Fear And Loathing In The North

Chapter 1:

The thorn scraped across her throat, cutting the soft skin with spiteful efficiency, just as nature intended. A sense of satisfaction tore the surrounding skin in two: the justified and the numb. The cemetery was a peaceful place, a lost realm of solitude and sympathy, where the forgotten tears of the countless bereaved had salted the wounded earth, leaving it inflamed and bitter. Years of neglect had taken its toll and the bracken that clawed its way up the many headstones had eaten away the names of the deceased. It was upon one of these hungry, twisted specimens that the girl had caught herself.

As she dragged herself through the stubborn undergrowth, a noise wafted across the graves to her right. It was a murmur, a shadow of a whisper; barely audible above the deafening silence that so defined the girl's haunt. Outraged, she resolved to investigate. Kneeling between Amanda Byrd and spouse Isaac, she could see bizarre figures silhouetted against the mackerel sunset that now gripped the sky.

Abominations: desecrators of the unmarred innocence demanded by modern society. Emerging righteous from her hiding place, Alice noted with idiosyncratic shrewdness the way the wrong-doers recoiled. Her lip curled in amusement. She glared at those foolish trespassers, trying to convey her unadulterated disgust at being disturbed.

"Sorry Miss...Uh... One began, before losing his train of thought as his eyes wandered into the abyss within hers. Alice said nothing. She had said no more and no less for five years and she liked it that way.

"We was just... just... hiding from... you know; them. The conversationally gifted man, complete with tasteless goatee continued, pausing to wipe some spittle from the corner of his mouth. "They don't like us, they think we're dirty. But of course, that's why you're here. He stopped, realised he had failed to reduce the level of hatred in Alice' eyes and blundered on regardless. Please, we just don't want to be found.

Alice empathised. Lack of human contact had rendered her nigh on emotionless, but these charmless miscreants had won her heart with their story, so much like her own. She nodded and motioned for them to make themselves at home.
That night Alice lay awake, glad of the watchful gaze of the nameless graves. Far on the other side of the cemetery were some of the strangest people she had ever met, and she did not yet trust them, years of solitude had fashioned her an introverted sheath from which she was not yet ready to uncoil. Her eyes closed¦

* * *

¦And opened again five years previously. She was lying in her bed, and could hear the soft regular breathing that betrayed the fact that her mother was asleep. Alice smiled and remembered the day before, playing in the park with mammy. A soft thump in the hall caught her attention, making her ears to ring and her pupils dilate as both senses strained against the oppressive darkness. A long silence echoed through the flat, and then Alice' world exploded into brilliant light...

* * *

...Alice woke with a start, glad it was over. Her happiness however, was short lived. She realised that she was no longer in the cemetery that had nurtured her into adulthood; she was in some kind of large mobile container, perhaps a lorry. Yes a lorry, Alice could hear the cars whooshing past outside and smell the warm tarmac of the road outside. She sat up and analysed her new habitat coldly. Since she was unable to see anything in the darkness of the container, she used her other senses. Nothing she could hear was out of the ordinary, but there was a wet smell emanating from somewhere else in the container. Unsure of her immediate surroundings, Alice inched across the container on all fours. Now the smell was much stronger and, reaching out, she could feel the rough moist sacking that produced it. With a growing sense of foreboding she peeled back the outermost layer. Was that skin? Yes: cold, dead skin.

* * *

It was some time after Alice woke up for the third time in her steel prison that she realized.
It was stationary.

Chapter 2:

A loud metallic noise and the sound of a bolt sliding out of a rusty metal casing caused Alice to look up. The container groaned as the doors were swung open on aged hinges. A large balding man shouted into the semi-darkness. Alice said nothing, but moved sorely toward the man, shielding her eyes with her forearm. The trees were caressed by sticky white snow, and a few were graced with icicles; tapered shrapnel extending cold arms toward the ground. A scarred, nicotine stained hand was clamped over her mouth and she was lead toward a well in a clearing. Here the road was barely visible, and Alice feared the worst. But how could these men possibly have found out? Horror filled her from head to foot as the sacking she had discovered in the container was brought to her. The man with the goatee, the man she had taken in at the cemetery was lying there. A maggot wormed its way out of one lifeless eye and Alice screamed into the balding man's hand. The cold muzzle of a gun was pressed into the back of her head, her cue to cease and desist.

The gun was her marshal for the rest of the journey, which took place on foot. Alice didn't notice the surrounding countryside, for the image of the goateed man being dumped in the well pervaded her every thought.

* * *

370 miles away in Germany, Lieutenant Alexei Shovich sat looking out over the dense gauze of the imposing Dusseldorf skyline. It was eight o' clock, and the sun had nearly established its berth in the sky, a plume of acrid smoke pushed out of his nostrils as he rolled another neat cigarette. The phone in the safe house began to ring, he waited for a while before answering, not wanting to appear to be waiting for the call.
"Alexei?
"Yes.
"It's time. Charlie will wait for you at the airport.
"Understood.
The Delfin officer wondered what could possibly be going on in the west to justify the use of his specially trained unit. The call was inevitable, but it had come too soon for Alexei. He had unfinished business in Germany. He lit his cigarette and put on his long black duffel-coat. It was going to be a long night.

* * *
Alice was thirsty; it had been days since the balding man had led her from the road and into the bunker. She had been tied to a chair in a completely empty concrete cell. Blood was pooled on the floor from wounds she did not remember sustaining, and weeping needle tracks littered her arm. She felt empty and alone, even more so in the knowledge that if she had been captured, the rest of her team was dead. However, with her the trail of information would run dry, SIS weren't stupid ' they didn't leak information to vigilantes. She had been hired to keep her eyes on the building next to her cemetery, that was all she knew and she was glad of it. Light burst into the cell and she looked up through hair matted with days of congealed blood. A woman she had not seen in the previous interrogation sessions strolled calmly toward her. The woman smelled intoxicating, of leather and sex. She unrolled a newspaper that she was carrying under her arm and placed it over the blood on the floor. Alice gasped as the woman knelt beside her, creaking as the leather on her thighs was stretched. A candle was lit, over which Sex and Leather held a teaspoon of powder. When it had dissolved completely, she placed a ball of cotton wool into the serum and drew a slippery tendril into the barrel of a pink tinted syringe. Alice blinked.

Finding a vein was easy, as she was tied to the chair incredibly tightly.

* * *

Alice arches her back as the heroin courses through her, releasing her from the confines of thought and reality. There is a pause as the woman waits for Alice to come down.

"You wont be getting any more until you talk. Are we clear?

Alice nods pathetically, with a detached look in her eyes.

* * *

Sarah was not pleased with the progress so far. Normally, withdrawal alone would have brought the information straight out of the bitch's mouth, but today it seemed, she'd caught herself either an unreservedly pathetic, uninformed vigilante, or an SIS special reconnaissance officer. Either way, she was meaningful to nobody now. She turned and walked from the room. If the bitch didn't know anything, she would die.

* * *

"More, please more!

* * *

"I'll skin your tits off, you ginger shit fuck! Hit me up with some of that sweet pink loving shit! Alice screamed, shaking in her steel chair. It had been too long... too long now and she knew it. If they had thought she knew anything, they would have come back. They were going to leave her here to die.

Alice Parker died a writhing heap of agony and self pity as opiates poured forth from every available orifice and left her a dried up husk on a plinth in her concrete hell.