Author David Moorland has submitted a first chapter of his novel, An Unkind Future. The first few paragraphs are published here, while the rest of the chapter is available on his blog.
They heard the sound of an engine coming up the wooded valley, labouring at points where the road was especially steep. But it was expected in any case. They had already received a secure message saying that they would have a visitor at about 07:00. An aluminium kettle was starting to boil on the gas burner set up outside the tent, and three plastic mugs were already lined up with a measure of instant coffee in each one. The leaf mould was deep and dry here under the spread of the small clump of trees that sheltered the tent from the sight of searching eyes. But, as an added precaution, a green, thermo-reflective canopy had been set up in the branches above the camp so that their activity could not easily be seen or detected by heat sensors in the drones that regularly patrolled the skies above the border. The tent itself, perhaps with enough capacity for four men, was of an unusual design and fabric such that it seemed to blend into the background when viewed from various angles, and certainly at a distance almost disappeared from sight. It was about the height of a stooping man in the middle, where the entrance provided a sort of passageway between the two sleeping areas on either side. Viewed very closely the tent material had an oily sheen about it and seemed to be a complex of subtly changing shades as it reflected the area of shadowed woodland around it.
The camp occupied the area between the last of the trees and the edge of the grass in the field, and lay entirely in the shadow of leaves and bough. The pegs for the tent had been driven deep through the undisturbed cushion of mould and twig, and into the hard-baked ground a few inches beneath. There was dust everywhere in this late Spring morning. A fine grey powder that had built up over many years adhered to everything they had brought with them. It was on the lower parts of their tent, and their boots were covered with it where they walked and scuffed it up around them. Even the outside of each of the white mugs, cleaned in a basin of warm water not too long ago, were now thick with muddy fingerprints. The foamy bowl still lay in the middle of the clearing under the trees, and some white plastic plates, with the residue of an earlier breakfast, waited to be cleaned.
A slightly overweight, middle-aged man in combat fatigues sat there tending a little gas stove. He was perched on a large branch dragged at some point from deeper into the wood to make a low bench. Indeed the branch might well have once been the trunk of a small tree, as at both ends it seemed to bear the marks of mechanical activity. There were several more timbers like this in the shadows suggesting that at some time in the not too distant past the field and the little wood at whose margin he was sitting had not been entirely forgotten. He ran his hand absent-mindedly over a well-established beard that had started to mottle with silver. The kettle began to dance with the boiling of the water inside and he quickly removed it from the heat and placed it on the ground in front of him, within the circle of stones that had been made into a cooking area. The undisturbed carpet of dried leaves and mulch from countless years had been cleared away to expose the hard, bare soil making it unlikely the stove would ignite anything in the dry, clear weather they had been experiencing. It had not rained in all the time they had been there, or for some time before their camp had been set up.
From above it would have been impossible to see them. The site was hidden by the thick cover of trees under which they had set up their tent, and was afforded even greater protection by the canopy they had strung in the branches above. They had deliberately pitched it just over the cresting sweep of the grassy field that fell away below them so that it could not be seen from the road that ran along the stream in the crease of the hills, and then up into the completely wooded landscape beyond them, nor from the next valley and hills behind them on the other side of the thin bank of trees.