Beyond Hope (Tales from the Brink Book 3)

by Martyn J. Pass

  “Don't you ever pull a stunt like that again. Ever. Do you understand?” he seethed. Tarrick's men had drawn their weapons and were ready to cut him down, but he waved a hand and called them away.

  “I'll let you have that,” he said to Alan. “I'll even go as far as saying that maybe I deserved it. But let's be absolutely sure - when this is over me and you will have some unfinished business.”

  “Get in line,” spat Alan, turning away. “For now, keep those gates open. My equipment will be arriving shortly.”

  Sarah handed the reins of Ziggy over to the boy who stood waiting with the box, his jaw dropping open at what he'd just seen. Alan, looking away from the gates, began heading towards her.

  “Well done,” she whispered in his ear as his arms enfolded her. “Shame you didn't finish the job.”

  He sighed and she felt her blood rush with heat. She took a deep breath and the air was electric with his scent. They kissed and the last day or so vanished as if it'd never happened, as if pain was just the absence of love, like darkness to light.

  “What happened?” he asked, gently touching her arm.

  “A scratch,” she replied. “Nothing more.”

  “We're nearly done here,” he whispered in her ear. “If we can survive the night, we'll be on our way home soon.”

  “I know,” she said, wiping away a tear. “But there's so many of them.”

  “But only one of me,” he grinned. Moll looked up and nuzzled her nose between them. “And one of her I guess.”

  Behind them the racket of turning cartwheels shattered the moment and Alan broke away, watching as the two carriages arrived, barely slowing down until they were both inside the walls. Then the chains began to rattle once more and the steel doors swung shut.

  Tarrick walked around the back of the carts and stared inside, joined by Alan and the drivers who quickly began unloading them. Sarah followed with Moll who'd managed to find a stick and was bouncing around with it between her jaws.

  “Shit, Alan,” she heard Tarrick say. “Where the hell did you find all this?”

  “I've known about it for a while and figured that it would be handy one day.”

  “You’re not kidding.”

  “I’ve already set some claymores up outside but I want to go back and lay out some distance markers. I suggest you send scouts in the direction of the purifier; if we can figure out when-”

  Tarrick put up a hand and stopped him.

  “I'll handle this,” he said. “I've known war most of my life; I know where these pieces will serve us best. Thanks Alan, you've saved a great many lives tonight but I can’t risk anymore. We’ll hunker down and wait for them to come to us. Do what you want to outside these walls, but there won’t be any scouts.”

  Alan sighed and nodded.

  “This one though...” he said, hefting a long black case out from the back of the second carriage. “I'll be taking myself.”

  “What is it?” asked Tarrick.

  “You'll see.”

  Alan gave orders for it to be setup on top of the highest building, facing west. Two handlers hurried off, struggling under its weight. After that, Tarrick took over and she and Alan stepped out of the way as rifles were passed around and crates of ammunition and explosives were distributed along the wall. All of it bore the unmistakable stamps of NSU and UKGOV military equipment.

  “Where on earth did you-”

  “One of my caches,” he replied under his breath. “There are more but I think this will do for today.”

  “I don't trust him,” she said. “And neither do a lot of people around here.”

  “I thought I did. Until now. What do you think?”

  “I think we've just armed him.”

  Alan looked as the grin spread across Tarrick's face as weapon after weapon passed him by. The muscles were bunching under Alan’s beard and Sarah put her hand in his.

  “We had to,” she whispered. “It was necessary. For them. For everyone else.”

  “I know. But he'll never give them up when this is over, will he?”

  “No, my love. He won't.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Something had delayed them. Sarah, standing on the top of the wall just above the gates, spooned hot stew into her mouth but she wasn't really that hungry. One of the little girls gave it to her, running around wrapped up in as many layers as her mother could find, serving trays of the stuff to everyone manning a gun. Sarah had taken it without thinking and she'd eaten it that way too, chewing the lumps of vegetables and meat without any kind of interest. Still, she knew she had to eat and something had to soak up the alcohol swishing around inside her stomach. She wondered if the answers to life could be found anywhere else other than the bottom of a bottle but then she realised that the answers weren't even there. Only the blind, idiotic courage to face them was.

  “How much longer do you think?” asked Alan, standing next to her.

  “I don't know. They were moving pretty fast when I saw them.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “About that.”

  “Not my best idea, I admit, but it saved Annie and her people. I hope I'll never feel that scared again, Alan. You can't imagine.”

  “It was incredibly brave of you.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”

  The cold was their constant companion now. It burrowed into their bones and made nests there, homes that no amount of stew or hot coffee could shift. Braziers burned below them in old oil drums so that those on the three hour shifts could enjoy a little warmth on their breaks but even these did nothing to change the fact that they were all frozen and waiting. There hadn't been a single sound other than the night noise they'd expected. No turning tracks. No marching feet. Nothing.

  “Maybe they changed their mind,” she said, putting down the empty bowl and taking up her mug of hot spirits again.

  “Maybe,” he replied.

  “Maybe the cold has got to them. Maybe they've all frozen to death.”

  “Hmm.”

  Moll sat at their feet, boasting about how little the cold seemed to bother her. Maybe, Sarah wondered, if she could express herself using her furry face, she'd be frowning right now or wincing in the chill. The dog had the benefit of being able to hide all its own thoughts from the rest of the world. Unless there was a stick involved.

  She passed Alan the mug and he took it, sipping as much as he could before it burned his tongue and lips. Then he returned it to her and she drank off some more.

  “You once said you were a gardener, right?” she asked. Alan nodded. “So how do you know all this stuff?”

  “What stuff?”

  “Guns. Explosives. That thing up there on the roof.” She pointed to the box mounted on a tripod and bolted into the steel roof of the tallest building they had. The small radar rotated on the top, making a faint, almost indistinct whirring sound as it moved.

  “It was after I came out from Longsteel,” he said. “I got caught up in trying to help the survivors. I ended up joining a joint Russian-UK military outfit, some branch of a private security firm or something and they taught me bits and pieces. Then, after that, I worked with a man called Teague just before the radiation cloud came. You learn things, you pick up stuff. Some of it stuck, some of it didn't. I still don't know how to put a duvet into a duvet cover properly.” Sarah laughed. It was the old Alan, the one from the campfire again and right then that was the man she needed.

  “What else do you know?” she asked.

  “You'll find out later,” he grinned. “When we're back at Pine Lodge.”

  “You're staying?”

  “Of course I am - if you'll have me.”

  She felt her heart bursting out of her chest and her broad smile almost hurt. The only thing that shaded the wonderful news was the coming battle and it still showed no signs of happening any time soon.

  “You'll sleep in my bed of course,” she explained in quick, clipped sentences. “We'll lie there every morning. Wrapped u
p warm together. We'll read to each other. We'll drink tea and coffee and eat hot bread from the oven with fresh butter. We'll sit in front of the fire with wine and you'll write in your books. I'll watch of course. I'll help you to find all those stories, those quiet tales inside you that have to be told out loud. I'll tell you about Meggy and you'll put her in those pages. We'll dance to the music in the spring festival. We'll grow old and...”

  She paused and a cold, hard hand settled on her heart, squeezing it as she realised what she'd said. Suddenly another hand was in hers and he clutched it tightly.

  “We'll grow old,” he continued. “We'll sit in front of the fire together and remember our youth. We'll see the faded pictures that make up our own story and we'll tell them to each other every night until we go to sleep in each other's arms. Books will hold our hands and lead us toward the end of our days and when we're done...”

  “When we're too tired to continue...”

  “We'll lie down together and sleep in each other's dreams.”

  The tears flowed down her cheeks and promised to freeze on her cold pale skin. She saw the end. She saw herself old and frail and crippled, yet he still a young man with years ahead of him. Years without her. Waiting for the end when he could join her again. She knew that was where his heart was and where it would always be and it made her smile.

  “They're here,” said Alan, releasing her hand and taking up his rifle. “They've come.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The tank stopped on the crest of a hill and waited. Its searchlights sent two wide beams of icy white light into the darkness, cutting through the cold air and stopping just short of the walls of the settlement aptly named Hope. The turret was one of the last of the robotic models and its sensors scanned the ground between itself and the target with a cold, calculating precision that held the lives of everyone inside the flimsy metal walls in its hyper-cooled quantum drive.

  The Slavers, clutching their machine guns and assault rifles, stood to either side of it as if waiting for the signal from its multi-cored processors and liquid-fusion engines. This faceless enemy with its two deadly orbs poised looking down and remained nameless; branded with labels and designations it hadn't given itself. Slaver and red-jacket meant nothing to the tank. It only knew its programming and right now that program called for total annihilation.

  “I wish they'd just attack,” said Alan. “They know they're out of range of most rifles but we have better ones. If they'd just inch forward a little more.”

  “What about the tank?”

  “That's another matter entirely,” he replied. “I've set the launcher's range to minimum. I can't risk them deploying some kind of chaff or decoy. Every missile needs to be on target otherwise we might only cripple it and keep the cannon alive. That wouldn't go so well.”

  “So what do we-”

  A cry went up through the night and suddenly the lines of Slavers broke, moving forward towards them at running pace. Tarrick, peering across the battlefield with binoculars, held his hand up, preparing the men to fire. Rifles were cocked and bolts slid back into position.

  “Tarrick!” cried Alan, gesturing to something in his hand that looked like a switch. “Wait.”

  The giant nodded and kept his hand raised.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A trigger. Watch the first of the markers.”

  The Slavers passed the furthest one of Alan's luminous markers set at intervals around the open ground. As they did so, he squeezed the lever down and the hillside erupted in a flash of light and a clap of thunder. Dozens of the Slavers dropped to the ground and the others halted their advance.

  “That’ll give them something to think about,” he said.

  Tarrick's hand dropped and the night became alive with the reports of dozens of rifles firing into the darkness, cutting down the dazed horde until the dead soon outnumbered the living. The survivors were forced to retreat back to the holy glow of the tank's ever-watching eyes.

  A cheer went up from the settlement and the order to reload was sent echoing around the walls. Alan never took his eyes off the enemy lines and, more specifically, the tank. Sarah could almost see him willing it to come closer, to be done with the whole thing and be off.

  “What happens if the tank doesn't come?” she asked.

  “It has to. It must.”

  Hope hadn't suffered a single casualty but Sarah feared how many might die before the night was through. The waiting was the worst part and as she stood there shivering, thoughts of home raced through her mind. She saw her Papa. The house. The stables. All of it. Gail - sweet innocent Gail. The pub. Sidney.

  “There was this strange little old woman once,” said Alan. “It had to be back at one of the early outposts I think. Maybe down near London just after I left the lab. She had this little dog, one of those tiny things that were really popular back in the old days, yappy little things. I remember being on patrol once and we came across her living in the ruins of this bland, faceless town. I had Moll with me and she was the first one to spot her lurking in the front of this old florist shop with this little rat-dog yap-yap-yapping away from under her arm. Obviously, Moll wanted to take a sniff so she ran over and stopped just short of the old girl and her dog, tail wagging, ears up.

  “They stood like that for what seemed like an age. There was this crazy, wild-haired woman with her dog and there was Moll with the hair on her back bristled up like a brush and her tail slowly wagging back and forth, back and forth. I remember the guy next to me just staring, waiting, wondering what would happen next.”

  “And?” asked Sarah.

  “She started dancing.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman. Her and her dog just started doing this little two-step move in amongst the rubble with this ridiculous grin on her face. Moll loved it. She started bouncing on her paws as the old lady went left and right and the yappy dog just kept on barking even when we walked on and left her. Yap-yap-yap.”

  Sarah looked out across the night and smiled to herself. She could even see the old woman and her dog in her head and it made her laugh.

  “I thought it was funny too,” he said. There was a strange whirring sound from the tank and Alan put his hand on her shoulder. “We should get down now.”

  “What?”

  “GET DOWN!”

  The tank fired and the night was shattered into glowing fragments that sparkled and danced behind their eyelids as the shot screamed through the air to land somewhere within the settlement, missing its intended target – the gate. The explosion lit up the camp with orange and red and the flares of light were joined by the cries of the wounded and the sounds of buildings caving in on themselves.

  Alan was the first to stand up and when he looked out over the wall he began firing his rifle down into the mass of Slavers who'd followed on the heels of the blast. Soon the others gathered themselves together and joined him, pouring down fire into the men who were trying to attach steel cables to the gates and wall struts.

  “There!” cried Sarah as one of them managed to fasten a coil around the metal poles. “Stop him!”

  The Slaver fell but already the cable was gathering tension as the tank began to reverse. Alan reached into his pocket and pulled out an oblong device, tapping numbers into a keypad on its side. There was a chirrup and it flashed blue twice before turning red. He leapt up onto the wall and threw the thing down towards the cable, ducking as it detonated. It gave off a brilliant white glow and when Sarah looked up she saw that the cable had been vaporised as well as a large chunk of ground along with it.

  “He's determined to stay up there,” she said, looking at the tank.

  “He is, but he's short on rounds.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If he wanted to he could've bombed us into the Stone Age but he didn't - he fired once for effect. He doesn't have many shells.”

  “I hope you're right.”

  “We'll see. If we can weather the s
torm, we might lure him in yet.”

  The night grew quiet again as the Slavers retreated back behind the tank and waited. Sarah scanned the dead zone in front of her and realised that the hundreds she'd believed to be dead down there were actually only thirty or so. In the frantic shooting she'd felt like an enormous tide of them had attacked when in fact it'd only been a relatively small number. All the corpses now wore the red coats of their tribe whether they'd planned to or not. Blood ran into rivulets made in the mud, trickling down towards the wall, sometimes away from it. The searchlights from the tank made all the carnage a gory tableau.

  “Why doesn't the tank just drive right on up to the gate and knock it down?” she asked.

  “The claymores will have him spooked,” he replied. “They weren’t expecting that and it bothers them. A well-placed firebomb would also do some damage from the top of the wall and we're not short of those, not with the spirits they distill here.”

  “That's true,” she laughed. “Do you think that thing can see your weapon?”

  “As far as I know it’ll only become aware of it once it launches. Then, if the driver knows what to do, he'll use something to counter it. Hopefully that won't stop it - these payloads split and guide themselves in blind; they're made to take out tanks like this one.”

  “We just need him to get closer then.”

  “That's right. I could launch now if I wanted but we'd be revealing our secret and we're only going to get one or two chances. The odds of taking it out in one go increase the nearer he gets.”

  Alan perched himself on the corner of one of the larger ammunition crates, cradling his rifle across his lap. Moll, calm as always, was sat on her haunches looking at nothing in particular. Everyone was on edge up and down the wall and very few words were spoken. Occasionally eyes would fall on him and Sarah could see that they were looking to him to see what they should be feeling, what his body language was telling them. When he was calm, they seemed to risk being calm as well.

  Sarah looked behind her, trying to see where the shell had landed and she wondered what damage had been done and, no doubt, who’d been killed. She tried to picture Ellen, that pale, delicate woman, bandaging wounds and tending to the sick and dying. It was hard to see her there, in amongst the blood and debris, caring for anyone or anything. She wondered if one day she herself would become like her, almost dead inside with grief. She hoped not. Life was much too precious a thing to waste on sadness.