Metamorphosis (5 page)

The big Scot
reached out for the wine bottle that he had given to MacKinnon to
carry for him. He had found it laying on the ground near their
vehicles and filled it before moving off to clear the approach to
the towers. He chuckled at the soldier’s confused expression.
“Dinna your maw teach you not to show up empty-handed?” He shifted
the bottle to his left hand so he could hold his C8 carbine in his
right. “Manners, laddie, manners.” With that, he simply strolled
around the corner and headed for the door as if he owned the
place.

He reached out
his carbine and tapped the silencer on the glass windows of the red
door. One of the two guards in the vestibule opened the door and
frowned out at him. Simpson produced an heroic belch and sauntered
in, handing the bottle to the second guard, who, seeing no
hostility from the sudden visitor, lowered his handgun and reached
out for the bottle with a grin on his face.

“I’m new,”
Simpson explained in a perfect local accent, to the surprise of his
mates, crouching out in the rain. “Thought I’d get here a bit early
for my watch and learn the way of things.”

“I bloody knew
it,” whispered a voice on the net. “That manky Scots git has been
putting us on with that dodgey brogue all this time!”

“Quiet,” Liam
cut through the chuckles just as the guard with the bottle sneezed
diesel fuel out his nose in shock. Simpson, who had been explaining
himself to the guard by the door brought his carbine butt up to
strike the man in the mouth, knocking him cold. “Shift yer arses,”
he growled into his headset, hanging inside his collar.

The entry team
poured into the small vestibule where both guards were now
unconscious. “He said there were four guards on the second floor.”
The big man shrugged. “Could be pure blatherskite.”

“You know your
job,” Liam told the group. “This building is hostile; if you see a
weapon, you pull the trigger. This is a meth lab so don’t lose any
sleep over the buggers.” He smiled at the men  who grinned
back at him. They were along to bring Tommy out but there wasn’t a
soldier alive, with the possible exception of the two guards at the
barricade, who didn’t relish the thought of going after drug
dealers.

“Masks on.
Security detail to hold the lobby. The rest of you follow me.” He
turned to the stairwell door and headed for the second level. He
led his force onto the second floor hallway and turned for the
southwest corner. Two guards sat at a small table, playing cards.
Liam fired two rounds into the man who sat facing him while the
trooper behind him shot the second guard before he could react.
Though silenced, the breech mechanism of the C8 still made a loud
noise in the concrete hallway as it slammed back and forth, cycling
ammunition through the chamber, spitting brass cartridges onto the
concrete floor.

It was one of
the reasons he had ordered his team to leave their weapons on
single shot rather than full automatic. The occasional shot would
sound like a guard cocking his weapon while a burst would be
unmistakable. His main reason, however, was that there were
children on this floor.

And one of
them was his son.

They formed up
at the doorway to the southeast apartment and one of the men
stepped up with another Halligan bar. Liam counted down on his
fingers. As the last finger curled down into a fist, the trooper
forced the door open and jumped back to allow the entry team space
to pour in. Liam was first through the door and it took him a
moment to assess what he was looking at.

There were
eight boys, some perhaps as old as thirteen or fourteen, in the
parlor. Six were standing against the wall watching a seventh who
was tied to a chair, his face a mass of bruises. One man, breathing
heavily from the beating he had been administering, was thrown down
and secured by Liam’s men, none too gently. The second man in the
room had been holding the eighth boy by the scruff of his neck and
he let go in alarm, raising his hands as he backed against the
wall. He was also secured efficiently and with a great deal of
injury.

The eighth boy
was Thomas.

Liam pulled
his mask off. “Tommy,” he said softly, knowing his voice was
unreliable at the moment. So much needed to be said but no words
came.

“Dad?” His
face showed his confusion. The last he would have heard was that
his father had disappeared after his helicopter went down. After
more than a year, he wouldn’t have expected to see him again and,
yet, here he was. A hint of his old smile came back. “Dad!” He
jumped across his former captor and threw his arms around his
father.

Liam finally
felt a moment of peace. All the fears that he had been holding at
bay since his release from captivity began to melt away. Thomas was
alive. He closed his eyes and held his son, the chill of the rainy
night forgotten.

“Something in
your eye, Simpson?” a voice inquired.

“Shut it,” the
big man growled.

Liam opened
his eyes and looked around the room. His troopers were checking on
the boys, looking for injuries and assessing their mobility. He
looked down to the boy who had been taking the beating. His men had
moved him to the couch and were assessing his injuries. “Tommy,
what was going on here?” He nodded toward the couch.

His son
stepped back and looked over to the prone, bruised figure on the
couch. “They caught him trying to leave,” he said, woodenly. “They
make examples of the ones they catch. The last one died. I yelled
at them to stop – they said I was next.”

Liam didn’t
know what made him angrier, the fact that these men were about to
beat his defenseless son or that Tommy was able to discuss it in
such emotionless terms. It was a survival mechanism; kill your
emotions before they kill you. How many murders had his son watched
in this room? How many times had he spoken up?

Liam pushed
his anger aside for a moment and smiled at his son. “You spoke up
for him,” he said as he reached out to grasp his shoulder. “That
was a brave thing to do, considering what you can expect from them
in return.”

Tommy
shrugged. “Didn’t do much for him, did it?” He angled his head
towards the couch.

Liam shook his
head. “They took a break to put you in the lineup, yeah?” He gave a
shrug of his own. “Otherwise, they might have beaten him to death
by now.” He looked at the rest of the boys, activating his headset.
“All units to rally point Delta. We are bringing out eight
children; one of them is seriously wounded. Second unit to have
their stretcher slung for patient transport.”

Liam pulled
his mask from its precarious perch on top of his head and shoved it
back into the storage bag at his hip. They moved the evacuees
quickly to the stairwell, passing the two men who guarded against
incursion from higher floors. They filed out into the lobby where
the soft rumble of diesels could be heard. The drivers were already
backing into the small courtyard, coming to a stop with the last
three feet of their vehicles under the building canopy.

Six men went
outside, opening the back hatches of the armored vehicles before
moving to take up defensive positions in the dying rain.

The exodus
began.

Two boys were
sent to the front of the second vehicle while their injured friend
was laid on a stretcher. He was carried inside and suspended 
between the rows of seats that backed against the outer walls of
the vehicle. The other five, including Tommy, were guided into the
lead vehicle.

The snipers
had rappelled down the faces of the two flanking buildings and now
ran to climb into the front passenger seats of their vehicles as
Liam followed the last of his men, climbing in the back hatch and
dogging it shut. “Up to the front end,” he told Tommy with a nod
towards the engine compartment that separated the cab from the rear
compartment.

“Two loaded.”
Simpson’s accent was re-surfacing, even over the radio.

“One loaded,”
Liam answered. “Let’s get to the post hospital.”

They pulled
away with a roar; stealth was no longer necessary but speed was.
After a few blocks, Liam opened the roof hatch and stood with
Tommy, watching the blighted cityscape fly past. The boy had
obviously been impressed with the armored vehicle and his grin was
more like the one that Liam remembered. They braved the last of the
drizzle, comforted by the flow of warmth from the heater below.
 

“Is the whole
world gone to the dogs?” the boy asked loudly, when the engine was
at a lower rpm. They swayed as the vehicle swerved around a burning
lorry.

“No, just
parts of it.” Liam hunched over to make himself easier to hear.
“Erin tells me things are much more stable on Guernsey. Not like
here where everybody is a stranger. There, most people have family,
roots.” They swerved again as they entered the zigzag concrete
barriers at the sector gate, which slid open at their approach.
MacKinnon had made a good impression on the guards.

“Are you
thinking of sending me to live with Auntie Erin?” They accelerated
away from the gates, heading towards the river. The sky was finally
clearing.

“Would you
like to live on Guernsey?” he half shouted.

Tommy craned
his head back to look up at his father. “Well, I’ll miss staying
with Uncle Leo, but I suppose I could do with a change.” His grin
took any sting from his words. It wasn’t a reproach, just his sense
of humor helping him to deal with the turmoil of the last few
months. His grin faded as his eyes drifted to the right, growing
wide in wonder. In the last few blocks, working streetlights had
begun to appear, and now they rolled to a stop as they approached a
traffic jam.

Two vehicles
had been in a minor collision and the crowds on the sidewalk slowed
as they passed. Cars honked as a uniformed police constable
authoritatively directed the removal of the damaged vehicles. “It’s
just like it used to be!” The boy said in wonder. “I had no idea
the world was still normal, and certainly not so close.”

I don’t
think I would go so far as to say the world is normal anymore.
Liam smiled and activated his headset. “Two, back up and take an
alternate route. This won’t clear up any time soon. We’ll wait it
out since we don’t have any medical cases on board.” Eight vehicles
back, the second
Fuchs
disgorged three men who began
directing the vehicles behind them. The space behind them cleared
quickly, civilian drivers encouraged to comply by the sight of
assault weapons.

Tommy’s brow
furrowed as he watched the accident scene. “Will you be coming to
Guernsey?”

“For a month,”
Liam said, looking up and straining to see the stars beyond the
glare of the street lights. “Then I have to report for training. We
have a job waiting for us out there and I have to see it through.”
Now that the rain had stopped, they climbed up to sit on the roof
of the vehicle, feet dangling down the hatch. He looked over at his
son. “Tommy, I would like to just stay with you but I owe these
men,” he began.

The boy
nodded, looking down at the air intakes on the roof. “So do I,
after tonight,” he said thoughtfully. “I suppose you’re all I have
to pay them with.” He looked over at Liam. “D’ you really think we
can beat whoever took Mars from us, Dad?”

Liam watched a
large flatbed back up to one of the damaged cars while he thought
about his answer. “Happen we might,” he said. “They obviously know
more about engines than us, but weapons and tactics?” He shrugged,
looking over at the boy. “One thing I
can
tell you: If we
don’t give it a shot, we’ll end up in the kermit for sure.”

Tommy turned
to the loading operation with a smile. The small Peugeot was
winched up the flatbed with a wail of metal-on-metal. “Well, if we
don’t know what the future holds,” he said brightly, nodding at the
ordered chaos, “we should enjoy civilization while it lasts.”

The Kennedy
boys watched in happy silence as the scene was cleared. A small
scab that would be gone in a matter of hours. Five miles to the
east, the same wound would have festered and spread, the cars
torched, the flames jumping to the nearby buildings. Sooner or
later, one of the two halves of a fractured society would establish
dominance. Liam feared that the virulent economics of
Sector
One
might prove to be the stronger.

He looked at
his son, watching a scene so mundane, so common-place that it
infused them both with a new sense of hope.
You will have a
life,
he vowed.
Win or lose, you will have a place in this
world.
The constable started waving traffic through. The big
diesel revved and they climbed back into the hatch.

Time to get on
with it.

I decided to
write this short story as I was working with my editor on the main
story. I felt Liam had a great deal of potential as a character,
and it had remained largely untapped in the first Black Ships
episode. In the eleven thousand words above, I’ve come to realize
that my plan for the second book in this series left too much on
the table. I had originally intended to jump forward a century or
so and explore a more distant future, but I’ve decided that there’s
a great deal of storytelling to be found in the decade following
the end of Black Ships. 

Liam and Tommy
will play a major role in the mad scramble to establish the new way
of things. Though life may, at times, be difficult, young Tommy
will doubtless consider it an improvement over his time with Uncle
Leo…

If you enjoyed
this story, a short review is always appreciated. Nobodies (like
myself) tend to get discovered by word of mouth and honest reviews
are one of the best ways to make an opinion available. If you’d
like to reach me with comments, questions or you just feel like
discussing the weather, I’m at
[email protected]
. Thanks for reading and have a great day!