The Brink (3 page)

“One more time,” said the man. “What the-”

Moll leapt up and fixed her jaw around his throat without making a single sound, other than a gargle that escaped from his blood flecked lips as he fell. The hunk of flesh came away from his neck without effort but as his writhing shape hit the ground, the pistol fired and the report tore through the night, sending the birds and insects into a fresh frenzy.

The bullet, angled up at Alan, slammed into his body and tore through his right lung, felling him with the impact and a sudden rush of air into his chest cavity. The agony was beyond compare as he tried to breathe using his collapsed lung. The noise alone was a horror in itself - a slurping, sucking sound that came from somewhere out of his swimming vision, somewhere important to him.

The camp came to life and tents were ripped open exposing lamps and torches that seemed to burst into life by themselves. Alan was aware of the glow that bathed him, aware too that he could hardly see clearly enough to escape. Fear and panic overtook the physical pain and he tried to stand, to get up and crawl at least, anything other than stay still and be taken.

Moll was growling behind him as he turned, moving slowly on all fours towards the spot in the shadows he thought were the bushes they’d hidden in. The lenses clinked together inside his pocket and he cursed himself for not destroying them there and then.

Moll snarled and attacked, was repulsed by a long spear branded by one of the older men, the hunter, and growled again. More gathered around them, some trying to get past her to reach him but Moll stood her ground, moving this way and that, always between him and them. Still he crawled and left a bloody trail of bright pink fluid in his wake.

The bushes came into reach and he felt the sharp briars pluck at his hair, his beard, his face. He pushed himself inside and felt nothing other than demonic agony that danced inside him, poking him with fiery goads and thrusting molten lead into his stomach.

Moll let out a whine as her body was pierced by the spear but was able to shake herself free of its point and limp away towards him. Still she growled but it was lessened now by her own suffering and on they came, circling them, closing around them with their torches and weapons.

“Moll!” he cried as he plunged further into the brush. “Here, girl. You’ve done your bit.”

Alan stood breathing deeply as the pain began to subside and the lung began to inflate again. He still clutched the entry wound with his right hand but even that was closing now and somewhere near his throat he could feel the lump of lead just beneath the skin that would have to be cut out later.

The men and women who’d gathered near him stopped when they saw him standing there, glaring at them in the firelight with baleful eyes that looked like they, too, were on fire. In his hands was his laser rifle, found where he’d left it earlier and fully charged.

He blasted the spear holder square in his chest making a hole the size of his fist that smouldered around the blackened edges. As he fell down dead, the others followed with each pull of the trigger until they turned and fled in terror from the avenging demon they mistakenly thought was dead.

Alan didn’t follow. When he saw that they were in flight, he took the lenses from his pocket and threw them on the ground, stamping on them until they were only fragments and half-buried in the mud.

Moll came and stood beside him, licking her reddened lips and looking up at him.

“I hope this’ll clean,” he said, looking at his stained smock. “It’s my favourite.”

2

Three days later they arrived back at Captain Teague’s camp and were met at the gate by two guards dressed in fatigue pants and looted hoodies that bore the famous sports logo in big white letters across the chest. Like most of Teague’s men they all wore large, wild beards and favoured gym sessions over drinking ones. Teague had taken his choice of troops seriously from the start and there were no slackers to be found on his team, no lazy troopers and no fat blokes who couldn’t run his obligatory 5 miles around the camp. There were a number of women as well who took their share of patrols like the rest, not content to let the stereotypes continue on into the scary new world that seemed to be ever on the horizon without a dawn.

Alan was glad to see them after three days living rough with only a tarp and a bedroll for shelter.

“You’re late,” joked Lenny, the tallest of the three and the only one carrying a weapon.

“If it irritates the Captain then I don’t mind. Did Henry and his wife make it here?” asked Alan.

“Yeah, we found them and we even towed your car back for you. We’re kind like that, though the thing is pretty much useless now without the repairs or the fuel.”

Lenny opened the gate and let them both through, running his hand along Moll’s back as she went by. She stopped and wagged her tail, wanting more.

“Fuel? Are we short?” he asked.

“We are for non-essential trips, Alan. Teague has something planned but he’s holding a briefing at the end of the week to fill us in. The rumour is he’s planning a move.”

“Wow,” said Alan. “I thought this place was pretty well secure.”

“A retail park will never be secure. It’s a beacon to every scavenger and looter for miles around and now that the supplies are at their lowest Teague expects we’ll be getting more and more visits from the bigger groups of crazies. Eventually they’ll get through no matter how hard we try and there are a lot of women and children to think about here.”

“Any ideas where he’s thinking of going?” he asked.

“Not a clue, mate. Best just wait for the briefing I guess.”

Alan said his thanks and walked on towards the main building but Lenny called out to him.

“Not your blood I hope.” Alan shook his head, looking down at his smock with the duct tape patch.

“Nope,” he lied.

Teague was right - a retail park would never keep out the gangs forever and as Alan and Moll walked up the road towards the complex of former shops and restaurants he began to see what Teague must’ve been seeing. Weak walls. Unsecured sewers. Too many ways in and out. Fire hazards. Plus the most obvious one of all - the treasure trove of supplies kept in the warehouses. Sure, their quantities had been dented by the need of the ever growing number of survivors, but the pallet stacks looked as high as ever and shrewd management coupled with efficient looting raids had kept them from being wasted or unnecessarily diminished.

The park itself was a fair size and it’d been a ‘new build’ in a flattened area of land that boasted a large, empty perimeter which Teague had cleared of debris in the first weeks of moving there. From the rooftops teams of spotters, snipers and LMG crews were stationed overlooking an almost perfect kill-zone and enormous flood lights could be switched on at a moment’s notice, bathing the area in a cold blue glow.

Within the camp the car park had been turned into the main living area - the warmer, more private shelter of the shops being used for other purposes and for those who had a greater need for them, such as the medics and the armourers. Great big tents, gazebos and makeshift wooden shelters had been erected on every square inch of tarmac and even caravans had been found and dragged into neat orderly lines for the more needy.

Orderly
. That was the by-word of every one of Teague’s men. It ensured clear walkways between shelters. It rationed out every piece of kit, every crumb of bread and every drop of water. It was a way of life to them. A mantra to meditate on during the evening and the first word on their lips when they woke in the morning.
Orderly
. They dreamt of order. They drank order. They ate and breathed order.

The problem was that it bored Alan to his very core and made him feel that survival in this new inhospitable world had to be carried out in an orderly fashion; to be metered out piece-meal with no unscheduled activity, no wasted thoughts or ideas or emotion that wasn’t ordered just so. It was stifling and it was only sheer obligation to duty that kept him there. Although he claimed no ethos and had no intention of developing one, his former life of working for himself before the disaster had given him a strong sense of duty, of fulfilling whatever commitment he’d made or offered. Back then it’d been bad for business if he’d gone back on a promise but now he felt like he had even more to lose. In this world people were putting their lives in the hands of a few brave volunteers and the only currency they dealt in was their word. If Alan hadn’t kept
his
word then Henry and his family would be dead. It wasn’t an un-mowed lawn or a weedy flower bed - it was life or death.

He reached the complex entrance and greeted the guard at the door. It was Steve and he’d been recruited after another settlement was hit hard by a gang of thugs and he’d been able to get the children there to safety single-handedly. It was that kind of courage that appealed to Teague and made him just the kind of man to have on his team.

“Mr Harding, you’re back sir,” he said with military precision. “Will you be looking for the Captain?”

“Yeah. Is he in?”

“Aye sir. He’s in the map room and he said to forward you on to him when you showed up.”

“Thanks Steve.”

The guard stepped aside and let him pass; stroking Moll as she went by and who, in turn, stopped and wagged her tail again. Alan didn’t wait for her but walked into the stifling heat of the shopping centre and made his way along the concourse. He passed people he knew, people he’d seen around camp and he received the occasional nod from some of the troops he’d gone out on patrol with. It was hard to do much else given that the walkway was divided by barriers to make the foot traffic orderly and any stopping was considered almost heretical.

At the map room door, which was converted into a make-shift headquarters out of an old coffee shop, he met Janet just as she was leaving and they stopped outside the doorway to talk.

“Jesus, Alan - I’ve spoken to Henry and he told me what happened. Are you okay? My God - that’s not your blood, is it?”

Janet was a compact woman with long, flowing hair the colour of good cider which she let fall over her combat shirt and fatigues. She was one of Teague’s former unit - one of many tasked with controlling the riots around Manchester during the disaster. She’d followed him to the shopping centre when the system had broken down and she was confident that she’d drawn her last real pay cheque. Bubbly, alert and eager to see orderly actions carried out in just such an orderly fashion, she complimented Teague the way butter compliments bread.

“No, not really,” he replied, wishing he’d taken the smock off in the first place. “How are they holding up?”

“He and Carol were a bag of nerves when they radioed in but we got to them in 30 minutes and brought them home. You took a risk letting them drive back alone. What was so important?”

“Henry mentioned that the ones who’d attacked him had been using cars and I couldn’t just drive away and let them have that kind of range. We’ve got a couple of settlements in that area and any kind of vehicle in Scavenger hands is worth taking the time to scupper.”

“So you took it upon yourself to deal with them,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yes.”

Janet tutted in her comical way and he couldn’t help but think that maybe she meant it; that his actions had been ‘out of order’, meaning not according to the strict, regimental methods of the Captain and a telling off was on the cards.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Henry and his family are safe and the scum that pick at the corpse of our old world have been deprived of their transport.”

She leaned a little closer and whispered to him. “You destroyed them, yes?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have returned if I hadn’t achieved my objective,” he replied.

“
Your
objective, eh?”

She grinned and stepped around him, heading back out to the car park camping grounds. Alan watched her leave and sighed. Even her walk was orderly.

“Harding - that was a jolly nice bit of work you did out there. Come in, man, come in and take a seat. That isn’t your blood I hope.”

Captain Teague sat behind the long map table with his feet up just as the rest of his advisors began to leave through the door. He had one of those small espresso cups in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other and Alan noticed that his little finger was extended as he lifted the coffee to his lips.

Teague was one of the old school of British Officers who’d come straight out of the womb and into Sandhurst with only a snifter of brandy in between the transition. He wore his stiff, ironed uniform as if it were on loan from deity and he drank his coffee as if a spillage anywhere upon it might mean sudden death. His hair, for what it was, had been cut short and slicked with some sort of product and his neatly trimmed moustache was like a narrow, black badge of office proclaiming his right to be considered military royalty.

To Alan he was everything he despised about his experience of the archaic class system that, at the time of the disaster, had been as strong as ever and threatened to begin anew in the ragged remnants of the old. But as a leader Alan couldn’t fault him for all that and despite his obvious sense of superiority to the predominately northern people in his camp, Teague was a gentleman and treated everyone with kindness and forbearance and even dared to tell a ‘witty jape’ once every blue moon. For that Alan was willing to overlook the rest, knowing that his own taciturn and at times misanthropic nature might have been just as irritating to him.

“It’s not,” replied Alan, looking down at the stain and taking a seat near the table. “But it’s done and at least-”

“I’m sorry my dear chap but I’ll have to stop you there and say what I’ve got to say - ugly as it is on my lips.”

“Go on,” he said.

“Well, it’s this - you were damn rash and you stepped outside of my orders. It isn’t the first time, I know, but there it is and I have to say that in spite of the success of the mission it was a damn fool-hardy idea to go back and leave Henry and his family to fend for themselves. What if something had happened? What if they were dead now instead of gorging themselves on their breakfasts? What then?”

Alan felt his face turn hot and red but held onto the fact that he’d done a good turn for the survivors in taking out those vehicles.

“I’m sorry,” he replied, looking down at the floor. “It was a risk I was willing to take.”

“But not one that Henry, Carol or Mikey were willing to take. Or that baby, bless it.”

Teague stood and drained his cup, then began to walk back and forth near his end of the table with his hands clasped behind his back.

“I did you a good turn in letting you train with my team and see how we do things. I did you another when you asked to go on patrol with them. I saw promise, I saw a skill set I could use in keeping this bloody wreck of a world afloat. If it were up to me I’d have a battalion of the kinds of soldiers I worked with before the disaster so you lot could jolly-well enjoy your time without worrying for scum like those monsters who attacked the solar collector team.”

He stopped pacing and faced him. “But I don’t have those resources anymore and probably won’t have again. I’ve got to make do with what I can find and so far I’ve considered myself blessed with the likes of you and Steven and the others.”

He resumed pacing and the floor creaked beneath his shining boots with their orderly laces.

“So it hurts all the more when the very people I rely upon let me down. Your mission objectives were clear, were they not?”

“They were,” he replied.

“And yet you disobeyed me. Why?”

“I saw a chance to make a difference and I took it.”

“You were already making a difference. Henry says you killed at least a dozen of them in order to rescue him. Is that not difference enough?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It’ll never be enough,” he began, standing, suddenly feeling very weary and tired. “People are dying out there. They’re being eaten - literally - by these vultures and I don’t feel like we’re doing enough, if I’m honest. I feel like we should be doing more.”

“More, you say?”

“Yes, more. A lot more. Not just standing around here with our maps and plans and bull shit and actually doing something.”

“You don’t think that this important planning,” he said, holding up the corner of the area map that was spread like a cloth upon the table. “Is doing something?”

“What
are
we doing? That’s my question.”

Teague looked at the map and turned it round so that it was orientated with north facing the door and south heading in their direction.