Looking around all movement has stopped but for the dancing flames. A door opens and a man steps out. Another one appears, chest heaving, a heavy fire extinguisher in his hands. He unclips the hose and sprays the dancing flames with white foam. Jessie slumps against the wall and takes a moment to process the scene. Wary, she scans the area, watching for signs of attack. The fire on the road doused the two cars burn bright.
“Alex!” she calls pushing away from the wall. “The cars.”
“Yeah.” He offers his arm as support. “They could blow any minute.”
The broad-chested man with the beard steps forward and points the fire extinguisher beneath the car as Bill walks across the road to join her. Uri steps out from the dark and kicks at the foot of a terrorist. Only its trainers remain unburned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Shouting!
Opening the back door, the air is heavy with smoke, voices clamour and crash. Beyond the gardens and the houses that back onto his, the night is orange singed with black. Fires! Big fires! Blazing fires that choke and burn and melt skin. Nausea floods Sam’s belly. His hand trembles as he holds the open door. Perhaps someone needs him? No. Stay inside. Stay safe. He stands for nearly sixty seconds battling against his urge to run and help and the fear forcing him to stay inside, stay safe, hide—hide like a coward. He groans as his heart palpitates and looks again to the burning sky. His arm tingles with memories of agony. He rubs his hand against the back of his neck and flinches at the touch. He’d forgotten in that second! Forgotten its texture, the ridges and mottles and scars and grafts of skin that runs from his right hip to his neck.
His mother had sobbed when she came to the hospital, he’d been the one to comfort her. It wasn’t so bad, it was just his side, not his face. The scars had been deeper than on the surface though and it was when they’d mended that he began to crumble. He slams the door shut, closing it against the smoke and the orange haze. He takes a breath, pushing down the tension, practicing his breathing like the therapist had taught him. Breath, exhale, breath, exhale. A lightness fills his head but the tight band across his chest is still there. As he takes another breath a scream fills his ears. His heart hammers.
Stay safe!
Hide!
Coward!
Another scream.
He stares hard at his melted hand and strides to the cupboard beneath the stairs, reaches for his boots and then grabs his jacket.
More screams.
He’s out of the door, heart pounding, matching the thud of his feet as he runs to the noise.
As he rounds the corner he stops. Ahead of him is a scene he can’t at first decipher. So many people running about, silhouettes flapping, dark birds against the bright flames.
A man shouts then growls only feet away. Sam jumps backwards, hitting the wall as a figure drops at his feet. What the hell! A metal rod pierces the man’s temple, glinting in the torchlight. Is this a nightmare? Is he actually awake? Sam shines his torch towards the dark houses. Curtains twitch and a door slams somewhere behind. A young woman sits crouched next to the wall on the other side of the road, her sleeve is slashed and stained. In her hand she’s clutching a crossbow. Did she just kill him? This isn’t real. It must be a hallucination. But it feels real.
It’s a warzone.
Hide! Run home!
No! No more hiding.
The scene becomes clear. They’re under attack. This is real. The heat and the smoke and the screams—they’re all real. Men are firebombing the street—throwing flaming bottles at the houses. It doesn’t make sense but he has to act. Rage stirs. His training kicks in. The road is alight with flames and the cars are smoking. If one of them blows the whole street will be in danger. He has to do something!
Without access to the fire truck and no way of drawing water anyway, he’ll have to tackle the fire manually. The pub! The last time he was there he’d noticed a large fire extinguisher on the wall next to the men’s room.
He sprints to the pub at the end of the street. An old coaching inn, it stands at the junction of the road that leads out of the town. It’s shabby, not somewhere Sally would ever deign to set foot in, but he’d sought solace there on more nights than he cared to remember, taken comfort from the landlady at the end of the night. She hadn’t been Sally, but she’d given him the warmth he’d needed, helped him shelter from the nightmares even if it was just for a few hours.
“Martha!” he shouts and raps at the locked door. “Martha!” He raps again. He shouts then raps until footsteps pound on the other side and Martha, her blonde hair scraped back into an unflattering ponytail flings open the door.
“What the hell is it, Sam?”
“Fire! People throwing firebombs-”
“What!”
“I need the fire extinguisher.”
She steps aside, cardigan pulled taut over full breasts and lets him in without question.
“Be careful,” she shouts as he runs back out into the street.
As he pounds back down the road, the cylinder clasped at a diagonal, he focuses on the car in the centre of the road ignoring the two men fighting on the path. Realising that one of them has a crowbar and is aiming it at the other he stops for a second and swings around. Paralysed, he watches. Which should he help? Which is the bad guy and which the good? Both are armed, both on the attack. His eyes flit from one to the other then breaks away to the fire. There’s the enemy he understands: the fire that is burning across the tarmac and licking at the car in the middle of the road. If it blows! He edges around to the other side. A man lies on the ground, his legs laid across the path, his head already consumed by flames. Don’t look. It could have been me. It’s not—just get on with it! Heart hammering, he pulls the pin from the fire extinguisher and releases the short hose. Please work! Please let it have had a regular service! He points the nozzle at the fire and squeezes. A burst of white liquid squirts towards the car and instantly expands to foam. He targets beneath the car to the fuel tank and then to the engine. As the last of the foam leaves the cylinder the car is spattered white and the flames have disappeared. The stench of burnt fuel fills the air. He stands mesmerised as he stares at the blackened car.
“Good job, Sam!” A hand clamps on his shoulder and he starts.
“Hell, Baz. You gave me a start.”
“Sorry, mate.”
“What the hell’s going on?
“Terrorist attack.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. That’s what they’re saying anyway.”
“There was a man with a bolt through his head.”
“A woman shot him.”
It’s surreal. “A woman?”
“Yeah. A young one.”
“Teenager?”
“No—a fit one. It was like something out of a film. I watched from my upstairs window. Pissed off the power’s down! I would have filmed it and put it up on Facebook.”
Sam sighs. Bloody people—is that all they thought about!
Rap! Rap! Rap!
The noise of tapping on glass cuts through Baz’s excited recollections of the attack and Sam looks up to see a woman knocking on a window. He stares at her for a second then turns and wretches. She looked exactly the same as her—the woman he’d ... he vomits.
“You alright, mate?”
“Sure,” Sam replies and wipes his hand across his lips. “Terrorists you say?”
“Yeah, come look.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
They sit in silence as the car winds back through the dark lanes to Bramwell. Jessie leans up against Alex, her good arm pressing against his. His hand clasped around her knee, she covers his hand with her own, reassured by the solidness of his body next to hers.
At the scene Bill had torn up strips of his own shirt to use as a tourniquet. In the torchlight there’d been blood beneath her shirt, she hadn’t wanted to look at the wound. It needed stitches he said and he’d deal with it at the cottage. Quite how he’d ‘deal with it’ using the
sewing kit they had she couldn’t think about, but she trusted him—she’d have to. She sighs with relief as the car turns onto familiar lanes; they were only minutes from home.
“I bet Michael’s climbing the walls by now,” Bill says as the car pulls to a stop in front of the cottage gates.
“Hell, I’d forgotten about him!” Alex exclaims as he releases Jessie’s knee and jumps out of the car. He unbolts the gate and swings it open then holds it as the car passes. He’s back at the door as soon as the car slows to a stop and reaches in to help Jessie.
“I’m OK, Alex. Honest. I can get out myself.”
As Jessie slides across the seat and swings her legs to the gravel, the door of the cottage opens and a mellow light shines out. Viktoria stands in the doorway.
Wrapped up in her own pain, she hadn’t asked the others how they were, but from the intense way Uri greets Viktoria it must have been an ordeal for him too. As Viktoria steps aside from Uri she can tell something is wrong.
“Something’s happened,” Bill says echoing her thoughts. “Uri?”
“Clarissa is missing.”
A stone sinks in Jessie’s stomach. “Missing!” How could she be missing? Uri had been with them.
“She went out with Andy for a walk but she didn’t come back.”
“What!”
“Andy,” Bill growls.
The hairs on Jessie’s neck prickle. How could she be missing? She knows this place too well to get lost.
“Where is Andy?” Bill demands as he strides to the open door.
IN THE KITCHEN BILL fills a canister with water then grabs some of the bread rolls Clarissa had warmed earlier in the day. He reaches into the cupboard and takes a packet of dried fruit and then places them all in the rucksack he’s borrowed from Jessie. He needs to keep his strength up. He turns to the table and looks straight at the girls sitting there.
Stella’s eyes are red-rimmed and Jessie’s face is riven with frustration. She nurses her arm; the sleeve of her top dark with blood. Clare stands at her side, scissors in hand, ready to cut off the sleeve.
“I’ll fix that when I get back,” Bill says nodding at Jessie’s arm. “It’ll need stitches.”
“I can do it,” Clare says from the other side of the room.
“What!”
Clare shushes Jessie. “Leave it to me, Bill. I can sew it up.”
Jessie sways almost imperceptibly as Bill nods in acceptance. He’s definitely underestimated Clare; she’s taking control of the situation with Jessie and even managed to calm Stella’s outbreak of hysteria. He’d found the girl’s histrionics too frustrating. It was only thanks to Clare that he hadn’t slapped the silly girl—her reaction was way over the top. Sure, Clarissa was missing, and yes, he was more than concerned, but you had to keep your wits about you in any emergency, not go to pieces with worry. She was young. She’d learn. Clarissa may be just lost in the dark. Unlikely.
Andy’s voice grates from the hallway. He’s deep in conversation with Uri. Not exactly deep, but intense and he was talking at Uri, not to him. Andy’s voice is deliberately low. Bill can’t hear their words but the tension between them is obvious. He bends to strap the newly cleaned hunting knife back onto his lower leg and grabs the torch from the counter top.
“Right,” he says turning to Jessie. “Clare’s going to take care of you and I’m going to find Clarissa. I won’t come back until I do,” he says in earnest. “Got that?” he asks with a nod and a questioning raise of his eyebrows.
“When Clare’s sorted my arm out I’ll join you,” she returns. Her voice is tense.
“It’s dark and you’re wounded Jessie. The best place for you is here.”
“But-”
“No buts! You’ll only hinder us if something happens to you. You’ve got to rest that arm.”
“Sure,” she replies. Her tone is defiant. If she manages to stay at the cottage for half an hour after she’s stitched up he’ll be surprised.
He nods again and strides to the door where Uri and Andy wait.
“You got the rope?”
“Yes, and the water and the blanket.”
“And torches,” Andy says holding up a large black torch.
“Then let’s go,” Bill says with determination. If Clarissa was hurt, she needed him. If it was Andy’s fault he’d kill him.
The only light is from the moon and clouds, like dark galleons, shift across it as Uri navigates the narrow road to where Andy said he’d last seen Clarissa.
Torches lit they make their way in silence, the only sound the thud of their boots and the occasional call of an owl. Finally, Bill breaks the silence.
“Tell me again exactly what happened.”
Andy huffs.
“It’s important!”
“Like I said, Clarissa wanted to see the sunset across the quarry. She said it was beautiful at that time of day and the white chalk would have a pink glow.”
“And.”
“And I was tired.”
Bill grunts.
“Alright Action Man! I wanted to take a rest—is that a crime?”
“No, but you let her go on alone when you know that the country is in chaos. There are some seriously nasty scumbags crawling out from under their stones.”
“We’re in the middle of the countryside—there’s no one here!”
“Tell us the rest,” Uri urges.
“I sat down on a log and she went further up the path.”
“And?”
“That’s it.”
“And you looked for her?”
“Yes, of course I did! It must have waited about twenty minutes and then I started to wonder when she was coming back. I waited a bit more then I went to look for her.”
“Where did you look?”
“I followed the path she went up.”
“Did you go to the quarry?”
“Yes! She wasn’t there either.”
“Did you check to see if she’d fallen?”
“Not at first, why would I? I just thought she’d taken a different path. When I went back out to look for her I did check over the quarry but I couldn’t see anything.”
Uri grunts. “She knows this area, yes?”
“I guess. She never talked about it to me but she bought it a few years ago so I guess she knows her way around.”
“She’s an experienced climber and hill walker,” Bill adds with a snap.
“She’ll be safe then,” Andy snaps back.
Bill senses Andy’s growing irritation and is surprised that he doesn’t know these details about Clarissa. Andy knew, much to his disgust, that Andy had shared a bed with Clarissa, knew every job she was working on, but that he didn’t know she was a capable climber and loved the outdoors was odd. She’d kept who she really was from him.
“Then I doubt she’s lost,” Bill continues poking at Andy’s angst. “It was still light when you lost her-”
“I didn’t lose her! The fields and hedgerows all look the same. She lost herself.”
Bill grunts in disgust. “It was still light when she walked ahead so, even if all the fields and hedgerows do look the same and she became lost, which is highly unlikely, then she could have used the bridge as a marker. There is no damned way she could have got lost with that bridge towering out of the water. It’s visible for miles around and from here, on this hill, you can’t miss the bloody thing.”
“Well, I can’t see it now.”
“That’s because it’s dark and all the lights are off because of the blackout.” Bill grinds his teeth holding back the stream of expletives he wants to hurl at the man.
Andy grunts.
“Da,” Uri adds, “I cannot see how she got lost. In the dark perhaps, but not in the daylight.”
“It was twilight,” Andy adds, the tension in his voice palpable.
“You think she is hurt then?” Uri asks.
Bill takes a breath to ease the tightness of his shoulders and the gnawing ache in his belly. She’s no
t lost—that explanation doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing in this area of rural England that would be a threat to her life. The only danger is from other people. What if an opportunist had found her. No! He can’t think like that. The only real danger was the quarry. If she slipped! “Yes, Uri. I think she may be.”
“We will find her, Bill,” Uri replies with a confidence Bill clings to.
The path narrows until they have to walk single file. Either side, the hawthorns grow tall. Bill listens hard through the breathing and footsteps of the men. Periodically Bill commands them to stop so that he can listen to the noises in the night. The wind blows through the leaves of the hawthorn and the scurry of rats or some other small mammal in the undergrowth, and occasionally a snuffle and something larger pushing through the hedgerows, but there is no sign of Clarissa.
After another ten minutes Andy points his torch to the side of the path. “This is where I sat for a rest,” Andy says shining his torch on the fallen log. It lies across the entrance to a field of young wheat or barley, obviously a barrier between the footpath and the farmer’s field.
Bill grunts as he imagines Andy sitting his lazy backside down and watching Clarissa continue ahead. It didn’t make sense. He’d never sit down to rest and wait while his woman went ahead. He wouldn’t be that weak for a start.
“How much further to the quarry?” he asks unable to keep the edge out of his voice.
“Just up here,” Andy says shining his torch along the pathway. “I can’t tell exactly where in the dark but it’s on the right—just past a wooden bridge.”
“Bridge?”
“Well it’s a bridge or a reinforced footpath. At the railings you can look out over the quarry. I checked there for Clarissa but couldn’t see her.”
Blackout & Burn: A Complete EMP Thriller Series Page 36
