Twice they bounced painfully over the rails and skimmed along the filthy concrete walls surrounding them as the headlights burned a bright white lance in front of them.
Imperceptibly, the air quality changed. The dimmest hint of grey infected the inky black around them and grew like an insidious virus, slowly taking over every minute part of their subterranean world until they began to realise they were approaching the other side.
Simon became more aware than he had been before. Not that he realised he was less aware at the time; it was more like the feeling of being drunk but not knowing why or how. He tightened his grip, squeezed the steering wheel and steeled his resolve to head directly for the light at the end of the ever so slight incline.
Like some hideous interpretation of birth, the Land Rover burst into the sunlight and skidded to a stop on the gravel of the tracks. Throwing open the doors, they spilled out to suck in as much fresh air as they could possibly inhale. Lexi was the first to regain her senses fully.
Dragging Chris from the car, she laid him on the ground and checked for signs of breathing which, with great relief, she found easily. Rolling him over onto his side with his head in her lap, she just sat and rocked as the others breathed through their own problems.
Trying to speak aloud, she choked and coughed uncontrollably. Clearing her throat, she tried again, this time in a strangely cracked voice which didn’t sound like her own.
“Welcome to France,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
PEACE IN SOLITUDE
Armed with his precious literature, Dan made good headway throughout the remainder of the day. Devoid of any recognisable sign of human life, the landscape he moved through became more undulating before the distant peaks became less distant. As the sun began to sink, he selected and cleared a small building to use as a shelter for the night. Finding a small slice of happiness in stretching his legs and only having his own wits and weapons to rely on, he made camp and ate a hot meal.
On further consideration, he felt that the happiness and freedom may be more to do with not having the others relying on him. A stab of guilt hit him, soon brushed under the metaphorical carpet of his thoughts, and he focused on the job in hand. Nestling into his sleeping bag for the night, he soon missed the company of one of the group. As the evening temperatures became distinctly more autumnal, he wistfully imagined the heat that Ash would be radiating right now.
As first light rose, so did Dan. The surprise at seeing his own breath misting in front of his face made him worry that autumn was further along than he feared, only for his mind to catch up and recognise that the drop in temperature was likely due to the significant rise in altitude. That elevated altitude was the sole reason he was there: higher ground and hopefully a stronger radio reception.
Fuelling himself for the day by cooking breakfast, he concentrated on the minute details of his routine. Open the plastic bag and ignore the written instructions, place the foil packet containing his favourite all-day vegetarian breakfast inside and pour in a distinctly unmeasured amount of water, seal bag and wait.
Inside of the anticipated thirty seconds, he watched as the bag suddenly inflated and steam hissed from the minute vents where the seal wasn’t perfect. Knowing that the sachet of chemicals was now reacting with the water and creating a fearsome heat which, in turn, was being transferred to his breakfast, he sat back and glanced at his watch in order to count off the required eight minutes.
His patience broke just after six, and he ate the mostly hot contents straight from the silver packet, ensuring he scraped it clean with the folding spork he kept in his vest. Licking the last remnants of food from the utensil, he dried it on his trousers and returned it to its place. Not very hygienic, he thought to himself, but smiled that there was nobody around to admonish him for his lack of decorum.
Pushing the hot remnants of the rubbish aside from any potential prying eyes, he repacked his kit and stretched off in the chill morning air as he smoked. Taking the time to enjoy the nicotine now pumping around his body, he scanned the horizon for the best place to head for. A similar hill to last time with a radio mast already in place was the obvious choice, but he could see no easy way to reach the summit. He settled instead for the outside choice of a nearby tall building.
Population centres had been something he had actively avoided for months now. It seemed to attract the wrong kind of attention, like any survivor found there would hold no interest in growing food but instead would prefer a more piratical approach to gathering supplies. His confidence in having seen no sign of others for twenty-four hours led him to decide on the simple option of the nearby four-storey brick mausoleum.
As he approached at low revs, he killed the engine to roll in silently as he swung the front of the truck around so as to be pointing towards escape should he need to depart in haste. A slow circle of the building gave him no cause for concern and the discovery of an external metal staircase seemed just too easy.
Maybe his luck had changed, but he realised he had thought that before.
With a torturous noise, the rusted ladder squealed towards the ground when he pulled it. Fearing that the sound would have carried far, he took cover and watched to see if anyone was attracted to it. Nobody came. He climbed the ladder slowly, feeling that distinctly unpleasant sensation of vertigo as he looked down and could see through the steel mesh of the landings as he climbed.
Finally, with shaking hands, he found purchase on the rough shingle of the flat roof and hauled himself onto sturdy ground. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he then produced the radio from his pack and sat at the base of the building’s aerial. He wound the device, lit a cigarette and meticulously laid out his notepad and pencil.
Ensuring the dial was resting at just after the 600 mark, he began to fine-tune it one tiny turn at a time.
Almost immediately, he was rewarded with a period of deliberate silence over the static before the familiar sound of the French voice repeating what he was sure was a recorded loop, only this time the signal was strong and the voice gave meaning through its tone rather than the words it spoke.
The tone of voice implied strength, compassion and safety.
Or perhaps he imagined it. It could mean danger, threat, superiority. He surprised himself with an uncharacteristic amount of hope and trust, and convinced himself that this place, wherever it was, could be somewhere they could be safe.
Checking over his previous notes, he wrote down the words he recognised again. He listened to the loop ten times over before he turned his attention to the dictionary.
Unaware of the passage of time as he concentrated on the pieces of the first puzzle requiring brains over all else since the world had turned upside down and inside out, he worked through all possible meanings of the message:
“Calling all survivors. We offer security, food and family. Our city has stood for generations. We are strong. We live and offer life. We are Sanctuary. Fort of the south sea.”
Leaning back and saying it aloud, he repeated the message to himself over and over. With each repetition, he invested more passion, more meaning and more feeling than before until he finally believed in it. They now had a goal. A purpose. A destination.
Wherever it was.
Dragging the large-scale map of the country from his pack, he began to scour his finger along the coastline looking for any mention of a sea fort. His only memory of such was on the west coast and he recalled from some distant repressed past that a bay near Bordeaux was important during the Napoleonic wars which had raged over Europe. Shaking away the irrelevance, he continued down over Normandy, skirting the west coast of the map until he reached Spain. Skipping out the peninsular on the basis that the message wasn’t in Portuguese or Spanish, he rejoined the coastline just after Barcelona.
And was rewarded with the words “Sud mer fort”.
“South sea fort,” Dan said to himself ponderously. “Sounds promising.”
He checked and rechecked the entire French coastli
ne on the map until no other option seemed possible given the information he had. To be thorough, he even dug out a larger-scale map to see if any of the French-controlled islands of the Indian Ocean made any mention of a fort, but he found nothing. Happy he had ruled out any other possibilities, he tried to calculate the distance he would have to travel to reach the promise of sanctuary.
Somewhere between six and eight hundred kilometres of unknown territory lay between his group and safety. Days if not weeks of travel if they encountered anything but good fortune.
The prospect of a continuing journey and a renewed race against time steeled his heart once more. It was time to go to work again and end the wistful daydreaming of camping in the woods and drifting around the empty countryside alone.
Only he wasn’t alone, he realised. Voices from below were now distinctly audible over the looping message still playing on his wind-up radio.
The sudden drop in his stomach indicated the all-too-familiar payload of adrenaline surging through his body and preparing the muscles to fight as his senses sharpened. Instantly forgetting all senses which weren’t immediately necessary, his heart rate rose and he could no longer feel the cold seeping into his body from inactivity.
Leaving the radio as it was instinctively so as not to alert anyone to a change in the environment’s atmosphere, he crept towards the parapet and inched his head slowly over the ledge. Fifty feet below him were two people looking around his vehicle. Speaking in low tones to one another, they were obviously discussing the sudden arrival of an alien object into their world. As one of them reached the canvas back and lifted it to look inside, Dan’s fear of losing his supplies and transport forced him into action.
Rising to one knee, he flicked the fire selector on his carbine and cleared his throat loudly.
The two explorers froze before wildly looking around for the source of the familiar but unexpected noise.
Happy with his height advantage and fearing no threat from the two unarmed men below, his only risk was damage to the vehicle if he had to fire. Preferring a diplomatic solution, he called out to them.
“Up here,” he said, trying to invest his voice with enough force as to command respect but not inspire fear.
Fear made normal people do very abnormal things.
Keeping the weapon trained on them but not appearing to be actively aiming at a target, he stood and placed his left foot on the ledge. Being so close to the edge made him uneasy, but not as uneasy as not knowing the intentions of strangers.
As one, both men looked up as the movement caught their attention. As one, both men panicked and threw their arms in the air as both began to speak at two hundred miles an hour.
“Je nes comprends pas!” he shouted down, in what he was certain was an awful pronunciation.
Both men stopped talking. One shouted back up in a similarly poor accent.
“English?” he asked.
“Oui. Anglais,” Dan replied loudly, as though sheer volume could overcome incomprehension. “Don’t move. Stay still, understand?” he shouted, reinforcing his words with a hand gesture as though he were instructing Ash to sit.
Abandoning the radio where it sat to maintain sight of the two at ground level, Dan sidestepped to the left until he found the ladder. Quickly slinging the weapon behind him, he dropped one level before bringing it back to bear on the vehicle.
Neither of the men had moved.
Repeating the process for each floor he descended made for slow progress, but eventually he was restored to ground level and approached them with legs bent and weapon raised. Stopping at twenty feet, he shouted at them to drop any weapons, resulting in confused looks being exchanged between them.
“Weapons,” Dan shouted again, tapping at his own gun with his left hand. Finally, they seemed to understand and a single semi-automatic pistol and a hunting knife were dropped to the ground. Moving in and kicking the weapons aside, he switched to the Walther which he drew from the holster on his vest while simultaneously lowering the carbine. Patting them down in turn, he found no further cause for concern and relaxed to stand upright and collect their weapons.
The gun was in a poor state and probably hadn’t been cleaned since it was looted, probably from a police officer given that it was a mass-produced variant of a popular weapon.
Up close, the two men were both young and distinctly non-threatening. Both were thin and dirty, more like street urchins than the intrepid explorer of the post-apocalyptic world as he must have seemed to them. Feeling suddenly ashamed of having frightened them, he stowed his weapons and produced his cigarettes to offer them both one. Exchanging looks of fear as though it were some kind of trick, they edged forward unsure. After they had both taken one from the outstretched packet and not been struck down, they seemed to relax. Dan offered them his lighter to use at a safe distance and watched as both began to relax.
It became clear that neither spoke English any better than he spoke French, so an uncomfortable silence reigned over the three men.
Dan had what he had come for and saw no sense in extending his trip now that he had a goal to pursue. Reaching into the rear of the truck, he pulled out a sealed box of spare rations which he had brought just in case.
Dropping it on the ground, he made a gesture of offering it to the two hungry-looking men who still stood awkwardly as though they did not know if they were permitted to leave or not. Both stared at him dumbstruck as he climbed behind the wheel, started the engine and drove away.
Glancing in the wing mirror, he saw the two men ripping into the box before he was even out of sight.
“See,” he said to nobody with a smile of satisfaction, “I don’t shoot everyone.”
SUDDEN DESCENT
The ringing in his ears from hitting his head on the ground was so intense that he heard nothing until the sounds of desperate gasps for breath cut through the whine. It took Mitch a half-dozen precious seconds to recognise that the gasping came from him. The force of the impact had been lessened by the vest and spread out more evenly across his upper body, but the deadly impetus of the bullet hitting him directly on the sternum drove all the air from his lungs and left him winded.
As his hearing began to return, so did his other senses; hearing screams and shouts of panic and seeing people running around all fought for brain space to be processed.
Pushing straight to the front of the line was the sensation of intense, debilitating pain. Forcing it away as best he could, he tried to shout for everyone to take cover but could barely utter a sound. Shaking his head as though the physical action could clear the fog from his synapses, he tried to stand only to hit the floor again. Constructing a painless fortress inside his head, he took precious gulps of air into his spasming lungs and willed the world to stop spinning.
~
Leah was sitting in the main building with Marie when she heard the shot. Springing to her feet, she snatched up her rifle and headed for the door, ignoring the panicked questions from behind her just as the first shouts were heard. Pausing before she went into the open, she took cover and peered around the corner to try and ensure she wouldn’t be cut down by whoever or whatever posed them a threat. Was it an attack? Was it an accident?
Unbidden, Ash fell into position at her side on full alert having reacted to the urgency with which she moved. Seeing no immediate threat, she moved fast and low towards the sentry position for answers. Taking cover at the rear of the biggest truck, she checked around the corner to see Mitch was down and struggling to get up. Fearing the worst, she bawled his name and was rewarded with a weak flutter of a hand in response as he turned to look at her.
“Are you hit?” she yelled.
“Vest. Not gone through,” he managed to answer in between gasps as he tapped feebly at his chest.
As it dawned on Leah that she was now the most able fighter there, she had to formulate a plan and fast. They had to evacuate, obviously, but without knowing where the threat was, they couldn’t blindly run away or they co
uld face more danger than they already did. Pausing for a second, she shouted at the top of her voice: “Everybody on the truck. NOW. WE ARE LEAVING!”
Her terrified companions needed little encouragement. People emerged from doorways and ran holding their belongings to the back of the truck where they threw themselves in haphazardly. Neil emerged from where he had been sleeping and looked around at the chaos until she caught his eye and pointed towards the cab for him to get it started.
“Adam!” she yelled.
“Here,” came the response from the other side of the truck before he jogged around to her.
“We need eyes on; Mitch is down and we don’t know where the shot came from. Don’t expose yourself.” She added the last words as she grabbed the front of his vest to be certain he understood her. He nodded and ran back to the other side where he could climb onto the bonnet for a better look.
She ran to Mitch and knelt at his side to check him over. Looking back, she saw Marie being helped along, quite unnecessarily, by Kate who was more trying to shield her from any potential harm than hold her upright. Marie slapped at Kate’s hands and pointed to Leah kneeling by Mitch. Without a word, Kate abandoned Marie and sprinted towards them having seen someone in greater need of her skills. Sera followed, laden with the bags of equipment they needed as the joint medical team. Knowing that Mitch was in better hands than hers, Leah returned her thoughts to the immediate threat. She looked up to see that Adam had retrieved the big rifle and was scanning through the scope ahead to find where the shot had come from.
Sanctuary: After It Happened Book 5 Page 10
