Hooded Man (19 page)

It was clear that this man – whose real name De Falaise did not even know – had learned a lot about him, and his plans. De Falaise intended to redress the balance.

Hence these three prisoners, cherry picked for shooting their mouths off about the Hooded Man. They’d been bundled into the backs of jeeps under armed guard, brought to the castle, and deposited here in one of the dank chambers De Falaise had requisitioned for his needs. Or, more specifically, for Tanek’s.

The girl he’d taken as his plaything would end up in the dungeons soon, too, De Falaise thought to himself. He was growing tired of her. The limp rag doll impression he’d found such a turn on at first was growing wearisome to say the least. While it was true he preferred no resistance, he was not a huge fan of necrophilia, either.

Another scream brought his attention back to the prisoners. Tanek was applying a hot iron to the oldest of the men, rubbing it up and down his thigh. He’d worked his way up the leg and would soon reach a place that would cause the maximum amount of pain. De Falaise had no sympathy for him. It could all end now if the prisoner would only tell them what he knew of the renegade... the renegades, he should say.

For they now knew that the man in the hood was no longer alone, after Javier had spilled his guts about what had happened in the forest. There were at least two trusted aides, it would seem.

“A holy man, you say?” De Falaise had questioned, rubbing his chin.

“The... the one from Hope, my Lord,” Javier spluttered, the side of his head a mess of dried blood.

De Falaise struck him. “You no longer have the right to call me that!”

“I’m sorry... I’m so sorry...”

De Falaise had leaned forward. “What was that, I didn’t quite catch what you were saying?”

“I said I’m sorry!” Javier hissed, spittle flying from his mouth. “I was scared...”

“More scared of your ‘maker’ than you are of me?” De Falaise said. “Why?”

Javier couldn’t answer. He just stared at De Falaise.

“Do you not understand, is it not apparent to you? Around here
I
am God! Your allegiance is to
me!
It is too late anyway for you to make your peace with whichever deity you choose to believe in. You’ve travelled too far down another path for that. The holy man lied to you if he was offering you salvation, you stupid turd. But I will keep you alive until you have learned your lesson, Javier. Which starts with telling me more about this Hooded Man’s gang.”

De Falaise had listened as his former major described a man in a checked shirt who carried a shotgun, someone small he hadn’t got much of a look at, and now Granger, the halfwit they’d picked up down in London.

“Ah, yes, him,” De Falaise had nodded knowingly. “I thought he might be trouble eventually.”

Even including the men he’d commandeered from Savero, the man in the hood couldn’t have much of an army... Unless more joined him from the villages.

It was nothing compared to De Falaise’s militia, but it was still a worry.

Tanek left the man he was burning and turned his attention to the woman. “Please, I’ve told you everything I know,” she said, sniffing back tears. “He lives in the forest somewhere. I haven’t even seen him!”

“No need to cry,” De Falaise said softly. “No need at all.” A sharp nod of the head and Tanek was reaching for his knife – not the one he usually carried, the soldier’s knife. This one was more like a scalpel. He brought the blade up with one hand, cupping the back of the woman’s head with the other. His hand was so big it covered almost the whole of her scalp. Then Tanek jammed the blade into her left eye and scooped out the orb. The woman screamed, the cry louder and much more piercing than the man who’d endured the iron.

“You see,” commented De Falaise. “No more tears now. Much better.”

Tanek flicked the eye from the knife, then made to take out the other one.

“For pity’s sake!” shouted the younger man.

“Pity?” asked De Falaise, turning towards him. “
Pity?
Pity is for the feeble and the foolish. You do not know this, which is why you are the one in the shackles,
mon ami
.”

Tanek finished up with the woman. When he moved to the side, De Falaise could see the holes in her face where the eyes had once been. Her scream had turned into a low moan. De Falaise gestured for Tanek to tackle the next subject.

“And it is also why, you see...” the Frenchman continued, stepping aside so that Tanek could get past with his next implement of torture, a drill, “you will be next.”

The man began screaming even before Tanek drove the drill bit into his kneecap.

T
HE THREE PRISONERS
told De Falaise nothing he hadn’t already known. The people feared and hated him, they admired and cheered for the Hooded Man.

“Something has to be done about the situation,” De Falaise commented when they exited the chamber, leaving the half-dead bodies behind them, “before it gets out of hand.”

“What?” Tanek asked, climbing the steps behind De Falaise.

“I have an idea. You see, it strikes me that if we cannot take him in his native environment, we must smoke him out somehow,
non
? And the way to do that is to eat at his conscience. You do know what that is, don’t you?” said De Falaise laughing. Tanek didn’t even crack a smile. “Yes, that is it. Tanek, if all goes to plan, then we will soon bring down this ‘hero’ and his band. We will rewrite history, and I will have his head before the summer is out!”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
ODAY HAD BEGUN
much the same as every other day since the world ended.

Though, to be honest, things hadn’t really changed on the farm much anyway; work-wise, at any rate. She still got up at sunrise, still fed the pigs and chickens at the same time, tended to the fields, saw to the bees. Life was pretty much how it had been for as long as she could remember. Apart from the fact that her brother and father were gone.

Mary Louise Foster looked out over the tracts of land that formed the backdrop of her house. It was an inherited property, which strangely enough she never thought would be hers – and certainly didn’t want to come by in the way that she had. Her mother left when Mary was only small, unable to cope with the lot of a farmer’s wife, and the two kids the farmer had given her. In many ways Mary resented the fact she’d disappeared like that, leaving her father to cope on his own. In some ways, though, she totally understood. At any rate, it had meant that Mary and her sibling, David, had to grow up fast. They’d been set to work on the farm, David taking to it like one of their pigs to muck, while she always felt oddly out of place. And always scrutinised. In their eyes she could never lift as much as David or her father, could never work quite as hard as they did. So the older she became the more she was expected to do what they called the ‘woman’s work’: cleaning the house, making the meals.

Then one day Mary decided enough was enough. She’d told them out and out that they had to do their fair share of work around the home.

“Only if you do your fair share out there, Moo-Moo,” David had replied.

“Fair enough, then, Diddy,” Mary responded, folding her arms.

So she’d rolled up her sleeves and joined them again out on the farm, resolving to work not just as hard as them, but harder. She hadn’t given up, not even when her limbs ached and her feet were sore. Mary lugged bales of hay, learned how to drive the tractor, got stuck in with the pitchfork and, in return, demanded that David and her father get in the kitchen from time to time and learn exactly how a Hoover operated. Her father refused, no matter how hard Mary toiled. Bernhard Donald Foster was stuck in the past, and not just because he liked to collect his precious historical memorabilia. He came from a different generation, who had buried their heads in the sand when it came to treating women the same as men. He had taken his lead from his own father, and his grandfather before that, who thought their wives were put on this Earth just to serve them. Which was probably why Bernhard had spent so many nights alone in that big double bed. Sometimes she’d hear him tossing and turning in the small hours and her heart would go out to him. Then he’d get up the next morning and ask her what was for breakfast, when he could expect it, and all that sympathy would vanish.

David, on the other hand, had admired his little sister’s tenacity: so much so that he began to help out with the cooking, did the dusting on a Saturday and even – shock, horror – gave a hand with the washing-up from time to time. Her father looked on with great disdain but said nothing.

Before Bernard died of a massive stroke at the age of fifty-five, David and Mary had developed an extremely close bond. David had just turned twenty, so he took on the legal guardianship of Mary. Both agreed they didn’t want to look for their estranged mother – who’d already been written out of the will. They’d be okay, here, together. They didn’t need anyone else.

Like David before her, Mary attended the local school, only she excelled in the arts. When the time came to choose, though, between moving away to attend college and remaining on the farm, Mary stayed with David. He hadn’t pressured her, but she’d felt it was her duty nonetheless. There was a big part of her that really didn’t want to leave him, anyway. Every year that went by, however, it grew tougher and tougher for farmers. For them. She continued to draw and often wondered what it would have been like if she’d made it to college. Would she have had a successful career in graphic design, met the man of her dreams that she’d been saving herself for?

But then, looking back, none of that had mattered in the end. Because of the Cull.

The first they’d heard about the virus, living all the way out here, was when David had returned from trying to sell the pigs at auction.

“They’re all talking about it. They’re saying maybe it’s come from the animals. Like foot and mouth, only worse, spreading to humans.... People are getting real sick, Moo-Moo.”

“There’s nothing wrong with our animals!” Mary said defensively.

“I know that! I’m just telling you what they said.”

But nobody knew where the virus had come from. The television threw back images of cities in chaos, of throngs of people desperate to get somewhere, but not knowing where. Mary and David locked themselves away from the outside world, pretending it didn’t exist.

Then, one morning, David began to cough.

“Look, I’m bleeding, Moo-Moo.” She could see that for herself. The blood was all over the towels in the bathroom, all over the floor. Mary had cleaned him up as best she could, helping him back to bed. She had no formal training in nursing, but had done a few courses in first aid and learned what she could from books. She was also used to looking after two grown men who insisted they were dying every time they came down with something. The only difference this time being David actually was.

They had all kinds of medicines in the house – the Fosters were very self-sufficient – and she tried him on antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, whatever she thought might help. Nothing did the trick.

The phone lines were all busy, the emergency services non-responsive. Mary thought about running David into the nearest town, but by that time he’d deteriorated rapidly. He probably wouldn’t have lasted the journey. All she could do was sit with him and hope he made it through the night.

He did, but only just. Delirious, he kept asking for their father in the final moments, wanted to tell him he was sorry for abandoning the farm. “It’s down to you now. There’s only you left. You have to promise me, Moo-Moo. As long as it’s still... still standing.”

“I promise, Diddy,” Mary had said, tears streaming down her face.

Then she realised he was already gone.

Mary buried David out by one of his favourite trees, where he used to read on summer days when they’d take picnics into the top field.

It still made her sad that she’d never gone off and started a family somewhere, but Mary had made her peace with the life she’d chosen – wouldn’t have missed spending those final few years with her brother for anything. Besides which, in retrospect, what might have happened to that family even if she’d started it? She’d probably have had to say goodbye to a husband she loved, to children. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what that must be like; what it could do to you.

Mary never really questioned why she didn’t get sick. She just assumed there was something inside her stronger than David. In the end she’d been proved stronger than both him and her father, had been bequeathed the entire farm and its lands.

And today had begun just like any other day: she’d done quite a few of her chores and was now looking forward to a nice bacon sandwich.

No sooner had she put the pan on the range, standing with her long, dark hair tied back in a ponytail, than she heard the sound of approaching engines. Apart from the tractors, which she’d used sparingly since David passed away – conserving the fuel they kept out in the adjourning garage – she hadn’t heard a car engine in longer than she could remember. It sounded strange to her; not just the noise, but the connotations of it. That people were, in fact, out there in the world.