.

  As he ran, his eyes darted left and right for an escape or at least a place to hide. Where road began to level, he was hit from behind the impact knocked him off his feet, and he could not catch his breath as his shoulder and chest began to burn. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, and spat blood on the tarmac and coughed to find air. Then he was hit again, this time through his calf. His leg felt utterly useless and he had to fight the shock as his brain told his body to give up. He felt the warm sticky ooze flowing freely from his chest, about four inches above and to the left of his heart. He wondered whether the round had passed through his lung. He wondered whether he would live for more than a minute.

  He heard shouts, whoops, and barbaric cheers as he balanced on his hands and knees. He looked up the street and saw the soldiers running towards him.

  The farmer heaved himself up and ducking across the street, he fell over the wall which dropped him back into the stream from which he had pulled himself a few days earlier. The Cockshaw Burn went underground again after about twenty yards. As Nat disappeared into the shadows, the NSO guards hit the wall above him and sent a couple of shots after him but none were keen enough to jump into the icy water also. He dragged himself through the dark tunnel, fighting his desire to rest with every movement.