I crouched down and started spinning the blade on the ground, “How are we supposed to know that? Prodding people with kitchen utensils? Attacking people with bricks? That sounds like something crazy people would do Joe.”
“My name’s Loui-”
“That’s nice Joe, look, we want to assume the best of you, but you just haven’t given us any reason to.”
He started looking around frantically, assumedly for something to barter, “Wait! Do you want clothes? I’ve got clothes!”
I looked down at my bare chest, “I suppose I do, but what we really need is transport. You wouldn’t happen to know about anything that could remedy that particular need?”
Joe thought for a second and then had another epiphany.
Torture is highly ineffective, that is a fact, but boy-oh-boy does fear make people think.
Just some food for thought.
“There’s a fourbie! Big one, just down the road, it’ll fit you and your men for sure.”
‘Me and my men’ I laughed to myself, “Why haven’t you and your boy taken it yet?”
“We can’t get it to run, my wife…” he trailed off.
I wanted to let him have his moment, but I needed to know everything I could about the thing. I snapped my fingers at the tip of his nose a few times, “Come on Joe, focus!”
He jumped back to the present and stumbled over his words, “Yeah… um… My wife was the mechanical one, I couldn’t even change a tire to save my life.”
I got to my feet and smiled down at him, “Brilliant! Well, we’ll be on our merry then.” I turned to leave, “Just one more thing.”
“Wha-What?”
“Give us that shirt of yours.”
Get Lucky
We cleaned up and shifted out of the house, leaving an M4 propped up next to the front door, and started making our way down the predominately hedge lined street. Fences with gates giving way for nine foot tall bushes that had all but consumed the archways and letterboxes that had once led to happy homes. Maybe.
They could’ve been really shitty homes that were rank with mold and abuse, you never know.
Point is we were in the world’s maze and most of us were bored, particularly with Harry’s incessant bitching about his bandaged hand. The only one of us who didn’t take notice was Mark who was trailing behind us, still looking over my pistol.
He’d also taken the alien weapon out of the duffel and was letting it poke out of the top of a black backpack that he’d found. The rest of the group and myself were in front, maintaining a line through the middle of the road.
Harry looked over at me for what felt like the dozenth time since we’d left the house, “That shirt isn’t staying on you, no way. How are you even moving?”
I shrugged, an incredibly difficult movement in the way too small shirt, “It’s form fitting.” I lied.
“Oh yeah? Flex then.”
I stopped half-way through a step and turned to face him. That was the third time he’d brought up my shirt and I was sick of it, it was time to prove him wrong.
I tensed as many of my muscles as I could and immediately heard ripping fabric.
Harry smiled smugly, “Told you.”
I huffed for a few seconds before getting my own smile back, “Fine, you got me, I’m in a tiny shirt, now you need to find me a new one.”
Harry’s smile disappeared and turned into disappointment, something I wanted to brew on for a while, but we had to keep moving.
We’d been walking for a solid fifteen minutes and there was still no car to be seen and we were starting to get pissed, well, except for Mark who I’m pretty sure was so distracted that he would walk right off a cliff if no one stopped him.
“Hey Mark, any luck with the gun?”
Without looking up he shook his head, “Not yet, don’t worry though, I’ll get it.” There was a snap and a crack and he tore off the slide before dropping it into his backpack. I cringed at the sounds, only just suppressing the urge to tell him to be careful.
‘He knows what he’s doing. He knows what he’s doing. He knows what he’s doing.’
“Wow…” Kate said, pulling me from my almost emotional staring.
‘Wow’ was an understatement.
The front of the black monstrous truck was sitting on the other side of the hedge, the only clearly visible part was the eight seat rear. Two red jerry-cans were stuck to the boot door and a small pile of what I guessed was left over cans of food were clearly visible through the broken rear window.
We pushed through the hedge and got around to the right-side front of the roaming metal shelter, “Why hasn’t anyone taken this yet?” Harry asked as he peeked into the blood smeared front seat.
I shrugged, “Probably thought it wasn’t worth the trouble. Wheel’s flat and the windshield’s clearly compromised, my bet? Driver’s hit something, or someone, and had them roll up the bonnet then the driver panicked.”
I went around to the left side of the car and found a zed stuck under the flat wheel. A moment of curious empathy wove over me as I watched it snap at the cruel world that had let it go hungry.
My mind was probably just trying to over-compensate for my waning humanity. ‘Meh.’ I thought to myself as I stomped on its head with the satisfying crunching sound of a fresh pumpkin, “Bippity boppity boop, you’ve got yourself a stuck vehicle and an apocalypse on your ass, what do you do?”
Wolf came around to my side and helped me lift the truck and shift the body out from under it before dumping it in the hedge, “Bail out. Everyone else that passes by disregards what looks like a dead hunk of junk with a zombie attached and shuffles on with their day.” We all grouped up at the front of the beast and looked on in silent admiration.
After some time of feeling really quite fortunate I turned to our resident mechanic who’d given up on fixing my pistol for the moment, “You reckon you can get her running again?”
He scoffed, “Are you kidding me? Of course I can’t.” I’m positive that he deliberately paused there just to hurt my feelings. It was the sly smile he shot me that gave it away, “That thing is heavy as all Hell. I’m sure I can guide you fellows through the process though. You think you and Wolf can help roll it into the garage?” He asked while pointing at the house behind us.
I hadn’t even noticed the red brick, two storey testament to consumerism. It had a detached garage for two cars, its rolling door completely open showing that it was empty with the exception of a tool bench and a few bits and bobs lying around.
“Definitely, you want to give it a good look over and write us up a list of everything we need?” I said with a heave as I picked up the truck from the front left side and gestured for Wolf to start pushing.
“Will do, I take it we’re spending the night then?”
Suddenly I was thrust into a paternal role, he may as well have asked if they could have ice-cream while the other kids waited silently and impatiently, hanging for their father’s response.
But what the children don’t know is that sometimes daddy wants ice-cream too… That does not sound alright in any way, shape or form. I apologise.
“Sounds good to me.”
The group practically whooped in excitement at the idea of a good night’s sleep while Wolf and I managed to get the truck tucked into the garage.
It was barely ten but the group were all well past tired. While Mark and I made sure that the truck was propped up and secured the others rushed into the house, claiming rooms and getting comfortable without bothering to check that the house was well and truly empty.
I didn’t want to get in the way of their fun though, after Mark and I shut the garage door I went from room to pristine room and let out a sigh of relief as it proved to be safe. ‘We deserve this.’ I told myself.
“There’s gas hot water!” Harry cried out from somewhere on the top floor.
I couldn’t help but smile at the ecstatic screeches and overwhelming joy that was flooding the house. There weren’t
zeds for miles around and we were finally in a place we could truly feel safe.
I kicked off my worn out shoes next to the entrance and just how bone-dead exhausted I was hit me. I’m honestly unsure as to how I got to the soft brown couch in the living-dining room combo with my pants, shirt and socks off.
I drifted off into a truly magnificent sleep, only waking twice, once as Kate threw a blue knitted blanket over me and gave me a soft kiss on the head, and another time when I heard someone moan from upstairs.
I almost jumped straight into panic mode, but before I could even throw the blanket off the moaning person gasped out “Harry…” It took me a second to realise what it was.
Honestly? Before I fell asleep again I wasn’t uncomfortable, I was just glad that Clara and Harry were becoming better acquainted.
River Angel
It had barely been ten minutes since John had left before it had happened. Gabriel struggled to ease his pounding heart as he watched from the safety of the crashed helicopter.
It was all over in a matter of seconds.
The four massive alien troopers had mowed through the survivors before they could so much as let off a round and the leader, dressed in a loose-fitting red jumper and black slacks, had Warren on his knees and was demanding something from him.
Gabriel wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger, kill the leader and hope to God that the others would frenzy, but something held him back. The sniper’s gut had always had a slight, but incredibly accurate, foresight, so he continued to watch on and wait with his rifle’s scope locked on the poorly dressed leader.
Then the leader gave up, growling something loud and foreign before turning back to the broken man who sat as straight as he could, each breath a battle.
Clearly Warren hadn’t had the information the alien wanted, he grabbed him up by the throat in one hand, regarded the mostly limp shell of a man at his mercy and cast him toward the river a good fifty metres from where he stood.
That’s when Gabriel activated his internal stopwatch, giving himself sixty seconds to get Warren back to the surface.
He waited, each breath coming exactly five seconds after the other, “Move…” he muttered to the aliens through his scope, “Move…”
“Kalshur alvet!” The leader bellowed and the others began to shuffle and Gabriel sighed with relief. But then he saw that they weren’t leaving, they were clearing room for two more aliens, one obviously pregnant and the other playing the role of midwife.
Gabriel didn’t have time to waste, he checked he had a round in the chamber, lined up his shot and stood, “Hey!”
The soldiers all spun to face him, their weapons at the ready while their leader stood snarling, “Batur fel-”
“Hold the Hell up fuck-face! Unless you want your bitch’s brain all over you!” Gabe let out his thirty second breath and tapped his fingers along the handle of his rifle, teasing the trigger.
The leader looked over the pregnant one and then back at Gabriel, his face even angrier than the first time, “That’s right! Now move on the fuck out of here or I’ll see just how many of your pale heads I can open up!” Forty second breath.
They still weren’t moving, waiting for their orders, “Five!”
“Fine!” The alien growled, “Meshot galjun!” and the others left. The leader lingered for a moment though, staring the sniper down as it tracked his love, and then disappeared.
Gabriel didn’t waste a second, he ran, ditching his rifle, and dove into the murky water and scanned it like a shark, looking for any sign of a body.
He was running out of air and the water was only getting murkier, but then he saw it, a single piece of lightly billowing bright green fabric illuminated by a stray beam of light. Gabe dove deeper and deeper while blindly grabbing before finally gaining a tight grip on the almost fluoro shirt.
Tunnels started to close around Gabriel’s vision as he shot up toward the surface, desperately trying to push Warren above him.
He fought the urge to gasp in a lungful of water for what felt like minutes.
Then with one final kick and a push Warren broke through the surface.
People Suck
I’m going to skip past my positively amazing shower and how I clippered my beard clean off. I’ll skip the hilariously awkward breakfast at five AM too, by which point Harry and Clara had made the proverbial beast-with-two-backs at least three times according to Kate who’d been next door.
The meal itself was mostly just two people looking shyly while eating their cereal at a mix of judging faces and those who were stifling a laughing fit.
I’ll also jump over the overly long and boring shopping trip, Hell, I’m not even going to run through the repairs and modifications which was a whole bunch of Mark yelling at Wolf and I for being incompetent while we did all the work.
I let the bonnet drop and heard the satisfying click before looking over our masterpiece. We’d replaced and resealed the windshield as well as added some heavy duty metal stripping to prevent further destruction. Sure it restricted vision a bit, but with the new titanium bull-bar not much would get in the way. We even got a completely new set of wheels, tires and axles.
And while we’d been doing that and more, Harry wouldn’t stop talking about how he’d helped. Here’s the full list of what Harry did, refilled the coolant and the wiper-fluid.
But enough on how great Wolf and I are.
“It’s beautiful…” Kate whispered as she approached us with Clara in tow. They’d raided the lady of the house’s wardrobe and come out looking like shoeless soccer moms, high waisted full length jeans and silky buttoned light blue shirts.
I was interested in how many of the exact same outfit the woman had had and then realised that it was probably the same amount of flannel shirts and blue jeans that the man had which Wolf and I had taken.
Harry and Mark, however, had had to raid the teenage boy’s room for clothes which seemed to be fitting them quite well, Harry in black sweat-pants and a long sleeve black shirt, while Mark had taken a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a ridiculously baggy red t-shirt.
“You girls wanna give it a clean?” I said jokingly.
Kate rolled her eyes, “Sure, let’s clean our carnage machine.” I did like that name, and I was starting to really like her again. The spark had been re-lit inside me and it felt good.
Harry smiled around at all of us, pausing for a long while on Clara before nearly jumping out of his skin, “Oh! I remember seeing a few bottles of lemonade in the deep-freezer in the house, hold on!” He disappeared from view and we waited.
I drummed on the metal panelling and glass as I walked around to the back of the truck, “What do you guys think? Should get us a fair way from here, definitely to the Coast.”
Mark nodded and leant against the back door next to me, “This thing’d get us to Toronto and back if we needed it to.”
For the first time in a long time I felt like we’d accomplished something. It was amazing to be able to feel that way.
Harry came screeching to the front of the shed, three dripping glass bottles of lemonade between his fingers in both of his high raised hands, “Icy goodness. And still in date!” He said proudly.
Then there was a bang and one of the bottles smashed, a full three seconds passing before blood started to build up around Harry’s right shoulder. But instead of collapsing he tossed Clara the other bottles, spun on his feet, searched for his attacker and cast the broken glass at the hedge resulting in a high-pitched “Billy!” to screech out.
The pain finally registered in Harry’s brain, “Fucking ow! CLARA!” He bellowed as he ran for the house.
I took his idea, running hard and fast from the truck, last thing we needed was our getaway riddled with bullets in the crossfire.
Dirt shot up around myself and the others as we stumbled and ran in a serpentine fashion, trying to dodge the poorly aiming Joe.
That’s right.
It was that mother-fucking arsehat, t
ook me a minute to realise that it was his voice, didn’t even register until we were in the house with the door shut behind us.
Shooting at us with a gun we gave him?
Talk about ungrateful.
“We’re here for our truck!”
Harry, who was currently being forced to lay down by Clara on the couch, shot up, “Oh yeah!? Show us your fuckin rego then!”
I planted my back to the door frame and looked into the lounge room, “You ok Har?”
“I’ve been shot! What do you think!?”
Kate shouted from the kitchen on the other side of the house, “Calm down Harry, you could be dying and the last thing you ne-”
“Do I sound like I’m dying!?”
Harry’s last words got drowned out by the sound of Joe taking a few more shots into the house.
I waited for a second after he finished and let the door swing open, a single bullet ripping through the open passage and hitting the stairs, “Jo-! Louis, mate, look. We can talk about this, you come out and we’ll give your boy the help he needs!” I looked at Mark standing on the other side of the doorway and pointed at the duffel bag at the base of the stairs and waited until he nodded.
“You can help Billy!?” Joe shouted back over after a few silent seconds.
“Not from all the way over here! Bring him over and we’ll have Clara have a look! Make sure you keep that gun above your head though!” I got into a catching position and waited, “Haven’t got all day mate!”
“Alright! Alright, we’re coming out!”
Mark waited a few more seconds so they could come out to the middle of the yard. He dove for the bag, grabbed something small and only barely familiar and tossed it to me.
I caught it, popped around the door frame, levelled my shot and put a green bolt between Joe’s shocked eyes. His head melted before he hit the ground, dragging his barely there son along with him.
The Mulligan Planet 2 (The Mulligan Planet Trilogy) Page 16
