Marion led Robin on a five-kilometre trek. The first part was tough forest, but they jogged once they began following abandoned railway tracks. They took cover twice, once to hide from a rowdy group of refugees who’d been out cutting firewood, and once when a surveillance drone buzzed overhead.
Robin felt wary when Marion said they were less than ten minutes from the Brigands’ camp. If you believed the Locksley Gazette, the Sherwood Forest chapter of the Brigands Motorcycle Club were vicious thugs who sold drugs to school kids, set fire to little old ladies and terrorised shopkeepers.
He knew the Gazette was biased, but it didn’t help when he started noticing orange Ranger jackets and pieces of Castle Guard uniform strung up in the trees. One even hung upside down with a body inside.
‘It’s a shop dummy,’ Marion grinned, when she saw Robin’s face. ‘Chill out. Nobody’s gonna harm you if you’re with me.’
They walked another hundred metres before Marion pulled out a battered yellow radio. She spoke to Robin as she dialled in a transmission frequency.
‘If you ever come here alone, never get any closer than those two big trees with the bike wheels hanging off,’ Marion explained. ‘The camp perimeter is protected with motion-sensing flame throwers and bear traps that’ll snap your leg off. And unlike Designer Outlets, the guards here shoot first and ask questions later.’
‘Tremendous,’ Robin said, shaking his head.
‘Main gate, this is Cut-Throat Baby,’ Marion told the radio. Then, after she got no response, ‘Main gate, do you hear me?’
She tutted and looked at Robin. ‘I bet my dad has changed the frequency without telling me. I’ll try the old one …’
Marion turned the frequency knob and got a cheerful response straight away.
‘Sister, sister!’ a youngish male voice came back. ‘Stay where you are, I’ll guide you in.’
Ninety seconds later a guy appeared between the big trees, giving a thumbs-up sign. He was about sixteen, ridiculously handsome, with curly blond hair. Muscles swelled under his shirt and he wore an ammo belt bristling with grenades and clips for the compact machine gun slung over his back.
Marion dashed out from cover and gave him a hug.
‘I can’t believe they trusted you on security detail,’ Marion said, before looking back at Robin. ‘This is my big brother, Flash.’
‘Dad said you two might turn up,’ Flash said as he gave Robin a crunching handshake.
‘His real name is Kevin,’ Marion told Robin. ‘But someone dared him to drink Flash floor cleaner when he was eight and he had to have his stomach pumped …’
‘You need to follow me really carefully,’ Flash warned Robin. ‘One of our guys put extra bear traps down. He was supposed to mark where he put them, but he was drunk, and he held the map upside down.’
‘For goodness sake,’ Marion said, shaking her head and looking at Robin. ‘This place is a shambles.’
‘Not like Designer Outlets,’ Flash said derisively, as he started walking. ‘Will prancing around with his clipboard, making shower rotas and giving home-grown courgettes to refugees.’
Robin caught a sweet burning smell as they passed a small clearing with two noisy diesel generators. Tangled plugs and cables lay next to a puddle like an electrocution waiting to happen. They followed the cables past battered old caravans and camper vans, most of which had been jacked up on stilts to prevent flooding.
The filthiest kid Robin had ever seen whizzed by on a mini-bike as they broke into a large oval clearing. Three wild pigs were being barbecued in a firepit at the centre, but to get there they had to cross a stretch of churned mud which formed part of a track the Brigands used to race dirt bikes.
Robin’s sneaker got sucked off in the mud and Flash plucked him out.
‘You need proper boots in this forest,’ Flash said, as Marion dug the sneaker out of the mud and Robin felt humiliated by his unimpressive arrival: carried like a toddler and plonked on dry ground with one shoe missing.
People had stepped down from their campers to see who’d arrived, including a monstrous bare-chested bloke with a wiry black beard and an enormous tattoo of the devil riding a Harley-Davidson across his back.
‘My baby girl,’ he bellowed, as he scooped Marion off the ground with one giant arm and kissed her on the cheek.
‘This is my dad, Jake,’ Marion told Robin, as he put her down. ‘But everyone calls him Cut-Throat.’
Robin decided not to ask how Cut-Throat got his nickname as the huge man swung towards him.
‘Find this boy some boots from the stores!’ Cut-Throat shouted, before leaning forward and glaring into Robin’s eyes. ‘What’s this I hear about you spending the night in the forest with my only daughter?’
Robin went from embarrassed red to terrified white and tried to speak words but just made a blarrrr sound.
‘Dad, don’t be a git,’ Marion said, giving him a gentle kick on the ankle. ‘He’s a good guy.’
‘I believe that’s true,’ Cut-Throat said, smiling as he placed a hand on Robin’s bow. ‘Anyone who shoots Guy Gisborne in the plums can count Cut-Throat as a friend!’
Cut-Throat took a phone out of jeans matted with dirt and engine oil and passed it to Flash before hoisting Robin up onto his shoulders.
‘I want a picture with this heroic son of a gun! Can you believe how little he is?’
Robin didn’t appreciate being reminded that he was undersized, and Cut-Throat’s hair stank of booze and old sweat, but he smiled for the photo, and a second one where Cut-Throat pulled Marion into the shot.
Flash got his own phone out for a selfie and soon Robin was engulfed, getting his picture snapped with glamorous biker mums, a young lad holding toddler twins, Flash’s teenaged pals, an old guy with gold dentures and finally a group shot where Robin aimed his bow at the camera, while at least thirty Brigands piled in behind, shaking their fists.
When the crowd died off, Robin felt overwhelmed by all the back slaps, high fives and strong handshakes.
‘They’re crazy,’ Marion said, amused by Robin’s obvious discomfort, ‘but even Castle Guards don’t mess with Brigands.’