Eternal Refuge

by Annabelle McInnes

  When Lucas dug his fingers into her upper arm, she didn’t flinch. Her jaw was set so hard that it held all of her anger, her fear, her terror. Her eyes wept constantly now. But her lip had ceased its quiver. She allowed herself to be manhandled further into the darkness, she didn’t fight as she lost sight of the light, lost sight of hope, of her courage, of her strength. She was enveloped in blackness both in body and mind. She would survive. She would.

  Because she was a warrior. She was a queen. Her body was strong, her muscles tough. She had survived a plague, she had endured loneliness and uncertainty. Kira might be little, but the fire that raged in her heart was fierce, hot, vast. Inside her was Euan and Nick’s love. Inside her, was the love she held for herself. She was not a tool, a toy, a male plaything that they could abuse at their leisure. She was woman.

  And she would roar.

  ***

  Tossed into darkness, Kira hit the ground hard. She bit back the cry as her puffy, sluggish fingers took the hit from the pre-fabricated flooring. The grunt she allowed to escape.

  The fire-safety door behind her slammed and Kira was lost in black. Where she was, she didn’t know, but she could guess. This warehouse had been built to support an IT conglomerate. She’d been manhandled through rows of dusty desks. Computers, now defunct and useless, were simply lumps of plastic and metal that collected nothing but dust. Colourful logos still adorned the walls, the meaning would be lost to the next generation that survived this nightmare.

  Her wrists were tied again and the twine dug into her skin. It surprised her how little effort it took to keep the blood from its intended destination. On her knees, her fingers were unresponsive as she attempted to twist them in their bonds. Around her, the air in the windowless internal room was stuffy, stale. The scent of unwashed man and terror lingered but was not fresh.

  She was angry, she was frightened, she was bound, trapped.

  But she remained dressed, unmolested and whole.

  Her captor had not tied her down. He hadn’t even bothered to gag her. No sound filtered through the fireproof door. The lack of light was oppressive.

  Above her, a fluorescent globe flickered, dimmed, turned on for a heartbeat, then off once more. She was doused once again in darkness, but this time Kira knew exactly where she was.

  On the surface, server rooms made for brilliant prisons.

  Alone, her fear dissolved, dissipated until she was empty of the consuming internal battle. In its place was not fury, but resolve. If Euan and Nick had taught her anything, they had shown her the worth of herself. Not as a commodity like that of which these men meant to use her, but in the sense that she had skills, she had attributes that were more than just the muscle and bone that made up her body. Or what lay between her legs.

  Kira was a human that was smart and brave. She was valuable as a person that had a brain, that could make decisions, see the present, and judge it. She was no longer going to let men define her, force her into a plaything for their pleasure. She was sick of this presumed inferiority, this lack of civility.

  This devastating lack of humanity.

  Yes, she was smaller. Yes, she was physically weaker. But that did not make her subservient, at least not in this context.

  She waited, her breath held in her chest for the light to gather confidence and show itself again.

  The dying globe zapped with its swan’s song.

  She twirled around where she stood. She had worked in marketing, but many of her friends had been in Information Technology. There was one thing she knew about servers. They needed to be kept cool, lest they overheat and breakdown. Somewhere in this room would be a ducting system large enough to chill the numerous machines that would have been housed in here.

  In the strobe lighting, her eyes darted to the roofing, the walls, in search of the way out. The internal cabinets had been removed, but not the ones that lined the walls. When she spied the vent in the ceiling, she almost whooped with elation.

  The light dissolved.

  She closed her eyes for no reason other than to focus, bit the inside of her cheek and considered both her options, and humankind’s path to destruction.

  How had fathers, brothers, husbands and sons turned into this? How had good men, who once loved and respected women as their partners and lovers, as their family, morphed into these creatures?

  How had the human race evolved into this?

  A trigger had been pulled. Civility and decency destroyed in the explosive aftermath. They had been convinced by the government that stood by and watched the destruction that their neighbours were their enemies, and that their friends were now foe. Load the shotguns, hoard the food. Those that stood beside them were not there to hold out a helping hand, but to steal what was left. It was this narrative that caused dystopia. It was this fear that drove the violence and cruelty. Humanity needed a leader. A trailblazer to show them what comraderie and decency could provide. What shared responsibility meant, illuminate the pathway out of the terrible, vicious mess they had created for themselves. If they were to survive as a species, they had to stop this warpath to extinction.

  If they continued as they were, with death, rape and torture as their foundation, they wouldn’t see another thirty years.

  Guidance was needed, a hand to support them on the road to success. She had told Euan that if change, true change, was really a possibility, they had to continue as they meant to go on. Equality had to be their foundation, and love to be their crown.

  The men of this world had been given a chance to rule. In her opinion, they had failed.

  She was small, the odds insurmountable. She had held hope close to her heart.

  In this space, her tiny stature was going to work to her advantage.

  Behind the rapid beat of her heart, the hum of the light remained. Patience would win out. But she knew that time was also her enemy.

  Soon Parker would come for her, soon the hands that had maimed so many others would scar her too. If her plan to escape failed, she would suffer under those malevolent eyes.

  Another rapid flicker. She dashed before darkness resumed. A lone, abandoned screw in the wall made an effective lance. Only a few precious moments of scraping the twine that bound her hands together against its sharp, rimmed edges was needed.

  Her fingers burned as the blood flooded the muscles and tendons. She shook them and hissed through the pain. In the darkness, her hands free, she felt along the walls until she discovered hope. The shelving of the cabinets that lined the walls were used as a ladder.

  It was then easy to climb them until she could pry her fingertips into a vent cover and pull it from the wall.

  She was nimble, lithe and quick. The soundproofing designed to keep the hum of the servers from outside was to her advantage. Strength and agility were used to her success and with only a few wiggles and scraped knuckles, Kira heaved her body into the cramped air-conditioning duct.

  Then, she crawled towards freedom.

  Chapter 20

  Nick

  The truck declared useless, Nick didn’t feel the miles he travelled on his feet. He didn’t register the intermittent rain, the howling wind, the day that bled into the night. It was nothing to him, inconsequential. It was simply something that happened to his body rather than his mind. He was on lockdown. His brain only thought of survival, but it was not his own it focused on.

  She was there, in that fucked-up place. It was surrounded by fencing and barbed wire. It was slashed with red paint in a mark of ownership, in a sign of warning, a threat, a deterrent. It didn’t dissuade Nick. Nothing as simple as paint ever would.

  But it was still a cause for caution.

  When he had spied the industrial sector on the horizon, his gut had revolted. It had been the first time in hours he had noticed his body. She was lost somewhere in the mass of innumerable buildings, the labyrinth of roads, the sea of concrete and tar. It registered a primal surge of hopelessness. He heeded his body’s requirements only long enough t
o bend at the waist and heave his guts up, then he had carried on. For every hour he had been on the road, Kira had been trapped in that hell. For every hour he wasted in the search for her, she suffered. Before him there were so many buildings, and he had no way to know where to start.

  The concrete was cool when he pressed his palm against it. The road at his feet was still wet from the rain. The world was silent as he walked, the wind absent as the sun descended for the day. A grey orb behind grey cloud. The light would soon be gone, and with it would be the last of Nick’s hope of a quick success.

  He shook his head even as he walked. He was lost. There were no markings on the asphalt of the truck’s path, no identifying marks to proclaim the way they had fled with their captive. He travelled through a wasteland of cement, tarmac and wire without a sliver of hope that he would find her.

  He gritted his teeth against the despair.

  Then, voices.

  Nick stopped, turned, listened. Masculine tones. Their rabble was easy, almost reckless in their disregard for possible enemies that prowled these warehouses. Possible enemies like Nick.

  He was behind a wall in an instant, his shoulder blades to the cool blockwork. His knife comfortable in his grip. He raked the hair from his eyes and held his breath as they passed.

  A small group made up of three men, clothed in mismatched rags. Threadbare backpacks were strapped to their shoulders, shoes held together with twine covered their feet. They shuffled rather than marched. Their stink was a waft of foulness that followed them as they passed. They were not quiet, cautious or careful. Smiles showed black teeth, voices ribbed and joked. They laughed and cursed as they shambled past him.

  This was no place to wander recklessly. The buildings had long been ransacked of their contents. Broken windows, absent doors, shopping trolleys that were piled high with remnants of faded plastic wrappers. If they were here, they had a destination in mind.

  If their bickering was to be believed, it wasn’t hard to consider where they might head.

  A place that would provide sanctuary and alcohol.

  ‘I told you, these will get us in, and get us a drink.’

  ‘They’re not gonna get us a fucking drink.’

  ‘They will, you just wait and see.’

  They walked with surety, without care. Nick used the gloom as his cover. His head swung in the direction of the speech, but he made no other movement. He would use them to his advantage.

  As they disappeared around a bend, Nick sent a final glance over his shoulder and followed them.

  He had no formal training in stealth, but some innate drive had him as silent as the shadows he emulated. Hidden in the dark, concealed by a setting sun, they led him straight to the monster’s lair.

  It was fucking huge. The largest building in the area. In hindsight, Nick never should have feared that we wouldn’t find her. The biggest building here was what would be needed to compensate for Parker’s small dick.

  Tin, iron, concrete. Surrounded by fencing topped with razor wire. It was a modern fortress, and that didn’t include the men.

  It was heavily guarded. Even where he stood, hidden in the shadows with significant space between him and the entrance, he could still see the guards that were armed with weapons as they monitored the parameter. Their faces were hard, their grips on their guns were firm, they prowled, ever vigilant. These were not men of an unregulated crowd that ambled from unknown destinations. These were the legion to the damned. Well-trained, well-defended and eager.

  Nick hovered, waited, oscillated between taking action and showing caution. To storm the building was suicide. To delay could mean Kira’s death, or worse.

  Did he wait for Euan? Did he proceed alone? He was one man against an army. Then he remembered.

  ‘You’ve done the impossible before. You’ll do it again. I trust you, believe in you. You’ve got this. Feel me?’

  Euan believed in him. He always had. From the moment he’d told him that he needed to get his father’s watch back, Euan had been at his side, caring for him, loving him, protecting him, and always, always believing that he could achieve the impossible. Maybe, like the previous times, Nick could tempt fate again.

  The men he had followed were no longer rowdy. They now trudged with purpose and care. Their faces were grim, their shoulders hunched. Gone were their smiles and their banter. They were men on a mission.

  The gate loomed. Wire and steel, timber and iron. A man dressed in black and green stood sentry. A red sash draped his chest. He glowered at the three vagrants until they offered canned food for entry. His features did not change as he took the proffered offering.

  There was Nick’s opening. It was his way in. He’d waltz right into that camp under pretence, into the belly of the beast. His gaze shifted from his destination to his clothes. But he couldn’t attempt it looking like he did. His clothes were new, his boots whole and intact. His face was goddamn clean. They’d know, at the very least they’d suspect. Any man that walked into the underworld dressed for a dance would find a demon willing to waltz. He’d be targeted and dead before he’d set foot inside.

  No, he needed to find a disguise. One that would conceal him from watchful eyes.

  He touched his breast pocket, to the picture that lay there. To the picture he had sworn to return to Kira. In this, he would keep up his promise.

  His focus shifted from the entrance to wander down the road from which he had come. An unfamiliar smile stretched across his face. In the distance, he saw a way to get in.

  ***

  Nick kept his head low and his eyes focused on the cracked cement. He shuffled his feet like all the others. Under layers of rags that stank of piss, shit and rot that he had stolen from a corpse, he still wore his fatigues. He hoped that no one looked too closely at his boots.

  As each step was taken forward, the sounds around him grew in strength. Raucous, harsh, vehement. Male voices that yelled and bickered. They were a mass of aggressive calls for more, for less, to move, to stop. It had been a long time since Nick had suffered through such overwhelming stimuli. Nirvana had been the last guidepost for the miscreants of humanity to congregate. Then, he had been at Euan’s side. His insides a whirl of torment after what he had suffered. This time, he was surrounded by another level of anarchy. His body vibrated with memories, but also in the fire was the knowledge that he had survived what had been done to him, grown stronger, and would save the woman he loved from the same fate.

  Nirvana had been lawless, the men tough and threatening. But this was violence personified. In Nirvana, Mickey-O’s hold might have been waning, but he still gripped the reins of control over his domain. Where Nirvana had been brutal chaos, this place was vicious and cruel.

  Men fought in the open. Blood and fists flew while skinny bodies with glassy eyes watched on. They spat, they pissed, they bled. They gathered in small groups, pounced on victims like rabid dogs eager for the meat. In every dirty hand that was not wrapped around a throat, a grimy jar filled with cloudy liquid was held. Nick didn’t need his engineering degree to inform him that what they drank to destroy themselves was local moonshine that would send them blind.

  The blood was wet on the pavement. It mixed with the mud from the recent rain. Lost teeth crunched under his boots alongside the stones. Mangy dogs barked, rowdy male laughter echoed. Chaos, hopelessness, desolation. Nick nearly lost his footing when a man fell to his knees at his feet.

  ‘I’ll suck your dick for a jar o’ Tack.’

  Nick pulled the hood further down to cover his face as he grimaced and shook his head.

  She had been here. She had seen this. She had been surrounded by this horror, this show of repugnance. His hands at his sides vibrated with the adrenaline, the shock, the mocking sensations that told him that she had been touched by it, maybe even been consumed by it.

  He turned from the worst of it and walked with haste towards the main compound. In the mud, he finally saw tyre tracks that looked fresh enough to be the o
nes that had carried her here.

  He swallowed the saliva that pooled in his mouth and followed the markings in the sludge. He passed terrors he could not voice. Revulsion and disgust formed a solid ball of abhorrence in his gut. His throat was clogged with the brutality of it all. Of the waste. Mickey-O had wanted to save these men, he’d built Nirvana so it could be done. If there truly was a God, in that moment, Nick understood why he had cursed them with the plague.

  The closer he moved towards the entrance of the great warehouse, the more conspicuous he became. There seemed to be an invisible cloud of separation that surrounded the main building. The air was different here, less stifling, more sinister. The men that wandered its perimeter were harder, meaner, eager and engaged. Nick crouched to fiddle with the lacings on his boot and surveyed the landscape for options.

  His only weapon was the knife, it remained a cold presence on his hip. Darkness could provide cover, but that would take time. Time Kira didn’t have. He couldn’t think of what they could be doing to her. He couldn’t think of her current circumstances at all. He had to work out a plan to find her, get her free and then the both of them to escape.

  Options swamped his mind. His body for hers, his blemished soul for her precious one. But he couldn’t risk it. Parker had no honour, and Euan would stop at nothing to see them both free. It would destroy the big man to know that Kira had been here, tainted by this. He’d never forgive himself, the road he had travelled was too hard to allow a bump like this be too hard for him to overcome.

  As he crouched, a man wandered past. He walked tall, erect, but nothing else registered. In his hand, a gold watched dangled.

  It had been months since he’d seen it. The last time he had, it had been strapped to Euan’s wrist. A token of luck as they fought for their lives. It had been lost in a dirt pit full of blood and lost teeth.

  The gold gleamed, the glass face was clean. The leather strap worn yet well preserved for its age.

  He remembered his father strapping it to his wrist every morning. He also remembered the man giving it to him as he took his last breaths.