Authors: Nick Christofides
Stuart was becoming more and more impatient as the rebels were unable to enter the police station; he sat with Nat, waiting and thinking. Nat got to his feet and looked towards the back of the police station. Without so much as a nod he set out up the road, it was only when he was twenty odd yards away that he ushered Stuart to follow.
They turned left into Hellpool Lane, the aptly named road at the end of which the rebels had suffered such losses. They ran up the road and then turned left into a small street lined by Victorian terraced houses with pretty gardens enclosed by stone walls. Fifty yards along this street, the road brought them out to the rear of the Police Station. They knelt behind the bushes where other rebels had taken up positions.
“The answer has been staring us in the face, you see there.” Nat pointed to a single storey extension attached to the back of the building. It had a flat roof and small windows.
“I know what you’re gonna tell me,” said Stuart.
Nat nodded.
“They’re the cells,” they both said in unison.
“Aye, I should know, I’ve spent a few nights in there myself,” Nat said with a wry and rare smile. “Long time ago though, when I used to hang around with the likes of you,” he added, slapping his old friend on the shoulder.
“I bet you that isn’t a concrete roof; these weren’t designed for any breakouts I’m sure,” Stuart said.
“Aye, that’s what I’m thinking.”
“Tonight in the dark?”
“We’ll have a go.” As he spoke he looked up to the sky. “It’ll be light soon, let’s get a move on.”
* * * * *
A couple of hours before the morning light broke the darkness the rebels cleared the dead from the streets. They held the regime troops with suppressing fire at the police station and they prepared for another day of fighting. The Rowell brothers began to organise their forces, reinforcements were trickling into Hexham from the West.
At the racecourse Beaston was sipping hot coffee, his fatigues open at the collar. He was looking at an ordnance survey map of the town he was planning to decimate as he tapped a sharpened pencil off the table top. He snatched up his mobile phone and hit the green button; he listened to the dial tone for three rings before the call was answered.
“Boyce, where the hell are you?” Beaston spoke urgently.
“Sir, we are now in a village called Tow Law, thirty- odd miles out from your position.”
“Good, good. See you on your arrival.” There was some degree of surprise in Beaston’s voice as he had been preparing himself to try and hold his position with the men he currently had at his disposal.
It was nearly an hour before the rumble of heavy machinery travelling slowly and precisely could be heard. Beaston’s mood transformed from dark to bouncing arrogance.
He leapt out of his chair, grabbing his sergeant by the shoulders, “Those stupid bastards had us! I want the artillery ready to fire in fifteen and troops mobilised and in position immediately.”
As the military convoy rolled into the racecourse, Beaston could see that Start had not let him down. The top table were serious about quashing this rebellion and for once they had given him the right tools to complete the job.
He now had at his disposal two units of heavy artillery, twenty-three mortar squads, three drone teams and nine companies of infantry. The tables had turned dramatically in terms of weight of numbers and also firepower.
Beaston deployed his men in an arc curling round the high ridge south of the town from Gallowsbank wood in the east to the Allendale Road in the west. Tactically, it was a superb position: at least one hundred and fifty metres above the town with a clear view of the whole theatre. He sent the drone teams out in the darkness and they flew high over Hexham with heat imaging equipment recording concentrated areas of heat, then the artillery and mortar squads were positioned on these areas for initial attack.
Beaston pranced around his makeshift command centre, high on the titillation of control and the excitement of anticipation. He had been in this position many times before, he knew the rebels didn’t stand a chance, and he needed to show his troops that winning was easy. He couldn't understand why the rebels hadn't carried on the rout when they had the opportunity.
“We’ll be having a brandy with lunch today,” he said to his team as the data from the drones filtered in showing a line of heat images running across the foot of the ridge and another concentrated around the police station.
“Make sure your gun bunnies over compensate on their AORs,” Beaston commented quietly but firmly to his artillery commander. “I want them legless and mentally ruined.”
* * * * *
As they sat under the stars, the grunt and groan of heavy vehicles and massive activity rumbled down the hill to the rebels in Hexham. John felt his heart sink, betrayed by his brother's caution. Phalin looked at Jesse. “I don't think we can attack, we need to dig in and hold the town. We can't send these people up that hill - all
that
is waiting for us at the top,” he nodded up the hill towards the mechanical din of an army preparing for war.
“Aye, agreed, we won't match them now and they have the higher ground. We’ll hide ourselves in the town and fight in the streets.”
“I think we make small sniping attacks on their lines, suck them back into town and take on smaller groups street to street.”
“That’s the way I see it,” accepted Jesse. Both men realised the opportunity they missed in pushing on up the hill when the chance was there. But this was no time for reflection or accountability. Now with the new sun came the dawning realisation that war was a constant. The enemy didn't just run away, they would always return, a little more knowledgeable, a little harder and a little more desperate. There was no control over events now; Jesse and Phalin had started something they could not have imagined before. They had led their peers into war, its very nature one of suffering and tragedy. When they looked briefly into each other’s eyes, they could see that flickering melancholy and doubt. Whether they won or lost this day, there would be no excitement or glamour in the tales of battle. Only sadness and a hollow in the souls of those who experienced it for all those whose lives were obliterated by the madness.
* * * * *
Nat and Stuart could hear the reinforcements. Both men knew that the next battle was going to be worse than the first. As the clangs, the engines and the yelling of orders echoed through the trees and houses, the chill of impending doom ran up Nat’s spine like icy water.
“We need to do this now,” he said to Stuart, who nodded and pointed to their right.
The two men, bent low, crept towards the red brick community hall which stood alongside the police station. It had a drive running along its flank wall leading to a car park at the rear. The drive was bordered by a low wall which the two men used as cover. The wall stood approximately one metre on Nat and Stuart’s side but two and a half on the police station side, dropping into the car park which remained full of cars. If they could get over the wall without being seen, the rest was relatively straight forward.
They were on all fours behind the wall. Nat looked at Stuart as if to say ‘what now?’
Stuart gave a slight laugh, “We gotta do something because my back and legs are gonna cramp up.”
Nat raised his head slightly above the wall and a single shot rang out from the police station. Before he had registered the noise, Nat fell back as dust and concrete chippings stung his skin. Lying on his back he looked at Stuart, eyebrows raised, stunned.
Then Stuart’s face clouded; he took his weapon off his back and checked the magazine. He looked solemnly at Nat and without a word shrugged his shoulders and leant on the wall, unleashing the contents of his magazine on the building. Shots were returned, hitting the wall and fizzing over their heads; but no sooner had Stuart began shooting than the whole rebel contingent seemed to follow suit. The building was shrouded in dust as the bullets rained down upon it.
Stuart took his chance and leapt over the wall. Nat followed suit and they found themselves sheltering behind a red car as the shots flew above their heads. They ran crouching under the deadly storm, moving across the car park and up hard against the window-less single storey wall.
Here they waited for the rebels’ firing to wane, then Stuart leapt onto the roof of the car next to him and then up onto the roof of the single storey extension. Lying on his belly on the flat roof, he hung his hand down and pulled Nat up behind him.
In the middle of the extension was a square lightwell or yard where prisoners could be brought in or taken out of the cell block. The walls had been built up higher than the roof, like a turret, which now obscured Nat and Stuart from the view of the regime troops within the building.
The roof had been chewed up by rebel rounds and they could see through the gnarled fibreglass to rafters and ceiling board below. They were in business; but the plan would only work if Claire was this side of the yard. They looked at one another, nodded and each shifted to the nearest hole where they began chipping through the exposed plasterboard of the ceiling below. They worked systematically across the roof creating small holes, calling out quietly, hearing nothing and moving on.
It was the fourth opening that Nat broke through, making short work of the fibreglass: he looked through the small hole as tracer rounds flew over his head momentarily lighting up the sky and saw a whisper of ivory skin in the darkness below. It was just a flash, but it was enough; as his size elevens smashed chunks of fibreglass and plasterboard away, he caught Stuart’s attention. Without a word, he dropped through the hole he had made and Stuart dived onto the gap and peered blindly into the blackness below.
Nat landed hard on the concrete floor. Although the ceiling was fairly low, the darkness had extended the drop and he couldn't prepare his landing. He rolled on the floor in a heap, a deep throbbing pain rising through his feet and shins. As his palms touched the cool, smooth floor his fingertips brushed another object alien to the flat surface. He reached for it and felt a thick woollen sock covering a bony little foot. Attached to the foot was a jean covered leg and a soft woollen covered body which smelled of Patchouli.
Nat knew Claire was hurt; she was limp and dazed in her seat, hardly reacting to his sudden presence in the darkness. He felt the pulse in her neck which was strong enough, so he began to tap her cheek but stopped immediately when he touched her swollen face, not least because she recoiled in agony. He moved quickly around to the back of the chair which she sat on. He cut the plastic ties which bound her hands and he whispered in her ear, as softly as his vocal chords, gnarled by the changing seasons of passing years, would allow,
“Hold on now, lass. I'm gonna pass you up to Stu, ok?”
Her arms wrapped themselves tightly around his neck and he crossed his forearms under her buttocks and lifted her smoothly and easily up out of the chair. He then used his foot to guide the seat under the flashing hole in the roof. Once in position, he stepped carefully onto the metal and plastic chair, it gave a little but took their combined weight. He moved his hands as gently as he could under her bum and pressed her, dead weight over his head. Claire guided herself through the jagged hole in the roof and then two meaty hands took her wrists and the woman levitated up through the roof, into Stuart’s arms.
Stuart's head came back through the hole, “She says there's someone else down there, a Rory?”
“Ok," Nat whispered, and he called out quietly in the darkness, “Rory, where are you man?”
A murmur came from his right and he found the curled up frame of a man against the cold concrete wall. Nat pulled him to his feet.
“You injured?” he asked. “You gotta pull yourself together - dig deep - because I can't lift you out of here.”
The broken man stumbled to the chair and, with Nat’s help and Stuart’s brawn, he too rose up off the chair and through the hole in the roof.
Moments later a hand came back through the roof and Nat could see Stuart's head silhouetted against the flashing dawn sky.
“Come on, Nat, let’s move,” he called down. Nat clapped Stuart’s palm with his own and called back, “I'll see you back at the farm.”
“Don't be fucking stupid, Nat. I'm not leaving you in there!” snarled Stuart, exasperated.
“You will, Stu,” he replied calmly. “You'll go now, get them and Amber safe on the farm. I have business here with the South African and the other one. Then it’s over. I'll be back before the sun's out.”
Stuart looked around at the rising sun and flashed a look back at Nat in ridicule of his promise. “There's plenty of time...not now...”
“Go, Stu, get Amber. Go!”
Stuart growled in frustration as he looked at Claire, shivering with fear, her back against the wall that separated them from the NSO guns. Then his silhouette disappeared from the hole in the roof and Nat was left in the relative silence of the cold cell.
He stood for a short while in the darkness, he could taste the concrete. His heart pumped blood through his body like the fire in an engine, his muscles twitched and his mind was as clear as crystal, lucid and focussed on his imminent future: the hunt. Right now, he didn't notice the ringing in his ears, his burning shoulder from the bullet wound or the open wound in his neck - an oozing mess created by a golf ball sized piece of brick which struck him during the fighting. The horrors of recent days weren't haunting him now; he was entirely absorbed in this moment and nothing else entered his mind.