Rise

by Victoria Powell

  Martyn stopped her as she tried to stand up. “No Zoe, it’s your turn.”

  Toby and Zoe were the only two Ackersons with duties to search for potential new bases. It took a long time to find the perfect site, an abandoned site somewhere discreet where the utilities hadn’t been turned off. If they confirmed a site too soon they could move the group into a police-monitored building or a crumbling ruin. Toby wasn’t ready to clear his favourite sites for occupation yet and Martyn knew that.

  Zoe glared at him. “Are you just trying to scare me? I know I had a close call out there today, you don’t have to wind me up.”

  Emma pushed into the conversation, bearing a tubular bandage and sports ankle restraint. “Zoe needs to immobilise that leg, not hike across the city. If you try to stand up I will tie you to that chair. Got it?”

  “Martyn!” The shout came from across the room. A man twice Martyn’s age was jogging across the sleeping mats towards them. “Martyn, is it true? Is Lexi captured?”

  Zoe squirmed and Martyn struggled to keep her in her seat. “Hywel, we don’t know. Alex is missing.”

  “That’s my daughter. What’s the plan to rescue her?” Hywel demanded.

  “Hywel, we’re not abandoning her.” Toby urged Hywel to calm down. “We’ll send scouts to find her. They’ll report to us at the new base and we’ll get her back. But first we need to get the kids away from here.”

  “We must get her now, before they start turning the screws,” Hywel moaned. Toby hugged Hywel tight, trying to calm him before Martyn decided to ride out into the night with him.

  “Where did she go?” Martyn asked.

  “She was in Middle Meadston, at the bloody busy-bodies house,” Hywel said.

  Martyn scanned over Hywel’s face. “You knew she left the base?”

  “Yes, ‘course I did. We had a fight and she always goes to them when we fight. She does it to get to me.” Hywel tightened his grip on a rifle hanging from his shoulder. His fingers shook and he stuffed them in his pockets.

  “Hywel, we need you here. We all need to be here. How are we supposed to keep everyone calm if the council are running around in a panic?”

  Hywel pulled a balled-up fist from his pocket. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, kid. You’re not a torture survivor. She’s only seventeen years old and she’s seen more of that world than you have.”

  “She’d want you to stay here.”

  “She’s too young to know what she wants.”

  Toby banged his hand on the table. “Stop it! Stop it now both of you.”

  Zoe pulled the drip out of her arm and paused to regain herself. “Martyn, go and gather three of your best scouts. I’ll find the address for you and the scouts can meet us there.”

  “I’m one of them,” Hywel said.

  “You are not a scout. You are a liability as a scout. People get caught. You’d be shit help at all today. You’re good as a front-line fighter. Help us get all these people to the new base and then plan a search and rescue with us.”

  Hywel helped Zoe stand up. “Zo, I want to be out there. I want to be ready.”

  She shook her head. “No. We can’t risk tipping off the police. Go help Marcus load up the car. He’s not very attentive to details.”

  Zoe coerced Hywel towards the vehicle. That man was a cornerstone of the Ackersons, when it came to a full-on attack Martyn would follow that man to the burning pits of Hell. Right now, Hywel was just a shell. He was another burden.

  Something was happening over by the main doors. Toby jogged easily across the warehouse.

  “What’s going on?” He asked the guard.

  The guard thumbed his weapon. “Someone’s trying to get in through the loose panel on the Brown Street corner. It’s a blind spot for the roof guard, ain’t it, so we pinned it down this morning. I need to go check it out.”

  “This could be trouble. You can’t be sure what’s out there,” Toby warned.

  With a nod the guard grabbed his colleague and dragged him out through the small door cut into the warehouse shutters. A third guard waited just inside, talking to the remaining roof guard on the radio to avoid friendly fire. Toby’s stomach turned knowing he should be up there covering the back exit. Time was passing. The guards would be walking down the side of the building. They should see their target in three… two… one….

  Silence reigned outside. No shots. What was going on?

  Scrambling feet were getting closer. Two loud bangs to the door – the signal – then the shutters swung outwards and the guards climbed back in, carrying with them a blood-soaked woman with jet black hair.

  “Hell, Alex! Is she conscious?” He followed the guards as they dragged her to the nearest bed mat. “Any cops?”

  One guard rubbed blood off his hands onto his trousers. “She’s semi-conscious. Must have just collapsed outside a couple of minutes ago. No cops. I think we’re safe.”

  Emma was at Alex’s side, closely followed by Hywel and Martyn. Emma checked for injuries and said, “She’s lost a lot of blood from this gash here. Someone’s had a go at stitching it, but it’s split again. Hopefully that’s the worst of it. We’ll fit a drip and stitch her up.”

  Toby said, “Add more guards. Cancel the relocation.”

  Emma added, “Check outside for any blood in the streets. All traces need to be bleached for half a mile radius. They’ll have the dogs out soon.” She patted Hywel on the arm. “She’ll be Ok.”

  Toby noticed Martyn’s heaving chest. One day he’d have to choose between saving her and protecting the group. Maybe... maybe he would make the right choice.

  Keeping the base quiet in the evening was one of the biggest challenges of base security. When five thirty pm ticked past and curfew took effect the warehouses should be empty. The heat signatures should be minimal in the streets. So, half the night shift’s duty was to stop people shouting their mouths off and popping outside for a smoke. The best time of the shift was when the bed mats were full.

  The tinny patter of rain on the corrugated roof harmonised with soft snores from slumbering illegals. On the warehouse roof two owners of the three unoccupied bed mats looked down on the tangerine-tinted streets. The gently sloping roof shifted under their aching feet. Both guards leant into the cold ruin of a chimney stack. Rain trickled down its surface and across their backs. From this spot they could see the whole roof and down into the front alley.

  Barney flicked his hair across Toby’s face. Toby scowled at him, but let it pass. The lad was only nineteen. This was Barney’s fifth time patrolling the night watch, but the day watch was more his forte. The kid knew how to work undercover. In the daytime the Ackersons played high stake risks to access information. Toby marvelled at some of the police route maps Barney drew up after a couple of days trailing cops on their circuits. Here on the roof Barney’s talents were wasted. All he did was watch water drip off his nose.

  Tonight was fierce; the weather threatened to blow them off the roof or flood them into the gutters. Toby was a forty-six-year-old naturalised Ackerson and he hated this job. Showing Barney the ropes had seemed like an easy task when Zoe suggested it. Barney was getting better at instinctively finding the best shadows, but that was tuition not instinct. When this shift started Toby sent Barney to his designated spot to watch the other alley. The kid clung on to his perilous position with the rain increasing and visibility decreasing. When the wind picked up Toby called him in; the chimney was the only safe place tonight.

  Toby hated abandoning an alley. The entrance on that side was pretty secure, with all the locks and barricades to keep anyone distracted long enough for an evac. There were huge benefits to having a secure second exit in the event of a head-on attack to the front of the building, but right now he was putting Barney’s life ahead of the group’s by betting there would be no raid tonight.

  Barney peeked out from below his hood, analysing his senior partner to guess his mood. “Toby?”

  Toby shook rain from his c
ape. “What?”

  Barney hesitated, but he seemed desperate to ask. Toby’s scowl grew as the silence extended. “It’s about the Erikssens.”

  Stretching his legs slowly, Toby lifted himself to his feet for a better view into the front alley. Toby sniffed before answering. “You stay away from that lot, you got me?”

  The alley floor was a good sheer, thirty feet below them. The concrete street was twenty feet wide, normally admitting a huge flock of workers and lorries on their way to or from the Business District. Now it was empty. All that was left was rubbish blowing around in the storm.

  Barney said, “When I was down in Central last week I saw one getting chased.”

  “I hope you stood well back,” Toby said, idly peering over the edge of the roof.

  “Why’s that?” Barney asked.

  “Did you see them catch him?”

  Barney shrugged. “Nope. He was a pretty good runner. I saw him take down a cop with a sharp shot too. That’s really hard when you’re running at full pelt.”

  Toby gave Barney a glare. “Well, if he had been caught you’d probably have lost your eyebrows. The Erikssens have a habit of blowing themselves up if they get caught.”

  Toby, as the senior security officer, knew all the routes and even where the next three possible bases could be. His job during the daylight shifts, unlike his young colleague, was to go out in search of new bases and secure the sites. He knew the police patrols around new bases and ensured that the buildings were definitely derelict. On a few occasions he abandoned his favourite sites just on a suspicion.

  “But Toby, they’re fighting against the police. Like we are?” Barney said.

  Toby turned back to his partner. “You have no idea. The Erikssens are as bad as the police! They kill people for no reason. They go into an open space and blow up dozens of random people just to graze a policeman’s knees,” Toby said.

  Barney shrugged. “That doesn’t happen a lot.”

  “If they find you, and know you’re an Ackerson, they will give you an ultimatum – join them or die. That’s it.”

  Barney shrugged. “I know that.”

  When Toby was caught by the police a few years back he was interrogated. The police beat him bloody and even pulled out a few of his back teeth, trying to extract information about their suppliers. Toby knew nothing and he kept it that way. The best way to protect his friends was to make sure he knew nothing about what they did. Hywel saved him that day. He led a team into the police station and smuggled him out. Toby had no memory of the escape. He lost a lot of blood before they reached him.

  Toby’s activities were a mystery to most people. None of the council members took part in security shifts any more. Barney, who thinks he is the brightest button in the drawer, had no idea that the pile of wood stacked on the far side of the roof was actually a carefully camouflaged escape bridge.

  Toby crouched back down by his partner. “You don’t believe me,” Toby said. “But if there’s any advice I can give you it’s this – if you see an Erikssen again then run. Run and hide. Some of the best of our group were lost to the Erikssens. Join or die. And if you join, one day you’ll walk into the middle of a nursery and blow up hundreds of babies because they’ll grow up in police barracks.”

  Barney turned away, staring hard at the crackled bricks of the chimney breast. “Perhaps you don’t know me at all.”

  “I’ve made my point,” Toby grumbled. “Barney, do you remember the Green Street massacre, about ten years ago?”

  Barney looked briefly over his shoulder at Toby. “Sort of. I was only a kid. We lived over in Falisans, my Mum and me. Some of her punters were in that part of the Business District when the raid happened. She lost a lot of trade for a few months. I just remember being really hungry all the time.”

  Toby nodded, he heard that a lot. “Do you know anything about the raid?”

  Barney sighed. “Um. Well, it was a police raid gone wrong. There was a group of sympathisers based in one of the towers. They’d been there for years and nobody knew.”

  “We called them the Chameleons. Their whole existence was focused on supplying food and resources to activist groups. They were not aggressive, they did not fight the police and they could not defend themselves,” Toby explained.

  Barney shrugged. “It was only a matter of time, then.”

  “Yes. It was. But they’d been operating under an official trading name for thirty-five years without any problems. It was something like Larton Logistics. Their security was tight and everything seemed above board.”

  “So, what went wrong?” Barney asked.

  Toby shook his head. “I don’t know. They might have said too much to a contact who then got caught and blabbed to save his skin? They might have revealed themselves somehow through a sloppy transaction? Who knows?” He grabbed Barney by the shoulder and turned him around. “The important lesson here is to always have an escape route. Always know when to abandon your base. Do whatever it takes to protect your people. Do whatever you can to rescue without risking the lives of others. You can’t ask more from your friends.”

  Barney nodded. “Like how we were packing up the base because Alex was missing.”

  “Alex knows too much about this group. As a kid she we allowed her into too many meetings she shouldn’t have overheard.” Toby clenched and unclenched his fist. “We should have abandoned everything and gone.”

  Barney scowled. “But then we wouldn’t have found her outside the warehouse.”

  “It could have easily been the police lined up outside the doors. If she hadn’t gotten onto the roof to escape.... She was being chased by Inspector Defoe! He knows how to torture the truth out,” Toby said.

  Barney had heard too many stories to disagree. “Well, she did get away. She’s on the mend and I think we’d be in trouble without her.”

  “She’s got her uses.”

  “One day she could run this group,” Barney said proudly.

  “Ha, she’d drive us all to Hell if she did.”

  The streets normally stayed quiet until about six am, which was today’s time to change the guards. That was the time that a handful of the neighbouring warehouses woke up and the street became a vibrant hub of commotion. Barney was itching for a run. Sometimes Toby wondered whether Barney had it right, and that a post-watch run would loosen up his stiff joints, especially on a bitter night like tonight. Instead Toby would head downstairs to fade into an unproductive sleep while the Ackersons settled to their chores or left the building for the day.

  Barney leant against the chimney and shook out his hair, carelessly flicking more water at Toby - as if that mattered. Another three hours of watch to go.

  5 - The Policeman

  There was a third unoccupied bed mat in the warehouse. Half an hour walking through the back streets and Hywel Jenkins slipped into Kettering, where Defoe watched from the shadows.

  The rain had dampened down the smog and cried itself into a quiet drizzle. Trudging through the litter on the west side of the city, Hywel pulled a short liquorice stick from his pocket and started chewing. Defoe mimicked his movement, pulling out a lighter, flicking the thing spluttering into life in his soaking hands, sending sharp gasps of light across the narrow opening between the tumbledown houses.

  Defoe took in the streetscape. A few of the windows had ragged curtains muffling lamplight inside. That was unexpected. Most of the flats around here had no power, no water and no heat. They should long since have been abandoned, which was why this was the perfect place for a secluded meeting. He leant against a rusty set of railings that marked the boundary between an old cellar entrance and the pavement. If not for the railing Defoe might’ve stepped into a litter-filled basement staircase and died in the soft mulch. This leafy scene was mirrored across five or six parallel streets, all waiting for the promised renovation, streets that had lost their names and were simply known as Wanderer’s Folly.

  All of this was going to change. The Ambassador had
big ideas about flattening this area and redeveloping it as The Upton Heights; an upmarket development aimed at the business classes. Soon Kettering would be unrecognisable. Most of the unemployed had already moved to The Reaches, an area neighbouring the police training and prison grounds. Those refugees would actually work a day in their lives making construction materials and reprocessing food for agricultural reuse. The number of illegals increased just after The Reaches was built. Ungrateful slackers.

  Then there was Hywel. His motives for snitching were clear. That snake said he was doing it to give his daughter a better life, Defoe could see through that. Self-preservation. That’s all Hywel stood for. Run to an activist group when the cops arrest your wife. Run back to the cops when a nice juicy deal is on offer. And yes, Inspector Gray had offered him a very meaty deal indeed. If only he could just grab Hywel and take him in now.

  Defoe stepped out from his shadow to fall in line behind his colleagues. Hywel stilled. Was he thinking of turning tail? Did he know what Defoe had in mind for the weasley bastard? Senses heightened. Three footsteps in the dirt. A baby crying in one of the flats. A portable radio played a slow blues tune. The scent of Defoe’s last cigarette still potent on his jacket.

  On the far side of the street, keeping her distance from Defoe, was Sergeant Scarlet Somersby. Somersby had a strong reputation as an expert spy - to those in the know - but also for her perverse enjoyment of violence. Her mean mix of palm blades and a winning, sexy smile left men at her feet begging for mercy, one way or another. Right now she was out of uniform, so to speak, wearing knee-high worn grey leather Doc Marten’s with jeans, a black top and a black leather jacket that barely hid the twin holsters beneath. The most curious thing about the red-head - and it really was red - was not her slashed, short haircut, but her backpack. She was on her way to a mission.

  Inspector Francis Gray was Hywel’s usual contact, but the sixty-something detective had brought along Somersby and Defoe for support. At times the cool, calm Inspector Gray was easy to work with and understood how to communicate covertly. At other times, like today, Hywel must feel that he’s a downright untrustworthy git.