We Had Flags (Toxic World Book 3)

by Sean McLachlan

  Kent’s voice came to him like he was hearing him from a long way off.

  “All right, kid, you’re on. Tell them what I told you.”

  Pablo pointed at the antenna. “He needs to lay it out straight.”

  Kent turned to look.

  As soon as he did, Pablo grabbed a brick and with all his strength brought it down on the radio. The side crunched in and sparks flew in his face. Pablo smashed it again and more sparks flew. All the dials went dead.

  “You little shit!” Kent grabbed him by the shoulders and flung him away.

  The world spun. Pablo was on his back, Kent approaching him, teeth bared, a knife in his hand.

  “Hooooo!”

  A weird, long howl echoed across the ruins. Not twenty meters away, a shabby figure popped up from behind a pile of rubble, waving its hands over its head.

  Mr. Cooper.

  “Tweakers!” one of the guards shouted, putting his gun to his shoulder and firing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Shots rang out to the west, a series of pops that sounded like an assault rifle, although Yu-jin knew too little about guns to be sure. Annette whipped out her shotgun as Yu-jin readied her bow, nocking an arrow and half-drawing the string.

  “Maybe the ship came back?” Yu-jin suggested.

  “Could it have come back so quickly?” Annette asked.

  Yu-jin shrugged. “Let’s go check it out.”

  They hurried through the ruins, more gunshots showing them the way. By unspoken agreement they split up, staying well apart from one another but within sight. Both had been in enough fights to know what to do.

  The shots died away. A shout, closer than they anticipated, told them they were almost upon whoever they were stalking.

  Both women slowed. Yu-jin glanced at Annette, uncertain. Just what were they doing, anyway? They crept through the rubble, hunting whoever was out there like they were going to shoot them, but they didn’t even know who. Everyone had gotten too trigger happy.

  “Did you get them?” someone called out.

  The voice came from not far off. Another voice replied.

  “I only saw one tweaker. Hit him. The kids are out of sight.”

  Annette ran towards the sound of the voice. “Hey, have you found my son?”

  Yu-jin hurried to follow her. For a moment she lost sight of the sheriff.

  Around another shattered building and over a heap of bricks, and she stopped short.

  Annette stood about fifty meters away, and only about ten meters in front of a pair of guards who faced off with her. Both the guards and the sheriff had their guns half raised, looking at each other warily. A little further behind the guards stood three more, one of whom, strangely, wasn’t holding a weapon, while one of the others had a spare M16 slung over his shoulder.

  The two lead guards glanced at each other.

  “What do we do?” one asked the other.

  “What’s going on? Where’s my son?” Annette demanded.

  Then one of the guards glanced to his right and spotted Yu-jin.

  And everything went insane.

  The two lead guards half turned and raised their assault rifles at Yu-jin. The rear two guards shouted something Yu-jin couldn’t catch. She was far too focused on the lead two.

  Yu-jin loosed her arrow. It sailed through the air and implanted its red shaft feather-deep into the nearest man’s chest. As he bent double, his assault rifle spat bullets, tearing the air centimeters from Yu-jin’s head. The guard next to him aimed his assault rifle, Yu-jin desperately drawing another arrow, knowing it would be too late. She sent up a quick prayer to her ancestors and Jesus as a shot hammered her ears.

  The guard flew to the side, half his head blown away by a barrel of Annette’s shotgun.

  Yu-jin went to one knee, nocked her arrow, and aimed at the other three guards. The one with no weapon was screaming and waiving his hands in the air. The other two aimed at Annette.

  Both got to fire before Yi-jin could. Each sent a three-round semiautomatic burst in the sheriff’s direction before one took an arrow in his side.

  The other, seeing his comrade fall, turned and fired at Yu-jin.

  She was already rolling away. Grit and bits of concrete flew in the air as the bullets stitched the ground, following her until she got behind a slab of marble. A final round cracked the edge of the white stone, followed by silence.

  Yu-jin glanced at the nearby terrain. The marble was big enough to keep her covered, but the area all around was open for at least three or four meters. If the guard was covering her, there would be no way to get free, and no way for her to raise herself enough to take a shot without fatally exposing herself.

  “I surrender! I surrender! Don’t shoot!” one of the guards shouted.

  This shouting was mingled with a groan, then stopped by the thud of Annette’s shotgun and the crack crack crack of an assault rifle.

  Yu-jin dared a peek over the edge of the marble just in time to see the lone remaining armed guard fleeing out of sight to the north. The unarmed guard remained jumping up and down, holding his hands in the air and screaming at Annette, who lay behind a rock not far off, blood flowing freely from her leg. The two closest guards lay dead, while the one near the screamer writhed on the ground, Yu-jin’s arrow lodged in his side.

  “I surrender!” the unarmed guard repeated unnecessarily.

  Yu-jin raised up and covered him with her bow.

  “Back away from your friends,” she ordered. “Make a move towards any of those guns and I’ll stick this in your throat.”

  The man cringed. Yu-jin edged over to Annette.

  “You OK?” she asked.

  “I’ve had worse. Ah, shit, this hurts.”

  Annette had torn a strip of cloth from her shirt and was winding it around her leg.

  “Is it bad?” Yu-jin asked, not daring to take her eyes off her prisoner long enough to check.

  “Clean shot through the calf, missed the artery. Hey, Surrender Man! What the fuck is going on?”

  “I didn’t want to do it!”

  “Do what?” Annette asked.

  The man went silent. Yu-jin drew her bowstring back.

  “Do what?” she asked.

  “Blow the ship. We set a bomb last night but it sailed out of reach of the radio detonator.”

  “Who has that?”

  The fellow hesitated. A groan from the man at his feet and another look at the gleaming arrowhead pointing at his chest convinced him to speak.

  “Kent. He’s probably headed for New City now.”

  “What about my son?” Annette asked.

  “And the other boy?” Yu-jin added.

  “They were the ones who brought the ship! We found them here with a radio. Kent wanted to make them bring the ship back but your kid smashed it.”

  “Yu-jin, I got him covered now. Get up on a hill and try to spot them.”

  She glanced at the sheriff and saw she had sat up, her wounded leg propped on a stone and her pistol aimed at the guard.

  Yu-jin nodded, put the arrow back in its quiver, and climbed up the sloping concrete roof of what had once been a building. It got her about five meters above the surrounding area. Some distance to the north, she spotted Kent running in the direction of New City. She saw no sign of the boys.

  She hurried back and reported to Annette.

  “You got to get them,” the sheriff said. “Gather up the assault rifles and bring them to me. Search Norton here, and then find my son and Hong-gi.”

  “We have to get Kent first, he’ll blow the ship!”

  “My boy is alone in the wildlands, find him!”

  “All right, all right,” Yu-jin reassured her as she collected the assault rifles. Norton busied himself giving first aid to the wounded guard.

  No, I’m going to hunt down Kent and stop World War Five. The boys are just going to have to fend for themselves until then.

  She glanced at the first man she’d hit. The arrow had tran
sfixed his heart. Yu-jin winced. At least it had been quick. She turned to Norton and indicated the man he was tending.

  “How is he?”

  “He’ll live, no thanks to you,” Norton growled.

  “Thank God,” Yu-jin sighed. Norton’s frown turned to a shocked stare.

  She went to Annette’s side and dumped the assault rifles within reach, gave Norton a pat down once he’d finished with his friend, tied him up with pieces of his friends’ uniform, and turned to Annette.

  “You sure you’re OK?”

  “Go!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The freighter was slow to accelerate and The Doctor’s motorboat soon overtook it. As he came up on the stern, a group of curious sailors gathered at the railing to stare at him. One had a pair of binoculars. The Doctor waved and cut the engine, idling well away from the ship. He didn’t want any of the more trigger-happy in the crew to get ideas.

  After a minute, a pair of sailors lowered the gangway on the port side. The Doctor put the engine on quarter speed and moved slowly towards the freighter. He studied the ship, trying to discern where the bomb was.

  It took him a moment to spot it. Clyde’s team had done a good job, tucking it below a curve in the stern where it was invisible to the sailors on deck. They’d painted it the same red color as the lower part of the ship, even going so far as to chip the paint here and there to make it better blend in with the old vessel. The Doctor would have never noticed it if he hadn’t been looking for it.

  Should I warn them? Not until I can get Yu-jin here. I don’t want “there’s a bomb stuck to your hull” to be lost in translation. Since we’re out of range it can wait.

  He cut the engine and coasted in for the last few meters. He tossed a rope to the sailor waiting at the bottom of the gangway, who pulled him in and tied the line to a bollard.

  Gebre Selassie hurried down the gangway. “What you do here?”

  The Doctor held up the medical kit. “Trade.”

  Gebre’s eyes widened in recognition of the emblem of the Red Cross, Crescent, and Star. The sailor with him said something angrily in Chinese. Gebre cut him off with a curt reply.

  “You hurt Asian.”

  “It was a riot.”

  “Ryot? What’s ryot?”

  “Criminals. Bad men. Not my fault.”

  Gebre still looked confused.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, just take me to Captain Wang!”

  That got him moving. He led The Doctor up the gangway, where a small group of armed sailors waited for them. Sub-lieutenant Yu glowered at him. The Doctor glowered back.

  That led to more gabbling. The Doctor watched with increasing impatience as the translator and the sub-lieutenant wasted his time. Gebre won this argument too, and finally they headed to the ship’s central tower, but not before Yu gave him a pat down.

  Once again he was led through the ship’s labyrinthine interior. The sailors with the AK-47s kept him surrounded, with Sub-lieutenant Yu right behind him giving him an “accidental” prod with the barrel of his gun every now and then. The Doctor controlled an urge to smack him.

  They met in a smaller, more private room this time. The rusted walls had no decoration but The Doctor’s heart leapt when he saw a tea set sitting on a table at the center of the room. The captain greeted him courteously and they sat. One of the sailors moved to serve but the captain waved him off and served the tea himself.

  They drank the tea in thoughtful silence, punctuated only by Captain Wang’s hacking cough. Mooring in Toxic Bay had obviously made his condition worse. After they were done, The Doctor called Gebre over to translate as best he could.

  It took a whole five minutes and a complete inspection of the medical kit to make the captain understand that he wanted to give him a checkup and cure his lungs.

  “What trade?” Gebre asked.

  “No trade,” The Doctor replied.

  Gebre and the captain consulted.

  “The captain happy to trade.”

  “He can trade his friendship.”

  When Gebre translated this the captain’s face went serious and some of the sailors exchanged looks. The Doctor got the feeling that he had asked for something important, and perhaps had made a cultural gaff. Had the question been rude?

  If it had, the captain took it as it had been intended. He gave his assent. As The Doctor readied his medical kit he was astonished to see everyone else clearing the room. Sub-lieutenant Yu gave him a stern look and stood right outside the door as he closed it.

  Yeah, yeah, one shout from your captain and you’ll come in here and blow my head off. I should introduce you to Clyde. You two would get on like a house on fire.

  Captain Wang took his shirt off and The Doctor gave him a full checkup. He was in worse shape than he looked. In addition to lung cancer, he had a heart murmur, arthritis, and showed signs of exhaustion. He was at the end of his tether, obviously holding it together for the sake of his ship.

  He had no medicine for the arteritis or the heart murmur, but he could do something about the lung cancer. The kit had a rigid plastic mask with a canister attachment. The selection of canisters was small and he had been rationing them, giving them only to children. This was important enough to make an exception. He selected a canister filled with anticancer agents and another with a mucous membrane restorative.

  He snapped the anticancer agent into the mask and had the captain put it on, which he did without the least hesitation.

  The reputation of the Red Cross, Crescent and Star is still worth something in China, eh? Good.

  After Captain Wang had breathed in the medicine for a few minutes, The Doctor had him remove the mask. He looked at The Doctor curiously. Understandable. The anticancer would take a few days to take effect, so at the moment the captain didn’t feel any different.

  “Just be patient,” The Doctor said, snapping in the mucous membrane restorative.

  The captain put the mask on again and after the first breath his eyes lit up. The wheezing grew softer and softer and by the time he had inhaled all the medication he was almost breathing normally.

  “Some things from the Old Times are worth keeping,” The Doctor said with a smile.

  Captain Wang put his shirt back on, looked The Doctor in the eye, and shook his hand. He then called in the men waiting outside. When his crew saw he was obviously better there was an excited conversation and much smiling in his direction. The Doctor was urged to sit and a sailor brought more tea.

  Sub-lieutenant Yu asked his captain something and got a nod in return. With great solemnity, the sub-lieutenant poured some tea for The Doctor.

  I don’t need to ask Yu-jin the significance of this, he thought, giving the sailor a respectful nod in return. Here’s hoping he stays friendly after hearing about the bomb.

  Gebre entered the room and spoke with the captain for a minute before turning to The Doctor. “All good now. Friends now.”

  “Yes, yes, friends now.”

  “Asians safe?”

  “Don’t worry, they are under my protection.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, safe.”

  Gebre translated for the captain.

  “We see soon,” Gebre said.

  “Um, yes.”

  “Trade now?”

  “Sure. We can trade. That’s all I wanted.”

  Gebre nodded and smiled. “Good! We sail back and greet your people. Ship coming in bay now.”

  The Doctor leapt out of his seat.

  “No!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “What do we do?” Pablo asked.

  He and Hong-gi, huddled behind the foundation of a wall, had seen Kent run by. They had heard Mom’s voice in the distance so they knew she was all right after the gun battle, but they were confused about why she and that Asian scavenger weren’t following Kent.

  “We need to go after Kent and stop him blowing up the ship!” Hong-gi said.

  “But what about my mom?”
<
br />   “She’s all right.”

  “Then why isn’t she here?”

  “Maybe they went the wrong way.”

  That made sense. So Mom was OK. What a relief! But if Kent got close enough to the ship to blow it up…

  “Where do you think Kent is going?” Pablo asked. “I don’t know how to track someone.”

  He felt bad to admit that, because he liked being a scavenger, but this was too important to pretend about.

  Hong-gi thought for a moment. “The ship is too far away to blow up by radio, that’s why he wanted us to call it back. So what can he do?” Hong-gi said, looking relieved, then he got a scared look and snapped his fingers.

  “Boats! There are boats back in New City. He’s going to get a boat and follow the freighter.”

  Pablo was doubtful. “There are boats down at Toxic Bay too. He could take one of those.”

  “Oh yeah, but could he catch up to the ship? Wait! The motorboat!”

  “That’s right!”

  Pablo remembered now. They’d only seen it twice, both times when Kevin or Rachel drove it around near the shore to test the engine. It was totally cool. Fast, too.

  “Let’s go,” Hong-gi said. They ran towards New City.

  They didn’t get far before they saw Mr. Cooper lying against a rock. One hand clutched his chest, where a widening bloodstain dampened his filthy shirt. The other hand held a can to his nose. His glassy eyes fixed on the boys and he let out a wild cackle. He raised his bloody hand and gave them a thumb’s up sign. They made a wide circle around him and kept on going.

  Half a kilometer further on they spotted Kent. As they climbed the sides of a stony ridge they saw him standing on top of it, looking out towards the ocean they couldn’t see yet.

  The boys stopped and hid behind one of the few sickly bushes clinging to the gritty soil.

  “What’s he doing?” Pablo asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hong-gi said, shaking his head.

  Kent hurried off to the left, in the direction of the sea. Once he was out of sight, the boys scrambled up the bare slope. At the top they could see the ridge led to another spine of rock heading out to sea and forming the narrow stone peninsula that cut off the entrance to Toxic Bay. Kent was almost a kilometer ahead now, a small dot heading for the tip of the peninsula.