No Dominion: An action-packed post-apocalyptic thriller (Plague Times Trilogy)

by Louise Welsh

  ‘Everything okay in there, Mike?’ one of the waiting men called.

  Stevie hissed, ‘Tell them you’re fine or I’ll slit your throat.’

  The smoker shouted, ‘She’s got me by the fucking balls.’

  The men outside laughed and a voice she recognised as the bull’s said, ‘Leave some for us.’

  ‘I mean it, she’s killing me.’

  The men’s laughter grew louder. It had a raucous edge.

  The smoker hissed, ‘Get off me, you bitch.’ He bucked beneath her and reached for something in his jacket. Stevie’s thigh muscles sang. She felt her grip on his arms loosening. In a second he would pitch her free and call on the other men.

  ‘Fucking bitch.’

  Stevie raised the knife and stabbed it into his carotid artery. Blood geysered from the wound and he made a drowning sound, wet and surprised. Stevie grabbed the edge of the plastic sheeting and held it over his face, covering his mouth and nose. Blood bubbled beneath, red and frothing. The door opened and light filtered into the converted stables. Stevie slipped a hand into the rapist’s jacket. She snatched the gun he had been reaching for from his pocket, scooted beneath an old Aston Martin and hid behind the skirt of its plastic cover.

  ‘Mike?’ It took the bull and his companion a moment to see the smoker’s body. Stevie watched from under the car as the men knelt beside him. The bull pulled the plastic from his friend’s face. The smoker made a liquid sound, his feet drummed against the floor.

  The nervous man said, ‘I’m out of here.’

  The bull caught him by the arm. ‘She’s just a lass,’ he whispered. ‘Joe will fuck us up if he finds out we took a woman out of turn. This way we can blame poor Mike, may he rest in peace.’ Stevie saw him take a gun from his pocket. He raised his voice and addressed the silent stables, ‘Sorry Mike frightened you.’ The bull’s tone was ludicrously gentle. ‘Come out and we’ll make sure you get back to the castle safely, no more monkey business. I promise you.’

  Stevie checked the clip in the smoker’s gun and pulled the safety catch off. She could hear the bull walking between the cars, lifting their shrouds to look inside and beneath them. He would find her soon.

  There was a shift of landscape beyond the Aston Martin’s plastic cover, a distortion of colours. Stevie recognised the anxious face staring at her. The nervous man said, ‘She’s here …’

  Stevie shot him in the centre of his worried expression. Blood spattered the car cover, obscuring the view of what she had done. She rolled free of the Aston Martin, and lay flat on her stomach next to an electric-blue Lamborghini. The bull was running for the door. She took aim, fired and he fell against it, his hand scrabbling for the handle as he sank to the ground.

  Stevie leant against the boot of the Lamborghini, trying to catch her breath. She vomited and then took off her bloody shirt and wiped her face. Blood was still pumping from the smoker’s neck. She wondered if he was alive, appalled at her urge to kick him in the guts. She took the men’s guns, bundled them in her shirt and zipped up her jacket. The path outside was empty, except for Pistol, sitting by the bushes. She called him to heel and walked away from the stables, down the driveway.

  A gatehouse stood at the end of the rutted drive, a Victorian Gothic addition to the old castle, decorated with miniature turrets. An ornately carved archway branched from it, embracing the drive. Beyond that lay the road. Stevie wanted to be on it.

  She stood under the arch, the knapsack she had fashioned from her shirt a weight in her left hand. To turn right was to turn towards home. To turn left was to head southwards, towards danger, with no guarantee of finding the kids. Stevie closed her eyes. Killing had made her numb. Pistol trotted through the arch onto the road beyond, sniffing at some unmarked trail. Birds piped in the slow dusk, a prelude to summer. Stevie’s shadow stretched long and thin towards the tarmac. She called the dog to her, turned her back on the road and walked to the rear of the gatehouse.

  The house’s windows were boarded up, but there was a shed at the bottom of its small kitchen garden, unlocked and stacked with gardening tools. Stevie selected a spade, prised the board from the kitchen window and climbed in. She checked her Timex. If Magnus was still at liberty he would come looking for her. She would give him three hours and then head south.

  The house was cast in dust and shadows. It smelt damply of earth, as if the woods were pulling it down into their roots. Stevie unlocked the back door with a key someone had left neatly in the lock and let Pistol inside. The dog wagged its tail, greeting her as if they had been parted for weeks.

  Stevie knelt and drew the dog to her, feeling the warmth of his body – alive. He tolerated her for a moment and then pulled away, keen to explore the new scents of the house. Stevie followed him into a musty hallway where a barometer pointed to rain. The living room was dark behind its boarded-up windows. Her eyes adjusted to the dimness and she saw a pair of two-seater velvet couches facing each other from either side of an art-deco fireplace. Stevie’s stomach did a quick flip-flop and she thought she might vomit again. She plonked herself on the nearest couch and put her head between her legs.

  When she looked up her gaze met a photograph propped on the coffee table in front of her. It looked out of place. Stevie wondered if it had been the last thing the inhabitant of the gatehouse had focused on as they succumbed to the Sweats on the same couch. She lifted the frame from the table. The image trembled in her hands. A group of five children stood outside the castle: four boys and a girl. Something about the girls’ hairstyles suggested the photo had been taken a decade before the Sweats. The children shared the same sandy-coloured hair and pale skin as Lord Ramsey. Their ages varied, but they were all in school uniform, the girls solid in Barathea blazers, the boys with side partings and puppety heads too large for their bodies. Each one sported a tie, knotted at the throat, and a smile that suggested mild strangulation. Stevie guessed the group was Lord Ramsey and his siblings, the ‘happy breeders’. She tried to find him amongst the children, but they were too similar. All of them were dead except one, and she did not know who he was. She placed the photograph face down on the table.

  A delicate writing desk with drawers too small to be useful sat to the left of the window. A bookcase at its side contained a shelf loaded with telephone directories. The gatehouse had been occupied by someone who had never learned to love the Internet. Stevie took a local telephone directory from the shelf and leafed through it, with no idea of what she was looking for. Pistol whined, keen to be on the move again. She shushed him.

  Rees had tricked her and Magnus easily because they had no idea of the geography of the district. Stevie slid the directory back onto the shelf, as if neatness mattered, and walked her fingers along the book spines, looking for a road map. She found an AA Guide and set it beside her improvised bag. There were other maps and travel guides on the same shelf. A lost geography: Paris, Berlin, Toronto, Auckland, Crete, New York, Amsterdam, Beijing, Chicago. The names sang. Stevie slid a guide to Rome from the shelf. It opened at a photograph of the Trevi Fountain surrounded by tourists (all dead now, presumably). Something fell from the book. She bent and picked it up. A handwritten receipt for two cappuccinos. She remembered a sun-splitting morning, hot city air threaded with dust and petrol, coffee frothing against the rims of two white cups set on a metal table, the high-pitched buzz of Vespas zipping through narrow streets, people, people, people: walking, loitering, holding hands, carrying bags, children, umbrellas, little dogs, falling in love, arguing, making love …

  Stevie slammed the guidebook shut. The sitting room was dark and quiet. Not even the sound of birdsong reached inside its walls. She let the book drop to the floor.

  A little later she was in the bedroom, changing her bloodstained clothes for a man’s shirt and walking trousers, when an advert she had glimpsed in the local directory tugged at her thoughts. Stevie fastened the shirt’s buttons up to her throat and stepped quickly back into the sitting room, Pistol at her heels. Ther
e had been so many fires since the Sweats, so many explosions and razed cities, it was likely that the premises and its stock were long gone, but the advert kindled a gleam of an idea. She flipped through the book until she found the right page, ripped it out and went in search of Magnus.

  Thirty

  The plan was simple and destructive. Stevie pulled the torn page from her pocket and passed it to Magnus.

  Relief at seeing her made his voice gruff. ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘Bottom right-hand corner.’

  It had grown dark in the woods, but they had not made any torches for fear of giving away their presence. The only light came from the full moon shining through the canopy of leaves above them. Magnus held the advert close to his eyes.

  ‘Festival Fireworks?’ He battened down a jolt of irritation. ‘Is there something I’m supposed to be getting here?’

  Olivia plucked the advert from his hand. She read it slowly, her lips silently spelling out the words. ‘You want to set them off.’

  Stevie nodded. ‘Joe and his army keep their fuel stocks well guarded. We can’t outgun them, so we need a distraction. What could be more distracting than an exploding fireworks factory? We set them off, Joe’s guys go running and in the meantime …’

  Olivia grinned. ‘In the meantime, we get busy.’

  The girl’s smile shone in the darkness.

  Stevie squeezed her shoulder. ‘Think it’ll work?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Olivia passed the advert to the girl next to her. ‘I think the factory’s still there, leastways I never heard of a load of fireworks going off. But we should keep away from the estate. It’s too close to the old abattoir.’

  ‘The abattoir?’ Stevie looked at Magnus.

  Magnus saw a splash of something on her cheek. He checked an urge to wipe it away. ‘Where Lord Snooty stores his fuel supply.’

  The young guerrillas were passing the paper between themselves. A few of them gave it a cursory glance. Magnus wondered if they could read.

  Henny peered at the scrap of paper. ‘I never saw a firework before.’

  Magnus said, ‘Ever see the Northern Lights?’

  Henny nodded. ‘When I was little I used to think they were ghosts coming across the mountains to get me.’

  One of the girls said, ‘Henny’s a baby.’ And the others laughed.

  Henny snapped, ‘I said, when I was little.’

  Magnus said, ‘Fireworks are too loud and too bright for anyone to mistake them for ghosts. If this goes up, it’ll be Northern Lights on acid.’ He turned to Stevie. ‘I don’t like it. Even if the factory’s still there and you manage to set it off, Joe’s guys might decide to stay at their posts.’

  The knife was back in Olivia’s hand. She looked like a bloodthirsty young pirate.

  ‘If they do, we’ll cut their throats.’

  Stevie said, ‘If they do, we’ll think of something else.’

  They had been walking as they talked, slipping through the woods, feet sliding on rotting leaves, crunching against fallen twigs, away from the castle, towards the outskirts of town.

  Magnus felt out of place, the only man in the troop. A few of the girls were nearly his height, but others were short and slight. He saw their camouflage headdresses bob and dip as they walked and felt like a white adventurer commanding a bunch of pygmies to their deaths. Sky fell into line beside him. She was tall and athletic enough to make a credible soldier, but she was too young to go into battle. They all were.

  He looked at her. ‘What did you mean when you said you left Belle and the rest of your gang because you thought things were getting weird?’

  Sky shrugged. ‘Why would a bunch of grown-ups want to hang around with kids like us? They acted like they were our mates, but they weren’t really. They wanted something.’

  ‘Any idea what?’

  ‘I don’t know. At first I thought Belle wanted little Evie. I was raging when we found out Willow had brought her.’

  A fallen tree blocked the path. Sky vaulted the trunk in one easy move. Magnus felt the bark rough against the palm of his hands as he swung himself over and thought again how easily a small scrape, a splinter or a graze, could lead to death. Shug was out there somewhere, alone and rendered stupid by love.

  He caught up with Sky. ‘But it wasn’t that?’

  ‘Belle looked after Evie. She was good with her, but I could tell she didn’t want to get too attached. It was like she could have loved Evie, but made a decision not to. I thought maybe she got Willow to steal her for someone else. Then I began to think that maybe they wanted the rest of us – me, Shug, Willow, our wee Orkney gang – for someone else too. That’s when I decided to leg it.’ Sky touched Magnus’s arm. ‘It’s nice that you came after Shug. He lucked out when he got you for a foster dad.’

  ‘We came after all of you.’

  ‘Maybe she did. Stevie likes everything to be in order, but you wouldn’t be here if Shuggie wasn’t missing.’

  The truth of her words made Magnus feel ashamed. He said, ‘Iris and Bill want you home, it just wasn’t possible for everyone to come, not with harvest due and the threat of invasion.’

  ‘You think someone’s going to invade our islands?’ Sky’s voice was warm with indignation.

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  Magnus had thought Stevie up ahead, but her voice sounded beside him in the darkness.

  ‘You’re needed on the islands, Sky. We won’t try to force you home, if it isn’t where you want to be, but I think you should go back and take as many of your new friends as will go with you.’

  The line of girls had been making steady progress through the woods, now it faltered.

  Stevie addressed them all, keeping her voice low. ‘We’d welcome more young people and I guarantee no one would make you get married or have babies, if you didn’t want to.’

  Olivia said, ‘We can’t make raids on Lord Ramsey’s men if we’re off on some island.’

  Someone said, ‘Shut up, Livi.’ There was a hiss of whispers and then a small voice asked, ‘What about our little sisters? If we leave, he’ll just wait until they get older.’

  The trees murmured around them as Stevie reached for a plan and the young guerrillas waited to hear what she would say. Small creatures rustled through the undergrowth. The girls stood frozen, the stillest things in the forest.

  Stevie squatted and the group gathered around her.

  ‘We have to make this a hammer blow and we have to make sure that Ramsey and Joe don’t suspect you’re involved. We need to hit them so hard it’s impossible for their army to follow us straight away. Joe thinks power lies in a show of strength. My guess is he’ll rally his men and head south after us, meanwhile you’ll be safely on your way north.’ She looked at Olivia. ‘How far south does Lord Ramsey’s territory go?’

  Olivia was playing with a twig that formed part of her camouflage. She looked anxious, as if now that the time for action was close she was less keen on cutting throats.

  ‘My foster dad says they can’t go further than Dingwall, not unless they take the whole army and are prepared to lose some of them. He says it’s anarchy over there. That’s why Dad likes Lord Ramsey. Him and Joe keep anarchy away, whatever that is.’

  ‘Anarchy’s what we’re going to bring. Magnus and I will head for Dingwall as fast as we can. If we’re lucky we’ll outstrip them. Meanwhile those of you who want to will head to Orkney. It wouldn’t be right to steal your little sisters away from their mothers, but you can come back in a year or two and if nothing has changed they can come to the islands too.’

  Henny said, ‘How would we get there?’

  Magnus turned to Sky. ‘Think you could sail a boat that far?’

  ‘I took the helm some of the way here. I’d need charts, but I think I could make it.’

  He looked at the rest of the group. ‘Anyone else a decent sailor?’

  The girls shook their heads.

  ‘My boat’s waiting at Scrabster.’ Mag
nus tossed Sky the keys to the cabin. ‘You’ll have to board in the dark. There’s a man named Rees living on the quayside. Avoid him if you can. He’d like to hand you in, but I reckon his wife won’t let him.’ Like all of their plans it was full of ifs, but Sky had been sailing since she was tall enough to reach the boom and Magnus would trust her with his own boat. He looked at the girls. ‘Say “Aye” if you want to go.’

  A chorus of voices whispered: ‘Aye.’

  He felt rather than heard Sky’s silence. ‘Sky? Will you take them?’

  The girl sat mute beside him.

  He asked again. ‘Sky?’

  ‘I’ll take them, but only if we set off the fireworks and do the petrol raid.’

  The gang of guerrilla girls gave a muted cheer.

  Magnus said, ‘It’s not a game.’ But the small squad were already moving towards a break in the foliage – the wood’s end.

  Thirty-One

  Festival Fireworks was half a mile from the abattoir. Magnus and Stevie were to make for the petrol stockpile. Sky, Olivia and the rest of the girls to the factory. Stevie’s stolen map helped them estimate how long it would take to reach each location. The fireworks factory was nearest. The guerrillas were to lie in wait there, long enough for Stevie and Magnus to get into place at the abattoir, then set the sky on fire.

  The girls stripped themselves of their greenery, rubbed fresh mud onto their hands and faces and emerged from the woods into the moonlit night, like slender seal-women slipping from the water. Stevie and Magnus ran with them, down a grassy hill, wet with night-dew, into the black and silent town. At the bottom of the hill they came together in quick goodbye hugs, then the girls trotted away, light and sure on their feet. Pistol wanted stay with Stevie, but she commanded him ‘Go’ and he scampered in the girls’ wake, his tail curving wide arcs against the night. A small part of her went with the dog. She would miss him, but it was better he return to the islands with Sky and the other girls.