Quite without warning, Neil began to kick the front of the dead truck and swear at it foully. Very rarely had even Dan seen his friend’s temper, and to most, it came as a complete shock to see the ever-smiling and painfully comedic man utterly lose his shit in a nuclear way.
Unfortunately for Neil, his slight lack of coordination combined with his overwhelming anger made for more inadvertent humour when he overstretched a kick aimed at the grille and fell hard on his backside. Getting to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster, he dusted himself down and addressed the small crowd gathered in embarrassed silence.
“I don’t suppose,” he said in his favourite accent, “that any of you are in possession of one diesel fuel filter to fit a Perkins engine?”
One or two slow shakes of the head disturbed the group’s stillness, having mistakenly taken the question as anything more than comical rhetoric to disguise his loss of control.
“Well, chaps,” announced Neil, “we seem to be buggered then!”
A small ripple of laughter ran through them as their nerves got the better of them in the fraught situation. Dan watched on, leaning lightly on Marie’s shoulder as he still suffered from bouts of dizziness, and glanced around looking for Leah. Catching sight of her a short distance away, she was already spreading the map out on the roadway. Walking over to her, carefully placing one foot down at a time as he still didn’t trust his ability to stay upright, he saw the girl working hard to try and figure out where they were.
“Need any help, kid?” Dan asked her, only to close his mouth when she held her forefinger aloft. The finger was meant to convey a polite request for him not to interrupt her thought process or she would have to start again. Feeling no sense of anger at being told so rudely to can it, he waited patiently until the finger was lowered and she turned to look at him.
Only then did he see the red rings around her eyes. The girl had barely slept for more than a few hours a day over the last God knows how long, and even though her mind was alert, her body was showing signs of beginning to fail.
“There should be buildings about four Ks ahead,” she said, following her assessment up with a hopeful, “I think.” Gathering herself, she looked him straight in the eye and issued her instructions. “You stay here, Adam can keep watch. I’ll take Ash and Jimmy ahead to see what we can find. There’s very little chance we’ll see anyone here because this is the middle of bloody nowhere but let’s not get complacent, shall we?”
A couple of years ago, receiving orders from a teenager festooned with weaponry would have seemed odd to say the least. Instead, Dan nodded his agreement but felt compelled to add his own words of warning.
“Fine. Be back by nightfall or I’m coming after you myself,” he told her.
Fighting back her urge to inform Dan that he couldn’t fight his way clear of a paper bag at that point, she nodded in agreement and turned away. Dan’s further instructions drifted over her shoulder as she walked.
“And when you’re back, you need to sleep,” he said, inviting no recourse for argument.
Turning as she walked to pace backwards, Leah displayed her biggest fake grin and raised two thumbs up to him.
Cheeky cow, he thought to himself with a smirk. As he watched her go, his right leg twitched and threatened to buckle under his weight. Turning to Marie, he expressed his opinion that sitting down in the very immediate future would be beneficial to his health. He didn’t make the refuge of the back of the truck; instead, he stumbled just before and, unfortunately for him, in direct sight of Kate.
He was unsure which hurt more: the throbbing pain in his head combined with the agonising soreness of his neck or the berating he received for being on his feet.
“I swear,” complained Kate, “your bloody head injuries will be the death of me!”
“I rather suspect they’re more likely to be the death of me,” he answered with slurring sarcasm.
~
Leah and Jimmy went forwards at a comfortable trot with Ash keeping pace effortlessly beside them. Rounding a left-hand bend as they went downhill, they saw a dozen or so buildings nestled in the small gulley ahead. Stopping at a distance and carefully surveying the scene below, Leah was happy that she saw no movement and no sign of recent activity. Glancing up at the sky, she told Jimmy they had maybe three hours to search the place for vehicles before they had to be setting off back to the others.
Saying nothing in response, Jimmy merely hefted his faithful crowbar and gave her a tired smile of agreement.
“Let’s do this,” she said.
OH, HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN
A week prior, she had been riding in a bombproof military scout truck at the head of a four-vehicle convoy, been carrying enough spare ammunition to turn the tide of a major conflict, and held supplies to keep them fed and fuelled for months.
Now, almost ashamed more than embarrassed, she was sitting in the front seat of a nine-year-old seven-seat people carrier and towing a rickety trailer which was packed to the point of overflowing with their kit and remaining stores. The only other form of viable transport found in the tiny village was in the form of pedal cycles, of which six of their group now followed on behind her while others were forced to walk. At their desperately slow rate of progress, it took them most of the following day to source a further vehicle sufficiently preserved in a dusty barn to get started.
Neil impressed them all by pouring lighter fluid on the air intake and telling them all to step back as the engine fired into life and revved violently until it settled down. Now, packed in more tightly than they had been in a single army truck, the two overloaded vehicles wound their ponderous way towards the coast at horribly low speeds due to the combination of gradient and weight.
Calling a stop to their travels for the day, she watched as the others unfolded themselves from the musty cabins and spilled into the fresh air. Clearing a small cafe for the night, Leah emerged to announce the area clear.
By this point, people had abandoned all hope of comfort and simply threw down their sleeping bags where they believed enough space existed for them to lie down. Within minutes, the dusty floor was a mess of snoring, multicoloured maggots of human proportions.
Wiping two glasses on the arm of her long-sleeved black top, she poured a couple of measures from a bottle she had found behind the counter. Tipping back one of the chairs on the small terrace outside, she sat next to Dan and handed him a glass.
Sniffing it with some trepidation, Dan sipped the drink to find it to be some fruity distilled substance, similar to the Calvados of the northern parts of the country but sweeter. Amused at Leah’s grimace as she sipped from her own glass, he watched as she leaned back to relax.
“One more day to the coast,” she said to him in quiet estimation.
“One more day,” he agreed, sipping again and fearing that he might actually develop a taste for whatever it was he was drinking.
“Then what?” she asked him.
Lighting a cigarette to fill the pause he needed to phrase his answer, he leaned back his own chair like hers and blew out a stream of smoke.
“Then we hope they are actually friendly and can help us,” he said, before adding seriously, “but if they aren’t, I need you on top form to kick some ass.” With that, he leaned over and took the glass from her unresisting hand. “So get some sleep.”
~
Sitting alone as he smoked, he drained first his own and then Leah’s glass as he mulled over the options they might face the following evening.
THE HUNT
“Calling all survivors. We offer security, food and family. Our city has stood for generations. We are strong. We live and offer life. We are Sanctuary. Fort of the south sea,” he told his assembled men in French, reading from the notepad in his hand.
After the gall of this Englishman had reduced his number to a mere thirty-eight, he had vowed to exact a brutal and slow revenge on him. Him and the others who had come for him in the big green truck which his sc
outs had reported was last seen fleeing to the north.
“So,” he said, arms wide and a wicked smile showing on his face under the livid bruising of his recently ruined nose, “who is hungry for seafood and revenge?”
As one, his small army roared their approval of his plan. In truth, they would have followed him anywhere though most were growing bored of their nomadic existence as they roamed the country in search of plunder. Each and every one of them had served with him in Africa, and a good number of his best fighters were former Foreign Legion.
Now they would chase this man to the edge of the sea.
The hunt was on.
SANCTUARY
Exhausted, cramped and longing for the freedom to sit without having to be in contact with so many others in a confined space, Leah happily exited the car and stretched her back.
Walking slowly forwards with her arms out to her sides, she glanced skywards to her left and marvelled at the impossibly steep slopes and impregnable walls. Pacing intently towards the lowered portcullis in the only break in the ancient wall that she could see, a light shone down through the early evening gloom and fixed her on the spot.
Hearing no challenge issued, but mindful of Dan’s advice, she stayed where she was and waited.
And waited.
A single line of French was shouted at her with an inflection which suggested it was a question.
“Do you speak English?” she shouted back.
A pause filled the air until the response came. “A little. What do you want?”
Her relief was palpable. Clearing her throat and holding her head high, she shouted back that she was with the group of survivors in the cars behind her. That they meant no harm and had heard the radio message offering safety. That they had been attacked numerous times since they left England on their journey, and that they were begging for help from the people of Sanctuary.
Only silence answered her impassioned plea and just as her heart began to sink as she thought they would be turned away, a creaking noise announced the raising of the gate.
~
They were greeted with kindness, and as Dan kept a hand on the shoulders of both Marie and Leah to steady his dizziness, he stared in awe at the high fortress protecting the gate in the wall which extended around the entire area between two steep cliffs. As he passed through the ancient but still formidable gateway, he looked skywards once more to find that the fortress built into the cliff was actually separate from the walled town and effectively prevented anyone from gaining a position to be able to attack the entrance to the enclosure.
In the sinking sunlight, he could make out a high watchtower at each end of the protected bay and a cluster of houses which extended beyond the huge central keep behind the gateway and down to the water’s edge.
The radio message wasn’t exaggerating, he told himself. This place really was impregnable: he’d need air superiority, a small navy and modern explosives or artillery to take this place.
His light-headedness wasn’t only caused by the concussion he had suffered; it was due in part to the relief he felt at being in a place where the outside world could be shut away and he could finally sleep soundly without his boots on and without his guns ready.
The place truly was an impregnable sanctuary.
EPILOGUE
They had been fed. They had experienced their first hot showers in months and could hardly believe that Sanctuary boasted not only the most secure defences they had ever seen but also had power courtesy, they were told, of the two massive wind turbines on the mountain top. If they looked closely, they could see the automated flashing red lights that served as a warning to the aircraft which were unlikely to ever fly close to the spinning blades again.
Dan had shaved with hot water and a fresh razor. They were asked politely to secure all of their weapons in a locked room as they entered the keep, and the presence of four armed and nervous-looking men had ensured their compliance. Almost. Dan kept hold of the suppressed Walther, which he stored under the pillow in the comfortable room he and Marie had been given in the big central keep, and he still had a knife in his waistband. Marie’s joy and relief at sleeping on a real mattress weren’t due to her being spoilt or precious; her pregnancy was advancing to the point where she felt uncomfortable most of the time and the prospect of a real bed was heaven on earth to her.
“Hey!” she said, grabbing Dan’s attention. “Remember when I asked when we were going to catch a break?” she asked with a rueful smile.
“I think we just have,” he answered, smiling back at her with all the unfamiliarity of his freshly shaved face.
Telling the dog to stay and not to climb on the bed, he left with Marie to answer the summons to meet the leadership of the town. As he closed the door, he was certain he heard the small sound of Ash leaping onto the duvet to get comfortable.
Dan, Marie and Leah stood in what had been the great hall where the medieval rulers of old once passed judgement, and waited in silence for the welcome speech.
~
A tall, thin woman entered the room. She bore a wide smile and shook hands with all of them in turn, introducing herself in accented English as Polly.
“You’re American?” Leah asked, unsure at her curious accent.
“I’m Quebecois,” she answered patiently, bordering on the condescending as she hadn’t yet fully understood the teenager’s status in their group. “French Canadian,” she explained, as though that made everything fall into place.
Polly began to embark on a great description of what they had achieved there since the fall of humanity as she described it, but Dan’s attention was snatched away by Marie’s gasp.
Fearing that she was in pain, he turned to her and opened his mouth to ask if she was OK until he too heard the source of her shock.
From behind a door off the main hall came the unmistakable sound of a baby crying.
END OF BOOK FIVE
The story continues in AFTER IT HAPPENED BOOK SIX:
REBELLION
(Due spring 2017)
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Sanctuary: After It Happened Book 5 Page 19