Dead Kelly (The Afterblight Chronicles)

by C. B. Harvey

  “Hit it again,” growled McGuire.

  Another shot shrieked across the street and into the compound. Again, there was no explosion, just yells of consternation. A staccato blast of machine gun fire emerged from the compound toward the building, then another, then another, all from different sources. They’d worked out where Mikey was.

  “I hit it!” burbled Mikey’s voice over the walkie-talkie, his mounting desperation tangible. “There’s nothing in those fuckin’ canisters!”

  A calamitous bang sounded, and a shell arced across the street from the compound, smashing into Mikey’s building. For a heartbeat there was nothing except the gaping hole, before the shell erupted outward and upward, the air suddenly full of spinning debris, tumultuous smoke and furious fire. When the smoke dissipated, it became clear that a huge lower section of the building had been decimated. The building teetered, the few remaining walls struggling to support upper floors. There was no way Mikey would have survived the onslaught.

  “They’re using the tank!” came Cho Hee’s urgent cry. “What shall we do, over?”

  McGuire grimaced. “Just follow my fuckin’ lead!” he roared at the walkie-talkie. By now he was directly parallel with the compound. Bullets started to ricochet off the driver’s cab, sparks glancing off McGuire’s helmet. With a snarl he wrenched at the bulldozer’s steering wheel, turning the machine hard right, its engine bellowing in protest. The tracks came down with a crash just as the bulldozer ripped through the reinforced fencing around the compound, careening through the barrier of old cars, rubble and steel poles.

  The bulldozer hurtled forwards, bullets sparking off its raised scoop. The tank that had destroyed the building opposite was swinging its still smoking gun in McGuire’s direction. McGuire leapt from the driver’s cab, firing as he went, the bulldozer rumbling inexorably onward. The tank let rip, the whizzing shell smashing into the bulldozer’s scoop, exploding on contact and sending fiery metal cascading down on the compound.

  The predicted chaos had arrived even without the canisters. By now Trex’s people were engaged in a firefight with the guards. Bennett’s soldiers ran to and fro, chaotic and undisciplined, hitting targets seemingly by chance. Grenades blossomed, atomising glass, metal and people. McGuire saw Nancy creating gleeful havoc with her meat cleaver, machine gun clutched in her other hand, and the old bloke Rudy barbecuing all and sundry with his Heath Robinson flamethrower. As he watched, Wilcox charged the tank that had hit Mikey’s building, shooting and scything his way through the cordon surrounding it and clambering up its front like a berserk animal. He was watching Wilcox drag the tank crew out through the hatch, when his attention was abruptly dragged elsewhere.

  A familiar figure had emerged through the melee, clutching an Uzi and heading straight for McGuire.

  “What the fuck do you want from me?” Bennett shrieked.

  “I want your people,” said McGuire matter-of-factly. “Tell them to surrender.”

  “You fucker!” screamed Bennett, coming to a halt a few metres distant. His face was a mess, poorly stitched together after his encounter with McGuire’s rifle butt. The stitches looked like they might split open each time he shouted.

  McGuire strode towards the boy, smirking beneath the helmet. “You’re a fucking joke. Captain, my arse.”

  “Keep back!” Bennett raised his gun. “Keep back or I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”

  “Who are you really, Bennett?” demanded McGuire. “Tell me who you are.” As McGuire reached the boy-captain, he lunged for him and wrested the submachine gun out of his grasp. As McGuire pulled the weapon free, Bennett slipped to his knees, blubbing.

  “I’m no-one,” he was muttering. “No-one.”

  “Bit of a disappointment, were you, Bennett? After Mummy and Daddy lavished so much money on your education? What were you meant to be?”

  “Daddy ran a merchant bank,” mumbled the captain. “He said I wasn’t up to working there, but that maybe he could get me a commission. Please don’t kill me.”

  “You’re a fucking joke and so is your phony fucking army,” said McGuire, bearing over Bennett’s pathetic figure. He crouched down and hissed, “Listen to me. You could do one thing to give yourself a trace—the merest hint—of dignity. There’s an outside chance your rabble could be of use to me.”

  “Anything...” A trail of snot dangled from his nose, and he smeared it across his uniform sleeve.

  “Surrender.”

  Bennett was wide-eyed. “Surrender? I can’t tell them to surrender. We’re the military. We’re the last bastion of civilisation, the...”

  McGuire motioned with a gloved hand toward the Abrams, and Wilcox glaring out from the turret. He’d apparently single-handedly taken control of the machine. The bodies of the crew lay beside the tracks, their scarlet innards sparkling in the bright sunshine.

  “We have one of your tanks,” said McGuire flatly. “If your people continue to resist, we’ll blow the fuckers to fucking Paradise and back. They need to surrender.” He jabbed a finger at Bennett. “You need to convince ’em.”

  “Okay, okay,” muttered Bennett as McGuire hauled him unceremoniously to his feet. “The tannoy, I have to get to the tannoy...”

  “Run along, then!” said McGuire, kicking the kid up the arse. Bennett stumbled, arms and legs flailing, for the wooden cabin. McGuire could hear him babbling to his soldiers: “Ceasefire! Ceasefire!”

  McGuire turned and strode back toward Wilcox’s tank.

  “Reckon you can work this beast?” he bellowed.

  “Fire it, you mean?” responded Wilcox, wild-eyed. “Fuck, yeah. I’ll work it out.”

  McGuire pointed. “Take out that wooden hut over there. Quick as you fuckin’ like.”

  Wilcox disappeared inside the tank and McGuire found himself having to duck as the turret whipped around to point at the cabin. McGuire could hear some tinny little PA system whining into action, Bennett’s desperate voice pleading with his troops to stand down. It was short-lived. McGuire jumped aside as the gun barrel roared into life. Even with the helmet covering his ears, the roar was terrific. The hut exploded into a burning cloud of wooden fragments, human tissue and bone. Although probably not backbone, McGuire wryly reflected.

  And with that, the defence folded. However incompetent Bennett might have been, he’d been their commanding officer; and one of the two Abrams was in enemy hands to boot. Wherever he looked, beyond the dead and the dying, beyond the debris and bits of bodies, McGuire could see hands raised in surrender. The twelve of them had taken the compound, with only one casualty: the boy sniper Mikey. It had been a rout.

  Cho Hee bounded up to him. She was bloodied but otherwise unhurt, her hair matted around her oily face. McGuire had removed his helmet, and now ran a gloved hand through his own greasy hair.

  “McGuire!” she called breathlessly, grinning and waving her machine gun triumphantly. “We beat ’em!”

  “Huh?” McGuire grunted, his attention elsewhere. He was estimating the number of prisoners, helmet dangling from his hand.

  “McGuire!” she yelled again, more insistently this time.

  “What the fuck is it?” growled McGuire, turning to look.

  “This.” She’d levelled her machine gun at his chest. He laughed involuntarily. His one-hundred-and-thirty-year-old iron breastplate wasn’t liable to provide much defence against a modern machine gun, destiny or no destiny.

  McGuire snorted. “What a fuckin’ surprise.”

  “Our Lord doesn’t trust you,” she said, sadly. He couldn’t tell whether she was genuinely remorseful or not.

  “You don’t say,” nodded McGuire. He deliberately turned his back on her, continuing to gauge the strength of Bennett’s defeated force.

  “He thinks you might try and displace Him,” she explained. “I’m sorry—you saved us, before. That was a holy thing to do. But the Lord’s will be done.”

  “One thing,” McGuire said suddenly, turning back toward her, a thin smile playin
g on his lips.

  “Anything,” Cho Hee replied, her expression earnest. She looked like she might cry, for fuck’s sake.

  “This,” said a voice behind her. A sudden crack sounded; Cho Hee’s eyes widened in shock as she reached a free hand up to her forehead, where she found a trickle of blood. McGuire watched as her hand reached the meat cleaver embedded in the middle of her skull, gingerly testing the edge of the blade. She fixed a reproachful gaze on McGuire and pitched forward.

  “Fuckin’ nutter,” muttered Nancy. She placed a boot on the back of the woman’s head and heaved at her weapon, now firmly wedged in the skull.

  “What the fuck?” Wilcox was out of the tank and running toward them, slowing as he approached. Some of Trex’s other people turned to look, disbelieving. Some couldn’t decide whether to train their weapons on McGuire and Nancy or to continue marshalling the prisoners. Rudy approached, flamethrower still smoking. He was muttering to himself in Polish, laughing and shaking his head.

  McGuire addressed them, “Think about it. We took this place with twelve people. We captured an army with twelve people. We suffered one fatality.”

  “Fuckin’ yeah,” acknowledged Nancy.

  “Trex is in charge,” snarled Wilcox. He was a big man, bigger than McGuire even, and bore down on him. “We work for him.”

  “Consider yourself headhunted, mate,” smiled McGuire. He nodded at Rudy. “You too, twisted firestarter. Fuckin’-A.”

  Rudy beamed appreciatively.

  “We work for Trex,” insisted Wilcox. “Why’d you go and whack one of his fuckin’ acolytes?”

  “Trex tried to get Cho Hee to nail McGuire,” said Nancy angrily, finally extracting her meat cleaver from the young woman’s skull with a jarring, scraping noise and a loud, sucking squelch. “He’s not to be trusted.” Wilcox regarded her with suspicion.

  “Nancy’s right,” said McGuire. “I want a new fuckin’ world, not a replay of the cosy old one. Join in or fuck off.”

  Trex’s people looked at one another, uncertain. Cho Hee had been the only true believer on the mission; the others were all gang members from Back in the Day. Their decision would rest on who they respected more: McGuire or Trex.

  “Okay,” nodded a woman with an eye-patch. “I’m in.”

  “Me too,” piped another.

  “Yeah, fuck it,” said someone else.

  “Tak, ja też,” said Rudy with an absent smile, blowing a curl of smoke from the nozzle of his flamethrower.

  Others hesitated, then one by one threw their lots in. Only Wilcox held back, his eyes playing on the figure of Nancy as she lovingly wiped the blood and brain tissue from her blade with a rag. Without looking up, she said, “There was nothing in those canisters, Wilcox. Trex set us up. Mikey died for nothing.”

  Wilcox stared at her for a moment. “Okay,” he said eventually. “Count me in.”

  “I know Trex,” said Rudy thoughtfully. “He will not go without a fight.”

  McGuire nodded. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “NICE ONE,” CALLED Trex. “You done got me a tank!” He stood at an awkward angle, leaning heavily on his cane. Ranged behind him was the motley rabble of his army. To one side, the massed ranks of gang members, clad in variations on a familiar uniform: beards, shaven heads or long hair, ripped denim, bandanas, motorcycle boots and tattoos, automatic rifles, shotguns and knives. On the other side, the civilians of Trex’s cult, all with the same glazed expression as the late Cho Hee, also brandishing a miscellany of weapons. McGuire even spotted the aged Reverend Sarah, shotgun propped languorously against her shoulder, a faint smile playing on her lips. Against a sea of incongruity she still managed to stand out. Behind them all rose the cathedral, its sandstone spire reaching for some other, better realm.

  “And an army,” added McGuire, striding toward Trex, exuding bonhomie, his iron helmet clasped under one arm like a returning general. “A shit army, but an army nevertheless.”

  Behind McGuire, Trex’s former accomplices—the nine who had raided the compound and now switched allegiance to McGuire—shepherded rows of battered, bloodied soldiers, guns at their backs. The uniformed men and women trudged into the compound, their hands above their heads, some looking defiant but most defeated, perhaps even relieved. There were about forty in total. A dull rumble accompanied their desultory approach: one of the liberated Abrams, Wilcox’s head visible in the turret. McGuire led his squad to a standstill some twenty metres from Trex’s ranks, the tank coming to a peremptory halt shortly after. Wilcox signalled for one of his comrades to cut the Abrams’ engine and a pregnant silence descended, broken eventually by the distant laughing of a kookaburra.

  “Trouble is,” mused Trex, hobbling toward him, braces shrieking with each step. “This looks a little bit, uh, confrontational.” As he approached, McGuire saw Trex’s familiar hand scythe dangling from his belt. “Not planning something disloyal, are you, mate?”

  McGuire stared him down. “I told you, Trex,” he deadpanned. “I’m all about the revenge. Plain and simple.”

  “Fuck me. How many more times?” returned Trex, seemingly genuinely exasperated, but also undoubtedly playing to the crowd. “I didn’t betray you.”

  “Maybe you didn’t,” ruminated McGuire. “But let’s be honest, eh? You used me to neutralise the military compound. And my reward? One of my ‘team,’ brought along at your insistence, turned out to be a swivel-eyed assassin intent on blowing my head off. Not to mention those canisters containing precisely fuck-all. Thanks a fuckin’ bunch, mate.”

  Trex waved his hand dismissively, “Yeah, well. The canisters were a genuine mistake, mate. Empty, were they? Well, there you go. As for Cho Hee—well, maybe she got a bit overzealous and misinterpreted my instructions.”

  “Like fuck she did,” McGuire sniffed. “Anyway, she got a meat cleaver in the brain for her trouble. I think she finally achieved enlightenment, mate, let me tell you. Nice bit of, uh, trepanning, I think they call it. Perhaps you should try it too.”

  Trex laughed, gesturing behind him to his acolytes. “Easy come, easy go, mate. There’s plenty more where she came from.”

  McGuire nodded. “Whatever. Let’s cut to the chase. I want your unconditional surrender. It’s over, Trex. I fuckin’ won. Lay down your weapons, walk away from here and we’ll say no more about it. You’ll have a fine fuckin’ time out in the Bush, trust me.” He flashed Trex a wide grin. “I know I did.”

  “And what’re you gonna do if we don’t play ball, fuckwit? Blow us up?” Trex laughed for the ranks, but nobody particularly joined him, even the perpetually sycophantic acolytes. Every set of eyes was transfixed by the tank.

  McGuire exhaled theatrically. “Yep, that is pretty much the idea.”

  Trex called out to Wilcox. “Don’t listen to this fuckwit, mate. He’s off his fuckin’ rocker.”

  McGuire shook his head. “He’s not interested, Trex. That kid Mikey paid the price for your little game. They’ve all had enough. Back in the Day, we were the rebels, don’t you remember? We fought against the shit, we didn’t fuckin’ give into it, let alone try and fuckin’ duplicate it, or whatever it is you think you’re up to.”

  Trex snorted, then projected his voice to the masses. “How the fuck would you be any fuckin’ different, tell me that? You’re full of shit, mate.”

  McGuire looked around him, at the crowd in front of him, the mob at his back. “People don’t want churches and schools,” he said. “They’re no fuckin’ use any more. They want order, they want control, they want certainty. That’s what I’ll give ’em.”

  “‘Certainty’?” echoed Trex. “Do you wanna know how I was certain you were up to something?” There was a look of manic glee on his face.

  McGuire’s grin became fixed. “Tell me, fucker.”

  Trex gestured to his people. “Bring ’em out. All of ’em.” A ripple went through the group behind him and Lindsay emerged, stumbling, held tight by tw
o of Trex’s minions, still dressed in her torn, dirty shift.

  “You cunt,” breathed McGuire.

  She was brought forward, blinking confusedly in the sunlight and struggling to walk. A further ripple spread across the crowd as the bedraggled doctor emerged, the baby in her arms. Behind them came Baxter, head bowed, hands secured with twine, his squashed face a mass of congealing lacerations and pulsating bruises.

  “They were caught heading for the docks,” announced Trex cheerfully. “Fortunately, you’d put Professor Baxter here in charge.” Some snickering from Trex’s troops as Baxter bowed his head still further. A gobbet of spit flew out of the crowd in a high arc and hit Baxter squarely in the side of the head. It dribbled down his pockmarked, bleeding face. Trex’s people seemed more confident, now, despite the tank. McGuire would have to be careful; the situation was becoming unpredictable.

  “I thought to myself,” continued Trex, “why the fuck is a sickly woman and her tot being moved? And then it occurred to me that my dear old mucker Kelly McGuire must have plans, and that said plans must involve fucking with me and my people. Hence moving his nearest and dearest to a place of safety, lest I decided to turn them into hostages, or perhaps get a little ruthless with ’em.” His bloodshot eyes met McGuire’s. “Am I warm?”

  McGuire’s eyes narrowed. “Wilcox’s just waiting for my word, man. If I give the signal, he’ll destroy the whole motherfuckin’ lot of you.”

  Trex pulled Lindsay to her, one arm still resting on his cane as the other clutched her fast to him, his massive bicep wrapped around her head. Sunlight caught off the hand scythe hanging from his belt, briefly dazzling McGuire. “I’ll tell you what. I think the blade is faster than the tank. What d’you think? Shall we see?”

  McGuire’s gaze switched to the men and women standing behind Trex. He spoke loudly, rapidly: “You’d sacrifice all of your followers, all of your men and women, just to slice a woman and her baby? Some fuckin’ God you are.”

  Trex smiled a lopsided grin. “How does it go? Suffer the innocents or something?” Suddenly he let Lindsay go, and she collapsed to the ground, moaning.