Doomsday's Child (Book 1): Doomsday's Child

by Pete Aldin

  Door, head turn, knife plunge—this took Elliot about a second and a half. He slipped the blade out, spattering a little blood on his bare chest. At least he hadn't ruined another shirt.

  He left the nameless Druid leaking fluid while he crouched at the front of the truck, surveying the street. He counted one-twenty, finally satisfied no one had seen his dash to the truck. He slipped around to the driver's door, confirmed the kill, grunted to himself. The Remington over/under lay on the cab floor, out of reach of the creeping blood pool. Elliot drew it out, checked his surrounds again. Still no witnesses. The Druid had a bandoleer strapped diagonally across his chest. Avoiding a fuss with the buckle behind the dead guy's back, Elliot plucked out the thirteen remaining rounds loops and shoved them in his cargo pockets. Then he bolted back into the deadspace between the Council Chambers and a community toilet block. He wiped the barrels once more on a patch of weeds and checked the weapon over: loaded, oiled, good to go.

  Unless they'd gone out a back door, Jeff and Waxer were still in the pub, maybe lightening their second keg a little before rolling it. Fine with Elliot: the drunker they were, the better.

  The little park around the Council Chambers split the shopping district in two. Elliot jogged around the building and into a service alley behind the stores. The back half of the pub was visible at the far end. Running straight up the lane toward it would invite trouble: potential shooters would see him better from inside than he'd ever see them. He climbed the hood of a car to help scale the curbside fence and dropped into a timber yard. Jogging, he took a roundabout trip through yards of car parts, farming equipment, more timber, garden supplies with some plants long dead and others outgrowing their pots. The weeds in the garden supply business hid two bodies, who thankfully didn't move when he bolted past. He reached the side street the pub was on, crossing down the road where the Druids couldn't see him.

  Seven houses sat between a football ground and the pub parking lot. Elliot hugged fences, pausing at the final house to crouch beside its hedge. The parking lot was an empty asphalt rectangle: no garden beds, no trees to break it up and no patrons' cars for cover. The building was still a hundred feet away.

  The instructor voice said, forget it, find an ambush point, let them come to you. Elliot told it to shut the hell up and sprinted across the tarmac, keeping low until he reached a dumpster. It smelled like the dead but probably didn't host any. As if to prove it, a rat the size of a housecat poked its nose out the top, startling him. It squeaked once, dropped to the ground and scurried off, keeping to the curb the way Elliot had been keeping to property lines.

  The sound of idiotic laughter meant his next two targets were close. A sign on the white door beyond the dumpster announced Kitchen Entrance. Empty plastic milk crates piled by the step up. The laughter was coming from behind that door which boasted an old-fashioned ornate knob. Hip and shoulder against the wall, he reached out, turned the knob, eased the door open.

  The kitchen wasn't much larger than an average bedroom, stoves along one side, storage along another, interior and exterior doors front and back, a narrow steel-topped island-bench in the middle. A meth pipe smoked gently from the island-bench beside open bottles of bourbon and rum. The M4 and speargun lay on the top of the stoves. A steel cooler had been built into the storage wall beside the cupboards and shelves and the two Death Druids faced it with their backs turned to him.

  Weapon ready, he would have fired if it weren't for the weirdness of the scene.

  What in God's name?

  Waxer leaned both hands on the cooler door as if being frisked, but he was giggling. Jeff—bald head shiny and fat arms jiggling—held a female zombie in soiled pajamas against a cupboard beside the coolroom, one hand clamped around her throat. The zombie arced her face toward Waxer's arm, jaws snapping while Jeff repeatedly poked her in the cheek with a steel skewer.

  “Zom kebab!” Jeff cackled.

  Waxer smacked his lips. “Stick her again, brother.”

  Two barrels, two dumb bastards, Elliot thought.

  He steadied the shotgun against his shoulder. And something in the tiny movement got Waxer's attention. His eyes widened and as Elliot's aim shifted his way, he dived for cover behind the island bench. Elliot fired, regretting it instantly. The blast tore up wooden shelves, blew a set of pasta bowls to pieces, but missed his target. Jeff started turning, bringing the zombie with him. Elliot's second shot clawed a trench through the fat man's abdomen and a chunk from the deader's hip. Jeff huffed and toppled and the object of his deranged torture went with him, piling against the cupboard in a tangle of limbs.

  Breaking the shottie open, Elliot dropped to one knee, expecting Waxer to pop up with his handgun. Instead, scurrying sounds from behind the food prep bench indicated the biker making for the door to the bar. Was he out of bullets? Elliot reached for fresh cartridges, freezing momentarily when the cooler door swung open to bang against Jeff and his wrestling partner. Elliot saw movement in the dark of the cooler, fumbled the first cartridge, dropped it. He pulled another out, but dead people poured toward him from the steel box, ignoring Jeff. The first one out was a big bastard, tall and broad-shouldered with hands the size of fry pans and dressed in what Elliot assumed was Australian football shorts and jersey.

  Elliot backpedaled through the open door, determined to get his weapon loaded. He had the second shell in when the footballer hit him, moving faster than Elliot had anticipated. Muscle-memory? he wondered as giant hands closed around the shottie. He tried to use the weapon as leverage, to turn the big pusbag's weight against him, twisting and attempting a throw, but the weapon was wrenched from his hands and it was Elliot who lost balance, shoulder striking the dumpster. He pushed off and backwards as the zombie lunged again and cracked its knuckles and skull against the steel. It dropped to its knees and the others surged past. Two old women in knit sweaters and trackpants; two males of indeterminate age in shorts only; a woman in waitress uniform but no shoes; a bloated gentlemen in badly-soiled whites who may have been the cook.

  Elliot turned and sprinted out onto the street in time to see Waxer vanish behind the corner store, headed for the vehicles. He either had no ammo or was simply a coward. But he might have more weapons in those vehicles and Elliot cursed himself for not taking time for a proper recon before he let his temper get the better of him. He had to get Jeff's assault rifle before Waxer returned with something similar.

  The huddle of undead was on its way, the rattled footballer now in the rear, but Elliot had enough distance to keep ahead of them. His boots pounded down the asphalt and then pavement as he made for the pub's front doors, wide open after Waxer had crashed through them. He paused long enough to pull them shut and wove through a jungle of upturned chairs and tables back into the kitchen.

  The cooler door had been knocked closed again by Jeff's struggles. Elliot blinked a moment at the spectacle of the big Druid holding in his innards with one hand and holding the dead woman's face away with the other. There wasn't a trace of fear or even pain on the big man's face, nothing but anger. His gaze swung Elliot's way and he swore, then coughed blood and returned his concentration to the dead woman.

  A motorcycle roared. Elliot slung the M4 and scooped up the speargun from the stove, headed out into the parking lot again. He tossed the speargun in the curb where the rat had run, keeping it away from Jeff, then assessed the rifle as he raced out into the street, his focus still on stopping Waxer. He dropped the mag out, checked it, worked the action to clear the chamber, slapped the mag back in place and chambered a round. He selected single-fire, rather than wasting rounds on auto.

  The dead were closing on the pub's front doors; the footballer had already reached them, scratching at the wood. Elliot took to the opposite sidewalk, aimed the rifle at the fast-diminishing dot at the other end of the shopping district, squeezed twice and lowered the weapon, swearing. He spun, got onto one knee, fired over and over until every member of the shabby crowd of pusbags dropped. He got up and sta
lked into the pub, kicking chairs out of his way until he stood by the food prep bench with the hot barrel aimed at fat Jeff's head. The Druid had defeated the dead woman, slumped against the cooler door with a dripping knife in a shaking hand. He still needed the other hand to press on his guts. Blood was everywhere. Elliot was standing in it. He didn't care.

  “What's his name? The one who got away? Waxer, right?”

  Jeff answered by spitting blood his way and swearing hot rage.

  “I only wanna know in case I run into him again. Then I can whisper it while I’m slitting his throat.”

  Jeff swore louder and tried to get up, but grimaced and fell back. The knife slipped from his hand.

  “Death Druids? On your way to Stonehenge were you?”

  This time Jeff said nothing, his eyes rolling, unfocusing.

  “You butchered innocent people. You …” No. There was no point in recounting the man's sins. Though he still panted shallow breaths, the blankness settling over his face meant he either couldn't hear or couldn't care. Safing his weapon and waiting it out, Elliot could only hope he still felt pain—pain that would extend into the next world and forever.

  *

  He retrieved the speargun and shottie and the cartridge he'd dropped. They fit snugly in a sports bag from a room upstairs, along with the two M4 magazines Jeff had in his back pockets. He searched a few rooms—got a shock when he found a suicide swinging from their belt in one. Another guest had left behind briefs, t-shirts, a couple of pullovers, socks, and a pair of torn joggers, all of it in Elliot's sizes, so he stuffed that in the bag too. He poured himself a double shot of bourbon and slammed it, sighed with the burn, left the glass on the bar. He collected the bandoleer from the truck—minimal blood; that was good—and slipped eleven shells back into it. He returned to the cellblock and dragged his pack out with a fresh and unbroken broom handle while the dead trucker mewled at him. The Shell peaked cap looked clean, so he scooped that out too, checked it over and jammed it on his head. He went into the police station bathroom and cleaned his chest with tap water and paper towels.

  The sun felt like a mother's caress on his wet skin when he stepped back out into the street; he put the two bags down, held his arms out to the sides and soaked in rays for a count of two hundred. Then he carried the gear across to the pickup. Dumping it on the asphalt, he pulled up the pickup's tailgate, leaned in underneath …

  His breath caught in his throat.

  There, cowering in the fetal position between plastic tubs of supplies and three swags, his wrists and ankles trussed in fencing wire, his eyes puffed by tears and at least one fist, was Lewis Ousef.

  4

  Lewis sat on the gutter, arms around his knees, zoned out and vacant as a deader. Elliot had cut him free and helped him to the edge of the pick-up, carefully massaged some bloodflow into his calves and hands. The young man hadn't responded to conversation, staring into the middle distance. As blood returned to his extremities, he'd stumbled to that spot on the gutter and stayed there.

  Elliot took ten minutes sorting through what he'd keep and what he wouldn't. The outlaw bikers' machetes, knives and pipes he slid down the storm drain opening, wanting to be rid of anything that might have been used on the Ousefs, wanting to deny the bastards their gear should they return. He didn't need their melee weapons anyway: so far, his tanto and hammer had served him fine. He found an open packet of lollipops, four left. He unwrapped one and stuck it in his mouth—strawberry; not bad—left another by Lewis and put the others in the pickup glove box. The logo for Lonnie Cabinet Solutions was emblazoned across the vehicle's sides and tailgate, but whatever carpentry tools Lonnie Cabinet Solutions might have once carried had been discarded by the bikers, which seemed immensely stupid to Elliot. At least they'd collected food and medical supplies. The V8's trunk had given up tire iron, jack, screwdrivers and spanners, a jerry can of fuel and six bottles of engine oil. More importantly, there'd been a box of fifty full-metal jacket 9 mm rounds—completely useless for any of the Druids' weapons but perfect for Elliot's SIG. It was the only thing that day that brought him the slightest bit of joy. He bundled what he wanted into the plastic tubs in the back of the pickup, along with his pack and the duffel bag then took one of the Druid's first aid kits out to Lewis.

  He placed it on the curb and inspected Lewis's face, wrists and legs again. The lollipop hadn't been touched. With more than a touch of irony, he murmured, “Sit still while I patch you.”

  Despite the warmth of the day, Lewis wore a red hoody pullover with a blue tee, a Pokémon character peeking through the hoody's collar opening. He wore shorts but no socks or shoes. He didn't flinch when Elliot touched an antiseptic swab to the cut above his left eyebrow and the scrape on his knee, or when Elliot pinched the face-cut closed with one hand and applied two butterfly plasters. Elliot dabbed the teenager's wrists with betadine and wrapped them in dry bandages. Then he sat back to admire the job. For a moment, he felt a familiar mental twinge: there was something about Lewis Ousef, something that nagged at him, something he couldn't put a finger on …

  He pointed to the sticky sutures on the teenager's face. “Don't take these off for a couple weeks. Less of a scar that way.” When the boy showed no signs of responding, Elliot attempted humor. “Although. Chicks do dig scars.”

  Still nothing. Well, he'd never been a guy to make others laugh. And he couldn't remember the last time he'd even spoken to a teenager.

  “The bandages we'll change in a couple of days. Your wrists will heal ok.”

  A fly had settled on Lewis's knee, probing around the abrasion. Elliot glanced up and down the road to prevent surprises, waved the fly away and sat on the curb beside him.

  “They touch you?” he asked.

  The young man's head turned fractionally, his eyes tracked towards Elliot and a shallow furrow appeared between them.

  “Those bikers, those asswads,” Elliot clarified. “They … touch you?”

  Lewis swallowed then pointed to his brow, and then the swelling under his right eye.

  It was Elliot's turn to swallow. It wasn't easy to ask a guy about something like this. “I mean besides that? Did they … ?”

  The frown deepened a little and Lewis looked away, which told Elliot nothing. He let it go. In truth, he didn't want to know. The young guy's near-catatonia might be down to what his sister and parents suffered. And really, that was the loss that mattered in the longterm: Lewis was alone in the world.

  Or was he?

  “You have anybody you can stay with?” he said, remembering a bunch of places circled on that map. “Friends, family? Maybe your dad was waiting till things settled down before visiting someone.”

  After a moment, Lewis shrugged. Nothing more than that. His attention was back on the ground in front of him.

  The rasp of shoe on asphalt brought Elliot to his feet. Sure enough, a new deader ambled their way from the direction of the pub. Probably hadn't seen or smelled them yet. Give it another fifty yards or so, and it would. He picked up the rifle, sighted on the corpse's head, then reconsidered, barrel dipping. The ammo was too valuable. He could take out the zombie with the hammer. Or he and Lewis could just leave. They should be moving anyway, he realized. If “Waxer” returned with friends …

  “So,” he murmured. “Where to?” Where in hell would Lewis—

  “Minchenbridge,” whispered Lewis.

  “Huh?”

  “Minchenbridge. Grandparents.”

  “Your grandparents live in Minchenbridge?”

  A slow nod of the head. Down the road, the zombie lifted its own head, tasting the air.

  “And where's that?” he asked, dropping his voice.

  Lewis mumbled, “South of Launceston.”

  Elliot shut his eyes, pictured the maps: Hobart, where he'd landed, had been on the south-east coast and he'd traveled about sixty miles inland and north-west from there; the city of Launceston was up near the north coast, a hundred twenty miles away, maybe more.
<
br />   Oh Christ. “How much south of Launceston?”

  Lewis gave another languid shrug, said nothing.

  Elliot squeezed the bridge of nose, teeth grinding.

  Goddam.

  There'd be crowds around Launceston. Lots of undead. Lots.

  And it was a long way from the remote wilds that Elliot was aiming for.

  But what was he gonna do? Leave the kid here? The deader had their scent now, lumbering their way. He had maybe forty seconds until it reached them. Lewis wasn't even looking for it, much less aware of it.

  Goddam hateful sonofabitch of a Universe.

  “Minchenbridge, you say?”

  The young man's twitch might have been a nod. Or just a twitch.

  Use a car. All goes well, you'll be back here in twenty-four hours. A small detour, that's all.

  Elliot sighed, lay the rifle down and took out his hammer. With other Death Druids out there, he wasn't going to get the chance to check the Harrietville Council Chambers building for books. Maybe Minchenbridge would have a library.

  He checked the sun not far from the horizon now, considered the distance they'd have to cover, then offered Lewis his hand.

  “Up you get, Cochise.” Lewis stared at it a moment, then got himself upright without taking it. Elliot spun the hammer inside his fist. “That biker may be back soon, so we better find somewhere to camp the night, lay low. There were a couple farmhouses I saw just out of town. Thick woods nearby we can run to if need be. Then tomorrow we go find your grandparents.”

  “Farmhouses?” Lewis's tone was as dull as his eyes. He wrapped his arms around himself despite the latent heat of the day.

  “Don't fancy driving in the dark. Besides,” he added as he flexed his arm and pointed the hammer at the zombie closing in on them, “tonight we could both use a rest.”

  *