The Cult of The Enemy: The Dark Places Trilogy

by S. G Mark

  “Language!” Aileen shrieked.

  “I’m sorry, Aileen,” he apologised.

  Kyle sighed, “I’m not sure you’re going to enjoy this evening.”

  After a dinner of oatcakes and butter was served, Kyle drew the curtains and set about explaining the evening’s plan.

  As he laid out an old ordnance survey map on the hardwood floor, Kyle pointed to their current location.

  “Aberlour,” he said, “Venue of many a summer holiday in my family.”

  His finger traced North East a short distance, tapping upon a contouring hill.

  “This is where we will go,” Kyle said, “It’s about an hour’s walk from here. We have to wait until it’s night, and we can’t use torches.”

  Alex nodded, knowingly.

  “It’s rough terrain, and we have to keep low at all times,” Kyle continued, “It’s not a real path anyway, so it’s just as well we’re all in trainers.”

  “What should we expect?” Jack asked, feeling the most naive out of them all.

  Whenever Alex was told information, he had an air of intelligence about him that Jack envied. It was as if he already knew what was being said to him, or had somehow linked another piece of knowledge to whatever he’d just been told. Alex always had a keen ability to seem in charge.

  Half an hour later, when the sun had fallen behind the hill, they set off. Kyle kissed his grandma goodbye whilst Jack and Alex loitered by the back door.

  As the kitchen light flicked off, they traversed the darkened garden and hopped over the little wooden fence into the alleyway behind.

  As the village clock struck ten, the three dark figures crept along the hillside, brushed by bushes and battered by a cold Easterly wind. Light faded fast, but in even in the pale sky, a comforting glaze of colour transcended the horizon. From the slightest pink through to the lightest touch of gold, there was a warmth that through the thick heather and stagnant bogs, Jack found inviting. As the wind chilled his bones, he felt more joy than annoyed. It was as if the pain slicing through his calves were invigorating and inspirational. Beyond the hill they climbed, the mountains rose above a bed of cloud; and the valley below shimmered in a haze of fresh rain.

  “Nearly there,” Kyle said breathlessly, “Just over the next rise, but take care. Before you reach the top, crawl on your front.”

  Jack turned to Alex, who nodded, accepting the instruction without question. Maybe that was the connection he missed, maybe he should stop analysing and just process.

  As the gradient sky flattened to a mere dark grey, Jack slid along his body, snaking over boulder, mud and heather over the top.

  In the cradle of the hillside, Jack’s breath was caught once and absolutely.

  As the mountains, magnificent in size, soared into the sky, the land they left below, in the deep valley at their feet, was alight in flame and fury. Miles and miles, stretching as if into infinity, the ribbon of fire reached and writhed.

  Their faces burned with distant amber. Shock dawned on their face as if it were the first sunrise on Earth. Words were lost; but all meaning was found. Panting, heavily, from the climb, their breaths were suddenly stolen. The sight below, mesmerizing.

  Farmland. Burning. The flames scratching the sky.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A black smoke shimmered in the valley below. The horrible stench of burning crops was pungent; the gentle breeze no longer comforting, but laced with an indefinable menace. Whatever thoughts had surfaced in Jack’s mind on the ascent up here, the sight before him defied all expectations.

  It was as if the jigsaw pieces, once scattered, were now merging neatly together. Suddenly Quentin’s email made complete sense.

  Alex was mesmerized by the sight. Kyle was looking at them both for some reaction.

  “Why would they do this?” Alex asked.

  But before Kyle could answer, Jack interjected.

  “Because they want a food shortage,” he said, “Quentin’s email wasn’t talking about starvation being used as torture, he was talking about it country-wide.”

  Alex looked horrified by Jack’s suggestion, “But why? Why cause mass hunger? It’ll only result in riots on the streets, thousands of deaths?”

  Raising himself off his elbows, Jack shrugged his shoulders, “I think that’s exactly what they want to happen.”

  Kyle looked at Alex and they seemed to exchange a sceptical glance. Jack was unable to care less. As his glazed eyes reflected the pyre below, it reminded him of the attack on Edinburgh and his opinion was cemented. They had sent suicide bombers to cause fear, terror. The CRU were never meant to preserve order, but reign panic.

  “We need to leave,” Jack said, “We need to get out of here.”

  Instantly he became uneasy, as if someone was watching them.

  “We can go down a little further…” Kyle suggested, pointing at a dully lit pathway leading down into the valley.

  But Jack shook his head violently, “We shouldn’t be here. We need to leave.”

  Immediately, he turned and began walking back down the path they had climbed. Alex and Kyle sprung into life and followed.

  “What are you talking about?”

  The heavy sensation in his heart that had not left him since his face was first plastered all over the television was groaning. For the first time, he understood what it was trying to say.

  “What’s going on, Jack?” Alex pulled his arm.

  Jack threw it back at him, “Don’t you see?”

  Alex looked around him, “See what?”

  Turning on his heel, Jack continued his descent.

  “Jack!” Alex called after him, but Jack ignored him.

  Time was precious. It had always been precious, but until now he had never appreciated exactly why.

  Through thick heather and sliding down muddy outcrops, Jack raced back to the cottage ahead of Alex and Kyle, who appeared to have a more relaxed view on what they had witnessed that evening.

  At least the cold wind on this side of the valley was not burdened by the foul smell of sintered neeps and tatties. It refreshingly blasted Jack’s face, cleansing him, almost, of an innocence he never thought he’d be able to shed.

  There was a reason for everything that was happening. There was a reason for Scar’s disappearance, for the random deaths on the streets, for the Rations, for the Shutdown, for the Curfew and for the millions of people scared of their own shadow. Jack just didn’t expect it to be this.

  At last his feet slammed against concrete. The cobbles were golden in the streetlight. Jack followed the alleyway back towards Kyle’s grandmother’s house. The branches leered over the small stone dyke, their leaves brimming with in utero life. Summer was on the horizon. Jack’s second summer with The Resistance. Nearly two years it had been since he had seen Eliza, and still each day he was saddened by her absence - wondering where she was, what she was doing and what she thought of all that was happening. Did she wonder if The Resistance were right? Or was she quietly suffering in the background, getting on with life just as Jack had been. A quiet victim, a mute player in this grand game.

  The little archway, through which Aileen’s doorway lay, was shrouded in black. Above, on the first floor, Jack could see the little array of candles they’d lit prior to their departure. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see that neither Alex nor Kyle were close behind. Indeed, they were completely out of sight.

  With his fingers frozen, Jack poised to press the doorbell. But his hand hovered. The door was ajar. A sliver of light trickled from the gap. Jack turned around, but still he found himself alone.

  Heart racing, he gentled pushed the door open. The little kitchen greeted him with calm repose. Pots and pans, dishes were all as still as the night. Ahead, candlelight spilled down the stairs; a shadow moved across it. Jack caught the door with the tips of his fingers so that it wouldn’t slam into place. Then, he crept across the floorboards, holding his breath; his eyes wide open to any slight movement. As he pass
ed the kitchen sink, he softly withdrew a sharp knife from the worktop and clutched it tightly in his hand.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he looked up. The landing was void of all light. Looking back, he still did not see any sign of the boys bouncing through the back garden, and he would have sighed with gentle relief had he not needed to keep as still as a corpse. Attention returned to the landing. With each step that he ascended, he ached with agony that it might make a sound. By the time his foot touched the top step, he kept his body low. The darkness consumed everything.

  In the space where he knew the door led to Aileen’s attic room, suspense poured forth. One step, a second and a third. Knife gripped tightly, he pushed the door gently open.

  Where he expected Aileen’s flirtatious smile, he saw only blood drooling from her lips. Her head had sunk into her shoulder, and a grin of blood around her neck trickled down into her bosom. She was in her armchair, knitting strewn at her feet.

  The lights burst open. A dark figure sprung from the corner. Jack instinctively ducked and the figure tripped over his body, slamming into the coffee table. Backing away, Jack held the knife aloft as the man arose from the debris of table legs and liquid wax.

  Standing tall, the man caught Jack’s eye and burst into laughter.

  “Oh, this is going to get me a fucking good promotion,” he jeered.

  Jack stepped forward a little, holding the knife at head height. But the man advanced quicker than he’d anticipated and had grabbed his wrist before he knew what was happening. The man slammed his body backwards against the wall. Jack collapsed to his knees, winded. With a clatter, the knife fell from his limp hand to the ground. Immediately, the man stepped on it, thrusting a kick into Jack’s face with his other foot.

  Thrown backwards, Jack felt the rain of his own blood scatter on his torso. His head slammed into Aileen’s armchair. Dazed and confused, he saw only the softly blurred outline of the man stepping forward and kneeling down to grab for Jack’s neck.

  Instinct reigned again. Stuffing his hand full of Aileen’s knitting, he thrust the sharp needle forward, sharply glancing away as it pierced through the man’s face. Blood squirted everywhere, like a fountain of crimson. Jack kicked the man backwards and he slumped against the far wall.

  Wiping his face with his sleeve, Jack rose to his feet and crept across the room. The man was jerking in pain. The needle was lodged just shy of his eyeball. Jack felt vomit curdling inside, but he knew one more thing needed to be done.

  The knife was once again on the ground. Grabbing it free from the man’s reach, Jack held it in his hand and paused for a moment. The man gazed up at him, his arms spasming with pain. Jack leant over his body and spoke softly to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “But this is for your own good. Her grandson will only torture you for days.”

  He took the knife and drew it across the man’s throat.

  At first the man was choking, gasping for air. He clutched his throat pathetically, with his strength waning at every minute grasp. After a few moments, he was still, and Jack straightened up, his attention split between the two corpses he shared the room with.

  Before he had a chance to check whether Aileen was still breathing, he heard talking below. Alex and Kyle had returned. Quickly, Jack rushed to the top of the landing at the same time as his friends had reached the first step.

  They looked up at him, confused. Kyle cocked his head, Alex stared intensely at Jack. A second later they were speeding up the stairs. Jack stepped backwards, allowing them both to rush into the room. He looked away as Kyle dropped to his knees at his grandmother’s feet.

  The shriek was unbearable. Jack looked at Alex, who was staring at him from the room, standing over the man’s body.

  “You killed him?” he asked, over Kyle’s sobbing.

  Jack nodded, “I did what I needed to do.”

  Alex advanced on him, “What did you mean earlier, that we needed to leave?”

  Jack was stunned that this was Alex’s first question, “It was a gut feeling that something else is happening here that we haven’t even dared to anticipate.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll discuss it later. Right now, we need to leave Scotland.”

  Alex nodded, “Kyle, c’mon. We have to go.”

  Kyle flared round, eyes bloodshot, “She’s not even fucking cold!”

  “We only have a matter of minutes, Kyle. You either leave now, or you die by her side.”

  Kyle seemed to hesitate, but eventually he stood up, kissing his grandmother’s hand as he did so. It was harsh, even by Alex’s standards, but Jack understood that urgency was presently more pressing than grief.

  Alex burst into action, racing downstairs and out the back door again.

  The three men looked frantically in every direction.

  “The car will be tagged,” Alex said, “We need to find another mode of transport.”

  “There’s a path, leading to the next village along. We can procure something there,” Kyle suggested, wiping a few stray tears from his cheek.

  A few minutes later and they were running along the moonlight roadside path. No headlights betrayed their presence. Only the padding of their feet on the tarmac revealed their location. Jack’s breath was heavy, abated. Kyle was racing ahead - Jack suspected something more than a thirst for life spurred him on. Alex ran with Jack, ensuring that he kept up.

  Sure enough, ahead of them around the next bend, the flames tormented their eyes; the single brightest object in the whole horizon. They all stopped, the echoes of their footsteps carried off by the wind.

  “How many, do you reckon?” Jack asked, as the other two turned to him, “How many more farms like this are being burned? This can’t be the only one?”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Alex said.

  “In a country dependent on Rations, you don’t burn crops,” Kyle said.

  An idea leapt into Jack’s mind.

  “Do either of you have a phone on you?”

  “Jack,” Alex mocked, “We can’t call anyone right now, they’ll be listening in…”

  “Just give me your phone,” he insisted.

  Kyle pulled out one from his jean pocket. Jack snatched it and immediately set it to video mode, pointing the lens at the fire.

  “What are you doing?” Alex asked.

  Holding the phone steady, Jack turned to his friends, “Put this on the internet, watch them try and deny it.”

  “But they will! It’ll be buried within the day!”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said, “But it’s not about making everyone believe. It’s about making them doubt.”

  They filmed the flames for a few minutes, ensuring that there was enough footage to split and duplicate for upload to the internet. There were many avenues they could release it on, but they had to be careful about when and how they did it. Every action would be traced back to their location.

  Once Jack was sure he had captured what they needed, they raced on into the swarming dark.

  Two miles passed and the light from the next village dawned on them. Immediately they spied drunkards spilling out of the local pub. They all slowed to a steady walk, gathering their breath as fast as they could. Jack kept pace with Alex, feeling more self-assured than ever, but still not wishing to be left behind.

  “Don’t they pay attention to curfew around here?” Jack whispered to Kyle.

  “When the pub’s owned by the CRU officer’s wife, the rules tend to get bent,” Kyle said.

  They merged with the drunkards outside the pub and soon located a carpark to the rear of the pub. With little decorum or even attempting to be discreet, they broke into one of the cars, Kyle at the helm, and drove off into the night.

  Jack was lying flat on the back passenger seat. Life was all happening too fast.

  Forty minutes later and they turned off into a small road, meandering through a dense wood. Jack watched the stars, twinkling above, disappear behind the thick canopy of pine needles.
Kyle drew the car to a stop underneath a tall tree and switched the engine immediately off.

  “Fuck!” he slammed the dashboard. “Fucking cunting bastards!”

  Alex stared into space directly ahead of him. It was an uncomfortable few minutes as Kyle exerted his loss on the car’s steering wheel. Both Jack and Alex could sympathise with him, but as Jack caught Alex’s eye through the rear-view mirror, Jack was keenly aware that neither of them could ever empathise. Both of them had lost loved ones to car accidents; but neither Douglas Reader or Jessica Lennox had ever been murdered by the government.

  “Thank you,” Kyle said at long last, turning around and addressing Jack alone, “Thank you for killing the bastard. I wouldn’t have been quite as kind.”

  Before Jack could say anything, Alex stole the realm, “They knew we were here.”

  “I know,” Kyle said, “I know…”

  For a number of seconds they absorbed the betrayal.

  “I thought the mole was dead,” Kyle continued, “I thought I’d worked it out, and that the person who betrayed you had died a few weeks ago.”

  “There could be more than one…” Jack suggested, doubting even himself.

  Alex shook his head, “Only the top people knew where we were, Jack. It has to be one of them.”

  “Melanie? Kim? Devin?” somehow he couldn’t believe it.

  “I think we have to entertain the possibility,” Alex said, “Yeah. Someone knows far too much. I mean we get moles all the fucking time. Little ones at the bottom of the food chain, predominantly. The most they will get is a couple of low grade people - maybe a vaguely important safehouse owner. But this? They know who we are. They knew about our raid on Quentin’s estate and they must have known we would be up here with Kyle.”