“There’s only one bastard mad enough to drive like that on these roads.”
The car came to a skidding stop twenty feet away, and the driver side opened. “Okay, what’s the plan?” Mike asked, walking towards them.
“See what I mean?” said Barney.
✽ ✽ ✽
“So, what’s your name?” the young woman asked.
“I am Talikha.”
“Talikha? I like that. They call me Sam.”
“Sam? I’m Sammy.”
“Well, Sam’s not my real name. This lot decided to start calling me it on account of my swords. Short for Samurai. They got tired of saying that though, so they shortened it to Sam.”
“Oh,” Sammy replied, disappointed.
“Is it much further, Sam?” April asked.
“Not much. We’ll get water and rest and then tomorrow we might come up with a fresh plan.” A girl walking by the side of Sam began to cry. Sam placed an arm around her shoulder. “It’s okay, Tess. We’ll figure something out.”
Talikha wondered how Sam had come to be in charge of all these youngsters, but there had been enough questions for one day. All she wanted now was to sleep and find a quiet corner with Humphrey to think about Raj. They made the rest of the short journey in silence and as they reached the entrance to the car park of the monumental hotel, Sam stopped.
“What is it?” Ryan asked.
She put her thumb and middle finger in her mouth and whistled loudly. There was a short pause, and then a young boy shouted, “Sam, is that you?”
“Yep, it’s me. We’ve got some guests.”
A car engine started, and a Vauxhall Corsa appeared out of the entrance to a farmer’s field twenty metres ahead. It clumsily negotiated the turn, headed towards them and then steered left into the car park. The overhead light was on in the car, and Talikha could see the boy driving it was just a teenager. The children in the passenger seat and rear seats looked much younger. “The rest of your army?”
“Yeah. Aiden’s thirteen. He’s second in command and the one who spotted you. We headed out to try and change your mind about coming this way, and if we didn’t come back within an hour, he was going to take the youngest ones and try to find somewhere else.”
“You look after them all by yourself?” Talikha asked.
“There were more of us. I had a friend… She—” Sam broke off. She’d shared enough for one day.
Talikha knew not to press any harder. The horde followed the car into the hotel grounds. The half-moon cast a spotlight on the Highlands’ stage and the hotel was the star attraction, once the venue for the upper classes, dignitaries and royalty, now a doss house for five hundred plus refugees.
“You said you had water?” April said. “None of us have had a drink in hours.”
“Aiden!” Sam called the young boy over as the rest of them climbed out of the vehicle. “Show this lady where the stream is.”
“Stream?” April said. “Isn’t that a little risky?”
Sam pointed to the silhouette of a foreboding black mountain. “It flows from there. We’ve been drinking it, and it tastes good. Nobody’s had the runs or anything.”
“It’s still a little dangerous to drink it without boiling.”
“I checked it out this afternoon. I went halfway up. There wasn’t a sign of anything to worry about, and it’s not really like we’ve got a lot of choices. Every pot and pan in the place has been taken. Virtually everything’s gone.”
“Regrettably, that will have been our people,” Talikha said.
“And now the ones who have taken over your town are reaping all the benefits while we sleep on hard floors and drink stream water.”
“So it would seem.”
“I’m hungry,” Tess said.
“I know, I’m hungry too. We can’t do anything about it right now, but first thing tomorrow we’ll try to catch some fish or something. How does that sound?” Sam asked.
“Like I’ll be hungry again tomorrow.”
Tess didn’t mean it to sound funny, but the adults couldn’t help but laugh.
Sam stopped at the door as others began to file into the magnificent building. “I’m going to take the first watch,” she said. “I’ll make sure that if we get any visitors, at least there’ll be some advanced warning.”
Talikha was tired and hurting physically and emotionally, but everybody was looking to her now. “Humphrey and I will keep you company.”
“Well, if you two have got the first watch, April and me will take the second,” Kyle said.
“Okay,” Sam said. “My spidey sense is telling me this night’s still got more surprises in store for us.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“You okay, Jen?” Mike asked as Stan’s motorboat bounced over the black water.
“I will be when tonight’s over.”
“You’ll be fine. It will be like when we were back in Morecambe, remember?” he said with a smile.
“If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working, darling.”
“Hey, you’ve got a short memory. You dug in and did what was necessary. We’re not going to be getting into a gunfight with these people. We’re going to take them by surprise, they’ll do the sensible thing and lay down their weapons, and Bob’s your uncle.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Mike, but how much blood did Lucy take?” Shaw asked.
“Hardly any. I feel as fit as a fiddle.”
“Uh-huh.”
They continued in silence around the cove and Raj steered the boat towards the white sands. He cut the engine a few metres before dry land, and he, Shaw and Mike jumped out, pulling the boat clear of the water and allowing Jenny to climb out without getting her feet wet.
“You’re such a gentleman,” she said as Shaw took her hand.
“Jen,” he replied, taking her a little to the side, “you understand why I brought you, don’t you?”
She smiled and touched Shaw’s cheek gently, a gesture unseen by Mike and Raj as they secured the boat and gathered the weapons.
“You really are very, very sweet sometimes, do you know that? Of course I realise. Barnes has to be where he is. There’s no way we could put Wren in the line of fire if things went wrong, or George for that matter, and as much as I love Ruth and Richard, they’re not really in the best place at the moment.”
“Mike’s right, they’re not going to put up a fight after Barney’s wounded a couple of them.”
“If you say so.”
“Trust me, I’ve got a feeling in my bones.” He smiled in the moonlight, and his teeth almost seemed fluorescent, then he kissed her hand. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Jen.”
“Tell me something, are you sure you’re gay? I mean maybe you just need an older woman to show you the ropes.”
Shaw burst out laughing. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed, but it felt good. It rose from within him and seemed to rattle his ribcage.
“What’s so funny?” Mike asked as he and Raj came to join them.
“I’ll tell you when you’re older, sweetheart,” Jenny replied as she took one of the rifles from Raj. “Come on then, let’s get this over with.” She slung the rifle over her shoulder, and the four of them marched off the beach and into the woodland.
“Okay,” Shaw said, flicking on his torch, “we head south for a couple of hundred metres then we’ll be next to the road. There’ll be enough light for us to see then if we stay parallel to it.”
“I do not wish to be the harbinger of doom, but doesn’t that also mean that there will be enough light for them to see us as we approach?” Raj asked.
Shaw didn’t answer. He widened the beam of his torch and started walking. Mike followed him, leaving Raj and Jenny standing there alone.
“Do you think he heard you?” Raj could not see Jenny’s face, but he could tell she was smiling. “Come on, love, where’s your sense of humour? We’ve all got to die sometime.”
chapter 29
Emma stood at the landing window for the best part of five minutes before returning to the kitchen. “No lights, no movement, nothing,” she said, looking at Jules’s face as Lucy took her blood pressure.
“Well, that’s healthier than it was. Her colour’s a little better after the transfusion too. How strong are you feeling?”
“Huh?”
Lucy removed the stethoscope from around her neck and placed the blood pressure machine on the kitchen counter. “We should move her onto the sofa in the living room so that she’s more comfortable. She’s not going to be up and about for a while, and a kitchen table isn’t ideal.”
“Okay. Let me get a few lights in the hallway so we can see what we’re doing.” Emma collected some candles and lanterns and left the kitchen.
Lucy placed her hand on Jules’s forehead. “Come on, sweetie. You keep fighting.”
A minute later, Emma was back in the kitchen and on the other side of the table. She grasped two corners of the quilt and Lucy did the same at the other end. “One, two, three.” They slowly lifted Jules and even more slowly negotiated their way through the kitchen door, down the hall, and into the living room. They tenderly lowered the quilt and its cargo onto the soft sofa.
“Okay, you keep an eye on her, I’ll go tidy up,” Lucy said, starting to head out of the room once more.
“Jesus, Lucy, you’ve never stopped. The cleaning up can wait a while. Why don’t you sit a minute?”
“I can’t. While Mike and Sammy and Jake are still out there, I can’t. If I don’t stay busy, my mind starts playing tricks on me.”
“They’re all going to be okay. We know Talikha led everybody out, we heard that for ourselves. She would guard Sammy and Jake with her life. And Mike? Lucy, it’s Mike.”
“That’s what worries me.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“I’m telling you something’s wrong, they should have been here by now,” the Hispanic female guard said, peering through the darkness, hoping to see a vehicle trundling around the corner to bring their replacements.
“And I told you, Rosa, there’s nothing in the world of fuck I can do about it,” Blaze growled. “The battery’s gone dead on the radio, not that the worthless piece of shit was much good before that, but we’re here until we’re here so keep a watch on the road and stop pissing me off.”
“Puto pendejo,” Rosa mumbled, walking away once again.
“Watch yourself, girl. I know what that means.”
“I bet you do, I’m sure you hear it a lot,” she called behind her.
“Jesus Christ, the mouth on her,” Blaze said as his best friend walked towards him holding out a packet of cigarettes. Blaze took one and placed it between his lips. His friend did the same; they lit them and stood in silence for a moment, savouring the taste.
“She makes a good point, y’know,” he said in his cockney accent.
“What point’s that, Bill? That I’m an asshole?”
“Well, two good points then.” Blaze chuckled but Bill continued. “They should have been here long before now.”
“You don’t think I realise that?”
“Blaze, you and I have known each other a hell of a long time. Of course I know you realise that. Question is what are we going to do about it?”
“Look, by my reckoning, they’re maybe an hour overdue. Could be anything. Could be vehicle trouble, could be that those folks Troy was holding managed to escape, could be all sorts. They’ve probably been trying to reach us, but since our piece of shit radio’s given up the goddamn ghost, we’re in the dark here. We’ll wait for another half hour and then I’ll send a team out. One of the properties on this end of the track must still have a functioning vehicle.”
“You’re right. It’s probably a flat or something. These roads are a bitch. My guess is they weren’t that great before everything turned to shit.”
“I don’t know why in hell Troy thought this was somewhere we’d want to live out our days.”
“Hey, don’t knock it. I’d live in a tent in the middle of Hyde Park if it meant I didn’t have to spend another minute in that tin can.”
“I suppose you’re—”
“You’re surrounded. Drop your weapons and put your hands up!” shouted the voice from the darkness of the woodland.
Despite the instruction, all sixteen men and women raised their rifles and aimed towards the tree line. “Steady, nothing rash,” Blaze said to them before turning towards where the voice had come from. “How about you come out of there and show your face so we can discuss this man to man?”
A radio hissed in the trees, and within a couple of seconds one of the soldiers screamed and fell to the ground. “My leg. They got me in the fucking leg.”
“Aaarrrggghhh!” One of the female soldiers howled this time as she fell face down, dropping her rifle as she went.
“They’re firing from behind,” another voice called.
“This don’t feel right. I think this is smoke ’n’ mirrors, Billy boy. If you had a greater force and surrounded people who’d killed a shit load of your friends and taken over your town, would you be asking them to put down their weapons or would you be blasting them all the way to Hell?”
“So what do we do?”
“Charge!” Blaze began firing and started running towards the trees where the voice had come from. Bill was right beside him for a second or two before the front of his head imploded. “Holy shit!” Blaze muttered. Bloody chunks of brain glistened in the moonlight as they flew through the air. Another figure, a woman this time, cried out but only briefly as her chest exploded outwards like a scene from a horror movie. Once they were in the woodland, they would be protected from the sniper at least.
A volley of automatic rifle fire from behind a tree thirty metres or so along the forest edge chopped down another three guards. Then, from the other direction, a more sustained attack took out another five. His squad returned fire, but the assassins had the trees to shield them. Another sniper bullet took out Rosa. She went down silently. That was a first, Blaze thought as he finally reached the tree line. There were only five of them left, and two of those were lying injured on the road. How did they get the drop on us like this? Damn it, I screwed this up well and truly.
He pulled a small flashlight from his belt and placed it between his teeth. The gunfire had stopped for the moment. Now they were playing hide and seek. “Payton, Carlos, stay with me, and if you’ve got flashlights, turn them on. I think we’re looking for four perpetrators here—the sniper, the shouter, and the two sons o’ bitches with the automatics.”
“I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit,” Payton said.
“Keep it together.”
A twig snapped to the left and Blaze shot around. His torch lit up the trees, and he shot a few rounds in the general direction of the sound but to no avail.
“I say we should switch the flashlights off. We’re advertising where we are,” said Payton.
“And I say you should shut your goddamn mouth and keep your eyes open. We ain’t going to see shit if we don’t have light, dumbass.”
“Over there, what was that?” Carlos yelled. Blaze looked to where he was pointing. The branch of a shrub was flapping wildly as if someone had just brushed by it. The three of them raised their weapons and fired into the darkness.
“Keep it tight,” Blaze said, taking the lead and heading towards the shrub. The other two followed as they went further and further into the woods like Hansel, Gretel and guest following a trail of breadcrumbs.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Where’s Mike?” Shaw asked as Jenny arrived back at the rendezvous point.
She let out a deflated breath. “When they started firing, he told me to run, so that’s what I did.”
The bushes rustled again, and Shaw brought his rifle up, night scope and all. “Raj, thank God. Have you seen Mike?”
“No. I came straight back here as you said.”
“Shit!”
&nb
sp; “It’s my fault, I should have stayed with him,” Jenny said. “I’m useless, absolutely useless. I didn’t even get a shot off, I just ran.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Jen. The last thing we expected was for them to open fire. By my count, you got three, Raj. I got five and Barney killed three with two still down injured on the road.”
“What should we do?” Raj asked.
“There’s not much we can do. I’m going to head back to the tree line and keep my eyes peeled. The last thing we want to be doing is going on a bloody duck hunt in the woods at night. You two stay here and stay low.” Shaw vanished into the trees while Jenny and Raj sat down on the wide, flat rock that they had all been told to meet back at.
“Oh God, I hope he’s okay. I feel so guilty,” Jenny said.
Raj took hold of her hand. “Mike told you to run and that is what you did. There is nothing to feel guilty about.”
“I suppose you’re right. I mean what bloody good would I be anyway?”
“Jenny,” he began, placing his other hand on top of hers. “If it wasn’t for you, there would be no Safe Haven. You helped build it from the ground up. Because you don’t use a gun that does not mean you aren’t a fighter. We are a whole. Alone there are things we cannot do; as a family there is nothing we can’t do. Mike is a different kind of fighter but no more fierce than you.”
“You’re a sweetheart. You always know what to say, but I think you’re wrong about me being fiercer than Mike. When someone tries to hurt his family, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who is more frightening. My only hope is that out there, right now, he’s the hunter and not the hunted.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“Barney, it’s Shaw. Over,” he whispered into the radio.
The volume was turned all the way down, so Shaw held the speaker to his ear. “Shaw, this is Barney. Go ahead. Over.”
“Two injured on the road. Three loose in the forest. Myself, Jenny and Raj are all okay and accounted for. Mike’s whereabouts and status unknown. Over.”
Safe Haven (Book 6): Is This The End of Everything? Page 25
