I felt a strong affinity for the students. If my brother was still alive, I would have been the first out the door.
By lunchtime, the situation the situation had gotten completely out of hand with students refusing to attend classes or do any work, and so in a rare display of consideration, the principle cancelled classes for the rest of the day and sent the students home.
I didn’t rush off with the others but went to the staffroom instead, figuring I’d get more information from Ryan than back at the lab, him being a Custodian and all.
The staffroom was uncharacteristically empty, as the teachers had all left except for Ryan and Mr. Li, who were locked deep in conversation at the far side of the room.
I knocked on the door jam.
Ryan said something to Mr. Li and hurried over to join me in the corridor, which was eerily empty of students.
“Is it really as bad as the rumours say?” I asked.
“Worse. I just got off the phone with HQ.”
“And?”
“Every foraging team was ambushed by Skel this morning, at pretty much the same time. Many foragers and Custodians were captured or killed, and most of the rest were wounded. Two joint Custodian/forager teams haven’t even returned.”
“How on earth could the Skel pull off a coordinated attack like that? The forager teams would have been all over Melbourne, right?” I had a very uneasy feeling about this, something was off, exceedingly so.
“They were, yes. And you’re right, it shows a level of coordination that belies belief. How did the Skel even know where the teams were going to be?”
“What does that mean for the town?”
“It means we’re in deep water. We can survive without foraging for a while, but what if this is the precursor for something else? Such as an attack on the actual town itself?” He laid a hand on my wrist. “I want you to hop over to the hospital pronto and eavesdrop on what the surviving foragers and Custodians are saying. See if anyone says anything incriminating, anything that could give us an idea as to how the Skel knew where the forager teams were going to be and how they were able to hit them all at once.”
I looked at him wild-eyed. “You suspect one of the Custodians or foragers is a traitor working with the Skel?”
“Just trying to cover all the bases.”
“Right, I’m on it.”
* * *
It was complete bedlam inside the hospital. Dozens of men and women crowded the reception room, some arguing at the top of their voices with the nurses on duty, demanding to know if their loved ones were amongst those brought in. The harried nurses invariably answered that they didn’t have a comprehensive list of who was brought in, and could not give any estimation of when the information would be available.
I passed through the crowd and weaved my way through corridors filled with doctors, nurses, orderlies, and civilians rushing in both directions. However, it was not until I got to the emergency department and intensive care unit that I saw the gravity of the disaster. Both rooms were filled to overflowing with wounded Custodians and foragers, many accompanied by distraught family members. Some of the injured were still on wheeled gurneys, others lay on hospital beds, and some even sat on the floor or squatted against walls since there was not enough room to accommodate them. Harried doctors and nurses frantically tended to in the injured. They also tried to comfort patients moaning in pain and placate complaining or crying relatives.
I saw foragers and Custodians suffering from a whole range of frightful injuries. Some had been badly burned by Skel Molotov Cocktails. Some sported broken bones after being hit by Skel clubs, others had arrow wounds, and a number had been peppered with shrapnel when Skel booby-trap bombs went off. Some of the men with severe injuries were being treated in the emergency room rather than in the operating theatres, since they were filled to capacity.
Tears slid down my cheeks at the utter horror of it all, especially as I saw my brother or Ryan in every burnt, broken or otherwise injured forager and Custodian. This could have been either of them. Watching the family members was just as painful. I saw a young wife sobbing over her badly burnt Custodian husband, his head and chest swathed in bandages. I saw a middle-aged man and his wife standing beside a wheeled gurney that served as a hospital bed for their teenage son, a forager, his right arm set in plaster. And on and on it went.
Hearing a familiar behind me, I scurried into the closest intensive care cubicle and quickly drew the curtain half closed. I nodded apologetically to the injured forager and his wife who glanced my way, not comprehending the reason for my intrusion.
Paying them no further heed, I peeped out past the curtain and watched as Mr. Fenton and Jazza entered the intensive care unit, worriedly checking the identity of each wounded forager. They kept at this until a middle-aged Asian guy on a wheeled gurney with a heavily bandaged shoulder beckoned them over with his good arm. Three other foragers stood beside him, one with a heavily bandaged hand. I realised they were the forager unit that occasionally attended the Underground meetings. The man with bandaged shoulder was Keanan.
Thinking I may need to hear what this lot was going to talk about, I left the cubicle and with my head held low to conceal my face, moved closer to them, stopping when I was close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation. Then I leaned back on the wall between two hospital beds and watched them out of my peripheral vision.
“...happened out there?” Mr. Fenton said.
“Got jumped by Skel. At least a dozen of them,” Keanan replied. “We’d been at our site for an hour when they hit us. They took out the Custodians with a booby trap – blew the front right off their blasted G-Wagon. One of them crawled out of the wreck, but they shot him full of arrows in the blink of an eye. We were cut off from our truck so we just hightailed it out of there on foot. Barnes got an arrow in the hand...”
The guy with the bandaged hand displayed it proudly.
“...and me in the shoulder, but we managed to lose them somehow. Glad we were close to home. Got picked up by a Custodian patrol in Footscray.”
“You four got off pretty lightly, going by the condition some of the other forager squads are in.”
“Lightly? You have any idea how much an arrow in the shoulder hurts?”
“You squawked like a stuck-pig,” Barnes said.
“Like you were any better with the arrow in your hand.”
“What’s this, who’s the biggest wuss competition?” Jazza said, his voice harsh, mocking.
“Get nicked, Jaz,” Keanan snapped.
“That’s enough lads,” Mr. Fenton snapped. He lowered his voice and continued. “Were you able to get in touch with the Japanese Rangers?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I shuffled a bit closer and closed my eyes, concentrating on shutting out all sounds except for their voices.
“Soon as we got there, yeah. The phone was just where the Rangers said it would be. Even answered it straight away,” Keanan answered quietly.
“And?”
“And I relayed to them the Patriot’s question about whether they would consider assassinating the chancellor and counsellors?”
“And what was their answer?” Mr. Fenton asked keenly.
“Their answer was ‘Yes.’ That the reason they established contact with us in the first place was because they are duty-bound to get revenge upon the last descendants of the Korean government officials who orchestrated the destruction of Japan.”
“Did they say when might be able to do this?”
“They said they’ll attack on Sunday night.”
“This Sunday – that’s fantastic – better than we could have hoped. You did well, Keanan.”
“I wouldn’t count my chickens, yet, Fenton,” Jazza said. “In case you aren’t keeping up with current events, Newhome is now under siege by who knows how many Skel. If they’re still there Sunday, you can forget about the Rangers.”
“I actually mentioned to the Rangers that Skel could pose a problem,
” Keanan said.
“And?”
“They said the Skel were of no concern to them and that the attack would proceed as planned.”
“You spoke to the Rangers before the Skel attacked you, right?” Jazza said.
“Yeah, so?”
“So things have changed a bit since then, don’t you think?”
Mr. Fenton waved Jazza down. “The Rangers are specialists in anti-Skel incursions, remember? The Rangers have anything else to say? Anything they want us to do?”
“They want some of our boys to meet them at the gates to guide them to the Chancellery once they get inside the town.”
“Sounds like a job for you and your friends, Jazza,” Fenton said.
“You can count on us,” the muscular Italian lad replied.
I rocked back against the wall, stunned by what I just heard. The Japanese Rangers were going to attack Newhome on Sunday night? But why? What were they going to do inside the town that needed the Underground resistance group to guide them? I remembered what I heard at one of the Underground meetings previously, where they discussed getting the Rangers to help them attack the chancellery or the Custodians. Could either of these be what the Patriot asked them to do?
I had a really bad feeling about this.
I zoned out after that, trying and failing to make sense of what they said about the Ranger attack. I stole away from my hiding spot and continued to walk through the ICU, listening in to conversations as I tried to find out if one of the surviving foragers or Custodians had betrayed the town to the Skel.
I got quite the surprise when I spotted Ethan Jones in one of the hospital beds. He had matured somewhat since I saw him two years ago, and not just in appearance and physical makeup. His whole countenance was different, darker, somehow, as though weighed down by a tremendous burden. The left side of his chest was heavily bandaged, so his foraging team had been hit as well. So much for him being some kind of vaunted Skel-slayer. Then again, if they were hit by a dozen Skel too...
Ethan was deep in conversation with a square-jawed Custodian officer, and I just about had a heart attack when I saw who it was. It was King, the Custodian officer I kept bumping into when I was masquerading as my brother two years ago. Only he was a lieutenant now, not a sergeant. I realised I had no need to be afraid of him anymore, as we were on the same side now, but all the same, I didn’t want him to see me. Still, I wanted to know what they were talking about, so I moved discreetly closer.
“...suppose you’ve heard the Skel hit all our foraging teams today, and around the same time. Two teams haven’t even come back, which means they must have taken out the Bushmasters as well. All the foraging trucks were lost,” Lieutenant King said.
“So I heard, Sir,” Ethan Jones replied.
“Any ideas why the Skel have done this?”
“It could be in revenge for us wiping out their twelve-man party on Monday.”
“But that’s not what you think, is it?”
“No, Sir.”
“Don’t pussyfoot with me, Jones, out with it.”
“I think today's attacks, and last Monday’s attack on the Japanese cars, are part of a greater plan against Newhome. Though what that could be I have no idea,” the forager said. I lifted an eyebrow at that comment, because I was thinking along the same lines.
“Okay, Jones. Let’s say I buy this theory of yours, but there’s one big problem with it,” the lieutenant said.
“How did a loose collection of nomadic tribes manage to coordinate such a carefully thought out plan to attack all of our foraging teams on the same morning? Teams that were spread all around Melbourne?” This Ethan Jones was on the ball.
“Exactly. Any ideas how they did it?”
“This is how,” Ethan said as he opened his right hand and gave a Sat-Smartphone to the lieutenant.
“Where did you get this, Jones?”
“From one of the Skel, Sir.”
“And you leave it till now to tell me?”
“Sorry, with the injury and all it slipped my mind.”
“Fair enough. I’ll be off now, I have to hand this in.” The lieutenant turned to leave.
“The conclusion you’ve reached isn’t necessarily the correct one,” Jones said quickly.
“And what conclusion is that?”
“That Hamamachi is supplying Smartphones to the Skel.”
“You know about Councillor Okada offering to trade Smartphones with us? That information is classified,” Lieutenant King snapped.
“I noticed our Japanese visitors had working Smartphones when we rescued them.”
“I see. Okay then, how else do you explain the Skel having them?” King demanded, holding up the phone.
“If Hamamachi is willing to trade them with us, they must be trading them with other Victorian towns too. The Skel could be stealing the phones from their victims.”
The lieutenant didn’t seem convinced. He said a few more words to the forager, and left.
I figured I had enough to report to Ryan and Mr. Cho now. Ryan would be relieved to know that the Skel used Smartphones to coordinate their attacks, although that didn’t explain how the Skel knew where the foraging teams would be. But that was a puzzle to solve another day – the pending Ranger attack was of much greater concern.
I strode purposefully from the ICU and into the corridor beyond, only to gasp in surprise when someone stepped out from behind the door and blocked my path. I barely had time to register Jazza’s face before his fist slammed full strength into my jaw...
* * *
When I woke, I was slumped against a wall in a room so dark it was utterly devoid of light. The place stank of mildew, rot, and disinfectants. My feet and hands were tied, the latter behind my back. Worse, I was gagged with a cloth shoved partially down my throat, causing me to retch. That was bad. If I vomited while gagged like this, I would choke to death. I leaned my head back against the wall and concentrated on taking one breath at a time until the retching stopped. My jaw also hurt like blazes and I had a king sized headache. I couldn’t believe I let my guard down so much that Jazza was able to ambush me like that.
I tried to work out where I was by concentrating on what I could hear. However, the only thing I could hear was the rhythmic thrum of some kind of machine. Frustrated, I tried to echolocate since that let me see in the dark, but as I feared, the gag was pushed so far down my throat that I could barely make a sound, let alone yell or sing at an ultrasonic pitch.
Time passed slowly and I dozed fitfully, my mind plagued with an endless stream of nightmares about Rangers attacking the town.
The sound of approaching footsteps woke me from a daze. A switch was flicked on and dull light flooded the room, which I noticed was a storeroom that hadn’t been used for years if not decades, going by the amount of dust on the floor and aluminium shelving.
When my eyes adjusted to the light and I took in my captors, I emitted a muffled gasp in shock. Four people stood in the doorway. The first three, as expected, were Jazza and his two cronies. The fourth was Bhagya, who appraised me coldly, as though I meant nothing to her.
I struggled against my bonds and tried to get a word past the gag, wanting to demand an explanation why Bhagya, whom I trusted as a friend, was consorting with a psychotic bully like Jazza to imprison me.
She came over and squatted in front of me, holding a bottle of water. “You even so much as try to use your ability when the gag’s off and Jazza will knock you out again. Nod if you understand.”
I nodded. She knew as well as I did that there was a good chance I could trip an ultrasonic detector if I used my ability. That would result in a squad of Custodians visiting us to find the “mutant” who had echolocated.
She flicked her head at Jazza, who came forward and with rough, strong hands, untied the gag and tore the cloth ball from my mouth. I arched my head back and suck down air in great gulps. Once I regained my breath, the Indian girl held the bottle to my lips.
“Bhagy
a, you have to let me go,” I gasped once I drank my fill, glancing fearfully at Jazza. “The Rangers are going to attack the town on Sunday night and we have to warn Mr. Cho.”
“Not too bright, is she?” Jazza said.
“What do you expect from a sheila?” Carver replied.
“I saw you snooping around the hospital, listening in to the boys’ conversation with Keanan,” Bhagya said. “Which is why I told them to grab you. Couldn’t have you alerting your boyfriend and Mr. Cho of the Rangers assault, considering all the effort it took to get them to agree to it,” Bhagya said.
I looked at her, flabbergasted. “What have you done, Bhagya? What have you asked the Rangers to do?”
“What needs to be done to set the town free from the chancellor and his tyranny.”
“How, exactly? If you’ve arranged this in conjunction with the Patriot and the Underground, a lot of innocent people are going to die. They’re unbalanced and psychotic – present company included.” I shot an accusing glance at my three classmates.
“They’re not like that at all, Chelsea. Unlike the pushovers in the Newhome movement, these guys have got the guts to do what needs to be done, and are willing to do it now. Once the chancellor and his lackeys are dead, the Patriot will send out a signal for the rest of the Underground movement to rise up in Newhome Proper and take out the Custodian leadership and as many privates as they can. In one night of sharp, violent, action, the Custodians will no longer be a force to be reckoned with. When the townsfolk wake on Monday morning, it will all be over. They’ll be free.”
I looked at her, appalled. “How many civilians and Custodians will die in this ‘night of sharp, violent, action?’”
“Who cares? As to the Custodians, hopefully most of them,” Jazza said.
“What about the seventy plus members of the Freehome resistance movement who infiltrated the Custodians? You going to kill all of them too?”
“Collateral damage, casualties of war,” Carver said.
“Bhagya, you have to stop this. What’s the point of liberating the town if it’s done like this?”
Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series) Page 118
