The Brink

THE

BRINK

M A R T Y N   J .   P A S S

Martyn J. Pass is the author of several bestselling books including ‘Project 16’, ‘The Wolf and the Bear’ and ‘The Unfinished Tale of Sophie Anderson’. He lives in the United Kingdom.

Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Goodreads and directly through his email - [email protected].

ALSO BY MARTYN J. PASS

AT THE DAWN OF THE RUINED SUN

WAITING FOR RED
(With Dani Pass)

SOUL AT WAR

HAGGART’S DAWN

THE UNFINISHED TALE OF SOPHIE ANDERSON

TALES FROM THE BRINK SERIES

THE WOLF AND THE BEAR

PROJECT – 16

THE BRINK

THE

BRINK

M A R T Y N   J .   P A S S

Copyright © 2016 By Martyn J. Pass

The right of Martyn J. Pass to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Cover design by Sam Wood.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks go to my proof readers, Tim Mason, Sam Wood, Dani Pass and Brenda Pass for taking the time to go through this book with such care! I thank them for being so supportive and not being afraid to tell me how it was. Thanks as always, guys.

Thanks also to the readers! You guys are fantastic and you’ve been a tower of strength since I started writing and I hope that you’ll follow along with me as we build worlds together. The reviews, feedback, Facebook friends and Goodreads posts have kept me going and it’s been a real pleasure to get to know you personally. Don’t stop! Don’t hesitate to get in touch and never be put off leaving a review or just saying ‘hi’, it means the world to me.

THE

BRINK

1

The baby began to cry. It might’ve been the gunfire somewhere far off on the other side of the door. It might’ve been the hammers and the crowbars desperately trying to pry the doors apart. It might’ve just been the hunger that gnawed at his little insides. Either way the piercing wail started somewhere inside the tiny lungs and burst forth with an inhuman cry, freezing the already terrified forms of the four survivors as they huddled in the corner of the pump house, waiting to die.

“Shush child,” whispered his mother into those small pink ears that were turning blue with the cold. “It’ll be over soon my sweet babe.”

The tears stung her eyes and fell onto her sons face. The gunfire grew more intense and perhaps a little closer now. The doors began to give with the assault.

“Please Henry - do something!”

“What, Carol? What the hell can I do?”

“Oh my God they’re going to kill us. We’re going to die. They’re going to kill my sons!”

Henry gripped the pitiful excuse for a weapon - a length of steel pipe - and tried to stand but his legs were too weak. His wife was right - they would die.
Eventually
. But these were savages and what he feared most was what would happen before then. Carol would be raped, her baby son dashed upon the rocks or fed to the dogs, their 12 year old, Mikey, would be-

“Oh my God they’re breaking in!” cried Carol as a shaft of the morning light cut through the dark and burned their eyes. The gap between the doors was big enough to let them see the hunters and their horrific faces, twisted and distorted with maniacal blood-lust, leering in at them. Worse than all that, in their waking nightmare, were their laughs, their evil cackling and whimpering as they realised their prize was in sight.

“Come on you bastards!” quavered Henry as he tried to summon up the last of his courage. “I’m waiting for you!”

Carol gripped her baby and her young son close to her bosom and wept. She prayed for a swift end for her children no matter what happened to her. With only a mother’s love her fingers began to tighten around her baby’s neck. They’d not take him alive, she muttered to herself over and over again.

Suddenly there was a flash of light that broke into their tomb and struck the far wall behind them sending fragments of stone skittering in all directions. The savages released their hold on the door and the two sides slammed shut, plunging them back into darkness with only the impression of light etched onto the inside of their eyelids.

“What happened?” said Carol, releasing her grip upon her baby’s fragile neck. It resumed its crying almost immediately.

“I... I don’t know...” said Henry. The black space stunk of ozone, of scorched chemicals and burned rock.
Laser
fire
.

Outside the noise of battle diminished, but underneath the rumbles and the muted cries was a sharp hissing sound that silenced the savages and their hoarse shouts until all was quiet. The sudden noiseless chamber was almost as horrifying and they sat there motionless.
Waiting
.

“It’s stopped,” whispered Carol after a minute had passed.

“What was it?” said Henry.

When three knocks sounded on the door Henry felt the terror jolt his body upright. It was heard twice more before he rose to his feet and approached the doors, gagging on the fumes of laser fire that poured in from the gaps.

“Who... who is it?” he managed to stammer.

“They’re dead - open up,” came the reply.

“Who are you?” he said again.

“My name’s Alan. I was sent to find you by Captain Teague. You’re Henry, right?”

“Oh my God,” he said to himself. “They came.”

The doors were heavily damaged by the crowbars and the impacts of the laser fire but with help from Alan they opened wide enough to let the four terrified but relieved survivors out into the daylight.

Alan stood there cradling the steaming rifle in both arms, smiling as they stepped over the bodies of the dead and came towards him. He wore simple hiking trousers and a military smock of slate grey and looked more like a mountain man than a soldier. He wore a woollen hat over a head of thick black hair that almost touched the edges of his unkempt beard and on his feet were everyday walking boots laced to the shins.

“Where’s your team?” asked Henry, squinting in the sun. Carol came up behind him leading Mikey along with her.

“This is it - except for her,” he replied, whistling a single note until behind him an enormous figure padded out from the bushes. It was a dog and not a wolf, that much could be seen from its shape, but the size of her was unnaturally large and its back was on a level with Alan’s waist. It stood next to him, panting, and her eyes fixed on Henry with a deep crimson glare.

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Carol, pulling her baby tighter to her chest. “What is it?”

“Her name’s Moll,” said Alan, patting the animal’s back. “She’s friendly.”

The beast licked the blood from her lips and sat back on her haunches, gazing up at her master.

“We need to move,” he said, jacking a clip from the rifle and exchanging it for a new one. “The noise will draw the others. I was able to surprise this lot but we won’t be that lucky again.”

“How far away is the Captain?” asked Henry.

“Far enough. I’ve got a jeep on the other side of the hill but only enough fuel to get us within the perimeter of the camp. After that we’re walking.”

“That’ll do for us,” said Carol, giggling with nervous energy. “Just lead the way, Alan.”

He smiled and his blue eyes caught the early morning light and filled them with fresh hope. A moment ago they were about to die and this giant of a man had saved them. Anything seemed possible now.

“Moll, off you go,” he commanded and the dog leapt to its feet and headed off into the brush. Then he cocked the rifle and indicated that they should follow.

Henry helped his wife and son past the smouldering dead - at least twenty - and wondered if they were already dead themselves. It felt like miracles had died when the sun had been snatched from space but, like the sky above them, perhaps the dawn had finally come.

The jeep was hidden under a scrim net and as they approached it Moll sniffed the air and growled.

“Where?” asked Alan, gathering up the ends of the cover and stuffing it into the back. The dog took a few steps towards the other side of the vehicle and barred her teeth. To Henry he said, “Can you drive?”

“Yeah,” he replied. Alan handed him the fob and raised his weapon, following Moll until she disappeared into the bushes. Henry got into the driving seat and started the engine as Carol and the children climbed into the back seat. “You guys okay?” he asked.

“I think so,” she replied.

After a moment Carol spoke. “Can we trust him?”

“What choice do we have?” he replied. “Teague sent him. He trusts him.”

“But
only
him. Why not a team?”

“You know they’re stretched thin. Teague didn’t want us to go and we insisted. We’re lucky he sent anyone.”

“We were doing it for them, for everyone.” Henry reached over a placed a hand delicately onto his wife’s knee. “It’s not like we were being selfish.”

“I know, my dear,” he replied. “So does Teague. I just want to get you guys back safely and this is our best chance.”

“He killed them all,” she whispered. “He did it with just a rifle and a dog.”

Henry laughed nervously. “Yeah. Too good to be true, eh? I’d heard there were a few Special Forces guys left alive so maybe he’s one of them.”

“What else could he be?”

Alan followed Moll into the woodland and crouched down as he neared the other side where a man-made clearing could be seen. If he’d have heard Henry’s best guess at his identity he might have grinned, but the nearness of a Scavenger camp - for that was Teague’s best term for what they were, kept him focused. The dog stopped just as he did and turned its enormous head back to look at him.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s always me,” he whispered. “When’s it your turn to get shot?”

Moll opened her mouth wide, displaying her gleaming white teeth in a kind of weird grin.

“It’s not funny, Moll. It’s about time you took one for the team. This smock is new and I’m growing attached to it, I don’t want to have to stitch up another row of bullet holes.”

He dropped onto his stomach and began crawling amongst the foliage until the nose of his rifle touched the very edge of the clearing. Then, lifting his eye to the digital scope, he swept the area very slowly until he counted at least six women on the far side who were tending great big cooking pots suspended over fire pits. Here and there a few children ran around them, battling each other with sticks and dustbin-lid shields and whooping like children do.

“No men,” he whispered to the animal. “Either we killed them all or there’s more out there somewhere.”

At that point, as if summoned, three older men came wandering into the clearing dragging the remains of a deer that’d been caught in a trap. Trailing behind it was the snare wire that had cut into its neck like a garrotte and, judging by the smiles on their faces, the old men were pleased with their catch.

Levelling the rifle, Alan fingered the trigger and thought about finishing the task to satisfaction. Moll had dropped onto her belly likewise and was now breathing heavily next to his ear, panting and appearing to be thinking the same thing.

“What do you say, girl? Shall we make the place safer for the rest of the world?”

The dog turned and lapped his face with its enormous wet tongue. Alan eyed the men and the women and tried to find the courage to pull the trigger. But was it courage, he thought, to murder them in cold blood? 6 years ago he’d never even killed a man and now he’d killed-

He looked down the scope and felt the twinge deep in his heart. He could still see the man’s face as the laser punched through his chest, see the expression, the horror at realising he was about to die. There was a burning fear in him the moment the body dropped and it felt like he was a kid again and he’d just broken something precious. It was a strange kind of horror to realise that he’d smashed something and he couldn’t fix it, that there’d be serious consequences and they were moments away.

When they didn’t arrive, the guilt came instead. It was the same with the second and the third and onwards right up until he’d ambushed the gang trying to kill Henry and his family. He could remember each one as he pulled the trigger. Where he stood. What he was doing. Where his eyes were looking. Snap-shots of time. Frozen images that he’d never forget.

He looked past the scope and let his finger move away from the trigger.

“I guess not then. You always were too soft on ‘em.”

Henry saw them return from the bushes and moved aside. Moll leapt into the back with the scrim netting and Alan climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Anything?” asked Carol.

“Nothing,” he replied. “Is the baby warm enough? There are blankets underneath your seat if you need them. It’s going to get cold driving in the open like this.”

She rummaged beneath her and found them, handing one to Mikey and wrapping the other around herself and the baby.

“Thank you,” she said, placing her free hand across the vehicle and upon his shoulder. “Thank you
so
much.”

“We’re not home yet,” he replied. “Just keep your heads down and do what I say and we might just make it in one piece. Once we’re past the junction we should have clear roads home.”

The engine hummed and whined as they set off. It was a hybrid military jeep and could run for a short time on combustible fuel as well as solar power stored in its cells. But like Teague and the others were starting to learn, this equipment would soon be a thing of the past despite its futuristic appearances. Even his rifle, one of the Mk III’s, was suffering from poor maintenance and with such precision components inside its smooth shell there was little or no hope of replacement parts any time soon. The car, like his rifle, would soon be useless, perhaps even less than useless.

“Is it as bad as they say?” asked Henry once they’d joined the pitted main road that led north. “Is it really falling apart?”

Alan shrugged in a friendly way but never took his eyes off the road or the rear-view mirror. He had both hands firmly on the wheel and he shot glances this way and that as if he were snap-shooting some invisible target that stalked them.

“The short answer is yes, I suppose,” he replied.

“But it’s been over five years. Shouldn’t the government be doing something to restore order?”

“I don’t know. Teague hasn’t heard from Command for over six months now and the last message-”

Alan stopped himself. The last message had been a garbled cry for help from someone who wasn’t the acting PM and it’d been cut short by gunfire and sudden radio silence. He didn’t want to tell them that. “Let’s just say it wasn’t too helpful.”

“So we’re on our own?” said Carol.

“Not alone,” replied Alan. “There are still plenty of survivors and more are coming in week after week.”