The Cult of The Enemy: The Dark Places Trilogy

by S. G Mark

  “Why did you let me up if you’re so worried?”

  “We aren’t worried,” she said, “Just cautious. If you were CRU you wouldn’t press the buzzer, would you?”

  “True,” Jack said, “But still, you were wary when I came in.”

  “It never helps to be thorough,” Lana said, “Besides, we hadn’t hear from anyone in days. When you arrived we were both intrigued and anxious. Why did you come?”

  “Kyle told me to come,” Jack explained.

  “Kyle, who is this Kyle? I don’t think we’ve met,” she shrugged her shoulders.

  “He works with Alex, do you know Alex?”

  Lana openly laughed, “Yeah, I think I know who he is.”

  “Sorry,” Jack apologised, still finding it strange that his best friend’s name was revered among strangers. Was he even his friend anymore? Was that an odd description of someone who had lied so thoroughly to him? Odd maybe, its accuracy was in the highest question. For days he had felt alone and maybe for a time with Anne he felt as alone as he did now; but there was something less remote about traveling with people who knew Kyle. Lana was completely isolated from Jack’s little world of comrades. The security blanket had been swept away from under his feet. There was no one to console him when he was lost; there was no one who understood his complexities; his fears, doubts and history inside the organisation. As far as Lana was concerned he had chosen to be here; as far as Lana was concerned, he was intelligent, savvy and had figured out the bad from the good without the aid of a tantrum and an elusive friend. Without even thinking it, she had made judgements on his character all before she had even known his name.

  Jack stared at the wall opposite them. The streets below were silent again. Any indication that there was a dead body down there was muted in a forbidden mourning. Jack wondered where the officers had gone next and if he had really been followed on his way here. He had been so careful. They had obviously not seen him enter the flat, else they would have surely pursued? But then was there any way of knowing he was a Resistance member as opposed to an ordinary citizen? He wasn’t even sure he had the obvious qualities of a man who had joined the former.

  “How long have you been here for then?” he asked her, more to break the silence.

  “A week solidly,” she said, “But we’ve had this safehouse for about eight months now.”

  “Do you run it?”

  “As much as you can call running this place running, yeah,” she sighed, “It’s a shambles, the whole thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You ain’t been here long have you?” she said, “I don’t know what you’ve been led to believe but it ain’t all sunshine and revolution. We don’t just march out there and shoot our way back to normality, and believe me I’ve tried. It’s a whole lot more fucked up than that.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I mean that what we’re doing... not everyone wants us to do. And those who do want us to want us to do it their way. It’s fucked up. I mean proper. We can’t do shit without someone disagreeing and that’s exactly why we are here right now. You ever met an Amanda here?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “Probs for the best. Controlling little freak. It was her who told us to keep our heads down - meanwhile she fucks off out London and sends another team in to extract some bloody accountant from somewhere. Of course they are killed or arrested and we are like two streets away from them - but no, she wanted her team in. So five people are dead and we just have to fuckin’ deal with it.”

  Jack had no response to her rant. He didn’t qualify to have an opinion on the matter. He was just this junior, silent member who biddably went where he was told and asked no questions, heard no answers.

  Craig appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, cup of water in his hand.

  “You’re not bringing that up again, are you? he said.

  Lana shot him a glance and he defiantly stepped forward into the room, crouching on the chair that Jack had briefly occupied.

  “Lana’s what you would call… strong willed,” he continued, “She doesn’t accept orders very well. Especially when she disagrees with them.”

  “Piss off, Craig,” she hissed.

  “It’s getting to the cabin fever stage,” Craig said, “Neil lost it last night but we had to calm him down. I guess it’s Lana’s turn tonight.”

  “You guys know what it’s been like,” she seethed, “Don’t try to play it down.”

  “It’s shit, but what can we do? So long as we help a few people out it’s alright, isn’t it?”

  “That’s not the point though, is it?” she rose up angrily, “It isn’t about helping one or two people.”

  “But that’s all we can do,” Craig shrugged his shoulders, resignedly.

  “Isn’t it better to help a few than none at all?” Jack finally offered his opinion, though he was not sure he entirely believed it himself. It seemed that in the past few days all they had achieved in trying to help people was to have them killed or arrested.

  “Get some sleep, guys,” Lana ordered the men in the kitchen, “We ain’t gonna solve the world’s problems tonight.”

  Craig and the others left the room to go into what Jack presumed was the only bedroom.. Lana settled back down beside Jack.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said, “It’s frustrating at times.”

  “I understand,” Jack said, benignly agreeing with her.

  “Living in Edinburgh can’t be great after that attack in the park, can it? I remember seeing it on the news. Though I was already a member at the time and knew exactly what was happening, it still angered me. We failed and they blamed the whole thing on us anyway. We weren’t even heard of back then. We were just this nobody group. Now we are feared throughout the country. Odd isn’t it? Odd that we can’t exist in society, but that filth like God’s Disciples can? I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t think any of it is about making sense…”

  “Perhaps not, but it pisses me off regardless.”

  “So what now?” Jack asked, “They were taking notes earlier, do we do that?”

  “Not much point, really. We’re only doing it to keep us from going insane,” she said, “Not like any of the information we get can be transmitted anywhere. We can’t even pick up the phone let alone leave the flat.”

  “They’re listening into the phones?”

  “Doubtful, but the phone line’s been cut,” she said, “It’s strange, I wonder why this Kyle bloke sent you here. I’m sure it’s been logged that we’re off radar and shouldn’t be contacted…”

  “We’ve been out of touch for a while,” Jack explained, “We were at Fort William, I don’t know if you heard?”

  Lana shook her head, “Never even heard of that place…?”

  “You really are out of the loop,” Jack smiled, though he wasn’t sure why considering the topic he was about to discuss, “It was horrific… they stormed us… we escaped into the walls of this little pub we were in and we saw… saw them shoot them dead, take the rest as prisoners… it was sickening. They just didn’t care.”

  “You think that’s horrific?” Lana said, “You ain’t seen nothing yet. One night alone in London and you will see all the horrors of the world. The CRU, gunning down whoever they please. People scurrying on to the last tube or bus before Curfew in case they get caught out - I’m talking proper stampede, throwing people on to the road, starting fights. But you know what they aren’t scared of being arrested by the Nightstalkers, cos they aren’t the sickest creatures out in the middle of the night. Rapists, murderers… you name it they are out there, and in their thousands. The Great Unhinged - they won’t even know what they are doing. They are battered down by society so much their brains have been fried. The only thing left in them is this animalistic urge to hunt… to kill. I almost pity them, they don’t know who they are anymore. But when you tell me what’s horrific, babe you obviously ain’t been to London. Things a
re so much worse here. It’s like another country. A training ground for criminals; a no man’s land for the sane; a petrie dish for the government.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cold morning light shattered through his excruciating headache. His eyelids were heavy, but sleep would not come. All night long the noises were relentless; sounds of the urban jungle, power crackling throughout its kingdom. His mind would not rest. Ever alert, it listened to every decibel, no matter how disturbing. It was his duty to listen to it; to refuel the hatred in his belly, the fire in his long-numbed heart.

  A gasping woman, shrieking under muffled hands. A terrified scream, gunshot sounds. Hacking. Hack. Hack. Hack. Lana explained the noise as Jack ran to the bathroom to retch the contents of his bile filled stomach. The body the CRU shot earlier was a goldmine. Every kidney had its price. But there was more, still. Gutter dwelling transients muttering terrifying stories to themselves, drug ridden addicts laughing manically to themselves as a trickle of alcoholics swept through the streets, tumbling over their own feet in search for the next drop. This was not how he imagined London - the home of sophistication, of wealth and politics.

  It was Hogmanay now. The last day of the year. Jack could scarcely process the events in his head. It had been one of the worst years of his life. From being arrested, twice, to being fired and his Rations banned, to his whole secret identity finally being unravelled… it had been a slow decay into a nightmare - as if drifting off to sleep on a summer’s day and dreaming of flowery meadows and ice cream before the monsters arrived. But even when they did, they saved the worst one until last.

  The longest year. Too much had happened to accurately reckon it all. Even the last week had passed in a blur of insanity and violence. Whilst the last few days presented a lull in action, they did not fail to bring horror to the show. Every night the screams arrived on cue. Every night the rapists wandered the streets. Every night the murders lingered. And the CRU played no part to prevent them; but every morning they came and marched down the streets as if they had patrolled them all night long.

  “It makes you wonder,” Jack said, holding a stale cup of tea in his hand, “What the human race is all about when it can watch this happen and do nothing about it.”

  Lana was towel drying her hair - her first brush with water in nearly five days - on the sofa nearby, “I think this is what we’re all about. I mean you ain’t been here for all this time, so you can’t see the change, and the funny thing is there isn’t all that much change… It’s like a dam, bursting. The water was still, calm, on the other side and you all knew it was there - you took your Sunday walks around it and had picnics by it… but now it's destroyed your homes, killed your loved ones and now… now it's not burst damns you fear, but drowning… and really? You could have drowned in the reservoir all this time except you never stepped in.”

  An hour later the entire household was sat around the kitchen table. In the three days that had passed, Jack had grown close to them all. Craig, underneath his dull exterior, was extremely funny and endearingly optimistic. Paul by comparison was much more silent, but equally as friendly in his own way. Jack had discovered he had grown up in Grimsby and had spent much of the past two years on the run, a known Resistance member to the CRU. He had thrilling tales to tell of being chased out of cities and fighting Nightstalkers one on one… and they would have been riveting had they not been also tragic and real. It wasn’t a Hollywood movie or a recount of the latest best seller, but someone’s life - someone who had left a wife and child behind.

  Karl was much harder to judge. Though he and Jack conversed and he had divulged a little of himself, there was something about Karl that unsettled him. Like Lana, he too preferred the action to the political impedance apparent within The Resistance. Jack was still on the fence regarding this stance, but it was a move that did not win Karl’s trust.

  As for the shaven handsome man who had greeted Jack at the door, he kept very much to himself, though he had brought himself to divulge his name: Lloyd. Religiously, he guarded the front door, listening for sounds in the corridor and checking the eyepiece when his worry was provoked. Far from rude, he smiled when someone passed but no words left his lips. Jack understood in a vague way - he had a job to do, and that job was to keep the others safe.

  “Don’t you think we should try and leave soon?” Jack said, peering out of the kitchen window. They were running low on supplies. A few boxes of cereal stood between them and hunger. Milk was a luxury unaffordable to them.

  “I’ve been thinking the same,” Lana said, “But we can’t all go.”

  She was looking intently at Jack and he took the hint.

  “Where do you want me to go?”

  “Just outside, grab some supplies. Test them.”

  “Any particular shop?” Jack asked.

  “The one round the corner. Ahmed’s Nuzagents,” she said, diving for a drawer in the tv cabinet. She pulled out a pad of paper and pen before scrawling on it.

  “Put this behind the cereal,” she said, “He’ll know what it means.”

  Jack grabbed the piece of paper and realised that even he did not know what it meant. It was a bunch of symbols - not even remotely resembling letters or numbers. Whatever code it was, Jack was never going to crack it but he was sure that in the wrong hands someone might.

  Twenty minutes later and he was back out in the fresh London air. He strode casually out of the flat as if he had lived there for years. As he burst into the street, he found the courage to ignore the rotting corpse which had been dragged over to the council bin. Four days of listening to it being hacked apart paled in comparison to seeing the flies swarm around the stinking flesh. Brushing humanity aside, he turned away from it as if it hardly mattered at all, and carried on in the opposite direction. Insides, his stomach gurgled with disgust.

  Beyond Inverness Street, the scenes repeated themselves. By reflection, living corpses scrounged for pennies from their pockets as they stood in pregnant desperation outside fried chicken shops; paperbag alcoholics swigging away their morning and frightened, furtive eyes fleeing towards fearless freedom which, by their hastened pace, they believed lurked just around the corner.

  There were no normal human beings here. There were no men in denim jackets, smoking cigarettes and sipping Starbucks coffee. High heeled women in tight pencil skirts didn’t exist here. There were no children and no grandparents. The place dripped with insecurity and mental illness. People broken by the recession; broken by life and broken at birth.

  Ahmed’s Nuzagents appeared on Jack’s horizon. Battered by age and smothered in dirt, pigeons and pollution; it was hardly inviting business. Pathetically empty trays of fruit and vegetables stood outside the shop; guarded by a tracksuited teenager scrolling through his mobile phone with dismissive interest. Scavenger eyes grasped at the scattered spoils as they staggered by: tracksuit returning a stern, warning shot.

  Jack passed the teenager and entered the shop. A bell rang above the door and there the quaint throwback to the local cornershop ended. The barren shelves bore battered produce and broken packets. Blackened bananas still had sale value. Out of date milk sat in the fridge slowly clotting into yoghurt. Security mirrors reflected around every corner as two men - bearing a striking resemblance to the boy outside - stalked the aisles and raised eyebrows at every move.

  There was not so much a cereal aisle as cereal box. Following Lana’s instructions, Jack placed the note behind the box - seemingly perusing the brand’s ingredients as a disguise. He then went to pick up some supplies for the group. Lana had given him four Rations - it had been so long since he had last used them he couldn’t quite remember how much that would buy him, or even what it might buy him. The pricing structure was probably different in London than to Edinburgh.

  Grabbing some bread, margarine, lentils and potatoes, Jack approached the counter. A middle aged man was slumped over the register. The counter was a chaos of paperwork, produce and pens. Behind him the walls
were thick with posters - the fresher of which were all governmental. CRU posters warning of attacks and Ration posters advising of fraud smothered the posters advertising local brands and events. It reminded Jack of the coffee shop he and Kyle had met in last year; except this time he was seeing more than just the mess on the wall. There was so much more to the piles of paper overlapping each other than he ever could have believed. The government’s posters were not on top by chance; they were there by strategy: subtly portraying to the world that this shop agreed with the government, promoting all its policies. It was less of an offensive tactic by the government to its people, but a defensive one by the shopkeeper himself.

  The man sprang to life and began scanning each item. Jack presented his Rations, hoping he had enough to cover it.

  To his relief, they were accepted and the cashier stashed them into his till. Before Jack could gather the items in a brown paper bag, however, the man’s hand snapped onto Jack’s. He threw an instructive eyebrow at one of his colleagues. Jack turned around and saw one of the guards manoeuvre to the entrance.

  “Do you want to buy any cereal?” he said, accent drizzled in the Middle East.

  “I didn’t fancy it in the end,” Jack said. The man had clearly picked up the note that was left, though quite what the procedure from now on was not on Jack’s radar.

  “Tell Lana I’ll have them ready for tonight’s meeting,” he said, extremely quietly.

  “When is that?” Jack asked, “We have been out of the loop for several days.”

  “Yes, security has been tight,” he said, “I understand. Tell her it's at the usual place. Seven o’clock. I’ll bring what I can.”