Chapter 15

A CROWD FILLED THE SQUARE IN FRONT OF THE MANOR house when they got back. Word had spread with the arrival of the newcomers. The dark clouds on the horizon from the explosions at Immingham seemed to portend doom. Reaper had radio messages sent to Bridlington and Scarborough and arranged for messengers to visit all the other settlements of the federation to warn them of the invading army.

He explained what was happening at an impromptu open-air gathering. At the more private meeting that followed, he asked if any newcomers had arrived. Steel would want to infiltrate, just as they were attempting to do with Kev. They should all be alert to the possibility of spies in their midst.

Sandra sat on one side of Reaper; Greta on the other.

‘Immingham has probably forced his hand,’ he said. ‘He was probably going to lay low and send people in, to work out our strengths and weaknesses. Now we know his intentions, but that doesn’t mean he’ll move quickly. He has to prepare. Hopefully, he’ll underestimate us.’

‘A force of four hundred armed men is a lot,’ said the Rev Nick.

‘You can always surrender,’ said Reaper.

Sandra said, ‘He offered terms. You work for him. That’s it.’

‘It’s hard enough working for ourselves,’ said Cassandra. ‘Living off the land is always hard work.’

‘It will get better,’ said Nick.

‘Not if Steel takes over,’ said Reaper. ‘But it’s up to you. He’s already given amnesty to Sandra and me.’

‘Amnesty?’ said Nick.

Sandra said, ‘At the bridge, he said we could walk away. It’s just Haven he wants.’

‘And will you?’ said Nick. ‘Walk away.’

‘Not unless you tell us to,’ she said.

‘So you’re staying,’ said Pete Mack. ‘So let’s stop talking bollocks and get on with planning what we’re going to do.’

Ashley said, ‘We have a hundred militia. We have good weapons. If it was a case of defending the manor house, we could do a good job. But it isn’t. There are farms and villages, the fishing fleets. We can’t defend all those. Neither can the people there. Steel can take us piecemeal unless we take him on in open battle. That may be our only option but I don’t recommend it.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Reaper. ‘When our most valuable commodity is at risk.’

‘What?’ said Pete.

‘People. We can’t afford to lose any more. And I don’t want to kill any more of Steel’s army than necessary. We may need them, when it’s over.’

‘What have you got in mind, Reaper?’ said Ashley.

‘Remove the head of the snake. Remove the venom. Remove those leaders among the enemy who want to kill. Then convert the others to a more peaceful way of life.’

‘Well, that’s an easy solution,’ said the Rev Nick, sitting back in exasperation.

Reaper was unperturbed by the cleric’s attitude. ‘They say he has more than seven hundred followers. These were ordinary people before the plague. I’ll bet they would like to be ordinary people again. Most of them are not killers. Most of them would probably love the chance to have what we have. A future. Peace. Good neighbours. They’ve been blinkered by a bully. Steel, and all those like him, need to be killed. Not in battle but quietly, so that nobody else dies. A knife in the back will do.’

The Rev Nick shook his head. ‘This is all before we even attempt to negotiate. This man isn’t like Muldane. He doesn’t rape and enslave. We could negotiate. You are so certain when it comes to life and death, Reaper. Who made you God?’

‘Maybe God did,’ said Reaper, and he glanced at Sandra with a smile. ‘And he gave me a guardian angel.’

‘The Angel of Death.’ Nick intoned the title with great sadness and shook his head again. He said to Sandra, ‘Is that how you want to be known?’

‘I don’t care what they call me. We’re all here because of Reaper. We’ve fought together – all of us – to keep this place going. But what some of you still don’t realise is that you can’t wait and let the other bloke have first swing. Steel doesn’t want to negotiate. He wants to rule. Reaper’s right, most people have ordinary hopes and dreams. A life, a partner, a future. But there are some bastards out there who are natural born killers and the plague gave them the chance to go and murder and rape and pillage. Well, the plague also freed us from convention. Me and Reaper, we kill because it’s necessary. I’ve tasted blood. Literally. And it doesn’t scare me any more. So yes, call me the Angel of Death. Shout it loud. Maybe it’ll scare some of those bastards out there that need killing.’

Her speech surprised Reaper. It surprised her. He reached across and gripped her hand briefly then turned to face the others, but her words had already left them all slightly stunned.

‘Whatever you two decide,’ Ashley said. ‘I’m in.’

‘Me, too,’ said Pete Mack. ‘Goes without saying.’

‘There are no other options but resistance,’ said Cassandra.

‘I’m in total agreement,’ Judith added.

Greta smiled around the group and said, ‘There can be no argument.’

The Rev Nick let out a sigh that seemed to deflate his whole body and make him seem smaller. ‘I know,’ he said, in a small voice. ‘I know there’s no other way. I just wish there was.’

‘What now, Reaper?’ said Pete Mack.

‘We send out scouts, arm the militia, hope Kev can discover the secret of a negotiated peace, or find a way to kill the bastards at the top, and wait for Ronnie to tell us when they’re coming. In the meantime, I have to go to York.’

Two teams went to the city: Reaper and Sandra, and Keira and Yank. They wore dark blue sweatshirts to cover their arms and leather gloves to hide their hands. They parked the cars well short of the castle walls and went to the apartment. They pulled the curtains closed, heavy velvet drapes that were lined. They lit a lamp and made themselves comfortable. After a while, Keira took a peek outside.

‘It’s getting dark.’

They were applying camouflage face paint.

‘It’s the first time I’ve used makeup in ages,’ said Keira.

‘All you need is a touch of Chanel and you’re ready for the ball,’ said Yank.

Sandra looked at Reaper’s face and said, ‘It suits you.’

‘Does it make me look like Sylvester Stallone?’ he said.

‘More Ronald McDonald,’ said Yank.

‘Thanks.’

Keira held up a bottle of water. ‘Anyone?’ she said.

‘No thanks,’ said Sandra. ‘It might make me want to pee.’

‘Do what I do,’ said Yank.

‘What’s that?’ asked Sandra.

‘Pee.’

They left the apartment and moved silently in the shadows of a deepening night. A torch blazed on top of the castle wall next to the Monkbar, which made the darkness beyond its reach denser than the night. Sandra went past the Viceroy of India restaurant, back to the walls and window, slipping into doorways, weapon held upright but at the ready. When she reached a point with a clear view of the gatehouse, she crouched on the pavement and squinted through the night sight on the L85 rifle. Reaper went across the street with Keira and Yank and slipped into the bushes and undergrowth at the corner of the junction. The two girls adopted support positions and Reaper crossed the road, using the buildings outside the Monkbar to shield him.

A second hand shop was on the corner and he eased himself against the window and peeked round. He could see across the top of the parked cars that blocked the entrances but nobody moved inside the walls at ground level. The beer barrel chicane through which the girls, Mary and Rebecca, were supposed to emerge, was only a few yards away. It was dark enough. Now all they had to do was wait.

Waiting was the worst part; the time when the mind played tricks and ran alternative scenarios to make you doubt what you were doing. Was that noise down the road behind him a rat or Brother Cedric sneaking closer with his crossbow? But then, when Reaper came to think of it, there wasn’t much of a difference, and he was probably being unkind to rats. Cedric was one of those people to whom evil came naturally, and no one would tell Reaper they didn’t exist. He believed in good and evil, whether through nurture or nature. For Brother Abraham, good and evil defined his belief in God. Was Reaper close to conversion?

Almost an hour passed. The shop window was full of distractions. We buy and sell and part exchange, said the sign. Laptops, CD players, hi-fi systems – if that was what people still called them – and musical instruments. He couldn’t see a lot of use for much of the stuff in the window apart from the accordion. Did that qualify as a musical instrument? What was it someone once told him when he was giving an example of an oxymoron? That was it: accordion music. Accordion? Music? He almost laughed but someone walked from the tower above the gate, across the open stretch of wall, farted loudly and walked back.

The moon shone fitfully between sluggish clouds. He stared across the road, but Sandra had melded into the background and he couldn’t spot her. A scuttling sound echoed inside the city. This time it probably was rats. A dog barked and others took up the cry. They sounded like a pack. Wild dogs on the scavenge. Well … maybe they’d eat the rats.

From the other side of the gatehouse he heard soft footfalls and he risked looking around the corner. A white face showed at the chicane of metal barrels. Reaper left his cover and lightly ran the ten yards towards the chicane, dodging the rear end of a blocking car. Brother Mark was leaning out, staring into the darkness. Reaper suddenly thought it could be a trap, but he was too far committed to back away. Besides, if it wasn’t a trap, the safety of two girls could hang in the balance.

He stopped short of the chicane and Mark, suddenly aware of his presence, almost flinched at his closeness. The monk raised a finger to his lips and went back between the barrels. The two girls slipped out a second later. They wore dark monk’s habits with the hoods up. Brother Mark did not reappear. Reaper held his gun at the ready and scanned the tower and the castle wall. He pointed and the girls followed his direction and moved quickly past him, towards the safety of the corner. Perhaps he was taking up too much room, or perhaps they shouldn’t have been running hand in hand, but they were too close to the blocking car and one of them banged into it and cried out, a small cry, but loud in the stillness of the night. Both girls stopped. He heard footsteps on the walkway above them.

‘Move,’ he urged, and the first girl ran, but across the road instead of round the corner. Perhaps she panicked, perhaps she believed the darkness would hide her, but the moon chose that moment to come out from behind a cloud.

‘Escape!’ someone shouted, and Reaper heard the distinctive sound of a crossbow being fired.

The running figure was flung forward and Sandra opened fire in short bursts. Single shots came from further across the road as the back-up team offered covering fire designed to keep the defenders hiding behind the walls. Reaper grabbed the second girl, dragged her round the corner and pushed her in the direction of the undergrowth across the road. ‘Run!’ he hissed. She ran.

Sandra and the back-up team kept firing as Reaper shouldered his weapon and ran into the moonlit roadway to the fallen girl. A crossbow bolt was deep in her back. He partly rolled her and picked her up in his arms as another bolt whisked past his head to clip the roadway in front of him. The moon went back behind a cloud and, for a moment, he felt enclosed by the night, but then someone threw a torch from the battlements and it hit the ground near him, sending a shower of sparks and casting him in its glow. The girls intensified their pattern of fire but, as he moved, he heard another bolt skid across the tarmac.

He kept running with the girl in his arms. He was soon out of crossbow range but he remembered what Abraham had said: Barry Foster had access to guns. He kept moving until the curve of the road took him out of the line of fire. He was outside the flats. Keira joined him from across the road; the other girl was with her.

‘Yank is across the road, keeping watch,’ Keira said.

‘Inside,’ Reaper said.

Keira opened the doors and he carried the wounded girl upstairs and lay her face down on the sofa. Even though he had run a good distance, she had been light in his arms. He wondered which one it was. Keira turned on the lamp and the second girl hovered in the doorway.

‘Is she all right?’

The girl in the doorway was Mary, the plainer of the two. He put a finger to the neck of Rebecca. There was no pulse. The bolt was solid aluminium, green feathers at the end of the eight inches that protruded from her back. Maybe another eight inside her. From the angle, it could have gone straight into her heart. Reaper felt sick and angry. How many more victims would he see die? He had the urge to go straight back and find Cedric and hang the little bastard from the battlements. He controlled his emotions.

‘Is she …?’ the girl in the doorway repeated.

‘She’s dead,’ said Reaper. He pushed the cowl from her face. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted. She could have been asleep. She was still beautiful. And forever young. ‘We’ll take her home.’

He didn’t attempt to remove the bolt. Just picked her up in his arms once more. Strange that now he knew she was dead she felt heavier. They met Sandra on the stairs, the question in her eyes. He shook his head.

‘Fuck,’ she said, quietly.

They went carefully but no one followed. A whistle and Yank appeared out of the darkness. Mary insisted on riding with her dead friend. She sat in the back of a Range Rover and Rebecca was laid sideways so that her head was in Mary’s lap and they drove home in silence.

Dr Greta Malone removed the bolt and left Cassandra and two other ladies who were roused from their beds, to prepare the girl’s body for burial. She found Reaper and Sandra sitting on either side of a table outside the Farmer’s Boy, sharing a bottle of wine in the darkness.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, sitting on the bench next to Reaper.

‘So am I,’ he said.

Sandra got up and Greta widened her eyes.

‘Nothing personal,’ Sandra said. ‘I’m going to bed.’ She walked around the table and kissed Reaper on the head. ‘Night,’ she said to them both, and went across the village square to the manor house.

‘It doesn’t get any easier, does it?’ Greta said. She reached across the table for the glass left by Sandra and poured wine.

Reaper said, ‘We would have got away safely but Mary cut her leg. Something broken on the back of a car. She didn’t see it in the dark and the shock made her cry out. Then Rebecca ran the wrong way. She was a beautiful girl. Well, you know she was beautiful. You saw her.’

‘She was beautiful,’ Greta agreed. She sipped the wine.

Reaper said, ‘Not that it matters. Just another life. Another wasted.’

She put her hand on his on the table. He didn’t object. ‘You’ve seen too much. We’ve all seen too much,’ she said.

‘Mary blames herself. When is it going to end?’

They sat for a long time without speaking, each lost in themselves but taking strength from being lost together.

Jenny and Tanya left at dawn to patrol south to the Humber and use a personal radio to check in with Ronnie. Cassandra debriefed Mary. At her insistence, Reaper was absent, but Sandra, without weapons and in a dress, sat in on the interview. The girl’s emotions were still fragile and Cassandra felt coaxing information would be better achieved by a feminine approach.

Adie didn’t return to the city. He knew it would no longer be safe, but he worried about the blacksmith, Joel Hardy, and the ordinary folk of York he had seen in the streets. He had been unable to speak to them but he had sensed their depression and fear.

A man arrived at Haven in a VW camper van with a sink and cooker in the back and rear seats that had been folded into a bed. He was alone. He said he was Arnie and had come from the Manchester area. Reaper glanced over his vehicle with interest.

‘I haven’t seen one like this before. Most people tend to choose something bigger. I did myself, at the beginning.’

‘They’re good vehicles and grand for a bloke on his own.’ Arnie smirked and added, ‘Enough room for two, if you get lucky.’

Arnie was in his early forties, medium height and build, dressed in jeans and a designer sweatshirt. He had a growth of stubble on his face, a shaven head and a face that was unremarkable until he smiled and showed the gap where his front teeth should have been. His lack of teeth didn’t stop him suffering from halitosis. Reaper suspected that if Arnie had got lucky on his travels, he would have had to use considerable persuasion. He wore Timberland safety boots with steel toecaps, excellent fighting boots; not a factor that was too suspicious on its own – everyone needed protection, but Reaper suspected him anyway. In the back of his camper van was a shotgun, a large kitchen knife with the handle taped for a better grip, and a claw hammer.

Pete Mack took Arnie under his wing and became his best pal, to monitor what he did and the questions he asked, and to feed him false information. At noon, two women arrived in a Volvo estate with bedrolls and a camping stove in the back and asked for sanctuary. Judith and Cassandra dealt with them. They said they were Shirley and Myra, they were middle-aged, travel worn and innocuous looking, but then looks could be deceptive. They were also treated as potential spies.

Sandra, back in her fatigues, body armour and weapons, reported what they had learned from Mary, which did not add much to what Abraham had told Reaper the previous day. Abraham was still a prisoner in the Holy Trinity Church. Mary and Rebecca had been held in the Treasurer’s House on the other side of the Minster. Foster had made it his home and headquarters. He had been attracted to it, she said, because it had been the medieval home of the treasurer of the Minster and was supposed to be haunted. A Roman road ran through its cellars and legionaries had, allegedly, been seen marching along it. Reaper wondered whether Foster actually believed the rubbish he spouted. If he did, it made his megalomania easier to understand.

Abraham had told him York contained 182 men, women and children. Mary said Foster had first imposed a curfew and put armed guards on the streets that were inhabited. Some of these guards had guns; some had crossbows. He had turned the area around The Shambles into a ghetto from which no one could leave without permission. The changes had happened swiftly, over the last few nights. Then, last night, he’d gone further and moved everyone into the Minster for their safety. God would protect them against the baleful influences of outside, he’d said.

There were about twenty children up to the age of fifteen who attended school in the Minster. There were more men than women, although she wasn’t sure of the ratio. Relationships had been formed, but Foster had separated men from women as another way of controlling them. She thought Foster had about thirty followers – mostly men, although there were perhaps four or five women among them. Most were people who were willing to obey orders without question.

‘I asked if they would be prepared to kill,’ Sandra told Reaper. ‘She said some of them would, although not all. Some, she thought, had been carried along by the excitement. But they will all obey orders.’

‘That’s the first step,’ said Reaper. ‘Obeying orders.’

‘Are we going in?’

‘We have to. And it’s not just about liberating Abraham and his people. I don’t want to fight a battle against Steel here in Haven. I don’t want to take him on in the field, either. I want to entice him onto neutral ground where he thinks the odds are in his favour. Where he will bring his best troops, his killers. The men the others follow. The neutral ground is York.’

‘So first we have to capture York?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And then you entice him?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘I’m still working that out. But this remains secret between us. Nobody else is to know. The only leaks I want are the ones that we plan. I want to go into York tonight and remove Foster and his cronies. I think we need to accelerate the action. Take the initiative away from Steel. He won’t be able to move his army at a moment’s notice, but if he hears of a way of taking the pair of us out and leaving Haven helpless, I’m betting he’d take it.’

‘Remove the head of the snake?’ Sandra said, with a grin.

‘Exactly.’

They buried Rebecca in the communal plot while the three newcomers were being given a tour of nearby villages. The Rev Nick conducted a brief service that was attended by Mary, Reaper, Sandra and Greta. Afterwards, Greta took Mary, who was still overcome by grief and guilt, to be cared for in another village that wasn’t on the tourist itinerary.

Tanya and Jenny had returned with nothing to report. Ronnie said a car containing two people had come across the bridge, circled the roundabout, and gone back. Nothing had moved in either direction since.

Reaper called all Special Forces together and gave them instructions. He conferred with Ashley, Smiffy and the Rev Nick and they exchanged and developed ideas. Ash smiled. ‘You are a devious bugger,’ he said.

‘I do my best,’ said Reaper.

Arnie, Shirley and Myra returned to the village square in front of the manor house with their guardians Pete Mack, Cassandra and Judith. Sandra, Greta and the Rev Nick went outside to join them. Reaper stood on the steps and shouted authoritatively to Pete, Cassandra and Judith to join him inside. They exchanged looks at his brusque voice; looks that could not have failed to be noticed by the three newcomers.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said, when they were in the study. ‘I was setting the tone. Sandra will be doing a bit of strutting as well, whilst she’s out there.’ He outlined his plan. ‘It’s all a bit hit and miss, but it’s worth a chance.’

Arnie, Shirley and Myra had lunch in the sunshine outside the Farmer’s Boy with Pete Mack and Cassandra, as Ashley mustered the militia. The men and women called to duty all wore military body armour and carried sidearms and L85 rifles. They looked formidable.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Shirley.

‘We’ve heard of a threat from south of the Humber,’ said Pete. ‘It’s just a precaution. As you can see, we’re well prepared for all eventualities.’

The militia loaded machineguns and mortars into the back of a wagon, which was then driven over the hill. Half the militia followed the lorry and the rest began building sandbag emplacements at the front of the manor house.

Shirley and Myra did not look particularly reassured.

Two Special Forces Range Rovers stopped in the square and Reaper conferred with the occupants and issued orders that the watchers couldn’t hear. Judith came out of the pub with packs of food, thermos flasks and bottles of water, rations for perhaps several days, which were put into the cars. The two teams drove away and Reaper and Sandra walked up the hill towards the front gate.

Across the square, Smiffy directed two militiamen in how to set up mortars in two of the sandbagged positions, and placed machineguns in the other two.

Pete Mack glanced up the hill and said, ‘Now Reaper’s gone, why don’t we go inside and have a drink?’

The three newcomers were directed into the back room of the pub. Arnie and Pete had cans of beer and Cassandra opened a bottle of wine for Shirley, Myra and herself. Before she could pour it, the Rev Nick put his head round the archway that led into the room.

‘Sorry to interrupt. Could I have a word?’

He indicated Pete and Cassandra and the two joined him in the other room.

Nick spoke in a conspiratorial voice that was just loud enough to be overheard by inquisitive eavesdroppers.

‘Do we have to do this?’ he said.

‘If Reaper says we do it, we do it,’ said Cassandra.

‘But surely we can negotiate? This Steel chap, he doesn’t seem so bad. If we do as he asks, no one need get killed.’

Pete Mack said, ‘This is pointless talk. We have to fight.’

‘Why? Because Reaper says so? All Steel wants is food, somewhere to stay. I heard he only wants to spend the winter here. Well, there’s plenty of space. His people could stay in Scarborough and leave us alone. All we would have to do is feed them and we can do that. We have a surplus.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Pete Mack. ‘Reaper says …’

Judith joined them from the kitchen.

‘Reaper says a lot of things,’ said Nick. ‘Reaper likes killing. That’s the bottom line. He enjoys conflict. But there must surely be another way.’

‘You’re talking about Reaper’s death wish,’ Judith said.

‘He can have a death wish,’ said Nick. ‘I just don’t want to be part of it. I don’t want the people here to be part of it.’

‘Easier said than done,’ said Pete. ‘Reaper’s word is law. You know that. Like Cassandra says. If he says we fight, we fight. The Special Forces girls will tell us when they’re coming. And we have the militia. We’ll give a good account of ourselves.’

‘At what cost?’ said Nick. ‘Besides, without Reaper the militia would run.’

Cassandra said, ‘Look, we can’t talk now. It’s not safe. God knows what he’d do if he heard us. Tomorrow morning he’s going to York to see Brother Abraham. We’ll talk again then. Although why he has to see Abraham when we’re facing a war, I don’t know.’

Nick sighed. ‘You won’t believe this but he’s going to do the 55 steps. Reaper has become righteous and what he needs before battle is a noon penance and absolution from Brother Abraham.’

‘Cry God for Reaper, England and St George?’ Cassandra said.

‘The man’s going mad,’ said Judith.

‘But who’s going to tell him?’ said Pete.