Safe Haven, page 12
Emma knew this was only a half truth and regretted it almost as soon as she said it.
"Emma?" a voice shouted from the trees.
"Yes. Yes, it's me!" she replied to the male voice.
"It's Richard," he replied, waving some bushes to the side as he emerged.
Emma never thought she would be so happy to see the nerdy librarian again. She ran across and flung her arms around him, kissing him on the cheek. "Oh God Richard, are you okay?" she asked pulling back.
"Yes...yes, I'm fine," he replied, taken aback by the warm greeting. "There were some survivors," he said signalling back to the bushes from where he had emerged.
Figures began to emerge from the greenery. There were old and young alike. Emma recognised some of the faces.
"Who are all these people?" asked Richard as the vehicles came to a stop and a host of strangers began to appear.
"It's a long story. But they're like us. They're survivors."
"Are the children okay?" interrupted Sarah.
"Yes. Yes, they're fine. Ruth and David took them back up to Emma's house. Sarah's frame visibly relaxed at the news.
"How's Jake? Is Sammy alright?" asked Emma.
"Sammy is fine," replied Richard. "Jake is still in shock, but he's being well looked after."
Emma let out a breath and turned as the last of the vehicles drove through the gate and ground to a halt. Many people had already disembarked. Some were crying, while some looked numb with fear and bewilderment. She saw Andy trying to comfort his youngest brother, Jon, who was battling with his emotions. Jon was no more than fifteen, and although he was tall like his other brothers, there was a giveaway youthfulness to his face which betrayed his years. Emma went across to them. As she approached, tears began to run down Jon's face.
"Listen to me!" All three of them lifted their heads to look at her. "Jules is tough and she's smart, but even if she wasn't, she's with my brother. There is nobody better to be with out there. They'll both be back, but in the meantime, you need to stay strong. Your people will be looking to you. You need to help them. You need to do what Jules would do." She was about to carry on when she saw Lucy helping a man with a makeshift splint on his leg out of a box van. "Now is the time they will need you the most," she said, giving one final look at the three brothers before heading towards Lucy. As she arrived, the man stumbled. She took his other arm, put it around her shoulder and helped Lucy with him into one of the large static caravans.
They placed him down on an old fashioned sofa, and he let out a yelp of pain, but neither offered too much sympathy—he was one of the lucky ones. A man with bloody rags around his neck and scraps of cloth over his eye was led to a seat by the nurse who had been in the mobile infirmary with Lucy.
"George is organising help to get the others in," Lucy said, giving the other two women a glance before heading back out of the door.
"We're heading up to the house. Are you coming?" asked Emma.
"I've got my work cut out here," she said, nodding to the door as more injured from the explosion at the warehouse were carried in. "I'd appreciate it if you could send my medical bag down along with some of my things," she said as she headed back out to the car park.
"What about Sammy and Jake? Don't you want to see them?" asked Emma.
Lucy dropped her head. "Give them my love. Tell them I'll try and get up to see them later."
Lucy closed her eyes for a second. People needed her. People were relying on her. She had to put everything else to the back of her mind and do what she was trained to do.
"C'mon, we're leaving," said Emma to Sarah as she walked through the crowded car park.
The pair walked up to George and Andy who were both stood talking to Beth.
"Listen. Lucy's setting up an infirmary in there," Emma said, pointing to one of the static caravans. “We're heading to my place," she said nodding to Beth, who immediately went across to stand by the side of Sarah, "I'm sending Lucy's medical supplies down, and I'll be back later on. That guy over there," she said pointing to her librarian friend, "his name's Richard, you need anything, you see him."
"Emma," called Andy, chasing to catch up to her. "Thanks!"
Emma nodded and returned to her van with Sarah. She took one look back across to the makeshift infirmary and saw Lucy in the doorway, ushering in the wounded.
Driving out of the village in the other direction, a familiar scene unfolded. The raiders had been thorough and merciless. Lonbaig would take a lot of rebuilding, not just the homes, but the place, the people. The three of them travelled in silence and Emma put her foot down on the accelerator, but seven miles had never seemed such a great distance. Just a couple of weeks ago, her gran had held a small get together, "girls only" at the house, where they had bathed in the warm afternoon sun, eaten Sue's homemade pizza, drunk what seemed like gallons of wine and talked and laughed into the early hours. That had been the best day Emma could remember in a long, long time.
And now...now this.
Emma guided the van around the tight bend. The property and outbuildings were almost invisible from the road, but as they headed down the hill, the familiar layout gave each of them a small breath of comfort. The warm feeling they experienced slowly turned cold as they noticed no sign of life in or around the house. Emma pulled on the hand brake and looked at the other two women.
"They mustn't have heard us," said Beth, refusing to believe that anything bad could have happened.
Together the three of them entered the house.
"Hello!" called Emma.
"Hello!" repeated Sarah and Beth in unison, but there was no response.
The three women looked at each other again before beginning a search of the downstairs rooms. On finding them all empty, Emma started upstairs, but stopped as she heard Sarah call out.
"Down there, look!" she said as she peered through the large bay window of the living room. There was a dinghy out on the water and a figure was waving, but not to them, to someone on the beach below.
The three of them sprinted out of the house and down the green hillside towards the beach. As wispy grass turned to sand, their anxiety lifted. At the far end of the small beach was Ruth surrounded by a number of children, all of them collecting mussels from the black rocks and putting them into buckets.
"Ruth!" yelled Emma as she ran towards them. Ruth and the children all had their backs to the three women, but as soon as Emma shouted, a stampede began. Beth made a beeline for Annie, but couldn't see John. Likewise, Emma ran towards Sammy, but there was no sign of Jake.
"Where's John?" asked Beth frantically as Annie dived into her arms.
"He's out on the boat," replied Annie, squeezing her sister harder than she had ever done. The tension evaporated, and Beth bathed in the adoration of her younger sibling, blocking out all that was wrong with the world. She edged round to look out towards the dinghy on the shimmering water.
Emma and Sammy both sobbed as they held onto one another.
"Where's Jake?" asked Emma.
It took a moment for Sammy to respond, but eventually she brought her tears under control. "Jake's at the house. He's not well. Ruth says seeing you again might help."
Emma pulled away from her younger sister. "What do you mean, not well? We were just at the house, there was no one there."
Ruth walked up behind them. "I think Jake's still in shock."
Emma remembered back to Mike talking about finding Jake on the hillside, but she had underestimated the severity of his condition. She stood up, taking Sammy by the hand and started walking back to the house. She looked across at Sarah who was surrounded by her joyful looking pupils as they threw warm and loving arms around her.
Emma and Sammy hurried off the sands and went back up the hillside towards their home.
"You left him by himself?" asked Emma.
"No, Dora's with him," she replied and suddenly, things made a little more sense.
The pair burst into the house and ran up the stairs. Dora jumped when they darted into the room, but her panic was replaced by happiness when Emma mouthed that Sarah was back and down at the beach. Dora ran out to greet the woman who had become like her sister.
Emma sat down on the bed next to her brother. He was sitting upright, staring past the window into nothingness.
"Jake," she said softly. "Jakey, it's Emma."
He was unresponsive.
"Where are Mike and Lucy?" Sammy blurted, realising amid all the excitement she had seen no sign of them.
Unable to handle telling her the truth for the time being, Emma opted for the partial truth. "We brought some people back who needed our help. They'll be along later." This placated Sammy for the time being and she climbed onto the bed next to Jake, taking hold of his hand, but eliciting no response.
Emma shuffled around and squeezed in next to Jake. She took hold of his other hand and began to stroke it.
"Everything's going to be fine Jake. You'll see. Everything's going to be fine."
She didn't know if Jake could even hear her, but she hoped he could not, because she hated lying to her siblings.
CHAPTER TEN
Fry was propped up with his back against one of the walls. He had been cradling Juliet's cold body ever since he had found it. The candles had long since extinguished and all but one of the lanterns had finally choked on their last drops of paraffin. He could just make out the silhouette of The Don's head. The thought of his eyes daring to look in the direction of himself and Juliet infuriated him.
"You think this is funny? This doesn't change anything. This doesn't change anything." There was no frailty in his voice, only resolve. "It doesn't change anything, does it sweetheart?" he asked looking down at his beloved Juliet.
He lifted her head and kissed her mouth, ignoring the lifeless frigidity that greeted his lips, ignoring the sticky trails of blood that streaked her face, ignoring the gory hole where her soft, supple cheek had once been. He pulled back and held her head between his hands.
"This doesn't change anything." He looked across the cellar floor and noticed the chunk of flesh that had been torn from Juliet's cheek before looking back down at her and gently stroking away an errant hair. He shuffled to his knees and carefully laid her body down on the ground before walking across to the workbench. He pulled the drawer open and grabbed a handful of candles. Fry lit them one by one, letting the melting wax drip onto a saucer and then he pushed the candle ends onto the molten wax, glueing each one into place. He carried them across to where Juliet lay and placed them around her in a wide semi-circle before returning to the workbench. He opened the bottom drawer and removed a purple sewing pouch, unzipping the rusty fastener to reveal a hotchpotch assortment of needles, and threads. Fry removed a bobbin still full with black cotton and a needle that glistened in the flickering light before picking up the fleshy remains of Juliet's cheek.
"Well darlin'," he said lifting her head onto his lap as he spread his long legs out in front of him and rested his back against the wall. "This might sting a bit, and you're probably going to have a bit of a scar. But as a young friend of mine once said, we've all got scars."
Fry unwound a long strand of black cotton from the bobbin and doubled it over before threading it through the eye of the needle. His actions were those of a man who was about to darn a pair of old socks, somebody who was just engaging in another part of his working day. When the needle was threaded, he put it in his mouth and carefully lifted the torn flesh up to the hole in Juliet's face. He pressed it into position, squeezing misshapen edges into place where he could and then skilfully pushed the needle into the necrotic tissue of the torn cheek and weaved it back up forming his first stitch.
When Fry was a boy, his family had been poor, but Christmas had always been special. They wanted for nothing at Christmas, and one of his cherished childhood memories was of him sitting in the kitchen with his mother. A batch of jam and lemon curd tarts had just come out of the oven, and a fresh tray of coconut tarts had been put in. The warm air was filled with the fragrance of plenty. He made coloured paper chains while his mother happily sewed the seam of a red felt Christmas stocking that would hang by the fireside on Christmas Eve. The crackly old radio in the corner was turned up much higher than usual and an old crooner was belting out "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". His mother had begun whistling it and he had joined in. That memory had stuck with him through all the good and bad times he had been through. It was a memory of pure happiness, one that would never be repeated in his life.
But now, as he sat, sewing his dead girlfriend back together, his subconscious had prompted him to whistle, and despite it being mid-summer, the notes that were coming through his lips were those of "Santa Claus is coming to town."
When Fry had finished sewing, he moved his mouth up to Juliet's cheek and cut the thread with his teeth before tying another knot. He pulled her body close to him, squeezing it, but now, it was less flexible, less human. Rigor Mortis had begun to set in, and although a big part of Fry needed more time to hold her, more time to clutch her, there was a part of him that was still rational and knew that if he didn't get the body settled into position, it would become almost impossible.
"C'mon darlin’ there'll be plenty of time for this later," he said as he hoisted her frame into his arms. He carried her out of the cellar and up the stairs as if she were no heavier than a pillow. He walked through the hall and up to the bedroom where he placed her into a flowery armchair in the corner, overlooking their bed. He stood back to admire his handy work and smiled.
He moved in to kiss her, and he closed his eyes as their lips met. It was the most natural thing in the world, a man kissing his woman; it made him feel alive. A thunderous knocking disturbed his intimate moment, and he frowned in annoyance as he marched out of the bedroom, making sure to close the door behind him.
"I'll be home late tonight darlin’ don't wait up," he said as the latch clicked behind him.
He thudded down the stairs and wrenched the door open to reveal TJ.
"Everything okay boss?" he asked.
"Why wouldn't it be?"
TJ nodded towards Fry's clothing, which was covered in blood.
"Och!" said Fry. "I was moving stuff around in the cellar and cut my hand," he said, hiding it from view. "Blood everywhere. I'll go change," he said, leaving TJ at the front door and heading back into the house.
"I can give you a hand in the cellar," called TJ after him.
"All done now," replied Fry.
As he walked back through the house, he closed the door to the kitchen and TJ got a smell of something familiar. Like the smell of a butcher's shop.
***
Darkness had fallen by the time Mike and Jules had navigated their way through back roads and farmers’ fields to avoid the hordes of RAMs on the A9 and Inverness centre. They had driven at speed through small villages that had fallen victim to the ravages of the raiders. How many people had lost their fathers, their mothers, their brothers, and their sisters, because of those men?
Mike brought the bike to a sudden stop, almost missing the junction at the end of the narrow country lane. There was a sign that read A835 Ullapool.
"Thank fuck for that," he hissed.
"Are we nearly there?" asked Jules
"No. But at least we're on the right road now," Mike replied.
***
"There's a dinghy heading in to the dock," said Andy as he burst into one of the two static caravans that had become makeshift infirmaries.
"Lisa," said Lucy to the nurse who had been helping her all day. "Make sure Mr. Fingle's leg is kept elevated and this arm needs a fresh dressing," she said giving a half-hearted smile to her female patient whose name she had already forgotten.
Lucy almost ran out of the caravan and through the car park with Andy. She removed her Glock from the back of her jeans, and Andy un-slung his rifle. George and Rob were already in concealed positions on the dock as the small dinghy got closer. Lucy looked at the approaching vessel and then across the moonlit bay to the familiar outline of the yacht. She could see silhouettes moving around on deck.
"Oh thank God," she said, slowing to a jog and then a walk. "It's them, they're back. Put your guns away, these are our people," she said walking to the edge of the dock just as the dinghy cut its motor and drifted in.
Five figures hurried up the rickety wooden steps and Lucy wasted no time in throwing her arms around the first one, Mike's gran, Sue. It was then that everything hit her. She had been in doctor mode up until now, but her emotions had rarely been in so much turmoil. She began to cry, and Sue soon realised that the tears were not down to the fact she had missed her friend, but that something was wrong.
"We were attacked," she said, trying to get her voice back under control.
The questions then came thick and fast. The group talked for more than ten minutes before even realising there were unfamiliar faces present. When Sue found out Mike was still missing, her usual stoic demeanour began to falter.
"I need to go home. I need to see Emma and the munchkins," she said as she began to tremble. Jenny wrapped a comforting arm around her.
"Come on love, we'll both go," Jenny said, looking towards the soldiers.
"I'll take you," said Barnes, needing to see Beth. He wasn't sure if it was love. But it was hope.
"You should come too," said Sue.
Lucy shook her head. "There's too much to do here, and look, I don't mean to be the bringer of doom, but those raiders plundered virtually all our food. We've got children and old people. We brought some food from the warehouse, but not much"
"Well, that's something we've got a short term answer to anyway," said Sue as she looked towards Hughes and Shaw.
Lucy looked at the three of them a little confused.
"The trip went a lot better than we'd hoped. The yacht's full of supplies," said Hughes. "I'll make a start ferrying everything in," he said heading back to the dinghy.
"Look," said Lucy taking hold of Sue's arm, "I'll try and get back to the house later, but right now, they need me here."
