The big man laughed, ‘And how about you preacher? You got any fighting talk in you?’
‘I’ll play no part in killing a preacher Will.’ Warned the man near the ditch.
‘Donal’s right Will,’ the one with the shotgun called, ‘that ain’t what we came for.’
‘Be fun though, wouldn’t it Todd?’
Mann took a moment to study all three men who clearly had no fear of being named. Brothers, he thought, unmistakably. He looked at the girl too, who had moved a short way away and stood holding her thin coat tightly around her, and she their sister. They all shared pale skin and blue eyes and dark, dark hair. And the one called Will had facial markings that made Mann’s hackles rise now that he saw them clearly, two fresh tramline gouges tracked from the corner of his eye to disappear down beneath his mask. Mann promised himself he would ask some hard questions of this Will given the chance.
The one called Todd spoke again, ‘Rosie, get the keys.’ The girl took a hesitant step towards Gunnar and stopped when he turned his gaze on her.
‘Highway robbery, Rosie, is that what you’re about?’ Gunnar said.
‘Keys.’ Todd repeated, with more urgency this time, and the girl covered the ground to Gunnar quickly and held out her hand to him. Gunnar glanced at Mann over the roof of the car and raised his eyebrows in question. Mann knew what was being asked; can we take them? What are our odds? Mann took in the two brothers in his sight, both masked against the choke and out of range anyway, both with guns cocked and if only one gun was loaded neither he nor Gunnar would walk away from this. Mann shot a look back at Gunnar and shook his head.
‘The keys.’ Rosie said to Gunnar, ‘Please.’ He gave her a grim look and she returned his look with some defiance of her own, but hers was tinged with fear. Mann could see this and realized it wasn’t Gunnar who unsettled her. She betrayed herself when she flicked her eyes at her brother Will. She fears him more than us, Mann thought. He watched Gunnar press the car key into Rosie’s outstretched palm and saw her whisper a few words to Gunnar that he himself didn’t catch. This was the work of moments and she was already stepping backwards and clear of the car.
‘Now Gentlemen,’ Will called, ‘you’ll be lying face down in the road for us.’
Chapter Three
Jakob stepped out through the heavy oak door of the Abbey and the chill wind whipped at his robes, snatching the hood from his head. Autumn was racing into winter as the clouds flew over the Island and on towards the mainland without pause. A noisy skein of geese passed overhead and Jakob shuddered to think how desolate their distant home must be if they left it to over-winter in the bleak fields here. The countless scarlet berries on all the trees around him warned of a long, harsh winter ahead. He pulled his hood back over his head, holding it tight under his chin with one hand while he gathered the hem of his robe in the other and set off across the yard towards the pasture where he could see his twin sister Keen sitting astride the stile in the far fence.
He was worried about her. In the few days since she had arrived she had said little, eaten less and slept not at all as far as he knew. John had brought her here to mend, as she had once brought him, and Jakob was determined she should mend whole again. He couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been strong and it scared him a little to see her so depleted. She had always had an appetite for life that he seemed to lack and she was as fierce in her loves as she was in her vengeance, if crossed, and her husband Amir had felt the bitter truth of that as the last thing he’d known in this life. Balanced against his worry for her in her current condition was always his fear of her getting well and leaving, heading out again into a world where she drew attention and trouble like a magnet.
He made his way over to the stile and sat beside her. She stared resolutely away towards the sea beyond the Abbey and the land beyond that though he knew that all she really saw was the past. 'What has happened to me?' She said without turning to look at him. Her hands were clenched tight in her lap and Jakob placed his hand on hers to calm them. 'All I do is sit and weep.'
'You have come through a bad ordeal.'
The wind whipped at her wild hair and she continued as if he had not spoken at all. 'After we lost Marshall and Peter in Brighton and John was safely here I gave up. I just surrendered...I settled.' She turned her sad face to him and Jakob looked at the deep lines around her eyes that he’d not noticed before. She put her hand, absently to the bruising that Amir had left at her throat.
‘He would not have hurt you had he known.’ Jakob said.
'His betrayal alone was a knife in my heart.' She said bitterly, 'And look at the complication he's brought down upon John.'
'John can take care of himself.'
'I have always had to watch out for him. He always looks for the best in people. It'll be his undoing.'
'He took an oath before God to find David and God will watch over him, bring him back to us.'
Her eyes were full of pain. 'You seem very sure.'
'As you must be.'
'And strong enough for two now.' She whispered.
Chapter Four
Russell paced the floor of the laboratory, the broken plastic of the micro-syringes Mann had given her crunching underfoot. She had dimmed the lab lights so as to shield her presence but she herself was bright with anger, anger at herself for having been duped so easily. She had been so eager to believe that the darts held samples from John that she had not for a moment considered otherwise. She absolutely held him to be a man of his word, as a youth he had always worn his heart on his sleeve and never dissembled and she had thought this fact would still hold true. Naïve of her when everyone else lied to thrive and survive, why not him? She didn’t regret revealing the whereabouts of his parent’s gravesite in the exchange, in some ways it was a relief to be rid of that burden, but she could now kick herself for not being more wary of his eagerness to trade. Why would he be so keen to hand her the makings of a weapon, for such he believed? No matter how many times she had tried to impress upon him that while others might harvest him for ill use all she cared about was finding a cure.
Still, despite his trickery, his anger and his threats, it had been good to finally stand face to face with him again, to know that he lived and that her decade of hoping and waiting hadn’t been in vain. But her plans hadn’t solidified in her grasp either, she still didn’t have John or any test specimens, and her time in the Facility was a counting down clock. She’d let it be known that she’d returned alone from Brighton because she’d sent her team to investigate another rumour of John’s appearance and she didn’t want to still be around, at least without high cards to play, when they failed to return, or worse, their bodies were discovered.
John had been right when he’d claimed to have clipped her wings. Her options were indeed now limited, but he was in for a rude surprise if he thought he had drawn her sting completely.
###
About Charles Barrow
Charles Barrow lives in the South of England. He studied English Literature and Film at University. He currently works as a tour guide, recounting tales to visitors. He enjoys writing stories for readers too. He admires John Wyndham, John Christopher and Henning Mankell for their spare prose. He grew up in the shadow of the nuclear arms race, and his formative influence was the 1975 BBC television series ‘Survivors’, set in a post-apocalyptic Britain. It's fair to say that the resulting paranoia feeds into his current fiction. But despite fearing that the Earth of the future will be far less ‘peopled’ than it currently is he remains an optimistic soul.
Connect with Charles Barrow
Email: [email protected]
Find his blog at barrowstories.blogspot.co.uk
Follow him at https://twitter.com/cbarrowbooks
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The Stolen Days of John Mann Page 9