Phoebe Beech Ch. 01: Glasgow

Phoebe let out a long breath. She'd made it. But she'd been spotted. And wasn't getting out of the cathedral without a fight.

She recalled the inscription she'd read. Carved into the black marble she'd ducked under in the midden crater, "Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

The meteorite that had struck the cathedral had managed to bypass fingerprint, voiceprint and retina scanners by cracking Glasgow's now defunct Soteria bunker open like an egg - the entrance buried under the rubble now a twisted mess of reinforced steel and cracked concrete. And being in their rubbish pit, the Reivers had never even known about it.

One of the network of bunkers hidden all across Britain, it had sat here undisturbed for over forty years. It was pitch black inside. Smelling of damp concrete and the miasma of Reivers' filth drifting in from the midden. But if this bunker was organised like the one she'd been in at Lindisfarne Castle, she knew where everything would be.

Phoebe stood up and, feeling her way along the wall, found the racking she'd expected to find. Distorted out of shape, but intact. She pulled on an LED headtorch and switched it on. The beam was weak but adequate to see by. As expected, she could see six compact but comfortable bedrooms leading off a central common room, toilets, showers, wide-screen TV with a vast library of e-books, films and games. Even after Lindisfarne, she still didn't have a clue what most of that actually was. There would be a rack of NBC suits, a decontamination suite, galley kitchen with a water recycling and purification system and enough food to last six people an entire year.

Finally, what she'd wanted to find. Automatic weapons and enough ammunition to start a small war.

Working quickly and trying not to think too much about the task ahead, Phoebe clipped on a pair of loaded Glock 30s in thigh holsters, then pulled an M16 from the rack. Brand new but like everything else, coated with dust from when the bunker's entrance had collapsed. The cold metal felt good in her hands.

Phoebe loaded it and the M203 grenade launcher slung underneath. Then packed a small daysack with MREs for a week, extra clips and a bandolier with spare grenades. She was ready. Or as ready as she was going to be. It was time to stop being the 'wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie.' If she wanted to live, it was time to fight.

. . .

As Phoebe heard the first voices growing nearer out in the cathedral's crater, she moved as far back into the bunker as she could go and still have a clear shot. The reflection of torchlight from outside flickered along the wall beside her. Giving the Reivers a few more seconds to cluster around the bunker's entrance, Phoebe's finger tightened on the M203's trigger ...

POOM!

Phoebe's first grenade blasted the bunker's marble slab away. Destroying the Dylan Thomas inscription and clearing the entrance, so she'd be able to exit standing up instead of crawling. She flicked the M16's selector to AUTO and fired an entire magazine out into the subsequent cloud of dust and debris.

TAKATAKATAK!

Path cleared, she reloaded both assault rifle and grenade launcher. But there was no way she was going to leave the Reivers with the bunker's contents intact. Edging out into the crater amongst bleeding and dead Reivers, she aimed back into the bunker ...

POOM!

Then fell to one side as the blast knocked her off her feet. The lip of the crater above split apart as an avalanche of floor tiles and stone blocks cascaded down towards her.

"Shit!" Phoebe rolled, fumbling another round into the grenade launcher. Black tipped arrows thunked into the refuse and muck around her and clinked off the rubble. She'd seen what weapons the Reivers had. Vicious, edged things and longbows. But hardly any guns.

If one of their arrows so much as nicked her, Phoebe knew she'd be in trouble. The Reivers dipped the points in shit to guarantee the slightest wound would become infected.

"I WANT HER ALIVE YOU FUCKIN' MORONS!"

McNeish's voice from somewhere above.

Whatever happened she wasn't going to let herself be taken alive twice.

With the gathering dusk, smoke and clouds of dust it was difficult to pinpoint where exactly the voice had come from. The Morning Chapel? Phoebe tried to judge which direction she'd been running from when she'd plummeted into the pit ... and fired the M203 once more. Upward, at an angle.

POOM!

Chipped stone gargoyles and shards of stained glass rained down as the explosion shook the cathedral, dust clouds quickly snuffing out cook fires. Screaming at the top of her lungs, Phoebe charged across the crater's bottom, firing wildly at shadowy figures looming too close. Ducking as a shotgun blast roared above her head.

With someone wielding an automatic weapon in their midst, many of the Reivers had wisely taken cover. Phoebe was hoping she sounded like an army, rather than just one person. A horde of battle hardened Spetsnaz - like Leonid, rather than one scared twenty three year old. She scrambled up the far side, shooting a halberd welding Reiver in the chest, then slamming another round into the M203.

Weaving between the great stone pillars of the cathedral's North Aisle, Phoebe sensed rather than actually heard Reivers behind her. Firing from the hip she sprayed 5.56mm NATO standard off into the gloom - the M16's recoil jolting her shoulder. Rewarded with a gurgle of pain as at least one of her pursuers dropped.

"DONT JUS' FUCKIN' STAND THERE!" Eilwen's voice bellowed over the racket of screams and toppling masonry. What Phoebe was dreading to hear. Eilwen was still alive, somewhere towards the Morning Chapel. McNeish's corner.

POOM!

One more for luck. With the chaos of dust, dark and smoke, Phoebe could no longer see where she was aiming. Hoping the resulting blast was right on top of McNeish's campfire, she emptied her M16 at the cathedral's front entrance - the Western Porch. Then cast the empty weapon aside as she sprinted towards it, trying not to trip over the dead and wounded.

As an afterthought, she chucked the bandolier and few remaining grenades into a firepit as she charged past through the cathedral's splintered front door and out into the cool evening air.

KABOOM!

. . .

Mere seconds later, Eilwen McNeish pushed herself groggily to her feet, rubbing dust from her eyes. Her ears were ringing. The projectile - whatever it had been, had arced over their heads and blasted the cathedral's ancient stone wall apart.

It was the Beech girl. It had to be. Fucking bitch. Though where she'd found automatic weapons was anyone's guess. She fumbled in the darkness for the Grach handgun she'd tucked under her bedroll. Worked the slide, then checked the dust covered bodies around her for signs of life.

Irn Bru - dead. Needles - dead, with a sliver of stained glass through his neck. She spotted Renton sitting up nearby and nursing a superficial head wound. The big brute had been running back from the crypt shouting something about the prisoner escaping when all hell had broken loose.

Eilwen spotted Cleave, chest crushed by falling masonry. Too bad. The boy wouldn't now get the opportunity to make up for his overeagerness.

Then she saw who she'd been looking for. A shock of greying black hair in a pool of sticky blood - shockingly red against the grey white of all the stone dust. Eilwen dropped to her father's side and shook him, "Are ye alive? Are ye okay? It's Eilwen."

Dylan McNeish grumbled something, then put a hand flat against the bloody floor tiles to lever himself up, "Yeah, I'm fine. I saw the Beech girl. What the fuck happened?"

Eilwen wasn't much for emotional displays. But she let out the breath she'd been holding in a long sigh, "She got her hands on an assault rifle and grenade launcher."

McNeish stared, "We need to find out where."

"No time for that now. Judgin' by the noise, she jus' left by the Western Porch."

McNeish spat blood from where he'd bitten his tongue, "Well get after her! Pick a coupla guys and bring the bitch back."

Eilwen nodded, then tilted her head to one side, "Dead? Or you still want her alive?"

McNeish considered for a moment. Remembering the promise he'd made, "Alive. We'll make what we were going to do before seem like a fuckin' holiday," he gripped his daughter's arm, "I'm relying on you Eil."

She searched his eyes, seeing some unspoken emotion seething just beneath the surface.

"Alive. Promise me."

"I promise," Eilwen pulled away. Shaking dust from her dreadlocks, she stormed off across the cathedral's debris littered floor, "RENTON! Grab a couple of yer best trackers. Meet me out front."

. . .

To the west of the cathedral, Phoebe spotted lights. Flickering cook fires in the windows of a few intact buildings of Glasgow's city centre. Drawing one of her shiny new Glock 30s she sprinted across the front of the cathedral. Past moss covered Reivers' cairns of human skulls, and staked heads planted in the ground, then turned east and headed off into the darkness as quickly as she could.

Hamnavoe and her mother had stressed to her time and time again, to always keep one round back. If all else had failed and capture by the Reivers was a certainty, that round would be the most blessed, valuable thing on the planet. Phoebe had failed to heed that warning once before.

She planned not to make the same mistake twice.

There'd be pursuit. Maybe not straight away - the Reivers would need a moment to collect themselves. But soon. And they'd be royally pissed off. Despite what she'd heard McNeish holler about taking her alive, Phoebe honestly didn't rate the chances of that happening. She'd lost count of how many she'd killed. Ten? Fifteen? More? She'd been lucky and caught them off guard. That's all there was to it. The Reivers simply hadn't expected an attack of such ferocity on their home turf.

If she survived the night, her muscles would be aching in the morning. Running and fighting after three days with no food would leave her body exhausted. She was fuelled by adrenaline alone now and needed to be as far away as possible when it wore off.

Shouts came faintly from the cathedral behind her.

They were coming.

Branches slapped her in the face. Brambles snagged her legs. Tripping and sliding down a weedy embankment, across a main road littered with gutted vehicles and up another embankment she ran, leg muscles burning, senses straining for any other sounds of pursuit. As she climbed a low but very prominent hill beyond, the massive tombs of Glasgow's Victorian necropolis loomed around her ... as it began to rain.

Fifty thousand individuals had been buried there over the years. Three and a half thousand marked graves and monuments - some as big as houses. Phoebe had no intention of being the next, and forced herself on.

Along gravel paths that would have once been neatly landscaped, southward and eastward. Phoebe Beech's thigh and calf muscles ached, her head swam from lack of food. And tears of pain mingled with the cold rain on her cheeks, "Yep," she muttered to herself, "the world is most definitely broken."

THE END OF CHAPTER ONE

Dylan remembered pushing his way to the front of the crowd. Watching the blonde girl glance down at what she'd grabbed from the weapon pile. A six foot long shaft of curved wood, topped with a wickedly sharp four foot long steel blade. A scythe. Unwieldy in the wrong hands. But she'd grinned at the Reivers' champion Flaps McGregor through clenched teeth and taken a step forward, "You're going down, fucker ..."

Dylan had seen something flicker across Flaps McGregor's eyes. Something that no-one else in Tyndrum had ever seen in his craggy, scarred face. Fear.

The girl had spun around to build up momentum as she danced towards the Reiver. The curve and movement of every limb undeniably graceful. From the corner of his eye Dylan had spotted the redhead helping the male prisoner to his feet. But none of the others had even noticed. They'd been too busy watching the spectacle unfolding before them.

Flaps had begun to turn away. To run, as the scythe blade sang through the air and neatly sliced through both his legs just below the knees. Flaps had screamed and thudded to the hard ground even as the blonde girl continued to spin, skilfully bringing the bloody scythe blade up over her head in a sweeping arc. Before bringing it straight down with a wet crunch, embedding it in the centre of their champion's chest.

It was during the prisoners' subsequent escape in a Humvee Rab had liberated from a Northumbrian army barracks that Andras McNeish was gunned down. Shot to pieces as the scythe wielding blonde, the redhead and the man who hadn't been so unconscious after all fled south. The McNeish brothers were down to three.

Rab hadn't wanted to appear weak and had gathered his Reivers to give chase. Southward into the borders and later Cumbria - swelling their ranks and hugely increasing their territory. But they never caught the three fugitives.

What was left of Glasgow had been occupied then by a quasi-religious cult that had seen Thanatos not as a harbinger of the end of the world but of a new beginning. New Dawn they'd called themselves. But they and their leader McMurphy had been quickly enslaved and the city itself made the new centre of Rab's fiefdom.

Dylan McNeish's formidable prowess as a fighter developed over the next twenty years. And his reputation grew. As Rab battled other Reiver clans for control of the west coast - with trusted comrades Bran and Cadell at his side.

It was the summer of 2050. The year Trevithick's army had been wiped out in the Manchester earthquake sending him into hiding with a lecherous Scot called Hamnavoe. Almost twenty nine years after the old world had disappeared forever, when the bounty hunter came ...

Dylan had been in Heysham on that day, working at getting an old fishing boat seaworthy so that his Reiver raiding party might get across to the Isle of Man. The bounty hunter had ambushed Rab, Bran and Cadell while they'd been on a scavenging expedition to nearby Lancaster - disabling them with tripwired booby traps before coldly executing all three with a bullet through the head. An eyewitness had provided a description before Dylan had slit his throat. And more importantly ... a name.

A woman. Blonde dreadlocks, piercing blue eyes. Carrying a pair of Glock handguns with one side of her face heavily tattooed. Many of the Reivers knew of her, as it wasn't the first time she'd tangled with them. It was the same skinny blonde girl who'd murdered Flaps McGregor with a rusty scythe.

Jessamy Beech.

With all three of his brothers now dead, Dylan McNeish found himself alone. He swore then and there, as he and his fellow Reivers feasted on the raw hearts and livers of their dead comrades that he'd avenge his brothers' murder. If it was the last thing he ever did.

COMING SOON - PHOEBE BEECH CHAPTER TWO: CHRONOS