My Name is Stab

Chapter Eleven - A Short Country Drive

For the next couple of days, I hardly stopped.

It was the middle of winter so there wasn't much daylight but what little there was, we spent down in the lower field in training - practice, practice, practice. Another of Laura's phrases which I was starting to hate even though it sort of made sense: "You're not practicing so you can do it right; you're practicing so you can't do it wrong."

She was friendly, encouraging and unrelenting.

At about noon, Ron brought a second bowl of porridge down for me. The rest were on only two meals per day but Susan had insisted that I needed more.

Of course I didn't feel comfortable eating when the others weren't but Laura wasn't having any of that. "Your body is your single most important piece of equipment and it is your duty to take care of it. Now eat. That's an order."

"Yes Corp!"

It did taste good. I had been hungry for so long that my body was sort of getting used to ignoring it.

But I was only given a couple of minutes to eat then it was back to the grind.

We didn't even get to rest when the light started to fade; we moved into the barn for more weapons drill. I could, quite literally, load and unload that shotgun blindfolded.

When we were done, I thought that I would be allowed to go and collapse but Laura managed to grab my attention. "I thought you wanted to learn how to kick Deemo in the balls," she said.

There followed an hour of intensive unarmed combat training. As Laura pointed out, I could use the fact that I am female and so skinny; people would let me get closer because they wouldn't consider me to be a threat. They had a dummy there - just a simple thing made of sacks stuffed with straw - and Laura had me kicking it repeatedly between the legs. "Use that anger," she kept telling me when I failed to channel enough power into the kick. "Remember that it's Deemo there. I want you to show me what you think of him."

At last I managed one perfect kick. We all knew it. It was met by silence for several seconds then James said, "Well, I certainly wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that."

He offered his palm for a high-five and I responded automatically.

I've said it before. These people just kept creeping under my defences.

I was completely done-in by the time we returned to the house but I felt better than I had in a long time.

In the evening, we spent some time selecting clothes for our decoy manoeuvre. I was quite close in size to James's cousin, Rebecca, and so she lent me some obviously feminine clothes. It felt strange. Not even Theodora had worn anything like that since 'the day'.

And then they made James put on the clothes that he was going to wear... and I came dangerously close to laughing. And then half a dozen of the girls and women started coaching him on how to move like a girl and things... and there was fun and teasing and giggling. It was sort of a perfect family thing.

And suddenly it was all too much for me. I just had to get out.

Eventually James tracked me down in the barn - sitting alone in the dark. He just sat with me for a long time without saying anything.

Finally he said simply, "It will get better, I promise you."

I didn't believe him but I knew he believed it so I didn't make a big fuss about it.

He sat in silence again for a while before adding, "I understand that it can get too much in the house, sometimes. There isn't much in the way of privacy there. You can come out here anytime but please would you tell someone next time? I was a bit worried."

I didn't want him to worry - I didn't even want him to care - but it wasn't an unreasonable request so I gave a sigh. "OK, I promise."

"We should go in now. People are starting to get ready for bed and we've got a big day tomorrow."

"OK."

He offered me a hand to help me up from the bale I was sitting on and I accepted it

The next morning, we had a couple more hours of movement training and then we got changed into our girly clothes. Then we travelled on into town. They had a working Land Rover which was part of their plan so we didn't even have to walk - an unheard of luxury. Laura was driving and there was James and me and another girl called Ashley who I had seen around the place. The atmosphere was quite tense but somehow it felt controlled... as if these guys were professionals and they knew what they were doing.

We gathered at a farmhouse on the edge of the town which was being made to look as if we'd been living there. We even brought a big pile of rubbish with us from the farm - empty tins and packets, animal bones, that sort of thing. We dumped them in a corner to try to make it look as if we'd been living there for a while and not starving.

That's where I met Sampson for the first time. He was a huge, coloured man - simply vast - and he always seemed to be smiling. I got the impression that he was trying to be particularly nice to me. I really did not need that. I didn't need sympathy niceness!

After a couple of hours, Laura appeared. She had been keeping watch on the road into town and the first of the Red Sleeves were starting to appear. As the tension started to mount, we piled into the Land Rover and Laura set fire to the farmhouse. Then, as Sampson started the engine, Laura borrowed my shotgun and took a shot.

Even I could tell that everything about that shot was completely wrong - and she was hopelessly out of range when she took it. She was obviously doing two things - shouting, 'we're here' and saying, 'I don't know what I'm doing'.

And it must have worked because, as we drove away, they all started following us.