The Battle Ground Series: Books 1-3

by Rachel Churcher

  “Anyone want to tell me what’s in that truck?” Will asks, standing at the head of the table and glaring down at us.

  Charlie speaks first. “Supplies, mostly. Rations and water, which you’re welcome to. We’ve also got armour, fitted to these guys;” she waves her hand to indicate the three of us, “weapons to go with the armour, and some personal belongings.”

  Will grunts. “You and you,” he barks, pointing at me and Dan, “come out and help me unload.”

  We follow him out into the farmyard. He helps us untie the cover and drop the tailgate, then Dan climbs onto the back of the truck and hands the crates down to me, one by one. I stack them into piles of armour, and piles of rations while Will watches. There’s a duffel bag that must be Charlie’s, and a bundle of clothes – staff uniforms and fatigues – which I stuff into the top of Charlie’s bag.

  “Show me the weapons,” he says, when the truck is empty, and Dan has climbed down.

  I open the top crate in the pile. It’s Dan’s – the chest panel of the armour is on top, his name stamped across it. I lift the armour, and pull out the rifle, keeping it pointed at the ground, and hand it slowly to Will.

  He takes it, and turns it over in his hands. He holds it up and sights along the barrel.

  “Flashy,” he says, with a disapproving tone. “Is it any good?” He looks down at it, doubtful.

  “Sure,” I say. “It hits targets. Blows holes in things.” He makes an affirmative noise, and hands the rifle back to me.

  “How many of those?”

  “Three. And three suits of armour to go with them.”

  “We’ll take those,” he says, nodding.

  “The armour is custom made,” I protest. “It fits the three of us.” He nods.

  “And what about the supplies?”

  I open the top crate to show him ration bars, dried meal sachets, chocolate bars. He peers in and nods again.

  “Bring those to the kitchen. The rest, we’ll stack in the barn.”

  Dan and I shift the crates. We stack the weapons and armour in the corner of the barn, and bring the kitchen crates and bags into the house. Will empties our rucksacks and inspects the contents, but returns everything to us. The woman from the farmyard unpacks the food and water, sorting it into piles.

  “Keys,” Will demands, and Charlie pulls them out of her pocket. “Anything I need to know?” He asks, and Charlie shakes her head. He grunts, and heads outside to move the truck.

  “He’s putting it out of sight under the trees,” says the woman as she stacks boxes of ration bars on the worksurface. “We don’t want them tracking you from the air.”

  Will drives the truck round the far side of the barn. We sit in silence as the sound of the engine fades.

  Charlie is the first to speak up. “So, Margie. Where are we, and do we get introduced?” She tips her head in the direction of the crates.

  “Jo, come and meet everyone.” Jo adds another handful of meal packs to one of the piles and comes over to stand at the end of the table, hands on her hips. She’s tall, and fit, with shoulder-length brown hair. Margie introduces us, and Jo nods.

  “You’re from the camp? Did you enlist?”

  Dan and I start speaking, but Margie cuts in. “They were all conscripted. Dan and Bex are from my school – we’ve known each other for years. Saunders is a friend from the camp. Charlie was on the kitchen staff, but she helped to get us all out. No one here has much fondness for the government.”

  Jo purses her lips and nods. “OK. Welcome, then. Will’s going to want to talk to you before he lets you past this room.”

  “Of course,” replies Charlie, giving Jo a smile. Jo turns away as the door opens, and Will strides in. He stamps the mud from his boots, then pulls up a chair at the end of the table. He doesn’t return the keys.

  “We need to talk about you lot. Who you are, why you’re here. What we’re going to do about you.”

  Jo fills the kettle and lifts the cover on the Aga while Will pauses, considering what to say next.

  “Margie, you should go out back. The Prof’s there, and she’ll want to talk to you.” He waves her away, and she grins.

  “Dr Richards is here?” Will nods. “I’ll see you all later. Will – be nice to my friends.” He gives her a grumpy half-smile, and she jumps up and heads for an internal door, giving Jo a quick hug on the way past.

  Will demands our names and ranks. He asks about the kitchen scrubs we’re wearing, and how we managed to steal a truck. He asks questions about the camp, about our training, about the personnel on site. He asks what we know about the government’s plans, and what we know about the attack on Leominster. I tell him I saw it first-hand, and he quizzes me about exactly what I saw, and what I know. Jo brings tea, and we all sit, happy to be explaining our experiences to someone who will listen.

  Charlie endures the most hostile interrogation. She’s not a recruit, and she doesn’t have the training or the equipment that we’ve brought with us. Will is very suspicious of her motives for helping us to escape.

  “Listen. I have no love for the government. I took the job they offered because I needed it. I don’t approve of kidnapping school children to make soldiers out of them. I don’t approve of showing them off to the cameras. And I don’t approve of whatever went on with this attack. I’m here by accident – Bex asked for my help, she needed to get out, and I saw a way to hurt the people in charge. But I’m pleased to be here, and I’m not going to go running back to the RTS. The sooner they stop – the sooner we all stop – destroying this country, the better.”

  The light is fading by the time Will is content that we’re not planning to betray his location or attack him in his sleep. The two men who were guarding the farmhouse swap places with the next shift, and lean on the kitchen counter chatting with Jo while Will asks his final questions.

  I’m tired and hungry when Will sends us with Jo to find a place to sleep. We pick up our bags and follow her down a corridor and out through a back door, Saunders leaning on me to take the weight off his ankle. The trees are growing very close to the back of the house, and the air is thick with the scent of pine. There’s a carpet of soft, brown conifer needles underfoot. Jo leads us along a narrow path under the trees to a small concrete building with a metal door. As we approach, the door opens and another guard with a rifle lets us in.

  I glance back at the house, and Jo catches my eye.

  “Will and a couple of the guards have rooms in the farmhouse. They make it look lived-in, and keep the attention away from the rest of us. Everyone else? We sleep down here.”

  She smiles, and steps inside.

  It’s a small room with a concrete floor and walls. There are no windows, but a bank of screens shows CCTV footage from outside, along with views of the farmhouse, farmyard, track, and gate. There’s a woman watching the screens, who looks up and greets us as we walk in. Jo responds, and leads us across the room to another metal door, which opens onto a metal staircase, heading down.

  Saunders looks around the room. “What is this place?”

  And I have a sudden flashback to a school trip when I was much younger. Concrete walls, metal doors, underground chambers. “It’s a nuclear bunker, isn’t it?”

  Jo nods. “Some survivalist nutcase built it for his family in the sixties. Kept it off all the maps. Will’s owned it for ages.”

  We follow her down four flights of clanking metal stairs.

  Safety

  The bunker isn’t what I’m expecting. It’s not leaking and dirty, like a derelict building, but it isn’t high-tech and exciting, either. There are three levels at the bottom of the stairs from the gatehouse, divided into dormitories, offices, workshops, common rooms, and storage. There’s another kitchen with several large tables, a meeting room with maps and diagrams on the walls, and even a laundry and shower rooms. It’s clean, but everywhere I look there’s bare concrete and exposed pipework. Everywhere is busy. There are people talking in the meeting room, peop
le relaxing in the kitchen, people using the washing machines. There’s a whole shift of people asleep, waiting to cover security overnight.

  Jo takes us to a couple of small rooms at the end of the dormitory corridor. There’s a four-bedded room for me and Charlie, and a four-bedded room for Dan and Saunders. We drop our bags on the beds, and she shows us what to do in an emergency. There are emergency torches charging in sockets along every corridor. The assembly point is the underground kitchen, and she makes sure that we know how to find everything we need.

  “Dinner in half an hour, bunker kitchen,” she calls, as she leaves us to settle in.

  It feels great to change out of the muddy kitchen uniform, and peel off the base layers I’ve been wearing all day. I put on a clean set of fatigues and head to the shower room to wash my face and brush my hair. By the time I get back, everyone is in fresh clothes. Charlie is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and I realise that this is the first time I have seen her wearing anything but the white kitchen scrubs and her fleece. She looks less formal and more relaxed. I start to realise that we’ve taken her away from her job and her colleagues, and that whatever happens now, she can’t go back.

  “Thank you, for getting us out this morning. And for driving us here. You didn’t need to do that.”

  “You wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t.”

  “That’s true. But I’m sorry we’ve dragged you into this.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I wasn’t staying there – not after what you saw in town.”

  I think for a moment. There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask, but it feels intrusive after everything Charlie has done for us.

  “Charlie,” I begin, hesitantly. “Why were you working with those people? With Commander Bracken?”

  She looks at me, as if she’s deciding how to answer. She sits down on her bed, and it takes her a while to reply.

  “I was in trouble, Bex,” she says.

  I sit on my bed, facing her.

  “What do you mean? What kind of trouble?”

  She puts her head back and stares at the ceiling.

  “Police trouble.”

  “Oh.”

  She looks at me again. “I got caught, doing something they didn’t like.” I nod, encouraging her to go on. “There was a group of us. We didn’t like where things were going with the country. With the government. So we took some direct action.”

  “Direct action?”

  “Nothing serious. Nothing dangerous. We just defaced some of their billboards. Spray paint. Slogans. Stickers. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh. OK.” That doesn’t sound too bad.

  “It should have been fine. We took precautions. We were clever about it. But …”

  “But you got caught.”

  “I did. My friends didn’t. So the police pinned it all on me.”

  She pauses. “I’m sorry,” I say, not sure how to react.

  She nods. “I could have turned them in, told the police who they were, but I didn’t, so it went badly for me. I was looking at a prison sentence. And then it turned out that they had a job going at Camp Bishop. They couldn’t find anyone to run the kitchen. No one wanted to work in their camps – residential job, no personal life, lousy pay. They couldn’t find anyone with the right experience, until they arrested me.”

  I nod again.

  “I’m a trained chef. I used to run the kitchen in a restaurant.” She smiles, faintly, at the memory. “So they gave me a choice. Prison, or Camp Bishop.”

  “And you’d lose your restaurant job, either way.”

  She nods. “And any chance of getting a good job again, with prison on my record.”

  I think about what she’s said. I knew I was in the camp against my will, but I didn’t know Charlie was trapped, too. We were all prisoners at Camp Bishop. And what Charlie did – getting us out when she’s already in trouble? There’s no way she’ll get away with this.

  “But you helped us. You helped us when you knew it would get you into more trouble.”

  She leans forward, and puts a hand on my knee.

  “It’s a pleasure to help. To get some of you away from the camp and the front-line cameras. You don’t need that. You need a country that works and you need to go back to school. You need a chance to do what you want with your lives.”

  “But you – if they catch you …”

  “Let’s not get caught.” She winks at me, smiling. “You’re better off out here than you were in there.”

  “Thank you, Charlie.”

  I hope she’s right.

  *****

  We meet up with Margie at dinner, and she introduces us to the team. The people here are a mix of ages and professions. There are plenty of academics, some ex-military personnel, a couple of journalists, and some people who couldn’t stand by and watch the government steal power. And of course, there’s Dr Richards.

  “How are you two?” She asks me and Dan, as we help ourselves to casserole and potatoes.

  “We’re OK,” says Dan, looking at me.

  “I’m pleased to be out of the camp,” I tell her, pushing away flashbacks of training, of the attack in town, of driving away and leaving Jake and Amy at the gate. The gun to Jake’s head.

  “Margie tells me that you saw what they did?”

  I nod. “I went into town, after Margie told me about the attack.”

  “And you’re convinced it was a government attack?”

  “I am. I saw the weapons they used, and I saw the cleanup crews. They weren’t afraid of the City Killers – they were acting as if it was all a game. They knew there weren’t any people left in town.”

  “Why did you ask her that?” Dan sounds indignant. “Of course it was the government. If it wasn’t you, then who else could it have been?”

  Dr Richards gives Dan a surprised glance. “You’ve changed your tune!” Dan nods, and shrugs. “We just need to be sure that there are no other groups working with their own agendas. But I’m satisfied that you saw what you say you saw. It is their usual pattern – just on a much bigger scale than they’ve worked at before.”

  “You mean they’ve done this before?”

  “Plenty of times. Most of the attacks they blame on us – that’s them, making people afraid.”

  Dan shakes his head. “Why would they do that? What’s the point of killing their own citizens?”

  And I realise. “Power,” I hear myself say.

  Dr Richards nods. “Exactly.”

  And I can see it so clearly.

  “They want people to be afraid, so they’ll sign over more power to the government. They want to take away the vote – not just for now, but forever. They want to give their friends the contracts to build defences and shiny new armour. They want to be able to rule completely – and they want people to allow them to.”

  “They want people to ask them to.” Dan finishes my thoughts for me, and puts his fork back in his bowl. “They want us to want them in power. They want that to be the only way we feel safe.”

  Dr Richards is nodding as we speak. “And they’re willing to commit whatever atrocities it takes to make us afraid.”

  “So what’s the point of resisting? What can we do about it?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out here. We want to find ways to resist that will make a difference. We choose our targets carefully – government sabotage, mostly – and we do our best to avoid civilian casualties. But we’re working behind the scenes as well, trying to influence people in power, people who might not be happy with the power grab.”

  “How can we help?”

  “Dad – Will – wants to talk to you all tomorrow.”

  “Will’s your Dad?” The question is out of my mouth before I can think about it.

  She smiles. “Yes. Will’s my Dad.”

  “So all this,” Dan waves a hand at the room, “is yours?”

  She laughs at that. “Definitely not. This is all very much Dad’s project. Dad’s act of resistance.
And he’s going to want to talk to you about what you can do, and what you can offer. In the meantime, try to be helpful around here. Give a hand to whoever’s on catering duty. Collect up the dishes, clean the tables, keep an eye out for things that need doing. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but we’ll find a role for you soon enough. For now, getting involved will help you make friends and show people here that you’re on our side. Oh – and stay inside the bunker. We don’t want you wandering off and getting lost in the forest.”

  *****

  We eat, and after the meal Dan and I help to clear the plates and load the dishwashers. It’s good to see Dan back in fatigues, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows. It feels normal, in the middle of all this.

  Dr Richards is talking to Charlie, trying to find out how the training camps are run, and Saunders is cleaning the tables, hopping between them and using chairs for support. I can’t help expecting Commander Bracken to walk in with the evening briefing, but everything here seems much more informal. Eating our meal with the legendary terrorists felt more like sitting with a family than the camp ever did, and since we entered the bunker we haven’t been yelled at or ordered around at all. It feels great to be welcomed into the group, but I find that I’m expecting this to end. I can’t accept that all these people are happy to have us living with them.

  There’s no briefing after the meal. People sit around in groups, drinking coffee and beer, and talking. There are several card games running by the time we’ve filled the dishwashers, and we head back to sit with Charlie and Dr Richards.

  “Thank you for helping,” Dr Richards says as we sit down. “I’ve been hearing about life at Camp Bishop from Charlie, and you’ll be happy to know that there’s no curfew here.” She smiles, and continues. “But you might want to think about getting some rest. Breakfast is at seven, and I know that Will’s hoping to talk to you in the morning.”

  I’m about to protest, when I realise how tired I am. I’ve been running on adrenaline for days, and Dr Richards is giving me permission to stop. Suddenly it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I say goodnight, and make my way back to my room, yawning and trying to remember where I’m going. I push my bag onto the floor, crawl under the covers, and fall asleep before anyone has time to follow me.