Brennan

by Bernard Knight

Genres: Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi; Dystopian; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

Set in an alternate version of the early twenty-first century, Brennan is Bernard Knight?s masterful retelling of the Arthurian myth in a dystopian modern world setting. Former soldier Brennan was one of only a few thousand British survivors of a horrific series of international disasters. Five years on, he has become leader of the Welsh survivors as their supplies of food and fuel grow ever more precariously low. However, they face violent competition for these scarce resources from other groups of survivors ? and to make things worse, those from other countries are raiding the UK for supplies and killing those who resist. To stand any hope of survival, Brennan must unite the remaining Britons and lead them in resistance against those who would see them dead ? but does he stand any hope of succeeding in a world already changed beyond all recognition?

Release date: August 13, 2016

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 275

Sample

The author wishes to thank Mr Stuart McKay, Secretary of the de Havilland Moth Club, for generously providing information about the Tiger Moth biplane, though any errors in the story are due to my misunderstanding.

CHAPTER ONE

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Brennan hunched over the wheel, his eyes aching from staring through the streaming windscreen in the grey light of an overcast morning. The Land Rover was touching forty, its tyres whining on the cracked tarmac as they battled into the driving rain. Alongside him, Casey was crouched inside his bright blue anorak, his big nose resting against the muzzle of the shotgun clutched between his knees.

‘Pushing it a bit, aren’t you? The bridge is coming up.’

This was from the man sitting beyond Casey, squeezed against the nearside door. Now with grey unkempt hair and straggling beard, it was hard to believe that the querulous Mervyn James had once been a consultant physician to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Brennan grunted and eased his foot from the pedal. The Doc was right; there was a nasty patch of road ahead.

‘When Beverley came over last week, he said the bridge had lost a bit more.’ Casey Wallace was a real Jonah, always relishing some titbit of doom.

The rain eased a little and Brennan leaned forward to peer through the glass, poorly cleaned by the worn wiper blades. Even after many journeys on this stretch of the motorway, he still found it disconcerting to be looking at the blank reverse sides of the big road signs, as they passed him on his off side. In the mirror, he dimly glimpsed the faded white imprints of letters which used to tell travellers to turn off for Chepstow and Monmouth. It was facing the wrong way because they were driving on the westbound carriageway of the M48, the other side being completely blocked by the wrecks of two articulated trucks which were rusting away across the whole width of the eastbound lanes.

‘Did Bev say it was getting dangerous to cross now?’ muttered Brennan, as he slowed to a cautious twenty-five.

‘Still OK, he reckoned, but he was on a motorbike. Said the road-deck was beginning to sag in the middle.’ Casey delivered the news with a kind of black satisfaction, his heavy features set in a permanent scowl. He had a lantern jaw and jutting brow-ridges and Mervyn had long ago privately diagnosed mild acromegaly, confirmed by the size of his huge hands.

‘Another couple of years and the whole bloody lot will fall into the water, like the other one did,’ grumbled the old doctor. A few miles further down, the second Severn Bridge had been destroyed by a drifting bulk carrier being driven into the supporting piers. Bound for Avonmouth, the last of its crew had died and the huge vessel had wallowed in the estuary until a ferocious gale on top of a spring tide had sent it smashing repeatedly against the central part of the bridge.

Brennan shrugged as he changed down into third gear. ‘So what? We did without ’em for thousands of years.’

Mervyn snorted. ‘That new one didn’t last long! And this one’s not much better!’ He prodded a finger forwards, to where the original Sixties bridge still clung to existence.

‘We’ll soon have to go around Gloucester way, like we used to in the old days,’ muttered Casey, gloomily.

The mention of years past laid a silence on them, each occupied with their private memories. Brennan was sorry for them, they still weren’t able to adjust fully, though they did much better than most. To the others, it would all come right one day. He knew it wouldn’t, so it was easier for him to get on with what had to be done.

Slowing even more, he changed down again so that he could bump up over the central reservation, where a runaway truck had destroyed the now-rusted steel barriers between the lanes. Brennan straightened up the sturdy Defender on the proper side of the motorway and drove slowly up the long western approach to the great bridge. The twin towers of the huge structure still reached up to the low cloud and the graceful sweep of the road-deck still arched across the estuary. But through the drizzle, they could see that the bridge, built to last for centuries, was already doomed. As they crawled cautiously along, dodging the burnt-out wreckage of a coach hanging over the side-rail, they could see that many of the vertical steel hangers that slung the roadway from the huge suspension cables, were broken. There had been a great pile-up of vehicles and an intense fire near the centre of the bridge. The impact and heat had snapped some of the hangers and, over the succeeding five years, rust, weather and the writhing of the bridge in winter storms, had stressed adjacent struts beyond their limit. Now part of the deck sagged alarmingly down towards the seaward side of the bridge.

More than a dozen cars, trucks and buses stood rusting between the towers and Brennan had to weave past several that all but blocked the lanes. As he edged past a huge Sainsbury’s van, the empty eye-sockets of a skull stared blankly at him from the cab. By some quirk, it had remained in place after the driver had decayed across his wheel. The men in the Land Rover hardly noticed, for death had become far more commonplace than life. Although the passage of more than half a decade had thankfully seen the end of the more offensive forms of corruption, the sight of the dead was still too common for even a casual comment.

Once across the bridge and through the desolate tollbooths, Brennan put his foot down and made steady progress along the road on the English side. There were still plenty of wrecks and abandoned vehicles strewn along the M4 motorway but, except in a few places, they were not enough to present a serious obstacle. The three men sat in silence for most of the time, almost hypnotised by the swish of the tyres and a steady metronome beat of the wipers. There was little else to look at in the grey light of the April morning, save the unkempt fields and the rapidly-spreading scrub and saplings. Already much of the road was sprouting grass and weeds through cracks in the surface, especially on the hard shoulder, which was almost continuous with the overgrown verges. The rotting fences allowed wild cattle and horses to roam at will and once Brennan had to brake sharply to avoid half a dozen bedraggled sheep who were wandering about the road.

They drove through the deserted countryside of Wiltshire, but when it became Berkshire, they came upon a new obstruction on the top of the ridge where Membury service station still stood. The five-hundred-foot television mast, its guide-wires slackened from lack of attention, had crashed down in the last gale and now lay right across the eastbound lanes.

‘That’ll take some shifting,’ grunted Casey with morbid satisfaction, moving the gun barrel to the other side of his face.

‘And who’s going to do that?’ demanded Mervyn dryly. The huge lattice-work would lay there until it rusted to nothing, perhaps a few centuries hence. As they drove up to the mast, they saw that the intact crash-barriers prevented them from crossing here to the other carriageway to get around the obstruction. Cursing, Brennan stopped to wrestle with the transfer box to get into low ratio and engaged four-wheel drive again. Turning hard left, he forced his way through the undergrowth and slowly bumped through the remains of the hedge and slithered over the wet ground of the field behind the base of the mast, to rejoin the slip road out into the service station.

With a last rattle of its diesel engine, the Land Rover pulled up near the gutted restaurant, old habits making Brennan stop in the parking lot though there was probably no other moving vehicle within forty miles.

The three travellers took the opportunity to eat and drink. There was nothing to be looted from the ruins of the service station – all that had gone years ago – but they had brought bread and meat with them, as well as a few bottles of home-brewed beer.

The rain had stopped for the moment, and they took a walk to stretch their legs and empty their bladders after the hard drive from South Wales. Brennan had stopped here several times in the past few years and knew there was nothing worth salvaging from the abandoned cars and remains of the buildings, but their feet still seemed to draw them across to the blackened shell of the restaurant and shops.

‘Someone’s been here recently,’ pointed out Casey. In front of them was a Renault estate car with flat tyres. He jabbed a finger at the edges of the hatchback door, which was lifted up.

‘No rust on those jemmy marks, they’re bright metal. Somebody’s busted in during the last day or so.’

They looked inside, but whatever might have been worth taking had gone. When they walked on to the building, it was just the same desolate ruin, dripping in the rain. Inside the shattered glass doors could be seen some human bones, scattered by foxes and wild dogs. Incongruously, two electronic games machines still stood against the far wall, gaudy lettering inviting punters to ‘Shoot the Bandits’ and try ‘Grand Prix Driving’. There was nothing worth going inside for, so they walked back, more wary now after seeing the recent marks on the Renault. Casey wished that he had not left his gun in the Land Rover, but all seemed as still as the grave – not that many Britons had graves nowadays.

As they started off again, Mervyn asked, ‘Whose territory is this? I suppose Swindon and Oxford are the nearest towns, but they’re all burnt to the ground. No one’s still living there.’

Brennan thought for a moment. ‘Gloucester’s patch comes up nearly as far as this – Jack’s zone. I don’t suppose the little group in Salisbury lay claim to anything here, they’re pretty small-time. It’s just a no man’s land.’

As they drove around the bend of the exit road, past the ruined and forlorn petrol station, Brennan swore again at what was ahead. Across the road was a long Mercedes van, its once-white sides streaked with rust.

‘Can’t get around that. Not with that lorry lying there.’

Mervyn stabbed a finger at a big articulated truck lying on its side, just where the van blocked the remaining lane that led out to the motorway. It had obviously skidded and toppled over, lying with its cab towards them, the long canvas-covered trailer stretching away to within a couple of feet of the Mercedes. A brick wall ran almost to the front of the truck, preventing any exit over the verge.

‘Sod’s law again! Why did the flaming van have to conk out just there?’ Casey sounded as miserable as he looked, as Brennan pulled up a few yards short of the double obstruction.

‘It wasn’t here a few months back, so someone else has been on the move around here. We’ll have to push the bloody thing out of the way.’ He switched the engine off.

‘Come on, Doc – the exercise will do you good.’

He stepped out into the thin drizzle which had started again, pulling his leather car-coat closer around his powerful body. Mervyn got down more slowly from the other side, his older joints protesting from the damp and the cramped front seat. Leaving Casey in the Rover, they walked together towards the Mercedes but, halfway there, a warning shout came from the Land Rover.

‘Brennan! Look at its tyre tracks!’

Casey, leaning out of the driver’s door, was pointing at the ground under the back of the van. Their eyes shot to the wet surface behind the vehicle, where muddy tracks led back to the nearby grass verge. With all this heavy rain, they would have washed away within minutes, so this was no abandoned wreck.

‘Back, Doc. Quickly!’ Brennan crouched and turned for the Land Rover, but even as he moved, there was the loud crack of a shot from behind the end of the overturned truck, followed by another from the corner of the brick wall.

‘Run for it! Get behind the Rover!’ roared Casey. As he spoke, he fired first one, then the other barrel of his twelve-bore over the top of the open door.

There was a yell of pain as the shot peppered whoever was hiding behind the rotting fabric end-flap of the articulated truck. Two more shots came from behind the wall, but thankfully the assailant was using a rifle, not a shotgun. His aim was bad and Mervyn and Brennan were safely behind the Land Rover before he could fire again.

‘Into the back – quick!’ snapped Brennan. Casey had dropped down into the cab to reload, as Brennan scrambled over the tailboard and crouched low as he fumbled on the floor for a weapon. Another shot drilled a hole through the green canvas hood, thankfully well away from his head.

Grabbing a self-loading rifle, he passed it over the back to the doctor, then seized a machine pistol for himself. As he clambered out, he heard Casey blast off two more shells from his twelve-bore. Two more bullets ripped into the hood of the Land Rover, as he tumbled over the tail on to the road.

‘Cover me, Casey!’ he yelled. The man in the front kicked open the driver’s door and fired off a round through the wide crack between the window and the door-pillar. The shot showered the end of the brick wall and while the bandit was keeping his head down, Casey loosed off the other barrel at the long trailer. By then, Brennan had raced to the burnt-out cab of the big truck, which was only a few yards from the Land Rover.

Mervyn dropped to one knee on the wet road at the tail of their vehicle and began firing rapid single shots at the end of the brick wall, to discourage the man from showing himself. Brennan suddenly jumped clear of the cab and swung around the back of the fallen truck. Standing with legs wide apart and with a two-handed grip on the machine pistol, he sprayed bullets along the length of the overturned trailer. The adrenaline squirted through his veins as he anticipated being met with a fusillade of shots, but his trigger-finger relaxed when he saw he was shooting at a dead man.

Leaning against the rear trailing-axle, a pair of wheels above his head, was a body, its neck a mass of blood from the impact of a shot from Casey’s choke barrel. The blast had hit him as he had rashly come around the tail-end to fire his rifle. His weapon now lay on the ground and his limp body was slowly sliding down the under-surface of the trailer.

‘All clear here!’ yelled Brennan and he turned to join the other two, but they had done their work before he got back to them. With Casey blasting away as fast as he could reload, the doctor had run to the far end of the brick wall and was peering around its end. He was ready to shoot, but he saw it was unnecessary. A ragged figure was running as fast as his legs would carry him in the direction of the deserted motorway, heading for the other services building on the opposite side.

Mervyn thought of loosing off a couple of rounds after him, but the range was too great for snap shots – and anyway, his heart was not in killing if there was no longer any need to protect their own survival.

‘Sure there’s no more of the buggers?’ Casey called, standing above the Land Rover door, his gun still at the ready.

‘Nobody here. Don’t go shooting at me as I come out, OK?’

Brennan came cautiously from behind the overturned truck and saw that Mervyn was gingerly approaching the Mercedes van to make sure that no more thugs were hiding in it. All seemed deserted, but the three of them made a slow circuit of the wrecked vehicles to check that they were alone at last.

‘Let’s see who this joker was,’ suggested Brennan, going back to the rear of the big trailer. They stood over the body, a victim of the latest crime wave. He was stone dead, though blood was still draining from the gaping wound in his neck.

‘What the hell did you load that cannon with, Casey? Elephant shot?’ demanded Mervyn.

In spite of having to live in a world replete with death, there was still a need to lighten the mood sometimes. Casey had already killed men when, many years before, he was in the Parachute Regiment before joining the Gwent Police, but he gained no pleasure from it.

‘A shotgun is better any day than those popguns,’ he grunted.

The old doctor knelt by the man and almost absently checked that his heartbeat had stopped. The victim was a scruffy, black-bearded ruffian in a collection of old clothes that looked as if they had been looted from a scarecrow. He had a coarse, stubbled face and tangled, dirty hair. Even in death, he stank of whisky and when they searched his pockets, they found a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker. There were no papers or any clue as to his origin, only an odd collection of jewellery, ammunition and a few bars of chocolate with tattered wrappers.

‘The Merc must have been theirs – the tyres are good and hard. We should have spotted that before we got out.’ Brennan was being too self-critical, but little slips like that could mean sudden death in these violent times. They walked to the white van and looked in the back. Lying on a sodden heap of old sacking was a hi-fi and a pair of speakers.

‘Fat lot of good they are, these days, with no electricity,’ grunted Casey. ‘They must have been looting from force of habit.’

‘Perhaps the poor devils were looking for food,’ suggested Mervyn. ‘Maybe they’ve got family tucked away in some hovel around here.’

The physician suddenly felt an aching pity for his fellow men, even those who had tried to kill him and he was glad that he hadn’t shot the one who ran away.

Brennan hefted the gun in his hands. ‘Come on, then. Let’s shove this damned thing out of the way.’ Releasing the handbrake, they strained to push the van to the verge to clear the road and walked back to their own vehicle, now quiet and subdued. There were too few Britons left to have to kill any more, even though they’d had little choice on this occasion. Why did the others ambush us, wondered Brennan? Why attack just for a few sandwiches and guns? He was bitter as well as sad about it – there were ways to avoid these confrontations, if everyone cooperated. But these times made a man hard, if he wanted to survive.

The rain continued for several more hours as they drove on, the three of them sitting in almost complete silence, except when they stopped to top up with diesel from the jerry-cans carried in the back. There was so much to remember and so little to look forward to. The present was so grim that most people spent their time living in the past. They all thought almost incessantly about their lost families and Brennan had additional worries about Gwen and Liz Peterson.

Though five years had blunted the immediacy of their sorrow, almost everyone that Brennan knew was a prisoner of their memories. They lived life on two levels: the daily round of tasks that was their only means of survival; and a silent vigil of recollection, replaying in their minds the life that they once had, which almost inevitably gravitated to the last awful weeks. Even Brennan himself, perhaps the best-adjusted man left in Britain, still had harrowing dreams and waking memories of the day he buried his wife and two children in a hole he had dug in their garden.

They were within twenty miles of Cambridge before conversation picked up again. The long journey had become more difficult as they turned north from the M4. Part of the M25 was completely impassable where a plane trying to make Heathrow Airport had crashed across the road. With Casey now driving, they had to skirt the edge of London for ten miles, to get back on to the orbital motorway further north. The outer suburbs and the satellite towns were as desolate as the rest of the country, with thousands of burnt-out houses and shops. Roads were littered with rubble from collapsed, incinerated buildings, and rusting vehicles were abandoned at all angles. Only the Land Rover’s capacity for taking to the pavements and fields allowed them to get through to the roads leading to the M11, which was relatively free from obstructions. As they neared the university city, Brennan relieved Casey at the wheel and Mervyn became more talkative again.

‘This lot we’re going to see, Brennan. Who are they, exactly?’

The leader glanced across at the speaker and thought again how his alert blue eyes were so at variance with his unkempt appearance. The physician, now sixty-five years old, seemed all spiky grey hair and some flash of memory came into Brennan’s mind as he recalled a television version of Robinson Crusoe, many years in the past. The shipwrecked mariner had looked remarkably like Mervyn James. In a way, he mused, that’s what we all are now – shipwrecked on a desert island, grubbing amongst the wreckage for supplies. Maybe the whole planet is a desert island, for all I know.

‘Well, what about them?’ snapped the doctor, jerking Brennan out of his reverie.

‘The Cambridge group? I only know what Beverley told us last week and that letter the fellow brought us a month ago. Bev said they were well organised and had very good discipline.’

Mervyn grunted suspiciously.

‘Discipline! Not another West Country set-up, I hope. With another Herr Adolf bloody Mellars!’ His voice was heavy with sarcasm. Brennan shrugged, his eyes on the road as two scraggy ponies scurried across the cracking concrete, where lines of grass and weeds were flourishing.

‘Bev estimated that they had at least three hundred people there, all in the city itself. They’ve had to pull in most of their outside folk from the farms, since the trouble began.’

Casey, his heavily lined face looking like a bloodhound, whistled through his teeth. ‘Three hundred! Perhaps they’ll want to take us over, not the other way round.’

Brennan sighed to himself, but said nothing. He was tired of trying to drum into the heads of people like Casey that he had not the slightest desire to ‘take over’ anyone. All he wanted was an alliance, some mutual agreement to work together and share resources and know-how. It was vital to have some degree of cooperation that might help one day to drag themselves back up the steep slope towards some sort of civilisation.

As far as he knew, the British mainland now had some twenty different groups, each with some semblance of leadership and organisation. These were slowly growing larger as they absorbed the remaining isolated survivors and bewildered wanderers, though there were still outlaws scattered in between, like those who had attacked them at Membury that morning. A vast no man’s land lay between the various groups, as well as a few communities where tyranny and even slavery were the order of the day.

Some of the groups, mainly in Wales, the Marches and the Midlands, had formed a very loose federation. It was the largest unit in Britain, as far as they knew, given the lack of communications. They were now hoping to persuade the Cambridge community to join, to extend the ‘Pax Brittanicum’ eastwards across the country. It sounded as if the ancient university city had a fairly large and useful unit, measured by the pitiful standards of the day. They already knew, from a visit last year, that its sister city Oxford was a deserted, burnt-out ruin and Brennan was intrigued to know why the other great centre of learning had survived so well. Cambridge had recently sent a rather tentative message, delivered to Gloucester by two intrepid men in a Nissan 4x4, asking about the present situation in South Wales and the West. Reading between the lines, it was a covert plea for help, in consequence of ‘certain difficulties with immigrants’.

Beverley Truman, their own lowly equivalent of combined Public Relations Officer and Foreign Minister, had gone up to Cambridge on his motorcycle the previous week and brought back favourable reactions for an alliance.

Now the main diplomatic mission was bumping its battered ex-Army Land Rover towards the city. At Duxford, which Brennan recognised from a visit to the Aircraft Museum long ago, they had to leave the motorway as the flyover of the interchange had completely collapsed, with the blackened wreckage of a large plane embedded in the debris, presumably another casualty of trying to land, this time at nearby Stansted Airport. Brennan went back a short way and found a break in the crash barrier, then drove up the slip road on to the A505.

About six miles outside the ancient city, they saw the first signs of life. There was smoke rising from the chimney of a distant farmhouse and where a bridge over a stream had collapsed, the gap was filled with a rough but effective timber framework.

‘Still a few folk living in the countryside. I thought Bev said they were all holed up in the town?’ asked Mervyn, looking out at a man herding cows in a field.

Brennan followed his gaze. ‘I think he meant the other side, towards East Anglia proper. We’re coming up from the south-west, but the boat people are pushing in from the east.’

He nudged Casey with his elbow. ‘Better pull the canvas over that lot in the back. There’s sure to be a checkpoint soon and we don’t want them to think we’ve come to start a war.’

Casey twisted round and lowered his shotgun to the floor, next to a dismantled tripod-mounted machine gun, a box of grenades and an assortment of rifles and pistols. He dragged a thick plastic sheet over them and diplomatically scattered some coats and tins of food across the top.

A moment later, Brennan congratulated himself on his timing, as a few hundred yards ahead there was a barrier across the road, made of two farm gates, painted red and white. Beyond was a pair of old trailers, filled with rubble, placed so that they overlapped at the centre of the road to prevent any vehicle from making a dash through the gates.

‘They’re well organised, I’ll say that for them,’ exclaimed Mervyn. ‘It’s like Checkpoint Charlie.’ He used an expression from the divided Europe of decades ago, that was already ancient history.

At the side of the road, as they drew up at the barrier, was a small cottage, its windows partly bricked up. Brennan saw the muzzle of a large-calibre machine gun poking out at them. A young man in a black raincoat came out of the cottage doorway. He had a red armband and carried a shotgun. In his other hand he had a small black box, which immediately caught Casey’s eye.

‘By damn, look at that! They’ve got mobile radio.’

Confident that his mate behind the cottage window had them covered, the guard came up to the Land Rover. Staring at the occupants curiously, his gaze settled on the driver. He saw a large, craggy-looking man in his early forties. Well over six feet tall, Brennan had powerful shoulders and a heavily handsome face, with a square chin and deep-set eyes under thick eyebrows. His dark hair was streaked with grey at the temples and there was more grey at each side of his short, bristly beard.

Brennan returned his inspection calmly. ‘Lovely day for ducks,’ he observed, lightly nodding at the rain.

The man looked at him suspiciously. People didn’t comment about the weather these days – or bother to make jokes.

‘You’re not one of us. Where d’you come from, then?’

‘I’m Brennan. The Federation man from South Wales. One of our chaps was through here last week, on a motorbike.’

The guard, a sallow young fellow with close-cropped yellow hair, dropped his radio into a pocket and rubbed the rain off his face with a hand.

‘Can you prove it, mate?’

Brennan seldom smiled these days, but this was worth a grin. ‘Try giving my bank manager a ring on that radio, sonny,’ he suggested. ‘I’m sure he’ll give me a reference.’

The youth scowled, then sheepishly his face cracked into a reluctant smile.

‘Fair enough, chum. But I’ll have to call HQ before I can let you through.’ He stepped back and spoke into his radio, his head turned away from them. Brennan and the others watched with interest and not a little envy. They’d not seen personal radios in action for a couple of years, since their batteries had given up holding the charge from then-makeshift generators. Of course, all telephones, email and mobile phone systems had gone down at the beginning of the nation’s collapse.

The young sentinel must have had a satisf. . .