And there he stayed, eyes fixed on the horizon, with despair creeping into his heart as surely as the cold crept into his bones as the sun began to sink again on the second day.
IT NEVER RAINS…
Few of them slept much in the temporary shelter of the garage unit. The wind whistled through the many gaps and shook the steel roller shutter with a thunderous noise which disturbed all but the deepest of sleepers. Despite her tiredness, Leah could not stop her mind from working overtime with the million and one thoughts rushing through her brain. Ticking them off mentally, she found herself attacking one problem at a time with logic as her weapon.
She worked through each aspect of her fears, creating solutions to problems, contingencies for eventualities, answers to questions. Her main difficulty was that she faced so many different issues that, unwillingly, her brain switched between topics with all the capriciousness of a hyperactive kitten.
Lying curled up in her sleeping bag with her head propped on her bag and her hand resting on her rifle, she gave up on trying to file away all of the worries and distress like the wind outside was blowing them around in her head and mixing them together irreparably.
Twisting over onto her back, she lay flat and tried to empty her mind of all cognitive thought. She found her brain in a void, but into that void from all sides like bodiless voices came creeping back those same fears and more. The anxiety leaked insidiously into her mind like water into a boat with a thousand small holes in its hull.
As her last attempt to try and sleep, she came out of her own mind and pushed her consciousness down into her toes. She worked upwards through her body, concentrating on each muscle in turn, and she willed it to become heavy as she felt herself sinking further and further into the thin comfort of her makeshift bed.
Sleep so nearly took her into its blissful embrace until the howling wind, in her state of flux between awake and not, transformed into the screams of people.
They wailed and begged her for help, but she could not move and felt powerless to stop whatever faceless terror persecuted those who relied on her. As the screaming built to a crescendo in her head, she jolted awake and let out a loud, strangled cry, a foul hybrid of anguish and rage.
Having startled those nearest her, she grumbled to herself as she gave up on any hope of rest and wriggled free of the sleeping bag to roll it up and stuff it angrily into her pack. Stepping carefully over the others in the back of the big truck, she jumped down from the tailgate to jar her ankle as exhaustion had robbed her of her natural litheness. As though she hadn’t enough to be unhappy about already, she took a glance to her left where the murky stream of shadowy moonlight piercing their metal burrow shone down on the swathed body of Jack.
The events of the last twenty-four hours washed over her again, and she replayed the attack over and over to find fault in her actions. She could not, but still felt that she held some responsibility.
Opening a bottle of water and jumping up slightly to sit on a raised workbench, she heard the click, click of Ash’s claws as he walked stiffly over to her side having sensed she was up. She reached down to fuss the huge animal and saw the gaping yawn as he displayed his numerous sharp teeth. The terrifying effect of seeing the damage his jaws could do was offset somewhat by the ridiculous noise his yawn made.
She chuckled softly, finding some sense of joy in a shitty world, and the noise seemed to offend the dog who now eyed her with a mildly reproving look. Ignoring Ash’s delicate sensibilities, she glanced around at the hole they had burrowed into. The dank, dusty garage was actually a lucky find as far as things went nowadays, she admitted to herself.
Startled from her reverie by a noise from the corner, one hand instinctively reached for a weapon until the realisation hit her: she could hear a person crying.
Slipping down from the bench in silence, she walked with her habitual sense of stealth towards the noise expecting to find Henry feeling sorry for himself. She was alarmed and instantly upset to find Marie tucked into a foetal position behind a large toolbox.
Marie was shivering with cold as she was only wearing a T-shirt with her back pressed against the cold metal, and in the poor light from the moon, Leah could see her face wet with tears and her eyes puffy from the torment of crying. Saying nothing, Leah sank to her knees and wrapped her arms tightly around her as a parent would do to a distressed child. Unable to say anything, Marie just cried harder into her shoulder and squeezed her tight to pull her forward. Narrowly avoiding hitting her head as she fell onto Marie, Leah would not allow herself to let go of the woman. As she held on tight to her, she could only begin to imagine what she was feeling: Dan was missing, Jack was dead, Marie was pregnant with no way of knowing she could survive the condition, and they were low on supplies and on the run with little or no idea where they were heading.
All these fears were shared with Leah to a great extent, but the girl reminded herself silently that she wasn’t the one carrying a potential death sentence in her womb. Not once in all the time she had known Marie had she seen her do much more than shoot a disapproving look or raise her voice. To find her in such a state as she was now, to see her almost catatonic with pain and emotion, brought Leah’s focus to a whole new and until now undiscovered level.
She missed Dan too, but as much as she wanted to burst out in tears of solidarity and shared pain, they would not come. Her heart was steel. She wanted nothing more than for Dan to come strolling back into their lives with all the cockiness and sarcasm he brought with him. She longed to see his unintentionally arrogant face look at her and try to impart advice without sounding condescending.
She missed him so much it had numbed her to the pain it caused to think he could be gone.
As she held on tight to Marie, she vowed to get these people safely to the rendezvous point, to find Dan and reunite their dysfunctional family before they drove off into the sunset and found the answers to all of their prayers.
Until that day, however, until the time when they were safe and fed and warm and out of all danger, she would remain as hard and as sharp as her knives. She had to, not only for herself but for everyone. When she had discharged those duties then and only then would she allow herself to cry like an overtired toddler who had been denied their wish.
She had no idea how long she had rocked Marie back and forth while she smoothed her hair and shushed her, but when the constricted blood flow in her legs threatened to cause more pain than discomfort, she had to force her arms away and stand. Reaching down to Marie to help her up, she was suddenly struck how much the powerful and enigmatic woman who organised them all so efficiently needed her right then; she had transcended to adulthood and now she was the protector.
Leading Marie gently back to the truck, Leah helped her into her sleeping bag and tucked her in, stroking her hair again until she passed out with exhaustion.
Backing away slowly, she stretched out her cramped muscles and returned to her perch on the workbench. Sensing that the moment of intimacy that he had not been invited to was over, Ash slunk from the shadows again to be at her side. The only indication of the big animal moving was the clacking of his claws and Leah pondered the terror someone would feel being on the receiving end of Ash when he was engaged in business.
As the pre-dawn light began to seep through the few windows, she busied herself as quietly as possible preparing water on the few small camp cookers they had left and stacking a selection of foil packets at the side ready. When she had decided that the others had slept enough, she went round them all to shake them awake, taking a small and cruel bit of enjoyment in ending their sleep which she had not joined in with.
They ate breakfast in relative silence, and as though both were ignoring the events in the night by mutual agreement, Marie gave a subtle squeeze of thanks on her hand as she passed by. To try and assuage her tiredness, Leah drank a coffee so strong that she almost had to chew it.
Loading up the equipment into the truck in some sense of order, Neil climbed
behind the wheel and turned the key.
Only to find the engine totally dead.
Neil tried over and over to start the big machine, his only reward being a ticking noise of struggling electrics. With a resigned sigh, he got out and propped open the large bonnet to look at the engine. The rest of them shuffled around, unsure what to do.
Leah sidled up to Neil, his hands already sporting an oily black residue as he poked and prodded at the cold engine components. She watched for a few seconds as he went through his curious personal form of logic and worked through the potential problems while he muttered under his breath and moved his hands as he spoke. Clearing her throat to bring him out of his thoughts, she asked what was wrong.
“Nothing I can’t fix, and it’s not like there aren’t any tools lying around!” Neil answered with forced joviality, waving a hand over the dusty racks of toolboxes to explain his lack of concern.
Leaning closer with intense seriousness, she whispered close to his ear that they had to be at the rendezvous by the next dawn, meaning that he only had a matter of hours to rectify their lack of transport.
Nodding his understanding to her, he straightened up as Jimmy walked around the front of the engine, rolling up his sleeves to help.
Leaving the two men to talk about oil and other things she didn’t understand, she went back to the others to try and think of something worthwhile for them to do while they waited. Finding that most had already found comfortable places to rest, she decided instead to talk to Mitch. Finding him resting with his eyes closed as he was propped up on a bed of bags, she sat down lightly next to him. They had a brief exchange about the engine not starting, to which Mitch expressed his faith in Neil’s ability to fix the problem.
“I know, it’s just that time is an issue,” she told him.
“We’ll get there and he will be waiting,” the soldier assured her, realising that the girl was almost frantic on the inside at being separated from Dan. Reaching up to cuff her lightly on the head, he instantly regretted his decision as the pain in his bruised chest radiated throughout his body.
Changing the subject, Leah asked him about the grenade Jack had given him which had made their escape possible.
Mitch’s face dropped and became a mask of neutrality.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said without emotion, but Leah was not one to be put off by grown men in a mood.
“Why?” she asked simply, unperturbed by the warning look he shot her in response.
He paused, unsure whether to unleash his thoughts about a man he counted as a friend and one who died trying to save them. In the end, his feelings ran too deep to hold his tongue. “Because I served in Northern Ireland. Because I saw people die from bombs and bullets. Because it’s too hard to fight a war when you don’t know who or where the enemy is when most people there are just trying to get on with their lives. Jack was one of them, and I’m not sure I can deal with that yet.”
“Jack was one of us,” she told him gently as she stood up, “and I’m going to bury him with the respect he deserves for who he was when I knew him, not what he did in the past.”
~
Having gathered others to help, and informing Henry that he would need to dig a grave, she left the unit with Ash to find an appropriate spot nearby. Turning left away from the built-up area instead of right as she had the day before, she soon found a small public park where trees stood proudly as they shed their richly colourful autumnal leaves. Crouching in cover for a while before she was satisfied that the area was clear, she stood and returned to the garage.
Arriving back after a necessary detour an hour later having found the necessary tools in a small hardware shop, she led a small band back to the park via the route she dictated to collect the spades she had left on the roadside.
Keeping watch over them all as Henry dug a hole in the earth, she saw how the boy threw himself into the task feverishly as though his effort now could in some way make up for his foolish actions. She told herself that she would have to stop punishing him after this last enforced task; to continue to do so was unjust and made her feel unnecessarily cruel.
Marie had insisted on coming to say a few words, and as Jack’s sleeping bag was lowered into the rectangular hole, she stood at the head and watched as the earth was piled on top of him. Unable to rouse herself to make a stirring speech, she merely shared a small recollection of something funny he had done once back at the house and asked others to share any similar stories. Ceremony over, they returned to the unit in a dutiful line following girl and dog.
Finding a filthy Neil engrossed in his work, he looked up startled when he saw she had returned. Holding a piece of machinery aloft with wires trailing from it, he declared that he had found the problem. Adam caught her eye, and walked over to tell her she should get some rest.
“I’m fine!” she argued.
“You look like shit,” he answered. “Try to sleep for a bit.” No longer able to mount a sufficient defence through exhaustion, she nodded her acceptance and found a quiet corner to tuck herself away in. As Ash joined her and circled four times on the spot to be sure he had chosen the right place, he lay half across her legs and began to snore gently within minutes.
Finally able to rest, she closed her eyes and slept.
~
She was woken only a few hours later by the unmistakable roar of a big diesel engine barking into life. Throwing off the sleeping dog, she climbed free of her comfort and walked to Neil to receive the offer of an oil-covered high five.
“Let’s go, people. We can make it there by nightfall if we hurry,” she called to them, seeing smiles of hope returned to her.
OUTNUMBERED
Dan sat in the same position until the sun had set, then returned to the back of the Land Rover to sleep during the dark hours.
As he lay awake throughout most of the night, his thoughts raged through a torrent of different possibilities and none of them were good. The agreement was to wait until the following dawn before falling back to the secondary meeting point. Were they already there? Had they skipped the bridge and gone straight to ERV two? Had they been captured?
He had to stick to the plan, and if they didn’t turn up at the next spot, then he would return to the beginning of the trail and would not stop until he either found them or died, whichever came first.
As the first indication of an impending dawn showed on the distant skyline, he emerged from the dark interior to prepare for the last day on the bridge before the window to meet there expired. Repeating the process of the day before, he ate breakfast and sat up to watch forlornly at the end of the bridge.
As midday approached, his anxiety forced him into some kind of action to preserve what little he had left of his sanity. Walking towards the few buildings in sight, he cleared each room in turn but found little of use anywhere. Strolling lazily back to his vehicle, he ate again and cherished one of his last few cigarettes. He only had six left in the packet, and he worked through the mental arithmetic to ration one per every block of hours until the others would join him.
Unable to stick to his self-imposed quota, he was down to the last two long before the sun began its descent. Glancing disconsolately at the sky, his breath stopped in his throat as his brain registered movement ahead of him.
Desperate to respond to a potential threat but fighting an inner battle with himself, he calmly climbed down from his vantage point and stretched his back. To anyone watching, he would appear like he had seen nothing.
At least he hoped it would.
Out of sight from whoever or whatever was to his front, he threw all of his equipment in the back and prepared himself for contact; he checked his magazines were accessible and tightened his vest ready for something, even if he didn’t know what it would be. Walking carefully along the side of the vehicle, he raised the carbine and pointed the scope towards the end of the bridge where he hoped his friends would be coming from.
It wasn’t them. They wouldn’t
be sneaking between the sparse cover and moving forwards at a crouch to try and remain undetected. Now they were closer and he could make out details, he could see that armed men were heading in his direction.
Thinking as fast as he could, his only sensible course of action would be to get behind the wheel and drive away. A glance behind him told a different story, as he could make out at least three shapes coming low towards him from that direction.
Feeling stupid and exposed, he decided that his only option was to fight. He had a foreboding sense that it was a fight he might not win, and decided that he had little to lose so reached into the cab and grabbed the radio mic.
“On the bridge. ERV one. Armed hostiles–” he managed before the first shot screamed over his head. Dropping the mic and retreating from the shot, he knelt and took aim at the attackers to his rear who were still not in a position to take cover and fire at him. Controlling his breathing and trying to ignore the shouts and gunshots from behind, he aimed and squeezed the trigger in a few short bursts.
Dropping one of them to lie still on the tarmac, two more turned and fled out of range, terrified and appalled by his accuracy.
Too late: he took his eye away from the scope to deal with the ones coming from the front just as a bellowed challenge sounded over his left shoulder. A bearded man swung a full-size axe at his head from less than a pace away. He could see it happening and felt powerless to do anything but accept the brutal ending.
His body overrode the decisions his mind was making.
In an instinctive flinch reaction, he fell back to the ground and raised the rifle just in time to deflect the vicious blow. The sharpened blade of the axe hit the ejection port of his M4 and mangled the metal, rendering the gun eternally useless. He dropped it and scrabbled backwards on the ground as he tried uselessly to free his sidearm from the holster on his vest but finding that he could not do it without halting his desperate retreat. Drawing the shotgun over his shoulder was even more of an impossibility so he switched tactics and decided to fight animal on animal.
Sanctuary: After It Happened Book 5 Page 15