Chapter 15: Mark of the Beast by Stephen Simpson

 

They spend their last hour together in silence.

Lydia was feeling a little anxious that they were all having dreams of her guiding them when she hardly knew what she was doing herself. It was a lot of weight on her shoulders.

When they reached Acton Rhetta Urson it was hard not to see where the data centre was. A large, white, five storey building taking up an area as big as all the houses in Alton Stine side-by-side, and back-to-back filled the horizon. It was as large as a village. White smoke plumed out of several chimney stacks on top of this building and a blue hue surrounded it.

Lydia told Giovanni to stop about a mile away, next to a wooded area. Snow spun in furious swirls in the air around the Land Rover.

They climbed out of the vehicle, careful not to slam the doors. Intuitively they pulled their jackets closer to their bodies to keep out the cold, frigid wind. Hunkering down between the snow-covered verge of the road and the vehicle, they surveyed the road ahead. The continuous snowfall limited their visibility.

Lydia said, “Ahead, at the end of this road, there’s a guard house.”

Natasha pulled binoculars from her backpack.

“What do you see?” Mark whispered.

“One guard. Half asleep.”

Liam took a deep breath, held it, then let it go. “What if there’s more than one? The other could have gone on a patrol, or something.”

Snow was settling on their shoulders, clung to their beanies and hoods. The tip of Mandy’s nose was turning bright red.

It was easy getting here, but now that they were standing on the precipice it was hard taking that next step. They knew freedom of making their own choices, and not being manipulated by a few, awaited them after they had finished what they had come here to do. They would see their families again. People would no longer be walking around as if they were in a trance. In this building there were a number linked to each and every person of Danglen. A number that was linked to their barcode. This data centre held information of their names, addresses, dates of birth, citizenships, biometrics, banking details, income, education, debt, digital identity certificates to sign documents electronically, and so much more. There was probably some intricate code that controlled each individual person that had received the barcode and the chip. A code that would keep them compliant and obedient. The only way to bring back the ones they loved, was to blow up this building. There was no choice.

They jumped with fright when they heard a gunshot, and a second later the tarmac in front of them sprayed a curve of black stones in the air as the tar disintegrated. A loud, distorted, mechanical voice said over a loudspeaker, “This is a restricted area. Turn around and go back the way you came.”

Lydia glanced at Giovanni. “You should give the keys to Mandy, so that she can drive the Land Rover away, so that it looks as if we're leaving, while we run and hide between the trees, until we have made a proper plan.”

“No way,” Mandy said, either shaking because she was cold or from shock, “I want to stay.”

Liam agreed with Lydia, “You’re the youngest, you should go.”

She gave him an insulted look. “Also, in case you didn’t put two and two together, I can’t drive yet because of my younger age.”

“Okay, so who is going to pretend to drive away?” Lydia asked.

Natasha suggested, “Why don’t we drive closer?”

“That would be suicide,” Liam said.

Mark disagreed, “Staying here is not an option. Through the trees, there is an embankment leading down to the water’s edge. Follow the dam to a chain linked fence. There are bolt cutters in my duffel bag. Here. Take it.” He pushed the bag closer to Liam. “Mandy, Giovanni, Natasha, and I will distract them from this side. You, Shaun, and Liam go.”

“Just the three of us? “Lydia asked.

He gave her a small smile. “Right now, at this moment, there isn’t safety in numbers. There’s safety in it just being the three of you. It will be easier to get into the building unnoticed, than it would be with a group of seven.”

Lydia shook her head, frowning.

Liam pulled her up by the arm. “Come. Let’s go.” He was still holding on to her arm as they ran the short distance over the snow mottled verge and then they disappeared into the shadows between the trees.

Shaun followed them.

Giovanni and the others got back into the Land Rover, and slowly he drove it down the narrow tarmac toward the guard house at the end of the road. The glaring spotlights that were pointed at them got brighter as they got closer, and Giovanni had to squint to see where he was going. He stopped at the boom barrier that blocked their access through the controlled point of entry, and held up both his hands, palms facing outwards.

Two soldiers were standing on the other side of the boom gate in a hunched over posture. Their faces were pushed forward, closer to the barrel of the weapons they held at the ready in both their hands. One of them yelled, “Step out of the vehicle. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

In the back Mandy, Mark, and Natasha kept low as they jumped from the back door. The snow crunched under their feet as they landed, and they hesitated for a moment because the sound was loud in the stillness.

Mark moved to the side and without moving his entire body from behind the vehicle, he reached for the petrol cap. The cap was shut tight, and he grimaced as he gave it everything he had, to twist it open. Without looking, he held his other arm out, and without a word, as if she knew his thoughts and exactly what he wanted, Natasha placed a grenade that she had pulled from her duffel bag in his palm.

As he removed the pin from the grenade and dropped it in the petrol tank, he screamed, “Now!” and ran for the ditch by the side of the road behind the Land Rover.

Giovanni yanked open the door and jumped. A shot went off and a bullet lodged into the seat he had vacated a mere second ago. As if in slow motion, Giovanni noticed the snow around him stir erratically as he ran through the flurries. Almost at the back, he tripped and fell, shoulder first into the ditch just as there was a loud noise, and the Land Rover was catapulted into the air while at the same time an expanding fire cloud filled the sky.

The heat washed over the four of them lying flat on their stomachs in the wet, damp ditch. Their arms were folded over their heads and their faces were pushed into the mud. There was a sudden, immensely hot wave of air and it felt as if the clothes and hair were being scorched from their bodies.

Huge shards of metal started to fall from the sky all around them as the pieces that were blown up, had no choice but to come back down again.

From across the road, one of the soldiers screamed as a fragment slivered through the flesh of his upper arm and lodged into the bone.

Giovanni reached for his calf where he felt a stinging pain and thought he must have scraped it against a branch or a rock in the ditch when he tripped and fell but when he brought his hand back it was slick with blood. He said, with a look of confusion on his face, “I guess I didn’t trip. I was shot.”

“What?” Mark crawled closer to him. “Let me have a look.” He dragged his backpack closer. “I can’t have a proper look, but it looks as if the bullet went straight through.” He rummaged in the duffel bag and pulled out a dressing that he put over the wound, over the torn material of Giovanni’s jeans and then wrapped a bandage around the leg to keep the dressing in place. “You’ll live,” he said as he patted Giovanni’s knee.

From across the road, they heard voices shouting and someone giving orders as more soldiers arrived.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Mandy said.

“They know exactly where we are, so we can’t stay here.” Natasha pulled a handgun and an assault rifle from her duffel bag. She handed the handgun to Mandy. “Do you know how to use it?”

Mandy looked at the gun in her hands. From the action movies she had watched, it looked easy enough. She turned the gun in her hand. “Yeah. I wouldn’t know how to reload it, but I can point and pull the trigger.”

Mark was on his knees, peeking over the ridge of the ditch toward the building across the street.

“Well?” Natasha asked.

Mark nodded. “Let’s get this party started.”

Giovanni agreed, “Before more of them arrives.”

Mandy asked softly, “Giovanni, how did it feel to get shot?” Her usual bravado was gone.

“Like a sting,” he told her. “But you’re not going to get shot because you are going to stay right here and cover the rest of us.”

“But…” She started to say as Mark and Natasha leapt up and started running forward, bullets spewing from their rifles.

They were barely out of the ditch when the tarmac shattered in front of them. They split up, Mark zagging off to the right, and Natasha zigging to the left.

With a rush of adrenaline pumping through his veins, Giovanni screamed a guttural sound and jumped over the ledge of the ditch. In two long strides he was across the road, hunkering behind a lone tree on the sidewalk. His body was pressed hard against the rough edges of the bark, and his calf throbbed with every beat of his heart.

Almost at the tree, Natasha slipped on a patch of ice and fell bottom first on the road. She waved Mark back. “No!” Bullets tore off bits of road all around her.

Giovanni hunched over and ran over to her, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her behind the tree. There was no way he was going to leave her. She was his stepsister and he had known her from when they were both five years old. He felt the wind of a bullet rush past his ear as he scrambled to get back behind the tree.

Natasha was bleeding from a multitude of superficial cuts on her face from when the tarmac shattered around her. The wounds looked like shimmering freckles in the glaring spotlights that lit up the night sky as if it was day. She waved him off. “Leave it!”

From across the road, Mandy kept the soldiers busy by shooting a round off at equal intervals as if she was counting from one to ten between every shot. The ridge in front of her formed clouds of snow and mud as bullets blasted into the soft soil in response from the soldiers behind the boom gate.

“This should be easy,” Natasha said as her lips pulled tight in a grim line. She leaned around the side of the tree trunk and pulled the trigger. A blast of bullets sprayed from the muzzle of her rifle, and she saw two soldiers fall to the ground. “Two down,” she said as she ducked back behind the tree.

Splinters of bark were flying in the air around them as the soldiers shot back.

There was a cry from across the boom gate, and Giovanni sneaked a peek just as Mark crumpled down to the ground. Quickly he turned back to stop Natasha from looking, but she had already seen.

Natasha filled with a stillness so profound that she could feel the whole universe inside of her. She seethed, as her words left her mouth through clenched jaws, “You know, Giovanni, I’ve always been good at adapting to my world. I was good at figuring out my place in any circumstance. When they took mum first, that was bad and then when your dad decided after you ran away to get the barcode because he thought it couldn’t be all that bad, I still had Mark. I realised then that having Mark was all that really mattered.”

Giovanni realised that she was going to do something crazy. He touched her arm. “I’m sorry. You’ve always known that when I can’t deal with something, I run.”

She craned her neck to look up at him, and her smile was brief. “At least you stuck around this time.” Her eyes darted from his face to the snowy road behind him and back again. “I don’t think we can win this war.”

“After we’ve blown up this building, everything will go back to normal,” he pleaded.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Evil will always be more powerful than good. The wicked will always push down the virtuous, and it doesn’t matter what we do.” Her finger was poised on the trigger of her assault rifle, moving up and down in small movements as if she was gathering her courage. With a sudden blood curdling scream she erupted from behind the tree trunk and ran straight toward the soldiers still standing on the other side of the boom gate as if they thought they were invincible. The rapport from her gun was loud and continuous as she kept her finger on the trigger. When a bullet hit her in the eye and sped through her brain, exploding out the back of her skull, she had no idea it was happening.

Mark cried, “No!” The o echoed for a while.

Giovanni felt his eyes starting to burn from the tears he was forcing back. She thought Mark was dead, but he was only wounded. He yelled, “Mark, don’t do anything stupid!”

Mark was already up, dragging his left leg behind him and shooting without stopping, moving the muzzle of the gun from side to side to get a larger coverage.

Soldiers scrambled for cover and shot back.

Mark’s body convulsed as bullets hit him straight on. His arms flailed in the air as if he was a puppet whose strings had been cut. He fell to the ground slowly and gracefully. The splatters of blood that erupted from his body hung in the air, dancing with the snow-white flurries, and landed on the ground around him like an abstract splatter painting.

Giovanni was paralyzed with shock. This was not how he imagined this would go. Did he really think the seven of them would walk away from this with only a few minor cuts and bruises? He felt a shudder of horror. Then panic. Then confusion. He wanted to run. Run as far away from here as he could. He glanced across the road and saw Mandy lift her head to shoot off another round. He realised she could not have a lot of bullets left and she said she did not know how to reload a gun. He could not run. He had to stop being a coward. This time he did not have a choice, and he had to stay. No matter what happened.

They stared at each other across the road for a long couple of seconds, and then Mandy dropped the gun and put her hands up in the air. “Don’t shoot,” she yelled. “I’m coming out.”

Continue reading Chapter 16/17

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