Forest of Glass

Copyright© 2020 by E.M. Tyrell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

Chapter 1:

Wolverines!

Beset on all sides by the tumult of a foul day, Daniel could only think of a single word – bleak. Not what he’d expected to come to mind driving through scenic Panamanian border country, but it was bleak: the sky mottled in charcoal grey and a sickly amber hue on the horizon; rain flying in sideways and battering the car; biting cold creeping in through the windows and barring the air con from warming numb fingertips and bitten cheeks; The windscreen, covered in a deep wash of rainwater and condensation to the point that visibility might as well have been nil as opposed to six inches in front of your face. The ground outside was so sodden that the tyres began to bite into the mud, ripping great chunks out of the dirt road and flinging it rearwards, all four wheels skidding and sliding across the track. Daniel strained his eyes hard and sighed, flexing his fingertips around the wheel in a vain effort to wake them up. Wrestling with the car, fighting off the drowsiness from the cold, ten days of cross country driving avoiding border crossings and settlements, crossing the glass belt, and trying to look after the kids – He was exhausted. Bone-weary. Every divot in the mud, every rocky outcrop in the sludge rattled the car like a shaker. Every raindrop that hammered the vehicle rang like a gunshot in the cabin. The 4x4, caked in turf and sediment mud, trundled along the track like a brow-beaten warrior, dragging itself through the quagmire as though wounds inflicted in the battle up to the crossing were beginning to take their toll. Electric motors whining with each wheel rotation. The teeth-gritting rasps of rock sinking into metal and plastic. For what felt like hours, Daniel had endured an agonising cacophony while summiting false peaks, regaining control as the car slid about the path, near catatonic in the glow of the floodlights ahead – like a moth to flame he continued on towards the lights, diminishing and shattered.

The dense Jungle began to subside into a muddy clearing, maybe twenty meters across. Daniel brought the car to a gradual stop besides the floodlight and set his hand-break. Daniel dropped his numb hands from the wheel and let his head roll back on his neck and suspired. His breath stung his lips and his throat felt like a gravel trap set in jagged ice. He brought his hands to his face, drawing his fingers firmly along his brow, round his eyes, and down his cheeks, before catching in the floodlight post in his periphery, pouring over it. He baulked at the flaking crimson paint, the jagged rust, the dents, the exposed wiring, and the peeling safety notices up and around the post. He took a sponge from the side of his chair and wiped the condensation from the screen. It may have been fatigue, or it may have been the poor visibility, but Daniel couldn’t believe what he was seeing. In fleeting breaks in the wall of rain, he could make out a lone concrete pillbox off to the right of the track about twenty meters away, ashen and lonely, strangled by dark fingers of vine sprouting anaemic leaves. The road wound off into the darkness of the Columbian forest, and above it hung a pair of black iron gates, sinking in their bulky hinges. Coils of oxidized razor wire ran off the sides in both directions, snaking into the thick canopy either side. This low place looked as though it hadn’t seen people in years. Suspending his disbelief, he broke the silence.

“This is it.” In the passenger’s seat to his right, Lorraine stirred stretching her arms out ahead onto the dash and clicking her neck. Daniel swung his arm in behind her seat and rolled his head towards the back of the car. Gloria’s raven hair cascading down past her shoulders, a pair of wisps hanging down over her face. Her Pale green eyes met his through the gaps in her thick black hair. Her angular face responding in kind as her red lips curled into a wry smile. Daniel smiled back at his daughter, before turning his head further towards his son behind him. Rafael was still fast asleep, head on the door and his breath fogging the bottom of the window. His chestnut hair looked like dark rubber in the low light, straight and messy and near black.

“Passports” he whispered. Gloria removed one of her ear buds and looked up from her book, confused.

“Huh?”

Daniel brought his hand up from behind the seat and pushed his finger to his lips and looked Gloria dead in the eye. “Quietly, I don’t want to wake him. Passports please.”

“There’s nobody here Mr Esparza” Lorraine’s voice was very quiet. She was obviously confused and it occurred to Daniel she’d become quite rigid and twitchy as she’d stirred.

“We don’t know that. The guards could be in the pillbox trying to keep out of this storm. If not I’ve still got the get out to open the gates so we can get through. I’m going to see if I can find anyone before I go messing with those” still whispering, and motioning towards the weighty gate latch handle and thick bars of the gate “If there is anyone here they’re gonna want to see passports at the very least. So Lorraine - passport please. Gloria sweetheart, could you get Rafy’s for me as well?”

“Sure but I’m with Lorraine here, it looks like the land that time forgot out there.” Rafael turned a little and let out a quiet moan while he slept

“Keep your voice down” Daniel glanced at Rafy, before looking at the floor of the car “I’m going to say this quietly because I don’t want him hearing this” he looked up at Lorraine, before turning back to Gloria, confirming he had their attention “an unmanned crossing is not a good thing. If I get challenged while I’m opening that I gate, I want to be able to prove who we are and where we’re from…” Gloria noticed something behind his eyes: a wobble. Something she didn’t recognise. Something that chilled her arms and contorted her face into a frown. “…or if necessary we can use them to barter for safe passage” he broke eye contact with Gloria and motioned his head towards the bag in the foot well before catching Lorraine’s eye and waiting. “Give me the passports girls.” Gloria, still trying to dissect what was hiding behind her father’s eyes, leant into the foot well and unzipped the nearest pouch on the holdall. She pulled out Rafy’s passport, before awkwardly lifting her butt out of her seat and sliding her own out of her back pocket. Lorraine meanwhile was furtling with the zip on her jacket – some of the fur from the hood was caught in the zipper and had jammed, and Lorraine’s cack-handed attempts to force it open weren’t working. Gloria handed Daniel the 2 crumpled little books and exchanged a look with her father – something between disappointment and irritation. Daniel turned back to Lorraine just as she managed to rip the zipper through the fur, down the jacket and straight off the bottom of the runner. Gloria bit her lip, and Daniel pushed his tongue in behind his teeth. Lorraine managed to dig her passport out of her breast pocket and handed that to Daniel, who then checked and double checked he had all 4, and leant over towards Lorraine, reaching into the foot well and opening the glove compartment. He rummaged around in there for about 20 seconds before making eye contact with Lorraine, and squirreling his hand into his coat pocket. He then tucked the passports into the opposite pocket, cracked the door open, and stepped out into the storm.

Gloria knew to trust her instinct. Seldom was it wrong, and more often than not it pre-empted something – a sort of early warning system. That system had been coiling the hairs on the back of her neck ever since she made eye contact with her father. As the driver’s-side door opened and the interior lights came on, Gloria looked into the front passenger seat at Lorraine, who sort of shrugged and tried to fix her zipper. She’d seen something though; something very different about her father’s eyes. The way he’d rummaged through the glove compartment and instantly pocketed his hand. He seemed unsteady and as though he was deliberately over-correcting every little move he made, almost as if he was drunk. She noticed a shadow over his face: his caramel eyes seemed to have glazed over cold and hard, but the tiny impulses of his face muscles betrayed the fact that he was anxious, if not terrified. Sweat had built up in the furrows of his brow, and his shiny black hair, illuminating the stray wisps of grey-white in his fringe. Strands had fallen out of the slick he always had it pushed back into, which normally he’d just push back into place with his fingertips, but he didn’t. Admittedly the few official border crossings they’d used had been manned, so perhaps her father was anxious about it being closed, but instead of anxiety or concern, all Gloria could see in his face, and all she could feel for him, was dread.

She wasn’t too far from the truth. Daniel’s mind had been solely on his Saint Christopher pendant the moment he’d asked for the passports. As he struggled to make his way through the sludge towards the gate, he tried to stay alert to sound or movement in his periphery. One hand jammed firmly in his jacket pocket, the other clutching a flashlight with numb fingers. Exhaustion can have the same effect as the wind in the cold, and as he laboured through the sludge, he could feel his body shivering as the rain and the biting cold engulfed him. 20 meters was not a significant distance by any stretch of the imagination, but every step Daniel took seemed to be clawed back by the mud. Caught in the headlight of the car, his shadow projected every slip and wobble onto the gate ahead of him. Feeling as though he was walking on lost feet, Daniel begrudgingly forced himself onwards, and after 10 minutes of fighting the mud he managed to get a hand around one of the gate’s bars and hoist himself upright, endeavouring to bring his feet steady underneath him. Using the gate as a crutch would have been an excellent way to steady himself, if the gate had any kind of retention mechanism in place – it didn’t, so it wasn’t, and Daniel went arse-over-tit as the gate swung out towards him and his feet went out from under him. Kicking up mud and flailing his arms as his hands slipped from the rain-soaked bars, Daniel felt his soft body meet the earth with a sudden, excruciating thud.

Daniel, winded and caked in mud, now found himself desperately trying to catch his breath and writhing in dull agony on the floor, trying to clear the dirt from his mouth in a series of throaty spits. When he was a kid, Daniel could wind himself and a few deep breaths would sort him out in a matter of minutes. These days, the thick dusty air was just as choking and stifling as the cramp in your diaphragm when you do go down flat on your back. ‘for Fuck’s sake’. He lay there, staring into the grey sky, gasping in the cold, taking choppy sips of stale air, and waiting for the cramp to subside. The heavy rain stung his eyes and was starting to drench his clothes, so he dragged his leg across the other and with an exerted heave managed to drag himself onto all fours. He heard the car door open behind the sounds of the storm, and then he heard it close, and as he craned his neck around to the right, he saw his daughter’s silhouette staggering towards him in the headlight beams.

“Dad?!” she was having to shout through the rain an even then her voice was faint “Are you okay?!”

“I’m fine sweetheart, get back in the car” every breath was a wheeze, and his teeth chattering in his head was giving Daniel a headache but he managed to blurt out an answer.

“Are you okay?” she kept staggering up towards him “You went over pretty hard, are you hurt? Don’t try to move just yet; try and catch your breath” Gloria knelt down in the muck next to her father.

“I’m fine, just a little winded is all” he groaned “Now please, go and get back in the car.” As he spoke, a twig snapped in the dark ahead of them. Daniel’s instinct started to come alive and he felt himself rising out of the stupor the fall had cast over him. He managed to get onto one knee, and grabbed his daughter’s jacket collar and pulled her face down to his eye level “Gloria, get back in the car now! Lock the doors.” He pushed her away from him and got his hands onto the floor either side of him, ready to push himself up onto his feet.

Gloria couldn’t see her father’s face because of the darkness and her body blocking out the headlights, but she could read the seriousness in his voice. She squeezed his shoulder before turning and, with great trepidation, headed back towards the car.

Daniel pushed himself off the floor and got to his feet. Still breathless, but jacked up to his eyes on adrenaline, he managed to catch his breath. Behind him more twigs were snapping. Leaves were rustling. As the seconds ticked away with the rain, low voices began to rise in the dark towards him. He began to panic, padding his jacket pockets feeling for passports, wallet, lighter, cigarettes, double checking that he still had everything and knew where it was. More seconds ticked away. The voices were clearly audible now, no more than thirty feet away. The underbrush ahead of him, partially illuminated by his torch which was still in the mud, began to rustle, and move in an unnatural way. The sounds of the brush breaking seemed to coincide with great dark silhouettes of huge leaves moving against the yellow and grey canvas of the night horizon. Daniel closed his eyes. He whispered a brief prayer to himself and pictured his saint Christopher clearly in his mind.

“Quién coño eres?” Gravelly and unwelcoming, the voice held Daniel where he was. He’d have to answer, though his Spanish was a bit a rusty.

“Hello there Amigo, are you the border official?” he said hoping it might placate the unfriendly voice.

“That’s an expensive car, check it out” Daniel thought that was what it said. It was muttered, and followed by the a piercing white torch beam which caught Daniel off guard, fanning his hand in front of his face in an effort to shield his eyes.

“Hola hermano! What are you? Mexican? American?” The voice didn’t soften. Not one bit.

“American.” Daniel replied, his voice trembling.

“Buenas Noches. So uh, what are you doing here Americano? You take a wrong turn somewhere?”

“No Sir. Heading down to Caracas from Baja with my children. My Mother’s dying; I want to see her again before she does” Daniel was hoping that God might forgive him for lying. It was, after all, only a white lie; his mother was in Caracas, she was buried there, but that wasn’t where he was going and he was starting to get the impression that the guy he was talking to wasn’t a border officer, and Daniel also realized at this point that he was one of four...

“That’s a long drive Mr…?”

“Esparza. Daniel Luis Esparza”

“That’s a long drive Mr Esparza.”

The torch beam fired off towards the car and Daniel got a brief look at the man holding it. 5’8, maybe 5’9. He was wearing a heavy coat, camouflage trousers, and a white peaked-cap with a shiny leather band around the brim – didn’t look like much, maybe 165lbs wet. There was thick black stubble running from above his ear and right the way along his jaw, under a hooked nose and covering emaciated sallow cheeks. There was an extraordinary darkness under his eyes, and they were little more than black orbs in the awkward light. Knife handles protruded from the sides of their boots, and the other three guards were all hidden beneath field caps and smocks. They had holsters on their thighs, and were each holding a rifle – one by the magazine well, one had it slung over his shoulder, and the other had it braced into his shoulder, muzzle to the floor. Daniel could hear them muttering and whispering in Spanish but couldn’t make out what it was they were saying. The Torch beam moved away from the car and back to Daniel.

“How old are your children Mr Esparza?”

“Rafael is 15, Gloria is 17, and Lorraine is 19, sir”

“Bueno. Do you have any verification of your identity Mr Esparza?”

“Yes, sir, I do. I have our four passports in my jacket pocket. Do I have your permission to remove them for you to inspect?” the guards muttered to one another again.

“Si Hermano, go ahead” Daniel heard footsteps in the mud coming towards him. Out of the torch light the silhouette of one of the guards grew larger and clearer until he was six inches from Daniel’s face. Daniel tried to keep his cool and handed the passports to the guard. The guard then went back over to the other three and yet again Daniel heard low murmuring in Spanish. He returned his hands to his pockets, squinting as the rain stung at his face and trying to keep warm. The low murmuring continued, drawing the night out like a blade, until it stopped, and White Cap cleared his throat.

“Okay Mr Esparza you are free to cross into Columbia”

“Thank you”

“We will however be seizing your vehicle as there is no authorization present here which would allow you to transport it across the border, and we will be seizing your passports to make a note of your passage through Panama”

“Excuse me – I’m sorry I don’t understand, why are you seizing my car?”

“Mr Esparza I would like to remind you that you are in Panama right now. While travelling within the confines of our borders you are subject to the laws and systems as set out by the governing bodies of Panama. As an instrument of those agencies, it is my job to seize the vehicles of any party without authorization to transport one, and because of your lack of authorization I will be seizing your passports so that we can make a note of who you are should we need to escalate the charges at a later date”

“Charges?! What charges?! This is absurd; there are no restrictions of vehicles in the Central American Economic Federation, and there’s no reason for you to seize our passports. What crime have I committed that gives you the right to do this, I at least deserve to know that much!” The torch beam went out. With just the car’s headlights and his little torch being the only things throwing light out, Daniel was struggling to see. The incessant rain and the debilitating cold were also factoring in to Daniel’s struggle to keep the guards in his line of sight. He could hear his heart beating in his ears, and a sudden rush of energy came over his arms and legs, and with it a heavy sickening feeling in his gut. He could hear movement and whispers in Spanish but couldn’t actually see anyone, which is why he never saw the butt of the rifle swing in from his left and connect with the side of his face. He did feel it though, right before he lost consciousness and collapsed.

Cold. Cold Daniel thought. Pervasive, engulfing cold. His vision was hazy, and his ears were ringing. His equilibrium was completely off; he wasn’t sure which way was up. All he could feel was the cold. As he began to slip back into consciousness, he started to process more of what was going on. His face was resting in the freezing sludge; his head was throbbing above his left eye. There was a coppery taste in his mouth, and he couldn’t really feel his fingers or toes. His vision began to creep back into focus, but there seemed to be a delay in processing what it was he was seeing. His vision seemed to ebb and flow as his head throbbed, and even then it was taking a couple of seconds to react to what he was seeing; Gloria, Rafael, and Lorraine were knelt down in front of the car; a couple of the guards were screaming orders in Spanish while White cap and another guard were rifling through the car; The rain was still coming down like a torrent, and Daniel was so cold. As he began to regain his senses, Daniel could hear Gloria crying. It was like a sad garbled noise at first, but the more time that passed, the more Daniel could see blood trickling down the side of his daughter’s face, and her terrified weeping was clearer and clearer with each second that passed. Lorraine too was crying but quieter, and Rafael…he couldn’t hear Rafael. In fact he could no longer see Rafael. He tuned his face up slightly and saw one of the guards with his rifle pointed directly at Gloria. Daniel had to act; he could feel it. But he wasn’t in a position to do much. The rain was beating down around him, creating cloudy puddles all across the track. His fingers were numb, and both of his hand was still tucked into his jacket pocket. He tried to shift himself over, and the ringing was leaving his ears, but as he began to move he felt the hot, dull pain in his head; just beneath his left eye he could feel an agonising, radiating ache. It kept throbbing until it was virtually all he could comprehend as he strained his eyes onto the guards. And then he heard a gunshot. He heard the sharp crack of the bullet and then his daughters petrified scream. All at once his senses seemed to sharpen – Sound returning to full clarity, pain subsiding, sensation in his digits sharpening, his awareness peaked and he realised that four harassing his daughter and rifling through his car. The adrenaline began to supercharge his body.

Sweeping his leg up toward his chest Daniel get himself up onto his knees, the mud compressing and oozing around his kneecap as he propped himself up. For the first time since he got out of the car he removed his left hand from his pocket, brandishing the .38 calibre revolver he’d retrieved from the glove compartment minutes earlier. Bringing it to the centre of one of the shadowy figures in front of him, he let loose with 3 rapid shots. Because of how he was stood in the headlight, Daniel was able to see the wounds open up with a small misting of blood and water being thrown up around each impact; one connected with the man’s hip; the next entered just beneath the ribcage; the third hit just beneath the armpit. The man cried out in anguish, collapsing to the floor in front of the children - revealing Rafy knelt in front of the car, terrified and shaking. The injured guard was now writhing on the floor, howling into the storm like a wolf in pain. His agonising gargles and pain-filled screams continued only for a few seconds but seemed to reverberate for miles. As one of the other guards slid in next to him, perhaps to comfort him, the screaming stopped with a low gurgling and the moist, oozing sounds of mud shifting as his legs and arms twitched for the last time.

White Cap had been frozen at the sound of the shots, and stood watching as his underling died in wheezing agony on the floor. Both White Cap and Daniel had seen the last breath – little more than a delicate, pink mist – rising from the man’s mouth and dissipating into the air without lingering for more than a second. Daniel was numb. There was a profound, vomit-inducing emptiness in his stomach, and a choking tension beginning to constrict his chest. He’d asked god to forgive him for the sin of lying less than ten minutes earlier, and there he was – a murderer. It was a sin that would not lightly be forgiven, and one that Daniel would never forget. He felt lightheaded, and his pain began to return around his eye and his head. His vision stayed clear though. Clear enough to see White Cap storming towards him through the mud. White Cap had thrown the left panel of his coat aside and drawn a large, clip point blade from a sheath, which he was now holding out to the side of his body, the blade glinting as if it was smiling at Daniel. The guard by the corpse had gotten up too, tears streaming down his face, and his rifle brought up into the shoulder and also pointed at Daniel. The third guard was now also angrily approaching Daniel, and as White Cap got to the base of Daniel’s feet, so too did the third guard, who promptly took a firm grip of Daniel’s throat, forced him up against the border gate and held him there. White cap leant in next to Daniel’s ear and pressed the point against his chest, just beneath the sternum.

“Americano, we were gonna let you go if you’d just gone along. Daniel, you killed Moshe!” White Caps voice was all over the pitch range, and Daniel was quite sure he was crying, but it did nothing to alleviate the concern of the now hysterical, knife-wielding, border officer in a position to kill him “You killed my fucking cousin Pendejo. I’m gonna fucking gut you, hijo de puta!” Daniel began to hyperventilate. The rain was beating down on the world, thunder was rumbling overhead, amber lightning was firing through the clouds, as if god was sending him a sign that the reaper was there for him, and that Daniel would soon be judged for his sins. He was crying, and struggling like a trapped animal, trying whatever he could to see his daughter and his son one more time before he died “We’re going to open you up, and I’m going to break your pretty little daughter in before I blow her fucking head open!”

At what seemed the very same moment as White Cap screamed his final, ghastly threat at Daniel, the sounds of the night seemed to dissipate beneath the ghostly thwacks that rang out from the foliage. They were sounds unlike anything Daniel had ever heard before, like a twig snapping in the distance, but quieter. They were such gentle, ethereal sounds but they caused absolute havoc. White Cap’s neck jolted sharply to the left before his body collapsed into the mud with a squelch. The man with the rifle, who’d been stood about 2 or 3 feet behind White Cap, seemed to collapse instantaneously as his cheek and torso were riddled with wounds. The man who had held Daniel against the gate went limp in an instant, and as Daniel once again slipped in the mud he noticed, while propped up on his elbows, petrified, that the man’s arms were tangled in the gate bars, and his head had rolled back on his neck – lifeless. He hung off the gate, legs folded at the knees, and Daniel felt the warm pools of blood around his hands in the mud. Daniel was catatonic. He frantically scanned his surroundings looking for the culprit but could see nothing. He could hear nothing. Not a sound except the low whimpering of Gloria and Lorraine, now embracing in front of the car. The silence seemed to endure for an unnaturally long period of time – even the sound of the rain had receded into a fine pitter patter in Daniel’s ears.

“Clear up!” a lone voice in the dark called out. The brush began to rustle again. The bushes began to shake and twigs were snapping under heavy feet. Deep, alien breaths were being taken as Daniel tried to pick shapes out of the night. And then a shadow passed through the headlights of the car. A great figure, wrapped in a black canvas poncho, stood in the middle of the track. Then a second. Then a third and a fourth and a fifth. They all wore black respirators with filters either side of the mouthpiece, and a glinting red visor set over the eyes. They each held the same alien weapon: a black stock like that of a hunting rifle, and a great black tube extending a good two feet out of it; vertical steel flaps rose maybe an inch off the top of the tube at the far end, and a magazine clearly sticking out in front of the gloved trigger finger. Their thick misty breath rose from their masks as they examined their kills, before one finally spoke up.

“All clear”

“Nice work ladies” the voice from before sounded off again. Amid the foliage, another of the figures rose from the leaves and thrust his weapon over his head.

“Wolverines!” The figures breath streamed through the mask as he yelled, before another pair of the figures emerged with him from the bush.

“Shut the fuck up Otis” Daniel was certain that this one of them was British.

“What? It’s a great movie!” A deep American voice.

“Big whoop. We’ve got four people that were almost killed by a bunch of Latino Reavers and you’re quotin’ a second rate war movie from the 20th century. Make yourself useful and see if the poor bastards need help” Daniel wasn’t actually sure what kind of accent it was. It sounded like a weird mix of Scottish and Australian but it seemed to slip his mind when a pair of enormous gloved hands lifted him from the mud and held him there.

“You good?” Daniel was shaking. He tried to speak but could only manage a few babbles and wheezes as he tried to move his head into a position where he could see his daughter “Okay dude, I’m gonna need you to calm down and try and speak to me here. You’re probably in shock but you’re gonna be fine. We’re not like them and we’re gonna try and help you get on your way okay?” Daniel closed his mouth and looked into the visor of the man’s respirator. He nodded frantically, trying to mask the fact that he was shaking. A second figure approached Daniel, stopping just to his right and removing his respirator. He was an older man, in his late fifties at least with wiry, grey hair, vague hints of ginger in the fringe, and a well groomed beard and moustache, with clean shaven cheeks. His eyes were pale blue-green, full of vibrancy and energy as they scrutinised Daniel.

“My name is Kellan Duffy. This big fucker is Otis. Your girls are okay, the younger one has a small cut on her head but it’ll be fine. Your son is in shock but he’s also gonna be fine. You need to calm down for me and try and get yourself under control. I want to help you but right now you’re not making it easy. We’re not gonna hurt you, okay?” Daniel took a deep breath, and nodded. Otis took his hand off of Daniel’s chest, and he and Kellan both stepped to one side as Daniel headed over to his passengers. One of the other masked men was cleaning Gloria’s wound – it looked horrific, like a deep gouge just above her right eye. Daniel fell to one knee and rolled so that he was sat between Rafy and Gloria. He took his son under his arm and squeezed him tight, and held onto Gloria’s hand while the medic went about his work. He sunk back against the car, and with tears running down his cheeks, finally let himself relax. Kellan turned away from Daniel and activated his radio:

“Mike-Uniform-Lima-25 En route to rendezvous, ETA approximately 4 days from now. Oh and we’ve picked some stragglers up by the border. Got use of a wagon so we’re gonna go ahead and move the stuff straight down, save the time it’d take burying it”

Chapter 2:

The Joker and the Thief

Kellan led the party through the gate and set up camp in the thick foliage just on the other side of the fence line. The car had been tucked into a small clearing about fifty feet into the trees and surrounding foliage had been stripped from the plants and fixed to the car in bushels to camouflage it into the foliage. One of the figures in black had cut a circle into the clearing with his boot heel before taking an entrenching tool and carving it out maybe a foot deep; several others brought kindling and loose wood to pile into the hole for a fire. The rest of them ferried crates and bags over the border, resting them next to the car ready to be loaded. Daniel and Lorraine watched them furtively, like skittish deer scanning in the dark for predators. Gloria was sat on a log with the medic, who had removed his respirator after they’d crossed the border, with Rafael asleep at her feet. In the firelight, his angular face flickered in and out of view – he was a very warm looking man, with dark, soft eyes and a white, toothy smile set into the rich, deep brown of his cheeks. He seemed to comfort Gloria just with his presence, let alone with the bad jokes and reassurances he gave her. Daniel thought he may have actually found some people still in touch with their humanity off of what he saw in him.

It had been maybe 3 hours since they’d crossed the gate. Daniel was still fairly out of it – his head hurt and the emptiness in his stomach hadn’t shifted. The last of the crates were stacked up next to the car and the two enormous people that had been moving them took a minute to stretch and remove their respirators. One of them was a ghostly looking man, 6 and a half feet tall, give or take an inch, and he was kissed by snow; he had skin like fresh milk, and eyes like frost on a wild meadow; his hair was silver grey, and his beard made him look as if he’d walked through the arctic drift, with wisps of straw hair hiding among the white. For the colour of his hair he could have been 60, but his skin was tight and his eyes keen – Daniel didn’t think he was much older than 30. The other was an animal of a woman. In all honesty Daniel hadn’t realised she was a woman until after she’d taken her respirator off – the breadth of her shoulders and the weight of her step had seemed like those of a herculean brute, but with her mask off she was actually quite beautiful, in a wild, savage sort of way. She was obviously of Latin heritage – golden skin and green eyes, thick chestnut hair cut high and tight, and a pair of razor sharp cheekbones that dominated her face – but she looked as though she’d been bread for war. Her neck was broad like a bull, and she had hands like shovels; Arms like a body builder and legs like a power-lifter. She wasn’t much more than 5’6, maybe 5’7, but she looked solid as a rock. The muscles in her forearms seemed to stretch the skin near ripping as she locked her arms out in front of her and cracked her neck. All of the figures in black looked as though they were athletic, but Gloria was athletic, and she didn’t convey the same harsh strength of these people. The woman noticed Daniel staring and gave him one of those “1000 yard stare, get your fucking eyes off me or I’ll snap your neck” kind of looks and Daniel quickly looked away. Daniel could see her sizing him up out of the corner of his eye, and he felt his heart rate start to climb as she walked over to him. He could hear the weight of her boots impacting the ground like a pair of hammers striking an anvil, and he felt the air grow cold as she got closer. Her arm stretched out ahead of her, Daniel clenched a fist and waited until she had a grip on him so that he could catch her by surprise, but she didn’t manhandle him. She placed a hand on his shoulder, enormous and vascular but as gentle as a cat’s paw. She took a knee down beside him. Daniel turned to meet her gaze. Her eyes were like an abyss of colour, beautiful but all consuming – Daniel couldn’t get anything out of them. But her mouth, her lips, had curled into a sort of hybrid between a grimace and a brood, full of concern. She was harder than coffin nails and she exuded an aura to remind the world of that, but her mouth had cracked the stony exterior. In that moment, she looked just like a mother, trying to probe into a quiet child’s deep thoughts, mining them for an idea about how she could help. She was mining Daniel. 30 seconds must have gone by, where they shared this deeply intimate but silent connection as they tried to tap into one another’s brains, before she pulled him in and, as any mother would, hugged him. In that moment Daniel felt as though he was a child, and as tears began to wet the woman’s shoulder he realised just how close he, and his children, had come to dying.

“hey hey hey hey hey, shhhhhhh” she whispered “it’s okay, you’re okay, you’re safe, there’s nothing to worry about, it’s all gonna be okay” her accent wasn’t particularly strong but it was present. A rich, velvety voice, like a cup of freshly ground Columbian coffee on a cold morning. Daniel brought an arm up and tucked it around her midriff, holding onto this rare tender moment as if it was the last he’d ever experience. The frosty giant who she’d been moving crates with had walked over and sat next to him now, cigarette in hand and equally concerned, just not so motherly.

“What’s your name darling” she said.

“Daniel” he was stammering “My name is Daniel”

“It’s lovely to meet you Daniel. My name is Isabella, but you can call me Red” Daniel sat back a little, and she was smiling “That is Isaac, but we all call him Snowy” she motioned to the man sat next to him “That strapping young man is Grantham, the one looking after your beautiful children, you see?” she pointed to the warm looking gentleman sat with his children, both now quite contentedly asleep in front of the fire “You’ve already met Kellan and Otis, they are the two men that spoke to you at the gate I believe?” Daniel looked round to the two men quietly chattering in the trees and nodded “And that’s Simon over there, talking to your eldest” Daniel saw Lorraine, sitting against a tree, with a wiry, skin headed man lounging in the leaves in front of her.

“She’s not my daughter” he turned back to face her “She’s a friend of the family”

“Okay…well that’s Simon with your friend” Daniel nodded gently.

“What about the dog?”

“Excuse me?”

“The dog” he pointed meekly out to Isabella’s right. In the darkness, just barely illuminated by the small fire, was indeed a dog - a wolfhound with a beautiful coat. It had keen eyes burning from behind its muzzle, and the uppermost part of its face was jet black, with curls of grey, black, gold, and white around his cheeks and chin, and a frosty white belly set between two muscular legs attached to broad shoulders. He was sat down, and his line of sight was fixed squarely on Daniel. The longer he looked at it the more uneasy it made him feel. In that moment Daniel decided it really was a wolf and he tensed his jaw in anticipation of another drama. He felt a hand rest on his shoulder and he swiped his head to the left to see Snowy, cigarette in mouth, piercing eyes buried in his own

“Easy Daniel. That’s just Wicken” Snowy released his shoulder and turned back to brood into the fire. Isabella got up and sat on the log next to Daniel, one hand on his, the other between her legs.

She whistled sharply. “Wicken, baby, who’s a good boy? Come to Mumma, come and tell her your story” The dog’s ears seemed to prick up at the whistle and its head cocked slightly. It folded one ear down towards his eyes and its sleek muzzle split into a daft toothy grin, tongue hanging limp out of the side. It shook its head for a second, before trotting jovially over towards Isabella. She lifted her hand from between her legs to roughly scratch its chin, before going over its ears, and its neck. The dog, obviously loving the attention, firmly planted itself between Isabella’s legs and raised its snout to tap Isabella under her chin as he scratched his chest. Daniel was amazed at how soft the dog was – in 47 years he’d never actually met a dog as friendly as this one.

“What did you say its name was Isabella?”

“Not Isabella. Red. We are friends now, you must call me Red” she rolled her head onto her shoulder and smiled at Daniel. He looked down to see the dog had done the same thing: the pair of them were sat there grinning like Cheshire cats at him. “And this handsome boy’s name is Wicken. Little bit of Husky, Little bit of German Shepherd, and lots and lots of love” she cackled as the dog licked the underside of her head. Red cleared her throat and the dog sat upright again, alert. She lifted Daniel’s hand from his thigh and slowly brought it round under the dog’s nose. He seemed to barely sniff his fingers, as if enjoying the bouquet of a fine wine, before licking the back of his hand. It felt like moist sandpaper and lifted all the hairs on Daniel’s hand. Quite remarkable, he thought.

“Good to see you’ve made some friends. Thought you might have been a mute!” the familiar voice of the man from the gate and that same peculiar accent caught Daniel a little off guard, turning to see him, hair tied back, sat on a log just to the left of his own by the fire, warming his hands. Daniel smiled at him wryly.

“No sir” his voice as a little hoarse so the words seemed to stick to his teeth before they limped out of his mouth “just a little…overwhelmed”

“Well I can’t blame you for that. Those bastards gave ya one hell of a hard time” he nodded as he spoke, as if insisting that it was little more than a hard time and not attempted robbery and murder.

“You could call it that”

“Ugly business, but you’re alright now. Mother Goose has taken quite the shine to ya, she’ll keep you safe”

“That’s cute Shamrock, you’re just jealous of the fact I’ve got bigger eggs between my legs than you do” in little more than a sentence Daniel clocked that, more than just a tank of a person, Red was as sharp as a knife.

“Shamrock? Is that the best you can come up with? Not the fact that I’ve a face like a melted candle or that I could do with a translator?” he scoffed.

“It’s okay Kellan. I told her to go easy on you. You’re at a certain age where the Irish tend to hit the bottle pretty hard and she didn’t want to send you off to see Captain Morgan!” Snowy said, his deep voice reverberating through the log and into Daniel’s legs.

“You’re a cheeky little fucker, Snowbell” Kellan jokingly threw a small nut or a stone at Isaac as a silence dropped over everyone.

Simon and Lorraine wandered over and took a seat next to Kellan. She was sipping a hot drink from a flask and Simon had wrapped his poncho around her shoulders. She looked Ashen, and exhausted. The 9 of them sat there quietly for a good 10 minutes: Grant with Rafael and Gloria; Kellan, Simon, and Lorraine on one log; Daniel, Snowy, and Red on the other; all of them just watching the flames licking over the edge of the hole and burning the wood shiny black. The sounds of the forest were alien. Cicadas buzzing in the night, birds screeching like chalk on a board, the trees whispering to one another on the wind. Sensing Lorraine’s discomfort, Kellan interrupted the night song of the forest.

“I presume Izzie filled you in on names, but for Lorraine’s sake, I’m Kellan Duffy. The beautiful lady sat next to your father is Izzie or Red if she likes ya”

“She’s not my daughter” Daniel said “She’s a family friend”

“Oh. My apologies” Kellan twitched his eyebrows “That’s Red. The gentleman on his left is Isaac, but we call him Snowy because Norway dumped all of their snow in his hair. You know Simon on me left, I call him noodle but I don’t think he cares for the name too much”

“Costello” Simon whipped back.

“D’ya hear that Simon? Nobody laughed at your Abbott and Costello reference because you’re the only one boring enough to have seen films from 120 years ago. Sorry Lorraine. The big scary black guy is actually a massive teddy bear and his name is Otis, and the smaller, smiley black guy is Grantham, Grant for short, or ‘Doc’ when you stub your toe. Howie is off collecting fire wood, he’s the bald Scotsman who speaks less English than the French”

“I heard that you boozy Irish prick!” a voice called out in the dark.

“D’ya see? Not a word! You can only feel sorry for the poor fella” Snowy and Red sniggered but Kellan wasn’t finished yet “and that beautiful hound is Wicken. I call him Barbie, because the next time he steals me socks I’m gonna barbecue him!” the dog looked at Kellen with a folded ear and a cocked head, which the Irishman mimicked, and cooed back at the dog, who promptly trotted over to Kellan, jumped in his lap, and smiled at Lorraine “He’s quite friendly when you get to know him, and he’s also thick as shit, hence the broken ear” Wicken squeaked, as if he was genuinely offended by Kellan’s jokes.

“There were 9 of you weren’t there?” Lorraine asked “Including the dog, weren’t there 9 of you?” everyone looked away quietly, and Kellan sighed, moving the dog onto the floor in front of him. He tinkered with trying to phrase something, but kept stopping himself from actually answering Lorraine.

“Darlin’, there were 9 of us but number 9 isn’t exactly conversational, so it’s probably best you don’t-” Wicken’s ears pricked up as he made a low growl on the floor. He stood up and sniffed the air a little, before growling again, folding his ears back, and stalking off a few paces, pausing to smell and listen. Out of the black, number 9, still hidden behind a respirator and underneath his black poncho, crept towards Kellan and threw Lorraine’s cup of coffee over the fire. The hissing and cracking of the kindling woke Gloria and Rafy, and Kellan looked up into the empty visor of 9’s respirator expectantly.

“Contact on the road” Otis, Red, Snowy, Grant, and Simon all got to their feet, donned their respirators, and grabbed their weapons from behind the logs or off of the car; Kellan stayed put and waited to hear what 9 had to say “APC, mounted gun, Maybe 10 guys inside. They’ve stopped to go through the gate. If we take them now we’ve got another vehicle and we can move a hell of a lot quicker tomorrow” Kellan just nodded, before donning his own respirator, and marching with the rest, fading into the night like shadows in a dark room. Daniel just stared after them, confused, but Howie was almost immediately beside him.

“Take your kids, get behind the car. Do not move unless you hear me tell you too, do you understand?” He said forcefully. Daniel nodded. Rafy and Gloria had already started to move towards their father, and Lorraine quickly moved towards him. He led them behind the car and crouched down in the darkness

“Rafy. Get underneath the car. Gloria, Lorraine, stay right here, I’ll be right back. Don’t move”

“Dad, what’s going on? please don’t go” Gloria pleaded, still waking up.

“I’m not going anywhere sweetheart, stay here and look after each other, I’ll be right back”

“Dad, please” Her beautiful jade eyes furrowed his brow as he held back tears. He squeezed her hands tightly in his and kissed her cheek, before staring back into her eyes.

“I’ll be right back” He let go of his daughter and headed round to the other side of the car, lifting the lid on one of the crates. Inside he found a strange looking pistol, like a long can with stuff sticking out of it. He took hold of it and started to creep in the direction that Kellan had gone. He ducked in behind trees, skulked between bushes and had his senses on a razor blade. He could smell cigarettes, and biodiesel. The air tasted crisp and cool, fresh with the dew of the rain. He could hear an old combustion engine grumbling away to itself, and soft voices in the dark. As he meandered through the forest towards where he thought Kellan and the others had gone, the smells grew more intense, the voices grew louder, the brush got thinner. With each step Daniel knew he was closer to whatever an APC was, and that Kellan might need him if there were 10 of them. He pressed himself against a dead tree; maybe 20ft back from the track and peered over into the gloom. He could see the very edge of the nearest camber on the road, jagged stones in a gulley just beneath it, and a few pairs of ragged boots, illuminated in the wash from the border gates’ floodlights. They were clunky, black leather, with steel lace rings, and they were beaten up as hell. Suddenly, in the darkness to his left, he heard a twig snap. He swung around to his left, eyes straining in the dark looking for any hint of movement. Seconds began to tick away as he searched frantically for anything in the void. Maybe 20 seconds had lapsed. Daniel could taste salt in his mouth as bullets of sweat ran down his face. He gripped the odd pistol in his hand and twitched like a rodent in the dark. CRACK. It was a second twig snapping in the dark but closer this time. Much closer. A shadow moved in front of him. A great tall shadow like a man in black ambling past his feet in the brush. Daniel froze. He heard some fumbling, and could see the shadow towering over him. Then the sound of water trickling, like a time-forgotten creek bubbling away in a lost valley, filled Daniel’s ears, and he felt a pattering on the top of his hiking boots. He was stunned. He couldn’t be sure as he couldn’t make out any detail, but it suddenly dawned on him. Someone was relieving themselves on his shoes. Did they know he was there? Was this someone’s idea of a joke? He scanned the shadow up and down, gobsmacked. His jaw agape, frozen in an awful, sickening combination of terror and absolute confusion, he could do little more than stare and strain to see. Then the shadow turned, ever so slightly. Shards of sickly ambient light slashed through the dark, across its chest and an arm. He saw the vague outline of an eye, glinting delicately in the sparing light, and saw it widen, and then harden. The arm moved, and Daniel panicked. He brought the pistol up to a shooting position, and just with the man at the border he brought it to centre mass. He went to squeeze the trigger, but nothing happened. He tried again, harder this time. Again, nothing. The shadow continued to move on the spot, reaching for something, and that hard eye had glazed over, cold as ice and black as rolled steel. Daniel’s face dropped as the realisation washed over him. He could see a blocky mass extending in front of the shadow, and what looked like a muzzle protruding from the front. He was petrified. He couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out, all he could do was wait. And then the shadow twisted sharply, like a rubber band snapping. There was this awful, quiet sound, for less than a second. A sort of muted pop, and then a grinding screech, and a soft thud. The shadow began to sink to its knees, and then rolled forward slowly, as though lying down next to Daniel. But it wasn’t lying down, and it wasn’t a shadow. It was a man. And from the right hand side of his throat was a hand, and an arm, and as Daniel tried to make sense of it, his eyes rising in the night, he was greeted by a respirator. Two large cans either sound of a mouth box, a large visor from the brow to the nose guard, and black rubber sealing in the face, leaving just a pair of ears, and tied back, white hair. Kellan.

Kellan laid the Capo’s body down, blood streaming onto his hand from his neck. The action had become so frequent for him that it didn’t even bother him anymore. Less of a killing stroke and more like muscle memory. The blade would have entered between the 3rd and 4th vertebrae, and the punching stroke afterwards would have cut through or ripped out most of what was inside. He didn’t make a sound, save for that of the knife entering and the soft gurgling after it was done. Poor bastard didn’t even have time to do up his fly. Kellan sheathed his knife and grabbed a hold of Daniel, sitting him up.

“Did he hurt you, Danny?” he whispered.

“N-No. No he did-didn’t” Daniel felt sick again. It was getting to be too much, he felt feint. His head began to swing without his input, and his eyes kept losing and regaining focus. Kellan pushed his head back up against the log and squeezed in on his radio.

“Ryan, tell me you’re ready to go” Kellan just needed this wrapped up now. It was one thing trying to keep his own safe, and now he was babysitting a soft-handed father with a weak stomach and his kids.

“Yes boss. All lined up. You found your pet?”

“Yeah he’s fine, just a little feint. Go ahead let’s wrap this up”

“With a neat little bow…” Kellan heard the whispered shots of the Lemurs’ carbines in the forest behind him. Then the sound of fleshy bowling pins falling into the dirt and the rustling of the foliage behind him. Through the trees the track was just visible, and on it he could see various lifeless limbs, and the deliberate steps of Ryan checking the bodies “Merry Christmas Irish. They look like Coodies to me, but the BTR is mint. Come have a look, and bring the civvies, we need to move”

“I’ll be down in a minute, could you send Red and Snowy back for the Girls and Rafael please”

“Yes boss” well at least the violence had been worth it. A BTR was a pretty serious piece of kit, especially for Coodies. He grabbed a flashlight off his belt and shone it over Daniel quickly: very pale, still conscious, and holding an Amrod? Kellan was genuinely surprised. He wasn’t surprised that the guy couldn’t get it to work; it wasn’t your garden variety point-and-shoot pistol. More that the guy obviously had a constitution ill-suited to violence, and instead of staying put with his kids; he’d stolen one of Kellan’s pistols and tried to give a hand. Maybe he’d misjudged this guy…Of course he wasn’t wrong about the fact that Daniel couldn’t defend himself, but when motivated by defending his kids this soft-touch had killed one guy, and tried to kill another.

“You’re full of surprises aren’t ya?” Daniel had actually lost consciousness at this point, which just made Kellan smile “Let’s hope your kids can stay out of trouble, huh? Might actually get more than 5 words out of ya at a time, eh?” Kellan took one of Daniels arms and hoicked him up onto his shoulders, carrying the unconscious Daniel down towards the track.

It had all gone over rather cleanly as far as Kellan was concerned. The floodlights from the gate gave a good field of view on what was ultimately a target rich environment. The potholed dirt road was dotted with pools of dark liquid, precious as Garnets and Rubies, spent on in the dirt. Kellan counted 9 bodies, all wearing the same tattered ex-military uniforms. Patches had been ripped from sleeves, their boots were near worn-through, and they were all fairly unkempt. Face down in the dirt, strands of Black and brown hair sprouting from cheeks and chins, and matted clumps of the same black and brown hair sprang out from Cap rims and over ears. Eyes open but…vacant, peered out into the nothingness of the night sky. Weapons of various age and condition were scattered amidst the bodies of fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, lovers, and former partners alike. All of them men, wearing the uniform of pirates, raiders, thugs, and thieves. It wasn’t that Kellan didn’t have sympathy. He’d lived long enough to not only know the pain of losing loved ones, but to understand the wait of taking them from others. But these “men” had lived as the foot soldiers of government entities that had neglected their people in the pursuit of wealth, and power; they died as common thugs, using their numbers and weapons as a cosh to lay low the few survivors of the plagues and the hostile climate for the sake of taking that which they refused to stand or work for. ‘You don’t cure a tumour by leaving it alone. It has to be cut out, and treated as an enemy if you want to live through it’ he could remember his father say. The man was a cad in the nicest of terms, but as much as Kellan resented him, he had to admit: the man was wiser than his short life would have suggested.

Gloria, Rafael and Lauren – no wait, Lorraine! – were also arriving on the gory scene, Snowy and Red walking with them. The poor kids’ faces when they saw him with Daniel over his shoulder!

“Christ” he thought “No easy day”. Gloria was the first to rush over to Kellan as he laid Daniel down and propped him up on the Mammoth wheel of the BTR. She wasn’t quite crying but her eyes were very glossy and her expression was something between anger and shock. Rafael, holding Snowy’s hand, led him over to his father shortly after. Kellan didn’t have any interest in playing family at that moment – the BTR was a gift in many ways, but it was a rare find. This meant one going missing would mean people coming to look for it. Not all Reavers were made equal: you had your run of the mill scumbags who had a knife or a gun and would use it to rob people of food, water, biodiesel, batteries, and anything else that had finite quantities; then you had the slightly more organised groups, normally groups of guys from towns that want to raid other little groups to make sure their own didn’t starve, and they operated with impunity if it meant their own were covered; then you had the Coodies – ex-military groups that were involved in the various Coup d’états in South America and Africa in the lead up to the resource wars – who had stockpiles of ammunition, vehicles, dry food, clothing, and people, they were never short of people. The guys that had attacked Daniel and his group were probably Coodies, or at least they had been wearing uniforms like Coodies, and then there are these guys. Probably heading into panama looking for Biodiesel to keep the BTR running, but when a tank with a large gun is threatening your community, you tend not to think about where the fuel gauge is at. But that wasn’t why it was a gift. Its value had nothing to do with its military capabilities. It was an enormous hunk of metals – steel, copper piping, titanium, silver and gold in electrical components, and even things like seat material. It was of far more value to the Lemurs in resources than in power. That said, it would make moving everything that they’d already scavenged a hell of a lot easier, which is why 9, and then Kellan wanted to take it. At the end of the day, the Coodies were just in the way. But more would come looking for it, so Kellan wanted to get moving ASAP.

He left Rafy and Gloria with Snowy to see to Daniel, and headed over to 9, who was searching the bodies for anything useful.

“Anything worth taking?” Kellan asked

“Few trinkets, couple of silver rings, load of ammunition we can’t use, and the Personnel carrier.”

“You okay there Ryan? You don’t seem to happy with me”

“Why wouldn’t I be happy with you Kellan?” he sneered.

“Well that’s just the thing” he grunted as he knelt down in front of Ryan “I don’t have a clue, hence me asking” Ryan looked up, and through his respirator Kellan managed to lock eyes with him. Ryan shook his head.

“There’s nothing wrong with firing off a few rounds and protecting people that we know can’t” Kellan cocked his head “If we then send them on their way. We’re not out here trying to marshal all the bad people of the world away from all of the weak people. We’re scavengers, not heroes”

“Is that how you think they see it?” Kellan asked.

“Who?” Kellan pointed at Rafy and Gloria “Wait really?” Ryan scoffed “the beacon-for-the-Liberal-arts, the barely-old-enough-to-masturbate, and Michelle Rodriguez’s great granddaughter?” Ryan started laughing in his mask.

“Yes Ryan, the three children whose father we saved”

“Uh I think you’ll find that Lorraine is a ‘family friend’”

“You having been there being a smart-arse and looking like a prize cock?” Ryan slammed his hand onto the corpse he’d been searching and removed his respirator, looking Kellan dead in the eye.

“If you wanna play daddy and granddaddy for sitting ducks, go ahead. But please remember that there are now 13 of us travelling through some of the most hostile landfall anywhere in the world. There is a 70% chance of rain every day, and with that there’s a 60% chance of glass storms anywhere between here and home. There are gangs of armed men that know we’re in country and want to kill us. There are gangs of armed men that don’t know that we’re in country, but we might have resources, so they want to kill us. There are jaguars and cougars and bears and a thousand small venomous creatures waiting for people like them to walk right in and ring the dinner bell. So no Kellan, I’m not happy that we’re running a mobile crèche for natural selection’s natural selection, and frankly I couldn’t give less of a shit how they see it: they’ll be dead in a week anyway” with that he got to his feet, grabbed his rifle, and climbed on top of the BTR with Howie to start clearing it and prepping it for the load. “If they’re lucky!” Kellan just shook his head and sighed.

“I want this vehicle ready to move before sunrise, is that clear?”

“Crystal.”

Faithless bastard. Kellan knew he was a good lad, he just wished someone had taught him how to shut up once in a while. Ryan had been through a lot, but the constant confrontation and the nihilism, it was draining. As Kellan walked back round the side of the BTR, he noticed Daniel had come to and Isabella was bringing him onto his feet. The girls were arguing about who should go in the 4x4, which was been driven in behind the armoured personnel carrier as they spoke.

“Gloria, I know this must be very exciting for you, but come on? He’s your father at the end of the day”

“You may want to be in an enclosed space surrounded by rugged men, but I’d like someone to talk to that isn’t just going to tell me how badly I have it because men oppress women or because I’m a Mexican-American, or even because I’m shorter than you”

“Girls. Please” Kellan chuckled as he approached “neither of you are going in the APC”

“The what?” Gloria asked

“The tank with wheels” smacking the side of it “you’re the two eldest and therefore the most capable of looking after yourselves. Your brother on the other hand needs a bit more time until he’s got himself covered, especially out here. My best guys are gonna be in the tank, so he’s safest there. Lorraine, Simon tells me you have some first aid training?” she nodded “and Gloria, your father will need someone to keep him company, don’t you agree” motioning to the very pale looking Daniel.

“Girls. Get away from him.” Though wheezing, Daniel still managed to imbue some authority into his voice “He’s a killer”

“Yes Daniel its part and parcel of the job” Kellan snapped, resenting the pious nature of the insult

“Not like this. These men had caused you no harm, and you butchered them!” the lemurs were all stunned by the outburst, even Red looking at Kellan not knowing how he’d react.

“Okay Daniel. You don’t like the manner in which I dealt with the situation. How long have you been around people like these?” pointing at the numerous corpses on the floor.

“The dead?” Lorraine asked.

“Reavers.” He growled “killers, rapists, raiders, and t’ieves” his accent twanging on the word like the plucked string of a bow “How well you know their kind?”

“Well enough. I was an attorney before the res-”

“Ah right! so you prosecuted people like that then did ye?”

“No, I was a defence att-”

“Oh so you defended people for doing the things that these people do?”

“I tried as best I could to secure the best outcomes for my clients”

“Okay, answer that again but cut the bullshit” Daniel scowled.

“I did my job”

“Nice answer. Didn’t work for the Nazis, or the Red Chinese, and it’s not gonna work for you either. As far as those lads at the gate were concerned their job was to rob you, and then when you wouldn’t cooperate it was to beat ya up, and then when you killed one of them it was to rape your daughter and kill you, your children, and lovely Lorraine here. Tell me, if I hadn’t intervened, would you be criticising me for killing these people?”

“Killing is never the answer” he said meekly.

“No! You wouldn’t have, because you’d be fucking dead! It’s been a while since I saw the states, I’ll admit that, but last time I was there they had separated into commonwealths independent of a federal body? So there were still governances but more localised when you left?” Daniel didn’t respond.

“It’s interesting that you’re silent Daniel. I’m not gonna hurt ya because you’ve given me no cause to. My men won’t touch you either because they respect the difference between necessary evil and evil for evils sake. These people that we ‘butchered’ are ex-soldiers. They would have fought in the resource wars which left millions dead across the world. They see anyone outside of their caste not as people, but as potential value. How many batteries might you have? How much metal? Food? Water? Clothing? How much can they gain by killing you and raiding your corpse? At least they died quickly. At least they died not knowing it was coming. They wouldn’t have experienced the all-consuming fear of the nothingness that comes afterwards, or questioned if they’re god would greet them on the other side. Where you come from, killing is never the answer, because police still exist. There are still laws and protections in place for you. This” raising his arms out his sides and looking around “this is Indian country, and you survive here but doing what you have to do to protect your own. If they’d found us first we’d be lying face down in the ground, gasping and bleeding away our last wishing we’d done something first. If you’re not prepared to accept that then what are you doing here? Why are you even here in the first place?!” Daniel was furious; bubbling with anger, but silent. His fists where clenched in his lap and he wasn’t sure what to say. In the end, he just told the truth.

“We’re heading for sanctuary” the lemurs chortled among themselves “what? What’s funny about that?” Kellan knelt down beside him, blood stains along his near sleeve.

“What do you think Sanctuary is Daniel?”

“Somewhere far away from all of this. Somewhere that isn’t rife with crime and poverty. Somewhere that food isn’t scarce to the point of townships starving and people eating their pets. Somewhere that the air isn’t a poisonous fume that slowly chokes you to death. Somewhere safe”

“You know about the Glass Daniel. You know that you can’t escape from bad weather; otherwise the entirety of the British Isles would have sprouted legs and walked a bit further south. Sanctuary isn’t safe because it’s remote, and it’s not safe because of some peace-preaching monk like the rumours suggest. People from Sanctuary don’t call it Sanctuary. We call it home” Daniel stared in Kellan in disbelief. It was a ridiculous notion that a peaceful community would have a band of…well…assassins!

“You’re from sanctuary?”

“It’s not a utopia Daniel. It’s not the land forgotten by consequence, it’s a brutal existence, and that’s saying something considering I grew up in Dublin after the good-Friday-rebellion. It’s hard work. We tend crops as best we can, we fight off wild animals daily, and we have to travel hundreds and hundreds of miles scavenging for rare materials to make the colony sustainable. We’re up here looking for tritium and steel. The big hunk of metal you’re leaning on isn’t for us to use to steamroll into some village somewhere and kill the villagers, or steal their bread. It’ll patch roofs, or make pots and pans, or to service rifles so we can defend ourselves. We’re serial recyclers, but we’re still militarised. Most of us are vets. Ryan, Simon, Snowy, Otis – they all came here fighting the Brazilians and the Argentines for resources. The whole reason they’re here in the first place is killing the enemy. Those guys there are the enemy, and if you want into Sanctuary, you’re gonna have to get right with it, because we can’t use peaceniks. You have to earn your keep with Miriam; protect your home with deadly force if necessary, and keep the wheels turning when it’s quiet”

“What do you mean keep the wheels turning?” Lorraine asked.

“Being a self-sufficient colony takes a lot of effort Lorraine. We farm, we manufacture, we maintain, we protect. We recycle waste from the river, and we use it to make things. Rifle stocks for example. All of the weapons we use have furniture made of recycled waste plastic. We make clothing when we need it or can’t scavenge it. We purify our own water, and grow our own food. The only times we eat meat is when some desperate predator wanders into the camp and we kill it, and we use the bones for tools or in broth. In 5 years we’ve built primitive turbines for electricity but they need regular maintenance. If you want a place in sanctuary, you have to earn it” Daniel felt empty. He’d brought his family 1000 miles away from home for a rumour that turned out to be false, and now he was a prisoner to a warlord and his cronies, doomed to a life of servitude, and the same for his children.

“So that’s it? We just go with you and become drones in a hive?” Gloria asked.

“No dear girl. This isn’t an ultimatum. It’s a choice. We’ve a hard life, and it requires sacrifices. Your father wants you to be safe, and my point is that this is what it takes down here. It’s a wild land full of wild people, and you have to be a little wild if you wanna survive”

“So what sacrifice do we make? Do you want Mr Esparza to kill for you like these guys? Are Gloria and I supposed to seamstress for the rest of our lives? What about Rafy?”

“It’s not up to me. It’s all down to what Miriam needs”

“And who’s Miriam?” Lorraine retorted.

“Miriam Lopez is the leader of our family. She’s a fantastic woman, and Sanctuary was her way of healing after her family died”

“What does Miriam need, Kellan?” Daniel asked.

“Well for one thing” Kellan rising to his feet with a grunt “She’ll want your car. She’ll decide what job she needs you to do when she sees you but, rather hypocritically, the most valuable thing you’ve brought besides your able bodies is a vehicle. Daniel. Look at me” Daniel rolled his head high and right, staring at the weathered Irishman looking down at him “I’ll make you a deal. If you want into sanctuary, if you want to be welcome in our home and have somewhere safe to put roots down, I’ll vouch for ye. I’ll do everything in my power to see that you’re given the best chance I can for a meaningful and happy life. I’ll make sure your children are looked after, and that they get the future you wanted them to have when you started your journey. Before all that, I’ll get you and your own down there safe and unharmed. As payment, you give me the keys to your car when we get there and I’ve kept my side of the bargain. It’s a hard life, but it’s better than anywhere else I’ve been in the last three years. If it’s what you want to do, I’m true to my word. Deal?” Kellan extended a hand down to Daniel, who hadn’t broken eye contact since Kellan had started talking. Daniel looked at Gloria; her face didn’t betray a thing going on in her head. He looked at Lorraine, who didn’t seem happy with it all, but through pursed lips she nodded slightly. He looked at Rafy, still sat beside him, and yet to say a word he nodded too. He turned back to the Irishman, took his hand, and Kellan helped him up by it. The two shook, once and well.

“Deal.” Kellan smiled through his beard.

“Ryan! How far off ready are you?”

“BTR’s already good to go; Howie and Grant are loading the last few bits onto the SUV’s roof now. Maybe 20 minutes”

“Good. We’ll leave as soon as the SUV’s set” he turned back to Daniel “I want you to ride with me in the 4x4 with Lorraine and Gloria in the back, give us time to talk. Your boy will be safe with Red in the big armoured truck with the rest, and there’s a cot in there as well so he should be able to get some sleep” Daniel agreed hesitantly; he wanted to keep an eye on Rafy – he was already a quiet kid and this whole ordeal probably wasn’t going to help a whole lot; at the same time he acknowledged that a bulletproof truck with a machine gun turret and 7 triggermen was probably the safest place for him right now. At least he hoped so.