Apex (Ben Bracken 2) Read online

  Warmth. Now. I strip and use the towel to dry myself as quickly as possible, my eyes coursing the cliffs and the surrounding sea in tandem. I throw on every single piece of clothing I have, from the jeans to the fleece to the spare pairs of grits. I leave my feet bare for the time being. My rain coat is a light Superdry piece constructed with reversible camouflage, an expensive excess but I just... really liked it, I’m ashamed to admit. I am glad I got it now. Urban grey on one side, forest green on the other. I thought it would come in useful one day, and I’d never really had the occasion before this moment. It just might save my bacon tonight.

  The cold begins to grip tighter, despite my activity. More warmth. Shelter. Go.

  A lot can be said for building a shelter in survival situations, and not just the obvious. The mere act of building something breeds proactivity. It’s a mental shot in the arm just as much as anything else. My subconscious will be both buoyed and occupied by undertaking such a task.

  If there are cracks in the psyche, at times like these, they will be prized open an inch at a time by the cold. Cold breeds discomfort, discomfort gives birth to doubt, and doubt is the first step to death in situations like these.

  I take my longer strips of seaweed, and my towel, and again beat them on the rocks. I need to get them as dry as possible, because moisture unlocks the door to the cold, and allows it straight in. But my shelter today needs to be both warm and camouflaged, and I have a solution in mind. I leave them on the rock, and put on my coat, with the urban blue grey on the outside. In the darkness, that will bear up to a quick glance no problem.

  The thing with camouflage is it looks so blatant when you are looking for it, and when it is in a setting that it is unsuited for. But strip away prediction and foresight and it can be such an incredible deal-breaker - not to mention lifesaver.

  I check my left foot, easing my first two toes apart gingerly to reveal a neat split in the webbing between the digits. It’s a fairly nasty one it seems, but won’t get near killing me. I take the duct tape, and bind the wound as best I can. It’s a rushed job, but will probably do. Duct tape fixes everything after all. I slip my shoes back on.

  I sit again, and wedge my pack between my right hip and the rock shelf, leaving out two lighters, a bar of chocolate, Lucozade, and my knife tool. I bend my legs and separate my knees, while hanging my towel between the two. In the space between my knees, I ignite the lighter and move it slowly along the underside surface of the towel. Being a microfiber travel towel, it begins to dry quicker than expected. It is a good start. Having this heat so close to me, even such a whisper of warmth as this, is another positive injection to my mindset.

  I’m strong of will and confident in my training. I don’t dwell on the cusp of hysteria and panic. But I do know how the mind can play tricks on even the stoutest character. And these little pick-me-ups are important. As is the piece of chocolate I pop onto my tongue. That out here, right now, as my pursuers scour the cliffs high above me, is a little piece of heaven.

  I’m not prone to doubts - well, not anymore. After I was

  dishonorably discharged from the army, my captaincy, medals and respect torn from me, and my family turned its back on me, my mental spiral was deadly and near-infinite.

  I drank. A lot. I drank to flush my bitterness back, to muddy and blunt my hate so that it just didn’t claw at me so much anymore. To keep the seething wolves of my darkest corners at bay. It was only a stop gap. A temporary solution. Everyday, I would wake, and hate was back at my side with a growing sense of self-loathing. I felt abandoned. And in near every sense I was.

  But I did flat zero to help myself. Nothing. Society had deemed me a pathetic specimen not worthy of the time or effort, and my subconscious had played along beautifully. That’s why I know how important it is to look after your mind.

  I never understood society’s innate disapproval of mental health issues, and my own struggles polarized my opinions intensely - when I could think straight that is. We are deified when we go to the gym, and revel in the specimens we transform ourselves into. It an exercise of muscle care, growth, protection and near-parental nurturing. The brain is also a muscle. Why not protect and nurture it in the same way? To look down on someone who struggles with their mind seems akin to doing the same to someone with a leg sprain. The mind has got every right to be looked after just as much as everything else in your body. Look after your mind, and it will look after you.

  Forty minutes pass, before the lighter runs out, and the towel is good and dry now. I leave it draped across my lower half, where I plan to keep it until daybreak, apportioning it the duty of windbreak. With my legs covered, all human part of me is hidden from the cliffs, either by camo jacket up top or dark towel at the bottom. The towel itself, however, is a dark block of color that just won’t do. Torch light would show it up as an anomalous mass, like dead pixels in a video game, and surely instigate further investigation, which the camo will likely fail.

  So I grab my strips of seaweed, and set about a ritual that I will devote myself until daybreak. Pure sleep can wait. I might grab an hour at some point, but I need to make sure that as soon as the sun begins to rise, I rise with it. I start by sparking the next lighter underneath the slivers of seaweed. The seaweed itself is, when not saturated with sea water, so light and opaque that it begins to crisp almost immediately, curling at the edges. It smells a little like broth as it burns, and the flickering of the lighter between my legs keeps a momentum of warmth close to my core. As the strips dry, I place them over the towel. The more I place, the more my legs look like a twisted knot of seaweed washed there by an errant wave or a stubborn tide. And my disguise is ever more complete.

  Every now and then, I twist off a piece of the softly charred seaweed and chew it quietly to myself. Seaweed, when boiled or barbecued crudely like this, can be a strong protein boost, and will keep me both hunger-less and fortified for the morning’s exertions. I look up, at Morte Point, and see torches swishing this way and that through the brush, followed by audible progress reports. They are looking for me. They will not find me. I chew harder, and mentally bed in.

  SATURDAY

  5

  I am awake long before morning. I watch the reversing spectrum of the blues on the water, as the light seeps into the world once again. It reminds me that we are nothing. Without the gift of the sun, this is an arid world, of darkness, and no life. It makes me grateful, and rattles the cage of my purpose.

  The gulls wake, and as they do, I notice I am alone on the rock. The seals have vanished, possibly off on a morning hunt to find some slippery, silver breakfast. I look to the cliff, but all I can see is the green of the ferns and the grey of the bare rock. There is no human life I can see, the trails on this side empty, even of sheep.

  I move, changing immediately back into my swim shorts, remembering there’s still only one way off this rock. I wrap the towel, now perfectly dry, and stuff it in my pack, along with the spent lighters. I put the strips of dried seaweed into a sandwich bag for later, in case I need an incredibly bland pick-me-up. I do one last check of the rock for any trace of my being there, but there is none.

  Satisfied, I pace to the edge of the plateau, over the water, and brace for the chill. I dive.

  It is cold, but I am well used to it now, my body remembering what it felt like last just hours ago. I begin to swim a steady crawl, taking even breaths and trace the edge of the cliff bases until I reach a beach. I know there will be one around here somewhere - the peninsular is just not big enough not to. I think about scrambled egg on brown granary bread, with liberal gouts of brown sauce. That would do very nicely at this point.

  There, ahead. A beach. Empty in the immediate clarity of post-dawn. It is not a big beach at all, perhaps fifty meters across, but it is most welcome. I feel my toes graze sand, and I’m greeted by a sensation of achievement. I survived the night, where the odds were against me. And I learned a lot from doing it. I don’t bother to quell the smile that is eking a
cross my face.

  As I walk out of the sea and onto the sand, I observe that there appears to be a steep hillside at the back of this shallow strip of sand, with a staircase cut into it, leading up to a grand old house on top of the hill. I’m struck by the notion that this may well be a private beach, and I have pulled myself up into someone’s glorified back garden. The house is a white, wooden, Victorian monument, possibly serving at one distant time as somebody important’s summer retreat. Whoever owns it there now, is in residence, the presence betrayed by a soft lamp glow through the ground floor windows.

  I must be careful. But damned if I’m not going to take advantage of these stairs. I take them two at a time, still in my bare feet, so my approach goes unheralded. It doesn’t take me long to scale the winding column of steps. The light may be a permanent fixture, left on all night by routine, or the owner of the property might be an early riser. Either way, caution is the order. Unless the owner appears at the top of the steps, with a plate of scrambled eggs. If that happens, caution may well be abandoned.

  At the top of the stairs, there is no such welcome, and I arrive on a stone patio central in the garden of the property. I take in the layout, hoping nobody is up, and spot a side gate. I crouch, and move past a weathered white dining set that’s near fossilized by years of brisk sea gales, towards the left hand side of the house.

  Shit! Movement inside. I drop behind a stone plant pot which houses a battered conifer, which is the nearest source of cover. The movement was wispy, out of the corner of my eye. It was ghostly, like a curtain flapping in the wind.

  I peek from behind the fronds, at the bay ground floor windows of the house. Yes. There is someone there.

  Standing staring out to sea, melancholy yet somehow proud, is a tall elderly woman in a long flowing ivory nightgown. Her hair is short, her features pursed, her eyes simmering pensive. She looks lost, forlorn. It looks like she is watching in the faint hope that the sea will bring someone home. It is an overwhelmingly sad sight.

  I lower my gaze. I have no intention of moving and alerting her to my presence, and I’m sure she has not seen me already. But I do feel that I am intruding on her privacy. I want to leave her to her mournful watch. I can hold in place for a short while, I should imagine.

  When I glance up to check on her, she is staring right at me. Her facial expression is the same, and at first I wonder if she is looking at something behind me, and I have somehow avoided detection. But her eyes are fixed right to mine, locking me to her gaze, that quiet sadness boring into me. I have a sense of her loss, of an injustice that life has at one time forced her to endure. I feel shame, that my rude intrusion has only added, in some way, to the injustices she has felt. I am overwhelmed by the desire to make amends.

  I stand, holding my hands out, palms facing her, and slowly shake my head. I mouth as deliberately as I can ‘I AM SORRY’. She does not change expression, merely watches me. I take a pace backward, and then to the side, keeping eye contact. I mouth ‘I MEAN YOU NO HARM’, for whatever that’s worth. I start to move towards the exit, while lowering my hands. The lady, imposing and godly, nods softly in the direction of the gate. I have been dismissed. It is a crazy moment, a microcosm of serenity amidst the chaos of the last 12 hours.

  She is a stark reminder of why I do what I do. The honorable remnants of Britain, the oft overlooked icons of yore, the past stoicism now overtaken by something more immediate and entitled. It is a reminder of why I do what I do. It is for people like this, who hope for a different time, but whittle away the hours until that dawn with respect and honor.

  I nod thanks to the lady, who looks out to sea once more. I will not let her down. Whatever evil I am bent to avert with my current plight, I will fight with extra vigor. I sprint along the side of the house, through the side gate, along a passage between the house on my right and a thick privet hedge on my left, and I am dispatched out into the driveway. A vintage Ford Traveler sits there on the gravel, its freshly polished wood chassis gleaming. I could well be in the fifties here. Perhaps that’s where the lady thinks she is - or wishes she was.

  The driveway entrance is a thick knotted arch of privet and fern, manicured perfectly, and once through, I am out onto a road lined still with thick hedges. If an early car to be hurtling down here, there would be very little room to escape, such is the narrowness of this country road. I take my shoes from the pack, and put them on, ready for a light jog. I want to hit civilization before the world wakes up, and get a march on a quicker route out.

  A farmer’s wooden access gate appears on my right, which seems the perfect way for a more direct route to Mortehoe, so I hop the wooden fence into a field of cows. In the distance, perhaps half a kilometer away, I can see the rooftops of Mortehoe. I run as the crow flies precisely in that direction, keeping an eye on the floor for cow muck, nimbly hopping them as I see them. It reminds me of precise foot placement in areas strewn with landmines, this time only with smelly shoes at stake. I rely on the timing of my activity to be the best camouflage, but fat lot of use that was back at the beach mansion. Maybe the village is a font of activity in the early hours, especially when wound up by the search for an intruder out on the Point.

  My answer is immediate and as obvious as I could ask for. A helicopter throbs over a distant hill, the surge of its rotors suddenly louder as it enters the valley, and I see it appear over the town. I sprint for the hedgerow which frames the field, before any airborne eyes can see me. The helicopter is the yellow rescue model, normally used in emergency situations as part of the search and rescue sea response. I know it is based at RMB Chivenor, which was where that crashed plane was supposed to be heading.

  In the shadow of the looming hedge, I take out my jacket and slip it on, forest green to the outside, and pull the hood up tight. I follow the hedge and get closer to the village. I would wager that I am now approaching the north end of Mortehoe, and I can hear motors at the south end, where the helicopter is now headed, off to the right of my field of vision. This makes sense, the south end being the principal entrance and exit to Morte Point.

  They are still looking for me. And they have not given up yet. But by swimming north-east and tracing the coast, I may have been lucky enough to have been ejected from the sea at the perfect spot to elude capture. I hop another access fence, and appear an a field full of tents. A camp ground of some kind. Here I can look just like any other early walker, an outdoorsman enjoying some active downtime. I walk with my hands in my pockets, my eyes alert as ever. A few people are up and at ‘em, boiling coffee on stoves and eating cereal. They all, to a person, stare out to the south of the village, eyes fixed on the circling chopper.

  I take the common path through the camp, and as I pass a group of four people, I clear my throat.

  ‘They’re up early’ I say, doing my best annoying conversationalist impression. ‘Can’t sleep a wink when they are doing that.’

  The people, who I can identify as a family of four, with a mum, a dad and two mid-teen boys who look for all the world like they wish their dad hadn’t made them come camping.

  The dad, keeping watch in the patriarch mould, gestures to the scene with a steaming mug. ‘That plane crash. There mustn’t be any survivors because they would have done that last night.’

  So the plane crash itself is public knowledge. I suppose it would have been difficult to keep that quiet.

  I pause, and look out at the chopper myself, which is now heading off in the direction of the Point itself.

  ‘Dreadful stuff, this plane crash. What are they saying happened? Have they come up with any answers yet?’

  ‘No official reasons given yet, but the village has been crawling all night with people. I don’t know why, if there’s anyone to save, they’ll be down off the Point. I mean they were combing the Point all night and everything, but still... You missed all this? You been under a rock since yesterday?’

  On one actually. ‘I am - I WAS - a heavy sleeper. I hope they find some survivor
s,’ I say, as I trudge off, knowing full well they won’t.

  The conversation has revealed some interesting pieces of information however, namely that they think I never left the Point, and that if they kept the village manned, they would force me to stay there. Then in the morning, they could bring in the big guns to track me down like a rat in a giant hay bale. Which is what I guess they are doing right now.

  I follow a dirt road which has materialized from the grass, as it plots a steady course towards a block of buildings. As I get closer, and the tents become more dense, I see that the buildings comprise a shower block, a sort of window fronted office space, and a corner shop with the shutters half-down. A milk-float is idling there, while a man in blue overalls takes a case of milk cartons through the cracked door to the murk of the shop. The morning shipment for the campers’ bowls of Cheerios and cups of tea. Also on the back of the milk float, is a batch of bound newspapers. As I get closer, I can see the size of the front page font reveals the headline story as the biggest piece of news this area has seen in, well, possibly ever:

  “PLANE SINKS OFF POINT”

  I find the choice of words quite odd, given that the word ‘sink’ should surely usually be reserved for topics about boats. Surely the plane crashing is the real news here. I pause while the delivery man takes the next milk-crate in, and sneak the top newspaper copy through the bindings. It’s a rare chance to grab some intel, given that I am unsure of what the day will hold.