I liked that.
I met Adam on the ramparts above the gates on the way back and we talked briefly. He was to be left in charge of the defences in our, in my, absence and was dressed accordingly. He had been quiet recently, having spent most of the winter unwell with a mysterious bug that had affected a dozen people in the town, but the warm weather had revived him enough to regain some fitness. He was still very much the understudy of Mitch and had worked with him for the last few years to train the militia, but took his turn on guard duty as the others did.
I went back down the steps, finding a lot more people gathered in the courtyard and another vehicle behind Neil’s fuel truck. Nemesis bounded over to Ash who, seemingly less alert than his daughter so early in the morning, avoided her attempts to swat at him and turned his head away. Dan nodded at me, dressed in his full battle gear which had evolved just as mine had since we had settled here. He still carried the evil shotgun on his back, but the new vest he wore was a lighter tan than the old one and the elasticated sling the gun sat in was higher. The Walther still sat on the left side, with the front of his vest sprouting ranks of magazine pouches with open tops. A big knife with a pointed metal cone at the end of the hilt sat horizontally across the top of the chest, just as my spare Glock was holstered on my own. An elasticated rank of red shotgun cartridges offered a flash of colour to the scarred man dressed black and tan, and everything about him from the way he dressed to the air of coiled violence that radiated from him spoke volumes.
“Alright, fuckers?” Mitch said gleefully, appearing from behind me with his own individual weapon resting over one shoulder. He carried the same weapon as Dan, as me now I had to remember, only his had the longer barrel and a bulbous addition underneath ahead of the trigger and grip. That addition, trusted in the hands of nobody else, lobbed 40mm bombs. He was dripping with equipment, almost as extravagantly as Dan and me, and between us we looked like a bad Hollywood movie cast. Alita followed him, wearing walking boots and brown trousers of a light material under a polo shirt and a thick body armour, looking every inch the foreign correspondent in a warzone; she just lacked the camera crew following her for the exclusive.
Mitch saw my raised eyebrows at her appearance, unable to comprehend that she was coming when he was so fiercely protective of her.
“Best interpreter we have,” he answered, “and besides, she wouldn’t stay behind. Believe me I tried.” He sighed as though to indicate that the argument was temporarily forgotten, even if he had lost and didn’t quite realise it just yet. He had equipped her with a gun, not surprisingly a Glock as they accounted for almost all of our sidearms, but the resolved look on her face made it clear that she was wearing it on her vest simply to stop Mitch moaning at her.
The militia members arrived at once and hovered near to Mitch who bent down to hand over a duffel bag to them. The two men and one woman took their rifles and handguns before dishing out the charged magazines until they were evenly distributed. They stood ready, as resolved as Alita and trying to appear for everyone to see that they were fearless in spite of their obvious trepidation at being about to head into conflict for the first time.
Two of them had been involved in the battle for Sanctuary and had been at the head of the queue of volunteers when we called for a standing army, however small, to be trained. Both Mitch, Dan and Neil had been badly injured in that desperate fight, and it fell to me to organise the defenders in the wake of the destruction wrought on us.
One man, tall, thin and miserable looking but transformed when he smiled, was named Jean. Beside him, golden hair falling over his forehead in waves over his piercing blue eyes and wearing a permanent look of confident amusement, was Lucien and beside him, Chloe. I smiled at Chloe, my eyes flickering towards Lucien and my cheeks flushed when he turned his smile on me. I pulled out the thigh rig with spare HK417 magazines and handed it to him without a word.
Chloe was ten years older than me, and at first, I didn’t think I liked her. She constantly muttered to those beside her when I was giving instructions and teaching the small classes in the basics, and back then my French was almost non-existent, so I was forced to rely on Polly and Alita and a few others to translate my words. I got the impression that Chloe was constantly undermining me, commenting under her breath on every other point I made, and I was close to losing my temper on more than one occasion. In a rare moment of honesty, I broke down to Alita. I was still only thirteen then and cried because I didn’t think they took me seriously. She hugged me and told me how wrong I was, because Chloe was helping to explain what I was saying to a man beside her.
“She hangs on your every word,” Alita told me, “and I have heard her defending your age to them.”
I changed my opinion completely at that point, spending extra time with her as my French developed over the subsequent years just as her English improved. She had a natural leadership quality which I liked, and despite the age difference she looked up to me and learned easily. It was no doubt that Mitch and Dan saw those qualities in her too, and she was one of the three senior members of the militia who whipped the others into shape when required. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest to see her volunteering ahead of anyone else to be part of the rescue mission.
Rocco had been brought out, his hands now properly secured in handcuffs taken from a French policeman who had ceased to have need of them years before, and he was pushed towards the back of the van lined up behind the fuel truck. It was a sturdy thing, but I knew from having driven it that it was stripped out in the back and completely spartan. With two dogs and six people in the back, it was going to be uncomfortable. Dan saw my eyes lingering on the van and guessed what I was thinking.
“Another reason to set off early,” he said, “is so that we get to Perpignan before the sun gets up too high.”
“Shotgun,” I answered deadpan, hoping that I would actually get away with it.
We gathered around. Mitch and Alita, the three militia fighters, me, Neil and his two apprentice engineers and Mateo hovering silently near the back, and all of us faced Dan.
“We’re getting fuel, we’re picking up the other truck, and we’re going to get our man back.” Murmured agreement met his words, spoken in rough French, which evidently wasn’t enough.
“We’re going to get our man back, and we’re going to put a stop to the bastards who did this to us… let’s do this.”
“En avant!” Chloe shouted, echoing the sentiment as other voices raised in support.
Motion Lotion Part III
Despite feeling pretty pleased with myself for calling shotgun, I grew guiltier with each mile that passed as the others in the back of the van would be getting more and more uncomfortable. It was still fairly good going on the road north after the trading post, as it was well travelled by another, smaller settlement, about fifteen kilometres towards the remnants of the city’s outskirts. Trees hung over the road from both sides, but a kind of tunnel was left down the middle which is what our small convoy stuck to as we made decent progress. We bypassed the gap in the trees ahead to our left where the settlement was; a farm similar to our own sub-district where the surrounding houses in the town had been populated to form a group big enough to evolve their own leadership and routines of society.
I’d been there a few times, in fact I was there for the first meeting back when Polly was still in charge and when the settlement had only just been claimed or started or whatever. They were worried at first, I could see that from their terrified looks at our weapons, and they seemed to prepare to leave when we explained who we were and what territory we controlled. Dan asked why they were packing back up, and when Polly told him that they were scared that they had encroached he waved his hands for them to stop. I remember it well, because he only knew a handful of words and phrases in French at that point and relied on Polly to translate almost all of what he was saying to them as he threw in the words he did know.
He told them that we weren’t there to drive them off
our land, that he wanted them to stay and to visit Sanctuary and to trade goods and food and for people to come and go between the two places as they pleased, that we would provide help and resources to them because they were our neighbours. Their faces told me that everything would be fine, that they were and would always be grateful for the kindness and the offer of friendship.
I had asked Dan about it afterwards, teasing him gently about going soft in his old age, but he explained his logic and made me feel like a fool for not understanding it.
“They’ve moved in on our doorstep,” he said, “there are enough of them to be a nuisance to us if they decided to be hostile, even if they don’t look like being able to offer any real threat. If they see us as their help and protection, then they aren’t likely to decide that we are a threat or a target. I was setting the tone,” he told me in a voice that sounded like the lecture was drawing to a close, “and I think they will be our friends because of it.”
“And what if they try to take what’s ours?” I said, genuinely wanting to know how he would deal with the hand of friendship being bitten.
“Then I’ll kick the shit out of someone,” he answered bluntly, as though no problems had ever existed in the world that he couldn’t solve with action.
They hadn’t, obviously, and there had even been an exchange of people between the new settlement and Sanctuary as some of them were fishermen by trade and we had some with skills that could help them. It became so that there was weekly travel between Sanctuary and Les Vergers, or The Orchards, as they had become known. Whereas the farm produced mainly potatoes and vegetables, The Orchards were in a sun trap and the groves of fruit trees were plentiful and needed no replanting, if not more than a little tender loving care, and their renewed productivity led to the trading post being established at the natural midpoint between the farm, The Orchards and Sanctuary. Refurbished, repaired and staffed by volunteers, the post signified something resembling the next level in rebuilding, at least to me, because it showed that we as a group were expanding and incorporating more people. They weren’t necessarily our people in that they weren’t living under our control, but they were part of our wider group and under our protection. It made me feel that the world was bigger than just our little group, and that made me happy.
Bypassing the road to that settlement, I fixed my eyes back on the road and switched on. It took us another forty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city, which always gave me a prickly feeling of malevolence. We had categorically avoided anything bigger than a small town since, well since forever really. The closest I had come to a city after everything changed back in England was when we got attacked by a pack of wild dogs, which probably had something to do with it. It was bizarre, because we – the gunslingers as Marie called us – were far happier in the dark countryside than we were anywhere near the concrete jungle.
We reached the outskirts and drove straight past the first two fuel stations we found, heading around the long loops of the exit roads to circle back onto a huge hypermarché where the fuel station bearing the same name stood at the far end of the car park. I slipped down from the passenger side, the right-hand seat as the van didn’t come with us from the UK, and hugged the side of the van to the rear doors. They opened as I reached the back and I gave a low whistle to bring Nemesis to my side. Dan mirrored my movements on the opposite side as Ash circled twice and looked up at me before realising that Dan was out to play and bounded straight to his side as the better option.
We fanned out, having already planned and done this with some of the militia, knowing that they would be getting their guns up and creating an inner cordon around the vehicles. Neil and his two helpers were still in there waiting for us to signal them the all-clear. Dan and I jogged forward, eyes up and alert as though the concept of being attacked or ambushed for our vehicles and weapons was a normal thing.
It was, had been for years, but just because it was normal didn’t mean it was right. I hated those kind of people, and as much as hated killing, I kind of felt like it fell to me to stop them hurting other people that couldn’t fight back.
We moved in silence, as much as in that we didn’t need to talk to each other to get the job done; not even to our dogs who were well accustomed to how we worked. Dan stretched out ahead, extending his lead by half a dozen paces to reach the door ahead of me. As we had so much backup, which we didn’t usually have, Dan crashed straight into the door to the fuel station. And bounced back.
As much as I tried to, I couldn’t help myself. I laughed so hard I couldn’t even keep my gun up. He picked himself off the floor, glanced back to where the others were, and his face darkened as he knew that he wouldn’t get away with pretending that hadn’t happened.
“It’s…” I choked, trying to stop myself laughing, “it’s a sli… it’s a sliding door, dickhead.”
I didn’t hear what he mumbled, but the sight of Ash worrying at him as he stood set me off again, like the dog was scared that Dan had been hurt by something, and then back-pedalled a few steps to look up at him confused as he stood. Dan, still grumbling, dropped his gun to hang on the sling and pulled the knife from his vest before jamming it into the crack where the door met the frame. He wiggled the knife, not to try and pry the door open and risk snapping the blade but just to give his fingers enough room to gain some purchase. He set one boot against the frame, the muscles in his arms bunching up and his face turning red as the effort seemed to raise his blood pressure in an attempt to force the door open like he was some kind of organic pneumatic device. The door, even though it tried its best to stay seized firmly shut, creaked open a few inches and allowed Dan to get a firmer grip on the inside. It gave way more and he put his body in the gap and forced it the rest of the way. With an exaggerated breath out, he relaxed and stepped aside for me to enter first as I was fresh. Gun raised, knees bent and my breathing steady I stepped inside as that dank, musty air hit me. I had pulled up the bandana over my mouth before going inside as experience had taught me that I didn’t want to breathe in the stale air of a building that had been sealed up tight for half a decade. The inside was only a small kiosk, not like the larger fuel stations back in England which were small supermarkets most of the time, and the only door led to a small store room and the passageway to the raised desk where the till sat under a layer of dust.
“Clear,” I said softly, getting no answer to the obvious declaration from Dan who still covered the doorway. He went back over to the others, stopping halfway to wave Neil over. I heard the engine start as I scanned my eyes over the shelves which didn’t seem to have been picked over, reaching down for a plastic carrier bag I threw in the cartons of cigarettes as I always did whenever I cleared a new place.
Everything we needed we had in fresh supply, but the cancer sticks he still couldn’t give up were becoming pretty rare.
I went back outside, grabbing a packet of potato snacks and checking the back for a date before it struck me that I only knew it was summer, and I had to drift off deep inside my head to figure out that they were still good for a few more months. I threw in as many packs as the bag could hold and went back to the van to put the bag in the footwell beside my new kit bag. I found Chloe near the back chatting with Mitch and looked around at the other faces.
“Où est Lucien?” I asked, getting my answer in the form of a pointed finger at the large billboard and the ladder running up one of the large support legs. I saw the stationary shape of the sniper doing his job and muttered, “Good,” in French.
It struck me that none of us had really ever sat down with the intention of learning the language, but having to explain everything and mixing English with French just kind of leaked in, like a kind of osmosis.
The sounds of Neil attacking the lock of the refilling pipes reached my ears and my eyes met Dan’s. He nudged his head towards the main shop, a hulking building the size of an aircraft hangar, and I pulled a face and shook my head.
“No time,” I said, meaning that we wo
uld only scratch the surface of a place like that unless we had bigger trucks and the whole day to attack it. He shrugged as though it was nothing.
“I got you something,” I told him, “in the front of the van.”
“Smokes?” he asked, an eyebrow raised in hope. I nodded, and he smiled, happy that someone had thought about him and grateful that he didn’t have to appear self-serving by helping himself to a bad habit while others stood watch. He was funny like that.
Neil had dropped in the long, looped hose through the reservoir pipe and began to spin the steering wheel to pump the fuel. I watched as he turned it with enthusiasm and grew tired after less than a minute. Having shown his apprentices the way, he stood back and breathed hard as his expanding midriff had slowed him over the last few years. He wandered over to us, red-faced and sweating from the brief exertion, and gave his assessment of the time it would take.
“Give them half an hour,” he said, “won’t fill it up, just give us enough to brim the tanks and a couple of the jerrycans for you.”
Dan nodded, his hands going to the pouch on his vest that carried his slowest killing tool, lighting one and leaning his head back to blow a stream of smoke upwards and not in our faces. The others huddled around, eyes aware and conversation hushed as we waited.
Andorra_The Leah Chronicles Page 13