by S. G Mark
“But they are in there right now - all of them… I don’t know how old his kids are but they aren’t guilty to his crimes… if he’s caught, who's to say they won’t be brought in, or even if he escapes with us we can’t guarantee their safety…”
“The kids will be fine,” Emma said stoically, “We stick to the plan. It’s just him.”
“But why? Just because Kyle’s calling the shots?”
“No,” Emma said strongly, “That’s not the reason.”
“Well what then? What’s stopping us running in and telling them that the CRU are about to break in any second?”
“Idiocy for a start,” Emma said, her eyes bulging with repulsion at the idea, “You really don’t get it, do you? I guess that’s why Kyle lied to you.”
“Lied to me?” he took a step backwards.
“Oh come on Jack, do you think we are the kind of people to leave the wife and children behind? Do you really think that’s what we stand for?”
“But Kyle said we couldn’t accommodate them all… it just had to be him…”
Emma sighed, “Come on, Jack. Use just an ounce of your brain here - you’re an intelligent guy! Stop blindly believing what everyone is telling you!”
“But I have to! I am way out of my depth here!”
“So start fucking swimming!” she yelled at him, “I’m not your fucking mother. I’m not going to hold your hand the entire fucking time.”
A sudden pain gripped Jack’s chest as he staggered back from her sharpness. At that precise moment - as a verbal retaliation was forming in Jack’s mind - the sound of smashing glass pierced the air. Both their attentions were snapped towards the garden gate as they pressed their eyes through the gap. The woman - presumably Mrs Marsh - had abandoned the dishes and was nowhere in sight. Seconds later they heard a shriek followed by screams. There was absolutely nothing they could do. Unarmed and with no backup, they could not take on the CRU officers who had burst into the house. Their hands were tied. Even Jack understood they could not risk their lives to help those inside. They knew too much about The Resistance, Jack especially. How many hours of torture would he endure before he divulged Alex’s name, his family’s address? It was something that he had not been able to digest for months, but as he stood in the freezing alleyway, it was something he was quickly coming to terms with.
They heard the sounds of objects crashing to the floor followed closely by more screaming - this time more high pitched and infantile: more crying than fraught with anger and fear.
“There’s nothing more we can do,” Emma said with a tone of sombre finality, “Let’s go.”
“Go?”
“You want to run in there and try and stop them? I’m sorry, he helped us out a lot and if he survives prison we’ll be grateful, but I have to be realistic right now. Staying here for much longer is suicide.”
Jack knew she was right and offered little protest.
Abandoning the sorrowful sounds from within the terraced house, they turned their backs on the desperate screaming of a loved one being wrenched from their home. The shrieking trilled in their minds as they casually walked along the alleyway; the volume of the family’s pain not diminishing despite the increasing distance between them.
Jack kept his eye on the asphalt beneath his feet, ashamed to even be able to look Emma in the eye. He felt sick that he was walking away, surrendering to the CRU in such a cowardly fashion. They had come here to rescue Alan Marsh, instead they had simply listened to him being condemned. They hadn’t even heard a syllable of his screams, but they didn’t need to. The abject horror chilling through his wife and children only too well defined the frightening world he was in. It wasn’t a quiet, British fear; no, all hope for reservedness was lost. This was the raw, trembling emotion of human beings being torn apart from within. And he had just watched it happen.
They reached the main road just in time to see the CRU officers drag the poor man kicking and screaming from his doorstep and into the street. Neighbours doors sprung open, wide eyes gulping down the gossip dream; the sight of the man treacle to their hearts. Jack watched them as they all watched motionlessly at the scene playing out before them. Their expressions were devoid of emotions; their beings vacant of reaction or protest. Whether it had happened on this street before was irrelevant; it was happening now and whatever their views or ignorance, they were still listening to the sound of a man pleading for his life; still watching a father reaching out for one last touch of his daughter’s hand...
“Keep walking with me, even when we pass the car,” Emma muttered beneath her breath.
Jack remained silent. Now was not the time to question her authority. He tried not to look back at the scene unfolding behind them, but a part of him felt disgusted by his actions. Alan Marsh had risked his life to help The Resistance; Emma and Jack had failed to rescue him; the least he could do was watch the condemned man being carried off by the CRU. It was Jack’s obligation to witness their failure - and to not to felt cowardly.
They passed the little Volkswagen Golf as if it was just another car on the road. Behind them they heard the ignition of the CRU van start up closely followed by the sound of two doors slamming, as instantaneously the man’s hysterical sobbing cut out and the community settled into its recent trauma. Jack stole a glimpse of the van as it steered into the road and drove off. The rest of the Marsh clan were standing in the doorway of their now emptier house. Jack wished to go over to them, to explain everything; but he was bound to silence and the reality that Alan’s children might never know why their father was taken from them…
With the van vanished from sight, Emma finally stopped and turned her attention to the carnage they had inadvertently caused. Jack’s heart was thumping in his chest as a trickle of guilt infected his bloodstream. They had caused this. It was their fault.
“We should have tried to save him,” he said, breaking the guilty silence between them.
To his surprise, Emma shook his head, “We can’t save them all…”
Jack’s eyebrows furrowed with confusion; her pessimism was exemplary.
“I really don’t get you, you know that? I don’t understand why you’re even attempting to help The Resistance,” Jack said.
“Keep your voice down!” she whispered harshly.
“No, I won’t! I won’t keep my fucking voice down,” he said defiantly. “It’s almost like you’re relieved that we don’t have to relocate him…”
Emma massaged her temple with her hand, “Yeah, well maybe I am!”
“I used to respect you, you know that? You tracked me down in that forest and it was your words that made me turn around,” Jack said.
“Well maybe you wouldn’t if you knew what you were really getting into…” Emma mumbled, marching off down the road.
Jack was astounded, running to catch up with her, “What’s going on?”
Emma blanked him.
He grabbed her by the arm and she tore round, “You know why we were only meant to take him, just him?”
Jack sensed Emma was at breaking point, but simultaneously knew that they couldn’t have this conversation in the middle of the street.
“Come back to the car, we’ll drive somewhere and talk,” he said, taking her hand and leading her back to the Golf.
At the car, Jack hesitated. Emma was upset, but as much as he didn’t want her to drive, he didn’t want to take her place. He hadn’t been behind the wheel since his sister had died. The idea of it still frightened him. Emma sensed this and immediately opened the driver’s door. Jack sighed with relief and took position in the passenger’s seat.
They drove out of the city, not quite beyond the boundaries, which were guarded by CRU officers, but far enough away such that the tungsten streetlights couldn’t illuminate their skin. Parked at the side of the road which led down to the city’s recycling centre, Jack prepared to ask his questions delicately. Emma’s cheeks were sodden with tears.
“Has something happened? So
mething to your family? I tried to ask you earlier, but you shut me down,” Jack asked, seemingly abandoning tact.
“My family is fine,” Emma dismissed, “That’s not the problem.”
“But something is?” he put his arm on her shoulder.
She immediately brushed his arm away, “You know I’ll fight for The Resistance until my last dying breath, but you have to know something…”
“What? Tell me?” Jack said, anticipation poisoning his every thought.
“You always find the good in people, don’t you?” she asked.
Jack didn’t know how to respond to that. He hadn’t ever given his attitude to others a second thought, but now that he did he certainly didn’t see what she saw. His instincts were to think of Alex, and that was one person he certainly didn’t extend many positive thoughts towards.
“Where are you going with this? What’s happened?” he said.
“That man, that man we just… completely failed to save… do you know what they are going to do to him?” she said, tears trailing her cheeks.
A slice of memory burst into imagery: cold water splashing across his face, trickling down his neck.
“A fair idea, yes,” he said, “But that’s exactly what we were trying to save him from…”
Emma pulled her hair out of her face, “And would you still have wanted to save him even if I told you that we could have taken his family, he just didn’t want us to?”
“What do you mean? He didn’t want us to?”
“I mean exactly that. This… this Alan Marsh… he wasn’t the nice guy I’m sure Kyle made him out to be. We took advantage of him. He was hiving off money from his clients long before we were on the scene - but once we had something on him, we were able to blackmail him into giving us a chunk.”
“So this guy… he’s…”
“Just a thief. Just a common thief. Not this hero that Kyle described him. Sorry, I was listening through the door,” she said, “He knew the CRU were on to him and he wanted out. We offered to relocate his whole family, but he said he didn’t want it that way.”
“But we saw him - we saw how terrified he was of leaving his children… we saw that, Emma,” Jack said, gripped with confusion.
“Yeah, and I’m sure if you had a death sentence pulled over you you’d make some amendments to how you feel about certain people in your life too. I guess he realised just a bit too late…. so I guess you’re asking yourself the question, why did we even bother?”
Jack couldn’t deny that he had already asked himself that very question. Why were The Resistance prepared to go to such lengths to save a selfish thief from the CRU. Kyle would have surely made efforts to tie up the loose ends with regards to the money trail leading back to The Resistance, so what was in it for them?
The answer was absolutely nothing. The Resistance had nothing to gain by saving him and more than likely nothing to lose if they didn’t. Except an image of a man Jack hadn’t thought about in nearly a year played itself back to him… Tony from the post office, being dragged off during the lunch break, never to be seen again. He recalled the atmosphere at work that afternoon. A hollow, intangible despair - an unsaid fear that the man they had seen every working day of their lives for the past few years might never reappear, just as it had happened to Mary before him, and to countless relatives and friends beyond that.
“He might have been a bastard, Emma, but we can’t just condemn people like that to the CRU… that would… that would make us just like them…”
“Then that makes you a better person than I am,” she said, “Not that I wasn’t going to save him, but I was struggling to figure out the point of doing so.”
“I never struck you as the type to have -”
“Feelings?” she interrupted him, “Forgive my emotions, I’ll promptly bury them underground.”
He put his hand on her shoulder again, “That’s not what I meant, Emma. It’s just after all you’ve told me, after what you said to me on that bloody hillside all those months ago… I never expected you to feel this way.”
Wiping her eyes, she smiled brightly at him, “I don’t, well… It’s hard to describe. Seeing you… this is all so new to you. It’s like I see your innocence, your ignorance… and I also see what I know, what I’ve been through and all I can think of is how much more you have to learn, and how it isn’t going to be an easy road for you.”
Jack shrugged his shoulders, “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. I know I’m naive, I know that I don’t have much experience with this… I know I’m going to make mistakes…”
“There’s making mistakes Jack, and then there’s making mistakes.”
Her face flushed white as a cloud and instantly Jack knew what was wrong.
“You’re worried you should have stayed to be with your family, right?”
Emma looked at him distantly for a moment, “Yeah. It’s just a wobble. Sometimes I forget what we’re fighting for and it unnerves me when I’m pulled in to help some bastard just because he did us a favour.”
“Well I can understand that,” Jack said, automatically searching for a tissue for her eyes, “And you will be with your family again soon.”
She smiled at him again and inhaled deeply, “Thank you, Jack. I needed to hear that. I’m sorry, sometimes it isn’t easy to keep up the optimism.”
Jack patted her on the shoulder soothingly, unsure of what else to say. Her behaviour had been in stark contrast to the strong woman he’d known since August. Perhaps this wasn’t as unusual behaviour as he may have believed. It wasn’t too unreasonable to be horrified when witnessing someone being physically dragged away from their family. But then the case of Alan Marsh was different to that of the nice fairytale Kyle had led him to believe; the altruistic accountant had been a lie and essentially nothing short of a common thief. Though his contribution to The Resistance was large, his arrest was not without cause. But Jack was dogmatic in his belief - whatever the man had done, he didn’t deserve to just disappear.
“Let’s go back to the safehouse,” Jack suggested, “Fuck all going on here.”
Outside, a gust of wind surged and toppled over a nearby bin, spilling its disgusting contents into the spindly hedgerow behind it.
“Yep, sure,” she started the engine.
Back at the safehouse, Kyle awaited their return in the kitchen. Shutting the door behind them, they realised that there were two new guests. Kyle popped his head around the door and beckoned them into the kitchen. A waft of warm food welcomed them; bubbling on the stove was a green swamp of stew. Jack’s stomach grumbled, but his tastebuds reeled - he salivated for a juicy burger or even a simple baked potato stuffed with cheese.
In the kitchen, the two guests looked up. One smiled eagerly whilst the other curled the corner of his lips limply. The latter’s hair flopped lazily over his eyes, which he ensured to brush out of the way with every alternate forkful of steaming stew he buried into his mouth. His attention was held by a crumpled newspaper laid out on the table. He traced the words with the tips of his fingers. His fellow guest gulped his food down merrily, waiting for Kyle to introduce them. He did not.
“What happened?” he said anxiously.
“They were already there by the time we arrived,” Emma explained, “There was nothing we could do without revealing our presence to the CRU.”
Kyle’s face fell, but not to the degree that Jack would have expected. This was the matter of a human life, not a crease in the plan.
“Well we closed the accounts he deposited the money into for us days ago,” Kyle said distantly.
“They can’t trace him to us though, right? Not directly,” Jack asked, alternating his worried gaze between the two.
“We never met him,” Kyle began, “But he did have dealings with some of our lower members. He never met anyone remotely high up who knew anything important… there isn’t a risk as such…”
“As such? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Do we need to leave now b
efore they start barging in the door like they did in Fort William?”
“No, not at all,” Kyle said, though his eyes intrinsically flicked to the front door. “Whatever Alan might say to the CRU, it would never lead them here…”
“But you can’t know that…”
“Jack, just trust me for once,” Kyle snapped, “It will be fine.”
The two men at table looked up at once; even Newspaper Man appeared invested in the drama.
“Why don’t we grab something to eat,” Emma stepped in, “It’s been a long day for both of us.”
Kyle grabbed plates from the cupboard and filled two meagre portions for them. Jack took his and sat himself at the table. As Emma dug in, the eager one of the two guests stuck his hand across the table.
“Ed,” he said.
“Jack,” he said, taking the man’s hand.
“I’m Emma,” she said, her hands too full of bowl and spoon to exchange greetings.
“Darren,” Newspaper man did not even look up from the article he was reading.
The four of them sat in an awkward silence for a few minutes, broken only by occasional slurping from Emma and Jack as they dug into their bland tasting stew. Jack could barely tell what vegetables were in what he was eating; he thought he had spied a sprig of broccoli but it had quickly disintegrated under his spoon upon investigation. Food was food these days; nothing more. Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with that, after all it was the way animals ate. Food served to maintain life, not add value to it. Still, the juicy burger he could not have taunted him as he imagined a splash of mayonnaise dripping down its edges.
Jack stared at the bottom of his empty bowl, swirling his spoon around the dregs of the stew. Emma had finished hers too and was staring wistfully around the cluttered kitchen. Briefly, Jack wondered who owned the property, if anyone at all.