Desolation (Book 1): Aftermath

by Butler, Simon L.

  “Are we going to stop and make camp for the night?” Ashe asked after a few hours.

  “No,” I said calmly, explaining, “while we are in the deep desert we walk at night, and rest during the day. If we cannot find shade, then we bury ourselves in a layer of sand to insulate us from the heat. It may be cold at night, but it means we are not wasting water and risking heatstroke.”

  “But how do you know where we are going if you can’t see?”

  I pointed up to the stars, “See those stars there!” My finger pointed to the southern cross.

  “Yeah?”

  “Now see those two stars there!” My finger moved to the two stars known as the pointers. “Those two are called Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri.” She listened intently as I continued, “Next, hold your hand up to the star furthest from the cross making an ‘L’ with your finger and thumb and then do the same down the centre of the cross. Where your fingers meet is exactly south!”

  She climbed down and tried it as if etching what she had learned to memory.

  “From there, you can easily work out all other directions,” I explained.

  She then pointed to a small cloud just below the cross, and asked, “What’s that?”

  I smiled, wondering how I would explain the notion of other stars and galaxies to this girl. I tried to keep it simple, so I said simply, “That is another galaxy called Andromeda.”

  She looked at me confused.

  “A galaxy is an enormous collection of objects like the sun.”

  “Oh.” She still looked confused, her eyes looking all around the sky at the hundreds of visible stars. “What about the stars?”

  I smiled, explaining further, “Each one of those is an object similar to the Sun.”

  “Really?” She looked at me sceptically. “How far away are they?”

  “They are so much further than you can possibly imagine.”

  The confusion remained as I pulled her up again and continued walking. “How far away is… what did you call it? Andromeda?”

  “Andromeda is much, much, much further than any star in the sky.” Her curiosity and wonder were fascinating. She had a hunger to learn and know more. Another trait of hers that I appreciated.

  The next few days of walking were largely uneventful if excruciatingly hot, any sense of being tracked seemed to have dissipated, and the conversation was light during the oppressive heat of the day. The first day we stopped once the sun got to a certain point, covered each other in sand, then sat a spare shirt over our faces to shield us from the head. Sleep was difficult, but it meant we were somewhat rested. When the temperature began to cool in the late afternoon, we carried on. Ashe’s refreshing attitude and sense of humour were quite invigorating, and her company had gone from fascinating to me to refreshing and invigorating. A routine began to form as the days blended. By the time we reached the far edge of the Sand Sea, the northern section of the lake was coming into view on the horizon, and the settlement I knew was less than one hundred kilometres beyond its shores to the east. Ashe and I had grown a lot closer over the last week or so, and I had grown to enjoy her company. Her reservations seemed to have passed, and she seemed to have grown more confident talking around me as came to realise that I would neither harm her nor leave her behind for expressing an opinion.

  “It is not at all a rare sight to find Lake Eyre full these days. This place was once almost completely dry in the time of the Old-world,” I explained to Ashe as her eyes looked in wonder at the large body of water. “But now it’s rare to see it less than a hundred kilometres from east to west.” The settlement, however, was still a few more hours away on foot, and dawn was getting close, so we opted to make camp and finish the trek in the evening. The sun beginning to peek over the horizon, and the air temperature was already heating up. “The sand on the shores should work just as well as the desert!” I explained.

  We set up by a tall series of rock formations by the lake building a firepit and preparing to make camp for the day. The rocks concealing us from the surrounding area and offered protection from the desert winds. It was still very warm here, but it was much less so than the scorching heat of the Sand Sea.

  The lake was beautiful and seemed to be teaming with life. With thousands of seabirds making this place their home over the years, meaning that fishing in the area had become a realistic possibility over time. “The water is far too salty for humans to drink, but sea life seems to be thriving in there!”

  “Really?” I suppose it would be strange, given that she had likely only ever seen freshwater fish in small creek beds. To her Lake Eyre was impossibly large, she gazed across the water as small waves crashing against the shore with amazement. “Is this the ocean?” she asked curiously.

  “It is certainly beginning to resemble an inland sea more and more each year, but no, it’s not; it’s a large lake.” She looked at me sceptically once more. “It’s like a really big creek on top of a salt plain!” I did not add to my explanation that the land was getting greener, less arid, and more hospitable also made it more palatable to zombies. They were still very rare this far from the coast, of course, but from time to time, they would wash upriver after storms and cause the locals problems, so it was something to be aware of.

  “I’ll take watch.” Ashe said warmly, breaking me away from my thoughts. “You get some rest, you look exhausted.”

  I nodded appreciatively, covering myself in sand until my body was properly insulated from the approaching heat of the day. “Just keep an eye on the shore, it’s rare, but zombies do occasionally wash up around here.”

  “Really?” Ashe asked with her usual sceptical look, whenever I said something that did not seem real to her.

  I nodded, replying, “Really! If you see anything, just wake me!”

  Chapter 3 – (Lake Eyre)

  I am not sure exactly when, but I fell into a deep sleep and dreamt about an obscure memory from my childhood. A group of people that I spent some time with as a boy, they did not speak in words. When I met them, I was maybe nine and probably far too old to fully adapt to their lifestyle, or I may never have left the cities. In my memory, I called them ‘feral children’, orphans of the apocalypse that had somehow clung onto life through the worst of the outbreak.

  “Jack!” Ashe shook me awake; her voice panicked. Startled me awake as I brought up the hunting knife instinctively to a defensive position causing her to jump back in fright.

  When I realised it was her, I put the knife back in its pouch and said, “I’m sorry!” It took her a second to gather her thoughts and regain her composure. The image of her frozen in fear sent a shiver of guilt down my spine as I climbed to my feet, putting a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  She said nothing at first, just pointing to the horizon to the west just north of where the sun was setting. My eyes moved quickly to the direction she was pointing scanning for movement. The distant sound of an engine spurred me into action immediately. I gathered my rifle, searching for the source of the sound. It took just a few seconds for me to identify the direction. Two dim sets of headlights were approaching from the west barely visible through the dying sunlight. Knowing that there were few people driving cars these days meant only one thing around here. The sight was enough to stir me into action as I threw the backpack over my shoulders. “Can you walk?” I asked, noting that her shoes were still on.

  “Yeah, I think I’ll be okay, my feet itch but they will be fine,” she said as she held her rifle close.

  “Hold your fire unless we have to, gunshots are a last resort always. You never know who… or what might hear it. Understood?” I put a hand on her shoulder, reassuring her as she nodded acknowledging my words. I tried to calm her nerves, speaking softly to reassure her. “We will be okay.” She blinked once through her green eyes and seemed to gather her resolve, pulling her rifle up to her shoulder with a determined look.

  “Let’s go,” I said in a serious tone leading us along the shoreline betwee
n rock mounds. “The last thing we want in a place like this is to give away our position,” I said, guiding her down to the shorefront of the huge inland lake, ducking down behind a small pile of rocks as the engines neared. Two pickup trucks moved quickly across the flat rocky terrain approaching the shore.

  “They have to be from New Alice,” Ashe explained. “No one else has vehicles around here!” She knelt close by her eyes skittish, moving between the trucks and our surroundings constantly.

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “Always focus on the target of concern,” I said trying to explain basic combat skills to her. “Use your peripheral vision and other sensors to monitor your surroundings otherwise. But your focus should always be your primary target.”

  She took in several deep breaths, taking my words on board as her eyes directed towards the trucks with a sense of focus.

  “Stay close to me, okay, we will be okay,” I said calmly, adding “Do not try to run!” The two trucks pass less than a hundred meters away. Once the glare of their headlights and the sunset were behind us, I was able to catch sight of the driver. Recognising the same guy that had been tracking us a few days earlier, ‘Sam’. I checked my rifle, knowing how this was going to go if we were seen.

  “What is it?” Ashe asked, her voice fearful at my reaction.

  “It’s the same guys I ran into the other day.” I pulled my rifle into my hands, holding it at the ready before turning to Ashe and ordered in a hushed tone, “Stay low and stay out of sight, they haven’t seen us yet.”

  The trucks pulled up several hundred meters along the shore of the lake, as six men climbed out of the two trucks, each carrying assault rifles and covered in heavy armour as if they were geared up for war. “It looks like they are geared up for a raid,” Ashe whispered as she moved behind me, “What do we do?”

  I took in a deep breath, calming my own nerves, had they truly come all this way for some traveller and a slave over some fucking kid? I wondered, even if the kid was a Bishop, it seemed unlikely that old man Malcolm would spend the resources on a needle in a haystack. The idea of burning several hundred kilometres of fuel just because they lost one of their own made little sense given their track record. “Don’t panic.” I whispered. “That’s the first thing.”

  Then the leader of the group said loudly, “Let’s make camp here for the night! Bring the trucks in to give us some cover. There’s every chance that son-of-a-bitch is out here somewhere.” Surely the Bishops knew this was a fool’s errand. I had no doubt that a bounty may have been placed on my head, but I wondered if rick has shared some of my stories of the coast. No doubt the thought of more settlements and communities not under their control would have been something of interest, still the use of precious resources did not make sense to me.

  Ashe just looked at me, her voice hushed but panicked still. “What do we do?”

  I took in another deep breath, trying to work out some elaborate plan that would keep us both alive, but in the end, I came up empty. The desert was flat, offering few places to hide except for a few rocks jutting up from the ground. We seemed to have two options, fight or lay low and wait for them to leave. I pulled off the backpack and handed it to Ashe, along with my Glock, fully expecting to lose against six of them if it came down to a fight. “Lay low for a few hours, stay quiet, and once they leave, run for the Lakeside settlement.” I indicated to the south-east. “Just follow the shoreline, and you won’t miss it.”

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Her hand reached out to grab my arm. “I don’t want to be alone out here, Jack!” She handed me back the Glock. She glared at me for a moment then said, “I’ll cover you if shooting starts – if we die, we die together.” I gently rested my palm on her shoulder, her courage was something inspiring, even if it was perhaps a little foolish. She checked the rifle competently, then moved up to the edge of the rock. I kissed her on the head instinctively, surprised that I seemed to be growing attached to the girl.

  I moved passed her approached the trucks along the edge of the shore using the growing darkness as cover, reattached the holstered Glock to my belt as I moved for the cover of another rock formation just fifty meters away from the trucks. If it did come to a fight, I wanted us in separate places, and I wanted to be in range to take at least a few of them out quickly.

  “Dude fuck this!” one of the men said loudly, “We should just go and fuck up that settlement, enslave the lot. Hell, we’ll probably find those fuckers there if we just lay low for a few days.”

  Sam replied to the man in his booming deep voice, “You heard Bishop, we can claim the bounty, or we can track the son of a bitch and the prize will be so much more!”

  “Fuck that dude, there is no way of knowing what Bishop wants out there, I say we just kill the son-of-a-bitch and take his head to Bishop.”

  The leader just turned and glared as his colleague and said something under his breath, causing the young man to cringe before he moved away from the leader slightly finding a small bush a few meters away from the trucks as he started to piss. I really did not like the idea of being tracked, and this was a good opportunity to take them out or die trying. Then my mind turned to Ashe and what would happen if I failed. I cleared my mind of those possibilities, pushing the sentimental thoughts to the side. Then as if on cue, one of the other men started taking shots at the sea birds that had gathered just a few meters from shore. I seized the moment and fired. The man with his dick out fell instantly, as my shot pierced the back of his head, the sound concealed by the idiot firing at the birds, and the direction would no doubt be difficult to track in these conditions. I signalled to Ashe to hold her fire and hoped she would understand the hand signal, as I waited for another volley from the idiots as they shot at the fleeing birds. I held my aim and as they fired, so did I, taking another shot at one of the men who appeared to be standing guard by one of the trucks. Another direct hit as his body collapsed under a puff of red mist visible in the evening twilight. The leader rushed over to idiots shooting at the birds and growled angrily, not noticing the second driver’s head snap back from my third shot. His lifeless corpse slouched over the steering wheel, causing the horn to sound from the truck. My third shot blasting a hole through the side of his head – but the sound of the horn alerted the others that something was wrong. It was then that I noticed a panicked man run from the far side of the second truck yelling towards the leader and the idiot. “Jimmy’s dead, he’s shot!” There were seven, not six, and four more remaining in my way.

  “What the fuck!” The leader growled as he pulled his rifle up, rushing back to the first truck taking cover by the front of the vehicle. I could still see him clearly but did not want to give away my position to the others, they clearly had no idea where the shots had come from as the four remaining men haphazardly took cover behind the front of their vehicles.

  “Hey,” Ashe whispered as she crawled up beside me. “Sorry, I couldn’t hang back.” She added, leaning up to kiss me on the lips as she took cover beside me, it seemed to have been a decision she had made at that moment. An act of loyalty that won me over immediately, though it did not necessarily fit my plan.

  I had to admit the feeling was heart-warming, but the idea of her death disturbed me far more than I thought it would nearly two weeks earlier. And not knowing what her shooting was like, I did not want to risk a direct firefight. “Okay.” I whispered, “but I need you to lay low and follow my lead, the only way we survive this is if we are not seen.”

  She nodded, understanding as I peered over the rock to check their position. They had moved over to the second truck and pulling the driver out, while the other two men continued to scan the area for movement. The second truck rolled closer to the shore, providing more cover to the group. The noise of the engine was not adequate to cover for another shot, but the moment of distraction for the others was ample opportunity for me to put another shot through the driver. I dropped down immediately behind the rocks after my shot as he let out an agonising
scream. I had been less accurate this time, and when Ashe peered around the rock to see, she said, “It went through his arm!” I looked again, watching the man stop the truck and crawl back to the other three, now on high alert and well away they had been ambushed.

  The leader seemed to at least get an idea of the direction of the shot as he rushed to the far side of the vehicle, “Over there!” he roared to his group, as they aimed their rifles in our general direction and opening fire. Bullets fizzed overhead, most not anywhere near our position. As soon as there was a break in the shooting, Ashe and I nodded to each other and jumped up, firing back. She laid down cover fire, her bullets cannoning into the truck as I searched for an open shot, catching sight of the top of one man’s head and firing a single shot. It bounced off the rear of the truck, causing them to panic. We had them pinned as several more shots from Ashe’s rifle bounced off the rear of the truck, I counted her shots, and as soon as she ran low, I opened fire to keep them pinned while she reloaded the rifle competently. She most certainly had handled a gun before and wielded the weapon like a seasoned professional. “Keep them pinned,” I said firmly as I ducked down, reloading my rifle as well.

  When she was low on ammunition a second time, we both too cover. Checking our weapons while the deep voice of the slaver called out angrily, “You’re only making to worse on yourself, you mother fucker!” The leader roared as he impatiently jumped up and squeezed off a few rounds in short bursts from his assault rifle.

  Ashe squeaked, ducking down lower as the rounds bounced off the dirt and sand nearby, with a few shots buzzing just overhead. The shooting paused momentarily, giving me a chance to poke my head up and open fire again. The leader was reloading his rifle while still in partial sight as I squeezed off another round quickly before dropping back down. “Ahh, motherfucker!” he cried out before several more gunshots rang out. The moment there was a break in the shooting I climbed up again and fired instinctively at one of the men hitting him in the shoulder just before he reached the second truck where the others prepared to make their escape. As the engine roared to life, one of them took a few shots at me forcing me to take cover momentarily as they began driving away. The moment the shooting stopped, I lined up another shot and managed to hit the driver’s side mirror as they rushed off in the direction of the Lakeside settlement.