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The whole camp was buzzing with life like never before.
We did our best to accommodate everyone. Some people slept in the kitchen, some found their place in various rooms. We even found one bloke crammed into the shower when Manny went to brush his teeth in the morning.
Waiting in the long queue to go to the toilet made no sense, so I simply ventured out into nature to mark our territory by a nearby tree in the most traditional way there is. They say it's supposed to repel the animals too, so there you go… additional defences.
Any important decision was usually made in the kitchen. Today, however, we held the council outside under the open sky.
“Alright, everyone-” Tommy addressed her ragged group of Rebels and the few of us. “We have all made up our minds yesterday and now it's time for action. The question is... how exactly do we retaliate?”
A murmur went through the crowd, a quiet wave of indecisive confusion.
Then...
“Charge at Lyonhall and destroy them!” someone shouted.
“Lure them out,” another voice offered. “It will be easier to beat them in the streets.”
“Alright. Of course,” Tommy sighed. “Does anyone have anything more realistic than that?”
Elskan stepped forward. “I know every single one of you must be thirsting for revenge right now. Just try to think rationally. Our objective is not just some petty retribution. That will come later. First we have to get to the captives and save them.”
“Exactly,” Tommy agreed. “And with that in mind, I'm going to ask you again. Does anyone have any ideas? Anything?”
She spread her hands wide, looking over her people with desperation. The power of our foe was... unfathomable. Any idea would have been welcome. Literally anything.
And we had nothing.
“The way I see it, there are two options,” Will spoke up. “Both of them equally disastrous. Simply, we have to get into Lyonhall and either take it by storm or sneak in and open the cells from the inside.”
“Which will only result in us getting slaughtered. Both of these,” El pointed out.
“I didn't say they were good.”
“Let's try to think about these ideas before we throw them away.” Tommy was quite clearly grasping at straws. Then again, we all were. “Can we get some plans of the fortress? The layout of the place?”
Mark snorted. “Sure. Lemme just give them a call real quick and we can go and have a look. I'm sure they'll be thrilled to see us!”
“I'm not being funny here. Can we at least get some pictures from Google? Or drawings! Anything you might remember from afar!”
They spent some time trying to recall the exact layout and architecture of the fortress, and for a good while I was even considering telling them about our brief stay in the dungeons and the subsequent miraculous escape, but everyone kept talking over me, and eventually I just chickened out, the group started arguing and shouting one over another and there was nothing of it.
I did notice something during their little squabble, though. Every single meeting we've had so far, every morning or a night before some crucial decision, Elskan has been the one bloke throwing around ideas, and he's been quiet an awfully long while this time, watching, scratching at his chin in thought and listening to us with a deep frown on his face.
I would have thought he was cheesed off or frustrated with our unwelcome guests if he hadn't shaken his head and looked around as if waking from some deep sleep.
Then he opened his mouth.
“Fox has a daughter, right?”
“-excuse me?” Tommy looked up from her crude maps in the middle of a sentence.
“Fox has a young daughter, doesn't he?” El repeated as everyone quieted down and listened. “Twenty or something-ish. We saw her during our little heist.”
“Yes. He does.” The Rebels leader had to be properly irritated by such nonsensical questions in her hour of need. “What of it?”
There was another brief pause, during which Elskan looked from one of us to the other, probably pondering whether he should share his thoughts out loud.
“Obviously, a dozen or so of us can't dare to assault the foxes in any imaginable way. We can't sneak into the fortress, no matter how much you wish to try it out, because that would be even madder than sneaking out. What we can do is... exchange the captives for something else.”
“Exchange them? Exchange them for what? Rocks? Leaves? We have nothing to offer to Foxglove.” Tommy waved his suggestion away.
“Not. Yet.”
Those two words echoed through the unusually crowded glade like a sudden roll of thunder, repeating and falling back until they struck the right chords in the head of their leader.
“Wh- I'm not helping you kidnap a little girl!”
“She's a perfectly grown-up little girl, and she's our enemy!”
“I don't care!”
But those two little words were already doing their work, taking root in the heads of her Rebels, growing through and forming new ideas of their own. They went through the small crowd like a silent wave until finally they came out of their own mouths too.
“Fox made it personal for us. Let's make it personal for him. That's what I say!”
“If he wants to take away our friends, that's what he'll get!”
“Let's get her!”
The votes were cast, the conclusions concluded and where in the morning there had been nothing but despair, a strange semblance of a plan was now beginning to form. All that was left to be decided was the place, the time and the method.
“Caroline Fox…” Tommy repeated with a doubt. “Trying to get your hands on her will be the same as trying to get close to her father. You'll need to enter the fortress one way or another.”
“I bet she loves to roam around the town when no one's watching. You can't keep a young woman like that locked up in her room all day.”
“You don't know that.” Ashley frowned. “She could be your typical introvert too.”
“True.”
“But even if she wasn't, and even if we were so incredibly lucky to find she was outside right now we would still need to find her.”
“We could use social media again. The same way we did with the burned lady?” Manny offered.
“You forget we don't have wi-fi out there.”
“Oh... crap.”
“That's not a problem though, is it?” It was Ashley's turn again. “I mean… I don't have to be hiding out in the woods with you and I have data.”
Elskan looked at her with a wide smile. He was getting well into it now, shaking away all his caution in favour of the thrill of the hunt the way I'd seen it before with him.
“Okay. Alright. For a second, let's ignore the fact they could track your location, because this is more important. Turn it on.”
It took her some time to find the correct webpage and even longer to identify the right Caroline, but in the end all of her efforts were for nothing. All there was was a seriously outdated profile picture showing a cheerful teenage girl with pigtails, and the last update seemed to be at least a couple of years old.
“Damn… you can't get lucky every time.”
Our plan was clearly about to fall apart, and as much as I hated it, I realised that this time maybe I knew someone able to help us.
Looking around, I took a deep breath to prepare myself for what was about to come.
“I know a cop!” I announced somewhat awkwardly to the room full of fresh outlaws.
“What Tony is trying to say, ever so gently,” Elskan rushed to my aid in the arising silence, “is that his sister Samantha works for the police. We didn't want to alarm anyone, so we didn't mention anything, but right now this little secret could prove to be just the advantage we need. Is that what you were trying to say, Tony?”
“Um…” The big secret was out and I wasn't sure how to carry on in the conversation, so all he got from me was a small shrug and the silence continued until Tommy's voice sounded through the quiet room.
“So all this time you've been nothing but a bunch of outlaws, living in the woods, and hiding away from Foxglove by the sound of it… and now you're telling me the cops are involved too?”
“That's not entirely true!” Elskan argued.
“What?”
“I mean... It is, mostly-”
“Are you kidding me? Does anyone have anything else they want to confess?!” Tommy flared up. “Do you happen to personally know the king of Britain by any chance? Or do you have a dead body in your closet?”
I heard a soft noise behind me and someone whispered, “It was me who stole your pudding from the fridge.”
“Not now, Manny!” Will replied.
“I agree we could have been a little more transparent in our cooperation.” El raised his hands in defence. “And we can settle everything later. Right now there's no time to be pissed at each other. Tony, do you really think she might be able to help us?”
“I can't guarantee anything,” I answered truthfully. “If we set off right now, we should catch her at home before she leaves for her shift.”
“That's already better than anything any of us has managed to come up with. If everyone here agrees, we'll take the car, head out into the town, do some reconnaissance and hopefully come back with the little fox.”
And so Samantha, as much as she would have hated it if she had known about it, became our only hope in capturing the young woman and saving our friends from the clutches of the heartless warlord.
“We can use the usual car. Someone just needs to remove the number plates from it before we go. That could be a horribly annoying oversight.”
“I'll do it,” I offered, hoping the manual labour would give me some time to clear my head before we depart.
“Good. We'll need the masks again and someone can go and fetch the few weapons we got yesterday…”
The four of us outlaws, excluding the youngest Manny, Tommy, and three of her courageous Rebels, were chosen as the perfect team to carry out the deed. Using a tool case from our shared room I dismounted the two treacherous signs from our stolen car and made my way back up the hill, only to find the rest of them armed and ready for action.
Just as we were about to set off though, a familiar voice behind our backs made us halt.
“Before you go! I made you something,” Ashley got to explaining. “A little bird told me you were thinking of a name for yourself-” As she spoke, I saw Will look down at his brother, who shook his head defiantly. It was clear who let it slip. “And I don't have exactly a name for you yet, but I wanted to... actually, we all wanted to thank you for helping us in some way.”
Tommy took the lead now. “Back in the sewers, we had a kind of a symbol sprayed on one of the walls to unite us in a way and to show what we stood for. Maybe you remember it.”
“I was the one who designed it, and considering the Rebels are...” Ashley looked over at her friends. “Considering that's not a thing anymore I thought I might make a new one for you.”
She turned around and all of the sudden there was a small bundle of green cloth in her hands.
“There's not a whole lot I could do out here, but I saw this pretty neat design on one of the shirts you've got hanging off the trees outside, and I tried to do something with that.”
The cloth unfolded to reveal a dirty picture on a green background. A part of the original print was missing because the shirt was torn down the middle, but we could still make out the image of a bird, flying with its wings spread wide. The upper part was missing, leaving room for improvisation, and the Rebel girl decided to replace it with a small feathered head with a long beak.
We could all but stare in surprise at this incredible gesture of kindness, and El stepped closer to get a better look.
“What kind of bird was that supposed to be?”
“I have no idea. My hand slipped a little when I was trying to draw the beak, but I kinda like the way it looks.” She seemed a little nervous when she noticed us staring. “It's just a work in progress, of course.”
“It looks like a hummingbird,” Manny said.
That earned him a frown from Mark. “Hummingbird? Are we supposed to be a wimpy-ass animal like that?”
“I think it's really nice,” Will tried to back the artist up. “Why this design?”
“I- I actually spilled my paints while making it and I was about ready to throw the whole idea away, but then I noticed this pretty wicked curve it made, so I just fixed it into a longer beak and... here we are,” she shrugged. “I think it's fitting. Hummingbirds are tiny, but they can do things no other animal can. Just like your little group.”
“We'll consider it,” Elskan promised, with the clear intent to scrap the idea as soon as everyone forgets, and turning around he led the way to the car and hopefully to the victorious conclusion of the beginning hunt.
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Not even half an hour later we stopped at the corner of a short street and I mustered all of the newfound courage of the last few days to get out of the car and knock on the door.
It had been ages since I'd been to this place.
“Hey, Sam.”
Sitting back in our tiny lodgings felt so… bizarre. You know that feeling when you come back home from a really long trip or holidays? Somehow the place just doesn't feel familiar anymore. The smells are suddenly off, the objects are all in the wrong places, you look out the window and it feels like a completely new landscape. It takes a while to readjust to something that's always felt perfectly natural.
“It's not that I'm not happy to see you.” She sat us all down in the space we used as a living room. “I just know I can't expect anything good when you turn up with the whole gang.”
“The whole gang?” I looked over Elskan and Tommy, thinking of the rest of our band we'd left outside. “Oh, this is... you have no idea.”
That earned me a frown. “Only a month ago we could sit in these chairs, talk and watch dumb stuff on the TV. That's not the reason you're here today, is it?”
Due to the strangely personal nature of this visit, I had to be the one doing all the talking while the two, dare I say, more experienced negotiators sat in their chairs and watched me do my magic. This was all on me.
“Fox's daughter, I think her name is Caroline… we need to know where she is.”
“Really?” Whether the information surprised her or not, she didn't let anything show. She didn't like it though. “And how would I know that?”
“We both know how.”
“Enlighten me…”
This was my sister. There was no reason to keep any secrets or waste anyone's time. We had little enough of it as it was.
“I know you blokes spy on the army wherever you can,” I told her, “You're the one who told me about it.”
“Well...”
“All we need is the name of the place and you can go about your day as if nothing happened and no one will ever know you helped us.”
I could clearly see the doubt in her eyes as Sam bit her lip.
“We do keep tabs on most of their patrols. Just to be sure.”
“You do?” El spoke up.
“Just to be sure!” she repeated, “Do I need to explain that? This is our town and they are stealing our work! We want to know where they are and what they're doing and once this whole mess is over, the ultimate plan is to give all this information to the people higher up. But that's a job for the force and not something I could share with a bunch of randos.”
“But we're not a bunch of randos. Are we?”
Family and a healthy sense of justice were the way to go with my sister and Tommy seemed to read that in her demeanour in those five minutes as well as I'd managed to do in over twenty years. The Rebel shifted in her seat.
“Sam, was it?”
“Yes. Nice to meet you,” she answered without ever changing her expression.
“From what I understand, people usually become police officers to help others.”
That earned her an ugly chuckle. “You would be surprised…”
“Maybe, but you don’t strike me as the type to join the force just to be a bully. We are trying to get our friends out of Lyonhall. They've done nothing wrong and they don't deserve to be closed up in a dungeon. In this town, we don't have a whole lot of opportunities to do something good and as depressing as it might sound, this could be the biggest chance you'll ever get.”
“What are you gonna do with this girl?”
“Take her to the forest and exchange her for the captives.”
She looked from one of them to the other and finally to me, then rose from the table to get some privacy in another room. “Let me- I'll just make a phone call.”
It must have been hard for her to find the courage to help a bunch of strangers and the more I am grateful for what she did for us. I know I probably wouldn't have.
We could hear her muffled voice coming from the other room, deciding the fate of dozens of innocent people. When she came back with a grim expression on her face and the exact location of Fox's daughter, it took a huge load off our hearts and all I could do was to nod, hug her like a clumsy idiot and head for the door.
Before I could join the others outside, she caught me by the arm.
“Listen... I can't tell you what to do. I can't make you-” Sam stopped. “Actually, I can. I'm older and I'm stronger. I can just take you into a chokehold and make you unconscious if I wanted to.”
“That's not how that works.”
“What?”
“I've seen it before. You can't just choke people without consequences.”
I was surprised to see her wince and stop for a second. “Whatever- I just want to know if you really think you're ready for this. Do you trust these people so much you would risk your life for them?”
“I'm not risking my life for anyone.”
The look she gave me after that reminded me way too much of our mother. “Of course not. Just be careful to stop before you get burned, alright?”
We looked each other in the eyes as we said our goodbyes and, hoping she could see nothing but determination in mine, I joined my two friends waiting outside.
“So she's at a movie theatre…”
“That's ideal.”
Tommy didn't look like she shared the outlaw's optimism. “You know, I was half hoping this would turn out to be just a daft goose chase and we could move on to something more reasonable. The more we're getting entangled into this mess, the more I'm hoping we might be able to do this and I know I'm going to be disappointed.”
“Don't be so negativistic,” Elskan nudged her in the shoulder and grunted in pain, no doubt immediately regretting his daft decision. “It's a beautiful day outside. Let's go kidnap a girl!”
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You might be wondering how come there was a functioning cinema in a time when we couldn't afford even something as essential as our recommended nutritional values and the answer is quite honestly very simple.
Some people have very strange priorities.
And in Nederstone there were enough of them to keep the local establishment afloat.
The time it took us to get to the place went by like nothing, and if our information was correct, we could look forward to meeting Caroline and her whole troupe of personal bodyguards inside.
It was a nice little building with wide windows and a big red neon sign broadcasting the names of the movies they were playing. Everything was freshly renovated right before the crisis hit, though you wouldn't guess it from the way the walls looked.
During the warmer months of the year, a small booth was placed near the entrance and it was to this that our outlaw leader went to look through the tiny glass window and flashed the young cashier with the familiar finger guns gesture. “Hello. Can I get five tickets for…” he stopped to look up at the playbill, mounted above our heads, “Generation of Degeneration…”
“Of course… um…” the boy looked down to write on his keyboard and frowned. “Though I'm afraid it's already running.”
“We know. It makes no matter.”
“It's already halfway in. But it's not a problem, honestly. I can book you some seats two hours from now. We won't be showing anything else till Monday, anyway.”
“Wait!” Will lunged forward, startling the poor kid to death. “We absolutely have to see that movie!”
“Ye- I- I've seen it. It's not all that great,” the boy stammered.
“Our friends are already in there,” I hurried with a helpful lie, “and we were supposed to meet them outside and watch the film together, but our bus got stuck in a jam.”
“Well, you should have said that at the start.”
I took the freshly printed tickets he handed me and grinned victoriously at the others while El struggled to collect pennies they had in their pockets.
The interior turned out to be as unimpressive as everything we'd spied from the outside. After a long, blank corridor adorned with old posters from the last year, we climbed a short flight of stairs and entered a drab hall of a small-town cinema. There was no popcorn to be had, unfortunately, and when a woman standing by the door tore up our tickets to let us through, we found ourselves standing near a dim-lit passage leading up to the only auditorium.
“A plan!” El stopped us in our tracks before anyone had the time to enter. “What do we have?”
“Let's barge in there and grab her before they have a chance to do anything,” was Will's brilliant idea. One of the unknown Rebels offered something a little more hopeful. “Someone could turn off the lights in there too. If there was like a generator or something around here…”
“Good thinking.” I could see El's eyes darting towards a closed door with a red warning sign at the end of the passage, which no doubt led up to a projection box, and he patted me on the back. “The two of us will take care of that and the rest of you go and act like you're late for some mediocre flick. Once the movie stops and everything goes dark just grab her and get out of there as fast as you can.”
We split up into two groups and as I watched the rest of our group disappear and descend a flight of illuminated stairs into the darkened room of the auditorium, I turned around and followed the limping, grunting outlaw to the door. He'd been holding the injured side of his body for a while now with a pained expression, I've noticed, and all the travelling around and unnecessary action on his part were obviously not doing him any good.
“You holding up alright?” I tried to inquire when he grabbed for the door handle and cursed as he found it locked.
“I'm still alive, aren't I?”
“Alive doesn't have to mean well.”
“I'll feel well when all of this is over and we're sitting somewhere up north in Scotland drinking hot cocoa and thinking about the time when we almost got killed by a bunch of foxes.”
“Is that door going to be a problem?”
“Not at all… you know, this is actually a perfect opportunity to show you the ingenuity of the credit card method.”
Stepping away from the door, I watched as he pulled out a card and carefully slid it into the narrow bit of space where the bolt prevented us from entering and with, “Don't do this at home, kids!” He simply punched the card in, sending the door flying open with a soft click.
Hearing about the way it worked made it sound absolutely ridiculous. Actually witnessing the ease with which the lock gave up was maddening.
The interior looked different from what I would have imagined. Years of cinematography taught me to expect a hulking projector in the middle of the room, its two iconic wheels spinning the tape with a silent hum. What I got was a pretty regular backroom; messy, full of old boxes of varying sizes and mostly empty safe for a long control panel in the front and a dimly lit, yellowed computer attended by one of the staff. The movie itself was being streamed onto the big screen from a simple tiny projector hanging from the ceiling.
The woman immediately turned around. “Excuse me-”
“This is no time for pleasantries.” El held an empty gun to her head. “I'm really sorry to ruin your day, madam. I'm gonna have to ask you to step back. Let us do our thing and nothing will happen to you.”
Thankfully, the lass' healthy sense of self-preservation kicked in and El directed her to the other side of the room where she squatted down without any further resistance and watched on in despair.
“Now sit in that corner and scram! I'm watching you!” he didn't stop aiming at her and turned his head to me. “Can you see them anywhere?”
There was a clear window of sorts at the front of the room overlooking the unsuspecting audience and to this I averted my attention, searching for our friends in the crowd. What immediately caught my eye was the curly head of a young woman sitting right in the middle of the auditorium. While there seemed to be a couple of spectators scattered here and there, her whole row was completely empty save for two soldiers, one sitting at every end right next to the stairs. No doubt the personal guard Sam had mentioned. Despite their important designation, they didn't seem exactly vigilant and watched the movie with more interest than their immediate surroundings.
Tommy and the rest were already sitting right behind them.
“Okay. Do you think you can take it over over here?” he handed me the weapon. “I'll go and help them and when I give you a signal, turn off the lights, the movie and everything, so it's completely dark in there. We'll handle the rest.”
And with that he left me alone with a gun in my hand and the distressed captive sitting in a corner.
Turn off the lights… Right. And how was I supposed to do that?
“Excuse me?” I was perfectly aware of how meek my voice must have sounded. I was no doubt the softest criminal in all of England. “Come over by here, please.”
Gingerly, the woman complied and moved closer to the computer, her eyes fixed on the gun the whole time.
“I need you- I mean…” I took on a more resolute tone and held my hand a little higher. “When I tell you, you will turn off all the lights in that room, understood? I need to give them complete cover when things go down in there.”
It was clear that she wasn't stoked to become an accomplice in some uncomfortably malicious scheme, but nevertheless she sat back down behind the computer and waited for my command.
Behind the glass I could see the dark figure of the last outlaw enter the room and walk up the short stairs to his seat.
“You're going after those foxes, are you?”
This sudden outburst of interest surprised me, understandably, and left me cautious. I wondered if I should say something or stay silent.
“Maybe. What of it?”
I got no answer and followed her gaze straight to the back of the curly head of Caroline Fox.
“They busted my brother yesterday, you know…” she looked at me and my hand lowered involuntarily. A small town, I suppose. “I don't know why you're here, and I don't know what you plan to do with them. Just make sure to give them hell.”
At the last word she pressed a button on her keyboard and the whole hall grew dark. The annoyed sounds of complaining patrons were drowned out by muffled thuds, loud stomping and shouts of an ensuing fight and in a minute I could hear people running down the passage past our door, which flew open to reveal William, panting and with his cheeks as red as a turnip.
“Was that it?”
“They've got our number,” he tossed me the girl's phone. “We'll leave it here and they can call us later. Now come on!”
Fairly certain, but not perfectly sure I've done my job correctly, I turned to my unexpected ally and handed the device to her. “Can you give this to the police or to whoever comes first?”
“Uh… sure?”
“Good.”
I was about ready to leave and join the rest of my friends in their hurried flight when the girl stopped me in the doorway.
“Wait!” she gasped, and I was surprised to see what I assumed was wonder in her eyes. “Who the hell are you people?”
The question left me standing there for a second, wondering. I couldn't tell her my name or the identity of any of the others, obviously, so I answered the first thing that came to my mind at that moment.
“We're the Hummingbird.”
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The ride back to the camp seemed to go by a lot faster than the initial nervous going to the town.
It felt awfully nice not to have to worry about the possibility of a failure now that it was all over. We'd done our job and whatever was about to come tomorrow was a problem for my future me.
Apart from an initial incident during which our captive tried to bite off Tommy's fingers, Caroline Fox remained strangely calm. She didn't appear to be afraid, hysterical or desperate for help. She just listened to us with quiet intent, no doubt waiting for a perfect opportunity to make her escape. Now that I know what the girl was truly capable of, I'm actually surprised we all survived that short ride in good health, considering we didn't even bother to tie her up. Being the amateurs we were at the time, taking all of our miserable knowledge from poorly written action movies, the only thing we did somewhat correctly was to cover her face and deprive her of her sight.
The edge of our woods came way faster than it seemed to have any right to do. We parked the car as close to our little hill as we dared to and led the blinded girl up and into our kitchen to the thunderous applause of all the eagerly awaiting Rebels.
She got what we liked to call 'the Ashley treatment'.
“Alright, what do you want?” Caroline got to talking as soon as we took the hood off her face and she got a quick look around the crowded room. “Do you want money? We have money. More than you can imagine. Do you want revenge or something? Because that will just cost you your lives.”
“I'm gonna give you a few very simple rules,” Elskan took off his mask as he stepped closer. “You're here to be exchanged for something, so you don't have to worry about your well-being. Give it a few days and you'll be back with your dear old father, commanding your army and oppressing the people all over the town as much as you like. Keep quiet, don't bite anyone again, and don't try anything stupid, and nothing needs to happen to you.”
“Yeah…” the younger brother interfered on his monologue. “You know... we have some experience with this stuff. It's not the first time we've kidnapped a girl and strapped her to a chair in our kitchen!”
“That came out wrong.”
“But it's true!”
“Quiet, Manny.”
“I need to pee, for starters.” Caroline looked around her. “Are you just going to keep me in here? Because I don't care if I'm going to ruin your chair.”
“Jesus. Mark, take her to the toilet.”
“What? Why me?!”
“Because I chose you! Come on!” El urged him on. “I'm the one who's hurt. You're the charming prince who's gonna help the damsel in distress to take a piss. Go!”
Leaving this impressive display of a clown show, I was just in time to catch the last bits of a speech Tommy was giving outside.
“You've all managed to do something unimaginable today and I'm incredibly proud of you,” she spoke to the small group that gathered there. “While we've accomplished a great deal of work, I don't want you to think we're out of the woods yet. All the worst stuff is just ahead of us and I want you to get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow you'll need all the strength you have left.”
She nodded in acknowledgement as I passed her and smiled lightly, and I like to think this small victory gave us all some semblance of hope and confidence that wasn't there in the morning.
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Of course, that wasn't about to last very long.
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