Nights of Fire: An EMP Survival Thriller (Blackout & Burn Book 2)

by Rebecca Fernfield

  “Yep,” he agrees.

  He walks up and down the line then places his hands on a 1962 Triumph Bonneville.

  “Nice bike,” Jessie remarks admiring the gleaming paintwork.

  “Only 650 cc though.”

  “Perhaps this one?”

  “What is it?”

  “Another Triumph Bonneville,” Jessie replies. “Hardtail, but from 1976,” she says reading the tag tied to the handlebars. “That’s before I was born!”

  “Well, I’ll take this one.” Alex reads the label. “1972 Triumph Tiger—so mine’s even older.”

  “But at least not pre-war!”

  Rap! Rap! Rap!

  Uri stands at the window, tapping again, gesturing once more for them to come outside.

  “He’s keen.” Alex waves at the blond.

  “He’s odd, don’t you think?” Jessie asks as she looks at Uri through the glass.

  “Odd? In what way?”

  “I don’t know—just the way he looks at you.”

  “Looks at me?”

  “No, me.”

  “You? But he’s married!”

  “No, not that way. He looks at me as though he’s confused.”

  “I haven’t noticed.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t hear so well.”

  “Dunno.”

  Uri waves again then strides back to the car.

  “They’re waiting.”

  “Best get moving then.”

  “Best find the keys then.”

  Both bikes wheeled out to the open space in front of the car showroom, Jessie slots the key into the ignition. Alex sits astride his Triumph Tiger, key in the ignition, and waits.

  “Go on then,” he urges.

  She nods. Her heart thuds, her mouth is dry. What if they don’t start? It’ll be a miracle if they do.

  “Come on, Jess. Try it.”

  She stamps down onto the kickstart. The engine roars into life.

  “Yes!” Alex shouts.

  “Go on then,” Jessie shouts as the roar of the bike’s engine runs through her. “Your turn.” If his bike starts the first time too it really will be a miracle. No way it can be this easy!

  Alex steadies the bike and places his boot on the kickstart. He pushes down. The engine fires but doesn’t catch.

  “Again!” Jessie calls over the hum of her engine.

  He stamps down on the starter and again the engine fails to catch. Again, try again! He rises in his seat, stamps down with force, and Jessie breathes a sigh of relief as the engine roars into life. Alex yelps as the kickstart peg slaps the back of his legs.

  Chapter 12

  A discontented grumble makes Harry turn his head. Maz mutters to Jenny. Her red hair glints in the sun, shining like plastic fibres.

  “Something wrong?” he asks. He wasn’t one for keeping his mouth shut. It got him into trouble at times—too many times, but it was better to be direct.

  Maz looks up, his dark eyebrows lifting in surprise. Harry holds his gaze. The body swings between them.

  He grunts in return.

  “What is it, Maz? Something’s on your mind.”

  “Why are we even doing this?”

  Harry knows he’s not referring to the dozen people walking with them to the hospital. “This?” he questions though he knows the answer.

  “Yeah. This”, Maz replies with an exaggerated strain.

  “It’s not much further. I’m sorry,” Nareen apologises.

  “No need to apologise,” Harry replies softly, noticing the pain working its way across her face as she takes in Maz’s discontent.

  Maz grunts again.

  “If you’ve got something to say, say it!”

  “He tried to kill us! Why the hell are we taking him to the hospital? It’s not as if there’s anything anyone can do. He’s dead.”

  A pained moan escapes from Nareen. Harry stops and glares at Maz. The man holds his gaze. A challenge.

  “We’re doing it for Nareen.”

  “Why the hell should we?” he retorts. “She’s one of them!”

  “She didn’t hurt anyone, Maz,” Harry replies. He can understand Maz’s frustration, his prejudice even, to an extent. Fear had made them all wary. When your lives were being threatened it was easy to see evil where it had never sat if the face fit expectations.

  Maz grunts. Nareen hangs her head. Harry’s frustration riles.

  “What were we supposed to do? Leave her in the street with her husband’s body bleeding out all over her?”

  Maz looks to the patches of dark blood drying across Nareen’s middle. He shakes his head and looks away.

  “Exactly! We’re not monsters, Maz. We’re not like them. Show some humanity.”

  Harry turns back to the front and moves forward. The sheet pulls in his hand for a moment and becomes taut. For a second, he thinks Maz is going to be stubborn and refuse to budge but then the tension eases and they move with their burden, another step closer to the hospital.

  They make slow progress through the streets. Hamed wasn’t a small man, he must be nearly six feet tall and on the heavy side, if not a little fat. Harry’s strong, but even he’s beginning to wilt beneath the strain. As they cross another junction a supermarket comes into view. Trolleys sit abandoned on the forecourt and several lay on their sides in the road. He looks down at Nareen. It doesn’t seem right to dump a body into a trolley, but perhaps some of the injured could use them too? It would seem less … ridiculous? No, it would be ridiculous. Embarrassing for her? Perhaps.

  “Nareen,” he says tentatively, wary of her grief. “The trolleys-”

  “Yes,” she replies without shifting her gaze from the road ahead. “It won’t be dignified, but he must be heavy,” she continues, matter-of-fact as she echoes his thoughts.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. He must be a burden for you. I’m sorry.”

  “Please! There’s no need to keep saying that you’re sorry.”

  “Sorry!” Her brows lift and she nearly smiles as she says sorry yet again for having said sorry.

  The body reminds him of a guy in a wheelbarrow as he trundles the trolley up the slip road. Its legs and arms dangle over the sides, its head lolling into the corner. The makeshift shroud had slipped away from his head a few times before Nareen had tucked it firmly down. He’d cringed as she’d pushed the fabric between the body’s skull and the metal frame and marvelled at the gentleness of her touch, her resilience. She must be going through hell, yet she was calm, serene almost.

  “Nearly there!” Harry encourages as he makes it to the top of slip road. In the distance the hospital stands as a dark block rising above the low buildings and numerous trees in that part of the city. Behind it four tower blocks stand as dark columns. There are none of the pluming chimneys of smoke that rise against the sky behind them. To their right is the river than runs to the sea and before that, where the land hasn’t yet been taken back by the relentless tides, retail parks. His belly growls as they pass. Only the day before yesterday he’d stopped off between jobs for a burger and a flat white at the MacDonald’s next to the petrol station. Mental note for Harry: check out the restaurants for food. If the supermarkets were empty, they were the next place to look. Although, and he smiles as he realises, there is a warehouse on the next industrial estate, a depot for Nisa. That would be the best place to get food. He looks about suddenly suspicious. What the hell, Harry! No one can read your mind, and, if there is food there, it’s for us all.

  “How far do you think it is?”

  “Two miles,” he replies and strains at the trolley, thankful that a sheet covers the man’s head. Wheels rattle over a pothole and the body jars against the thick metal wire. Harry cringes. This had to be the most bizarre – and gruesome - thing he has ever done.

  The sun has passed its highest point as they walk the last stretch of road before they reach the hospital’s entrance. Here the roads are lined with houses, a welcome contrast to the industrial e
states and retail parks that dotted either side of the dual carriageway behind them.

  There are people here too. It’s not unusual to see people along this road, he’d passed down the road often enough on his way to and from work, but it was unusual to see them grouped together and standing around. And, he notices with concern, some of them appear to be armed. He looks back at the straggle of injured people following his lead. They had nothing to protect themselves and he couldn’t take on a gang of armed men alone and hope to come out of it on top. Maz grumbles behind him, suddenly alert. “Take it easy,” he warns as they draw closer. One of the groups moves onto the path and watches their approach. They jostle among themselves. There’s something primal about the gang as they spread out along the path and spill onto the road. Their eyes are angry and defiant.

  “Who are you?” a dark-haired boy calls as Harry walks within earshot. The boy holds a crowbar in his hands, fingers white with the intensity of his grip. He can’t be more than fifteen. A wave of pity washes over Harry as he notices the boy’s hands tremble.

  “Just passing through,” Harry replies. “Going to the hospital.”

  “You come from over there?”

  “Yeah,” Harry returns.

  “People say that terrorists are burning everything down and killing people in the streets.”

  “We’ll kill them first!” another lad shouts.

  “Is that why you’re here … with those?” Harry nods to the crowbar in his hands.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s true,” Maz interrupts.

  “What’s in the trolley?”

  “A terrorist,” Maz replies.

  “Shut up, Maz.”

  The boy looks with disgust at the covered body and takes a step back.

  “What you doing with it?”

  “He’s my husband-.”

  “You’re a terrorist?” The boy’s eyes shift from the body to Nareen and back to Harry.

  Another group of what look like older men, steps into the road and begins to walk towards them.

  “No, I-”

  “She’s not.”

  “She looks like one.”

  “Now, hold on!”

  “Terrorists!” a voice shouts.

  The older men begin to run.

  A shriek splits the air behind Harry.

  “No!” he shouts. “Listen, we’re not—she’s not … a terrorist.”

  “Please! We just want to get these people to the hospital,” Jenny pleads.

  “Burn it down more like!”

  “No!”

  “These people are injured—they need help.”

  “I’m not one of them!” Nareen shouts.

  “Prove it!”

  The group has doubled in size. The older men push to the front. They glare at Harry.

  “Who’s a terrorist?”

  “No one is.”

  “She is!”

  “No! For heaven’s sake! She’s not—she helped us. She warned us about the attack. If it hadn’t been for her, these people,” Harry says turning to the straggling group behind him, “would be dead—not trying to get to hospital for treatment.”

  “What about him then?” the boy asks prodding at the body in the trolley.

  “Hands off!” Harry warns. “He’s dead. He’s no threat to us now.”

  “Then why you taking him to the hospital?” He prods at the body again.

  “Hey!” Harry says stepping forward. “I said hands off!” he stares at the boy until he backs away. “Because we’re not barbarians. This woman’s husband died. I couldn’t leave her in the street with his body and no way of … of disposing of it.”

  “He doesn’t deserve it,” the boy grunts.

  “You’re right, he doesn’t,” Harry agrees. “But Nareen helped save a lot of lives today and she doesn’t deserve this either.”

  The boy nods and takes another step back. Tension eases. Harry takes a chance and pushes the trolley forward. He grips the handle. Show no fear.

  “Let him through.”

  The group moves aside and Harry gives the trolley a hard push forward.

  Chapter 13

  To Michael, riding through the town felt different somehow. The morning had started well enough—the sun had risen as usual and warmed him as it shone in through the bedroom window. Guilt had ridden him as he’d woken and become conscious of his surroundings. He was in Bramwell—the house he’d found tucked into the forest, hidden away and laden with provisions, the house that belonged to someone else. The feeling was momentary, gave way to elation, and he’d stretched in the sun’s warmth whilst looking out of the window to the canopy of trees not more than twenty feet away. A squirrel scurried halfway up the tree, looked around then disappeared among the branches, and the birds sang a chorus that seemed to fill the window. It was a slice of heaven—Michael’s slice of heaven.

  Later, he’d lit the Aga and made himself a cup of tea in one of their mugs—white and printed with the insignia of the armed forces. It was chipped but he didn’t care—tea tasted the same whether it was in a chipped mug or not. He’d eaten until his belly was full and even washed his face, pits and bits with warm water. Life was good—he could live like this quite happily, forever.

  However, curiosity had got the better of him and here he was cycling through the town. He’d checked in at his own house. All was in order but the cars that had been stuck outside yesterday were still there. He could hear the rev of engines here and there, but mostly it was quiet. Odd that—how noisy the town really was—you didn’t realise it until the racket stopped—a kind of selective deafness he guessed, perhaps some sort of survival mechanism, a defence against your eardrums being pounded day in and day out by the infernal racket of cars and lorries. The sun warms the back of his neck as he pedals a little harder, maintaining his speed up the hill. The sound of an engine vibrates in the distance spoiling his peace. He pedals harder.

  A flash of red catches his attention. At the mini-roundabout ahead a car stops. Michael watches with interest as a figure steps out of the passenger’s side. It was an odd thing to do, just stop there and get out of the car, but perhaps the driver’s not local and needs some directions? With no other traffic it’s not as if he’s holding anything up.

  As he continues to pedal, the figure gets back into the car, does a rapid U-turn and disappears back up the road. Michael continues his labours up the hill. His chest heaves with effort. Just a little further across the roundabout then its downhill again.

  Tyres screech.

  The red car bursts out of the petrol station forecourt and swings back onto the road. Michael’s tyres bump across the painted circle at the centre of the roundabout. The car’s engine seems to squeal. Michaels stares at the approaching car for a second, processing the scene.

  It was heading straight for him!

  Pulling at the handlebars he forces his thighs to move the pedals.

  It’s not going to stop!

  Move it, Mikey!

  He powers forward and steers the bike to the left. Can’t they see him?

  As his bike moves so does the car—back into his path.

  What the hell!

  The car is only feet away. He pushes at the pedals with every ounce of his strength. The car clips his wheel. Thrown to the ground, his shoulder smashes against the tarmac and the unforgiving frame of the bike bites into his leg. He cries out in pain. The car’s tyres screech and it slows down.

  Were they going to stop? To say sorry? To help him?

  The car reverses at speed.

  Heart pounding, Michael realises it isn’t going to stop. He grabs at the bike, pushing it off his leg and stands. The pain is immense as he hobbles away, desperate to get some distance between him and the car as it rushes him again. Behind him is the low wall of a corner house overhung by a palm tree. Michael had never understood it, had even mocked Brian for planting it there, now it could perhaps save him from being crushed to death. He runs, slaps his hand on the wall and vau
lts over, rolling behind the thick trunk of the palm tree. The car slams into the wall. Bricks and debris strike his calves and ankles as he staggers along the side of the house. The pain makes him shout and he leans against the wall as he runs down the path.

  Looking back at the car, two figures sit in the front, a third in the backseat. They’re … laughing! A deep frown crosses Michael’s brow as he stares at the cackling driver. He’s never seen the men before in his life, but one in the front look like Bilal, the Turk who runs the pizza shop on King Street, the other looks like a bloke he went to school with—weasel-faced with dark hair set against the palest skin. The one on the back seat has much darker skin, his face in shadow beneath a baseball cap. Michael’s heart beats hard in his chest as terror runs through him. They were playing with him—like a cat with a mouse before the final kill.

  The car’s engine revs and pulls away from the wall. As the car reverses they seem to argue. He catches his breath. Will they come at him again? He wants to edge away but keep them in his sights too. He waits then sighs with relief as the car does a three-point turn and drives away down the road. As Michael hobbles to the front of the house he watches it take a left into the police station carpark and disappear. Odd! Why would you deliberately try to run someone down then report yourself to the police? They’d have no luck anyway; there was never anyone in there. Limping, he moves away from his place against the wall, wheels his bike across the road and down to the police station.

  Keeping close to the garden walls of the houses edging the street, he makes his way to the Police Station’s entrance. The smell of petrol is strong. The car has pulled up to the station’s door, its boot open. The taller of the three men moves first and reaches into the boot. When he stands, he holds a petrol can—the same green, squat type that Michael’s stepdad uses to fill up at the petrol station when he wants to mow the lawn. Stupid old git was forever mowing his damned lawn and Michael had been sent countless times as a teenager to the fill not just one, but two, jerry cans with two-stroke.

  A man with a grey jacket and black, curling hair leans into the boot and pulls out a metal rod. Michael squints. No, it’s not a rod—a crowbar. One has petrol, the other a crow bar and they’d tried to run him over! The hairs on Michael’s neck prickle. The boot slams shut.