Diamond Sky Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3

by David Clarkson

  ‘I’m already dead,’ Armareth told him. ‘I have nothing to fear from dying again.’

  ‘What about Sammy,’ replied Fox. ‘Would you be willing to give up his life in order to deny me mine.’

  ‘He does not have to make that choice,’ this time the voice was clearly Sammy’s and not Armareth’s. ‘If you live, we all die anyway. I will gladly give my life to save others.’

  ‘In that case,’ replied Fox. ‘I grant you your wish.’

  He squeezed the trigger twice, putting two bullets into the Aboriginal man’s stomach.

  ‘Noooo!’ Emmy screamed out and ran toward Fox.

  Her grandfather slapped her down with the back of his hand. As she lay helpless on the floor, he raised the barrel of his gun towards her.

  ‘You always did take after him,’ he said. ‘There was a time when I was in denial, but with each failure, I just see him more and more in you.’

  Sammy’s body lay still at the centre of a rapidly expanding pool of blood. There was nothing more that he could do to help her. Emmy closed her eyes and braced for the moment when the bullet would take her life.

  Chapter 36

  Davo had been adamant that Lucy was to remain in the car. She thought fear would hold her to her promise, but once she heard the gunshots coming from the laboratory she knew she had to try to do something. There were no weapons in the car and the only item that was at hand was the set of handcuffs she had earlier taken off Sammy’s wrists to enable Armareth to leave the car. She picked these up and ran into the building.

  I really hope that you are watching over me right now, dad.

  Sammy or Davo, well, both of them, was lying on the floor, covered in blood. Emmy was also on the floor, but did not look hurt and she had Lucas with her, so Lucy went to the Aboriginal first.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘H-have to stop him,’ the stricken man stammered; she assumed it to be Armareth.

  She looked around and saw Mike’s lifeless body on the floor across the other side of the laboratory.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she told him. ‘I think that Mike’s been taken care of and Lucas is with Emmy. Everything is going to be okay.’

  With a sudden renewal of energy, the Aboriginal embodiment of Armareth pushed himself back up onto one knee.

  ‘It’s not Lucas,’ he told her. ‘It’s Fox; he already took Lucas’ body. I have to stop him. If I can hold him for long enough I can force him to cross over. It’s our only chance.’

  If that was not Lucas, then Emmy was in serious trouble.

  ‘How long must you hold him for?’

  ‘I don’t know; seconds, minutes maybe? All I know is that I have to try.’

  She looked back at Lucas who now had a gun pointed at Emmy. There was barely a scratch on him. He would have no trouble breaking free of the wounded man’s grip. Then she had an idea. She reached into her pocket and took out the item she had taken from the car.

  ‘Put these on him,’ she said, handing the handcuffs to Armareth. ‘If you can hold on long enough, he will be unable to break free of you.’

  The injured man nodded. He affixed one half of the handcuffs around his left wrist. Then he gathered every ounce of energy he had left and rose to his feet.

  ‘Fox,’ he called out. ‘I am not finished with you yet!’

  The professor turned towards the Aboriginal, taking his eyes away from Emmy. The young scientist used this distraction to her advantage and swung her arm, knocking the gun from her grandfather’s hands before running to the other side of the lab.

  At first, Fox was torn. His initial instinct was to follow Emmy, but he could not ignore the threat posed by a desperate man. As his foe ran towards him, he braced for the collision and attempted to turn the other man’s momentum against him, but as he pushed Armareth away, something went wrong. He felt an irresistible pull on his wrist and was dragged down to the floor, landing on top of Sammy’s body. He tried to stand and that was when he noticed the handcuffs.

  ‘It’s over, Jackson,’ said Armareth. ‘I’m taking you to where you belong.’

  Fox tried again to wriggle his hand free, but there was no give. Armareth clasped his hand over his wrist and the room around them dramatically shifted its perspective. The opening accelerated towards them before Fox could even figure out what it was. He screamed out with all of his might and then he was gone. Sammy’s body, meanwhile, remained rooted to reality. The half empty cuff dangled loosely from his wrist. He had done it. Fox was finally gone. The girls ran to him.

  ‘Where did he go?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘It does not matter,’ he replied, rising up onto one knee. ‘The important thing is that he has indeed gone.’

  ‘And Lucas?’

  This time he could not answer her. He turned instead to Emmy.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she told them. ‘He was already dead. The cord had been cut. There was no way for him to come back.’

  Lucy closed her eyes and pushed all of the pain, all of the heartache to the back of her mind. When she reopened them she realised it was not completely over. The Aboriginal still had a gaping wound in his stomach. As if her awareness of the wound had reawakened his pain, he fell to the floor.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Emmy. ‘Sammy, you have to hold on.’

  ‘I’m afraid that Sammy has already gone.’

  ‘Mr Armareth?’

  The fallen man laughed.

  ‘You don’t have to be quite so...formal.’

  She looked into his eyes and saw that he told the truth. Something about the eyes, however, had changed. Obviously, they did not look like Sammy’s, but they did not look exactly like Armareth’s either; at least not since she had known him. They were the eyes from the photograph, where he had looked so happy with her mother.

  ‘We have to get you to a hospital,’ said Lucy. ‘We can still help you.’

  ‘No,’ he told her. ‘It’s much too late for me. Besides, this body was only borrowed and I didn’t do a very good job of looking after it. It’s time that I went too.’

  ‘You’ll be okay,’ Lucy told him. ‘She will be waiting for you.’

  She glanced up at Emmy and realised that her words may not have been appropriate. The scientist’s expression had changed too. The anger, fear and even the sadness that she had been burdened with for so long had also gone away.

  ‘Before you go, there is something I have to know,’ Emmy said to Armareth. ‘You never finished your story.’

  ‘I think that in your heart, you already know how that story ended.’

  ‘I need to hear it.’

  Armareth coughed to clear his throat of the blood that filled his airways.

  ‘When I ran from your grandfather that night, I thought I would always be running. I could not let him keep me from Flick. Somehow, I thought we could make it work so long as we ran together. Unfortunately, I would only get to see her one more time. She was driving home as I fled from the building. I ran into the road directly in front of her. She swerved into Jackson as he chased behind me.’

  ‘That is how Pops lost his legs; my mother ran him down?’

  ‘I never knew if she blamed me or if she blamed herself. From that day on she was never the same. Pity kept her bound to him. She did whatever he asked of her. It was Jackson who wanted her to marry George. If an accident had not taken both their lives a year later, she would always have been ruled by him.’

  Emmy went quiet and Lucy knew what she was thinking. Armareth did not have long left and he lay back, resting his head on the cold floor and his breathing slowed.

  ‘George was not my father, was he?’ Emmy finally asked.

  ‘He was a good man,’ replied Armareth, ‘and I do not want you to think any less of him’.

  ‘I never knew him,’ replied Emmy, with a tear running down her cheek.

  ‘She never said for certain, but I always knew. The timing made sense and then when I heard what she had named you, I finally knew for sure. The nig
ht we fell in love was at a gig in Alice. The band was not great, mostly doing covers of popular rock songs from that time. Guns n’ Roses were big back then. We shared our first kiss to a rendition of one of their hits. I think you know which one.’

  The sole tear was joined by more until her entire face was streaming forth with years of pent up emotion. Emmy raised him up in her arms and for the first and last time, she got to hug her daddy. Then, he too, was gone.

  ‘He always loved you,’ said Lucy.

  ‘I know,’ replied Emmy.

  Lucy looked into the scientist’s eyes and saw herself from just a week earlier. The only difference was that her loss had been balanced by a lifetime of happy memories. She put her arm around Emmy to offer comfort and as they hugged more tightly, all of their doubts and feelings of grief were pushed aside. She was not aware of who instigated the kiss, only that she did not want it to end.

  Chapter 37

  Ned sat in his battered ute, parked by the turnoff to the observatory road. He thought of Jake and of the savage beasts that had taken away his companion, his friend. On that night, the monsters held the upper hand. Now he was the one that would be able to pre-empt their every move. In the Sly Fox, people talked about the visions as being a precursor to the apocalypse. Others blamed the supposed alien visitors at the observatory. Ned did not know which to believe. All he saw was opportunity.

  The confusion and intermittent pain was too much for most to cope. Ned found that alcohol helped. It numbed the pain and dimmed the clarity of the hallucinations, allowing him to more easily discern the difference between that which was real and that which was not. He still received the odd flash and that is what drew him back to the billabong. The vision was telling him where he had to be. The fact that fate was sending him back there could mean only one thing – revenge.

  Across town, Jimmy was just leaving the house. His mother had played music at full volume all morning. He tried arguing with her, but she told him that it was the only way to block out the voices in her head. In the end, he gave up arguing and grabbed his jacket then went outside for a walk to clear his mind. Since the rest of the town started to get the visions too, his no longer caused him so much concern. If anything, he was getting off lightly, as everybody else saw only bad things. Then there were the headaches. Jimmy had not experienced these, but more and more people in the town complained of pain and dizziness. People were staying indoors, trying to rest their minds as much as possible. As such, the streets were empty.

  He passed the police station before carrying on down the hill towards the Sly Fox. Another theory amongst the locals was that getting blind drunk would also stop the visions, the voices and whatever other crazy stuff people were experiencing. Just on the corner by the pub, he saw somebody. The figure turned around and Jimmy saw that it was actually him or at least another vision of what would soon be him. Once he saw himself move from the spot, he quickly jogged over to try to find out what he had been or would be looking at.

  This was a new development. Normally what he saw of the future would be identical to what he would eventually see when time caught up. It was sort of like a future memory. The fact he was now on the outside of the vision, effectively watching his life in the third person seemed to be significant. It alerted him to a greater sense of urgency to the vision. He wondered if anybody else was experiencing this.

  The ghost like image of himself moved through the grounds of the pub and headed toward the cordoned off area around the damaged generators. He took a quick look over his shoulder to make sure nobody was watching and then followed.

  The vision did not last for much longer. He watched as the image of himself climbed under some tarpaulin and then vanished from sight. Whilst he tried to figure out what had compelled him to this place, the sound of large, powerful engines startled him. He quickly ran to take cover under the tarpaulin, before peeling back the corner to take a peek outside.

  He could see three military trucks. Two took the turning onto Main Street, whilst the third carried on toward the observatory. One of the vehicles pulled up directly outside of the Sly Fox. He saw about a dozen armed soldiers emerge from the rear of the vehicle and each one of them wore what appeared to be some sort of radiation suit. It was like something out of his favourite videogame; Call of Duty and Jimmy had never seen the like of it before. He wondered what the threat could be - so dangerous that it warranted a force of this size.

  Chapter 38

  Emmy could have stayed in bed forever. Despite enduring so much pain and loss, she had never felt so complete in her entire life. After everything she had been through, she could finally imagine a life beyond her work. This was thanks largely to the girl lying next to her; the girl who presented her with so many tantalising possibilities.

  ‘You are full of surprises,’ she said.

  ‘Believe me; I am even more surprised than you are,’ replied Lucy. ‘I guess this means I have been living a lie my whole life.’

  Emmy rolled onto her side and offered her new lover a concerned look.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? I mean, I had no idea, but when I look back it seems like it has always been there. I feel like such a fool.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up over it. For all we know, you might not even be gay.’

  It was now Lucy’s turn to speak through facial expressions. She stared back at Emmy with wide eyes and arched eyebrows.

  ‘I’m just saying,’ said Emmy. ‘So there’s a spark between us; you don’t have to let it define your whole personality. Perhaps the next person you fall for will be a guy. You just don’t know.’

  ‘You seem to. What are the chances of you ever sleeping with a man?’

  ‘That’s different; I’ve had my whole life to explore and come to terms with my sexuality, whereas this has all happened so quickly for you. We should probably take things slowly, just in case.’

  ‘I think it’s a bit late to suggest we slow down.’

  Lucy ran her fingers across Emmy’s naked midriff, tickling her as she went. The scientist giggled and playfully pushed Lucy onto her back, then straddled her.

  ‘If you are sure you want to take this further, I will be glad to oblige. I can do things to your body that a man could not even dream of.’

  Lucy was turned on - it felt right. She wished she could stay in bed with Emmy forever, but there were still challenges facing them. She was concerned about the radiation and if she was infected.

  ‘I want to,’ she told Emmy, ‘more than anything. It’s just that I’m scared. What if your grandfather’s prediction comes true and I go mad like the others?’

  ‘I think you are going to be okay. Your father told me that he was protecting you. I do not know how, but I am sure he has kept you safe. We should get dressed and call Charlie. The sooner he and I get to work on a cure, the sooner nobody need worry.’

  ‘What about...you know?’

  Although the body of Lucas had completely dematerialised along with the professor, there was still the problem of Sammy and Mike’s corpses in the laboratory. The two women had been caught up in such a sandstorm of passion that they failed to report that there had been further killings.

  ‘We’ll worry about that when we need to. First we have to find that cure.’

  As they were putting on their clothes they heard a noise from outside. It was too loud to be from an automobile. It was the sound of a helicopter - a method of transport particularly favoured by the military. Once dressed, they went out to the courtyard where their fears were confirmed by the sight of a large military helicopter in the process of landing. Two soldiers leapt out of the transport before the blades even stopped spinning. They both wore full body radiation suits, but Emmy knew they were soldiers because they carried large assault rifles, which were being aimed directly at her and Lucy.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she called out, whilst raising her arms in the air. ‘This place is now secure.’

  ‘Get on the flo
or,’ one of the soldiers shouted.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she replied, taking a step forward.

  ‘Ma’am, get on the floor now or I will have no choice but to use force.’

  She did not dare call his bluff and nor did Lucy. They both obliged and lay face down on the pavement with their arms spread out in front of them. Emmy heard more footsteps, but was unable to determine how many as she could not get a clear look without raising herself up a little and risking the soldier’s ire.

  After lying in fear for what seemed like an eternity, she was finally ordered back to her feet. She was then roughly grabbed by a soldier who handcuffed her hands behind her back.

  ‘Ouch!’

  The soldier extracted the blood from her arm without permission or warning. His comrade did the same to Lucy and they both quickly analysed their stolen specimens on small portable devices that Emmy was not familiar with.

  ‘Clear,’ shouted the first soldier.

  ‘Clear,’ shouted the second soldier.

  They waited and then after two more soldiers had come out of the observatory and waved what Emmy presumed to be another “clear” message, the girls were roughly spun around to face the helicopter once more.

  An older, larger man had now exited the craft. He was dressed in military uniform and had stars on his shoulders. He did not bother with a radiation suit and the soldiers holding the women soon removed their masks. Emmy thought it likely that the psychic radiation would not show up on a standard Geiger counter and that they had taken the clear blood samples to mean that the site was safe. Such bad planning and lack of foresight did not bode well.

  The general briefly conferred with one of his subordinates before approaching the two prisoners.

  ‘You are Dr. Rayne, I presume?’

  She nodded. He did not even acknowledge Lucy.

  ‘I have been informed by one of my men that there are three bodies inside. Two of them are American Servicemen and the other an unknown Aboriginal male. Would you care to comment?’