End Times Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Carrow, Shane

  I felt like every minute we were wasting time, time that could be better spent on the long walk I was now fairly certain we’d have to make anyway. “Let’s just bite the bullet,” I said. “We’re going to have to hike back.”

  “You give up too easily,” Matt said.

  “Well, what’s your genius plan?”

  He scratched at the bandages around his knee. “If we puncture the tank we can drain the fuel into the bucket. We just need the right tools.”

  “Well, that’s the problem.” The toolkits on the snowmobiles had contained a few spanners and a sparkplug remover, but nothing like a screwdriver, nothing sharp.

  “Go back and check the lodge, there must be something.”

  “I did! There’s nothing.”

  “What about an axe, or something?”

  “Matt. They cleared everything out of here when Trish and the kids came up to the ship. Why would they leave anything behind? Trust me, there’s nothing there.”

  “Well, we could try flipping it and pouring the petrol out into a bucket.”

  I snorted. “Maybe if we were in a garage or had a crane. How are we going to hold a half-tonne snowmobile above a bucket?”

  “Well, maybe if we can push it over to one of those hollows on the snow...”

  “Matt,” I said. “We’re wasting time. We need to get back to Jagungal. I’ll hike, you stay here. I’ll send help back.”

  “Fuck off,” Matt said. “I’m not staying here by myself.”

  “You’re injured.”

  He glared at me. “I’m fine. I’m not going to be able to keep up the pace you can, but I’m not staying here by myself. What if you just don’t come back, huh? What do I do then? We have no idea what’s happened back at the Endeavour. We’re not splitting up now.”

  I threw my hands up in the air. “Well, then, we’re going to have to wait another day, because there’s no way we’ll be able to make it back before sunset.”

  “So?”

  “So we’re not sleeping rough out in the mountains.”

  Matt laughed bitterly. “You would have done real well coming down from New England.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Matt. It drops down to zero at night up here.”

  “You’re such a pussy. It won’t be fun, but we won’t die, and I’m not waiting around here all day.”

  “You’re being a dickhead!”

  We argued for a while more. As much as I disagreed, I was disappointed that we were fighting again. Just because our last fight had been interrupted by a crisis didn’t mean it was over. Although it was, at least, less hostile – we were arguing over a decision point in our shared strategy, now. The fear of what had happened at Jagungal was weighing as heavily on Matt as it was on me, even if he said he wanted nothing to do with the place anymore.

  The argument eventually ended with Matt determined to walk back there, and setting off across the valley with a determined limp. I watched him go quietly, intending to easily catch up to him in a few minutes as a petty way of showing how much better equipped I was than him to make the journey back.

  Matt was halfway to the ridge when a mounted rider appeared at the top of it – then another, then another, then two more. The five of them stood silhouetted against the rising sun, looking down at us.

  I pulled my rifle from my back, slowly, then realised that these were riders from Jagungal. I relaxed, feeling relieved – and then realised my mistake, and raised my rifle again.

  Matt had his rifle sights against his eye was well. The morning sun was to their backs, and I couldn’t make out their faces. Would it have mattered if I could? Matt was shouting something to them, but I was upwind of him and couldn’t quite make it out. None of them had reached for their weapons. I started carefully stepping to the left, trying to increase the span between myself and my brother, but I could see the rifles on their backs and knew that if they opened fire on us we wouldn’t have a chance.

  One of the riders carefully made his way down the slope, towards Matt, and they spoke for a moment. Matt turned and signalled to me, calling me over. I lowered my rifle and started walking towards him, but I didn’t sling it over my back, and I kept my finger on the trigger guard. It was only when I drew nearer and recognised the man that I relaxed. Bill Duncan, a former stockhand mate of Andy’s, and one of the initial wave of Jagungal migrants who’d come up from Barton Dam. I could trust him – I thought. Of course, I’d thought I could trust Dermot as well.

  “So what the fuck happened?” I asked, as soon as I was within earshot.

  “Internal attack,” Bill said. “Don’t know who or why. Tobias ordered me to bring you back ASAP.”

  “How’d you find us?” I asked.

  “Followed the tracks,” he said. “Did he get away, or did you kill him?”

  “Killed him,” Matt said. “He tried to ambush us in the lodge.”

  “You made it pretty easy for him,” I muttered.

  “Who was it?” Bill asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Didn’t recognise him. The body’s over there by the treeline, but I smashed the face in so it didn’t reanimate. You won’t be able to recognise him either.”

  “We’ll have to bring him back anyway,” Bill said, nodding to one of the riders, who trotted off in that direction. “The captain will want him ID’d.”

  “Bill,” I asked, wracked with anxiety. “Did they get the nuke?”

  Bill exhaled. “Yeah. They did. Off and away in the Black Hawk.”

  Matt swore and kicked the snow with his good leg. I felt a wave of anguish in my stomach. “What about the PAL codebook?”

  “No idea. Listen, it’s chaos back there. They’re all dead or fled, a few captured, but we have no idea who the fuck they are. Tobias wants you back, now. Saddle up.”

  The rest of the riders had picked their way down the ridge at that stage, one of them trying to radio Jagungal with a status report. Matt climbed up behind Bill, and I took the saddle behind a guy I knew by face but not by name. A moment later, the rider who’d been sent to retrieve the body returned with it strapped over the back of the horse, flopping with the motion like a dead fish.

  Then it was hard riding – forcing the animals up the ridge, cantering down the other side, a painful and uncomfortable gait. I hate being on a horse, but I guess I better get used to it. A couple of years from now they might be all we have left. Even if we manage to wipe out the machine base in Ballarat, I don’t see the Holden production lines starting back up anytime soon.

  What had taken us less than an hour on the snowmobiles took three hours on horseback. We passed the mass graves of the southern valley first, where people were hauling and burning corpses. Some of the dead faces were people I recognised.

  As we topped the hills over to the Endeavour’s valley – the same ridge Matt and I had crested so many, many months ago – I was expecting to see some terrible scenes of devastation, smoking wrack and ruin. But it looked pretty much the same, apart from a few things. Most of the corpses seemed to have been dragged south already. The Black Hawk was gone. A few of the vehicles were, as well. Some of the muddy, churned-up snow that develops in any well-trafficked place was tinged with blood. But that was all.

  Aaron, the Endeavour said, relieved. Matt. I’m glad you’re all right.

  What the hell happened? I asked, as the riders took us down towards the camp. We were heading not towards the Endeavour itself, but towards the radio tent – towards Captain Tobias, presumably.

  An internal attack, the Endeavour said. I could have detected an external attack from kilometres away, but these people were among us. Sleeper agents. As far as we can tell they were loosely confederated around Ira Cole. They were all men, all refugees – supposed refugees – from Canberra. About fifty of them.

  Ira Cole. He’d been here for months – one of the first survivors who’d trickled in, after Captain Sanders’ team had arrived. Only a few days ago he’d given me a lift down from the chopper site to the Endeavou
r, when I was weak from giving blood after we picked Matt up. That fucking bastard.

  Fifty traitors. Out of a thousand. 5% of the camp.

  They got the nuke, I said.

  Yes. And the codebook.

  And we don’t know where they went.

  Not yet, the Endeavour said. We took one prisoner. Damien Forster.

  It wasn’t a familiar name. How could this have happened? Matt demanded. How could you not have known what they were planning?

  I don’t read minds.

  You can so! Matt snapped.

  I didn’t say I can’t read minds; I said I don’t read minds.

  You’ve got to be kidding me, Matt said.

  But I could see the Endeavour’s point. I’d never been entirely comfortable with it knowing everything I’d ever done; and I certainly didn’t want Jagungal to be a place where anyone who came for refuge and safety had to sacrifice their most private memories to an alien spaceship... although, if they had, quite a few people would still be alive and we’d still have the nuke.

  A little late for that now, anyway.

  We’d arrived at the radio tent. I dismounted, thanked the rider for his help, and he gave a curt nod before wheeling away, off to join the patrols looking for other survivors who’d fled out of the valley during the attack. Matt dismounted behind me, and the two of us entered the comms tent.

  The array of radio equipment was on a bench down the middle. A pair of corporals with headphones on were twiddling with dials or repeating coded messages. Sergeant McNeil was speaking to someone, quite animatedly, on a satellite phone. Tobias was sitting in a folding camp chair behind the radio operators, bleary and exhausted. He had a hollow look in his eyes, like a mediaeval king after a defeat in battle. He perked up a little as we came in, at least. “Thank Christ you’re alive,” he said, with a touch of anger. “What the hell were you thinking, taking off like that?”

  “One of them took off on a snowmobile,” Matt said, limping in and taking a seat beside him. “Made it all the way to Trish’s lodge. We chased after him.”

  Tobias pinched the bridge of his nose. “Next time a thing like this happens? Stay fucking put. Sit in your cabin in the Endeavour with a gun pointed at the doorway. Please?”

  “So we’re planning on having another one of these ‘things’, are we?” I asked. “What was this? What happened? Who were they?”

  “We don’t know,” Tobias said. “But they were well-organised and they knew exactly what they were looking for. Some of them were fucking guards on the tent we had the nuke in. And they just... it was like clockwork. They knew the Endeavour wasn’t reading their minds, but they also knew it could see and hear everything they said and did – in the valley, anyway. They had it timed. All at the right moment, they went for their weapons, they killed the guards who weren’t their people, they took the nuke and stole the chopper.” He was grinding his teeth and staring off into space. “And they sabotaged most of the vehicles they left behind. Killed some of the horses...” He turned to look directly at us. “And they came for you. While the others were taking the nuke, five of them came right into the ship.”

  “They wanted to kill us?” Matt said.

  “No. They wanted to capture you. They had tasers and cable ties. And they came straight for the ship. Why else would they go there?” He sighed. “Thank God you left so fast. You must have just missed them. They found Jonas and Simon and Andy instead.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Are they...”

  “They’re OK,” he said. “Hurt, but alive. They were just coming out of the armoury when they got there. They got one of them alive. Damien Forster. I’m heading down to interrogate him soon.” He glanced up at the radios. “I’ll tell you now, though – this could be worse than we thought. We’ve got nothing but radio silence from Christmas Island.”

  More wonderful news. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Tobias said. I imagine he was thinking the same wild worst-case scenarios I was – simultaneous uprisings in every government outpost, loyalists murdered, the government of Australia overthrown. My feelings towards the MPs sitting on Christmas Island, giving orders from afar while ordinary Australians suffered, weren’t 100% rosy – but neither did I want them murdered in the middle of the night like some of our people had been, replaced by God only knew what.

  “Do you think this is... New England?” Matt asked, uneasily, still haunted by those ghosts.

  Tobias shook his head. “New England’s gone. Draeger’s lieutenants are more interested in carving out their own little strongholds than coming south.”

  “One of the other rogues?” I asked.

  Tobias frowned. “I doubt it. If it was just radio silence on Christmas Island, maybe – but they just don’t have the resources to attack us this far south, especially in a covert way like last night. Put them together, and Jagungal and RAAF Base Wagga are the biggest military force in New South Wales and Victoria, now that New England’s collapsed.”

  “Cole and his guys – his first few guys, I mean – showed up a couple of weeks after we got here,” I said. “After the first army reinforcements. They were the first civilian refugees we had.”

  “Fucking hell,” Matt said. “How long...”

  Tobias didn’t say anything. He ran a hand through his hair, and stood up. “We can sit here and speculate all we want, it’s not going to solve anything. Let’s go talk to Forster.” He clapped a hand on the sergeant’s shoulder as we walked out. “You send a runner down to the Endeavour the second you hear anything.”

  We made the long walk down through the camp. It was almost deserted – there was a lot of work to be done today, I guess. Not to mention the dead, or Cole’s contingent, who had fled. At least everyone I saw looked healthy, if shaken – I’d been expecting injuries and bandages and bloodstains galore.

  I found out why when we got to the Endeavour. The place was a madhouse, the medical bay overflowing with the injured. They were all the way out into the corridor, some on blankets, others lying on the floor of cold, blue Telepath metal. Medics and soldiers and civilian volunteers were rushing around with IV drips and gauze and syringes. The worst part was the screaming – people crying out in agony, long, inhuman wails. I felt a sudden hot fury for Ira Cole and his accomplices. How could they have done this? Lived among us for so long – friends and neighbours – and then turned around so violently, and done this? Why?

  It was then, as Tobias was hustling us through the crowds, trying to get us aft, that I saw Andy. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, Akubra shading his face, huge stains of blood covering his chest. “Oh, Jesus,” I whispered, because as he raised his face I knew exactly what I was going to see.

  “You think this is bad?” he said, one eye staring back at me, the other a bloody, ragged mess. “You should see the other guy.” And then he laughed hysterically, high on morphine.

  I grabbed a passing medic. “Put some fucking gauze over his eye,” I barked at him. “Jesus!”

  He hesitated. “I’m needed...”

  “It will take you ten seconds,” I said. “Do it.” I waited until he was crouching down by Andy, who was still laughing weakly, and then I followed Tobias and Matt down the corridor. My words, in this ship, carry weight. Maybe someone else needed gauze more urgently, but I didn’t care about triage. Andy was my friend. Who the fuck had just shot him up with painkillers and left him there? I wouldn’t be very good at being a doctor, I don’t think. Constantly mopping up other people’s violence. Renouncing my own thoughts of violence. All of these images, Andy and Ira and Dermot, were swirling around in my head as Tobias led us into the cabin where we were keeping Damien Forster.

  He was handcuffed to a chair, the only piece of furniture in the room. Half a dozen other people were gathered around. I ignored them, strode up to Damien, gripped his hair and brought my fist into his face.

  Nobody moved to stop me, least of all Damien himself. He was bruised and bleeding; I probably wasn�
��t the first one to take out my frustration on him. I felt one of his teeth come loose, but apart from that it was like punching a slab of meat hanging from a butcher’s hook. He was a big guy. I punched him a few more times, and still nobody stopped me. So I stopped myself. It hadn’t made me feel any better. Made me feel worse, actually, and vaguely ashamed.

  I let go of his hair and went and put my hand against the wall, facing away from everyone, breathing heavily. There had been a lot of injured people in the hallway, and I thought quite a few of them had been at the edges of camp burning bodies. But it wasn’t enough to account for how quiet the camp had been.

  “How many did they kill?” I asked.

  “More than a hundred,” someone behind me said. It was Captain Sanders. “We’re expecting that number to rise. They took us completely by surprise.”

  “It was murder,” Jonas said, as I turned around. He had a bandage around his right arm, gashes across his face, cotton buds on his left elbow where he’d been giving blood. “Cold-blooded murder.”

  “Has he said anything?” Tobias asked.

  Sanders shook his head. “Not a word.”

  Tobias sighed. “OK. Here’s how it’s going to be. Endeavour, I know your opinions on reading people’s minds. I know that you consider it a last resort. I know that you consider it equal to rape.”

  The Endeavour said nothing, but we all knew it was listening.

  “This man came here pretending to be a friend,” Tobias continued. “He accepted our protection, and worked hard to earn it. He went on patrol. He went on scavenging runs to Jindabyne. He cooked and hunted and collected firewood. Not three days ago, after the last snowfall, he made a snowman with some of the kids. He was a friend and a comrade. He was a man we trusted.

  “He betrayed that trust last night, when he murdered people in cold blood. He and his friends took up arms, in the middle of the night, and gunned down anybody who stood in their way. He and some others came here – came to you, Endeavour – with the intention of abducting Aaron and Matt, to take them God knows where and do God knows what to them. One of his friends took out Andy’s eye. If Andy and Jonas and Simon hadn’t been alert, hadn’t heard the gunfire and realised what was going on, then I have no doubt that this man here, and his colleagues, would have happily murdered them in cold blood while they slept.