this book is by me nick armbrister and is out now on amazon...
Beginnings From The Edge
Oldham was once a key town in the north of England that supplied the world with huge amounts of cotton. Now the mills are gone, the light industries that replaced them are distant memories and not much remains. Things have certainly changed in the wheel of life. Not coming full circle but shattering and wrecking it.
After so much strife and conflict people are left questioning the basics of life, morality and humanity. As the atomic clouds parted and forty percent of towns and cities lay flattened, could anything else go wrong? The radiation left many areas as deserts but the half-life of Twenty First Century bombs is measured in years rather than centuries.
Now life begins to edge back to normality. People learn to put the past behind them and look to an uncertain future. One town in what used to be called the north of England begins to live again. With the town physically untouched – unlike so many others, maybe the human spirit can shine through.
A group of young friends, who had seen most things first hand, fell back on each other. There were three of them, all in their mid twenties and local to the area. They had fought in the civil uprising of 05 to 08 and seen things that most could never imagine, through the nuclear exchange, each lost a friend or relative killed or simply missing. So they had had turbulent lives. Now, for the last couple of years, they concentrated on survival. The last jobs in the town disappeared at the start of the war, now they did anything to make ends meet. Like arms dealing.
That is what Lee does, after all everyone needs a personal weapon in these times of lawlessness. Lee was a mysterious and quiet man; he seemed to have so much on his mind but when asked he shrugs it off as nothing. The other two think that he missed his younger sister, her whereabouts are unknown. She went to London with her friends to take part in a protest against the threat of war with France but the government ruled with an iron hand and no matter how many tens of thousands of people protested, war went ahead anyway. Lee didn’t know if his sister died in the nuclear bombardment of our capital city; her death will probably never be confirmed. So Lee lives in the pain of not knowing the fate of Debbie, his peace-loving sister. It seemed that her journey to London in the weeks before the exchange led to her death, she was one of many who tried and failed to bring peace with no violence.
Lee always carried his nine-millimetre Browning pistol with him; he acquired this from a member of the SAS who way dying of cancer. The now deceased soldier had seen combat, so the pistol had a history but Lee didn’t mind. He just added to that colourful history in more ways than one.
Lee never had a normal job, as he was about to leave school the civil war broke out. With school friends Sarah and John, it was away to fight and defend England against attacks by marauding Welsh revolutionaries. During the years of action, the quiet boy became a man. After witnessing and participating in several war crimes, he questioned everything he had seen and done, he was disillusioned with conflict and vowed never to kill again unless to defend himself. With the uprising over, Lee was “out of a job”. He had learned the skills of close combat, ambushing and weapons training in the dangerous days of his youth. But with his mind now made up, Lee didn’t want to actually fight again, so he fell into arms dealing, in most types of weaponry other than the really big stuff. It was hard for one man to carry a howitzer. He equipped John and Sarah with their personal guns, the exchange of arms and ammo was more than enough to bring a crust in.
Lee was of medium height with wild brown hair that he only cuts when absolutely necessary – every three months to keep it out of his hard grey eyes. Those same eyes had seen many mad and awful sights but these were unpredictable times, so many people had witnessed bad things. He had intelligence equal to any and this brought Lee through the days of revolution and war in one piece. When asked, he would describe himself as an English patriot who would die for his country and his own causes but now he would rather talk about problems than fight over them. Lee’s sign was Libra.
Sarah was the loudest member of the trio; she was brunette, with brown eyes the colour of autumn leaves that missed nothing. Her star sign was Leo, which explained her ability to dominate a crowd with her effervescent style. Her humour was her greatest ally, taking her through the tough years. Sarah stood by her two friends in the civil war; she was the only one wounded falling victim to a Welsh sniper, the shot passed through her left shoulder leaving bad scarring. Her recovery was due to the help of her pals and a lot of luck. In the conflict many wounded died to once curable infections. In most areas medical treatment was like back in the Middle Ages, only now were things slowly improving.
Sarah and Lee were responsible for organising attacks on rebel bases and supply routes, in highly dangerous operations following brutal rules not recognised by normal armies. This was no normal war where executions and random killings became normal activities, fighting was more like guerrilla warfare in short and fierce engagements. At the other end of the country, the Scottish campaign was more open warfare but just as fierce; people died in a bad chapter in British history. Total deaths numbered up to a quarter of a million on all sides.
She once admitted to having a three dozen or more war kills to her credit and another twenty plus from her war crime incidents, this was a subject she would normally avoid unless when really pissed – when her beautiful eyes clouded over with great sadness. Now Sarah helped people who had illnesses and such like that could be dealt with; a lot of people come to her with simple things. More serious like radiation sicknesses are mostly fatal, they numbered in the tens of thousands; Oldham had several hundred of varying degrees of severity.
Sarah carried her mini Colt 6mm pistol that neatly fitted her waistband. After the pain of being wounded she would rather forget the past to move to the future, her hope is of a stable future for the town and herself.
John was the “acquirer” of the group; he was able come by anything that people wanted. His devious mind allowed him to think up all sorts of schemes and propositions for others, if they wanted booze or stolen clothing he could find it. John was 6ft 2in tall, with dark green eyes, mousy brown hair, powerfully built and skilled in street fighting. As an all rounder he came out on top nearly every time; other people to John weren’t necessarily enemies – they could become trading partners. His many contacts over the local area as far as Rochdale were an example of that. When things went wrong John had to fight his way out of trouble, his broken nose showed past encounters that he’s lost. His star sign was Taurus. A placid, often stubborn man with great survival skills, his friends could rely upon John in tight situations. He was very laid back when the mood took him; maybe his Taurean side came through.
John firmly believed the past doesn’t matter, he believes it’s gone, irreplaceably lost but that we must learn its lessons or we would be in trouble if we didn’t. Ironically John had thought many times, “Let war-faring groups of people talk about their disputes rather than take up arms or the use of violence.” This liberalism was a gift that all three young people shared and would be important to the future developments on this ruined island. More than all the guns or bullets, it would bring hope. Anyhow, Lee, John and Sarah have depended upon one another in the most harrowing years of the new century. This is their story.
Sarah remembered a contact with one Welsh unit after they moved against English towns on the Welsh border area. Heavily armed groups of killers murdered, selectively raped and burned then withdrew leaving carnage behind. By the time English freedom fighters reached the area affected it was too late. From over six hundred attacks by Welsh gangsters only two hundred met with any useful resistance being engaged, from single shots to total annihilation of the attacking force. One such engagement took place on a warm night in August 07 at the height of the attacks, one group being caught after attacking a small English border town.
Leading her hunter/killer group down the main street Sarah alone kept count of casualties – eight women, six children, four elderly and three men (who attempted to fight back with pistols before being captured and executed). These were what she could see, others would be in burning buildings - thirty houses had been torched, three pubs and a full street of shops. Her armed group was the English blocking force in the right place at the right time, not to stop the Welsh but to hunt them down and to exact a swift and bloody revenge.
She remembered the unending battle to destroy their Welsh enemy, an English response to a crazy situation – the destruction of a Welsh village. Its name didn’t matter, nor did the names of the other ransacked towns or unclaimed mutilated corpses.
Sarah herself killed a family of six who hid in their fortified farmhouse. With one of her group laying down covering fire at the front of the house, the others covered front and back to stop any escape. Lee crept to the side of the building, hidden in the shadows. Up onto the roof, as silent as the killer he was, he placed a small tarpaulin over the chimney. When the smoke filled the house, the family tried to escape in a desperate gamble to save their lives and get word out – “English attack!”
Only Sarah was ready and she cut them down with her machine gun. She didn’t kill them, such was her shooting skill in the dark moonlit night and her fire cut their legs from under them. She closed the distance and shot each injured person with her same machine gun on single shot. The men swore and threatened her; the wife wept uncontrollably, the children looked on with terrified eyes. Sarah was the last thing they ever saw before she executed them. Lee and another member of her group searched the house, the torched it after finding nothing of value but spare ammo. No plans or maps of enemy positions. Then it was the same with the rest of the small village, let it be known the English had been in town!
On the way back to the border area a single Welsh sniper opened fire on Sarah’s group, killing one man with a classic shot between his eyes and wounding Sarah with a round in her shoulder. Her comrades used their skill to find the sniper, after a brief exchange of gunfire he was captured alive. Sarah watched as they cut his balls off, put them in his mouth and poured petrol onto him. He screamed revenge but despite her wounds, Sarah laughed and set him on fire before she passed out. In pain or disgust?
Unwanted images came to her mind, an English town in flames, one woman tied to a lamppost, raped and stabbed to death. Careful tracking of the enemy, a fierce fire fight and capture, torture to gain useful information and the execution of the Welsh attackers as a real deterrent to any future attacks. Then the revenge on the village… all nightmares that never left Sarah. She would certainly end up in hell for her crimes; nothing could ever justify what she did; yet all who lived and survived the mess of the civil war, knew it had to be done. Terror bred terror, atrocity bred atrocity.
Its winter, January 2015; cold covers everything it can with its wicked fingers. Temperatures of minus 15 were common and only the foolish left the sanctuary of the warmer buildings but with most of the windows gone it was still cold indoors. A hard race of people existed in what was once a populous town. Now fifteen years into the new millennium, the law of the toughest ruled. There are a lot of hunter/killer raids by rival groups, from ex-war fighters to a now minority of Asian people to the single silent knifeman on the prowl. It all happens at night.
Where once young people danced and drank the night away, long cold dark shadows hide menacing dangers, the great buildings thrown up at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries are now private war zones. On nights in January, up to ten people a night die in private wars and murders, never mind of the cold.
The old business buildings, flats and shops were now home to vagrants, the homeless and a plethora of others, a lot were people with little or nothing in terms of wealth. That can be measured in many ways and taken in just as many, from killing a man for his warm clothes to rubbing out a gang member for his automatic weapon.
If an old soldier from the Second World War saw the frozen blood, windowless buildings and slow death of the town, he would be half forgiven for thinking that time had stood still. Maybe it had in a way. There was little transport on the roads, other than remnants of the English army in ten-year-old Armoured Personnel Carriers to the odd moonshine powered car. Petrol scarcely flowed and the army heavily guarded the single tankers that arrived quarterly, petrol was used sparingly in army vehicles not yet converted to run on gas. Normal people would be shot if they tried to obtain legal fuel, so a moonshine derivative is used when necessary. Most of the oil refineries were gone, bombed flat.
The once great cultural centre of Oldham was now a dead horse, once glitzy clubs and museum and art gallery now derelict. Who wanted to party after the death of millions of people? Maybe God outlawed such things; it now seemed like that in a powerless dark town.
A sudden burst of heavy gunfire cut through the night sending streams of pretty green tracer shells into the January heavens, no one knew who or why the shooting occurred, it just did. Maybe some drugged up or drunk idiot having a laugh?
Sarah was jolted awake from a restless sleep, she can’t remember her dreams but they were bad. Cold gripped her like an unwelcome friend, telling her she was alive and had to face another day.
Noticing her stirring, John offered her a bottle of spirit to warm her body. She took the bottle and gulped a generous swig of the clear liquid. Lee was still sleeping, oblivious to his waking friends.
Sarah spoke: “Fuck this, how can it be so cold? I can’t believe it. Cheers for the rocket fuel, John.”
“Well, it could be to do with the war and the bombs going off or just the planet getting colder. Fucking hell, I don’t know.”
John had thought many times about the war, its effect on nature’s world, the loss of people, towns, etc. He never came up with any solid answers though, so his answer was the same each time. Maybe one day, he would learn all of the reasons why but he knew he wouldn’t like the answers. He wondered how the other nations in Europe coped with after effects of a nuclear war on their doorstep.
Though none had used force, many nations had suffered, with either blast damage on bordering towns or radiation and fallout killing thousands of people that lived miles from the war zone. In reality everyone had suffered, with England and France blowing each other to pieces, an embryonic Wales and Scotland hit hard with casualties in their millions. The civil war had finally thrown off the chains of rule by London but several years’ later war descended to destroy all. The French targeted Wales and Scotland without mercy, due to alleged sympathies with the English, this allegation would never be proved.
Lee finally awoke, his first words were, “Oh shit, aint it fucking cold! C’mon troops don’t stare, I need a shit now…”
“Enjoy your dump!” guffawed Sarah.
“Ha ha! You’re funny,” retorted Lee.
He got up and went to the corner, to do his ablutions in an old bucket. A curtain hid a rustic home made toilet. A few minutes passed and Lee was happy; it was a big turd! He wiped his arse on an old rag and pulled up his combats. Today, bog rolls simply didn’t exist in the old country of England; can you imagine the countries of Europe doing an airdrop of twenty thousand-crap roll? It would never happen.
Sarah picked her stuff up and made her plans for the day, not that it differed from any other. “I’ll leave this derelict flat and head up to the First Aid Station. I’ll take my winter gear, I’ll need it, see you both later.”
“See you later,” both men replied.
With that she grabbed a piece of stale bread off the table and left her pals, they would no doubt be trading guns and ammo or coming by useful items to bargain or trade. A lot of use money was now; shops were empty and gutted long ago.
Suddenly another burst of weapon fire echoed through the empty concrete buildings. No incoming shells troubled them, so it was wild fire again.
“Those stupid fuckin’ cunts waistin’ good fuckin’ ammo!” John shouted in annoyance. “What the hell are they shootin’ at, flyin’ fuckin’ pigs?”
“Well see it my way. It’s more bullets to trade to the jarheads,” Lee said.
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