Hackman stood at the top of the stairs. He took Rachel from me, and I collapsed to catch my breath. The ground was wet and the air was clearer here. A burst pipe sprayed water over everything, which kept the flames at bay.
My head felt light, and the world went black again.
“You know, I think you’re turning head trauma into a sport.”
I blinked and rubbed my eyes. Josh lay on the bed next to mine. I managed a smile. “I’m semi-pro right now. A few more, and I’ll qualify for nationals.”
He laughed, and so did I. My ribs hurt. He sat up, reached over, and put his hand on my shoulder. “Seriously, though, are you okay?”
“I think so.” I sat up slowly and checked myself, coughing smoke out of my lungs. My legs throbbed like they were sunburned, and my knee was pretty sore, but I was remarkably all right, considering.
Josh smirked. “You look like dirt.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I smiled, punching him in the arm.
He moved and sat next to me, running his fingers through my hair. “I’m sorry about before. Our fight.”
“Me too.”
“Honestly, I don’t want to underestimate you. You’re a lot tougher than you look. I heard some guys talking about how you carried Rachel all the way out of the basement. That’s crazy.”
“Is she all right?”
“They didn’t mention it. They said she was the one who set off those bombs. Is that true?”
“Did they say anything else? Is everyone okay?”
Josh shook his head. “This part of the compound didn’t get touched, but they put you in here with me ‘cause they were running out of space in the medical rooms. About eighty dead. Couple of kids ... The bombs were on a timed delay or something, but you probably know that already. They got the fire under control pretty quickly. I offered to help, and they told me to watch you instead. I do know they’re prepping for retaliation. It’s gonna be major.” He paused. “You didn’t answer my question. Was it Rachel who bombed the place?”
I nodded and tears welled in my eyes. “I don’t know who to trust anymore. I thought she was my friend. But after her, and Noah, I feel like the whole world is keeping secrets from me. Everyone except you.”
He slid his hand into mine. “There’s one thing I’m keeping from you. But it’s probably the world’s worst kept secret. I think it slipped out a while ago, in your kitchen.”
I smiled at him.
“Ari, I—”
“Don’t say it. Not right now. Not here.”
His eyes dropped.
“It’s not that,” I said quickly. “You’re amazing. And sweet, and kind, and you know me better than anyone. It’s just that, right now I don’t have space in me for anything but hate.”
He drew back. “Hate?”
“Hating the Unseen, hating every little part of them with every last part of me ... It’s all that’s stopping me from melting down completely. I want to feel something else, but I’m scared that if I let in any other feeling, anything else but anger, all the other emotions I’m keeping down will blow up in my brain and I’ll become a vegetable.”
He nodded. “I get it. And I’m a patient guy. What’s it been, two years so far? I can handle a few more days.”
“Two years?”
“Ever since you broke your ankle that day at lunch. You were wearing those ridiculous pink socks with butterflies on them. You had a little smudge of dirt on your cheek from the fall, and the tears made your eyes sparkle. Most people look like a sea lion when they cry, but not you. You were beautiful.”
I shook my head slowly. “I can’t believe you remember all that.”
“How could I forget?”
“That was so cheesy,” I smiled, “but sweet.” He shrugged, and we sat in silence for a while.
There was a knock at the door, and Hackman entered without waiting for a response. I let go of Josh’s hand self-consciously.
“Good, you’re awake. Follow me.” Hackman whirled out of the room into the hall.
“Nice to see you too,” I muttered in an imitation of Hackman’s voice, and Josh sniggered. I kissed him on the cheek. He smiled, and I left.
TWENTY-NINE
We walked through blackened hallways and crumbling corridors. Most of the mess was cleaned up already. The Kindred were definitely efficient. There was one pile of rubble that hadn’t been moved. As we walked past, a melted face stared out at me from between the rocks. Whoever he or she was, they hadn’t made it.
Hackman stopped for a moment and gazed at the blackened mess. “This is why we fight.” He turned resolutely and marched on. I followed, unable to shake the image of the face.
We stopped outside a briefing room. Hackman looked at me for a moment. “This is it, Ari. Make sure you’re ready.”
Without any further explanation, he entered the room. There was nothing else for me to do, so I followed.
The others were already there, seated around a table. Frank, Nareem, James, and Vicki were poring over maps and photos, talking in quiet whispers and pointing to different landmarks and roads. There were two other teams as well, eight more in total. Probably the backup units from the previous night.
“We need to strike, and we need to strike now,” Hackman began. “Our oversight has approved a full-scale attack against the Unseen. It’s time to wipe them out of our region, exterminate them like the vermin they are.”
There were nods from around the table.
“Thanks to Ari, we’ve located the traitor, and we also know they’re keeping her family in the farmhouse. An examination of Rachel’s previous movements and her satellite phone has led us to several other Unseen facilities. We must wipe them out before they have the chance to run. If they don’t already know we’ve found them, they’ll work it out soon. The time is now. This is the final solution.” He leaned forward. “I’ve already briefed the teams who are taking on the other safe houses. This group will attack the farmhouse, as we already know the layout and location. Pay close attention.”
The plan was for one of the experienced units to take up positions around the perimeter and create a distraction that would lure the Unseen fighters out of the house. Once they were far enough away, we would enter through the front and back doors and take down any resistance inside. It was short, sharp, and brutal, and had the greatest chance of success. We spent ages studying maps and diagrams with different coloured arrows, circles, and lines that all meant different strategies and defensive positions. James, Vicki, and I would join half the remaining unit through the back door, while Frank, Nareem, and Hackman would join the others at the front. There would be six people entering the house from each side. If something went wrong, we would meet up at an old shearing shed about forty minutes’ walk away.
We were due to begin at sundown, which was only an hour away, once the light had completely faded, to ensure adequate cover.
This was all in theory, though, and as I spent the hour waiting, I ran through every possible way this could go wrong. I do that sometimes—run through scenarios in my head and work out all the different outcomes.
Once, I had to confront Caitlyn about her gossiping behind my back after she told everyone at school about how I was crazy jealous of Taylor Sparks when she was dating Isaac Lewis because I had a massive thing for him. I spent the whole weekend stewing over the fight we were going to have on Monday, going through every possible conversation in my head, every response she could have and what I would say, and then what she would say and how I would counter. I got so caught up in my head that when I went to talk to her that morning at school, I was shaking with anger. Turns out, it wasn’t even her who started the rumor. We’d been talking in the bathroom, and Jackie Trawler had overheard and told everyone. I’d wasted the whole weekend boiling in my own rage, and it wasn’t even her fault in the first place.
Sometimes, it’s not the greatest habit to play these things out in your head, but it’s not as bad as working out what you would have done after it’s
all said and done. That’s just pointless. But this time, I felt like I had to run it through, work out every way I could be cornered, every way we could be caught, every way this tightly stretched plan could snap and whip back into our faces. If it came to the crunch, I had to know what I was going to do. I couldn’t let anyone down—not my unit, and certainly not my family.
When the call came to head out, I was still feeling underprepared. We’d had a soldier visit our school on Remembrance Day once, and he said that no amount of training or preparation gets you ready for a real-life battle. I understood that now; I had experienced some nasty things for sure, but I’d never run head first into this kind of fight. Hopefully, I wouldn’t freeze, or even worse: crack up under the pressure.
We piled into the van, and I felt really sick. Not just motion sickness from the bumpy drive out of the park, but a churning anxiety in the pit of my stomach. In a very short time, a lot of people were going to die. I stared at the others, trying to take in their faces in case it was the last time I saw them alive.
James was visibly scared, staring at a spot on the wall behind me. He looked how I felt, and I could only imagine what I must have looked like to everyone else. Vicki sat next to him with a calm anger. Her eyes burned, but she was holding James’s hand to comfort him, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. Nareem had his eyes closed and brow furrowed, trying to ready himself for the coming fight. I felt sorry for Frank. He looked so defeated and afraid, every scrap of false bravado devoured by terror. He swallowed hard. Hopefully, he wouldn’t choke tonight. I couldn’t see Hackman—he was up front driving—but he would be wearing his usual weird smile.
The drive felt five times longer than the previous night, partly because I knew what I was heading into and partly because I wanted to absorb every last living moment I had before the battle. They were potentially the last moments Mum and Skye had left as well.
I focused on my hands and tried to count backwards from a thousand to take my mind off things. I was so tired but alert at the same time, like my brain had drunk ten triple-shot lattes but hadn’t told the rest of my body about it. I was running on pure adrenaline and had been for a while now. My eyes closed for one second.
I snuffled subconsciously as I woke, and everyone turned to stare at me. The van was slowing down. Somehow, I’d fallen asleep on Nareem’s shoulder. How on earth had I managed to sleep knowing what was about to happen? I was more tired than I thought.
Trying not to show my embarrassment, I went to stand as the van stopped, but my foot had fallen asleep and I tumbled back into Nareem, who caught me awkwardly. Winded, I laughed at how uncoordinated I was, and everyone else quietly joined in. It broke the tension, which was nice, although it also slightly hurt my pride.
Hackman glared at us and motioned for us to be quiet. We had stopped a fair way from the cornfield we’d planned to use as our cover like the night before, and there was a big problem.
The sun was almost down, casting thin light over a now blackened field. Where the corn had been, there was nothing but smouldering ash and charcoal, wisps of smoke rising from the burned-out crops. The fire I started had blazed way out of control. Our cover was gone.
“This complicates matters,” Hackman said. “Our reconnaissance teams would normally pick this up in advance, but after Rachel’s attack …”
“They’re still in the house,” Nareem said, looking through binoculars. “I can see them moving through the windows. So they’re alert, but I don’t think they’ve seen us. It looks like they’re packing, getting ready to run.”
“We have little time, then.” Hackman turned to me. “You said Rachel advised them to leave before midnight. They’re moving faster than they should, which means they likely know we’re coming. We don’t have much time.”
“We don’t have a safe approach,” Vicki jumped in. “They’ll see us the moment we try to move closer.”
Everyone in the van went silent. My face burned; this was my fault. In my escape the previous night, I’d ruined our plan. I hunted for a solution, wanting to redeem myself. I looked at the fields, deep furrows running in a grid along the edges.
Suddenly, the solution was obvious. “Irrigation channels,” I murmured.
“Excellent idea,” Frank chirped, which came as a shock. It was the first time he’d said something positive about anyone but himself.
“What do you mean?” James asked. He’d been a townie too long.
“The irrigation channels are deep trenches dug through a paddock to get water to the crops. They won’t go the whole way to the house, but they’ll get us pretty close. I noticed some on the way in last night. They’re deep enough to crawl through without being seen if we can find where they meet the road. They’ll probably be fed from the old dam nearby—we drove past it yesterday. It’s only a few minutes back.”
“Find the dam, find the trench, crawl to the house, and we’re on them before they know what’s coming,” James mused.
“Done,” Hackman said. He reversed as quickly and quietly as he could, turning around at a junction and heading back towards the creek crossing. We pulled in underneath a weeping willow, its long branches hiding the van from the house.
Hackman handed out fighting masks to hide our identities from any Unseen who might escape. Of course, the plan was to kill them all rather than let that happen.
I paused for a moment, taking in our surroundings while the others piled out of the van. I hadn’t seen the other units yet, the ones creating the distraction and joining us in the house. The air was spinning with flies, so I didn’t breathe in deeply in case I swallowed one, but the night was alive with smells clamouring for attention. There was the sweetness of the weeping willow, musty wet mud under my feet, the sting of smoke from the burned field, and a hint of rotten flesh from a dead fox filled with maggots on the other side of the road.
The paddock we were next to was enormous, and the farmhouse was smaller than my thumbnail from this distance. It was going to be a long crawl. I climbed into the bowl formed by the old dam. The earth was so dry it had cracked into plates, like a miniature earthquake had caused fault lines running all the way along the basin. They crunched under my feet as I stepped across the dam. The ground felt like rock, except up one end, where the irrigation channel sat. Some water was seeping through from the almost dry creek, making this end a touch muddy. Once, this whole thing would have been filled with water; now, it was just a reminder of lost prosperity.
It was almost completely dark now, and I strained to make out how far the irrigation channel went. Maybe it connected all the way to the paddocks on the other side of the farmhouse, but there was no way to know for sure.
At the edge of my vision, something moved. A brambly patch of shrubs shifted, and I froze as a masked face emerged from the tangled thorns.
Hackman turned. “Stanley. Good to see you. I was wondering when you’d show up.”
“We’re all here,” said the man called Stanley. “Saw the field burned out and assumed we might meet up this end. Sorry we couldn’t call, no reception out here, and we were told to keep radio silence.”
Five other faces emerged from the bushes, and Hackman told them our approach. Stanley said the other unit was in position for their distraction, waiting for our signal.
We got down on our hands and knees, keeping our heads under the lip of the channel. It wasn’t a deep one, so we were pressed pretty low. I kept scraping my knees on rocks and sticks that coated the ground or stuck up out of the mud. A few minutes in, my hand pushed down on the pointy end of a barbed wire offcut, drawing blood. I bit my lip to stifle the groan. Hackman was in front with Stanley and two others from his unit. I followed, then James, Nareem, Frank, and Vicki, with the remainder of Stanley’s unit bringing up the rear.
The pace was frantic. I scrambled through the ditch like I was being chased by wildcats, which was almost true with Vicki crawling at the back of the line. From what I could hear, she kept shoving Frank forward as he slowed.
It was causing some tension. I stopped for a second and looked back. Frank was sweating like a roast chicken and didn’t look well. I felt kind of sorry for him, but there were more important things at hand, so I turned around and got back to it.
Hackman slowed the pace as we neared the house. We were almost there but still out of earshot. He went through the plan once more. By this time, I had it memorised practically word for word. James, Vicki, and I would go through the back with Stanley and two of his team, while the rest breached the front of the house, with Hackman on point. Once we were in position, Hackman would set a small stump alight near the back of the property, which could be seen from where we were now but was so far away it would take a lot of skill to tune. The hidden unit would see the signal and create a series of explosions behind the silos before engaging the Unseen fighters that came to investigate.
That was the plan, at least.
We split up. Hackman’s unit stayed where they were, to edge their way around to the front. They only had to head to the tree line, which was simple, considering how dense the trees were between them and the house. Our move was a bit harder. We continued towards the back of the property, but we were still a fair distance from the house, so the next part was risky. We had to make it out of the irrigation channel all the way to the scrub without being seen.
I peeked over the edge of the ditch to scope the route. The scrub grew thick close to the backyard but was cleared a long way between there and our current position. We’d have to run for it, leaving ourselves visible from the kitchen window for at least ten seconds.
My hands sank deep into the mud, and I grimaced. Hopefully it wasn’t septic runoff. Mum used to tell me horror stories from when she was a toddler and lived on the farm with her parents. Their septic system would break all the time and leak into the soil, and my grandparents would come out and find her paddling around in mud created by their own refuse. Life on a farm isn’t as romantic as it’s cracked up to be. I shuddered at the thought and refocused on the mission at hand.
The Fire Unseen Page 18
