A World Torn Down (Book 6): The Road To Redemption Read online

  The Road to Redemption

  A World Torn Down, Volume 6

  Rebecca Fernfield

  Published by Redbegga, 2019.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  COPYRIGHT

  Also by Rebecca Fernfield

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  REQUEST FROM THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

  For my family.

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright 2019 Rebecca Fernfield

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Rebecca Fernfield

  Click here to receive special offers, bonus content, and news about new Rebecca Fernfield books. Sign up for the newsletter.

  A World Torn Down series

  The Road to Ruin

  The Savage Road

  The Outcast’s Journey

  The Path to Despair

  The Route to Justice

  The Road to Redemption

  Blackout and Burn series

  Days of Fire

  Nights of Fire

  Land of Fire

  Town of Fire

  Mortal Skies series

  Mortal Skies

  Mortal Skies 2

  The Kielder Trilogy

  The Kielder Strain

  CHAPTER ONE

  Thin light seeps into the room as Deacon opens his eyes. Everything is in place as it always is; the left curtain panel sags in the middle where the plastic hooks had snapped after he yanked them closed in a drunken stupor months ago. The right hangs back on itself from the corner, the hooks pulled from their metal rings on the pole above. Cobwebs hang in dark and dusty strands from the ceiling to the pole and cover the curtain tops. The rooftops beyond the window are faded behind glass, dust-spattered on the outside, and spotted with black mould on the inside. Pink rosebuds and green tendrils turn in on each other as the wallpaper lifts from the plaster beneath, curling a little more with each damp month that passes. Motes dance in the light, but even their sway seems sombre.

  Beside the bed, and covering the floor, are dirty clothes and towels, their damp mustiness pungent even above the fug of stale and beery air that fills the room. Deacon’s arm slips from the bed, and his hand hits the floor as he wallows in the fog of grief that overwhelms him each morning; memories of Jules, and Finn, the two women who had captured his heart, of Kit, his adopted son, and Saul, his dead son, suffuse every synapse, every cell, every fibre of flesh. As knuckles scrape against the cheap nylon carpet, pain bites at the broken skin across their tops, and the memories flood back; Dan Morgan!

  With a jerk he sits, the dull ache of last night’s alcohol making his head heavy, and groans. Dan Morgan. After all these years of searching, the man had finally walked into Deacon’s life. Cradling his head in his hands, his belly queasy, Deacon remembers the previous night: finding Dan and Cassie Morgan on the road, willing himself to break the man into pieces on the spot, but bringing them back to the pub to dish out his punishment, then Cassie’s desperate plea for him to help find her children. He’d relented, gone with them up to the farm, watched in amazement as Saskia had shown some human decency and executed Maurice Stamford for being ‘a nonce’, then turned on her heels and strutted off back to her slave farm. He had to admit, Saskia was one messed up bitch; on the one hand more than happy to despatch a paedophile, but on the other, gleeful at capturing, and enslaving, men, women, and children. Sure, she claimed they were a workforce, but when you kidnapped people and sold them to the highest bidder, you were a slaver, pure and simple.

  Dan Morgan’s accepting eyes as Deacon’s fist slammed towards him flash in his memory and he swings his legs over the bed. Bottles skittle across the floor, their progress quickly halted by a pile of unwashed clothes. Deacon staggers to a stand and lumbers with heavy steps downstairs, and out of the back door. He relieves himself against a far wall, splashes his face with water from the rain butt, then searches the kitchen worktops among dirty plates, boots, beer tins, and bike parts, for a tube of toothpaste.

  A series of repeated thuds break the quiet and then Chris tramps down the stairs followed by his girlfriend, Shona. Unlike Deacon, the man looks fresh, a little puffy around the eyes from too much beer the night before, but uncrumpled, with hair brushed, and beard long, but not straggling. Feeling a pang of discomfort at the comparison, and Shona’s searching gaze, Deacon makes an effort to tuck in the shirt he has slept in, abandons the effort, grabs an open tin of beer from the counter, and takes a swig. Shona, a good-looking woman Chris has recently acquired from among Jackson’s gang - along with two hard-fought beatings from her ex - stands close to his side, unsure of Deacon.

  “Bad night, boss?”

  Deacon grunts. “Nah, slept like a baby.” In truth, Deacon has no memory of making his way to bed, or of going to sleep. He takes another glug from the can. The last memory he has is of Dan Morgan’s face as they’d locked him in the cellar. He sputters, beer dribbling from the side of his mouth. Dan Morgan is in his cellar! The thuds repeat.

  “Sounds like our guest is getting pissed off.”

  The memories flood back now. He’d hit Morgan square on the chin, knocking the man out, and dragged him back to the van as Saskia had strutted back to her slaves. Cassie, and the kids, had screamed for Deacon to leave him alone, but three years of grief, hurt, loss, and anger had swirled into rage, and Deacon could not be persuaded. Dan Morgan would pay for those years of hurt, for killing Jules, for destroying their lives, and the billions of other souls across the planet the plague had taken.

  Unable to think straight, he’d brought him back to the pub and tied him to a chair in the cellar, locking the doors with a heavy chain and massive padlock, shutting Dan Morgan’s pale and frightened face in the dark. Deacon pats his pocket; the key is a hard lump against the fabric.

  “So ... what are we going to do with him?”

  Deacon’s head throbs. Over the past three years, he has yearned daily to catch up with Dan Morgan, but beyond grabbing his collar, and staring into his frightened eyes, Deacon has not planned how to punish the man. He takes another swig of beer, remembering Baxter, one of Lennox’s original crew, hanging from improvised gallows at the petrol station, punished by Jackson for attempting to rob his fuel stores. There were stories too, of Jackson hanging one of his own for stealing a tin of spaghetti hoops. Deacon resolves to mete out a similar style of justic
e; if Jackson could carry out executions for attempted robbery, and petty theft, then Deacon is certainly justified in executing the man who, in his greed and blind indifference to the suffering of others, had slaughtered billions of men, women, and children.

  “We’re going to give him what he deserves.”

  Chris chuckles. “And what’s that boss?”

  “Death.”

  Thudding comes from beneath his feet. “Fetch Jake, and get Morgan hog tied. We’re going to the quarry.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jackson takes a lungful of air and stretches his arms, grimacing at the cracking in his back and the ache in his shoulders. The right one gives him a shot of pain as he rolls it then pulls at his elbow, stretching it out across his chest. He likes the others to know he leads from the front, and works just as hard as they do, but he has paid dearly for yesterday’s efforts chopping wood to replenish their store in preparation for the coming winter. He had learned the hard way that it was too big a risk not to have a large reserve beyond what they thought they needed for heating and cooking; anything less caused massive discontent and unrest among the ranks, and he won’t tolerate another attempted usurpation of his power.

  He lets his arm dangle, the tightness in his muscles has reduced, but the pain in his shoulder sits deep and nagging. Reaching inside his pocket, he pulls out a black tube of cream, rubs some onto his joint, then quickly replaces it as the door to the communal room swings open and footsteps pad across the floor.

  “Morning, Guvnor.” Carey steps beside Jackson. “That is one sweet sight,” he says looking out across the expanse of neatly planted vegetable beds that now cover what had been the local football field. Only narrow strips of grass, just wide enough for a man and his barrow, remain between dozens of oblong beds. Beyond the wall that surrounds the pitch, and mounted on the viewing stands, are dozens of solar panels, whilst along another side are four small wind turbines connected to the clubhouse. Life in the apocalypse may be tough but, for those loyal to Jackson, the football club had become a relative paradise. Jackson doesn’t share Carey’s enthusiasm; to him, the field, and the other areas of pasture that the group have claimed and begun to plough, sow, and harvest, are a terrifying burden that has to be protected at all costs. Each day reports come back about another field being ransacked, or fruit trees stripped, and yesterday they had received dire news from the farm; their entire flock of Hebridean sheep had been rustled. Jackson has his suspicions, and his number one suspect is Lennox Devereux and his evil sidekick, Saskia Volkov, but a close second is that drunken wannabe highwayman, Deacon Carlisle.

  “Glad you didn’t say that it was a ‘good’ morning, Carey!”

  “How so, boss?”

  “We’ve got some thieving bastards to sort out. It will be a bloody crappy morning for them once I catch up with them.”

  “The sheep up at Glebe Farm?”

  “Exactly.”

  Jackson riles as he remembers the chocolate-brown face of the lamb he’d helped birth last year, knee-deep in snow, up to his elbow in the ewe’s vagina. “When I get my hands on them, why I’ll ...”

  “That’s what I’ve come in to tell you-”

  “You’ve found them?”

  “The sheep? No. But I have just passed Carlisle and his mate Chris Brock. They were headed out of town, down towards the clay pits.”

  Jackson narrows his eyes; there are plenty of grass-filled fields out that way, perfect for grazing a flock of sheep.

  “I thought it was odd, and that Shona was with them too.”

  Jackson growls at the mention of the woman’s name.

  “Do you think it was her that tipped them off about the flock?”

  “It could be,” Jackson agrees. “I wouldn’t put it past the bitch. Bloody women; they’re all the same; conniving and deceitful.”

  Carey murmurs an unconvinced ‘too right’ and Jackson swivels from the burgeoning harvest of the football field and closes the double doors. “Get Elliot. We’re going to lynch ourselves some sheep thieves.”

  Five minutes later, rifle loaded and slung across his back, Jackson sits astride his bike, the heavy thrum of its engine felt as vibrations through his buttocks and thighs. The massive concrete towers of the suspension bridge loom and, as they pass beneath the flyover where the road moves from land and out over the water, he opens up the throttle; twin exhausts boom with a guttural roar. Behind him four bikers ride in formation, and behind them Trina drives the jeep and trailer; if the sheep are down by the clay pits, Jackson is going to make damned certain they are returned to their rightful owner—his very self.

  Overgrown hawthorns hide the gently nodding reeds and bulrushes that populate the blocky ponds running parallel with the treacherous river. In this direction the ponds, which had originally been dug out for their clay for the local tile and brick making yards during a long-gone era of prosperity and boom, run for at least a mile.

  He passes the allotments originally commandeered by Deacon Carlisle, but now under Jackson’s control, and then approaches the dump. ‘Recycling Facility. Open Friday to Tuesday 1000 to 1800’ is printed on a greening sign strapped to huge metal gates, perpetually locked by a thick chain and padlock. No more landfill, he muses, the whole town was being recycled and repurposed these days, and the only thing in production was life itself: copulation, pregnancy, birth, and inevitably, death. As he rides through a vast cloud of gnats, he muses that insects seemed to be the only ones getting a good deal from the plague that had destroyed Mankind.

  Almost three-quarters of a mile out of town, tyre tracks, wet from the puddles left by last night’s rain, guide Jackson into the old quarry.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Throwing open his door, Deacon stamps to the ground and then yanks the passenger door open. Dan Morgan’s eyes bore into him, the arrogance that had once stared back at him from the laptop in the house he’d shared with Jules, has disappeared. Replacing it is abject fear, the sour stench of which, Deacon can smell rising from the man as he grabs his upper arm and hauls him from the seat.

  Dan stumbles, grunting through the cloth forced between his teeth as his knees hit the stony ground. White shards of chalk skitter as he rolls onto his side and curls into the foetal position. Gagged, and with hands and feet tied, he scours the landscape before coming back to stare at Deacon and then Chris, Jake, and Shona as they jump from the cab.

  “Nowhere to run, Dan. Nowhere to hide.” Deacon croons. “The day is finally here.” He kicks a heavy boot into Dan’s rump and the man grunts. Deacon forces a grin, disappointed at the lack of satisfaction he feels in kicking the man’s arse, and scans the surrounding area. Beneath the grasses and dandelions, and trees that have settled in earthy crevices, the rock is a brilliant white, and the quarry’s sides rise steeply from the floor of scraped-rock. At the far end sits a car, its bodywork blackened with fire and now rusting, the branch of a nearby sapling poking through from one broken back window to another.

  Deacon checks the trees for a suitable branch, then, taking a coil of rope from the boot of the vehicle, he strides to an alder with several nearly horizontal branches. Two of the branches are too close to the ground, but he throws the rope over the third. Dan’s muffled complaints rise to shouts as Deacon coils the rope around the branch. In the distance, the hum of bike engines roars. Jackson out of his box again! Ignoring the noise, he strides back over to Dan, instructs Chris to take his arms whilst he picks up his feet. They carry him across to the waiting noose.

  Dan bucks against their grip, one word repeating, ‘Please!’ Stones sink in Deacon’s belly with each plea. Stay strong, idiot! This has to be done. At the tree, they lay him back on the ground. Deacon’s gaze locks with Chris’ as Dan continues to beg; there is no hint of enjoyment in the man’s eyes. Shona shifts from foot to foot, obviously uneasy. Nausea swirls in Deacon’s belly. Just be strong!

  “Peath!” Dan shouts through the cloth. “Am thorry ... Peath!”

  “Should we be doing t
his?” Shona takes a step away from Dan as he attempts to shuffle away from the tree. “I mean ... we can’t just kill him.”

  Sweat beads at Deacon’s hairline. “Why not?” His question is defensive, but he doesn’t meet her eyes, and makes a pretence of adjusting the rope. “We have a rope. We have this scumbag. We know he’s guilty.”

  “I ... it’s just that ... that in real life, a jury would decide if he was guilty, not just one man.”

  “In real life?” he scoffs. “What the hell is this ...” he gestures to the sides of the quarry, the car, Chris, Jake, and then himself, “if it is not real life? Jesus, woman!” His voice rises with bitterness. “It can’t get much more real!”

  “I just meant ... that before The Death ... in civilised times ... that it would be done properly.”

  “Civilised! Properly?”

  “Yes, properly. Jackson says that it is the mark of a civilised society for criminals to be judged and sentenced by their peers.”

  “Which is exactly what we’re doing, Shona. I have judged him and I have sentenced him to death.”

  “Yes, but, just one man alone-”

  “Was Baxter judged and sentenced by his peers? And what about the bloke who stole the spaghetti hoops?”

  “Frank broke our rules; he knew the consequences. Baxter tried to steal our fuel.”

  “Yes! And it was Jackson who had them executed for their crimes, just as I am executing Dan Morgan. He killed billions of people for Christ’s sake! My Jules died in agony because of him ... Saul ...” A lump rises in Deacon’s throat. He swallows down the emotion. “Doesn’t Dan Morgan deserve to die?”

  “I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to die, it’s just that he should be put on trial first. Jackson-” Shona’s reply is drowned out by the roar of bike engines.