by Pete Aldin
What now?
He could leave this godforsaken world in a blaze of glory. He was better armed than he'd been in a very long time—and carrying more ammo, too. He could find that other "prosecutor", Rooster they'd called him. Join forces—if he could work out where they stored the guy. How many SERPs could they take out tonight? All of them? Half? What would be a better option now than that?
Looking for Jimmy.
"Jimmy." He reached for a wall to stop the floor from sliding out from under him. Bile rose in his throat.
Jimmy.
The moving image was burned into his mind of Jimmy being dragged by the legs away to a room somewhere to turn.
He could go get Jimmy. Only, Elliot couldn't know where they'd put him; he and the woman probably weren't in under that grid where they stored the rest of that "jury". Besides, Jimmy would be too far gone now—the only reason for finding him would be to put a bullet through his head. If only they'd taken the arm off at the elbow fast like Kyle had done with his own fingers, the infection might not have taken. The boy would have had a chance. But how long had it been now? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? Forty? No, the kid was gone.
Gone!
Elliot kicked the male SERP's body in the chest, hard. A rib broke.
"You killed him, you prick. You killed him and those people and—"
There were other people, people Elliot had to help. Another choice, another option.
Settlers Downs.
Lewis. Heng. Claire. Alyssa. Kim and Rit and Chariya and Faye and ...
Angie.
His heartbeat had been calm since his second tasing wore off, even as he took out his two captors. But now it spiked.
Angie.
If they got her.
If they put her on that stage ...
She was out there somewhere. Kyle had sensed it, too. Had she stayed close? Had she returned to the fallback? By now, she may have given up on him. On him and Woodsy and Jimmy. Maybe she was on her way back home, a mile or two ahead of Kyle and his new breed of slavers.
He stooped and felt at the man's thigh pockets and then the female's. She had a key; when he dug it out, it had a logo he recognized from a couple of missions around Libya, a logo from a military vehicles manufacturer. The find gave him the smallest burst of satisfaction. He could get out of here, and a BearCat armored truck would give him as much edge as a couple of SIG MCXs did. He stood, with the key in his pocket and one of those MCXs in his hand and the other bobbing against his back, started marching down the corridor.
Jimmy was lost—leave no man behind; what a joke!—and Elliot had to get home.
But there'd be no home, he realized, he admitted, without Angie.
⁓
He tucked himself into the nook between a tree and the hospital wall as he got his night sight. The only light left burning in the town was a solitary street lamp down by the school. The moon was up, the sky clear. He felt the chill out here now as his rage abated; it seeped through the arm-holes of the vest and the thin cotton of his tee.
All of the people had left the hospital grounds. But not all of the vehicles were gone from the lot. One sedan, three station wagons, a motorbike. And out on the road, one of the BearCats. Confident in his night sight now, he left cover and strode through the lot. No movement by the Bearcat, no lightning-bug flare of a cigarette, no one waiting for their buddies to lock the prisoner away and come back. This was the SERPs' turf, a kilometre or three inside their thick walls, and they had nothing to fear.
"Until now, assholes. Until now."
The big truck was unlocked. Probably the two ex-cops he'd just killed were meant to put it away for the night. It started on the first try, the rumble gratifying, vibrating into his thighs and back and stomach wall. He stood both MCXs in the racks provided between driver and passenger seats. The clock on the dash read 3:44 a.m.: two hours until dawn. Whoever had driven this last had left the shifter in 4X4 Low. He switched it to 2WD. Plunged the clutch to the floor, shifted into first gear. Paused for a few seconds as the temptation returned from earlier, the impulse to find the place where SERPs lay their heads, maybe run the truck through the side of the building where their beds all touched the wall.
Instead, he called up the map in his head, scanning it until he found the markings for a school and hospital close together, recalled the roads around them until he got himself oriented. He gave the truck some gas, let out the clutch, and U-turned toward the west.
If he couldn't quickly find the road to the gate near where Angie had dropped them, he would twist that drive-setting back to 4X4. And he'd drive along the wall until he found a way out. Flood barriers, armed guards? No bother. Elliot had a frankensteined armored truck and rifles of his own.
And he had someone he needed to find.
Part Four: Our Roles in Life
17
The Jericho-Pankhurst region was mainly open ground, farms and woods with few roads; Elliot's first turn out of Pankhurst put him on the direct road to the gate he wanted. He fully expected people to come running from one of the buildings, rounds to ping off the ballistic glass, a chase. Nothing. As he entered farmland outside of the hamlet, he checked his mirrors compulsively for headlights. No one came for him. Mile after mile of farm fences passed by on either side.
In a little under fifteen minutes, he was cranking on the handbrake after slipping the truck into neutral. Two weary gate sentries wearing no armor stood center road with a low oil-drum fire at their backs, blinking in his headlights. Thickly bearded and clad in beanies, duffel coats, sneakers and jeans, they didn't look like SERPs. One sported a hunting bow, the other cradled a small caliber rifle. Neither was expecting an attack from within: one had a smile forming, perhaps hoping for early relief from his post; the other scowled, no doubt expecting a message that meant more work for him.
Standing on the running board beside the driver's seat, weapon braced in the wedge between open door and chassis, Elliot delivered a message neither expected. And took six rounds to do it.
He collected the rifle, a .22. He checked the owner's pockets, but when the first thing he found was the key to the gate's padlocks, he resisted checking further for extra .22 rounds, more interested in getting that gate open and getting away from anyone he might have alerted.
More interested in finding Angie.
⁓
As dawn thought about breaking, Elliot eased the driver's door closed and slung one of the MCXs, locking the other rifles in the cab. The dirt side road he'd parked on was wet with the previous day's rains, forcing a careful pace through the gloom. There was no way he was using a flashlight when he didn't know who was around.
A rhythmic thumping sound off to his left. A small kangaroo in travel, no threat. Moments later, another following it. Crackling sticks to his right revealed an echidna, waddling around in its search for food. The only other sounds were the mocking laughter of distant kookaburras and closer, the upwards-inflected whip-whip call of a bird he didn't know.
He left the road, jumped a waist-high wire fence. Four hundred metres of thankfully sparse bushland later, the farrier's homestead came into sight as a blur of lighter color through the trees. The rising sun was hidden behind a panel of cloud, leaving the property corpse-pallid. He took cover by a towering gum at the wire fence separating property from forest. No lights in the house. It was fifty metres to the drying yard behind it, another thirty from the drying yard gate to the back door. If they had snipers ...
He hopped this fence, followed it along the property line. The light and the hour were in his favor, making for potentially sleepy hostiles, and a dark backdrop behind his dark clothes. Closer to the drying yard fence, the paddock was broken up by a children's playhouse and a large free-standing water tank; he left the fence line to use them as cover.
The tactical part of him murmured, They might have one man watching the rear but their attention would be on the road.
The impatient part of him said, This is pointless. Woodsy might have t
old them about this place, but they wouldn't have anyone waiting for Elliot. Jericho wouldn't have roving radio-equipped scouts routinely patrolling the roads who'd been alerted to arrive here ahead of him.
They might give chase to their stolen truck. But they wouldn't be here ahead of him.
And yet.
And yet.
Haste was usually a mistake.
As he'd proven several times already this week.
And Angie? As unlikely as it was for SERPs to be here, it was equally unlikely she would be. There was no point raising his hopes. If Woodsy hadn't sold her out, if she hadn't been captured or killed while Elliot languished in that underground lunch room with Jimmy, she'd have left for home.
We're not back by sunset, you go.
That was the arrangement. That was the plan.
He paused at the water tank. Five metres to the low brick wall at the border of the drying yard. No sound but birds. Until a dog barked, and then another, somewhere out in the forest behind him. Wild probably. Feral. He hoped. The SERPs weren't tracking him. He hoped.
He shifted forwards, then froze as a brown blur stirred and vanished around the corner of the house. The afterimage resolved itself in his brain seconds after the thing was gone. A wallaby. The animal's presence a good sign no one was indoors. Or at least not making noise in there.
He made the gate, a squeaky-looking square of rust as high as his knee. He stepped over it.
Close now. Damn close.
The Rover was not back here where they'd parked it the first night. Angie was gone. She had to be.
And if they had her, he'd...
He'd what? Collapse and weep? Put a bullet through his skull?
The deep well of his rage had been opened by Kyle's brutality, by two close calls with the undead in a few days, by what had happened to Jimmy, by being forced to put down that man on the grid, by the imminent threat to Settlers Downs.
And if they'd hurt Angie, that would be the clincher, the straw for the camel's back. If she was gone, not headed home, but really gone, another hole would open. It was threatening to already, a sinkhole off to the edges of his psyche and between him and what was left in his cold reservoir of rage, a gulf labeled why bother anymore?
No. He had to snap out of that shit.
Don't think; act.
And act, he did. Step by quiet step, closing on that back door. Fast and silent across the yard, ducking beneath drooping clothes line, almost slipping on a peg, then a weed, barrel sweeping windows upstairs and down. If they hadn't shot at him yet, they weren't going to: no way were these guys giving him another reprieve like they had by putting him in the "court". Not after he'd taken out four of them. Next time they crossed paths, they'd be gunning for him.
He made the door, found it unlocked—like they had left it open for him. A trap? He eased it open, slipped into the narrow laundry room. The next door was wide open, flat against the wall. He moved there fast and entered the kitchen off the living room, keeping left to the hallway wall where no window could backlight him, MCX sweeping the living area.
She was sitting on the sofa in front of the bay window with a blanket over her thighs, a shottie and Glock on top of that, and her hands raised.
He shifted aim away from her. No one else was there. The room was open, it was clear. No one holding her hostage.
"What ..." he started. He didn't know what words came next. He stumbled a couple of steps closer. She dropped her hands to her lap, moved the weapons to the floor and got to her feet, the blanket slipping onto her shoes. Her face was as drawn and pale as Woodsy's after his torture, her eyes puffy, the whites shot through with red. There were tremors running through her micro-expressions, aftershocks of a night of aloneness and terror. Her first step was a stumble, too, one shoe catching in the blanket. She kicked it aside, her expression twisting from blankness to anger as if that recalcitrant object were the cause of all her woes. He crossed to her, intending to comfort. But as her gaze came up, and he saw the want there, the need, and as he saw that her fear had been for him, and not for her, it was he whose knees buckled. And it was she who caught him.
⁓
Sometime in the past few minutes, she had sunk back onto the chair and he had come to his knees before her, his head turned into her breast. One of her hands held him beneath the shoulders while the other stroked his hair.
They couldn't stay this way. They shouldn't. There was work to do.
But Elliot couldn't break away. No tears came to him; he didn't believe he was capable of them. But his breath shuddered on the way in and out. His throat had a lump like an RPG stuck in it. No words came to his lips, and those in his mind were fragments of thought and intention and observation.
She smelled faintly of lemon-curd soap from her shower, days ago now. She smelled of sweat and fear. She smelled of life.
Eventually, she broke the tableau, pushing him gently away with hands on his ears, holding his head straight. "They're dead?"
"Jimmy. Maybe not Woodsy."
"Tell me."
He swallowed against that lump, forcing it down. "We need to move. I'll ... I'll tell you on the way."
She released him, sat back and pointed to the rifle at his side. At his vest and belt and the objects on them. "That's not yours."
"Is now."
"Tell me. I need to know."
He told her. In rapid, bullet-point fashion that took all of two minutes. He felt like crap, breezing over Jimmy's fate so fast, so matter-of-fact.
"We need to move," he repeated.
"Do you know what the mind does to you when you're alone? When you're wondering?"
He was pretty sure he did know, but he gestured for her to continue, giving her a moment to vent.
"I imagined you dead. You three dead. Then getting back home and everyone there being sick and dying. I'd really be on my own. Completely on my own for the first time since..."
Her voice caught and then she caught herself. She punched herself in the thigh. She straightened her back and cleared her throat. "And that's my pity party over and done with. Next item: you really think they've gone to The Downs? It's a long way, and there's sickness there."
"I think they need bodies, they need manpower. And Woodsy just handed them thirty-plus workers. They can find some way to quarantine our people while they treat them with their meds. But they're already on their way I was told. You didn't see trucks leaving this way?"
"No."
"They would have gone from the north anyway, not this side of their ... region ... whatever it is."
"City-state."
"Yeah. City-state. Jericho."
She bent for her weapons and he stood to make room for her. "What's the plan?"
He pointed out across the bushland beyond the house. "So far it's getting in the truck I left out there and driving like hell."
"And make up the rest as we need to?"
"Yep."
"I'll grab my pack from the Rover." She prodded his vest. "Got me one of these?"
"You can have mine. And I've got doubles of these weapons in the truck for you."
"Good boy."
"I hope you won't need any of it. But I think you will."
"If they've hurt any of our—any more of our people—I'll help you kill every one of them whether they're wearing armor or not." She made for the front door but he caught her by the belt.
She rounded on him. "What?"
"I really wanna kiss you right now."
"Well, don't just talk about it," she said.
Their mouths met in a crush of passion, their hands and fingers tangling in each other's clothing. Her lips were soft and firm at the same time. She pressed against him and he wished he'd taken off the vest. Heat—good heat—rushed up his back, his neck, his face. The lump in his throat melted away.
When they separated, he kept his hand twisted in her belt, pressed to the small of her back. He put his forehead to hers. "If we could stay like this. If we could have ... this ... Us ...
forever. Be normal."
"We're not normal, Elliot." She pulled back to catch his eyes. "We're nowhere near it. And for some bizarre reason, that works for me."
"Me, too," he said. "Me, too."
⁓
"Okay, so what do we do about this Kyle arsehole?" Angie asked as Elliot turned the truck back onto the main road.
An idea came to him, threads of thought converging, entwining: Kyle's potential convoy of armored trucks; one main road in and out of the area around The Downs; the Vike blockade at Birns River; Woodsy trashing both front tires of the Land Rover on that tree branch. What if they could rig a couple of bombs? IEDs had worked hellishly well in the Middle East. Well enough to stop a dozen vehicles he knew about from experience. Well enough to—
—to kill half the people in a market square including everyone else in his fire team.
Radler. Eames. McGovern.
Angie's hands wrapped around one of his. They were cool. They squeezed. He came back. Immediately. Not sweating. Not smelling copper or dust or smoke. Not hearing screams and sirens. Smelling the electric stink of the truck, Angie's sweat, and only faintly the odor of the deaders from beneath the killing floor.
"Where do you go?" she asked him. "You never talk about it. And I've never asked. But I want to know."
He squeezed her hands then let them go. Her callouses rasped across his as their fingers separated. "I'll do you a deal. We get through this, we get time for a heart-to-heart, I'll tell you." And, surprising him, he meant it. "All of it."
"Holding you to that."
"As you should." He took his foot off the gas momentarily while a wallaby bounded across his path. The BearCat's headlight missed it by inches.
"Lucky thing," she said. "Lucky and dumb. Why would it pick now to jump in front of a truck?"
"It's his world. We're the dumbasses, making it dangerous for everything else."
She waited a beat, then: "Yeah, we're the dumbasses who go out into the wilderness to find charms to give to psychologically damaged young girls so they'll be a little bit happier."
