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fredbassettTitle : Within These Walls, Chapter 12 of 30
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Nick, Connor, Danny, Kermit
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 59,000 words in 29 chapters of approx. 1,500 – 2,500 words each
Spoilers : None
Summary : Ending up in Dartmoor prison for refusing to recant their belief in evolution is only the start of the problems facing Nick, Stephen and Connor. And Sir James Lester soon ends up with other problems on his hands than just an over-crowded prison population.
A/N : 1) For acknowledgements, please see Part 1. 2) For anyone avoiding scenes of rape and its aftermath, it’s now safe to return.
Nick Cutter pulled up the collar of the bright orange jacket he’d been issued with that morning. This was the first time he’d set foot outside the confines of Dartmoor Prison since his arrival there just over a week ago. Nick and Connor, together with Danny Quinn, the man who had become the nearest thing to a friend they had, had been assigned to an outside work group. Stephen, still recovering from the injuries he’d received on their second day, had remained behind on medical orders.
Nick blamed himself for what had happened to Stephen. If it hadn’t been for his association with Nick, Stephen wouldn’t be in this predicament. And neither would Connor. Nick knew that it was intellectual arrogance and stubborn refusal to keep quiet like so many of his colleagues had been doing that had landed them in this mess. As a result, Stephen was recovering from rape and they were all doing their best to ensure that Connor didn’t end up the same way.
Dartmoor was, as Stephen had discovered, an altogether harsher environment than the remand centre where they’d been held before the trial. The prison was over-crowded, staffed with the dregs of the prison system, and seemed to harbour as many potential rapists as a fox has fleas, which was one of the reasons why the soldiers had been drafted in. It was their job to contain the simmering stew of resentment and prevent a descent into the recent riots that had swept the country’s jails.
The new governor clearly believed in the value of hard work. A gang of thirty inmates, all wearing leg shackles, secured to each other by a long length of stainless steel chain, were currently outside in the freezing rain, breaking rocks by hand in the previously-disused Merrivale Quarry. One of the guards was clearly something of a local history buff and had taken great delight in informing the work party that the quarry, which had last been worked commercially in 1997, had supplied the stone for the Falklands Memorial in London, a fact that had been met with a nod of approval by the young soldier who had accompanied the group.
They were currently breaking up granite by hand, using lump hammers that were nowhere near big enough for the job. As far as Nick could see, the whole process was designed around punishment rather than productivity. The rain had been coming down steadily all morning and he was soaked to the skin. The jacket he’d been given was waterlogged and wet trails had been making their way down Nick’s back for the last two hours. Only the backbreaking work had gone any way to keeping him warm and even that was no longer helping. His hands were white and pinched with the cold and he had long since stopped feeling his feet inside the flimsy trainers.
At Nick’s side, Connor was shivering violently and looked on the point of exhaustion. The hammer slipped from the young man’s fingers to clatter down on the grey rocks at their feet.
“Pick it up!” The guard must have already been watching them to have reacted so quickly.
Nick recognised the man’s voice. It was Jackson, the guard who had struck Stephen only minutes after their arrival. The same man who had been quite prepared to cover up Stephen’s rape and was no doubt still biding his time before he could take his own pleasure. Since that day, none of them had gone anywhere alone in the prison. It was no protection against the guards, but so far they had managed – with Danny Quinn’s help – to steer clear of any more trouble, and Captain Ryan and his men had been vigilant. But out here they only had one young soldier on duty and he looked barely old enough to have enlisted, let alone be a member of an elite unit. Nick could only presume that with the current state of the country, entry requirements had become somewhat less rigorous.
Connor reached down for the lump hammer, but as he picked it up, the short wooden handle slipped out of his numb fingers and clattered to the ground again.
“Pick it up, you idle little fucker!”
“He’s cold, not idle!” The words were out of Nick’s mouth before he could bite them back.
“Then he’ll just have to work harder, won’t he? That’ll warm the little shit up.”
The man was the sneering epitome of everything that Nick hated about the current travesty of a criminal justice system that gave men like Jackson free rein whilst depriving young men like Connor Temple of their liberty for nothing more than adherence to the principles of science. Nick felt his temper rising inexorably to the surface and he tightened his grip on the handle of the heavy hammer in his hands.
The rasp of metal on metal told Nick that somewhere behind him the slide on a semi-automatic pistol had just been drawn back, pumping a round into the weapon’s breech. Until his committal to prison he’d been wholly ignorant of such sounds, but like any scientist, he was a quick learner.
“The men need a rest and a hot drink.” The speaker was the young soldier who had accompanied the group. “They’re half an hour overdue for a break.” The man raised his voice and addressed the work group as a whole. “Put your hammers down and step away from them!”
“They don’t deserve a bloody rest,” Jackson grumbled, but Nick noted that he didn’t seem too inclined to press the point. A quick glance over his shoulder told Nick that the soldier was standing about ten metres away looking deceptively relaxed, an assault rifle slung over his shoulder and the semi-automatic pistol, a Glock 19, according to Stephen, who knew about that sort of thing, held parallel to his leg, the barrel pointing at the ground.
The hard look in the man’s eyes belied his youthful looks and made Nick revise his earlier estimation.
“Going soft on them, Cooper?” Jackson’s challenge was half-hearted but he clearly wanted to avoid losing stature in the eyes of the prisoners.
“I wasn’t soft on the one I shot in the leg two days ago,” the man called Cooper said mildly.
Jackson grinned and took the opportunity presented to him to align himself with the soldier. “Little fucker squealed like a rabbit. He wasn’t expecting that, was he?”
Nick had seen the incident they were talking about. It had happened in the exercise yard. Two prisoners had got into a fight and had resisted the attempts of one of the guards to break them up. When one of bystanders had taken it into his head to add to the mayhem by thumping the guard, the young soldier had taken decisive action when his shouted warning had gone unheeded. The man had ended up in the medical bay, minus a kneecap, where he would no doubt remain for some while.
Cooper grinned back, diffusing the tension, although Nick could see that the hardness hadn’t left his eyes. “I reckon they think we carry these for the fun of it,” he remarked, watching the row of men closely to make sure that his order was being carried out.
When all the hammers had been laid down, Cooper motioned with his pistol over to the two transit vans parked next to a derelict building. “There’s coffee and some energy bars over there. You’ve got half an hour. Make the most of it.”
The men shuffled over to the vans, took the polystyrene cups of hot coffee that one of the guards handed out, grabbed a couple of energy bars each and then did their best to huddle together by the side of the building, doing their best to stay out of the driving rain.
Nick gulped down his coffee while it was still hot and then chewed the meagre ration of food slowly. The rain had slackened off slightly but it was now being replaced by mist. The air was cold and clammy and the quarry was soon shrouded in grey. Nick was actually quite pleased to get back to work as standing around had just made him feel worse. His prison-issue clothing was sticking to him and he was chilled to the bone. At his side, Connor was still shaking with cold and Nick was concerned about the risk of hypothermia. Danny had slipped the lad some of his food ration and insisted on him eating it, which had made Nick feel guilty about eating both of his own energy bars.
The mist brought with it a noticeable edginess in both the prisoners and the guards. The tale of what had happened on the moor on the day Nick and the others had arrived on Dartmoor had eventually spread throughout the prison, no doubt growing in the telling, as Nick found it hard to believe the stories of dismembered bodies and a creature that sounded like something out of a Conan Doyle novel. But the nervousness was clearly catching, and Nick was aware of the frequent glances Connor and the others were casting into the gathering gloom.
Nick saw the young soldier standing by the vehicles talking into his mobile phone. His rifle was now slung across his chest and Nick was aware of a higher state of alertness both in him and in the guards.
He nudged Danny and muttered, “They’re expecting trouble of some sort, aren’t they?”
Danny nodded. “This is the first work party out on the moor since that business last week. There’s bound to be…”
The distant sound of gunfire cut across Danny’s words. The prisoners weren’t the only ones who looked startled. The guards grabbed their tasers and stared around into the mist.
The soldier – Cooper – strode over, still talking into his phone. “Boss, what the fuck’s going on? Someone out here is shooting…” He listened for a moment, said, “OK, great, it’s fucking crap out here and getting worse.” He shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Calm down! You can blame the MOD for the noise!” he yelled, his voice steady and reassuring. “All right, the guv’nor’s taken pity on the lot of you and I’ve been told we can take you back in. Hammers down and make your way back to the vans!”
Nick looked at Danny. “MOD?”
“There’s a firing range bordering on the quarry,” Danny told him. “We do sometimes hear shots, but they aren’t normally out in this sort of weather.”
The staccato sound of rifle shots came again.
A sudden drag on the shackle around his left ankle stopped Nick in his tracks. Connor had come to a halt and was staring into the mist. A moment later a large shape hurtled down from the rock face above them and cannoned into the line of chained men. Instant pandemonium erupted. A cry of pain and fear was abruptly choked off. More screams came from both sides.
A single gun shot rang out at close quarters followed by a growl that raised the hairs on the back of Nick’s neck. The mist was now too thick even to see the men at either end of the chain. Moments later, Nick felt his feet being pulled in two different directions and he fell to the ground. The side-effect of shackling each prisoner to the next became immediately obvious. The panicked men were pulling each other in different directions and they were starting to go down like dominos. Nick flung his hand out, trying to push himself upright and his fingers closed around the handle of a hammer discarded by one of the other men.
Another growl cut across the screams and something large and hairy barrelled past Nick. Acting on instinct, he struck out with the hammer and felt it connect and then the creature was past them and heading off into the mist. He caught a brief glimpse of a dark, brindled pelt and heard the sound of gunshots at much closer quarters as Cooper fired on their attacker.
With the sound of gunfire still ringing in his ears, Nick gripped the handle of the hammer ever harder and wondered what the hell had just happened.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Nick, Connor, Danny, Kermit
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 59,000 words in 29 chapters of approx. 1,500 – 2,500 words each
Spoilers : None
Summary : Ending up in Dartmoor prison for refusing to recant their belief in evolution is only the start of the problems facing Nick, Stephen and Connor. And Sir James Lester soon ends up with other problems on his hands than just an over-crowded prison population.
A/N : 1) For acknowledgements, please see Part 1. 2) For anyone avoiding scenes of rape and its aftermath, it’s now safe to return.
Nick Cutter pulled up the collar of the bright orange jacket he’d been issued with that morning. This was the first time he’d set foot outside the confines of Dartmoor Prison since his arrival there just over a week ago. Nick and Connor, together with Danny Quinn, the man who had become the nearest thing to a friend they had, had been assigned to an outside work group. Stephen, still recovering from the injuries he’d received on their second day, had remained behind on medical orders.
Nick blamed himself for what had happened to Stephen. If it hadn’t been for his association with Nick, Stephen wouldn’t be in this predicament. And neither would Connor. Nick knew that it was intellectual arrogance and stubborn refusal to keep quiet like so many of his colleagues had been doing that had landed them in this mess. As a result, Stephen was recovering from rape and they were all doing their best to ensure that Connor didn’t end up the same way.
Dartmoor was, as Stephen had discovered, an altogether harsher environment than the remand centre where they’d been held before the trial. The prison was over-crowded, staffed with the dregs of the prison system, and seemed to harbour as many potential rapists as a fox has fleas, which was one of the reasons why the soldiers had been drafted in. It was their job to contain the simmering stew of resentment and prevent a descent into the recent riots that had swept the country’s jails.
The new governor clearly believed in the value of hard work. A gang of thirty inmates, all wearing leg shackles, secured to each other by a long length of stainless steel chain, were currently outside in the freezing rain, breaking rocks by hand in the previously-disused Merrivale Quarry. One of the guards was clearly something of a local history buff and had taken great delight in informing the work party that the quarry, which had last been worked commercially in 1997, had supplied the stone for the Falklands Memorial in London, a fact that had been met with a nod of approval by the young soldier who had accompanied the group.
They were currently breaking up granite by hand, using lump hammers that were nowhere near big enough for the job. As far as Nick could see, the whole process was designed around punishment rather than productivity. The rain had been coming down steadily all morning and he was soaked to the skin. The jacket he’d been given was waterlogged and wet trails had been making their way down Nick’s back for the last two hours. Only the backbreaking work had gone any way to keeping him warm and even that was no longer helping. His hands were white and pinched with the cold and he had long since stopped feeling his feet inside the flimsy trainers.
At Nick’s side, Connor was shivering violently and looked on the point of exhaustion. The hammer slipped from the young man’s fingers to clatter down on the grey rocks at their feet.
“Pick it up!” The guard must have already been watching them to have reacted so quickly.
Nick recognised the man’s voice. It was Jackson, the guard who had struck Stephen only minutes after their arrival. The same man who had been quite prepared to cover up Stephen’s rape and was no doubt still biding his time before he could take his own pleasure. Since that day, none of them had gone anywhere alone in the prison. It was no protection against the guards, but so far they had managed – with Danny Quinn’s help – to steer clear of any more trouble, and Captain Ryan and his men had been vigilant. But out here they only had one young soldier on duty and he looked barely old enough to have enlisted, let alone be a member of an elite unit. Nick could only presume that with the current state of the country, entry requirements had become somewhat less rigorous.
Connor reached down for the lump hammer, but as he picked it up, the short wooden handle slipped out of his numb fingers and clattered to the ground again.
“Pick it up, you idle little fucker!”
“He’s cold, not idle!” The words were out of Nick’s mouth before he could bite them back.
“Then he’ll just have to work harder, won’t he? That’ll warm the little shit up.”
The man was the sneering epitome of everything that Nick hated about the current travesty of a criminal justice system that gave men like Jackson free rein whilst depriving young men like Connor Temple of their liberty for nothing more than adherence to the principles of science. Nick felt his temper rising inexorably to the surface and he tightened his grip on the handle of the heavy hammer in his hands.
The rasp of metal on metal told Nick that somewhere behind him the slide on a semi-automatic pistol had just been drawn back, pumping a round into the weapon’s breech. Until his committal to prison he’d been wholly ignorant of such sounds, but like any scientist, he was a quick learner.
“The men need a rest and a hot drink.” The speaker was the young soldier who had accompanied the group. “They’re half an hour overdue for a break.” The man raised his voice and addressed the work group as a whole. “Put your hammers down and step away from them!”
“They don’t deserve a bloody rest,” Jackson grumbled, but Nick noted that he didn’t seem too inclined to press the point. A quick glance over his shoulder told Nick that the soldier was standing about ten metres away looking deceptively relaxed, an assault rifle slung over his shoulder and the semi-automatic pistol, a Glock 19, according to Stephen, who knew about that sort of thing, held parallel to his leg, the barrel pointing at the ground.
The hard look in the man’s eyes belied his youthful looks and made Nick revise his earlier estimation.
“Going soft on them, Cooper?” Jackson’s challenge was half-hearted but he clearly wanted to avoid losing stature in the eyes of the prisoners.
“I wasn’t soft on the one I shot in the leg two days ago,” the man called Cooper said mildly.
Jackson grinned and took the opportunity presented to him to align himself with the soldier. “Little fucker squealed like a rabbit. He wasn’t expecting that, was he?”
Nick had seen the incident they were talking about. It had happened in the exercise yard. Two prisoners had got into a fight and had resisted the attempts of one of the guards to break them up. When one of bystanders had taken it into his head to add to the mayhem by thumping the guard, the young soldier had taken decisive action when his shouted warning had gone unheeded. The man had ended up in the medical bay, minus a kneecap, where he would no doubt remain for some while.
Cooper grinned back, diffusing the tension, although Nick could see that the hardness hadn’t left his eyes. “I reckon they think we carry these for the fun of it,” he remarked, watching the row of men closely to make sure that his order was being carried out.
When all the hammers had been laid down, Cooper motioned with his pistol over to the two transit vans parked next to a derelict building. “There’s coffee and some energy bars over there. You’ve got half an hour. Make the most of it.”
The men shuffled over to the vans, took the polystyrene cups of hot coffee that one of the guards handed out, grabbed a couple of energy bars each and then did their best to huddle together by the side of the building, doing their best to stay out of the driving rain.
Nick gulped down his coffee while it was still hot and then chewed the meagre ration of food slowly. The rain had slackened off slightly but it was now being replaced by mist. The air was cold and clammy and the quarry was soon shrouded in grey. Nick was actually quite pleased to get back to work as standing around had just made him feel worse. His prison-issue clothing was sticking to him and he was chilled to the bone. At his side, Connor was still shaking with cold and Nick was concerned about the risk of hypothermia. Danny had slipped the lad some of his food ration and insisted on him eating it, which had made Nick feel guilty about eating both of his own energy bars.
The mist brought with it a noticeable edginess in both the prisoners and the guards. The tale of what had happened on the moor on the day Nick and the others had arrived on Dartmoor had eventually spread throughout the prison, no doubt growing in the telling, as Nick found it hard to believe the stories of dismembered bodies and a creature that sounded like something out of a Conan Doyle novel. But the nervousness was clearly catching, and Nick was aware of the frequent glances Connor and the others were casting into the gathering gloom.
Nick saw the young soldier standing by the vehicles talking into his mobile phone. His rifle was now slung across his chest and Nick was aware of a higher state of alertness both in him and in the guards.
He nudged Danny and muttered, “They’re expecting trouble of some sort, aren’t they?”
Danny nodded. “This is the first work party out on the moor since that business last week. There’s bound to be…”
The distant sound of gunfire cut across Danny’s words. The prisoners weren’t the only ones who looked startled. The guards grabbed their tasers and stared around into the mist.
The soldier – Cooper – strode over, still talking into his phone. “Boss, what the fuck’s going on? Someone out here is shooting…” He listened for a moment, said, “OK, great, it’s fucking crap out here and getting worse.” He shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Calm down! You can blame the MOD for the noise!” he yelled, his voice steady and reassuring. “All right, the guv’nor’s taken pity on the lot of you and I’ve been told we can take you back in. Hammers down and make your way back to the vans!”
Nick looked at Danny. “MOD?”
“There’s a firing range bordering on the quarry,” Danny told him. “We do sometimes hear shots, but they aren’t normally out in this sort of weather.”
The staccato sound of rifle shots came again.
A sudden drag on the shackle around his left ankle stopped Nick in his tracks. Connor had come to a halt and was staring into the mist. A moment later a large shape hurtled down from the rock face above them and cannoned into the line of chained men. Instant pandemonium erupted. A cry of pain and fear was abruptly choked off. More screams came from both sides.
A single gun shot rang out at close quarters followed by a growl that raised the hairs on the back of Nick’s neck. The mist was now too thick even to see the men at either end of the chain. Moments later, Nick felt his feet being pulled in two different directions and he fell to the ground. The side-effect of shackling each prisoner to the next became immediately obvious. The panicked men were pulling each other in different directions and they were starting to go down like dominos. Nick flung his hand out, trying to push himself upright and his fingers closed around the handle of a hammer discarded by one of the other men.
Another growl cut across the screams and something large and hairy barrelled past Nick. Acting on instinct, he struck out with the hammer and felt it connect and then the creature was past them and heading off into the mist. He caught a brief glimpse of a dark, brindled pelt and heard the sound of gunshots at much closer quarters as Cooper fired on their attacker.
With the sound of gunfire still ringing in his ears, Nick gripped the handle of the hammer ever harder and wondered what the hell had just happened.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-04-28 06:10 pm (UTC)Eek at the chain gang! Now it's even more difficult to survive! *hides*
But maybe this is what Nick and the others need. The truth!
no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-28 06:38 pm (UTC)It's hairy and I'd bet it's got sharp teeth!
Eeep - they're sitting targets shackled together!
no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-28 07:36 pm (UTC)Yay for Kermit!
Eek for the boys being chained together with the beast out there... no doubt with big sharp teeth.
Is it Wednesday yet? ;)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-28 07:44 pm (UTC)*meep* for the cold and wet, and bloody Jackson. Luckily the soldiers seem to have his measure. And anyone who underestimates Kermit is going to be schooled very quickly!
*ouch* for being pulled two directions, but *yay* for Cutter holding his temper.
Lovely last line. I'll bet they all have spinning heads!
no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-28 09:49 pm (UTC)Poor Stephen he started to suffer pretty quick for being in prison.
I wonder what was out in the mist and if Nick injured it or just made it mad.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-29 08:50 am (UTC)I had to smile when you described the young soldier - I knew it'd be Kermit :-D
no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-29 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-29 05:09 pm (UTC)I feel bad for Cutter. He blames himself for everything that's happening and he needs to get over himself because the others are going to need him. I'm really pleased they have Danny to help them and they really, really, really need to listen to him.
Now, this is very exciting and I'm loving Kermit. I'd forgotten his last name (did I ever know it? Probably) he doesn't trust (or like) Jackson as far as he could throw him, although, tossing him in front of the ??Dire Wolf?? sounds like an excellent idea.
Hey, maybe Kermit could take Connor under his wing. That could serve everyone very well. *g*
**looks for Wednesday**
no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-29 10:04 pm (UTC)*Bites nails* It's splendidly atmospheric. I'm rather hoping an unpleasant fate awaits Jackson (though not too soon!) from the creature in the mist.
Poor Nick would feel guilty and responsible for everyone even though they make their own choices. And poor Connor probably is struggling to know what's hit them.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-30 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 04:49 pm (UTC)