SAFE HAVEN: RISE OF THE RAMS

by Christopher Artinian

  Both women held back their emotions. What kind of a world was this? They stayed with the farmer until he drifted off to sleep, or maybe he just shut out the world. Either way, they removed themselves from the room and went back to the kitchen. Alice, the farmer’s wife, had prepared some sandwiches and made some tea. Lucy believed that as well as being in a state of shock and denial, Alice was probably a little slow-witted. Keeping busy was the best thing for her, but at some stage she was going to have to face what had happened.

  Mike opened the outer kitchen door as Samantha and Lucy came through the inner one.

  “How is he?” asked Emma. Alice stopped stoking the coals in the range to listen.

  “He’s resting now,” Lucy said. “He got badly beaten, but there’s no permanent damage.” She looked at Alice. “I’d let him sleep for a little while before you go in. He’s been through a lot.” Alice smiled nervously and resumed stoking the coals.

  Mike noticed Lucy had her doctor’s bag in her hand and took it from her. “I’ll give you a hand with this, Doc,” he said, making eye contact with all three women from his group, motioning for them to follow him outside. He led them to the ambulance and flung the bag in the back. “We need to get out of here right now.”

  “We can’t just leave these people, Mike,” Samantha said. “They need our help.”

  “Fine, they can come with us, but these raiders will be back, so we need to move.”

  “He’s not going anywhere. Jesus, after what’s just happened to them...” Lucy was a little agitated by Mike’s lack of compassion.

  “Okay, look, I’ll try to convince him. I’ll explain to him that if these guys come back it will be his whole family wiped out next time.”

  “Mike. They kidnapped his daughters. One of them was eleven. Eleven, Mike, that’s not much older than Sammy.” Lucy’s words hung in the air like acrid smoke.

  “I’m not saying this is an ideal situation, Doc. It’s shit. There isn’t a part of this that doesn’t stick in my gut. But what it boils down to is this: I need to protect my family. I’m not going to risk these fuckers getting hold of Sammy or Em, or you or Samantha for that matter. When I said I owed you, Doc, I meant it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re with us now. Like I say, I’ll do my best to make him see sense. But we have to leave. I’m not prepared to risk our safety.”

  “We need to help them, Mike,” Samantha said once again.

  “For fuck’s sake, Samantha!” She was visibly taken aback that Mike had sworn at her. “Don’t you understand what’s going on here? Don’t you see how serious this is? This isn’t some post-apocalyptic Scooby Doo; we’re not trundling around in our ambulance solving crimes and helping strangers. This is literally life and death... Literally! If you want to help them, help me convince them to leave with us.” Without waiting for a response, Mike turned and stormed back into the house.

  The women stood looking at each other. Everything he had said made perfect sense, but every ounce of humanity within the three of them was shouting in a deafening voice that they needed to help this family. They needed to help them find their daughters, their sisters.

  Eventually it was Lucy who spoke. “He’s right. It really hurts me to say it, but he’s right. If these guys come back, we could all end up dead or worse. We need to try and persuade them to come with us. I saw that farmer’s eyes though; the guy’s already dead inside. He won’t come, but maybe we can save his wife and his sons... maybe.”

  The three women slowly walked back into the house. In the kitchen, Alice was mixing something in a bowl, and she seemed oblivious to what was going on. Lucy had seen this a number of times before; it was how a lot of people dealt with traumatic situations. Mike had already gone to see the farmer, and they could hear voices mumbling behind the old pine door.

  “Alice... Alice... We need you to listen to us for a minute,” Emma said, trying to get the housewife’s attention.

  “What is it, dear?” Alice asked, smiling. She lifted the bowl up so she could carry on mixing the contents while she spoke.

  “Alice. We’d like you to come with us,” Emma said.

  “Come with you where, dear?” Alice replied distantly.

  “Well, we’re going north. We’re heading to Scotland, but right now, we just need to get away from this farm. We think the people who were here last night are going to come back.” She looked at the older woman pleadingly but saw no understanding or acceptance in her face.

  “Oh, no, no, no, dear, we couldn’t leave. There’s so much to do on a farm, the work never ends. No, no, no, we couldn’t leave, dear.” With that she turned around and placed the bowl back on the kitchen table.

  The three women looked at each other hopelessly until they were jolted by the deafening tirade that erupted in the other room.

  “For fuck’s sake, Joseph, will you listen to me? The blood of your entire family will be on your hands if you don’t come with us. These men are coming back. How you lived through last night is a miracle, but you won’t be so lucky next time, and neither will your sons and your wife. Is that what you want? Is it? Tell me, because I’ll go out there now and put them all out of their fucking misery so at least you won’t have it hanging over your heads.” The door opened abruptly and Mike stomped out. “It’s like talking to a fucking lump of wood,” he shouted, barging down the hall. “Come on, let’s get loaded up,” Mike said to the three women. They stood silently in the kitchen, their mouths gaping.

  Emma went to collect her brother and sister from the other room. The two farmer’s sons sat on the opposite sofa. They looked scared. The youngest looked like he was about to start crying again. No doubt Mike’s outburst had something to do with that.

  Lucy went through to the master bedroom and gently knocked on the door. Joseph was sitting up in bed, staring straight ahead, his eyes cloudy and distant.

  “Joseph. I’m sorry about Mike. He’s a little... He can get a little... Look, I don’t like how he said it, but please think about your family. If those men come back, you could lose the rest of them.” Her soft New England accent slowly spilt the words out. “Joseph, you need to come with us. You’ve got two young boys who need their father. You’ve got a wife who needs her husband. Please think about that.”

  The farmer turned onto his side away from her. He said nothing. Sadness crept over Lucy’s face as she resigned herself to defeat. She turned and left the bedroom.

  Mike already had the engine running and everybody in the back. He was looking at the front door of the farmhouse waiting for Lucy to appear.

  Inside, Lucy tried to speak to Alice once more, but to no avail. She went in to speak to the boys, the youngest was crying again, so she crouched down in front of the other.

  “Look. We’ve got to go now. If you hear vehicles after we’re gone, get your brother, your mum and your dad into that room where we found you. Take the shotgun with you and take some shells in too. Don’t come back out until you’re sure they’ve gone. Do you understand me?” she asked, holding the boy firmly by the elbows.

  He nodded, and just as she was about to stand up, he spoke in a weak, broken voice. “My sister is only eleven. Why would they take her? She’s only eleven.” Lucy gulped, trying to stifle her feelings. She turned and walked through the kitchen and out of the house. She climbed into the cab of the ambulance and the wheels began to roll.

  They were about a hundred metres away from the house when Mike looked across at Lucy. Her head was bowed and tears were falling onto her chest. He slowed down the ambulance and reached over to her. “Doc?”

  “She’s only eleven, for God’s sake,” she stuttered, between baying cries. Her eyes overflowed with grief as she looked towards Mike. “She’s a little girl. She’s a little girl, Mike.” Lucy fished around for something with which to dab away the tears but found nothing. Mike took out a wad of gauze he had stashed in his pocket and handed it to her. H
e pulled on the handbrake and put the vehicle in neutral, opened the door and climbed down.

  For a moment he leant against the ambulance with his eyes tightly closed. His breathing gradually became heavier and heavier and his hands started to shake uncontrollably. He crouched down on the floor, hoping to compose himself before anyone could see him like that.

  “What’s happening?” asked Jake, puzzled at why they had stopped.

  The boy’s question went unanswered but Lucy decided to find out. She jumped down, wiping away tears as she did, and walked round the front of the ambulance to find Mike knelt down on the ground, his arms tightly wrapped around his torso in a vain attempt to stop the uncontrollable rage that was making his body convulse. His eyes looked wired shut as she approached him, and her words went unheard and unanswered.

  “Mike. Mike, what’s going on?” She crouched down and tentatively extended her hand to his shoulder. As she made contact, he flinched, as if being woken from a terrifying nightmare. She repeated her question, this time with real concern as she noticed his violent shaking. She put a hand on his forehead to see if he was running a fever, but he wasn’t.

  Mike didn’t speak for a moment. His breathing was still erratic, his face still twitched. He grabbed hold of Lucy’s hand and took several deep breaths in the hope that he would regain his composure. Finally he was able to speak. “We do this my way. I know what these people are. I know how to deal with them. We do this my way!”

  “Deal with who? Do what your way?” She asked, staring into his bloodshot eyes.

  “We’re going to get those girls back.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Within five minutes, they were stood back around the kitchen table. Emma had taken Jake and Sammy into the lounge, but was standing in the doorway so she could hear the plan. At the prospect of being able to rescue his daughters, Joseph had snapped out of his trance-like state and was perched at the head of the table, keen to hear the details.

  “First things first,” began Mike. “Joseph. What’s underneath the stone chips out there?”

  “We’ve got some thick barrier sheeting, but underneath that it’s just earth. Why?” he asked, a little puzzled.

  “The raiders are going to come back. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, but it will be soon because they won’t want to run the risk of losing what’s in this place to someone else. The fact that they closed the gate when they left tells me that they saw what was in your outbuildings. They’ll definitely take the food; they may take some of the vehicles or other supplies as well. The chances are they’ll also come back into the house to see if there was anything they missed,” he said, looking around the table to make sure everybody was following. Even Alice was looking a little more responsive now her husband was up and about.

  “Okay. I’m guessing all these guys will be armed. We’ve got one shotgun between the lot of us, so we can’t get into a gun battle with them. We’re going to have to use what’s at our disposal. So we’ll dig some pit traps, y’know, like bear hunters used to use in America. I noticed there’s a mechanical digger in one of your barns, Joseph. How long would it take to dig three holes, four by six and roughly six feet deep?” Mike looked the older man straight in the eyes, hoping he could take up the challenge.

  He mumbled a few figures under his breath as he visualised the task. “The digging won’t take too long, probably less than an hour for each hole. But we’re going to have to cart the earth away and even up the surrounds,” he said, looking back up at Mike.

  “You’ve got a flatbed truck in one of the barns. We can use that to clear the earth, yes?”

  “Well, it’s not a tipper, but yes... yes we could.”

  “We don’t know how long we’ve got – and there’s the chance these guys could come back before we’re even ready, in which case we’re going to have to just fight for our lives – but the sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll be done. We want holes in front of this door, the side door of the barn where your vehicles are and the side door of the building where you’ve got your food store. The main doors are bolted from the inside, so they’ll have to use the side entrances. Take your lads, Joseph, and get started on those.” Mike looked at him once more, hoping he’d spring into action.

  “Before we do anything, we need to move my son and son-in-law somewhere until we can give them a proper burial.”

  “Joseph,” said Mike softly as he leant forward, “those two men died trying to protect what was important to them. Leaving them where they fell makes it look like there’s nobody left here. That will give us an advantage that could save your family and mine. When this is all over, I’ll help you bury them myself. But right now, don’t let their deaths be in vain.” He leaned back from the table and watched Joseph, who nodded, understanding what was at stake, and signalled for his two boys to follow him.

  When they had gone, Mike spoke to the women. “Alice, we need curtains, bed sheets, quilt covers and whatever you can lay your hands on that can cover a six by four hole, okay?” At first the farmer’s wife looked a little shocked to be included in part of the plans, but she did as she was asked.

  “Okay, you two,” said Mike, looking at Samantha and Lucy. “We need wooden curtain poles, mop handles, sweeping brushes. Get a sharp knife and whittle them into spears. Then take the chairs apart,” he said, pointing at the solid pine seating around the table. “The legs, the spindles, anything you can sharpen and turn into a spike for our traps, use it.” No sooner had he spoken than the two women got to work.

  “What do you want me to do?” Emma asked, still standing in the doorway.

  “I need you to take the ambulance back the way we came and park about a mile away, well out of sight. Then I need you to come back. There’s a Land Rover and a caravan in one of the barns. Take the kids, a good supply of food and go park them with the ambulance and stay there. If this all goes south we’re going to need a getaway plan.” He looked at her hoping she wouldn’t argue.

  “I can fight too, y’know. I’m not useless.”

  Mike moved across to her and spoke softly. “That’s exactly why I want you with Sammy and Jake. You’re the only one I trust to defend them.” He hugged his sister tightly and they looked at each other, knowing how dangerous the next few hours would be. Finally Mike smiled. “Now fuck off, I’ve got work to do.”

  Emma let out a small laugh and turned to get the children.

  *

  Within four hours, the finishing touches were being put to the traps. Old sheets and curtain lining was straining under the weight of a single layer of stone chips. Beneath each sheet lay 144 cubic feet of nothing above a bed of sharp wooden spikes standing to attention in quick-drying cement. Mike had salvaged three chairs, some rope and some duct tape and taken them to an open space in one of the barns. If all went to plan he would need them later. The sun was getting low in the sky and it would not be long before darkness fell.

  Alice and her youngest son, John, had joined Emma, Jake and Sammy a mile away in comparative safety. Mike was with Lucy and Samantha in the house. They had unlatched the window to the master bedroom; that was the only way in and out of the property avoiding the trap. All three stood at the front window as the farmer and his eldest son, Peter, cleared away the last evidence of the day’s work. Mike handed the shotgun and a dozen shells to Lucy.

  “I saw the way you handled this earlier, Doc. I’m guessing you were used to guns back in the US.” She broke the shotgun to load it like she had done a thousand times in her youth. “You two are the key to this whole thing.” He handed Samantha one of the spears that had been fashioned from a wooden mop handle. “On the off chance one of them gets in here, you need to do whatever you can to buy time for the Doc. Me, Joseph and his son will hide wherever we can. Ideally we won’t break cover until the first trap has been sprung. What we need you to do is usher as many as you can towards the other holes. If we’re lucky, we’ll us
e all three traps, and that will mean there are just two raiders left for us to deal with. Best-case scenario, we want three of them alive, but at the end of the day, do what you need to do.” Mike looked at the two women, picked up the pile of makeshift weapons from the bed and made his exit.

  “Y’know, as grateful as I am that we have a plan, I can’t shake the feeling that Mike got this straight out of an episode of the A-Team,” Lucy said, half smiling in the dimming light of the evening.

  “Well, at least the A-Team were always alive at the end of each episode,” Samantha replied.

  The pair watched as Mike went over to the farmer and his son. He handed them spears and kitchen knives and made movements, presumably fighting tips, before pointing to various spots around the courtyard.

  *

  Darkness had fallen. The temperature had cooled noticeably and both women had their hands tucked under their armpits to keep them warm.

  “If it’s this cold in here it must be freezing out there,” Samantha said, wiping away the condensation her breath had caused on the window. The low moon illuminated enough of the courtyard to see basic outlines, but the three outside were invisible.

  “What time is it?” Lucy asked.

  “Just after eight,” Samantha said, squinting at the display on her watch. “They might not even come tonight. We could be like this for days.”

  “Yeah, that thought occurred to me too, but Mike seems to think they wouldn’t risk losing what’s on this farm to someone else, so let’s wait and see.” She rubbed her eyes to try and ward off sleep.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Killer headache.”

  “I’ll see if there’s anything in the bathroom cabinet.”

  “No need, I’ve got some painkillers,” she said, reaching into her pocket for a plastic bottle.

  Samantha squinted to see the bottle Lucy removed from her pocket, but it was too dark. She watched the doctor take a pill and place it on her tongue before cocking her head back and swallowing.