Desolation (Book 1): Aftermath

by Butler, Simon L.

  “Would you rather do this now or when it's stinking fucking hot?” The man they called ‘Sam’ replied forcefully, frustration in his voice. He seemed to be the one calling the shots even though he was not the one Micky had identified as the son of Malcolm Bishop. My ears detected as many as four separate sets of footsteps as they passed the storefront. “That fucking trader said he’ll be passing through here unless he went deep desert. ‘Reckons he’ll be avoiding the highway, so we’ve got to think outside the box, Terry.”

  “Yeah, I know!” The first man, ‘Terry,’ sighed with resignation in his voice, “I heard the slave he bought was a pretty one though. Are we gonna keep her?”

  Then another man spoke: “Oh yeah, I tried to buy her a few weeks ago, the motherfucker put a real high price on her, so I just rented the slut for the night. Fuck that was some tight pussy. Stupid bitch wouldn’t stop crying the whole time. I was glad to fucking send her back.”

  “I vote when we kill that fucker and take his shit, we use the girl up and sell her on. Fuck the northerners, they can have her when she’s all used up.” Terry joked. The thought made my blood boil, before asking myself at the same moment - why did I have the urge to protect this girl? It was a strange feeling that I pushed down; it was something to think about later. For now, my focus had to be getting passed these idiots and back to the homestead.

  “Shut up and stay on alert!” Sam said, his deep voice echoing off the surrounding ruins.

  Rick had given me away, it seemed. It was hardly a shock; a few rounds of ammunition and I had no doubt he would have talked. He was a businessman after all. I doubted they would find the homestead, there were dozens of such houses in the surrounding area, so we would likely be okay there if we laid low. The thought was encouraged by the fact that if there had been a road to the homestead, it had been long ago buried by the desert.

  Sneaking out of town was my first thought, but then again, if these guys lived, coming back to trade next time could be a real problem. I tried to think of a plan that didn’t involve getting into a shootout with a bunch of poorly skilled, though well-armed thugs. I caught a look at them through the store window and spotted three of them with bolt action rifles of various sorts and the familiar bold man ‘Sam’, seemingly their leader wielding an automatic assault rifle. It was an old military issue Styr though it was hard to tell from a distance what condition the weapon was in. Those things did not function well when they were poorly maintained. One of the men was the one that Micky had pointed out at the bar, he continued to joke about his ‘night’ with Ashe. At that moment, I decided that I did not care who his father was. If I had the opportunity, I would kill him slowly and leave his rotten meat to the dingoes.

  I moved to the rear of the store and out through the back and into a small ally way, with a rusted wire fence and a small industrial area behind it full of old cars and equipment that was long past its used by date. Quietly paralleling the group trying not to be spotted. I wondered exactly how much information Rick had given them, as I continued to listen to them. He knew well enough my usual path, and he knew I normally stopped at the Lake Eyre settlement, so that gave away my direction to some extent. But I wanted to be sure they wouldn’t follow me all the way back to the mountains to the far east. Bypassing Lake Eyre was manageable, but the idea of having a tail all the way to coast was not an appealing thought. Their conversation seemed to die off as the men performed haphazard searches of some of the brick homes I had already been through as the leader ‘Sam’ moved far too casually along the street.

  I’m not sure how they spotted me, it was perhaps a glint from my rifle in the morning twilight, or perhaps it was just the movement. “There’s some asshole following us! Get the motherfucker,” the leader's voice ordered loudly as he opened fire.

  Fuck! I hissed as bullets bounced off the walls nearby. Ducking down, I quickly moved back into the industrial area without being seen and hid behind a rusted garage with a collapsed roller door. The shell of a rusted old beetle providing some cover. “Where’d the motherfucker go?” one of the men said loudly, giving their position away immediately. These were not poor hunters, they were incompetent.

  Two of them approached with their rifles drawn ready to shoot. I slipped behind the building just as they rounded the corner of the garage and rushed back towards the street. As I reached the ally way once more, I found one of the men moving along the same path I had been following behind the houses. He had no idea when I moved up behind him stealthily and drove my knife through the back of his neck and up into his skull. He was dead instantly and without a sound while the others seemed preoccupied searching other areas. I gathered the man’s rifle, another thirty-odd-six and a handful of loose rounds he had in his pocket. I realised then that it was the blonde asshole Micky had pointed out named ‘Terry’, shame there was no time or dingoes to finish my earlier thought on the scum bag. But it surely meant that they would come back in force if word got back to the Bishop family. I ran well clear of the men about another hundred meters and fired on one of them he came running down the alleyway, try and help the blonde idiot that got in my way. The bullet struck him in the chest before I moved behind the wall of a collapsed weatherboard house. I slipped away quietly, and by the time I heard shouting about their friends, I was about two hundred meters away. Ducking down behind a small brick fence, I listened in on their heated conversation as the men shouted back and forth. “It was him – from the fuckin’ bar! I want that desert rat fucking dead!”

  “We should head back, man! Old man Bishop will want to know about this!”

  “Fuck!” I hissed to myself, knowing what that meant. There was a choice made at that moment, knowing that they knew Ashe was with me. It meant I couldn’t just drop her off somewhere to pay for my fuck up. I could try to hunt and kill the remaining two and maybe get lucky. But as I turned the thought over in my mind, I heard a truck start in the distance. The fact that they had access to vehicles changed any thought of hunting them down. I peeked around the corner and saw the two bodies still lying in the alleyway.

  “You’re fucked now, Jack!” the familiar deep voice called out. “Bishop is gonna have an army after your head now, you son-of-a-bitch!” His words probably meant access to radio communication.

  I growled to myself, I had indeed fucked up. Killing the slavers was probably going to be necessary, but I had to get Ashe out of that homestead. If a large-scale search party was now being organised, it would be a matter of time before they found us if we stayed still. We would not be able to hug the edge of the Sand Sea as I would normally have done, we would need to go straight through it.

  I rushed back to the homestead following the same path I had taken earlier that morning, arriving at the homestead by mid-morning. I was earlier than intended and found Ashe on the front porch preparing several condensation traps to distil the unfiltered water. “Hey, how did it go?” She said, unable to hide the relief on her face that I had returned. I forced a smile and indicated for her to follow me back into the house where I unloaded the supplies I had scavenged. “Nice!” she said, impressed at my haul before noticing the second rifle. “How the hell did you get that?”

  “Slavers!” I said coldly. “Two dead, two more on our trail, and it seems likely they have been in touch with the Bishops to organise a bounty. We need to get packed and get moving as soon as possible.” I handed her the boots I had found and some thick pants she could wear under the filthy dress to offer some protection to her legs. I proceeded to strip and clean the new rifle while Ashe quickly pulled on the pants and boots. As expected, it was filthy, so I spent nearly an hour cleaning the weapon properly while Ashe reorganised the backpack and got the freshly distilled water bottled.

  “Will they come this way?” she asked as she closed the bag and handed it to me. The fear in her eyes likely had more to do with the idea of being left behind, though she was not likely to admit that she would be unable to keep up on foot.

  I had not seriously
entertained the idea of leaving her behind, though I had no doubt the thought was plaguing her mind. I would shoot her first, rather than leave her to those animals. Replying to her question, I said, “I doubt it, but I don’t want to be here too long to find out. One of those guys said something about heading back to New Alice, so we might have a bit of time before they pick up the trail. But they are in cars so they will catch up easily. Let’s wait until nightfall then hit the road. If your feet are still sore, we will do as we did yesterday.” I said nothing about the man’s comments about ‘renting’ her, but it explained a lot. I supposed she was afraid it would happen again, and that all this was just some trick. I shook my head to clear the thought as it only seemed to anger me, bringing back memories of what had happened to Amy. I decided I would try my best to reassure her, to keep her safe, it was the only thing that seemed to calm my mood.

  She shuffled her feet in the new boots, walking a few meters. But the look on her face indicated that that pain was barely tolerable. She tried desperately to play it down, almost making it look manageable. Though she winced as she pulled the boots off again, and blood appeared to be seeping through the bandages. “I’ll be okay!” she said, trying to make sure I didn’t leave her behind.

  I shook my head. “Just rest your feet, I’ll get everything ready here, and we will have another look later this afternoon.” I reassembled the rifle after I had finally managed to get it clean, reloaded it the magazine with ammunition and handed it to Ashe, who was seated on the lounge once again.

  She stared at it for a long moment, a part of her still hesitant to trust me. She took in a deep breath and said “Thanks,” taking the rifle and handed me back the Glock.

  I then went back into the bedrooms and began searching the cupboards and drawers, finding several pairs of old socks. I did not know if they would fit, but several more layers of protection for the girl’s feet might at least help if she had to walk. When I came back out, I handed her the socks then went to check the condensation traps, which seemed to be working well. The unfiltered water was poured into a large pot with a smaller pot sitting in the middle, and she had obviously found some old plastic wrap to seal the top with a small stone in the centre to guide the condensation drips into a smaller pot in the middle. It was a simple idea, but effective so I took the rest of the empty bottles down to the nearby creek, gathering more water and adding it to the outside as Ashe had done previously.

  I had to admit to being slightly impressed. Ashe certainly seemed to have some survival skills, which gave me some hope that she might prove reliable on the road. I would offer the option for her to leave once we hit the outer settlements and explain the life I live once we got there. She could make up her own mind then. For now, we had slavers following us, and that had to be the focus. I could not bring myself to leave her to those animals, Amy would never have forgiven me for that.

  The rest of the day, Ashe I spent topping up water from the condensation trap and preparing for a long hike. It would be several days before we reached Lake Eyre and had another source of water. I resigned myself to the fact that I would be carrying her most of the way and made sure my bag was emptied of any unnecessary weight before nightfall. She was doing everything she could to make sure she was useful, and the effort was something I greatly appreciated. I had come across traders before with slaves that did as little as possible, waiting to be fed and looked after by their ‘Master’ before providing them with the service they had been bought for. I am not sure which frustrated me more, the slaver owners that partook in this activity? Or, the slave that was so unwilling to protect themselves that they would rather be raped every night then try to make it on their own? The thought was infuriating. The idea of Amy fighting for her life right to the end may have been an idolised image from my childhood, but it was a mindset I respect far more the common attitude of the new world. My anger subsided when I found Ashe preparing a meal for us out of the tins of food. She was not like those slaves I had met before at all, and I suspected an attempted rapist would quickly find a knife in their back if she had the chance, which filled me with a sense of pride. She reminded me of my mother in that respect, she was strong and capable, and that is what I wanted from her. I had no room for slaves in my life, but if she were to become a partner and a friend – that was something I might at least be willing to try.

  We packed away any signs of life in the homestead to make sure any trackers would not know we were here, before packing away the plastic wrap to take with us. We did one final check of the house, and as soon as the sun was on the horizon, we hit the road. Three layers of socks made walking almost bearable for Ashe, though it was obviously still uncomfortable, and I much preferred that she did not make the injury any worse. I pulled her up into a piggyback as we had done the previous day and proceeded on foot into the deep desert headed south-east towards the Sand Sea in the direction of Lake Eyre, the next human settlement that was not overly friendly to slavers. I had no doubt that the salvers would try looking there, but stopping there was almost a necessity for food and water.

  Several hours passed as the cool night air set in making the walk much easier. I could smell her scent in such proximity, which caused me no end of distraction as I walked. It wasn’t like perfume or anything like that as many of the female slaves seemed to be bathed in. It was a more natural smell, a certain freshness that I had not experienced before. My mind wandered as I marched along the rocky desert where plant and animal life grew extremely scarce. It wasn’t long before rocks gave way to sand and dunes as the night air grew very cold.

  “Thank you, Jack,” she whispered, her arms squeezing gently around my neck. The first embrace of any sort I had received in many years. The feeling was soothing, and I instinctively reached up, placing my hand on her forearm in acknowledgement.

  “Don’t mention it,” I said warmly trying to reassure her, as I continued forward trying to focus on keeping up a good pace. The quiet of the desert was eerie, and I needed to occupy my mind to help keep focused on the task at hand. “Tell me about yourself? Do you have any family?”

  She rested her head on my shoulder, then said, “My family was based a few days walk west of New Alice. We were a small settlement of about fifteen people working on establishing an agricultural settlement to trade food. The place was on a large underground aquifer, and it had rained quite a lot in recent years, so we settled there when I was little. Three families working together to build a life. We grew food and sold it to the traders in New Alice, and things seemed to be doing fine.” She hesitated for a long moment, and I felt a few tears landed on my shoulder. “Anyway, word somehow got out that we were successfully growing food, so we soon had some tough guys move in and take over the land. Anyone not deemed to be useful to the operation was sold into slavery.”

  I reached up again, instinctively, and squeezed her forearm. “Including your family?”

  “No,” she said calmly. “My parents agreed to it, my dad was quite willing to work with them and got paid compensation because apparently ‘redheads fetch a good price’. What they didn’t tell him was that redheads only fetch a good price if they are quiet and submissive. My dad pretty much became one of the tough guys, and my mum went along with it because it kept the rest of my brothers and sisters alive. I know it was probably out of necessity, and if they could have, they wouldn’t have done it, but it still makes me angry. I swore I would never be a submissive slave just out of spite to them.”

  “I’m sorry!” I said sympathetically as I walked.

  “It’s okay,” she said, letting out a sniffle, “How about you? Any family?”

  “No, no family. My mother died when I was young, and my dad before that. They were good people, but it was the early days of the outbreak. They did the best they could under the circumstances.”

  She squeezed my neck again gently. “Do you have any friends or people you run with?”

  I laughed. “No, not really, I have a few acquaintances and contacts that
are good for trade. Trust isn’t exactly my strong point. Besides, I like being alone most of the time. People steal, betray and get you killed.”

  She said nothing for a long time, then added: “I’m sorry that you got stuck with me, if you want, I can leave once we get to the next settlement?”

  I sighed; I still didn’t know what I wanted out of this, if anything, human contact was turning out to be a guilty pleasure of sorts, but did my life really allow for another to join it? I decided honesty was the best approach. “I don’t really know what I want out of this,” I said calmly my footsteps carrying us forward. “And I do not exactly live a settled lifestyle so asking you to come along for the ride may be something you simply do not want.”

  I sensed a warm, genuine smile as she kissed my neck appreciatively. Her tears still seemed to be flowing, as her arms squeezed my neck tightly as her face pressed into my neck. “You are a good man Jack, a rare find in this world.”

  Those were words I had never heard before, ‘a good man’ - I had to admit it was nice to hear it, even if I did not believe it myself. I had killed far too many people in my life and done far too many things that I regret to be that. Amy had many times called me a ‘good boy’, but the meaning of the word good seemed strange, and in many ways, so impractical to survival. We continued in silence for a long time, it was only after a few more hours had passed that I realised she had dozed off her arms wrapped tightly around me and her head buried in the side of my neck. It was a warm feeling to have her with me, and the thought of leaving her somewhere was beginning to feel like a less attractive prospect. That some other slaver might find her and take her back to that life filled me with a tremendous sense of anger, breaking my usual stoic demeanour. Still, caring was dangerous in this world.