Forager - the Complete Trilogy (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Trilogy)

by Peter R Stone

  "You don't know that, Elder Sister – at least give him the choice," I said hopefully.

  "Oh don’t be stupid!" she tilted her head to the side.

  "This is not your choice, Elder Daughter, I will discuss the matter with him, and that's final," my father said.

  Ruth didn't respond this time, but her eyes were desperate, pleading.

  "Hey, who is the suitor – do we know him?" I asked suddenly.

  "He's your stupid boss, Trajan Barclay," she said.

  Recalling what my boss told me when he came over to fix my flat, an idiotic grin stretched across my face.

  "What are you smiling about?" my sister spat.

  "You can stop stressing about his marriage proposal and that you're barren – he already knows," I said.

  Elder Sister took a menacing step towards me. "What? How – did you tell him?"

  "No, you did."

  "Me – when?" she snapped, looking bewildered.

  "Yeah, you kinda shouted it out in front of everyone when they came over to fix our flat," Nanako pointed out kindly.

  Elder Sister's hands flew to her face. "Then why does he want to marry me?"

  "For starters, he told me that he thinks you’re beautiful. Also, as his wife passed away two years ago, he wants a wife and a mother for his two kids."

  A stunned silence filled the house. All the fight went out of my sister and she rushed off to the kitchen with tears in her eyes.

  "So does this mean she's getting married?" Younger Sister asked excitedly.

  "I expect so," I replied, glancing at father.

  "If what Ethan says is true, then Elder Sister will marry Mr. Barclay, and," my father paused and looked pointedly at me and Nanako. "She'll be marrying one of our own."

  With that barb, my hackles went up. I took Nanako's left hand in my right and gave it a squeeze to encourage her, and turned to my father. I was gonna have it out with him over his continued rejection of my wife, and this time I was gonna stay objective. "Father, why won't you accept Nanako into the family? Everyone else has."

  He didn't reply, or even acknowledge I'd spoken.

  "What exactly is your issue with her, Father? Good grief, she was just eighteen when I was wounded. It's no wonder she panicked, considering what she was going through. And don't go quoting the things I said to her then either – I was out of my mind."

  "It's because of her that you got shot!" my father answered heatedly.

  "You can't blame her for that – it had nothing to do with her."

  "Yes, I can," he snapped back. "If you hadn't met her, you wouldn't have gone to Hamamachi, you wouldn't have married her, and you wouldn't have been shot! Do you have any idea how close you came to dying? The neurologist told me it was a miracle you were still alive! Do you know how hard it was for me to see you in that condition? If you had come back here after you ran away instead of running off with her, none of that would have happened."

  "So your beef with Nanako isn't that she's a foreigner, but that you blame her for my injuries? What about my getting got shot by Skel three weeks ago when I was foraging?"

  "I told you from the beginning not to get a job as a forager, but you wouldn't listen, would you?"

  "Did you know I was conscripted into the Custodians yesterday?" I asked him.

  "What?" The colour drained from his face.

  "I was given the rank of a Custodian consultant and I went in with them this morning when they tried to catch the Skel sniper."

  I don't think I ever saw my father so shocked or distressed. He looked at my mother, at Nanako, and then back at me. "That's not possible, Son. They can't do...wait, did you say you were out there this morning, in that battle? But no, you said a consultant, so you were out of harm's way, right?"

  "We got ambushed and had to fight our way clear, and I was right in the middle of it." I waited until my words sank in before I continued. "Can you see the point I'm trying to make? I got shot when I was in Hamamachi, I got shot when I was foraging, and now I'm a Custodian and got shot at again today. It's time you stopped using the fact that I was shot in Hamamachi as the reason for rejecting my wife."

  I could see my reasoning was finally getting through to him, but there was something else troubling him.

  "Why couldn’t you marry one of your own people?" He banged his hands on the table. "Ethan, you are my only son. It's your responsibility to continue the Jones name and our heritage. But now you're going to breed half-castes! You have destroyed our Anglo-Saxon line and family name!"

  So finally, after all this time, we got to the heart of the matter. I guess I wasn't surprised, considering how proud my father was of our heritage. Still, the level of animosity he was revealing came as a bit of a shock. I breathed out slowly to calm myself, and then answered softly. "I think you've forgotten something. What were you, your father, and I, taught at school? 'Multiculturalism leads to division.' Remember that? It's an unofficial tradition that we only marry our own race – and it's completely against the Founders' teachings. Newhome is supposed to be one people without division."

  Father averted his eyes, but remained quiet. Man, he was one stubborn git.

  I leaned forward in my chair. "The fact is, Nanako is my wife, and you have to accept that. And you're gonna have to face up to the terrible things you did to her, and to me, when she brought me back here two years ago. And you have to apologise for it, too."

  My father stared at me long and hard, glanced at Nanako, and gave a curt nod. An acknowledgement, of sorts. Then he turned to my mother. "Where is dinner, Wife? You trying to starve me or something?"

  Having listened to the entire conversation from the kitchen doorway, my mother bowed respectfully and disappeared into the kitchen. Nanako gave my hand a reassuring squeeze, so I turned to her and was relieved to see her give me an encouraging smile.

  At that point my mother and older sister brought in the main course, which due to the sniper threat having shut down the market, was a very simple affair of dry fruits, gravy on home cooked bread, and some vegetables.

  I reflected on the argument with my father and realised it was the first time I'd ever argued with him without losing my rag.

  * * *

  Nanako and I made our way back to our apartment after dinner, holding hands and savouring each other's company. We both knew things could easily go pear shaped tomorrow night.

  "You did good tonight." She flashed me her cute upside down smile.

  "Thanks – maybe I got through to him."

  "I'm not counting my chickens yet."

  "Would you like to?"

  "Like to what?" she asked, genuinely confused.

  "Count some chickens. We have an awful lot of them over in the poultry shed," I pointed out.

  "Doofus!" She laughed and whacked my arm.

  We reached our apartment and then froze in disbelief and surprise at the pile of rotting, stinking garbage dumped upon our doorstep. There were vegetable scraps, rotten fruit, used kitchen wipes, scrunched up papers, empty bottles, pieces of broken glass, and even bits of wood, dirt and leaves.

  And if that wasn’t enough, several notes spewing anti-Japanese racial slurs had been stuck on the door with tape or tacks.

  go home Jap

  go back to where you came from, Nip!

  Jap spy!

  Jap sympathiser

  And more.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I held my breath and ripped the offensive articles off the door, noticing all the different hand writing styles. This wasn’t the work of one person. Who else had Sienna conscripted to join her hate campaign? Had she pulled our neighbours into it too?

  Nanako took a few steps back, her eyes brimming with tears. I could guess what she was thinking. For two years she had dreamt of coming back to Newhome so that we could be together again and be happy like we were before I was shot. And although we were together again, the happiness she sought was marred by this campaign of racial abuse and harassment.

  "I’
m so sorry," I said as I went over to join her and hold her hands.

  "How can one person be so consumed by hate?" Nanako sniffed back her tears. "Hasn’t Sienna got anything better to do with her life?"

  "Shall I go and explain that to her? Dump the garbage back on her doorstep?"

  "What’s that gonna achieve except to lower us to her level. Besides, if you respond in kind to bullies, it only gets worse. I know, I tried."

  "When you were in school?" I asked.

  "Yeah," she said softly, looking down.

  "In Inverloch or Hamamachi?" If I remembered correctly, she went to primary school in Inverloch and secondary school in Hamamachi.

  She peered up at me from beneath her long bangs. "Hamamachi."

  "But why – why did they bully you?"

  "Because…because I had problems."

  "You mean your anxiety attacks?" I asked gently. I was thrilled she was finally opening up about her past – even if we were standing on the walkway outside our doorstep which was covered in stinking refuse.

  "Yeah, and because I took a year off school when everything was too hard. The bullying was much worse after that."

  "So what did you do?"

  "I just concentrated on my school work and my friends, and then quit school before my eighteenth birthday to become a forager." She paused and looked at the mess at our door. "So do we begin training an hour early, or do we clean this up now?"

  "I don't want to come home to this in the small hours of the morning," I said.

  Nanako wrinkled up her pretty button nose. "Then let's get to it."

  * * *

  After we'd cleaned up Sienna's thoughtful gift and disposed of it, we dressed in the new clothes we purchased and made our way to the Recycling-Works. It was dusk, and the light was fading rapidly. Women were not normally allowed outside after dark, but the captain had conscripted Nanako to join this mission, so the rule did not apply tonight.

  One of the gates was open, so we slipped into the Recycling-Works yard and went up the stairs into the foyer, where we found the others already waiting for us. There were Captain Smithson, Sergeant Xiao and the two remaining men of his platoon with David and Shorty. And not surprisingly, my boss as well. Except he wasn't my boss any more. I guess they needed someone to unlock the joint since it was after hours. David and Shorty were still shooting visual daggers at me, well, Shorty was. David seemed mightily troubled, more so than I'd ever seen him. I suppose it was justified, given the circumstances.

  Trajan hurried over to greet us. "I was so worried when I was told you'd been conscripted, Ethan, but now your wife, David, and Shorty too? And for some secret mission? What's going on?" he asked in a hushed voice as he glanced nervously over his shoulder at the Custodians.

  "Sorry, boss..."

  He held up his hands. "Call me Trajan, Ethan – I'm not your boss anymore."

  "Okay – Trajan." Man, did that feel weird or what? "And hey, nice move with my sister."

  "You don't object?"

  "Of course not," I said with a chuckle.

  "I'm not sure how good my chances are, though, your father didn't seem too enthusiastic when I approached him."

  "They're coming around," I assured him, "Just don't give up, okay?"

  "They are? Thanks, that's good to know."

  "Sergeant Jones, the night's not getting any younger," the captain shouted over to us.

  And so began a gruelling, eight hour training session as I put my team through everything I could think of to prepare us for tomorrow night.

  We foragers and Sergeant Xiao's squad took turns hunting each other in the scrap metal yard. We skulked about in the dark around piles of iron, twisted copper pipes, old stoves and rusting hot-water systems, car engines, and any other type of junk that had been stored in the yard.

  There was little competition, of course. We managed to creep up on and ambush the noisy Custodians repeatedly, and they almost never found us when they were the hunters. But it was good practise, all the same. And I didn't cheat by using flash sonar. I relied entirely upon what little starlight came through the windows and skylights, and my hearing, of course.

  The modern recurve bows provided by Captain Smithson came from North End, where they'd been used for recreational purposes and competitions. They took a little getting used to since we had only used Japanese hankyu half-bows before, but Nanako adjusted in next to no time and spent the hour instructing David and Shorty in their use.

  By dawn, having practised stealth manoeuvres and archery for nigh on eight hours, we called it a night and headed off to our respective homes to sleep.

  The next twenty hours crawled by at a snail's pace. We snatched what sleep we could, did more archery practise, and ate to replenish our energy.

  * * *

  When midnight arrived, we were gathered before one of the imposing, twelve-foot high concrete walls that surrounded North End. Accompanied by two full platoons of Custodians, Captain Smithson led us to a secret door in the eastern wall that was located just below its northern end.

  "Time to go," he said sternly.

  I readied my pistol while Nanako and the other two prepared their bows and arrows. David had sharpened the arrows in the Recycling-Works workshop, giving them a better chance of penetrating Skel armour.

  "We're ready," I assured him.

  "Speak for yourself," Shorty grumbled.

  The captain leaned close and gripped my arm. "You come back, okay, Jones? Take out that blasted Skel sniper and then you come back. And that applies to all of you. Custodian Command may not fully appreciate what you four are doing, but I do, okay?"

  We nodded, and then Sergeant Xiao cracked open the magnetically sealed door, revealing the darkened nighttime landscape outside. The lights on the wall and in the guard towers had been turned off an hour ago. The Skel wouldn't see us when we came skulking out the secret door.

  "Let's do this," I said. I darted through the doorway, loping smoothly and silently across the concrete sidewalk and onto the asphalt road and no-man's land that ringed the town. Nanako, David and Shorty followed close behind. We went north to start with, for I didn't want to head straight for the ruined buildings directly opposite the town, since those'd be full of Skel.

  The partially cloudy sky meant visibility was poor, but not impossible. Yet as soon as I heard the door swing shut behind us, I let rip with flash sonar and then quickly crouched down, drawing the others to crouch down beside me.

  "What is it?" Nanako whispered.

  "Three Skel, directly ahead, a hundred meters." I could see them clearly. The echoes of my ultrasonic shouts made them look ethereal and spectral, like the living dead with darkened eye sockets in gleaming skulls.

  "They seen us?" asked Nanako worriedly.

  "No, they're picking their way across no-man's land, probably wondering why the wall's lights are out."

  "Hey, I can just make 'em out. Woah, they're even uglier in the moonlight. Shall we take 'em out when they get closer?" Shorty asked as he slipped an arrow out his quiver and notched it to his bowstring.

  "No, if even one of them sounds the alarm we'll have to abort. Let's just hunker down here for a few minutes until they pass."

  We remained motionless as we knelt on the road, invisible to the Skel thanks to our black clothes.

  "I've got a bone to pick with you, Jones," David said softly. "Why did you get me and Shorty involved in this stupid suicide mission? Assuming it was your idea to bring us along."

  I was surprised by the level of anxiety in David's voice. He normally tackled danger head on. "Isn't this why we came back to Newhome? To protect it?"

  "That was your idea, not ours," he grumbled.

  "You could have at least asked us first, you know, given us the option to say yes or no," Shorty added.

  "You guys would rather we sit back and do nothing while everyone starves because they've run out of food? All because of one blasted Skel sniper?" I asked. The three Skel were fifty meters away now but were g
oing to bypass us by a good, safe margin.

  David leaned closer, his eyes wide with fear. "And you think we can succeed when over a hundred Custodians couldn't?"

  "They failed 'cause they walked right into a Skel trap. We're gonna sneak around behind them and bump off their sniper without going anywhere near their ambushes." I put a hand on David's shoulder. "We've done this many times when we were foraging, remember?"

  "Never at night and never against so many of them. The most we ever fought was twelve. How many do you reckon are out here now? A hundred? Two hundred?"

  "There's about two-dozen less than there were yesterday morning," I replied, "but honestly, it's irrelevant. Those who aren't asleep will be facing the town, not looking behind them. Now stop worrying. If I didn't think we could pull this off, I wouldn't have brought you along."

  "The Skel patrol's moving off – let's keep going," Nanako said.

  We rose and continued north through no-man's land towards the Ascot Vale Housing Commission Estate. The estate was large, and was probably quite a sight once. It had irregularly placed multi-storey apartment blocks and cottages set amidst large lawns. But the brick buildings were in a sorry state of disrepair now and the lawns had been reclaimed by nature. Wild blackberry bushes, shrubs, ferns, waist-high wild grass and gum trees had turned the lawns into a veritable forest.

  Echolocation revealed Skel sentries hiding at the edge of the estate – behind trees, bushes, and windows. However, there was a gap between two apartment blocks that contained no Skel sentries, so I led us directly towards it.

  But we'd taken only a few steps into the tall grass when I saw a telltale thin wire stretched from one building across to a homemade bomb lying against the wall of the other.

  "Hold up, guys," I said, "There's a tripwire here. I'll straddle it and help you over it one by one."

  Nanako looked up at me, her eyes full of trust as I helped her over the wire, directing her feet one at a time. After that I assisted David, and lastly, Shorty, who although he followed my directions, appeared uncharacteristically uncomfortable.