Surviving When The Lights Went Out

"I'm going to get my head down too," I said, "the sofa is very comfortable." No way was he having the other single in 'my room'.

"I'll manage," he said patting his bergen.

I went to sleep easier than I would have thought possible that night, content that I didn't have to lay half-awake listening for strange noises that would indicate the worst was about to happen, it already had, and at least 'the worst' had a twenty-first century rifle he could take on any OTHER interlopers with.

I woke first the next morning with a faint ringtone from my mobile phone. The thing hadn't had a signal in many weeks and the Wi-Fi signal had gone when the mains power did, but it was still a very effective alarm clock.

I got up tiptoed into the bathroom and washed my pits and cleaned my teeth, tapping Jack's bedroom door to find that she had the same idea as me and was dressed with just her teeth to clean.

In the living room our SAS defender was out for the count on the sofa and snoring quite loudly, this probably being his first proper night's sleep in days, all tucked into a distinctly non-military looking blue sleeping bag with the barrel of his rifle sticking out from the top. I thought on whether to try and get him while he was in it and was thinking about how to do that. I filled the kettle and turned it on, while Jack stood next to me picking up the cover from the cake, what had been almost an entire fruit cake was more almost gone and had bits had been broken off it, probably by hand.

"OI DICKHEAD!" she shouted across the room ruining our chances of taking him and the soldier jumped awake, still trapped in his sleeping bag and struggling to free himself before the angry woman was all over him.

He managed to free his top half and sat up, looking stupid and bleary-eyed but still armed.

"Fucking what!?! He whined swinging the barrel from her to me.

"You've eaten half of this fucking cake, it's supposed to last us all week!"

"I was fucking hungry alright?!" he challenged.

"We're all fucking hungry Mac, haven't you noticed?" she shouted back.

He obviously didn't like to be disturbed that early, and he obviously didn't like taking that kind of shit from a woman.

"It's fucking cake..." he said shaking his head, "bake some more!"

"We only have cake once a month dickhead!" she shouted at him, unless you know how to grow wheat and grind flour and turn sugar beet into Tate and fucking Lyle before June, that's all our fucking supplies, no bread, no cake!" she snapped at him, "For fuck's sake, got the brains of a fucking cricket bat, I'm going on the forage," she looked across at Mac, "Put your fucking boots on GI Joe, you're part of this now!" She growled and rolled her eyes at him, mouthing 'Oh for fuck's sake...' at his just sitting there looking like a dick.

She left through the back door, pulling on my Dad's old Wellington boots in our small conservatory.

"Hell hath no fury like an SAS officer's daughter mate," I said.

"Yeah... yeah well," he said desperate to reclaim his superiority, "she needs to wind her fucking neck in that's all, I'm..." he paused to think of an appropriate metaphor, "I'm the fucking law round here!"

"No you're not, you're on a top-secret mission to scout around and report back to the Sass," I said, "How are you doing on that by the way? Not going to learn much by sitting in our house are you."

"Yeah, well... just chillin' for a few days, getting me breath back like."

"So when are you going to report back to them?" with a tone that suggested I was actually interested.

"Only did it yesterday morning," he said, "got a few days yet."

"When you got to make your next one?"

He paused, I could see in his face that he really didn't like being put on the spot.

"Who wants to know?" he finally threw in, grinning back at me.

"I do, that way I'll know how much extra food I have to get in to replace what you eat while you're here, and when you're likely to be on your way."

"You trying to get rid of me?"

"Yeah." I said quite simply.

"Look MATE!" he said with a raised voice, "Like I said, I'm here on behalf of the British government and you are required to render me assistance and to enable..."

"Who said?"

"Who said... what?"

"Who said I have to offer you assistance. You are apparently hear on behalf of the British Army?"

"Y... yeah," he mumbled ending his statement with a rising inflection as he gained confidence.

"Then surely the Army should be feeding you not me, the government's telling us there's plenty of food and they'll be getting it out to us soon," I paused to let that sink in, "and you are the government - aren't you?"

"I... well..." he stammered.

"You've walked in here pointing your machine gun and J... at Deana and I every time we disagree with, you could be anyone."

"I'm from the Sass!"

"Alright," I said, "Show me you MOD form 90."

Being the son of a Military father and mother I'd grown up with the concept of the MOD F90. The standard armed forces Identity card that every squaddie carries.

"Haven't got one," he said almost straight away then quickly adding, "Sass don't carry paperwork, just in case we get captured like."

It wasn't paper, it was a credit card sized ID. My Dad left his at home sometimes as well I had to admit but nine times out of ten he had it.

"How are you contacting your sergeant major?"

"Hidden radios," he said tapping his nose, "We've all been taught the secret locations and the codes and that."

"Next time take me with you, and he can tell me that I'm supposed to feed you?"

"Weeeeeeell," said the super-soldier, "I can't do that either, OPSEC again mate."

"Riiiiiight," I said and stepped outside to pull on my boots and stepped out, walking quickly but quietly on our usual route to catch up with Jack.

I did once into the woods. "Careful with this wanker Jack," I cautioned, "he's as much a squaddie as you are, but he's armed and fucking stupid, never a good mixture."

"I know" she hissed, "that..." she stopped and looked up at me, "that was OUR Cake Jimmy!" she sighed and looked back over her shoulder towards our croft that we had just started to get really comfortable in, "In our place... who the fuck does he..."

There was a noisy kicking open of doors and a stumble as our guest tumbled out of the house pulling on his under body armour shirt.

"Alright!" he shouted at the top of his voice, "I'm fucking coming!"

We both turned to him holding fingers to our lips and looking cross with him.

"This is a STALK!" she hissed at him, "now everything in the area knows we are here." She had the crossbow slung across her shoulder, I guessed the shotgun was being saved in case we might need it and Mac saw it.

"What's that!" he said pointing at her back.

"It's a guitar Mac, just reeeeeally badly strung."

"It's a crossbow!" he said, a bit shocked.

"Yet still you had to ask what it was," she snapped back not looking at him.

"I... I'd better take that." He said adding some grown up emphasis to his stuttered statement and extending his hand.

"Why?" I said tiptoeing through the bush behind Jack.

"Because..." he obviously needed to think of a reason, "because I'm an SAS man, I've been trained in the use of silent weapons." We ignored him and carried on our stalk, "I said I'd better take that!" He shouted.

"Yeah, I heard," said the trained gamekeeper still ignoring him.

"Fucking..." he shouted stopping us dead in our tracks, "Just... fucking hand it over!"

"No!" I shouted back, "we've both successfully stalked game with this while you haven't, so unless you want to scare off anything edible shut the fuck up!" I turned and walked back to him, "If you don't like it go back to the cottage, or even better pack up your bergen and fuck off back to headquarters! It's thirty five miles in that direction!"

I could see his rage, I could also read what was going on in his head and Jack was sailing pretty close to the wind with him. He walked back to the cottage and I desperately hoped he'd take his kit and fuck off.

No chance; he'd blundered into our perfect little set up and it was just too sweet for him to walk away from - as far as he was concerned he had a machine gun and we didn't.

My Dad's hunting crossbow had upset the balance of power and the passive-aggressive, multi-terrain-patterned Alpha male couldn't allow that. As we walked I thought on whether we could actually use the crossbow against him; I was a pretty good shot with it and Jack even better, but we had lost our element of surprise and he could just as easily hunt us with this 30 rounds as we could with the our two bolts.

Shit.

Bluff it out, this was no SAS man and he was no rocket scientist either,

"Jack," I whispered to her as we lay in our favourite spot upwind of where our lunch was most likely to appear, "we've got to take it easy with this wanker, I don't think he's quite as emotionally balanced as we'd like him to be."

She turned to me and smile,

"Sorry Jimmy," she said, "Playing your hot-headed sister is starting to get to me!"

We started to get a bit chilly; normally we would have had a mug of tea, even some hot or cold porridge before heading out on a stalk but not this morning. I looked at her and she at me, about to mutually cancel our vigil when we both heard the crackling and crunching of someone trying to sneak up on us.

"It's all right Mac, you can walk normally. We're just coming in."

"Stay where you are!" he shouted nervously, "lay the bow on the ground in front of you and stand back!" Ooooohkay, perhaps not then. "You heard me PUT IT DOWN!"

I looked at her and she at me, and in a flash of eyes we both knew, 'do as he says, no games.'

We turned around to face him. He'd put on his jacket and his equipment vest over the top of his shirt, even going with the bush hat, as if all of this would convince us of how serious and professional he was.

"OK!" he shouted, we were feet from him, "step back from the crossbow!"

We did

"Mac, we're just here, no need to shout mate."

"Yeah... well, sometimes you fucking snowflake millennials don't do what you're fucking told UNLESS SOMEONE SHOUTS AT YOU!" He'd obviously studied hard to learn the concept and usage of the two terms. He was OK with 'snowflake' but he'd struggled to say 'millennial' adding some extra E's, N's and L's.

"Why?" I said. It was only fair that I played my part.

"Why what?" he was moving towards the crossbow on the floor where we had been lying.

"Why do we have to do what you tell us, this morning you said you were the law, well I've been listening to the news every night and at no point has our esteemed Prime Minister told us we're under martial law."

"You've got that to defend people right?" said Jack.

He nodded.

"Yeah, Military assistance to the... wassname,"

"And we can't defend people with our crossbow?"

"Well... no not really," he stretched out the last word, "gotta be trained up like..."

"Precisely," she said, "I'd put my stalking and camouflage skills up against yours any day of the week."

"Oh!" he got even crosser. Even I was ignoring my initial suggestion that we play it easy with this twat, "Just do as you're fucking told," he closed his eyes briefly and I guessed he'd made up his mind about something, "Right... RIGHT! Step back, go RIGHT BACK, BACK out of the woods!"

I saw him crouch down by the crossbow and pull out a multi-tool from his pocket and fold out the wire-cutters within the pliers.

"NO!" I shouted as he bent to cut the bow line, "Mac, that is one of our prime suppliers of meat, don't destroy it just because you... because you're annoyed that we aren't fucking behaving!" He stopped and considered that. "You gun has, what 40 rounds in the magazine?" it held about thirty actually, "Whenever you use it they'll hear the crack all the way back to Hereford, and once you've shot them, that's it." I leaned forward slightly hoping to appear more rational and reasonable, but also with a view to charging down the bastard if the opportunity arrived, "That bow has five bolts, and they are all re-usable; OK you may very well be fucking off back to Hereford and the tonnes of food they undoubtedly have there for you, you wreck our bow and we starve."

He turned his gun to face me and snarled, struggling to get past his 'I've got a weapon but I don't want you to have one' gambit.

Jack sniffed in disgust, folded her arms and rolled her eyes.

"Well you've convinced me Mac; you're not here to share at all are you," she said, her eyes narrowed, "you've got a gun and you're here to take what we have and you won't be able to if we can fight back, just like I said you were yesterday." I looked at her stunned. That pretty face of hers that was ingrained onto my heart and soul had somehow contrived such a look of feminine disappointment and betrayal that even I felt a touch of it, "just shoot the pair of us Mac, that's what this is all going to eventually come down to isn't it?" His bottom lip flapped, "You aren't here to defend us, you're here to take what we have so stop pretending to be our friend and just get it over with for fuck's sake and stop pretending you like us, just be the fucking bully that you are and get on with it." There was a very convincing break in her voice.

My look of surprise was nothing to the man braced and staring at me through the optical sight on his gun, which came down to reveal a look of such concerned shock and disbelief I thought he might cry.

"No, Deana... no..." he lowered the gun, "no, look," he stepped forward taking the gun in one hand so he could spread his arms in well-meaning contrition, "It's just... these are strange days... and... well... I've been trained to survive in the harshest of conditions see, survival of the fittest and all that."

"And what about the oath you took to defend the Queen and all of her subjects? Forget that bit did you?" She dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket, "no, like you said, this about YOU and fuck everyone else isn't it, if you want it you'll take it." She turned to me, "Hold me Jim-Jam," she said as I took her in my arms, "hold me while that coward shoots both of us so he can steal everything we've worked for."

"Deana!" he stepped closer and I kept hold of her, I could see that the gun was still on full-auto and the safety catch off, "look, I'm sorry Deana, forgive me -- please, I'm... I'm just a soldier, used to issuing orders that's all, I never meant to... to upset you."

Jack pushed her face into my neck, her shoulders heaving quite convincingly, but I could feel no tears from her face. She made a big play of pulling at the front of my fleece to dry off what clearly wasn't there.

"OK," she said turning to face him, "we put the crossbow in the barn and keep the bolts in the house - separate, and you keep your gun but put the magazine with the crossbow, in the barn -- that's fair isn't it."

His face was a picture of shock, he clearly wanted to do whatever he could to please the pretty girl and desperately hoped he hadn't ruined his romantic chances with her, but an SA80 without a magazine was only so much metal and plastic.

"Aah, Weeeeeeeell," he said his mind obviously racing, "you see..."

"See what?" she said, "you're worried that we have a crossbow, we're worried you have a machine gun, no one has anything, everyone wins!" She beamed her most gorgeous smile at him.

The gorgeous Jacinda surely deserved an Oscar for her performance this morning, and we hadn't even had breakfast yet.

Despite her most ravishing smile Mac came to his senses realising that without his gun he was a nobody again, and being a nobody was probably the thing that made him dress up like this and pretend to be a super soldier in the first place.

"Naaaah," he said trying to smile his way through it in the hope that she might smile at him again, "no sorry, my orders say that I'm not to unload or put down my weapon at any time, sorry; orders is orders," he paused, "Your Dad would have told you that."

"Yeah, but our father wouldn't be holding two innocent householders at gunpoint because they had food and a warm bed that he wanted." She shook her head in disappointment.

"Deana!" he all but shouted, "IT'S NOT LIKE THAT!" he held his rifle to his hip evidently trying to look quite cool about the whole thing, "I told you!" he closed his eyes again, "It's not that easy, please don't try and put me between you and my duty -- my duty will ALWAYS WIN! Now back inside!"

He indicated back in the direction of the cottage and I looked at Jack again and walked out into the clearing with my hands above my head, and Jack followed suit.

Once we were closer to the yard he called us to a halt,

"Jim, is there a key to the barn?"

"No," I replied not turning back to him, "why would I need to lock it?"

"We decided we are going to put the crossbow in there didn't we?" he sighed with some exasperation.

"Oh yeah, you need to hide ours but keep your gun so you can threaten us with it, sorry I forgot."

"It's..." he sighed again, "Jim, I'm NOT going to rise to your bait any longer, now open the barn door." I stepped over and did so, leaving the door ajar, he dropped the crossbow by the door, "Deana, take the crossbow and put inside somewhere safe, don't try and funny business, your brother is still out here."

"OK, MATE!" she said with some emphasis and a sneer. Trouble was this time he sneered back, at me this time.

"I'm kind of with Deana on this one Mac, please don't pretend that we're mates anymore, just tell us what to do and try not to shoot us OK?"

Deana came out back out,

"It's on your work bench Jimmy," she said, nice and dry in there."

"OK," she closed the barn door and flapped over hasp over the staple.

We went back into the cottage and I headed for the kitchen, switching on the kettle and getting down three mugs and two tea bags, we were still rationed of course.

Mac walked into the kitchen noisily and slumped down in my armchair.

"Always like seeing a woman in the kitchen Jim, always have," he looked across at Jack taking her boots off, "and it's rare to come across one so beautiful." He grinned a sickly grin.

Oh fuck, after threatening us and bringing us back into our own house at gunpoint the oaf was actually trying to be charming.

I looked at Jack and raised my eyebrows, she rolled he eyes back, and Mac must have seen it.

"I was only trying to be nice!"

"Yeah well, people being nice to me normally don't have a machine gun pointing at my back... yeah yeah, you're keeping a gun on us for Queen and Country."

"Make my fucking breakfast!" he sneered.

"Oh yeah," she said with a grin and sniffing through her nose and clearing her throat, "Are you really sure you want me to do it?"

I reached down into the fridge and pulled out the huge bowl of overnight oats, it was one of Jack's best recipes and way better than mine, with honey, dried apple, frozen berries, and some frozen yoghurt, it was lovely.

I spooned out three quite small bowls of it and handed them around.

Mac looked at it with some hesitancy.

"It's overnight oats Mac, very good for you."

"It's cold porridge."

"Yeah," said Jack, "if you can make the sure the sun shines today you can warm it up."

He rolled his eyes and took his bowl. After his first spoonful he raised his eyebrows and ate it all, scraping at the bowl.

"So what next?" he said looking at the fridge, obviously still hungry; but then I was a bit peckish myself. I could easily have eaten the same again and normally would have done, even having a couple of slices of toast, but this was going to be starvation rations while the Twat was living here.

"Washing up?" said Jack dropping her bowl into the sink next to mine.

"We've got to food to put on the table," I said, "No disrespect Mac but your bushcraft isn't quite up to our level."