by Pete Aldin
"Oh. Why'd you do that?"
"Because A, even if we could attack a compound full of armed psychopaths, I didn't know where the hell they actually were at that time. And B, if I told Lewis, he'd get it in his head to go find them and then he'd die. Or he'd miraculously kill them all and then live with the guilt for the rest of his life."
That was his story. He'd told it. The truth and nothing but. He waited for her verdict.
"I think you did the right thing," she said. "He was a lot younger. He definitely would have died."
Elliot nodded slowly, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "That's the way I saw it. I had one job: get him somewhere safe. But it's obviously not the way he sees it."
"But you got him somewhere safe—and then you went and got her. I don't get why he's angry at you."
Elliot scratched at his forehead for a while, trying to put it into words. He said, "Maybe it's a guy thing. We all hope we can do everything for ourselves and feel insulted when someone else does it for us."
A man don't need help from no one, no way. Like the hypocrite Uncle John was, he'd said those wise words while making Elliot wash his truck.
"Or maybe he just hated being lied to," he added, chasing John's ghost from his head.
"Men," she sighed with a roll of her shoulders.
Elliot asked her, "What's he mad at you for?"
"He wanted to go on the mission. I said he had to help me look after the kids. He feels like I guilt tripped him."
"Well, if you did, it achieved a great result."
"I didn't guilt trip him. It was true. Plus ..."
"I get it. And I agree. Lewis can be tough, trust me, but he's not born to be a fighter the way I am. Or Sturgis is. Or Angie. Krystal, he'll get over it. He obviously loves you. And if you keep him focused on how he's needed here, he'll forget about going on the trip in no time." He wondered where the hell that sage piece of advice had come from.
"Thanks," she said and her eyes were misty.
Not wanting to deal with a crying young lady, he said, "You want anything while we're out there? Anything besides medication?"
"Oh, anything coke would be great, thanks. If you have time."
Coke? He remembered then, the slang word Downs young people used to mean "cool" and, more specifically, anything good from the old world that was no longer available.
That's what Alyssa had meant when she said the word last night.
He said, "And at the risk of repeating myself, aren't you meant to be helping him with those kids?"
Above her mask, her eyes widened in one of those don't-be-mad-at-me teenage expressions. "Yeah."
"Well, you can't just go in and out of quarantine." He put on a mock parade ground voice. "Soldier, you need to get your ass back there and support your squad mate."
"Okay, sir." She started off, then spun and gave him a thumbs-up. "You're a nice man, Elliot."
His laugh was genuine this time, surprised. "Not me, sister."
"Yeah. You are. See ya when you're back."
And, raising her umbrella, she skipped off into the rain.
Elliot left the Rover then and headed for the armory with the smile lingering on his face, and the lead in his gut melting away.
"Good talk," he said.
Part Two: Road Trip
7
The roads between Settlers Downs and Birns River Bridge were in good shape, despite being without maintenance for years. Four times Woodsy had to slow and ease around tree debris, and once he braked hard to avoid a wallaby the size of a small child. But most of their journey's first leg passed uneventfully.
Elliot, riding shotgun, kept his ears closed to Woodsy's effervescent prattling and his eyes on their surroundings.
Their rugged, unpopulated surroundings.
There really had been a lot of wilderness in Tasmania even before the Collapse. The island-state was the size of Ohio or West Virginia, but it had been far less populated than those US states. Its towns had been mainly small ones, dotting a map that was almost entirely forest and farms.
Being so small and having decent highways, it would have taken him two or three hours in the old days to get Lewis from Harrietsville where he'd found him to The Downs, from the midlands to the east coast. And his subsequent trip to Inglebourne across the eastern mountain ranges to find Alyssa would have been even closer. Both those trips had taken decidedly longer, and it hadn't just been the need to avoid roving packs of deaders: roads were often clogged with old accidents and abandoned vehicles, the human detritus of last-ditch stands against packs of undead where people looked now like old roadkill, fallen trees there was no one to clear, animals grown bold and sunning themselves in the open...
As if to prove the truth of that last thought, a mob of kangaroos watched the Land Rover from the verge, unconcerned.
Woodsy said, "Some great barbecue right there."
Elliot ignored him and turned his mind to the last time he'd traveled in this particular Land Rover. Their only big raid beyond their territory two winters back had meant dragging this Rover plus a pickup over the range of mountains past Birns River. But while today they'd be turning left through the relatively low foothills, that raid had taken them into the mountains proper, to the modest hospital at St Mary's. And to prove that there were people still about and with smarts to boot, there'd been a group sheltering in it. Twenty-odd survivors, nineteen of whom had taken one look at two vehicles full of people with guns and scattered into the town's side streets and the local bush. A wise thing to do. He wondered if any of them had returned to the small hospital afterwards—returned and cursed those strangers with the guns for looting a full third of their shit. Only one of them had heeded Claire's call—Nance the farmer—too old and too proud to run. Nance had convinced them to leave more supplies and equipment than they'd intended. If this current mission was unsuccessful, Nance might end up bedding down on one of those same hospital cots, only this time in the community's Infirmary.
"We should have brought the pickup," he groused. They'd welded a flat iron plate to the front of the former fencer's utility, angled and fixed with low clearance from the road to muscle through car pileups and scrape aside fallen branches. There were sure to be more blockages once they got up into the real hills past Birns River Bridge.
Woodsy took the next curve a little harder than Elliot thought wise—and there ahead were the ten-cabin motor inn and the gas station opposite that meant they were a kilometre and a half from the town. From Jock's town. When the man's face swam up into his mind's eye wearing the leer that had been its final living expression, Elliot didn't try to stem the rest of that memory, of shooting the man in the throat, of watching him thrash and bleed and choke.
Some deaths were meant to happen.
Some kills were good kills.
⁓
"This'd be so much easier on a bike," Woodsy muttered as he slowed to a stop on a Birns River Bridge backstreet and pulled at the handbrake.
"Noisier, too," Elliot said and climbed out into a misty rain to clear the way ahead, leaving the rifle, unholstering the SIG. He'd thrown two lawn chairs off the asphalt one-handed before Angie and Jimmy joined him to clear the rest of the crap blocking the street. Bad weather, he hoped, had been behind most of the mess. It was haphazard enough, and Settlers Downs had suffered through one hell of a storm two months back; no doubt that had caused the gum tree debris they'd encountered along the way here. But it certainly had not caused the Main Street blockade of furniture and car bodies they'd tried to detour by taking this street.
He pointed to Jimmy's holstered Glock. "We'll work. You cover us. Watch the houses."
Expressionless, Jimmy pulled his piece and moved along the gutter, head turning.
"This is Vikes, you think?" Angie asked, her eyes darting around. Pigeons cooed from some sheltered roost nearby. Magpies called to each other. A wind chime tinkled. Rain pattered on the debris.
"Could be. Not much of a roadblock. They pro
bably left a lot of this outside the houses while looting." He launched a deck chair toward a cottage front yard. "Storm did the rest."
"But the main road ..." She lifted a canvas picnic umbrella and took it to the sidewalk. Water ran off it in rivulets.
He holstered the SIG and passed her, carrying a plastic outdoor table over his head. "Sure, Vikes. Or some other group. Might be an ambush. Might be demarcating territory." He dropped his load on the grass verge and returned for a long plastic planter box.
A minute later, they had cleared enough for the car to pass. They bundled into the Rover as Woodsy drew up alongside them. Angie took the shotgun seat before Elliot could.
"Hustle," Elliot told Woodsy, checking both ends of the street before climbing into the back. "I hate choke points."
He kept his rifle between his thigh and the door, his SIG out and ready, his free hand on the electric window control. Any moment, he fully expected enemy fire and cursed himself for not thinking this through better and for not forcing Woodsy out of the driver's seat. But they made it down the short lane and around the corner without interference, pointing them back at the bridge the town was named for.
The narrow steel-stone-and-concrete span ahead was clear. Wisely, Woodsy pressed the pedal down to get across it quick, the suspension bouncing them around over the haphazard bridge paving. The cargo space rattled with the cooler boxes and instant cold packs they'd brought to transport medication.
"Might be trolls under here," Jimmy murmured beside him.
"What?"
The eighteen-year-old shrugged and turned his face to the water, abruptly sullen.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what's wrong with this kid?
On the other side, the road turned them up onto the wooded hills Elliot and Lewis had once walked across. He twisted around to get a glimpse of Jock's expensive house standing back on the river bluff overlooking waterway and township. Seconds later it was lost behind the folds of the land and the thickening forest, as the car climbed.
"What are you looking at?" Woodsy asked him.
Straightening, Elliot caught the man's eyes in the mirror. "Wondering why whoever blocked the main road and the parkland left the bridge open."
"Would've been easier just to block that," Angie agreed.
"Perhaps no traffic comes from this direction," Woodsy said. "Or they use the bridge themselves."
Elliot grunted, not wanting to admit that sounded reasonable. Jimmy still had his Glock out and on his lap, pointing at the door. His finger was within the trigger guard. "Holster that," Elliot told him.
Jimmy considered the pistol a few seconds before asking the back of Woodsy's head if he should.
"Yes, son," said Woodsy.
So Jimmy did.
"Jesus, Mary, Joseph, kid," Elliot muttered. He shifted his rifle into a better position against the door.
The Rover bristled with weapons, but fortunately all except Jimmy knew how to secure them and still have them ready for trouble. Elliot had outfitted himself, Woodsy and Jimmy, allocating weapons he'd looted from a Druids' motel-safehouse three years earlier. For Woodsy, a USAS12 shotgun to compliment his own police-issue Smith & Wesson .40 caliber semi-automatic. A Glock 17 for Jimmy—the big ass knife the teenager had found for himself made Elliot more nervous than the handguns, given Jimmy's history. For himself, he'd taken the Steyr-AUG and suppressor, along with his trusty SIG P226 and Shrade lockblade. He'd given himself a Druid-owned M9 bayonet to replace the machete he'd lost, and put a 30-06 rifle in the back of the SUV as a spare long gun.
Angie had already been there in the armory when Elliot had arrived; to her favored sawn-off double barrel, she'd added a modified Glock 18 along with two "CMAGs". The magazines were huge by comparison to the pistol, twin-drum assemblies boasting one hundred rounds. She loaded one into the Glock and kept the spare in the shoulder satchel carrying her shottie. The mags were heavy, but she'd be glad of them in a firefight. All the Glocks boasted biker-fashioned suppressors—the Death Druids had had a penchant for them—and Angie had wondered aloud if she'd get a chance to use the full-auto option on the Glock 18.
"Not if the option is running like hell," Elliot had told her. Watching the trees as they flowed past his window now, he thought that there would probably be a day where she did use that full-auto option. The one thing history said to the future was that there would always be skirmishes, and always be wars.
The car crested a rise, nosing down into a shallow dip before hitting a new upslope. Downshifting and slowing to take a tight curve, Woodsy caught Elliot's eye in the mirror and said, "Tell me about the Vikes. You're the only one who met one?"
"Only one to speak with them," Angie corrected. "A few of us have seen them, me included, but always at a distance."
"Yeah," Elliot explained. "Once they shouted threats at—"
"I heard that part," Woodsy interrupted, changing up to third and swerving around forest debris even while accelerating. "They shouted obscenities at Dave One when he was scouting solo. But why didn't they shoot him? What kind of weapons do they have? As good as ours?"
"Probably zero guns," Angie said before Elliot could answer. "Bows and arrows, slings and spears is all we've seen. The guy Elliot talked to had a sword, I shit you not. Makes sense for freaks who style themselves on Vikings, I guess." She shook her head. "They're dickheads. They're like cosplayers, but cosplayers that might kill you."
"Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't," Elliot said. "I'm not keen to run into them again, but when Dave stumbled onto them, they were skinning a wallaby. Probably just protecting their meat."
"There's wallabies everywhere," she snorted. "Why worry about him stealing theirs?"
"Because their brains are Swiss cheese," he told her and turned his attention to Woodsy. "Look, I had a brief conversation across a creek bed one time, when we surprised each other. It was an amicable six minutes. Completely different to Dave's experience. For the first six seconds, I was concerned he had buddies in the bushes, flanking me. But then the wind blew the smoke from his cigarette my way. Not standard tobacco."
"Whacky tobacky."
"Exactly. The guy was spaced. And pretty stupid to be wandering the bush in that condition."
"They're potheads?"
"He was. No doubt goes with their, er, philosophy. In six minutes, he asked no questions about us except where I got my accent. And that, I shit you not, was a serious question. He was impressed with me being a foreigner. Then he asked me how I liked Australia." Elliot grunted a laugh.
"What did the bloke tell you about them?"
"That they are a peace-loving people if other people leave them alone, a force to be reckoned with if other people don't. Most, he said, knew each other from before the world ended. And they liked to live off the land, like their, haha, ancestors."
"Right. And you don't think they're all leftover Maggot Riders or Satans."
"Satans?" Angie asked.
"Satans of the South. Another bikie gang."
"Oh, yeah." She scratched the back of her neck. "I vaguely remember seeing them on Sixty Minutes."
"They're not bikers," Elliot said.
He glanced at Jimmy, but the kid was concentrating on a sign they were passing. Blueberry Barn - Crepes, Pancakes, Berries, Local Cider.
Elliot thought, God, I'd love some pancakes.
Only good things happened when a person dug into a short stack.
The only times—the only times—that Uncle John had been okay to be around had been on the last Saturday mornings of the month. That was when John's monthly paycheck meant a trip to town and a huge pancake breakfast that had always filled a young Elliot to the point of bursting. There'd been syrup, there'd been coffee, there'd been ice-cream, berries. Whatever the hell he'd wanted on those mornings. An hour or two of relief from John's temper before the man's irritability had set back in on the drive back home.
Just thinking about them, he could taste them. He could smell them.
"Yeah, they're
not bikers," Angie was saying. "I've seen them three times when they didn't see me. They do the whole TV Viking thing. Bare chests. Tattoos. Heads shaved on one side with hair flipped over the other way. They're just idiots who've ..." She echoed Elliot's earlier laugh. "... who aren't really taking the whole end-of-the-world thing seriously."
"Well, they don't sound too dangerous then," Woodsy said. "Potheads aren't usually violent."
"Guy I talked to was chilled," Elliot said, "but anyone is violent when they need to be. And who's to say that ganja is the only thing they're using? His last words to me were, 'You stay your side of this creek and we'll stay on ours'."
"Shit," said Woodsy. "Well, at least we've got better weapons."
For now, Elliot thought. Sure, The Downs had a reasonable stock of firearms for a place like Tasmania, between the rifles and shotguns that had belonged to its former owners and the weapons looted from the Druids. What they didn't have was a whole lot of ammo. Bullets and shells counted in the low hundreds, not the tens of thousands that Elliot would've liked. Conservation of ammunition was an explicit virtue in the community. In all the years since bringing in Alyssa, Jimmy and Claire, Elliot had fired nineteen rounds. Nineteen. Fifteen had been into the heads of deaders in the early days. Two had been over the heads of strangers threatening him—assholes from Nine Mile River the first time, then a disheveled crazy in a southern beachside hamlet. The last two rounds had gone into a kangaroo he wanted for meat. He'd personally supervised the use of seventy-seven 9 mm, .22 and shotgun rounds in training some basic weapons skills to others. Others had used a few rounds in their scouting—Angie, Rit, the Daves, Shaz and Tania, Sturgis—but only a few.
Hopefully, as he'd said to Angie in the armory, they wouldn't need to fire one shot on this mission.
