After it Happened Boxset: 1-6 Omnibus Edition, page 48
With a heavy heart, he stood and left the house, Ash following at his heel without a command. Dan smoked as he walked slowly up to the farm, delaying the conversation as long as he could in good conscience. He found Neil with a hot drink and his feet up on the rear step of a Land Rover. Ash went straight to him and gave him an expectant stare until Neil’s hand went to a pocket and came out with something for him.
Dan sat heavily and let out a long sigh.
Neil sipped his tea and guessed his friend’s problems. “She asked you about the tyre pump, then, mate?”
“Yeah,” Dan said with a tired smile, “she did.”
“It’s viable. I’ve got the stuff, and as long as she doesn’t rip a wheel off, she should be fine. I’ve fitted a CB to her motor and was planning on repainting it black like yours,” Neil said, way ahead of him as always. “Ready in two days.”
“Thanks,” Dan said. “Am I wrong? Is she ready?”
“She saved your arse, didn’t she?” he replied. “Twice, as I recall!”
Dan smiled and leaned his head back. “She did, but I worry about her. She scares me a bit.”
He meant it. Leah’s abilities were impressive, but her cold attitude towards what she was becoming was his greatest concern. She had killed people. Killed people with the weapons he had given her and the training he had provided. She had calmly assessed situations and made ruthless decisions without hesitation, just as he did. The only difference was that he struggled with the decisions sometimes, whereas she seemed not to. He had had this discussion with Marie more than once. In her counselling sessions, Leah was very matter of fact about it, and the taking of a life was pure logic to her, necessary to protect the group, hence acceptable. She didn’t have trouble sleeping, and she showed no signs of post-traumatic responses.
“In a way,” Marie had told him, “she’s better equipped to deal with this, as she has less to forget about from before. This is her life, and we are expecting her to still act like a child. She isn’t, not anymore.”
Dan had to accept it; she wasn’t a little girl now. He had to let her go out into the hostile wasteland that was their home and trust that he had prepared her enough.
He left Neil with the project to finish Leah’s vehicle and went to find Andrew to find out what stores were the next priority. A supply run for clothing and bedding was planned for three days’ time.
SOLO MISSION
Leah’s Land Rover was prepared and found sitting proudly with a new matt black paint job and a comedy set of pink dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Just after six in the morning, she shuffled in to Ops with her boots unlaced and a coffee in her hand, dumped her operational bag in the corner near the door and sat at the table.
A casually lazy salute was thrown Dan’s way and followed by a sarcastic grunt of “boss”.
Very similar to him: it was unwise to speak to her until the caffeine had soaked in.
He regarded her critically. She was thirteen, tall, and very leggy for her age, but her thin frame was wiry and strong. She moved like a predator, muscles taut like cables, but there was a kindness and compassion to her. Behind the façade lay an analytical mind capable of complex problem-solving, but her personality showed with her love for film quotes and sarcastic retorts. She was a product of their environment. An amalgamation of himself, Neil, Penny, Marie, Steve and others. It was time he trusted her.
“Supply run going out after breakfast,” he said. “Make sure you’ve had something to eat.”
“I know. I mapped the route,” she said after blowing her drink. “That’s yours, isn’t it? Why do I have to eat now?”
“Because it’s not mine,” Dan said as he rose to his feet, followed by Ash. “It’s yours,” he finished as he slid the Defender keys across the table and walked out to hide his smile.
Leah sipped her drink and watched the keys slide to a halt just out of her reach, processing what Dan had said twice over, looking for the joke at her expense. She finally understood that he had just given her her own vehicle and her first command – she was going out, and not as anyone’s sidekick. She was going solo.
Sipping her drink again, she watched the unmoving keys as it sunk in properly, then finished her drink in one large gulp and stood, stretching.
She walked outside and stood gazing at her own car, taking a slow lap around it to inspect the paintwork. The back section proudly showed a neat rank of puncture-repair bottles next to a large air pump, and a new CB radio was screwed tightly to the dash.
Still not quite believing the turn of events this early, she walked back inside and got herself a breakfast of thick toast and eggs. She washed down another coffee and stood, catching Jimmy’s eye.
“Thirty minutes?” she said, trying to convey calm confidence and not let out the bursting excitement she was starting to feel.
Jimmy raised his cup in acknowledgement and she left the room. She went back to her own quarters after a visit to the bathroom and tied her hair up high in a ponytail. She looked at herself in the mirror, having a silent conversation where she reassured herself that she was ready. That she could do this. That she wasn’t scared. She had been nagging to be let off the lead for weeks, and now she had been, the doubts hit her hard. She thought of going to find Dan and asking him to shadow her, but stopped herself. Drawing up to her full height, she held a long breath and let it out slowly.
“You can do this. Woman up!” she said quietly to herself before turning abruptly away and walking back downstairs. She strode confidently into Ops and donned her kit vest, pulling the Velcro tight with her diaphragm inflated. She checked the chamber of her Walther, screwed on the suppressor and flicked the under barrel light on and off to test it. She pressed her thumb down on the top of the two spare magazines she carried for the sidearm and secured the flap on top of the pouch. She retrieved her desert-dappled carbine and went through the familiar routine of checking the gun’s action and the three spare magazines she carried for it before loading one into the breech and racking the bolt to seat a bullet into the chamber.
She applied the safety and slung the weapon over her body in completion of her ritual, then slowly walked towards the door, stopping only to write R5 in the “out” section of the chalkboard. She picked up her kit bag, always ready to go, and went to start up her vehicle. Rich stood leaning against the doorframe of the office and offered her a simple gesture as she walked by. She bumped his fist gently and left the house as he called, “Stay safe, Nikki.”
Jimmy and his team of three others in their two small lorries were ready soon after, and all three vehicles met outside the front of the big house. This was Leah’s first shot at taking the lead, and her mentor was nowhere in sight. Intentionally, she suspected.
“Morning, everyone,” she started with confidence. “Dan’s not on this run; I’m taking the lead instead.” Best get that out first, she thought. She saw Jimmy smile, but one of the others pulled an obvious face at a teenager being in charge of them. She had to carry on before her confidence evaporated. “I’ll lead the route, clear the target, and we should all be back safely this afternoon. None of us are new to this,” she said, hoping that nobody pointed out that she’d never been out on her own before, “so let’s get it done.”
She nodded, and thankfully Jimmy filled the immediate silence by encouraging his teams to get moving. He shot her a sly wink and a warm, proud smile as he turned to his truck.
Thank God that went OK, she thought as she climbed behind the wheel. She would genuinely rather face armed attackers than have her confidence burst by people not wanting to go with her.
She peeled out, leading the convoy on a winding journey to their target. At about nine miles out, she picked up the mic and keyed it to call the house. Rich came back, acknowledging her transmission.
“Almost out of CB range. Will shout up when we are on the way back,” she broadcast with partly faked confidence.
“Roger,” said Rich. “Bring ’em home safe, Nikita.”
The journey was uneventful, other than having to nudge one husk of a car out of the way to make space for the bigger vehicles. They arrived at their target and stopped in the car park of the small retail park. Leah got out and readied her weapon, and she nodded to Jimmy, who stood guard by the entrance with a shotgun. She checked the large sliding glass doors and found them locked. Conscious of the others watching her, she went to the large plate glass window and looked through before stepping back a few metres and flicking off the safety catch. She fired a single round into each corner from her suppressed carbine and watched in satisfaction as the glass shattered into a million pieces and cascaded down in a flow of small beads. She went through the wide gap, boots crunching on the shiny fragments, and set about clearing the warehouse-style showroom quickly and efficiently. It took her no more than five minutes to return and call the others inside.
“All clear,” she announced. “Showroom and stockroom with no upstairs.” She turned to Jimmy and told him she would clear the next building as they took what they wanted. Jimmy waved his team inside to collect beds and mattresses. She walked the short distance to the next building and repeated the entry process, taking longer to clear this time as there was a door leading to a narrow stairway and a series of small offices on a mezzanine floor. The wooden door with its keypad lock yielded to a single round from the carbine.
As she went back outside to see the others carrying the items they had come for, a noise at the edge of her hearing focused her attention. She couldn’t place it, but something told her that it wasn’t a natural noise, which set her senses on edge.
She ran to the nearest lorry and climbed on the wheel to reach the bonnet, from there hauling herself easily onto the roof of the cab to give her a commanding view of the area. She could see nothing, but the noise was still there, brought to her ears intermittently by the eddying breeze. Three minutes went by, then four and five, but still nothing came into view.
Jimmy saw her looking around like an alert sentry and asked her if everything was OK.
“Yeah. I can hear something in the distance, I think. How long?”
“Five minutes, then we’ll hit next door for the clothing and bedding,” he replied.
Leah stood watch for another fifteen minutes as the others moved into the next building and began to bring out armfuls of clothing and other things. A flash of movement at the extremity of her vision made her raise the weapon to look down the scope. Whatever it was that had moved was no longer there, but the noise was more pronounced now. She suspected that she had heard an engine, maybe more than one. She fought down the urge to call the others back and flee in panic.
Recalling what Dan had told her, she forced herself to stay calm. “Remember,” he had told her, long before she had gained the experience to fully understand the true meaning, “we’re probably the scariest things out there, so there’s no need to panic.”
She told herself this over and over, but the feeling of uneasy fear was growing in her belly like a rapid cancer. Jimmy came back and told her that they had filled one of the lorries but wanted to get the second one stocked from the next shop. She thought for a second before jumping down and pulling out a small pair of binoculars from her vest.
“Get up high and keep an eye out,” she instructed. “There’s definitely something moving around out there.”
Jimmy nodded and she turned to open the third large commercial building. The sliding doors were unlocked, and with the help of the others, they were forced the rest of the way open. She repeated the clearing process, conscious not to rush the task and cause more problems. As she reached the extreme of the stock area, a single blast of a shotgun made her heart stop for a moment.
MAD MAX II
Leah turned on her heel and sprinted for the entrance to find the others milling about in mild panic. Her worst fears were alleviated when it became apparent that the shot was for attention and not aimed as a threat. To her left, she saw a handful of motorbikes slowly peeling into the car park and spreading out in a menacing pack. She dropped to one knee in the partial shelter of the entranceway and shouted at the others to get back in the vehicles. They had one shotgun per lorry, and Jimmy was standing on the bonnet of his truck with his legs planted widely. Leah scanned the approaching group through her optic and decided that they did not look friendly.
The bikes stopped in a line almost perfectly plotted for Leah to strafe the entire group. She stayed put where she was and slowly reloaded a full magazine into the carbine, flicking the fire selector to automatic. The bikes were all canted over onto their stands and one by one the engines were stopped to bring an echoing silence to their small battlefield.
Leah had no intention of letting her fears rule her, as otherwise she would have opened up on them immediately. She decided to see how it played out and gauge if they really were an enemy. She wasn’t hopeful; their clothes were all ragged and they carried long knives and other cruel-looking weapons on their bikes. None of them wore a helmet, and the one who seemed to be the leader stepped forward and craned his neck up to Jimmy.
“What are you doing here?” he asked amicably enough, but a threat hung in his words.
“Shopping, mate. You?” Jimmy replied with his casual cockiness.
The biker held up his hands in mock defence. “No offence meant,” he said without genuine meaning, “we’re just being friendly.”
Leah decided that he was not friendly. Not one bit. Jimmy got that impression too.
“Well, we’re just leaving,” Jimmy said without moving.
The biker boss tut-tutted and shook his head slowly. “No,” he said slowly, “you’re not. You’re going to come back with us and be our ‘guests’.”
Leah had heard enough, and she reacted as three other decisions were made simultaneously. First, Jimmy swung the barrel of the Remington towards the bikers and brought the butt into his shoulder. As soon as he moved, four of the bikers reached into their jackets and pulled out weapons.
She didn’t know who fired first.
“The point of any conflict is to kill them quicker than they can kill us.”
Dan’s words echoed in her mind afterwards, as she replayed what had happened. The bikers were still bunched up in a ragged line facing Jimmy as they drew. Leah had no time to differentiate between those aiming weapons; she just had to drop them quicker than they could drop Jimmy.
She fired five short bursts before she switched her aim to the last one. As she did so, her victim flew backwards, upper body bending unnaturally as he was thrown down by the huge impact of the shotgun. The conscious thought that he was already hit heavily did not enter her mind as she stitched a further line of bullets into him as he fell.
She rose to her feet, hands moving with much practised ease as she reloaded without looking. “COMING OUT,” she yelled, not wanting Jimmy to panic and shoot her in case he was in shock. She went along the line of downed bikers. All dead with the exception of one trying to stem the thick flow of blood from the hole in his neck. He looked at her mutely, mouth opening and closing soundlessly, as he struggled to stop the arterial gush. His eyes went vacant in a second, and the hand relaxed to allow the last weak spurts to pour out with the rapidly decreasing pressure of his failing heart.
She turned away and looked to Jimmy.
“Are you OK?” she asked him.
He looked directly at her and gave a small nod, clearly horrified by the speed of what had just unfolded.
“Everyone else OK?” she shouted.
The other three emerged from the lorries unharmed. They were fine.
“Right, clear the last building quickly and let’s get the hell out of here,” she instructed them. She didn’t know why she did that, but the focus of completing a task quickly brought them all back into the present, and they scurried away to comply.
Leah checked the bodies of the bikers she had ventilated, taking poor-quality and badly maintained weapons from them. She recovered a revolver, a semiautomatic pistol which she didn’t recognise, and three sawn-off shotguns, leaving the large machetes and knives. The bike belonging to the leader had curious markings on the tank, and as she studied them closer, she was horrified.
Line after line of stick men and women were painted on with something that looked like Tippex; the realisation that this was the same as pilots in World War Two painting the outlines of planes they had shot down on their aircraft made her feel sick. These were bad people, and they deserved to die.
She thought about that for a second, changing her mind about the declaration she had just made to herself.
Her group deserve to live, and these people wanted to change that. That’s why they were dead and she wasn’t. She stood up, straightened herself, and shook off the brief violent encounter. She climbed back to her perch on the lorry and scanned for more danger as the others came out of the shop with the valuable supplies. With deft hands, she replenished her weapon with a full magazine without looking.
Leah was calm. She was shaking slightly, but she recognised the physical reaction to adrenaline and knew that it would fade soon. She sat on her right foot and rested the carbine on her raised left knee, slowly scanning the horizon and breathing slowly to return her body to normal.
She was calm, she was effective, and she was a leader.
She wouldn’t recognise it herself, nor would she probably like to admit it, but she was also the most dangerous person in over fifty square miles.
AFTER-ACTION REPORT
Leah’s convoy made it back in the afternoon. She had called home on the radio ten miles out, reporting a successful trip and a contact. Dan snatched the radio from Jack and asked for details, the nervous strain evident in his voice. Leah assured him that they were all fine and that she would give him a full report as soon as they were back.
