Simon Clark - The Fall

‘Who, Jud?’

‘No, I’ve chosen Zita.’

‘Zita? Why?’

‘She drove tractors and an assortment of farm vehicles when she was in her teens.’

‘But—’

‘She’ll do a good job, Mr Baker.’

Sam swallowed his doubts. Zita was extremely capable. Indeed, every man and woman there had worked minor miracles, but it seemed as if Carswell was expecting positively superhuman performances from them. All Lee had to do was to catch one of the rocket-tube ‘wings’ on the barn-door frame as he backed the bus out and that would be 20 hours of work down the drain. Again Sam had the nagging suspicion that Carswell’s battle plan was too complex for it to work – especially without the time to practise.

‘You, Sam. You’ll drive the Range Rover. Jud Campbell will be in the passenger seat. He’ll operate the switches that will fire the rockets. You’ll have a couple of soldiers in the rear seats armed with rifles. I suggest you stuff your ears with cotton wool; it’ll get very noisy. Any questions?’

Yes… loads.

The light-bulb igniters haven’t been properly tested. What if the rockets don’t fire?

What if the rocket-tube wings are too flimsy after all and simply drop off when the car goes over a bump?

What if the cars become stuck in snowdrifts?

Can four or five hundred men and women stop three thousand battle-hardened barbarian warriors?

That was just the start of the questions. Sam could think of hundreds more. But it was all too late in the day now.

What he heard next came as something of a shock. He should have anticipated it, but somehow in the white heat of the conversion work he’d pushed the eventuality to the back of his mind.

Carswell said, ‘It’s been four days since the Bluebeards attacked Casterton. I don’t envisage them delaying any longer, on the off chance the town could call on help from outside; therefore, I’m going to have the vehicles moved up to the amphitheatre car park tonight.’

‘Tonight?’

Carswell gave a curt nod. ‘If they come at first light tomorrow we need to be ready.’

Sam forced a smile. ‘So this is it. The eve of battle. Hell of a Christmas present, isn’t it?’

Dawn. Saturday 25 thDecember 1865 – Christmas Day.

‘God rest ye, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay… for Jesus Christ our Saviour was born this Christmas Day…’

The words came from Ryan Keith. He’d hardly said anything since the death of his wife. Now the Christmas carol wasn’t sung so much as grunted syllable by syllable.

They were at the amphitheatre. It was eight in the morning. From the grey sky only the occasional flake of snow spiralled down with a luxurious laziness as if enjoying the slow glide to earth.

Sam watched Ryan. The man had armed himself with a double-barrelled shotgun. He didn’t say why he was here, but Sam hoped it was to inflict some damage on the Bluebeards. Not on himself. Nor on any of the other townsfolk and soldiers now preparing the vehicles that were dotted around the car park.

For a moment Sam actually regretted that the conversion on the vehicles was finished. While they’d been hammering, sawing, splicing away there in the brightly-lit barn they could make believe that the eventuality they were preparing for would never come.

But here it was.

Crunch time.

This was Casterton’s only line of defence against the Bluebeards. A fragile line at that. One that looked insignificant there on the car park that was surrounded by several hundred acres of snowbound meadows.

Sam allowed his gaze to travel to the huddle of vehicles. He saw the bus with its stumpy ‘wings’ housing the rocket-launcher tubes that gleamed a brassy yellow in the daylight; Carswell had decided the bus should be named, and he’d ordered Zita to paint Thunder Child on the side in chunky black letters. There too was the Range Rover with its own small ‘wings’.

Mounted on the roof of the ice-cream van was a muzzle-loading cannon, which as weapons went was already pretty much an antique in 1865. Parked in a line by the visitors’ centre were half a dozen cars. All of this formed Carswell’s army for his Operation Rolling Vengeance (named tongue-in-cheek, Sam guessed).

Sam turned his attention to the strip of land between the river and the rock face, along which the barbarians would come. It was nothing more than a grassy bank now buried beneath five or six inches of snow. Here and there were deeper drifts that threatened to bog down an unwary driver. At the top of the cliff Sam could see the edge of the forest. From here, with its dark, leafless branches, it looked like a heavy black fringe of hair running along the cliff. Half a dozen crows circled high above the trees themselves, their mournful cries filling the air.

Just at that moment Sam could picture the Bluebeards’ surprise at seeing the approach of this motley bunch of vehicles.

Somehow he couldn’t believe their reaction would be one of fear.

They were more likely to burst out laughing.

Along the track that led to the main road came the cavalrymen with their long steel-tipped lances held vertical. Behind them came horse-drawn carts that carried the foot soldiers, together with barrels of wood alcohol that would serve as a Victorian equivalent of napalm.

‘Ah, good.’ Carswell walked briskly up to Sam. He was dressed in a long tweed coat and riding boots. ‘You’re ready with the Range Rover?’

‘All the rockets are in the tubes, ready to fire.’

‘You will remember that the light-bulb triggers will work only once, then the whole trigger assembly has to be replaced when you come back to reload?’

Sam nodded. ‘We’re ready to go when the Bluebeards show themselves.’

‘Good man. Ah, here are the foot soldiers. Now, I don’t intend to deploy these fellows in the battle unless I have to. They’re our insurance if Johnny Bluebeard should happen to break through.’

Sam saw Jud catch his eye. Carswell’s plan sounded so slick. As if nothing could go wrong. But Sam remembered clearly enough his first demonstration of the electric rocket trigger he’d devised. It hadn’t fired.

Nevertheless, they’d all agreed to put their lives in Carswell’s hands. His plan seemed plausible; certainly it was the only one with any chance of success. Love it or hate it, they were stuck with the thing now.

Carswell pulled on his leather gloves. ‘I’ll see about having fires lit. This cold’s going to be a devil of a problem if we have to wait long. At least it’s no longer snowing to speak of.’

He walked away to where the soldiers were unloading their equipment from the carts.

‘Well,’ Sam said with a grim smile. ‘December 25 th. Merry Christmas, Jud.’

‘And a Merry Christmas to you, Mr Baker.’ Jud’s smile failed on his face. He looked a worried man. ‘Maybe we should have fortified some of the buildings in town after all; just in case…’

‘Don’t you think these vehicles are going to do the job?’

‘On paper they should.’

‘So Carswell was fond of repeating. But we’re not fighting this battle on paper. It will be on 50 acres of snow and ice.’

‘You know, Sam, if the Bluebeards do attack and it goes badly for us, there might come a time when we have decide it’s every man for himself.’

‘Don’t let Carswell hear you say that. He’ll accuse you of defeatism.’

‘That he might. But the bottom line is, we might have to concentrate on saving our own skins and the skins of individuals who are closest to us.’

Sam looked at him. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’