“Rafi,” I said to Dan, just in case he hadn’t realised. In answer to his reaction at seeing our man so mistreated, Ash issued a low snarl as though he was our elected spokesperson.
“I must congratulate you,” the man with the makeshift white flag said in a tone of voice that made my trigger finger twitch, “I expected you to come, but you have done well.”
“Shut your mouth,” Dan snapped at him, “drop your weapons and let him go.”
“I cannot do this,” he answered stiffly, “until you allow me to go.”
“Let him go and then ask,” Dan responded hotly, “you don’t have a choice here.”
“This is where you are wrong,” he said, a smile creeping over his face as he dropped the white cloth from the end of the gun and exposed what he held.
It was my M4, the sight of the faded dappled tan camouflage sending me into a rage. I held my nerve, and if Rafi wasn’t there I would have filled the bastard with holes, but I couldn’t with his life so endangered.
He solved that problem for us, pitching forwards as though overcome with sudden pain as he gasped and whimpered. The gun fell away from his head just long enough to provide a clear shot, and I took it.
I wasn’t the only one, as Dan’s own gun spat a single bullet at the same time. The remaining men raised their weapons uncertainly but didn’t fire. Tomau looked shocked, defeated almost as the panic of losing hit him. Rafi stood, dusted himself off and walked stiffly to stand in front of Tomau.
“Rafi, move!” I yelled. He ignored me.
“The others should go free,” he said, half turning towards me but keeping his eyes on the man, “but this one cannot.”
The five surviving members of his gang of mercenaries backed away, distancing themselves from him as though they understood that their survival depended on disassociation form their leader.
His eyes narrowed, and he began to raise the weapon to Rafi who snatched at the barrel and pushed it down. The two men tussled, pushing and pulling as the others scattered away from the danger of a stray bullet hitting them as Tomau’s finger squeezed the trigger involuntarily to stitch a handful of rounds into the shattered front of the building. Tomau broke free, losing his hold on the gun as he did but whipping his hand to his hip and bringing it back with a pistol gripped firmly. Gunshots rang out and he seemed to dance and pirouette before dropping to the ground almost gracefully. He was done. Dead. And his siege of his country was ended.
Repair, Rebuild, Move On
The surviving five, together with the two groggy prisoners from the tunnel, were given food and water for a day and forced into a vehicle found in the town. They were very clear on what would happen if they were seen again, and their instructions to head back to Spain and not head this way again were taken with a solemn silence. The man emerging as their leader, or at least their appointed speaker, tried to apologise for the actions of the man they had fallen in with. Dan didn’t want to hear it, and he stopped trying to explain. Neil had driven back through the tunnel to return with a strong contingent of others to collect weapons and resources from the town they had been denied access to.
After being searched for anything of use as a weapon, the survivors were sent away and not seen or heard from again.
Carla had asked Dan why he had let them leave, and he turned on her with an anger that she didn’t truly deserve as the last of the adrenaline left him.
“Because I’ve had enough of killing,” he snapped at her. “I’m a protector, not an executioner.”
She backed away, wary of his hostility, but busied herself with taking control of the people and reform them in the image of the future she had been shown by our words.
I sat with Rafi, using my small trauma kit from my vest to clean and dress the worst of his wounds which had already scabbed over. A cut on his head should have been stitched, but the time for that had passed and he would be left with a long scar for the rest of his life. One of the smooth electric cars came back, unnerving me as it made its almost silent and alien progress towards me, and they took him back to the hospital for treatment and rest.
As I watched him being driven away a bark behind me made me turn I bent and slapped my hands onto my thighs to make Nemesis bound forwards towards me as she slunk low to the ground and wagged her tail rapidly. I fussed her, looking up from the direction she came from and saw Lucien approaching with his rifle cradled in his arms like a baby. He reached up and swept the hair off his face, smiling as he stepped close. He opened his mouth to speak, but I silenced him.
I silenced him by wrapping my arm around his neck and pulling him down to me, our equipment clanging together as I kissed him.
“C’etait inattendu mais pas inappreciable,” he murmured, saying something about the kiss being unexpected.
“Shut up,” I told him softly, “thank you, my guardian angel,”
He smiled at me, melting my heart and pressing his nose into mine.
“Ahem,” came a voice from behind us. “Work first, canoodle later,” Dan said sternly.
“Canoodle?” I said. “How old are you again?”
“Piss off,” he said, walking away to hide his smile.
~
Rafi stayed in Andorra, after a week to recuperate with Mateo at his side. Chloe remained also, to assist him in passing on the knowledge and skills to the appointed defenders and show them how to clean and maintain the weapons taken from Tomau’s group.
They closed the southern road securely, blocking it with rocks and vehicles to seal it and allow them to concentrate on their tunnel as though it was the main gate inside their huge, natural walls.
We returned home, our uncomfortable van having made the long journey back around to be loaded with our people. Another van was gifted to us, loaded with produce and dried tobacco much to the delight of Dan. And we went home. Life moved on just as it always did. There were guard shifts to stand, people to train, weapons to clean and fish to catch. There were supply runs to escort, people to keep focused and in line, records to keep and lessons to be learned.
Reaching my own bed after a week on the go I threw down both bags, one ransacked and battered and the other full and new, then stripped my equipment off and fell onto the bed as my dog huffed through her nose as she relaxed beside me.
It struck me that I had visited another country, twice in a week, and I considered the concept of taking a holiday. If nothing had changed, if my life had turned out just as it was expected to, then I would probably be looking at some kind of foreign holiday with my girlfriends the following summer. Drinking and dancing and staying in grotty hotel rooms in some costa-del-cheap resort and coming home exhausted and broke after a week of partying.
I scoffed at my own thoughts, startling Nem into looking up at me before laying her head back down in annoyance.
Who wants that? I thought. Not when I’ve got all of this.
I fell asleep, having only summoned the energy to take my boots off and unfasten my combats, deep in thought and thinking of cleaning my old carbine to remove all trace of the unworthy hands that had held it for a short time.
I didn’t know that the renewed period of peace would last less than three years, that I would be forced back into conflict before I grew restless again, but that was a story I didn’t yet know.
Epilogue
“But what happened to them?” Jack asked, his face wrinkling up at the seemingly unfinished tale. “The ones you let go?”
“I don’t know,” Leah said, leaning forward in her chair, “but they never came here, or to any of our other settlements as far as I know.”
“So they just disappeared?” Peter enquired.
“They just… stopped being our problem,” she told him, “you see, some people are dangerous. Take me for example. I’m dangerous to anyone who would try to threaten us, but am I a good person?”
“Of course you are,” Jack said, almost annoyed. He hated the grey areas in life. “But their leader wasn’t, was he?”
�
��No Jacky-boy,” she said, “I’m not saying he was. But people like him are only a problem when they have others around them to do their dirty work. He needed followers, and without enough people to follow him I doubt he would ever have amounted to much again. If he’d lived, that was.”
“But we’re still friends with Andorra?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied matter-of-factly, “very much so. It’s just that the journey takes a few days now that we don’t use cars any more, and they come to us at the start of every summer with carts of things to trade. They take salted fish and meat back to see them through the winter. They don’t bring much tobacco any more, I think it was just your grandfather who kept that trade going, but we are still friends.”
“And if someone attacked them again?” Peter asked. “Would you go back there?”
“I would,” she said, her expression so genuine that they believed her utterly, “but I’d have to let the younger men and women do any fighting because I’m so old now…”
She waited for their protests about her age to pass, smiling and feeling reassured that they didn’t agree with her.
“But now it’s time for bed,” she said, holding up her hands to ward off the barrage of moans and protests as they always did when she told them a story.
“Tell us another one,” Peter pleaded, “tell us about Steve and the people back in the old country.”
“Another time,” Leah told him. “I’ve still got lots to teach you and right now you need your sleep, so you can grow up big and strong and take over from me and be responsible for everyone here. Just like your grandfather was, and just like I am.”
They rose, stroking Ares and making the dog grumble in response for the last time, before Adalene stood up from the chair she had been listening from to tuck them into bed. Her belly was only just starting to swell now, the child inside her growing strong which explained why she was so sick each morning, and Leah leaned back to smile as she remembered all that she had seen and done in her life, vowing to leave her legacy in the children that came after her.
Children are life, she told herself, and they are our future. Children are all.
~
She didn’t take the usual evening walk around the town, instead she put two extra logs on the fire to give Ares some warmth to sleep beside as he was too tired to follow her to the bedroom. She slipped off her clothes before pulling back the covers and fitting her own body into the contours of the man already half asleep.
“You are freezing,” he complained sleepily, making her press her icy feet into his warm legs and prompt a gasp of shock.
“Stop complaining,” she told Lucien as she kissed her man’s shoulder. Her man. Captain of the town’s defenders and leader of their civilian militia. Father to their daughter. Uncle to the boys he took on so willingly as his own after the passing of their parents, vowing to teach them everything he had learned.
“Sleep,” she said softly, kissing him again, “or I shall tell you a story to send you off to slumber too.”
~
Ares didn’t wake the following morning, having drifted off into a peaceful and well-earned slumber in the night. Leah knew he had gone the second she woke, and a single tear of sadness and regret fell for all the times she would think of him in the years to come.
She carried him, wrapped tightly in a blanket as though he still felt the cold, up the mountain path for as long as she could manage, only then allowing Lucien to bear her burden as she took the two shovels from him. They set him down, the proud, old warrior being shown the reverence he had earned and deserved, and dug the hole in silence near to his four-legged ancestors where she imagined him and Ash, who he had never met, with Nemesis beside them, sitting peacefully on the cliff overlooking the town they had all defended without question or cowardice for their entire lives as they sniffed the evening air, ever watchful for a threat to their people.
They had no words to say, not out loud anyway, but each stayed silent in their thoughts for a while. They returned to the town, barely a word said between them as they descended in peaceful companionship.
And life moved on, filling their minds with new tales of adventure, learning and teaching new skills for the next generation to keep alive and pass down to their own descendants as the years passed.
Sanctuary was no longer a place, no longer stood as just a physical entity or inanimate walls. It was no longer a town that offered them safety in the turmoil of the remains of humanity, but instead it was a people. A concept. A way of life. A model of how to exist with others.
And it was Leah who told the stories which kept that spirit alive for generations to come. They were the chronicles of her extraordinary life. And she had many more to tell.
About the Author
Devon C Ford is from the UK and lives in the Midlands. His career in public services started in his teens and has provided a wealth of experiences, both good and some very bad, which form the basis of the books ideas that cause regular insomnia.
Facebook: @decvoncfordofficial
Twitter: @DevonFordAuthor
Website: www.devoncford.com
The After it Happened series
Set in the UK in the immediate aftermath of a mysterious illness which swept the country and left millions dead, the series follows the trials facing a reluctant hero, Dan, and the group that forms around him.
www.vulpine-press.com/after-it-happened
Andorra_The Leah Chronicles Page 22