“Not sure,” Dan replied. “A week?”
Mitch kicked at a rock and kept his eyes on the ground, making Dan feel like he disagreed with him but wasn’t sure how to say what he wanted to.
“Just spit it out, man!” Dan said, although as kindly as he could manage.
“It needs to be longer,” he snapped back. “Everyone is fucked, and not just the civvies but our blades too.”
Dan had to smile at that: it had been a while since he’d heard someone refer to their fighting strength as blades. While Dan was inclined to agree, he sensed that there was more on Mitch’s mind.
“So how long do we wait?” he asked gently. “A month? Two? By which time we’ll be wading through shitty weather and snow trying to head south. We’re already out of summertime, the nights are getting longer and the temperature drops every day. How long will we last on the road in winter, for fuck’s sake?” he finished, more in exasperation than anger.
His voice had risen higher as he spoke, and realising that he had just inadvertently shouted Mitch down, he shrank himself back to his normal size and tried to put the anger and frustration back in its box.
“You’re right.” he said, by way of a weak apology, “but so am I. So what’s the compromise?”
Brushing off the hostility and confrontation instantly, Mitch had his answer loaded and ready to fire. “Two weeks,” he said. “Long enough to recoup, but not so long that people get comfortable and decide to live in a mud hut forever.”
Fixing him with a look, Dan simply agreed. Dropping his cigarette end on the dirt and grinding his boot onto it, he walked away without another word.
Watching the conversation from a short distance away, two people emerged from their hiding places of minding their own business and made their way towards Mitch.
“Well?” asked Kate.
“Two weeks,” Mitch replied, seeing Kate bite her lip and consider what they could achieve in that time.
“It’ll have to do,” said Neil, joining the small circle. “Any longer and Marie will be struggling, and I don’t want to be carting her around when she starts looking really pregnant.”
“In that case,” Mitch said, turning his tired face to look at Neil, “I need your help getting a sentry post up.”
Kate watched the two men walk away discussing the necessary building materials and let out a sigh which was somewhere between exhaustion and desperation.
Two weeks was more than enough to patch everyone up and get them properly rested, but delaying any longer would mean they may be stuck in medieval France for a whole winter.
Which would mean a death sentence for Marie and the baby. If that happened, Dan would fall apart.
If Dan fell apart, she had very little hope of any of them surviving to see another summer.
~
A day and a half later, things in their small village looked very different.
The vehicles had been carefully backed into the small square, with the tallest blocking the entrance and facing outwards. The main truck was too big to reverse fully inside, so it acted as an obstacle and a sentry post in one. A small shelter had been erected on the roof of the cab, with all the comforts required of a discerning night sentry: water heater, seat, high-powered rifle and snacks.
Kate had claimed a section of the main hall as a field hospital and laid out all her gear. Marie was propped up in the corner and instructed to do nothing but rest as every other member of the group, with no exceptions, was given a health check.
Dan tried to decline but was instructed that in no uncertain terms would he be exempt.
“Who’s the highest authority on a warship?” Kate asked him when he told her he was fine.
The question caught him off guard, and he sensed that the logic of the conversation was already predicted so that he lost with whatever counter-argument he raised.
“The ship’s doctor,” he answered grudgingly.
“Exactly,” Kate said, looking proud to have won but a little disappointed to have achieved victory without a fight.
“So, Captain,” she said with heavy sarcasm, “sit your arse down and let me check you out!”
As she fussed over him, he asked her quietly about Marie. He had tried to ask the woman herself, only to be unceremoniously ejected from the hall so she could be violently sick.
“The morning sickness is crippling her, but it’s supposed to be the worst around this time. She’s starting to show more and I doubt that our little road trip has helped with that. She’s dehydrated and tired, but I can fix that.”
She stayed silent for a while as she calculated his heart rate with her fingers and a stethoscope.
“As for the long-term fix,” she said when she had finished, “I’m afraid that’s on you.”
As if the burden was not already painfully apparent, the reminder sent Dan back out to his duties with a heavy heart. Pausing to light a cigarette in the crowded square, the smell of coffee touched something inside him and inspired him to hunt down the source until his need for caffeine was satisfied.
Much to his disappointment, the source rested with Henry. Having made his entrance, he could hardly ignore the boy and leave so he accepted a cup and tried to play nice. Henry was tinkering with a wind-up radio in the desperate hope of finding something other than static. An excruciating few seconds of watching the boy turn the dial millimetre by millimetre threatened to shatter his pretence of being able to tolerate him. Unable to contain either his patience or his irrational temper any longer, Dan rose to leave.
As he began to walk away with Ash loping to flank him, the static broke, rewarding the boy’s perseverance with a flash of garbled speech.
It was unintelligible, not spoken in English, but it was undoubtedly words.
Dan froze and spun back to the boy who wore a look of such triumphant horror that he sparked both pride and an immense annoyance in the older man. Brushing away the latter, Dan strode back towards him with such purpose that Henry almost spilled from his seat on a log thinking that Dan may have finally cracked and would go for him again.
“What was the frequency?” Dan snapped at him.
Dumbstruck by the radio and Dan speaking to him, he simply opened and closed his mouth without a single word escaping.
“The frequency?” Dan said again, more patiently this time. “What was the frequency?”
Flustered, Henry picked up the radio, which still wavered between static and silence, and squinted at the dial.
“Just after six hundred,” he stammered.
Spinning away, Dan scanned the faces of those people he could see looking for Neil. As much as he wanted to bawl his name, the panic that would cause in others was not worth the excitement so he kept quiet. Eventually finding him close to the entrance, he told him what Henry had found.
“Could be a voice loop from before?” Neil offered by way of being a devil’s advocate, only to reverse that opinion as he worked through the logic. “But nothing would still have power to be broadcasting without someone looking after it,” he said, moving his hands as he thought through the possibilities. “If it was anything but static, it must be manned. Think about it, even if something had an indefinite power source like solar and was set to repeat a recorded loop, by now it would have needed cleaning or maintenance to keep going.” He looked at Dan with excitement, not knowing that the two men had very different ideas.
“We need to hear what they’re saying,” Dan said. Just as Neil began to agree, Dan continued. “I want to know who they are, where they are and what their capabilities are. I need to know if they are a threat.”
The disappointment on Neil’s face was sadly evident. His friend, the person still alive that he had known for the longest time, the man capable of such heroic compassion and empathy for others, was broken.
Everywhere he looked, he saw danger. Every person they met was an invader to him. He understood that some of the paranoia, in fact most of it, was completely justifiable but the sadness Neil felt for hi
m then was incredible. Dan simply couldn’t allow himself to think that there was anyone good left in the world.
Thinking how best to explain this to him, Neil gently offered an alternative suggestion. “Or we could find out what they’re saying, where they are, who they are and try to understand why they’re broadcasting a message,” he said. “Remember when we left a message the first time? That brought us Leah…”
He left the last comment hanging heavily on Dan’s conscience. The dirty face with its scruffy beard which was starting to show grey in patches looked up at him past the angry scar running down over his left eye.
Before he could ask, Neil anticipated and answered.
“We need a big metal aerial, somewhere up high.” And when Dan opened his mouth to ask where, the older man simply pointed behind his shoulder to the hills in the distance. Sitting proudly on top was a string of large metal pylons.
“Climb up one of those, and I reckon you’ll get the message.”
Dan stared forlornly into the distance. He didn’t know whether it was the prospect of heights or the risk of disappointment which twisted his insides more.
SUMMER HOLIDAY
The gear was packed, repacked and carefully placed into the Land Rover like jigsaw pieces to achieve the most efficient fit. Precious diesel was siphoned into the extra tank on the roof, and spare tyres were checked for pressure.
They could afford no more delays, unless they wanted to be testing the off-roader’s ability to traverse a snow-covered continent.
Melissa was adamant that she was done running. Lexi suspected that she had made friends in the group who had convinced her to stay, but most of them curiously avoided the newcomers. Simon, by way of association she incorrectly assumed, was included in that avoidance.
Dressed in a mismatch of different colours now, both Paul and Lexi had found themselves forgoing their usual black attire. There seemed little point in continuing the trend anyway.
Chris remained sullen and hostile despite his usual nature, and Lexi suspected that the loss of Melissa was stinging him on a more personal level. She recalled the gossip of the house that the two spent a lot of time together on the farm after he and Ana split, but the relevance of that seemed insignificant now. Either way, having a grumpy adult in the back seat of an already cramped vehicle on a long journey asking if they were there yet seemed less than inviting.
Lexi asked Simon directly why he didn’t seem to play much of a part in his own group, but the big man deftly turned the question away in such a manner that she was left even less sure of the answer. The most she could gather was that he seemed to be in charge before he met Dan, but then when he came back as the sole survivor, something changed. She couldn’t be certain if it was the group’s feelings towards him or Simon himself but something had definitely changed.
If he was planning on joining them to escape, then that was OK with her; he was a capable and very reassuring man to have around. If he was joining them to cleanse some debt, then that gave her cause for concern.
Regardless of mood, and with almost no ceremony whatsoever, they rose early and squeezed into the truck to drive east without a word.
Lexi liked the Land Rover, but she could never understand how such a big vehicle could force a difficult choice: The driver had to either forgo using their right hand for much other than holding the wheel still, or wind down the window to allow elbow room. The choice between awkward steering and constant draught was an uneasy one to make, but Lexi having the smallest frame by far made her the best choice for driver. Paul sat behind her with a map on his knees and his rifle propped next to him, whereas Lexi placed her own on the dash. Simon sat in the passenger seat with a shotgun between his knees and Chris sat behind him, looking out of the window in silence.
That silence infected the cabin for most of the four hours it took them to reach the outskirts of the capital. From the large, encircling motorway which was usually at a standstill with too many cars all trying to get to the same place, they could see the haze of destruction resting above London where the imagined cloud of smog would be.
Without a word, they all stopped to stare at the brooding place like it was some mythical dark zone that they were forbidden to enter. Lexi saw Simon stifle an involuntary shudder: whether it was about his imagination at what horrors had happened there when it happened or whether it was the country dweller’s inherent fear of built-up areas, she didn’t know.
They drove on, weaving through more and more obstacles now as they pushed further into the population centres. As one, and without any words of caution, all four occupants became more alert now that they were feeling surrounded by more concrete than they were used to.
Perhaps it was a form of evolution, Lexi thought. Like wild animals instinctively knowing to watch the skies for predators, were they evolving to keep themselves safe through instinct? Or, more likely, were they simply all too aware of the risk they faced from other people?
Pushing onwards, and being forced to make a few minor detours, they reached their goal in the early afternoon.
To find a scene from a disaster movie.
FRENCH CONNECTION
After four days of living the natural lifestyle, moods had returned to something resembling normal. No longer were everyone’s eyes rimmed red; no longer did people fall asleep mid-conversation through sheer exhaustion. Clothes were washed and dried, meals were taken in relative comfort and people tended to their small needs which weren’t addressed when they were on the road.
Dan surveyed the quietly busy scene beneath him as he stood watch, feeling curiously like an outsider as he witnessed the normal goings-on of his group.
Thanks largely to the boxes of ration packs taken from storage in the military lines, their food needs were more than met with each twenty-four-hour pack containing more calories than most of them needed in three days; they were designed to keep soldiers in the field fighting fit with maximum efficiency.
The novelty of the packs never seemed to wear off, and it seemed to Dan that every person he saw had a foil packet of something edible. Being more partial to having a sweet tooth, he had already emptied all the boiled sweets, nuts, dehydrated fruit and cereal bars from a half-dozen packs and crammed the treats into every available space in his personal kit. He could never stand being hungry and said as much to Mitch who was sitting beside him in the sentry post.
“Mr and Mrs Death’s three little boys,” Mitch said, looking at Dan to see if he was following the train of thought.
Smiling, he held up his hand and counted off one finger at a time as they both spoke in unison.
“Cold, Wet, and Bloody Hungry,” they chorused before lapsing back into an amused, comfortable silence.
Mitch was there to take over mid-morning so Dan could no longer delay his venture to the mast. He was both dreading and avoiding it while simultaneously excited to know if others had built something as good as they had at home.
Home. He still thought of it as home, even though he’d come to realise that the chance of making it back there were on the slim side. His home, whether he could articulate it or not, was wherever Marie, Leah and Ash were. If that happened to be sitting on top of an army truck, eating vegetarian all-day breakfast from a foil packet and surrounded by what were effectively mud huts, then that was just fine.
Only it wasn’t. If they didn’t find answers to questions they barely understood within a few months, then nothing would be fine ever again.
“Right,” he said, his back painfully cracking as he stood. “Back by sundown. ERV five miles down the road if the shit hits the fan. If I’m not back by morning, then come and rescue me.”
He hardly needed to reiterate the instructions to Mitch on what to do in the event of something unexpected, but he felt better for saying it all the same. He had argued adamantly against taking Henry to the mast, despite it being his discovery initially, and opted to go alone as he didn’t want to take away another gun from their small camp. The motorbike should
get him most of the way there, and as long as he didn’t fall off, then he should easily be back before nightfall.
Climbing down to find Ash had pre-empted him and was waiting at his feet when he landed, he told him he had to stay with Leah today. He was rewarded with a concerned look of misunderstanding, which incidentally was the same look when the dog’s hopes for food were raised, but he followed obediently all the same.
Finding her lounging on boxes of ration packs with her feet up and a nail file gently sculpting the tips of her fingers came as no great surprise as Dan had come to accept that she was, after all, a girl.
Pointing first at Ash and then to Leah, he gave simple instructions.
“You, stay.” Ash glanced once at Leah, then both looked back to Dan in unison. “And keep the dog with you. I’ll be back before dark,” he said as he turned to leave.
“Hilarious as ever,” came the muttered sarcasm aimed at the back of his head.
Neil had already prepared a bike for him, and he said goodbye to Marie who mildly scolded him for being soppy. A hint of seriousness crept into her voice, edged with concern, as she asked him, “Are we going to catch a break soon?”
Smiling to reassure her, he kissed her and promised they would. Soon.
He took the wind-up radio and the length of wire which Neil had given him instructions on how to use, and he set off at an easy pace down the road.
Maybe the relaxed atmosphere of being stationary for recuperation dulled his senses slightly, but instead of his usual paranoid alertness, he allowed himself to enjoy the ride. He was in an area of soft, green rolling hills which in the absence of people was truly beautiful.
By midday, he had reached the nearest piece of road to the high bluff where the metal museum piece stood proudly. As he nursed the bike carefully through the overgrown grass up the slope, he wondered absent-mindedly how long it would stand before nature showed its slow-moving might and reduce it back to the raw materials from which it was made. A long time, he guessed, but still it was an inevitability that every trace of their feats of engineering would become relics. Maybe one day people will look at the remnants of the Seven Wonders and seek answers in ancient texts about their origins.
Sanctuary: After It Happened Book 5 Page 6
