Chapter 17 : Summer, A Face From the Past

It was the last day of our track building marathon, everyone had packed up and I had decided that on the final evening we would bring everyone down to Newsham for a fish and chip supper. We loaded all the workers, their bikes and tents onto our train and took them back.

Everyone had worked hard, even the captives, and I asked Sid if we could give them a fish supper as well. "Fine by me," he said, "they're showing signs of being trustworthy. Chain them in pairs."

I asked about Vin, the captive who seemed to be jumpy. "I thought he was one of the more trustworthy ones," Sid replied.

Anyway, everyone from Sleights descended on the steam engine shed and devoured a huge quantity of fish and chips. We now had our potato crop and cooked extra chips for everyone.

The trouble started shortly after Shaun, Jill and Linda came in for their meals, Jill was now heavily pregnant, and Linda sat her down. Linda had a smaller bump but Jill was huge, like a balloon ready to burst. She was due in just over a week.

Linda then went to fetch her family's food, screamed, and ran from the shed. Kelly, Kat and myself were walking in with Sid and his two wives. Kelly caught Linda as she ran towards us. Kelly now had a bump as well and for a second they were bump to bump. Linda screamed, "The third man!" and pointed. Kelly tried to calm her down as I looked where she was pointing. I saw Vin in the corner, trying to drag his chained partner along, they were arguing.

Sid and I ran over, and Sid grabbed Vin, "What the fuck are you doing?" Linda had calmed down, and Kat and Kelly were talking to her. Kelly then ran over. By now Sid's two wives had drawn their side arms, and both had their guns pointed at Vin's head. Kelly pointed at Vin and said, "Linda told me that this is the third man that attacked her and murdered her husband last year. You killed the other two when they attacked you a few days later, on your return from York."

Now I understood why Vin had been so jumpy around me, he had recognised me. Kelly carried on, "Linda says that the man that attacked them had a distinctive scar over his right eye."

At that Vin collapsed on the floor and started whimpering. He had the scar, there was no doubt as to his identity.

Graham had now joined us and I took charge. "Graham, separate these two." I turned to his chain partner, "Can I trust you to behave for an hour or so?"

"Yes." he replied.

"OK, if you try anything..." and I made the sign of a slit throat. Sid's women seemed quite capable so I then turned to them and said, "You and Graham, get him outside. Cuff him but don't hurt him. Sid, Kelly and I need to have a quiet talk, and Linda needs to join us."

By now all the Sleights people were surrounding Sid, asking what was going on. "Apparently Vin has more of a past than he admitted to," he said, "he murdered the husband of one Mark's people. Susie and Kim have him under control, and Graham from Newsham is helping. I need to talk to Mark, Kelly and Linda, the victim's wife, about his future."

By now Kat was with Linda and I motioned them to follow us to the house. Kelly said to Graham, "Do you want to use our log store again?"

Graham gave a hollow laugh and said, "Yes, and then THAT tree!"

I just said, "Maybe, Sid may have other ideas."

Sid looked at me and said, "Mark, I told them they had to 'fess up to their past as a condition of being allowed to live. Vin glossed over everything, I wondered at the time ... If you want to finish him I wouldn't blame you, and I'd even help."

"OK, let's take this inside. Yes, put him in the log store for now."

Sid looked at me and commented, "I take it the log store's housed some prisoners before?"

Kelly looked at me and nodded as we went inside. Kat, still holding Linda, knew of Colin's real fate since we had told her when she joined us.

Kelly related the story of Wayne and Colin Goodram to Sid. Linda said nothing. We told him that no one else apart from Graham and now Linda knew what we had done with him.

When she finished Sid looked at me and said, "I would've done the same thing."

I looked at everyone and said, "OK, I'm not sure who has the final say on Vin's future since he's one of Sid's people. From our point of view, Linda is the injured party so they should both write life or death on a piece of paper, and give it to me."

Linda and Sid both opted for death. Linda then spoke, "Vin was the leader of the three, he was perverted and evil. The things he got the others to do to my husband, I will never forget. I'm happy now, pregnant, and living with a wonderful man, but Vin took a piece of me away, and I'll never get it back. Worse, I know he would do it again."

"OK. I don't want to do it here in full view. I'll tell people what has happened, which brings us to THE tree, it's as good a place as any."

Sid said, "Sound like a plan to me, Mark. Kelly, Kim and me 'escort' him there? Kim's calmer than Susie. What about the lady, Linda?"

I looked at Linda and she said, "I want to be there and see his face as he realises his fate. I'll even pull the trigger if you trust me to shoot straight enough. It would be closure to me."

Kelly and I were both surprised and said, almost together, "Are you sure?"

She replied, very firmly and in control, "Oh yes, nothing would give me greater pleasure, and I would like to tell everyone here why he was taken away and shot."

"OK, you go and tell Shaun and Jill what's going on. Better still, rather than having the rumour machine working away, would you speak to everyone now?"

"Yes I will," she said vehemently. "I'm not ashamed of what I'm going to do."

So we all made our way back to the steam engine shed. I took a loud hailer and got everyone's attention.

"As most of you saw, we had an incident with one of the captives from Sleights. Linda identified him as the leader of the group that tortured and murdered her husband. There is no doubt as to his identity or guilt."

I then handed over to Linda and she repeated what she told us and described some of things he had done in detail. She said that she supported his execution and, in fact, had volunteered to assist.

Sid then spoke, "As those from Sleights know, we made a deal with the captives, they confess to all their crimes and we would spare their lives in return for a spell of servitude. Vin lied, badly, murder and torture of innocent people is despicable, I support his execution. Has anyone from Sleights anything to add?"

There was a bit of murmuring and a large man, who I later learned was Shaz's partner, stood and said, "Shaz has a way of dealing with men like Vin, we would just have to make sure he didn't survive." He then made the sign of chopping off his balls and everyone from Sleights laughed. It broke the tension a bit, and soon the people from Sleights were regaling our people with Shaz's exploits. It was gruesome, but everyone lightened up.

I said to Sid, "OK, let's do it. Linda, Kelly, come with us"

Sid called Susie and Kim over, they both came with us.

We dragged Vin out of the village. Linda walked with Kelly until we got to the spot where Colin had met his maker. Linda said, "Let me have the first shot, and the rest hold your fire unless I totally fuck it up."

Vin was a jibbering wreck for most of the walk out of Newsham but then suddenly he got a grip on himself, looked at me and said, "I knew as soon as I saw you it was all over. It's no good saying I am sorry, I was given a chance by the people at Sleights and blew it by lying. If I'd confessed I know Sid would have fought my corner and maybe saved my life, but I thought I would be clever after Daz got five years servitude for rape. I knew I would get more. The silly thing is, I think all the others told the truth, we have talked since you know."

With that he turned and faced the tree. Susie handed Linda her gun. Linda put three shots in his back and he slumped to the ground, dead. Linda looked at me and Kelly and said, "Thank you, you two have given me hope. I have a new life growing in me and I have avenged the death of my husband. When we get back to the shed I'm going to announce my 'marriage' to Shaun and Jill, they've asked me to do it before but I've always refused. I told them I loved them both but the time wasn't right, it is now."

We walked slowly back.

Sure enough as soon as we got back she went into a little huddle with Jill and Shaun. They all came over, grabbed the loud hailer and announced their 'marriage' in the way that all other people had since the collapse. Everyone clapped and cheered. They were standing in front of us when, all of a sudden, Jill held her 'bump' and we realised her waters had broken. Fortunately our two doctors were with us. Jill was taken Sophie's house. Giving birth must have been catching because five hours later Sarah went into labour. Sarah had come back with them as well as she was a week overdue as far as we could tell. Jill's labour was easy, and by the morning we had another little girl in the village, and they did call her Dora, much to everyone's amusement.

The Sleights Survivors set off the following morning but Josie stayed behind to assist Sophie with Sarah. Sarah had a difficult labour but Shona was born late the following morning, legs first, our third girl! Mother and baby were fine in spite of the labour. Linda and Kelly were next, maybe one of them would give us a boy.

We actually ran our train, returning our Sleights friends, up the new track slowly. It got them two miles closer to Pickering. The new track was fine, it just needed bedding in and some more ballast tamping down in one or two places.

In view of the excellent progress on the rail link we agreed to have another week with everyone on the job just before harvest. We were going to start from both ends that week, as there was a long section of track leading into Whitby which was needlessly complex, with three tracks in places, a left over from the days when the North York Moors railway was a separate undertaking from the national rail network. This track could be lifted and moved to Pickering, we also found a working steam crane on the North York Moors railway. The old timer who had suggested using steam power was going to get lessons off Katie to enable Sleights to run trains as well. They also wanted to explore up Eskdale, which had a railway.

Nick and Blackie had visited Sleights, and we decided that after harvest we would have a meeting to discuss our co-operation on things like security and transport.

The following week of labouring on the new railway link saw most of it completed, we had around half a mile to complete, and in fact the two work parties could see each other. Normally we had Sundays off but everyone agreed that we were so close to finishing that we would work the Sunday. Sid and Ron came down from Sleights, and Blackie and Nick were there to see the last section of track lifted into place and bolted up. There was a huge celebration that night and, the following day, the 4K's and I visited Sleights, having travelled all the way from home by train. Sid, Ron and their wives travelled to Newsham. We passed each other in Pickering station.

Tony, from Sleights, who had been interested in using the railway was now being taught by our steam people and was able use the engine at Grosmont.

He was a strange old man, he lived on his own, he was pleasant enough, but he kept himself to himself. Sid decided that the job of fireman, which in Sleights terms also meant cutting and splitting the wood, should fall to one of the captives. One of the women captives actually volunteered. Sid laughed and said, "I know what she's doing, she's hoping Tony will take her in, after all the long hours on the footplate together, she will probably get through his tough skin."

Because we may now have two engines working on one line we set up a procedure to ensure that we had no accidents. Pickering station was the boundary between what we called the Newsham Railway and the Sleights Railway. Before anyone proceeded into the adjoining area they had to get radio permission to continue, and each railway would maintain a board showing all movements that day. It wasn't a foolproof system but, on our section, visibility was usually good and the low speeds meant that we would be able to stop within our limit of vision. However, the track north of Pickering was very twisty and this gave us more cause for concern.

The following week the Coates brothers told us that they had managed to round up four horses. Although they were not true draft animals they would allow us to see what we could achieve with horse power. Their two wives, Susanne and Jane, had taken on the task of caring for the animals. The two lads had made a simple cart, based on an old car axle, and the horses were quite capable of pulling loads around the village. They quickly became indispensable for moving building materials from the railway siding. When they were not being used they would be left to graze on the village green. The only problem I could see is that we didn't have a stallion, so maintaining and increasing our supply of horses was impossible. However, Charlie reckoned that we should find one on our travels.

The following week was harvest week. We had had a good summer again, plenty of warm weather and enough rain. We were confident that our wheat harvest should be around eighty tons. We also planted ten acres of barley, rather late in the season, that wasn't quite ripe yet.

I had said that work on all other projects should stop to gather and thresh the harvest. Larry and Arnold had managed to get the threshing machine working without too much difficulty, it would be powered by one of our ploughing engines. However the first job was to cut and bind the sheaves of wheat. We had two horse drawn binder reapers, which had been coupled together and would be pulled by the ploughing engines with a cable, in the same way as the plough.

We set the engines up and started the first cut across the field. Everything worked as planned. Because the cutters would only work one way we then had to clear all the sheaves of wheat before we could reverse the contraption across the field and move both engines a few yards to begin the next cut.

Clearing the sheaves of wheat took time, we found that the easiest way was with a horse and cart, but it still took maybe fifteen minutes each time. What we needed to do was discharge the sheaves to the cut side of the field so that we could cut and stack at the same time. In the end we decided not to fiddle with the equipment at this point in case we broke something. I did however insist that we left two or three cuts worth of standing corn to experiment on once the main harvest was gathered. If it got ruined it wouldn't matter as we had more than enough wheat by my calculations. It took three days of hard work to cut our seventy five acre field.

We then began the threshing process while the main workforce moved on to the task of lifting the potato crop. We had lifted some potatoes through the summer but this was now the final clearance before winter, we needed to get them stored in a frost free clamp for the winter. Again the yield from the field was about what we expected, but lifting forty acres of spuds by hand was a backbreaking task.

The threshing machine worked OK and we were bagging wheat and moving it to the big barn. Eventually, after ten days, all the wheat was threshed and we had close to seventy tons.

Modern combines bale the straw but the old threshing machine just put out an unmanageable pile. Both Nick and Sid wanted it for animal bedding during the winter, but moving it was going to be a problem.

In the end we put a wheeled cage under the outlet from the threshing machine. We then used our horses to move this to the sidings where we used the steam crane to lift the cage up and empty it into one of the open trucks. It would still have to be offloaded at the other end but that was a start.

That left the rape seed crop. This proved very problematic. The binder reaper wouldn't work with it. In the end we cut a section by hand and attempted to use the threshing machine to separate the seeds from the plants. Bad move, it completely jammed the machine and we spent the rest of the day clearing the jam.

I spoke to Charlie about how they had harvested rape seed before the collapse, and he said they used their small combine, with the cutter bade set higher, and it worked fine. The question was were we prepared to sacrifice maybe ten gallons of bio-diesel to harvest at least some of the crop. In order to get this back we would have to press the seed to extract the oil. If we could get it all to work we would have a steady supply of vegetable oil, but if it failed we would be ten gallons of fuel down.

Sid sent the four remaining captives down to help with the potato crop. The woman who was fireman to Tony had apparently managed to convince him that the solitary life wasn't as nice as having a warm and willing woman in your bed each night. Red had met his maker after one too many kick-offs, he just wasn't prepared to change his ways.

There was now a daily train service between Newsham and Sleights and we took it in turns to run the train. In addition the 'milk run' from Kirkham Abbey had been timed to meet at Rillington, where our new line diverged. Scott and Vi had now moved to Kirkham Abbey, and kept the tank engine and a few trucks and coaches there. They still visited Newsham regularly but had taken over an empty cottage there. We were sorry to loose Scott, but in the grand scheme of things it meant that Kirkham had their own driver and fireman.

As harvest was drawing to a close Richard asked me to help with their move to Bridlington. There were four family groups, and they had taken over a row of houses next to the railway on the outskirts of Bridlington. They had harvested their vegetables at Filey and were ready for the move. Because two of the family groups had their houses further from the railway we decided to take a horse and cart to assist with the move. Richard had dismantled his power and hot water systems.

We had allowed two days to give Richard and his families a chance to get everything packed and ready. However they also had the boats to sail down, and the fishing gear had to be loaded and stacked, and it looked like too much work.

Richard came to me at the end of the first day and said, "We need some help, we still have a lot to do." Kelly was with me and we decided that a work party from Newsham would assist. Kelly thought that we should leave the men on finishing the harvest work and take a party of maybe a dozen women up to Filey the following day to help with packing. I agreed and she started to organise it.

Kat then appeared and I told her what we had agreed. She said, "OK, I want to go up as well and see how everyone is getting on. I think Kayleigh may have some news for us." I took this to mean the patter of tiny feet.

Two days later Chris took one of the engines and some trucks, and everything was loaded for the journey to Bridlington. The move went reasonable smoothly and Gerald and his friends sailed their fishing boats down to the harbour.

I then sent a message to Scott to ask him to hitch the truck filled with straw on the return from his next milk run. I also contacted Ron and told him the other truck of straw would be attached to the train tomorrow. I wanted the straw moving from the sidings at Railway Farm as it was a fire risk.

Tony and Dee, the woman who was now helping him, appeared the following day. I asked Tony how he was getting on, I really meant the engine and learning to handle it, but he obviously thought I meant Dee and said, "Well, I've been widowed close on ten years now. I'm sixty five this year and Doris died when I was fifty five. When Dee volunteered to be the fireman I asked Sid if I could pick someone else. I suppose I was a bit wary of women and, well, Dee had a reputation sexually. When Sid first announced that as part of their servitude they would have to make themselves available sexually she embraced the order with vigour and practically threw herself at every man in Sleights. Sid however said, 'One volunteer's worth a hundred pressed men. If she gives you any trouble I'll sort her out.' so I had no choice."

Dee then chipped in, "And by taking on what seemed like a shitty job I got the last single man in Sleights."

Tony then carried on, "Yes, she threw herself at me. Working on the footplate of a steam engine is a hot place and she soon shed the orange overalls. I then realised that she didn't wear a bra and her knickers seemed to be almost non-existent. When I tried to ignore her she knelt in front of me, pulled my shorts down and did something that made me take notice of her."

I looked at them and said, "What about the chain?"

"Sid said that she must keep it on until she has served her two years but I never lock her to anything other than the bedposts, and that's only when she asks me to!"

Dee laughed and said, "I belong to Tony now. I've done some things in the past that I'm not proud of but the collapse and Sid has given me a chance for a fresh start. I reckon at forty one I'm in last chance saloon. Plus, if I did some of the things now that I'd done in the past I would probably be shot, not just given a community sentence or a few months in prison."

She seemed like a rough diamond, but they seemed happy enough

Tony then asked me about the survivors we had identified in Eskdale, "Because Sid wants me to make contact with them before the winter." I told him we had the pictures that Paul had taken at home, and we got into the train and made our way the last half mile to the village. I then called Paul and Tracey over and they spent the next hour looking at maps and pictures.

Tony left with plans to contact five possible groups of survivors close to the railway in Eskdale.

At home our extension was finally finished after the delay caused by getting the harvest in. That night I went into my new room and, as I expected, Kelly was sitting up in my bed looking like the cat that got the cream. I kissed her on both sets of lips, and my other two wives came in and said good night.

It was nice to be just the two of us again in bed. Her bump was now getting bigger but she was still able to ride me in the way that we both liked. She said, "I expect you to fuck me right up until I give birth!" As we were cuddling up to go to sleep her bump kicked me a couple of times, she laughed and said, "I hope you take note of that, the little one in there wants your attention as well." With that she laid on her back and put my head on her mound. She liked sleeping that way and I asked her about it. "I find it makes me really horny in the morning, seeing your head there, and knowing that as you wake you will probably lick me out."

I liked it as well, somehow the smell of a woman relaxed me and I always seemed to sleep well. Both my other wives said they found it uncomfortable sleeping on their backs.

Now that we had separate bedrooms Kat joined me the next night and, again, I enjoyed the one to one time, and also felt the quickening in her belly. She then asked me about anal sex. "I've seen you fuck Kelly's arse and she gets off on it. I've never been comfortable with it but I want you to try with me. If I still don't like it we won't do it again, but I want to try it."

I told her we would need plenty of lube and an old sheet to throw over the bed. She cuddled up with me and said, "Next time it's my turn I'll come prepared. I've even been using a toy up there to try and open myself up a bit, I actually enjoyed the feeling. I think when Simon and I tried it I didn't prepare myself properly."

And the next night Karen joined me.

The following night I expected Kelly to join me but instead Kat came in to my room. She was naked, and she climbed on to the bed, turned around and presented her arse to me. She had a butt plug in and said huskily, "Take that out carefully and put something else in to take its place."

Who was I to refuse a sexy woman.

I came in her arse and she got turned on. The problem was I got ahead of her and came too soon so she didn't actually get an orgasm from me fucking her there. I finished her with my tongue on her clit. Afterwards she said, "If you'd lasted a bit longer I would've come. I don't believe it, I always thought an orgasm from being fucked there was a fiction perpetrated by porn films. The good thing is, when I've given birth you can fuck me there, I couldn't imagine going six weeks with out sex."