by M C Rooney
Since her arrival in the eastern town, which had a population of over five hundred people and machines that made loud noises, and some thin round glass things that shone with the light of the sun, even at night, Molly had spent half of her days on the beach, standing barefoot with her boots in her hand, watching the ocean rush in and out over the sands.
“Do you ever get tired of seeing this?” she asked Michelle, who had decided to accompany her today.
“Never,” Michelle replied. “Have you noticed yet how peacefully you sleep with the noise of the ocean nearby?”
“Yes, I have, and those soft things are so comfortable.” Molly smiled and was again in a state of shock, as today, Michelle had decided to be nice to her for some reason.
“Beds,” Michelle replied with a grin.
Molly stopped looking at the ocean and looked over at her new friend and watched as her lovely blonde hair blew freely in the breeze. She reached up to her own hair and found clumps of hair that banged against her head whenever the wind picked up.
“How do you get such nice hair, Michelle?” she asked.
“Well, you know … I sort of … wash,” she replied as she looked at her feet.
She washes? Molly mulled over this answer and came to a conclusion she didn’t want to know.
“Oh no!” Molly said in embarrassment. “I smell bad, don’t I?”
“No, no … no. Well, yes, real bad,” Michelle replied.
Molly felt humiliated and started taking off her clothes.
“What are you doing?” Michelle said, horrified.
“I need to wash myself. I feel so ashamed,” Molly replied as tears welled in her eyes.
“Well, yes, you do need to wash,” replied Michelle, “but you will just put the same fur clothes on again and smell as putrid as ever.”
“Putrid!” Molly wailed and continued to take her suit off.
“Stop,” Michelle said firmly, and Molly did as she said, albeit with a sulky look on her face.
“There is a combined hairdresser and bathhouse in town that is for women only,” Michelle continued, “and the owner does it purely for his enjoyment and ours. Especially since we have no money here on the east coast anyway.”
Molly had no idea what money was, but she stayed silent on that subject and listened to what Michelle had to say.
“I will take you to him now, and he will give you what he calls a complete makeover,” Michelle finished.
Molly had no idea what a complete makeover was, but she again decided to stay silent on the subject and listened to what Michelle had to say.
“We will also find some newish clothes at one of the clothes stations,” she finished. “Then, we need to burn your old fur clothing in the hope it doesn’t infect the whole town with the plague,” she finished with a big grin.
“Thank you, Michelle,” Molly said with a small smile. She was feeling a bit better now. “Roland doesn’t know how lucky he is to have you.”
Now it was Michelle’s turn to cry.
What do I say now? Molly wondered as her new friend bawled her eyes out. Should I hug her? Oh no, that’s right; apparently, I smell so bad that she might pass out, she thought with a grimace.
“What’s wrong, Michelle?” she decided to say.
“I’m pregnant,” Michelle wailed back at her.
Oh, that was serious, Molly thought.
“So I’m guessing Roland doesn’t know yet?”
“No,” Michelle blubbered.
What should I do? Molly thought in a panic. She had never had any friends, apart from the professor. What did girlfriends do in such a situation?
“Perhaps you should have a … complete makeover as well?” Molly waited and hoped she had said the right thing.
Michelle wiped her face and looked back at her. “Okay,” she said and headed back towards the town.
Ned Abercrombie was twenty-two years of age and, because of his father’s patronage, had risen quickly to be Captain of the Eastern Diggers. Whilst some of the older soldiers may have been jealous of his meteoric rise and believed this to be purely based on who his father was, Edward felt he deserved this position due to his knowledge of battle tactics, his intelligence, and his skills with the sword. This was not arrogance or a deep love of himself that provided him with these thoughts. Edward was just being honest in the analysis of his personality and physique.
Edward was also highly adaptable, and for the past few days had been secretly monitoring Molly McLaren, or more specifically, Molly’s electrical suit. Once Edward had sent a messenger to his father detailing all of what he knew about Molly and the tower, the messenger returned quickly with a reply from his father: ‘Watch her, watch the suit, and above all, don’t let her leave.’
Edward didn’t think that Molly would leave too soon, as she had quickly become enamored with the sea and the warmish weather. He had considered using his considerable talents of seduction in an attempt to keep her from leaving and a way of controlling her, but he believed there was a far simpler solution in making her stay.
Molly was lonely, and she enjoyed the company of her newfound friends.
Sure, Edward believed her to be stubborn in her belief that the tower lands were hers, and she seemed to be overly fond of the professor, but he was sure that keeping Molly in this town for the foreseeable future would be a simple task. He looked through his spyglass from a nearby hill at Molly and Michelle standing on the beach watching the ocean tides come in. Molly had done this for days and had stood barefooted with the company of Michelle, Jeremy or Roland.
He wondered whether Michelle had told her, or anybody else for that matter, that she was pregnant. Roland surely didn’t know, which truly amazed Edward. Roland liked to think he was a man in search of spiritual enlightenment about how the universe worked, but yet he couldn’t see his girlfriend right in front of him dropping him hints left right and centre that she was with child.
He hoped to one day be a father himself, as soon as he found a girl with the same interests, intelligence, and good looks as himself. He wanted to make sure that the very best of genes were passed on to his children.
He watched as Molly and then Michelle started waving their hands about. He wondered if they were having an argument. Molly seemed like she was about to take her clothes off, which only piqued Edward’s interest as to what she was going to do with her suit, but she quickly stopped undressing. Then Michelle looked like she was crying. This went on for about a minute, with the end result of them both walking back to the town. Edward watched them walk the main streets and pondered where they might be going. He saw the women’s hairdressers shop was open and made a calculated guess that they were headed there.
He was correct yet again.
Given the state of Molly’s hair, he thought they might be in that salon for some time. He decided he had an hour to kill so made a decision to head back to the soldiers’ gymnasium for an afternoon workout with weights and to hone his sword skills some more. He still couldn’t believe that savage had managed to put a rip in his blue jacket.
When he arrived at the gym, he was greeted by yet another messenger from the governor. Father was returning very shortly, and Edward was to make plans for the eastern community’s survival.
Tasmanian Lower Midlands
Two young girls sat out the back of Greg Hurst’s home and prepared the food caught on their latest hunt.
“Bloody hell, these kangaroos are hard to clean,” Renee said as she grunted and sliced another tough strip of the furry skin off the dead animal.
“Maybe it’s your blunt knife,” said Susan.
Renee gave her knife a good looking over. “Maybe,” she said.
“You’re very good with the bow,” Susan Hurst said.
Renee just shrugged. “Practice, I guess. It’s my job, so I may as well be good at it.”
“Do you plan on being a ranger forever?” asked Susan.
“I’m not sure,” Renee replied. She was only eighteen, so
she hadn’t given much thought to the future. “We only have a small population in Hobart; maybe there are two thousand of us.” After a moment, she continued, “We all work at surviving, basically.”
“Just the same as us.” Susan nodded.
“My grandfather,” Renee added, “said that before the Collapse people worked to earn money so they could buy things.”
“Yes, my Pop said the same thing,” Susan replied.
“I guess now because there isn’t money, there isn’t a wide area of jobs to do,” Renee said.
“Self-propagating, my Pop said money was,” Susan offered.
“Hmm, a problem for another time, perhaps,” said Renee as she dug her knife farther down the kangaroo’s skin.
“Can I help?” a timid voice said from the back door.
Susan immediately stood up and began fussing around her sixteen-year-old cousin, as she had done ever since Renee had helped her back here.
“You should be resting, Marissa,” she said in a firm voice.
“I have been,” Marissa replied quietly as she looked down at her feet.
“You can help,” said Renee, which earned a glare from Susan. “Or at least you can sit out here and enjoy the sun,” she continued and gave Susan a glare of her own in return.
Marissa couldn’t sit in the house all day. She needed some sunlight and human company, as far as Renee was concerned.
“Here,” Renee said, as she handed over a small rabbit to skin.
Susan passed Marissa a knife as she sat down next to them, but was still angry at Renee and grumbled under her breath about ‘resting’.
“Are you feeling better?” Renee asked; she was always straight up with everything. She never ‘beat around the bush’ as her father liked to say.
“Yes, thank you,” Marissa replied softy and looked over at Renee’s sword and bow, which were leaning against the back of the house.
“Your uncle has gone with Tom and Locke to train some of the new boys,” Renee said.
“I know,” Marissa whispered back, but continued to look at Renee’s weapons.
“It’s a shame no females put up their hands to be trained,” Renee said and then swore as she dug another hole in the kangaroo.
“What do you mean?” Marissa asked, looking directly at Renee for the first time.
“I know what you mean,” said Susan angrily, “and she is too young to become a ranger.”
Renee was about to argue that she had been just fifteen when she began her training when the Hurst’s next door neighbour yelled about incoming bandits.
“Get inside,” Renee ordered Marissa and Susan.
“But all they want is food,” Susan replied as she dragged her cousin indoors.
“Well, they bloody well can’t have any,” Renee said with a grunt in reply. “And lock the bloody doors,” she added as she grabbed her bow and sword.
The town that the Hursts lived in was basically a long road with about fifty houses on both sides and little gravel roads that led off to both the eastern and western surrounding hills. This was where the rest of the community lived in their own isolated houses. It was in the middle of this long road that Renee decided to stand, with her bow over her shoulder and sword on her hip, and watch as six disheveled men of various ages rode into town demanding food. She just wished she had time to grab her hat, but she did have her green jacket on, which she would sleep in every night given the chance.
“Give us some food, you bunch of cunts,” yelled the leader to the nearby houses. He was a man maybe in his forties, though it was hard to tell his age since his face was a mixed pile of dirt and facial hair; just looking at him made Renee want to scratch.
He carried only a tattered old knife, and looking at the others, Renee noticed that some of them weren’t even armed. These men were bullies, not warriors. If they went to Hobart and demanded food like that, even a seventy-year-old granny would have thrown them out of town.
“Um, I’m afraid there will be no more freeloading from this community. Now, please be a good chap and leave immediately,” replied Renee.
“Who might you be, bitch?” the leader growled out.
“I might be, and am, Renee,” she replied with that cheesy grin she wore so well. “And who are you, dear sir? The Man who Doesn’t Wash, perhaps? The Lord of the Toilet? The Man whom Flies call Home?”
The leader looked at Renee in absolute astonishment. Here was a man who had led his small gang for twenty years by brute force and took no shit from anybody and was now getting piles of it in return.
“You listen here, you little—” he tried to say.
“The Talking Turd,” Renee continued. “The Crap that Rides, The Great Dung Beetle. The Human Septic Tank, The Bearded Grogan, The Man with Two Arses,” she said with a pointed look at his face.
The leader screamed and jumped from his horse and ran at Renee with his knife still sheathed; no doubt he just wanted to punch her in the face.
“About time,” Renee muttered, as she was fast running out of insults to give.
As the man ran closer, she calmly placed her bow at her feet and removed her sword, and when he was within striking distance, she spun around and delivered a perfect roundhouse kick to his jaw. The leader flew to Renee’s right and smashed his head against a picket fence. Renee walked over to him, lifted his dazed head, and punched him flush in the face, knocking him unconscious.
“One down, five to go,” she murmured.
The five remaining men looked at Renee like she was a fire-breathing demon.
“Get her!” one of the young men shouted.
“You get her, Dave. That was your dad she just knocked out, not mine,” another replied.
The young man called Dave dismounted from his horse and tentatively walked towards Renee.
“Ah, the Son of a Dung,” she said and bowed.
Dave now ran at her, screaming like his father, and threw a haymaker of a punch. Renee crouched low under the punch, stepped easily to her left, and rammed her right foot into the side of Dave’s knee, causing him to cry out in pain and fall to his knees. Renee followed this up a split second later with a sidekick to the head, knocking him out.
“Two down,” she said and only then realised that all the families who lived on the road had come out of their houses to watch, even Susan and Marissa. And they were all carrying boxes of food.
Oh no, please don’t give in, Renee thought in anguish.
One of the elders from the families cried out loudly, “You want our food?”
The four riders that were left looked keenly at the old man.
“Then you can have our food,” said the old man, who proceeded to throw a tomato at one of the horsemen, hitting him square in the face. This galvanised all of the families, who began to pelt the bandits with food scraps until the four of them rode at full pace back to wherever they came from.
Renee laughed her head off and only stopped when she felt a slight tug on her jacket.
She looked across at Marissa, who was gazing at her with focused and clear eyes. This was the first time Renee had seen her so composed.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes what?” Renee replied.
“Yes, I wish to become a ranger.”
Renee smiled and placed an arm around her shoulder. “Well, that is good to hear,” she said. “Now, the first lesson of a ranger is how to tie someone up good and proper.” Having said this, she led Marissa over to the two unconscious bandits.
Up on a rise of a hill about a kilometre down the road from where a food fight was occurring, Tom stood next to Locke and Greg, watching as the twenty young men, aged from fourteen to sixteen, went through their archery lessons of firing arrows into the nearby trees.
They were good for the most part, as farmers relied heavily on the bow and arrow to defend their livestock, but they needed to improve. A ranger was required to hit a moving object, not just a standing tree. When Tom had told them that, with practice, they would hit a target wh
ilst riding a horse at pace some of the young recruits looked at him with complete disbelief. However, the growing rumours that they had killed some of the
Westerners that way would soon remove their skepticism.
“What do you think?” Greg asked Locke.
“About as good as Tom when he started, and he turned out all right,” he replied.
Greg gave a sigh of relief. “If these boys turned out as half as good as Tom Dayton then my community would be doing just fine,” he replied.
Tom looked down at his shoes, and Greg could see that he was blushing of all things. It was good to see the man-mountain wasn’t vain like some physically strong young men could be.
Suddenly, they heard the sound of horses racing along the road and looked down the hill and saw four horsemen racing southwards.
“Where are they going in such a hurry?” asked Locke.
Tom brought out his spyglass from Pips’s saddlebag and could see their faces clearly. They looked frightened.
“I think I recognised one of the riders,” Greg said with worry as they passed the hill.
“One of your food bandits?” asked Locke.
“Yes,” Greg confirmed.
“Mount up, everybody,” Locke yelled out. “We’re going back to the town.” All of the recruits ran to their horses.
Tom was still watching the four riders as they slowed to a halt. “They are stopping, Breaker,” he said.
“Why?” said Locke, who could barely see them in the distance now.
Tom looked beyond the bandits and saw five green-jacketed riders pointing their bows at them. Was that Cazaly at the front?
“Five Rangers have shown up,” Tom said. “I think the leader is Jerry Cazaly,” he added, making this assumption based on the sun bouncing off his shiny head.
“Greg, take the boys back to the town; we need to meet up with our friends,” said Locke.
Greg did as he asked, and he and the anxious recruits rode north at a fast pace. Tom and Locke mounted their horses quickly and, bows at the ready, made their way southwards.
The four bandits who were rattled by how the townspeople had acted were now terrified, as five armed men were pointing bows straight at them, and two had now arrived from behind.