Hope: After It Happened Book 4 Read online

  As the house came into sight, Steve lost control of his aircraft.

  If only he had not tried to nurse it all the way home, if he had just stopped a few miles short then he could have got it on the ground in one piece and walked away.

  As it was, Chris was on the farm when he heard the tortured noise of dying machinery and looked up at the skyline. He had a front-row seat as the Merlin crashed through the trees and spun to the ground, destroying one of the solar panel towers as it came down.

  Steve, despite controlling a crippled thing, did well and kept it level on impact.

  The belly of the helicopter slammed into the ground and ploughed great furrows as the resistance of the earth held it tight. The dying rotors continued to spin as they decelerated, digging cruel gouges into the soft turf.

  Chris stood useless and open-mouthed at the horror he had witnessed. His wits returned to him, and he ran headlong through the field from the farm towards the wreckage.

  BOATS

  “Do you know anything about boats?” asked Mitch pensively of Adam as they walked amongst the rooms of a lavish seafront house.

  Adam stopped.

  “No,” he said. “You?”

  “Some. Not much really,” he answered, before they both laughed.

  They had spent hours looking for a good place to set up for a couple of days until the convoy reached them. They found the issue of boats to be easier than expected as almost all of the extravagant houses had their own crafts on their private moorings. The keys all had bright, floating keyrings attached to them. Of the first few, two were so small that they would need both to get just the people over the water and a third for their minimal equipment. Another had taken on water and sat shimmering just under the water level.

  They had waited in cover after their loud drop off, both ready with rifles after Adam’s crash course in military weapon discipline. Mitch had been quick and thorough in his instruction, which was sensible seeing as he was training his own backup.

  Nobody responded to their arrival, and after an hour Mitch called for them to break cover and start their search. The sun drew low and they settled in, eating cold beans and rice pudding from the can and enjoying a companionable drink as they talked.

  They rose with the morning sun, and continued their search.

  My midday they found what they were dreaming of; a three decked yacht on the far side of the bay. It took them near on an hour to row a small boat over and another two to find the keys. They put their supplies on board and cleared out all detritus which they didn’t need. The boat was wonderful and modern; every bit as plush and luxurious as the houses they searched. The controls weren’t dissimilar to that of a car, and without too much difficulty it was piloted over to the opposite side of the bay where – with some contact with the jetty – it was moored successfully.

  “It’s called parking by braille, son!” yelled Mitch cheerfully as Adam winced at the contact between fibreglass and wood.

  They settled in to rest for the day, planning to source more fuel the following day for the journey when, hopefully, the rest of the party would join them.

  DUE SOUTH

  Two days of hard travelling had brought them into Dorset. Leah, with her keen senses, was the first to claim she could smell the sea air.

  They had encountered nobody on their journey, much to Dan’s relief. Even though their whole party was armed, he knew all too well that only a few of them had ever fired a shot in anger or been faced with the terrifying prospect and sound of incoming rounds.

  Tired and travel weary from their ponderous haul, they drove down to the sea front and set up a defence. As agreed, the horn on the Land Rover was sounded three long times.

  They waited.

  Mitch, for all his simplicities, had a sense for the theatrical. Just as Dan was beginning to lose his composure and organise a search, movement showed on the water. He barely contained his excitement as the grandest yacht he had ever laid eyes on cruised into sight.

  The three horn blasts were returned and a waving Adam was visible on the bow. He held aloft his weapon in celebration and Dan was struck by the sudden beauty of the setting. A silhouetted boat with an armed man stood tall on the foredeck filled his heart with hope and a lust for further excitement.

  Mitch brought the boat into mooring as Adam leapt down and tied the hull to the jetty. Members of the group ran to them, and Dan fought down the urge to call them back. He needed that excitement to run deep for this whole wild goose chase to work.

  Mitch stepped down smartly and cracked off a crisp salute to Dan. He adopted Neil’s signature style and returned the pose as the others climbed aboard making noises similar to that of small children running into a play barn.

  The comedy salutes cracked into huge smiles and the gestures evolved into a firm handshake as the two friends congratulated each other without words.

  “It’s a three-deck Sunseeker,” he said impressively, hiding his total ignorance by repeating the facts he read on the deck.

  “Should fit us all in fine,” he continued as he strolled along the jetty like he was trying to sell it. “The GPS is useless, obviously, but the fuel gauge is showing half full. We’ll need to rectify that when we can find where they keep the boat petrol or whatever it takes. Let me show you the best bit!”

  He smiled and walked towards the rear of the boat before turning and gesturing at the flat stern.

  Dan felt his heart skip a little as he read the ornate scroll in big lettering across the back naming the yacht.

  Hope

  MAN DOWN

  Chris sprinted desperately over the uneven ground, stumbling as he ran. Others were starting to pour from the house now as the brutal and cacophonous sound had interrupted their day.

  The rotor blades had stopped turning by the time he reached the wreckage, not that he noticed as he threw himself towards the side door and fought to open it. All around him were the tortured noises of the stalled engines, hissing and screeching into his brain.

  His panic made him clumsy but he managed to force open the door and climb inside. Fuel poured from the ruptured spare tank to his left spraying him with the strange smelling oily substance, but he didn’t notice at the time. He pulled himself through the aperture to the cockpit and found Steve slumped into the harness, unconscious. The seat had collapsed on impact, as it was designed to do to prevent serious injury, but as Steve wasn’t wearing a protective helmet his head had suffered a terrible blow.

  His scalp was covered in blood and it continued to pour down his face to run into his lap.

  “STEVE,” bawled Chris, over and over but getting no response. It suddenly occurred to him that the fuel may catch alight and that they could both go up in a fireball. He moved Steve’s head aside, adding his blood to the fuel covering his own body, and fought with the harness to try and release him.

  His hands were sticky from the slick fluids making the task almost impossible under such stress, but he finally managed to gain enough purchase on the latch to turn it and free his friend.

  As he did, Steve’s deadweight fell towards him due to the uneven angle at which the broken aircraft lay. Both men fell backwards into the right hand seat, and Chris struggled to regain his footing. He heard screams and shouts from outside; the primitive fear of fire cutting through his terror to shout at them to stay away.

  He half dragged, half carried Steve to the doorway where they both fell out onto the ruined turf. He lay there for a second, before the thoughts of a super-heated explosion came to him again.

  “GET BACK,” he screamed, making half of the assembled onlookers turn and run as they too realised the possibility of the imminent explosion. Chris regained his footing and dragged Steve clear, ever fearful that they would be engulfed in flames at any second.

  Others ran to him to help him up, when Kev let out a bellow of terrified rage and picked Steve up bodily before running back to the house carrying him like a child. His lifeless limbs hanging and bouncing grotes
quely.

  All around him people were breaking down in tears. The sobs cut through his fogged brain and brought him back to the present. He looked up at the face in front of him as the repeated questions became intelligible.

  “ARE YOU OK? WHAT HAPPENED?” asked Jay, wild eyed in front of him.

  For a second Chris thought it was Dan who stood in front of him. Tall and dark-haired.

  “Bastard,” he said, shaking. “It’s your fucking fault.”

  Jay was visibly taken back, but put the response down to shock. How was it his fault?

  Chris sat where he was, shaking from the effort and the adrenaline surging through his body.

  “Bastard,” he said again.

  Kev still howled like a wounded animal as he ran the short distance to the house. He burst through the main doors like a battering ram and straight into medical.

  He threw Steve onto the bed, startling Lizzie and Alice even though they had heard the crash. He bellowed again, dancing on the spot and pointing at Steve. His bellow turned into a strange, high-pitched keening noise as tears flowed down his face. He turned to face the wall and maintained his pained noises.

  Jimmy wasn’t there to calm him down, and he stayed in that toddler state until Maggie came in to soothe him. She gently led him away as Lizzie and Alice were feverishly working to the best of their abilities to stem the flow of blood pouring from Steve’s head.

  “There’s so much blood!” said Alice, as the panic started to affect her. Painful memories of her own father bleeding so profusely cut through to her, distracting her from the task.

  “I can’t find where it’s coming from,” said Lizzie, calm and focused.

  “Cut his clothes off,” she instructed the younger woman, taking her attention away from the free-flowing blood. She started at his ankles, cutting up the legs of his flight suit with heavy medical shears and exposing bare skin as she went. She gasped when he uncovered his right leg, standing back to press a bloody hand to her mouth in shock.

  Lizzie stopped what she was doing to look at the source of her shock and saw that Steve’s lower right leg was clearly broken and discoloured by livid bruising.

  “FOCUS,” she snapped.

  “The leg can wait, the bleeding won’t,” she said, before returning to the task of mopping away the pouring blood to try and locate the source on his skull. Alice stepped back, having cut away the suit to expose his broken body; bruises covered him everywhere including the blackening circle over the left side of his ribcage. Lizzie glanced at that, worried about possible organ damage and internal bleeding. She forced herself to concentrate; internal bleeding second, stop the blood flow from his head first.

  “BP cuff and oxygen SATS,” she said to Alice, who ran to get the equipment to monitor his vital signs.

  “Gotcha, you bastard,” she said with an angry glee as she finally located the deep gash high over Steve’s right ear exposing the white of his skull. She put pressure on the wound and wrapped a dressing on tightly.

  “Hold this,” she snapped at Alice, who did as she was told and went to keep the pressure on the head wound.

  “Cuts to the head bleed like crazy,” Lizzie said reassuringly, as much to herself as Alice. “They always look worse than they are.”

  She worked feverishly, checking Steve’s vitals before starting a top-to-toe survey starting with shining a torch in his eyes to see if his pupils reacted. Luckily they did, but the rest did not look good.

  Deep gash to the head, broken ribs, badly broken leg. Those were the obvious injuries anyway; he likely had internal bleeding and some damage to his organs from the impact to his torso, and that leg would cause no end of trouble if she couldn’t set it soon. She stood back and looked at him again, deep in thought.

  “I’m going to have to set the leg whilst he’s out. It’s better that way,” she said, hoping she was right. She strode to the door and pulled it open, finding a bewildered crowd of concerned men and women in front of her.

  “Mark. Paul,” she said, beckoning them inside and shutting the door again.

  “I need you to help me,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I need one of you to hold his upper leg while we pull the lower part down to set the bone.”

  Paul nodded gravely while Mark looked sick. He had spent enough time in this room being treated, the testimony to that being the thick scars all over his body from when he was attacked by a pack of dogs on a scavenging run.

  They got into position while Alice continued to check him over. She spoke softly to him; so softly that none of them heard her words. She was soothing him, telling him it would be ok, speaking as much to herself as to him.

  Paul held on tight to his thigh just above the knee, and Mark held the ankle. Lizzie looked them both in the eye, bent to take purchase just below the break and steadied herself.

  “Now,” she said. All three began to pull, but it wasn’t enough.

  “Harder!” she grunted, feeling the jagged edges of the bones grate against each other. They were red faced and breathing heavily at the effort, struggling to force the contracted and ruptured muscles of his leg to give enough to return it to a semblance of its original shape. Eventually, centimetre by sickening centimetre, the leg stretched until a final crunching sound indicated that they had succeeded.

  “Alice. Splint,” she said, breathless. She didn’t dare let go of the twisted limb save it return to its former unnatural shape. They strapped his leg tight in an inflatable boot before relaxing again. Mark ran from the room, unable to keep himself from fountaining vomit from his mouth as he went.

  Paul smiled nervously, hoping that they had done well, but Lizzie just stared at Steve.

  He hadn’t made a sound throughout what would have probably been the most painful experience of his life.

  “Thank you, Paul,” she said quietly, not taking her eyes from the battered and bloody man on the bed. Paul left, and the two women stood in silence.

  Lizzie picked up a sharp implement, jabbing it harshly into the sole of Steve’s good foot. No response. Not even a twitch.

  Dismayed, she hung her head.

  MOTION LOTION PART II

  “Boat petrol?” asked Dan, amused at Mitch’s blatant ignorance.

  “Yeah! What else does it run on? Fairy dust and unicorn farts?”

  Both men laughed as they walked away from the residential side of the harbour towards the commercial buildings in the distance. Ash loped alongside, eagerly sniffing the new smells of the sea side.

  The whole group had spent a comfortable and happy night in one of the seafront mansions. Furniture and beds were claimed by adults acting like children at a sleepover. Marie strode in, playing the part of the matriarch and loudly expelling an excited gaggle of people from the master bedroom before laying claim to it for her and Dan.

  “Pregnant woman, coming through!” she announced, instantly regretting her words as she saw Ana out of the corner of her eye.

  Mitch and Adam hadn’t located a fuel source on the day of their arrival, and the matter was becoming time-sensitive.

  “We need a full tank at least. Neil reckons the fuel tank is as big as his old trailer tanker and that was five thousand litres. Maybe fifteen hours’ worth of driving,” said Dan, relaxed but still alert as they walked.

  “Sailing,” corrected Mitch, happily displaying that he had at least some knowledge of nautical matters.

  “Sailing then,” repeated Dan, “but that should still get us to where we’re going easily enough.”

  “What’s the plan for finding it?” Mitch asked, genuinely curious.

  “Straight over to France heading south, turn left and follow the coastline until we think we’re there,” said Dan, accepting that he didn’t really know but still unable to admit the fact to anyone.

  “If we go for about eight hours then we’d have to be about right I reckon. We’ve got maps of the continent so we should be able to recognise the landmarks or something.”

  “Well we won’t be g
oing anywhere unless we find more diesel,” he said peevishly at having been corrected.

  They walked for almost forty minutes, not wanting to take a vehicle for the noise it would make and also to save what fuel they had to be siphoned off to add to the tank of the Hope and further their range. They also would struggle to get a vehicle down to the edge of the water in most places, so they were happy to do the reconnaissance on foot and aimed to bring the boat to the source.

  A smell drifted through the air to them; gone as soon as it was detected.

  Both men froze. Both were well attuned to the dangers and had been in countless situations where a lapse in concentration or an ignored sense could spell death.

  Silently and without instruction both men readied their weapons and dropped to a crouch in the shadows of the building line. Dan turned to Mitch, knowing that he too had sensed the presence of another person.

  The smell was unmistakably that of something cooking; more specifically, a barbecue. A glance at the huge dog confirmed that there was indeed something edible within a mile as his snout was raised and his ears pricked. Dan thought that if that dog had an Achilles heel, it was his stomach.

  The pair crept forward quietly, not sacrificing speed for silence but being careful to avoid any sound which could give away their presence. Slowly they made their way onwards, picking up the smell every so often. After a short time, it was constant; definitely a barbecue. Dan fancied that he heard a voice, as fleeting as the smell had come to them at first, and gone just as quickly.

  The sun had dropped behind the buildings by then, shadowing them slightly, but they were still horribly exposed; two armed men in black clothing creeping along a deserted promenade with a grey wolf skulking along with them. There were slightly more conspicuous ways to be viewed, but short of riding in on a tank they would hardly seem friendly to any watchful eyes.