“I guess not,” Wren replied, looking out over the shimmering loch.
“Thomas and I were talking, and we think it would be a good idea if you two moved in here. You’ll help us get the polytunnels up, you’ll help us with stuff around the farm, and in return, you can live here and you can get a share of the produce. Enough to make sure you’re fed properly. You can help when we cut wood, and you can have some for your stove. And if you need our help or we need yours, we’re both just a stone’s throw away.
The two girls were still looking out over the beautiful loch and beyond to the woods. When they turned back around, they both had tears running down their faces. Wren threw her arms around Isabel and Robyn threw hers around Thomas, which was a little like throwing them around a very wide oak tree. He stood there for a moment, frozen, not quite knowing how to respond to this girl who had him stuck in an emotional bear hug. He put his right arm around her, then his left, and gently returned the hug with a little pat to her back.
“You’ve no idea what this means to us,” Wren said.
Isabel kissed the top of her head. “It usually takes me a while to warm up to people, but I liked both of you from the start. If the last few days have taught us anything, it’s that we never know when our time is up. It would be stupid to waste it now, wouldn’t it?”
epilogue
It had been a good day. They had got the frame for the first of the polytunnels standing, and it would not be long before the rest of it was up and they could start planting. Although never having had one before, Thomas knew lots of farmers and smallholders who had, and he knew the crops that grew the fastest. Spinach, kale, rocket, courgettes, lettuce…there were many. The family was going to be self-sufficient in no time, and then, they would get more tunnels up and begin to trade. He was sure there would be other outlying farms who had escaped the horrors of the towns and cities.
As he pulled the Land Rover into the farmyard, his brow furrowed.
“Who the hell’s that?” Kayleigh said as the four of them looked towards the 7.5-tonne truck parked outside the house. Thomas pulled on the handbrake and they all climbed out.
“Stay here,” he said opening the back and pulling out the shotgun. He walked towards the door and Brendan joined him, but he put a hand on his shoulder. “Keep an eye on the girls.” Thomas placed his fingers on the handle and pushed the door open, ready to raise the shotgun at the first sign of trouble.
“Will you put that thing away?” Isabel said as all the heads at the table spun towards the doorway. Wren was sat at the far end and two strangers, one a middle-aged man, one a younger man, were sat with their backs to the door. They looked a little startled as they turned and saw a giant with a shotgun standing in the doorway, boring holes through them with his eyes.
“I didn’t expect visitors,” Thomas said, walking into the kitchen and putting the shotgun on one of the countertops.
“This is...I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name already,” Isabel said.
The man stood up and walked over to Thomas. “McKeith, Gordon McKeith. I’m pleased to meet you, Thomas. Your wife has been telling me all about you and what you’re doing here.”
Thomas raised an eyebrow and looked at Isabel. He extended his hand, and the two men shook. “I don’t recognise you from these parts.”
“Well, no, me and the lad here are from up in Loch Uig. We managed to escape a large part of what hit everybody else by the sound of it,” he said returning to his seat.
“Loch Uig? I’d heard that place had been taken over by an armed gang.”
McKeith and the younger man burst out laughing. “And that’s without fake news and the internet. I’ve heard all sorts since I took to the road. No, Loch Uig is as it always was. Like I say, it faired a lot better than most.”
“And what are you doing down here?” Thomas asked.
“Well, as I was explaining to Isabel, I’m wanting to see who’s around, see who’s in a position to trade. We’ve got requirements up there, like anybody. By the sounds of it, in a few months, you’ll be flourishing again. Maybe we could trade what we have for some of what you have.
“And what do you have, exactly?” Thomas asked as Brendan, Kayleigh and Robyn walked through the door.
“We’re still taking stock, but I was happy to make a trade with your wife already,” he said, smiling towards Isabel.
“Is that right?”
“We’ve got a cheesemaker up there, and we still have a few dairy cows. I wanted to show goodwill and prove I was serious, so I traded a wheel of our local cheese for a bucket of spuds. Trust me, it’s a good cheese. Maybe when I come back, we can trade a lot more.”
Thomas turned to look at the large circle of cheese on the counter and he almost started salivating before turning back to McKeith. “Maybe,” he replied.
There was a long silence, But McKeith broke it. “Well, thank you for your hospitality, and thank you for letting me know about Tolsta. I’ll be sure to avoid it.” They all shook hands and he left carrying the bucket of potatoes. He put them in the back of the truck before climbing into the driver’s side.
The engine started and the stone chips crackled as the truck pulled away. McKeith looked in the mirror as the family was assembled in the doorway. He lowered the window and leaned out, giving them a friendly wave before putting it back up. He smiled to himself and turned the wheel right. Their journey was underway once more. They had only been gone from Loch Uig one day, but already they had covered so much ground. The rural communities had fared much better than the towns and cities and now his plans were coming to fruition.
“I still don’t understand why we traded all that cheese for just a few spuds,” the younger man said.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” McKeith replied.
“Well?”
“I don’t answer to you.”
“No, but when you show up with less than you set out with, The Boss is going to be happy as Larry to see you.”
McKeith turned to look at his passenger. In one violent movement, he grabbed hold of the back of the younger man’s head and smashed it against the dashboard. There was a loud crack, the young man screamed and as he brought his head back up, blood poured from his nose.
“What somebody like you will never understand is the most valuable currency is information. What we gave them in a bit of cheese we’re going to earn a thousand times over when we come back down here and take their harvest…and those women. Watch and learn boy, watch and learn.”
THE END
Acknowledgements
To my wife, Tina. We are a partnership in every sense of the word, and if it wasn’t for her, not one page could ever have been written. She works relentlessly to help me get my books to a wider audience, and I’d be lost without her.
Thank you to the members of the fan club across on Facebook. It is a privilege to be part of such a fantastic group, and not a day goes by where you guys don’t put a smile on my face. Thank you, my friends.
And of course, the professionals. Sheila Shedd, my awesome editor who makes the impossible, possible with her metaphorical red pen. And not forgetting the amazing Christian Bentulan – He never ceases to amaze me with his work. Thank you, mate.
And last, but by no means least, I want to say a huge thank you to you for reading this book. I’ve said this before, but it is as true now as it ever was: Time is not something we get back, and for someone to spend theirs reading one of my books makes me feel immensely proud and very humble at the same time. It is a feeling I will never get used to, and never take for granted. Many, many thanks.
The End of Everything
Book 2
Christopher Artinian
Dedication:
To those who always see the glass half full, and never stop fighting.
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Prologue
The Grand Hotel had seen thousands of guests over the years, but never the kind it hosted now. Fry sat at the end of the long oak table waiting for his right-hand man, TJ, to show the next lieutenant in. He scratched his ginger-grey whiskers as he looked around the opulent surroundings. Expensive oil paintings adorned the walls of the large function room, and the furniture looked like a single piece would cost more than he had earned in a year on the police force. None of that mattered now, though. Fry could have whatever he wanted, whatever he was prepared to take.
The large double doors at the end of the room swung open, and TJ escorted a pair of men, one middle-aged, one in his twenties, to the table. They sat down in the two chairs closest to Fry, who tipped his head towards the door, signalling TJ to leave them alone.
Fry glanced from one to the other. His eyes narrowed as he looked a second time at the older man. “I know you,” he said in a thick, Glaswegian accent.
“Mckeith, Gordon Mckeith, I did a bit of business with you and the Don in the past.”
Fry took a puff on his thick cigar and exhaled a plume of blue smoke into the air before nodding slowly. “The prepaid SIM cards.”
“That’s right. You’ve got a good memory. I had a contact at one of the big comms companies.”
Fry stared at him long and hard. “They were a cash cow, those cards. Our guys on the street couldn’t get enough of them to sell.”
“They were profitable for everybody concerned. Those were good years.”
Fry sucked on his cigar again and nodded slowly, his blue eyes taking a measure of Mckeith as the sunlight advanced further into the room. “Okay, so…”
“I’m Fin,” the younger man with a cut on his nose said, standing up and offering his hand to Fry. “They call me that ‘cos I’m a shark around the ladies,” he laughed.
Mckeith looked down to his hands, embarrassed, and Fry just glared at Fin who sat down again, the smile immediately disappearing from his face.
“So, what’s the deal?” Fry continued, edging around in his seat and looking straight towards Mckeith.
“I’ve been south these past couple of days. Avoided the big towns, mainly looked at the villages and outlying areas. Lots of farms, lots of country estates, lodges, hotels.”
“And?”
“Some places are lost; some have escaped so far,” he pulled a map out from his inside coat pocket and laid it flat on the table, then he produced a notebook from another pocket.
Fry leaned forward and started to examine the map and the notebook. “How did you come by all this information?”
“Well—”
“That was a piece of piss,” Fin interrupted. “Y’see what we did—”
Fry lurched across the table and grabbed Fin by the throat, forcing him and the heavy chair over. As it hit the ground, Fry increased the pressure and Fin started to go red in the face, choking and sputtering.
“How about you go get someone to change your nappy and let the grown-ups speak, you little stain?” Fry’s eyes burned holes through the young thug. Finally he released the grip from around Fin’s throat. He scurried away, not even daring to look back.
The fiery haired Glaswegian sat back down, picked up his cigar, which had scorched the beautiful oaken table, and took a puff on it. He tapped it with his thumb, releasing a small flurry of white ash to the carpet below, and nodded towards the other man.
“Most of these people were so grateful to see someone bringing news from the outside that they wouldn’t shut up. I told them we were wanting to set up a kind of trade route, y’know, small communities helping each other out. Occasionally, I’d sweeten the deal, offer them something that was worth more than what I wanted from them, so the next time I showed up, they’d welcome me with open arms,” Mckeith said, sitting back in his chair.
Fry sat back too. “Smart, very smart. Most of these idiots would just do a smash and grab, see what they could get right now, put every village on high alert, waiting for the bad men,” Fry laughed. “I assume you’ve got a good idea of who’s got what.”
Mckeith moved to the chair nearer to Fry and dragged the map and notebook across the table. “There are some places that are ready now; there are some that will be ready in a few months.”
“Explain.”
“Right,” Mckeith said, pulling a pen from his pocket and pointing. “This place, The Deerstalker Hotel and Tavern, this one’s ripe now.” He moved the pen across to his notepad. “It’s a forty-room hotel…nice one, too. It’s got stockpiles of booze, and a full pantry. They’re not producing anything; all they’re going to do is diminish their reserves, so that’s a place we should strike as soon as.”
Fry stood up, walked over to a long bar, poured himself and Mckeith two large whiskies. “Go on,” he said, placing a glass in front of the other man.
“It’s out in the sticks. Family run, but with a few girls from overseas working as cleaners and in the kitchen. The owners didn’t have the heart to turn them out when everything went to shit. They knew their families would be gone, so they kind of adopted them. Couple of Estonians, couple of Croatians, few Poles. And, yeah…some lookers among them, too. They’ll be popular with the lads. Now the owner, he’s a hunting nut, used to take parties out on the surrounding moors. He’s got himself a nice little gun collection, ammo, too. There are a few cars there; they’ve got a van, a minibus, plus three generators. So, my advice, we take a squad down, and clean the place out, before they eat and burn through all their supplies.”
Fry took a drink of his whisky; a thin smile formed underneath his dirty ginger whiskers. He nodded thoughtfully. “And there are other places you wouldn’t hit right now?”
Mckeith took a long drink from the glass. “Johnny Walker Blue Label,” he said, nodding appreciatively and wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
“The man knows his whisky.”
“So...” Mckeith said, waving his pen around the map before bringing the nib down on another numbered point. He looked up the reference in his notebook, “Jack’s farm.”
“Who’s Jack?”
“Thomas Jack. Lives there with his wife, son, and two girls they’ve taken in. Few supplies, nothing major at the moment, but they’ve got the materials for twenty polytunnels. They’re doing the groundwork for the first of them. Now I don’t know if you know much about polytunnels, but stuff grows fast in those things. That’s going to be a lot of food when it’s harvested. He’s got quite a bit of plant and machinery too. A couple of tractors, a digger, Land Rover, generator.”
“Whereabouts is that?”
“West of Edinburgh. Not miles out of the city, but far enough.”
Fry leaned in and looked at the map. He put the cigar in his mouth, and held it gently between his teeth while he read Mckeith’s corresponding notes. He examined the map again carefully for a few minutes before taking the cigar back out of his mouth. “They haven’t built the polytunnels yet, you say?”
“No.”
“Hmm. Seems silly to hit such a valuable resource for just one harvest. We’ve got shitloads of open fields around here. It would make a lot more sense to build the polytunnels around us.”
Mckeith nodded appreciatively. “We’d need a few lorries, but yes, that makes sense.”
Fry sat back in his chair. “This is good work. I’ll make sure the Don knows what you’ve been up to. Nothing like striking while the iron’s hot. Draw up a list of the first places to hit, then let’s get the ball rolling.”
“Erm…”
“What?”
“I was thinking about going north. You’ve got hundreds of men who can raid, but information gathering, that’s a little more skilled.”
Fry stubbed his cigar out on the table and regarded Mckeith for several seconds. “Right you are. Draw up that list before you head out though.”
“No problem.”
“And Mckeith…”
“Yes?”
“Good work.”
Mckeith made his way
out of the room and through the large foyer of the hotel. As he stepped out into the sun, he smiled. The village was a hive of activity. A few days before, there had been eight hundred men there, and with Fry’s arrival, that figure had nearly doubled. Soon there would be a vast army camped at Loch Uig, and Fry and the Don would need loyal generals to lead them; loyal generals who would be rewarded well.
Mckeith’s time was coming, and nothing was going to stand in his way.
chapter 1
The archery club was well hidden, to say the least. The old sign was no longer visible from the road, as abundant leaves and overgrown branches had shrouded it. Robyn and Wren walked along the narrow country lane with their javelins resting on their shoulders. Wren had a leaflet in her hand entitled: Things to do, Places to go. It featured a small map, and she kept checking it, religiously.
“I’m sure we should have reached it by now,” Robyn said, looking over her sister’s shoulder.
“We have,” Wren replied, smiling and pointing to a narrow side road. She stuffed the leaflet into the back pocket of her jeans and took hold of the javelin in both hands. “It’s just as well. There’s a village up ahead, and who knows if it’s safe or not?”
“You told me this would be safe.”
“It will be...probably.”
“I hate you sometimes.”
“Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” her sister replied.
They started to walk up the windy lane. The tall and unmanaged hedges lining it stopped them from seeing what lay beyond, but they could be confident there was no traffic. Traffic was not really an issue anymore—not after the events of the previous week.
“This reminds me of when we went on holiday to the Isle of Mull,” Robyn said.
The End of Everything Box Set, Vol. 1 [Books 1-3] Page 19
