by Devon Ford
It was ten days before Christmas, and they believed that the New Year would bring them victory.
WHISKEY, TANGO, FOXTROT
Dan could not begin to comprehend what events had transpired to present Lexi to the gates, and the discovery of Paul evidently beaten to within an inch of his life only added to his confusion.
He desperately wanted answers, but neither one of them were in a position to provide them; Lexi remained unconscious despite physically being relatively unharmed, and even when Paul regained consciousness he could not speak.
Kate had far greater concern for him than he did Lexi. She said that the girl’s body had simply shut down to protect itself and repair, whereas Paul was in immediate need of medical care.
She listed his injuries, those that she could diagnose without x-rays, and it made for grim reading.
“Severely concussed, jaw fractured on the left side and probably an orbital break too,” she reeled off. Dan had broken his eye socket once years ago and remembered with a grimace how long it took him to recover.
“His hands are broken too, judging by the boot prints in the bruising I’d say they were stamped on,” she said, continuing the damage report. “Ribs too, and other than that I can’t tell until the swelling goes down. He’s pissing blood, too, which could be a whole raft of things which may or may not be life-threatening. For now, all we can do is give him pain killers and anti-inflammatory meds and hope for the best.”
Her normal rising anger at seeing people hurt was oddly absent, given the sheer destructive level of the beating Paul had taken. She seemed more pale than normal.
Dan opened his mouth to speak but she cut him off quietly.
“I don’t know when they will be awake, and even then I don’t know if they’ll be able to tell you much.”
Dan closed his mouth. Placing a hand on her shoulder he left the room and went to Marie as he had been instructed to. She was probably within seven weeks of giving birth now, and the medication left her frail and drawn. Still, she smiled when he walked in and rested his rifle against the wall. Melting heavily into a chair, Dan loosened his boots without taking them off as Ash mirrored his exhausted flop by hitting the rug in front of an open coal fire.
“Kate has no idea when they’ll wake up,” he said, noisily undoing the Velcro of his vest in some small concession to comfort.
“Paul is badly hurt and physically can’t speak, Lexi is in some kind of emotional coma by the look of it.” He sighed, rubbed his face as though he could force out the confusion and infuse some answers.
“They’re alive and they’re here. Everything else we’ll figure out,” Marie told him, as anxious as she felt she knew it didn’t pay to wind him up any further when he felt powerless.
The litany of questions had come in a salvo of such ferocity that anyone listening would have thought Dan was angry. He was, but he just had that unfortunate manner that the person he was speaking to seemed to take the brunt of everything.
“Anyway, how are you feeling?” he said, changing the subject to something he hoped was far happier.
“Fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. Kate says I’m doing well and nothing is wrong; the baby’s heartbeat is strong.” Glancing at Dan she saw his eyes had closed and his head leaned back in the chair. She carried on talking, unsure if he was listening much but feeling no annoyance as her man hadn’t stopped for long or even slept much in the last five days. Testing her theory, she trailed off to see if he noticed.
Eyes still closed and mouth still slightly open, Dan surprised her by still being awake.
“Need to decide on a name,” he said groggily. “What was your father called?”
“We’re not naming her after my father,” she said with a smile, returning to one of their usual sources for friendly disagreement.
“He’ll need a good, strong name,” Dan said, still checking the back of his eyelids.
“Yes,” Marie said, “she will.”
Dan smiled, before he went the way of his dog and fell asleep where he sat.
~
Dan woke, neck in stiff agony, to find the fire burned down and Marie still asleep in bed a few feet away. Glancing down to his right he saw what had woken him as Ash licked his right hand again and regarded him expectantly.
The dog’s stomach was more accurate than any timepiece he had ever worn.
Leaning over to feel the warm breath coming from Marie he quietly left after picking up his rifle and shutting the door as silently as possible.
Stopping on the stone steps to tie his boots, he told Ash he would have to wait as they went via medical to get food.
Entering the makeshift hospital, all thoughts of food were forgotten.
Lexi was sat up, awake.
She had clearly been treated to a shower, evidently her first for a long time, and her long, wet hair had changed colour from when he saw her last. Her eyes held far more presence than when he had last seen them, but she still wore an air of vacancy that was unnatural on her.
Dan walked over and started to bombard her with questions as softly as he could, but when she recoiled in child-like fear he stopped. Kate rose and gently pulled him away by the elbow. The paramedic looked exhausted too, evidently having spent the night watching over them both. Sera joined them from the next room where Paul was suffering silently. She too looked tired.
“She hasn’t spoken yet,” Kate said in a low warning, “and I’m not sure she will yet. Someone really fucked these two up.”
Dan already had his suspicions given his own fairly recent treatment at the hands of others, but he decided not to start a chorus of jungle drums just yet and cause panic.
“She’s acting like a mute child,” Kate continued, “which must be some sort of defence mechanism.”
Dan turned to regard his former Ranger and saw only the frightened child Kate had alluded to. So many thoughts bounced around his head which could only be forced into any semblance of order by answers; answers that Paul was too damaged to give and Lexi was too frightened to.
Wearing a warm, fatherly smile Dan pulled up the chair next to Lexi’s bed.
“Do you remember me?” he asked her softly.
Lexi’s eyes flickered between Dan’s face and Ash. She nodded, but kept her lips forcefully pursed.
“You’re safe here. We call this place Sanctuary,” he said.
At the mention of the name, Lexi’s eyes grew wide and she fired glances around the room as though searching desperately for safety. Pure terror in her eyes, she stared at him as though caught out and in trouble as her breathing became rapid and her still bloodshot eyes welled up with tears. Her head shook from side to side in disbelief until she finally spoke.
“What is Sanctuary?” she asked, her voice full of malice and anger as though not her own.
“Where are you from?” she said, rising from the bed with a furious look on her face.
“What are you DOING HERE?” she screamed.
Dan’s look of confusion seemed to enrage her and she screamed again, baring her teeth and lashing out at him. He leapt back as he got to his feet, Ash stepping forward and issuing a frightened bark at what was happening.
“What is Sanctuary?” she screamed, repeating the question hysterically before bursting out in tears and hiding under the blankets of her bed where she sobbed forcefully, leaving the three shocked people and one confused dog staring at her.
“I want to wake up!” she sobbed. “Just let me wake up.”
“You are awake,” Sera told her, reaching out a tentative hand to touch her shoulder and making her recoil, “and you’re safe here,” she added.
“Safe?” she snapped savagely. “Fucking safe?” whipping back the covers from her head she regarded them through teary eyes suddenly more angry than upset with her wet hair plastered to her face.
“Nowhere is safe,” she spat, “he’ll find you.”
In that moment, Dan knew with absolute certainty who had delivered his two broken frien
ds back to him, but he still had to ask.
“HIM!” Lexi answered. “He made Steve crash. He took everyone. Simon. Chris,” she ranted, confusing everyone.
Seeing his own confusion mirrored in Kate and Sera, he turned back to Lexi to see she had regressed to the scared, childlike state she had been in before.
“They’re all gone,” she cried, “the Frenchman told me.”
Even more confused, Dan was lost for words. He had no way to know that Lexi was so confused, her mind a broken jigsaw puzzle of facts that could not fit together yet. He knew enough, however, to be fairly sure of two things: one, they were not safe there, not yet, and two, that all was not well at their old home.
THE MIXING POT
Steve’s recently acquired intelligence source was a goldmine. Max provided locations of weapons storage, provided numbers and rotation times of guards, and even more information kept secret from the general population.
The camp had somehow established contact with survivors in other countries – Canada and Spain that Max knew of – although they were obviously as cagey with details as anyone would be given the circumstances. Max didn’t know how this contact had been made, and didn’t know the location of what was called the ‘communications room’ on the reports crossing his desk.
He knew that others had found a way around the baby problem, as Richards called it, but knew little else about it.
He also kept tabs as best he could on the activity of the two brothers, although they kept their own dedicated guard units insulated from the rest of the command structure and gave their own orders in interpretation of those Richards cascaded out via Max.
Steve thought of ways he could use Max’s influential position to undermine the leadership, but everything he came up with posed a risk to the young man. He couldn’t accept that, at least not yet. That gave him pause; was he really capable of putting someone in danger for his greater good?
Had Steve become that person?
The answer took little soul-searching, and it was yes.
Yes, he would put Max at risk, as he would himself or anyone else, but only when the results outweighed the cost of losing the resource.
He hadn’t done this, he told himself: they had. They had taken him and his friends away from their home, had hurt and killed people, had removed their liberty and provided a dubious safety at the cost of their liberty.
He had become the man who was prepared to do what it took to remove Richards, only now the scenario was complicated by the brothers – or the twins as his people still called them – who were vying for control themselves.
Rubbing his eyes as he lay awake in bed he tried to clear his mind in the hope that sleep wouldn’t elude him again that night. He knew he was kidding himself; sleep would not come while his mind burned off a thousand different possibilities.
~
“I say we move with what we have in place already,” Will said vehemently, looking into his brother’s eyes which betrayed nothing.
Benjamin said nothing. Merely stared back for a few heartbeats until Will’s momentum expended itself in the silence.
“Don’t rush it,” he said simply, “last time you rushed things you brought in a man we – I – had to kill to keep us all alive.”
Will said nothing, the stress of their near miss of discovery still causing him sleepless nights. They had got away with it though, only just, and their secret was still safe amongst the few they trusted. They decided not to expand the inner circle any further, believing that most guards and other people involved in the organisation would simply accept the change in leadership as it would make little difference to their everyday lives.
“We stick to the plan,” Benjamin repeated patiently, “and take over on New Year’s Eve when we get Richards drunk and make it look like an accident. Then I announce that I’m taking over as second in command; people like the natural order. That way we won’t look like traitors and things just carry on as normal,” he finished, repeating each step as though talking to an impatient child.
They had discussed many ways to remove Richards from the equation. A couple of key others would need to go quietly too, but that could be done in slow time. They could be called outside of the camp on urgent business and never return, that part would be simple enough. Killing Richards outright would cause a commotion, and with emotions running high, who knows what could happen in the heat of the moment. They planned a bloodless, well almost bloodless, coup and on New Year’s Eve when people were permitted to celebrate then Richards would drink too much and die in a fall. A tragic accident. An event of public mourning, no matter how insincere, would follow and then Will’s leadership would be accepted without challenge.
If there were to be any challenge, then they agreed that further accidents were always possible.
ROCKS AND HARD PLACES
Dan was stuck. Frustrated.
When he was frustrated, he recognised, he was a bit of an arse to be around. He found himself snapping at people he would ordinarily have asked kindly to help him. He yelled at his dog for being under his feet, when Ash was only there out of an utterly undying and unquestioning loyalty.
Dan’s insight into his behaviour only served to make him feel guilty, which added to his frustration.
He had a horribly ominous feeling about many things. He was certain that the men who had captured him had tortured Lexi and Paul, and that they would eventually have to deal with them once and for all. That held a number of inherent problems: how would they safely get outside of the walls to scavenge further afield? How could they protect the farms, their power supply and the few people maintaining the wind turbine? Taking enough fighters out of the protection afforded by the walls meant leaving amateurs manning complex and dangerous machinery, and his suspicious nature didn’t really want to be outside of the gate in the killing field of such a massive machine gun when he didn’t fully trust the person controlling it. All of these concerns were overshadowed by the feeling of dread when he recalled the man whose nose he had broken and feared that this may all be his doing, like it was personal.
And those were just the immediate problems.
He also worried constantly about Marie who seemed to be getting both bigger and weaker by the day, and there was still the risk to the baby and her from childbirth.
He worried about what sequence of events could possibly have come to pass that led Lexi and Paul to be thousands of miles away from home with no equipment. He worried about the things Lexi had said, her insane rantings which had caused Kate to have to sedate her as he held her down onto the hospital bed.
He also now, just to add another item to his list of shit stopping him sleeping, had to worry about another pregnancy. The morning after Lexi’s arrival saw another visit to the gate, this time two people from the farm with a dog in tow.
They had no idea, how could they, about the events the previous day. Being told that they had to stay in Sanctuary for their own safety came as a disappointing blow, but the couple understood. They had brought their dog as it needed veterinary care, and Ash, it seemed, was the cause.
The cross-breed bitch he had met during the resupply run with Mitch and Leah was now, undeniably, pregnant. Sera made loud noises about having enough to do already, but Dan knew the frosty woman well enough to know that her bluster covered the fact that she warmed to the dog immediately and would enjoy a brief return to her old life and see these puppies into the world with joy. She examined the bitch as thoroughly as she could and gave a rough estimate as to when the litter was due.
Around the time Marie was due to give birth.
So, on top of all the immediate, long-term and long-distance problems Dan had to worry about, Neil made it worse by happily reminding him that he will soon be a father and a technical grandfather all around the same time.
Seeing the silent glance Dan shot towards him prompted a burst of laughter and Neil beat a hasty retreat.
Dan was certain that if he could find out what had happened
from Lexi, just the basics of why she had left home and who hurt them, then he could formulate a better plan of what to do. Fighting off the frustration with repeated runs up and down the stone steps didn’t work as he became fatigued too fast due to the long days of worrying and watching. Wandering the big castle with so many empty rooms he came across Mitch who was wearing a look he could only describe as guilty.
“What’s that for?” Dan asked casually, pointing at the long loop of copper wire slung over his shoulder.
Not one for dishonesty, Mitch answered him.
“Command wire,” he said simply, swallowing and keeping his face neutral as though talking to a senior officer in his old life. It was all he could do not to stand to attention.
“Command wire as in for a detonation?” Dan asked carefully, knowing that Mitch retreated behind short answers to protect himself.
“Er, yeah,” he replied.
“Two things,” Dan said in a measured tone. “Who else knows what you’re up to and show me.”
He suspected the copper wire would have come from Neil, which it had, and in answer to the command to show Dan what he was planning, Mitch simply walked on and beckoned him to follow.
Walking into an empty room, bare apart from an old wooden table and stool, Dan paused in horror.
“It’s safe!” Mitch explained having seen the look on his face. “See, not connected yet!” he finished, waving what looked like short, metal pens connected to more wire at Dan.
The sight of the detonators in Mitch’s hand wasn’t what was causing Dan concern, but more the two green slabs of metal with their cases prised open did that.
“Vehicle mines,” Mitch said, as though explaining what they were would make it any better.
Dan was no munitions expert, at all, but he had a healthy fear and respect for such things that prompted a great deal of worry at seeing abandoned explosives being messed with in such an amateur way. Still backing towards the door, as though a few feet of stone could possibly prevent his atomisation should they inadvertently go off, he kept his eyes on the mess on the table.
