Dan was much the same, only his dusty memories were of different places and different people. The only common theme was that people were capable of such unending cruelty to one another, and the end of the world went a long way to making it worse, as the only thing keeping those people in check was the threat of retribution.
~
I was taking my turn on the pier where I spent every day watching the distant hulk lying motionless out in deep water. I was grateful for their arrival in one way, as it saved me from having to give excuses why I could no longer step foot on a boat without feeling instantly sick.
Not one boat had been seen leaving it for the first few days, and when the shout went up from one of the eagle-eyed in the high tower, every man and woman capable grabbed a weapon and lined the sea wall ready to pour fire at anyone heading to our little slice of paradise with evil intent.
The boat bobbed towards us for a few minutes, growing larger in such slow-motion as to betray the distance the massive ship was from land. I had claimed seniority; Dan accused me of playing but I ignored him. I stretched out the headband of the ear defenders as I flicked down the bolt latch to select fully automatic fire on the Browning fifty and braced my boots wide on the stone walkway in anticipation of the thunderous vibrations the huge gun would send through my body. I glanced left and saw Mitch flipping out the bipod legs attached to the underside of the barrel on the captured and refurbished PKM as he handed a spare belt of linked ammunition to a bewildered young man beside him, giving instructions through the medium of sign language and shouting. He must have sensed my interest because he rested the stock into his shoulder and dropped his body weight slightly to line up the gun before looking in my direction and offering a wink.
I took a breath, let it out slowly, and waited for the little boat to come into effective range. In theory the bullets could kill at over a mile away, but the chances of me sending a bullet over that distance and taking into account the various changes on wind and temperature over the water, as well as the curvature of the Earth and a few other factors I couldn’t counter, were so slim they were non-existent. I could fire the entire belt of ammunition, something which we couldn’t replace, at them and still miss with every single round.
Before they came anywhere near close enough to shred with our amassed firepower, they turned abruptly to our right and headed east. We watched in annoyed silence as they went out of sight even before we heard the whine of their engines.
“Well,” Dan said quietly to break the awkward silence, “that was disappointing.”
It was. I flicked the bolt latch back up and released the twin handles of the machine gun, feeling like I would never get the chance to fire it, which strangely bothered me.
“Stand down,” I declared loudly, feeling faint as I said it and staggered slightly. I thought I’d got away without anyone noticing but one of the militia members, a young woman who flatteringly seemed to model her look on mine, stepped close and spoke in rapid, concerned French.
“I’m fine, really,” I insisted. “Je vais bien.”
“Tu n’es pas,” Lucien said as he appeared through the small crowd to emerge shouldering his way to the front. I tried to push him away, tried to tell him I was fine, but a wave of heat surged through my head and I fainted.
I came around in the infirmary with Kate scowling down at me. I scowled back, mostly out of anger at myself for appearing weak in front of people, and moved to prop myself up on my elbows.
“Slowly,” the medic admonished me as I sat up and waited for the wooziness to fade. A tug at my left elbow revealed a thick needle piercing my skin, my eyes following the clear tubing running from my flesh to the bag of liquid hanging from a chromed frame.
“Is that all you do?” I asked with no real venom in my words. “Just stick a bag of fluids in anyone you find?”
“Pretty much,” Kate shot back without even looking at me. “Now, what have you had to eat today?”
I thought about it and answered honestly. “Some juice,” I admitted.
“No carbohydrates?” she enquired with a raised eyebrow. I shook my head. “Well, no wonder you fainted in this heat on an empty stomach.”
Fainted? I thought. I’ve never fainted in my life…
“Oh,” I said out loud, “I err…”
“You need to rest, and you need to eat properly. I swear you’re as stubborn as Marie for taking my advice…”
“I’m okay, I ju—”
“Eat something, rest, don’t overdo it,” I was told firmly. “And you aren’t going anywhere until I’ve finished topping up your oil.”
I sighed and slumped backwards to flop into the pillow, not expecting a Neil joke from anyone except Neil, taking the enforced inactivity as a chance for some quiet time. That was ruined by another wave of sickness that I just knew wouldn’t go away on its own. I sat up, my voice sounding strangled as I asked for help.
“Unhook me,” I said, “I’m going to throw up.” Kate looked at me uncomprehendingly for a moment too long, making a retching noise erupt from the back of my throat which I cut off by clamping my free right hand over my mouth.
Now, normal people would have let me off the bed. Would have disconnected the drip or else carried the frame holding it for me to puke with at least some dignity. Not Kate. Not the paramedic who’d been vomited on so many times in her life that she was almost immune to the sights and smells and sounds of it. No, she just brought a bowl over to me and held my ponytail clear while I coughed up the acidic contents of my stomach.
“Pheeeww,” she whistled in mild distaste as she looked away and tried not to breathe in, “you were telling the truth about the juice.” Her nose wrinkled and her eyes blinked rapidly as the smell of acidic orange filled the room. I finished, wiping my mouth and leaning back with an exhausted groan. I opened my eyes to see her looking at me curiously.
“What?” I asked, still out of breath.
“How long have you been feeling like this?” she quizzed.
“Just this morning,” I lied, “didn’t feel like eating much and didn’t sleep well…”
“Right,” Kate said, drawing the word out with a clearly pronounced subtitle of, ‘I don’t believe you’. She picked up a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope and advanced on me like the world’s kindest torturer. I lacked the energy to make her stop and stayed still as she messed around with me, poking and prodding and telling me to keep still as the pressure around my upper arm increased and a thermometer was shoved under my tongue.
“Mmff a ’ectul ffmumutah?” I mumbled through the obstruction. She just glared at me for a moment, ignoring my weak attempt at humour and probably contemplating telling me that it was indeed a rectal thermometer and that she hadn’t cleaned it since she saw the last patient. She took it out of my mouth and frowned at it, muttering something about a high temperature. I glanced up at the drip and saw that it had almost finished so I carefully withdrew the needle when she wasn’t looking, snatching up a small square of boiled cloth and pressed it hard into the tiny wound as I slipped down from the tall bed.
“I’m fine,” I said as I headed for the door, “I promise I’ll eat something whe—”
I stopped, seeing the exit to the infirmary blocked by Dan and Mitch. Both were still dressed for war and both wore faces of undisguised anger. My heart dropped, thinking that somehow they had found out about my situation, I think that was what people said about it, and were coming to force me to stay inside until I turned fifty.
“What’s going on?” Kate asked with evident concern. “Do you need me to leave?”
“No,” Dan said, “stay. You’ll need to hear what we have to say too.” Kate sat down. “Looks like that boat we saw today wasn’t the first one they’d sent out,” Dan intoned ominously. He seemed to want to say more but was struggling to phrase it the way he thought it should come out. I wanted to tell him to get on with it but the rainbow of emotions coming off them kept my mouth closed.
“The settlement
s to the east,” he said, “the homestead people?” I knew them. They were like a large family, only none of them were related before it all happened. They came up with their own idea of living together in what Dan called an ‘off-grid’ lifestyle. They reminded me of the old TV shows where people lived off the land out in newly populated areas of countryside. I liked the idea, until I realised that the ten of them had to get all of their own food and water as well as every other chore necessary to stay alive. Their way of life made me know I had it easy in many ways, as I never had to worry about what I was eating and whether there would be enough fuel to have a fire. Much the same way that the people who made food or harvested firewood never had to face the prospect of fighting with any invaders because that was what I did for them.
“What about them?” I asked suspiciously, not wanting the answer to be what I thought it might be.
“One of them is here. He…” Dan wavered and cleared his throat. “He was hurt.”
Kate leapt up to grab her bag loaded with everything she might need to administer emergency medicine. “Where is he? What are his injuries?”
Dan held up both hands and took a pace towards the paramedic. He placed those hands on her shoulders to stop her frantic movements and fix her gaze on him.
“It’s too late,” he told her as softly as his anger would allow, “he’s gone.”
“Gone?” she shot back. “Gone bloody where?”
“He’s bloody well dead, Kate,” he said harshly. “And a lot more people will be if we don’t do something about it.” He glanced at me as his glowering eyes told me to fall in and get ready for a fight. I followed them out of the room as Kate began to interrupt and say that I couldn’t go anywhere. A single warning glance from me stopped her protest, and she nodded for me to go.
That day was the first time I ever truly understood the word atrocity. I found myself walking away from the gatehouse automatically as my feet propelled me onwards in a daze. Nemesis walked beside me, looking up intermittently and whimpering as she picked up on the mood.
How that man had walked to Sanctuary was beyond belief. That he had survived the injuries they had inflicted upon him was an impossibility, but to have covered over eight miles on rough ground after having both of his hands removed at mid forearm before suffering what looked like a crude cauterisation was the stuff of nightmares.
He had survived long enough to tell one of our militia that they had attacked their home, had dragged away the woman and murdered the men. How they had given him the option of which parts of his body they should remove with a machete as the rest of them jeered and laughed at the entertainment, forcing him to pick two things. He had chosen his hands, because he knew he couldn’t walk to raise the alarm on stumps and the other option they gave him would mean bleeding out or simply dying of shock.
He must have been one of the strongest, bravest, most resolved men I think I could ever have met to have survived the ordeal long enough to make it there and tell us, and his death rocked me so far over the edge that I needed to be alone. I walked out to the small bay where I still ran when I wasn’t feeling sick and splashed into the shallow water as it lapped lazily towards me. Tears broke from my eyes and began their escape downwards as I tried to corral them with the backs of my hands.
I had seen death before. I had visited it on more people than I actually knew and some of that death was dealt at close range and with real malice. I had seen the results of tortured minds and bodies. What I had never seen was the results, the leftover dead meat, of pure and unadulterated sadism. These people, no, these pirates, had committed atrocities on our doorstep.
And they had to pay.
Immediate Action
Dan paced like a caged animal, barely able to contain his rage. I, like Neil and like Marie, had seen him like this once before. Mitch, despite seeing Dan angry on plenty of occasions, including more than one instance of murderous intent, had never seen him like that.
The last time I’d seen him that mad was when we’d learned about Joe’s body being hung from a streetlight about a million years ago.
The only reason he hadn’t left yet, hadn’t taken his rage and his guns and his dog and waged personal war on anyone he could find was because Marie blocked the main gate with her arms folded.
No weapon he possessed would break that defence.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she ordered, “not like this.”
“How am I supposed to be?” he snarled at her, totally blind to how he was speaking to his wife. “Should I be calm about it?”
“No,” Marie said, fighting hard to keep the reaction out of her words, “but you should be rational about it.”
“Rational?” Dan exploded, flinging his arms up. His outburst affected everyone in earshot, but the one frightened flinch I saw pushed me to intervene.
“Oi,” I snapped as I stepped forward to force myself into his eyeline. I pointed my finger at the end of my ramrod-straight arm. He peeled his eyes away from Marie’s and followed the line I gave him and saw something that brought him back down to Earth. Ash cowered, fearful of his anger instead of being riled up and ready to go into action alongside him as he should be. Dan recognised it in an instant as his emotions connected the dots far faster than he could have explained. When that realisation hit him he deflated instantly.
Marie, hiding the fact well that her husband calmed down for his dog and not her, stepped forwards and dropped her folded arms to grab his hands and get his eyes focussed on hers and make sure he heard her.
“You need to react properly, not just run out there and start a fight with the first people you don’t recognise,” she told him in a firm but softer voice. She had tears in her eyes, which at the time I thought was because of the fear and the anger of the situation but I later realised she had been suffering physically since her last miscarriage.
“She’s right,” Mitch said, “this is a come-on.”
“A what?” I asked, having not heard him use that term before that I could remember.
“It’s a lure to get people out in the open. To bring fighters out of cover into a killing ground. Chopping this poor wee bastard’s hands off and seeing where he runs to for help is a sure way to get a response, do you not think?”
As brutal as that was, it was definitely a tactic that would work against a moral enemy. Dan seemed to deflate, reaching out to wrap Marie up into a hug that oozed wordless apology. She knew him well enough to know not to take his emotional stupidity as intentionally hurtful. He was angry, and he needed to punish the bastards who hurt and killed innocent people. He pulled away, cuffing unashamedly at the tears in his eyes.
“Who spoke to him?” he asked, his voice cracking as he spoke.
“I did,” a young man answered. I recognised him, not surprisingly as I knew all of our militia members to some degree. I didn’t know him well, but I appreciated his resolve as he kept his face free from emotion and recounted the last words of the mutilated man who I then realised lay covered with a once-white sheet found from god only knew where.
“How many?” Dan muttered as his brain whirred into overdrive. The answer was given and the questions came one after another. He asked about their weapons, their language, their accents, how they were dressed, how they carried themselves.
“How is this?” the young Frenchman asked, unsure of the translation he had given the question in his own mind.
“Et leur comportement? Dîtes moi, comment se sont-ils comportés? Ont-ils eu de l’allure martiale, par exemple?” Marie offered in French far better than my own, asking about their behaviour and whether they appeared like they were military. I think that was what she meant anyway.
“Ah… non. They were... sloppy?” he offered questioningly.
Undisciplined, I thought, unsure if that made them less or more dangerous. It made them unpredictable in many ways, and unpredictable always increased the threat level in my mind.
Dan continued interrogating the man for every scrap of infor
mation he could glean before a gentle hand from Marie rested on his arm and reminded him that he wasn’t trying to drag the answers from an enemy. That unspoken communication, the soft reassurance of physical contact with a loved one, brought him back down again.
“Okay,” Dan said in a growl that was more upset and disillusioned than angry. He paused as he thought, and I could see his mind weighing up the same factors mine was, as to go outside of the walls with enough fighters to remain safe meant stretching the town’s defences even thinner than they already were. “Lucien?”
“I’m here,” he said from behind me, taking a step forwards and reaching out to place a hand on me automatically as he always did whenever he got in easy reach. I felt the warmth of his fingers on the back of my right hip and my body responded all by itself to lean into him.
“You have command of the gate,” Dan told him. “Take ten militia and hold it. Tell our people in the fort what’s happened and get them to double up on their watches.”
“D’accord,” Lucien replied, waiting for the rest of Dan’s instructions to be given out so that he had an overview of what everyone else was doing.
“Neil, can you man the fifty in the bay and take charge of that side please?”
“Got it,” Neil answered without an accent or any humour as his eyes lingered on the covered body beside him.
“Mitch, Leah, Adam – with me,” Dan finished.
“Hold on a minute,” I heard myself saying, “what’s the plan?” Dan looked around, seeing concern and fear radiating back at him from the assembled faces.
“The plan is to head for their settlement, see what’s there and re-evaluate,” he said simply.
“And if you find them there?” Marie asked. “What then?”
“You need to ask?” I questioned her gently, my eyebrows up as I purposely switched my gaze from her face to the body of the peaceful homesteader whose only want in life was to exist peacefully.
Piracy: The Leah Chronicles (After it Happened Book 8) Page 12