Jessamy Beech Ch. 05: Southport

"Don't panic little girl," said the voice cheerily, "Charlie doesn't want to hurt you."

Jessamy tried to look up, to locate the source of the voice. Charlie? But in doing so her rucksack slid down her arm to hang from her elbow. She couldn't move. There just wasn't the strength in her forearm to move herself and the weight of her bag.

"In a bit of a pickle aren't you, little girl?"

Jessamy growled at whoever it was in frustration, "Why don't you, uhn ... fucking help me instead of ... just watching?"

The rucksack's weight was dragging her arm down. Her fingers were losing their grip on the greasy wet rail. If her tormentor wasn't going to help, there was only one thing she could do ...

"FUCK IT!" Jessamy cursed as she took her hand off the rail for the couple of seconds it took for the rucksack to slide off her arm and tumble into the muddy water. All her food, water, bivvy bag and maps were gone.

"Whoops," said Charlie.

Anger, fear and pure adrenaline lent Jessamy's arms strength as she scrabbled and climbed the rest of the way to safety. She clambered onto the crumbling concrete of the bridge and lay there, panting, the muscles of her arms burning.

"Bravo! Well done that girl! Through adversity to the the stars!" the sound of clapping came from the parapet beside her. Jessamy looked up, a hand ready to reach for the Glock in her thigh holster.

A scrawny, wrinkled old man sat watching her with bright, alert eyes. A shaggy beard full of crumbs and bits of twig grew halfway down his narrow chest. He was totally naked and painted bright blue from head to foot. Jessamy couldn't help but notice that he was also sporting an enormous erection ...

"I've just lost all my fucking stuff thanks to you!" she snarled.

Charlie raised his hands in a gesture of peace, "Charlie meant no harm."

"You scared the shit out of me!" Jessamy placed a hand on her Glock as Charlie stepped down from the parapet.

His eyes ran up and down her hungrily as he moved forward, "Perhaps the little girl would like Charlie to make it up to her in some way hmm?"

He looked like an old man but was he really as harmless as he seemed Jessamy wondered. She wasn't going to take any chances. She drew her handgun, "Stop right there!"

Charlie stopped and eyed her appraisingly, one hand lazily stroking his bright blue cock.

He must be freezing, Jessamy thought. Or so batshit crazy that he no longer notices.

"If the little girl shows her titties, Charlie will let her go."

What the fuck? Had the old man really said what she thought he'd said?

"You're in no position to ask me for anything. I've got the gun," Jessamy stated through gritted teeth. She had to admit though that her position was rather precarious. If Charlie rushed her, the broken edge of the bridge was barely two feet behind her.

"Titties? Just a peek?" Charlie began to stroke himself faster.

"Keep back," Jessamy warned, aiming the Glock in a two handed grip as Ross had taught her. She'd been mortified after shooting the Reiver up in Scotland and really didn't want to be the instrument of another death.

Charlie's demeanour changed. In a low voice he growled, "Get your fuckin' paps out little girl or you're not getting off this bridge."

He charged. Jessamy squinched her eyes shut and fired.

BLAM!

A sound of shocked surprise and Charlie staggered back looking down at the gunshot wound in his chest. He was dead by the time he hit the ground, his twitching cock still pointing obscenely skyward.

"I tr-tried to warn you," muttered Jessamy.

She was about to roll the body into the river and carry on her way when the glint of metal caught her eye. Charlie had something around his neck, obscured by his filthy beard.

Trying not to gag at the smell, Jessamy delved under the dead man's beard with her gloved hands.

Dog tags and a plastic ID card threaded onto a metal chain.

She scratched off some of the grime revealing a photo of an immaculately presented but unsmiling man in a blue uniform. But the bright, alert eyes were unmistakable. Charlie. The man she'd just shot as he'd looked before Thanatos had ravaged the planet.

Jessamy read the name printed on the ID.

"You have GOT to be fucking joking!" Jessamy punched the body in angry frustration.

Air Vice Marshal Charles Harding, RAF.

Charlie.

Jessamy felt sick. Her quest had borne fruit after just a couple of days. This sad specimen was none other than the third name on Bromden's list. The chances of such a coincidence were astronomical but with such a small number of survivors she supposed the odds were lowered somewhat.

One of the few people left alive who could possibly stop Thanatos and she'd shot him dead. Although judging by the state of the man Jessamy had serious doubts that he would have been any use.

"FUCK!" Jessamy screamed at the overcast sky at the top of her voice. Her quest had just become a lot more difficult.

. . .

By the time Jessamy walked through the abandoned village of Arnside, the tide in Morecambe Bay was all the way in. She had no trouble finding the scruffy bungalow, daubed with the same bright blue, that AVM Charles Harding had been using to sleep in. But despite a thorough search she found nothing.

Across the street, an orange fishing boat moored in the shelter of a stone pier in the harbour bobbed up and down on the current, the moss collected in the corners of the wheelhouse windows the only sign of disrepair.

Peering cautiously around, Jessamy stepped down into it. Big plastic containers labelled 'Diesel' were neatly stacked in the stern and secured with bungees. In the wheelhouse a rusting bunch of keys dangled from the engine ignition.

Jessamy looked around at the scarred timbers of the deck beneath her feet. No leaks. They appeared to be sound.

Jessamy had never piloted a boat before in her life but thought that if she kept in close to the land she could knock days, perhaps even weeks off her journey. How hard could it be? There appeared to be plenty of fuel. Sitting behind the harbour wall the boat had somehow survived the tsunamis and freak weather of the last ten years. Or perhaps someone close by still maintained it to take it out fishing ...

Glancing nervously through the moss streaked windows at the village in case the someone showed up, Jessamy bit her lip as she turned the key in the ignition. The engine concealed beneath the deck made a weak groaning, coughing sound.

She tried again.

This time a sputter, then silence.

With a silent prayer to the fates, that by now she reckoned owed her a break, she twisted the key a third time.

A cough, a splutter ... and the engine chugged into life, vibrating the deck beneath her.

"Yes!" Jessamy squealed. She'd have to figure out the controls herself and work out how to refuel the thing, but for the moment at least, she had transport.

. . .

Hours later, as the late afternoon sun began to sink behind the grey clouds, Jessamy was sailing south along the edge of what had once been Lancashire. Strange currents occasionally swung the boat off course but with a twitch of the wheel she was able to stay parallel to the coastline.

The broken remains of an enormous metal tower were visible from miles away, sticking up from the gutted ruins of what had once been a thriving seaside town. From what she remembered of the AA maps, Jessamy guessed this had once been Blackpool. She steered around a long pier jutting out into the water, now nothing more than charred timbers and melted girders.

There wasn't even this level of destruction in Scotland. Jessamy dreaded to think what she'd find further south.

. . .

The wind was intensifying as afternoon became evening, whipping the surface of the water into yellowish white foam. Jessamy decided that rather than continue in darkness, she would have to find a safe harbour to spend the night.

But as her little orange fishing boat crossed a wide river mouth, sand dunes and marram grass were all she could see to the south, stretching along the coastline for miles.

DOINK!

Something solid bounced off the windscreen making Jessamy yelp with surprise.

She peered out into the growing darkness. Out at sea, a roiling black cloud loomed, flickering with flashes of lightning. Objects swirled around inside the maelstrom, splashing into the waves and violently colliding with one another.

"Oh fuck," Jessamy gasped fearfully, "debris storm."

She'd only witnessed the freak phenomenon once before on Mull. Debris from the meteorite strikes, rubble, wreckage of vehicles and even bodies were swept aloft by impact shockwaves and storm force winds that grew in intensity as they circled the globe.

The first fat drops of rain plinked against the wheelhouse roof, followed by louder thuds and clangs.

With a debris storm, the rain wasn't only water, it was heavy masonry, sharp metal ... and corpses.

A section of brick wall hurtled into the water mere feet in front of the boat. A brick wall that may have traveled thousands of miles from anywhere in the world. A tractor tyre bounced off the stern and was sucked back up into the sky. A fence panel. A torso. A motorbike's sidecar.

The noise was tremendous. A howling wind punctuated by the crashes and booms of unseen things. With sweating hands, Jessamy desperately steered the boat in towards the shore, gusts of wind slamming into the orange hull. To stay out in this would be suicide. She had no alternative but to beach the boat and find shelter.

The windscreen shattered as half a ceramic wash basin crashed through it, showering Jessamy with broken glass.

"Shit!" she willed the little boat to go faster, to outrun the storm. But it was no use ...

The battered carcass of a 1969 Ford Mustang plummeted down from the sky and slammed into the boat's stern, the impact lifting the bow completely out of the water. Instantly the engine cut out and Jessamy felt herself falling backwards.

The weight of the car pushed the sinking boat's stern down into the seething waves as Jessamy gasped with shock at the freezing temperature of the water.

Desperately she grabbed for anything that would keep her afloat. Rain and stinging sleet made the visibility practically zero. Jessamy became so disoriented she could no longer even guess which way the shoreline was.

She was going to die. Drowned amongst the debris of other people's belongings.

Jessamy ducked as a timber A frame from the roof of a house cartwheeled past across the churning wave tops and was gone. She swallowed a mouthful of cold sea water that instantly chilled her.

Then something hard and flat smashed into the back of her head and shoulders and everything went black ...

. . .

"Newald! Take a look at this!"

"Fuck off!"

"I'm serious you prick. I think it's a ... it's a girl."

Jessamy only half heard the muffled voices as if they came from a dream. She felt cold, aching all over, despite the sunlight shining on her face, in her eyes. She heard running footsteps coming closer, crunching on sand and shingle ...

"Bloody hell Weitzman. SIKORSKY! Weitzman's found a girl!"

Jessamy flinched as something cold and metallic nudged her cheek.

"Sh-she moved! Newald, she's alive."

With tremendous effort, Jessamy opened her eyes. Her head was throbbing with pain. She could see three pairs of identical military style boots clustered in front of her, the business end of an assault rifle inches from her face.

A booted foot shoved her, "Wake up!"

Against the odds, she'd survived the storm. But where was she? And who were these people? Fighting back waves of nausea, Jessamy raised herself up on to one elbow.

She was lying on a debris strewn beach. Bricks, timber, body parts and even pieces of car littered the oily black sand. In the distance, a long pier like the one she'd seen in Blackpool jutted out into the now calm Irish Sea.

Jessamy brushed back the matted hair stuck to her cheek with a glue of dried blood and regarded the strangers. Three men, each of them dressed in patched and worn military fatigues and kevlar helmets, one carrying an SA80 assault rifle, the other two loaded crossbows.

Fodders.

"Wh-where am I?" Jessamy croaked. Her throat was parched.

"Sunny Southport love," answered assault rifle man, "and who the fuck are you?"

"J-jessamy Beech. There was a-a storm."

"You ain't fuckin' kidding. Were you out in that?" asked one of the others.

Jessamy nodded, wincing as her head throbbed painfully.

Assault rifle glanced up and down the deserted beach, "We should take her in ..."

The others nodded.

"... after we've had a bit of fun," he leered down at Jessamy, "that alright wiv you darlin'?"

Three horny soldiers with just one thing on their minds. Jessamy reached down and tugged her Glock from its holster.

"Shit Brian. She's tooled up!"

Jessamy didn't even see the boot that kicked her brutally in the face. She just felt an explosion of pain as her lip burst and her Glock went skittering harmlessly across the sand. Strong hands instantly seized her limbs, pinning her face down.

"Open her legs."

Someone scrabbled at her belt and moments later, Jessamy felt her Craghoppers and panties being yanked roughly down, "Getthefuckoffofme!"

"Hold her still!"

Jessamy still had her Royal Marines Commando knife secured to her lower leg but there was no way she'd be able to reach it, "Please, no!"

Ignoring her pleas, one of the men straddled her legs. Jessamy heard someone spit and a moment later she felt something warm and bulbous nudge between the cheeks of her ass ...

THWAP!

There was a loud expulsion of breath and Jessamy felt the weight of the man fall away.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?"

Jessamy's arms and legs were freed as the other soldiers scrambled away from her.

"Sarge. We found this uh, civilian. She threatened us with a handgun. We were restraining her."

"Does restraint always involve having your fucking cock out Corporal Newald?"

"N-no sergeant."

Jessamy still felt woozy from the blow to her face. She struggled to pull up her trousers and underwear as she tried to focus on the newcomer. Another soldier, this one carrying an SA80 and wearing sergeant's stripes. His shock of red hair appeared to glow in the morning sunlight.

"Get the fuck back to the transport or you're all on a charge!"

The three soldiers looked for a moment as if they were going to argue, then thought better of it and hurried away up the beach.

Jessamy's rescuer squatted down beside her, "Are you injured?"

Jessamy shook her head, though she could feel blood pulsing from her split lip and a bruise forming on her cheek. She squinted up at the man ... then stared at him, incredulous, "How the fuck did you get here?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing," smiled Seoras.

THE END OF CHAPTER FIVE

A century before, at the height of one of the planet's bloodiest conflicts, Italian prisoners of war had been forced to construct barriers between the southernmost islands of Orkney, to prevent enemy submarines entering Scapa Flow, the then safe harbour for much of the British navy's surface fleet.

Thousands of prisoners had moved over 50,000 huge concrete blocks into place using the most rudimentary of equipment, creating not only the so called Churchill Barriers but a vital road link built on top of them joining the islands of South Ronaldsay and Burray to the main island and its capital, Kirkwall.

Jessamy gazed out across Scapa Flow, imagining all the wrecked ships that lay rusting beneath the waves. And after her moment of weakness the previous night, trying to avoid Hamnavoe's eye.

The sex hadn't been perfect by any means. But rough and animalistic was just what she'd needed. Jessamy's orgasm had left her trembling and gasping ...

... and wanting more.

But that would be out of the question until she'd cleared Hamnavoe's name.

The antique Landrover jounced and shook north along the potholed road between fields of stunted crops, the driver scowling at Hamnavoe in his rearview mirror. Not that Hamnavoe was taking any notice. He sat opposite Jessamy in the back wearing a smug grin.

"Behave," she hissed through gritted teeth.

"Ye weren't sayin' that last night lass," Hamnavoe whispered and winked.

The man was incorrigible. But Jessamy realised that a small part of her liked that.

By the time the Landrover passed the stone walls of the old Highland Park distillery on Kirkwall's outskirts and started down the hill towards Bignold Park and the town centre, word had spread about its passengers.

The town's population of around 9000 had doubled since Thanatos, with southerners fleeing to the far north thinking they would be safer from the strikes. And it seemed that a good percentage were now lining the street, screaming abuse at Hamnavoe and cheering Jessamy for bringing him back to stand trial.

Hamnavoe's smile faded as the Landrover reached the bottom of the hill and swung around the corner towards the imposing red sandstone cathedral of St Magnus. Jessamy had explained that they would first have to proclaim Hamnavoe's innocence before they started hunting for clues as to Trevithick's whereabouts. Easier said than done.

"Let me do the talking," Jessamy hissed.

Hamnavoe nodded dumbly.

The Landrover juddered to a stop at the foot of the cathedral steps. Jessamy peered out through the grimy side window. There were hundreds out there. Orcadians and southerners had all come together to see Hamnavoe pay for his alleged crimes. She remembered what she'd once said to him on the road, "You'll get what you deserve. You tortured two families in their own homes, then raped and crucified their daughters. You're going to fucking burn for that Hamnavoe."

That was before he'd convinced her of his innocence. Jessamy pushed open the Landrover's back door and climbed out, just as Keaton and his lackeys emerged from the cathedral.

"Miss Beech. Do you have him?" Keaton was an unremarkable little man in his sixties with thick white hair and the bushiest black eyebrows Jessamy had ever seen. The rumour was that before Thanatos he'd worked in the ferry terminal in Stromness.

The crowd grew quiet as they jostled one another waiting for an answer. All eyes were on her. Jessamy Beech, bounty hunter, warrior, mother. Legend.

Jessamy swallowed hard, "Yes. I have him."

A deafening cheer erupted from the throng, and it was all the local militia could do to hold them back.

Keaton smiled a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Jessamy couldn't stand the man. Try as she might she just couldn't interprete his body language, so she never knew what he was thinking. Keaton gestured to one of his lackeys who stepped forward carrying a small holdall.

"As we agreed Miss Beech, 5000 for bringing the rapist and murderer Hamnavoe back alive."

The lackey held out the bag.

This was it. The moment when everything was most likely to go tits up.

"Just a moment Mr Keaton," Jessamy began. Her mouth suddenly felt extremely dry, "I need to say something about Ham ... about the accused."

Keaton frowned. He was an impatient little shit who didn't like to be kept waiting. Jessamy noticed a squad of his armed militia edging closer to the Landrover, ready to drag Hamnavoe out into the open.

Jessamy's fingers unconsciously drifted down to one of her Glocks as she spoke, "I ... have reason to believe ... that Hamnavoe ... is innocent."

The crowd went wild. They'd come to see Hamnavoe dragged bruised and bleeding through the streets. Not to see her captor declare his innocence. Milita men were pushed roughly to the ground as the Orcadians surged forward baying for blood.

"STOP!" screamed Keaton, "let her speak."

But no-one was listening. Jessamy drew both her Glocks and fired a couple of warning shots into the air. The militia dragged a terrified looking Hamnavoe feet first from the Landrover and proceeded to give him a good beating.