The double doors to the village hall swung open and in walked five men. Everyone sitting at the tables turned to look. The men headed straight towards the assembly. “Err, breakfast’s over I’m afraid,” Shaw said, climbing out of his chair.
“That’s too bad,” said Troy as he continued towards them.
Puzzlement continued to reign on the faces of the council until all five of the men withdrew sidearms. “What the hell?” Shaw said as both he and Hughes reached for their own weapons and jumped to their feet simultaneously.
“Don’t even think about it,” Troy boomed, aiming his gun towards Lucy’s head.
Shaw and Hughes stopped dead. “What is this?” Shaw demanded.
The doors swung open again, and Angel walked in. “I told you to keep watch,” Troy said as he turned to see her bolting the entrance.
“You know I don’t take orders, hun.”
“What’s going on?” Shaw demanded again.
“Well, shug, in business terms, this is what we call a hostile takeover.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t worry, you will. Now, why don’t you just go and sit yourself down and stop getting your panties in a twist?” Angel said as two of the men who had accompanied Troy took Shaw’s then Hughes’s sidearms.
“Okay, tie ’em up,” Troy said, sweeping his weapon around to point at Shaw. Another man stood back with his pistol raised, ready to put down anyone who tried to resist. The council continued to look on slack-jawed and bewildered; the other three soldiers cable-tied the council members’ hands, using the narrow hole in the back of the plastic chair to bind them to their seats. Each one had the same impulse, to struggle and to fight back, but they realised it was futile.
Before they reached her, Lucy quickly delved into her pocket and retrieved a stainless-steel paperclip. She placed it between her index and middle fingers. She held her breath and prayed as her hands were bound together through the rectangular gap in the back of the plastic chair. She relaxed again when the guard moved on to his next captor. A paperclip … one single paperclip. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“Are you going to tell us what the hell this is about?” Hughes said.
“In good time,” Troy replied. He stood there, his gun not wavering for a moment as it pointed directly towards the bridge of Shaw’s nose. When the three men had finished securing the last of the cable ties into place, they retreated from the table and raised their weapons. Troy lowered his and placed it in the back of his jeans.
“Okay, you’ve got our attention,” Shaw said.
Troy laughed. “Your attention. Oh boy, by the end of today we’re going to have a lot more than your attention. Now, I think it’s about time you just shut up and stop acting like you’re still in charge because as of now you’re not in charge of anything.”
Shaw looked around at the rest of his friends. All of them were as stunned as he was. “Now listen,” Angel said, taking over, much to Troy’s irritation. “If you play this thing just like we ask, not a single hair on anybody’s head is going to get ruffled today.”
“Who are you people?” Lucy asked.
“That’s not relevant. What we want is,” Troy said with a menacing smile.
“Look, we want what you’ve got. We want this place … Safe Haven, and I mean what I say. Every last man, woman and child can walk out of here unharmed if you give it to us,” Angel interjected once more.
“Give it to you?” Lucy replied incredulously. “This is our home. We’ve got hundreds of people living up and down this coastline.”
“We know. That’s why we’re not unrealistic with our demands,” Troy continued. “We realise it’s going to take a little while, but we’re here to help you with that.”
“You came in the other day. We housed you, we fed you,” Ruth said.
“Well, that was your problem. You keep an open-door policy at a time like this? You’re lucky you’ve survived as long as you have,” Troy snapped.
“We do it to prove there’s still good in the world, that the people who need help can still get it. If we closed our doors to refugees and the desperate, what would that say about us?” Jenny asked.
“That you had good sense,” Troy said with a wide grin that made him look like a man who had just won the world chess championship.
“You’re mad,” Shaw began. “Five of you against hundreds? Okay. You’ve got those guns, you could kill every last one of us in this room, and then what? You’re insane if you think—”
“Oh boy, well, you just don’t have a clue, do you?” Troy pointed to the radio handset that was sitting on the table in front of Shaw. “You’re going to get on that walkie-talkie and tell all your units to stand down. My fleet is just waiting for my command, and then this place is going to be a whole lot more crowded.”
“Ships? You’re the marauders?” Emma said.
“Marauders?” Troy laughed a little. “Well, yes, I suppose that’s what you’d call us.”
“You’re totally insane,” Shaw said. “I’m not going to give that order. Never in a million years. You can kill me, but there’s no way I’ll let you take Safe Haven.”
“Listen, what Angel said was the truth. We’re going to let everyone walk out of here alive.”
“What, like you did in the Kyle of Lochalsh?” Emma spat.
Troy smiled again. “You might not like my methods, but they’re effective. Right here, right now, the smart play for everybody is to do as I ask. We’re not monsters. We don’t kill people for the sake of it, but make no mistake; we don’t have a problem killing if it helps us get something we want. Now, we don’t want infected running around in a place where we want to settle down, and we don’t want a bloodbath where we use up some of our valuable, yet considerable resources. There is no benefit to us in killing all of you people.”
“Wow! You’re real fuckin’ saints,” Jules said, boring holes through Troy with her eyes.
“Trust me, you don’t want the alternative,” he replied before turning back towards Shaw. “This is the deal. My ships come in here, and every man woman and child gets marched out of Safe Haven unharmed. You all go off and start a new life somewhere else.”
“This is our home. We’ve built our lives here,” Jenny said.
“Past tense. Was your home. You leave here with the clothes on your backs. You leave all the food, vehicles, weapons, supplies, medicines… You leave it all behind, but at least you leave.”
“But we’ve got sick and old people. We’ve got people who aren’t up to making any kind of journey,” Lucy said.
“Well, that’s just too bad,” Troy replied. “This is the deal, take it or leave it.”
Lucy turned towards Shaw. “We’d be putting those people to death.”
Shaw stared at Troy then Angel; then he looked at the other four men. “There’s no reason we can’t come to some kind of compromise. This is a long stretch of coastline. We can all find a place to live here.”
“You don’t listen too good, do you?”
Suddenly Hughes lifted his chair off the floor with his feet and flew backwards, crashing it against the wall. There was a loud crack as plastic split, but the chair did not shatter and free his constraints as he had hoped. He collapsed to the ground, writhing and wriggling, desperate to break free from the cable ties that were bound tightly around his wrists.
Troy and the other men raised their weapons towards the sudden movement, but when they realised Hughes was going nowhere, they lowered them again, just watching and laughing, cruelly. They let Hughes struggle for a few more seconds before two of the men dragged him and his chair back to the table.
“Now y’all should listen to what Troy says.” Angel looked at the women for what seemed like an age. “Some chance of life is better than no chance of life.”
“Chance of life?” Lucy said. “Walk out of here with no food, no shelter, and no weapons. Walk out of here with those sick people with no meds? What chance of life will th
ey have?”
“More than if you don’t do as we say,” Angel replied.
“I’m fed up of jawing,” said Troy. “Now, I’m going to press the talk button on your radio, and you’re going to tell all lookouts to stand down, you’re not going to fire up your siren, and my ships are all going to enter the bay unencumbered.”
“That’s a big word for a piece of shit like you,” Lucy hissed.
Troy’s eyes flared, and he walked across to where she was sitting. He grabbed a handful of her thick hair and pulled her head back, placing his mouth up to her ear. She could feel his rough stubble brush against her lobe as he spoke. “I know lots of big words, darling—disembowelment, decapitation, dismemberment.” He let go of her hair as quickly as he had clutched it and her head fell forward.
Lucy looked across towards Shaw. “You can’t do this. You can’t give that order. If they kill every last one of us in this room, you can’t give that order. It would be the end.”
A heavy silence hung in the air for a few moments as her words sunk in. The nine friends all looked at one another. This meeting had started so routinely and now there was a good chance none of them would be leaving.
Troy pulled a knife from his belt and marched across to Shaw. “Now, are you going to do as I ask and give the order?”
Shaw looked at each of his friends before lifting his head to look at Troy.
“Go fuck yourself!”
chapter 15
“I don’t think you understand, shug, we—”
“No, you don’t understand.” It was George who interrupted her, and every head in the place turned towards him. George, the mild-mannered, logical, thoughtful engineer behind so many projects that had improved life for the citizens of Safe Haven; George, the kind-hearted old gentleman who never had cross words with anyone. “Everyone around this table has stared death in the face a hundred times before. It’s nothing short of a miracle that we’ve lasted as long as we have. You can kill us one by one, but we’ll never kowtow to people like you, and if your ships show up, then everyone in town will come out to fight. We’ve faced down tyrants and bullies before. We’re not scared of the likes of you.”
There was not a member of the council who did not swell with pride as George spoke, despite the dire situation they were in. “Well, ain’t that just adorable,” Angel said, smiling.
Troy’s face remained like stone, and he looked towards two of the men and nodded before turning back towards the table. “You can’t say you weren’t warned.”
The two guards dragged Hughes, chair and all, over towards the stage that had been the platform for speeches, public meetings and even the odd children’s nativity play in its time. Now, though, it was merely an elevated position to make sure the captive audience had a full view of what was going on. The two burly men lifted Hughes, despite his kicking legs. Then, when the chair was up on stage, they climbed up too.
“Come on, you fuckers. Don’t be a pair of little mummy’s boys, take these restraints off and I’ll give you a fair fucking fight.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be happening any time soon,” Troy said.
“Tell you what, three against one. I win, you let us all go. I could take down a bag of shite like you in a heartbeat.”
Troy laughed. “None of you understand yet, do you? But you will in a couple of minutes.”
“What, you think torturing me will make a difference?” Hughes asked as the two men tried to secure their prisoner’s feet. As one of them bent down, Hughes brought his knee up hard. It smashed into the face of his captor, and the guard stumbled back, falling off the stage.
The man hit the floor with a heavy thud and let out a pained groan. Troy removed his weapon again and raised it towards Shaw and the others. “Go help him tie up the prisoner,” he said to another guard, utterly disinterested in the man in agony on the floor who was trying to scramble back to his feet.
The third guard went to join the other on stage. He managed to avoid Hughes’s kicking legs and, eventually, with cable ties and a short length of rope around the prisoner’s midriff, they secured him to the chair properly.
“What, you’re going to torture us one by one until we give in to your demands?” Shaw asked.
“To be honest, I’ve never found torture to be that effective, and I can tell that I’d probably get bored long before you gave me what I want, so let’s call this a demonstration. Yes, that’s what this is. Mercer, do the honours, will you?”
Mercer was the one who hadn’t fallen from the stage. He had worked as a mercenary in Africa for thirteen years after coming out of the United States Army. He had seen the most horrific sights and done things that, no matter how he tried, he would never be able to forget. Today was no different, and as he reached into his belt bag and removed a syringe there was no sadness, or regret, or shame on his face for what he was about to do, it was just business as usual. He looked across to Troy who gave him a nod, and Mercer immediately plunged the needle into Hughes’s neck.
Hughes let out a small grunt as the metal punctured his skin, and the icy liquid entered his body. “What’s that? You’re giving me some kind of truth serum? You want to find out our secrets? Well, good luck with that, you fucking pricks.”
Mercer withdrew the needle and replaced the protective cover before placing it carefully on a trestle table at the back of the small stage; chances were he’d be using it again before the day was over. Then he and the other guard watched. Troy leaned into Shaw. “Now remember, all this could have been avoided, you’ve only got yourself to blame.”
“What is this? What’s going on?” Shaw asked.
“Shh,” Troy said, placing a hand on Shaw’s shoulder. “The show’s about to begin.”
Shaw continued to look at his captor, still baffled, until he heard a loud cough come from the stage. He immediately turned to look at Hughes, whose expression of belligerence had disappeared and had been replaced by one of fear. “What’s happening to him? What did you give him?” Shaw demanded.
“All in good time.”
The entire council was transfixed in terrified silence as they watched the colour drain from Hughes’s face. His cheeks twitched, and his body convulsed as he tried to fight what he realised was happening to him. He grimaced and gritted his teeth as he felt the infection taking over. This was it; after everything he had been through, this was his end. A deep sadness overwhelmed him, and as much as he wanted to shout, and kick, and scream, and damn his captors to hell, it was taking him all his time not to cry. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing how scared he was that this foreign, dark, cold menace was invading his body, consuming him from within.
He began to shiver as he looked towards the council members. Horror and sadness painted their faces in equal measure. His eyes fixed on Jules. Why hadn’t he had the guts to tell her how he had truly felt about her? From the first day they had met, he had been smitten. Now it was too late, but if there was any image he wanted to take with him before this malevolent thing inside devoured him once and for all, it was her face. Not as it was at this moment in time; not with wide-eyed terror and floods of tears blurring her beautiful eyes, but with that smile. That smile of hers was what he wanted in his head.
He could feel the cold spreading quickly, but he needed his petrified brain to do him this one last service. Just remember. Remember the way the corner of her lips curled up before she used to say something funny; remember that laugh—almost like a little girl’s laugh, he wished he could hear it now. Remember the warmth and caring in her eyes whenever she spoke to him. What he wouldn’t give for one last word. But as he looked at her now as even more tears flooded onto her cheeks, he knew that it was all over.
Hughes continued to fight as he watched her. He continued to shake and shiver. He could feel his eyes starting to close, not by choice—his body belonged to something else, some other entity. Tears ran down his face, he was so afraid, so sad, so alone. But then he heard a sweet sound, the voic
e of an angel, and he fought with every last ounce of strength to focus. It was her. It was Jules.
“Don’t fight it, darlin’,” her voice was quivering as she continued to cry. “Just go to sleep now. Close your eyes and go to sleep. We’ll all see you again on the other side. We’ll all be together again soon.”
Hughes froze for a moment. His face had been contorted with pain for the best part of a minute, but as he closed his eyes one last time, the thinnest of smiles stretched his lips. A pause, two, three, four, then dark red blood dribbled out of his mouth and over his chin. His eyes flicked open once again, but they were not his eyes anymore. What sat in that broken plastic chair on stage was no longer Hughes. It was a monster.
Whereas Hughes had writhed and struggled in a vain attempt to fight off the infection, the creature now wriggled and thrashed, desperate to break its constraints and feast on the bountiful warm flesh in front of it. Within a few seconds, its wild movement had toppled the chair over. It continued to convulse, doing its best to shuffle its way across the stage. It had no concept of the physical limits the restraints bound upon it; it had just one goal, a single purpose.
Shaw looked at each of his friends. Tears were flowing from every pair of eyes. He turned his head towards Troy. “You people are monsters.”
“I told you. This was on you. It could all have been avoided. If you’d have just got on that radio and—”
“Don’t you dare put this on any of us, you piece of fuckin’ shite,” hissed Jules. “All we’ve ever tried to do is live our lives. Yet people like you keep showing up.”
“As I was saying”—he turned his head towards Shaw once again—“you needed a demonstration.”
“To what end? There are quicker ways to kill someone,” he replied, looking back towards the growling figure on stage.
“I don’t need lessons in how to kill, and that’s not what this was. Now, this is how it’s going to play. You’re going to send a message out to your people. The rest of my team is already in position. Across at that library of yours, you’ve got at least a dozen youngsters.” He turned towards Jenny. “You must have the best part of twenty people over in that pub car park of yours, sawing away to your—” he turned towards George “—specifications, so you can give those darn marauders a lickin’ the next time they show up.” Troy glanced across at Angel. He could see a renewed respect for him on her face. He was in charge now. Women like her, they liked that. They liked men of power. He unclipped the radio from his own belt. “One word from me and my team spring into action. Within a minute, we’ll all be gone, and you’ll be shoulder-deep in death stink.”
Safe Haven (Book 6): Is This The End of Everything? Page 13
