by Benson, Tom
“Thank you, Noreen,” they chorused.
The midwife set off again. With fresh memories of Dawn’s cherubic twins, she tried to imagine a gorgeous ebony baby born from the union of a handsome man like Calvin, and a tall natural beauty like Cherry.
“Hello, Anne, and how are our oldest child and his mother?”
“Kenny is doing well, and I’m doing great, thank you.”
“Three months and his growth is steady.” Noreen took the baby from his mother. “Hello, young man.”
The child’s big blue eyes stared at the nurse, and he reached out to touch her dark skin and long black lashes. He giggled when he caused her to blink rapidly.
“He seems fascinated by eyelashes,” Anne said, “although having said that, he’s nearly blinded Craig a couple of times. He can move those little arms pretty quickly.”
“How is Craig handling being Kenny’s dad?”
“I would have been prepared to go it alone—”
“Nonsense, Anne. It was tragic that you and Ken had planned a future and he was taken from you in such a way. Craig didn’t ask to be your partner out of pity or duty. It was because he got to you first after you broke the news about carrying Ken’s child.” Noreen looked over her shoulder. “You’re a good-looking young woman, and you had admirers back in the days when this gravel under my feet had railway lines on it.”
“Craig is eager for us to have our own baby, and we’re thinking maybe next year when this one is running around.”
“You two better time it that way, or I’ll spend my life in this tunnel checking on babies.” She handed back the bundle of joy who turned in his mother’s arms to have another grab at the midwife’s eyelashes. “Where is Craig at the moment?”
“You’ll laugh when I tell you.”
“Go on.”
Anne nodded over her shoulder. “He’s about five hundred metres that way working with Archie and Jay-Dee. They’re setting up a playground, and using stacked sleepers to make a boundary fence.” She shook her head. “The easy part is the boundary, but the hard part will be removing all the gravel from inside the space.”
“Wow,” Noreen’s eyes opened wide. “You have to give them credit for thinking so far ahead. Maybe by the time, they erect some swings or whatever there will be a child big enough to play in there.”
Both women laughed.
Noreen squeezed Kenny’s hand. “Be good for Mummy, and I’ll see you soon.” She set off again, but only as far as the three men building the children’s play area. She stopped for five minutes to watch and then she headed back to the installation, thinking of how members of the community had become partners.
The two forestry workers, Norman and Chloe, were still great friends but hadn’t paired off romantically. Noreen remembered that awful moment as the coach sped into the tunnel entrance a year before. The final flash of colour she saw from her seat were the two people standing at the edge of the nearby forest, staring as the big coach had raced past them. They couldn’t have known then that their short run to help others would save their own lives, and the entrance would collapse minutes later. They’d been stalwarts within the group since that first day.
Norman had been smitten by the curvy redhead photographer, Louise, a woman he probably would never have met otherwise. They always joked about holding back from having children. It was possibly a question of fate, or Mother Nature taking control of their situation.
Chloe, the other forestry worker, had made it evident from early on that she had a soft spot for Sandy, the NCO who still had nightmares about his arrival at the installation. Still, he was improving by having the lively woman in his life.
The thought of Sandy caused Noreen to smile as she considered her beau, the other soldier, her young, quiet and serious Flint. He made the nurse feel like a million dollars every time he looked at her. Like Sandy, Flint had nightmares, but they were becoming fewer, and Noreen was able to coax him into talking when he felt down.
Archie, the big bearded plumber, and Jay-Dee, the male nurse, had been a surprise couple to everybody. Even when it became known that they wanted to be together, they avoided any public displays of affection. Both were quiet men as individuals before becoming partners.
The other gay couple in the community were more natural to imagine for Noreen, but she didn’t understand why. Apart from only six years in age difference, they were both feminine in different ways. Steph, the author with her shoulder-length fair hair and fuller figure, paired with Tracey, the tall, athletic blonde firefighter. A glance was enough to see that they were blissfully happy together.
Had it really been a year since that night when Steph had given her first briefing and suggested that individuals should be emboldened and approach their secret crush?
Embarrassment, bashfulness or however it might manifest itself had disappeared in the unique community through the common need to survive and depend on each other. There was no need for secrets. On that night a year before the whole concept of not holding back with feelings was thrown out in the open. Within days the first courtships had begun openly.
It was with thoughts of other couples that the curvy midwife cruised along the tunnel road and into the central passage towards the clinic.
When Victoria was a student, she would sometimes look at her favourite lecturer. She’d wonder what he’d be like when not creating theoretical scenarios and offering insights into what made the world what it was. Like a few other young women in her class at the time, Victoria had a crush on Harry Mason, the handsome, bearded professor. She looked along the glass corridor at him now, having given herself to him in body and soul. He had reciprocated and shown that beneath all the hair, the humour and the endless level of information, there was a good man and a sensitive, caring lover.
“When should we tell him?” Victoria whispered as she gently caressed her abdomen.
Harry looked up. “Did you say something?”
“Not to you, lover.” Victoria smiled at his furrowed brow and shaking head.
Alan, the business executive and Ramona the lovely chef had become friends soon after the main group had made the facility their new home a year before. The pair had chatted over a cup of herbal tea one night in the early days, and though they both recognised there was a chemistry, they made no move to take it to the next level.
Ramona had taken Alan’s hand and voiced her opinion while they’d walked through the underground orchard. “I see a lot of things developing apart from what I prepare and serve up in the cafeteria.”
Fortunately, Ramona had checked the timer and thermostat. She was confident that the lights would stay dim and there’d be no scheduled indoor rain for at least an hour. The grass was dry … well, relatively, but neither of them cared.
Two people were in the glass balcony upstairs gazing out at the view below and off into the distance.
A movement hundreds of feet below caught Bill’s attention and he lifted the binoculars which were always left in the balcony. For a few seconds he teased the focus wheel with a fingertip and then stopped to stare. He was sure he’d seen something move between the edge of the loch and the perimeter of the forest so far down below.
Fiona moved close to him. “What are you looking for?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I thought I saw a deer.” Bill wasn’t certain what he saw but it wasn’t a deer. He hung the binoculars on the hook and turned to the woman who’d become his soulmate. “What were you dreaming about just now?”
“I was just thinking how it seemed to be the natural order of things that some people paired off, while others preferred to be free agents. Only a handful of our community are content to be on friendly terms with everybody but not be in a relationship.”
“It proves that there are those who cannot be forced into a relationship if they don’t want one.” As he stared out across the loch and the mountains in the distance, Bill shook his head. “We might yet be protected by this mountain range.” He had stood in the glass balcony
many times since that first occasion, when he’d been overcome by grief, like every other person who’d viewed the new landscape.
“You’ve sounded optimistic from the first day, which is only one of the reasons I’m so fond of you.” Fiona, who a year before had run a busy dental practice wrapped an arm around her new man. “You don’t think that black soot cloud will come this way?”
“No, because it’s not carried by the regular winds down here below cloud level, it’s at a much higher altitude. We’ve seen how the forests within a few miles have retained their greenery, but if you look out to the horizon, you can see whole areas are white.”
“Do you believe in the theory that you and Harry came up with … the partial chill?”
“Yes, and if there is some strange being out there who controls these things, I’m hopeful that the fledgeling icecaps might have a chance to increase once again. The tide levels might not recede by much, but maybe in five or ten years we’ll see the darkness fade and light return to our planet.”
“Could it go the other way, as Harry suggested?”
“Yes, there is a possibility that in maybe fifty years or so the dark areas will go and the temperatures will reverse. We must strive to teach the next generation all we can about adapting.
“While you’re thinking about our next generation, would you like to close that trapdoor and we’ll lend a hand to increasing the population?”
Bill smiled at her as he squatted down to lower the trapdoor into position. “As one door closes.”
Apart from the three portals in the old tunnel being converted into habitable accommodation, the empty coach and the four antique train carriages once known as Harry’s Place were refitted. Some of the materials were obtained by reusing the original furniture from the coach. Various fittings which were no longer necessary in several areas of the main installation were also recycled.
The hand-held radios once used by the staff and maintenance technicians in the power station were distributed so that the Control Centre, the medical room, the cafeteria and each separate area of accommodation had a means of communication.
With regard to more distant contacts, Harry never again heard from his friend Benji in Kenya, or Jacob who had sailed from Australia to New Zealand. He did however have regular brief radio conversations with Marianna, the scientist who was living with twenty other survivors in a forest in Bolivia.
Life inside Auchcarn and the old tunnel continued to improve on a regular basis. Importantly, a new and healthy generation was growing within the strange community which was well-established.
Elsewhere, a struggle was taking place to ensure offspring would be produced successfully. In the shallow waters at the edge of Loch Awe beneath the shadow of the 'Hollow Mountain', a pregnancy was reaching full term.
From under the surface of the water, a small but healthy baby battled in rhythm with its mother’s painful urges. The new arrival was expelled and caught with care by hands which were equally at home when extinguishing life. From beneath the water, the innocent pink creature was lifted free.
A few minutes later, as the new mother consumed the nourishing package which came with her child, she held the baby to a tender and swollen breast.
“You’ll never meet your father, my child because I’m a human black widow.” Patsy, as she continued to think of herself, licked at the warm fluid on her lips and smiled at the innocent babe suckling at her breast. “I survived for three months alone before your father found me and had his way.” She gazed at her tiny daughter. “Your father subjected me to a few painful minutes to satisfy his desires, but like a typical man, he relaxed afterwards. At least he was big enough to provide me with fresh meat for a few days.”
The almost naked, deranged woman sat on a fallen tree at the edge of the forest. She smiled and looked at the bundle she cradled in her arm. “As you grow, I’ll teach you to use men. We only need them for one purpose.” She kissed the baby’s head and gazed once again through the forest canopy at the glass structure high above. “Two purposes if you count feeding on them afterwards.”
When the child had been satisfied, the woman pulled the deerskin shawl around her. She strode back to her home, a cave with an entrance hidden by forestry. It had a stream nearby, and a good view of the corridor which stretched between two nearby mountains.
“I’ll call you Sylvia, which in Latin means from the forest.” Patsy kissed the child’s head again and smiled as she gazed up at the people in the distant glass passageway. “I’ll teach you how to survive my way.” She nodded. “There is light at the end.”
***The End***
About the Author
Tom Benson was born in
Glasgow, Scotland in 1952.
He joined the British Army at 17, serving 23 years, from 1969 – 1992.
Tom worked at trade with a wide variety of radios in England, Northern Ireland
and throughout Germany.
He served 2 years in West Berlin while the infamous wall was in place. He spent 2 years as a military training instructor.
Tom saw active service on the streets of Northern Ireland in 1973 and in the desert during the Gulf War in 1991.
A career in retail spanning 25 years followed service life. Tom retired in 2017.
He has been a creative writer since 2007
and is married with a grown son.
A Word from the Author
I hope you enjoyed my vision of incidents
we all hope will remain no more than
fodder for the creative mind.
While this story is set in the future and is therefore fiction, the long railway tunnel, including its purpose is based on fact.
*Auchcarn Power Station is based on a hydro-electric installation which exists and is located within a mountain in Scotland.
All characters and events depicted are fictional and any similarity to actual people
is purely coincidental.
*Auchcarn is an anagram of the actual facility.
Also by the Author
All titles are available in digital format.
*These titles are available in paperback.
Novels
*Amsterdam Calling
*Ten Days in Panama
Beyond The Law: Formation
Beyond The Law: Retribution
Beyond The Law: Consequences
Codename: Nightshade
A Taste of Honey
Give & Take: A Tale of Erotica
Curious and Camping: An Erotic Journey
Being a Good Girl: An Erotic Novel
Sharing: An Erotic Novel
A Class Act: A Tale of Erotica
Woman to Woman:
Give & Take; The Prequel
A Life of Choice - Part One
A Life of Choice - Part Two
A Life of Choice - Part Three
A Life of Choice - Part Four
A Life of Choice - Part Five
.
Short Story Collections
Smoke & Mirrors
Temptation
The Welcome
A Time for Courage
One Man, Two Missions
Coming Around (Erotica)
Quiet Night Inn (Erotica)
.
Novellas (Erotica)
Highland games - 1
Highland games - 2
Highland games - 3
Highland games - 4
Highland games - 5
.
Poetry Collections
Humour: Poetry Vol 1
Love and Romance: Poetry Vol 2
Natural History: Poetry Vol 3
Military Matters: Poetry Vol 4
Thrills and Chills: Poetry Vol 5
Rhyme & Reason: 200 poems
Tongue in Cheek (Erotica)
**This trilogy
is only available in paperback:
A Life of Choice: The Trilogy Edition
Part One
A Life of Choice: The Trilogy Edition
>
Part Two
A Life of Choice: The Trilogy Edition
Part Three
This is the same story as the eBook
five-part series,
but reduced to three paperbacks for those who
for whatever reason do not use digital reading devices.
www.tombensonauthor.com
