Fallout

by Chris Morphew

  ‘OK,’ said Tank. ‘I can do that.’

  I went back to my place at the table, rubbing my eyes with the bases of my palms. Sick of this. It should have been simple. Two sides: us and the Co-operative. Was that really so impossible for everyone to get?

  ‘Right,’ said Reeve. ‘I reckon that should do it. We’ll head out tomorrow arvo. Two o’clock. It’ll be a good few hours on foot. Ideally, we’ll get there around sunset: dark enough to give us some cover but not so dark we go smashing into trees on the way out.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘What should we be looking for? I mean, what are you actually hoping to find in there?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Soren sneered.

  ‘No. This isn’t –’ I faltered, already regretting the decision to let him come. ‘We’re not starting a militia here. You really think we’re going to get Shackleton’s men to switch sides by shooting at them?’

  ‘They don’t need to switch sides if you’ve shot them already,’ said Mike.

  ‘Mike!’ said Cathryn, appalled.

  ‘Look,’ said Reeve, putting both hands down on the table. ‘We’ve got a partial idea of what’s in there, but nothing even close to a full inventory. Some of these decisions have to wait until we’re in there. But, yeah, I’ll be looking to pick up rifles, ammunition –’

  ‘And then what?’ I said, voice rising to cut him off. ‘We shoot our way into the Shackleton Building? Murder anyone who gets between us and Tobias?’

  Reeve looked me right in the eye. ‘Is that really what you think of me, Jordan? I don’t want this any more than you do. And I’d love to say there’ll be a convenient, non-lethal way to deal with the guards we need to deal with, but I just don’t know. We may not be able to get out of this without spilling some blood.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Soren, punching the table. ‘We need to make them understand that we are serious. We are at war. Collateral damage is an acceptable risk.’

  Mike nodded in agreement, as though Soren had just delivered some rousing speech. Kara made a kind of disgruntled noise.

  ‘Right,’ I spat, rounding on Soren. ‘Yeah, as usual, other people’s deaths are an acceptable risk to you!’

  ‘What’s your solution?’ Mike stepped in front of Soren, like he was getting ready to stop a bullet. ‘Hug it out?’

  ‘Enough,’ said Luke’s dad, pulling the three of us apart. ‘He’s just told you he doesn’t know what we’re going to find until we get there. Let’s survive that step first, okay?’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Kara. ‘May I remind you that, even armed with all the weapons we could carry, we would still be hopelessly outnumbered against the Co-operative in a direct assault on the Shackleton Building. This argument remains a pointless exercise until we can deactivate the surveillance network again.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But don’t think this is –’

  I crashed down into the table.

  ‘Jordan!’ Luke rushed over, pushing everyone else out of the way.

  I screamed as the vertigo kicked in. The room whirled around me, colours bleeding together. I dropped to my knees, losing my grip on the dusty table, stomach hurtling around inside me, matching the pace of the disintegrating room. I fell back, hearing the shouts, feeling the hands grabbing at my arms and legs, cradling my head.

  And then all of it disappeared. I was gone again.

  The floor flattened out under me. I lay there gasping, tears streaming from my eyes, until a nearby spluttering sound brought me around.

  I wasn’t the only one crying in here.

  I sat up. The room was gleaming, pristine. The cracks and chips in the marble table had vanished, and it was now surrounded by half a dozen leather chairs. The door was wide open, revealing a brightly lit corridor.

  There was another little sniffle, and I realised the sound was coming from underneath the table. I crawled over, reaching to pull one of the chairs aside, but my hand went straight through it. I bent closer to the ground, peering under. It was a girl, maybe five or six years old, face in her hands, long brown hair spilling past her shoulders and down across her lap.

  I jumped as another face appeared in my peripheral vision. Luke, here for me already. I turned to look at him, trying to fix my mind on getting back, but my attention kept flickering back to the girl under the table. Even without seeing her face, there was something familiar about her.

  A shout echoed in the distance, harsh and guttural. The girl’s head snapped up, revealing dark eyes shot with red, and again I could have sworn that I’d seen her before. She cringed and buried her face again. Someone out there was badly hurt.

  Luke was still reaching for me. Reaching through me. I reached back, catching fistfuls of air – and then crashed straight through Luke’s body as a furious explosion shook the room from somewhere up the corridor.

  I sprawled across the ground, grazing my hands. The shaking continued, more and more violent, sending chairs toppling over and dust raining down from the ceiling, and a deafening roar rose up in the room, like a horrible dark creature sweeping up the corridor towards us. The little girl screamed, cowering in a ball. It took me a second to realise that I was screaming too.

  I fought my way to my knees, grabbing desperately at Luke’s arms and still not making contact. The roar intensified to an impossible, mind-crushing sound – and then the whole room was swept up in a wave of white-hot light. It spewed through the door, blinding, shattering, swallowing everything.

  He was gone. Everything was gone but that roaring, all-consuming light.

  ‘LUKE!’ I screamed, clawing blindly at the air. ‘Luke! Get me out of here! Please!’

  Two hands came down around my wrists. I let out a terrified shudder, falling into him, fingernails digging into his skin.

  The others flashed into view around me. Reeve, Mike, Soren, Amy, Mr Hunter, silhouetted against the light. Then all of it dissolved again, swirling away like someone had pulled out the plug.

  Everything shifted, and I found myself drowning in darkness. It rushed through me, penetrating every part of my body. Luke pulled me towards him, arms wrapping around my back. It all changed again, and I landed back in the meeting room. Remi Vattel was alone at the desk, surrounded by paperwork. She jumped up, knocking her chair over.

  And then I was back. Back in the present, still shaking, gagging, face pressed into Luke’s chest. Panicked voices broke out around me, adding to the throbbing in my head.

  ‘Get back!’ said Luke, face white. ‘Guys, come on, give her some space!’

  Luke’s dad stooped over me, and the two of them heaved me to my feet, shuffling me out of the room, tears still streaming down my face. I glanced blurrily at Kara on the way past. She frowned like she was trying to piece something together.

  ‘What was it?’ Luke asked when we were out of earshot of everyone else. ‘What were you screaming at?’

  ‘I was there,’ I said, still shaking. ‘I was right in the middle of it. I think I just saw this whole place come down.’

  Chapter 13

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5

  8 DAYS

  ‘You sure you’re okay with this?’ I asked Amy, sneaking down the dark corridor ahead of her.

  ‘It’s fine. I – oops, sorry,’ she said, accidentally speeding up and bumping into me again. ‘It’s fine. Good practice for tonight.’

  I stopped at the first glimpse of light up ahead. ‘All right. He’s up there. Just around the corner.’

  I turned sideways, letting her past, listening to the shink – shink – shink of Bill’s pickaxe driving into the wall. I readjusted the rope over my shoulder.

  ‘Okay,’ said Amy, psyching herself up. ‘Okay.’ She raised her fists in front of her, and I could just make out the dark shapes of the sedative pens clenched in each one.

  A rush of footsteps and she was gone. I waited, hoping. Bill let out a howl of rage, and suddenly Amy was right on top of me again, almost knocking me to the ground.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she pa
nted, the words speeding out of her mouth. ‘Oh my goodness. That was nuts.’

  ‘NO, NO, NO!’ Bill shouted, charging around like an angry bear if the sporadic flashing of his helmet light was anything to go by. There was a series of loud smashing noises, like he was determined to tear the whole room apart before he went under. ‘I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS! This is not – This is unacceptable – I need…I have to…’

  Bill’s throat gave out and the torch on his helmet drifted to a standstill.

  ‘Nice work,’ I whispered, flicking on my own torch and heading down the corridor for a look.

  Bill was on his stomach, face pressed into the concrete. He’d made a lot of progress with his excavating since I’d last been in here. There was now a hole in the back wall big enough for a person to climb through, leading into what looked like a whole other room.

  I walked past Bill, tiptoeing around him despite the fact that he’d just been pumped with a double shot of sleeping drugs. The empty space on the other side of the wall turned out to be part of another old corridor, blocked up with concrete and junk in both directions. The far side was all gouged and cracked, where Bill had made a start at clearing a path.

  What could possibly be down here that was so important to him? If Tobias wasn’t his concern, then what was? And why didn’t he just tell us about it?

  I turned back, shrugging the coil of rope off my shoulder. I prodded Bill with my foot to make sure he was really gone, then got down by his side, dragging his arm out from under him.

  ‘Do you, um, need a hand?’ asked Amy behind me.

  ‘No, I’ve got it.’ I crouched over him, one foot on either side of his body, roping his wrists together behind his back, and then moving down to start on his legs. I looked up. ‘You get why I have to do this, right? I mean, I know he hasn’t come near us since he woke up, but you know what he was like back in town. He’s not stable. I can’t have him roaming around the place while Mum and Georgia are –’

  ‘Whoa. What the –?’

  I swung the torch around. It was Mike.

  ‘I told you not to come down here,’ I said.

  ‘I heard shouting,’ said Mike. ‘Anyway, screw you. Since when did I start taking orders from –?’

  I grabbed him by the front of the shirt, dragging him up to me until his face was an inch from mine. ‘Listen Mike, don’t think I haven’t considered knocking you out too. But honestly, we can’t afford to waste the sedatives on someone whose arse I could kick with my eyes closed. So here’s the deal: You go back to Tank right now, and you don’t leave his side until we get back.’

  ‘And why would I –?’

  ‘Because,’ I said, twisting his shirt around my fist, ‘if anything happens while we’re gone – if anything happens to my family – I’m going give you to Peter. Let him decide what to do with you. You understand me?’

  Mike swore at me bitterly, jerking out of my grip.

  I bent back down to finish dealing with Bill. ‘Good.’

  The rain came out of nowhere about two hours into our hike to the armoury, pounding through the trees and turning the ground to mud. Reeve said it was a good thing, that the noise of the downpour would disguise our approach. But then, as Luke had pointed out, it would do a pretty good job of disguising anyone who was approaching us too.

  We trudged on. By the fourth hour, I could barely feel my feet and yet the rain showed no sign of easing up. We’d moved into some particularly sparse bush. A few scattered trees and not much else. I didn’t like it. But the sun was setting now, so hopefully the darkness would help hide our escape on the way out.

  Reeve was in front, checking our trajectory with a compass. He stopped as we reached the road again, meeting it for the third time that afternoon as it wound itself around and around the town.

  ‘Don’t forget to look both ways,’ he said, scanning for any sign of movement.

  We darted over the road.

  ‘Right,’ said Reeve. ‘I think that was our last cross. Shouldn’t be too far now.’

  I looked over at Luke, who’d been talking quietly to his dad for the last few minutes. Mr Hunter was carrying another one of our three rifles. Not because he wanted it, but because it meant Soren couldn’t have one. Luke patted his dad on the back and came over to me, rain sticking the shirt down against his front, outlining a body that was really starting to show the strain of being underfed for so long. A body that was going to have a knife plunged into it any day now, if history played out the way it was supposed to.

  I shoved the image away as he reached me. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Sounds like Soren’s not too happy with you,’ said Luke, holding my hand and leaning in to be heard over the rain.

  ‘And?’ I said. ‘When is Soren ever happy with me?’ ‘Mike told him you threatened him.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Only to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid while we were gone. And where does Soren get off, lecturing me on being kind to others?’

  I glanced over my shoulder at Soren. He was skulking along behind the rest of us, eyeing the rifle in his mum’s hands. It wasn’t loaded yet – we were down to Reeve’s last two clips – but if things went to plan, it would be soon enough. Kara looked back and waved at Soren to hurry up.

  I hadn’t asked her yet about the little girl in my vision. I was still trying to work out a way to approach the subject without raising too many questions about how I even knew the girl existed.

  ‘So what are you going to do when he wakes up?’ asked Luke. ‘Bill, I mean.’

  ‘He’ll still be out when we get back,’ I said, hoping I was right. ‘I guess we just wait and see what happens after that. We can always put him under again if we need to.’

  ‘Not for long,’ said Luke. ‘How many sedative cartridges do we have left?’

  ‘What else was I supposed to do, Luke? Just leave him down there with Mum and Georgia?’

  ‘No, that’s not –’ He stared at the mud, rain dripping off the end of his nose. ‘I’m not saying you did the wrong thing. We just need to think about it, that’s all.’

  Reeve threw out a hand, signalling us to stop. A narrow dirt road cut across in front of us. He raised his rifle and then signalled us all to cross.

  After about five minutes, the bushland dropped away and an enormous grey warehouse appeared, the same one that Luke, Peter and I had broken into almost three months ago. I slowed down, pulling out Georgia’s camera to do a quick pan across the clearing. The warehouse was surrounded by a towering razor-wire fence with padlocked gates at the front to let the delivery trucks in and out. A guard slumped lazily against the wall, barely even bothering to watch the entrance.

  ‘C’mon,’ said Luke, pulling me away.

  ‘We could get back in there,’ I said. ‘I mean, if it comes to it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Luke. ‘Although Mum reckons our supplies should be okay for a week or so. And by then…’

  By then, one way or the other, it probably wouldn’t matter.

  On our last trip to the warehouse, we’d escaped through a hole in the fence and run straight back into the bush, too focused on evading security to wonder if there was anything else out here. But it turned out Reeve was right; the dirt road kept going, and about five hundred metres further up, we came to a second clearing.

  The armoury was twice as big as the warehouse. Its walls were plated with a gleaming silver metal that reminded me of the tunnels under the town. Narrow, black-tinted windows dotted the building at regular intervals.

  The one positive was the lack of cameras. Reeve said that was because back before the concentration camp, this place was meant to be hidden even from most of security.

  The dirt road curved around to the front of the building, dead-ending at the ramp. We crouched in the undergrowth, keeping well back from the edge of the clearing. I grabbed Georgia’s camera again. The rain and the trees obstructed my line of sight a bit, but I still had a pretty good view of the front of the building, and down one si
de. A tall, broad-shouldered security officer stood guard at a huge set of double doors. He looked much more alert than the guy at the warehouse. I guess you took things more seriously when you were guarding explosives instead of groceries.

  I glanced sideways at Amy and Reeve, who were peering out from a fallen tree a little way off. Reeve whispered something to Amy. He pointed down the side of the armoury. Amy nodded. I leant out from my hiding place, trying to see what they were looking at. A second guard had come around the corner. Officer Cook. We’d run into him before.

  There was an explosion of wet leaves, and Amy was away. I caught a glimpse of her flitting through the trees, and then she was out of sight.

  ‘All right,’ said Reeve to the rest of us. ‘Get ready.’

  I turned my attention back to Officer Cook just in time to see Amy sprint up behind him, swinging the sedative pen above her head like a dagger. She plunged it into his neck.

  Cook whirled around with his rifle and a shot exploded through the bush. Amy screamed, sprinting back into the bush, apparently unhurt. Cook moved to follow her, but the sedative was already starting to kick in. He staggered to the edge of the clearing and fired again.

  There was a shout from the other end of the building as the front guard came splashing around. Officer Cook turned to yell something at him, then collapsed into the mud. The other guard slowed, nervous now. He stared out at the bush, weapon raised.

  Cook tried to push himself up into a sitting position, but his arms were giving out. He barked at the other guard to help him. The guard backed towards Cook, still not taking his eyes off the edge of the clearing. He took one hand off his weapon to help Cook to his feet.

  Amy flew back out into the clearing. The other guard dropped Cook, aiming his rifle again. Too late. Amy blurred behind them, jabbing the guard in the back, and disappeared into the trees again. The guard staggered back, tripping over Officer Cook.

  More crashing bushes and splashing feet and Amy was right back on top of us. ‘Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Come on! Hurry!’

  She kept moving, out to the front of the building, and the rest of us jumped up and got ready to follow.