“Don’t you ever wonder what their story was, who they were before they died?” Key, one of the fishermen, asked while staring at the gnawed remains.
“Maybe the kids get bit, mother tries to take care of them. Father locks them all in the shed. Hears her screams as they turn and kill her. Blows his own head off,” Eric said.
“It must have been hell,” Key said.
“Where the fuck do you think we’re standing?” Eric scoffed.
“Hey Eric, there’s another room back here.” Rache pulled horse tack and ropes off the wall and unbolted a door.
“Careful,” Lug warned. They moved into ready positions and then nodded at Rache. She opened the door wide and stepped back, her own blade ready to strike.
The room beyond had a concrete floor and sheet metal walls. It was large enough to hold a five-hundred-liter tank, and the smell of oil permeated the air.
“Oh you little fuckin’ beauty . . .” Eric whispered. He ducked down and peered under the tank, satisfying himself that the room was clear before stepping forward and tapping on the metal side. A dull booming sound changed in pitch about halfway down.
“Diesel fuel,” he said with a wide grin. “Let’s get you tinkers working on the truck. If you can get the engine in a fit state to run, we can drive as far as you fuckin’ want.”
* * *
Else stood in the office upstairs, looking out the window towards the road, willing Joel to come loping out of the drifting rain. In her arms the baby shuddered and struggled to breathe. Else bent her head, closed her mouth around his tiny nose, and sucked sharply, drawing thick mucus out of his airways. She turned her head and spat on the floor. The baby shared half her genes; he shouldn’t get sick. He should be strong like her.
“You are strong,” she whispered to his fever-warm skin. “You will come through this and be okay.”
She tried to feed him again, but the congestion in his nose and chest meant he couldn’t breathe and eat at the same time. Instead she walked up and down the carpeted hallway, listening to the rain and speaking softly to her son of the things she would teach him when as he grew up.
* * *
In the shed, every engineer now crowded around the truck. They had rolled the chassis out into the rain, the tires flat after years of sitting. With the front of the vehicle under shelter, they managed to tilt the cab forward and expose the engine. They had scrubbed the green corrosion from the battery terminals and carefully topped the cells up with fresh rainwater. Another team had drained the fuel tanks and using a hand pump had filled a jerry can with diesel, pouring it carefully into the tank.
Now a heated discussion had broken out with different points of view on how to proceed. Rache slapped at a dozen hands that reached in to tug or point at the cables, aluminum, and other parts of the engine.
“Battery,” one of the engineers declared. “It’s a diesel engine; we need electricity to heat the glow plug so the fuel will ignite.”
“We should strip it down, check everything,” Lug insisted. “It’s what the Foreman would have us do.”
“The Foreman ain’t here!” Rache snapped. “I’m foreman on this job and I say keep your fuckin’ hands out of it.”
“How do we make ’trickery without solar panels?” asked a blonde woman engineer.
Rache opened her mouth to answer but realized she didn’t know what to say.
“With this,” Eric announced. The engineers rose from their huddle and turned to look at him. He stood next to a squat, square machine on a frame with two wheels.
“Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to my little friend,” Eric beamed and patted the machine.
“What is it?” Rache asked.
“This is a Milton model MD806, diesel-fueled, three-phase, two-kilowatt generator. It turns diesel into electricity.”
The engineers climbed down from the truck and pored over this new discovery.
“How does it work?” Lug asked.
Eric shrugged. “Well it’s a practical application of the Faraday principle of electromagnetism . . .” Eric trailed off and regarded their blank faces. “Magic, who cares? You put the fuel in and it makes electricity.”
“We should still strip down the truck engine and make sure every part is ready to function,” Lug insisted, and others nodded their agreement.
“Did you ever think that the Foreman had you stripping things down and rebuilding them constantly because that was the only way he could keep you doing what he wanted?” Eric asked. “Seriously, that ship was going nowhere. It was all about keeping control of the population while he sat up there in his office, stuffed his face, and got his dick sucked.”
Under Eric’s guidance they cleaned the generator, checking the fuel filter and cleaning corrosion off the terminals. They watched with intense curiosity as Eric filled the tank with fuel. He flicked a switch and waited.
“It’s not working,” Rache said.
“Give it a minute,” Eric replied. After ten seconds he pressed a button on the control panel. The generator clicked but the engine did not fire.
“I told you, we should strip it down and put it back together to make it work,” Lug said.
The other engineers spoke their agreement this time. Eric scowled at them.
“Touch this fuckin’ thing and I’ll gut you. Rache, don’t let them touch it, I’ll be right back.”
Eric vanished into the back shelves of the shed, returning a moment later with a bent steel rod.
“What—” Rache asked but Eric waved her to silence.
Inserting one end of the rod into the machine Eric twisted it rapidly, the angled shape of the rod allowing it to spin easily in his hands.
“Okay,” he panted after ten seconds of frantic turning, “push the green button.” Rache jabbed the button and the generator coughed, shuddered, and then fired. A cloud of black smoke bubbled from the exhaust, filling the shed with a choking fog. Eric straightened up and made some adjustments, the generator’s clatter smoothing out into a steady chugging.
“How long does it take to make electricity?” Rache shouted over the noise.
Eric grinned, and lifting two large alligator clips on the end of rubber-clad cables, he touched them together. A white spark crackled across the bare metal. “Step aside,” he said.
He attached the clips to the battery in the truck. Climbing up into the tilted cab, he frowned at the empty ignition, then looked up and pulled the sun visor down. A set of keys dropped into his lap.
While the engineers watched with absorbed fascination Eric slid the key into the slot and turned it. The truck engine turned over, a long whining ignition cycle. The engineers exhaled with an almost religious awe.
Eric grunted, pumped the accelerator pedal, and turned the key again. The truck engine fired, the roar of it drowning out the shouts and cheers of the engineers. Eric climbed down and lowered the cab on its hydraulic struts.
“Can we drive it with those wheels?” Rache asked.
“There’s a compressor, it’ll pump them right up.” The engineers jockeyed for position and gave each other advice as they rolled the compressor over to the truck and inflated the tires. To Eric’s relief they all inflated and held pressure.
“Alright, turn it off or we’ll have every dead prick in a hundred miles coming to have a look.”
The engineers were jubilant. For many of them this was the first time in their lives they had made something mechanical actually work. The holders and fishermen had clustered in the backyard, watching with interest over the fence.
Chapter 8
It would take years for the cities to crumble, for the dry center of Australia to send enough dust and sand to erode the glass and stone. Burying everything under nature’s relentless onslaught. In a thousand years, or a million, there would be nothing but a few preserved ruins, clues to the past and strange hieroglyphics that would speak of a civilization that once considered itself great and immortal.
Joel hadn’t returned by mid-afterno
on, when the flatbed truck and a four-wheel-drive SUV recovered from a garage next to the house rolled out onto the decaying roadway. Else sat in the passenger seat of the SUV while Eric drove. The engineers had spent the morning planning a roster system for who got to drive the truck. The first two were old enough to have driven before, and in true engineer fashion, they trained the others on the job.
Else insisted on leaving a note for Joel, telling him they were heading for the settlement on the north side of the lake called Gol Gol, north of Mildura.
The baby’s fever broke during the morning and he had slipped into an exhausted sleep. Rache and Cassie sat in the back of the SUV; the cargo space behind them was loaded with food supplies, fuel tanks, tools, and weapons salvaged from the house and outbuildings.
“There’s gotta be hundreds of places like this around here,” Eric said. “We can get everything we need.”
“Can you get us a safe place to live?” Cassie asked from the backseat.
“Yeah,” Eric nodded, “I reckon we can do that.”
The rest of the group, packed on the deck and in the cab of the truck, were in high spirits too. Most of them had never ridden in anything other than a boat powered by a sail and oars. They cheered and sang as the truck rolled out, following the SUV.
Eric kept them moving at under thirty miles an hour to start with. The road was littered with abandoned vehicles, and the occasional evol stumbled out of the debris to stand confused as they drove past.
“We should stop and kill them,” Rache said as an evol bounced off the bull bars on the SUV.
“Keep driving,” Else said. She felt the leaden weight of exhaustion pulling her down into sleep, the comforting weight of the baby sleeping against her skin under a blanket cover.
Else woke up after dark, the baby grizzling and squirming.
“Where are we?” she asked as she moved him into a feeding position.
“Somewhere south. There’s a river up ahead. Not sure on the bridge, though.”
“Let me see the map.” Else took it and looked out the window into the darkness. At least the rain had stopped. “Did you see any signs?”
“Yeah, it’s the Black River,” Eric replied.
“Rache, take a couple of your people and walk the bridge. We need to know if it is clear and safe.” Else remembered a bridge she crossed a lifetime ago and the shocking lesson in swimming that came from it.
Rache slid out of the cab, gesturing for engineer backup she walked out into the beam of the SUV headlights. Two men jogged past the pickup and into the light. Rache directed them to each side of the bridge and the trio started walking, weapons in hand.
“Townsville’s down the road a bit,” Eric said, staring into the darkness beyond the headlights.
“I never went there,” Else replied.
“It was my hometown,” Eric said.
“I’m sorry,” Else said, it being what she understood was the right thing to say when someone spoke with such sadness.
“My wife took the kids to Sydney. We had a girl and a boy. It was right before everything turned to shit. She managed to get through on the phone a couple of weeks later, said she was going to try and get to Moore Park, some kind of evacuation center had been set up there. They were airlifting people out, she said. I never heard from or saw her or the kids again.”
Else frowned. “Moore Park was never evacuated. People stayed there, they fought to survive. They fought hard and did it too. Right up till last year, when the treaty with the evols broke down; then they were overrun.”
“Jesus . . .” Eric muttered. “My wife’s name was Katie. Did you ever meet a woman named Katie at Moore Park? She was something, you would have liked her if you met her. She was the sweetest, most kindest person I ever knew.” Eric’s voice cracked a little; he kept staring out into the darkness.
Else lifted her head and looked at him with a steady gaze. “I know the name. I heard a story about a woman called Katie with children, a girl and a boy. She was one of the lucky ones that did get evacuated. People said she was very nice and kind.”
Eric’s head lowered to the steering wheel. A sob crawled up from somewhere deep down inside and hacked out of him like infected phlegm.
“I’m sorry,” Else whispered. Her attention flicked to the headlight beams. A shadow passed in front of them, then another. It wasn’t Rache or the engineers. Evols had come, drawn like moths to the light and the warmth. Else shuddered with relief, grateful that since the destruction of Adam she didn’t feel them anymore. That she didn’t hear their voices and their cravings deep in her mind.
“Evols,” she said. “Cassie, take baby.” Else lifted the well-wrapped infant from his covering blanket and passed him into the backseat. Cassie made space for him next to Lowanna, who barely twitched in her sleep.
“Stay in the car,” Else said, sliding out and closing the door behind her.
The cold air and the standing up brought on an intense need to pee. Else suppressed the sensation and lifted the two blades she carried. Rache and her engineers were taking too long. They couldn’t stand here all night; the people on the back of the truck were exposed.
Flexing her arms, Else moved onto the concrete bridge. Cars had crashed into each other, some of the wrecks still containing trapped bodies. They moaned and snapped their dead teeth at Else as she squeezed past. She stopped, went back, and smashed their skulls in with the point of her blade before continuing on. The river ran high, swollen with the rain falling in the higher plateaus, roaring under her feet and eroding the concrete until one day this bridge would collapse and be gone.
Climbing onto the back of an abandoned truck, Else stared out into the night. A ragged line of evols were caught by the barricade of crashed vehicles, almost halfway across the bridge. Else counted a dozen of them shuffling in aimless circles, and more, trapped in their steel coffins, adding their moans to the necrotic chorus.
Else jumped onto the roof of a sedan, and then with long easy running strides she ran over the rusting hulks, slashing at the dead who reached for her. Her blades found their targets; skulls split and bled black fluid. Heads rolled like balls across the wet concrete and she nimbly sprang onto the truck that had jackknifed across both lanes. The bridge beyond was clear of vehicles; only skeletonized corpses remained.
“Rache!” Else yelled, her voice rolling out over the swollen river and echoing off the sky.
“Else!” Rache’s desperate shout came from somewhere out in the dark.
Else dropped to the road and started running. There was no time to go back and get help; getting every armed holder, engineer, and fisherman past the dead would take too long. Whatever trouble Rache and her men had run into could kill them if she didn’t hurry.
Laughter and men’s voices came to Else out of the darkness. Her feet were almost silent on the concrete, the rushing torrent under her feet covering any noise her boots made. A fence had been set up across the bridge. Else slowed to a halt—she had seen this kind of thing before. People died at places like this.
She could hear Rache now, fighting and swearing, no sound from her engineers. Maybe they were already dead, or maybe they were the ones laughing?
Else went to the edge of the bridge and sheathed her blades. Slipping over the rail, she lowered herself down to a narrow ledge, her hands gripping the concrete curb as her feet slid along the concrete lip.
Once she had passed the wall blocking the bridge, Else climbed the concrete buttress in a chin-up movement that let her peer over the edge and see what she was up against.
A fire burning in an oil drum illuminated a scene that Else had seen too often before. Four men armed with a variety of homemade bladed weapons, rifles, and shotguns stood around the fire watching as Rache struggled against two others who fought to hold her down and pull her clothes off.
The heads of her two engineers were mounted on spikes on the wall. Their bodies had been tossed into the river.
Else pulled herself up and dropped onto
the bridge behind the spectators. She had studied a book that explained how to whistle in a dozen different ways, but every time Else tried it she couldn’t make a sound. She settled for walking up behind the two nearest men and cutting their throats. Their companions were still laughing when they turned to see what was happening. Else stepped over the bodies and buried a blade in the third man’s neck. With a jerk on the handle she pulled him between her and the fourth man as he fired a shotgun blast into his dying friend’s back.
The third man screamed, his blood spraying over Else’s face. The two men struggling with Rache scrambled to their feet, one of them pausing long enough to kick her in the face when she tried to stand up.
Else charged the shotgun man. The gurgling man with the blade in his throat stumbled and fell. Else left the blade behind and threw the second one. It spun, handle over curved blade, and hit the shooter in the face.
“Fuck!” he yelled, the shotgun drooping as he clutched his broken nose.
Else snatched the blade off the ground and with an uppercut swing she slammed the point up through the man’s chin hard enough to burst it out the top of his skull. She scooped up the shotgun as it fell, turned on the balls of her feet, and fired from the hip. The blast sprayed shot over both the men bearing down on her, sending them spinning away screaming and bleeding from ragged wounds.
“You fuckers!” Rache screamed and kicked the nearest groaning casualty. “What the fuck is wrong with you people! We weren’t a threat! We weren’t trying to steal anything from you! But you fucking killed my friends! You fucking assholes!”
Else finished them off while Rache vented her fear and fury on the bodies. “Rache, we need to go. We have to find another way to cross the river.”
Rache stood shivering, her arms locked around herself while Else found a way to open the gate in the wall. They returned to the others in silence, Else guiding Rache over the vehicles and getting her settled in the backseat of the SUV.
Tankbread 2: Immortal Page 18
