Safe Haven, page 5
He knew he wouldn't have long before the beasts were upon him once again, so he worked quickly. He knelt by one of the fallen figures he had seen from a distance, and pulled the man's shirt open. It was still damp from the blood. He had indeed died from a gunshot wound. Mike looked back to the other side of the roundabout. A lorry was on its side. The flames were slowly working their way towards it, but for the time being, it was still in one piece. It blocked the entire carriageway as it had veered then toppled. The question was why? Mike could feel the heat from further back as he approached the cab of the truck. The windscreen had shattered, and there were several small holes that had made the glass crack. Bullet holes. He booted the fragile screen in and pulled out the broken bodies with the same compassion he would show for a bag of cement. He flung them on the tarmac and immediately saw red holes. They had been shot too. Mike leaned into the cab and pulled out two rifles. He checked the bodies for spare magazines, put them in his backpack, and then something else caught his eye.
"Fuck me!" he said lifting a grenade from the pocket of one of the dead men. He placed it gently into his rucksack, flung both rifles over his shoulder, and stood searching the area for any further clues.
Nobody had survived the carnage at the back of the overturned lorry. There must have been vehicles in front because there were clear skid marks, a sure sign of an abrupt stop. If Lucy and Emma had somehow managed to capture the truck, they would have done it where they had options. A roundabout was the perfect place. There were four exits, Mike ruled out north and south immediately. One was blocked by a raging fire, and one had probably been blocked by enemy vehicles. The east exit would have been the easiest, but it headed away from the city, and the city was the safest place for them to go. The raiders didn't have a problem fighting and killing unarmed villagers, but RAMs, they were something else. They wouldn't wade into a city with their numbers diminished as they were just so they could take back their female entertainment.
Mike ran back to the bike and headed down the west ramp, ten metres from the bottom he saw a small line of something black. He immediately put the kickstand back down and dismounted. He looked back beyond the burning wreck and could see the RAMs not too far back now, but he would be gone before they got close to him. He bent down to take a close look. He stretched his middle finger out and gently touched the blackness. He brought it up to his nose. Oil. He looked a few metres further, there was another dribble. The lorry was leaking oil. He would be able to follow it to its resting place before it finally ran out. He climbed back onto the bike and began to follow the oil trail.
He travelled a couple of hundred metres before stopping and cutting the engine. There was a familiar sound, but much louder than he had ever heard before. It couldn't be. It was. The sound of not dozens, but hundreds of RAMs. He couldn't place where it was coming from, it seemed like it was all around him, it seemed like he was drifting in a sea of their noise, their growls.
It was probably the sound of the engine that was riling them. "Shit," he spat.
He looked at the bike, but knew if he continued on it, it would be game over. It had got him this far, but it would be the death of him if he took it further. He wheeled it onto the pavement and into a bus shelter. If he needed it again, he knew where it was, but the rest of his journey would have to be on foot.
The rifles were heavy on his shoulders, but if he made it to Emma, Lucy and the rest of the women, they could be the difference between life and death. He looked behind. The distance he had made since the roundabout along with the few twists and turns would have been more than enough to flummox the RAMs that had been chasing him. He advanced to a crossroads, still following the leaking oil trail, the menacing drone getting louder and louder with each step he took. He gripped the side of a building, once a carpet showroom, now just a relic. He dreaded what was waiting for him around the corner. Mike ducked low and edged his head out, the sound immediately increased in volume, but there was no movement and no sign of any RAMs. He looked up and down the street. There were long abandoned car showrooms, a ransacked petrol station and a few fast food restaurants, plenty of places for RAMs to lurk out of sight of the road. He stood up and headed around the corner, immediately picking up the oil trail once again. He began to run, eager to get off the streets.
His eyes darted from side to side as he went, peering through crud covered showroom glass, looking for the slightest movement behind industrial waste bins, but he saw nothing despite the constant noise of a number of RAMs he didn't even want to estimate. The area became more open plan the further he ran down the road, he could see beyond the street he was on, up another carriageway and across to a large industrial estate.
He squinted into the distance to see the huge colourful sign of the Home and Garden Depot. Without realising it, a smile formed on his lips. He knew Lucy and Emma were a lot more intelligent than he was. If he was escaping with a truck full of unarmed women, the first thing he'd want to do is arm them. This wasn't America, you couldn't just walk into a sporting goods store and arm yourself with guns, the best you could do over here was equip yourself with weapons for hand to hand combat. Provided the huge DIY superstore hadn't been looted already, that would be the logical place to go. That would be where Lucy and Emma would go.
He began to run faster, realising that the growling drone was diminishing. Where ever it was coming from, he was moving further away from it. As he carried on following the trail of oil, he became more convinced that the DIY superstore was where the lorry had headed. He came to a large roundabout and rather than looking for the trail, he ran directly across it to the third exit, in the direction of the store and the industrial estate. He immediately picked up the oil trail again. He allowed himself a grin. He was right. He was going to find them.
As he approached the gigantic store, he noticed there were no vehicles in the car park. That made sense, they wouldn't want to advertise the fact they were here. He slowed down a little, he had been running for quite some time and the weight of the two rifles and his backpack were becoming more noticeable.
The volume of the huge gathering of RAMs wherever they were had decreased further, giving him a small amount of relief. Only a small amount, because he knew that when they headed back out of the city, there was the chance that they could run into them, but that was a nightmare for later. Right now, he had to find Lucy and Emma.
***
Lucy and Beth came out of the makeshift infirmary and headed back into the office where Jules and Emma were still talking. "I've examined the five who sustained rat bites. None of them are displaying any symptoms I would associate with turning, but their wounds are infected and unless we can get them some antibiotics, they might not make it.
Jules looked forlorn. "Virtually every place in town has been ransacked."
"If we can get them back to Lonbaig, I've got drugs that can treat them," Lucy said.
"That's if the raiders didn't take everything," Beth added.
"I stashed everything of value. There's no way they'd find it."
"I've told you, there's no way of getting out of here. The whole city is overrun. It's all my fault. I should have got us out when we still had fuel for the vehicles."
"Baloney, you did good here, Jules. You did better than good. You gave people a chance who would never have had one by themselves. We'll figure something out. We've been in tighter scrapes than this, we'll figure something out." Lucy reassured her.
"Jules we've got trouble," yelled a voice from the other room.
"Oh, there's a fuckin’ switch," she said, sighing deeply and pulling herself up out of her swivel chair. "What is it now?" she said marching past the three new arrivals and heading towards the window.
The three friends followed her out, lingering just a moment. "Sarah and all the women are being fed downstairs. If nothing else, they've got a good supply of food and water here. Honestly, what do you think our chances are?" Beth asked, looking first towards Emma and then to Lucy.
"Honestly…better than they were when we were in the back of that lorry," replied Lucy.
"That's it?"
"I'm not going to lie to you, Beth. Without transport, we're stuck here, and when the food runs out... We're going to have to go out and find working vehicles. It's not going to be a walk in the park."
This wasn't news to Emma, but Beth's face drained of colour.
"Lucy! Emma!" Jules shouted.
Lucy and Emma, followed by Beth, walked towards the small crowd assembled at the window. The Venetian blinds had been angled down and all the figures were watching the loading bay below. As the three women approached, Jules turned to them.
"I hope you know how to use those guns, because we've got company," she said.
The two women reached round to the back of their jeans like it was second nature, pulling their Glock pistols out ready for use.
"What is it?" Emma asked.
Jules glared out through the narrow slits. "There's a bloke with a shotgun, tough looking bastard; looks like he's scouting the place out. There'll probably be more behind him. He's checking out the lorry you pulled up in. Now he's looking at the bullet holes on the side. Okay, now he's stepping back, taking in the back of the building. He's looking at the canopy over the loading bay and the office windows. Now he's climbing up the outside of the lorry cab. He's taken the rucksack off his back and flung it onto the canopy. Now he's done the same with the shotgun... The mad fuckin’ bastard, he's just leapt from the top of the fuckin’ lorry onto the loading dock canopy. Jesus, this guy's fuckin mental."
Lucy, Emma, and Beth, looked at each other in the subdued light. Suddenly, the man Jules was talking about sounded very familiar.
"Let me see," Lucy demanded as her and Emma squeezed in next to Jules. "It's Mike!" Lucy said, almost shaking with excitement.
"You know this guy?" Jules asked turning to Emma.
Emma's voice erupted with joy as she spoke. "Jules, Y'know that pain in the tits I was talking about? You're about to meet him."
"How the fuck did he find you here?"
"My brother can be quite resourceful when he needs to be," she said, the smile not leaving her face.
"Oh man, he is going to be so pissed that we drugged him," Lucy said, remembering the look of betrayal on Mike's face, despite the overwhelming feeling of joy that had swept over her. Then, she snapped to her senses. "What the hell are we doing?" she asked and roughly pulled up the blinds and opened the window.
Mike had climbed onto the canopy at the far end, and for the moment they had lost sight of him. Lucy leaned right out, the stillness of the hot afternoon air becoming electrified by her excitement.
"Mike," she yelled, waving her arms. It took him a second to locate the source of the shout, but then his feet began to thunder across the corrugated steel roof towards her. He shoved the shotgun into his backpack and without missing a beat leapt up, grabbing tight hold of the window sill and pulling himself through the gap using his powerful arms.
He looked at Lucy, then Emma, almost not believing his eyes. The shock, quickly turned to elation, and he pulled both of them into him. Emma clutched him, her joyous tears running onto his shoulder. He had his arm tightly wrapped around Lucy's waist, and she took hold of his face, kissing him feverishly.
"I found Jake on the peak behind the house...he's in shock, but he's alive," Mike reported.
The two women remained silent, but held him even tighter. After a minute, he let go and went across to Beth, embracing her firmly, he pulled away, keeping a warm and reassuring hold of her upper arms. "Annie and John are safe."
The uncertainty about her younger brother and sister had been eating away at her ever since she left them, but hearing this news was like having a huge weight lifted from her.
Although Mike had known other people were in the room, he hadn't acknowledged them. His attention had been on the ones he loved and cared for. Now, he began to look around at the assembled men and women. They wore military uniforms, but he could see they were not military personnel and they were not raiders. They possessed the looks of people who were scared, who were on the verge of being beaten.
Emma stepped up to her brother's side and turned him towards Jules. "Jules and her people are coming back with us."
Lucy and Emma looked at each other. They had made the decision, knowing it would be hard, and dangerous, knowing that it defied reason, but also knowing it was the right thing to do.
Mike turned looking at all the tired and harrowed faces, then he looked towards Emma and Lucy. "Alright," he replied shrugging his shoulders.
CHAPTER FIVE
Fry sat back on the plush burgundy leather sofa and took another satisfying suck on his cigar. Part of him was furious that the raid had gone so badly - the terrible loss of men, vehicles, fuel, and supplies - but there was part of him that was laughing inside.
He was the right-hand man to a gangster, affectionately named by the local press in the northeast prior to the apocalypse, The Don of Durham. As a crooked police officer, he had done his bidding before the days of the infection and since. Fry had garnered a reputation as a terrifying and unrelenting sadist, and the men feared and despised him. But recently, things had changed.
Fry had been sent north of the border at the behest of The Don, to create a Scottish base for their operations. During the crisis, they had thrived, creating a black market for sought after goods. They had recruited willing and weak henchmen, and when Fry and The Don felt the time was right, they struck, taking over villages, towns and cities. The armed forces had been too badly depleted to put up any real resistance, so The Don's army of raiders soon became the dominant force. When the remainder of the British Armed Forces were called south in a last ditch effort to save the capital, that was when The Don and his men began to wreak real havoc, spreading almost as fast as the virus that had started this apocalyptic catastrophe.
Fry had plundered a village called Candleton, which had a unique geography and could have been made into a fortress and a solid base of operations in Yorkshire. He had desperately wanted it for himself and was enraged when instead The Don had handed the rule of the village to a man called Potts who had been his daughter's current pet. Lorelei was a constant thorn in Fry's side, but a move against her would be a move against The Don. And as much as he fantasised about holding his hands around her throat and watching her eyes turn red as she spluttered and choked to death, he chose not to do it.
Soon after Fry moved to Scotland, Lorelei had returned to her father's side in the northeast. Potts had been killed and the army she had taken with her had been cut in half through continued attacks by RAMs. Their original base, in Sodburgh then fell without a strong general there to organise the men, and so, the Don's entire empire had crumbled. They had all fled north to join Fry in Loch Uig.
All the men who had despised Fry began to realise he had been the one keeping them alive. He had been the strength behind The Don's operation. When Gordon McKeith had gone to The Don with his plans to raid the surviving villages and farms in the Highlands, Fry had protested, saying it wasn't a sensible move. Eager to win back the respect of his men and restock their dwindling food supplies, The Don had flown in the face of Fry's advice and empowered Mckeith to head the raid.
TJ, who had been Fry's own right hand man, but unlike Fry had enjoyed a good level of camaraderie with The Don's troops, informed Fry that serious dissent was brewing in the ranks. Unless something was done soon, there would be trouble.
The encampment at Loch Uig had been disorganised when Fry first arrived, but he had soon brought order to it. It was home to over three thousand souls. The vast majority of them were The Don's soldiers, but women kidnapped from plundered villages numbered in the hundreds, providing various degrees of servitude to the camp. Although enslaved whores kept most of the troops content, some men had decided to make more permanent arrangements. Women who had a man of their own wore a pass or were given a tattoo to signify they belonged. If they were touched by anyone else, it would be death to the man who laid hands on them.
"Penny for your thoughts," Juliet said, as she slumped onto the sofa and laid her long brown legs across Fry. Up until meeting Juliet, Fry had despised women. He used them to fulfil his physical needs and treated them as a tradable commodity, but Juliet... Juliet was a kindred spirit. She was a powerful force, easily turning adversity to her benefit. Her smooth dark skin and stunning looks tantalised him, her sense of humour made him roar with delight, and her hunger for power made him feel that he had found the one thing he had been looking for to take the next step.
He was under no illusions as to her attraction to him. She was young and beautiful, he was a grizzled warhorse with scars inside and out, but she saw the strength in him and that was the only aphrodisiac she needed.
"You know my thoughts, sweetheart," he said snapping out of his daze and sweeping his hand up her smooth, silky legs.
"Some party," she smirked, looking across the dining room.
The room had been prepared days before at The Don's request. The homecoming of Mckeith and his men would have been a huge celebration.
But now, The Don sat at the head of a table with just a few cronies keeping him company. He was never one to pass on an opportunity to eat, drink and be merry, so even with no returning heroes to toast, he decided to throw the party anyway. Lorelei, as always, was in a state of inebriation, wrapping her lips around a young soldier who would doubtless be her next toy. Although the sycophantic fools poured drinks and tried to make merry, there was an air of foreboding in the room.
The large country hotel where they had taken up residence was luxurious. It was reserved for The Don and a select and favoured few. Fry had been offered the chance to move in, but he had preferred the privacy of a large house on the outskirts of the small town, where he could talk to Juliet until the early hours of the morning, planning...plotting.
