The eighth boy was Thomas.
Liam pulled his mask off. “Tommy,” he said softly, knowing his voice was unreliable at the moment. So much needed to be said but no words came.
“Dad?” His face showed his confusion. The last he would have heard was that his father had disappeared after his helicopter went down. After more than a year, he wouldn’t have expected to see him again and, yet, here he was. A hint of his old smile came back. “Dad!” He jumped across his former captor and threw his arms around his father.
Liam finally felt a moment of peace. All the fears that he had been holding at bay since his release from captivity began to melt away. Thomas was alive. He closed his eyes and held his son, the chill of the rainy night forgotten.
“Something in your eye, Simpson?” a voice inquired.
“Shut it,” the big man growled.
Liam opened his eyes and looked around the room. His troopers were checking on the boys, looking for injuries and assessing their mobility. He looked down to the boy who had been taking the beating. His men had moved him to the couch and were assessing his injuries. “Tommy, what was going on here?” He nodded toward the couch.
His son stepped back and looked over to the prone, bruised figure on the couch. “They caught him trying to leave,” he said, woodenly. “They make examples of the ones they catch. The last one died. I yelled at them to stop – they said I was next.”
Liam didn’t know what made him angrier, the fact that these men were about to beat his defenseless son or that Tommy was able to discuss it in such emotionless terms. It was a survival mechanism; kill your emotions before they kill you. How many murders had his son watched in this room? How many times had he spoken up?
Liam pushed his anger aside for a moment and smiled at his son. “You spoke up for him,” he said as he reached out to grasp his shoulder. “That was a brave thing to do, considering what you can expect from them in return.”
Tommy shrugged. “Didn’t do much for him, did it?” He angled his head towards the couch.
Liam shook his head. “They took a break to put you in the lineup, yeah?” He gave a shrug of his own. “Otherwise, they might have beaten him to death by now.” He looked at the rest of the boys, activating his headset. “All units to rally point Delta. We are bringing out eight children; one of them is seriously wounded. Second unit to have their stretcher slung for patient transport.”
Liam pulled his mask from its precarious perch on top of his head and shoved it back into the storage bag at his hip. They moved the evacuees quickly to the stairwell, passing the two men who guarded against incursion from higher floors. They filed out into the lobby where the soft rumble of diesels could be heard. The drivers were already backing into the small courtyard, coming to a stop with the last three feet of their vehicles under the building canopy.
Six men went outside, opening the back hatches of the armored vehicles before moving to take up defensive positions in the dying rain.
The exodus began.
Two boys were sent to the front of the second vehicle while their injured friend was laid on a stretcher. He was carried inside and suspended between the rows of seats that backed against the outer walls of the vehicle. The other five, including Tommy, were guided into the lead vehicle.
The snipers had rappelled down the faces of the two flanking buildings and now ran to climb into the front passenger seats of their vehicles as Liam followed the last of his men, climbing in the back hatch and dogging it shut. “Up to the front end,” he told Tommy with a nod towards the engine compartment that separated the cab from the rear compartment.
“Two loaded.” Simpson’s accent was re-surfacing, even over the radio.
“One loaded,” Liam answered. “Let’s get to the post hospital.”
They pulled away with a roar; stealth was no longer necessary but speed was. After a few blocks, Liam opened the roof hatch and stood with Tommy, watching the blighted cityscape fly past. The boy had obviously been impressed with the armored vehicle and his grin was more like the one that Liam remembered. They braved the last of the drizzle, comforted by the flow of warmth from the heater below.
“Is the whole world gone to the dogs?” the boy asked loudly, when the engine was at a lower rpm. They swayed as the vehicle swerved around a burning lorry.
“No, just parts of it.” Liam hunched over to make himself easier to hear. “Erin tells me things are much more stable on Guernsey. Not like here where everybody is a stranger. There, most people have family, roots.” They swerved again as they entered the zigzag concrete barriers at the sector gate, which slid open at their approach. MacKinnon had made a good impression on the guards.
“Are you thinking of sending me to live with Auntie Erin?” They accelerated away from the gates, heading towards the river. The sky was finally clearing.
“Would you like to live on Guernsey?” he half shouted.
Tommy craned his head back to look up at his father. “Well, I’ll miss staying with Uncle Leo, but I suppose I could do with a change.” His grin took any sting from his words. It wasn’t a reproach, just his sense of humor helping him to deal with the turmoil of the last few months. His grin faded as his eyes drifted to the right, growing wide in wonder. In the last few blocks, working streetlights had begun to appear, and now they rolled to a stop as they approached a traffic jam.
Two vehicles had been in a minor collision and the crowds on the sidewalk slowed as they passed. Cars honked as a uniformed police constable authoritatively directed the removal of the damaged vehicles. “It’s just like it used to be!” The boy said in wonder. “I had no idea the world was still normal, and certainly not so close.”
I don’t think I would go so far as to say the world is normal anymore. Liam smiled and activated his headset. “Two, back up and take an alternate route. This won’t clear up any time soon. We’ll wait it out since we don’t have any medical cases on board.” Eight vehicles back, the second Fuchs disgorged three men who began directing the vehicles behind them. The space behind them cleared quickly, civilian drivers encouraged to comply by the sight of assault weapons.
Tommy’s brow furrowed as he watched the accident scene. “Will you be coming to Guernsey?”
“For a month,” Liam said, looking up and straining to see the stars beyond the glare of the street lights. “Then I have to report for training. We have a job waiting for us out there and I have to see it through.” Now that the rain had stopped, they climbed up to sit on the roof of the vehicle, feet dangling down the hatch. He looked over at his son. “Tommy, I would like to just stay with you but I owe these men,” he began.
The boy nodded, looking down at the air intakes on the roof. “So do I, after tonight,” he said thoughtfully. “I suppose you’re all I have to pay them with.” He looked over at Liam. “D’ you really think we can beat whoever took Mars from us, Dad?”
Liam watched a large flatbed back up to one of the damaged cars while he thought about his answer. “Happen we might,” he said. “They obviously know more about engines than us, but weapons and tactics?” He shrugged, looking over at the boy. “One thing I can tell you: If we don’t give it a shot, we’ll end up in the kermit for sure.”
Tommy turned to the loading operation with a smile. The small Peugeot was winched up the flatbed with a wail of metal-on-metal. “Well, if we don’t know what the future holds,” he said brightly, nodding at the ordered chaos, “we should enjoy civilization while it lasts.”
The Kennedy boys watched in happy silence as the scene was cleared. A small scab that would be gone in a matter of hours. Five miles to the east, the same wound would have festered and spread, the cars torched, the flames jumping to the nearby buildings. Sooner or later, one of the two halves of a fractured society would establish dominance. Liam feared that the virulent economics of Sector One might prove to be the stronger.
He looked at his son, watching a scene so mundane, so common-place that it infused them both with a new sense of h
ope. You will have a life, he vowed. Win or lose, you will have a place in this world. The constable started waving traffic through. The big diesel revved and they climbed back into the hatch.
Time to get on with it.
From the Author
I decided to write this short story as I was working with my editor on the main story. I felt Liam had a great deal of potential as a character, and it had remained largely untapped in the first Black Ships episode. In the eleven thousand words above, I’ve come to realize that my plan for the second book in this series left too much on the table. I had originally intended to jump forward a century or so and explore a more distant future, but I’ve decided that there’s a great deal of storytelling to be found in the decade following the end of Black Ships.
Liam and Tommy will play a major role in the mad scramble to establish the new way of things. Though life may, at times, be difficult, young Tommy will doubtless consider it an improvement over his time with Uncle Leo…
If you enjoyed this story, a short review is always appreciated. Nobodies (like myself) tend to get discovered by word of mouth and honest reviews are one of the best ways to make an opinion available. If you’d like to reach me with comments, questions or you just feel like discussing the weather, I’m at [email protected] . Thanks for reading and have a great day!
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Blog: http://agclaymore.blogspot.com/
Table of Contents
Spin Buldak
UN Route Control
Central London
East London
From the Author
Metamorphosis Page 4
