“Moving!” I called, so he knew I was leaving, and he slotted across as I went past him, taking slow steps backwards as he fired on the ever-closing tide of undead.
I pushed Isaac along from behind as he was flagging, berating him to get a move on, until we emerged out into the light. Isaac dropped the last of the boxes into the truck’s rear, almost falling against the vehicle as the last of his breath exploded out of his lungs.
Just as I stepped out into the light, the crack of Nate’s rifle echoing behind me, I screamed at Isaac to move. In his constant rush back and forth, his mind clouded by panic, he hadn’t seen the single undead that had managed to potter around the edge of the building. It had been shuffling towards him for God knows how long, and it was only eight feet away, its lips already drawing back into its death snarl, silent and hate-filled, filthy claws already reaching out, ready to rend and tear.
There was no time for the rifle, slung behind me as I’d been urging Isaac on. Instinct took over and I reached for the Glock at my hip, palmed it smoothly into my hand, raised the weapon and pulled the trigger. All in one clean motion.
Bang.
Bullet to the head, one dead zombie that collapsed at our feet.
Shit, I couldn’t do that in one clean motion again if I tried. And I did try, later on back at the lodge. I tried to repeat the move and got the gun stuck in my holster, dropped it, threw it, fumbled like a dickhead with it. Out of fifty attempts, I probably managed it clean only three times.
But in that moment, when it had to be done, I must have appeared like Dirty Harriet to Isaac as I stood there, barrel smoking, one hand on his shoulder still from dragging him aside.
I gifted him with a smile of swaggering satisfaction and holstered the weapon.
“Do you feel lucky, punk?” I winked, feeling like a stone-cold bad ass. “Now, pretty please, with sugar on top, get in the fucking truck.”
Mutely, he nodded, running round the other side to climb in, while I jumped into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine, dropping it into first gear and holding the clutch as I waited for Nate, left hand ready on the handbrake.
Nate edged out of the doorway, still firing down the narrow hall rapidly filling with undead, as they squeezed into the space and oozed forward in one bloated, hungry mass.
Not bothering with running round the vehicle, Nate simply jumped into the back of the truck and banged on the side.
“Take us home, Erin,” he ordered. “We’re done here today.”
We made it home without any further issue, but we’re going to have to find a new source of gardening supplies. That retail park is officially out of bounds, because as we drove past it on the way home from the main road, a swarm of undead were shuffling out of the B&Q as well. That’s a big ass hardware store, so there could be a shit load of undead in there for all we know. It’s officially off limits from here on in.
I do know of a few garden centres in the local area that we could probably access on back roads, so they’ll have to move up the priority list. That’s for another day though, we need to take stock and slow it down a little. Moments like the electronics store amp up your adrenalin and the crash that comes after is exhaustion like I’ve never known. I’ve done some crazy things on rooftops when free running, things that set my heart racing for their danger, but it doesn’t even compare to the flood that goes through you in life-threatening combat. It’s a soul-deep exhaustion when that leaves you. Nate is more used to it than I am, but the guy’s still just over fifty, so it gets to him more than it might have in the past.
It wipes the shit out of me. All I want to do is lie down, maybe read a book, probably just sleep. I can’t even write when that crash hits, which is why I always wait until the morning after to record the events.
That’s enough for today, I think. Pottering round the lodge today. I’m going to hang out with my Golden Girls; Freya, Maria, and Norah. Those three are the best.
September 5th, 2010
KADIE
Tensions were running high until today. We’ve all been house-bound, because for the last couple of days, the rain has been on and off, but when it does rain, it’s absolutely battered down, and not the kind of weather you want to go scavenging in.
Hmm. I don’t like that word, actually. Scavenging, looting… they’re such negative words, like we’re raiding or plundering. Resource acquisition is more appropriate, but it sounds so snooty and formal. I need to find a better word for what me and Nate do. Sadly, I own the world’s worst thesaurus; it’s not just awful, it’s awful.
Shit, it’s hard being this funny.
What wasn’t funny is the tension boiling in the lodge over the past few days. Alicia was a ball of traumatised rage, and of course we can all understand why, but she’s been handling her ordeal with hyper-aggression as a defence mechanism.
On the flip side is Laura, who’s little more than a phantom, silent and ethereal as she floats about the place in a daze. I guess we’d all hope that the two of them would have some kind of bond and find strength in each other from their shared pain, but that’s just not the case. Alicia wants to start an argument with everyone—especially the boys—while Laura doesn’t want to speak to a soul, though Freya seems to be making progress. I’ve noticed that even though she’s saying little, when we’re all together to eat and plan, Laura plants herself next to Freya. My little dude Particles is also excelling as an emotional support dog and today he managed to evoke the first flicker of a smile from Laura as he licked at her face excitedly. He’s a smart cookie that pug. Dogs rule.
Everyone’s been walking on eggshells around them both, giving them space. Even when Alicia is at her worst, she’s been given a great deal of leeway, because none of us really know how to support someone who’s been through what she has. Nobody feels they can say anything, because we haven’t experienced what she has. Everyone’s afraid of being cold or unfeeling, trying desperately to empathise with her plight, but we just don’t know how to manage it.
That all changed the moment her ire turned on Charlie.
The kid is nine years old. He has a certain innocence that needs to be protected for as long as we can, because this world has already stripped much of it away. He’s been kidnapped, seen the undead kill, had Bancroft’s gun to his head, seen the corpses of men gunned down; shit, he’s seen more than any nine-year old boy should ever experience. It’s testament to Mark’s solid parenting and Charlie’s own fortitude that he’s still a bright and happy kid, despite all the horrors this world has already thrown in his path.
Rape and its aftermath, though… that’s just something a boy his age just doesn’t need to compute right now. He knew the women were captive and terrorised in some way, but the savagery of Bancroft and his men is one thing we need to shield him from right now. Bancroft’s men “hurt” Alicia and Laura; that’s the way Mark explained it to him. Charlie didn’t need any more and he accepted that explanation from his dad.
Seeing Alicia angry at everyone, snapping at everything anyone might say, that gold-hearted kid decided that Alicia was hurt, and angry, and sad. He did what any kind-hearted child would do in that instance. He tried to give her a hug, bless his little heart.
“Don’t touch me!” snapped Alicia, forcibly placing her hand on Charlie’s chest and shoving him backwards. Taken off guard, the poor kid stumbled backwards, planting to the kitchen floor on his arse. He put one hand on his chest where she had pushed him, looking up at her with the glisten of tears in his eyes.
“What the hell, Alicia?” roared Mark, standing from the stool at the kitchen island and rushing to his son. “What’s your problem?”
“Boundaries,” she spat back. Shit, there was such venom in her tone. “He needs to learn them, or don’t you teach your son how to treat women?”
It was a wholly unfair accusation. Mark is such a gentle guy, but Charlie is his whole world. If you want to wake the sleeping lion in our resident engineer, question his parenting or his beloved boy, and
woe to you.
“He’s a child, Alicia!” bellowed Mark, kneeling beside Charlie and checking he was okay. “He’s nine years old, and just wanted to give you a hug!”
“I never asked for one, or wanted one,” she retorted. “My space is my own.”
She was all-in with her argument. I could understand her fury if it had been someone like Mark or Isaac breaching that personal space, but Charlie’s a kid and doesn’t understand what she’s going through. He just knows she was hurting and wanted to make her feel better, in the only way a loving child knows how.
“He’s a child,” repeated Mark, through gritted teeth. “He just wants to help you.”
“I don’t want or need any help,” she hissed.
The poor woman was a bit unhinged, and she clearly wasn’t dealing with processing her ordeal at all. While Laura’s trauma manifested as emotional detachment, Alicia’s roared in impotent fury. There was no getting through to her it seemed, until a breakthrough came from the most unlikely of places.
“Enough,” said Nate into the space between them, his voice flint hard. “Enough,” he repeated, this time more softly. “Alicia, you can’t do this alone. We don’t pretend to know what you’ve been through, but Mark’s right. Charlie’s a kid and what you just did was a step too far.”
“And what do you know about what I’ve been through, Nate?” she demanded. “What makes you think you can say anything about it?”
The lodge was silent after Alicia’s demand, everyone nervous as the issue was effectively brought out into the open, with everyone there. Nate doesn’t say things without thinking them through, and I knew better than most what was coming. He was ordering his thoughts, letting the brief silence add a gravitas to what he was about to say. What came next blew my mind.
“Between ’91 and ’02, Sierra Leone endured an intense civil war. You may have seen it on the news, though a few of you probably would have taken no notice being too young. At the start of May 2000, British forces began a military intervention under the codename Operation Palliser. D squadron of 22 Special Air Service was my unit.”
“I knew it!” I said, slapping the kitchen counter. “I fricking knew you were special ops.” Remembering myself as everyone turned toward me, I cleared my throat and magnanimously gestured at Nate. “Please, continue,” I permitted.
Nate just raised one eyebrow, before turning his attention back to Alicia.
“I saw some things and met some people who changed me during my time there, Alicia. Never have I met anyone with more strength, resilience, and incredible compassion, than a woman named Kadie.” Nate’s eyes focused entirely on Alicia, the whole room silent as they waited breathlessly, myself included. “Kadie was taken in the early part of the conflict in ’92. At the age of twelve, she was indoctrinated as a child soldier, an assault rifle put in her hands. Her brother was initiated as well, he was two years younger than her, at just ten, only a year older than Charlie here.”
All eyes drifted to Charlie, all of us trying to imagine the horror of him having an AK-47 thrust into his hands and forced to fight. I couldn’t do it; it went against everything a sane mind could comprehend.
“It was bad for her brother, Amad, but Kadie’s experience was much more harrowing, being a girl.”
He left that statement hanging, not saying it out loud to shield Charlie from the naked truth but leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind exactly what poor Kadie endured.
“She was… hurt… by men in her own unit, given as a child-wife to one of the commanders who was ‘unpleasant’ to her and when her little brother, Amad, tried to escape at the age of twelve, he was captured and brought back to their encampment.”
My own breath quickened, fearing at what I was about to hear. It was far worse than I could have imagined.
“Kadie was given an order, a heavy wooden club thrust into her hands, and told to beat her twelve-year old brother to death in front of everyone, as an example to what fate awaited traitors and cowards. She was fourteen, Alicia. Fourteen. She had been a child soldier that had killed grown men in war, had been physically assaulted—repeatedly—by her own so-called allies, forcibly addicted to opiates to keep her dependent and compliant, and then had to beat her own little brother to death with a club while everyone watched, as he begged her for mercy.”
Jesus fucking Christ. My chest was hollow by this point, more so by the pain I heard in Nate’s voice as he recounted the tale. I know him well enough now to see and hear those little nuances that tells me something has affected him, and this wound ran deep. He’d had this woman in front of him, telling him her story with her own words, seeing every flicker of emotion at the memories on her face. Christ, I’d be a bawling mess if someone told me their story with that much horror in it. My heart would absolutely bleed for them.
“Being forced to kill Amad was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” continued Nate, his voice impossibly soft. “That was in ’94 and she waited six years, nursing that trauma, forging bonds with those in the same situation as her, before she could make her escape. When our forces landed in Sierra Leone, she led a breakout of thirteen other women, all taken as child soldiers, all with similar tales of heartbreak, and fled to the safety of our lines. She was only just twenty, Alicia.”
“So, what? I’m just supposed to shrug all this off?” demanded Alicia, though her voice had considerably less heat.
Nate shook his head. “You didn’t let me finish,” he chided gently. “Five years ago, I received a letter from Kadie.”
“How did she get hold of you?” I asked. “Weren’t you like, super-secret special ops?”
Nate nodded. “Aye, but after I’d left the service, I found her on my mind often. That was my last year in 22 SAS, as forty-two is the upper age limit, and in all my years of service through the Falklands, the Gulf, and other operations in Africa, Kadie’s story had a profound effect on me in a way no other had. I pulled some strings with old contacts to see if they could locate her and sent her a letter, just giving a PO box to return to.” A faint smile touched his lips. “And she returned it.”
“And?” Everyone in the room was rapt by the tale.
“The war had been over for three years, and she had returned to her home village. Those women she liberated came with her and settled there, having no family to return to. Kadie had married and given birth to a son. She was a prominent voice in her community and was growing into a political activist, working closely with Unicef to extricate and rehabilitate children affected by war. That letter is my most prized possession.”
Alicia fell silent, the last of her heat cooled by Nate’s story and calm demeanour.
“My point, Alicia, is that Kadie didn’t get there alone. She kept those women around her, they helped each other, and she allowed herself to be supported, as well as giving support. She used that pain, not with anger or hate, but to try and force something positive out of a life destroyed by war, picking up what pieces she could to bind back together into something new.”
Nate sighed then, looking tired and every one of his fifty-two years, both hands clasped around his coffee cup.
“Life is too great a struggle on the best of days, Alicia, if you try to do it alone. In our darkest hours, when the demons are at our door, we need to be able to call on someone to face them alongside us. The world is hard enough, especially now, but you need to understand that these people here, sitting around you now, are not your enemies. They will offer an arm to lean on when you feel weak, or a quiet presence to merely sit with so you’re not alone, for those times you don’t feel like speaking, or can’t.”
He glanced at Freya then, giving her a little nod. This old dog sees way more than I give him credit for.
“What if I don’t know how?” Alicia’s voice trembled, anger giving way to guilt as her eyes darted to Charlie.
“You’re not a victim, Alicia,” said Nate. “Kadie taught me that. She never wanted to be considered a victim, and instead called herself a survivor. Y
ou had no control of what happened, and you suffered, but you’re here now. You survived. So, to start something new, first accept the end of what came before. Forget that victim’s anger and find the survivor’s strength I know you have. Both of you,” he added, looking to Laura.
“And how do I get there?” asked Alicia.
“You start walking away from where you are.”
Profound stuff, right? But I had a question that needed answering.
“Um, Nate?” I asked innocently. “Did you just quote Winnie the Pooh?”
The quirk of a smile at one side of his mouth revealed the truth.
“Busted,” he said, finally breaking into a rueful grin.
Everyone snorted or chuckled, shattering the tension. This ferocious old soldier, who they’d all seen in his terrifying glory during their liberation when he was geared to the max, suddenly became human to every single person in the lodge. His calm words, the intensity of his story and advice that pierced through Alicia’s rage, then the absurdity of this ferocious veteran of countless conflicts dropping a Winnie the Pooh quote, all combined to humanise him completely. Finally, the rest of the lodge had seen a glimpse of the Nate I knew. They got to see the man himself, not just the fearsome instrument of violence they’d all perceived him as.
Nate went to his room and produced that very letter from Kadie, which was passed around and read by all. Reading it as a group somehow managed to fuse us all that little bit closer, asking questions of Nate, hearing him tell how inspiring he found that meeting with Kadie, and how much it affected him.
I keep discovering depths to Nate that amaze me. When called to arms, he’s an absolute powerhouse, calm and controlled, lethal in the execution of his actions. He’s experienced things that none of us have and they’ve affected him to his core, but under that fearsome granite shell of his pumps a big squishy heart full of empathy and humanity. He’s seen humans at their worst, yet somehow, he comes out better than before because of it.
Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Page 28
