Roken Friedriksson
Hiccup & Eleanor - Part 1 - Chapter 3
This is Hiccup & Eleanor, book two of The White Age, which I will be releasing as a serial - with one chapter per week - over the coming months. You can also preorder the book here or catch up on Substack here.
Book one, Absolution, is available for purchase on Amazon, or you can catch up here.
i)
Hampshire, England
23rd September 2074
The early afternoon sun cast its blinding rays down onto Roken as he shouldered his rifle and trudged on through the ash. He was battered and wounded; driven by his need to make amends and to prevent a bad situation from snowballing out of control. His mission was now to find and neutralise his colleague, Zero, before he did something they would all regret. Ever since the helicopter crash, the task had become more and more difficult. Each step was a drain on his limited resources and, though he was tracking every half-step with relentless guile, Zero was faster, more cunning, and didn’t rest. He’s getting away from me. Nothing angered Roken more than failing, and every day that passed without a sighting of his prey made it less likely that he would succeed. I can’t let him get away. I can’t risk what might happen. Despite everything, I cannot let him destroy himself.
The weather had been appalling since the crash, and this had done nothing to relieve his rage. He longed for the dry chill of his native Iceland, not the relentless, damp gloom of this hell. Roken was in survival mode and journeyed from shelter to shelter as efficiently as possible, but the weather made every step more sluggish and every construction of shelter more pathetic. The war had hollowed out this part of the land and he hadn't come into contact with anybody. He could feel the warmth of radiation from the nuclear blast creeping up the back of his neck, clawing with ageing fingers at his spine and the hairs up the back of his neck. Roken had sustained a mild concussion in the crash, and this made the need for him to rest even greater and the distance that his target could gain from him more pronounced.
Zero was off the grid and could not be contacted by UNA. The only way he could be found now was if Roken could track his movements using every drop of the intuition he had refined over the past thirty years of service. He can't go far, not with the damage he'd sustained in the crash. I'll find him, Roken assured himself, promised himself. As soon as Roken realised that he was following the canal towards Hampshire, he knew where he would be heading: to the airfield; to The Doctor. Shit. Maybe Elise is right, maybe this could all end terribly. I can’t let him do this! The helicopter had crashed three days before, and Roken knew that Zero would need to re-charge soon. He has to stop somewhere, anywhere, and then I can close the gap between us.
Roken stopped and raised the telescopic scope of his rifle to his eye as he leaned gently around a short, tired wall. His shoulder-length grey hair was tangled with his beard, and it framed his face against the elements. Across the road he had noticed a petrol station, about two hundred metres away, and he needed supplies. The looting and the riots had cleared out most shops and buildings but, the further from London he travelled, the greater his chances were of finding some much-needed sustenance. His mother had once said that a Londoner would sooner kill a man than let him walk away with something free. I get that now, he thought.
The shopfront wandered before his right eye with a detailed crosshair placed in front of it. He squinted hard and breathed slowly and deeply; maintaining the steadiness in his arm and focus in his eye. The glass shopfront had been obliterated. A car protruded from the front of the building and the deep black scars of an explosion pasted the walls. Roken was surprised that the building was still standing, the damage appeared so severe. But there could still be something inside. Maybe in a storage room out the back, he told himself hopefully.
Roken dropped his rifle from his eye and slung it over his shoulder. Still crouched, he began to run along the low wall beside him, his aching body reluctantly adhering to the demands it was accustomed to. He paused just beyond the wall and slotted his body behind a gnarled old oak tree, beside the road. He could see the roundabout a short distance ahead and then the wrecked petrol station. He bent his head and listened as he ceased breathing for several seconds.
Nothing. Silence.
Damn, he thought. His instincts screamed for him to run. He knew too well how badly this could go. The thought of his commanding officer screaming in his face washed over him briefly: "you just had to neutralise a robot, a fucking friend of yours, and you died in a petrol station scavenging for some snacks?"
“I need supplies, Ric.” he whispered softly to himself, reassuring himself that this was the right thing to do. This is not a mistake.
Roken checked the magazine in his rifle and then his 9mm pistol, which was strapped to his left thigh. The rifle was returned to his back and his pistol drawn. He pointed it at the ground about five metres ahead of him and clicked off the safety.
Two steps past the tree, Roken glanced left and then right. Nothing. Wrecked cars and hollowed buildings sat around in piles of broken glass and debris, left for dead, they stared blankly at him, contemplating their timelessness, their infinite nothingness in this forgotten place. Two more steps and Roken ducked behind a car that had been completely burnt out. The silence hung in the air and sent a shiver through him. It was a surreal silence. A nonsense, a trick. It made no sense, there was never no noise. He rolled around the back of the car and sprinted towards the petrol station.
Roken had almost reached another, slightly larger car when the bullets came soaring passed his head in a furious stream. The concrete in front of him erupted in a blitz of sparks and smoke and rubble was spat out in chaotic angles. He rolled on his left shoulder and leaped through a bush behind a short wall next to the petrol station. He lay prone on his back for what felt like minutes as the bullets screamed through the air only a couple of feet above him. He held his breath and waited.
How could I have been so stupid? I should be dead. His mind had faded since the crash; tapered away like a lit fuse and left him feeling hollow. It’s the damn radiation. I can’t stay here for long; my mind will melt to nothing. Or I’ll get myself killed.
The firing ceased and he drew breath. His thoughts were a shattered mess, he simply hadn't expected an ambush and now he was trapped. Roken strained to listen, but there was nothing; an ominous silence endured. He had to move, or he was dead. But how am I to get out of here? Without moving his body, he glanced around. The short wall ran for two metres in both directions. After a moment’s deliberation, he began to shuffle his body carefully up toward the edge of the wall behind his head. Every muscle throbbed as he tried to push himself along the ground without raising a limb above the height of the brickwork. Any sign of his presence would result in another blast of machine-gun fire. It was a painstaking two metres. He reached the end of the wall and slid half a metre down onto his front: he was lying in a small, walled-in yard with pools of oil and water on the ground, sucking at his filthy clothes.
Roken double-checked his pistol's safety was off; a habit more than anything else. He knew his time for respite would be brief. His pursuers would be closing in on where he was last seen; he was being hunted. The silence of the abandoned street behind him seemed to encroach on his being; making him itch with claustrophobia. He could feel it retracting in on him like a hostile cloud. I need a fucking cigarette, and I need to get away from this radiation. There was a heat behind his eyes, a perpetual headache he had experienced in his nuclear support training. It wasn't immediately life threatening yet, but he knew that his days would be numbered if he didn't get help soon. Assuming I am able to survive the rest of the day.
He took a small mirror from his breast pocket and held it up as slowly as he could manage, so it just crept above the top of the wall. He angled it one way and them another, scanning the street; the scene of stillness and carnage. Opposite the petrol station, he could see the shell of an office building. A shattered company name hung in ruins with letters askew and nonsensical. Three floors were exposed by a perfect circle of destruction in the face of the building; the signature of a rocket-grenade, Roken was certain. He strained his eyes to find any tell-tale signs of a gunman on one of the exposed floors. He glimpsed a flicker of light, the fading sun catching the glass of a rifle scope, and then the mirror in his hand shattered as a single bullet tore through the air. Half a second later, the unmistakable roar of a sniper rifle gunshot smashed the well-preserved silence to pieces.
Fuck.
Roken's finger and thumb screamed in agony. He hadn't expected the sniper and cursed his foolishness. These drifters are well equipped, he thought as he lay hidden behind the wall, twisting his body in an attempt to free his own rifle from beneath him: a sniper rifle with an extended holographic scope; his prized possession. He didn't have long to react, so he spun onto one knee, leaving an inch between the top of his head and the top of the wall, and locked the rifle into his right shoulder. With his left hand he removed the empty water bottle from his left hip and slowly raised it up toward the top of the wall. As it emerged over the top of the brickwork, the terrible crack of his pursuer’s sniper rifle sent it spinning from his hand. Without hesitation, he pushed his body up, raised the scope to his eye, and squeezed the trigger of his own gun.
There was a face, and an eye, a dilated pupil of understanding, and then a flash of blood-mist and the face was gone. The force of the shot sent an off balance Roken tumbling onto his back, where he lay winded and motionless. As the noise subsided to nothing once again, a thought rolled around and around in Roken's head: a machine gun, a machine gun, a machine gun. His subconscious was screaming for attention, and it took him too long to listen to what it was trying to say.
By the time the thought reached his conscious mind, a girl had sprung out of the bushes to his left and lunged at him with a machete. Roken rolled to his right to avoid the blade, which ricocheted off the asphalt in a shower of sparks. He drew up on one knee, raised the rifle to his midriff, and fired a hole through the girl's throat. She dropped the upraised machete and fell into a heap on the floor. She was young, emaciated and clad in scraps of old, American army gear, a large machine gun strapped to her back. Damn Americans, Roken thought as he looked down at his kill, such a damn mess.
Roken had barely clambered to his feet by the time a third attacker, an enormous man with the build of a cage-fighter, leapt over the wall and tackled him off his feet. The wind was knocked out of Roken's lungs again and his vision went black for a second. His rifle was gone, and he could feel the man on top of him drawing a combat knife. Light pierced his eyes, and breath flooded his lungs as the blade came down toward the centre of his chest. He palmed the blade away, but it plunged into his side, sending a stream of blood onto the already soaked ground and pain surging through his body. As the man pulled at his knife to continue his attack, Roken drew his own from his right boot and plunged it into the side of his neck. Blood poured out over them both and they lay still in the returning silence.
There can't be any more of them, Roken thought to himself as he lay bleeding beneath the dead man. His energy was drifting away as the pain started to swell across the left side of his body. With all of his might he rolled the man off and away; a gaping mouth dribbled blood as he stared blankly up at the reddening sky.
Roken closed his own eyes and listened as intently as he could in his state of pain; through the throbbing of the blood rushing through his ears and the thumping of his heart in his chest, he heard only silence. If there's another one of them, I'm dead. He managed to clamber to a seated position, and then over onto all fours. Hot blood ran from his chest wound and soaked his shirt, turning it a darker shade of green. His head became light as nausea washed over him. He spat angrily on the floor.
There was a sound behind him. A rough, scraping sound, like metal on metal, or plastic on plastic. I'm dead. In one swift, albeit somewhat drunken, move, Roken grabbed his pistol and span around onto his back, pointing the gun in the direction of the noise. A red fox raised its gaunt face languidly from the discarded plastic food carton it had been chewing on the floor and gazed back at him. Roken grinned and lay back, relief filling his bleeding chest.
ii)
It took almost an hour to scope the entire area for anybody else: with his pistol drawn in his right hand and his left hand pinned to his wound to staunch the flow of blood, he checked every crevice in the vicinity for potential threats. There was nobody else around. He entered the cavernous front of the petrol station and scavenged all he could from behind the counter and the storage room beyond that. It had largely been cleared out, probably by the three who had attacked him as they had seemingly made camp in the hollowed office opposite, but he found two packs of cigarettes and a few various foodstuffs. Enough to keep him out of similar situations for at least a couple of days.
His head was light, and his entire left side was throbbing dully. The world began to swim. Walking in a straight line had become an arduous task. Roken stumbled into the wreck of a car outside the petrol station and propped himself against it. His face reflected back at him through a shard of broken rear view mirror in the passenger seat; the colour had drained from his face; he looked as though he were dying. I'm such a fool for letting him get away. I’ve lost him.
A beeping in his ear snapped him back to attention:
"This is Base Camp 9. Rifle, confirm your status." The chatter was in his right ear. His concussion made it echo, shuddering his aching brain.
"This is Rifle. Status is wounded." Roken grunted back, breathing deeply to control the pain, if only for a moment.
"Confirm mission vulnerability."
"Mission is unaffected. I'm tougher than I look." The line clicked dead, followed by silence. Two seconds later the line crackled back to life and this time a woman's voice spoke.
"Roken. What happened?" The voice was crisp and clear and made Roken smile despite everything. Elise.
"Well, if it isn't my guardian angel." Wincing, Roken leaned his good side on the car, lighting one of his newly acquired cigarettes and inhaling deeply so his head spun with the sudden rush.
"What happened?" The voice was soft, concerned, yet firm enough to express control.
"I walked into a door." Roken said, tentatively prodding his wound with his left hand.
"We can see blood loss, not a small amount, and your heart rate is dropping. Have you been shot?"
"Nearly. It's a knife wound. Left chest. Not mortal. A scratch.” He took another drag of his cigarette, and his side wailed with the exertion of his chest muscles, “Marry 'tis enough." Roken smiled as silence hung on the line for several seconds.
"Are you quoting Shakespeare at me?" The voice betrayed no emotion.
"How else will you learn to love me, Elise?" Roken's stomach fluttered as he pictured her face, her blushing smile, a million miles away. He swayed on his feet and had to catch himself. The excitement of speaking to Elise, along with his injury, made him giddy.
“Any sign of Zero?” She asked, her voice now unable to disguise her concern.
“I have a strong trail. This minor setback aside, I think I am on course.”
"Just get it done and get home safe. Your signal keeps dropping out so I will contact you when I am able. You need to stitch up that wound soon." There was hesitation; a reluctance to let go. “Over.” Her thoughts were unspoken this time: don’t let him get to The Doctor; don’t let him destroy himself. She couldn’t risk UNA finding out what he was capable of, because it would all go to hell fast if she did.
"Oui, mademoiselle." Roken stamped out his cigarette and looked around him as the line went dead. Loneliness smothered him. It wasn't a feeling he often felt. He was trained to be by himself for months on end, such was the nomadic nature of his job, and he was hard-wired to thrive alone. But speaking to Elise had exacerbated his feelings of seclusion and he just wanted to be with her.
When did I last see her?
iii)
Bern, Switzerland
23rd March 2074
“Are you happy?” Elise flicked her cigarette onto the floor and cocked her head at Roken, her voice almost lost amid the drone of the band inside the bar. The cold had eased but there was still winter ice in the air, and she was shivering slightly; her Spanish blood would never grow accustomed to the cold. Roken loved the way she persevered; not wanting to appear weak in front of the Icelandic man before her.
“In what sense?” Roken took a drag of his own cigarette and looked up at the stars scattered in the sky above them. It’s nothing like Iceland, where you can see the stars flicker with their boiling passion.
“With this place. With Switzerland.” Her blue eyes were made all the more striking against her pale skin and black hair and she kept them locked on him as she spoke.
“Sure. It’s a job.” Roken shrugged, not entirely sure where this was going.
“Just a job?”
“I am here six months at a time, if I’m lucky. It’s busy and it’s pretentious, and the beers are extortionate, but it’s fine.” Roken smiled but Elise didn’t return the gesture; she seemed stung by his response, and he couldn’t place why.
“Do I factor in your thinking, at all?” She blinked away and sipped her red wine. Ah, Roken thought, I did not play that well. They had been seeing each other on and off for the past two years and, despite Roken having strong feelings for her, they had never made a commitment to each other. It was the nature of the job, Roken told himself on many occasions, not knowing where he would be and for how long meant that he could not tie himself down to anyone or any thing. Least of all Elise. It wouldn’t be fair on either of them.
“Of course you do, El.” He reached up to grab her arm, but she flinched away.
“I am here every time you come back, and we have a great time. But then you go, and I’m just expected to wait and hope you come back in one piece. Hell, it’s my job to make sure you come back in one piece. That’s one fucked up relationship dynamic, don’t you think?” Her eyes were wet pearls of sadness that drew in the moonlight. He felt weak with the guilt, knowing that he should have done so much better. What can I say to that? I’ve let her down.
“Marry me.” The words slapped against the cold air with the dull force of a shovel. Why did I say that? Elise paused for a moment, frowning at him in shock, before bursting into laughter. Roken could feel the heat rise to his cheeks. Damn.
“You're an idiot.” Elise said through her bursts of laughter, “but thanks, all the same.” She rolled her eyes and turned away, grabbing her coat as she went. “I’m going home, Roken. I don’t expect you to walk me.” She called over her shoulder and breezed passed the bar and out onto the main road. Roken just stood still, watching her leave, frozen in place by his embarrassment and his confusion as to what to do next. Just move, you idiot. He bolted out of the bar and then turned left, following her path out into a moonlit Bern.
He caught up to her and they walked side-by-side in silence for the fifteen minutes back to her apartment. Snow was piled on the sides of the footpath and ice crunched under their boots; the rhythmic, repeated sound a tonic to the void that hung between them. They reached Elise’s house, and she turned to face him; her beauty framed by the ice and highlighted by the moon and the stars. The darkness of the street made the bright punctuation all the more poignant.
“I can’t do this, Roken.” Her face was set as she met his eye but that only exacerbated Roken’s pain. “I will always be here for you, waiting for you to come back, but I cannot wait any longer for you to tell me that you love me, to tell me that you can’t do this without me. Because that’s what I need to hear. You don’t need me like I need you. Go to Iceland and fight the war. That’s what you do best, and I will watch over you and Zero for as long as I am able. But I can’t keep loving you, not like this.”
“I…” Roken’s voice caught in his throat as he fought back tears. How is this happening? But he knew there was no point in arguing. She was the strongest person he knew, and there was no changing her mind when it was set. He dropped his gaze to the floor and nodded; an affirmation that she was correct.
“Thank you, Roken, for everything.” She tilted her face up to his and kissed him on the lips. He could feel the warmth of his tears on the cold of her face and wanted to scream with the pain that this would be the last time. She turned and was gone, into the silence of the cold, hard night.
iv)
Hampshire, England
23rd September 2074
I need you now, Elise. And you're nowhere near me.
Roken gathered the bodies and packed them roughly into the shell of a van, which was somewhat concealed by a swathe of aggressive bramble plants, around to the side of the petrol station. He had to take precautions; if there was a patrol out and they saw the bodies he would become the subject of a different hunt. By the time he had finished with the clean-up, his wound was on fire and his breathing was becoming laboured.
He climbed the steps of the rotting office building where he had found the twisted, headless body of the sniper he had shot. There were several bags beside the corpse, through which he rooted for any potential loot; he gathered a few tins of food and some much needed medical supplies.
Roken ascended to the floor above, limping and with one hand acting as a support against a crumbling, damp wall. He entered an enormous open-plan office space. The setting sun sent red light pouring into the semi-circular rocket-wound at the front of the building, as though it were a viewpoint over hell. To his right, there was a shrine running the entire length of the back wall. It was decorated with flowers, photographs and statuettes of varying sizes, shapes and colours. It was a cacophony of faiths; a Christian cross stood propped up between Hanukkah candles and golden Buddha effigies. Roken sat down in front of it and marvelled at the intricate collage of belief that stood before him. Why do people still believe in anything? Especially here.
Finally tending to his wound, he stuck himself with a vial of morphine and got to work. The alcohol stung as he poured it over the deep gouge between his fifth and sixth ribs on his left side; the location was awkward for stitches, so he had to settle for a thick glue to seal the wound and a bandage wrapped tightly three times around his torso. His head burned with the pain and the morphine as they danced in riotous battle. He fell back and closed his eyes. How safe am I here? He fought through the fatigue and dizziness. His breathing deepened and sleep took him in a surge of ecstasy. Safe enough, I hope. He withdrew Zero’s severed finger from his pocket and squeezed it tightly in his hand. It squeaked as the synthetic ligaments fought to maintain their structure. Look what you’ve done, Zero. Look what you’ve done to me.
As sleep took him, he was dancing with Elise on the roof of a ruined building, in the centre of a ruined city. Bombs went off all around them as they spun around and around; hands locked and faces adjacent. The world was ending around them, but they had each other. Precise paradise amidst chaos and oblivion.
v)
24th September 2074
When he woke, the room was cold and damp with the intrusive dew of morning. Roken wiped his face. His skin was hot, and his clothes were soaked with sweat and blood. A grey light crept in through the long windows and seemed to seep into the building through its gaping, roadside wound. He could see the cold but not feel it, which he knew was a problem.
Roken rose tentatively, he could feel the wound on his side throbbing angrily; his muscles struggling with the damage as they tensed and flexed. He was in a far worse way than he had thought: a fever was creeping up, probably through shock, and he needed for the wound to be thoroughly cleaned and stitched as soon as possible. He half-emptied some water he had scavenged from the drifters over his face, droplets clinging to his grey beard, and gulped down the other half, his thirst fierce.
I need Elise, I need Zero. He placed his finger against the tragus of his right ear and said “Base Camp 9” in a croaked wheeze. Nothing. He tried three times and there was still no response. Why did I tell her I was okay yesterday? I won’t survive this. He cursed his pride and rose to his feet. He had to move to try and acquire some signal or some help, however unlikely either might be.
He left the building by a side door and followed a footpath away from the road; shelled out office-buildings to his right, and a multi-storey car park on his left. The car park was littered with an array of vehicles in various states of deconstruction: an American helicopter lay on its back on the top floor, strips of metal reaching up like the dead legs of a spider. What were they thinking coming here, it was never going to go well. They should have left this country to rot and saved some lives. Roken had shouldered his rifle again and held his pistol ahead of him. He narrowed his eyes to ease the blurring and placed his feet carefully to prevent stumbling.
A short way down the footpath, he arrived at a pond. The water rippled lightly in a stiff morning breeze, a simmering liquid metal. The browned and blackened vegetation that formed a large ring all the way around the body of water stood starkly in the growing light of the tentatively rising sun. Life had abandoned what was doubtless once a source of thriving beauty. Only the wind stirred the scene from stillness, lightly buffeting the deceased scenery as though attempting to wake it from a heavy slumber.
Roken turned right and fought through the weeds and branches that leered angrily, as they protruded into the pathway and scratched at his skin and clothes. He bowed his head and forced his way forward, claustrophobic anxiety started to stir in his mind, exacerbated by his wound and by his inability to see clearly. He rounded the pond for several minutes, checking frequently for a path off to the right, heading south. Head south and then east. Get close to the airfield and maybe you can be extracted when you find Zero. With every step, his head and chest felt heavier; it was harder to breathe. I must find Zero.
“Base Camp 9. This is Rifle. Come in.” Only silence greeted his request.
He needed to rest, he knew he could not go on any further. I just need to rest my eyes for a while, then I can move on feeling fresh, without this damned headache. He stumbled into a concealed clearing to his right, which backed onto a fence. He went to his knees and then fell over onto his side. Elise's face appeared before his eyes, and he smiled. He wanted to cry; to tell her he loved her, to say sorry. He said nothing and closed his eyes as the cold, hard ground welcomed him into its arms.