The Cult of The Enemy: The Dark Places Trilogy

by S. G Mark

  Toby stared back through the darkness. Jack sensed some of what he had said had breached the battlements, but he was tired and he had little energy left in him.

  “Get some sleep,” he said, “We’ll need to be up early if I’m to take you somewhere safe.”

  After a few minutes, Toby shifted into a pile of his own hay and laid his head to rest on the prickly pillow. Both drenched in mud and stream water, their bones shivered but their skin radiated a cosy warmth as they drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

  Morning rose into the sky in a cascade of rouge. The muddy fields were bombarded by a howling gale; the woodlands swaying simultaneously like sails upon the sea. A quiet scene of countryside, marred by the singing sirens in the distance. Jack gazed out back at the etches of the urban battleground and yawned. Sleep had not been kind.

  Behind him, Toby shuffled out of an equally disturbing sleep. During the long hours of insomnia, Jack had heard the boy talking and screaming. His dreams must have been terrifying. There were moments where Jack had to calm him down, but the peace was only temporary and the nightmares soon returned. As dawn approached he wondered if that was how he had slept in the days following the car crash with his sister. He remembered those precious moments of slumber, where, lost between the fog, he’d find her, smiling as if all were well.

  “You’re still here,” Toby rose, groggily, “I didn’t… I didn’t think…”

  “I’m not a monster, and I’m not going to leave you behind,” he said, staring out at the horizon, “They’ll be checking the stations, no doubt. We probably only have a few hours here until someone thinks to search for us here.”

  “What do we do then?”

  From his pocket he withdrew his phone. It looked like it hadn’t survived the adventure into the stream. He tried turning it on, but it was completely dead.

  “Mine’s the same,” Toby said, “Just a blank screen.”

  “We need to steal a car,” Jack said, a plan forming in his mind.

  An hour later they were prowling the perimeter of the town. From the overgrown bushes, Jack had spotted a particularly vulnerable looking vehicle and, within ten minutes, set about breaking into it, utilising the urban skills Lana had taught him.

  Cruising along the village streets, Jack was in the driving seat, casually steering through traffic. Toby was to his left, nervously keeping his head down and staring at his toes so as not to be noticed. It was the exact opposite of what he should be doing.

  “Head up, stare out the window, smile,” Jack instructed, glancing over at him, “Act normal and you’ll appear normal. This,” he gestured at the boy’s behaviour, “This is suspicious.”

  Toby immediately, and silently, did as he was told and sat with his elbow leant against the car door. Casual. Relaxed. Normal.

  As they approached another standstill in the congestion, a sight emerged into view. For Jack, it was not unfamiliar. But he was keen to watch Toby’s reactions.

  The CRU officers were controlling the entry into a side street. They had stopped a couple in a car and were now ordering them out on to the road with their weapons. Six CRU officers crowded round, in broad daylight, and rounded on the woman. They pulled her away from the car, tossing her between each other, laughing and joking.

  “That’s okay, is it?” Jack asked his passenger. “That’s the integrity of the CRU, right there.”

  “What do you expect me to say?” Toby reeled round, “This is all new to me. I can’t just accept what you tell me. So the officers over there are horrible, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there to do good.”

  They drove past the scene without another word. The queue of traffic dispersed into separate lanes as the security booths dawned on them.

  “You’re a minor, so they don’t check,” Jack said, “So just be the miserable teenager that you are. I’ll handle this.”

  Fuelled with misguided optimism, Jack rolled the car forward to the booth, leaning out the window and flashing his ID card at the woman.

  “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” he half winked at her.

  “Where are you heading?” her grim voice was not swayed by his seduction.

  “Skegness - one last trip with the old Uncle before this one turns eighteen. You can see he’s thrilled.”

  The woman returned a steely stare and scanned his ID card, “Cleared to go. Have a nice trip.”

  As they drove away and entered second gear, Toby emerged from his state of misery.

  “Why are we going to Skegness?” he asked.

  “We aren’t going to Skegness,” Jack said, carefully disguising his lack of advanced planning with intrigue.

  Toby shuffled himself into a more comfortable position, “Then where are we going?”

  “Blackpool,” Jack said, a vague plan forming as fast as the asphalt ran underneath his tyres.

  “It’ll the furthest away from home I’ve ever been,” he said, continuing to stare out the window as the fields whipped by at furious speed.

  At four in the afternoon, Jack found himself knocking on a familiar door. It had taken them longer to arrive than anticipated. There were unexpected roadblocks - not for them, but another security threat. They sat in traffic for longer than he cared for. The radio was their only comfort, for Toby made little effort to speak and Jack found himself in a similar position.

  The radio listed the latest daily bomb threats before the brief news covered a few sentences on each of them. It made for depressing listening, but it served as noise. More DD warnings and threats and even a sighting of The Masked Man, it was the usual offering from the anarchist group. After the news came a list of all recently arrested terrorists. Jack suspected half of them were made up, but he thought he recognised one name amongst the strangers. His scepticism bit its tongue, for the moment: Toby was no doubt quietly accepting his fate in much the same way Jack had done during the first few months at Headquarters. From experience, he knew that silence was the key to overcoming the doubt and processing the anguish and pain.

  White noise preceded the traffic update. Queues for hours. CRU officers in pursuit of Democratic Demolitioners near Carlisle. As painstaking as the delays were, Jack was just grateful that the CRU were not chasing The Resistance members, and more importantly any of his friends.

  “The DD are different to you aren’t they?” Toby asked, uttering his first words in hours.

  Jack reached for the radio and turned the volume down.

  “We’re nothing like them,” he said, “The DD are all about destruction, anarchy. They just want chaos.”

  “One of their attacks killed my friend’s cousin,” Toby continued, “Shooting spree in a shopping mall.”

  “They are disgusting,” Jack said, “I’ve seen their followers first hand. I’ve even met The Masked Man.”

  “What the fuck?” Toby wheeled round, “How did you meet him?”

  “It was strange,” Jack began to recount the night he went to meet Kyle, and he very unsubtly emphasised exactly how naive he had been before he had joined The Resistance. Toby seemed rapt with attention though, and Jack found that he seemed more accepting of what he was being told.

  “So what made you join The Resistance, if you believed them to just be terrorists? What changed your mind?”

  Jack smiled, “I had to. I was pushed into a situation where I had to accept that everything I thought I knew up to that point was wrong. It wasn’t easy, in fact it was exceptionally hard. But had I refused to accept the truth, I would be dead already I think.”

  “Wow, subtle.”

  Veering off into the turnoff to Blackpool, Jack said, “My job isn’t to be subtle. It’s to tell it as it is.”

  The tone had lightened from that moment onwards, with Jack feeling that he had made a breakthrough with the boy. His top priority was to ensure Toby’s safety and so long as he could get to Blackpool alive, the rest would follow its natural course.

  Outside the Blackpool safehouse, Toby stood nervously behind him. They had abandon
ed the car about two miles away in a supermarket car park. All the while Toby had remained silent. However, Jack could almost remember the acid burning in his stomach the first time he had arrived here with Anne. The unknown suddenly not a nagging doubt, but a very real and dangerous threat. If there was anyone that understood what Toby was going through, it was Jack.

  Hamid opened the door cautiously at first and then, upon seeing Jack’s face, threw it open.

  “You’re back!” he beamed, excitedly, “And you have friend! Come in, come in.”

  Jack stood on the doorstep, aware that Hamid was skipping important security checks.

  “No, it’s okay,” Hamid seemed to have read his mind, “Your friend is here. It’s okay, come in.”

  Apprehensively, Jack stepped through the threshold. Kyle was standing in the hallway.

  “I thought you’d come here,” he smiled, grimly.

  Shaking off his annoyance that his every move could be anticipated, Jack stepped aside to allow Toby to go ahead of him.

  Kyle’s face fell, “Who is this?”

  “This is John Malcolm’s son,” Jack introduced them, “I couldn’t just leave him with the CRU.”

  “No,” Kyle shook his head slowly, “Absolutely not.”

  The front door shut and Hamid set about fussing over everyone.

  “I have one of my finest curries on the go,” he announced, “Should be ready in an hour or so. Now, can I get you both something to drink, yes?”

  Toby looked to Jack for approval.

  “Toby,” Jack said as Hamid steered them into the living room, “This is Hamid. He runs this safehouse and he is going to look after you.”

  “Is this where you were going to take my dad?” Toby asked, “To this house?”

  Hamid looked apprehensively at Jack and initially stuttered before setting about tidying the coffee table.

  “Can I have a minute alone with Toby?” Jack asked.

  Both Hamid and Kyle left immediately, closing the door behind them. Jack encouraged Toby to take a seat, as Jack sat on the edge of the coffee table and faced the boy.

  For the past several hours he had been gearing up how to approach the subject, and had made little headway on how to introduce it. Somehow not having a script to work with made it easier in his head to figure out what to say.

  “Toby…” he began, “This safehouse is going to be your new home for a while. You cannot leave unsupervised, at least not until this whole situation with your father dies down.”

  “Situation? He was killed!” Toby shouted, “And you can’t keep me here. I don’t want to become part of The Resistance, I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

  Jack took a few moments to retain his calm, “That may be the case, but your safety is more important than whether or not you believe in our organisation. Right now, the CRU are going to be looking for you. They are going to make all sorts of assumptions on what you might know about your dad’s involvement with us and they are not going to stop to ask questions. You walk out there or try to make contact with your friends or family, and they will know about it. Now maybe in a month things will be better, we can give you a new identity or we can transport you to another location. But you need to know that everything has changed and the sooner you learn to cope with that change the better. I can’t make you believe the truth, I’m not even going to try and explain it to you. If you want to know, Hamid will be here.”

  “You won’t?” his tone was saturated with disappointment.

  “For a few nights, yes, but you are going to need time to adjust before you want to ask these big questions. Trust me, if there’s anyone who knows what you are going through it’s me.”

  Toby examined his scratched hand and picked a few of the splinters out, “I’m afraid.”

  “Of course you are,” Jack said.

  “What if I can’t cope?” he said, his throat clogged with grief, “What if I can’t do this?”

  “You can,” Jack said, “You can because your dad could.”

  “But I don’t know what he did, I don’t know what this meant to him,” Toby said, slouching back against the sofa and rubbing his red eyes. “I want to believe he did good, I really do but at the back of my mind I know what you guys do. You’ve killed people. I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to kill anyone.”

  “And you won’t have to,” he said, “We can keep you safe, if that’s all you want from us.”

  “And what if I don’t want anything from you?” he asked.

  Jack sighed, he didn’t want to have to admit it, at least not this early on, but it seemed that the boy was not going to relent.

  “You can’t leave, Toby,” Jack said, feeling disgusted that he was reiterating a hauntingly familiar conversation, “It isn’t safe for you anymore.”

  His eyes scrunched up with tears, Toby gently nodded and Jack took that to be an understanding, if not an appreciation, of the scenario he now found himself in. Maybe one day he would fight alongside Jack, maybe one day he would be able to see his family again; until that time there was nothing he could do to make Toby feel any better save one thing.

  “C’mon,” he said, rising to his feet, “Hamid is the best cook in the country. A plate of his curry will make you feel better.”

  As he led a rather reluctant Toby into the kitchen, Hamid erupted into an excitable mood as he saw an opportunity to train a young sous-chef. Within seconds he had taken Toby under his wing and had instructed him to gather ingredients for bread making.

  Meanwhile Kyle, leaning against the wall on the far side of the kitchen, met Jack’s eyes and a connection formed instantly between them. Leaving Hamid and Toby busy preparing dinner, Jack slipped back into the living room as Kyle joined him a moment later.

  “John’s dead,” Jack spoke first, “They stormed the place and shot him as we tried to escape. I found Toby in the alleyway behind the house. They would have killed him just for being nearby, you know that.”

  “I’m not angry that you took him,” Kyle said, sitting down opposite him and clasping his hands together solemnly, “John Malcolm was a Level One resource. He worked for the Inland Revenue, diverting taxes to private accounts which we opened on a temporary basis before cashing in and closing. He also informed us of any large donors to the government. He was one of our most valuable spies.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him,” Jack said, “They just came. We didn’t have time to escape...”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said, “That man was destined to die the second he woke up yesterday. Nothing you could have done was ever going to change that.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Only a handful of members know any of the Level One resources. We don’t have a list, they are just all in our heads. The CRU knew we were coming - which means the mole is much higher up than we thought.”

  A chill ran down Jack’s spine. Death had brushed against him last night, and it might have been sent on the orders of someone claiming to be on the same side.

  “Do you have any idea who?”

  “None whatsoever,” Kyle said, “But whoever killed our guys in that raid back in September, I’m willing to bet the same mole is involved here.”

  “Who do we trust then?” Jack asked, “If they’re as high up as you think, who should we trust?”

  Immediately a sense of guilt pulsated through him. It was automatic, as deep seeded as the guilt he carried with him as a citizen walking through the street in Martial Law. Indirect responsibility, ascribed as guilt and chained to the heart as blame.

  “I trust you,” Kyle said, “And I trust Alex. Until we find the mole, I don’t think we should trust anyone outside our triangle.”

  Jack stared hard at the floor. In all these months, he had never felt more alone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  One Year Later…

  “War? War is in our history, victory is on our blood,” Cameron’s voice melted over the microphone, “Too long has t
his country suffered at the whims of the radical, too long have we been tormented by these tyrants whose manifest is solely for chaos, for destruction and for war. Well,” he paused, briefly, glancing at his notes, “Today we give him them their war. Tomorrow, we will make them regret it.”

  The applause thundered as the camera panned out from the Prime Minister. A few hands followed suit, but mostly the bar remained opaquely silent. The bartender dried the glasses for the third time in a row. The alcoholic dripping off the bar raised his hand for another vodka. Jack drowned himself in another double whisky on the rocks.

  Sitting back in the booth, he scratched his stubbly beard and caught the scar some CRU officer had given him; it stung a little. It would be a few weeks until it had properly healed. With one eye on the door, he waited for his companion to arrive. After several months traveling between the Northern cities, he was glad to return to London. He missed the ability to be lost in a crowd. He missed the smoke and anonymity of the streets, of the people.

  The last few months wore on him. Sleepless nights of rescue missions, transporting Resistance spies across the countryside. Days spent printing propaganda for others to distribute at recruitment drives or more daringly on the streets. Never spending more than a few nights in a safehouse, he carried his life in his pockets. Every day he was a different person. Philip Matthews, Lloyd Buckley, Tim Ryder, Frank Jenson, Chris Hughes. He cycled through them like they were days of the week. Tim on a Monday, Frank on Wednesday - Lloyd was always a Friday man. His mind was addled with whom each of these men were, what they did and where they were going. Always a different person to avoid the suspicion of the CRU, so his movements could never be tracked.