Extracted

by RR Haywood

  ‘Ben . . . keep going.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The day ends. The seventh day since they arrived. She packs the pistols away as Harry heads inside. Ben stands by the edge, staring down into the valley.

  ‘You did really well,’ she says, checking each pistol before placing them in the bag. ‘Ben?’ she calls when he doesn’t respond.

  ‘Huh?’ He turns round, that expression back on his face. The one she keeps seeing when he drifts off and she has to call him back to the now.

  ‘You did well today.’

  ‘Oh, thanks.’

  ‘Getting there,’ she says.

  He nods.

  ‘One week today,’ she says conversationally. ‘Goes quick, really.’

  He nods and pushes his hands into his pockets. She looks at the stubble on his jaw and the bags under his eyes and notices the weird contrast. He is already healthier than he was a week ago. He is eating good, nutritious food and drinking plenty of water. He’s exercising and has colour in his cheeks but the broken sleep and poor mental health are having an effect too. She smiles warmly. ‘We should celebrate.’ She winces inwardly at the crass word. ‘Well, not celebrate, but . . . you know . . . mark the occasion.’

  He doesn’t nod this time. He shrugs instead.

  ‘Maybe join me and Harry for a beer tonight.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says, looking down at the ground. ‘I’ll probably turn in.’

  ‘Have a beer with us. The sunsets are amazing out here.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he mumbles.

  ‘I’ll make you,’ she says, still smiling. ‘At gunpoint.’

  ‘You don’t need a gun,’ he says with a weak smile. ‘You could beat me up with your eyes closed.’

  ‘Ooh, give me a few months and you’ll be beating me up . . .’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what I just said,’ she admits, feeling him coming back and wanting it to continue. She thinks fast, biting her bottom lip. ‘Oh, I was going to ask your advice.’

  ‘Me?’ He blinks and looks at her.

  ‘Yeah, er . . . do you think it’s weird sharing a bathroom with me? You know, like . . . should I use another set of rooms or is it okay to share with you and Harry? You know, we’ve got loads of rooms and . . . er . . . what do you think?’ She trails off, knowing it was the weakest request for advice ever thought up on the spot. For a second she wants the ground to open up and feels a rare blush coming into her cheeks. He stares at her. She’s sure he can see the awful question for what it is. He rubs his chin and nods.

  ‘Up to you really,’ he says, drifting back off. A double-edged sword. On the one hand she feels relief that he didn’t pick up on her ham-fisted attempt to keep him talking, but on the other she feels frustration at his loss of attention again.

  ‘Carry this for me?’ she asks, holding out the bag of pistols while picking up the empty mugs of coffee and thinking to tell Harry off again for not taking his empties.

  He takes the bag and waits like the puppy he has become for her to go through so he can follow and wait and follow and wait. She passes him the mugs while she locks the back door then takes the mugs back off him. Anything to keep the interactions going. Anything to find a spark of conversation.

  ‘Got steak tonight,’ she says, walking with him through the corridors. ‘Lean steak, of course . . . and I asked for a nice garden salad. Nice and cleansing. Do you like wine? What about beer? You a lager or bitter man?’

  ‘Er . . . not, er . . . pardon?’

  ‘Lager or bitter?’

  ‘Er, not that bothered really.’

  She hides the frustration. She knows more about him than any person has a right to know about someone else. She spent hours of her life reading and re-reading every word about him ever printed and she knows he preferred lager but also really liked real ales.

  ‘What about real ales? I used to love a real ale.’

  He shrugs and nods. Hands in pockets as he shoulders the door open to the main room.

  ‘Empties,’ Safa says instantly, giving Harry the look as he hovers near the food table.

  ‘Aye,’ he says. ‘We messing now? Is this steak? It smells like steak. Is it steak?’

  They eat. Safa and Harry making conversation that Ben hears but doesn’t take in. He eats his steak and salad. He drinks the water then sits waiting quietly. Steph was having an affair. He would never have got married anyway. It doesn’t matter that he is dead because she was fucking someone else. He died. He is dead. He misses his life and his fiancée even though she was about to tell him it was over.

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You coming for a shower? Shit, I mean going for a shower. Not coming as in coming with me . . . I didn’t mean that . . . I didn’t mean coming . . . fuck it. I meant are you going for a shower?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ He gets up as she lifts her hands at Harry, who shakes his head and sighs. He showers. He dresses in the grey tracksuit and heads back to his austere sterile room with the single metal bed and the glaring light.

  ‘Come for a beer.’ She leans round his door to see him sitting on the edge of his bed.

  ‘Nah, I’m going to—’

  ‘Fuck that,’ she says, venturing into his room. ‘Come on . . . you promised . . .’

  ‘I just—’

  ‘Nope. With me. Come on. Just one.’ She takes his wrist and laughs as she pulls him up on to his feet. ‘Watch the sunset. Have a beer. It’s like our Friday night so . . . actually, I wonder what day it is here. Do you know what day it is?’

  ‘Er, no . . . listen, I just want to . . .’

  ‘Fuck that. Fuck off. Get fucked and just have a fucking beer,’ she says, still holding his wrist.

  He smiles at her profanity and the way she says it. She smiles back, seeing the spark come into his eyes.

  They head back outside to three chairs set side by side. Bottles of beer in a cooler box on the gun table. Harry already with a beer in one hand, a cigarette curling smoke in the other and his long legs stretched out, barefooted in the warm evening air.

  ‘Beer,’ she says, handing Ben a bottle.

  Ben sits and doesn’t notice that he’s the only one in the grey tracksuit. Safa wears loose linen trousers and a white sleeveless top. Harry in the jeans and T-shirt he wore in Rio.

  ‘I was just asking Ben what day it is,’ Safa says, taking a beer and sitting down.

  Harry sips from his bottle and thinks for a second, ‘No idea,’ he says after that whole second’s worth of deep contemplation.

  Ben drinks his beer but doesn’t taste it. He doesn’t even register what beer it is. He doesn’t think to register what type of beer it is. His mind is not here in this place.

  ‘I’ll, er . . .’ He stands up and places the empty bottle on the table. ‘I’ll turn in . . .’

  ‘Ah, have another one,’ Harry says.

  ‘Nah thanks, mate.’ Ben pauses, hesitating and awkward. ‘Tired . . . I’ll, er . . . see you in the morning then . . .’

  They watch him go and hear as he pauses under the hissing air jets then walks down the corridor to the doors. Safa sighs.

  ‘Only been a week,’ Harry says quietly, nodding at Safa to pass him another beer.

  ‘Get your own, you lazy shit,’ she says, arching an eyebrow. ‘Oh, stay there, old man,’ she huffs as he makes a meal of preparing to stand up. She grabs two more bottles and sits down in Ben’s vacated chair.

  ‘Ta,’ Harry says, taking the beer.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ she whispers, taking a swig from the bottle.

  Harry nods, staring down into the valley. ‘I’m sure he will be.’

  ‘He will,’ she asserts, shooting him a hard glare.

  Harry pauses. His silences speaking as much as ten sentences sometimes. ‘We had chaps join up . . . tough chaps too . . .’

  ‘Save it. Heard it. He’ll be fine.’

  He swigs from the bottle. No offence taken at her blunt tone. ‘How long you goi
ng to give him?’

  She swigs from her own bottle. He is Ben Ryder. He was seventeen when he took on a gang of hardened men high on drugs. He could have run away. He could have hidden. He was terrified but he still did it. Same with Holborn. He was terrified but he still did what hundreds of other people couldn’t do. While everyone else ran away, Ben ran towards. That means something.

  ‘Long as it takes.’

  Twenty-Four

  ‘It’s been almost four weeks.’

  ‘I’m fully aware of that.’

  ‘And he isn’t getting any better.’

  ‘He’ll get there.’

  ‘Harry?’ Roland says, looking from Safa to Harry across his desk. Harry stares ahead, wanting to say something but abiding by his sense of loyalty to Safa. In the end he says nothing, which again speaks volumes.

  ‘We’re running out of time,’ Roland says heavily. ‘You’ve had him running and training and stripping those blasted guns apart every day.’

  ‘Time?’ Safa asks, Roland groans and sags back in his chair.

  ‘Time, Safa! Time.’

  ‘Got a time machine.’

  ‘Again? Is that going to be the answer every time we have this conversation?’

  ‘Got a time machine.’

  ‘Four weeks. It has been four weeks—’

  ‘Almost four weeks and, er . . .’ She pauses, looking him in the eye. ‘We have a time machine. We could take four years and it wouldn’t make a fucking difference. We can go back to any point in history . . .’

  ‘Yes, but at some point you will have to make the decision that Ben is just not suitable.’

  ‘HE IS BEN RYDER,’ she shouts with sudden ferocity. Roland flinches, the words stilled on his tongue. ‘It takes as long as it takes. You’re feeling the pressure because you think nothing is happening, but it is happening. Harry and I are training and learning to work with each other and Ben is adapting to his new environment. He just needs time.’

  ‘How much time?’

  ‘Ask me that again and see what happens . . . go on . . .’ Safa growls the words out, the intent clear on her face. A shift at her side. A slight motion from Harry that makes her ease back from Roland’s desk.

  The heavy silence stretches. Roland waits for the tension to abate. The same as last time and the time before that. That Safa is right is just another irritation. In theory they can take as long as they need, but the lack of progress is eating away.

  ‘Are you under pressure from someone else?’ Safa asks, breaking the silence.

  ‘Pardon?’ Roland asks, caught off guard by the question.

  ‘I said are you under pressure from someone else? Do you want me to explain why it takes this long to train someone?’

  ‘No no.’ Roland waves a hand at her. ‘Nothing like that. No, you are right. It’s my perception at the lack of progress. I apologise.’ He exhales long and slow. The weight of the world on his shoulders and showing once more in those deep worry lines. He smooths his hair back and rises from the chair, walking over to the window under the open shutter to stare out into the valley. ‘It’s just me,’ he says after several quiet minutes.

  ‘Just you?’ Safa asks.

  ‘Just me and the inventor . . . well, one other person too, but—’

  ‘You’re gabbling,’ Safa says.

  Roland stiffens at her tone. ‘The inventor told me when the end of the world was realised. It’s just me. I am the one running this. I arrange the financing for it. Me. Just me. So yes, there is no one else to report to, nor is there anyone else putting pressure on us, but I still wish to make progress and to do so as soon as humanly possible.’

  Who exactly is Roland? How does he arrange the finances? Who is the inventor? Why did the inventor ask Roland for help? What did he mean when he said one other person?

  ‘So we have time then,’ Safa says as bluntly as ever as Harry stares forward and waits passively.

  ‘You asked Malcolm to get sandbags ready for a firing range. Why aren’t you using them?’ Roland asks, changing the subject.

  ‘He’s not ready.’

  ‘Not ready? How many times does it take to strip a weapon down before you can use it?’

  ‘It’s familiarity.’

  ‘I know exactly what it is,’ Roland says, turning from the window and speaking gently. ‘You’re worried about giving him a loaded gun.’

  She looks up sharply as Harry stares ahead at the spot on the wall.

  ‘Ben wouldn’t do that . . .’

  ‘No? Then why hasn’t he fired it yet?’

  ‘We’re doing other skills sessions,’ she says in explanation. ‘Physical training and unarmed combat.’

  ‘I’ve seen,’ Roland says carefully, ‘and he’s hardly applying himself.’

  ‘And Harry and I have both been conditioned by the jobs we did in the services and police,’ she pushes on doggedly. ‘Ben doesn’t have any of that.’

  Roland goes to reply but stops and sits back down heavily. ‘He looks awful,’ he says quietly. ‘Is he sleeping?’

  ‘No,’ Safa sighs, shaking her head.

  ‘Then tell him,’ Roland groans, rubbing his face that shows the stress of days spent waiting and worrying.

  ‘No,’ Safa replies instantly.

  ‘Safa,’ Roland pleads. ‘You have to do something. Tell him what Steph did and take away his desire to go home. Force a reaction. Provoke him so he can channel that anger.’

  ‘Yeah, why not?’ Safa says with disgust etched on her face. ‘We’ll take a man already suffering and make it worse. Yeah, that’ll be such a nice thing to do.’

  ‘At some point, which will be sooner rather than later, we’re going to have to make the difficult decision that Ben just isn’t right for this project.’

  ‘He will be fine. I promise.’

  ‘Okay,’ Roland says, sensing the temper in her is threatening to come up again. ‘Fine. Just keep me posted.’

  Neither of them know where he goes and they have no idea of anything Roland does away from the bunker and although they are curious, they are both too deeply conditioned by their former lives to question such workings. You focus on your job and let someone else worry about where the pens come from.

  Safa was a uniformed armed police officer. Every bit of kit she carried came from somewhere else and was organised by someone else. Her service sidearm was maintained by someone else. The vehicles were serviced by someone else. Her uniform was organised by someone else. The canteen was stocked by someone else. Even the bullets for the weapons were sorted by someone else. She was there to protect and worry about the finite details of her job.

  It was a single act but it was enough to shape Safa’s life from that point on. It seemed like the whole world became obsessed with Ben Ryder after Holborn and even more so when it came out that he was the same man who killed five gang members when he was seventeen. Then Steph tainted it, but not for Safa. She had seen greatness and knew without doubt there were decent, honourable people in the world and it was the essence of Ben that she held close when she was being touched and groped in the private rooms in Downing Street.

  There was something else too, something deeper than all of that. A snatch of a view as she held eye contact with him from the platform while he dragged the dead man down the tracks, but in that second she saw someone of immense power and life. It struck her then and it stayed with her.

  He’s still Ben Ryder though. She can see it. She saw it before and can tell it’s there in the tiny bursts of anger that surge up to give life to his eyes and it’s thrilling to see, but it dies so quickly and he slumps to become passive and inert, like a child hanging off her every word.

  She pours coffee from the flask in the main room and moves to slump into a chair. Harry pauses, wondering if he should leave her alone, but decides on the other option, pours himself a cup and sits down in a chair across the table.

  She sips and thinks, remembering seeing him when she staggered from her room and knowing instantly
it was him. It was Ben Ryder. She knew it. She couldn’t believe it but she knew it. Even now she has to remind herself that this is reality when she’s watching him strip the weapons and guiding his arms round her neck to show the best grip when snapping someone’s spine.

  ‘He is getting fitter,’ she mutters, glancing across to Harry, who nods benignly and sips his coffee. ‘And he can strip every weapon we’ve got here.’

  ‘Aye,’ Harry says.

  ‘His reflexes are incredible. What do you think?’ she asks sharply.

  Harry shakes his head then sips his coffee.

  ‘Go on,’ she says, nodding at him. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You’ve not asked me before,’ he says quietly.

  ‘Because I know what you’ll say.’

  ‘Aye, you do.’

  ‘You don’t think he will make it.’

  ‘No.’

  She watches him, sensing he wants to say more but is stopping himself, and instead he sips the coffee with that benign, easy expression. ‘You never ask anything,’ she observes.

  ‘Nothing to ask,’ he replies.

  ‘Harry,’ she says firmly.

  ‘Safa,’ he says easily, with a smile that makes her pause and take a breath that softens the harshness in her eyes.

  ‘Why do you let me take charge?’ she asks, voicing another question that’s been quietly nagging at the back of her mind for the last few weeks. ‘I’m a woman.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘You’re from nineteen forty-three. You didn’t have women officers then.’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Not in combat roles though.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘So they weren’t in charge of you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Whatever,’ she huffs as he refuses to take the bait and be drawn into an argument to vent her irritation. ‘We’ll just keep going then.’