“But you must ask for it,” he finished, leaving the humiliation heavy in the air.
Steve was in too much pain to offer any resistance. He hurt all over and felt sick with every breath.
“Please,” he whispered, “please.”
Richards offered no answer other than to smirk again and leave the room.
ALL LIFE IS LUCK
Mitch gave a simple report as he ate the unrecognizable contents of a can of food so fast that he barely tasted it. Through his mouthfuls he stated that there was no movement at the barracks. None. At all.
Dan thanked him, although his concentration was marred by the fact that he was unable to pull his gaze away from the slimy substance Mitch was shoveling into his mouth.
He opened his mouth to ask a sensible question about tactics when he could no longer contain himself.
“What the hell are you eating?” he asked, repulsed by what he was watching.
Mitch stopped chewing, one cheek puffed out like a hamster. He looked at the can, looked back at Dan and offered a shrug.
Shaking his head to clear the image from his brain, Dan returned to the task.
“Get your head down for a few hours,” he said, looking away to hide his disgust.
He moved around the others; ‘doing the rounds’ as he called it. Taking a lap around the group, exchanging pleasantries and cracking bad Dad jokes reminded him why they were all going through this hardship; they were a family.
A large, highly dysfunctional one with a family pet who would most certainly raise complaints from the neighbours, but they were still a family.
That afternoon they carefully approached the front gates of the base and opened them unopposed. Moving his small team of makeshift soldiers, drivers and engineers into the series of large buildings he marveled at the sheer size of the place. Row upon row of challenger tanks waited inside one aircraft hangar sized unit. Another held a swathe of armoured vehicles with their wire blast netting protruding awkwardly. It was difficult for most of them to stay focused; they were unchaperoned children in a sweet shop. It was like a backstage pass.
The rest of the day was spent picking their new fleet. A huge supply truck with a large cab and rows of seats in the back became Jack’s new prized possession. An off road truck, the likes of which Dan had never seen, was claimed by Neil; a double cab with a fuel tank dominating the rear of the chassis.
A whistle from Mitch towards the rear of the building made him jog up to where he and Leah were stood grinning like children. He could excuse that from Leah, obviously.
Dan’s own face cracked into a smile, instantaneously transforming the scowling look he bore because of the scar into one of pure, childlike joy.
“It’s called a Foxhound,” Mitch said proudly.
Dan walked a slow circle around the resting beast. It was like his old Discovery on steroids. A v-shaped hull gave it an aggressive stance. He opened the rear doors – the only way inside the protective cocoon – and saw four seats in the back as well as two up front.
“We were suffering badly from roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan,” explained Mitch, “so this was developed to replace the Land Rovers we were using. Four wheel steering too.”
Dan had heard enough. It was his; it had to be. Bullet proof and blast proof, all feelings of loss for the comfortable 4x4 he left behind evaporated.
Leah smiled at him.
“Shotgun,” she called out with a smirk.
Sending Jack, Adam, and Neil back with the big supply truck to fetch the rest of the group, they set about deciding what else to take and where to search for more supplies.
The camp was huge. They avoided the barrack blocks for no other reason than they didn’t want to find the skeletons of so many men and women, but stores were found and stockpiles of uniform raided.
Over the next two days they stripped down everything they carried, replaced their own equipment with better items and gathered their strength. Try as they might, nothing they had with them could bypass the physical security to access the weapons lockers.
In terms of firepower, they had to make do with what they had. Luckily, that was still quite a lot. Dan marvelled that they had travelled all this distance and the only shots fired were for hunting, but that was a matter of luck too, he guessed.
Refreshed, replenished and in far more safety and comfort than before, they prepared to resume their journey south.
Leading the way in his Foxhound with Leah beside him he glanced over his shoulder at Lukas and Marie as Ash nosed his way in between the two front seats to get a good view of the road ahead. They were followed by the large transport truck bearing the majority of the group as well as box upon box of ration packs; the store of MREs caused great delight as most of them had never eaten out of a self-heating tinfoil bag before.
Behind them came Neil’s tanker, fully stocked with diesel full of additives to prolong the life of the fuel. That was another thing Dan hadn’t realised; he never thought to question the sell-by date on fuel, but Mitch assured him that the stocks on the bases were full of chemicals to keep them viable as they were a stockpile and not an everyday use.
At the tail came Mitch with Adam beside him, a tried and tested military snatch Land Rover similar to their old Defenders bringing up the rear.
Armed, armoured, and well equipped they rolled south toward Munich.
Only to find the road barred not three miles away.
EPILOGUE
“If we stay here then they’ll find us,” Lexi hissed at the other three from the deep cover of the woodland they hid in. Nobody could counter that with any feasible logic.
“We’ve got to get away from here,” she finished, taking control for the first time since Dan had left.
Moving as carefully as they could still made every footfall sound like a firework display as the dried and broken branches snapped under their boots. Melissa cried quietly whilst Chris remained silent.
It took them an hour to move through the darkness around the lake to find the blocked access road leading back to the tarmac. The rusting hulks of the vehicles dumped there by Ewan after the last attack on their home loomed ahead.
Crouching by the side of a wreck, Lexi listened intently.
Leaning back to Paul she told him what she knew.
“Voices. At least two men,” she said.
Paul nodded and switched places with her. He watched though the darkness, seeing the flash of a lighter as one of them lit a cigarette. He listened for a few minutes before turning back.
“Two of them, and they have a vehicle,” he said.
Lexi thought for a minute.
“No guns,” she said, unslinging her rifle and handing it to Chris as she whispered for them to stay put. Lexi had never followed suit and equipped herself with a suppressed weapon, suddenly regretting that decision. A gunshot would bring their attackers down on them; something that none of them wanted. Paul did the same, handing his own rifle to Melissa who held it as though it would explode at any moment.
As slowly as they could, she and Paul crept out of their hiding place and inched towards the two bored sentries. Being given the perimeter cordon was a job for the lame and the lazy; it seemed as the two did nothing but complain about their allocated task.
One was sat in the passenger side of a car, carelessly bathing himself in the soft yellow light. He would be completely blind to anything over two paces away whereas their own night vision was well attuned by now. The other played it perfectly for them.
“I need a piss,” he announced to his dull-witted partner as he wandered away into the undergrowth.
He passed only a few feet away from Paul, who struck like a snake. Rising from his crouch he wrapped his left arm tightly around the man’s neck and pulled him tight to his body. With his right hand he pulled the opposite side of his head painfully down.
No sound could escape his mouth and Paul dropped his body weight into the back of his knees to take him down. Leaning back, he exerted every ounce of pressure
he could muster; the long hours of his life spent lifting weights suddenly meaning the difference between life and death. The combination of the force on his head pressing the bony part of his left wrist into the side of the man’s neck made his struggles short lived.
With a massive effort that betrayed Paul’s sheer strength, he violently twisted the man’s head towards him. The sickening sound of a single, sinuous crunch died away in the following silence. Breathing heavily, he gently laid the dead man down.
The lazy one on the car was still complaining. When he didn’t receive any verbal ratification for his complaints, he called out to his partner.
Receiving only silence in return, he climbed out of the lit interior of the car and tried to blink away his immediate blindness.
Movement flashed in front of him, and still he failed to react. A blonde woman appeared from the dark and hit him hard in the chest with a knee. He slammed back into the car and drew breath to shout an alarm when he was struck hard in the throat and a red hot burning sensation exploded in his groin.
Lexi drove her knife hilt first into his windpipe, the reversed it and plunged the blade into the inside of his hip joint where it met the top of his fleshy thigh. Struggling to hold her hand over his mouth she sawed the knife backwards and forwards until rewarded by a pressurized spurt of hot blood. Holding him there she watched the life drain almost instantly from his eyes as she let go to watch him slump to the floor.
Paul joined her, saw what she had done and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“We need to go,” he whispered again, running back to fetch the others. Lexi nodded to him, even though he had already gone. Wiping her hand and her knife on her victim, she began removing his weapons before dragging his body away to the bushes to hide it with the other.
Paul had retrieved similar weapons from the man he had killed and all four piled into the car. Setting off slowly, he drove for over an hour in near darkness before he stopped.
He killed the engine to save fuel as silence hung heavy in the car.
“So what so we do now?” asked Melissa from the back in a small voice.
“We go south,” replied Paul.
“We go south, we cross the Channel, and we find the others.”
END OF BOOK FOUR
The story continues in AFTER IT HAPPENED BOOK FIVE: SANCTUARY
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Hope: After It Happened Book 4 Page 16
