After it happened book 9.., p.10
After It Happened (Book 9): Home, page 10
part #9 of After It Happened Series
He knocked on her, on their door he corrected himself, and cracked it open enough for a dog to escape but not far enough to see anything inside.
“I’ve got Nem,” he called inside, earning a strangled groan of acknowledgment that echoed with the just the right resonance to let him know she had her head in a bowl.
The dogs fast-walked along as the younger and much leaner dog slobbered at Ash’s face as they sped up perpetually until both hit the next doorway as one and tried to occupy the same space at once, forcing Nemesis to give way to her sire’s superior bulk or be squashed into the doorframe.
Dan groaned involuntarily as he took the steps; his joints issued cracks in sequence until his whole body was loosened up ready for the day. The dogs knew the way just as well as he did, and they stretched their legs to crank up to a full run and race one another when they hit the wet sand below the tide mark on the beach.
Dan leaned his back against a large rock, leaning to one side so he wasn’t pressing the worn grip of a Walther too painfully into his kidneys, and retrieved a battered tin and a disposable lighter to touch flame to one of the recent batch he’d bought in trade from Andorra on their last visit escorting a delivery of salted fish.
Inhaling deeply only to lose the moment to a sudden cough that got away from him, he tried again and watched as Ash tried to balance on three legs while lifting the fourth impossibly high in the air to water a very specific patch of absolutely nothing. Nem, being the helpful offspring that she was, bumped into him as her own nose was glued to the sand searching for the perfect spot to make a deposit.
He smiled, seeing the relationship between the dogs not too dissimilar to his own with Leah; he was just trying to go about his business and she was being annoying.
Wandering back with thoughts of fried eggs, baked fish and fresh bread sliced thickly just how he liked it, he found his path blocked by Neil who stood in his way, balled fists on his hips.
“See ’im off, Ash,” Dan goaded his dog, knowing the instruction would never be taken literally when the target was his oldest friend in the whole world. As if to prove the point, Ash bounded towards Neil with his tail wagging and none of the bowel-loosening attitude as if the attack was real. Nem, not entirely in on the joke, ran alongside Ash as if nagging him to tell her what game they were playing.
Neil played along, waiting until the last minute before bending down and allowing the savage attack to adorn his patchy white goatee with liberal amounts of dog drool.
Ending the gratuitous brutality, Dan called his dog back and greeted Neil kindly. “Have you lost weight?”
“Piss off,” Neil shot back, switching into an over-the-top American accent. “You’re hardly the lean, mean fighting machine you were when we first met.”
Dan looked down, not that he didn’t know what he was going to see but it was a reflex like looking at your watch. He’d put on some weight, granted, and he’d slowed down along with suffering from the long-term effects of so many injuries, but he was still in pretty good shape for a man in his early forties with high mileage and a poor service history.
Neil, on the other hand, had fully embraced what he claimed to be his well-earned retirement.
“It’s true, Neil,” Dan admitted with a sigh. “You’re literally twice the man I am…”
Neil squinted his eyes at him, making Dan suspect he was going to be treated to a quote he either would or wouldn’t get, and more than likely wouldn’t allow Neil to know he found funny.
“We all set?” Dan asked his friend. Neil hesitated before inflating his chest and replying.
“Solid shmaybe.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning we’re all set. All you need to do now is be granted clearance.”
“Leave that to me. I do what I want, when I want,” he said, trying to sound cool and in control. It might’ve worked had Neil never met Marie before, and the timing of Leah having a bun in the oven complicated matters further. Dan walked back towards the main house, as they called it, even though it was more of a medieval stone castle, and prepared to drop the bombshell.
~
“Say that again?” Marie asked quietly. Dan knew she’d heard him. The only things she always heard him say were the things that would get him in trouble anyway. He recognised her words for what they truly were: a dare. It was like when she said something was ‘fine’, or that he ‘should do whatever he wants’.
A vision of Admiral Ackbar leapt into his mind, crying out to him that it was a trap.
“It’s not going to be for long,” he promised. “You know I’ve been meaning to go for ages now, only with Leah…with how she is…I don’t want to go after that and there’ll be loads to do and—”
“So you want to take yourself away on a jolly when Leah isn’t in any kind of fit state to fight, leaving us down two leaders?”
“When you put it like that it’s always going to sound ba—”
“And how the hell are you going to drive a boat all the way back there? You remember the last time you went on a boat? Actually, you remember the time before that as well? Not to mention almost killing everyone just crossing the Channel…”
“Well, technically none of those were my fau—”
“Don’t forget you aren’t as young as you used to be,” she threw in, finally succeeding in getting the bite she’d been fishing for.
“You’re almost the same age as me,” he said. Her eyebrows went up, which in his mind was the same as hearing the soft click of a land mine activating, telling him he’d stepped on dangerous ground.
“Look, I’m just saying that it’s now or probably never. We can be back before the baby’s born, an—”
“We?” she enquired, her eyes flickering to her peripheral vision and her right hand snapping out with a click of her fingers to fix their son to the spot where she’d seen him attempting to sneak out along the wall. The pointed finger rotated and morphed into a beckoning digit which seemed to reel him in like he’d been hooked. Still not breaking eye contact with the boy’s father, the beckoning finger changed again to indicate her intention that he should sit.
Dan cleared his throat and saw his own look of feeling chided reflected in the boy’s eyes. “Neil can handle the boat and any mechanica—”
“Oh, so now it’s you and Neil going? Just admit it, you want a lads’ trip.”
“Jimmy as well, but it’s not like that,” Dan assured her, sticking to his guns and standing up for himself a little more. She leaned back and fixed him with a look as the couple stared it out for a few seconds.
They both knew the inevitability of the conversation, but neither of them would ever give up on having their say. Marie knew he’d go anyway, even if they parted on bad terms because she knew him well enough to know that he’d already promised to go. Dan knew that she’d be unhappy with him going because she’d been nagging him for years to hang up his guns and retire; to stay at home and do something that held no more danger than an office job.
As much as she didn’t want him to go, she recognised that he needed to and, if she was honest, she guessed that he was right when he said that it was now or never.
“Fine,” she said, giving in sooner than expected and earning a very suspicious glower from Dan. “Even if I’m obviously the last person to know about this, but she’s due in four and a half months so you’re back here in two.” The way she said it left zero wiggle room for any answer other than agreement, and it helped that he actually agreed with the timeline.
“Seems sensible,” he said.
“I mean it,” Marie warned him with a mischievous smile, “you get back here before you’re a grandpa or I swear to god I’ll geld you with a plastic spork. Now,” she said, turning to their son and allowing no response to her promise to Dan, “what time did you get up and start eating pastries in the kitchen?”
Sebastian opened his mouth to answer, his eyes on his father as though pleading for support, but Marie cut him off.
“And before you answer, just remember that I already know the truth.” The truth, such as it was, was evident in the flaky crumbs of what she suspected was a freshly baked croissant still on his clothing and chin.
Sebastian deflated, admitting everything as he folded like a piece of paper. Dan felt for the boy, hoping that he never decided on a life of crime as his career would be ridiculously short.
Dan snuck away as soon as he could without drawing attention to the fact that he wanted to be somewhere else, taking the spiral stairs to the tower their reclusive scholar occupied and rarely left. Neil, melting from the shadows of one of the many nooks the castle provided, fell in behind him and ahead of Ash as though the three of them were trying to act casual and pretend they weren’t all headed to the same place.
Knocking and entering the room a second after, Dan nodded to the two men hunched over the old radio set.
“Anything?” Dan asked without preamble.
“Our friend Jason in America has been in touch,” Victor, their resident scholar, answered.
“Anything from Steve?” Dan asked, dismissing the other information as he had other priorities.
“Nothing,” Victor said with a shake of his head. No news was good news in most cases, but not hearing from their friends after their last message which had been kept under heavy wraps gave them all a deep sense of unease.
Marie didn’t know everything, Dan thought, because if she did then there was no way on earth she’d want any of them to go back.
To go home.
LADS’ TRIP
Although the cryptic messages about Steve’s people coming under attack was the primary reason for the journey, Dan couldn’t help but experience the thrill of being on the road again. He’d always been an adventurer at heart, and even back when their group had been small, he’d always felt the need to be out exploring rather than digging up potatoes or standing guard.
He hadn’t broken the news to Ash yet, expecting the dog to suffer and grumble as he did every time he was forced onto a boat, but the concept and logistics of journeying over land was simply unachievable in the timeframe he had.
Since the vast ship obscuring their southern view had disappeared a few months before, and since the bruises from the severe beating Dan had taken at the hands of the pirate had faded, the feeling inside the walls of Sanctuary had returned to one of peace and happiness. They were expecting a tight winter given that they’d fallen behind on stocking up with the plentiful fish the hot weather brought to their reach in the coastal waters, but even that wasn’t enough to dampen the spirits of his own people.
Although the massive tanker and the bruises were gone, the memory of what they had been through – of having their home attacked and invaded – had left a scar on Dan’s memory to add to the many others which formed his decision-making processes. Along with the memory, the aches and pains from his most recent injuries remained so that each morning he crunched and cracked worse than he did before.
“It’s not the year on the plate,” he’d often say to Leah, “but the mileage on the clock you need to look at.”
Well, his mileage was pretty high, and if he was honest with himself he’d skipped more than a few scheduled services if the analogy was to be taken fully. He was still suffering from the beating he’d been forced to endure on the bridge of the tanker while Leah did her thing, and he was struggling to admit even to himself that he was past his best.
Marie, of course, was still going on at him to hang up the vest but he knew he’d be himself until he died.
He thought about the others coming with him. Mitch had seemed torn, opting to stay and keep their township safe to be close to his wife, Alita, and their baby girl. Dan didn’t blame him or hold his change of nature against him in any way.
Jimmy, despite appearing settled for the years since they’d arrived, seemed to have been going through a phase for the last two years.
He’d tried his hand at fishing, at the production lines dealing with their hauls, and at the water sterilisation plants Neil had set up so long ago. He’d run the supply wagons to and from the farms, The Orchards and had even gone on a few of the longer trips back and forth from their allied enclave in Andorra. He’d spent a few weeks at the farms fixing their various technical issues, but his sense of wandering made him feel more and more temporary everywhere he went.
As soon as word of Dan taking a boat back to visit Steve and the others who had survived from their old home reached his ears, he pretty much packed his bag and asked for a seat.
“It’d be nice to see Kev again,” Jimmy said. “See how he’s getting along. Maggie and Cedric, too. And the others, obviously.”
Dan smiled at him, feeling the pang of memory from a time where they had been happier, even if that happiness was a temporary reprieve through naivety. He agreed, instantly, but he also had to trust him with the additional information that the others not joining them wouldn’t have.
“Listen, mate,” Dan said softly, “I need you to know all the facts before you come with us. This isn’t strictly a social call, if you follow me…”
Jimmy’s eyebrows went up, waiting for more intel.
“Steve’s people reported that they were attacked a couple of weeks ago,” he explained. “Since then we’ve heard nothing.”
“So what? You’re going in as a one-man-band to save the world?”
“It’s not like that,” Dan said again, feeling annoyed that so many people made assumptions about what his responses were. They were mostly correct, which was why it annoyed him so much.
“We’re going to see what’s going on,” he explained carefully. “And after that we can decide what – if anything – needs to be done.”
Jimmy had agreed to keep his secret, insisting that he was coming anyway, regardless of the risk. If anything, it hardened his resolve to go.
Neil’s cheerful greeting pulled him from his reverie as he swung his pack off his shoulder.
“Alright, dickhead?”
“Morning,” Dan answered, not rising to the bait and not taking any offense from the man who dreamed of ways to push people’s buttons purely for the entertainment value. He looked down to his left where Ash fixed him with a suspicious look bordering on accusatory. Seeing as how he’d just dropped his bag over the railings of a boat, the suspicion was understandable.
“Sorry boy,” he said, earning a warbling grumble from the dog in response. “It’s got to be done. No other way, I’m afraid.” And there wasn’t, not anymore. There was every likelihood that there would still be serviceable aircraft hidden away which could be nursed back into life, but trusting an old diesel truck to run on degraded fuel was a very different prospect to trusting a small plane. Similarly, carrying enough fuel to make the journey by car would be too difficult to manage so they went back to the way they first escaped their island home and planned to go by sea.
Both of them had rather vivid memories of their journey to France in the first place, and their inexperience at the controls of a boat was, without doubt, the cause for the risk they were all in back then. That risk was negated by the recruitment of a third accomplice.
“You are late, my friend,” Mateo announced in his booming voice, still heavily accented in Spanish no matter how long he had been speaking English. Tall and muscled like the stereotypical image of a hardened sailor back in the time before ships had anything but the power of the elements to propel them, the dark skin around his eyes seemed permanently crinkled as though he’d spent a lifetime squinting at the sun.
“Sorry,” Dan said weakly. In truth he’d taken longer than expected to say goodbye to his wife and son, and that was before he’d even found Leah to speak to her and the bump that stretched the skin of her belly. He’d been hit with a wave of fear when saying goodbye; he believed for a moment that he was too old to be travelling so far from home and even considered abandoning the trip in favour of a form of semi-retirement.
“It is no matter,” Mateo told him, reaching down to scratch under Ash’s chin. The dog lifted his head to allow it, seeming more to permit the man to touch him as opposed to enjoying it. “He will have the tide for one more hour to help us.”
“It’s ready?” Neil asked. “The boat?”
“It is ready,” Mateo answered, sounding solemn and dolorous as he always did. As permanently unimpressed as the Spanish fisherman seemed, he would never deny Dan anything since the day he and others had risked their lives to bring back the man’s younger brother who had been taken prisoner by men attacking their friends in Andorra. Leah had escaped that attempt, and together they had made every one of the bastards sorry.
The boat they were talking about was the one they’d actually be using to travel, not the fishing boat they were about to board. Their boat was another yacht found on a private pier years before and recovered to Sanctuary. It was only half as grand and big as the one they’d liberated from the Dorset coast years before. It had been taken out of the docks and into deeper water where Mateo had tested it for seaworthiness. Since then it had been anchored just beyond the sea wall waiting for them.
“All the supplies loaded?” Dan asked, stepping back in anticipation of heading off his dog who was already beginning to backpedal away from the evil moving floor he knew he didn’t want to walk on.
“Food, water and fuel,” Mateo answered.
“And the, er, other supplies?” Dan added, raising his eyebrows at Neil knowingly.
“Already loaded,” he said quietly. Anyone who knew Neil knew that something was up because he never gave a quiet, simple answer when he could quote a film or do some other impression. Dan nodded, not wanting to ask more when there were other people around. Any of those could carry word back to Marie that their journey was something more than a friendly reunion.
Dan reached down to stroke Ash, tricking him and slipping a lead around the dog’s neck which immediately started the struggle for the dog to escape being forced onto a boat. Between him and Neil amid a significant amount of snarling and threatening snaps of the dog’s big teeth, it took over a minute to fight Ash over the railing where he immediately tried to break free and return to dry land. Neil managed to get him behind the door of the small cabin on the deck and shut it, muttering something in between gasps for breath that Dan probably wouldn’t have understood the reference to if he’d heard it.
