Forager (Forager - A Dystopian Trilogy)

by Peter R Stone

  Having regained my breath, I threw my bow at the Skel's head, tore the crossbow from his hands, and then rammed it stock first into his skull-face armour three times in quick succession. Bone armour cracked and shattered, blood flowed, and the Skel fell against the wall and slid to the ground. It would be some time before he regained consciousness.

  Glancing about apprehensively while using flash sonar, I saw that the two men who had been using the second car's doors as cover were lying on the road with crossbow bolts in their chests. The 4WD had two more passengers, and they were hiding on the vehicle’s floor between the front and back seats. I watched the third Skel reach the car, fling open the rear-passenger door, and lift his crossbow towards the two people inside.

  Luckily, the crossbow I had appropriated was still loaded, so I raised the weapon to my eye, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The bolt hit the Skel in the side of the neck and he collapsed, his bone armour clattering noisily when he hit the ground. He fired his crossbow as he fell, but the bolt flew over the car.

  With my Skel opponents dealt with, I paused to survey the battle. Michal, David and Leigh had overcome the Skel across the road in the second story window and were kneeling and preparing to provide covering fire. The Custodians had not fared well against the Skel. Two were down, slain by crossbows or rusty iron clubs, and King and his last man were desperately trying to fend off the last two Skel, who were hacking away at them with animal ferocity. The Custodians must have run out of ammunition for they were using their guns as clubs.

  A massive Skel smashed King's gun out of his hands with such force that the lieutenant was knocked over. The Skel lifted his spiked club to finish him off, but five arrows hit him in the back in quick succession, courtesy of Michal, Leigh and David. Four arrows stuck in his bone armour without causing injury, but the fifth penetrated his armour and hit his spine, and he keeled over with a scream of rage. Shorty fired several arrows at the last Skel, and looking like a pincushion, the nomad finally went down when one of the arrows struck him in the neck.

  All Skel accounted for, I tossed down the crossbow, retrieved my bow and hurried to the second black car. It was the biggest four-wheel-drive I'd seen, even larger than the Custodians' G-Wagon. We didn't have many cars in Newhome, and certainly none like this one. I wondered where these people were from. I was distraught that we hadn't been able to save them all, but relieved we'd been able to save the two who were still hiding in the car.

  Chapter Four

  I limped over to the car and stepped slowly past the open rear passenger door so I wouldn't appear threatening. Crouching on the floor between the front and back car seats was a middle-aged Asian man with his black hair cropped short. He wore a black suit and exuding an air of authority. I hazarded a guess he wasn't Chinese.

  I realised he was studying my face as closely as I was studying his. Perhaps he was unsure of our intentions. "And where are you from, young man?" he finally asked with an accent so peculiar that it took me a moment to work out exactly what he said. In fact, some words I could not quite understand at all.

  "I - we - are from Newhome, and Sir, you're lucky that we just happened to be in the area today."

  His face lit up with hope and he reached out to take my hands. "From Newhome? That is most fortunate!"

  "So you are on the way there? That's what I thought. I'm so sorry we couldn't get here soon enough to save your companions, though," I said as I helped him step down out of the car. His hands were shaking slightly, but I was not surprised considering how close he had come to being skewered by a Skel crossbow bolt a minute ago.

  The man bowed apologetically. "Please forgive me, but I do not speak English. I am from Hamamachi."

  I stared at him in confusion regarding his claim that he couldn't speak English, for apart from his weirdly disturbing accent, he was doing just fine so far. "Oh, you're from the Japanese colony over near Inverloch," I said. From what I had heard, the colony had been established around the same time as Newhome, by a Japanese whaling fleet that had been working the South Pacific when the bombs rained down. And rather than return to Japan, which was said to have been completely destroyed, the fleet made landfall near Inverloch and set up a colony there.

  Having helped the Japanese man out of the car, I handed him over to Shorty, and then turned to help the remaining passenger out of the car. And then I froze, dumbfounded, for sitting on the floor between the chairs was a teenage girl, fifteen-years-old at a guess, and everything about her blew my mind. Over a black top and a pink-and-blue lace skirt she wore a faded light-blue jacket with black zebra stripes; she wore knee-high black boots over torn pink leggings; and around her neck was a black dog's collar, from which hung a silver bell and a pair of golden rings.

  Her black hair was cut to about jaw-level and curved in towards her face, while her fringe, which had been died dark pink, reached below her eyebrows. Two much longer strands of hair, also pink, cascaded over her shoulders. The nose ring was another unexpected touch.

  However, it was her dark brown eyes that caught my attention - they were completely encircled by thick, black eyeliner, and were studying me intently.

  I don't know how long I stood there staring at her, and her me, but she finally flashed me a shy yet encouraging smile as she reached out a small, delicate hand. "I'm Nanako."

  "Nice to meet you, Nanako - I'm Ethan," I replied hesitantly as I helped her out of the car. Nice to meet you? I berated myself. She had just watched Skel murder four of her companions and had been seconds away from being butchered herself, and that was all I could think to say?

  I didn't realise just how petite she was until she stood beside me - the top of her head only just came up to my chin. I stood there, holding her small hand, too confused by her strange appearance to form any coherent thoughts let alone speak, while she stood there looking up at me.

  "Thank you for coming to our rescue, Ethan. I was terrified those Skel were going to..." her voice tapered off. I noticed she spoke with the same, peculiar intonation as her companion, but I was able to understand her a bit better.

  "It's okay, it's all over now," I assured her.

  "Did you shoot the Skel that was about to kill Councillor Okada?" she asked.

  "Yes, that was me," I confirmed. "You speak English very well, by the way."

  She tilted her head slightly to one side, and this time with a broad Australian accent, said, "I wasn't speaking in English."

  "You weren't? Then what language were you speaking in?" I asked, perplexed. If she hadn't been speaking in English, how on earth could I understand most of what she was saying?

  "I was speaking in Japanese," she replied, eyeing me curiously.

  "Jones, get over here!" bellowed Sergeant King, interrupting any further attempts at conversation. "And bring the girl; I need her to translate what this guy is trying to tell me."

  The sergeant was attempting to talk to the Japanese gentleman, Councillor Okada, but was getting nowhere, if the frustrated look on his face was any indication. Nanako and I hurried - well, Nanako hurried and I hobbled – towards the sergeant, who was getting a long gash on his arm bandaged by the other surviving Custodian.

  “You’re limping, Ethan, are you hurt?” Nanako asked with genuine concern as we joined the others.

  “I’m fine, it’s just a bruise,” I assured her, surprised she had noticed.

  Nanako nodded, and then began to translate what her companion was saying to Sergeant King.

  Councillor Okada and Nanako were representatives from Hamamachi, the Japanese colony near Inverloch, and were on their way to Newhome in the hope of initiating trade between our two towns. They had brought with them some of the goods they produced in Hamamachi; primarily electronic items such as microwave ovens, personal computers, mobile phones and cameras. He also expressed his very deep gratitude that we had arrived in the nick of time to save them from the Skel.

  The weird thing about listening to Councillor Okada speaking and Nanako translating was tha
t I understood much of what he said before she translated it. And yet somehow, I could barely differentiate the difference between the two languages, apart from the peculiar accent. Was this was another attribute of my mutation - that I could discern the meaning of any spoken language, even though I had not learnt it? Surely that could not be so, but what other explanation was there?

  It was a hypothesis I could not test easily, as no language other than English was permitted in Newhome, since the Custodians had banned multiculturism. Not multiethnicity, mind you, as Newhome boasted a number of different ethnic groups: the good old Anglo-Saxon 'Aussies' like me, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Greeks, Italians, Indians, Turkish, and others. However, it was forbidden for the ethnic groups to follow or practise their own culture and customs, for as had been drummed into our heads at school:

  Multiculturism leads to division,

  Division leads to conflict,

  Conflict leads to violence,

  Violence leads to war.

  War leads to extinction.

  That war lead to extinction was a lesson not lost on us survivors of World War Three, where the human race was virtually annihilated.

  All the same, each ethnic group in Newhome rebelled against the banning of multiculturism in their own way, primarily by only marrying people of their own race, hence generations after the Apocalypse, the different racial groups were still distinct. For all we knew, each ethnic group in Newhome could be the only survivors of their race in the world.

  "Right!" Sergeant King declared once he had garnered the needed information from Councillor Okada. "We must return to Newhome immediately, otherwise more of those abominations may find us. We will take the bodies of my men and the Japanese escorts back with us; I'm not leaving them for those vultures."

  "Michal, fetch our truck, and Leigh, help him get all the bodies in the back," I said, agreeing with the need to rush.

  "We have to bring the trade samples from the wrecked car too," Nanako said, pointing to the Japanese car that had triggered the roadside bomb.

  "No probs, we'll see to that," Michal shouted back as he ran back to retrieve our truck.

  "And we must destroy this car, we cannot leave it for them," Councillor Okada said as he helped Nanako lift items out of the destroyed car's boot.

  "Lieutenant King, Councillor Okada says we must destroy this vehicle," Nanako translated.

  I pulled the detonator from my pocket and threw it to David. "Reckon you can manage that if you retrieve the Skel bomb you disarmed back there, David?"

  "On it!" David shouted and ran off after Michal.

  Sergeant King sent the private off to bring back the G-Wagon, and then he, Shorty and I helped Councillor Okada and Nanako - who was surprisingly strong for her diminutive size - to unload the samples from the lead car.

  "You wounded, Jones?" King asked when he noticed my limp.

  "Just a bruise, Sir," I replied. Actually, a dented bone and a bruise, and it still hurt like blazes.

  "You boys handled those Skel like professionals, Jones," King said as we worked.

  "Thank you, Sir," I answered cautiously.

  "It wasn't a compliment, Jones - makes me wonder what you boys have been doing out here."

  "Sir? Surely the amount of metals we bring back answers that question," I replied, trying to rein in my irritation at his veiled accusation. What did he think we were doing, planning a revolution?

  "Which is three times more than any other team does."

  "In that case, Sergeant, perhaps you need to ask the other teams what they have been doing out here?" I shot back as fear and trepidation took a hold of me again. Was he trying to find out if one of us could find metals through echolocation?

  He glared at me. "Got an answer for everything, haven't you, Jones."

  "We're just doing our job, Sir."

  King made to leave, but turned back. "Oh, put your bows and arrows in the back of the G-Wagon."

  I suddenly felt very vulnerable - how could we forage safely without our weapons? "You're taking them from us, Sir?"

  "Let's put it this way - if the other Custodians find them in your truck when we get back, you'll be in a world of hurt just for having them, and so will I for letting you use them."

  "Understood, Sir," I said, acquiescing to his demand. We would part with our precious bows and arrows.

  Michal reversed the truck down the road until it drew level with the wrecked 4WD. We loaded the trade samples in the back, and then reverently placed the bodies in there too, covering them with tarpaulins we had brought with us. Once that was done, David crawled beneath the wrecked Japanese 4WD and rigged the Skel homemade bomb and detonator to its petrol tank, setting the timer to five minutes. We were lucky the Japanese still used petrol, it made destroying the car a lot easier. All Newhome vehicles had solar powered batteries.

  One minute later, our three-vehicle convoy headed off to Newhome: Sergeant King lead the way driving the G-Wagon himself; next came the Japanese car and its two passengers, driven by the Custodian private; and we brought up the rear with our weather-beaten truck and its cargo of trade samples and our slain comrades. The copper we had stripped out from the apartment building lay forgotten in the street.

  We hadn't gone far when David's bomb went off, assaulting our ears with a massive bang as a huge, angry fireball soared into the sky behind us. I guess there wasn't much left of the car now.

  "Man, did we kick some or what!" Shorty exclaimed excitedly. We had fought Skel four times over the past two years, but there had always been less than six of them, not a dozen like today.

  "That's 'cause we rock," Leigh added, his face also flushed with excitement - quite in contrast to his pre-combat expression.

  “You did good, guys,” I said. However, the bodies in the back of the truck drove home an unpleasant thought - if the Japanese had not come when they did, the Skel would have attacked us instead, and, as I hadn't been using flash sonar, that would be our bodies in the back of the truck. On the other hand, the fact that the Skel had set up an ambush complete with bombs directly in the Japanese convoy's path worried at the edges of my mind. Something wasn’t right.

  I brought my left leg to my chest and gingerly explored my shin. The dint in the bone was quite noticeable and even now, the leg throbbed with pain. Associated with the injury were memories of the Skel who had caused it, sending shudders of revulsion through me.

  Looking to the Japanese car in front of us, I was surprised to see the girl turn and glance at us - well, not at us but at me. Her brown eyes locked with mine for an instant, and an expression I could not decipher fled quickly across her round face before she turned away again.

  Suddenly a crystal-clear image flashed into my mind of several pairs of slippers, shoes and high-heeled black boots, laid neatly in rows in a foyer boasting a polished wooden floor. Following the image, I was hit by an overwhelming feeling that this exact situation, right down to its smallest detail, had occurred previously. I instantly rebelled against this, for I knew that was impossible. And as I tried to wade through the implications of what I had just experienced, a sharp metallic taste erupted in my mouth, followed immediately by a sensation of falling from a great height.

  I grabbed the truck's dashboard to steady myself, but almost as soon as it had started, the sensation ceased, after which intense pain exploded through my stomach, and then vanished. And as if that wasn't enough, the unnerving episode concluded with every nerve ending in my body spiking with adrenalin.

  The entire episode, from image to adrenalin spike, had taken perhaps a few seconds, but the after effect was weird - I felt like I had just woken from a very deep and exhausting sleep.

  "You okay, Ethan?"

  I looked at Michal, who was glancing at me as he drove.

  "I...uh, I'm just tired, I guess," I replied. I mean, what else could I say - I had absolutely no idea what had just happened, it defied all logic. Even the image made no sense, for I had never seen that polished floor, shoes, boot
s or slippers. Was my mind flipping out due to the most stressful day of my life, or, and I shuddered to consider this disturbing possibility, was it a premonition of some kind?

  Whatever it was, I never, ever, wanted to experience it again.

  Chapter Five

  "Hey, check it out, that girl keeps glancing at us," said Leigh as our three-vehicle convoy reached the end of Victoria Street and turned right to head north up Dryburgh Street.

  "Did you see way she dressed? She looks like a doll!" Shorty exclaimed.

  "And her hair, I mean, what's with the pink?" Leigh said, laughing.

  "Hey, don't knock her, mate. I wish Newhome girls were allowed to dress and do their hair like that," David sighed.

  "Can you imagine the Custodians reaction? They'd go psycho," Leigh agreed.

  "Hey! You reckon all the girls are like her where she comes from - what's the place called?" Shorty asked.

  "Hamamachi," I replied.

  "Right - 'cause if they are, next chance I get I'm going AWOL and heading straight there, and I ain't never coming back," Shorty vowed, his face alight with the possibilities flowing through his mind.

  "She's not looking at us," Michal said after a moment. "Only at Jones."

  That brought a chorus of ribbing and jokes from the three in the back seat. I looked at Michal and sighed, but truth be told, the corners of my mouth did turn up ever so slightly. My life would be rather dull without those three clowns to liven it up. The 'Dour Duo,' that's what they called Michal and me, and I guess that summed us up pretty well. I had not always been so glum, though. Back in the days before the accident and subsequent operation, I used to be rather chipper, as far as I could recall.

  And Michal was right; it wasn't 'us' Nanako was glancing at, as Leigh supposed, only me. Moreover, on a couple of occasions it was more like a long stare, causing me no small amount of discomfort. I had seen very few girls in my life, apart from my sisters, and of course glimpses of those who attended the Solidarity Festivals that were held several of times a year. Girls were not permitted to attend school but had to stay home and learn practical skills from their mothers such as needlework, food preparation, and house cleaning. For that reason, I didn't know how to respond to Nanako's attention, and I was the one who broke eye contact in each case.