The Cult of The Enemy: The Dark Places Trilogy

by S. G Mark

  Panic gripping him, Jack hurriedly crammed the rest of the man’s body into the cubicle - crumpling his legs against the plastic sides. As he rearranged Jeremy’s body, he checked his pulse one more time - it was beating, steadily. He might wake at any moment. He didn’t have time to clear up the blood from the floor. Instead, he closed the cubicle door gently behind him and held it in place for a few seconds before straightening up and inhaling deeply.

  They needed to get out of there. Quickly.

  Charging through the bathroom door as calmly as he could muster under the circumstances, he raced over to a bewildered Darren, who was staring casually at his half empty glass.

  “We need to leave,” Jack announced quietly, “Now.”

  He gently pulled the edge of Darren’s jacket to make him hurry up. Glancing over at the other table, he caught Kyle’s concerned eye and nodded gently. Immediately, Kyle began gathering their things - much to the other’s worried expressions.

  Moments later, Jack was marching out of the pub, leading the party back to the safehouse as quickly as possible. Darren lagged behind with the others, though none of them moved remotely slowly. All were aware of the danger, though none of them knew from whence it had come. The further the distance they put behind them and the pub, the better.

  After a few hundred metres, Kyle found the courage to catch up with him. Walking by his side, imitating two friends chatting to anyone who witnessed, he privately reeled at Jack.

  “What’s going on?” he whispered.

  “There’s an unconscious CRU officer in the men’s bathroom.”

  “What?”

  “I put him there. He tried to arrest me… I don’t even know how it happened, but he’s slumped in the cubicle right now. We might only have a few minutes.”

  Instead of fear, elation and humour sparkled in Kyle’s eyes, “That’s fucking brilliant!”

  Wordlessly, they raced on ahead. Twenty minutes later they were filing back into the safehouse. Kyle assumed control the second the door was shut. Lining up in the hallway, everyone, including Jack, listened intently to the man’s orders.

  “There’s some backpacks in the cupboard under the stairs. Take only what you need. Make sure no one else is in the property too - and if they are, send them in my direction. We probably have an hour, tops.”

  Jack raced upstairs with Darren, who immediately set about grabbing his personal effects from beside his bed. He was grasping objects with panicked desperation - it unnerved Jack, who stood on the landing, lost in a fog of confusion. Downstairs he heard cupboard doors banging loudly shut; footsteps racing across creaking floorboards as stressed exchanges were shouted from one room to another. Everyone was riddled with such determined focus; whilst Jack had nothing to do. He stared wildly at them as they squeezed past him, carrying bags of paperwork - Jack spied the corner of a set of Ration vouchers. He thought of asking if he could help, but knew ultimately that they would spend more time instructing him than if they had simply done it themselves.

  He crept downstairs and found Kyle in the living room, cowering over a pile of paperwork. He was rifling through them with exceptional speed. Quietly, Jack sat on the arm of the sofa and watched as Emma ran in and deposited more paperwork by Kyle’s side before scurrying back out again.

  “Help me look through these,” Kyle commanded Jack, who leapt reluctantly off the sofa to join him on the floor.

  “What are they?” he asked, leaning over the latest tower and glancing at the first few lines. He didn’t make any sense of them at all. They were a bunch of numbers clumped together.

  “Those ones are account details Alan Marsh gave us - he got rid of the evidence before we were due to pick him up. We hadn’t managed to burn all of our stuff yet. This pile here is just some scribblings of things we’ve discussed… sensitive things.”

  “Why the fuck did you write them down?”

  “We burn regularly, but it’s been pretty full on over Christmas,” Kyle said, “I know that’s not an excuse.”

  “So what am I meant to do?”

  “Just make sure there’s nothing additional on those pages that we need to know about. We cleared the money from those accounts days ago - but there may be something Alan needed us to know.”

  “Right, okay,” Jack said, completely ignorant of what he was supposed to be looking out for.

  The first layer seemed to be just account details, listing some addresses as well. To the best of his knowledge, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary - but with his inexperience, that hardly meant anything. Page after page he turned over, and the letters slowly ran into each other in his desperate hunt for something unique, something important. And then he saw it - the biro scribbled appendix to a sentence he couldn’t comprehend.

  Regular payments from three MPs to the same personal bank account…

  “Time’s up,” Emma called from the kitchen and moments later her body joined them in the living room. “Everything’s packed. Let’s go.”

  Kyle jumped to his feet, paper falling like snow around his legs.

  “Get everyone down here now,” he ordered.

  Emma shouted up the stairs for them all to drop what they were doing and listen to Kyle. Less than a minute later and they were all gathered in the living room, bags over shoulders, jackets adorned and attention set.

  “Emma and Darren, head to Bristol. Go via Bath - we have a man there who can change your ID. Head to the safehouse there, the one on the South side. The owner is called Owen. They’ll tell you where to go. Ed, you’re with me. We’ll head North… Jack…” he turned to focus on his friend, “I’d ask you to come with me or with Emma, but if anyone has seen us… they’ll have seen us arrive at Fort William together and they’ll have seen you and Emma arrive at the station together. If the CRU have half a brain, they’ll be pouring over the CCTV footage and I can’t have them recognising a pair….”

  “I understand,” Jack said, bitterly. He didn’t understand. He didn’t know where he was going, he didn’t have any idea of what to do next and yet that was the very thing that was expected of him.

  Kyle ordered the others out of the building, but blocked Jack from leaving. The two were alone in the house.

  “Go to London. The safehouse is at one-hundred and nineteen Inverness Street, Camden. Password to get in is Marylebone.”

  “But Kyle -”

  “No time, Jack. This time you’re on your own - I won’t say you’re ready because I’m not going to lie to you. You’ve a lot to learn, but you need to see the world through your own eyes before you’re one of us…”

  He touched Jack gently on the arm before pushing him aside to return to the living room.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just leave, Jack. Leave now.”

  As Jack turned to race out of the door, he saw Kyle extract a can of oil from a cupboard and pour it frantically over the pile of papers, the walls, the furnishings… He lingered just long enough to see Kyle light the match.

  Chapter Twelve

  The safehouse burned artistically behind them as they marched onwards, in separate directions and destinations. In a sea of dusky darkness, the little terraced house played lighthouse to the world. Even as its timber walls disintegrated into rubble and the memories held within it suffocated from the smoke, the flames cursing the sky seemed to dare its onlookers - to ask why a Resistance safehouse was on their street; to ask what it was they were doing and to question the kind of people who would be driven to such abhorrent evil.

  A fire engine whirred by Jack as he walked briskly back to the station. He kept his face low, tilted to the ground as his eyes scanned ahead for obstacles. The wind whipped his cheeks and rain spat down from a moody cloud. A bleak hue had poisoned the city. Time trickled onwards, omnipresent in Jack’s mind. The Enemy were coming and he had little time to spare. He quickened his pace.

  It seemed that he would end the day in London, though quite what he would do when he arrived there was another
matter. Presently, getting to the station was his biggest challenge. As his arrival from Blackpool proved, security was tight and was bound to be stricter in light of recent events. It had scarcely been two hours since they had cumulatively rushed out of the pub. Jack was disgusted by his actions. He hadn’t meant to cause any harm, and yet he reacted instinctively. The man was still breathing, at least, but sure to wake soon if he hadn’t already. It would only take a matter of minutes before he would recount Jack’s description to the CRU. The noose around his neck tightened delicately.

  The great burning terraced house roared its treacherous identity. Jack imagined the CRU already combing through the ash for evidence; a trace of DNA, a strand of hair or a burnt, curled edges of a piece of paper containing vital names. Consequently, Jack’s mind was in overdrive as he raced along the streets. This was his first journey alone. He felt like a small child being allowed to walk to school without his parents. However, Jack’s feelings were trivial to the matter at hand. This was about survival, not personal inadequacies.

  When he reached the train station, it was crawling with CRU officers. Jack’s heart sank at the sight of them - they stretched the entire length of the street leading up to the entrance. The little security booths were thriving with rules and regulations as they checked every passenger. A deeply neglected confidence within him surface, leading Jack to stride up to the line and join it. He didn’t need to feign his impatience, but he did need to act cool - as if he only needed to catch his train, and not flee the city as a traitor to his country.

  The couple in front of him were stressing about missing their connection. Luggage trailed heavily behind them. It struck Jack as strange that they were more concerned about being delayed than the reason they were being delayed. Security at every major train station? Travel cards to leave the city perimeter? Jack the Hypocrite screamed telepathically at them; but they were not listening.

  Eventually it was his turn to hand over his ID and pray to whichever god may exist. Another android held court as it scrutinized Jack’s card.

  “The system says you arrived this morning,” the android raised an eyebrow.

  Jack metaphorically stamped on his own panic.

  “Yes,” he said, casually as a police siren screeched by, “But there’s been an emergency.”

  “What’s the emergency?” the android asked, not a tone of concern in its voice.

  Jack didn’t know where it came from - perhaps it was born from the lies he had told all these years, perhaps he had just learnt from his peers, but the words had departed his lips before his brain had even cleared them for take off.

  “One of my friend’s is in hospital… he tried to stop some of these Resistance bastards… and they beat him up - pretty badly. He’s fighting for his life.”

  “Wow, I’m sorry to hear that,” the android’s facade faltered and the woman beneath offered a kind, warming smile, “I hope your friend will be okay.”

  “Thank you,” Jack allowed his hand to overlap hers as he reached for his ID; he looked at her in the eye for a second in order to establish a human connection, but the android only returned an error.

  He progressed through the barrier and into the main concourse of the station. Rushing over to the ticket machine he hurriedly bought a single journey to London Kings Cross, trying not to gag as the price appeared on screen. Emma had given him sufficient cash earlier, but even spending someone else’s money on the ticket still didn’t detract from its exuberant expense.

  The next train to London was in five minutes. He raced to the platform and jumped on to the relatively empty train. Grabbing a seat by the window, he submersed himself in his own little world.

  Exhaustion stinged his eyes. He needed to sleep for days in order to recover from the past few days’ events, or even to simply understand them. It was quite a different world to the one he’d lived in before; and certainly more cruel than the one he had read about in newspapers or overheard at Headquarters. Where a year ago he had been fighting to save every penny, he was now fighting to save his own life. Every wrong move could spell his last - and not in a dramatic, theatrical way but in a caustic, harsh style that only real life can wield. Had he said the wrong thing at the security booth, he might never have made it to the train and that alone was enough to frighten him to the end of his days.

  The countryside, now plunged into complete blackness, sped by as Jack gazed out the dirt-smeared window. Only the occasional twinkling of amber defined the sky from the ground; and all too quickly did they disappear into fresh tides of deepest ebony.

  The train was suffocatingly quiet. What little conversation there was could freely be overheard by all onboard their carriage. Banal chatter on celebrity gossip drifted by; its unimportance crucial in Jack’s frustration. As he lay slumped back in his chair, he listened to the inert whispers of life’s whimsical dilemmas: teenagers sniggering over internet pictures, their parents calmly discussing days gone by. No one was bothered by the terrorists. No one was bothered that they may be on the same train as one. They were all distracted by their own lives to care what dangers there may be out there. Their attitudes angered Jack beyond measure; but he hardly blamed them for until recently he had been one of the selfish masses, who cowered at responsibility greater than their own pathetic lives.

  Kings Cross. High bricked archways stretched overhead as the train pulled in; a rush of frantic travellers scurrying for their belongings. Jack, bagless and near penniless after buying his ticket here, stepped off the train. Cold air ensnared him - not as harsh as its northerly cousin, but brutal nonetheless. He joined the race towards the barriers and onwards towards the security booths.

  By contrast, there were at least double the number of booths here than there were in Leeds. The natural flow of people spliced into separate queues. Calm queues that expected nothing but delays and inconvenience. Jack noted how everyone here sighed with acceptance. High level security had become the norm. It was unnerving to watch hundreds of people calmly adhere to strict policies; extracting their IDs on command and burying their shifty secrets deep within. It was all written across their faces - Mrs One-too-many-Rations-in-her-Purse, Mr Broke-Curfew-Once, Ms Knows-too-much-about-the-Resistance.

  Twenty minutes passed before he was next in line. In all that time he had digested the magnificent architecture of the station - fractures of the old stonework peeking through an emblazoned white structure in a stark contrast between old and new. Where shops would have stood side by side, only empty carcasses remained. It was not unsurprising - why should London suffer less than the rest of its metropolis siblings? Still, this was the first impression Jack had of the capitol and it was sad to see his childhood expectations so disappointedly missed.

  As the android’s mouth opened to pose the same question he had been asked at Leeds’s station, Jack was suddenly grabbed backwards and dragged across the concourse by two lumbering CRU officers.

  Blood drained from his extremities as his heart limply continued. Beady eyes from the crowd watched, hawk-like and hungry for gossip and action. He was the man in the papers they would see tomorrow - or the man who simply disappeared from the streets. How had they known? Had they followed his movements since Blackpool, even as far back as Fort William? If there was any way to escape, he just needed to keep silent, to keep the truth buried so deep that even he himself might believe it was all a fairytale.

  They took him inside a room just off the main waiting area and threw him into a chair. Staring back at him from the other side of a threatening oak desk was a suited man with military eyebrows and a crosshair firmly aimed at Jack’s forehead.

  “What’s this?” he shouted and Jack nearly answered back had he not been interrupted.

  “The man you picked out from the crowd,” one of the men who brought Jack here replied, commandingly.

  “Randomly assigned for questioning, this man is not a suspect!” his eyebrows marched across his forehead. “Get out of here, the pair of you!”

 
The two left obediently, leaving Jack completely lost in confusion.

  “Please accept my apologies on behalf of the Criminal Referral Unit. You have been randomly selected, as part of our security checks, to take part in a brief interview regarding a recent threat to the city,” his words were honeyed, an ocean apart from where their true meaning lay.

  Jack remained silent, not wanting to wrongly implicate himself. Kyle had not told him of any threats to London.

  “Can I take your Identity Card please?” he reached out a hand, presumptively.

  Jack reached into his pocket and placed it on the desk beside the man’s hand.

  The man’s friendly demeanour slipped slightly, like a crown too large for his head.

  “What is this threat?” Jack asked, breaking his silence with an edge of irritance.

  The officer took his card and perused it carefully, shining it in the light from his desk lamp.

  “What do you know of the organisation going by the name of God’s Disciples?”

  Jack was relieved he had not mentioned The Resistance, “Yes, I’ve heard of them.”

  It was not so long ago that a certain former friend of his had taken him to one of their meetings as part of a regrettable date. Whilst they did not seem overtly violent or threatening, there was something very strange about the group. It had a vibe not unlike Sunday church services and yet had sinister undertones. Children were encouraged to be vocal about their inherited homophobic beliefs. Speeches were made that inferred a constant fight against evil, though that evil, when quantified, did not quite match society’s standard. Their evil was society - a society that tolerated what they believed to be abhorrent crimes. And yet, they were not as hounded as The Resistance.