Blighted Land: Book two of the Northumbrian Western Series (Northumbrian Westerns 2) (26 page)

He struggled with this. The grin disappeared and he started to rub his hands together. Like he was cold. He closed his eyes. Tilted his head back. ‘Mum. And Jack. Told me before they went…’

‘Went where?’

‘Away.’

Away where?’

‘Away. Away. Not back.’ Then he was silent, his eyes glassy.

‘Right. Thanks for answering.’ So his mother and his step-dad or brother or someone had gone off. Left him for some reason. It had happened so many times. Kids abandoned by parents to fend for themselves. Sometimes they went off to die, other times it was to search for food or water or shelter. Now and then it was because they couldn’t cope. For whatever reasons it had happened to Daniel.
 

He’d latched onto me because he thought I was a good man. Because I’d been kind to him and he’d been told that was what he needed to look out for. There were worse reasons to form partnerships but it was still going to be tricky. I’d have to work out where we were going. Or where I could leave him.

Casper came out of the building. He held two tins in his hands and swung them as he walked. They were dented and free of labels but one was big, the size of a shell from the Eblis’s gun. He clanged them onto the tank’s hull.

Taking out his pen knife he cut into their lids Becky grabbed pan and plates from the tank. He tipped out tomato soup from one, more orange than could be believed. The other was sliced apricots.

We warmed the soup and shared it before having several apricots each. Daniel kept close to me the whole time. At the end of the meal the pair of us walked over to a nearby stream and washed up. Daniel took the rough off the bowls and pan and I finished off.
 

We worked in silence in the evening light.
 

Once they were all cleaned we headed back.

‘Will they be there?’ he said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘When we get there. Will they?’

For a moment I walked alongside him as we held the pan and plates at our side, the sun setting on the petrol station. This could have been about the bad people or just a random thing.
 

When I said nothing. He tapped me. ‘Will they be there?’ He pulled his serious face. ‘When we get there. Will my Mum and Jack be there?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Maybe, Daniel, maybe.’

I carried on to the tank, Daniel moving with a lightness to him. I’d have to let him down at some point.
 

But not yet.

W
E
SET
OFF
ON
the road again, turning north at Peebles. The Eblis rumbled through the town where warehouses stood abandoned and shops derelict and empty. A car park had been turned into an encampment: tents were lined up, greens and blues. Faded shades of pink and yellow. Two old men dressed in rags stared at us as we roared by. We carried on past smart houses at the edge of the town.
 

Then we were back into countryside, open moorland with clumps of trees, on our way to Edinburgh. The road was quiet as the light faded. The setting sun lit the clear sky orange and gold.
 

Casper smiled to himself and Becky seemed relaxed at the controls. Daniel had stopped rocking and hummed. Maybe we’d all be okay. The four of us could head into the highlands and part as friends. Each go off and make some kind of a life for ourselves.

As we carried on along the road the debris started to appear out of the darkness, burnt out vehicles and busted barricades. Edinburgh had a reputation for being well organised and reasonably safe but they didn’t let strangers just wander in. And we weren’t going through the city, we were skirting the edge, where all the people who hadn’t been allowed in hung around. At the side of the road was a message, roughly painted on the side of a lorry.
Edinburgh: Count Me Oot
it said in distorted paint.
 

We drove over breeze blocks with railings tied to them.
 

Further on there was scaffolding on a hummock.
 

Becky slowed the Eblis. She flicked the spotlights on and manoeuvred to light the structure. There were two decaying bodies strapped on, naked apart from underwear and sacks over their heads. A sign hung around each of their necks, saying
They Didn Pay
.
 

This was reivers’ work. Seemed some nasty ones had set up camp on the edge of the city.

We came to a section that had steep embankments. The road had been partially blocked by massive chunks of concrete and debris, several metres high, somehow brought and dropped in. To the right was a lower section where the blocks had been blasted clear. Around us there were vans and cars. Empty and stripped. They must have got stuck here. Been picked clean. This was a bottleneck. A trap. Getting trapped here would be really bad.

‘We should go back,’ I said.

‘I can get us through,’ said Becky.

‘This is a trap. Let’s go.’

‘Don’t panic, Trent,’ said Casper. ‘We’re safe in here.’

‘This is reiver territory. We should go.’

‘I can do it,’ said Becky. She steered us to the lower section of the blockade. The tank rose up and tilted backwards. It juddered and crawled over the blocks, still a metre high. We moved forward then dropped down over them. There was a thump and the Eblis fell to the right, the rumble from the tracks turning to a grinding sound.
 

‘We’re caught on it,’ said Becky, pushing the controls.

‘Stop!’ shouted Casper.

Becky still had her hand on the control, ramming it forward but the Eblis pitched and jerked. Casper dropped down and grabbed hold of her, pulling her away from the levers. The sound of the motors died down and the tank settled at an odd angle, tilted over.

‘I was trying to drive us over it,’ she said.

‘You’ve busted a track.’

The tank’s reactor gurgled behind us. Otherwise there was just the creak of Daniel’s chair as he rocked back and forward, his hands clasped together.

‘Can we fix it?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ Casper said. ‘But we’ll have to go out.’ He swivelled the turret and looked through the sight as me and Becky watched our screens. The tank’s headlights lit the road with long shadows from the debris. Beyond the lamps’ beams it was pitch dark. I adjusted the controls on the monitors and got it onto infrared. The embankments appeared around us in ghostly shades. There was no sign of movement. Casper grabbed a box out of a locker, dimmed the light and opened the hatch. ‘Coming?’ he said to me.

‘You all right Daniel?’ I said.

‘Yep,’ he said but he had his eyes shut and hands on his head.

Becky handed me a torch and I climbed out to join Casper at the side of the Eblis. It was dark all around us.

I held my pistol tight. There was no sound. No movement, the stripped vehicles behind us still in evening air.
 

‘We’ll need light to work,’ said Casper.

I turned the torch on and flicked it around. The Eblis was halfway over the lower section of blocks. Either side of us was the rest of the barricade, much higher, made of piled up rubble that hemmed us in. The block that we were on had been worn down. Three thick steel rods from the reinforced concrete poked out. One had sheared-off in the track but the other two were still jammed in it where it had snapped.
 

Casper shook his head, put his gun on the tank and took out a selection of heavy tools, then he shouted up to Becky. ‘Take the right track back a little,’ he said.

A few seconds later the drive wheel started to turn and the track pulled tight before springing free of the rods.
 

‘That’s it,’ he shouted up and the motor stopped. He turned to me and pointed at the rods jutting up. ‘We need to hammer these flat.’

‘Right.’ This was going to be some work.

‘There’s a hammer in the tank.’

I propped up the torch on the concrete aimed at where he was working. Then I went back into the Eblis as he began removing the broken section of track.
 

Becky and Daniel both looked up at me when I went back in.
 

‘Everything okay?’ she said.

‘I need the sledgehammer.’

She reached into a compartment and fished it out.
 

‘I don’t like it here,’ said Daniel.

‘Me neither.’ I took the hammer and went back out.

Casper had a battery powered drill, which whirred away on the riveted section of track. The sound bounced back off the embankment.
 

I put my gun next to Casper’s, lined up the sledgehammer and aimed at the steel rod. It was in barely lit and when I swung I caught it at a bad angle. Second time was better and it clanged like a church bell as the rod bent slightly. I did it again, got into a rhythm and bit by bit folded it over. The sound rolled off down the road.

Casper was still busy with the drill. There was a ping and the rivet fell out of the track.
 

‘Got it,’ he said.

I hammered some more and folded over the first rod. Then I started on the second. Its position was worse and I had to take long swings. The sledgehammer bounced off. Missed.

‘How’s it going?’ said Casper.

‘It’s going.’

He carried on doing something with the track and I shifted round to get a better swing. The rod started to fold over and I swung harder to flatten it down.
 

‘That’ll do,’ he said. ‘I need some help here.’

I put the hammer down. It was quieter than ever. I held the track where he showed me as he slid in a new pin and finger-tightened its nut. There was still no movement or sound from the embankment. Maybe we were going to get away with it.

He lined up the second pin but couldn’t get it in. The track was at the wrong angle.
 

‘Shit,’ he said and he shouted up to Becky. ‘Back it a little.’

‘How much?’ she shouted back.

‘Millimetres.’
 

The track shifted but it now pulled too tight and the pin still wouldn’t go in. He got her to move it forwards again. It went too far. This went on for some minutes. Forwards and backwards. I held the torch and watched the embankment. The faint shadows of grass. I listened for sounds: anything that suggested reivers were coming.
 

At last the track’s hole lined up. He slid the new pin in and started to tighten it up.
 

As he worked there was a sound from behind us, a rustling. I turned towards the noise and flicked the torch up. The dead grass was still and there was no one there. I whispered up to Becky. ‘Is there anything on the infrared?’

Before she answered there was a zing, a high pitched sound and something shot over our heads. It bounced off the tank and disappeared into the dark.

‘Are you finished?’ I grabbed up a pistol and aimed the torch up to where the object had come from. There was still no sign of anyone. They must have chucked it from the other side of the embankment. At least this meant they couldn’t aim. It was tempting to fire off a couple of shots but I wanted to save ammo for when someone appeared. When the reivers showed themselves.

Casper grunted. ‘Can I have some light?’ He worked on the track as two more objects shot over our heads. One disappeared across the road and the other bounced off the hull. Landed near us. I picked it up and examined it. It was an arrow, barbed and fletched with what looked like dried skin.

‘See movement up there, Becky?’ I shouted.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nearly done.’ Casper gave the track one last tap and put the tools into the box before closing it. As he straightened up a couple of arrows flew over. One landed on the ground. The second hit him.
 

Stuck in his back.
 

He cried out and extended up, stretched out. Another caught on my sleeve, missing my skin. I jerked it out and dragged him sideways, as he moaned and tensed up. There was a sound from the bushes and several arrows bounced off the tank near me. Another caught my trousers and one hit Casper’s shoe, sticking in the laces.
 

I dropped him onto the ground and lay beside him, behind a lump of rubble that formed part of the barrier. I raised my pistol and fired several shots in the direction the arrows had come. The shots thudded into the soil.

‘Becky?’ I shouted. There was no reply. ‘Becky?’

Another hail of arrows came but this time there was another sound, louder. The machine gun on the tank hammered out a stream of bullets. They thudded into the embankment and pinged off rocks. There were no shouts or signs that anyone had been hit but there was silence after the gun stopped.
 

‘Trent, Casper, are you okay?’ said Becky.

‘Casper’s been hit,’ I said.

‘Shit.’

‘It doesn’t look critical.’ Not that I could tell. But I didn’t want to worry her.
 

‘Can you both get back in?’