Jessamy Beech Ch. 15: Mull

Suddenly, four sleek grey shapes in tight formation thundered low over the bay, then banked quickly out of sight to fly around the northern side of the island, the sunlight glinting on swept back wings each emblazoned with what looked like a red star.

Jessamy's heart leapt. Jets. Functioning airworthy jets after all this time.

"Who do you think they are?" Phoebe asked excitedly.

Angus glanced down at her with a troubled frown, "It's been a while since I've had a brief on the latest Russian military hardware Pheebs darlin', but if memory serves... I think they're Sukhoi Su-57s, NATO codename Felon."

Jessamy didn't have a clue what a NATO was, but her heart sank. She'd vaguely heard of Russia. The country that had thirty years earlier started all this. The country that had launched the missile that split Thanatos in two and plunged the world into an apocalyptic nightmare, "Russians? Sh-shit, Angus."

Angus blew out his cheeks, "Aye lass... shit. It's not over yet."

THE END OF CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Major General Volk felt his stomach churn as he hastily looked away. He'd inadvertently caught a glimpse of some of the Reekie creatures feeding, in one of the captured town's back alleyways.

Subhuman cannibals. All of them. With the number of dead littering Berwick Upon Tweed's streets, he doubted they'd be going hungry for a very long time.

But the sooner more of his regular troops arrived the better. The Reekies would then be forced to either surrender the automatic weapons they'd been loaned and return to their own territory in Edinburgh, or be shot. Their brief alliance had been a marriage of convenience, nothing more. Their combined forces had been victorious and there had been not one coalition casualty.

Coalition armoured personnel carriers now guarded each road leading into Berwick Upon Tweed. The pitiful few male survivors of the town's defence force had been rounded up and would be sent south to aid in the reopening of Scunthorpe's steel works. The women to less wholesome work in the new colonies of Scarborough and Bridlington. Coalition helicopter gunships would be out hunting down any that had fled the battle across Northumberland's wild interior.

All was going exactly according to plan.

"Major General, sir," a young lieutenant in battle dress snapped off a salute, "we've gained access to the old barracks building. Many of the town's women and children were barricaded inside. What would you have done with them sir?"

Volk studied the junior officer, looking him up and down. Back ramrod straight. Uniform threadbare but nevertheless neatly pressed. He'd once been this enthusiastic and eager to please. Before Thanatos changed the world forever. Before the fire storms and radiation had rendered vast swathes of his motherland uninhabitable.

"Keep them there for the time being. We're not monsters like these Reekie creatures, so make sure they're well fed."

The lieutenant waited patiently as Volk fished a creased 8 X 10 photo out of an inside pocket and unfolded it. A favour he'd promised an old friend. He showed it to the young officer.

A posed studio shot of a teenaged girl with pale, freckled skin, vibrant blue eyes and tumbling locks of lustrous red hair, "Tell your men to look for this woman among the survivors. She'll be in her late thirties by now, possibly even forty. If you find her, have her brought to me. Her name is... Merida."

COMING SOON...

TAMSIN BEECH CHAPTER ONE: LINDISFARNE