Society: After It Happened Book 3 (7 page)

RECOVERY

Pete’s shoulder was healing slowly, helped – he claimed – by the two little spaniels who lay on his legs and seemed happy to sleep all day and all night with occasional breaks to eat or go outside.  Every day James came to him for instructions in the morning, and every evening he would sit with the old poacher and discuss his results, receiving tips and pointers based on his performance.  James was putting weight on, and no longer resembled the skinny, terrified kid Lexi had brought home.  He had grown a sturdy set of shoulders, having taken over every heavy task from Pete.  He trusted the older man which is why, one evening, Pete told him straight that Pip didn’t need him to follow her everywhere, and that she was going to be fine without his help.

What Dan had learned later was that the young girl had spent a long time talking with him, as they were the only ones being treated daily by the medical team.  She had asked Pete for advice, then for his help in putting James off trying to be the husband he had never been asked to be.

James seemed to take it well, but a subtle eye was kept on him to be sure.  Jack stepped in a few times a week to show him some skills and teach him about different types of animals and when their breeding seasons were.

Pete was even allowed out for a few hours at a time, which he spent sat on a folding chair on the lakes jetty fishing.  True, he did have a fishing rod, but the only thing he ever caught seemed to be a small bottle of scotch.

Dan didn’t feel guilty about the ruse; he had discussed it with Kate beforehand who agreed as she didn’t want him sat in medical either moping or drinking.

“It’s actually not that much” she said to Dan as they discussed Pete’s drinking in private one day “He never seems to be actually drunk as such, he just needs a top up to keep him going.  I’ve seen way worse alcohol problems than this, and I would class Pete as ‘functioning’ at absolute worst”

Dan had to agree.  Not once had he ever seen Pete staggering drunk, not even at Christmas when he himself had ended up throwing up in the snow, and he never showed any adverse signs of the alcohol affecting him.  He decided to re-categorise Pete as ‘Drinker’ and not ‘Alcoholic’.

Marie had started to take her one day off a week to coincide with Dan’s.  They enjoyed a lazy lie-in which they planned ahead for and stocked his room with drinks and snacks the night before.  After a morning not wasted in bed, they got up for lunch and did whatever they felt like for the rest of the day.  Marie called it ‘pottering’.

The routine had established itself well enough that on those days Ash would spend the morning with Leah.  He knew she loved the status of walking around with the huge dog at her heel.  Maybe Ash would father a litter one day and she could have her own, Dan thought.

On one of their free days, Marie was restless.  She wanted to go out somewhere.  The irony of being a Ranger for fun on his day off from being a Ranger wasn’t lost on him, but if she wanted to go out then he would take her out.

“Where would madam like to go?” he asked lazily.

“Anywhere” she replied “Just take me out somewhere” He realised the furthest she had been from the house since he brought her back months ago was to the gardens where she visited Cedric and Maggie every week.

“Ok” he said “But you work to my rules” he kissed her arm as they lay in bed.  She rolled over slightly so he could see her raised eyebrows. “Oh?” she asked.

“You move when I say, and you stand still when I say” he kissed her shoulder.

“And you follow my instructions to the letter” he kissed her neck, making her squeak and pull away.

“You’re so melodramatic!” she teased.

They dressed and Leah reluctantly relinquished control of his dog back to him.  Ash seemed unhappy too, as he probably doubted Dan would feed him anywhere near as much as Leah would.

He drove well, showing off and completely wasting his effort as Marie didn’t even notice.  She was no longer the only person there who knew what Dan had been before but she decided to push a little harder for the reasons why he was so moody at times.

She asked him to stop the car.  She got out and looked around, spinning a slow circle. Dan scanned the area over his weapon, looking for Dangers.  He was just about to call her back to the car, to tell her to be careful, when he realised that all he ever saw nowadays was danger.  He never stopped to see what she was seeing.

Now that the earth had started to lay claim back to all the concrete and tarmac, and the busy pace of the world had replaced the rat race with the race for survival, he never stopped to appreciate the beauty around him.  It was a clear day, and from the motorway fly-over they had stopped on he could see for miles. He could see three sets of hills, the two smaller ones showing the way north through a valley and a much larger range to the south.  He had driven through this place so many times in his life, but never once had he seen what was beyond the line of traffic.  He lowered his carbine and slowly stood up straight.

“Relax, Daniel” she said kindly. 

UNBURDENED

He relaxed.  He walked over to her, discarding the weapon by slinging it behind his back, and put his arms around her waist.  He kissed her gently, and she responded.

They disentangled themselves and leaned back against the barrier.  They lit cigarettes and as he exhaled slowly she asked him the question he knew was coming.

“What happened?” she said quietly.  From all their conversations, all his attempts at diverting or distracting her it always came back to this.  She wanted to know what tortured him so much.

“Three years ago, nearly.” He started “I was a firearms officer.  You know; flash car and sexy looking kit.  I was happy with life.  She was in the job too, and the kids” he stopped, swallowing down the tears which threatened.

“It was a Friday night.  Busy as usual.  We got a call for a kid with a knife on the outskirts, bad area you know?  Concrete jungle kind of place; all high rises, high crime rates and high unemployment” Marie knew. 

“We got there, looked around and couldn’t see anyone who looked more suspicious than normal.  We’d had a lot of hoax calls there; kids on the estate throwing things at the cars.  Couple guys got hurt; one was quite bad when a freezer went over the balcony and hit a car.  It was becoming an estate you didn’t go onto unless you went in force”

Marie knew those areas well, having sent plenty of people in force to fetch her the bad people to lock away.

“Anyway.  Walking back to the car and my mate goes down; they’d lobbed a half-brick at us from a balcony.  Just dumb luck that he took it in the head.  Lights out, fractured skull.” He drew on his cigarette, taking it down to the end before he flicked it away with his thumb and forefinger.

“A kid appears from by the car.  It came to my head that they’d figured out what we were and were going to take the guns.  I still believe that now, even when it doesn’t matter anymore.  I tried to call for backup but this kid ran at us.  He had something in his hand.  I couldn’t see it clearly but I was sure it was a weapon.  I drew on him, shouting at the top of my voice for him to stop.  He didn’t, so I shot him once in the chest” he said, eyes vacant and tapping the fingers of his right hand on his sternum.

Marie stayed silent, letting Dan fill the gap.

“They all scattered” he said, looking up with tears streaming down his face “Backup arrived and helped me do CPR on the kid.  My mate survived, the kid died on scene.  They took my gun, swabbed my hands and led me away to give my initial statement – they all had that look of pity on their faces.  Dead man walking.” He cuffed at his eyes.

“The press screamed racism.  Police brutality.  Black youth murdered by white cop; all that shit. He was fourteen years old.  I was sure it was a gun he was carrying but the only thing they found was his fucking phone.  He was running to help, and I killed him.  He wanted to be a paramedic when he grew up.  He was first aid mad when all the other kids his age were chalking up robberies and weapons charges”

He cried.  “It was awful.  They hung me out to dry.  My name got leaked and I had death threats.  ‘Racist pig murderer’ – that’s what they painted on my car.  I went downhill badly.  Depression, insomnia, mood swings.  I was in a bad way.  Not just my career – I didn’t care about that any more – but my life was over”

He looked down at the floor “That’s when she left and took the kids.  I found out afterwards that she’d been dropping on her back for her boss anyway; not that it mattered by then.  Everything I’d ever worked for was gone.  I did my job, and the organisation crucified me for it.  I was in a situation and reacted how I was taught, but it was wrong.  I was wrong.  Not once did the job stand up in the inquest and say I was innocent; they bent over backwards to help prove I wasn’t”

“After eighteen months of hell the inquiry declared a lack of any evidence to convict me for murder, but nobody forgot.  It was ruled an ‘accidental death following police contact’.  I’d moved back to where I’d started out before transferring.  Everywhere I went it was the whispering; ‘that’s the bloke who shot that kid’.  Bastards; you’d think your own side would look after you, wouldn’t you?  After that the word of the private prosecution came through.  I was suspended again, and was looking at a trial for manslaughter”

He paused.  “It looked likely that I was going down for it”

Dan angrily wiped the tears from his face and lit another cigarette. 

“So now you know everything” he said bitterly “still want me around?”

Marie had stayed still and silent as it all poured out of him, now she took a breath to speak.

He held up a hand and shushed her.  She fought down her angry indignation and supressed the urge to cuff him around the head.  He leapt to his feet and threw away the cigarette, calling Ash back to heel as he swung the carbine back to his front and raised it in one smooth action.  He squinted through the optic pointed down the empty and overgrown motorway.

“What is it?” she asked, a hint of fear making her voice slightly higher than normal.

“Movement” he said gruffly “Vehicle, almost a mile away” 

HARD CHOICES

Emma nursed the uncomfortable car northwards on a motorway littered with cars and green plants overgrowing the hard shoulder and central reservation.  She was sure last week that she was going to die.  She had started to cough, and had felt drained very quickly.  She recorded her notes throughout, dictating what she felt to be her own death so that someone might find her research and the data she carried and one day understand what it was that happened to them all.

For three days she coughed and shivered, drinking all the water she carried and being too weak to find more.  She was confused, fevered.  She couldn’t understand how she had gone past the forty-eight-hour mark.  Had she?  Was she not reading her watch correctly?

She was even more confused when she woke up on the fourth day, feeling better.  She had coughed so hard that her throat was sore and had bled from the minute rips caused by the violent coughing.  Her abdomen hurt, and looking under her top she saw her stomach muscles more pronounced than ever; she found herself looking at a six pack and wondering who it could belong to as it couldn’t be hers.  She had coughed herself to death, and this was some form of afterlife.  That was it.

Only it wasn’t.  As her mind cleared from the fever she had suffered, she realised that she had been ill but had not died.  She suffered exactly the same symptoms, so she thought, but the virus had not killed her.  She saw her digital voice recorder abandoned on the floor next to where she lay sweating and shivering.  She had left it on and flattened the battery.  Hopefully she could charge it in the car when she got moving again, but first she needed water. 

She needed water, food and clean clothes.  She had to admit, she stank.

She gathered what she needed, taking aspirin to try and numb the pain in her head and body.  She found clothes to wear in an abandoned shop after climbing in through the window.  She washed with cold water, helped herself to deodorant and fresh clothes before leaving through a fire escape.  She paused at the sign which told her that the door was alarmed, and pushed the bar anyway.  She doubted there was anyone alive close enough to hear it.  She started her car, and continued north.

Completely unaware that she was being watched.

The two men in the car followed her.  They kept back in the distance, keeping her car over a mile away when the geography allowed and waiting for the right time.

Dan whistled Ash and told him “IN”.  The dog launched himself through the open window of the Discovery.  He started to walk sideways, keeping the car in his scope as he moved towards the driver’s side.

“Get in, Marie” he said calmly.

“We’re not going after them are we?” she asked “I don’t, I think, let’s call up the others” she reached for the CB.

“No time” he said, and started the big three litre as she watched the car approach without the need for the optic.

“Female. Alone” he said as he reversed and went to drive down the exit slip to get behind the car.  Benefits of no traffic, he thought.  He stopped, turning the nose of the car to the left and moving to lean out of the window and raise the gun again.

“What is it?” asked Marie, flustered and more than a little annoyed at him.

He didn’t answer, just reached for the CB.

“It’s Dan, anyone there?” he said, keying the switch.

“Here Boss.  Go” Leah snapped back efficiently after a few seconds.

Damn. “Who’s there with you?” he asked.

“Just me.  Lexi and Steve are off site, Rich is swimming in the lake and Joe is sleeping off the night shift” she replied, sounding curious.

Shit, he thought.  He either had to do this alone and keep Marie safe, or ask Leah to drive to find them.  If she left now she could be backing him up in ten minutes.  He looked at Marie, agonising over the decision.

“Is she ready?” she asked, reading his thoughts easily.

He nodded and keyed the mic again.  “Fastball op, kid.  I need you to write the following down, ready?”

A second’s pause, then “Go”

He gave very succinct directions to his current location, then “one vehicle seen, second vehicle looks to be stalking it.  Suspect hostiles.  I need you to back me up, get on the motorway THE WRONG WAY and follow.  Take a car with a CB and go.  Now.”