“What are you doing?” asked Louise with a stern tongue.
“Isn't that obvious?” David said. “I'm driving north.”
“We need to help these people, David. Some of them don't even look like they'll make it through the night. They need our help.”
“Help them?” David replied, sounding a little confused. “Help them do what exactly?”
He knew deep down there was absolutely nothing he could do for these people. He'd become content with putting on a hard and tough exterior when it came to the victims, causalities and atrocities of this brutal, cruel war. And he didn't want to waste any more time letting a guilty conscience side track him from his main goal. He was here in this place of death, hate and destruction for one reason, and he was slowly but surely making himself feel completely dead inside to anything else.
In the case of Louise, he guessed that wasn't entirely true though, but he knew, deep down inside, that if it came to it, if he had to choose between Louise and his crusade for revenge, vengeance would win hands down, every time. But only if he had to choose.
“We can't just leave them like this, David. We just can't.” Louise begged and pleaded as tears formed in her eyes. “If we just up and go, we'll be no better than the extremists who caused all their pain and suffering in the first place.”
“Jesus Christ, Louise.” David finally snapped. He ran his fingers over his head. “I'm not a fucking doctor or a miracle worker or a fucking one man armed security force, and neither are you. I mean, what can we do, huh? What the hell can we really do for these people? Call an ambulance? Call the police? The government? Can we drop them off at the nearest fucking hospital and get them any kind of help? No. We can’t. Just like us, they’re on their fucking own out here. Now get in the fucking truck right this second or stay here and do what you can to ease their pain and sufferings. It's your choice.”
Tears streamed down Louise's face. She wanted to scream about what a cold, heartless bastard David really was. That he was no better than the racist, bigoted and narrow-minded Nazi extremists who now ran this land. But she also knew, deep down, that the same cold-heartedness David possessed had kept them safe all this time and would continue doing so for as long as she stayed with him. Louise glanced back at the group of slaves with a heavy heart. Some of them were on their feet now and checking up on the other less-fortunate men and women – the ones who couldn't even stand on their own two feet.
“Louise. You have five seconds. Then I'm out of here.”
“Just give me a bloody minute David, all right?” Louise snapped. Some of the slaves glanced over at the upset Louise, but nobody said a word.
Louise quickly gathered herself. She wiped her tears and made her way to the passenger side of the truck. When she opened the door, she immediately made a grab for David's rucksack. David tried to snatch it back from her but for the first time, she was too fast for him.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Louise responded to David's words by giving him a look of daggers. In silence, she took out some of the remaining fresh fish and porridge bars inside the bag. She also removed a couple bottles of water they'd filled up that very morning back at the freshwater loch. David gave her another intense glare, but said nothing as Louise met his stare and threw the almost empty rucksack back inside the truck. She then grabbed a couple of the Uzi machine guns and rifles hanging at the back of the driver’s compartment and made her way back to the slaves on the grass.
David watched in the side mirror as Louise handed the guns, food and water to some of the healthier looking women and men. He watched her speak to them for a few more minutes as she pointed back towards the hills and valleys from which they'd just travelled.
Finally, she hugged some of the slaves goodbye before making her way to the front of the truck again. She jumped into the passenger seat with a scornful look and folded her arms defensively. As soon as she'd slammed her door, David accelerated into the road ahead. In silence, the recently freed slaves watched them leave.
PART 3
Redemption unleashed
Chapter 23
The closer they ventured to the outskirts of Glasgow, the more the dead bodies piled up on the sides of the road. The flow of traffic had also increased as the remaining white British men and women still living and working in the area, and still lucky enough to have vehicles, attempted to go about their everyday lives.
Louise had to cover her eyes and look away in disgust every time they passed another rusted, old road sign where the rotting corpses of dead ethnics and foreigners hung and swayed in the wind and light rain. They were a constant reminder of the fate that had befallen her father in Edinburgh. Even though she'd seen so many dead bodies in her relatively short time back on the mainland, she still couldn't get used to the grim and horrific sight of new ones. A complete polar opposite to the remaining British extremists travelling the same stretch of motorway who were seemingly oblivious to all the death and destruction that surrounded them.
When they reached the denser southwest side of the city, they began seeing more old and new buildings lying in complete and utter ruin. Some had been bombed into oblivion, probably by the old diminishing government’s army at the beginning of the war in a last ditch attempt to take some kind of control of the city, or perhaps even by the extreme, new nationalist regime, themselves, trying to smoke out hiding immigrants. Other buildings lay burnt to a crisp with only their feeble black skeletal frames remaining as evidence that something strong and stable once stood there. As they passed more rubble and destruction, one huge multi-story apartment block seemed to have been recently set on fire, as thick black smoke seeped out at a frantic rate up into the grey skies above.
Next, they saw a gang of white gunmen marching hundreds of ethnic slaves beneath an underpass and towards the general area of the city centre. Further up ahead they saw more white extremist gun men, who started waving down David's truck. He ignored them, of course, increasing his speed as his truck roared on by the pot holed motorway, leaving a trail of dust in their wake.
This act of defiance antagonized the gunmen a great deal and they began firing random shots at the back of the speeding truck. The bullets missed their intended target by some distance while David allowed himself the slightest of grins as he watched some of the gunmen in his side mirrors, angrily waving their guns in the air.
When they reached the far west side of the city, more smoke began to rise and fill the grey skies above, and from one concentrated area in particular. With no other vehicles or people around, David pulled the truck onto a steep incline bypass so he could get a better sense of where the various streams of smoke were coming from. What both he and Louise saw next, in the near distance, rocked them to their very cores.
In front of the two was a huge, spiralling, fenced-off wasteland that David vaguely recognised as the old Glasgow Airport. One of the terminals had been completely demolished and laid to ruin, possibly from an explosion or bombing. The few remaining planes out on the airfield had been burnt to a cinder from the inside out while the surrounding runways and grasslands had been turned into a massive outdoor prison camp. Thousands upon thousands of ethnic prisoners were being forced to dig up parts of the ground and old runway, ploughing at the concrete and dirt terrain.
What David and Louise saw next on the other side of the main runway chilled them to their bones. Tens of thousands of bodies, most likely those of ethnics and foreigners, were piled 10 and 20 high, one on top of the other. They were being thrown, one at a time, into dozens of bonfire pits, which seemed to be acting as makeshift crematoriums scattered across that side of the airport. The foul, rotten smells of burnt and roasting flesh and bone flowed into the surrounding skies in thick streams of black and grey smoke as hundreds of armed extremist soldiers, both men and women, wandered the old airport wasteland, readying the next line of bodies to be cremated in the huge pits of fire.
Without words, David stared at the horrific scene that stretche
d out like an epic movie set before him. It felt so surreal to be sitting there watching, especially for Louise. A few tears trickled down her cheeks as she watched with a heavy heart.
“This is…” Louise finally said, breaking the intense silence hovering in the air, “…absolutely horrific. I can't believe I'm actually seeing this with my own eyes David. It's just madness ... pure and utter madness. It doesn't even seem real. How is this happening, David? How?” Louise sobbed as she wiped away her tears at the same time. David remained silent and closed his eyes. In the back of his mind, he whispered a silent prayer of forgiveness for the human race to any of the thousands of gods throughout the history of mankind who might still be listening. He'd never been a religious man, but he prayed ferociously now, even though deep down inside he knew it was a waste of time and that humankind was, in fact, the one true master of its own fate.
“What has the world come to, David?” Louise continued before placing her head into her hands and grabbing her hair. “Can we just go now, David? Please? Can we just drive the hell away from here? Please? I can't take this anymore ... I just can't take it.”
In silence, David started the engine and continued driving west on the old M8 and moving farther away from the surreal scenes in Glasgow. Louise huddled into a ball in the passenger seat. With her head resting morosely against the window, she sobbed to herself, unable to stop her tears from flooding down her cheeks. At that exact moment, the thickening grey storm clouds up high, finally gave way and unleashed a strong, side-slashing heavy rain, down upon the land.
David flicked on his window wipers. Out of the thick, down pour, he began making out the grim, looming grey frame of the Erskine Bridge. It was one of the few River Clyde crossings on the outskirts of Glasgow that they might be able to use without having to venture into the fallen city itself, putting their lives, especially Louise's, in even greater danger than they already were and perhaps risk losing their mode of transport, too.
As David drove closer to the towering bridge, he began to see through the light mist and rain a steady build-up of gridlocked traffic where beaten cars and ragged trucks piled up, one behind the other, in rows of three and four, trying to get through the makeshift roadblocks and checkpoints on the first third of the bridge.
When David saw the dozens of guards searching the cars and trucks close to the front of the queue, his gut instinct told him to make a quick, sharp U-turn and find some other way to make it up into the Highlands, even if it meant driving all the way out to Falkirk or Stirling or even Perth. However, before he could make that rapid turn and exit, they soon found themselves two, then three, then four cars deep in static traffic, as more vehicles began piling up behind them, all sitting bumper to bumper and gradually edging him onwards, towards the checkpoints.
David let out a frustrated sigh and crawled forward whenever the gaps appeared. There was no turning back without making a huge scene in trying to navigate his big army truck 180 degrees around and heading back the way they'd come.
As they continued to move along at a snail’s pace, David noticed countless more armed soldiers walking up and down the side of the huge bridge. The soldiers were wearing the same uniform, but David's gut instinct told him these guys weren't ex-British-army soldiers; they were just local racist nut job extremists who had stolen the uniforms from dead soldiers or the fallen army bases throughout the land. He could tell this from their body language, the way some of them moved and carried themselves. The way they lazily held their guns and posture like they weren't used to life in a real army.
David glanced over at a couple of armoured vehicles. A huge tank sat on the edge of the roadside, watching and waiting to be called into action. He doubted the makeshift tank drivers inside actually knew how to handle such a beast, but for the time being he would give them the benefit of the doubt.
David then noticed a handmade road sign just up ahead; it read: “Keep all slaves visible at all times.”
Louise noticed the sign too, which brought great fear to her eyes. For a few dreamlike moments, she had actually forgotten where she was. Caught up in the heavy patter of rain all over the truck, she'd been daydreaming again that she was on some kind of rainy bank holiday road trip into the country with her family.
Louise sat upright, wide-eyed and alert. She turned to face David, desperately seeking an answer and reassurance that everything would be all right.
“Listen to me, Louise,” David said, recognising her concern. “Everything is going to be okay. Just don't say a word. Let me do all the talking. Do you understand?”
Louise nodded as the truck continued crawling towards the straight stretch of road, approaching the first third of the bridge before it reached the edge of the River Clyde below. She nervously watched a group of soldiers about a dozen yards away from the main checkpoint as they searched all the vehicles in the queue just ahead of them. All the soldiers were wearing heavy green rain jackets.
“What do you think they're looking for, David?” Louise asked, just above a whisper. Deep down inside, she already knew the answer.
“People like you, I guess, but probably ones who are deliberately hiding or being hid. That's my best guess.”
Suddenly, a huge commotion erupted in front of them. A soldier violently dragged a young mixed-race boy from a hidden compartment in the boot of a nearby car. The little boy's Caucasian mother frantically scrambled out of the vehicle. She begged and pleaded with the merciless guards for her child's safety with a chilling scream of raw grief and emotion. The sound of a mother who had just lost a child even though he was very much alive for the time being.
She continued howling and sobbing for the soldiers to leave her boy alone and to give him back. David wound down his driver's-side window, just a touch, so he could get a better idea of what the soldiers were saying to the mother and what actions they might take against her and her boy. He didn't believe for a second they would actually execute the lad or the mother, right there and then, but he did wonder where they might take him.
“Please ... please ... I beg you.” The woman was on her knees now, yelling and sobbing to the high heavens as she grabbed at the head soldier's uniform and rain jacket. “He's my son ... he's my only son. Please, have mercy.”
“Where are his papers?” asked the head soldier while the other two soldiers restrained the crying little boy only a few yards away.
“I don't ... I don't have any.” The mother continued to cry and plead. “I lost them ... they were stolen from me ... please.”
The head soldier gave a cocky grin. “So, which is it then? Did you lose them or were they stolen from you?”
As the heavy rain beat down upon the mother's face, she hesitated ever so slightly, as if trying to come up with the right answer. Of course, there was no right answer anymore.
About a mile north of the Erskine Bridge, on one of the distant forested hilltops, a black female sniper along with an Indian female sniper lay on the cold, wet dirt beneath a thick scrub of bushes on the cliff face. The black female sniper gazed intently through the eyepiece of her rifle while the Indian woman stared hard through the lenses of a pair of binoculars. Both women anxiously watched the movements of the extremist soldiers on the bridge, along with the gridlocked traffic.
“Something's happening down there with a white woman and her mixed-race kid. Do you see that?” asked the Indian woman
“Yeah. I see it,” replied the black girl.
Back in the army truck, David and Louise watched helplessly as the dramatic scene unfolded before their eyes. Louise appeared to be getting more panicked and restless by the second. David remained his calm and composed usual self.
David checked his side mirrors again, glancing back at the increasing build-up of traffic directly behind them. He was getting a bad feeling about this. He thought about simply reversing the truck and turning hard, trying to barge his way through the traffic jam like he had originally intended to do. He wanted to get the hell out of there at all costs.
His reckless actions might even draw the attention of the soldiers away from the mother and her kid. Then again, they might just aggravate the situation further for them.
David let out a deep, weary sigh at all the traffic behind him. He knew it was utterly useless. There were just too many damn cars, vans, motorbikes and trucks in the way now. He'd pretty much be attempting suicide. With the armed guards only a dozen or so yards in front of him and on either side of the truck, he would leave himself far too exposed to the rapid spray of gunfire that would surely erupt seconds after his attempt to flee.
Then something very bad and unexpected happened.
All of David's thoughts of making a run for it shattered into a million and one tiny pieces as the sheer seriousness of his and Louise's situation yanked him violently back to reality with a sickening thud. The head soldier, with the sobbing mother still on her knees in front of him, casually gave the order for the other two gunmen to shoot the little boy.
Everything happened so fast, right in front of David's eyes. For the first time since he'd arrived back in this lawless, miserable land, he wanted to selflessly react to another person's pain and suffering. However, by the time he'd even blinked, let alone thought about acting, one of the gunmen had shot the little boy dead, point blank, in the back of the skull. The gunman hadn't hesitated in the slightest either. He'd simply raised his gun as ordered and pulled the trigger, all within a few seconds of being told to do so, like he'd done it a hundred times before. He most likely had.
David had to blink hard and fast, three or four times in a row to regain his composure. He still couldn't believe what he had just witnessed, even as the little boy's body fell to the rain swept ground. Louise covered her mouth with both hands, just to stop herself from screaming out. For a second, she thought she might even throw up.
The Wrath of David Page 15