The Viperob Files

by Alister Hodge

  Gwen clenched her jaw but gave a curt nod of acceptance. “Fine. So, once we get on a train and escape the island, where do we find an army outpost?”

  “Power of positive thought, eh?” said Kane.

  “We’ve got to make it out, there isn’t any other option,” she said, unperturbed. “You said you’d help us off the island, but not whether you’d join us on trip to deliver the data chip into the right hands.”

  “I have every intention of going all the way, but this isn’t a picnic. If, on the off chance we get separated, you guys need to know what you’re up against on the mainland. That place is a whole different story to your life here.”

  “We’re not kids, Kane,” said Jaego. “We know about the Wastelands outside of the city. So, what? A few homeless people out of work, how bad can it be?”

  Kane laughed, a harsh, grating noise in the relative silence of the room. “You’ve got no idea, kid. There’s a reason why the city’s walled and the Maglev track is elevated off the ground—and that’s because the Wastelands are bloody dangerous.”

  He looked at each of them in turn. “Anything within a kilometre or two of the sea’s abandoned to the Tri-Claw, just like here on the island. If you go far enough inland, you eventually come to the city wall, behind which the shareholders of the different corporations live. But between the Tri-Claw and city wall, that land is controlled by whoever is strong enough to survive.

  “In the city limits, property can only by owned by a corporate shareholder and homelessness is illegal. Any person found that shouldn’t be there is ejected outside the wall. The Benevolent League of Businesses eliminated social welfare last century, and that means those who aren’t lucky enough to be born into servitude like us, are left to their own devices to survive. There’s no law enforcement in those areas. The BLB doesn’t care if they live or die, so long as their precious shareholders don’t have to bear the cost. The strong might survive for a period of time, but the weak just disappear. Out in the Wastelands, there is no such thing as morality. You’ll do whatever’s necessary to keep breathing and hope it doesn’t send you mad.

  “Your only chance is to keep your head down, hope you don’t run into anyone you can’t handle, and make it to an army recruitment post. The army is the only relic from the old country, the only not-for-profit entity remaining. Viperob trained you kids in the advent they needed their own private force to protect the corporation during war, but now you’ll have the chance to fight in a real army. Any one of you could pass for seventeen or eighteen at a push. If it were me, I’d lie about my age and seek to enlist once you hand over the data chip.”

  “Walk in the park then, eh?” said Ethan, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

  “Yeah,” said Kane. “That’s the spirit. You kids will be fine; a few nights sleeping rough and you’ll be a soldier before you know it.” He stood from the table and stretched his back. “We’re going to have a long night. How about we each try and get some kip this afternoon beforehand?”

  “Is he asleep?” asked Ethan.

  Gwen eased her head around the corner of the doorway. Kane was lying on the floor, his head on a rolled-up shirt with eyes closed and mouth open, breathing deeply. She gently closed the door and walked back to where the boys knelt in the adjacent room, taking care to keep her footfalls soft.

  “If he’s not, then it’s a damn good act,” she said quietly.

  Ethan levered up a section of floorboard and extracted the leather pouch containing the rings. He undid the drawstring and upended the contents into his hand, sorted through the jewellery before picking out the largest diamond ring.

  “Hey, Gwen, give me your hand for a sec.”

  With eyebrow raised, she let him take her left hand. Ethan tried the ring on index and middle fingers, before finding a good fit on her ring finger.

  “Um, no offence, Ethan, but I think I’m little young to be getting engaged.”

  “Ha, Ha,” he muttered. “Kane thinks there’s only one ring, so I don’t want to be pulling out the pouch in front of him. I thought carrying it like this would be the easiest way until we need to hand it over, and somehow, I don’t think it’ll fit on any of mine, let alone those sausages that Jaego tries to pass off as fingers.”

  “Hey, I heard that,” said Jaego, doing a poor job of looking offended. “But what about the other ones? Do you reckon we should split up the stash between us, just in case we get separated or one of us bites the dust?”

  “Good idea.” Ethan passed two of the rings to Jaego, another to Gwen, and kept the last for himself. Jaego undid a leather thong he had about his neck, then slipped the rings on before tucking them out of sight again. Ethan took the drawstring from the pouch and copied his mate by retying it about his neck. When the boys had finished, they stopped to find Gwen still sitting with her extra ring in hand.

  “I can’t take this,” she said, stretching her hand back to Ethan. “You two risked your lives to get them.”

  “Hey, it was Jaego’s idea, but it makes sense. We’re trusting each other with our lives, let alone something as unimportant as a ring. But hey, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll be happy to take it back again once we reach the army recruitment site,” said Ethan.

  “Ok. I’ll look after it, but that’s all—I will be giving this back to you once we hand that data chip in,” said Gwen. “Seems a bit strange though, that you’re willing to trust me with one, when both of you went to lengths to avoid Kane knowing about the others.”

  “Yeah, what’s that about?” asked Jaego. “I was just following your lead.”

  “I thought it seemed odd that he already knew we had the rings, and gave me the distinct feeling for a moment that I was being played.”

  “Well he was a mate of your dad,” said Jaego. “Maybe he mentioned them before everything went tits up.”

  “You’re probably right. It’s just that the last time I ignored my gut, it nearly got us diced by a Tri-Claw.”

  “Well, dodgy or not, I’m following Kane’s lead in one thing,” said Gwen as she found a clear area on the floor to lie. “I’m going to try and pass out for a while.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Gwen leant forward and peered through a gap in the boarded-up window frame. A fingernail moon had breached the horizon, but it would provide little light by which to navigate. Night was descending quickly, the grey half-light of dusk becoming darker by the second. Soon they would have to leave the house and gamble their lives on escape via the Maglev.

  Gwen felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise, breath catching in her throat. In her peripheral vision, a shadow moved on the other side of the street, coming to life as massive claw darted out and clipped a scurrying rat. The rodent emitted the briefest of high-pitched squeals before it was dead, neatly cut in half by the razor-sharpness of the Tri-Claw’s twin weapons. The car-sized bulk of the creature now emerged onto the street from its hiding place, smaller claws at the side of its mouth reaching out to pick up the carcass and stuff it into its waiting mouth. Prey eaten, the creature scuttled off in search of other food. Gwen’s gut clenched, the rational part of her mind finding some relief the monster had run in the opposite direction to their chosen route. But there would be other Tri-Claws crouching in the darkness, watching and waiting for an easy meal of warm, human meat.

  “Hey, Gwen, can you hold this for a second?” asked Ethan.

  She swallowed on a throat gone dry and glanced over her shoulder to where the boys were putting the last touches to some makeshift weapons. For what she’d just witnessed, the boys’ efforts seemed nearly as pointless as taking a toothpick to fight a rhino.

  Two finished spears were propped against the wall, while Ethan held the last work in progress. He had a 140-centimetre length of wooden dowel scavenged from a broom handle. Jaego had drilled a neat hole in the end of the wooden pole, and now Ethan inserted a stripped-back handle of a cooking knife into the gap. It was a tight fit, but with a few taps against the fl
oor, Ethan buried the blade in its new home. Gwen grabbed hold of the wood in one hand, the blade held carefully with the other while Ethan wound wire around to reinforce the blade’s housing. Job finished, he passed it to her.

  She rolled the wooden handle in her grip, watching as the steel blade turned at the weapon’s tip, light glinting off the polished metal. “I wish I had some rounds left for my pistol. Do you reckon these will make any difference if we actually meet one?”

  “Against an armed Spec Ops officer? Nah, I reckon we’ll still be screwed,” said Ethan, his voice deadpan.

  Gwen thumped him in the arm. “Very funny, you idiot. I meant whether it would be effective against a Tri-Claw.”

  Ethan rubbed at his shoulder, eyes somewhat contrite. “Did you just see one outside before?”

  Gwen nodded, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the spear handle more tightly at the thought of the armour-plated beast.

  Ethan sighed. “I don’t know, but it’s got to be better than fighting them with our bare hands.” He turned and nudged his mate with the toe of his boot. “Jaego—you reckon their face is soft tissue?”

  Jaego glanced up from the bag he was packing. “Yeah, that was where I buried the powerhead of your bang stick the other day. Under the front hood of the Tri-Claw’s shell is the head and mouth. I guess it’s usually well enough protected by the shell above, because that was the only part I saw that wasn’t covered in plated exoskeleton. It was just four shiny black eyes above its mouth. If we’re able to shove a knife in there, we should find the brain and put it out of action.”

  “What, while we stay out of reach of the two claws and stinger?” said Gwen, one eyebrow raised.

  “Yep. Have you done this before or something?” said Jaego.

  Despite herself, Gwen barked a short laugh. “Just a couple of bloody comedians.”

  A fake cough interrupted their conversation, and the trio looked up to see Kane had entered the room. His face was sombre, pale in the growing shadows within the room, as he viewed the finished weapons. “Let’s go through the route one more time and then hit the road. We’ve got fifty minutes until our Maglev leaves the station,” said Kane. “Ethan, you said you had a map?”

  Ethan ducked into the next room, where they heard him rummaging for a moment. A minute later he reappeared with a rolled-up length of paper in hand. Kneeling on the wooden floor boards, he uncurled the sheet and pinned it out with a few bits of brick. Kane lit one of the boys’ gas lanterns and rested it next to the paper. It was an old map of the island, dating from before the water’s rise.

  “My dad found it at work and printed me a copy last year. Jaego and I used it to plan some of our dives,” said Ethan as Gwen and Kane leant forward to look at the document. Jaego, who’d seen the document many times before, was happy to sit back and finish packing his bag.

  A large rectangle was marked in black at the middle of the island denoting the current location of the Viperob complex. Gwen pointed at a blue line drawn in from the coastline. “Is this the current shoreline?”

  “Yep. Whole blocks of houses are under water, and on the north side of the island, there’s a whole suburb that’s now at least thirty metres under the surface. Nothing but sand and trilobites walking those streets these days.” Ethan sighed. “It’s kind of hard to imagine what this place must have looked like before our ancestors went and totally screwed the world.”

  Kane ignored his commentary, tracing a route with his index finger from their current location up to the Maglev station, marked by a purple rectangle. The station lay outside of the Viperob complex, but was connected by an enclosed walkway to protect employees in transit during the night from Tri-Claw attack. On the other side of the station, a single width of track continued for six hundred metres until the ground dropped away beneath as it traversed the span to the mainland.

  Kane tapped his finger on the page again. “If we take this route up Carrington Street, then left on Studer Avenue… it shouldn’t be more than a twenty-minute jog. I don’t think I need to reinforce the importance of spending as little time in the open as possible, do I?” he said, eyes serious as he stared at the teenagers.

  “No problem from us, Kane,” said Jaego. “If anyone’s going to have an issue, it’ll be you trying to keep up with the pace we set, old man.”

  Colour crept into Kane’s face as he stared back at Jaego with eyes slightly narrowed, but he didn’t utter a retaliation. Instead he flicked the fragments of brick off the map and rolled it back up. “Ok. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Between the four companions, there were two small rucksacks packed with the small amount of food that was left in the house, the boys’ first aid kit, and a few other items of use. Jaego and Ethan shouldered a bag each and headed for the door. Gwen was already there, homemade spear held tightly in hand. She gripped the door knob and closed her eyes for a moment, took a steadying breath then pushed it open. A quick glance up and down the street showed nothing but concrete and vacant desolation.

  “That way,” said Ethan under his breath, pointing up the street. Without another word, the group took off at a run.

  Gwen’s pace settled into metronomic regularity, chest rising and falling with the unforced respiration of a seasoned athlete. She forced herself to stare straight ahead as she ran, ignoring the darkness to either side and the shadows that taunted her peripheral vision with every step.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Consciousness seeped slowly back into Zach Tan’s mind. Sounds of which he couldn’t make sense accosted his brain: a woman crying softly, a man swearing. Pain lanced Zach’s skull like a hot poker from behind his left ear through to his eye, making his stomach roil. He lurched up to a sitting position and the small movement was enough to send hot vomit gushing from his mouth.

  Zach tried to open his eyes, but the lids were stuck together by something. He raised a hand and scooped off a glutinous mass of blood with his fingernails, allowing his eyes to open. He looked around, his mind struggling to work out why he was lying alone on a trolley near the outer wall, covered in blood. Sounds of movement came from the other side of a door through the wall.

  “Hold her still,” muttered a deep voice.

  “This is wrong, mate. Harris is going nuts. He’s taken it too far this time.”

  “What, you want to tell him you refused a direct order? It’ll be us with a bullet in our head instead. Stuff that, just hold her still so I can get this over with.”

  Zach jumped as two muted gunshots sounded, followed by a dull impact with the ground.

  “Jesus, Roy…”

  “Shut up and grab her legs,” grated the first man. “It’s not our fault, we’re just following orders. As far as anyone knows, the Tans died in the cyclone. If you want to blame anyone, blame their stupid kid for messing with the wrong crowd.”

  Tan? But that’s my name? His traumatized brain finally began to catch up. His son Jaego—chased by Spec Ops. His wife and him arrested, tortured for information. Realisation hit—they were being murdered. He looked around, head swimming with the quick movement as he frantically searched the area for his wife but came up empty.

  “Go get the last one while I drag her farther away from the wall.”

  His heart began to race at the sound of footsteps approaching the door. Zach realised he’d regained consciousness too late and that he’d just heard his wife being murdered. He wanted to be sick again.

  The handle moved on the door, a key in the lock turned.

  Unsure what else to do, Zach laid back down and closed his eyes again. The door opened with a metallic groan from its hinges, then footsteps approached. His head was roughly moved to the side as the officer nudged it with the toe of his boot.

  “Jesus,” muttered the officer under his breath. “Can’t believe he’s still breathing after Harris stamped on his head like that.”

  Through slitted eyelids, Zach watched the officer squat to grab hold of his ankles and begin dragging him to the door
way. At the last moment, Zach kicked hard, the tip of his boot connecting with the officer’s chin. With a crunch, the man’s head was flicked backwards before he crumpled to the ground unconscious.

  Zach moved as fast as the agony in his head would allow. Getting to his knees, he stripped the officer of his handgun.

  “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Zach snapped his gaze up to the officer’s partner framed in the doorway. Without thinking, he lifted the stolen handgun and fired. The officer was smashed backwards like he’d been kicked, crimson blossoming from the wound in his chest as his feet kicked a staccato of death where he fell. The man at his feet groaned and began to sit up. Zach changed aim, firing at point blank range to mash the second officer’s head back into the ground. The centre of the man’s face disappeared in a mist of blood, a crater of gore replacing nose and cheek bones.

  Zach slumped to the ground again, part of him wanting to see his wife’s body, the other terrified at the prospect of what he might find. Grief consumed his mind, constricting his chest like a vice. He’d failed in his job as a father and husband, failed to protect his wife or find his son.

  “Beta Team, report to the Maglev station ASAP.”

  The voice had come from a radio set attached to the security officer’s jacket. Zach leant down, unclipped the device and brought it close to his ear, hoping that he might hear some news that would say his son was still alive.

  “Beta Team, your presence is requested as backup at the Maglev station. Confirm receipt of order, over.”

  Zach glanced at the two dead officers and felt a small measure of cold satisfaction. But it was only a start. If there was any chance his son was still alive, he had to keep moving and try and fix part of the nightmare. He forced himself to stand, then needed to prop against the wall for a moment until his head stopped spinning. Zach touched a hand to his head where blood dripped from his left ear in wet plops of carmine. Harris stamped on my head. Wasn’t that what the officer had said? Whatever had happened, he knew his head wasn’t right, the blood signalling a likely fractured skull. If the blood built up between his brain and skull, he’d lose consciousness permanently.