Tamsin Beech Ch. 06: Ayr

"Hey Cooper," Tamsin called, "see what else you can shoot while we're out."

Cooper grinned, keeping a close eye on the empty buildings to either side, "What would you like, boss? Wild pig or goat maybe?"

Tamsin interrupted, "Is that the Burns guy you said about?" she asked the Irishman. They'd reached Burns Statue Square. Across the weed choked road, an impressive bronze statue stood partially encased in tangled ivy.

Cooper nodded, "That's the fella. In the old world people'd be going around quoting his stuff every day and not even realise they were doin' it. Bit like that Shakespeare fella."

Tamsin frowned, "Shake who? Spear? What, was he some great warrior?"

Cooper laughed. But Leonid was staring at a tall white art deco style building beyond the statue.

Tamsin crept up behind him and slipped an arm through his, "What is it man of my dreams?"

Leonid smirked, remembering the previous night and kissed the top of her head, pointing, "A cinema. I've heard of them but never seen one in such good condition. Hundreds of people would go to watch films ... movies, on a giant screen."

She had no idea what he was talking about. Another example of useless old world technology no doubt, "Do you want to take a look?"

Leonid nodded and put an arm around her shoulders.

"That's fraternising with an officer," Cooper pointed out.

Tamsin grinned, "Fuck off."

. . .

As a precaution, they drew weapons as they approached the cracked and faded entrance to the old Odeon cinema. The outer doors had long since disintegrated and the few remaining pieces of timber hung sadly from frames grown soft with rot. Framed posters still hung around the wide foyer, sheltered inside from the worst of the weather. Ancient movies that Tamsin had never heard of and was never likely to see - 'Back To The Future,' 'Mad Max: Fury Road' and 'Brave'.

Tamsin stopped, staring at the sun bleached image of Disney's red haired, bow wielding heroine, "I realise it's a cartoon. But she looks like my mum."

Leonid smirked, "With a bow? No, she looks more like you. Your mother's a lady, whereas you're more ..."

Tamsin waited, "More what?"

Leonid floundered, "More ..."

Behind them Cooper rattled an enormous padlock and chain threaded through the interior doors' handles, "This is odd. Why would anyone lock up an old cinema?"

"Unless there's something inside worth having?" Tamsin suggested, swatting at a fly buzzing annoyingly around her head. There seemed to be a fair number of them flitting about in the gloomy shadows of the foyer. And a smell. Faint near the entrance, but growing stronger as she stepped closer to the padlocked door. A sweet, but metallic odour of corruption and decay ...

"Do you smell that?" she asked Leonid.

He nodded, "It's almost like ..."

"Blood," Tamsin quickly raised her Grach in a two handed grip. Without bolt cutters there would be no way of cutting the chain securing the doors to find out what was inside. Unlike the rest of the building's contents it was oiled and well looked after.

"Maybe there's another way in?" suggested Cooper.

"Are you sure we want to find it?" Tamsin countered.

The chained doors suddenly rattled as a pale arm squeezed through the gap between them, clawing blindly, "Help us! Please ... help us or ... or kill us."

More hands and arms appeared. Fingers gripping the door edges with cracked and filthy nails, poorly healed stumps where hands had once been, "Help us! B-before they come back!"

Tamsin aimed at the dark gap between the doors, "Who the fuck are you? Before who gets back?"

There was silence for a moment. Then a single quavering voice behind the screen's doors whispered, "Reivers."

Leonid spun around as a screech of tyres broke the silence outside, "This is a fucking larder!"

Tamsin crouched down, keeping well out of reach of the grasping hands behind the doors, "What?"

"Like we've done with the diesel. Leaving it there. The Reivers do the same ... with food. We have to go ... NOW!"

They sprinted out into the square as a red painted military Humvee with half its bodywork missing squealed to a halt not fifty yards away.

TAKATAKATAK!

Rounds from a roof mounted heavy machine gun chewed up the tarmac around their feet. Cooper screamed as both his legs were hit. He rolled awkwardly and landed in a bleeding heap, screaming, "D-don't let them t-take me alive! PLEASE!"

Leonid paused, as if ready to go back and do the decent thing. Another shot from the Reiver vehicle slammed into his right side and sent the tall Russian sprawling behind a burnt out Audi.

"LEONID!" Tamsin yelled. She quickly fired off a few rounds from her Grach, not expecting to hit anything but hoping to give the Reivers something to think about. The roof gunner ducked back down.

Tamsin crawled over to her second in command, "Leo, fuck! How bad is it?"

Blood pulsed from a ragged hole in Leonid Denisovich's midsection, "I-I think it went all the way through. I wouldn't want a R-reiver's bullet in me. You have to get back to the boat Tamz. Go now ... GO!"

Cooper screamed again, "D-don't let them t-take me! PLEASE!"

At Leonid's side, Tamsin bit her lip, "I'm not leaving you."

TAKATAKATAK!

Chunks of rust showered down on them as the Audi lurched from bullet impacts. Wincing, Leonid squeezed Tamsin's arm, "Ys lyublyu vas. I ... love you Tamsin Beech. Now please ... GO!"

Tamsin quickly holstered her Grach and snatched up Leonid's AK12. She needed greater firepower and if possible more ammunition. There was currently only one place she was going to get either. She slithered past the Audi to Cooper who writhed about clutching his ruined legs in agony.

"I'm sorry Coop. There's nothing I can do."

Cooper looked at her with tears streaming from his panicked eyes, "Don't be sorry. Just do it ... please?"

Without thinking, Tamsin snatched up the Irishman's fully loaded Kalashnikov, closed her eyes and shot him in the head. Then without so much as a glance at his corpse scrambled back to Leonid.

"Can you stand?" she hissed.

Leonid clutched his wound, applying pressure, "I-Ill try."

Tamsin nodded grimly, "On three. One ... two ... THREE!"

She burst from cover and emptied the Kalashnikov's entire magazine at the Reiver vehicle. Something splatted redly in the cab as one bullet found the cracked windscreen. The roof gunner disappeared, but whether hit or merely taking cover she had no idea. Tamsin cast the empty weapon aside and hooked Leonid's arm around her shoulders, "With any luck my parents have heard the shooting and they'll be all set to get the fuck out of here!"

A blur of movement behind the Humvee caught her eye. More Reivers, on foot. If they were lucky perhaps her and Leonid hadn't been spotted.

He grimaced, "Let's go."

. . .

It took an hour to reach the harbour. Twice Tamsin had to lower Leonid to the ground as she returned fire with some of the bolder Reivers pursuing them. They knew they were hunting someone. But who or how many they'd have no way of knowing. The Reivers had the advantage. They presumably knew the town, were better armed and weren't encumbered by a bleeding casualty.

As Tamsin and Leonid reached the road bridge over the River Ayr, a Reiver suddenly charged from a dark alleyway waving a huge axe above his tattooed head. A crossbow bolt in the side of the neck slammed him sideways with the force of its impact.

"What the ..." Tamsin was relieved to see McTavish jogging towards them. It appeared he and her parents had indeed heard the shooting. They had sent him to help while Ross maneuvered the trawler out through Ayr's narrow harbour entrance.

"Reivers," Tamsin panted by way of an explanation, as she strained under Leonid's weight. She was soaked in sweat, every muscle shaking from adrenaline and burning from the exertion.

"Leave me Tamz," he groaned, attempting to push her away.

"You tell me you love me then expect me to leave you? No fucking way soldier. I want you back on the boat so you can explain yourself."

With McTavish covering their retreat with crossbow and Leonid's AK12, they painfully covered the last few hundred yards to the Novoye Nachalo. Gunfire sounded from across the river as more rabid Reivers appeared on the south bank and began heading towards the bridge.

"Where's Cooper?" Ross Beech yelled from the wheelhouse. As expected he'd turned the trawler around and aimed it at the harbour entrance. Tamsin shook her head as Merida helped her manhandle Leonid onboard.

"SHIT!" Ross punched the bulkhead.

"Dad! We better get going. We've no ammunition and I've no idea how many hostiles are after us."

"I thought this was all going too fucking well."

Yanking the throttle back, Ross grabbed the trawler's wheel and guided the Novoye Nachalo back out to sea. The remaining wheelhouse windows crazed and splintered under a barrage of arrows and grapeshot. An axe embedded itself in the gunwhale where Tamsin had been standing only moments before.

They had what they'd come for. Food and fuel. But at what cost? Cooper was dead and Leonid Denisovich might soon follow. Tamsin put the other discoveries they'd made in Ayr out of her mind as she and her mother took the wounded Russian below decks to assess the severity of his injuries.

PART FOUR: SLATRACH BAY

"Just a flesh wound," Merida announced some time later, "clean entry and exit wounds. I've cleaned it as best I can. But ..."

"It was a Reiver bullet," Tamsin added.

Merida nodded solemnly. Neither of them had to say any more. They'd made Leonid comfortable in the trawler's fish hold in the exact spot where he and Tamsin had made love the previous night. How could their situation have changed so quickly?

They had food. They had fuel enough to get them perhaps another couple of hundred miles further north. But then what? The ammunition for their firearms was all but depleted. With one of their number wounded, they were now four against how ever many hundreds or thousands of Reivers infested Scotland's west coast.

Tamsin smacked the bulkhead with the palm of her hand, biting back tears of sheer frustration, "Fuck! Why did we have to go south of the fucking river?"

"You ... weren't to ... know Tamz," Leonid groaned. His wound was still oozing through the field dressing tightly wrapping his abdomen, his bare chest slick with a sheen of sweat, "where ... are we heading?"

Tamsin knelt to grip his hand, "Ssh. Dad's heading around the Mull of Kintyre then north. We might get as far as Oban before the diesel runs dry. But after what happened in Ayr it's too fucking risky to land on the mainland again. The Reivers could be there too. We need to rest up and put together a plan."

"So ... where?" Leonid winced as pain lanced through him.

"Ross is heading for one of the islands," Merida informed him, "there are plenty to choose from. Islay, Jura, Mull ..."

"And suppose we come across a nest of Reivers, mum? Or another one of their fucking larders? This was their boat for fuck's sake. We need to find somewhere small and out of the way ... to hide."

All the resistance plans for tracking down the Soteria project's key personnel were forgotten. What good would any of it do if there were no resistance left alive to see it through. Five of them. Against Zakhvatchikov, Kim Napp Gylan and Volk. Against untold numbers of Reekies, Reivers and other desperate scum. For the moment their first priority had to be merely staying alive.

Merida nodded slowly in agreement and turned to leave, "I'll go tell Ross. See what he thinks."

Leonid gripped Tamsin's hand, "You ... did a kind thing. With Cooper."

"It was a merciful thing. I couldn't let him end up like those poor souls in the cinema. Eaten alive. Besides, you would have done the same."

"Why didn't you do the same for me?"

"Because I ... never mind. I'll see if we have anything to give you for the pain. Back in a while."

. . .

"Kerrera," Ross announced, pointing to a white shape on the faded chart in front of him, "it's just a few miles southwest of Oban."

"I know it," said Merida, "we could see it from our windows when we holed up in Oban years back. When you had amnesia?"

Ross nodded grimly, "The entire island is only a few miles long. But if we land on the island's far side, here ... at Slatrach Bay, no-one on the mainland will see us. There are no villages or towns for Reivers to hide out, just a few isolated farms and an old ruined castle. There's a boatyard marked at the island's north end so we may be able to find more fuel or even a salvageable sailing boat that doesn't need fuel."

Ross, Merida, Tamsin and McTavish were clustered together in the trawler's wheelhouse late the following morning as the boat glided through the choppy green swell of the Sound of Jura. To their left, the two conical hills that occupied much of the island of Jura displayed a riot of colour - purples and yellow of heather and gorse, while to their right the jagged sea cliffs of the Mull of Kintyre slid past.

Gannets plunged into the waves at incredible speeds around them, fishing, while black guillemots and razorbills floated serenely on the surface gabbling at one another. Skuas soared overhead waiting to snatch an easy meal from any unsuspecting victim - the pirates of the bird world.

Rough sea conditions had meant that their fuel supply hadn't lasted as long as they'd anticipated. The Novoye Nachalo's engine had had to work hard to make any headway and if they didn't make landfall soon, Tamsin guessed they'd be swimming ashore. Below in the hold, Leonid's condition had quickly worsened. In the few short hours since being shot, he already had a fever and his wound was beginning to fester.

She nodded quickly in agreement, "Yeah. Let's head for Kerrera."

Merida bit her top lip and nodded. After their experience in Ayr, none of them were particularly keen on landing anywhere, particularly an island they knew nothing about. From his place by the wheelhouse door, McTavish gave a bob of the head. Sea travel didn't agree with the Reekie scout and with the increasing chop he was looking decidedly green. With his blue clan markings it made for an odd combination.

Ross turned away, "Kerrera it is then."

. . .

It was evening by the time the Novoye Nachalo steamed north past Easdale. An island that had never been much more than a collection of slate quarries, the dozen or so basic stone cottages built around its harbour had long since collapsed, now indistinguishable from the piles of shattered slate covering the landscape.

Ross slowed the trawler almost to a full stop, as the sun dipped in the overcast sky behind Mull far off to their left. If there were indeed Reivers in Oban, it would be prudent to approach Kerrera in darkness. McTavish clambered onto the wheelhouse roof, squatting precariously with his crossbow across his knees, as beneath his feet Ross applied the throttle ...

Kerrera was in total darkness. In fact for as far as Tamsin could see in every direction, not a single pinpoint of light pierced the perfect velvety blackness. She stood braced with feet apart on the swaying foredeck, the shape of the rocky coastline appearing as a subtly darker silhouette against the charcoal grey sky as the Novoye Nachalo crept forward.

"Try not to hit any rocks or run aground dear," Merida whispered in her husband's ear. To all of them, the engine noise sounded excruciatingly loud in the deep quiet.

Nervous seals, disturbed by their proximity dove into the safety of the water from rocky islets. Ross hunched over the wheel, staring intently ahead as his eyes became more accustomed to the dark, "What, really?"

"No need to get snappy."

With McTavish on the roof and Tamsin watching over the side for rocks, Ross guided the trawler slowly up along Kerrera's western side until finally he spotted what he'd been looking for, "Old ruined buildings partway up the hill, and a small beach. If this is Slatrach Bay there should be an old landing stage just about ... there."

"Is the water going to be deep enough?" Merida asked, concerned.

"To be honest I hadn't thought of that. We'll soon find out."

. . .

The dilapidated stone quay had originally been built by drovers swimming their cattle across to the mainland from the larger island of Mull. Kerrera had been used as a staging post where the herds would have been gathered together.

Without so much as a mooring cleat to tie the boat upto, Tamsin wrapped the bowline around a rock protruding from the cliff face above the quay. In the shallows, the trawler had scraped bottom on the way in with a rending sound like splintering wood. Ross had quickly checked below decks for leaks, but the hull would have to be thoroughly inspected before they disembarked.

The quay ran towards a small curve of shingle beach on their left, from where a wide path led inland towards the ruins Ross had spotted. Tamsin watched the dark hills in front of them warily as her parents clambered off the boat, leaving McTavish standing watch.

"If we're going to be spending our first night here I want to have a scout around the immediate area first," announced Tamsin. She felt anxious leaving Leonid unattended, but if anyone on Kerrera had spotted them coming ashore, they would all be in danger. She drew her Grach.

Ross nodded, clutching Leonid's AK12 in his one hand.

"Perhaps I should stay with the boat and you take McTavish instead," Merida suggested quietly.

"Yeah, maybe that's ..."

A beam of blinding white light from the undergrowth above suddenly made them all flinch and shield their eyes. Tamsin briefly considered shooting at the source but decided against it. They might be outnumbered and vastly outgunned.

And if it was Reivers ... they were already dead. Ross stepped protectively in front of his wife, but made no attempt to drop his weapon.

As Tamsin took a cautious step backwards, a homemade arrow clacked off the stonework at her feet.

"THAT'S FAR ENOUGH! STAY THE FUCK WHERE YOU ARE!"

Tamsin peered around the cove, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice - a woman's, but with the light in her face could see nothing but flashing spots before her eyes. She guessed the spotlight might be some kind of lantern with a powerful reflector behind it, "We're peaceful," she called out, "we just want somewhere to rest a few days and we'll be on our ..."

"QUIET," shouted the woman's voice again, "one word from me ... my husband and daughter will cut you down where you stand. You're not Reivers. So who are you, and why the fuck are you on my island?"

A silhouette appeared, blocking the light as it paced slowly and deliberately towards them holding a fearsome looking longbow.

The voice sounded subtly different. After all it had been twelve years since any of them had set eyes on the woman in front of them. Indeed, Leonid and McTavish never had before. But the fierce blue eyes, the blonde dreadlocks and the intricate celtic knot tattoo covering one entire side of her face were unmistakable.

Merida squeezed past her husband, raised her hands and took a careful step forward into the light, "Jessamy Beech. So this is where you've been hiding ..."

THE END OF CHAPTER SIX

The previous evening, back in Ayr ...

"As far as we can tell, all the dead are Reivers sir," his bodyguard, a North Korean major called Cho reported.

Kim Napp Gylan looked around the square at the bodies littering the car park, the burnt out military style Humvee that they'd had to take out with an RPG. These Reivers were nothing more than indisciplined savages, but fought with such a terrifying ferocity that he guessed they could make a formidable foe in great enough numbers.

His six man squad had been dropped off by Mil MI-24 helicopter in Alloway just a couple of miles to the south. It had taken them half the day to fight their way into the town centre. They'd lost one man - decapitated by a scythe blade. All very invigorating to be sure ... but more importantly, this time it had been worth it.