Doomsday's Child (Book 2): Came Monsters

by Pete Aldin

  He jumped as a crunching sound came out of the door-speakers. A moment later there followed the clang of a guitar chord and thump of a kick drum.

  Woodsy withdrew his hand from the stereo to slap the steering wheel. "Love this song!"

  Elliot realized the crunching sound effect was meant to be marching boots, an army.

  A single punk rock riff later, Angie asked, "What is this shit?"

  "Holidays in the Sun." Woodsy checked her reaction and pretended shock. "You never heard this? Never heard of the Sex Pistols? You're kidding me. Elliot, what do they teach young people in school, mate?"

  "Quit the music lesson and turn it down," Elliot growled.

  Woodsy reached over and lowered the volume a single notch, twisting around to grin at Elliot. "A great road trip needs great driving music."

  "It needs a great driver," Angie said and turned the music lower herself. "Next safe space to pull over, it's my turn."

  "Little missy, I was a highway patrol driver when you were toilet training."

  "Don't care, you're—watch out!"

  Elliot slammed forward as Woodsy braked and hit something simultaneously. He got one arm up in time to brace against Angie's seat, then fell back as the car slewed to a stop.

  Everyone bailed. The blacktop behind the car was littered with debris chewed off the eucalyptus branch Woodsy had run over. A length of wood the thickness of Elliot's thigh poked from beneath either side if the car. Round the front of the vehicle, Angie began swearing a blue streak.

  Inspecting the damage as she had done, Elliot joined in the cussing for a moment before confronting Woodsy. "Both front tires? Marvelous work for a pro driver. And how many spares we carrying?"

  "One," Angie said unnecessarily. She was on her back now, head under the front of the car. "Axle's okay though, thank God." She wriggled out and dusted herself off.

  Jimmy was watching the trees around them, Glock back in his hands. Like all of them, his breath was clouding in the chill September air.

  Woodsy stood scowling at the tires and scratching his gut.

  "Happy?" Elliot asked him.

  "Fair go, mate. Coulda happened to anyone."

  "Anyone not watching where they were going." Elliot went to the driver's door, leaned in and turned and pulled the key out. Holidays in the Sun cut off instantly.

  "I love that song," said Jimmy without a skerrick of emotion.

  "Woodsy, looks like you're going to be busy extracting gum tree from car and getting that first spare on."

  "Where are we getting the second tire?" Angie asked, staring uphill in the direction they were headed.

  "Blueberry Barn."

  She turned. "What?"

  Elliot went to the tailgate and opened it, rummaged around. "Back a ways there was a restaurant with a few SUVs in the lot. Jimmy and I can bring one back and we'll cannibalize two of the wheels."

  "Tires'll be flat," Woodsy said, but Elliot brandished the tire compressor before handing it off to Jimmy. He pulled out the jumpstart kit and left the gate down while going around to retrieve his Steyr.

  Eying the kit, Angie nodded approvingly. "Better than pushing a tire uphill all that way."

  "You know it. You okay here?"

  He expected her to argue, to demand that she come, but she was too smart for that.

  "Am I okay to sit here on a log," she said, "while Woodsy works his arse off and you two lug those kits all the way down to the 'Blueberry Barn'? Absolutely, I'm okay here."

  Patting her double barrel, she smiled, the first time he'd seen her smile in weeks. Smiling suited her, he thought. The sudden tingle in his gut agreed with his thought.

  Elliot returned her smile for a moment then followed Jimmy who had already started downhill.

  8

  "That is so goddamned weird."

  They'd walked half a klick and Elliot still couldn't work out why the woods on either side of the narrow mountain highway were so vastly different. The forest to his left was all pine, a colorless sight all the way to the top of the slope. The view to his right and downslope, however, was ablaze with color and rich with entirely different vegetation.

  How can they be so completely different? It was as if he stood literally between two worlds.

  The scent of the pines reached him on the breeze and his gut clenched with melancholy nostalgia, as the smell transported him back to one of the best hiking trails he'd ever tried. He'd hiked and camped among ponderosa pines up along the western slopes of the Ochoco Mountains, alone and at peace for a week. These Tasmanian pines were not ponderosas, but they looked a lot like them. They smelled like them. The ground was dusty and bare beneath them as it had been that summer.

  And on the other side of the road, a vastly different ecology. A steep valley choked with plants, some of which he now knew well: tea-trees, flat pea and mint bush, eucalypts, wattles and ferns. Flowers burst in yellows and blues and reds and purples down there. Underbrush filled in all the spaces, hiding the soil.

  So much life.

  Too much life, Jimmy must have decided. The young man froze, dropping into a crouch, his eyes on that forest beyond the road's lip.

  Elliot took a knee too, weapon up. He heard nothing to cause alarm: the pip-pip of some small bird, the deep buzz of a large bush insect in flight nearby, the thumping of his own pulse, the breeze sighing in the trees. He duckwalked closer. "What'd you hear?"

  Jimmy said nothing, then a moment later shrugged and started off again, his Glock down by his thigh.

  "Good talk," Elliot said. He jogged a little to catch up. "Hey, kid. Pretty sure I've told you a few times over the past couple years. Keep your booger hook off the bang switch."

  "What?"

  "Your Glock. Keep your finger off the trigger. Keep it outside the guard." Since the Glock's safety was part of the trigger, the most secure way to carry it was in a position where an accidental clenching of the fist wouldn't discharge it.

  Jimmy glanced down and up, didn't break stride. Elliot craned his neck to check for a change. Sure enough, the finger was outside the guard now. "Better," he said. "It's dangerous to carry it the way you were."

  Jimmy did look at him now. A glance, nothing more. "Why?"

  "Why? Because I've seen someone shoot himself in the foot carrying it the same way you were."

  "I know what I'm doing," Jimmy grumbled.

  Elliot thought a moment. How had he gotten through to Lewis on matters like this? Actually, the question was better phrased as how had he not gotten through to Lewis in the early days? Whatever that answer was, Elliot should really do the opposite. So he tried starting with a compliment. "Well, that's good you know what you're doing. You're definitely a smart guy. I'm interested, though, in how you know what you're doing." Jimmy picked up the pace to create a little distance. Elliot added, "I'm not doubting you, kid. I just wanna know where you're getting your confidence from? Who taught you?"

  "Taught myself. And Woodsy did. A bit."

  Elliot frowned. "Woodsy taught you to use the Glock?"

  A grunt.

  Shit.

  "Well. Okay. But remember to keep your finger off the trigger unless you're in a live situation."

  A shrug.

  "Kid. I got some experience in this, you know. I ran teams. I trained warriors." Well, a little bit. "We're on a hazardous trip here. We need to be good at what we do. Keep ourselves safe. Keep our ... our mates safe."

  "I know that."

  "Okay. And I know you can use a knife." He'd seen first-hand the results of Jimmy's knifework when he'd gone in to set Jimmy free. The young man had been handcuffed to a bunk bed during a protracted firefight between the Death Druids, who'd used him as a sex slave, and their apparently arch enemies the Maggot Riders. Jimmy had used the confusion to get a knife off the biker sheltering in the room with him and stabbed the man repeatedly. His captor didn't have the keys for the cuffs. Fortunately for him—and for Claire who'd also been trapped in the room—Elliot had come along after the fac
t and found the keys that had set him free.

  A flinch from Jimmy at the knife reference, but no other reaction. Did he think about that, about his days with the Druids? Did he have nightmares and flashbacks and doubts like Elliot did? Elliot could ask him, of course, but he doubted he'd get much out of him. And he could well understand that. Those things were almost impossible to talk about.

  "How about if you don't have a blade?" he asked him instead, staying on track. "What if you're in a situation and your Glock fails? Or out of ammo?"

  Jimmy shrugged. "I run or duck."

  "Good options, I agree. Sometimes the best options. Let's say you get caught in a crowd of deaders—"

  "All gone."

  Elliot thought of Bess, his dog. "Nope. Bastards are around still. But okay, let's say you wander into a supermarket you think is safe and there's living people there. Who want to kill you."

  "I run," Jimmy repeated, tone dull.

  Elliot repressed a sigh. "In this scenario you're cornered."

  "Shit," said Jimmy. A little frustration crept into his tone; Elliot couldn't tell if it was because he was picturing it in his head or tired of Elliot's perseverance.

  "Damn right, shit. You must've been in that situation at some time. Chased. Or crowded. Early on in the Collapse. People or pusbags. What did you do? How'd you fight?"

  "I ... I didn't fight people. Real people. Just dead ones. A little."

  "What with?"

  "My step-father's steering lock."

  Elliot pictured him trying to crack skulls with that foot-long length of steel and said, "Good. Nice. A blunt-force weapon like that is a great option. So you got your steering lock, or a two-by-four or even your pistol butt. You're attacked by deaders or, okay, by some angry living sonofabitch. How do you hit them? Where?"

  "Anywhere."

  "Where?"

  "Head, arms, guts."

  "Not guts. Hard to get to through their defenses. Won't cause enough shock. The head's good though. Arms are good, depending on where. So where would you hit them exactly?"

  Jimmy tapped his bicep with his Glock, making Elliot glad the kid had shifted his finger.

  "The muscle? How about their legs?" he asked, a suspicion growing. Jimmy tapped his thigh, the side of it. "Woodsy taught you this already, didn't he? To use a police baton?"

  A nod.

  "And cops were taught to go for big muscle groups." It was their standard procedure. "That's why they had to hit rioters over and over and over. Because those muscles take the shock of the weapon, they cushion it. Takes a while to hurt someone bad enough to put them down. But us? These days? We need to take someone out with one or two strikes max. Jimmy, you hearing me?"

  "Sure."

  "One thing I want you to remember. Like a mantra. Blades like flesh, impact weapons like bone."

  "Uh?"

  "You have a blade, you slash muscles or their gut if you can reach it. You have a stick or a bat, you hit their bones."

  "So ... their head, like I said?"

  Better. The kid was actually listening now. Maybe even interested. They neared a sign with symbols for an eating place five hundred metres ahead. So Elliot made the most of the time they had left before they'd reach it.

  "The head is good if you can reach past their arms. If they're defending themselves with arms up, break a finger or wrist so you'll at least shock them. Another thing you can try is pretend to go for their groin. That's called a feint, pretending like that. Then you hit them upside the head when their hands drop to cover their nuts. Man, you manage to hit someone in the head and they'll stop thinking for a second or two. Then you do not pause. If they've been stunned, you smack a knee or an ankle or a collar bone. Breaking any bone is gonna shock them bad and might be enough to stop them. When you hit, you hit hard. You incapacitate them and you move on to the next target."

  "Fancy shit," Jimmy murmured, but he sounded thoughtful.

  "Not fancy. Targeted. Hell, clumsy is fine as long as you hit bone. You don't need to be Bruce Lee."

  Jimmy looked up at the blue sign displaying the distance to the restaurant, and then over at Elliot. "Who?"

  "Christ, kid. Don't say that." He hurried past him to take point. "You make me feel old."

  ⁓

  There turned out to be plenty of sinister-seeming shadows and cupboards in the Blueberry Barn, but no people or drybones. After a thorough and agonizingly slow recon of the restaurant and the two outbuildings, Elliot finally marched back up to one of the cars in the lot, and crow-called Jimmy in from the bush across the highway. There was evidence of looting along with some vandalism: perhaps survivors were still holed up in these secluded hills.

  Graffiti-spray marred the exterior walls of the restaurant and its signs. As if a pack of wolves had passed through, pissing on things to mark their territory. Perhaps these taggers—like the old-world ones—were so unsure of their own existence they needed to leave something tangible to prove it. One message scribed in the unsteady writing of a spray can novice said, Bastards your all Dead—Elliot figured the odds were good that whoever those bastards were to the writer, they were dead. Another said simply MINE—a word which, he noticed now, had been scratched over and over into the sides of all the cars with a nail or knife blade.

  While Jimmy came down from the road, Elliot knelt by one of the SUVs, picked up a wayward screw and scratched his name into a compote of engine oil and dust on the ground. See it's true. I'm real. I was here.

  There'd been some cans of pre-mixed bourbon-and-cola inside. He'd brought one out and now he cracked it open and sipped—then spat it out. Flat. And chemical-tasting. "Not coke," he said. "Not coke at all." He tossed the can.

  When Jimmy was close, Elliot tapped the deflated tire beside him. "I'll cover you while you air these up. Then you cover me while I jump it."

  Jimmy dumped the jumpstart kit and tire inflator three yards from the car, staring downhill. "I want those first."

  "Huh?"

  Jimmy pointed out past the gravel lot to where the ground leveled off and a path started. A faded sign showed a cartoon blueberry with a goofy grin and stick-limbs. "Pick me, pick me!" the idiot blueberry was saying in kindergarten font. One of its arms extended like Jimmy's toward what used to be berry gardens running either side of the path. Row-stakes showed above a briar patch of weeds.

  "It's all long dead," Elliot told Jimmy. "Now help me here."

  "Might be some," said Jimmy, already moving. "Berries even grow in the wild you know."

  "It's too early in the season."

  "I'm checking."

  "Kid—"

  "I didn't have breakfast." He was a third of the way there now.

  "Sonofa ... Get your damn berries. Just hurry it up. And I mean hurry."

  Jimmy's shuffle turned into a childlike skip.

  "It's the cartoon blueberry," Elliot muttered. "Goddamn marketing assholes." Louder he said, "Be careful!"

  Jimmy had reached the sign now. The word MINE had been painted in one of corner of that too. Well, if there were any berries in that patch, they were Jimmy's now.

  Elliot sucked in cold mountain air. The season was wrong. There'd be no damned berries. The kid was wasting time. If Woodsy hadn't brought him, this would go so much smoother. In fact, if Elliot had just come with Angie, this would already be going better.

  "Screw it," he said, laying the rifle on the SUV roof. He picked up the inflator.

  The tire valve cap was on tight: he had to twist it hard. When it came off finally, his hand slipped and banged up against the bottom of the mudguard, scraping skin.

  He gasped, fell on his ass and sucked at the blood welling on the side of his finger. "Fucking Woodsy fuckhead—"

  Noise!

  The crunch of boots on gravel.

  The thuds of a heavy person running.

  Elliot dropped the inflator, scrambled to his feet and snatched up the rifle. He stepped out from between the parked cars into open space.

  The man barreli
ng toward him was big—really big. Obese-big. Taller than Elliot by half a head. Maybe two-fifty pounds. Probably more.

  Elliot took aim, then let the muzzle dip: he should drop the guy and quickly, but there was something off about him. Not deader-off, more like...

  Scav-rat.

  No weapons. Grimy cargo shorts and an unbuttoned khaki shirt, but no shoes. A shiny scalp with wild tufts of grey and brown sprouting along the sides. Eyes wide and white. Face and beard dappled with muck. Spittle sprayed from his mouth as he barked, "Mine!" over and over.

  "Goddamnit." With a sympathy that went against his training, he safetied the weapon, took one hand off it to wave at the guy. "Not here to hurt you," he said. "Leaving soon."

  The big man didn't slow, thirty feet away now. If anything, Elliot's attempt at pacification seemed to anger him more, his already reddened face contorting and puckering. "Mine!" he screamed.

  Now he was close enough that Elliot could read the name Greg embroidered on his shirt pocket below the Blueberry Barn logo.

  "Oh, man," Elliot muttered and braced himself, both hands back on his rifle.

  As Greg lunged across the final gap between them, Elliot ducked low, dodged right and downhill. He brought the Steyr's butt around and into Greg's left calf. The leg buckled, pitching the man sideways onto shoulder and hip where he skidded a metre across the gravel. Elliot lay down the rifle. He leapt forward as the big man found his knees, got his right arm over the man's shoulder and around his throat, hooked the inside of his elbow across the guy's adam's apple, his fist against the guy's opposite shoulder.

  "Not yours!" Greg grated.

  Elliot clasped his right hand with his left, pressing his left arm into the man's head. Greg bucked. Elliot hung on. The big man smelled like roadkill. Sweat from his hair soaked into Elliot's shirt. His neck was thick and Elliot had to press hard to find the carotid.

  "Mine," the guy grunted, trying to get to his feet, trying to get an arm over to swipe at Elliot. "Mi—" With blood flow to brain interrupted, he faded quick. Started going limp.

  Then Jimmy cried out.

  Surprised, Elliot's grip slackened slightly, enough for Greg to get a breath, get some blood to his brain, shift and throw Elliot's grip off a little more.