“Seriously!” He yelled. “Get a grip. The lot of you.”
Mina edged towards the wall to her right. “Settle down,” she screamed. “-And you,” she said firmly. “Get. Down.” The boy looked up at her and almost obliged, seeing the stern set of her eyes locked on his.
“Right,” he said, looking back at the men and women he fought for survival with. “Fuck the lot of you. I’m outta here. Seems like no-one here gives a shit about living any longer. You’ve all lost your complete set of fucking marbles.”
He turned to proceed up to the roof’s gap to find Mina inches away from his face. “No,” she breathed. She swung her arm around in a wide arc and thrust the screwdriver deep into the back of his thigh. A high-pitched shriek left his throat and he fell backwards, clutching his pierced muscle. He landed heavily on his shoulder and writhed back.
“Glen, do something,” urged the lighter haired woman, who went from pulling his arm back to pushing him forward.
Glen moved forward calmly, removing his shirt and rolled Warren on to his side without a word. “Okay,” he said, “On three. One. Two.” On two, he pulled the screwdriver from Warren’s leg and immediately wrapped it twice around with the shirt, tying it tightly just above the wound. He looked up square at Mina. “I think we can come to an agreement. This boy’s getting a thrashing.”
“I ain’t no boy. Fuck you, Glen!” Warren managed before sprouting a further flurry of swear words.
Glen picked up Warren and seemed to wrestle him over to one of the old church pews yet again. The others followed him with nothing, but a concerned glance at the two women.
Shannon watched Mina clamber up to her. “You certainly calmed that situation.” Shannon opened her mouth, found no further words and shrugged.
Tariq found that his control of where the bullets were ending up was getting a little better. He continued to fire single bullets at a time, periodically as to not use them all up too quickly. He pinged them noisily off the roof and walls of the animal sheds successfully – so far – keeping the two soldiers in its cover. At the house, he could see the smoke billowing thickly out the window into the path of one of the floodlights, gradually darkening the area just outside. A figure ran across the complex, stopping behind the tree in the centre. Tariq saw the muzzle flash at the top of his sights and immediately ducked down. The man had seen him.
Instead of returning to firing the rifle, he grabbed it in both hands and rolled into the gully. He didn’t know how many bullets remained in the magazine so he swapped it while behind the cover and then started dragging himself further towards the building. Bullets whistled over his head by only a short distance, he dared not stand for fear of one passing directly through his skull. The man must have emptied his magazine as the firing stopped, but it was quickly taken up again by the erratic fire of the two soldiers from the animal shelter.
When he was far enough away from where his location was last known, he bobbed his head up to regard the situation below him. A fourth soldier was rounding the corner of the animal sheds from the other side, but halfway between that and the treeline which provided Tariq his shelter, another point of gunfire flared up and cut the man down as he ran. “My brother,” Tariq said. “He probably just saved my life.” The loose cover fire into the treeline paused for a moment before intense fire focussed on an unseen target near the house. Tariq scrubbed his face with his palms. He knelt face down in the dirt, covering his head for a few moments before rising to a stooped run back in the direction he had come. He could see the backs of the two soldiers closest to him. “I had better return that favour.”
He found what he was looking for, a clear path between the trees and before he found time to stop and think, he pulled the pin out of the first grenade. He gripped it tightly and locked his eyes at those soldiers’ feet. He threw it hard and it went soaring out into the complex, just touching the underside of the canopy leaves as it reached its highest point. Tariq dropped to the ground and had just enough time to start wondering how long the fuse was before the explosion ravaged his ears.
Stopping the man from finding Tariq in the woods had given away his position and part of Leighton regretted it a lot. That same part also wished especially that he hadn’t had to leave the cover of the house to do it. The smoke from the interior of the house that had initially gifted him some cover dissipated quickly in the cold air and he had only just enough time to dive behind the Land Rover before three rifles homed in on him. Bullets came in a steady stream either side of the vehicle including some that moved the air around his trousers. One of the soldiers was clearly shooting from prone towards his feet.
He had to move and the only thing he could think to do was to drop the rifle and pull his feet up with his hands gripping the back edge of the vehicle. It was not a posture he could keep up for long and had to drop his feet periodically. Just as he was lowering his leg, he heard the faint sound of a grenade blast. The same instant, he moved back from the vehicle that was then rocking on its suspension from the closeness of the blast. He took a step back towards the Land Rover and collapsed, his left leg no longer able to support his weight. It wasn’t until he saw the wound – just above the inside ankle bone – that the searing pain started. Blood drained from his head leaving him dull and woozy. His stomach turned and tears ran down his cheeks. He wanted to scream, but couldn’t find the breath to.
Tariq didn’t want to see the carnage. Silence filled the complex and tinnitus roared in his ears. He knew he had hit the target. After years of lobbing rocks and returning canisters of tear gas at police officers across Tahrir Square, he had become adept at judging these kinds of distances. The lack of gunfire returning in his direction corroborated what he knew. -But he also knew there was one soldier left out there. Last seen somewhere near the tree in the middle of the complex.
He started his consideration of the landscape below him by trying to spot Leighton near the house. The air was already clear by the time he brought himself to look up, but he couldn’t see his partner anywhere. He used the rifle’s sight to get a slightly magnified view and scanned around the house searching for any signs of movement. He lowered the gun and roamed his eyes back and forth between the buildings. He simply wanted to see either of the men out there. Tariq felt surprisingly lonely as thoughts of Leighton’s state rubbed at his mind. The fact that a man with an obvious motive for a vendetta against him was also nowhere to be found felt as though it was grinding apart his stomach lining.
Tariq considered the two options to him. Stay still; if the man knew where he was already, he dies. Move in; if the man doesn’t, he would then and he dies. Tariq then also considered that the man was probably hiding somewhere in the complex with the same dilemma. -And somewhere else – he hoped – Leighton was having the same thoughts.
After minutes of thorough thought, he settled on his answer. Move. He edged slowly from tree trunk to tree trunk through the wood towards the house. He dared not go towards where his grenade landed. At least the only body between him and the house was not one that he had created. He followed the outer wall of the animal shed around until the house came back into view along with the Land Rover. Still he saw neither of the men he was looking for.
Movement caught his eye and he swung the rifle to his shoulder. Through the scope, he saw – what he assumed in that instant – would be his final image. A grey-haired, well-built man aiming a similar rifle straight at him. One of the floodlights cast a grim shadow across the angular features of his face. What should have been only a fleeting moment dragged on. Tariq wasn’t sure if he was not already dead. Maybe the soldier’s gun had already fired and instead of heaven or hell, all he would be left with for the rest of eternity would be the single image of his last sight. While contemplating his eternal fate, Tariq noticed a sound float over the continuous rise and fall of ringing in his ears. It was neither him, nor the man ahead. It varied in pitch and intensity. Time still passed.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Tariq said pulling the
gun away from his body. “We’re done here. Okay?” He placed his rifle on the ground and held his hands palms outwards. “You’re the last man standing. Neither of us need to pass on, yet.” The man’s hard eyes softened an infinitesimal amount as Tariq darted his to the source of the moaning. “We have someone left alive, but injured. The rest of this is senseless. We’ve done enough. If I need to die for it to end, so be it, but there are some innocent people being held captive in that barn. A mother, her child, an innocent young woman. This is too much. I’ve already put my gun down. I just need you to make your decision quickly with regards to me, but let those guys in there go. Let a child be reunited with its father. Please. Come on.” Tariq held his hands together palm to palm, physically pleading with the man.
The barrel of the man’s rifle lowered slowly.
“Thank you, thank you. Are you okay?” Tariq asked sincerely.
“I am fine.” The man frowned heavily in disgust as he regarded all around him. “Are you?”
“Shaken up. For sure. Now, one of us has an injured, but living friend close by.”
“Tariq?” came Leighton’s voice weakly. “Tariq?”
“Leighton? Where are you, man?”
“Land Rover. Shit, I got hit by something.”
“I’ll get the medical kit,” the soldier told Tariq, before darting into the house.
“It’s okay, Leighton.” Tariq moved over to the Land Rover, checking the front seats as he rounded it. He found Leighton lying in the flatbed part, clasping his ankle. Blood ran into the grooves of the floor in glistening black streaks. Tariq reeled away from the sight.
The soldier returned and instantly started to work on Leighton’s wound with pungent antiseptic wipes. Leighton gasped and flinched his body, but Tariq’s weight on his calf stopped him from being able to escape the agonising sting as it worked its way into the hole in his leg.
“You’ve taken shrapnel. There isn’t much I can do except to wrap it up right now, though you’ll have to get it out at some point. That point isn’t now,” the soldier told him.
Leighton regarded the man for the first time properly. “You,” he said. “You’re the one that Mina asked me to spare. I can see why. Thank you. I’m sure Mina would say the same too.”
The man remained stone-faced. “Don’t.” He shook his head. “You don’t have long until the rest of our survivors return. So, you’d better go let them out.” He placed a set of keys in Tariq’s hand. “The large bronze key.” The man let the pressure off Leighton’s leg – now tightly bandaged – and turned on his heels. Tariq jogged to the barn and out of Leighton’s view. The grey-haired man, however, turned and took a step forward.
“Before you go,” Leighton called after the man. “Why weren’t we just killed?”
The man stopped, his back still to Leighton. He turned his head half way around. “Because we’re all still the same. Whether the rest of these pricks thought so or not.” Then he continued onwards towards the horizon.
Mina had taken to sitting for what felt like an age after the shooting and explosions had finally stopped and it already felt like another age since she had sat. Apart from the continuous swearing spouting from Warren’s mouth, the cohabitants of the barn had remained silent. There had been some crying, mainly from Shannon who was worried – quite literally – sick, but no words formed themselves in the dark, heavy air.
The chain rattled and Shannon eagerly turned her head before jumping down to the ground with Zeke clutched tightly to her shoulder. She had crossed half the barn by the time light flooded in with the opening of the doors. A solitary figure stood silhouetted.
“Shannon, I assume?” the figure said.
“Where’s Leighton?” Shannon quizzed. “Where is he?”
“He’s out here. He’s-” he paused. “He will be just fine. Where’s – er – Mina? You in there, Mina? Damn, it’s dark in here.”
Mina jumped down, confused, and walked into the light. “I’m here. Who are you and how do you know my name?” As she drew closer the effect of the light silhouetting him dissipated and she saw the man was wearing a mud-covered vest-top over otherwise skin-tight clothing. His bald head and face were also covered in dirt with sweat streaks digging trenches that tracked from the top of his skull to his pointed chin. She looked at him with perplexed distress.
“I’m a friend of your Grace.”
She was about to ask what made her a Catholic priest when it dawned on her. “You know Grace, where is she?”
“Not far, but we don’t have much time. Come on, the two-, three of you. Hello, little one,” Tariq said. Zeke turned to the voice and started crying, burying his head into his mother. Tariq looked down at his bony mud-covered form and shrugged. “Don’t worry, little one, I’d cry too.”
“What about us?” The voice of Glen called out of the darkness. “You just leaving us here?”
Mina turned to regard them. “The door is open.” She ran to catch up with Shannon with Tariq already jogging across to the Land Rover. The outside felt oppressively bright under the floodlights and Mina squinted as she ran.
Chapter 55
Tariq jostled with the set of keys until his fingers finally got hold of the black, plastic-topped key for the Land Rover. Shannon leant over the back of the vehicle, draping herself over Leighton, whose arm pulled her in tightly.
“Mate,” Tariq said, coming to life again with the project of getting everyone away on his hands. “You’ve got to get yourself into one of the seats. I take a corner too fast and you are in the ditch. Come on.” He shoved the key in the ignition and turned the engine on and went to the back to pry Shannon off her husband. “Come on, guys. We can’t hang around here ‘til sunrise. Shannon, get strapped in, I got him. Mina, stop staring. We are going to get Grace now. Sit passenger side.” Tariq was getting frustrated at his itch to leave and everyone else’s seeming reluctance. “Come on. Come on. Come on.” He clapped his hands loudly for emphasis. Shannon finally got out the way. “Go. Strap in. I got him,” he urged, placing a hand on her back. “Come on. Your weight on me. Let’s hop you over here.”
Leighton moved easily and let Tariq almost throw him into the rear passenger seat.
“I’ve got Tramadol, if you want it.” Mina proffered the packet across and Shannon took it, thanking her.
“Strap in guys. You may notice there are no doors, so keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times.” Shannon started popping the tablets into her hand. “Give him that. You, sit in the middle cross both seatbelts across you and Zeke.” Tariq revved the engine and put it in drive. “Leighton, Mina. Are you both strapped in? Shannon, you holding on tight?”
Everyone murmured their affirmation.
“Right then. We’re going.”
At the main road, Tariq took a right and drove steadily straddled across both lanes of the country road. After batting various levers, the high beams came on and lit the land eerily in front of them. The only noise any of them could hear was that of the loud diesel engine chugging comfortably at low revs. They took another right after Tariq had to slam the brakes on to slow in time and thereafter the road eventually twisted and turned until Tariq recognised the steep banks on the right of the road. He slowed gradually to a crawl until the small rocky outcrop came into view.
“Mina, give me a hand.” Tariq pulled the handbrake up sharply before jumping down. “Grace!” He called. “I bring a visitor.”
Mina cried out into the darkness. “Oh, Grace. It’s me!”
A moment of silence passed as they started hastily scrambling up the thick grass.
“Mina?” Grace’s voice came, drifting on the wind.
“Yea, honey?”
“You made it.” The excitement in Grace’s voice was rampant. “Yes. Come here.”
Mina skidded on her knees as she lowered herself to hug her friend. They embraced while Tariq started rolling a few of the water bottles down the hill.
“All right. You two. I hate to be the buzzkil
l here, but we really got to get out of this area as soon as possible. There’s – like – seven dead bodies in a well-lit area less than a mile away and that old man suggested a very strong possibility of his friends turning up back there sometime soon.”
Mina asked Grace, “Is he always like this?” Loud enough for Tariq to hear.
“I for one, will let him off for bringing you back to me,” Grace replied.
“Aw, thanks. Now. Come on!” Tariq said with urgency.
Grace was held up by Tariq on one side and Mina on the other down the slope and Tariq lifted her himself into the remaining seat in the back while Mina grabbed up the bottles. Once Grace was strapped in next to Shannon and a bottle of water doled out to each of them, Tariq drove off. Grace made acquaintance loudly with Shannon and Leighton in the back.
They continued for over an hour and a half with Tariq aiming as close to south west as he could manage in the dark landscape. He battled a tsunami of tiredness and the other passengers drifted into silence. He could tell Mina was still watching his eyes intently for any sign he might pass out and drift them all off the road. Eventually Tariq pulled over and chugged noisily on his bottle of water.
“Tariq,” Leighton said behind him. “You all right?”
“I don’t know. I mean yea. I’m exhausted.”
“I don’t blame you, man. You’ve pulled through for all of us right now.”
“It’s all good.” Tariq barely had energy to reply at all.
“Are you still good to drive?”
“No, not good to, but I can.”
“It shouldn’t be long from here. Shit, this Tramdol is good,” he said, suddenly distracted. “I recognised some of the road signs. We can get to my parents’ farm with just – maybe – twenty minutes more driving. Can you do that? I promise you a bed, a bath, a-, whatever we have to offer you. It’ll be worth it.”
Ousted: A thrilling debut novel of survival and humanity Page 29