Here's an interesting fact for you if you ever decide to go camping in the woods or anywhere else in open nature.
In the morning, as the sun rises, all the moisture from the ground and the trees evaporates into the air and anything and everything you leave outside will get very and unpleasantly wet. Such as your clothes, for example, after you've spent the whole evening washing and scrubbing them…
Remember, I learned this the hard way so that you don't have to.
And so, grabbing my dirty pants from yesterday, I made my way to the kitchen to listen to Will and Mark and their report from the various expeditions into the forest they've been on over the last few days.
“We haven't found anything interesting to the west. The border ends pretty close to our camp and you can walk out into some wheat fields if you go far enough and make out some kind of a small village in the distance. I'm not sure which one it is, though. Tunstall or Blaxhall… The east is a little more interesting. The forest goes a long way on that side and the landscape seems to be way more wicked too, with a few big boulders here and there and a couple of paths. There's a fast river coming through and a wooden bridge with some signs about rare animals that live here.”
“Good thing we don't know how to hunt,” Manny noted in a small voice.
“Sure.”
“We also visited the house you were talking about. A proper shithole. If I didn't know any better, I would have said it was haunted,” Mark said.
“It looked pretty creepy,” Will agreed. Up to the north, the trees thin out pretty quickly and you can walk some fair distance along these, what I assume are, long bike paths. No one uses them anymore. If you go even further up, the forest seems to be flanked by a high road of some sorts. We saw cars passing by from a distance, but we didn't want anyone to notice us. And...” He trailed off, trying his best to recall the details, and Mark finished for him. “That's about it. Down to the south is the town and no one wants to go there.”
James rubbed his hands together, as if he too was in some way responsible for the findings of our two scouts. “Sounds like we picked the best part. We have the best cover, our little hill, the lake... It's not as bad as it could be.”
Elskan simply nodded. “I'm glad we didn't get any more weird surprises. I should have sent someone out a long time ago.”
“This other building,” James went on. “Can we use it in any way?”
“It's mostly just a little more than a decrepit ruin,” Elskan shook his head.
“Maybe just make it into a storage of some sorts? Any additional space might come in handy with all the new stuff we're getting from the Rebels.”
“You would have to see the place,” he explained further as I nodded in support. “It doesn't even have a roof and the wood is so rotten we were practically sinking through the floor in some places. To renovate it would take way too much effort for almost no gain.”
“That's a shame.” James glanced around the kitchen. “I thought it might get you move all the rubbish out of your rooms.”
“Don't get your hopes up,” William smiled. “And now that that's done, what are we gonna do today? Anything interesting?”
“We do have an interesting investigation to investigate. If you are interested.”
“I was actually just asking to keep the conversation going more than anything.”
“Well, tough luck! Now you're a part of this whether you want to or not, and we're going on another expedition!”
With a satisfied grin, the main outlaw finished his coffee and began.
“So, a few days ago I gave Ashley my number so the Rebels can contact us without her having to walk all the way to the forest.” As he spoke, El pulled out his phone and started searching through the menu. “I got the first message when I was out in the town yesterday and when I got back home it was too late to wake you up, so I decided to wait till morning- and you better buckle up for what's coming.”
He took a deep breath and read the message aloud:
124Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsmhKgWV0iT
The girl ⟨20:41⟩ cometo sewers munchies
The girl ⟨22:01⟩ shits real*
124Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSQln7R7yCa
“What do you think it means?”
“It means that for the general public writing full sentences is harder than it seems,” Mark offered.
“We're supposed to come for a visit, clearly.” Will took the situation a little more seriously. “And... bring our own food or something?”
“Maybe they've decided to throw you a party after everything you've done for them,” Mark went on in the same tone, and Manny's eyes lit up with excitement.
“You think they would throw us a party?”
“Somehow I seriously doubt it,” Elskan had to disappoint him. “Then again, we don't have any data to work with. And it's a big mistake to theorise before you get any data. You could start twisting the facts to fit the theories, rather than the theories to fit the facts. That's where our investigation comes in,” he proclaimed confidently, while Will watched him with his face squashed in thought.
“Was that a quote?”
“What?”
“Was that a quote? I feel like I've heard that before.”
“No...”
“I think it's fairly clear what they want. After the last time.” James said.
“Let's not get ahead of ourselves. It could be just a regular job.”
“Or a party!” Manny refused to give up.
“Or a party,” Elskan allowed with a smile.
There was a room for one more wholly unexpected event before we got to the main task at hand. Unusually, the main outlaw gathered us all together on the clearing between the huts right after the breakfast to show us some kind of a... presentation?
That was certainly new.
“Guys, I have something to show you,” he started, emerging from our shared cabin and carrying some long and visibly heavy object covered in white cloth. He'd been up and about more than usual these last few days and I couldn't help but notice the new 3D printer in our room, running without interruption almost every night. Whatever new trap or invention he was about to reveal to us, I was sure it would be good.
“Now... don't freak out!” he mumbled pre-emptively. “I can explain everything.”
It took a few failed tugs before the white cover flew to the sky, revealing a gleaming mechanism beneath.
It was the single lightning bomb he'd managed to save during our adventure with Einstein and had dismantled and assembled again at least a dozen times during the last few days. It looked different than the last time I'd seen it. More robust somehow, as if my roommate had made some drastic changes to the initial design. Extra tubes and thick wires were sticking out of the centre where the mysterious batteries sat in their protective casing. And that was just one of many changes...
“You've gotta be shitting me...” James was the only one of the outlaws who'd seen these dangerous inventions before, and he seemed to remember all too well what they could do. “Are you just absolutely nuts? We destroyed them for a good reason!”
“And I saved and upgraded one for a good reason!”
The rest of our friends were understandably lost. “What is this weird... engine supposed to be?”
“It's a bomb,” James explained plainly, backing away.
“Not anymore!” El assured him. “I've spent a good while making sure it's going to be anything but that! Our friend Einstein might be a genius inventor, but he clearly lacks vision. The obvious flaw of his original design was the uncontrollable outburst of energy that could fry anything in its path, as we saw in the case of the unfortunate lady.
“And you know me. As soon as I get my hands on something like this, I just can't stop tinkering with it. I threw a bunch of parts away, I added a few of my own, I almost gave Tony a heart attack one morning... and then finally! I think I found a way to literally direct lightning.”
With his blonde dishevelled hair and a wild expression on his face, he looked so much like the original creator I almost started backing away too.
“But why?” someone asked.
“That's a great question, Manny!” the leader of the outlaws pointed enthusiastically, and immediately continued in his monologue. “My first instinct, naturally, was to make it more like a gun. Being the first man to literally hold the power of lightning in the palm of my hand sounded like too much of a temptation. But it wasn't long before I realised electricity works a different way than projectiles do and I had to rethink all my plans...
“That's why I added this long bit.” He raised the mechanism up high to show off a kind of a metal rod sticking from one end. Held in this way, the weapon looked almost like some strange, futuristic sword. “To direct the discharge in the right direction.”
It was apparently time for the grand finale, because El set the device back down again and began fumbling with some of the exposed wiring. This time he didn't care for any volunteers from the audience.
“I'll show you what it does in a hot minute. Also... I cranked it up a bit, so step away if you value any internal organs you might have.”
“What did you just say?!” James managed to yelp out as Elskan pressed the trigger and the supposed bomb came to life, charging up and shaking uncontrollably for a second and then, with a comical noise that almost sounded like someone relieving themselves, stopped and came to rest. A single wisp of smoke escaped upwards into the open sky and disappeared instantly.
Everyone stopped covering their ears and cringing away, the younger brothers craning their necks to see what would happen next.
“Is that it?”
“Lightning in the palm of your hand...” James mocked his friend, who hurried forward to assess the damage. “Is that right?”
“I swear it worked the last time!”
But while the upgraded device seemed to be intact, the damage caused to his reputation was irreparable.
“Is this some elaborate joke?”
“They sounded way more threatening in your story…”
“I bet Einstein wasn't even that tall in the end.”
“Come on, guys!” he tried to get their attention one last time as everyone turned to walk away. “By the way, is everyone thinking about that cool group name? I hope you all got some decent suggestions.”
“I've got one!” Manny volunteered, to his dismay. “How about the Sinister Six?”
“Great… we'll talk about it later, alright?”
I remember at the time this disappointing incident immediately went over our heads as nothing more than yet another crazy morning and forming our already well-established reconnaissance group, me, Elskan and James set off to find out what was the true meaning behind the mysterious message.
“You're finally here? I told Ashley to write you like ten hours ago!”
Tommy wasn't alone that day when we caught her in her office. Newly, in the seat in front of her and with his back turned to us, sat a man in an orange and purple uniform. His helmet was sitting on the table, so we were able to recognise the short-cropped blond hair and big ears sticking out the sides of his head even before he turned around.
“Oh, it's you!” he called out.
James stopped at the door. “Fast friends, huh?”
The soldier seemed a little nervous, trapped deep under the ground amidst all his presumed enemies. Tommy responded before he had a chance to open his mouth.
“I have to admit it's a little strange having one of those bastards as a guest in my rooms.” She looked at him warily. The bags under her eyes spoke volumes about the state of her current sleeping schedule.
“I got her message,” Elskan assured her. “But you can't expect us to just barge in at the first command we get. That was never the case before.”
“I know. This is kind of a special situation,” she spoke to the mercenary. “Tell them what you told me.”
The soldier got up from the table, turned to us and folded his hands on his chest. “I'm here with a proposition.”
“A proposition?”
“Yes. I told you I want to help you the last time I was here, and you didn't seem exactly excited about it, and all the conversations we had later appeared to be pretty fruitless too, but now I think I might have something that could really make a difference in your fight against... well... us.”
“Finally,” the Rebel leader added.
“Hold on! As far as I know, we're not fighting anyone,” Elskan frowned. “Correct me if I'm remembering some details the wrong way, but when we started this relationship, we agreed that we would never have to go against the army.”
“I remember that from our last time. That was simply bad wording on my side,” the soldier allowed. “I'm talking more about inconveniencing them while leaving as little trace as possible. No one will know. Think of the first idea I had only on a much bigger scale.”
“That sounds a little better.”
“But we're still talking about Foxglove,” El reminded them. “A whole army of dangerous mercenaries. We're all fully aware of that, right?”
“I think we can all agree a conflict in one way or another was inevitable anyway. If we want to grow as a group and influence the way things work in this, town we're going to have to learn to take some minor risks,” Tommy said.
“We might have a different idea about what we call minor. You want to rob them, don't you? Is that what this is all about?”
“And why not? We've already discussed the whole reasoning before, haven't we? People in the streets have nothing to eat, while there's always one group that seems to have more than enough,” she left us hanging for a second. “Foxglove has-”
“Oh, bugger off!” Elskan sprang from his chair.
“Will you let me finish?” Tommy frowned. “Foxglove has always had more than enough to eat. More than enough to feed half the town, I'd wager. They have these supply deliveries from London that come every single week, and now-” she grinned slyly, “thanks to you and thanks to our soldier boy, we know when they are coming... The hour and the day.”
“This all sounds like a build-up to something absolutely horrible and I already know I'm gonna hate it,” El sat back down in his seat.
“Just listen to what I have to say and you can make up your mind as you wish.”
“Go on,” James urged.
Tommy took a deep breath. “So everyone knows the tale of Robin Hood-”
“I already hate it.”
“He took from the rich to give to the poor,” she ignored Elskan's remarks. “Now we are trying to give to the poor, just like him, but without the proper sources...” she left the rest of the sentence unfinished. “If I wasn't the one running this place, I'm not sure I would have even noticed the Rebels existed, just as he said.”
“But isn't that kind of the point?”
“The point has always been about helping people. If we suddenly have a chance to do it bigger and better, we have to take it.”
While James didn't seem at all alien to her plan, I couldn't help but share Elskan's worries. Maybe it was simply the fact that we'd both seen the full extent of the army's forces from upfront. Nonetheless, I tried to keep my mouth shut for the moment and trusted the two outlaws to voice any concerns I might have had.
“So, let me get this straight... A Foxglove soldier has advised you to directly assault Foxglove and you think that's all fine and we should run along with it.”
“I'm still here and I can hear you...” the soldier complained and Tommy sighed.
“I know it's a lot to ask-”
“That is an understatement.”
“I'm not going to pressure you into this. What I can do is offer you double the usual amount. Take it as another assignment if you want to. You'll get extra supplies for the next week and whatever else we might loot off them. How does that sound?”
“Sounds like not nearly enough for literally attacking the army.”
“Let's listen to the full plan before we make any final decisions,” James suggested and to my surprise, all El did was to wave a hand over it, letting the soldier speak.
“Alright… um… you blokes are not from around here. Have you ever heard of the Red Church?”
“It's an old building not far from the centre,” I helped them, happy to make myself useful. “We might have passed it a few times. It's pretty forgettable, to be honest.”
“Red Church is anything but forgettable,” the soldier corrected me. “I'm sure you would remember it. The important part is that it was gifted to Foxglove, along with the fortress they got when they moved in. They have a couple of old properties like that scattered around the town.” He shrugged. “We use this one as an occasional warehouse. It has minimal security, no alarms and anything going to Lyonhall has to pass through, including all the supplies and food. Blokes love to argue over who gets assigned to guard there because it's just so simple to nick stuff once you're inside. We want to take advantage of that.”
“We also want to do it as covertly as possible,” the Rebel went on. “A small group of people. One car. If we're smart about it we don't need to alert them to our presence.”
“Was this his idea?” James cocked his head towards the soldier. The man nodded in agreement. “Good thinking.”
“I hate to sound like some stereotypical chick from a heist movie, but I can't think of anyone better to pull this off than your group.”
It took a while of Elskan complaining and arguing before he spoke to the soldier. “Can you give us a moment?” And with the fox out of the room, he lowered his voice. “You really trust him?”
“I have no reason not to. You were there when we questioned him and he's had more than enough opportunities to betray us since.”
“We met him what… three or four days ago?”
“And so far, so good.” Tommy looked at him with a small shrug. “Don't think I'm being careless. I've been paying quite a close attention to watch what he does and says. I even got a small group of my people to follow him around when he leaves.”
“And?”
“And nothing. As far as I can tell, he's completely legit. He's even gone so far as to share info I've never heard about before. The warehouse he's talking about is real. I've had that checked out too.”
“Could be a trap.”
“And what kind of trap would that be? He knows about the existence of our whole underground, so why would Foxglove bother trying to get a small fraction of people?”
The conversation went on in a similar manner for a few excruciating minutes. Opinions were being thrown around, ideas mentioned, considered and discarded and I'm not sure if I was the only one who noticed, but the more we talked and the more we got caught up in this thing, the clearer it became we were about to get one of the worst assignments ever.
By the end of the conversation, when the soldier opened the door to see what was taking so long, the Rebel had us wrapped around her fingers. The tasks were distributed, the appropriate rewards equal to three weeks' worth of food promised for our efforts, and before I had any time to gather the courage to say anything in protest, the outlaws were already shaking hands with the two newfound allies.
Storming out of the room in a strange kind of dual ambivalence between fury and resignation, the last comment Elskan made was:
“I'm gonna murder Ashley.”
124Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ86OFEy94v7
£¢\£Â¢
We only had a couple of days to prepare for the big raid none of us had asked for, and the three of us spent them mostly sitting about and procrastinating in the camp. The leader of the Rebels was kind enough to lay off any and all remaining duties we might have had and for a short while our life in the forest seemed to go back to its previously beaten tracks. Cleaning, playing board games and watching the TV on repeat were my only worries until the fateful evening, much sooner than I would have liked, when James barged into our room and almost gave us both a heart attack. He was wearing an old hoodie and a mask to cover the lower half of his face.
Equipping ourselves in a similar manner and taking what guns we had as an extra precaution, I and El hopped into the car with him and almost half an hour later arrived on foot to the arranged destination. The fading light of the dawning sun wasn't enough to keep us from spotting two similarly masked Rebels standing a street down from the building in question. Judging by their appearance and two big duffel bags they carried on their backs, these were undoubtedly supposed to be our new allies, assigned to us for the upcoming sneaky operation. As we moved closer to confront them, it became clear our mysterious acquaintances were not as strange to us as we might have thought.
“What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing?” Tommy lowered the mask, exposing her familiar face. “I'm helping you finish the damn impossible assignment I myself decided to give you. I want to be a part of this!”
The two outlaws exchanged a quick, worried look, and James took the initiative of a responsible parent. “Are you absolutely sure this is a good idea?”
“Sure I'm sure. You do this all the time, don't you?”
“I think what James is trying to say is that literally anyone would be better than you,” Elskan tried to reason with her. “Not because of your abilities... It's just that the general doesn't usually reside on the front lines.”
“And who exactly was I supposed to send? Some of the old people? Or the kids? Or Ashley? My underground is just full of the finest mercenaries in this town, innit? That's why I have you.”
“If you're counting on us to protect you...”
“Oh, please. I can take care of myself. Do you really think I would trust you with my life? I was the one who agreed to this whole idea and I am the one who will see it through. A general is only as good as the distance he dares to near the front lines. That's what I think.”
There was no point in arguing with her. And besides, from what we'd seen so far, I was sure she her self-confidence wasn't displaced in any way.
Instead, I averted my attention to the soldier standing next to her. Without the uniform and any weapons, he didn't look intimidating at all. Just another young man coming home from a pub or a party with his friends. I wouldn't look twice at him in a crowd.
“You. How do you suddenly manage to escape so often? You said it wasn't easy to sneak out of your quarters unnoticed, if I remember it correctly.”
“Oh, I... well...” the soldier stammered, turning a suspicious shade of pink. “I told the others that I have a... a girl in the town. So they cover for me when they think I'm running after her.”
Elskan gave him a lasting look, then glanced over at James. “Nice.”
“Nice,” his friend echoed.
“Can we move it?” Tommy stormed past them. “You can pat each other on the back once we get safely out of there.”
My stomach growled from nervousness and before we had any time to reconsider our actions, the outline of the Red Church appeared over the surrounding buildings, illuminated by the dim light of the streetlamps.
To the credit of whoever came up with the name, the building was indeed a bright red colour. This was caused by its crumbling facade, exposing old bricks underneath, neglected and abandoned, much like other historical sites of our wonderful town.
To their disgrace, they should have cross-checked their facts. The Red Church was, ironically, an old synagogue. Its one round tower was jutting out over the neighbouring rooftops, while the remains of its twin lay scattered across the town and used to fortify numerous architectural projects over the years.
“There are usually just two people guarding the front door.” At the soldier's signal, we stopped on the other side of the street and stood around like a bunch of creepy loafers.
“I would have expected more.”
“It's not like the public knows about this place. And even if they did, who would be crazy enough to come here?”
“I know, right?” El stared at the fox coldly.
“There's another small exit through an alley,” the soldier went on. “That will be our entry point. I've been stationed here before and no one can ever be arsed to check the back. All everyone cares about is to stuff their pockets before the shift's end. Security comes second.”
The entrance he described turned out to be a small door, likely used by the rabbi in the lost days of its former glory. It wasn't even locked and gave way as soon as we pushed into it. This all seemed way too simple to be true.
“It's usually barred,” he got to explaining. “I had to tear the whole thing down to make way. Now follow me. Up these stairs.”
The five of us hid on the second gallery, peeking over the banister at the scene below us. The circular space of the first floor (and they probably have a better name for it, but I have no idea) had been cleared out. Someone had to move all the wooden pews to the sides and stack them in tall rows on top of each other to make the place into more of a warehouse, and a thick layer of concrete was poured over the entire floor to create a surface more suitable for heavy cars. The raised platform and the reading table at the front have been spared the damage, though the soldiers weren't exactly gentle with them either.
“You can add a sacrilege to the count of everything Foxglove has to answer for.” Tommy couldn't leave a chance to criticise the army in their ways.
“Sorry about that,” came a whisper from beside her.
“No problem.”
Apart from the mesmerising sight of the historical architecture, there was no one to be seen. No guards scouting our surroundings and no guns at our backs. So far, everything seemed to be going perfectly smoothly.
“Are they going to be on time?”
The soldier gave Tommy a frown. “This is the army. Not a public transport.”
No sooner had he finished the last word than we had to duck back down as there was a rattle at the front door and tires screeched on the road. Voices could be heard shouting orders and in the next second the heavy wings swung inwards and two foxes stepped aside to let a convoy come through.
The wall behind us lit up, sending long spiked shadows along the length of the ceiling when three vehicles entered the synagogue. One after another, a long lorry and two armoured jeeps manoeuvred into place and stopped. The loud rumble of the engines was replaced by the slamming of both metal and wooden doors opening and closing.
About a dozen or so Foxglove soldiers filled the space, all dressed in their bright uniforms of entangled orange and purple shapes and ready to stand at attention in two rows with their palms outstretched to their foreheads.
Tommy pushed past me to be a little closer to our turncoat and hissed:
“Two blokes? What is this supposed to be?”
“Wait- this is wrong.”
Before he could explain himself any further, the door of the last car flew open and a true giant of a man stepped out into the light. He probably wouldn't quite measure up to our Einstein, as far as I could tell, but what he lacked in height he made up for in muscle. This man looked like a tamping bull, more than anyone I have ever seen. His black skin contrasted with the greyish receding hair on his head and the bright colours of his uniform and despite his build he might have been around forty. Maybe fifty?
As he stepped out, he brushed the non-existent muck off his trousers and made his way to the back of the lorry.
“So?” the Rebel pressed on, a little louder this time.
But looking at the soldier next to me, his silence wasn't caused by a lack of knowledge. There was confusion in his eyes, outweighed with fear.
“That's Fox...” he whispered.
“A fox?” James wondered. “Aren't you all?”
“The Fox! Hector Fox!” I couldn't miss a slight trace of panic in his voice. “The founder of Foxglove!”
“That guy is Fox? I mean he does look intimidating, but I was expecting him to appear just a little more evil.”
Tommy sat so still she could have been a statue. “What's he doing here? He can't be supervising every single delivery they have, right? That's bullshit.”
“Yeah, that's weird.”
“Something is wrong,” the soldier repeated.
“And the other one?”
A young woman appeared on the other side of the car. By the face, she might have been Fox's exact copy; lanky, rather than muscular, but still clearly in her prime. She tied her curly hair into two short buns at the back of her head and, unlike him, didn't bother to wear a uniform. There was a slight air of ease around her, more than authority.
“Caroline Fox. His daughter.”
“His daughter? What is this for them, a family trip?”
The soldier shook his head. “He takes his daughter everywhere he goes. We can see her at roll calls and when we exercise. Whenever we hear Fox yelling at one of his subordinates, she's standing right behind him like a shadow. She's supposed to take over the family business one day, though if it's of her own ambition or her father's, I can't tell. That's as much as I know.”
Stepping aside, one of the men opened the backdoor of the lorry and the hulking stature of their leader disappeared inside. There were the shouts of more commands being called out and the shuffling of heavy crates rang out before everything fell back into quiet anticipation.
The whole show lasted only a couple of minutes. The foxes stood around nervously, watching as their boss rummaged through the boxes of cargo, his deep voice muffled by the hood of the van, mumbling now and then in what seemed to be a satisfied manner.
As I watched them, I noted that his daughter didn't seem to exactly share his enthusiasm. Caroline Fox mostly walked around the perimeter, admiring the ruined decorations and speaking to her men. At one point she wandered along so close below our location I felt like I could almost pass out from anticipation, until her father stepped back out with a satisfied grin and gestured for her to join him in the car. The whole typical ceremony of standing still and saluting to pay respect was repeated once more, and the next second both cars disappeared into the night, leaving only the lorry and five men guarding its cargo.
I heard a shuffle beside me and ducked down in fright when I heard Tommy's voice whispering right next to my ear.
“What are we supposed to do with this? There's way too many of them!?”
“Wait…” Elskan warned her.
Down beneath us, the mood seemed to shift as the group stood alone without their leader. The men relaxed their stiff posture and one of them cracked a quiet joke to the amusement of his friends and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
“Anyone got a light?”
While the youngest one of them excused himself and retreated back to the passenger seat of the lorry, the rest of his colleagues departed outside for a quick smoke.
Right… you can always count on people being normal humans. No matter how scary they might seem.
“What was that all about?” I asked the soldier quietly, and Tommy answered for him. “Our introduction to the big bad guy. Who cares? This right here is our chance, so let's take it while we can.”
“There are still people down there!”
“One bloke who won't suspect anything!”
“He will if you keep shouting like this.”
“Alright...” Tommy lowered her voice. “We have some time before the rest of them come back. So let's go now.”
We all ducked down as the soldier below us raised a hand to his ear to adjust an earbud, ran it through his hair, wiped his nose.
“Fine.” James glanced at the heavy door and back at the car. “Let's go.”
The old steps creaked and groaned so loud I half expected the whole town to come running after us. I couldn't believe we were doing this. Of course, I was no stranger to stealing from behind people's backs, but could we really pull this off without mucking something up?
In a single file and hunched down for additional stealthiness, probably looking positively hilarious to an outside observer if there had been one, we made our way towards the big vehicle. Everything was just cracking in my opinion, until completely out of the blue the Rebel dashed forward to get closer to the guard and shoved a gun right in his face, smiling like a waitress attending her least favourite table.
“Hello. I've never actually done this before, so excuse me if it seems a little sloppy, but... Step out of your car. Hands up and all that, please.”
For one long second the young man watched us in disbelief, frozen in place and wide-eyed, his jaw half open in shock. At last, he pulled out his earbuds
“You- I don't- erm… you're not supposed to be here,” he stammered with a sudden urgency.
“Just get out!” Tommy lost all her patience and pulled him out by the collar without another word.
The rest of us restrained and confiscated all of his weapons with almost natural ease. The only slight complication occurred when we tried to take his handgun from him and found that it was attached to his belt by a short plastic cord, no doubt designed to prevent these exact situations. Fortunately, our own soldier immediately took action and helped us resolve this minor problem before anything turned ugly. While he held the man at a gunpoint the four of us hopped up onto the back of the lorry to inspect the cargo and true to his word, after examining some of the first few boxes, we found fresh fruit, pastries, frozen meat… all the wonderful ingredients that none of us could normally afford.
With a satisfied yelp I've never heard from her before, Tommy dropped down the duffel bag and got to filling it up to the brim with food. The two outlaws followed her lead, opening one package after another, throwing everything into the other one and moving down the line until James called out for everyone to stop.
“You've gotta see this!”
And there, shoved all the way to the back where we couldn't see it at first, was quite a different sort of cargo.
The first of the massive wooden crates we opened was almost completely filled with straw and contained some uncomfortable amount of ammunition. The second and third seemed almost identical and the fourth, a smaller one, was full of brand new, shiny rifles.
We didn't bother opening the rest.
“Guns?” El stared at our discovery with quiet discomfort. “You didn't say anything about weapons.”
“I didn't know anything about weapons.” The soldier sounded a little irritated. “From time to time they try to upgrade their gear a little. And it's true that we've been using some pretty outdated stuff for a while now,” he added in a whisper.
Tommy got up from her work to see what was going on and stood over our discovery with her arms folded in thought.
“Are we taking them too?”
“That's not a good idea,” was El's first reaction.
“I mean… we can steal as much food as we can, and they probably won't even notice it, but if we decide to take this, it could deal them a blow they could have never seen coming.”
“Except we don't want to deal anyone any blows. We want to take what we can and we want to quietly disappear into the night, leaving as little trace as humanly possible.”
“We might never get another opportunity like this,” she pressed on.
“And so what?”
“And that should be more concerning to you! Crippling them as much as we can is as important in our fight to save the town as anything else.”
“Yes. Your fight. That's the important word here.”
“First and foremost, we should get out of here as soon as possible. We have what we came for.” I tried to be a voice of reason as the two stared each other down. But regardless our complaints and arguments, Tommy squatted back down again and started to fill the remaining space in her bag with the dangerous cargo.
“We've got kids down in the underground. We can't keep these things around them, so I'd appreciate it if you could take them with you and get rid of them.”
“Well, we've got Manny back home, and he's no kid anymore, but he might as well pass for one if you squint.”
“What?”
“The point is, we are not taking any weapons. Tony is right,” El jabbed my chest with a finger. “We did what you asked of us and we're leaving.”
At that moment, in the traditional way of our incredibly horrible luck, we all froze as we heard the main door open and slam shut behind our backs.
“-and I've cards if nothing else. We've got a room back there where we keep the-” the voice trailed off as the old soldier's eyes adjusted to the light and he stopped in a weird jerking motion that made him look like a robot without power. Two more men we saw earlier were right on his heels, both younger than him and realising the full significance of the scene in before them, the quicker of the two fumbled for his gun, which provoked a similar reaction from both James and Tommy.
Once again we were held at a gunpoint.
The second time this week.
“Don't be an idiot! Put it down!” the older soldier broke the tension, grabbed his younger colleague's weapon by the barrel and shoved it so that it pointed to the ground. I suppose you learn to be careful if you want to grow into years in a similar profession.
El stepped forward. “Yeah. Put-”
“Put them down!” Tommy finished for him.
All the extra time we'd taken to argue about nothing came right around to bite us in the ass, along with three fully armed foxes. While Tommy, El and James appeared dazed and shocked by this new development, and our soldier seemed so terrified he might have darted for the exit any second, I was surprised to find my mind felt perfectly clear. Maybe it was the rush of adrenaline, the fact that I'd been in this situation before by this point or simply the realisation we now had an advantage.
I knew what we needed now was to de-escalate the situation and to everyone's surprise, including mine, I tried to take charge.
“We don't want any problems,” I began feebly.
“I think it's a little too late for that.” Elskan's voice in my ears wasn't exactly encouraging.
“And we don't want to hurt anyone or…”
“We don't want to hurt anyone either,” the old fox assured me. “So how about you lay down your weapons too and surrender to us? You have no way to get out of here now. Even if you walk out of that door, the police or someone else will eventually get you. Are you hungry?” he glanced over our bagged spoils. “We have food at the fortress. The dungeons are not as bad as people say they might be.”
All I could do was shudder at the thought.
“Yeah… we'll take our chances.” I was pleased to see Tommy shared my disgust with his mad suggestion. “Nobody move a muscle.”
The whole group started backing away, including the young guard who'd been held at a gunpoint, and for a single second it seemed as though we might be able to flee the place perfectly scott-free. The foxes could only stand and stare as we carried their colleague away, until the overzealous bloke from earlier, with complete disregard for his well-being or any common sense, picked up his weapon with a loud curse and raised it to his eye level to take a shot at us. It's hard to tell whether he was just daft or if, as I suspect in my case, it was simply all the adrenaline pumping through his system that caused him to attack in such an unfavourable situation.
Maybe he was just so afraid for the life of his friend.
Or maybe he was just really into his job.
I ducked down as I heard the shot being fired and pulled Tommy and her heavy bag to the ground along with me. A brawl breaking out behind us gave us just enough time to move out of the way and hide behind the sweet metal solitude of the ransacked lorry. The older soldier must have interrupted this reckless attempt to murder us for a moment, but the damage was already done. Our side fired two mindless shots in retaliation, our captive slipped out of our grasp and was free to run and join his comrades, and we were showered by a quick round that tore holes into the furniture stacked against the wall behind our backs and sent long, sharp splinters flying in all directions.
I didn't arm myself, so all I could do was to wait while the rest of the group tried to return fire as best as they could. Mostly, though, we just covered in fear while the soldiers moved forward, shouting and trying to encircle our position to get a line of sight on us. It was fairly obvious that by now one of them must have called the headquarters to let them know what had happened, all the cars were about to turn back and in a minute we were about to be overrun by their reinforcements and thrown back into the dungeons.
I was terrified. So terrified, in fact, I couldn't even move until I heard Elskan's voice shouting right next to my ear to be heard by Tommy.
“Are you happy now?”
“Screw you! I didn't want this! What are we going to do?”
At that, the outlaw looked around him for something he could use. When one of the mercenaries stuck his head around the corner of the van, it was clear we ran out of any better options and he reached into his pocket, pulled out a round, bright orange object and shouted again.
“You want to get rid of these guns so bad? Then let's get rid of them.”
Something clicked as he sent the thing flying in a wide arc straight into the cargo hold full of food and ammunition.
“Run for the door!”
You see… Elskan was kind of a hypocrite in a way, and what we didn't know was that despite his anger at Tommy's decision, just before the soldiers came back, he rifled through the cargo himself, and the thing just falling through the air was some kind of explosive he nicked while we weren't looking. As soon as I realised this, I darted towards the small exit to catch up with everyone else.
This was the first properly huge explosion of my life and I want to do it justice.
Contrary to popular belief, there's usually no fireball involved and absolutely no heroic leap through the air to miraculously escape your fate. Instead, bits of metallic shrapnel kick up the dust, flying towards our heroes at a breakneck speed, tearing everything and everyone in their path to bloody shreds, while the blast wave, far too weak to actually lift anything off the ground, follows close by to catch off-guard any unfortunate suckers standing too close to the radius and decompress their internal organs.
And contrary to what I just said, in this case there actually was a huge fireball.
Running away with my eyes idiotically closed shut in anticipation, I could only imagine the hood of the lorry opening up like a big can of sardines, all the soldiers ducking down in an almost instinctive minuteness that undoubtedly saved their lives, and the gigantic column of black fire and smoke rising to the roof and engulfing the whole place up in flames. A thunderous roar, the likes of which I have never heard before, echoed throughout the circular space, and it took me a second before my ears stopped ringing and I could hear El calling out again.
“Remember! It's not the fire that kills you. It's the smoke! Get out!”
I was lucky to be left completely unscathed and didn't stop running even when my vision got all blurry from the ever-present fumes and my throat began to hurt with every other breath.
James was the first to kick open the door and the next moment all five of us were standing outside in the alleyway coughing and cursing our lungs out. It wasn't long, however, before our discomfort turned into hysterical laughter.
“Why do you have to burn every place we visit in this town?” James laughed, gasping in between breaths.
But the other outlaw didn't reply and I could see him sitting down with his back to the nearby wall, staring off into the distance with glassy eyes.
“El?” I called him with sudden concern.
“I looked at the blood,” he groaned, staring straight forward. “I shouldn't have looked at the blood.”
To our collective shock, he raised his hand, the palm all shiny and slick in the low light.
“The explosion or a bullet… something must have got me.”
While all James could do was to freeze in place, Tommy was on him in a heartbeat, and it wasn't long before we found a dark spot spreading over the side of his hoodie.
“Anyone got a light?” she asked us, immediately pulling up his shirt, and the soldier knelt down beside her and pulled out his mobile phone. “We have to leg it. They'll be on us in a second.”
“You can go if you want to. We're finished anyway.” She kept her eyes on the wound. “I think it's just a scratch, but I'm not sure. You're bleeding like a stuck hog.”
“Am I? I didn't notice…”
“Don't be sarcastic with me, we're trying to help you. Can you walk? James! Tony!” She didn't bother waiting for an answer. “Help me get him up.”
Despite my better judgement, we helped him rise and stood by, awaiting further instructions.
“We need to get him into the underground,” Tommy decided, unlocking her phone and dialling a number. “Mike! Are you waiting in the car?”
There was the usual delay and an annoying murmur of static before a young, distorted voice came through from the other side.
“No. Why?”
“What do you mean, no why?”
“You told me to go if you didn't come back soon. And you didn't!”
“Well, come back here, you moron! We're fine and we need a ride!”
Angrily, Tommy locked the phone again and looked at me with a face full of despair.
“That was Mike. He's… not the sharpest tool in the shed. He's got a car though, so that makes him our getaway driver.”
That wasn't enough for James, who seemed to be turning downright hysterical.
“We can't wait around here for a car that might be on the other side of the town! El needs help.”
“Then let's go back home,” the outlaw offered, holding his injured side.
“The forest is too far-”
“No! The other place...”
“Other place?” James appeared confused. “Oh- wait… that other place?”
“Sure,” El said in between shallow breaths.
I had no idea what they were rambling about.
“Are you sure? She's starting to be a little... volatile. I don't know-”
“Just go already!”
So at the odd insistence of the outlaw leader, we split up, leaving our two companions behind to fend for themselves while we carried him through the streets to god knows where. The soldier departed back into his quarters and the Rebel disappeared into the night.
Our quiet walk through the midnight town seemed almost peaceful, or maybe it was just the shock of everything that had just come to pass.
Despite all of our crazy exploits over the past few weeks, none of us had ever suffered anything worse than some scratches and grazed ankles. Over those few days, I've started to think of my new outlaw friends as almost some infallible sentinels. The realisation that we could get seriously hurt was new, way too real and positively terrifying.
It wasn't long before we reached the quieter outskirts of the town and somehow I just couldn't shake the feeling the streets looked a little too familiar. Had I been to this place before? Part of my confusion was perhaps due to the fact I was paying more attention to my injured friend than to our surroundings and the more surprised I when I looked up and saw the building of a small, familiar pub.
The illuminated sign above the door read:
“The Old Barrel?” I said out loud.
“Finally!” James groaned under the weight. Not only did we have to carry the outlaw, but also the heavy bag full of stolen weapons. “That was the longest, dumbest walk of my life.”
“Good thing I'm keeping so fit,” El said groggily.
“Muh… You could lose a few pounds.”
Freeing one hand from under the outlaw, I pounded on the door, expecting to see the knackered face of the awakened waitress.
Instead, after a moment's delay and the sound of a few hurried steps, the door opened to reveal a completely different young woman. She looked to be about in my years, wearing a loose denim top over a striped yellow shirt while long red hair fell in waves down over her face and past her waist as she moved.
She started to say something in a tongue I failed to understand, then stopped mid-sentence when the smile vanished from her face and she backed away from me. Somehow my face in the doorway wasn't the one she'd expected.
“Hey, honey,” Elskan addressed her in a ghastly whisper. “We've got a situation going on.”
Even through the impenetrable language barrier, it was pretty clear her next word had to be a curse.
“What have you done this time?” The woman ushered us into the empty bar room and switched to more or less fluent English. Her accent strongly resembled the one I'd learned to recognise from my outlaw friends, if only a little thicker.
“We got into some trouble. For a good reason, though.” James helped me carry El the last few steps where we lifted him up on the desk of one of the tables and undressed him, smudging blood all over the place in the process.
“What's wrong with him?” When she noticed all the blood, her voice seemed to break, though she quickly regained her composure.
“A scratch… I think.”
“You think?”
“It's from a… or… actually, it's nothing.”
“David!” she called James by another name in her strange, outlandish accent and pierced him with a cold stare.
“Alright! We wouldn't bring him here if it wasn't necessary. It was his idea. And it was an honest accident.”
A closer examination in a calm and safe environment revealed the wound wasn't as bad as it might have seemed at a first glance and after a long and quite clearly heated discussion in their incomprehensible language, the woman slapped James two times across both cheeks, kissed the incapacitated Elskan goodbye and headed up the stairs in search of something that might help us patch him back up.
Our role in saving Elskan's ass was apparently over and for a good few minutes now I'd been sitting behind one of the tables further away from all the action, utterly confused and dazed by everything that had come to pass in my life in a single shitty evening.
It wasn't until one of the chairs squeaked on the clean polished floor that I looked up to see the other man joining me in my solitude.
“James? I think you two owe me some sort of explanation.”
“Yes. That would probably be fitting.” the outlaw turned in his seat to watch the woman returning along with the waitress, Mary, yawning and still in her pyjamas. “Where do I start?”
I shrugged.
There was a brief look of desperation on his face. “You know how we told you we were fleeing from the war and all that jazz? We decided to hide out in England with all the other immigrants and eventually we settled down in Nederstone because we ran out of money to travel any further up north.”
I nodded slowly, anticipating some kind of a new revelation.
“Yeah… well, there's a prelude to that story,” he chuckled nervously, nodding towards the direction of the two women. “Um… meet Anne, my younger sister and Elskan's lawful wife. She is the real reason we ended up in Nederstone. She… and the little one.”
It was at that moment that I finally noticed another little detail that must have escaped me in all the confusion surrounding Elskan's injury. As she bent down to clean the wound with a fresh towel, I could see a properly swollen pregnant belly clearly visible under the long yellow shirt she was wearing.
How do you continue a conversation after something like this?
“I- I have a sister too,” I shared a little awkwardly.
“I'm sure you do.”
“Yeah… so this woman is your family?”
“Yes.”
“Elskan's wife-”
“Oh, yeah.”
I took a second to watch this new, fascinating person that had so suddenly entered my life. James had to be lying!
“You're not pulling my leg, are you?”
“Why would I do that?”
“And are you absolutely sure all of this is real?”
“I should. I was their best man!”
Pulling the chair a little closer to me, James took to retelling the story from the very beginning.
“The early days of these wars were just a confusing mess for all of us, as I'm sure you can remember. Families were trying to stay together as best as they could, borders were being closed one by one and supplies were just beginning to run thin. It was even worse for us, if you can believe it, because right about this time my bull-headed sister decided to fly away and help her friend Mary keep her slowly dying business afloat. She was in her second month and it was understandably risky, even without the immediate threat of global war, but try explaining that to her. I think it was maybe not even a full week after she departed when all hell broke loose and the island closed its borders.”
“I think I can see where this is going now.”
James only nodded.
“It wasn't easy to get off the island and even harder to get in and the more desperate we were when the two of us finally reached the Chunnel and found the road completely closed and flooded by hundreds of camping runaways from down south. By some incredible intervention of luck we managed to find and bribe one old drunken captain who got us across in a ship half-eaten by worms and the next day we were standing at the coast of England, kissing the ground and heaving our lunch out. Despite everything, things suddenly looked hopeful, however, and we were set on our way to save her.
“But when we arrived we found the town in ruins the way you know it today; people on the streets begging for a few pennies to feed their kids, broken windows and burned houses and your leaders completely negligent of anything that was happening. That was about six months ago, the army wasn't even there yet and we were already seeing the place go up in flames.”
It was not what we'd pictured. The two of them were back together and we made sure Anne was safe in her quarters at the inn, but all of the sudden we found ourselves stranded in an unknown land; outlawed deserters with pockets full of air and nowhere to go.”
There were no rooms for us at the pub and it didn't feel safe to stay in the streets and in the end, it was my idea to go and try to sleep in the forest a few nights until we manage to figure out something better. We found an abandoned cabin, the one that's now the kitchen. A few nights turned into a few weeks, we met Will and Manny and... well, you know the rest.”
I took some time to process it all and grimaced in thought.
“So the whole story about fleeing from the war and everything-”
“Is not entirely false,” James shrugged. “I'd be lying if I claimed I didn't welcome a good reason to escape legal service. It just wasn't the whole truth.”
And again, all I could do was to sit and stare as Anne walked around, looking after Elskan, her hands now as red as her flowing hair.
“And this is finally the real way it's happened, huh?”
The outlaw watched me for a moment. There was something strange in his eyes as he shook his head.
“Sure… Take it or leave it.”
“I guess I'll take it then.”
“No one knows but me and El, and we would really appreciate it if it could stay that way.” Though he spoke calmly, there was a certain edge to his voice I couldn't miss. It wasn't all that surprising, considering they'd dared to cross half of Europe for this woman.
“No one?”
“No one.”
“Not even Will and Manny?”
“Not a soul… and if it wasn't for the way this evening has turned out, you wouldn't know either.”
Without the need to say anything back, I felt as if we came to some kind of mutual agreement on the topic. I had my own share of secrets too, after all, whether Elskan chose to share them with him or not, and among rebelling underground societies and lightning casting criminals, a small change in someone's backstory was far from the strangest thing I'd encountered.
Taking care of Elskan's wound and finally stitching it up shut against the outlaw's stern protests took the two women a good while to finish, and we spent it sitting and chatting nearby.
Finally, when the loud complaining quieted down and the blood stopped flowing, Elskan's wife drew nearer while Mary did her best to clean the place up for the morning.
“Thank you for bringing him in,” she addressed James in a much calmer voice than before.
“I mean… of course,” he smiled. “How is he doing?”
“Much better. For all that shouting and screaming earlier, he actually managed to fall asleep while we were working. We'll keep him up here for a few days if you don't need him in the camp.”
“Hm…”
“Now which one of you two is going to tell me what happened out there?”
The terror in James' eyes was clearly visible across the small table and he immediately started coughing, as if the mere notion of that made him swallow his tongue or something.
“Yeah… no. I'm not doing this. We have to head back home before folks start worrying about what happened and you have your husband right here and I'm sure he'll love to explain everything as soon as he wakes up.”
And before she could object in any way James grabbed the full duffle bag, I was hurried outside, the door slammed shut behind our backs and we headed back out into the night.
ns18.188.0.144da2
然後按「加至主畫面」