Alex fired again and Gemma lowered her pistol. ‘Stop,’ she said, ‘he’s down.’
She saw her husband then, in the paddock at the roadside fence, leaning his rifle against the fence railings and drawing a pistol from his belt.
He started to climb the fence railings.
Fifty-Two
I was almost over the fence when the girl on the ground suddenly sat bolt upright.
Her left shoulder was a mess of blood and meat and her face was streaked with it.
She was barely five metres from me and I could see the craziness in her eyes. The submachine gun was still in her right hand and she was bringing it up. The muzzle was level with me before I even registered and she fired, the bullets zinging past my head. I flinched and punched out the Ruger in my right hand, firing by instinct, three rounds in quick succession, her body shuddering as the rounds all hit home.
The submachine gun triggered another burst as the barrel dropped and I heard the rounds impacting the fence railings below me. I fired two more rounds into her torso, lifted the barrel slightly, and drilled the last round through her nose. The body slumped sideways and the submachine gun dropped. I jumped back down and shoved the empty Ruger into the holster, grabbing my Rossi again. I quickly scaled the fence and moved around the ute. The girl was clearly dead, her head leaking fluids onto the asphalt of the road.
The big man that Rob had dropped was in a heap on the road, also leaking blood from his head. There was a big hole in his forehead and his sightless eyes were staring at the sky. Beside him was a massive guy, flat on his back with a shotgun beside him. His front was wet with blood and I could see multiple holes in his torso. If I was a betting man, I’d say that Gemma and the guy with her had shot him.
I moved to the cab and confirmed it was clear, then checked the rear of the ute. I yanked aside the bundled tarpaulin and saw the body of a woman there. Chubby, dyed hair, and with stab wounds in her chest. Dead.
There were more weapons beside her too, and boxes of ammunition.
I stepped back, sucking in a breath. My heart was already pounding with adrenaline, and it skipped a beat when I saw Gemma running towards me. I put down my rifle and moved past the dead bodies and opened my arms. She crashed into me so hard I staggered and I wrapped her up tight, lifting her off the ground as she cried. She cried hard and I felt my own eyes leaking too, not quite believing she was actually home and alive. She was beaten and bloodied but she was alive.
We held each other for what seemed like forever until Gemma let go and wiped her eyes. We laughed at each other and I wiped tears from her face then kissed her firmly on the mouth.
‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ I said. ‘Who the hell are these guys?’
‘Long story.’ She turned to the guy who was standing off, waiting awkwardly. ‘Alex, this is Mark,’ she said.
He came over and we shook hands.
‘Alex is from work,’ she said. ‘He’s been with me since this all happened. We’ve pretty much walked from work.’
‘We were getting a bit anxious,’ I said, then a thought suddenly hit me. ‘Is it just these pricks or are there more to come?’
‘Just them,’ Alex said, and I nodded.
‘Good. There’s been enough shit going on here this week.’
‘Is Archie okay? Where is he?’ Gemma rubbed her face and ran a hand through her hair. ‘What about Mum and Dad? Who’s here?’
‘They’re all here and they’re all okay.’ I realised that, despite the carnage around us, I was grinning like an idiot. ‘Shit, I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe you made it.’
My wife gave her companion a sideways look. ‘We nearly didn’t,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty rough out there. Man, there’s riots and everything, we had…’ She shook her head and looked away. ‘It’s pretty bad,’ she said quietly.
I heard footsteps behind us and turned to see Bevan arrive, his AR-15 at the ready.
‘Holy fuckin’ shit,’ he said. ‘Who the fuck are these guys?’ He noticed Gemma then and raised a hand in greeting. ‘Hey, Gemma.’ He stuck his hand out and shook with Alex. ‘You guys all okay?’
‘Yep.’ I was about to pull Gemma in again but we both heard the shouting from our driveway as Archie came running.
‘Mum! Mum! Mummy!’
She ran to him and they were both crying by the time they met and she swept him up in her arms and they clung to each other.
I didn’t want my son to see the bodies and the mess, so I gently guided them up the driveway and told Gemma I would be there soon. I went back to where Alex and Bevan stood together, Bevan checking out the carbine that Alex was holding.
‘Where’d you get that from, mate?’ Bevan was saying.
‘Um, from a guy,’ Alex said uncomfortably.
‘You bought it?’
‘Um, no…we took it from him…’
Bevan was about to ask another question but I intervened, seeing how uncomfortable Alex was with the conversation. The other neighbours were coming down the road too, some armed, most not.
‘Guys, we need to get this shit off the road.’ I jerked a thumb at the ute and the bodies, and the shot-to-shit Honda. ‘There’s a dead woman in the back of the ute too, and some guns. Give me a hand and we’ll get the bodies into the back of it and move it off the road.’
Between us we got the girl and the big man into the back, the other neighbours standing back and watching. When it came time to move the massive guy, I called on a couple of the neighbours to help. They did so, gingerly trying to help us lift him before I got grumpy.
‘Come on, get into it,’ I snapped. ‘I’m not breaking my back for this fat fucker. Put some effort in.’
We got him up onto the back of the ute and shuffled him up, closing the tailgate after him. I pulled the tarp off the dead woman and spread it across all four bodies.
‘Bevan, can you take this to your place mate?’ He looked reluctant and I raised my eyebrows expectantly. ‘Kids don’t need to see this shit mate. We’ll sort it out later, okay?’
‘I don’t want them there for too long,’ he said, but he did as I asked and moved the truck down the road.
‘You two,’ I said to the two guys who had helped us with the bodies, recognising one as one of the Macklins’ workers, ‘go and get some water and brooms and wash the blood and shit off the road, okay?’
They went off to do it, and I got Alex to help me push the Honda to the side of the road. The keys were in it but there was glass everywhere inside and I didn’t fancy getting cut.
By the time Alex and I got back up to the house things had calmed down and a pot of water was on the boil. Nothing like a cup of tea in times of high emotion. Archie and Gemma were on the couch together, and it was clear that he wasn’t going to be letting her go any time soon.
I introduced Alex to everyone and Gemma explained that he had walked with her all the way from Freemans Bay. I knew there would be more details to that journey but she was careful not to go there while Archie was listening. Rob took me aside and asked if he had hit the guy with the BAR. I told him he had and he nodded slowly, processing that. I knew it wasn’t sitting comfortably with him, all the violence of the last few days, even though he was stepping up and doing what needed to be done.
‘You saved my arse,’ I told him. ‘That guy would have dropped me. That was a hell of a shot.’
He nodded, taking some solace from that, and I shook his hand. ‘It was the turning point, dropping that guy.’
‘I’m just glad you’re okay,’ he said quietly. ‘And my girl’s home safely.’
After washing up, I fetched a bottle of bourbon from the cupboard and cracked it open. I poured us all a decent slug and we toasted the safe homecoming of Gemma and our new friend Alex. He seemed overwhelmed by everything that was going on, but Sandy took him under her wing and got him busy helping her in the kitchen.
Fifty-Three
As darkness fell, Rob and I walked down to Bevan’s.
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The red and silver ute was parked outside his shed, and we found him in the garage. He had unloaded the weapons from the back of it, and had them laid out on the floor with their magazines and spare ammo. He looked up as we came in, and I could see the excitement in his face. He was loving having all these guns in his hands.
‘Alright mate?’ I said, casting an eye over them.
‘There’s some really good shit here,’ he enthused. ‘Look at this; a fuckin’ BAR. That shit is fuckin’ brutal.’
He was right; it was fuckin’ brutal. So brutal it had nearly killed me, Gemma and Alex.
‘You’re not wrong,’ I agreed. I checked the weapons again. ‘Where’s that M3?’
He looked around as if he had no idea, and spread his hands. ‘Um, I’m not sure…’
‘Come on, where is it?’ I fixed him with a glare. ‘You can’t help yourself, Bevan. This is not all for you to lay claim on.’
He looked surprised. ‘Oh come on, Mark, these arseholes came to my home…’
‘No, they came to my home,’ I corrected him. ‘Trying to kill my wife.’
‘That was a helluva big shootout,’ he said. ‘They could’ve killed any of us.’
‘Not you,’ Rob retorted sharply. ‘You dropped your nuts and hung back while him and my daughter dealt with it.’
Bevan looked like he’d been slapped. ‘I didn’t drop…’
‘And he popped one of the fuckers from a hundred metres away on iron sights,’ I said, jerking a thumb towards Rob. ‘Saved my life.’
Bevan stewed on it for a moment. ‘You can’t say I dropped my nuts, because I didn’t. I had to get my gear and get down there, and there was bullets flying everywhere. I couldn’t just run down the middle of the road; I’d’ve got shot. I got there as fast as I could.’
I let my anger simmer a bit, and took a breath before speaking. ‘Look, whichever way you cut it, you have no claim to keep all these. You’ve got a shitload of weapons of your own.’
‘I want the SKS,’ he said obstinately. ‘It’s a real Russian-made one.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Get me the M3 and we’ll take the rest of this stuff. We’ll keep some and I’ll give some to the neighbours.’
We eyeballed each other for a few seconds before he backed down. He fetched the British submachine gun from inside, along with the four magazines for it. I put it with the other weapons and led the other two men outside.
‘You got access to the Macklins’ little digger?’ I asked.
Bevan nodded. ‘I can get it.’
‘Go get it now, and we’ll bury these fuckers.’
‘What about the truck? And the other car?’
‘I’ve got an idea for them, but one thing at a time.’
We waited while he headed off over to the Macklins’ place, and I took the opportunity to quickly check inside his house. I didn’t trust him not to have nicked anything else, and I was right. He had kept back a few boxes of 9mm Parabellum ammo, stacked on his dining table where I guessed he had put the M3. As far as I knew he didn’t have any 9mm-calibre weapons.
I took them back out to the garage. Rob rolled his eyes when I showed him – he was getting a serious dislike for Bevan.
The digger was old but functional, and I got Bevan to drive it into the paddock beside his house, over into the far corner.
‘Why my place?’ he wanted to know.
‘Because I don’t want my wife and son to have a constant reminder of how close they came to being killed at home,’ I said bluntly. ‘Just dig the fuckin’ hole.’
He did as he was told, scowling all the way, and I fumed as I watched him. I was physically and mentally drained, and I didn’t need his shit. Our fragile relationship was under strain but right at that moment I didn’t give a shit. I just wanted to bury these pricks and get on with it.
Once the hole was deep enough I drove the Ford over and we dumped the bodies in the hole. Bevan covered it again, smoothing out the ground as best he could. There were no tears shed, no sadness. I was tempted to spit on their graves but held back. Those pieces of shit deserved nothing from me, not even my spit.
I drove the ute back to Bevan’s house, thanked him, and loaded the weapons and ammo into it. He was still grumpy when we left.
Rob and I went home and unloaded all the weapons and ammo into the garage – I didn’t trust Bevan not to come foraging, so put them under lock and key. While Rob went inside I looked over the weapons again, deciding what I wanted to keep.
The BAR was a given. A semi-auto .308 with a 20-round magazine would be very handy when you needed to reach out and touch someone.
The Norinco CQ 5.56 was a Chinese semi-auto version of the M16 in .223. This one had half a dozen 30-round mags with it. The pump action shotgun the massive man had been using was a Winchester SXP with a 28-inch barrel and a 4-round tube capacity. The M3 was an interesting weapon. It was a ruggedly ugly little 9mm submachine gun. It had a simple telescopic butt and a 30-round magazine.
The Beretta 1301 Tactical shotgun was the Marine model in black and silver, and would be very handy.
The last one was an SKS carbine in 7.62x39mm, the old Russian calibre. It was also a semi-auto, fed with 10-round stripper clips, of which there were several. I put that aside as one that I was happy to give away. The ammo wasn’t common and I figured we could live without it. I added the Winchester to it and kept the rest aside. I knew I was keeping the best weapons, but what the hell, I figured we had earned it. My family were pretty much the only ones dealing with the threats we faced, and we needed to be equipped to do so.
I added the 7mm Magnum Ruger M77 I had taken from the shitbirds at Meremere to the giveaway pile, plus the bolt action Norinco .22 recovered from the thief my mother had shot. I nodded, satisfied. Four weapons to share out with the neighbours, four for us.
By the time I had cleaned up again and gone inside, living arrangements had been worked out. One of the camp stretchers had been put up and Alex would sleep in the lounge, meaning nobody else had to move. If it was to be a longer term situation that would readdressed later, but for now, he was just happy to be sleeping inside.
Dinner was soon ready and we all sat at the dining table together to eat. Sandy, Jenny and Alex had been busy and we had rice risotto with chicken and vegetables from the garden. Gemma sat between Archie and I and I felt like a goofy teenager again now that she was home. I hadn’t realised how stressful it had been not knowing where she was or whether she was safe, not until I actually had her home.
Looking around the candle-lit table, I knew that even though our house was now home to a collection of people who otherwise would never have been together, it was okay. We were safe and warm, we were fed and watered, and we were together.
In the days ahead, and with the trouble that came, together we were going to need to stand fast.
THE END
Message from the Author
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Cheers,
Angus McLean
About the Author
Angus McLean is a South Auckland Police officer.
His experience as a cop and a private investigator gives his writing a touch of realism. He believes reading should be escapist entertainment and is inspired by the TV shows he watched as a youngster.
His real identity remains a secret.
www.writerangusmclean.com
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