‘It’s you who are deluded if you think you can have a normal life as others do.’ She sneered.
He laughed ‘I know that better than anyone, so don’t reckon on bruising me with your taunts.’ He slapped a hand against his webbing clad chest, ‘You’ve seen that I’m armoured now, and please, for your sake, don’t think to test its strength. For all I’ve said here, you meddle in my world again woman and I swear I’ll bring God’s own fury down upon you.’
He pulled a plastic case of micro-syringes out of his pocket and held it up to show her. She looked at it quizzically.
‘And now, before we part, I wish to trade for information.’ He said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Keen sat behind the wheel of the car parked in front of the farmhouse. She leaned her head out of the window for the second time and yelled, ‘Amir, come on!’
He appeared at a run from the farmhouse and crossed around to the passenger door of the car.
‘What were you up to?’
He climbed into his seat and slammed the door, ‘Nothing.’
‘We agreed to be away at first light.’
‘Then drive.’
‘Gah.’ Keen started the engine and slammed the van into gear, ‘Here.’ She handed Amir his pistol and he placed it on the floor between his feet. A moment after she slipped the clutch she saw Mann materialise in the lane ahead. ‘John?’ She stamped on the brakes and was out of the car in moments and running across the rutted ground to embrace him. ‘How are you here? You found the boy?’
Mann released himself from her grip and shook his head. He looked up to see Amir step out of the car, rubbing at his cricked neck.
‘You nearly put me through the window.’ He said to Keen, then looked at Mann, ‘This is a surprise.’
‘I imagine.’ Mann replied.
‘You seem frosty.’ Said Amir, warily.
‘I’ve come with a heart full of winter.’
Keen looked from one man to the other, ‘What is it John?’
‘Some days ago a broadcast told of the roads I’d most likely be found on. It’s how Chenko’s men tracked me. Another this morning pinned me exactly.’
Keen was puzzled, ‘Who..?’
Mann spoke over her question. ‘Ask Amir if he caught the message from Treader to you and bounced it out again, telling Russell of my whereabouts at the viaduct.’
'Dr Russell?' Keen gasped as she turned a dark look from Mann to Amir. Mann fetched a folded piece of paper from his pocket, the same piece Tate had given him earlier. Mann crushed it into a ball and threw it at Amir’s feet.
‘Then ask him why he inked a Cobra glyph into my arm for all to read. And finally, ask him why he steps out amongst friends with a gun.’
Keen swore softly under her breath. Mann gave her a searching look and she turned glittering eyes on him, ‘I had a glimmer of doubt.’
Amir stepped forward and raised his pistol, ‘I meant to deliver you to the government John, not a Russian outlaw.’
Mann narrowed his eyes.
‘And neither did I mean for the woman and her son to get hurt.’
‘You own to it all then?’ Mann said grimly.
‘John you belong with Russell, we must have a vaccine.’
Mann saw Keen stiffen beside him and grasped her hand.
Mann looked back to Amir, ‘Did Russell somehow bewitch you?’
‘I’ve all along thought it John. Even when we first met I thought you wrong to ignore your debt. I hoped you’d come to it in your own time but…’ Amir shook his head, he looked tenderly at Keen, ‘You’ll realise the sense of this once there is a serum to fix us all.’
‘A pox on your fix.’ Keen hissed, ‘This is John you’re betraying.’
‘Will you always take his part against me?’ Amir shouted, ‘I see how you huddle in corners together, not even hiding your feelings from me.’
‘You make this about us?’ Keen cried.
‘Will I ever be first in your eyes?’ Amir looked at her with a pained expression.
‘This is between you and me,’ Mann said, ‘leave Keen out of this.’ But Amir ignored him. His eyes were still fixed on his wife.
‘Do you even have an answer for me?’
‘You would see him pinned and studied like a Brimstone for jealousy?’
‘I would see you look at me the way you look at him.’
‘When the sight of you sickens me now?’ Cried Keen.
Mann stepped towards Amir, and placed a hand on his arm, ‘Listen friend.’
Distraught, Amir rounded on Mann ‘Not friend,’ he shouted, ‘Never friend.’ And with a backhand swipe of his pistol he whipped Mann across the face and sent him sprawling to the ground. A deep cut opened on Mann’s cheekbone and as he raised his fingers to it Amir stepped forward and fired his pistol down into Mann’s heart.
Mann’s head rang from Amir’s blow and he fought to stay aware as he pawed at his own chest expecting to feel a hot flow of gore where there was none. He looked again at Amir and saw his confusion. Amir spun round to Keen and took her by the throat with one hand while he pushed his gun into her face with the other, ‘You would have sent me into a fight with blank bullets?’
‘A fight of your making.’ She hissed.
‘I chose a future free of the choke for us, and I chose it over John, that is my only crime.’
‘Your crime is that you just pulled the trigger, and that choice killed you and I stone dead.’
Amir hammered the gun butt into the side of Keen’s head, she yelped in pain and her knees gave out. He dropped the gun and put his other hand to her throat. His face darkened by rage, Amir alone held Keen upright as he began to throttle the life from her. Mann forced himself to his feet and ran at Amir, hoping to knock him off balance, but Amir shrugged him off. Mann could see that Keen was failing as she weakly tried to loosen Amir’s grip.
Gunnar arrived in the yard at a run, knife drawn. Mann waved him back with a shouted ‘No’. Then with only a second’s pause, he smeared his hand through the blood coursing down his own cheek and stepped up behind Amir, snaking his arm around him to cup his gore slick hand over the other man’s face. Amir snarled with anger and tried to break free of his grip, in doing so he released Keen who fell to the ground heaving for breath.
Amir twisted around to face Mann and butted him hard in the face. Pain exploded behind Mann’s eyes and he fell to the ground, rolling away from Amir as he did so. He shook his head to be free of the agony blinding him to Amir’s next move, worried Keen may be in danger again. Through slitted eyes, he located Amir, a body length away. He was standing statue still, glowering down at Mann. His face was smeared with Mann’s blood, his eyes were filled with tears, drool began to leak from the corner of his lips and he choked, once. Then Keen stepped up beside him and put a bullet through his head.
Mann lay back on the cold ground and looked to the sky to see birds scatter in fright. He could smell cordite and hear the gun shot echoing between the farm buildings. All his troubled days together had never brought such a feeling of desolation as he felt now. Keen’s howl raised the hairs on his nape and he looked over to see her on her knees beside Amir’s body. With an effort he crawled to kneel beside her, and he held her, speaking softly into her hair while she shivered in his arms.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mann rubbed unconsciously at the tattoo beneath his sleeve, as Keen dabbed at the blood on his battered face with a wet cloth. He looked at the livid bruising on her throat, at her temple, and at the pain in her eyes.
‘Those glyphs will have to be fixed.’ She croaked, in a harsh voice.
He stopped rubbing at his arm and nodded assent. She dropped the cloth into the bowl of water between them and stood, turning her attention to Gunnar out in the front yard, winding Amir’s body in a sheet.
‘He may just deliver you straight to this Chenko.’ She turned to Mann, ‘You trust him?’ she whispered, and then smiled bitterly, ‘Trust has suddenly become as fragi
le as a wren’s egg.’
Mann stood up beside her, ‘I have to hope his word is good.’ He looked down into her face, veiled by a dark shroud of clouds. ‘You will go to Jakob then?’
She nodded and a tear broke down her cheek. She had been adamant she would go with him and Gunnar, he had been firm she would not. She must go to her brother at the Abbey and heal. He hated to part from her but he knew he was right when she pushed no harder. It told him all. He had never seen her this low. He thought of her always as a force of life, as if the world channelled through her. He remembered her in Brighton years before, fighting with gun and fist, patching up the wounded, leading their escape. There was seemingly nothing she couldn’t face down or increase and make better except, now, this. She seemed suddenly broken, in a fundamental way that spoke of defeat. And the thought that her spirit might never mend filled him with dread. He swallowed hard to rid himself of the tang of old coins in his mouth that might have been the taste of blood, or fear.
‘I will come back to you…’ he started, but she put a finger to his lips to silence him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gunnar sat in the passenger seat of Mann’s car, parked at the edge of a field. Through the windscreen he could see Mann standing at the field margin, staring out across the tall grasses where wheat once grew.
Gunnar returned his attention to sharpening his best blade on a whetstone, and testing its edge against his thumb.
Mann opened the driver’s door and got into the car, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Gunnar looked at Mann’s bruised face in profile. ‘She could narrow it no better than this field?’ he said.
Mann shook his head.
‘Still at least you know now where they rest.’
Mann nodded and they fell into silence for a moment. ‘What will the good Doctor be testing my piss for right now do you think?’ Gunnar’s question lightened the mood for a moment and Mann smiled but the dark cast soon returned to his face.
‘Why didn’t you finish her?’ Gunnar asked, ‘She scattered my family unmarked in a field, I wouldn’t have let her live.’
‘It’s complicated.’ Said Mann.
‘It seems to be the run of things around you.’ Gunnar replied.
‘Mostly.’ Mann said.
Mann dug in his pocket and lifted out a locket on a chain, which he hung from the mirror. Gunnar lifted his eyebrow in question.
‘It’s for David.’ Mann said, ‘And a promise I mean to keep.’ He turned the keys in the ignition, and the engine roared to life as he headed the car back onto the road leading east.
###
Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, please take a moment to leave me a review, I'd really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Charles Barrow
Excerpts from The Darkening Days of John Mann
If you’ve enjoyed reading The Stolen Days of John Mann then why not download the next instalment of John Mann’s story, The Darkening Days of John Mann.
Read some excerpts from it below.
The Darkening Days of John Mann
Chapter One
John Mann looked down into the ruined face of the young woman on the ground. The crows had taken her eyes. He cast a glance over to the lifeless bodies of the old man and woman on the other side of the farmyard. They’d all been dead for perhaps half a day, their heads stove in. A gory shovel lay on the cobbles nearby and Mann had to guess this had been used to end them. He looked again at the young woman lying at his feet and bent to pull the hem of her dress back down over her knees. There was no dignity in death, he knew, and she’d moved far beyond the all too human need of it anyway, into the care of the Almighty now, but he would do what he could for her. He studied her broken hand with its torn nails. She’d fought hard to defend herself and whoever had done this would bear the scars of her dying rage.
He stood again and viewed the smouldering farmhouse. The fire was doing its best to consume the damp and decrepit building but was losing the battle. If it couldn’t manage flame it could certainly deliver smoke and great choking billows of it swept the yard now, stinging Mann’s eyes and catching in his throat. It was the great pall of smoke, seen from a distance that had brought Mann and Gunnar to a halt here.
Gunnar stepped out of a nearby cinder block barn, his face muffled against the thick fumes, and crossed the yard to where Mann stood, ‘A hit for fuel and food.’ He pointed to the remnants of a woodpile, ‘And there are a score of empty hutches in the barn.’
Mann shook his head in disgust. ‘Three dead for rabbits and kindling when we are surrounded by woodland?’
Gunnar indicated the dead woman at their feet, ‘They took more than they carried away.’
‘We bury them.’ Mann growled and began to remove his coat.
Gunnar placed a hand on his arm, ‘No.’
Mann shook his arm free of Gunnar’s grip, ’I will not pass by and leave them to the birds.’
Gunnar gazed into Mann’s angry face, still bruised and swollen from Amir’s beating, ‘I meant not to leave them here either,’ Gunnar said, ‘we will return them to their home and build the fire, and then you will say some words to send them on their way.’
Mann opened his mouth to protest the burnings but suddenly felt weary and realized Gunnar was right. They were too depleted to dig graves and it mattered not to the dead either way. ‘It’s a good plan.’ He finally said. Gunnar nodded and walked away to where the old couple lay.
It had been the work of two hours to cremate the bodies and send their souls to a more peaceful place. Their ashes would scatter in the coming winter winds and the woodland around would slowly reclaim the farm and there would be nothing left to mark their lives, their struggle and their passing. Except the memory of them, Mann thought, I will keep their memory alive until that too is replaced by the memory of others I’ve yet to bury. It did seem the bitterest luck that these people had escaped death by the choke only to meet it by the hands of someone who coveted what they’d worked hard to store away against lean times.
Chapter Two
Moving at a careful pace down a cracked and weed matted road, Mann was happy to have Gunnar drive. They had put a good distance between themselves and the south coast and were moving into unknown territory now. They were at the limits of Mann’s knowledge of the area, gained from his travels visiting the old, the ill and the spiritually desperate, while Gunnar knew better the land around where they were headed, but this left many miles of road and track in between that neither of them were familiar with. More to be feared than the open roads were the towns and villages they may have to enter on occasion for food and black market fuel. Since the inked ID on Mann’s arm now flagged him as the fugitive Cobra his access to rationed fuel, sanctioned for preachers, was denied them. This meant that they would have to trade en route to their destination. As if able to read his mind Gunnar spoke, ‘We’ll need to stop for fuel soon.’
Gunnar cast a glance across at Mann in the passenger seat and didn’t see the girl step directly out into the path of the car. Mann shouted a warning and grabbed at the steering wheel as Gunnar stamped on the brakes. The car veered and screeched to a halt just a body length short of the girl. The men rocked back in their seats and sat a moment collecting their wits as the panicked girl rushed to the driver’s side window. Mann took the girl in at a glance, a teenager perhaps, she was slender and slight, with a tumble of unruly black hair, a patched blue dress and a thin brown coat.
‘Help me please.’ She cried as she reached Gunnar’s window, ‘It’s my baby, please come.’
Mann looked past Gunnar and into the muffled face of the girl. ‘Calm, calm, where is the baby? What is the panic?’
‘Please preacher my baby is ill. Not the choke, he’d have passed two hours since if it was.’
‘I’ll come.’ Said Mann. Gunnar shot him a quizzical look. Mann shrugged, ‘A preacher’s lot.’
Mann got out of the car and the girl spok
e again to Gunnar, ‘Please Sir, you too, we’ll have need of your help.’ She opened Gunnar’s door and began to pull at his arm.
‘Whoa, whoa.’ Gunnar muffled his face as he climbed out of the car ‘I have no skill with babies.’
‘Perhaps then with the knives at your belt?’ The gruff voice came from the trees behind Gunnar, as did the unmistakable sound of a rifle’s hammer being cocked. Gunnar spun around to meet the sounds as Mann tensed in expectation of a volley of fire. Instead three masked men appeared. The one who had spoken came crashing out of the undergrowth between the roadside trees, rifle raised and aimed at Gunnar. Another man appeared in the road behind the car, shotgun shouldered. Mann turned at the lighter tread of the third climbing out of a ditch beside the road. He had a pistol levelled.
‘You any good with that knife Mister?’ The first and biggest man continued.
‘Lay down your arms and find out.’ Gunnar replied.