The pair shuffled slowly towards the porch and Grace lowered herself with a grunt into one of the chairs there. Mina went off towards the shed and came back with an armful of untreated off-cuts of wood. She placed them down on the edge of the porch a metre from Grace’s feet and trundled back to the shed. This time she returned with a green crate filled with bricks and placed it alongside the wood. She moved one of the loose paving slabs from the step of the house and heavily dropped it down on the grass and then started to build a small square structure from the bricks.
“You need to put an air-hole in at the bottom,” Grace ordered, pointing at the three-brick high construction.
“Oh, so I guess seeing as you can’t do any work that makes you manager, huh?”
“Of course! -And you can tell it isn’t a council job because the managers on site don’t outnumber the workers.”
“Well, I don’t react well to management, so I would stay out of it, if I were you,” Mina joked. “You can be useful by finishing this while I get some newspaper and a grill rack. Do you reckon you can manage?”
“Yea, that sounds fun.”
Grace worked her way to the porch edge, sat down on it and then shuffled herself over to the paving slab and took one of the bricks out from the completed bottom row, before placing new ones to the top row. She had only managed to complete one row before Mina returned from the house and shortly after completing the structure, they were taking lighters to the newspaper and flicking them in to the pit once they were suitably alight.
The first thing Tariq knew of the troops entering his building was the footsteps on the stairs. He wished he had thought to close the door, but when he had entered a desire to make no noise determined his actions. Either way, right then in the almost pitch-dark wardrobe, there was nothing that he could have done by knowing anyway. There was no action he could take other than sit and wait and hope to be passed and pray he could tell when they were gone at the end of their investigation.
He listened intently to the multiple sets of footsteps as they moved around the top floor of the building. The sound seemed to reverberate around his head as the noise filled his little space. Heavy boots on floorboards didn’t make for an inconspicuous sound. A few times he thought they must both be in his room and he braced himself for whatever would happen. He sat praying for them not to think about checking the wardrobe at all.
After a few minutes of listening, he heard a new set of footsteps growing in intensity up the stairs. This set halted the noise of the others and sounded more determined in its purpose. It moved at first in clear defined thuds towards the back of the house and he heard the shuffling of the other two pairs as they moved out of its way. It stopped a moment then loudly rang out for three crashing stamps at the floorboards. Tariq wondered if others had been hiding here that he had missed. The footsteps moved into the next room along and the same happened again. Tariq tried to work out what they were doing as fear took hold of his body. He noticed he was sweating profusely as a drop of sweat stung his eyes.
The steps came into the room. Tariq held a hand over his mouth and tensed, waiting for the three loud footsteps. Maybe they were trying to scare a noise out of anyone hiding. He had to fight off the urge to let out a noise as the sound of the three deafening thuds filled the cavity in which he hid. He waited some more, picturing his reaction as they opened the door and saw him huddling there, hugging his rucksack and sitting in a pool of his own sweat which seemed to be pooling at the back of his trousers.
Instead, a loud shout rang out in a staccato yell which preceded the vacation of the room and eventual descending footsteps. It sounded like all three sets were leaving and Tariq held his breath for about thirty seconds before the loud double bang of them opening next door brought on a wave of relief. He slid his back down until his legs were bent, but his back was flat against the ground and celebrated internally, breathing out raging deep breaths that were filled with the fear that was then leaving his body.
Shannon took Zeke and sat a few metres behind Leighton, cradling her little boy. Leighton watched the troops moving from north to south along the main road as they stopped to spend a few minutes in each building along the way. It was a fair few minutes before they reached the last complete house in the village and once that was checked, they all came together and fell into a single line. All of them seemed to be pointing themselves in a different direction as the man at the front, moved his arms in short rigid positions, silently giving orders for the next part of the investigation.
They moved off and split into a group of four walking down the centre of the road and two groups of three that followed each pavement. Where they met roads branching off from the one they travelled, the main group would stop, dropping to their knees while the opposite group of three guarded the way that they had come from. The group of three on the side of the road would walk down until the buildings ended and then returned to the main party and on they moved again. Leighton thought that if the village had been bigger or more complex in its road’s design then this strategy for complete coverage would never have worked.
The green and the inhabited pub eventually came into view at the edges of the telescopes lens and Leighton could see at the nearside of the building there was movement. It was an ambush. The people inside had a plan and were only a few short seconds from executing it. The troops moved with a relaxed gait, they were following a well-rehearsed script and it looked unlikely that they would have found any resistance if they had checked any other towns. Leighton braced himself as they took each step closer to the trap that was clearly about to be set off.
Chapter 39
Tariq, exhausted now the adrenaline was wearing off, had almost found some unwanted sleep when gunfire suddenly perked his ears up. “Shit. What the fuck’s happening?” he said aloud before clapping a hand to his mouth. He could hear the louder blasts of shotguns cutting through over the rhythmical triplets of assault rifles. A scream hung in the air and the rhythm broke into the sound of chaos.
He picked himself up and against his better judgement he left his hiding place to see what was going on. He had been told by his dad once that if he heard gunfire, he was better to run than to hide, as much as his instinct told him otherwise. You did not want to get found by someone who had just fired a gun freely and their reduction in adrenaline shortly after a firefight meant they were unlikely to be up for a chase. He couldn’t take that advice until he knew exactly where it was happening. He could assume that it was the centre of town at the green, but his mum had told him that to assume was to make an ass of yourself and he certainly didn’t want to be an ass running into a fight like the one he could hear.
The window opened easily and Tariq angled his head until the noise was loudest, confirming his assumption and making it worth acting on. The houses opposite had a thick treeline that extended from the back gates on for around a hundred metres or so before it went into a steep farmed field. Past that, where the hilltop reached the sky, was another line of trees that seemed to descend the other side, the way he had come into the village. He ran through to the back bedroom, the view of clean, open farmland put him off. He wanted some cover for as much of his run as possible. “East it is,” he sighed.
The firefight was now just a lot of shouts and the occasional triple burst of rifle fire. He had hoped it would have lasted longer. The troops had a car up this road. He had to be quick. He threw his bag over both shoulders and sprinted down the stairs. He edged around the front door, he could see their open-topped Land Rover parked with no-one in attendance and a brief thought to steal it crossed his mind and carried on going. He looked right towards the green, but the curve of the road meant that houses blocked his sight of anyone or anything happening. He sprinted across the road towards the messiest front garden and straight through the open front door. He stopped his hand from closing it as he went through and darted quickly through the rest of the house until he came to the kitchen and back door. He fumbled around with the handle a
nd the key for a moment until the door swung in towards him. He didn’t look back, urged on by the possibility of a gun aiming straight at his back at any moment and he thought if he looked around it could slow him just enough for a clear shot to be taken.
The back garden was equally as messy as the front. A low wall bordered the right-hand edge and he saw it as an opportunity for a quick way to launch over the rickety back fence. He climbed onto it and stood up straight. Then, grabbing the top of the fence, he vaulted over. The ground was lower on the other side and he landed heavily, sliding down a slight embankment and turning himself over until he came to a halt in a ditch in between the fence and the wooded area. He was winded and gasped for breath. He looked both ways along the back of the fences and up where he had come from, a good ten feet above his head, and fixed his eyes there. Imagining repeatedly the sight of an unfamiliar face, there to hunt him down, peering over. When it didn’t come for at least a minute he rested his head against the dirt and evaluated his pains for anything that should be worrying to him.
The first blasts of shotgun fire caused Leighton to jump and drop his telescope which then proceeded to roll a few metres away from him. He could only just hear the noise and a he crawled forward and fumbled around until his hand finally met the metal, warm from the intensity he had been gripping it with. By the time he had got it back to his eye, smoke seemed to be piling out of the windows, perhaps from a grenade thrown in or perhaps from the number of shotguns all firing at once. The cloud spread quickly with all the fire in such a small space and it made it difficult for Leighton to see what was happening.
The fighting died down to more sporadic shots, all controlled bursts. He could only assume that in the clouds of white smoke, the ambush had failed. It had lasted less than a minute, all told.
As the smoke dissipated, he could see the clothed mounds of the dead. Four of the mounds seemed to be cloaked in the camouflage of the troops and about half a dozen – mostly close to the door and nearside of the pub – wearing a variety of typically rural outfits. A sudden flashback of a dark shop interior and a heavy, lifeless body lying underneath him entertained his thoughts and Leighton shuddered and pulled himself back from the vision. He took another fascinated look at the aftermath and saw a small crowd of three men and five women being ushered from the front door with arms held aloft. Once they were clear of the large barrels that stood along the front, two of the troops moved in to handcuff the three men and roughly push the women north while the rest of the rifles were kept aimed at them.
Leighton shuffled backwards out of sight of the village and saw Shannon rocking erratically with her hands over Zeke’s ears, cuddling him tightly to her chest. He moved over to the pair and lay on the ground to focus on them so intently that it fought off further flashbacks from reaching him.
Mina was stooped over a very lightly boiling pot of water when a faint sound of distant pops reached her ears and she lifted her head, gazing down the valley towards the village.
“Grace,” she said with urgency. “Did you hear that?” Grace was staring past Mina with a deeply furrowed brow.
“Yeah.” She paused with a finger over her lips trying to make out the sound. It carried on gusts of wind and died down in between. “I have no idea.”
“No, me neither. It doesn’t sound natural.”
“I don’t know. It sounds like distant firecrackers. Maybe it’s proper gunfire.”
“It must mean there are survivors though, right?” Mina questioned.
“If it does, I am not sure they are the sort we want to bump into.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know. Hope?” Grace said uncertainly.
“I don’t like this. We should get inside.”
“If they come here and see a thriving, standing house, they will check it. You’re right, let’s go. I’d rather not greet them in the open where they can sneak up on us. I don’t think this is good. Help me up,” Grace said.
Mina picked up the pot and emptied it onto the flames to douse them, helped Grace to her feet and followed her in. She locked the door and pulled the blinds down in the kitchen, before the two of them took the slow journey up the stairs with Mina gripping Grace’s waist to keep her friend steady as she hopped step by step.
Leighton retold the events he had witnessed to Shannon, whose mouth gaped open in shock. “What are we going to do now?” She asked.
“I just don’t know,” Leighton answered.
“Well, I need you to make a call on it. You saw it happen so will be the best judge. Take another look at what is going on. I trust whatever decision you make. I am really scared for us, Leighton.”
“It’s okay. It will be okay, my love. Let me have a few minutes to think. I will get us out of this. You’ve got me. I got us this far and it hasn’t been too shit so far, right?”
“Well…” Shannon said. “Not as shit as it could be, anyway.”
“Let me take a few minutes to have a think, I will have another look out over there and work out how we continue to the farm. Are you okay?” he asked sincerely and seriously.
“I don’t know. I am shaking. It’s a shock.”
“I know, I know. Just wait here. I will only be there,” he said, pointing to where he had looked out across the valleys.
Leighton walked stooping to half the distance and then hunkered down with a hand gripping his chin, while he tried to clear he thoughts. His brain was a jumble of images all layering on each other and blocking him from being able to think clearly. He needed to see what was happening, then just make an instinctual decision. Any chance of a clear-cut plan was well out the window now. He must take in all the facts and be sure to react to anything new to keep them safe.
At the hilltop, he saw a canvas covered army truck had turned up at the village and had driven all the way to the green to collect the troops and their – he supposed – prisoners of war. Way over to the right of the village he saw a small grey plume of smoke lifting and twisting in the wind over in one of the valleys and leaving the green in that direction, the Land Rover that the troops had arrived in carrying two of the soldiers.
Chapter 40
Tariq heard a loud diesel engine going past him leaving the village and he realised he had been dreaming of something. He had fallen asleep there on the ground. He cursed himself and got up. All his muscles ached, particularly those in his lower back. He had fallen hard and unprepared from a fair height and remembered a phrase that he had heard for the first time not too long ago, ‘look before you leap’, and almost laughed. He moved away from the noise as it faded into the distance, trying to head perpendicular to the fence behind him in order to get to the edge of the wooded area in a straight line.
He managed well enough, by the time the fence was out of sight behind him, it was clear where the ground opened up in front and he quickly covered it until reaching a barbed wire fence that crossed his path. It was low enough that he could have pushed it down and straddled his way over and on the other side it looked out over the acres of open farmland to the next treeline. He thought for a moment that he could see smoke, but he dismissed it as being a part of the loose wisps of cloud that raced high in the atmosphere.
It looked to be just short of a kilometre away and he would be an obvious figure in the middle of acres of flat farmland on the side of a hill. The only way around would take him close to the town again and require at least twice the distance to travel. He was meant to be running and so run he would. He gathered his breath and stretched out his aching legs and then run he did. Starting off at somewhere close to a sprint and, seeing the treeline barely move towards him, he gradually slowed to a steady jog. As the land got steeper, he slowed down until he was barely moving faster than he would have done walking, but the treeline was close and drew him in.
He slowed to a walk once he reached the tree roots that caused the land beneath his feet to undulate and once he felt suitably hidden, he let his legs drop him to the ground and held his side ag
ainst the stitch that had developed in his left ribs. He was truly sticky under his clothes with the exertion induced sweat covering the dried, fear induced sweat from less than half an hour ago.
Mina checked outside the window of the bedroom to see a plume of smoke drifting into the air, giving away the presence of at least a single living human. She sighed loudly and drew the blind closed. “Wait here,” she told Grace as she headed downstairs. Once she reached the porch, she went hunting for her shovel, found it and dug into the edge of the vegetable plot, picking up an onion with the mound of earth. She poured it down the brick chimney they had made earlier and the smoke halted right away. She watched it for a moment longer and saw a few tendrils of smoke working their way out of the earth and decided on another shovel load to finish the job.
As she thrust the shovel into the earth, she heard an engine erratically revving as it worked the way up the overgrown driveway to her house. She entered the house and sprinted up the stairs. “Find somewhere to hide. Right now!” She shouted through her deep breaths. “They’re coming.”
Grace reacted with a start. “Where?” she asked.
“Somewhere you can lie down. Under the bed?” Mina questioned. “Yea, go down on that side, I will pull the duvet down so it hangs down a bit. Like when you were a kid, try and stay as close to the wall side as possible.”
“Right, okay. Let me give it a go.” Grace worked herself down onto the floor and awkwardly pushed her casted leg underneath the bed in front of her. Mina started off quickly, happy enough that Grace would be safe.
Mina reached to the top of the stairs. “Grace,” she called back.
“Yea?”
Ousted: A thrilling debut novel of survival and humanity Page 20