Jessamy Beech Ch. 06: Gloucester

Weitzman had been ordered to take first watch much to Jessamy's relief. She couldn't stand the little shit. Seoras had headed off alone with his crossbow, hunting for fresh meat to supplement their diet.

"So where you from Beech?" asked Mpenzi, "can't place your accent."

"Uh, Cornwall. But I grew up in Scotland."

Mpenzi nodded, chewing a mouthful of rehydrated stew. She'd untied her dreadlocks and let them hang loose around her shoulders.

"I can't place your accent either," said Jessamy.

Mpenzi smiled, "You wouldn't, growing up in Scotland. I'm from Johannesburg in South Africa. Came over as a student just after the Springboks won the World Cup for the fourth time."

Jessamy frowned. She'd never heard of either of those places, "Wh-what are the Springboks?"

Mpenzi laughed, "What are the Springboks? You been living on a desert island Beech?"

"Yes, actually."

"You know what rugby is right?"

Jessamy shook her head.

Sikorsky sneered, "Thick. As. Shit."

Mpenzi gave him a withering look, "We can't all have your sharp wit and intelligence Sikorsky."

"I like your hair Sergeant," said Jessamy, then immediately wished she'd kept her mouth shut as Sikorsky smirked.

"Thanks. I think dreads'd suit you too," Mpenzi studied her, "lot easier to manage with shampoo and conditioner in such short supply."

"Maybe I'll do mine like that too one day."

"I don't think it'd suit me at all," interrupted Nethybridge, wanting to be involved, "I have very fine hair."

This time when Sikorsky smirked at the women's conversation, Mpenzi flashed a warning glare at him, "Mr Sikorsky. If you've finished eating would you kindly go and join your friend Mr Weitzman on watch duty?"

"Yes Sergeant," Sikorsky mumbled through clenched teeth and stamped out of the room.

. . .

Sometime in the small hours, Jessamy heard Nethybridge crawl out of her sleeping bag and tiptoe across the room. To take a pee in the rest rooms next door she assumed. She drifted back to sleep.

Seoras hadn't been successful on his hunt, so Mpenzi had declared that as well as searching for the elusive bunker entrance, they would scavenge any provisions, weapons or ammunition they came across.

Searching every building on the entire camp was going to be a massive undertaking for the six of them. It was by no means guaranteed they would find anything. Jessamy wondered when would be the best time to make her escape.

. . .

Their first full day dawned like a mouldy flannel, grey and damp. It made sense to start with the ground floor of the big HQ building. So, while two stood guard watching from top floor windows for intruders, the other four cleared furniture and debris searching for the hidden bunker entrance. Floor panels were lifted, fire exits opened and inspected. Locked office doors and false walls that hid heating ducts and electrical conduits were smashed open with a sledgehammer. Electrical diagrams and fuse boxes were studied to ensure every cable was accounted for and not powering some hidden room.

They found nothing, except faded documents, long dead corpses and rat droppings.

. . .

"Crazies were out beyond the fence earlier," Weitzman announced casually as their evening meals warmed on a camping stove.

"What?" Mpenzi cried, "why the fuck didn't you say so?"

"There were only a few."

"How many's a few?" Seoras looked up from skinning a scrawny rabbit he'd managed to shoot. It looked sickly and Jessamy decided at once she wasn't going to have any.

Weitzman looked him in the eye, "I dunno. A few. A dozen maybe."

Mpenzi rose to her feet, her canteen hitting the carpeted floor with a clang and spilling its contents, "YOU BLOODY PRICK! They could be scouts. We might have a bloody army outside by morning, eh?"

Mpenzi's guttural accent became more apparent when she lost her temper, Jessamy noticed.

Weitzman shrugged.

"You're on first watch, double shift. And if I catch you asleep I'll bloody skin you. Get out of my sight."

Weitzman stared at her and Seoras for a few seconds, then slowly stood, picked up his helmet, SA80 and half full mess tin and left the room.

"Stupid little cunt," Mpenzi muttered, then aloud, "sleep with your weapons close by tonight. And with one eye open in case we get company."

Seoras decided as well that the rabbit didn't look too healthy and tossed the half skinned corpse out of one of the broken windows.

. . .

Once again that night, Jessamy was rudely awoken from a very pleasant dream about Merida by Alison Nethybridge crawling out of her sleeping bag to go for a pee in the small hours. She couldn't understand why the woman had to drink so much before turning in.

Why had they even brought her along? Nethybridge was no help at all with the heavy lifting, was afraid of her own shadow and couldn't even strip her own weapon without someone else's help. Jessamy rolled over as the communications specialist shuffled back to bed a few minutes later, but try as she might couldn't get back to sleep.

. . .

Day two followed the same pattern as the first. The squad moved on to systematically search some of the camp's smaller buildings, leaving the lookouts with specific instructions to warn them of any inquisitive locals.

"You're on second watch tonight Beech. You'll relieve Weitzman," Mpenzi informed Jessamy that evening. Great. Midnight until three AM. Which meant that her sleep would be interrupted yet again.

"I might join you," suggested Seoras.

Jessamy hadn't had much time to speak with the soldier who'd aided her escape from Mull. She liked him and was certain she'd appreciate the company. She nodded agreement.

"We're making fuck all progress Sergeant," Sikorsky observed. The wind howled around the building outside, whistling through cracks in the ancient double glazed windows.

Mpenzi sighed, "The Preen brass thought it was a pretty important rumour to follow up. But I'm starting to suspect that that's all it was. A rumour. This has just been a waste of time and resources."

"But we can't call for an early extraction, can we?" Seoras asked.

"No," said Mpenzi, "but if we find nothing tomorrow, I think we should call it a day and spend the next few days scavenging what we can find in the city. Are we agreed?"

Jessamy nodded. If this was in fact Bromden's bunker they were searching for, they had no idea of its importance. Seoras and Sikorsky murmured their agreement. Alison Nethybridge squirmed where she sat on her upturned bergen.

"Something wrong Nethybridge?" asked Mpenzi.

"I ... I think we sh-should see the mission through to the end."

Mpenzi let her breath out in a loud huff, "Corporal. This is a waste of fucking time. You've lugged all your IT equipment down here for nothing. Don't you get it? There IS no bunker!"

Jessamy had no idea what IT equipment was.

"Do you r-realise how vital that b-bunker is if we find it?" Nethybridge stood with all eyes on her.

"No Corporal, I don't. Because the brass didn't deign to tell me because I'M only a fucking grunt," Mpenzi's voice was hard and bitter.

Alison knew, Jessamy realised. She knew what was inside ...

Nethybridge sat back down and stared miserably down at her boots.

"If you can't justify why we should continue this pointless fucking search, then we do as I said and give it one more day," Mpenzi loomed over Nethybridge threateningly, "when we get back to Woodvale your report will read that we searched for the entire week. Is that understood Corporal?"

"Yes, Sergeant," Nethybridge answered in a barely audible squeak.

Feeling a little sorry for the corporal, Jessamy pulled her sleeping bag up over her head in the vain hope of catching a few hours sleep before her watch. The city streets of Gloucester would be the ideal place to slip away and make her escape.

. . .

2300 hours. Jessamy jolted awake as a foot nudged her clumsily in the back.

"Sorry," whispered Nethybridge, "just going for a pee."

Jessamy was about to curse, but held her tongue. She guessed she'd slept for about an hour, no more. She lay still in the darkness, listening, as Nethybridge made her way across the office and slipped through the fire door into the corridor outside.

She was due on watch in an hour so it was pointless trying to sleep anymore. Jessamy quietly unzipped her sleeping bag and sat up, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. She could just make out the soundly sleeping forms of Mpenzi, Sikorsky and Seoras, dim light from the cracked windows glinting on gunmetal and their other gear.

"Fuck it," she murmured and wearily pulled her boots on. She'd relieve that prick Weitzman early and start planning her desertion. Nethybridge was certainly taking her time tonight ...

. . .

Faint moonlight streaming through the high windows silvered the edges of dusty, broken furniture as Jessamy stepped out into the corridor. Away from the snores and farts of the others, there was silence.

She closed her eyes and imagined herself standing on the beach back in Tobermory. The old distillery at her back and the hills of Morvern across the water. The salty smell of rotten seaweed. Oily wavelets lapping the shingle at her feet ...

Jessamy spun around, suddenly alert.

She'd heard something. A cry of pain?

No, more like a sob. A whimper? She listened, hearing her own blood pounding in her ears.

Something knocked against something else off to her right. Then again. It came from the restrooms. Jessamy raised her SA80 and slowly pushed the door with the toe of her boot.

It took a few seconds for Jessamy's mind to comprehend what her eyes were seeing. Weitzman holding Nethybridge face down over the wash basins with the weight of his body, one hand clamped over her mouth while he struggled to unzip his trousers with the other. Alison's own trousers and underwear were down around her ankles, "Keep fuckin' still and I won't hurt you," he snarled.

"WEITZMAN!" Jessamy called, taking aim at the centre of his unprotected back.

Weitzman looked up, surprised, "Beech! Glad you could join us."

"Let her go ... or I shoot," Jessamy could feel the rage boiling up inside her. She didn't know if Weitzman and his friends made a habit of this but seeing timid little Alison Nethybridge at his mercy made her all the more determined to put a stop to it.

"You won't shoot an unarmed man in the back," Weitzman turned away and finally managed to unzip his trousers. Alison squirmed desperately under him.

He was right. Jessamy could bluff all she wanted, but knew that that she'd be unable to follow through with her threat. She'd killed. To protect herself, to protect her friends. But in each case she'd been overcome with remorse and regret afterwards. She hated killing, "Weitzman! Don't make me do this!"

Weitzman fumbled his cock out of his open fly and winked at her, "Stick around and you can be next."

A film of tears blurred Jessamy's vision as she took careful aim. Thinking back, she realised that she could've simply incapacitated Weitzman by hitting him with her SA80, or by wounding him with her knife. But part of her wanted this. Wanted to kill one of the men who'd tried to rape her.

And that scared her ...

BLAM!

Weitzman's head exploded redly against the mirrored wall above the wash basins and his lifeless body crumpled to the tiled floor.

In the doorway, Seoras lowered his weapon and stepped forward to check on Alison, "You okay?"

"Yes," she shuffled, "thankyou. Both of you."

Jessamy stared wide-eyed at the dark smear running down the stained mirrors.

"Mpenzi and the others'll be here in a second to see what the noise is," warned Seoras, "but you've got nothing to worry about Jess. The prick had it coming."

Dumbly, Jessamy helped Alison straighten her clothes and wipe some of Weitzman's blood out of her hair. Apart from a split lip and a bruise forming on her cheek where Weitzman had punched her, she seemed physically unharmed, "We better ..."

BOOM!

The whole room rocked, making the door tremble on its hinges and flakes of loose plaster and ceiling tiles cascade down from above their heads.

"What the FUCK was that?" asked Seoras.

"Think we better get back to the others. There's no-one on sentry duty," Jessamy glanced down at Weitzman's body.

Shouts could be heard on the floors below as the heavy cabinets that they'd used to barricade some of the corridors were noisily manhandled to one side. Mpenzi and Sikorsky appeared from the office, "Who's the fuck's on sentry?" she hissed.

"Weitzman," answered Seoras, "he's dead."

Mpenzi didn't look too bothered, "Unfortunate. Tell me later. Whoever this lot are, they mean business. They've got explosives so we can assume they're probably armed too. Grab your stuff and head for the rear stairwell."

"WE DON'T WANT TO HURT YOU. WE JUST WANT TO BE FRIENDS!" called a voice from the floor below. In the silence it sounded shockingly loud, and close. Dust sifted down from the ceiling onto Jessamy's shoulders as she listened.

"Lying shit. Now," Mpenzi reiterated, "go."

Seoras, Alison and Jessamy snatched up their bergens, leaving sleeping bags and anything else that was already unpacked behind. They'd just have to manage without. Footsteps pounded along the middle floor corridor beneath their feet.

"Clear," announced Sikorsky from the corridor ahead as they hurried through the dark building to safety. Alison skidded on a sheaf of discarded papers in the gloom and almost fell.

Jessamy grabbed her arm, "I got you. Stay close to me," she breathed.

"THERE THEY ARE!" shouted a gruff voice from back the way they'd come.

BLAM BLAM!

The fire door into the rear stairwell exploded into splinters and glittering chunks of glass beside them.

"MOVE IT PEOPLE!" Mpenzi shouted and dropped to a crouch to cover the others' retreat.

Sikorsky watched Jessamy helping Alison find the top of the stairs in the darkness, "Leave her Beech. She's no fuckin' use. She'll just slow ..."

His entire body jerked wildly as gunshots stitched a line across his chest and stomach. He slumped against the wall, dead.

Mpenzi returned fire as Seoras started sprinting down the stairs, a desperate scramble, scanning the way ahead, his footsteps echoing in the narrow confines of the concrete stairwell. Behind him Jessamy half carried and half pushed Alison.

"I forgot my g-gun," Alison whimpered.

"Forget it," Jessamy panted, "we've got more important things to worry about."

Bringing up the rear, Mpenzi made her way down the stairs backwards, watching the shattered fire door above them, still wedged open by Sikorsky's bullet riddled body. Willing for a head to appear so she could blow it away as a warning to the others.

"How many do you think there are?" Jessamy called down to Seoras. They were almost down to the ground floor, that if she remembered correctly, led through a fire exit directly on to the car park outside.

"Dunno. If they're the ones Weitzman spotted ..."

BLAM!

Seoras slammed backwards into the wall as a deafening shotgun blast from below took him squarely in the chest.

"NO!" Jessamy spotted the killer at once. Lying in wait in the open fire exit for anyone trying to escape the back way. She raised her weapon and flicked the selector to fully automatic ...

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!

The scavenger, or whoever it was was lifted off his feet by the tightly grouped bullet impacts and thrown outside onto the muddy tarmac. Jessamy shoved her SA80 at Alison and crouched beside Seoras. She could see at once that it was hopeless. Seoras was already dead.

"We need to go," whispered Alison, tugging Jessamy's shoulder.

"She's right," shouted Mpenzi, pounding down the stairs behind them, "move your ass, Beech!"

The three women charged through the fire exit door and across the deserted car park, expecting at any moment to be shot from one of the HQ building's windows high above them.

Mpenzi fished something out of a breast pocket and yanked a metal pin out with her teeth, "Been saving this for a special occasion, RUN!"

She tossed the frag grenade back at the fire exit as the first scavengers emerged, dropping into firing positions and raising their motley assortment of weapons.

BOOM!

Tiny fragments of masonry, glass and other, wetter things peppered the tarmac around Jessamy's running feet as the three of them headed for a break in the camp's ten foot high perimeter fence. Beyond - open fields. If they could only put some distance between themselves and their pursuers they guessed they could lose them.

Behind them, the screams of the wounded were drowned by a deep, booming voice, "SPREAD OUT! FIND THEM! I WANT THEM ALIVE!"

. . .

The next day dawned with a gradual brightening of the sickly brown sky as if the weather itself had given up hope. Dirty snowflakes once again spiralled down coating the rutted landscape in a layer of grey slush.

In a burned out pub across the road from Gloucester's Kingsholm Stadium, Jessamy Beech scanned the road outside intently. An emaciated fox crept under the old stadium's turnstile searching for scraps. She would have been tempted to shoot it for their breakfast if there hadn't been an unknown number of bloodthirsty pursuers hot on their tail. In the unnerving silence that cloaked the city, even the smallest sound could give away their position.

"We've got two SA80s, one Glock, just over 200 rounds and half a dozen flares," said Mpenzi. Having half her command wiped out had hit her hard Jessamy noticed.

"Food?" Jessamy asked.

"MREs that should last three of us a few days. Some tins and some jerky. One water purifier."

"Who the fuck are they?" Jessamy asked no-one in particular. She was allowing her anger to beat down her grief for Seoras' death. She'd killed yet again. As revenge, and this time ... it had felt good.

"The local dickhead who thinks this is his territory," Mpenzi guessed, "like small time Reivers. If they catch us they'll probably rape us then eat us."

"We better not get caught then," said Jessamy grimly.

"Wh-where's the helicopter extraction going to be?" Alison asked. She'd been more quiet and subdued than usual since their escape from the RAF camp. Which was understandable. Jessamy had helped her every step of the way as they'd stumbled across fields and along overgrown public footpaths into the outskirts of the city.

Mpenzi blew out her breath, "Same place they dropped us off."

"We can't go back there," said Jessamy at once.

"Agreed," Mpenzi turned to Alison, "is there any way we can contact Woodvale, get them to send the chopper elsewhere?"

Alison shook her head, "There's no internet anymore. M-most of the phone masts are dead and there's probably too much atmospheric interference down here in the valley for r-radio signals. We're fucked."

"Probably?" asked Mpenzi.

"If we can get high enough I MIGHT be able to get a signal through. But there are no buildings tall enough."

Jessamy peered out of the window at the enormous tower silhouetted against the sickly sky just a few hundred yards beyond the stadium, "Is the cathedral tall enough?"

Mpenzi turned back to Alison, "Well?"

Alison thought for a few seconds, then nodded, "Uh, yeah. Maybe."

"We head for the cathedral then. It's our only chance."

. . .

"I took the precaution of studying a street map of Gloucester before we left Woodvale," said Alison. She was repacking her bergen after Mpenzi told them to leave anything that they didn't need.

Jessamy turned, "And?"

She was wondering how much time she had left to slip away from the others.

"Uh, yeah ... go up Skinner Street past the stadium, onto St Catherine Street, turn left on to Dean's Walk, cross Gouda Way into the grounds of the old Kings School and we're there. It's not even half a mile."