Dead Kelly (The Afterblight Chronicles)

by C. B. Harvey

  “Dead Kelly,” called a woman’s voice. McGuire released his grip and the elderly woman collapsed to the floor. He turned to see Nancy and Wilcox approaching. Nancy was holding something that dripped a dark, continuous line along the intricate mosaic floor.

  “Got something for you,” Nancy called. There were gasps and shrieks from the parishioners as they realised precisely what this woman had brought into the House of the Lord. This was the new world; nothing—but nothing—was sacred anymore.

  Nancy lifted her prize up for McGuire to inspect it: Bobby Kendall’s head, his flaccid face frozen in a look of astonishment, neck cartilage and tissue hanging in ribbons from where it had been hacked off.

  “As you requested,” said Wilcox, stifling a snigger. “He ran for it, but didn’t get far—fat fucker.”

  “Most of his gang are dead,” said Nancy, chewing gum as she stared, fascinated by the decapitated head, watching as rivulets of blood trickled to the floor. “A few scarpered. The petrol dump is ours.”

  “You’ve done it, boss,” exclaimed Baxter in an intense, excited whisper. “That’s it. You’ve won. The Kendalls, Trex, Spider, Ritzo. Even fuckin’ Zircnosk. You beat ’em all.”

  “Not all of them. Not yet,” McGuire shook his head, his bloodshot eyes fixed on Reverend Sarah as she struggled to pull herself to her feet. “Now I know who betrayed me. She has to pay. She knows she has to pay. Isn’t that right, Reverend?”

  “You’re the Devil,” spat Reverend Sarah. She’d used the font to pull herself up; he noticed the puddle of overflowing water had reached the tip of his boot. “But your reckoning will come. God will deal with you, you fucker.”

  McGuire regarded her defiance with a pained smile, which abruptly vanished. “What did you do?” he said suddenly, fixing his gaze on her again. “What did you do to the baby?”

  “What do you think I did?” she said, perplexed. “I blessed him and I named him.”

  McGuire shifted his stance, slopping the puddle. “Why?”

  “You know why. He will be in the Lord’s hands if anything happens to him.”

  “She wouldn’t...” he hissed.

  “She plans to deny you everything,” responded Sarah calmly. “She knows how to do it.”

  “I want my revenge. I want my son.” Suddenly furious, he bellowed, “I want my fuckin’ legacy!”

  “We saw her,” said Wilcox unexpectedly. “Lindsay, right? Gunning down La Trobe.”

  McGuire rounded on him. “You fuckin’ saw her?”

  “On one of those quad-bike things. Ten, fifteen minutes back.”

  McGuire spun back to Baxter. “Grab the armour,” he said urgently. “Meet me by the bikes. No-one else, just you.”

  “But Boss,” protested Baxter, “we don’t know where she’s gone. Unless...”

  McGuire towered over Baxter, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Unless what?” he snarled.

  Baxter stared at McGuire, a familiar look of consternation on his thickset features. “Unless she’s taken him back. Y’know, to where it began.”

  HE RELAXED HIS hand on the throttle, clambering off the machine before the motor had stopped, and felt the sandy breeze on his face. The animal growl of the engine faded, and the roar of the wild ocean flowed into the void. He saw the quad-bike Lindsay had taken, a child’s seat and assorted abandoned toys visible in the rear of the vehicle. Despite the wind, their footprints—hers and the toddler’s—were easy to spot. He apparently wasn’t too far behind them. With a grimace, he pulled his ACR from its straps on the side of his bike and started down the narrow wooden walkway. He’d barely begun the descent to the beach when the sound of a second quad-bike approaching reached him, and he heard Baxter’s familiar, stumping footfalls crunching on the stony terrain. Baxter’s arrival sent a wallaby bouncing back into the trees.

  McGuire stepped onto the beach, onto that fine, familiar yellow sand. There was only one set of footprints now; she must have picked up the child when she heard the approach of his bike. He walked steadily, not changing pace at all. By now Baxter had caught up with him, and crunched alongside with the backpack, as if they were heading out for a fucking beach holiday.

  The squat man grinned. “Perhaps we should just leave her, boss. Forget it and move on.”

  “Fuck off,” muttered McGuire. “When we reach them you’ll need to take the kid. You’ve gotta keep him safe. That’s your job. You got it?”

  Baxter frowned. “Sure, boss. You really think she’ll harm him?”

  “You heard the Reverend,” he responded. “She plans to deny me everything. There’s only one way she can do that. You’ve got the armour?”

  Baxter patted the backpack. “Uh-huh. Sure thing, Boss.”

  Lindsay’s footprints drifted to the right before disappearing amidst an outcrop of rocks at the edge of the sea. Above them towered the sheer, jagged cliff face. As McGuire and Baxter rounded the corner, McGuire saw her desperately picking her way over the slippery rocks, the wriggling child clutched under one arm, Reverend Sarah’s shotgun in the other. Somewhere high above them, a kookaburra laughed.

  “Why?” called McGuire suddenly, almost despite himself. The echo of his voice threw his own desperation back at him, and he detested it.

  Lindsay turned in horror, stumbling to a halt on a stretch of sand. She hesitated, clearly unsure what to do. Sure, she could cross this section of beach, head for the next bluff, but she was a smart girl. She must know the situation was hopeless. McGuire would catch her without breaking a sweat. He just needed to get to her before she could harm the child.

  “I had to,” she shouted. She lowered the kid to the ground and backed onto the sand as McGuire and Baxter continued their approach, ushering Liam in front of her. She half-heartedly raised the shotgun, clearly unsure how to wield it. He’d never seen her lift a gun, not even in jest. “Life with you was fucking insanity, Kelly. I couldn’t carry on anymore. Not with a child.”

  McGuire lifted his hands up, palms outward, as he stepped off the rocks and onto the wet, compacted sand. “You could’ve left me without betraying me,” he said calmly.

  “Look at what you’re doing now,” she responded, struggling to keep the gun level. “You’d have come after us. Of course you would. I betrayed you to the cops because I figured they could protect me. I didn’t know they were going to leak it to the fucking media, to Danny Kline and all those bastards. I’m so sorry. If it wasn’t for the fucking Cull...”

  McGuire shook his head. “But you didn’t run this time. Not till now. Not till I found out.”

  She laughed weakly, shaking her head. “There was nowhere to run to. And besides...” Her voice trailed off, caught by the wind.

  The toddler had become fascinated with a rock pool. McGuire gestured to him. “Lindsay, let me have the child and you can go. I promise. Just don’t harm him.”

  Lindsay looked baffled. “Harm him? Why would I harm him?”

  McGuire sighed, turning to Baxter, dropping his assault rifle to the ground. “Give me the armour.”

  Baxter nodded in surprise. “Sure, boss,” he said, sinking to one knee. He began pulling the helmet and breastplate out of the backpack, passing them reverently to McGuire.

  McGuire held the two pieces of armour up, then resumed his steady, unflinching approach. “Don’t you see, Lindsay? This is my legacy.”

  “Stay back!” hissed Lindsay, steadying the gun.

  McGuire ignored her, continuing his relentless approach, “When I’m gone, someone has to wear them. My son. It’s... it’s destiny.”

  A shot rang out and McGuire instinctively shielded himself with the armour. He felt a jolt, enough to stop him walking. He looked down at the armour; unsurprisingly, the bullet had passed straight through the breastplate. With a pained grunt, he looked to his arm and saw where the bullet had grazed him. The smell of his own seared flesh reached him through the salt-tainted air.

  “I told you to stop,” cried Lindsay. “It’s old, that armour, a th
ing of the past—it can’t stop my bullets. How’s it gonna protect him?”

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s a symbol. He has to wear it,” insisted McGuire. “He’s my son.”

  The kid glanced up from his endeavours with the rock pool, his face lighting up as he lifted a quivering finger and pointed. “Daddy,” he said.

  McGuire looked at the green-eyed boy with the porcelain complexion and the auburn locks, at his button nose, at his squat, podgy frame. He looked at his chubby hand and realised the finger wasn’t pointing at him at all, but past him, to his squire. McGuire smirked, and shook his head, gesturing toward himself.

  “Daddy,” he corrected.

  “Daddy,” insisted the kid, frowning, pointing still at Baxter.

  McGuire began shaking his head, irritated, when he caught sight of the look on Lindsay’s face. Those pale, delicate cheeks were flushing, ever so slightly. McGuire’s mouth went suddenly dry, and he gaped at her. She turned her head to look out to sea.

  Kelly McGuire felt something cold and round nudge the back of his exposed neck. It was the nozzle of a submachine gun. “Sorry, Boss. Smart kid. Just like his daddy.”

  “No way,” breathed McGuire. His gut screamed.

  “Way,” confirmed Baxter.

  “You fucker.”

  “Quite literally,” Baxter said. “But thank you, mate. You did it all for us. Built us a fuckin’ empire, you might say.” He was calm, self-assured. “Killed everyone that needed killing, knocked off all the competition, enslaved the rest. Created an infrastructure. Invented systems, protocols, rituals. Only a man as obsessed with control as you—with certainty—could have done it. Thank you so very much.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Baxter cleared his throat. “Not really. All we needed was the last piece. We were just waiting on the Kendall gang. When I saw Bobby’s decapitated head I could’ve jumped for joy. Once he was accounted for, that was it. Time to bring you somewhere remote and wrap the charade up.”

  “I knew you’d follow me here,” said Lindsay absently, still staring out toward the Bass Strait. “And if you didn’t, Jonnie would have made sure you did. That’s why I didn’t run. I didn’t have to, this time. I had to bring you here.”

  “Jonnie?”

  “She means me, mate.”

  “You fuckers don’t have the balls for a putsch,” hissed McGuire. “Let alone the brains.”

  Baxter caressed the back of McGuire’s head with the cold barrel of the gun. “Fuck me, I wouldn’t talk about balls if I were you, McGuire. Besides, this is no putsch, mate. You never were in control of this to begin with. It was always me. I worked every fucking angle, took every fucking opportunity. I owned it.”

  “I’m telling you it’s bullshit.”

  Baxter gave a rumbling laugh. “Think about it. I was always in there, keeping tabs on things, manipulating things when I had to. Before the Cull and after it. Baxter the messenger? ‘Our man on the ground’? Now that’s bullshit, comrade.”

  “You’re not clever enough. Neither of you. It’s beyond you.”

  “You think? I’ll tell you what. I’m going to explain it to you now, because I want you to know just how comprehensively we fucked you over. Then we’ll see how clever you think we are.”

  “Tell me.”

  McGuire heard Baxter draw a deep breath. “Originally, back before the Cull rearranged the chess board, we just wanted to take over the gang—y’know, a sort of Bonnie and Clyde-style arrangement, only minus the bloody denouement. To do that we had to make sure you were either dead or in jail. Didn’t quite work out like that, as you know. You did a runner and then the fucking Biblical plague hit. Everything looked like it was fucked for a bit, but then lo and behold you came walkin’ out of the fuckin’ Bush like the answer to our prayers. We couldn’t fuckin’ believe our luck. So we hatched a bigger plan, one where we let you do all the work for us, and the prize is all the greater. Because the prize is, like, everything. Y’know. Control of everything. Still think we’re not clever?” He’d brought the gun around and was caressing McGuire’s face with its nozzle. “Not just an incy-wincy bit?”

  “It’s mine,” murmured McGuire. “I made this world. I fought for it.”

  Baxter leaned in to him. “Oh, does diddums think it’s unfair? You know your problem, McGuire? You’re not anything. You’re just a fucking void where a person ought to be. The media gave you a name, so you stole a dead man armour’s and thought that would make you a hero, a rebel, a proper villain or some shit. Then we let you think you had a son to continue your legacy. But the hilarious truth is there won’t be any legacy. Not for you. No immortality. Nada, zilch. Not even a graffiti daub of your blood and guts.” He kept the gun trained on him as he stepped backward, pulling the helmet from McGuire’s slack fingers, moving to join Lindsay. “That’s the point of telling you all this. I want you to understand that, when you’re dead, no-one will remember you even existed. ’Cause you, see, Kelly, I’m erasing you from history.” Baxter beamed triumphantly. “Now tell me. Do you capiche?”

  McGuire swallowed. “How long?” he said at length.

  “How long have we been fucking?” Baxter chuckled, then paused. “Let’s not worry about that. You can do the math, though, mate. I mean... well, the thing is. You couldn’t do it, could you now? Not with that crippled thing between your legs?”

  McGuire watched Lindsay flinch, her face still turned from him. He clenched his jaw, froze his expression, let it all wash over him.

  “They tried to fix it, didn’t they?” continued Baxter, his gimlet eyes searching McGuire’s face. “The surgeons, I mean. All the way through your childhood. And each time they made it worse. How horrible. How painful. How humiliating.”

  Baxter gestured with the gun towards McGuire’s crotch. “What must it have been like growing up with that? The torment. The teasing. The first time a girl ever saw you down there, felt down there. What must it have been like, eh?”

  McGuire blinked slowly, but still he did not speak.

  “Is that why you killed ’em, mate? Is that why you axed dear old Ma and Pa? Yeah, I did my research, mate. I’ve known about your little secret for longer than I care to remember. Long before the fuckin’ Cull.”

  A flurry of fractured images flashed in front of McGuire. His Papa desperately trying to protect his Mama. The axe in his hands. The hoarse screams, the spraying blood, the splintering cartilage. Staring at what he had done. The brain and bone and blood, some of it brightest crimson, some of it deepest scarlet. The red and the black. “They said it was beyond their control,” McGuire said simply, his voice little more than a whisper. “They said they tried to fix me, that they were sorry, but they couldn’t. But it wasn’t good enough. Nothing is beyond control. Nothing.”

  Baxter lowered his voice, “You did manage it once, though, didn’t you? To fuck, I mean. Just the once. Here on this beach. I watched you. That’s why we thought you’d be keen to return, to where it all began. The thing is... me and Lindsay were at it like jack rabbits. All the fuckin’ time, whenever your stupid back was turned. Take it from me, the golden stud was never, ever for you, mate.” Baxter lifted his head, inhaling the sea air appreciatively. “Which is more likely, do you think? That you’re the kid’s dad or that I am?”

  The three of them stood in front of him now, the happy, triumphant family. Or some shit like that. Lindsay watching the crashing sea, the toddler preoccupied by his rock pool. McGuire looked from the child to the man and back again. The shape of the face, the physique. The brow, furrowed in concentration. There was little doubt that Baxter was his father.

  McGuire watched as Baxter pulled the iron helmet over his own head. “The others won’t accept you,” he said evenly. “Wilcox, Nancy, Rudy. They won’t trust you.”

  “They’ll trust us,” riposted Baxter, his head covered. He tapped the iron mask with his free hand. “It’s a fuckin’ brand, mate. Think about it—no-one will be able to tell the fuckin’ difference.”


  “You fuckers,” growled McGuire. He flexed his hands impotently, felt the rough skin of his curving scar. “I’m Dead Kelly.”

  “Yeah, you always were,” conceded Baxter, his voice muffled. “Dead to the world. But you’ve been replaced. Now it’s my turn.”

  “You covered every angle,” said McGuire hollowly.

  “You got it, mate,” acknowledged Baxter, finger poised on the trigger, eyes just visible through the slit in the helmet, the painted, peeling skull leering at him. “Every angle.”

  The kookaburra’s staccato laughter reached McGuire suddenly on the breeze, and he looked up at the cliff-top. “Except that one.”

  A fleeting, streaking blur, a solid thud. Baxter pitched backward, the bolt emerging from the eye slit. Lindsay spun in horror, no idea where the shot had come from, her own gun useless in her hands. McGuire heard the kookaburra laugh again, melancholy above the roar of the ocean. The second bolt hit Lindsay in the side of her head, spinning her around, emerald eyes staring, auburn tresses floating, before she collapsed in a heap beside Baxter.

  Liam had started to cry. McGuire watched the boyish silhouette of Meg Kendall, crossbow raised, silent now, no longer the laughing kookaburra. He wondered whether she would kill him, or the child, or both of them.

  He watched intently as she gradually lowered her weapon. From her perspective, she’d executed Dead Kelly and his lover, and in doing so avenged her brother and her lover. Evidently that was enough. After a moment more her silhouette vanished.

  He stepped over Lindsay’s corpse and reached down to Baxter’s helmeted head. With a loud squelch, he extracted the bolt from the eye slot, then prised the helmet off Baxter’s bloodied head. He placed the helmet and other pieces of armour into the backpack, before stepping away to consider Lindsay and Baxter’s corpses.

  He tried to find within himself the appropriate emotional response, finally discovering it as he scooped the crying child up into his arms. It was satisfaction; of that he was certain.

  McGuire picked his way back along the beach, soothing the boy with promises. Eventually the child stopped reaching for his parents and began to smile, and then to nuzzle into his shoulder. Dead Kelly smiled too.