by Pete Aldin
Elliot maneuvered, trying for his original textbook position, then looked downhill to the berry patches. "Jesus!"
Jimmy too was down on the edge of a garden bed. He faced out, but he'd fallen into a tangle of anti-bird netting. Across the path, a tiny drybones dragged its carcass toward his feet, jaw snapping. It wore a dark blue sundress with yellow flowers. Her filthy hair was tied back with a yellow ribbon. In contrast to the dress, the ribbon was clean, fresh. A rope had been tied around her waist, but Elliot couldn't see what the other end was tethered to.
Your Glock, he willed Jimmy, fighting to get his grip tight on the squirming Greg.
"Babies," the big man mumbled. "Homes."
Holding a garden stake for balance, Jimmy got his pistol out with a shaky hand, aimed it—
Greg cried, "No!"
—and Jimmy dropped it in the netting. He fumbled around for it.
This time Greg's "No!" was a scream.
The big man surged upright, shaking himself like a wet dog, dislodging Elliot. He swung a log-like arm around so that Elliot had to block it with both of his. The blow was hard, toppling Elliot on the uneven ground. He rolled over once and came up ready to defend himself. But Greg had forgotten him, careening down the parking lot toward the gardens, arms wheeling. His cry became, "Katie! Katie! My Katie!"
This time, Elliot didn't hesitate. His SIG came free of its holster and he steadied himself with a shoulder against one of the parked cars. But he didn't need to kill the poor bastard. The guy had big legs; Elliot was certain of the shot. Hit a leg, contain him, and treat the wound later. He closed one eye.
But it was Jimmy who fired. Three rounds. Greg fell face first, slid, then rolled a couple times. He came to rest face down and unmoving.
Elliot hurried forward in a crouch, wary in case Jimmy fired indiscriminately. He was halfway to the berry patches when Jimmy put two rounds into the undead child.
"Holy Christ," he whispered and moved in on the fallen Greg. As he reached his side, the man spasmed once.
No more movement.
Nothing.
Greg's head was turned sideways.
Elliot stooped and put a hand to the man's neck.
No pulse.
Eyes vacant.
"I'm so sorry, Greg."
A thump made him look up. He straightened. Jimmy was out of the netting. He had a garden stake out of the ground, hitting the deader's head over and over until there was nothing there but a spreading stain on the path with hair and a yellow ribbon clumped within it.
Chest heaving, gut clenched tight, Elliot studied Jimmy. The kid finally tossed the stake and marched up the path again. His Glock was in its holster. He plucked a weed from the side of his pants. "Shit, that was close," he called.
"Close?" Elliot replied. Then louder: "Close!" Jimmy froze. Elliot pointed to the dead man beside him. "I had this. I had this. He did not have to die. But you hadda go pick breakfast from an empty berry patch! You couldn't watch your back for deaders!" Blood was seeping out from under Greg's body. One of Jimmy's shots had hit the heart. Jimmy was looking at Elliot, not at the man he'd killed. "Goddamnit, I wish I'd brought Lewis. Lewis would never have—!" He cut himself off.
Pointless.
Jimmy's face had clouded, had colored. He had an adolescent pout going, had closed himself off. Wrapping his arms around his chest, he dropped his gaze and made his way back up the lot toward the SUV. Elliot put out an arm to stop him and the kid dodged it easily.
"That's your last chance with that Glock," Elliot told him. "Strike three."
"Piss off," Jimmy replied.
"I'm pissed off all right. I am real pissed off."
His own finger was still dribbling blood from his earlier wound, he realized; he couldn't feel it. He pressed the finger hard against his pants to stop the bleeding as he followed Jimmy up the lot again.
Jimmy picked up the inflator and got to work doing what he should have done in the first place. Staying extra-vigilant, Elliot popped the hood and got the starter kit in position and busied himself with work. The tire-inflating went fine, but the SUV took a little coaxing to start—partly due to old fuel.
Thirty-two minutes after he'd first arrived, Elliot was climbing behind the wheel.
Standing outside the open passenger door, Jimmy said, "I think I'll just run."
"What?" He was gonna run back to the others?
"If I'm outa bullets. I'll run away."
"Oh. Truly, Jimmy, not the right time for this talk."
Jimmy clammed up again and took his seat. He put his face to the side window. Past him, Elliot could see the stumpy shape of a Tasmanian devil venturing out of the underbrush. It checked uphill and down, then scurried across to start pulling at the dead man's body.
"The circle of life," Elliot muttered and pulled the car out of the lot.
A withdrawn and sullen teenager sitting beside him felt like déjà vu. It was Lewis at his most traumatized all over again. No, not Lewis. As Elliot had said without thinking, Lewis wouldn't have caused Greg's death. Jimmy was erratic and unreadable in a different way. His childish desire for something he couldn't have—and his subsequent carelessness—had gotten that man killed. And almost gotten Jimmy bitten.
Death Druids did a real number on you, kid, didn't they?
Elliot said, "From now on, Jimmy, you do exactly what I tell you. You keep your eyes open, your ears open. Concentrate. Be circumspect: that means you keep your head on a swivel, checking around you all the time. You read me?"
Jimmy gave no indication that he had.
"I meant what I said about the Glock."
Elliot sighed. The kid wasn't listening. Perhaps he couldn't.
"All right, Jimmy. If the safest thing for you to do is run when we're in serious trouble, then okay, you run. You find your way back home if we haven't established some other fallback location already."
Further silence. Jimmy didn't shift at all.
"You can find your way home okay?"
"... No."
My God, this day just keeps getting better.
"Well. Get Woodsy to show you on a map. Find a way to memorize it. You have to work crap like that out."
More silence. This time, Elliot gave in to it. He really couldn't be bothered anymore.
Minutes later, they were pulling up near a sweaty and dirty Woodsy and an impatient Angie.
"I'll just run," Jimmy said and climbed out. He darted over to greet Woodsy with a handshake. Rather than get immediately to work unhooking another tire, Woodsy peppered the young man with questions about the "mission", nodding and shoulder-patting over the young man's short responses. There was a loud clang as Woodsy's tire iron slipped from his hand. Jimmy stooped for it at the same time as Woodsy did; they knocked heads, then offered synchronized apologies.
"Holy shit," Angie said as Elliot got out.
"Holy shit, what?"
"We're teamed up with two of the Three Stooges."
Jimmy had his Glock out again and was pointing back down the highway with it as he explained something to Woodsy.
"Put that away!" Elliot barked. To Angie, he said, "Yeah. The dumbest two."
"Any trouble?"
"You could say that." Elliot scratched the back of his neck. "One claymore. One ... scav-rat."
"Oh."
"I nearly contained the guy without ... without damage. Then Jimmy got sloppy, enraged the fella. Then shot him dead." An oversimplification, but Elliot couldn't find the energy for the long version.
"Jimmy killed him?"
"Yep."
"Shit."
"Yep."
Her expression softened. Just a little. She asked, "You okay?"
"Sure."
"Really?"
He nodded, took a deep breath, let it out slow. "I am. Thanks. But it's real bad us being out here."
"Agreed. But do we have a choice?" She brushed past him—the brief contact was not unpleasant, he thought—and turned the ignition key enough to light up
the dash. "Still got half a tank of petrol."
"It's been sitting in there for three years, but seems fine now it's turned over a little. You thinking to keep it, the car?"
"When Mr. Talkfest and his sidekick are ready to do some actual work, they put this one's spare on our Rover and then you and I follow them in this."
You and I. He liked the sound of that.
Claire's face came into his mind's eye, smiling a smug smile. The Council member was The Downs's maternal figure and ever keen to matchmake, especially when it came to him and Angie. But there couldn't be anything permanent between them? Could there? No, he didn't have something like that in him.
Nor does she.
Still, he'd read somewhere that a single man's fantasies in their forties might turn to settling down. Perhaps, after all, there was some sense in that. Especially if it was with someone as resourceful and—yes—and as pretty as her.
"What are you thinking about?" Angie asked him and he blinked himself back to the here-and-now. Her expression was curious, her focus intense. What the hell expression must he have been wearing while he imagined that scenario?
"Nothing," he said.
She snorted. "That's original for a man. And probably correct." She brushed by again, headed for the Rover. "Hey, don't you two dickheads worry about it. Keep on chatting and waste all the daylight. It's not like we're in a fucking hurry or anything."
Elliot blew out a breath and watched her with butterflies in his gut.
Why couldn't he have undertaken this mission just with her?
9
Even when they left the mountains behind, progress remained slow. Roads were in poor shape, covered in litter and occasionally blocked by an auto wreck or two. Weeds and three years of rainfall conspired to break up the blacktop in places. Here and there, bodies lay on the road or up on the verges. None of them moved. Some weren't much more than piles of clothing and bones after years of serving as food for local wildlife.
Elliot and Angie's car followed Woodsy and Jimmy's. Coming out of a place called Campbell Town, Woodsy pulled over beside a lorry. Parked sideways, the small truck blocked half the highway. His arm appeared out of his window, pointing at the blue spray-painted message on the lorry's side:
35 km to security prosperity community
We're taking the world back
Elliot stuck his own arm out his window and waved Woodsy on. "Man's stopping in the middle of a goddamned chokepoint."
Angie replied, "Anyone would think we were out sightseeing." As their car neared the lorry, she pointed. "See the other tag?"
Elliot took a second look. A smaller scrawl of red paint spelled bullshit in a different hand. Elliot accelerated, overtaking Woodsy as they left the town, taking point.
"Bullshit all right."
"Security, prosperity, community," said Angie. "You're not buying that?"
"If you had those things, would you advertise them?"
"Well, we do have them. And we don't advertise them, do we?" She huffed a laugh. "Anyone advertising something wants something else in return." She shifted in her seat, looking back at the lorry. "You know, I saw this TV show once where they did something like that..."
Despite the potential danger they might be in, the next half hour passed in what Elliot found to be pleasant conversation. Angie became chatty; she could be an entertaining raconteur when she wanted to be. They discussed old pop culture, potential choke points ahead on the road and contingency plans for ambush, weird and cool and beautiful things they'd seen while scouting over the years. Angie told Elliot how much she'd loved Tasmania in the old days—and things about her life she'd never mentioned before: illegal midnight dives for abalone with friends, bush walks in forests millennia-old, trail bike rides through national parks while evading park rangers, the lively night-life of her university, the generosity of neighbors in the Hobart street she was born and grew up in. He risked long glances at her while she spoke; Christ, he was attracted to her. And not just because she was reality-TV pretty, athletic, or blonde. It was more that Angie—whatever her mood—was fiercely and unrelentingly alive. Indomitable.
He ventured a couple of jokes. She didn't laugh at them. But neither did she sneer or tsk. Well, that was progress.
Knowing him to be well-traveled due to his military service and private contractor work, she asked him what was the best place he'd ever visited.
"Settlers Downs," he said, surprising both of them. After a moment, he added, "Yeah. I think it's The Downs."
For whatever reason, that killed the conversation.
At twenty-five kilometres out of Campbell Town on an open patch of highway with clear lines of sight across farms to each side, she told him to pull over.
"I'll drive," she said. "You watch."
Five kilometres past the town of Ross, the roads were cleared of car bodies, branches, human and animal remains. Large boutique farms with rundown manor-style houses appeared to their left, native forest remaining to their right.
And coming over a hill two kilometres further, Angie suddenly veered off road, nosing the car down a farm driveway and behind a screen of conifers.
"Did you see that?" she breathed, cutting the engine and cracking her door as Woodsy pulled in behind her.
"Couldn't exactly miss it," Elliot said and exited the vehicle.
"See the wall?" Woodsy asked as they met midway between the vehicles.
Elliot ignored him and tapped Jimmy's shoulder before the young man could wander back down the driveway. "Up in the hedge there. Guard the vehicles."
Jimmy frowned at him, but darted into the conifers that lined the driveway.
Angie started moving, too. "You boys take a looksee. I'll be scouting the bush across the highway."
Leaving the shotgun in the cabin, Woodsy opened the Rover's tailgate and grabbed the spare 30-06 rifle. Elliot snatched at the field glasses before he could get them, then locked gazes with the other man. "You're by the gatepost, I'm over the road by the sign. Don't stand on the roadway like you're target practice for anyone on that wall."
Woodsy's mouth opened, but Elliot was away before the argument could start. At the curb, he crouched low and scooted across the tarmac, avoiding a clear profile. He took a place by another of the security prosperity community signs. There'd been two more along the way, marking off the distances at thirty then twenty kilometres. This version was a sturdily erected three-by-two metre billboard; the signwriting was more carefully finished, using brushes rather than spray guns. And no one had added bullshit to it. He got down in the dirt and gravel beside it, lay down his Steyr and raised the glasses.
The road dropped gently before them into a straight run through a flat valley. The land below was mainly cleared of mature trees, but choked with towering grasses and saplings. Most of a kilometre away, giant power pylons marched across the valley between them and the edges of a hamlet beyond. More notably, behind those pylons, someone had built the wall to protect that hamlet.
Through the field glasses, the barrier appeared as a rust-colored bank of shipping containers and what looked like flood control barriers, all of it three to four metres high. In places, barbed and razor wire had been strung along the front of the containers as an extra deterrent. He couldn't see a single deader stuck in there anywhere.
"One hell of a building project," he murmured. The ingredients were spoils from the decaying city of Hobart, perhaps.
He could see no movement among the dozen buildings in the hamlet beyond the wall. And no patrols at the—
"Wait."
He pulled the glasses back to the left.
"Smart."
They'd built a sniper's nest up on one of the pylons, a box made of iron sheeting with a good view of valley and highway. He watched it awhile: maybe that was two heads bobbing around in there, maybe that was a fuzz of cigarette smoke or camp stove smoke, but the glasses weren't good enough.
When he glanced across the asphalt, Woodsy signaled a query. Elliot motioned hi
m to stay put and alert. One more time, he scanned the wall, the land beyond, and the sniper's nest. This time he was sure he caught movement—enough to confirm the shapes were heads and they were alive. Better, he saw zero indication anyone was paying attention to him. No glint of glass, of a scope or binoculars. The forest to his right was raucous with bird song. A flock of black cockatoos were out near the pylons, making the worst of it. Unless those sentries were alert to frequent traffic—which there wouldn't be—they hadn't heard the cars and they were bored, distracted and probably playing cards.
"Not so smart."
He gave a low whistle of inquiry. A few seconds later, Angie answered it with a crow's caw: all clear. So far.
He sat on his heels behind the sign, one hand tapping his holstered SIG.
That wall. That big bastard of a wall. Possibly miles long, surrounding that tiny town and its outlying areas. The ends disappeared where bushland curved around to obscure them. The facility they were seeking was south and west of here, and Elliot could only hope the wall wasn't that extensive. From the section he could see, a lot of people took considerable time to build it: the flood barrier blocks and shipping containers would have taken cranes or loaders, and presumably transport from Hobart ports, requiring further manpower to guard the vehicle operators from deaders or dangerous humans. He used the field glasses again. That gate was made of shipping container doors with a lock-area between it and another similar gate beyond.
Elliot had difficulty picturing a community large enough to build this. It was three years and ten months since that day when his old life had ended along with everyone else's—and his new life had started, along with far fewer of everyone else's. He'd been in Hobart then. Not a big city. Not even middle-sized. Way less than a million people. Most of them would have turned, been killed by the turned, starved, or died from injury and illness. It hadn't seemed like there was anyone left alive when he'd made it out of there, but there must have been. Thousands might have fled to remote locations like this—or lived here already and perhaps welcomed that influx of refugees coming to them. And in these places, no doubt further tragedy had befallen many, based on his own early experiences. Other Downs' residents—and Birdy, poor Birdy—had reported the arrival of mainland refugees to the north of Tasmania where there had followed a Hurricane Katrina pro forma of murder and abuse. And then, unlike Katrina, there followed more outbreaks of the undead. This had apparently been the genesis of that massive tide of deaders that came south and east in search of prey. The tide Birdy had saved him and Lewis from by landing her plane to warn them.
