Who Could Do This?
“Go,” Dan whispered, having sunk low into a firing position behind a tiny patch of raised ground. Advancing through open fields with little cover was fraught with danger when you expected an attack at any moment, and even the flimsiest of cover felt like a fortified trench.
I stood from the small depression where I’d been lying flat, Nemesis following at my heel automatically, and bounded forwards in the low body position with bent legs and rifle up ready. I dropped to my left knee behind a low wall and smelled the source of the smoke instantly.
My nose turned up at the odour. I was unable to place it, but my brain conjured the idea of overcooked meat left to burn on an open fire. Wood smoke mingled with the smell of burnt flesh but there was an element I couldn’t place.
When we crested the low ground into the small valley where the homesteaders had settled, the smell grew stronger until I rounded the side of an old brick-built barn to see the farm’s courtyard.
I hadn’t been affected by any waves of sickness since I had action to concentrate on, but when my eyes took in the source of the burning smell and connected it with my senses my stomach boiled and flipped. I wheeled away back out of the yard and vomited onto the ground, only just missing Nemesis by an inch. The dog tucked her back end underneath her body as she danced aside in confusion. Both Mitch and Dan heard me expelling the contents of my stomach but as what had caused it was just as abhorrent to them, neither passed comment or judgement.
It wasn’t the sight that had caused my reaction, not that they would know that, but the smell had flipped a switch inside me.
A man, at least I assumed it was a man as his hair had burned away and only his legs and shoulders retained any kind of shape, lay on what had been his belly over a firepit. He hadn’t caught fire, not from what I saw, but had burned away nonetheless, like leaving a piece of meat over a hot plate on direct heat.
A low whistle from Dan caught my hearing and I glanced around. I saw Mitch look over in the direction of the sound and nod before moving off to encircle the farm buildings and search the perimeter. Dan had ordered the move without me, thinking me incapacitated by the sight of the burned body. I wiped my mouth, sniffed in to dislodge something stuck at the back of my nose and nearly threw up again before I spat it out to startle Nemesis again - she had never seen me be that disgusting before.
Gun up, legs bent and upper body scanning over my weapon sights I went back into the courtyard and allowed my mind to block out the sensory feed from the fire. Seeing the littered body parts and broken bodies surrounding a chopping block soaked a dark red was little better, and soon the buzzing of flies filled my hearing to add another confusing element to my input.
“My heel,” I muttered to Nem as I started to clear the outbuildings, beginning with the one on my immediate right and working around the courtyard until I emerged into the daylight near the main house. Ash rounded the building and loped towards us, seeming angry and subdued at the same time. It struck me that not everyone soaked up emotions from their animals, but then most people didn’t live and fight alongside their own like they were an extension of themselves. Nem and I were linked somehow, just as Dan and Ash were. I glanced down at Nemesis to see her reflect the same angry nervous tension I felt.
Death was everywhere, littering the ground and clogging up what should have been the warm, fresh air of southern France in the early summer. My eyes played a vile form of jigsaw puzzles as I tried to mentally connect the severed hands and feet with the limbless bodies. I stepped closer, reaching out with the toe of one boot to flip something over in the centre of a puddle of dried blood.
“Oh my fucking god!” I erupted, turning away and trying not to puke again. This time had nothing to do with my ‘condition’ and everything to do with what I hadn’t recognised in the twisted, shrivelled piece of human flesh. Dan emerged, looking at me with questioning, wide eyes until I pointed at what had caused my outburst. He turned, taking it in until the realisation hit him too.
“Oh,” he said simply, the word catching in his throat.
“What?” Mitch called out softly from across the yard.
“They cut off…” Dan started, “they cut off one guy’s…” He shook his head, unable to say the words out loud and make it real. “House,” he said to the stunned Scotsman. “Leah, cover outside.”
I knew the real reason he told me not to go into the house. I knew that he was protecting me from the horrors inside as his mind had already connected the dots. Quite literally dismembered men outside and no women. Either they were taken, or they were inside, and either option would stop anyone experiencing the discovery from sleeping for a very long time.
I kept my back to the door of the farmhouse and heard the faint noises of doors opening and furniture being shoved aside as the two men and Ash searched. Before they emerged, I heard Mitch’s muffled voice growling “bastards,” over and over again. Sounds of coughing reached me and I realised that one of them was losing their lunch too. That meant that whatever was inside was something that my hyper-sensitive nose didn’t want to experience if it had made either of those hardened people throw up.
“What is it?” I called out. “What’s in there?”
“Stay out there!” Dan barked back at me using his ‘alpha’ voice. There seemed to be an echo, a kind of resonance when he did that, and beside me Nemesis seemed to shrink a little as she took a series of nervous steps backwards. I stayed outside as my inherent need to know everything was pushed aside by fear and sickness. Unable to stay in the courtyard and hear the undulating waves of buzzing flies swell and ebb in intensity, I climbed the side of a log store and perched on top of a low roof to keep watch. Whoever had done this was long gone, but the sight of the scattered bodies was too much to take in if I didn’t have to as my mind kept trying to trace the dismembered body parts back to their original place.
I looked outwards, cutting up the horizon into sections and scanning each in turn to give a structure to my watching. Every few minutes I let my gaze fall out of focus and simply let the world ahead haze out of clarity. It was easier to spot movement that way, at least that’s what I had found during the countless hours of guard duty I had conducted since I had turned thirteen. The downside of doing that for too long was that it put me into a very relaxed state, and dulled my other senses which was why I jumped a mile out of my skin and yelped a little when Dan spoke from behind and below me.
“All clear?” he asked, the words thick in his throat. I turned and looked down at him, seeing his eyes red and puffy.
“Yeah,” I told him, my own voice subdued also.
“Hold the fort for ten minutes?” he asked me as he pulled at the rubber mouthpiece of the drinking tube snaking over the right shoulder strap of his old tactical vest. I waited as he took four long pulls on the tube, his stubbled cheeks sinking inwards as he gulped down the tepid water.
“We’re going to put the others inside,” he said with his eyes on his task as he pulled on a pair of thin, black gloves without looking up at mine. I didn’t know what to say to make it better, to soothe his damaged soul for what he had to do, so I just told him I’d keep watch.
Mitch was already dragging a man from the crumpled position he was in to stretch him out flat on his back. He gripped the dead man’s clothing at the shoulders as he had no hands to give him any purchase on the arms. Dan slung his weapon, picking up the legs as they lifted him as reverently as they could. I watched until they had manoeuvred him inside and scanned back to where he had fallen. His hands were still there, discarded like unwanted crusts at a meal. I turned back to watch, not wanting to see Dan and Mitch forced to stoop and recover the severed body parts.
I blinked, my eyes lingering closed but instead of the darkness inside my eyelids my brain saw the gruesome scene I had just tried to escape.
Hands.
A bare foot. Another still in a boot with the shoelace untied.
The back of a man’s head with his sha
ggy brown hair matted thick with blood above the ruin of his severed neck and exposed spine.
I opened my eyes to rid myself of the imagery, knowing that the scene would be one of those things that stayed with me forever just a vividly as when I first saw and smelt them. Most of those feelings, those extreme experiences that existed inside the vault I kept locked deep inside myself, revolved around death:
The death of my mother and younger brother before everything changed.
The death of the first man I had killed.
The death of the feral dogs who had attacked and so nearly killed us.
The death of Penny. Of Joe. Of Jack.
The feeling of fear when I was stranded and alone after being ambushed a few years before.
This butcher shop scene I presided over was added to the vault as I forced it inside to start the process of locking it away.
“Still okay?” Dan called up to me from behind again. I said nothing. I didn’t turn around, just raised my right hand away from the grip of my weapon to hold a raised thumb aloft. Nemesis whined quietly below me, not liking the separation of the height difference between us.
“Grab that,” I heard Mitch say. Curious, I turned then to see Dan lifting a log from the fire that still burned. He carried it carefully towards the house and saw me looking back at him.
“Be ready to go,” he told me, and leaned into the house to drop the flaming wood inside. The fire didn’t catch straight away which I naively expected it to, and I just watched the empty doorway for a full minute until reality reasserted itself. I climbed down and soothed Nem as she spun a circle around me to check I hadn’t changed in the few minutes I had been away from her. Dan came back into view carrying something and Ash following intently with great interest and a raised snout as he tiptoed on his front paws to try and put his head into the crate in his master’s hands. I saw what it was, and knew that Ash would be interested as he thought it was either a play thing or a snack.
“Geddawwff!” Dan grumbled at the dog, nudging him away with his right hip with as much success as he’d have trying to stack tennis balls. “Bloody dog.”
Dan pushed him away again, prompting an undulating grumble as the big dog backpedalled.
“No,” Dan said conversationally, “you can’t have it.”
Another grumble from Ash as he sat back on his haunches and licked his chops as though he answered the man.
“We need it,” Dan said as he pointed at the pigeon in the small crate made from nailed together wooden slats. “That’s how we send messages home. It’s not for you.”
Ash issued a muted barking sound through his nose and cocked his head to one side.
“No,” Dan insisted. “Piss off.” He pulled the small notebook from the pouch on his vest and smoothed it out on the wooden table he had perched at. He left it there while he fished in his vest again and produced a small leather pouch which he rested down to take out a pinch of the dried, shredded tobacco and spread it evenly on the small paper he produced. He rolled it between his thumbs and his forefingers until it formed an even, thin tube and licked the edge of the paper to complete the ritual.
He pinched the errant strands of precious tobacco from one end and placed it in his mouth to produce a bright yellow disposable lighter adorned like it was a packet of chewing gum. Flicking his thumb down on the top of the thing made to look like a packet of juicy fruit he introduced flame to cigarette and closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply but slowly to lean back and close his eyes. He lifted his trigger finger up and curled it around the thin smoke, taking it out of his mouth as he held the toxic cloud in his lungs to get the full effect.
Like all addicts Dan knew just how far to push his high and blew the smoke out in a long stream of relaxed satisfaction as he picked up the stub of pencil he kept with the book. He scribbled out a short note, tore the sheet out of the book and rolled it tight before folding it back on itself and reaching inside the cage to grab the flapping pigeon. He tucked the message into the leather tube tied to the bird’s leg and lifted it out of the cage to stand and toss it high into the air. He watched the bird fly out of sight, just as Ash did as he wheeled on the spot in the vain hope that it would fall from the sky into his loving embrace. He sat, took another pull on the rolled cigarette and bent to write the message again on another piece of paper before repeating the process and releasing a second bird to flap noisily upwards and turn towards the sea where whatever magic gave it the genetically formed sense of direction sent it after its partner towards Sanctuary.
“What did you tell them?” I asked him, wanting to know the content of the message.
“That we’ve found the settlers,” Dan said as he watched his dog staring intently after the shrinking speck of the flying messenger. He took another pull on the cigarette and made a noise as he spat a loose strand of tobacco from his lips. “And that they’ve been killed.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else,” Dan intoned with finality. He knew that I knew those in receipt of those messages, sent in duplicate as a standardised failsafe, would read between the lines and factor in the brutal treatment of the man who would be carried to our clifftop burial site and shown more respect in death than he had been shown at the end of his life.
“Who…” I said, stopping as I didn’t know where my train of thought was heading.
“Who would do this?” Dan asked gently, taking the last pull on the small smoke and dropping it onto the ground. “Bad people, Leah. Very bad people. People like Bronson. Like Le Bloody Chasseur. Like that fat fucker in Wales. Just more bad people.”
I took his point, meaning that the who wasn’t important, only the what. Whoever it was, they had stirred the hornet’s nest. They had woken the beast.
A cracking sound came from the house and interrupted our taught conversation making me spin to react to the noise. I lowered my half raised weapon and stood back to my full height as the reaction had raised the gun and lowered my body to meet the threat somewhere in the middle. I relaxed, seeing that it was just the fire taking hold in the house when my brain finally understood what had happened.
“We’re… we’re burning them?” I asked, turning back to Dan.
“It’s a cremation, of sorts,” he said softly. “We… we couldn’t be sure to put the right bits of the right people together if we buried them, so we decided to cremate them all together.”
“Together in life, together in death,” I said solemnly. I felt more than saw Dan’s eyebrows raise in answer to my uncharacteristic words. “Piss off,” I told him, “just let that one ride, okay?”
Dan said nothing, just raised two palms in mock surrender and took a few paces backwards as I watched the flames lick up the wooden frame of the front door.
He was on his third smoke by the time the heat from the burning house grew too hot to remain there. We retreated outside the walls of the homestead to watch as the first lick of orange flame burst from the break in the tiled roof of the house. Black smoke billowed upwards to be whipped west and dissipate over the plateau.
“Tracks,” Mitch said. Dan and I turned to face in his direction to see him bent down examining the ground.
“Six men,” he said in a voice that made me think he was trying to do a Neil and quote a film, “wearing boots. They walked…” He stood and stared at the ground ahead theatrically.
“They went south east,” I said, “following the obvious path to the coast.” Mitch glared at me, seeing how unresponsive I was to his distracting humour at that point, and dropped the act. I led on, Nemesis at my side with Dan and Ash behind me. I glanced back to see Mitch crossing himself as his lips moved silently to say a prayer over the burning house.
I remember now that I felt like I was the only one to be affected by what I’d seen there, like the other two were hardened to it and somehow coped better. I suppose that betrayed my age and inexperience at the time, because I wasn’t the only one with a locked vault deep inside my soul where all the really bad things
went.
The only difference between mine and theirs was that mine wasn’t full to the brim.
Contact
We followed the tracks for less than ten minutes before Dan, who had taken over from me on point as we always did at regular intervals to keep the person at the lead fresh, stopped and sank to one knee as he held out a flat hand to make Ash lie flat with the ‘down’ signal.
I froze when he did out of learned habit and made the same gesture to Nemesis. She lowered herself like a machine in total silence and pricked her ears up to stare intently forward. I couldn’t see or hear anything, but when pitted against the ears of the dogs our own hearing was pitiful by comparison. Dan went flat, stretching himself slowly out to crawl forwards with tiny movements so as not to betray our position to whoever or whatever had caused him the concern. Being further back neither Mitch nor I went prone, but simply waited as patiently as we could to find out what had sparked his sudden caution.
The far younger version of me had learned not to ask questions at these tense moments, as I had figured out that I would always find out soon enough and distracting someone in Dan’s position would only ever get a best-case scenario of being ignored. Just because I wouldn’t ask what was going on didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try and find out though, and I slowly leaned forwards from my kneeling position to stretch out onto my elbows with my carbine held in the crooks of both elbows. I began to move forwards like a bulky caterpillar as I walked my elbows forward in turn before slowly contracting my stomach muscles and sliding my knees forward. The thought hit me that I wouldn’t be able to do that in a couple of months’ time and I mentally kicked myself for losing focus; if there weren’t literally pirates anchored off our coast then I might have time to deal with the situation I was in. Crawling forwards with as much control as I could muster, I inched my way towards Dan’s side as a rustle of dry grass made a sound beside my left foot. I glanced back, careful even then to move my head slowly to not catch the attention of any unseen watchers with the amateur mistake of fast body movements, to see Nemesis maintaining her loyal heel position even as she belly crawled just as I did. It was both adorable and ultimately cool in equal measures as I caught eyes with my dog who was more tactically aware than most soldiers we had ever trained.
Piracy: The Leah Chronicles (After it Happened Book 8) Page 14
