Jessamy Beech Ch. 11: Penzance

Even in the gloom of the moonlit room she could still notice the contrast between her own pale skin and Mpenzi's. The South African woman's was the colour of strong black coffee, except for the slightly paler palms of her hands. Jessamy was fascinated. She wished it was daytime and not night, so she could undress her friend and better appreciate the numerous shades of brown skin elsewhere.

"We better get some sleep now, before we wake up Ox and Morwenna," whispered Mpenzi. She sat up and threw Jessamy's panties at her.

But a moment later it became embarrassingly clear that Jessamy's moaning orgasm had already disturbed their hosts. As they heard the rhythmic sound of a headboard knocking against the wall in the bedroom below them. Starting slowly, gradually, then quickening, becoming more urgent. Punctuated by little whimpering gasps.

"Think you must have made them horny," Mpenzi sniggered.

Jessamy gripped Mpenzi's hands, "And you've made me horny. You're not going to sleep until I've had my way with you, sergeant."

"Is that right, corporal?"

Jessamy didn't answer. She reached down for the hem of the black woman's t-shirt and slowly drew it upwards, "And while I'm at it, you can tell me ... what exactly is a ... a strapon? And where can we get one?"

PART TWO: IVOR THE ENGINE

After a simple breakfast of homemade bread and jam and steaming mugs of unsweetened black coffee, Ox and Morwenna bid Jessamy and Mpenzi a fond farewell, with the understanding that they were both welcome in Liskeard at any time. It became obvious that none of them had had much sleep during the night though there was no mention as to why. Mpenzi, Jessamy had soon discovered, was insatiable and had touched her in ways that no other woman ever had. And in places no other woman ever had.

Morwenna gave them food to last for a couple of days, or at least until they'd reached their destination, and Ox returned their stolen weapons.

"So where do we meet the transport?" Jessamy asked. She couldn't keep the smile from her face as she remembered the novel new use Mpenzi had suggested for a candle the night before.

"The railway station apparently," Mpenzi answered. She looked uncomfortable wearing civilian clothes, but nevertheless cinched the hood of her second-hand goretex jacket tight against the drizzle and chill wind, "I guess it stops outside."

"I suppose it's another bus or something that's been repurposed and covered in armour plate," they nodded polite greetings to the guards manning Liskeard's defences, many of whom they now knew by name.

"How's your foot?"

"Sore," Jessamy answered. She had to admit though that during the previous night she'd completely forgotten about her injury for a while as she and Mpenzi squirmed in each other's passionate embrace. She found herself thinking about what she had done to the tall South African woman - caressing her, overpowering her, making her writhe and scream - and it made her wonder how soon the next time would be, "just don't expect me to walk any distance."

"Think you had plenty of exercise last night," Mpenzi grinned with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

"Maybe I should 'exercise' more regularly," Jessamy slipped a hand into that of her friend and they continued wordlessly, past the gutted wrecks of the six Challenger tanks, to Liskeard's tiny railway station.

. . .

Liskeard station stood on the main railway line that had once run all the way from Paddington in London over three hundred miles to Penzance on the western tip of Cornwall. Hurtling chunks of spaceborne rock from the rogue asteroid Thanatos had since destroyed the tracks at Camborne and various points east of Plymouth. The once picturesque coastal section between Teignmouth and Exeter had been completely washed away by a tsunami, devastating the town of Dawlish with it.

But away from the destruction, between Saltash and Truro, the line remained virtually unscathed.

Jessamy and Mpenzi were somewhat confused when they found the street outside the station deserted. But a chaotic din of activity seemed to be coming from the railway platform itself. Shouts, curses and the sound of heavy loads being shifted ... and above it all a loud hissing, like a distant waterfall ... or steam escaping.

"No," Mpenzi muttered, "they can't have ..."

Jessamy followed her around the station building on to the platform itself, limping as quickly as she could.

A small, but fully functioning steam locomotive waited at the platform, coupled to two carriages - one being loaded and unloaded with freight, the other with passengers. The engine may have once been a cheerful green but was now streaked with grime and pockmarked by small arms fire. A rusted snowplough had been welded to the front to deal with any obstructions on the track. Jessamy noticed the tatty passenger carriage had a machine gun emplacement mounted midway along its roof and that most of the windows had been boarded over.

"OY! What the fuck are you two doin'?" shouted a gruff voice from the locomotive's cab. A thuggish looking man in a filthy boiler suit eyed them suspiciously, a finger twitching on the trigger of his crossbow.

"Um, Ox ... told us you'd take us as far as Truro," said Mpenzi boldly.

Boiler suit relaxed somewhat, "Ox? ... ah, you're the two who escaped across the bridge is it? I bin expectin' you."

Jessamy had never heard an accent like it before. And judging by the man's reaction, he'd never heard one like Mpenzi's either, "You aren't from 'round 'ere are you?"

"Johannesburg. South Africa," Mpenzi answered warily.

Boiler suit's face cracked into a broad smile, revealing gappy brown teeth, "Bloody Springboks eh? You're a long way from 'ome aren't you my lovely? Why don't the two of you come up here in the cab? I was about to fry some eggs for brekkie. We can talk rugby 'til it's time fer off. Oops, forgettin' me manners," he held out an oil covered paw, "Jones the Steam they call me, an' this ..." he slapped the metal side of the locomotive, "is Ivor the Engine."

. . .

The Bodmin & Wenford Railway had been a heritage railway, based further down the line at Bodmin, with an interchange between it and the national rail network. Thousands of visitors a year had enjoyed days out reliving the bygone era of the steam railways.

Now, with twenty first century civilization all but wiped out, just Ivor and a few bits of scruffy rolling stock were all that remained. Jones explained to them over a second breakfast of eggs fried on the back of a hot shovel how he'd moved to Cornwall from Swansea in Wales to help maintain the locomotives for future generations, "See, apart from Penzance to the west which is a bit cut off, we got two settlements tryin' to make a go of things up this way - Truro and Liskeard. The railway's a lifeline. We move building materials, food, people. It's not much, but it's a start."

Jessamy breathed in the unfamiliar smells of soot, smoke, grease and fried eggs, enjoying the feeling of being warmer than she'd felt for months.

Mpenzi shook her head, bemused, "I can't believe you've achieved all this. What about coal for the engine? Where does that come from?"

Jones laughed, "We use wood my lovely. Great big Forestry Commission plantations all around this area, so we're never likely to run out. Lot of it's dead, mind ... but it'll still burn."

"Jones?" called an officious looking man wearing half moon spectacles from outside, "all loaded. Time for off mate."

"Right you two, get yourselves comfy in the passenger carriage an' I'll go look for my assistant isn't it?"

. . .

"Can't remember the last time I was on a train," Mpenzi gazed out of the grimy carriage window, enjoying the novelty as the bleak landscape of the Cornish countryside sped past. Dead grey fields, the mountains of waste from china clay works, entire hillsides covered with the blackened stumps of trees, ruins of engine houses, isolated farms gutted by fires long ago, and dozens upon dozens of simple wooden grave markers beside the tracks.

But there was also life. Around stations at Bodmin Parkway, Par and St Austell, tiny communities had grown up like islands of civilisation in a barren sea, bartering what few fresh vegetables they'd managed to grow from the thin soil, for clothing and weapons with which to defend themselves from roving bands of hostiles.

"I can," answered Jessamy in a quiet voice.

It had been the day after the first strikes had annihilated the towns of Camborne and Redruth. It was deemed that Cornwall was a danger zone and at high risk of suffering further meteorite hits, so a government evacuation policy had suggested all children old enough to travel should be sent to Scotland for the duration. To islands such as Mull, Skye and Arran - out of harm's way.

Jessamy's father, John Beech had bundled her and Ross, her elder brother, onto the packed train at Penzance station. She remembered asking at the time where their mother was. Why wasn't she there to say goodbye? Her father wouldn't answer. Or couldn't.

A bus had carried them around the destroyed section of line as far as Truro, from where another train had carried them, through the day and into the night, all the way to Scotland. The night sky had lit up with streaks of fiery light as pieces of Thanatos had rained down around them on Birmingham, Crewe and the outskirts of Glasgow.

Nightmares of that journey had haunted Jessamy for years afterwards. This trip, in the opposite direction but along the same tracks held its own terrors for her. What was she going to find when she reached home?

. . .

They reached Truro with no mishaps and bid farewell to Jones the Steam. The dozen or so other passengers exited the busy station and turned left to head down into what remained of the city with its three spired cathedral still standing like a beacon of hope. Armed guards watched Jessamy and Mpenzi warily as they turned right and trudged up the hill in drizzle and squally wind.

"You okay to walk Corporal?" Mpenzi asked.

Jessamy nodded.

"These folks have certainly got their shit together. While the rest of the country's on its knees, you've got a fucking working railway down here."

"Jack Aubrey's not doing so badly either," Jessamy piped up.

"Yeah, well," Mpenzi scanned the ruined streets around them as they walked, "there's always some fucker like that who benefits from others' misery ... how far d'we have to go?"

"More than twenty miles, less than thirty. We lived in a small village just outside Penzance," Jessamy explained, "it's been eleven years so I hope I can remember the way."

. . .

They walked through the day, taking frequent breaks for Jessamy to rest her foot. As expected, Redruth and Camborne were impassable. Desolate, cratered ruins that looked like pictures she'd seen of Hiroshima according to Mpenzi, though Jessamy had never heard of the place herself so was unable to comment.

They skirted around the devastation and eventually rejoined the main road, now the A30 near Connor Downs, just east of Hayle. Several locals watched them suspiciously as they passed through, brandishing makeshift weapons, but said nothing.

The estuary at Hayle was completely clogged with an immense tangle of wrecked fishing boats that looked as if they'd been swept in from the open sea by a collosal wave and tossed together like discarded toys. Tangled nets, beams, rusted hulls cracked open like eggshells, all lay rotting in the waist deep mud - evidence of some catastrophic strike somewhere to the north in the Bristol Channel.

Jessamy peered around as their surroundings became more and more familiar to her. The big roundabout at Lelant - her parents had driven this way on warm summer evenings to walk the dogs on Porthkidney beach. It was now a scene of carnage, blocked by a mass pile up of gutted vehicles centred around a charred petrol tanker.

They found a tiny granite cottage with much of its roof still intact a few miles further on at the village of Crowlas and opted to spend the night there before proceeding the last few miles at first light. Mpenzi reasoned that if Penzance was guarded against hostiles, they wouldn't want to be arriving armed with automatic weapons in the dark.

. . .

"What will you do ... if your parents are dead?" Mpenzi asked as she prodded their modest campfire. They lounged on the cottage's bare living room floor on mildewy cushions dragged from an ancient three piece suite.

Jessamy stretched her aching legs, "I've no idea. I've been trying not to think like that. I've already lost my brother."

"You could always come with me," Mpenzi raised an eyebrow, waiting for a response.

Jessamy looked her in the eye, "Why? Where are you going?"

"I'm not a soldier anymore if the army I was in no longer exists. I'll find a boat and go south to France. From there I can get home."

Jessamy sat back, aghast, "All the way to South Africa?"

"Jess, there's nothing to keep me here. I need a purpose. While I was Sergeant Lupita Mpenzi I had one. Would you? Come with me?"

Jessamy shrugged noncommittally, "Let's talk again tomorrow eh?"

Without waiting for an invitation, Jessamy snuggled in close to Mpenzi and very soon after, the women were both fast asleep in each others' arms, sharing one anothers' body heat.

. . .

"WELCOME TO PENZANCE," Mpenzi read, from the scorched metal sign lying in waist high weeds beside what may have once been the road. They'd followed the A30 along the edge of Mount's Bay as soon as the sun was up and despite the previous evening's maudlin topic of conversation, were in good spirits, as the weather was dry and the sun was shining for a change.

Jessamy's mood soon took a nose dive however when she surveyed the devastation they were walking in to.

Beyond Long Rock, almost everything had been torn apart or flattened. Industrial estates, holiday chalets, the railway line that ran along the seafront - had all been washed away leaving a wasteland of knee deep black mud for as far as they could see, dotted here and there with massive granite blocks as big as cars that had once formed the town's sea defences.

"Tsunami?" Mpenzi ventured.

Jessamy nodded. St Michael's Mount - the world famous island in the middle of the bay with its abbey - was still there, but scoured clean of trees and all vegetation. A lump of bare rock with a shattered ruin on its summit. Looking across from where they stood, Jessamy could see that the seaside village of Marazion was simply no longer there.

It was impossible to see where the land and sea had once met as the cracked and debris strewn mudflats extended far out into the bay and a long way inland. But in the distance, the granite tower of St Mary's Church still loomed over the harbour so it was possible, Jessamy hoped, that at least parts of Penzance had escaped the worst.

"Which way?" asked Mpenzi.

Jessamy held back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. Her parents had lived on a hill. The village of Madron was almost two miles inland from the town. Surely it had somehow survived this. She motioned ahead to where the road split - one side submerged in thick, oozing mud leading towards the town, the other climbing steadily up hill away from it.

. . .

It was noon as Jessamy and Mpenzi climbed the steep hill towards the outskirts of Madron. Ash covered fields lay silent and empty on both sides of the road, a litter of white bones the only evidence that cattle had once grazed there.

Mpenzi halted and motioned ahead to where a massive tree trunk completely blocked the road. She swung her assault rifle down and thumbed off the safety, "Looks like someone's still here. Keep your eyes peeled, this is a great spot for an ambush."

"Perhaps if we call out. Make ourselves known," Jessamy gazed around at the half demolished walls and stunted bushes bordering the road as she quietly unshouldered her bow and nocked an arrow.

THWACK!

Something smacked Jessamy painfully across the back of the head, sending her sprawling in the dirt seeing stars. Her arrow whistled wildly off skyward. The next second, shabbily dressed figures emerged from behind the tree trunk barricade, charging towards them.

Two grabbed Jessamy's arms and wrenched them back behind her before she could recover her senses.

"FUCK OFF!" Mpenzi brutally smashed the stock of her weapon into the chin of the figure nearest to her, snapping his head back in a spray of blood and sending him crashing to the ground. And already she was spinning to meet the next assailant. She slammed her rifle into the figure's abdomen, then at once jammed the weapon's cold metal barrel into his ear as he landed on his side, temporarily winded, "any last words, fucker?"

"Drop the gun or we slit your pretty friend's throat!" snarled one of the pair holding Jessamy. She felt a cold blade brush against her neck.

"Tupa kisu! Drop the knife or I'll blast your friend's ugly head all over this fucking road," Mpenzi spat back. Her prisoner groaned, clutching his bruised stomach.

Jessamy's head throbbed. Through bleary eyes filled with bright tears of pain, she looked at Mpenzi ...

"LAST CHANCE," retorted Jessamy's captor.

There were five of them Jessamy realised. The one who'd hit her from behind, the two with the knife, the one Mpenzi had already incapacitated and the one she was about to shoot if she didn't get her way ...

"I'LL COUNT TO THREE," Mpenzi screamed, "ONE ..."

The green Buff covering the face of Mpenzi's captive slipped as he writhed in pain ...

"TWO ..."

... so that Jessamy had her first clear view of his face ...

"THR -"

... he was just as she remembered, vivid blue eyes edged by deep crow's feet, untidy blonde hair now touched with grey and a scruffy beard.

"MPENZI! DON'T SHOOT!!" Jessamy cried, startling her captive into scoring a stinging line across her throat.

"Why the fuck not?" Mpenzi forced her captive's head down.

"BECAUSE HE'S MY DAD!"

PART THREE: HOME

"I'll finish making the coffee," suggested Mpenzi awkwardly, as Jessamy and her father, John Beech sobbed and hugged one another tightly in the cottage's living room half an hour later. Now that they were indoors away from the eyes of the other villagers, the Beeches could finally be themselves.

Jessamy's initial reunion with her father after eleven years apart had been emotional but strained. After the stunned disbelief at the barricade, swift explanations had been made followed by awkward apologies from both parties to those battered and bruised by the incident. The man Mpenzi had clubbed in the face had lost two teeth and suffered a split lip after all so needed a lot of convincing.

Introductions had been made and finally Jessamy and Mpenzi had been allowed into the village itself for the short walk to the Beech family's home. The quirky grade two listed building next door to the village's small granite church was exactly as Jessamy remembered it. Certainly its three scantle clad storeys were missing a few slates, there was peeling paint on the window frames and a few cracked panes but it wasn't as if her dad could just nip down to B&Q or Screwfix at the weekend anymore.

"I can't believe it. Jess. My little Jess. You're ... practically a young woman now," John Beech held his daughter at arm's length, studying her. Blood crusted one ear where Mpenzi's gun barrel had scraped. He seemed somehow shorter to Jessamy, but then she realised that it was her who had grown taller, "when we lost contact with the rest of the country we ... feared the worst. I thought I'd lost you Jess."

Jessamy smiled, "I'm here now. It's taken me a year, but I'm here now ... thanks to Lupita there."

Mpenzi grinned from the kitchen as she wrestled a boiling kettle from the Aga with a tea towel.