by M C Rooney
“Have you had any more contact from Grant Hamill?” John asked.
Buzz looked at John Carter sharply. How does he always know these things? “No, Grant has to keep a low profile,” Buzz replied. “It’s his brothers, Gregor or Gary, who come see me when they can.”
“And the new laws?” John replied. “Do you think they will work, both here and there? Will the people accept them?”
“I have been circulating the news slowly, via gossip and word,” Buzz replied as he indicated the computers and printers. “Most people cannot read, but we are slowly fixing that, as you well know.”
Buzz had classes set up in the old school. He was strongly encouraging his people to learn to read and write. John Carter was one of the teachers.
“And there?” John asked.
“The Hamills are a bit hesitant. They are not sure whether a rule of law will work just yet.”
“And the jackets are ready?”
“Yes, they are,” Buzz replied.
“Do you have men picked out?” asked Carter.
“Yes, and women too,” Buzz replied.
Interesting, Carter thought, the women fighting the Easterners and Kirstin’s influence was greater than he first thought. “And are we being watched right now?”
“Seriously, John Carter,” Buzz said in astonishment, “how do you know these things? Flynn swears to me that he tells you nothing.”
“Oh, he doesn’t,” John replied calmly, “and my boy is a man of his word. But he does talk about the community, and whilst he doesn’t say directly what is happening, you can hear a theme.”
“A theme?” Buzz replied in confusion.
“Yes,” Carter replied. “If you listen very carefully and watch their body language, you can always hear a theme in what a person says. Change, my boy was saying when he wasn’t really saying it. Danger, he also said. So I just put two and two together,” he finished with his usual grin.
“Theme,” Buzz murmured.
“So are we being watched?”
“Yes,” Buzz replied. “Up on that nearby hill that looks out on the school.”
“They probably know they would not be disturbed up there either,” John replied thoughtfully.
“Yes.”
“How many?” John asked.
“Just a few, but when the brother comes, there are at least twenty.”
“And who is watching them now?” John asked.
“Alex, Sam, and Ian.”
“Could be interesting then,” John replied. “But I have to go see my daughter-in-law right now.” And he nodded goodbye, crawled backwards, stood up, and walked away, patting the dog under his jacket.
Buzz watched as he wandered all the way down the street towards his old home. He saw his sister Danni Carter, who had only recently found out that she was pregnant and Flynn Carter come running out of the house. Even though she was a great distance away, Buzz could hear his sister squeal with delight as she was presented with her new family dog. It seemed that when the new baby arrived, he or she would have a family companion along with a loving mother, father, and grandfather.
“What the fuck are they doing?” Brad Martin asked as he looked upon the township and saw a number of people sitting on the road.
Twenty warriors were now standing around Jonas. It was clear to Brad who the heir to the Martin clan was. The last six months had only made him hate Jonas more. Jonas had become Glen Martin reborn.
“I still can’t tell,” Jonas replied. “I told Father about the sparks from that metal thing, and he doesn’t know either.”
Sparks from that metal thing, Brad thought in disgust. No wonder Father didn’t know what it was when it was described in such elaborate detail. Fucking idiot!
Still, Brad didn’t know what it was either. He thought he would be able to guess because he was much more intelligent than his brother, but he had to admit to himself that he had no idea what it was. All he saw was a bunch of people sitting on a road and some small triangle-like structure spewing out jagged flashes of light into the sky.
“It’s getting dark; we better head back,” Jonas said.
Scared of the dark, dickwad? Brad thought nastily, but it actually was dangerous to run around in the dark, and the good camping ground for the two-day journey was a few hours walk away.
“Okay, we better go,” Brad replied. His first journey to the lamely called Hopetown, and he had found nothing useful.
“Look!” somebody cried out. Brad thought it was that tall man named Eddie Cornwell. He seemed an all right fella, he supposed, but he was a bit hesitant to use violence in suppressing the tribe, so that made him just a coward in Brad’s eyes.
“Look at what?” Jonas asked mildly. He seemed to have changed a bit since Ozzie’s death. He actually tried to get along with the warriors.
Bloody idiot, Brad thought in disgust. Rulers don’t inspire loyalty by ‘getting along’ with the warriors. They inspire loyalty by controlling them with fear. Didn’t Jonas learn that from his father?
“The lights,” Eddie said in awe. Everybody looked down at Hopetown and saw that as the sun went down, the lights in some of the houses were going on. “The structure is lighting up the houses,” Eddie continued. He seemed to be talking only to himself.
Brad realised that the tall man was right. The small ‘metal things’ he thought with a grimace, were somehow lighting up the houses.
“We need to tell Father right away,” Jonas said urgently, and he and his men ran off towards their own hometown.
Yeah, follow him, you brown-nosing bastards, Brad thought, and then he had to run quickly to catch them up.
Eddie stayed where he was for a moment and looked down on the new town in wonder. Hopetown indeed, but some people needed to die before the name would mean anything. He then glanced up at the nearby trees, nodded, and gave a small smile, then ran after his tribe warriors as well.
“Shit a brick,” Alex said quietly in disbelief. “He knew I was here.”
Alex, Sam, and Ian had climbed high in the thick trees that overlooked Hopetown and watched as Brad and Jonas Martin and twenty of his tribe looked down at the main street and school. They thought they were all well hidden.
“Did he just nod at you, Alex?” Sam called out from another tree. Alex could barely see his brother, so he wondered how the man on the ground could have possibly seen any of them this high up.
“Yes,” Alex replied as he stroked his scraggly beard. It had never been the same since Rodent had blown it off.
“Bloody hell,” Sam replied in fright, “we were all sitting ducks up here.”
“I know,” Alex replied. He felt as though his life had just flashed before his eyes, as his father would like to say about a close call.
“Who was that man?” Ian called out as they all climbed down from their individual trees.
“No idea,” Alex replied, but he knew he owed him his life.
“We better go and tell the chief,” Sam said as they all gathered together on the blessed ground. Sam hated heights.
“Agreed.”
Alex looked at where the men had left and wondered again why that man had spared his life.
“You know there were two Martin brothers here together,” Ian said to the Follett brothers. “Flynn would have killed them for sure had he known.”
“He’s just biding his time,” Sam said to Ian as he stroked at his own luxurious beard. “He’s just biding his time.”
“Mysterious.” Ian nodded.
Alex watched Sam preen at his beard. Sam looked back at Alex with a small grin. “I thought you didn’t like beards,” Alex said testily.
“Yeah, well, you know, things change,” Sam replied with a bigger grin.
“Son of a—” Alex muttered, but he couldn’t complete the sentence as Sam was his brother and Alex loved his mother.
Ian sighed.
The Martin Mansion
“Are you sure your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you?” Brett asked a
s he gazed out of his lounger room window, deep in thought. “It could have been the fading sunset reflecting off the windows.”
“No, Father,” Jonas replied firmly, “the lights were coming from inside the house. Weren’t they, Brad?” he asked his brother.
“Yep,” Brad replied. A man of many words, who was still sulking that Jonas appeared to be the heir apparent.
“This is interesting,” Brett murmured. His Great-Aunt Rebecca, who was currently pushing up the daisies at the back of the house, had told him about electricity and how it lit a house and provided warmth as well.
“We need to steal it,” he said firmly.
“How?” Jonas said in surprise.
“I don’t know how,” Brett spat out as he turned to his eldest surviving son. “You need to think of a fucking way. We are dying here; our tribe is shrinking.”
The tribe wasn’t shrinking. It was the warrior numbers that were shrinking by the day. You’re losing your power, Brett thought anxiously. People do not look to you for leadership anymore. He didn’t have the numbers to enforce his rule, either. Six months ago they’d had over ninety warriors. Then Ozzie led an ill-fated attack on the Roberts family and lost twenty one men. Since then the numbers had reduced to about forty. They said they had had enough of the violence and wanted to work on the land. What a bunch of cowardly bastards they were. But what could he do? He couldn’t beat the men into being warriors again. Hockey would be turning in his grave if he knew.
He still wasn’t sure how Ozzie and the others were killed by the so-called pacifists, but twenty-two bodies were found weeks later in a large field. Ozzie’s body had been too decayed to retrieve and bury next to his brothers, so his carcass was still rotting out there. Brad said he had an arrow wound to the back and had a chest wound. Brad was also smiling when he told him, but Brett was too stunned to hit his smug face; he just sat in his chair and placed his head in his hands. The only good thing about fewer warriors was that more food was being produced, and the people were working less in the other jobs than they had to. They were starting to look happy. Unfortunately, due to some minor mishap with his grandfather, Brett no longer had Grant Hamill, who was one of the few people who could read and write, to tell him about the food increases, and how many hours and which jobs people were working. The electricity was the key. If he was to provide the people with electricity somehow, he would be king again.
“We would have to sneak in at night,” Brad said. “From what I saw, they have no warriors at all.”
“Really?” Brett said in shock. “Are you sure, Jonas?”
Bloody hell, I just said so, didn’t I? Brad thought angrily as he watched his father look to his brother for confirmation.
“Yes, Dad,” Jonas replied. “I saw none at all. They all looked very busy. No doubt rebuilding the town.”
Oh well, Father, it must be bloody true then, if Jonas God Almighty said so, Brad thought with a jealous scowl.
“Strange,” Brett muttered to himself, “they must not fear us.” He didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted.
“But we have a problem, Father,” Jonas continued. “We don’t know how it works, only that it lights up these things,” he said, pointing at the ancient lightbulb in the ceiling.
“I don’t care,” Brett said firmly. “We need it to make the peasants respect us again.”
“But it will only work on our house,” Jonas said, exasperated.
“How do you know that?” Brad spat out.
“Because, dickhead,” Jonas replied angrily, “none of the people out in their huts have any electrical equipment.”
Good point, thought Brett. But maybe having electricity in their home would make the tribe respect them again … or would it make them rebel? He was struggling and he knew it. He felt like the reins of power were slipping from his grasp.
“Did you just call me a dickhead?” Brad said quietly as his hand drifted towards his knife.
Yes, he did, because you are, Brett thought. If only Brad had the character of his half brother Grant, then maybe he would be a worthy son.
“Yes, I did,” replied Jonas, whose hand moved close to his knife as well.
Brett thought about letting them fight to the death, but he only had two sons left now, so he had to walk in between them and calm them down.
“You will work together, boys,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “You may hate each other, but we are all we have left.”
Jonas let his hand go from his knife and muttered an apology, and so did Brad; neither of them meant it, and one of them now intended to murder the other.
“Now, you are to work out how to steal this structure,” Brett continued, in the belief that the threat of bloodshed had stopped, “and I expect your raiding plan to be ready come the end of the week. All right?”
“Yes, Father,” both of them muttered.
The Policeman
Eddie Cornwell was an average-looking man, but incredibly slim and tall. Bean Pole Cornwell some of the people called him, and some of the elders said he would have done very well at an old era game called basketball. He had plain brown hair, green eyes, and had come from a long line of Westerners. In fact, his grandfather had told him that the original Cornwells were shipped over from England as convicts at the start of the nineteenth century. The term convict was something of a misnomer for Tasmanians. Whilst the original convicts would have felt ashamed of being called such, the descendents would often give a laugh at learning of their ancestors’ conviction, unless, of course, if it was for something very serious. “I’m royalty,” they would chuckle and feel proud that their ancestor had survived in such a tough environment.
But Eddie was far from a convict; in fact, in the old days, he probably would have been a policeman, and a very good one at that. “It powered the houses,” he said as he looked down at one of his fellow warriors. “The people in Hopetown have lights at nights. Who knows what else it could do. Provide warmth maybe. This could be a new beginning for us.”
“We should go there and get it, then,” one of the older warriors said. “And kill those cunts while we are about it.”
Yes, you should, Eddie thought. Do us all a favour, please, and go there now and die. “But we don’t know how to work it,” Eddie replied in sadness.
“Perhaps we should bargain with them for the knowledge,” a young warrior said thoughtfully.
“But who would bargain with a warrior?” Eddie replied.
“Maybe we should think about changing our ways like all the other warriors who have left their weapons behind,” he replied.
Now you’re thinking, Eddie thought. Please keep spreading that sort of talk amongst your mates. “Yes, perhaps we should,” Eddie replied thoughtfully. “Good idea, Griffo.”
“You fucking cowards,” the older warrior said. “Kill them I say; kill the lot of them,” and he stalked off to do nothing, like all the warriors did.
“Unfortunately, Buzz’s people double our number, and if need be, he can summon four hundred warriors or maybe more, as they don’t wear war paint now,” Eddie replied to the young man as he watched the older man walk away. “And we only have forty. Still, I’m sure Brett Martin will come up with a plan; he has led us well up until now.”
The young man looked thoughtful as he said goodbye to Eddie and walked away to no doubt talk to some of his close mates and hopefully change his ways.
And this is how Eddie had been talking for the last two years. He had done it so often that it had become second nature for him. He had influenced at least forty warriors to give up their weapons, who in turn, had influenced others. And with the help of the Hamill boys, Ozzie’s ineptness, and Brett’s butchering of some well-loved elders, the Martin warriors had reduced from two hundred to about forty. Eddie now watched as the community moved around doing the daily chores. He wished he could join them, but Grant had insisted that one of them must remain as a warrior to influence people from the inside, so to speak. Eddie had volunteered, an
d apart from the joy of seeing another warrior give up his weapons, he was usually bored out of his mind. Violence was the only thing the warriors were required to do. Martin’s men did not mend, grow, cook, or invent; all they did was enforce Brett Martin’s will, by intimidating and threatening the very people they were meant to protect, that and a lot of standing around. It made him sad, it made him sick, and it made him very angry. The day he had to watch Arnie Hamill, Grant’s own grandfather, get his throat cut for just being associated with their old leader, Hockey, was a day that he would never forget. He felt like humanity had reached the very depths of evil. He was amazed at the clear thinking of Grant on that day, and even more amazed that the advice had come from the old witch Rebecca Roberts. Perhaps there was some good hidden away in all sorts of people, he mused.
He promptly changed his mind on that as his thoughts moved to Brett Martin. If only Brett knew that Hockey was alive and well and living a life of peaceful retirement out in the bush somewhere. He wondered if Brett would have gone looking for him. He doubted that; only someone with small intellect would actively go looking for Hockey, and as evil as Brett was, he wasn’t stupid. Eddie now wandered aimlessly through the community with its small huts and dirt roads that had only been formed because people had walked on them for decades. He watched as his people worked on the rich farmlands to produce the food and clothing that they required, but again, his mind wandered to the sight of those electrical towers. What could they do for them in the future? Would their community be able to return to the mythical days of old? He saw a building being constructed in the distance, which was privately known as Ice Land. The Martins hadn’t even bothered asking what it was. He saw Grant Hamill in deep conversation with about ten young men. Ex-warriors to be exact, for there were a few in that group that he himself had influenced to give up the fighting life. They all looked very serious as they listened to Grant intently. Eddie kept moving, not wanting to draw any attention to himself or provide any suspicion of collusion with Grant. But trying to avoid a Hamill always led to seeing another, and soon he saw Gregor in yet another deep conversation with some elders. The men and women with grey hair who remembered the day before the Collapse were also listening intently to a Hamill brother. He hoped their plan would work. They were so close now, and thinking of how close they were brought Eddie’s attention to Gary Hamill, standing casually against one of the community huts, looking bored. Gary glanced at him, but Eddie looked away and kept walking. Only the very observant would notice that his left hand had only three fingers pointing downwards. Gary nodded slightly and walked away.