Pulling off the road, he made straight for a covered commercial garage with the roller shutters most of the way up. Not bothering with the time it would take to check if it was safe, he drove straight in nose first and killed the engine before spilling out to check for danger. A flurry of activity was happening behind him as he checked every corner of the large workshop they had so suddenly invaded, and seeing the manual overrides for the shutter doors, he slung his weapons and pulled hard on the stiff chains.
Calling for help, he was joined by other hands as they added their combined body weight to the task, eventually being rewarded with the screeching sound of seized metal giving way as the doors began to descend and plunge them into a murky, dusty darkness.
At the back of the truck, Kate was barking orders, as was her manner in an emergency. Having had a table cleared and dragged into a shaft of sunlight from a high window, she gave further orders as people brought her the things she needed. Seeing too many idle hands with the attached minds having time to panic, Neil gave his own orders and had the unit thoroughly searched and the exits secured.
While Kate and Sera were working hard on stopping the blood gushing from Jack’s side, he found Leah still in the back of the truck with Mitch. She was gently easing open the stiff Velcro of his vest and lifting it away as carefully as she could so as not to cause him any more pain, just as Ash whined softly and licked at the dried blood on his face.
He was sleeping in a way; pain racked his body and forced his face into a rictus of agony as she worked, but blessedly he seemed oblivious to the worst of it. Pulling up his black polo shirt, she gasped at the livid bruising which had already radiated outwards from the centre of his chest. Suspecting that there may be a few cracked ribs too, she checked the rest of him as tenderly as she could, finding nothing else but a gash to his head, likely sustained as he fell, which had already stopped bleeding. Using the small straight-bladed knife she kept taped to the left shoulder of her vest, she dug the point into the vest she had taken off Mitch and began to work it around. After considerable effort, she retrieved a misshapen and ugly lump of lead where it had been stopped by the many layers of interwoven mesh. The vest had done its job and prevented penetration but there was only so much that could be done and the resulting mess of his chest was testimony to that. Any higher calibre and it wouldn’t have been stopped by the layers but without walking around bearing the extra poundage of the ceramic plates front and back, there was little hope of surviving such a hit. He was lucky.
Seeing Neil watching her, she suddenly felt embarrassed at having an audience but embraced it as she asked for help making him more comfortable. Clearing a flat space as she pocketed the twisted bullet remnant, she spread out a sleeping bag and together they gently laid him down with his head and legs raised slightly. Looking outside the truck, her eyes rested on the first unemployed pair of hands she saw and snapped at him for his attention.
“Henry!” she said, prompting him to jump in fright. “Get over here!” She waited impatiently as the older boy clambered up the tailgate to stand at her side.
“Watch him,” she said nastily, pointing at Mitch. “If his breathing gets noisy or sounds laboured, then scream for help. Other than that, stay still and do nothing.”
As she was about to turn away, she saw that Henry still had the gun tucked into his waistband and her temper snapped. Whipping back to him, she snatched the pistol away and rammed the muzzle hard up under his chin, forcing him back against the side of the truck. He squirmed his face away from the business end of the gun to no avail until Leah leaned in close to his face.
“Look at Jack,” she snarled.
Henry’s face didn’t move so she repeated the order while reinforcing it with a push of the gun. Henry turned his face to see people working desperately to help the old man.
“That’s your fault,” she whispered in his ear, before pulling the gun away roughly and jumping down. Ash followed with a glance at the boy before he flashed his teeth and followed suit by jumping down. Mortified, Henry looked to Neil for support or even to share in his outrage for being threatened and blamed, but he met no such agreement in his eyes. With a final look of disappointment, Neil too turned away and left the boy to his own conscience and duties.
Leah had rolled up her sleeves, stripped off her weapons and body armour, and threw in her lot to help the makeshift trauma team.
Jack was in a bad way.
Covered in blood, Kate worked with her hands on his left side to find the entrance and exit wounds. Eyes to the ceiling as she looked with her fingers, she called aloud the bad news. “Two entrance wounds at the back, only one exit front. We need to get the other bullet out,” she said.
“What do you need?” Leah asked confidently.
Hearing the question, Kate turned to Sera and fired off a list of equipment she needed from her bags. It wasn’t that she ignored Leah intentionally, but it was more that Sera understood her requirements more and there was precious little time for explanations. Unoffended, Leah carried on checking Jack over at the extremities as she knew that their paramedic’s priority was with gunshot wounds.
Loud swearing and screams of futile anguish came from the truck. Panicking that Mitch had succumbed to internal injuries that she could not have diagnosed, Leah’s heart sank until she made sense of the words she heard.
Sera was beside herself with grief and rage as she reported the loss of Kate’s equipment bag. “It must have been left behind in the panic,” she shouted, tears pouring down her face.
Ever the practical mind, Leah asked Kate again what she needed.
“Sutures, fluid bags, IVs, dressings…” She listed these in a desperate voice without taking her hands away from keeping pressure on Jack’s flank. “Everything,” she said, finishing with such a sadness and air of futility that it threatened to overwhelm them all.
Leah was not one for futility. See a problem: find a solution.
“Neil,” she said, catching his eye, “map?” Walking away from the makeshift operating table, she joined the older man in another patch of light as he spread out the map.
“A few hours to the ERV at least,” Neil answered in anticipation of her question.
“And three days to make it there,” she finished for him, “which we aren’t going to do unless we get more medical supplies.”
Neil was surprised at the different tracks of logic they seemed to be on. Perplexed, but fearing the answer, he asked outright. “What’s on your mind, kid?”
“Somewhere close. Hospital, ambulance station, doctor’s surgery. Anything that would have what we need.”
Both scoured the map to find where they believed they were, settling in agreement on the outskirts of a large town. Fanning out from there, their fingers traced lines until the legend at the side of the map was consulted and what appeared to be a small hospital was located.
“It looks to be about three or four miles away,” Neil said out loud as the thought came to him.
“Can’t take a vehicle; attracts too much attention and leaves you all stranded,” Leah responded in a similar distant tone as her brain worked overtime too.
“Hang on a minute,” Neil said as the consequences of her words sunk in. “What do you mean ‘leaves you all stranded’?”
“It means I’m going, now, and you’re staying here,” she told him defiantly, daring him to try and overrule her. Neil knew better than that; she was the better soldier, and she was younger and fitter with better reactions and sharper senses. But she was still a teenage girl and it burned through his very soul to let her take a risk that he could take instead. Opening his mouth to raise all these points, he found himself cut down instantly.
“Don’t give me any shit about someone going instead of me. I need to go, and you and Adam need to stay here to protect the rest and that’s the end of it.” With that, she whirled away, followed loyally by Ash, and began to replace her empty magazines with the full ones from Mitch’s vest as she didn’t have the t
ime to reload her own from the precious store of munitions in the truck.
Neil watched her as she checked every piece of equipment, scoffed down a cereal bar while barely tasting it, and followed it with a bottle of water. Fuelling the engine, that was all he had just seen her do. She didn’t eat for enjoyment, only to ensure peak performance when needed. Seeing such a young girl be so robotic saddened him, but on balance he was happier that she was on their side.
“How are you going to carry it all back?” he asked her gently so as not to seem like he was trying to dissuade her.
Wordlessly, she climbed into the truck and looked at the wreckage of assorted bags thrown down. Finding the one she wanted, she opened the top and turned it upside down to scatter the belongings recklessly around until the bag was empty. Turning around, she threw the now empty bag to its owner and informed Henry that he was her pack horse.
Horrified, the boy just stood there with his mouth open watching her walk away until Neil told him that he was to go with her.
“Stay quiet, do exactly as you are told and nothing else,” Neil said to the boy. “This is the only thing you can do to even begin to make it up to her.”
Watching him go in a trance, Neil settled down to take over watch on Mitch’s condition. Seeing the purple bruise of his chest gently rise and fall made Neil think that being asleep throughout all of this was an appealing option.
ARE WE NEARLY THERE YET?
Long journeys are a struggle for anyone. Being alone is bad, but sharing the experience with three others who really aren’t getting along all that well made for significant discomfort. Even worse when the droning, repetitive whine of tyres on concrete left a monotonous ringing in her ears to complement the ache in her body brought on by the vibration of the road through suspension and wheel which were more designed for foot-deep mud than long stretches of pitted asphalt.
Three days of driving at this pace had led them almost to the centre of the country after finding the ruins of Paris in the distance to be a less than inviting sight. It took them the entire first day to get past the tangle of interconnecting fast roads where one obstacle had even been the total collapse of the motorway flyover, causing three roads to be impassable. The source of the collapse was evident in seeing the burned-out hulk of a full tanker embedded into the rubble of concrete support beam.
Sticking to the smaller roads was fraught with terror, as every movement seemed like an imminent ambush.
Now, a few hundred miles inland, they were settling in to the same dangerously boring routine taking the toll roads ever south with no real idea of where they would end up.
Sighing and tightening her grip on the wheel, she blinked away the sluggishness and focused on the empty road ahead once more.
Three feet away to her left and pretending to be fast asleep sat Simon. The crossing had scared him badly, and the feeling of being drugged and driving through a waking nightmare had shaken him to his core. He was a big man in need of space and craving the freedom he had enjoyed his whole life outdoors so being underground was not an experience he wished to repeat any time soon.
His quiet moment of introspection was interrupted when he felt the vehicle slowing down. Not wanting to open his eyes to see what had caused the deceleration nagged at his conscience, but he favoured solitude in the balance of that moment.
His self-absorbed moment was then shattered when Lexi swore loudly.
“What the fuck?” she said with an element of terror in her voice.
Straightening in his seat instantly, Simon peered ahead and blinked his eyes into focus in search of what had caused her outburst. As she brought the car to a complete halt, he followed the line of her outstretched finger.
Squinting to make out what it was, the horrifying reality of a severed head impaled on a spike burned into his brain. Silence reigned in the cab for a few brief moments, before all four began to speak at once.
“Back!” Simon snapped at Lexi who was already selecting reverse gear and half turning in her seat.
“Move your bloody heads!” she barked at Paul and Chris who were obstructing her view as they both craned forward to stare at the gory scene ahead.
The tyres bit into the concrete and began to propel them backwards until she threw the wheel over in an arc to perform a wide turn. Slamming the gear lever into first, she stood down hard on the accelerator again to speed away from whatever horrors waited down that road.
TIME-SENSITIVE
“It’s got to be now,” Leah answered angrily, making Marie take an involuntary step backwards and raise her hands to calm the girl. Neil had come to her in a last-ditch attempt to convince the girl not to go when he lacked the courage to try and insist.
While Marie was opposed to her going based purely on her age and the responsibility she felt for her, she couldn’t argue that it made sense and her plan was fundamentally sound. Her only real concern was that she was insisting Henry go with her to carry any plunder she found. The untested and impetuous youth made Leah’s task risky but she couldn’t find the words to get through to the girl. Her head swam, she felt dizzy and knew that she would vomit uncontrollably very soon.
Guessing Marie’s reservations, Leah pre-empted her in a bid to cut short the conversation.
“He’ll do exactly as he’s told and if he screws up, I’ll bloody well leave him out there. Is that good enough for you?” she said icily.
Marie had to admit that those terms were acceptable. Before leaving to find somewhere private enough to give in to the sickness threatening to take over, she grabbed the girl in close and hugged her.
“Come back in one piece,” she whispered before kissing her on the forehead.
Worried that the emotions bottled up that day would erupt if she were shown any more compassion, Leah pushed away gently with a promise that she would.
“Never make a promise you can’t be sure to keep,” Marie said sternly, echoing Dan’s mantra. “Just be damned sure you look after yourself.” With that, she turned away and walked as fast as her pride would allow to the small toilet in a back room.
Cuffing away an unauthorised drop of moisture at her right eye, Leah turned to see a very nervous Henry waiting for instruction. Raising a single finger to beckon him closer, she stared into his eyes to compound and reinforce the fear he felt of her. She needed him to be totally compliant and unthinking; the last time he had tried to be a hero had resulted in the carnage not thirty feet away from her.
“Stay close, keep your mouth shut, do exactly as I say and nothing else. Do you understand me?” she said in a cold voice, prompting only a demented nod from the boy who was unsure whether his silence was required immediately or when they left the unit.
Hesitating, she reached down and hefted a pump-action shotgun. She held it for a moment and extended it to him. He reached for it, finding resistance in her arm as she held it tight. Glancing at her, he saw Leah’s eyes burning intensely into his.
“Carry it for me and don’t even think about trying to use it. It’s Jack’s, and he’ll want it back.” She snarled before letting it go and turning away.
She nodded to Neil as she walked towards the fire door adjacent to the large metal shutters. Emma ran up to her as she moved, thrusting a scrap of paper into her hands.
“Kate’s written down the stuff she really needs. Good luck.”
Leah nodded her thanks for both the list which she had forgotten to ask for and for Emma’s kindness. The scientist wasn’t one for sentiment and felt ever awkward around people and their feelings so Leah was genuinely happy for the words she spoke.
Stacking up at the side of the door with Henry meekly following behind her, she whistled the dog once and watched with satisfaction as he loped towards her wearing his game face.
“He’s my backup. You are just for fetch and carry. Got it?” She added one last snippet of advice to Henry. Turning back to Neil, she nodded once and pulled back the bolt on her rifle to load a round into the breech.
As the
door cracked open to spill blinding sunlight into their gloomy hideaway, she stepped out fast to seek cover in case anyone was watching the building. Ash slunk low and fast with her, crouching down as she knelt behind a long-dead vehicle lying flat on flat tyres. Henry followed suit and Leah allowed herself a split second of cruel amusement seeing the sheer terror on his face. If he wanted to impress her, then today had not gone well for him so far, she thought.
Having studied the map as closely as she could, she turned left and began to move cautiously along the building line with Ash stalking at her heel. As instructed, Henry followed some distance back so as to still be close but not so near that he interfered with her drills.
The hospital only lay a few miles north from their position, but the whole journey there was fraught with risk as every junction was overlooked by buildings bearing ominously dark windows. After thirty minutes of moving carefully, her legs burned from staying low and her breath rasped in her throat from the exertion. The same nerve-racking progress continued and, to her surprise, Henry made only one mistake when he knocked over a metal bin and prompted a loud echo to reverberate around the deserted streets.
It took just over forty minutes before the hospital came into sight. It was a ruin to look at from the outside, with abandoned ambulances littering the main entrance. They didn’t look like ambulances, but Dan had already educated her about the continental practice that most ambulances were more like taxis than the traditional and familiar big yellow buses she was used to.
Cowering ten paces behind her hiding spot, Henry became worried. She was just kneeling there, doing nothing for minutes as she just stared at the building. The supplies they needed were in there, so why didn’t they just go and get them so they could run back to safety and be out of this unfamiliar and frightening world? But she didn’t move, she just sat there watching and making him more and more nervous by the second. He was terrified. This was all he had wanted for the last year, everything he had hoped Dan would bestow on him: the prestige and status of being made a Ranger, the gun and the equipment and the training to go with it, but all of this he suddenly realised he didn’t want. It was dangerous, and it scared him half insensible. Just as he thought he couldn’t bear to stay still any longer and was considering running all the way back to the garage and to the tentative safety of the others, she moved.
Sanctuary: After It Happened Book 5 Page 12
