My arms were still pinned by the weight of my attacker and by my own weapon. I wriggled and writhed, bucked my hips upwards to create space enough to move, to do something, to change the situation, but it didn’t work. He recovered, punching down into my chest and stomach hard to drive the air from my lungs before reaching down to wrap his filthy hands around my neck and squeeze. I dropped my chin onto his hands, trying to maintain any airway I could as I knew my body would betray me and start to give up if I was choking. I turned my head from side to side as a desperate whine escaped my mouth, only for that sound to be drowned out by a growl and snarl as Nemesis launched herself at the man.
She bit down hard on the nearest part of his body she could reach, sinking her long teeth into the back of his right leg. He reared up, screaming a guttural noise of pain and fear that only came from being attacked by an animal, and that movement was enough.
I bucked my hips again, pushing myself free enough to pull my right hand out from underneath myself. I snatched for the grip of the Glock on my chest and wrenched it free to hold it in two hands and fast-pull the trigger to punch a dozen rounds into the chest of the bastard on top of me before he even began to fall back down. The sound of the bullets, fired so fast that it could have been automatic, hung in the air as my ears rang painfully.
He slumped over me, hot, sticky blood pouring out of him and onto me in gushing waves. I pushed him off, wriggling away to get to one knee and recover the grip of my carbine, and wipe the blood off my face to see better. Nem still tore at his body, snarling as she wrenched her head from side to side and ripped clothing away complete with chunks of flesh.
More bullets hit the ground around me, and I turned in the direction of the new noise to lay flat and open up on them. I saw two, running in the open and firing wildly from the hip as they advanced with all the enthusiasm of believing themselves invincible but none of the caution that even the most basic of training would have given them.
They fell. Not to my fire but to rounds coming from their right as Mitch and Dan cut them down. I got to my feet, falling back down to one knee as the disorientation of the hit and the close-range gunfire had robbed me of my balance. I raised my gun and Nemesis left the man who was being boring by not fighting back or screaming. She nuzzled at me as my breath came in rapid gasps, the pain of the brief and violent struggle finally hitting me. I doubled over, a small cry of pain escaping my lips making my dog whine and bump me again with her bloody nose.
Dan and Mitch ran to me, both fearing that I had been hurt, and my repeated mumbles about being alright fell on deaf ears as they forced me to lie down to check me over.
Dan told me later that the sight of me covered in blood, literally sheeted from head to toe, terrified him. It took a lot for him to admit feelings, and I only wished he would do it more often to Marie so that she wouldn’t take out her fears and frustrations elsewhere. Like at me.
“I’m fine,” I said, back in control of my senses and my body as I pushed them away to climb to my feet, “I just got a bit… wobbly for a second.”
“Where are you cut?” Dan asked again intensely.
“I’m not,” I told him, “it’s not mine.” Their eyes cast to the crumpled body of the man who had fallen on me, revealing for the first time that he was a thin young man who seemed so much smaller in death than he had moments before. A sound far behind us made us spin, weapons raised, to see another one throwing down his weapon as he ran desperately away.
“He’s just a kid,” Dan said as we all squinted at him through our scopes. A single loud crack of a rifle’s report made me jump and flinch again. I slowly straightened to look at Mitch who was lowering his gun, a wisp of gasses escaping the end of the barrel.
“You don’t spare the life of a dangerous animal just because it’s a young one,” he intoned gravely, his face a mask of hatred. “It’ll just grow up to be another dangerous bastard.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Dan said, not so much changing the subject as simply dropping it. “I want to be back before the sun starts to go down.
A strange sensation hit me then, one that all women recognise and dread at the wrong moment.
“I, err, I need a minute first,” I said, walking off towards the nearest building and slipping inside. I tried to check, even used my bright torch in the dark and dusty interior, but with so much blood covering me and soaking my clothes I couldn’t tell whether any of the blood came from me as I feared.
Reflection
I look back to that point now and I can still recall the fear. I’d never experienced dread like it before then, and never since, but that fear that my desperate fight with a filthy, ragged pirate had caused me to lose my baby lanced through my chest like an ice-cold spear. I said nothing on the journey back, understandably so after having seen the things I had seen and coming too close to getting myself killed.
They didn’t know what I was really afraid of, but how could they?
My first stop back at Sanctuary was a shower. I stepped inside without taking anything off and let the cool water fall over me and my kit to run off my boots with a pink tinge. I called Nem to me, forcing her under the water with difficulty to wash away the blood from her face as though seeing her proudly wearing the results of her training would paint her in a different light to people. I stripped my kit off piece by piece and laid it out, transfixed by the diluted blood running from the barrel of my battered carbine. The man’s blood had covered me, getting in every nook of my kit and soaking through to my skin where it had dried to a tacky film during the hot walk home. I peeled off my clothes, scrubbing at my skin and hair as I used an entire bottle of the precious shower gel I had so recently liberated. Nemesis had escaped to shake the water from her coat and lie in the corner of the room where she shot hurt looks at me.
My stomach had stopped hurting, but the knowledge that at least some of the blood had come from me made my heart beat faster than I was comfortable with. Dressing in clean clothes without drying myself thoroughly I left my weapons still wet and untended as I walked fast with my head focused on my feet towards medical.
Luckily, I saw nobody on the way, nobody who stopped me to ask me anything anyway, and I knew that Lucien would be on the sea wall looking outwards at the threat and not inwards with a concern he didn’t even know he had.
The infirmary was empty, making me go back across the corridor and knock at the heavy wood separating Kate’s rooms from the outside world. She called out from inside for whoever it was to come in, and I entered to see her looking up from the chair she sprawled on as her eyes lifted up from the dog-eared paperback she was reading. She took one look at me, at my normal clothes and my subdued bearing, at my wet hair and my face which was already beginning to contort and threatened tears at any moment.
Kate dropped the book without marking the page, some image of a silhouetted man and a dog on the battered cover and rushed to me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as she grabbed my shoulders and tried to look at my face. “Are you hurt? What happened?”
I lowered my face, not wanting anyone to see me cry as I was powerless to stop the tears from flowing. I didn’t answer her, just cried and hugged her to bury my face in her shoulder. She stopped asking questions and steered me back to the comfortable seat where she sat me down and held my hands to let me get it out. She didn’t push me, didn’t force me to speak, just waited until I told her.
“I think…” I sniffed and cuffed at my eyes. “I think I lost my baby today…”
Kate hugged me tightly, letting me cry until it all came out. She didn’t admonish me for going out into danger despite being pregnant, wasn’t cross with me for lying to her about feeling sick that morning, simply held me and let me pour out my fear and pain because nothing she could do could prevent the worst from happening, if it was actually happening. When I stopped and sat up, panicking slightly as my nose was full of snot and threatening to drip, she handed me a handkerchief without even checking if it was clean
or not.
She stood, holding out her hand to me and pulled me to my feet to lead the way across the corridor and into the rooms that were our hospital. She sat me down, turning away and coming back with a small plastic pot and gesturing for me to go to a small room to do what she needed me to do. I came back, pot in hand in a daze and sat as she dipped a stick into it and rested it on the top of the plastic. She passed the time by checking my pulse and blood pressure again, probably just so that the wait wasn’t filled with painful silence.
“How far gone do you think you are?” she asked.
“I’ve missed this month and last month,” I explained. She nodded her understanding.
“Have you eaten anything today?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking back to when I last ate something and figuring out it had been hours. As though my body had been reminded, my stomach growled audibly. “Actually, not for a while now…”
Kate smiled, turning away again and coming back with a wrapped chocolate bar which she handed to me. I smiled. She knew I had a sweet tooth and these things were rare nowadays. They were so full of chemicals and preservatives that we had evolved away from that when the sugar hit my senses it set me alight like a drug. Sugar was a drug, at least it had been before, and I had listened to Kate moaning that it was a killer that had enslaved the human race, being responsible for more health issues than smoking and drinking put together.
The distraction of the chocolate worked, and the test had given her the results before I realised it.
“Good news,” she said smiling at me, “but let’s be sure because hormones are funny things.” With that she dug around in a drawer, rummaging as though she looked for something she didn’t need to use often. Turning back to me her hands held an off-white box with a springy cable hanging from it. She fumbled with the cable, running her hand down it to raise up what looked like a tiny microphone at the end. “Lean back for me?”
I did, reclining stiffly on the old patient couch and feeling every part of the fight I’d had that day. I lifted my top, suddenly feeling self-conscious for some reason, and Kate asked me to unfasten my belt. I did, and she squirted a small sachet of something directly on my skin.
“Ahh, cold!” I gasped, as though that mild discomfort was anything in comparison to what I’d been through that day.
“Sorry chick,” Kate said, pressing the small microphone onto my skin and moving it around as she twirled the dial on the box in her other hand. Tense seconds passed by as I held my breath, convincing myself that nothing would be there and the positive test had been a trick.
“There,” Kate breathed, turning the volume up and meeting my eyes with a smile.
The sound I heard next was both terrifying and amazing. The rapid, echoing, swooshing sound of a tiny heartbeat fluttering inside me put the world in sudden perspective.
My tears started again as relief and stress poured out of me. She hugged me once more, letting me cry onto her and purge the emotion until it dried up and I re-emerged from the state I had fallen into. I sat up, dried my eyes and blew my nose again. I folded the handkerchief carefully, concentrating on the small actions as a reason to keep my eyes down and say nothing.
“Want to talk about it?” Kate asked me. I took a breath, looking up at the ceiling and holding it for a long time before I blew it out through my pursed lips.
“I didn’t know how I felt until today,” I said in a voice that didn’t sound like my own. “When I thought…” I screwed my eyes shut to stop from crying again and took a few moments to gather myself. “When I thought I’d lost it, I nearly fell apart. If I was here and not out there with Dan and Mitch, I don’t know what I would’ve done. The stupid thing is that I’m scared to tell him, and even more scared to tell Marie because…” I faltered, realising that Kate would obviously know about her miscarriage and shaking my head to clear my own stupidity, “because of her issues. She really wants another baby, and I don’t even know if I can cope with this…”
“You can,” Kate said, “if you want to. You’ll have help, you’ll have support, and you’ll never have to do any of this on your own.”
I looked at her, seeing her eyes reflecting her genuine words, and cuffed at my eyes again as I nodded. I did want this baby, and the terror of nearly dying along with the fear of thinking I had lost it just served to solidify that in my mind. I slid down from the bed I was sat on, mumbling my thanks for her time as I headed for the door for the second time that day.
“You need to stop going outside of the walls though,” she told me, “that includes going out to sea.” I stopped, turning to look at her.
“No, I need to stay active,” I told her, “we’ve literally got wolves at the door and you want to take one of our best pieces off the table?”
“It’s for the best, for you and the ba—”
“No,” I said, “don’t do that. If I don’t stop these fucking animals, then there won’t be anywhere to raise a baby. There won’t be anything here left at all. You saw what they did to the guy who made it here?” She swallowed and nodded, making me guess that she’d already heard a version of what we had found at the settlement. “Well they did worse to the others,” I said. “I watched Dan pick up a man’s head by the hair today. We had to burn the bodies together because we couldn’t see which bit went with which body. You hear what I’m saying? You see why I can’t take a back seat now?”
Kate nodded, clearly biting her lip to stop her from saying something else. She let me go without saying another word, so I walked back to my room to spend a couple of hours cleaning the blood from every part of my kit and my weapons.
Because I was damned sure going to be ready when we saw them again.
The Waiting Game
I had sworn Kate to secrecy which was a promise I was certain she would keep right up until the point when she thought I was putting myself in danger, then she would blurt it out just to get others to keep me in line. She would wholly believe that she was doing what was best for my health, for my baby’s health, but I knew I’d do all I had to do to keep everyone else safe from the threat.
I hated being under siege. The massive ship just sat there, anchored out to sea to block our access to the deeper waters holding the fish we needed to create our excess food stores for the coming winter. We never had to think of these things before, not when food came from shops or was just delivered to your door, but I knew all too well that if we didn’t overproduce and store or trade it then we would be in for a hard winter.
We’d had hard winters before, when the population of our town had increased rapidly, but back then we could fall back on stores of canned food and the foil packets of the military ration packs. We had even cleared out almost all of the stores of dried pasta, rice and flour, and I mentally planned another trip inland to the hypermarché. I abandoned the thought, knowing that sparing the personnel for it would mean hardship or gaps in the defences for those left behind.
It wasn’t just the physical hardships of living under constant threat of attack; the mental pressure started to show some cracks in people that would likely never have come out otherwise. Dan ran patrols up the coastline to discourage any further forays to land, and after returning to gather the bodies of the pirates we had killed he had piled them into their boat and piloted it back to anchor it off our bay.
He hoped it would serve as a warning, as a sign that anyone sent ashore would not come back.
“Why do we have a boat full of dead bodies just sat there?” Marie asked me one morning as she walked with my little brother down to the shoreline for a closer look. I guessed she was looking for Dan as he had a habit of hiding when it came to difficult conversations about his feelings. She pulled a knitted shawl tighter around her shoulders as she stood to talk to me, feeling the speed of the breeze pick up closer to the open water. The air was warm even early in the morning but somehow the sea always provided a chill to those not expecting it.
“They might come in handy,” I told her, sounding
just like Neil every time someone asked why there was half an outboard motor sitting untouched in a corner.
“Handy…” Marie started, trailing off as I guess she realised she really didn’t want to know. She shook her head and turned away, wandering over to Dan who stared out to sea as though the hulking ship would do something at any moment. She looped her hand inside his arm and rested her head against his shoulder as he seemed to come back into the real world to lean his body into hers. He reached down to bring their son into the embrace and I just watched as the three of them stood there, frozen in time for a moment.
“Hello? Earth to Leah?” Lucien’s voice cut into my thoughts and burst my bubble. He opened his mouth to speak again but stopped, his eyes focussing further down on my body to where I had unconsciously placed a hand just under my belt buckle. I took it away quickly, pulling a face that I hoped would signify I had some discomfort in my stomach and not what it really was.
“What?” I asked. “Sorry, I was miles away.”
“Oh,” he said, “okay.” He seemed flustered and confused but recovered enough to tell me what he wanted to say. “The farm, they have send someone to tell us that they”—he pointed a hand out to sea—“have been seen near their walls.”
I didn’t have to ask how they knew it was ‘them’. Appearances were fairly obvious, and even though a good portion of our population weren’t white skinned, the arrival of strangers with AK-47s made it pretty obvious that they weren’t locals. I whirled away, calling Dan to me in a tone of voice that achieved instant compliance.
“What is it?” he asked as I took long strides up the sloping stone walkway towards the castle and the gates of our town.
Piracy: The Leah Chronicles (After it Happened Book 8) Page 16