Authors: Nick Christofides
He walked across the empty room until he hit the wall. From there he moved left, hands flat on the smooth painted concrete, slightly tacky to the touch from condensation from the high gloss paint which covered it. It was only a few feet before his hands fell away into a gap and hit the frigid, iron cell door. He felt around the frame of the door and found hinges on the near side; the door would open out from the side he was on, leaving whoever was coming in further away from him. So, he moved to the other side of the door, and with his back to the wall he readied himself.
He strapped his assault rifle tight across his back, took out his handgun and changed the magazine to a full one. Then he slipped his twelve-inch hunting knife from its sheath; the blade managed to attract whatever light was rebounding around the darkened room, glinting slightly.
He took deep breaths as he thought about the best way of getting someone to open the cell door. He had time so he went for a lure rather than an alarm. He turned his gun around, holding the barrel he began to hit it against the concrete of the door frame. No more than firm taps, the sound was not loud, but it resonated through the steel door. He hoped that someone would be passing and at best think Claire was trying to escape, at worst become inquisitive as to what the sound was.
The minutes passed and Nat was becoming impatient when suddenly the viewing slot in the metal door slid open aggressively. Torchlight beamed into the darkness and waved around the empty space, settling for a moment on the empty chair in the middle of the room and then slowly ascending to the hole in the roof. Nat held tight against the wall to the side of the door, his scalp rested on the cold wall and his breathing was slow and steady. He heard a voice: “She's only fucking gone through the roof.”
“Open the door, let me see...” said another voice.
Nat stood calm as he heard the clink of keys, the metallic grind of the correct key in the lock, the clunk of the solid lock unlocking and the wash of light as the door cracked open. His grip tightened on his hunting knife as the two men entered the cell, their attention fixed on the chair and the roof.
“She must have been helped - Truter almost killed her earlier,” said one as the two men stood a few yards in front of the shadowy hunter set to pounce behind them. They looked vacantly up the shaft of torchlight pointing at the hole in the roof when Nat made his move. He took one step forward and swung his right foot with all his power. His boot came into contact with the man on the left-hand side: a full unadulterated boot in the groin from behind. It hit with such force that the guard was lifted off his feet and thrown forward, landing painfully on the chair, sending it flying and the torch skidding across the floor, plunging the room once more into darkness.
Before the light or the man had come to rest, Nat had spun the distance between the two regime troops. He plunged his knife into the second man's side. Shock took the man before death closed in; he staggered in the darkness and slumped against the side wall of the cell, his life draining away in the blood which flooded the floor.
Nat moved back to the first man who was wailing from his belly in uncontrollable bass groans, fighting for breath over the seismic waves of gut rot pain. Nat knelt beside the sorry heap and sunk his blade deep between his ribs, silencing his din. As two lives in the cell extinguished, the third stood tall, breathed the fresh air laden with the smells of war: hot copper, wood smoke and dust. He was at the height of alive now, his every sense burning for the next confrontation and his focus firmly on hunting down the South African.
At the open cell door he darted his head into the corridor back and forth in either direction, there was no one there. He thought about where he was in the building and imagined that left would lead him to the central courtyard and on into the depths of the building. He turned left and moved quickly, his back to the wall.
He reached a closed door and opened it slowly. As it cracked a voice came from the other side, “Has she tunnelled under the wall?”
Nat turned his slow motion into fast forward - he threw the door open - and the flashing sky above illuminated three figures sheltering against the walls in the small open courtyard. Nat's handgun flashed with a metallic thump three times in quick succession and the three men remained where they lay. He searched the bodies, taking three grenades and a set of keys.
As he turned, he heard the sound of a heavy metal ball rolling on concrete. His brain immediately registered the dark rat-sized lump coming through the open door on the far side of the courtyard as a grenade. Reacting, he scragged the man who lay at his feet by the scruff of the neck. He heaved him up off the ground like he had done to a thousand bales of hay in the past; he turned and threw the dead weight across the yard with all his might. The limp body landed belly first on top of the shell. The farmer had seconds but managed to throw himself against the wall while pulling another body over his, he lay as flat as he could when the courtyard turned into an instant pressure cooker.
First, Nat was blinded by light, then thin air crushed his body in a wave of pressure, and finally he felt his skin burn in an instant. His ears felt as though they were plugged and a high pitch ringing was the only thing that came through. His eyes registered a white light speckled black. But there was no time to waste on acclimatising; if someone had thrown a grenade through the door, they would follow the explosion.
Without moving the mangled corpse that had taken the brunt of the explosion, Nat loosened the strap of his assault rifle and pulled it around to face forward across the courtyard to where the door was. Although his eyes were settling once again, the room was cloaked in a thick soup. As he saw dark blotches appear in the smoke, he opened fire, some of his bullets hitting their targets as the shadows fell to the floor. But the thumping bloody corpse which lay on him took rounds on his behalf also.
He needed to move, so as the shadows fell, he threw the body to one side and jumped to his feet, skirting the side of the courtyard and around to the side of the open door. He saw three new bodies lying in the doorway as the smoke began to clear. There were more grenades. Wasting no time he took two, pulled their rings and threw them in either direction down the hall outside the door. He waited, counting the seconds; reaching seven, he heard the two ear-splitting bangs in quick succession.
He followed the explosions directly, looking blindly left and right, choosing right this time he hugged the wall in the smoky darkness. He tripped over a body as he approached another door. 'Another door!' he thought, all unknowns dangerous for him, he knew he could only ride his luck for so long.
He pulled another grenade from his pocket as he looked through the small square window in the door. It was reinforced with wire, little squares which disappeared as he focussed on the corridor behind. The lights were on and it was empty, it turned to the left after ten or fifteen yards. Nat wasn't going to chance it. He repeated the action of clearing the passage with a grenade. As he rounded the corridor, the walls were covered in gore. There were three people: two dead, the furthest dying. Nat put him out of his misery and moved to the next door which gave access to the main central hall in the station.
The farmer slipped through the double doors and into the dark space. At first, the dimly lit area seemed empty, the tough lino floor squeaked slightly under his feet. Notices spanned the walls and a large varnished wooden desk ran to his right, behind which there were various metal filing cabinets. The large room still smelled clean and clinical.
Nat immediately calculated the risks: the door behind was not going to produce any surprises, the door at the far end of the hall led to the foyer then the street. There were two doors behind the desk. Nat edged towards the counter in silence, a large clock ticked on the wall above the doors. The noise outside the station seemed to have stopped; he couldn't make out whether it was because he was deep in the guts of the building or whether the fighting had slowed outside.
As he stepped slowly through the quiet, his weapon shouldered, eyes straight through the sights, index finger resting gently on the trigger. His breath was calm, in-out, in-out. Deep, controlled breaths, his mind calculating, concentrating and beginning to react to an instinctive feeling that something was about to occur. His mind concluded that whatever was about to happen in this situation was most likely to be at his expense. So he side- stepped twice, quickly turned and slumped down against the desk so that it stood solid between him and the doors.
His breath was faster but under control. He sat and looked at the blank white painted wall opposite. It was not white now as the room was dark, but he could see it reflecting the scraps of glow that entered the space. There was silence now, no movement to discern; he heard the occasional crack of sporadic firing from outside and within the building. But it was all outside his microcosm. His backside ached on the concrete floor as his tail bone rested hard on it. He shifted onto one cheek as he contemplated his total lack of a plan. The red mist had undone him - how could he really think that he could enter the building on his own and survive? He looked to the front door and immediately went off the idea of running the gauntlet of ‘friendly fire’ as he exited the building and NSO shots at his rear.
Thinking of Esme's smile, he was at peace with death as he sat in the silence, his weapon resting vertical between his legs, his forehead leaning against the hot metal of the barrel. The pain of her loss was unbearable in the moments of calm and solitude; it would be a mercy to be released from his grief. Then he thought of Amber and his stomach turned, she was only eighteen.
The doors behind the desk opened with a slight metallic creak of the hinges and the squeal of wood against wood on the floor. Then he heard the soft steps of a number of men stepping into the room with their weapons leading the way and their eyes firmly down the sights.
He sat with his head lowered as eight men rounded the desk with their weapons trained on his head and body. They had torches mounted on their guns and his sight was compromised by the lights shining directly in his face. He kept his head down, figuring that either someone would kill him. Or, they wouldn't. Yet.
* * * * *
“Looks like he's had enough,” said one of Truter’s soldiers as the South African joined them in the hall with Bell slumped on the floor in front of the desk. Truter was not as quick to write the old farmer off, so he kept behind his troops and their blinding torches, safer for him to be unseen, but not unheard,
“If I had known then what a pain in the arse you would become, Bell, I would have tortured your wife. As well as let those dogs rape her; they were horrible boys those - poor woman. You should have been there, Bell.”
As he heard Truter's accent, the farmer's head rose, his white hair and teeth glowing in the bright lights. His sweating brow wrinkled around those cobalt eyes. Every man with a weapon trained on him tensed as his eyes blinked in the blinding beams of the torches. The farmer didn't speak; he simply grimaced into the light, and searched it for his prey.
Truter opened his mouth to give the order to shoot the cornered man when a deafening clap resonated through the building; the sound was enough to drop the men to their knees. Then an instant passed before flame leapt from the doors behind the desk and a wave of energy carried debris, bricks, and the rafters’ steel beams through the air towards the men. The ceiling collapsed and no sooner had dust filled their lungs than the weight of the building was upon them.
* * * * *
Nat stuck fast to the desk as hell broke free above him. The explosion tore at the solid wooden structure, but it held and for the most part protected him. As the ceiling came down he got on his hands and knees, covered his head and pulled in tight along the bottom of the desk. The joists of the ceiling came down in one and lay across the desk sloping down to the floor, saving Nat’s life as he nestled in the suffocating dust of his lucky capsule. His face and mouth and nostrils were caked in masonry obliterated by the blast. He tried to wipe it away and take a lung full of air, but it felt as though he was inhaling cement. He choked violently as he pulled a rag from the t-shirt he was wearing under his coat and tied it over his mouth and nose.
He crawled through the rubble and squeezed between the fallen ceiling joists and desk, as he stood in the glowing dust ridden space he saw nothing but carnage in front of him. His mind registered the destruction, the earth shook again and another deafening boom dropped him to his knees. As he began to get up again another explosion shook the world; Hexham was being flattened by artillery. The gauntlet thrown down by the rebels had been taken up by the NSO in no half measure. War was upon them and the farmer realised he was in the eye of the storm. That, however, was not enough to make him run just yet. He checked his weapon and moved through the rubble. He saw some of the NSO troops - mangled bodies, arms and legs sticking out of the rubble. There was only one in which he was interested: the South African.
The heavy dust born of the demolished building and pulverised masonry was thick in the air and the flames that roared from the impact zone created ample currents within the air to keep the particles airborne. The same flames gave off a flickering orange glow which provided Nat some sort of vision in the confusion. The stench of burning materials and flesh hung heavy in the air. Nat was thankful that he could see the dawn sky when he looked up as he feared he would have asphyxiated by now had the explosion not taken the roof off the building.