by V. L. Dreyer
"Are there many infected here?" I asked Dominic when the youth finally paused to get his bearings.
He glanced at me and shrugged. "Some, but we left them alone. They weren't hurting us."
I took a deep breath and nodded my understanding. I usually made a point of putting the infected to rest, but I knew that for many people the task was too messy, strenuous, or just plain upsetting to deal with. "We're going to need to take care of them before we leave. Don't let me forget, okay?"
"Yes ma'am," Dominic agreed good-naturedly. He paused for a second, and glanced at me with a frown. "Something's wrong."
I cocked my head, listening to the sound of the world around me. A second later, I heard what had alerted Dominic: over the whisper of the rain, I could hear voices raised in anger. I touched my finger to my lips to indicate silence, and tied Boudicca's reins to a bike stand beneath the shelter of an overhanging roof. Once my horse was secure, I slipped my shotgun off my back and carefully checked there was a cartridge loaded and ready.
Dominic's eyes went wide, and he took a few rapid steps back away from me. I held up a hand and gave him a friendly smile. "It's just in case. I'm not going to let anyone hurt either of us, okay?"
The youth stared at the gun a second longer, then he looked up at me and nodded silently. I led the way down an alley, following the sound of raised voices. As we drew closer to the source, I started to make out a few words here and there. One of the voices was an adult male, but the other sounded like a young teenager. Every time he shouted, his voice broke and squeaked awkwardly – but that didn't make the threat in his tone any less real.
"I told you to fill up the damn tank! Do it!" the youth shouted, his voice trembling with an odd mixture of anger and fear. "You think I won't do it? I will! I'll kill you both!"
"Okay, okay!" the adult voice cried back. "Look, we're filling the tank. Please, calm down – we're doing what you told us to."
I crept up to the end of the alleyway and held up a hand to halt Dominic, then I peeked around the corner. A hundred meters in front of me, a pudgy youth stood with an assault rifle trained on two older men in the forecourt of an abandoned petrol station. The youth had his back to me, his attention fully focused on the men. I slipped back, and beckoned Dominic in close enough that I could whisper in his ear.
"I'm going to sneak up behind him and try to disarm him," I said softly. "Stay here and keep watch. If you see anyone coming, shout and warn me."
"Yes ma'am," Dominic agreed readily. He puffed his chest up and nodded resolutely. "You can count on me."
"Good man." I gave him another smile, and then turned my attention towards defusing the hostage situation. The sound of the rain masked my footsteps as I eased myself out of cover and started creeping forward. The footpath was frequently broken up by what had been large gardens, which worked to my advantage. Every so often the youth would jump and look around, but the bushes and benches gave me enough cover to avoid being spotted.
I was tense as a bow-string and ready to snap by the time I got within a few feet of the youth's back. Just at that moment, he shouted again and very nearly made me jump out of my skin.
"Hurry up!" he yelled, his hands trembling on the assault rifle. I was close enough to see his knuckles turning white, and also close enough to see that he had no idea what he was doing with the gun. Just at that moment, one of the two adult men glanced towards us, and I saw his eyes widen. That tiny gesture was just enough to alert the youth to my presence. He spun to face me – and found himself staring down the barrel of my shotgun.
"Your safety's still on, kid," I told him gruffly, giving him a hard stare. He froze like a deer in the headlights, wide-eyed. Whatever his plan had been, he hadn't counted on any real resistance. Now that I was there and at an obvious advantage, he didn't know what to do. So, I made the decision for him.
Under any other circumstance, it probably would have been stupid to make a grab for the gun, but this time I considered it a calculated risk. I lashed out and grabbed the barrel with one hand, then I shoved as hard as I could. The boy yelped in surprise and fell over backwards, landing hard in a puddle of mud. I shoved my shotgun back over my shoulder, and trained the muzzle of the assault rifle on him instead.
"I think I'd better keep this, don't you?" I said, channelling as much power and command into my tone as I could. The youth just stared at me, his mouth gaping open like a freshly caught fish. I slipped the safety off with a dramatic click, and he jumped.
Just at that moment I heard Dominic shout a warning, followed by a female voice raised in panic. "No! No, please, don't hurt him!"
I took a step backwards and turned slowly to face the sound of running footsteps, keeping both the new arrival and the teenager in my firing line. An older woman who could only have been the youth's mother raced across the clearing towards us, her face a mask of anguish. As soon as she reached us, she threw herself down in the mud and tried to cover the boy with her own body.
"Please, don't kill my son," she begged. "He's all I have left."
"I have no intention of killing anyone," I replied without lowering the weapon. "But you'd best explain to me why your dear little boy here was trying to mug my friends."
"What? Mug?" The woman shoved herself back and stared at the boy in horror. "Bobby! Tell me you didn't?"
"I just did what Dad would have done," the youth whined, nervously scooting back away from the both of us.
The woman gasped and shook her head vigorously. "That man was not your father, and you know that you're not to call him that ever again. Nor are you to emulate his behaviour! He's dead, and he deserved it." The woman turned and looked at me, her hands raised in a gesture of placation. "I'm so sorry. His real father died in the plague, and we were… taken in by a group of men, who…" She took a deep breath, and even with the rain I could see the tears gathering in her eyes. It was a look that I knew well, and sympathised with better than most. I lowered the weapon and took a step closer.
"Let me guess," I said softly, understandingly. "You did what you had to do to keep your son safe."
The woman nodded and looked down at the ground. "They were bad men, all of them. They did terrible things. They hurt people. I had no choice; if I hadn't done what they told me to do, then they would have killed us."
"But you escaped?" I prompted, offering a hand to help her up. She accepted it gratefully and hauled herself up.
"No," she said, fruitlessly trying to brush the mud off her clothing. It just made the mess worse, of course. "Someone killed them. All of them. I don't know who. The lookout said there were travellers on the road, and Henry took his men out to attack them. They never came back. Bobby and I left Pukeatua the next day. There were… bodies along the road, but we never saw Henry's…" The woman took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, obviously doing her best to put on a brave face. "It's for the best. He was a terrible man."
I felt a cold chill run down my spine, like the ghost of actions past creeping up on me. I glanced around at the others, then looked back at the woman, doing my best to keep my face expressionless. "This Henry person, was he about six-five, wore a lot of army surplus, had a tattoo on his neck about here…" I asked, pointing to a spot on my own neck.
Her eyes widened. "Yes! How did you know?"
"Because I killed him," I told her bluntly, making no attempt to sugar-coat the truth. "I was the traveller on the road, with my husband and our foster daughter. My husband is Chinese, and my foster daughter is Indian."
"Oh, no!" The woman gasped and clasped her hands to her chest. "Henry hated anyone that wasn't European, he blamed them for the plague. He… please tell me that he didn't hurt them?"
"No, they're fine." I glanced at Bobby, who was still sitting in the mud staring at me, then I looked back at the woman. "He tried to kill my family. I couldn't let that happen. I won't tell you what happened to him in front of Bobby, though. No one needs to know except me."
The woman started to say someth
ing, but Bobby cut her off before she could.
"You… you killed my dad?" he said, his voice carrying that strange mixture of fear and anger again.
"Don't call him that!" the woman cried, spinning to face her son. "Henry was not your father! Your father was a good, kind, gentle man. Your father would never have threatened this lady's child."
"He was my dad!" the stocky youth shouted back, shoving himself up to his feet. "I don't know this other person you're talking about. Henry taught me to fight and shoot and drink – he's the only dad I ever knew."
"I'm sorry, Bobby," I said, with as much sympathy as I could muster; after all, my issue was with Henry, not Bobby or his mother. "He didn't give me any choice. He attacked me, and I had to fight back."
"I don't care! I don't care what you say! You killed my dad!" Bobby screamed at me, his florid face turning red. He took a menacing step towards me, but I was no more intimidated by him than I had been by his stepfather. I raised the assault rifle and trained it on him.
"Stand down, Bobby," I told him, my voice cool and firm. "What's done is done. There's no changing that now."
"Shut up! You're a murderer, and I hate you!" the young man bellowed, then he turned on a heel and ran away from us. After a few steps, he slipped in the mud and went down hard on his knees, then picked himself up and kept running.
His mother looked at me again, her face wet with a combination of tears and rain. "I'm so sorry. Bobby… was too young, he doesn't know any better. Henry was the only man he had to look up to since his father died."
"You don't need to apologise," I said, lowering the gun. "I tell myself that I had no choice, but maybe I did. Maybe I should be held accountable for my actions." I glanced at her, and gave her a weak smile. "Amongst my group, we have a code of laws. If someone has a grievance with someone else, then they can pull the other person in front of a magistrate and a group of their peers, and have that person put to trial. If it would help Bobby to deal with his grief, then I'm willing to submit myself to a trial regarding the death of his step-father."
The woman bit her lip and looked away, watching her son slip in the mud again. She seemed to think about my offer for a second and then she was gone, running after Bobby and calling his name. Once they were out of sight, I took a deep breath to calm my frazzled nerves and turned to look at Dominic and the two strangers I'd managed to rescue.
"I really need to learn to keep my big mouth shut sometimes," I admitted, the strength draining out of me as the adrenaline started to fade. "I’m sorry you had to witness that. We need to deal with this petrol, before the flood water gets here. Let's get to it, shall we?"
Chapter Four
By the time the others reached us, I could hear the flood-water lapping against the buildings nearby and see glimpses of it down the alleys between buildings. Bobby and his mother didn't return, but the brief encounter left me feeling wrung out and more than a little guilty. I'd tried so hard to forget what I'd done to Bobby's step-father to protect my own family, but now I had no choice but to remember it. Thankfully, the urgency of our situation helped me to keep going, even if worry still nagged at me.
Suddenly, Dominic shouted an alert. I looked up just in time to see my Hilux rounding a corner and pulling into the forecourt of the old petrol station, followed by a couple of unfamiliar vehicles. I glanced at Dominic and raised a brow. "The first truck is mine, but who are the others?"
"Those are our trucks," Dominic explained. "I see my dad driving! I bet they've got the barrels for us!"
"You have better eyesight than me, mate," I answered dryly. "Go give them an update, will you?"
"Sure!" he agreed, then he dashed off to do just that.
I smiled and glanced at the two men helping me to get the underground tanks ready to be drained. "He's a good kid, that one."
"Aye, seems to be," the shorter one agreed pleasantly. He was a stocky fellow named Aaron, with curly brown hair, a faint Scottish accent, and a smile that seemed to be hard-wired onto his face. The other man was tall, slender fellow named Charu. He was somewhere in his early forties but still youthful and handsome, with dark skin much like Priyanka's. That was where the similarity ended, though. Aaron had introduced him to me, but Charu hadn’t said a word. He just nodded, shook his head, or shrugged when I asked him questions, and avoided eye-contact. I couldn’t tell whether there was something wrong with him or if he just didn’t like me, so I decided it was better to ignore his sullen attitude and just give him time to get used to me.
"I think this should be good to go," I told them, kneeling down to examine the haphazard hand-pump we'd assembled from pieces strewn around the buildings nearby. "Just keep your fingers and toes crossed that it doesn't pop loose at an inopportune moment."
Aaron laughed and nodded, but Charu just shot me a look and went back to tightening the bolts. I eased myself up to my feet again, wiped my hands on my pants, and went over to the trucks. As soon as they came to a halt, the doors of the vehicles popped open and people started piling out. Half of them were the familiar faces from my own group, but the rest I'd only glimpsed in passing at Johan's camp.
"Hey, sis!" Skylar called. "I see you found us some new friends." She ducked out of the rain and into the shelter of the forecourt. Hemi followed her a second later, with Johan and Dominic hot on her heels.
"I certainly hope so," I replied, grinning at them. Johan and Dominic both grinned back, and behind me I heard Aaron laugh again. "Anyway, as far as I can tell this petrol is still good – but it won't be for long. If that water gets anywhere near it, it'll be useless to us. We've jerry-rigged a pump, but I don't know if we're going to have enough time to get all of it. We're going to need to work fast."
"I have an idea to buy us some time," Aaron said. I glanced at him and raised an eyebrow, nodding for him to continue. He cleared his throat and stepped forward, joining the ring of people around me. "I came here as a backpacker right after I finished studying, and ended up living here for a couple of years. The outlying farmland gets flooded on a regular basis. I know they kept a supply of sandbags on hand in case of emergencies."
"Oh!" I gasped. "You're thinking that we could delay or divert the flood water long enough to get the rest of the petrol?"
"Aye," he replied, nodding. Suddenly, he grinned and pointed at a large hall just across the road from the petrol station. "And that right there is the town hall. Probably the best place to start."
"I'll agree with that," I said. "Aaron, you're with me. Johan, Hemi, I want you guys to take care of the pumping operation. Skye, you and Dominic are on watch. Show him how to use this, please." I handed the rifle that I’d confiscated from Bobby to Skye. She gave me an odd look in return.
"This isn't one of ours," she pointed out. "Where did you get this?"
"Long story," I replied. "No time to tell it now. But watch out for a kid of about fourteen who isn't part of either of our groups. He's got a grudge against me and might try to stop us."
"If you say so," she said doubtfully, then she shrugged, took the rifle, and turned her attention to Dominic. I unshouldered my shotgun and ran off towards the town hall, leaving the others to take care of their assigned tasks.
"Any idea where they would have kept these theoretical sandbags?" I called as we ran, ducking across a road marked by paint so faded it was impossible to make out what it might have once said.
"Not a clue, but I can make an educated guess," he called back. "Let's try that side door, since it's the only one at ground level. Makes sense that you wouldn't want to lug sandbags up stairs, right?"
"Right," I agreed, adjusting my course towards the door at the back of the building. When I got there, I tried the handle and found it locked from the inside. I glanced around and spotted a couple of windows a few meters farther along the wall. "Stand back and cover your eyes."
Aaron did as he was told and waited patiently while I used the butt of my shotgun to break the glass. I carefully cleared the shards out of the frame, then ca
lled him over. He cottoned on to what I was trying to do immediately, and cupped his hands on his knee to give me a boost. A second later, I was crouched inside the dark building, my shotgun at the ready.
Nothing stirred except the dust-bunnies I'd disturbed by letting in a breeze. The place smelt like a tomb, but so did everything that had been locked up for a decade. I pulled out my torch and used its thin beam of light to guide my way to the door.
Aaron joined me as soon as I unbolted the door, pulling a torch out of his own pocket. Our twin beams pushed back the darkness, illuminating a small office with nothing more than a dusty old computer on a desk against one wall, and a couple of doors leading off into other rooms. I opened one and discovered a vast, empty meeting hall. The other revealed a storage room filled with folding tables and stacked chairs.
"Nothing here," I said, disappointed. Aaron blew out a sharp breath and nodded, then he paused for a moment to think.
"Wait – there were other government buildings outside, I think," he said. He hurried past me out the door, and I followed close behind him. Our feet splashed through deep puddles as we raced down the street and across a gravel parking lot towards a low, squat grey brick building.
"The fire station?" I called after him. "You think they'll be in there?"
"Fire-fighting crews did more than just fighting fires, so it’s possible," he replied, ducking into the relative shelter offered by the overhanging ledge of the building.