Read Online The Border Reiver by Nick Christofides - Free Book Online

soon enough the moisture in the sticks was being exorcised in the form of a thick plume of smoke which soon died back when the fire broke into flame. Nat eyed the approach to his land as the smoke could be seen from a long way off, but all remained quiet. 
    His mind turned back to his breakfast as he fashioned a rough spit out of three sticks and roasted the meat over an open fire. He also opened one of the tins of beans and placed the open tin on the edge of the fire to warm.
    He ate as he gazed west up the Tyne Valley towards the chimneys of the chipboard factory in the distance, which, for as long as he could remember, was continually belching out some concoction of gases. Today they were dormant. He wondered what the rest of the country were doing, was there civil war? Were people resisting? It didn’t look like it to him, the countryside was quiet, but then he didn’t imagine bombs would be going off either way.
    It was seven miles into Hexham. He briefly considered walking but then thought better of it - time was against him. He’d take his chances in the Jeep. After gnawing the last of the meat from the rabbit’s bones, he put the fire out with loose soil from a nearby mole hill. He walked into the shelter and delved into the canvas bag, removing the ball-h peen hammer he had stowed in there.
    He put the tool in the inside pocket of his jacket and put the rifle back in the bag. Then he put the canvas bag into a plastic feed sack to keep it all dry and set off with it towards the house. Halfway up the steady incline he ducked into a small overgrown thicket, inside was an outcrop of rock which had a small cave. He pushed the bag underneath and moved off towards the house with his hammer in his pocket.
    His home was now just a smouldering mess of stone, charred wood and melted man-made materials. He looked, but his gritty face gave away no emotion. His jaw jutted like a rocky outcrop, his eyes were narrowed against the wind, his whiskers were white as snow and the lines on his face were dark and uniform, like a furrowed field.
    He stepped up into his Jeep; the keys remained in the ignition but the rear bumper was embedded in the blue NSO car which he had crashed into the night before. He started the engine, slammed his foot down on the accelerator and the powerful engine roared. The vehicle lurched up into the air, but the tyres were true, biting into the gravel, throwing it aside and hitting the earth underneath. There was an almighty hollow crack of plastic passing its breaking point and a squeal of metal being torn away as the bumper was left behind.  The Jeep tore off down the driveway mostly under the control of its driver.
    He entered the centre of Hexham up Preistpopple; the town was quiet. It certainly didn’t seem to be engulfed in turmoil, but there was evidence aplenty of the revolution. There were two burnt-out shops on the street. There were a few smaller shops open, but the department store had been smashed up and looted. All the large windows were shattered and, from what he could see, the inside was wrecked.
    The way he saw it this revolution was a case of complying or be, at least, ruined, at worst, destroyed. There were a few people milling around; he recognised the faces but didn’t see anyone he knew to talk to. He parked the Jeep on Beaumont Street, a grand Victorian Avenue with attractive five or six storey buildings built opposite the Sele Park. There, the road slopes gently north to the Abbey, where a church has stood for over a thousand years.
    It was the top of the street, next to the war memorial, that he felt was the most exposed; this is where he would wait. He pulled his truck off the road, parking across four parking spaces which were usually full of cars visiting the shops and sites of the market town, but today they were empty. He got out of the vehicle and strode over to a bench positioned at the gates to the park. He pulled his collars high around his neck and buried his hands