This has gone through several revisions since I last posted it, so although the structure is basically the same, I thought I'd give it another go (and a new thread) as I want to sub it again. All comments welcome. I have one particular question which I'll post after the text.
(Contains bad language.)
********************
Adam hunkered in the long grass by the chain-link fence, peering into the stark light and shadows of the machinery compound. All was still in the breathless May night, only the faint drone of the town’s ring-road breaking the silence. No sign of danger, no reason to pull out. This was it, he realised, nerves tightening his gut. They were going to become criminals.
‘Hope I’m not kneeling in dog sh*t,’ said Rick next to him.
‘Shh!’ hissed Jezz from Rick’s other side. ‘Ad?’ she called softly. ‘Those on the left, you think?’
Three of the earthmoving machines were in near-darkness, missed by the uneven spread of the security light. ‘Makes sense,’ Adam said, trying for the experienced cool of the lead in a Hollywood heist. ‘Even if there’s CCTV, it won’t get our faces.’ Which mattered, because they’d forgotten to bring masks.
Jezz took the bolt cutters from her rucksack and put them to a bottom link of the fence. The gunshot wire-snap jumped Adam with panic, but he clamped down the urge to run for safety.
‘Isn’t there a quieter way in?’ whispered Rick. ‘Like driving a ****ing truck through it?’
Jezz didn’t answer, but cut more links in a vertical line from ground-level up. Adam kept looking round, heart tripping on adrenaline. He was amazed Rick was still here. Rick had never even climbed Doaky — there was no reason the tree would mean anything to him. He must really want to get into Jezz’s pants.
‘Now pull,’ said Jezz. They wrenched up the fence from either side of the bottom of the cut, to make a triangular opening. ‘Rick, you’re biggest, you go first.’
Rick dropped to his front and wriggled though the gap, his jacket snagging a couple of times on the cut wires. Jezz pushed her rucksack through and followed it, Adam bringing up the rear. They skirted the edge of the illuminated patch to reach the shadow of the digger. The air stank of diesel and grease.
‘How much sugar d’you bring?’ whispered Adam, trying to spot the filler cap.
‘Kilo bag,’ said Jezz.
‘One, that’s it?’
‘All Mum had. Don’t sweat, it can’t need much. It makes the fuel turn solid in the engine or something.’
Adam wondered if he should have checked for himself. ‘I’ll search it up,’ said Rick, and reached for his phone.
‘Don’t, idiot!’ hissed Jezz. ‘The light.’
‘Yeah, but I can — shiiiit …’
The urgency in Rick’s low whisper froze Adam rigid, Jezz too. Rick was staring towards the corner of the compound, by the lane.
A human shape stood there, beyond the fence.
Adam swore silently, and shrank deeper into the digger’s shadow. He and Jezz had worn their black kickboxing pants as camouflage, but he noticed with horror that the satin fabric still showed a faint gloss. He willed it not to be seen as the man in the donkey-jacket trod slowly along the strip of bare ground, a couple of metres outside the compound.
If this was a guard checking the fence, they were screwed — they hadn’t even tried to push the wire back. And now they were trapped in here. Jezz had said that being sixteen, they’d get away with a police caution. Adam had believed it at the time, but now his imagination raced through court appearances, juvenile detention, visits from his distraught mum. As the man approached the break in the fence, he tried to bottle up an urge to pee. Five paces from the gap now. Four, three, two …
The man walked right past it. Thank Christ.
And stopped.
Adam’s muscles tightened, ready for pushing, running, escape. But the man didn’t investigate the fence. Instead two people came from the other direction to meet him: a woman with long pale hair and a dark cagoule, and a man in a leather motorbike jacket with red flashes on the sleeves.
If these were security guards, they were the weirdest-looking Adam had seen.
It got weirder. Leather-jacket got to his knees and began to work at the ground with a small tool, maybe a trowel. Adam strove to see, hardly daring to breathe. After a couple of minutes, donkey-jacket handed the kneeling man something small, and leather-jacket buried it. With the earth tamped back down, he rose to his feet, then the trio stood dead still for minutes. The hairs on Adam’s neck rose at snatches of low-voiced chanting.
At last the newcomers moved off, but only as far as the corner of the compound by the lane, where the whole rigmarole was repeated. They were distant enough now for Adam to risk a whisper.
‘What the hell was that?’
‘F*ck knows,’ Jezz murmured.
‘That thing they buried — you don’t think it was a bomb?’
‘Don’t talk stupid,’ she said. ‘Wait till they’ve gone, then we’ll get on with our thing.’
That could take ages, Adam reckoned, if those people were going to bury several whatever-they-were.
‘Uh, guys?’ breathed Rick, who’d been doing something under his jacket. ‘Says here sugar in a fuel tank does bugger all.’
Adam groaned. ‘You’re joking …’
‘F*ck off!’ whispered Jezz. ‘I’ve heard it loads of times, I’m sure I have.’
‘Urban myth, according to this.’
‘But …’ The catch of confusion and failure in Jezz’s voice stuck a needle in Adam’s heart. He found her shoulder in the darkness and squeezed it.
‘We’d better split,’ he said. ‘They’re moving, look — we’ll be screened by those containers. Quick.’
They crawled through the fence-gap and hurriedly pushed the edges back down, then ran hunched over along the dark field-edge by which they’d come. Adam’s mind swarmed with thoughts enough to fill the night sky: relief that they were out of there, annoyance with Jezz for not researching her plan and with himself for not checking it, pain for that upset in her voice at the end, for knowing how bad she would be feeling. As they slowed to a walk, Rick started gabbing with the excitement of breaking in and nearly getting caught, not caring about failure. Because he didn’t give a flying f*ck about the tree, Adam thought.
‘There’ll be other plans,’ said Jezz at last. More to herself than to them, it sounded like.
‘Hang on, wait.’ Adam stopped. ‘Those three back there — think they might be anti the bypass too?’
‘I’m not asking them,’ said Jezz. ‘Three chanting loons in the dead of night?’
‘Maybe I will,’ said Adam. ‘What if there aren’t other plans? Two more weeks and Doaky’s a pile of sawdust.’
She grabbed his wrist. ‘Ad, they’re nutters. It’s too dangerous. Don’t.’
This wasn’t like her. She’d lost heart, Adam knew. And him going back would make her feel shown up, and if he was honest he was scared to do it. The raid itself had used up his fragile courage.
‘Let’s just go,’ Jezz said, that painful catch again, and she tugged, and they started off through the heavy night, trousers rustling against field-edge plants, sending up pale moths whirring dimly visible, and the smells of green sap. ‘We’ll have another think tomorrow when we’ve got cooler heads. My stress levels were in orbit back there.’
‘I noticed,’ Adam said.
‘I’ve heard pissing in a fuel tank can work,’ said Rick.
***************************
The question: I can't recall where, but recently someone (@Toby Frost maybe?) said one good way of starting a story was to show the MC doing whatever they're best at. I can see the sense in that, but here I've almost done the opposite. Is that a mistake?
(Contains bad language.)
********************
Adam hunkered in the long grass by the chain-link fence, peering into the stark light and shadows of the machinery compound. All was still in the breathless May night, only the faint drone of the town’s ring-road breaking the silence. No sign of danger, no reason to pull out. This was it, he realised, nerves tightening his gut. They were going to become criminals.
‘Hope I’m not kneeling in dog sh*t,’ said Rick next to him.
‘Shh!’ hissed Jezz from Rick’s other side. ‘Ad?’ she called softly. ‘Those on the left, you think?’
Three of the earthmoving machines were in near-darkness, missed by the uneven spread of the security light. ‘Makes sense,’ Adam said, trying for the experienced cool of the lead in a Hollywood heist. ‘Even if there’s CCTV, it won’t get our faces.’ Which mattered, because they’d forgotten to bring masks.
Jezz took the bolt cutters from her rucksack and put them to a bottom link of the fence. The gunshot wire-snap jumped Adam with panic, but he clamped down the urge to run for safety.
‘Isn’t there a quieter way in?’ whispered Rick. ‘Like driving a ****ing truck through it?’
Jezz didn’t answer, but cut more links in a vertical line from ground-level up. Adam kept looking round, heart tripping on adrenaline. He was amazed Rick was still here. Rick had never even climbed Doaky — there was no reason the tree would mean anything to him. He must really want to get into Jezz’s pants.
‘Now pull,’ said Jezz. They wrenched up the fence from either side of the bottom of the cut, to make a triangular opening. ‘Rick, you’re biggest, you go first.’
Rick dropped to his front and wriggled though the gap, his jacket snagging a couple of times on the cut wires. Jezz pushed her rucksack through and followed it, Adam bringing up the rear. They skirted the edge of the illuminated patch to reach the shadow of the digger. The air stank of diesel and grease.
‘How much sugar d’you bring?’ whispered Adam, trying to spot the filler cap.
‘Kilo bag,’ said Jezz.
‘One, that’s it?’
‘All Mum had. Don’t sweat, it can’t need much. It makes the fuel turn solid in the engine or something.’
Adam wondered if he should have checked for himself. ‘I’ll search it up,’ said Rick, and reached for his phone.
‘Don’t, idiot!’ hissed Jezz. ‘The light.’
‘Yeah, but I can — shiiiit …’
The urgency in Rick’s low whisper froze Adam rigid, Jezz too. Rick was staring towards the corner of the compound, by the lane.
A human shape stood there, beyond the fence.
Adam swore silently, and shrank deeper into the digger’s shadow. He and Jezz had worn their black kickboxing pants as camouflage, but he noticed with horror that the satin fabric still showed a faint gloss. He willed it not to be seen as the man in the donkey-jacket trod slowly along the strip of bare ground, a couple of metres outside the compound.
If this was a guard checking the fence, they were screwed — they hadn’t even tried to push the wire back. And now they were trapped in here. Jezz had said that being sixteen, they’d get away with a police caution. Adam had believed it at the time, but now his imagination raced through court appearances, juvenile detention, visits from his distraught mum. As the man approached the break in the fence, he tried to bottle up an urge to pee. Five paces from the gap now. Four, three, two …
The man walked right past it. Thank Christ.
And stopped.
Adam’s muscles tightened, ready for pushing, running, escape. But the man didn’t investigate the fence. Instead two people came from the other direction to meet him: a woman with long pale hair and a dark cagoule, and a man in a leather motorbike jacket with red flashes on the sleeves.
If these were security guards, they were the weirdest-looking Adam had seen.
It got weirder. Leather-jacket got to his knees and began to work at the ground with a small tool, maybe a trowel. Adam strove to see, hardly daring to breathe. After a couple of minutes, donkey-jacket handed the kneeling man something small, and leather-jacket buried it. With the earth tamped back down, he rose to his feet, then the trio stood dead still for minutes. The hairs on Adam’s neck rose at snatches of low-voiced chanting.
At last the newcomers moved off, but only as far as the corner of the compound by the lane, where the whole rigmarole was repeated. They were distant enough now for Adam to risk a whisper.
‘What the hell was that?’
‘F*ck knows,’ Jezz murmured.
‘That thing they buried — you don’t think it was a bomb?’
‘Don’t talk stupid,’ she said. ‘Wait till they’ve gone, then we’ll get on with our thing.’
That could take ages, Adam reckoned, if those people were going to bury several whatever-they-were.
‘Uh, guys?’ breathed Rick, who’d been doing something under his jacket. ‘Says here sugar in a fuel tank does bugger all.’
Adam groaned. ‘You’re joking …’
‘F*ck off!’ whispered Jezz. ‘I’ve heard it loads of times, I’m sure I have.’
‘Urban myth, according to this.’
‘But …’ The catch of confusion and failure in Jezz’s voice stuck a needle in Adam’s heart. He found her shoulder in the darkness and squeezed it.
‘We’d better split,’ he said. ‘They’re moving, look — we’ll be screened by those containers. Quick.’
They crawled through the fence-gap and hurriedly pushed the edges back down, then ran hunched over along the dark field-edge by which they’d come. Adam’s mind swarmed with thoughts enough to fill the night sky: relief that they were out of there, annoyance with Jezz for not researching her plan and with himself for not checking it, pain for that upset in her voice at the end, for knowing how bad she would be feeling. As they slowed to a walk, Rick started gabbing with the excitement of breaking in and nearly getting caught, not caring about failure. Because he didn’t give a flying f*ck about the tree, Adam thought.
‘There’ll be other plans,’ said Jezz at last. More to herself than to them, it sounded like.
‘Hang on, wait.’ Adam stopped. ‘Those three back there — think they might be anti the bypass too?’
‘I’m not asking them,’ said Jezz. ‘Three chanting loons in the dead of night?’
‘Maybe I will,’ said Adam. ‘What if there aren’t other plans? Two more weeks and Doaky’s a pile of sawdust.’
She grabbed his wrist. ‘Ad, they’re nutters. It’s too dangerous. Don’t.’
This wasn’t like her. She’d lost heart, Adam knew. And him going back would make her feel shown up, and if he was honest he was scared to do it. The raid itself had used up his fragile courage.
‘Let’s just go,’ Jezz said, that painful catch again, and she tugged, and they started off through the heavy night, trousers rustling against field-edge plants, sending up pale moths whirring dimly visible, and the smells of green sap. ‘We’ll have another think tomorrow when we’ve got cooler heads. My stress levels were in orbit back there.’
‘I noticed,’ Adam said.
‘I’ve heard pissing in a fuel tank can work,’ said Rick.
***************************
The question: I can't recall where, but recently someone (@Toby Frost maybe?) said one good way of starting a story was to show the MC doing whatever they're best at. I can see the sense in that, but here I've almost done the opposite. Is that a mistake?
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