Cold Winds Dark Days

Cold Winds

Dark Days

SIMON J MOORE

Copyright © 2015 Simon J Moore

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1517054516

ISBN-13: 978-1517054519

DEDICATION

To my two beautiful children Harry and Liliana.

You are my inspiration

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

1 Party

2 Kate

3 Day Out

4 Interrogation

5 Martha

6 Funeral

7 Encounter

8 The Meeting

9 Disclosure

10 Dan

11 Dan’s Story

12 Uncomfortable Flight

13 Kidnap?

14 Eidolon

15 Eureka

16 The Palm

17 Mac Attack

18 The Sub

19 Confederates

20 The Beginning?

About The Author

Connect With Me

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Edited by Luciana A Moore & Margaret Louise Moore. Cover design by Simon J Moore & Luciana A Moore

1 PARTY

It had taken David some time to choose the present, but he finally selected a remote controlled car, which was a copy of a monster truck with large knobbly wheels, and would be just right for playing in the back yard, ‘Well, just as soon as this damned bad weather has cleared up’, he thought to himself. It seemed as though the storms had been here forever. It had been raining for the past twelve days in a row the wind whipping up faster and gustier each day. He felt the bad weather would never go away and could hardly remember a nice day this year. David imagined the look on his son George’s face as he opened the present.

David and Maria Collins had been married for nine years and had three children Carol, Jessica and George. He worked at the local bank and was now in management. He earned enough to enable Maria to stop at home and look after the children.

David decided to phone Maria to tell her he’d be a little late for George’s birthday party. He’d been working on a computer problem at work most of the day and it had taken longer than he thought it would. A tree had been blown down near the office because of the constant rain and high winds. It had hit a junction box where all the communication cables were joined and it had taken engineers two hours to fix, which in turn left David a 2-hour backlog of work that needed completing before he could go to his son’s party.

David wanted to make sure he could get home as quickly as possible, got his old trusted radio out from the bottom drawer of his desk and tuned it to the local traffic report. The problems on the roads had increased recently to the point where it had become a necessity to check the traffic report before making the simplest journey. The roads were flooded and washed out, trees were frequently blown over, chimney tops came tumbling down and even unexpected snow storms materialised in summer or baking hot days, so hot it would melt the asphalt roads. It had become so easy to end up in the middle of a traffic jam, if you didn’t keep abreast of the latest road problems.

A particularly large tree had fallen on David’s usual route home and so a quick detour would be needed to get home before the kids had completely wrecked the house. He made great time on the backlog of work and had nearly finished. He phoned home to let them know how long he would be.

What time will you be getting home? The kids are driving me mad! The tone in Maria’s voice told him exactly what she meant. She meant get home now. David got the message.

I’m setting off in the next ten minutes, he said in a soothing voice, trying to calm her down. I should be home in the next forty-five minutes. There’s a tree down on the route home so I will have to go a different way! Maria knew that the weather was getting more erratic every day.

David finished his work, turned the desk light off and walked over to the coat stand. Put on his coat and turned to leave. He flicked the light off, set the alarm and closed the door behind him. He gave the door a final push just to make sure that it was locked and walked to the edge of the rain canopy that covered the doorway. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a foldable umbrella, removed the cover, pressed the release button and sheltered under whilst he ran over to his car.

A sudden pang of terror shot through him, taking his breath away, rooting him to the spot all at the same time. He felt as though someone or something had crept up behind him and was lurking menacingly. He daren’t turn around to look at him? it? no them, two of them. David had never been as afraid as much since his first year in banking when he had been held at gun point in a robbery. He waited for a moment expecting a gun to be pushed in the back of his head, but nothing happened. He quickly plucked up courage to turn and look but there was no one there.

The rain was really pouring now and the wind had gathered to such an extent that he had to lean over into the wind at an angle that under normal circumstances would cause him to fall flat on his face.

As he scrambled his way towards the car, his thoughts turned to getting home in the warm and dry and the fun of all the kids. He reached the car and inserted his key into the lock and at exactly the same time a huge gust of wind caught the umbrella and wrenched it from his grasp. It shot off at such a rate that David had no chance of realising what was happening before it was too late. The umbrella shot off down the car park scraping cars on its way, went over the fence at the bottom and then was seen no more. There was no way that David could chase it, the wind was too strong and fast. ‘Not even an Olympic runner could catch that’, David thought as the realisation hit him he had just lost his new umbrella. He had only bought it the week before because of a similar incident.

He unlocked the door and climbed in. Soaking wet, he pulled off his raincoat and slung it into the back off the car. He reached down to switch on the radio for the traffic report, flicked the button and the sound of the DJ instantly filled the car.

It’s another bad night for driving; we have lots of problems on the roads for you tonight!

Lots of problems on the roads? said David, there are enough bloody problems on the car park, never mind the roads! He snorted with indignation. He put the key into the ignition and started the engine. He switched the headlights on and saw the full extent of the storm ahead of him. The smaller trees were nearly bent over double and the larger ones were swaying alarmingly in the wind. Apprehensively he put the car into gear and slowly set off on the thirty-minute journey home.

The driving conditions by now were atrocious. David thought to himself ‘I wish I had set off earlier.’ It was now nearly a full blown storm and most people had taken shelter. The streets were usually deserted when it got this bad. Houses were being built more sturdily these days since all the world’s weather seemed to have gone mad. The real beginnings of the effects of global warming were being seen and still there was some so-called scientist that had said it was nothing new and we are just going through a phase in the weather pattern.

I think we all know what’s happening, David said out loud, our Government’s did nothing about it when they were told all those years ago, he argued with the radio. The usual way that Governments go around things is to treat the symptoms and not the cause. It’s usually less expensive that way, he continued.

Strong winds and rain came down almost horizontally battering the car. ‘At least the car is getting a good wash,’ he thought. Even in such bad conditions he still had time for humour. Leaves and litter shot across the road in front of him as he drove down it. He had decided to go along the built up area where the houses and buildings would give some shelter from the wind. The only problem with that was as soon as you went past the shelter of a building; you caught the full force of the wind that made you swerve as it hit you.

Oh my gg--! That’s all that David could get out before he realised what had happened. He hadn’t seen it coming towards him until it was too late. An object came out from the shadows and into the headlights of his car. It hadn’t made a sound above the now familiar swirling and whooshing of the wind. That’s all he could hear until the crash of the object, a corrugated roofing sheet, hit the front headlight and scraped along the front of his bumper.

The sound hadn’t lasted more than a split second but it sent an instant shiver all round his body; like a small electric shock that still resonated some seconds later. David had not heard a sound like that since young Peter had scraped his finger nails down the blackboard at a school parents evening, which had sent shivers down the back of everyone in the room. The sound of screeching rubber on tarmac pierced the howling wind as he slammed his breaks on.

The car came to an immediate stop. David just sat there, not knowing what to do. A normally calm man, he was now on the edge of panic. He sat for a moment to collect his thoughts as the wind shook the car from side to side. It was a mixture of tiredness and the shock of what had just happened, his knuckles had turned white and his heart was pumping. He gripped the steering wheel, as he tried to look out of the windscreen to see what damage had been done. The corrugated sheet was wrapped around the trunk of a tree at the front of a nearby garden. It looked as though a piece of wet paper had been thrown at the tree and was wrapped around it. The normally rigid sheet had been tossed like flimsy fabric in the strong wind. David could not see what damage had been done and so apprehensively opened the door. The wind blew on as he staggered out of the car and struggled to stand. Leaning over at an alarming angle to compensate for the power of the wind he staggered to the front to see the damage.

The glass of the headlight had not been broken but had been ripped from its mountings and was dangling from the wires that supplied its power. It shone down and lit the road surface and highlighted scratches on the road that the sheet had left. Although the scratches were not deep, it was still disturbing at how lucky he was and how much more damage could have occurred. Across the front of the car, there were several more scratches and one had pierced the skin completely which had left a gash six inches long and one inch wide. David shuddered at the thought of what had happened and realised that if he had not reacted, as quickly, it could have been a lot worse.

He tried his best to push the headlight back into the mountings in the front of the car and with a click it popped back in place, then he staggered back into the car. His clothes were soaking and he was wet through to the skin. He shivered as the chill of the wind began to take effect. With a flick of a switch, a blast of welcoming warm air circulated round the car and the heater roared into action. Normally it was very rare in this humid climate that he used the heater, but on a night like this, it was a welcome addition in the car.

As he put the car in gear and set off, he thought of the party back at the house and the children. He couldn’t tell the kids about the accident but would tell Maria after the party, so as not to spoil the fun. The TV stations constantly showed how someone had been killed in a car crash because of the weather and David did not want them worrying. He thought that he would show them in the morning what damage had been caused. The windscreen slowly started to mist over with all the humidity in the car. David tried his best to keep it clear with the sleeve of his jacket but it kept misting over. It was a mixture of the humid night and David’s wet clothing that was too much for the heater to cope with. It could no longer keep up with clearing the windscreen and warming David.

This was now the sixth time in minutes that David had cleared the screen with his sleeve. As he pulled up at the traffic lights David looked perplexed as the light from the traffic signal seemed to be getting bigger and bigger. With a deafening crash the traffic light smashed through the front windscreen, shards of glass flew in every direction slicing through everything that got in their path. David was slashed all over his face, a tiny fragment of glass embedding deep within his skin. The glass hit David with such force that he didn’t realise that he was cut at first; he felt no pain. The traffic signal was sitting on the front of his car looking a lot bigger than he thought it would have, now that it was up close. It suddenly dawned on him what had happened, the wind snapped off the top of the traffic signal and it had flown on to the car with such force that it shattered the windscreen. ‘This journey is becoming a nightmare!’ he thought. He reached through the front of the windscreen and tried to push the huge box of lights away.

It’s amazing how big these are when you’re up close, he said to himself. He pushed the huge box back out with all his might as the wind caught hold of it and sent it flying down the road.

David could now feel the full force of the wind on his face. Flaps of torn skin were forced open as the wind caught them. Blood started to ooze and he reached up to feel his face and realised the severity of the cuts. His fingers slipped into the deep gashes of his cheeks. He instinctively tried to pinch the skin together to stop the wind from causing more damage. Blood from a large cut on his forehead started to pour and trickled into his eyes. He wiped what he thought was water away to see deep ruby red blood smeared. He looked down at his other hand and all down his arm was covered in blood. David reached into the glove compartment to get the first aid box but it was gone. ‘Maria must have taken it for George’s birthday party. She should have told me; just when I need it the most,’ he thought.

It was then that he made a decision to get home as fast as he could. ‘If I don’t get home quickly I’m going to be dead.’ He put the car into gear and sped off along the street. Instinctively he put the windscreen wipers on. They shot into life, following the outline of where the glass should be, flapped aimlessly in mid-air. David wasn’t thinking straight because he had lost so much blood. He didn’t know that a piece of the glass had sliced into his neck and through his jugular vein. It was this cut that was draining the life out of him but he didn’t know about it. The movement on the non-existent screen mesmerized him. It looked so funny to see the wipers going about their designed path without a screen. He laughed to himself at the sight of them.

David was tiring quickly and the wipers were hypnotic. He began to think of the fun that his children were having right now and the games they would be playing. The car drifted over to one side and with a thud hit a tree. It came to an immediate stop and jolted him forward and out of his dream. He sat there for a moment not knowing what to do, weakening quickly. His car wasn’t ever going to go again. He was very sleepy and he knew that if he didn’t stay awake he would be dead. It was almost impossible to move his hand to open the seat belt. With an immense effort he managed to move his hand to release the mechanism and the belt slid back into its holder. He couldn’t move anymore that was the last of his strength. ‘I must stay awake,’ he thought, ‘until someone helps me.’ The wind screamed across the car and from the shadows David saw two dark figures coming toward him from deep in the storm. ‘I’m safe now, they will help me.’ He thought to himself. The dark figures seemed to peer into the wreckage watching David. He could not see their faces and started to wonder why they were not helping. With the last of his strength he raised a bloodied hand pleading with them for help. They remained motionless as the last of David’s strength ebbed away.

Please help me, he gurgled, pleading to them. But they did not move. ‘I must sleep now,’ was his last thought, with that, he closed his eyes. The last of the blood trickled from his body until slowly it stopped.

The dark figures remained motionless for several seconds looking on at David’s corpse. Slowly they turned and made their way back into the darkness. A clawing bolt of lightning struck the two figures. The storm raged around them as they slowly dissolved into the night. As quickly as they disappeared the storm abated and within moments, it had stopped.

2 KATE

The storm began to break, it had been such a long time since Kate had seen blue sky and every now and again the sun shone through the gaps in the clouds. It wasn’t until she felt the sun on her face that she realised how much she had missed it, she had got so used to the weather that when she felt the sun on her, it felt like a great weight had been lifted off her and she was ready to take on the world. Today she felt good and it put an extra spring into her step. Her mousy blond hair swayed as she walked. Kate liked to look good and today had chosen a beige linen suit to keep cool.

Kate lived quite close to where she worked but still drove there, never knowing when she would need the car to go out to get a story. Kate worked as a journalist at The National Planet newspaper organisation, one of the biggest in the area. As she reached the office Kate anticipated the night’s news and what she could find and sensationalise. That’s what she did best, take a small story and make headlines out of it. She had been a journalist for many years and was now hated by many in the industry for her portrayal of death and destruction. At first Kate concentrated on the usual family stories and how cats had got stuck up trees, but that was getting her nowhere and had somehow stumbled into sensationalising the truth to sell papers. This was where the money was, in death and destruction.

She opened the big glass door to the offices and walked in.

Good morning, she said to the guard at the front desk.

Morning, the guard replied as she reached her office door she looked at the sign on the door that read. ‘KATE ANDERSON, SENIOR WRITER/EDITOR’, Kate walked in.

Bitch, the guard whispered to himself so that Kate could not hear him. There weren’t many people that had time for Kate. She had walked over everybody to get what she wanted and she didn’t care who got hurt.

Kate had a thirteen-year-old son Dan, whom she did not have that much time for as she was too interested in her writing. She had been married many years ago to John Anderson but her husband had left her because of her obsessions and her increasing lack of the decorum when it came to her stories. Other differences had also become too wide and forced him to leave them. She was extremely proficient at investigating story lines and had uncovered lies and illegal dealings of several politicians and high powered businessmen.

John had been a Conservation Consultant and had left when Dan was young. Kate could have gone back to her maiden name, but told everyone that ‘Anderson’ sounded better than her old name ‘Gately’. She had been teased at school over her name which had taken its toll. She gave the exterior appearance of not giving