“I’m not sure – could be hours, maybe weeks.”
“Weeks!”
“How do you know all of this.”
“A guy I know is into survival stuff. Calls himself a prepper. I only listened because he’s a good mate, but honestly, I thought he was going a bit loopy and getting himself tangled up with a bunch of tin-hat Doomsdayers.”
“A religious nut, then?”
“No, he’s an atheist. But anyway, turns out it is a bona fide threat. The US take it seriously. They have contingency planning in case of a total blackout. And like I said, Congress set up a special committee to evaluate the threat, so did our government.”
“Do we have contingency planning?”
“If we had, don’t you think we’d know about it?”
“I’ve had no training.”
“You?”
“Nope.”
“Typical! They took no action then.”
“Alright, we’ve established that the government have failed on that score, but we’re coppers not politicians and we’re getting off the point here. We need to deal with what’s happening right now. It’s getting dark, snow is falling and not letting up, and we’ve got no electricity, no heating ...”
“It’s the end of shift in ten minutes.”
This last comment was met with a round of muttered agreement.
“What, so we just leave?”
“There’s nothing to do here. We can’t fill in paperwork in the dark, or respond to calls that aren’t coming in.”
“So, we just go home?”
“You can stay if you want to Al Farad, but what you going to do?” Freestone asked. “Go home. Get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll wake up and the lights will be on, you’ll see.”
A gnawing guilt had settled over Vicky, but PC Freestone was right. There was nothing she could do at the office, she had written her report, and it was long past the end of her shift. With the light fading to dark grey, and snow falling in earnest, she left the station, and made her way back to her flat.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As Vicky unlocked her front door, Gregor ushered Callum through the back door of the two-up, two-down trap house, and walked to the end of the yard.
“Here is good.” Gregor spoke in hushed tones. Callum shivered as snow fell in large flakes settling on the concrete path. He waited for Gregor to continue. “This electro-magnetic pulse ... how long it last?”
Surprised at Gregor’s change in attitude, he said, “I don’t know ... it’s only a theory ... something I heard about.”
“Sure ... but could be true. You are right. No electricity. No mobile. No Wi-Fi. Plane falling out of sky.” He gestured towards the centre of town with a sharp jerk of his head. “Cars not working ... it seems like in film, but ... could be real, so, how long it last?”
“I have no idea, Gregor. Maybe hours, maybe days, weeks, months.” Callum shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“If electricity comes on in few hours, no problem, if few days we will be cold, but if months ...”
“It won’t be that long, I’m sure.”
“At home, when we had war, there was no electricity for many months, only power was from diesel generator. If war is starting here, then we have big problem.”
“Sure, but-”
“People here have nothing for survival. They will become like monsters; killing each other for tin of beans.”
The idea sounded ludicrous. “Sure, but it won’t come to that.”
“Callum, we have nothing here. If what you say is true, then we will be trapped in this town. No food. No heat. Nothing to drink. There is nothing in the cupboards here. Dominic is not domestic. He keeps no food.”
“They get pizzas or Chinese delivered.”
“No take-aways if no electricity. We will starve.
“Then what do we do?”
“I learned many lessons in war. But number one is that to survive you have to be the strong one, maybe the bad one. Only the ones who had food and weapons survived in my town. The strong preyed on the weak; the weak suffered. They were robbed, beaten, raped, tortured.” Gregor swallowed. The evidence of bitter, uncomfortable memories was obvious on his face. “Often, they died.” He glanced at the white flakes falling from the sky. Large clumps of white snow had already spattered his shoulders and gathered as a crown on his cropped head. “We have to prepare for worst.”
“How?”
“It is nearly dark, we go to shops and take what we need: food, clothes, weapons. We have to be first, ahead of others. Also, winter is coming. Is going to be bad. We must find heater that is not electric. Gas heater.”
Callum nodded. They definitely needed a heater, but what Gregor was suggesting sounded like overkill. “Why don’t we just wait until tomorrow—see if the electricity comes back on?”
“Frostie!” he hissed. “You did not listen to me. If electricity does not come back on – if we are at war – then we have to prepare. Today was bombs. Aeroplane falling from sky. No electricity for hours now. No police sirens. No ambulance sirens. Something is very, very wrong.” Callum nodded. “Good, you understand. We go tonight. I suffer in war many years ago. I will not suffer again. You understand?”
Callum was mute in the face of Gregor’s passionate words. It was obvious that they came from a place of deep pain and personal experience, perhaps experience that would explain the scars across the man’s torso. Gregor had never explained the long scars that swept across his chest, stomach, and back, and only admitted that the round depression in his shoulder with its twisted and mottled skin was a bullet hole begrudgingly. No story of how he had come to be injured had ever been offered, and no one had dared to push for one.
The door at the back of the house opened. “Callum,” Anna shouted.
“Come,” Gregor said, pushing ahead of Callum.
“Callum,” she called again. “I think it’s time for me to leave ... it’s starting to get dark.”
Gregor’s fingers closed around Callum’s bicep. “Girls stay here,” he said. “The red one ... she is mine.” After one more step, he said, “You understand?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Good.” Gregor strode ahead, reaching Anna first. “Is too dangerous for you to walk home. You stay here tonight. Gregor will take care of you and sister.” Ignoring her frown, he slipped an arm around her waist and walked her back through to the candlelit living room. “You stay here. Is warm. Me and Frostie—we go into town and find heater and food. Gregor will take care of you and sister. Understand?”
Trapped beneath his intense gaze, Anna simply nodded and sat down as instructed. Gregor certainly had a way of getting people to do as he told them, and women usually conformed to his desires—in the end.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The mission had been accomplished successfully, but failure slid over Jamshid like a pall. The bombs had detonated in quick succession, but the follow up, the strike that was to send an electrical pulse out across the country that would knock out its electrical grid and communications network, had come far too soon. Without means of transport, making their way across town to the docks, their pick-up point, had been a struggle. They had reached the spot at the allotted time with only minutes to spare, but those minutes had dragged to hours as the extraction team failed to arrive.
Now, he stood with Kamran and Mohammed at the dockside shivering as the snow fell and the temperature plummeted, waiting to be picked up. Yousef and Mohsen had so far failed to arrive, and Jamshid suspected that they had become victims of the blasts, probably killed as they attempted to get out of the mall.
The air was thick with cigarette smoke, mingling with their freezing breath as moonlight glimmered on the black water more than two metres below licking at the vertical dockside wall. Feet numb, Jamshid pulled his coat tight, and took another drag on his cigarette before lobbing it into the snow. Its bright orange tip glowed in the dark but quickly died. Its life, like the child in the pram at the mall, extinguished. As Ka
mran had regaled stories of previous bombing missions, and the carnage they had wrought, relishing the detail of the injuries his victims had suffered, the faces of the people at the mall had begun to plague Jamshid: the woman who had sat beside him on the bench and offered him one of her sweets from a paper bag, the child with a bottle full of cola, the young redhead with a bruised face, the heavily pregnant woman who had passed by as he’d accepted the sweet – they were all dead, obliterated by the blast of a bomb he himself had built. Innocent blood was on his hands. He stuffed them further into his pockets and instead forced himself to think of his wife and the life they would share as soon as he returned home. He yearned to sit in their garden with her by his side, enjoying the warmth of the evening after the heat of the day had subdued. She would bring him sweetened coffee and they would both sit watching the stars, dreaming of the house they would build. It would be a secluded house, somewhere out in the mountains, away from the spying eyes of the religious police. They would dance and drink and laugh and make love ...
Kamran cut off his thoughts. “Jamshid! Don’t you think that is right?”
“What?” Pulled out of his daydream he returned to the grim reality of the docks.
“That we must have killed at least one hundred people?”
The faces swam in his memory.
“Blown to pieces,” Mohammed laughed. “Kafir blood has been spilt today. Alhamdulillah”
“Mashallah!”
“And more in the plane! Watching it smash into the side of the mall-”
“Boom!”
The men cackled.
“And more to come. They will all die in this cold.”
“Dirty kafir pigs!”
“Shut up!” Jamshid hissed sickened by their glee.
“Shut up yourself, Jamshid.”
Mohammed eyed him. “This is a glorious moment for the Islamic Republic.”
“It is glory for Allah!”
Bullshit! “Glorious! There’s nothing glorious about blowing babies apart.”
The men watched him closely.
“This is jihad, brother.”
And then Jamshid made his mistake. “Jihad! Fuck jihad!”
Mohammed scowled, his frown deepening. “What did you say?”
In the distance the engine of a motorboat hummed.
Unable to hold back his rage, Jamshid turned on the men. “What kind of men are you? Laughing at slaughtering babies and old women in the name of a bloodthirsty god!”
“What?”
“The devil is in him!”
“Your god, Jamshid. We all fight for Allah. To bring the world under his rule.”
“The only good kafir is a dead kafir, Jamshid.”
And then Kamran made his mistake. “This stinks of heresy! What you are saying goes against the teachings of our great leaders and the teachings of our book.”
In the distance the hum of the motorboat grew louder.
Two pairs of eyes watched him closely. He fingered the hunting knife in his pocket. If his ‘heresy’ was reported then there would be an investigation, his family would come under suspicion, he could be thrown in jail, his wife, her father, his mother, and anyone related to him could be taken away and tortured. And he knew exactly what fate awaited him as soon as he returned to Iran, perhaps even on the ship back home, if Kamran or Mohammed breathed a word of his disbelief.
“He is not a believer!”
“What are you Kamran? Huh? A dirty Christian? A bastard Kurd? A Jew?”
“Maybe he is a Baha’i?” With a show of disgust, Mohammed spat in the snow.
It was too late. Jamshid knew with absolute certainty that his outburst had sealed his fate, and theirs. “They’re here,” he said with a jab in the direction of the sea. In the near distance the angry buzz of an outboard motor could be heard.
Their conversation forgotten, Kamran turned to the direction of the engine, Mohammed stepped to the edge of the dock, and Jamshid moved into action.
The blade glinted in the moonlight as he stabbed Kamran in the back, the tip puncturing his lung as it slipped between his ribs. He withdrew the blade before Kamran had a chance to react then, with a powerful kick, pushed him into the water. Before Kamran hit the water, he jumped behind Mohammed and sliced the knife across his throat. Pulling Mohammed to the ground, he stabbed him once through the heart then rolled him over the edge of the dock. He flailed with incomprehension into the black water.
As the dinghy came into view, and the men began to sink, Jamshid crept into the dark space between two shipping containers, then headed back to town.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sinking back into the raspberry velvet of the sofa placed in her living room to face the now dead television, PC Vicky Al Farad took a sip from the glass of wine she had poured for herself barely sixty seconds after unlocking her front door, and certainly before taking off her woollen hat, coat, and the bag slung across her shoulder. She carried the glass with her to the hallway as she forced her shoes off by the backs, her mother’s shrill reprimand remembered from childhood ringing as a memory. If she could see her using the toes of her shoes to force the back of her heel down whilst taking a large mouthful of wine from an oversized glass, washing up from last night still beside the kitchen sink, she would have given her that disapproving frown she had mastered as the mother of seven children. But today, her mother, may she rest in peace, would just have to forgive her. She glanced at the ceiling, muttering a silent ‘Sorry Mum’, then closed her eyes. The pain behind them was deep; today had been one of the most intense of her life, and her shift at work had officially finished seven hours before she had been able to make her way home.
Exhausted, she had left the torchlit office, realising that she would be more use to the team, and the poor sods whose lives were about to be turned upside down, if she had a decent sleep. She took another sip of wine, enjoying the warm buzz that it brought, and forced herself to recline on the sofa. Laying stiffly and at an awkward angle, she took another sip of wine and almost instantly rose to stand; sitting still was a tough call, one that she had never been particularly good at. Relaxing after the events of the day, even with the wine, felt like an impossible task.
Walking back through to the kitchen to refill her glass, her mind returned to the shopping centre and the redhead groomed by Callum Frost, a member of a notorious gang out of Manchester that had arrived in town last year and quickly established their dominance among the drug pushers. They had a reputation for violence, a brutal leadership, and were suspected of involvement in several murders although, so far, the evidence wasn’t strong enough to push through a prosecution. Police operations extended to observations at this stage and given the suspicions of human trafficking activity beyond the typical movement of children from one town to another to carry out drug-related activities, Vicky agreed that getting the evidence together, and making it stick, was crucial. But watching them groom women and children, and taking no immediate action, was proving to be hard!
The young redhead hadn’t seemed the typical mark the gang targeted. She was a little older for a start, the younger girls with the awful makeup groomed in the minutes before Callum had approached her, were the norm. She was, however, perfectly vulnerable: recently orphaned and scared witless that her sister was going to be forced into care. Vicky regretted approaching the woman whilst they were at the mall; gut instincts had taken over and she had gone against team protocol and acted unilaterally, which meant that not only was Joshua royally pissed off with her, but the girl had bolted too.
Taking another sip of wine, she walked to the living room window. The night was pure, unblemished by light pollution, and only the moon cast light across the town. From her vantage point of the fifth floor of a converted Victorian flour mill she could see the light catching the glassy sea beyond the docks. Her eyes moved along the town’s watery boundary towards 12 Lovett Street, where she was sure that Callum Frost had taken Anna Crofton and her sister Jemima. She took another sip of wi
ne, the second glass now half empty.
The howl of a dog, low and mournful, seeped through the window left on vent. With a shudder, she pulled the window to closed, catching sight of her own face reflected in the glass, ghoulish above the flickering tealight on the sill. Surprised at the middle-aged, wild-eyed woman staring back at her, she smoothed at the halo of hair escaping from her tight ponytail and turned away from the reflection. The dog’s howl continued as a muffled wail. “Bloody dogs!” she muttered before making her way to the bedroom, wine in hand, and prepared herself for bed.
Several hours later she jolted awake from a hyper-realistic dream where Anna Crofton had morphed into Liam Neeson’s daughter in ‘Taken’ shackled to a bed complete with dirty mattress and drug paraphernalia strewn around the room. She sat bolt upright, struggling to discern imagination from reality, and with the need to break down the door at 12 Lovett Street suffusing every cell in her body. Sitting on the side of the bed, head throbbing, she fought the urge to get dressed and make her way to the trap house.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As Vicky struggled with her conscience, Callum followed Jake and Gregor out into the street. Aaron trailed behind, sulking at having to go out into the cold. A deep layer of snow lay across the road and parked cars, and the moon shone bright from a sky studded with stars. With light reflecting from the snow it was far easier to find their way down the street than they had anticipated, and Gregor turned the torchlight off to ‘save battery’. Callum zipped his jacket to closed as a gust of wind pushed icy fingers down his neck. In the distance a dog barked, and another howled in return, the noise crystal clear in the sharp winter’s night.
“Weird, isn’t it,” Aaron said kicking at the snow with his slack stride.
“What—the howling?” Jake asked.
“No, the quiet ... don’t think I’ve ever heard it this quiet.”
Dark Winter Series (Book 1): Dark Winter Page 10