by Ru Pringle
‘I barely go outside these days.’
A radio is playing in the background. Some local pirate station, by the sound of it. Her heart is still pounding. She hopes she at least gave the two men something more pressing to think about than her. She wonders who they were. A pair of local chancers, or something worse? Or … what if they hadn’t actually wanted to hurt me?
‘I don’t have a radio,’ she says. ‘Have you heard any news about the … the, ah, conflict? Do you know where the front line is now?’
But he doesn’t answer her question, instead barking, ‘Drink up.’ A fractured look has entered his eyes. ‘You must be going, my dear – I keep telling Glenda, but she never listens. Cold callers are everywhere.’ His voice rises. ‘Scum, that’s what they are. Take your money, soon as look at you. It’s not safe!’ And suddenly, he’s pulling her from her seat and virtually pushing her out of the door.
Bewildered, she thanks him, and finds herself outside once more with the armoured door slamming at her back, feeling naked and indescribably alone. She hears deadlocks click into place.
Her knife is on the floor inside.
Looking wildly about, she walks as fast as she dares back towards the Oban Caledonian. There’s a strange expectancy in the air. She can’t say what it is, but it’s almost palpable. At the back of the hotel she catches sight of the soldier who accosted her on the way to the chip shop.
He’s lying on the ground.
Around him something dark is spreading, glistening in the orange sodium light.
YOU’RE FINISHING your bag of chips as you notice a change come over the town. You can’t put your finger on what it is, but you know it isn’t good. Having looked abortively for a bin, you add your bag and greasy napkin to the drifts of litter already on the ground.
You’ve experienced this feeling before, you realise. It’s the kind you get before a riot.
You find your stride lengthening as you head back towards the car. Encountering a wall of largely drunk squaddies, you shoulder your way through. There are protests. Whistles. Someone even throws a blind punch, but it’s helped on its way by a nudge to the wrist so the bruiser who threw it ends up punching himself in the mouth.
Beyond the scrum you thread between civilians milling without apparent purpose. Many are showing signs of unease. They’re feeling it too.
You glance at the electricians’ van.
Move, you idiot!
You consider tapping on his window, but if the man inside’s as wired as you’re feeling, a bullet to the face isn’t an unlikely response.
Above you, windows are opening.
Oh crap. Now you wish you’d brought that ’phone with you.
You walk purposefully back to the car and sit in it, breathing heavily. You’re about to turn the ignition key when you notice a scruffy, broad-hipped old woman with short grey hair stomping – almost waddling – along the road by the big old hotel. She’s moving away from someone lying on the ground.
Memory jogged by something, you squint at the figure. She’s not very athletic. A farmer by the look of her clothes and her face, which is ruddy even under street lighting. Something’s very wrong with her leg.
As she turns round the corner of the hotel into the light, breaking into an unexpected jog, you see her face is quite striking. Wide-spaced eyes, with a prominent dimple …
Skin tingling, you open the car door, eyes locked on her face.
You almost don’t see the other men until it’s too late
GASPING FOR AIR, Coira lurches on up the road. It feels like she’s forgotten how to walk. Ahead of her, men in jeans, fleeces and other civilian clothes are running along Aird’s Crescent. Most are wearing woollen hats, bandannas or balaclavas. They move stealthily, keeping low.
She rounds the corner of the hotel at a half-run.
Just over the road, by the Royal Hotel, she sees an inconspicuous old softroader saloon car parked half on the pavement. The windows are tinted, but she can see its driver looking at her. The face looks intent, but slightly confused.
She feels her neck hairs prickle.
The occupant slowly opens the door and gets out of the car. The figure’s movements are measured. Cat-like. She finds eyes like targeting systems locked on her own.
Coira’s stomach lurches. She’s about to break into a sprint, but stops herself dead. The armed soldiers on the waterfront seem agitated, shouting and gesticulating wildly at their off-duty comrades and the few civilians remaining on the street.
One raises his rifle in the air and releases a single shot.
There are shrieks and yells of alarm. Then silence, but for the music still coming from Shaggy’s.
‘Everyone leave the fucking street, NOW!’
The figure from the car dives sideways back into the vehicle, closing the door. Beyond the car, towards the station, furtive shapes are darting between shadows. Coira watches a dark cylinder extend into the pool of street illumination. Faint sounds reach her ears of metal clicking and sliding against metal.
From the north there’s a rumble of big engines and other mechanical noises. Standing on tiptoe, she can just make out a convoy of army vehicles trying to push through the crowds strung out along George Street and Corran Esplanade. Irate soldiers are still trying to hustle them out of the way, but most are too stupid with drink to appreciate the urgency.
Every hair on her body is standing on end.
She backs into the shadows and tries to merge with the hotel wall.
IT’S HER! You can hardly believe it. How she disguised herself so convincingly you’ve no idea, but it’s definitely her. You’re painfully aware that, but for this piece of sheer luck, you would never have given her a second glance.
You peer over the dashboard.
Keir’s still there. For a moment she looks torn by indecision, then as if she’s trying to press herself invisibly into the wall. You can’t see what’s going on, but you trust her instincts.
You’re pondering what to do when you’re half-blinded by something like a vast searchlight being switched on.
LIGHT CONSUMES THE NIGHT above the harbour. It’s followed by the thunder of a detonation. Felt as much as heard, the concussion reverberates around the town, breaking windows and triggering every working car alarm.
As if at a signal, the shadows by the station light up with muzzle fire.
There’s a weird “ching, choing” sound as bullets bounce off the hotel walls a few metres away. Coira throws herself flat on her face. Risks an upwards peep between her fingers.
A blinding mushroom is swelling into the sky above the ferry port. Orange-white fire seems to suck itself upwards from the rear deck of the navy boat, moving like a viscous fluid. Salt spray deluges everything. A mat of seaweed splats on to the pavement a body’s length away.
In the unnatural daylight she sees something streak from an open window along the waterfront. Flying right past the chip shop she was in minutes earlier, it strikes the tank leading the convoy as unseen bullets begin mowing the already staggering off-duty soldiers and other bystanders down like grass.
All hell breaks loose.
Evidently not dead, the tank swivels its turret, and blasts something straight into the window the missile came from. There’s a thunderous twin boom and the road is deluged with masonry, followed by a rumbling roar as what looks like the whole building collapses on the road, burying more soldiers.
Meanwhile a second missile, fired from somewhere else, has reduced the troop-carrier behind the tank to a burning shell. She watches a third projectile do something similar to the tank, which seems to make a cartoon burp, gun slumping, smoke spewing from its hatches.
All along the waterfront, more explosions are happening.
There’s a second detonation at the ferry port. Over the thunder and the screaming she can hear noises she remembers from the dolphin hunters’ mortar. Gunfire seems to be everywhere: she sees tracer arcing right along t
he street. It’s like a scene from a violent science fiction film. Even the turret of the stricken ship has joined in. Despite burning brightly, it’s pounding high-energy projectiles of some kind into the five-storey buildings along the seafront like an immense machine-gun, with spectacular results.
Coira squirms along the foot of the wall, trying to get away from the carnage. A burst of bullets smashes through a window at about head-height, raining glass and shattered stone over her back and head.
What the fuck next? She has to get back to the boat. But how?
The window of the car the driver had emerged from is crazed white. The car’s occupant is nowhere to be seen. Coira plots a quick mental map, and crawls round the corner.
Once near the back of the hotel again, she gets to her feet and heads for the nearby roundabout in a crouching run. The loose towel has formed a ridiculous bulge around one knee, but she doesn’t stop to move it. A couple of private vehicles zip by on their flight out of town, wheels screeching, passing so close and so fast that they ruffle her hair.
She crosses the island in the middle of the roundabout, opening her hips up as she dashes into Albany Street. An army all-terrain vehicle ploughs over the traffic island where she has just been, its occupants yelling at each other, the gunner tugging desperately at the loading mechanism on the gigantic weapon in the back. She hears something fizz over her head. A building metres away dissolves in flying masonry.
YOU COWER BENEATH THE DASHBOARD, fumbling your pistol out of the drinks holder. Shards of glass rain down on you from the windscreen. You yell as more bullets ping into the car’s metalwork. Outside suddenly sounds somewhere between a war zone and a demolition site.
What the hell? Craobh Haven – and now this?
There’s a hiatus. You risk a peep over the dash. The glass is crazed in concentric circles around a cluster of bullet holes, but there’s enough clarity at the edge for you to see that Keir has gone.
You swear, pop open the passenger door, and slide on to the tarmac like a snake.
You’re treated to a view almost directly down the main street behind the harbour. It’s insane. People and vehicles, including tanks, are exploding and burning. Buildings are falling.
You squirm as fast as you can behind the car, then make a stooped dash along the wall of the Royal Hotel. What sounds like a high-calibre shell whumps into the top of the building directly above you, and you break into a full-on sprint for the roundabout. You suspect the smashing noises you can hear are bits of hotel falling on your car, but you don’t look back, dodging a couple of hatchbacks and a bicycle before you stand, panting, at the junction with the street on the roundabout’s opposite side.
Albany Street.
You slip into a doorway and, still holding the gun, brace your hands on your knees. You know the mayhem will spread. But where will she have gone? What about the other officers here? You curse yourself for not taking the time to memorise Oban’s street layout.
You dither. You simply don’t know what to do. Make the wrong move now, you realise, and you’ve lost her.
You hop up on to an old steel bollard. A bullet zips alarmingly close past your head. A lot of shouting and screaming is going on: people are beginning to pour from the town centre, crossing the roundabout. Some are bleeding. Most are terrified. Many run into Albany Street.
You scan the sea of retreating heads, but you can’t see any that look like hers.
Because you can’t think of anything else to do, you begin jogging with them.
COIRA RUNS.
Albany Street is fairly straight, and she finds herself joined by others, all running in the same direction. Lights in neighbouring houses are coming on, with people standing at windows, open-mouthed. Others are leaping into cars, which reverse recklessly into the fleeing crowd, horns blaring in attempts to shoo the panicking pedestrians out of the way. Runners beat on doors of the moving vehicles, imploring or demanding to be let in. Most of the drivers have locked their doors, and push aggressively through the ruckus. One hasn’t: a door pops open, and immediately the 4X4 is mobbed by pushing and brawling men and women, immobile in the middle of the road, its driver and her family screaming.
Coira runs on as fast as she can, turning a bend in the road which brings her back towards the ferry port. A few people are still ahead of her, but she’s overtaking them. Military personnel are swarming like ants on the dock. Most are moving, but some are obviously bodies. She passes the port turn-off as an army fire engine and several other military vehicles hurtle along the railway track toward the docks.
She forces herself into a rhythm. Hears the unmistakable scream of jets overhead, and looks over her shoulder. All over town, fresh explosions appear. These are like the ones she saw at Craobh Haven: more firework than fireball. And they are devastating. She turns and stands, transfixed, as buildings smash like models, and burning people, clearly visible, are tossed around like ashes in a storm.
Answering fire from what she assumes are surface-to-air missile launchers streaks up from somewhere in the hills behind the town. Above, there’s another firework display as what has to be anti-missile chaff is deployed. She can’t see the jets themselves, but there are glimpses of their exhausts: glowing spears of orange and blue. They seem somehow too fast and reactive – too anxious – for drones.
There’s an explosion overhead. A cloud lights up orange, and down through the palls of smoke now rising out of the town corkscrews a spaceship-like aeroplane – burning, one wing missing …
Straight into the Colosseum-like facade of McCaig’s Tower.
This is mental. This isn’t happening.
She runs on, spitting out her wads of wet chips, tearing for breath now. She’s left the others behind. As she nears the boat club, the houses lining the left of the road all have their lights on. At the one with the union flag a man with a shotgun is framed in the doorway. She moves aside to let more cars through. Gunfire seems to be getting nearer. There’s a burst very close, and she looks back up the road to see an old army Land Rover veer off the road into a line of hedges. Soldiers are spilling out of vehicles behind it.
Panting, she stumbles down the path to the boat club jetty, screaming when something erupts from behind the dinghy. It’s a frightened cat. Physically shaking, she pushes the dinghy into the water and splashes in after it. She almost capsizes trying to get in.
She rows into the bay, pulling with manic urgency. The wind has dropped and the tide is pulling her strongly into the Sound of Kerrera. She struggles against it, but already she’s tiring. Other people have had the same idea as her: a couple of civilian RIBs are skimming over the harbour, aiming for the north entrance. A fresh burst of explosions lights the sky above the town to her left. Something in the corner of her eye grabs her attention, and she looks over her shoulder towards the marina on Kerrera.
The shore of the island is alive with short-lived bright sparkles.
She stops rowing. Smoky little trails begin arcing up from the shore and down over the bay, connecting Kerrera with a wave of fresh explosions in the town. Moonlight is breaking through the cloud, and she looks up in time to see a turbofan-driven drone crossing the moon’s disc on its way towards the island’s northern end.
Seconds later, the shore by the marina is peppered with fire. Individually small, the explosions are so dense that they coalesce into a carpet of peach-white illumination. She watches the propped-up yacht hulls she so recently explored topple each other like dominoes. The roof of the laundry block seems to jump into the air and disintegrate, while the barn and the shed just burst apart.
Most of the little sparkles have disappeared.
Coira puts back her head and utters a howl of utter despair.
YOU’RE ALMOST OUT OF TOWN NOW. Ahead and behind, people have slowed to a jog, their heads darting at each new sound or movement. By unspoken – and very British – agreement, everyone fleeing on foot is on the right of the road, leaving the left free for th
e erratically fleeing vehicles.
You’ll need to work out an exit strategy yourself, you realise. Your stomach tightens. You’re on the edge of losing her, if you haven’t already. She could have moored the kayak anywhere along the shore here, and you’d never know. Assuming she was still in a kayak.
And even if she was – would she necessarily have gone back to it?
You canter to a breathless halt by some houses, and look around, hands braced on your knees. Your intuition is shot. You briefly scan the harbour, but its flickering shadows are too confused and dark for retinas still bleached from watching explosions. There’s gunfire close behind. You see tall vehicles and a wall of soldiers moving towards you.
Self-preservation kicking in, you run along the road to a turn-off on your left. There’s a side-road winding up the steep hill above the harbour.
You grit your teeth and climb.
COIRA CAN’T WORK OUT what to do.
Where can she go? Roadblocks will be everywhere south of Oban after this. Or worse. She doubts the army will be in any mood for restraint. Even if she could find a way across town, moving north by land also seems out of the question. From what she’s just seen, it’ll only get her killed.
She looks wildly about.
She could row to Kerrera. But then what? The island’s obviously been crawling with separatists, and any survivors are unlikely to be welcoming. Had they watched her blunder round the marina as they lay in wait for the ambush in the town? Wondering all the time if she was about to give them away? She shivers at the thought that they might have shot her as a precaution.
By the looks of things, the British army could be all over Kerrera soon. And the truth is, there’s little point going there now anyway. She doubts if anything near the marina bigger than a pebble, let something as fragile as a kayak, will survive the night.