Apocalypse 3

by Matt J. Pike

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or roll my eyes. As everyone else seemed to select laughter as the best response, it was enough to tip me over the edge. Although I did yell out to him that there could still be rifles out there. He put his arms out and yelled, “take your best shot!” After a few seconds silence – from us and beyond the wall – he added, “my rifle wins” before pulling up his pants and sliding down to safely.

  That scored a bigger laugh than before.

  It also confirmed my pretty strong suspicions Jonesy has a screw loose.

  Just glad he’s on my side.

  Who knows, maybe we all looked like we had a screw loose in that moment. But there was something about it. Maybe a little crazy is what you need to get through whatever was coming our way. Maybe we were putting on a giant act to convince ourselves we were ready for whatever it was we were being sucked into.

  Anyway, in that moment, we were winners.

  Shane passed the bottle around to those of us who had come up from Pulteney St, then reported word of our success back to Lana. We also heard all was clear out east, which prompted another group cheer – although not as loud as the ones Jonesy got.

  As the bottle did laps, we exchanged our little stories from the battle. But this was a tempered celebration at best. Everyone knew what we’d done and everyone sensed the scale of things that could lay ahead. So, it was less celebration and more moment of oxygen and clear air while we could get it. Maybe even to slightly relax, just a little bit – enough to forget for a split second.

  And even with all that going for us, conversation soon turned to what we were going to do. We had a crumpled ash sweeper within our reach, we had our entire force up at some sickeningly wrong hour of the night and we had an enemy that could come back at any time, on a number of fronts. Yeah, all we’d done was win a battle.

  I was doing my best to try to appreciate that for what it was, but I wasn’t as in the moment as the others.

  *

  By the time dawn hit, Jonesy had replaced the punctured tubes on the ash sweeper. While Jonah and Ange helped him, the rest of us were on ash moving duty. We had managed to dig a hole in our wall, large enough for our new prize to pass through. Then we moved beyond the sweeper’s location and pushed all the freshly excavated ash back over the newly exposed road. We pushed back their trench just beyond the Glen Osmond Rd, Hutt Rd intersection before the ash sweeper was up and running again.

  There wasn’t much light to be seen as it soon started raining. It was fat and heavy – the sort that announced it was settling in for the day.

  This actually prised more celebrations out of us than completing the capture of the ash sweeper. We all knew this sort of rain was the perfect way to compress the recently moved ash and, if it lasted long enough, to hide signs

  of where we had moved it altogether. It would just be like their sweeper had disappeared from no-man’s land altogether.

  It was a beautiful thing.

  And losing visual reference on the path they’d created also meant they’d have to start from scratch next time. Newly moved ash gives so much easier then the stuff that’s been packed in for months. Not only that, we figured it was now highly unlikely they’d try to attack again in these conditions – way too risky for them.

  It was a big win all around.

  *

  We needed to take as much advantage of our early win as possible. First and foremost, that meant sleep. We sent the night crew on their way.

  Along with the cars they came out in, they also took the ash sweeper back to the oval.

  The rest of us settled in for a long, boring day on the three lookouts along the southern wall. We swapped for naps where we could, while never taking eyes off no-man’s land.

  It was just after lunch when things started up again. We heard a gunshot, soon after another. None of the look-outs reported a direct sighting. With the weather as closed in as it was, visibility was well down.

  I radioed to report the change into control. I also got an update as to what was happening out east – it was all quiet. The signal was weak – but we were able to understand the conversation at both ends.

  You always have to be asking ‘why?’ in this world – especially when the situation is as bad as it is now. The whys are important. As in why are Norwood engaging now? What are they hoping to achieve?

  There’s only one logical conclusion you could come to from it all and it was a scary one. They were starting their campaign of sleep deprivation on us. It showed they knew they had greater numbers than us. It also showed they were settling into a long campaign and our victory hours earlier, wasn’t really a victory at all. It was them trying to make a move and us shutting it down. But this was a sure sign that we could expect one thing after another until they got past our defences, or we killed enough of them that they lost the will to try anymore.

  The thought alone made me more cold and tired then the night’s efforts.

  It got me thinking, too. If they’d lost their ash sweeper, why were they coming straight back at us? It was their biggest weapon in getting across no man’s land. Why were they still pressing at us? What did they know that we didn’t? What did they have that we didn’t know about?

  Troubling thoughts.

  *

  The next 48 hours could be described as a blur. Norwood were playing us. Whatever intel they gathered on us, part of it was definitely knowledge they had a numbers advantage. They made sure rest didn’t come easy for us.

  There would be intermittent shots fired from our southern border, then they’d test us to the east. Sometimes both flanks at once. We’d never see the enemy, they’d just engage us from the shadows.

  It was most definitely a campaign of sleep deprivation. But it was one thing to know what they were doing and another to do something about it. Even when we did make a smart call above the commotion to send people back to the oval to rest, sleeping was hard to do. It certainly was for me.

  When you’re already tired and your mind is racing, you can’t just switch off from that. You become wired. You think about what’s happening in the shadows beyond no-man’s land. You think about what they really know about us and what they plan to do next. And you wonder what the hell you can do about it. And the answer you keep coming up with is not much, but it just makes you think on it more.

  The whole thought process starts churning through your mind from the start again. Then you realise you really should get some of that sleep stuff you’re laying down to get, which just puts the pressure on to make sleep magic into being. That never makes it happen.

  I had taken two trips back to the oval for sleep and failed dismally both times. Even with Alyce lying next to me purring away, I couldn’t get my mind away from it. That fact alone scared me more than the rest of it combined. If I couldn’t sleep when I was at ground zero, with Alyce in my arms, what hope did I have to sleep ever again?

  My first taste of sleep was on the floor on the second storey of the Botanic Hotel. It wasn’t even my shift on lookout but I’d gone back to the eastern front. Actually I hadn’t gone there, I was drawn there. As guilty as I felt for leaving Alyce and the comfort of home, something was telling me I had to be close to everything that was happening. This conflict was somehow coded into my DNA and leaving for sleep just didn’t seem, well, right. No matter what comforts awaited there. In a way, the chaos and my proximity to it, gave me the peace of mind to drift off for a few hours.

  I woke up feeling worse than the zombie-like state before I’d had any sleep at all. How does that work? I remember cursing everything sleep-related at that point.

  I also woke up to the frantic sounds of scrambling from the night crew as the sun started to brighten the sky. Norwood were making their next move.

  ***

  February 19, 2015

  I ran a damp cloth over my face and eyelids as I headed upstairs. Shane was there with Asha, Travis, Eliza and Trent. I could hear the disbelief in their voices as I neared the lookout r
oom.

  Now, most of what happened over the space of this battle still rattles around in my head at various levels of memory, but what unfolded over these next few moments was as crystal clear as I write this as when it happened... and will remain that way.

  I didn’t bother asking questions. I figured I was going to find out soon enough. It must’ve been dark in the lookout as I remember my eyes being assaulted by the dim morning light. The visibility was as good as it gets – you could see all the way across no-man’s land to Kent Town. There, at the bottom of Rundle Rd, was a fleet of Norwood vehicles.

  I swore when I saw what stood in front of the fleet – an ash sweeper – they had another ash sweeper! “How?” was the only other word that dropped out of my mouth.

  Shane started fumbling with theories. Nothing too complex mind you. I think thoughts entered his brain and fired out of his mouth as words in the same second. “Well, fuck me. What? How? When? I mean... just... just... how? Maybe they had a second all along. Maybe... Maybe it just got overlooked when you headed east. They haven’t built a new one in a few days have they? Who are these people?”

  He pretty much vocalised what the rest of us were too dumbfounded to, and in every bit of an inadequate manner as we would have. And while I was on the verge of hallucination due to my lack of sleep, everyone else in the room had just finished pulling an all-nighter.

  At that point we knew there was not much we could do. They were a good 200m out of range, even if we loaded a trebuchet to the max and let rip. So, it was a case of watch, learn, spread the word and prepare to hit them the moment they were close enough.

  “Why are they coming at day time?” I asked.

  I got plenty of pondered looks, but no one offered an answer.

  Shane went to grab the two-way to report into Lana, no doubt. But, as soon as he picked it up, Jonesy’s voice came through the speaker. “We’ve got a problem. Over.”

  This is totally not what any of us were expecting to hear. Shane pulled his trigger finger away from the radio and looked at us with the same expression we’d been giving each other since the ash sweeper showed up.

  Lana was on it in a flash. “Base receiving, over.”

  Jonesy continued. “We’ve got a situation – an ash sweeper situation. They’re back.”

  “Affirmative,” said Lana, “I’ll see what I can send your way.”

  We shared another round of dumbfounded looks before Shane brought the radio to his lips. “Actually, base, I’m looking over Kent Town and we have the same problem over here.”

  This time there was a pause at the other end.

  “East, can you repeat that please?”

  Shane did as instructed. Again, there was a pause. This one dwarfed the other.

  Again we were left to exchange puzzled looks. I pictured Lana swearing like a trooper in frustration, well not, because she doesn’t... but making all the noises of frustration like she wished she could. “Base, you receiving? Ba–”

  “Affirmative. We’ve got some numbers to crunch. Standby.”

  *

  Thinking back on it all now, it’s still too much to process. They had done a number on us. They had slapped us in the face with a fish of a game-changer. It was brazen, arrogant, ruthless... and a thousand other things we had no chance of digesting before we had to act. It was super badass.

  I felt totally stunned – as did the others. Whatever that fish was, it was a big one.

  Waiting for Lana’s response was the only time we had to adjust from what we thought was going on to what was really happening. It paralysed my entire thought process. Like, reflecting on it now, I had created a system of thinking and acting that had kept me ahead of the game and alive in this world. It was an operating system – JackOS. I put all my value in JackOS because it had proven itself as robust and reliable.

  Then, maybe when the oval started, I upgraded to JackOS2.0. Same core programming, but it was a major system upgrade to cater for the larger environment. JackOS2.0 adapted too. In fact, it continued to do so at every turn. If something outside the parameters of the code presented itself, JackOS2.0 had it covered. It didn’t matter how strange or threatening or challenging – the code adapted, I adapted.

  But this made me question everything. How? How the hell did they have two new ash sweepers? I took this totally personally. Whether anyone else thought it or not didn’t matter. Staying ahead of the game was my thing. It was my JackOS2.0 code, my survival DNA. And in the time I had to think before Lana got back to us, and even with everyone around me talking and wondering aloud about the same thing, I knew this was all my fault.

  I didn’t go back east again when we knew they were mobile and needed monitoring. I didn’t push further when we were there to spy on the fleet. I didn’t allow myself the insight to think this was a possibility. I’d like to say my heart sank at my failing, but that doesn’t give the feeling that overwhelmed me justice. Everything below eye level on my body dropped into a black hole of fear and self-loathing.

  I. Had. Failed.

  When I thought of everyone and everything I was responsible for, and what potential stupid clues I’d missed or JackOS2.0 runtime failures I’d overseen that led to this moment, well, I had no words. None then and I still have no words now.

  All I knew was that whatever Lana came back with, and it didn’t matter what, I was going to do it. Whatever she commanded would be done to a level that could not be beaten. I owed everyone in New Adelaide, and if I ever had a moment or chance to give for the greater good, I would.

  We watched as the ash sweeper began its back and forward dance. It dug the first parts of its path into no-man’s land.

  It was a helpless feeling as there was not a thing we could do about it.

  We trained our binoculars on what was happening behind the sweeper. You could make out a few SUVs and a few people on foot. We were trying to spot any patterns in the movements. Any idea of where they might be intending to go – or clues as to how they might move around – anything!

  Lana piped back up on the two-way. “Jack’s with you, correct? Over.”

  “Affirmative. Over,” responded Shane.

  “Received. Standby,” said Lana before dropping offline again.

  We went back to binoculars duty. It wasn’t long after that conditions started changing. It was small gusts of wind at first, letting the ash being kicked up from the ash sweeper dance around in the breeze. But, before long, it start turning into something else altogether. The cloud around the ash sweeper soon enveloped it but then, on a bigger scale, the wind kicked the ash up again. What was our vantage point over the enemy was gone. Visibility reduced to less than half of no-man’s land.

  We watched, reactions varying from swearing to utter disbelief. I mean, that was as critical a moment as we had ever faced and the weather – the stupid, random weather – just handed Norwood an absolute golden ticket.

  Then Shane locked onto something even more disturbing. This wasn’t a random weather event. The ash sweeper was kicking up the ash as it churned its way forward. But those Norwood people fanned out behind it were doing the same. They were positioned out at intervals way back across no-man’s land in Kent Town and they were disturbing the ash. Freeing it from its clumpy mounds and sending it up into the air above. And the breeze that rolled down the plains most mornings was doing the rest.

  We couldn’t make out how they were doing it, or what they were using. But we could see several pillars of ash rise and spread until they joined forces as a giant ash cloud.

  They were using the weather against us.

  They were using it as a weapon – a cloaking device.

  With each minute that passed, they were obscured from view more and more. And as they did, well, I couldn’t help but find an admiration, strange as it might sound. It was a genius move. Simple and smart. Between that and the appearance of two new ash sweepers, they had earned my respect at one level. In that moment though, I realised the true threat of the enemy w
e faced.

  For the first time, I was truly scared.

  At some point in all that, Lana had radioed back to let us know reinforcements were on their way. The rest of my day shift crew were heading back out to the front both here and down south. The night crew were going to stay on obviously, which meant we would soon have all but three people protecting our borders.

  We all knew, whatever we had mustered together to defeat them on the last attack, we’d have to do again, across two fronts, in tougher conditions and against a larger-scale attack from an enemy who had already shown more surprises than we’d bargained for.

  New Adelaide was on the line.

  *

  Before the ash cloud had claimed them from sight altogether, we headed to our only hope of inflicting damage at that range – the ballista – the super-sized crossbow mounted in the remains of the tower of the Botanic Hotel.

  I went up the staircase with Asha and we surveyed the area. You could see the ash kicking out and over the last row of buildings across no-man’s land. I don’t know what they were doing, but it was working. Not only were they literally creating a smokescreen, they were doing so in a safe and out-of-range location.

  Both Asha and I picked up spears. She loaded hers into the weapon and cranked the loading mechanism back. While she did, I looked at the size of the spear I was holding – it was huge. Fearsome. It was hard to imagine the terror that would be unleashed when the ballista spat out that spear.

  We’d never fired it into no-man’s land before, but it had been tested plenty. Someone – assuming it was Jonah – had kindly marked distance indicators next to the crank shaft. The further back Asha wound it, the further it would go, but with a handy guide indication.

  I knew the parklands were about 500m wide, which meant we had to wind up to the maximum to reach the target. Of course trajectory angle was a key component in that measure and we had no idea where to set the angle, aside from keeping it as it was... basically the first shot was a whole lot of guess work.