Doomsday's Child (Book 2): Came Monsters

by Pete Aldin

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  Impact!

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  Blackness.

  ⁓

  Bright light, nausea.

  Ringing.

  Salt and copper on his tongue.

  Something tugged at his shoulder.

  He opened gummy eyes to stare into a bleached-out sky and wonder why he was on his back beneath it. Why he was hot and cold at the same time, with dust in his nostrils, blood in his mouth, ringing in his ears. Clods of dirt and brick pattered the hard earth around him. The pull on his shoulder was a child, a girl, a ... a ... Syrian girl. Pulling at his rifle strap, looting his dead body, only—

  "I'm not dead," he said, or he thought he said. His tongue felt rough and thick as pumice. His legs were on the ground, but his head was at a funny angle above it, prevented from touching it by the bulk of his gear. He bent his limbs to turn over onto his hands and knees, tried to see what had happened to him. The girl was fleeing, picking her way across a wide black scorch mark, a crater, between blackened cars and pieces of market stalls and merchandise ... and pieces of people.

  He had somehow gotten to his feet, swaying there. Through the ringing in his ears came screaming. Wailing. Some people were alive. Some had made it. His team? What the hell were their names again?

  To his left, the date-seller boy lay with lacerations across his face and his left arm sliced off at the elbow. The stump spurted blood while the other arm reached for something only he could see. Elliot had to help him. Had to stop that bleeding. Had to check the rooftops for hostiles. Had to ... Had to check his men.

  Radler.

  Eames.

  McGovern.

  That was it. Their names.

  But they were not there.

  Although that, that over there, that was a piece of kit. That was a boot. A US Army boot. And that, that there, that might be a sleeve with an arm inside.

  Somebody grabbed him by the vest, turned him, shouting in his face. The other sergeant. Elliot couldn't remember his name. And his words were just noise. Was it even English, or Arabic? Elliot pulled free of him and stumbled, falling on hands and knees again. The Guy? The spook? Was that him there, that battered ballistic vest with raw mincemeat leaking out of it?

  He blinked and he was upright, the sergeant and another soldier at each arm, forcing him back to the Hummers. They were fine, the vehicles were fine. A shadow passed over him, so he squinted up: the drone, low and headed to the other side of the market. He blinked again and found himself slumped in his Humvee's shotgun seat. The other team's driver was beside him, shouting into the comms, calling for support. "That's what I should do," Elliot told him but the man just frowned as if it were Elliot's turn to speak Arabic.

  He grabbed the door frame and levered himself out. The driver tried to restrain him, but Elliot easily jerked his sleeve from the man's grip.

  The market had filled with new people, local people, dragging bodies to the edges. None of those bodies were his team. His team, his men, they were dead men and there wasn't much left to see of them.

  Radler.

  Eames.

  McGovern.

  Dead.

  Gone.

  Friendly territory, The Guy's voice asserted inside Elliot's head.

  He shook his head. Cleared the voice. Started up a headache.

  It felt like all his bones were rattling. His skull vibrated with fragmented thoughts and that goddamned ringing.

  This can't be real, a voice told all the other thoughts. Perhaps the voice was pleading with the universe. It's not. No way is this real. It's not!

  But it was real.

  It was very goddamned real.

  And it always would be.

  Part One: Settlers Downs

  1

  The dog froze, growling, her hackles raised, her head angled left.

  Elliot tightened his grip on her leash. "Wassup, Bess?"

  She stopped growling, but didn't move, her ears up. And he waited her out. Maybe it would be another rabbit. Maybe another dog. If they were lucky it wouldn't be a claymore—or drybones as the rest of the camp called them.

  The long grass around him hissed in the wind, waving and dancing to a melody only it could hear. Stalks brushed his jacket sleeves, the side pocket of his cargo pants. This was always risky, walking through land that hadn't been marked off their maps as safe. But risk was part of scouting. Three years and no one had wanted to come in here, because it was empty space, a green patch on the map between two sets of wooded hills, just grass overgrown and ready for wild fire someday. Also, some said, because it was so close to the Esk Highway, and therefore close to land frequented by the pot-head group who called themselves Vikes. This was at the western limits of the territory that had fallen to The Downs, the original name for the converted sheep ranch the others now called Settlers Downs—but it was their territory.

  The dog was sniffing, listening. He gave her more time, plucked a grain head and rolled it around his palm. It might be barley, he thought. They might have planted this for cattle fodder, it might be useful. Up ahead, a silo rose above the sea of green. He'd been using the old farm's rutted driveways to hike along—until he'd seen the tall cylinder out in the middle of the field, a half klick behind the homestead. A silo was worth investigating. A silo might have useful stuff: seed stocks; a forgotten weapons cache. Someone had to be first, and he did have Bess. Problem was, long grass occasionally hid claymores, unseen like a landmine until a person stepped on them and got a bite. It had happened. It had happened a lot last summer and autumn, though only one bite had reached skin and that was because poor dead Alan had gone scouting wearing shorts. That was asking for a bite—from deaders or snakes.

  One more poor dead idiot to add to the rest of them. Survival of the smartest.

  Elliot thanked Christ and all the saints that any undead still haunting the earth these days had lost the bite strength to puncture most fabrics. And he hadn't seen one walking in well over a year.

  The dog glanced back at him with a short whine. He dropped the grain and rested his hand on his holstered SIG, eyes and ears straining toward whatever was in the grass there. If it was a wallaby or a hare, it might break and reveal its position, handing him a chance at bagging it. But, it also might be feral cats, a litter. Or a tiger snake. Or—however remote the chance these days—it might be a mobile deader.

  Bess growled again and Elliot decided a detour was in order. That silo was right there, a hundred and fifty yards away. But it wasn't worth this. He could always come back with a tractor and someone riding shotgun. They could muscle across the field that way.

  Probably nothing in it but mulch anyway.

  "Move," he said, jerking the lead right. With relief it seemed, she complied, allowing him to turn her away from whatever hazard she'd sensed and toward the bitumen road on the hill a kilometre ahead. "Good girl," he soothed and her ears flicked down at the praise.

  His pack was heavy with rabbit carcasses and a coil of aluminum wire for the farm's mig welders. His long bow's string rubbed across his jacket zipper, the quiver at his left hip catching in the grass from time to time. The SIG sat on the opposite hip in front of his machete.

  Six rabbits, some welding materials. Actually not bad for a days' work and about as much as he wanted to carry on foot. He'd left the car in the woods off road and up the hill beyond the roadway ahead, and tried to cover some territory they hadn't yet cleared on their maps. There was very little of that left these days, at least within the bounds set by the Council. If it was old-world supplies they wanted, they'd have to start traveling further afoot like he'd been advocating. They could try making peace with the Nine Mile River folks north again, try trading with them. Or else venture south toward Hobart and hope the coastal scavengers they'd skirmished with were long gone or had calmed down a little. With the biker gangs gone, things should have been more civilized these days among the living. Should have been.

  Bess growled again and surged against the lead. He gave
it a little slack, let the Alsatian-cross drag him forward until a whitened lump amidst the grass resolved as a head. A weathered and unmoving head with hair like cobwebs. He jerked the lead hard and ordered, "sit!" She complied. She was one of the better dogs he'd bred: loyal, obedient, predictable. And she didn't demand idle chitchat.

  He slipped off the bow, dropped it, then lowered his shoulders with his arms held back. The pack's straps slid down until it fell the final couple of feet to the ground. Bess glanced at the rabbits, but never truly considered taking one. He scratched her neck and told her, "stay". She was by far his favorite—she listened to him the way people should. She'd stay there until he said otherwise, come what may. He grabbed the bow and passed the dog, getting his machete out.

  His inner Unconventional Warfare Instructor said, Go back to the tractor path. Forget the shortcut. Long way is usually the right way.

  But he was tired and the highway was right up there and taking the direct route would shave fifteen minutes off the walk. And it was only one deader. He pushed the hay aside to reveal the claymore in all its lack-of-glory, lying perpendicular to him with its peeling-paint skull near his right boot. It shuddered, wanting him but unable to act upon it. The ex-human was a husk really, all ribs and hips and a snapping jaw without much muscle strength or fiber left. The damn thing couldn't even turn its head to look at him, much less use its arms and legs. Not for the first time, Elliot wondered how they survived so long once they lost the ability to move. And feed. Did field mice come a-nibblin' and get more than they bargained for once they got near the face? Did deaders eat grass?

  He braced, about to stomp its head, when the dog barked. Then yipped. Then howled in pain and terror. He pivoted, machete high. Bess was on her side, legs kicking and muzzle snapping at the two naked deaders who'd fallen onto her.

  What in–?

  They'd sprung from the thick vegetation to the dog's left while she was focused on Elliot. He hadn't heard them with the wind hissing in the grass and the dog's quiet growling. Neither, apparently, had she. One had dropped across her, pinning her. She tore at the other one's ribs while it clawed and snapped at her.

  He started forward, but instinct made him jerk left, almost toppling him. Another deader had reached for him from the grass. It was standing, moving, jaw clacking, coming for him. He slashed at it, taking off a hand, then split the skull with the back of the blade. He turned back to her and froze. Bess was in bad shape, blood in her fur. They hadn't gotten her fully open yet, maybe didn't have the strength, but could still damn-well scratch—and bite too from the looks. If he got her away now, she might survive this. One of the farmers might treat her. Reaching her, he took one drybones down with a blow to the base of the skull. Bess pulled free then, fast-crawling away and into the grass, vanishing.

  "Come!" he called in desperation, and raised the machete to take out the other deader so he could follow her. But the grass parted to his right in multiple places and heads appeared at ankle-height, knee-height, and then one at shoulder-height. He recoiled, cried out. Croaking, stumbling undead came at him—three, then five, then eight, then more—and Elliot himself was stumbling, crashing through stalks and clumps of long grass, his bow and his pack and his dog abandoned. He was running for the far side of the field, running for the black ribbon of asphalt visible up on the hill. He glanced back, saw nothing, slowed, then stopped. The noise was all back by the pack where there was enough meat in the six rabbits to keep the pusbags happy. Bess yelped, then wailed. Bile burned his throat as he put one hand on his thigh, bent over, gasping.

  Should he go back? Should he run?

  The decision was made for him when the grasslands came alive around him, alive with the snarls and gurgles of the long-dead. Rustling. Scraping. They were everywhere. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.

  Elliot stumbled backwards as the familiar tinnitus and white-vision of a flashback came at him hard. He twisted round and ran as the dry brown of the grass merged with the terracotta walls of Al-Kasrah. Bess's cries became the wailing of mothers and the boy with no arm.

  He cried out in agony and shock and wasn't sure if he was yelling now or back then or both. Surging forward on legs he couldn't feel, he saw the ruined faces of deaders through the Syrian dust as he shoulder-charged them and vaulted them and hacked at them, registered the impacts against them only distantly, and just as distantly hoped none of the impacts were bites.

  And then he was on the road, having somehow gotten over the wire fence. He was sinking to his knees on rough bitumen, a headache slamming at his temples, his machete gone, cursing the moment he'd ever decided to head into terrain where he couldn't see more than a couple of yards in any direction.

  He'd lost the rabbits, the bow and the pack.

  He'd lost the dog.

  He'd lost another friend.

  2

  He drove home with dulled emotions, a churning stomach and a head full of self-recrimination. No bites. Some bruises. A tear along the bottom of his shirt where it had caught on the fence. It wasn't fair he'd escaped this unscathed—not when Bess had died. Not when he'd gotten her killed. It wasn't goddamned fair that he got off so lightly every time.

  It was near sunset when he arrived. Slowing twenty metres out from the Settlers Downs main gate, he flashed the headlights five times—two long, one short, two long—the code for scout returning. Today was Wednesday because Sturgis was on sniper duty up on the Windmill. The former Navy man's red hair stood out against the scaffolding as much as his dirty-white pullover—neither was best practice in camouflage.

  Who are you to talk about best practice? he asked himself. Went wandering through a sea of claymores. Lost your dog...

  There was no excuse for the lapse of judgment, the lapse of caution, the risk he'd taken. Same as there wasn't for Sturgis up there. The Council should give the man holy hell about it.

  Holding onto the gate as he crept past, one of the Cambodian moms gave him a broad smile and called "Suas dae!"—hey there in the Khmer language. A shotgun swung from the strap on her shoulder. He and Lewis had met Chariya and her extended family on a bridge more than three years ago. Lewis had instantly adopted them as his own family. Elliot had taken a lot longer to warm to them than they had to him.

  Elliot acknowledged her with a brief raise of his fingers from the wheel and kept the Land Rover moving—past the tarp-covered piles of steel and aluminum scrap on his left, ready for future smelting; past the four-metre-long smokehouse on his right, the building that housed pottery kilns and meat smokers leaking its rich and pleasant-smelling stream of grey into the still air; past the long line of burners and trestles set up beneath canopies and along the outside of the smokehouse, their pans and sifters and pots set for evaporating seawater for salt, for separating potash from wood ash to mix with fats for soap, for separating soda ash from seawater to be used in laundry and in controlling pests and mildew; past the jumble of equipment piled under yet another tarp after being stripped months ago from the nearby Iron Devil Brewery.

  Above, the clouds sagged, pregnant with rain. He nosed the Rover inside the garage. Two younger men had their heads buried under the hood of an Audi SUV. The one holding the work lamp straightened and snatched the keys from the air when Elliot tossed them.

  "There's stuff in the back," Elliot told him. But there wasn't much. No, the really good stuff, the rabbits and the aluminum were with his pack in the middle of that field. Them and—

  "Where's Bess?" the man with the lamp asked. His friend raised his head and Elliot saw that he was talking to both of the two "Daves". With typical Aussie humor, the community had nicknamed them Dave One and Dave Two. Dave One held the work lamp.

  Ignoring the question, Elliot said, "Where is everyone?"

  The Yard was deserted. At this time on a Wednesday, Lewis and his girlfriend Krystal should be sitting with a ring of children in the homestead's front garden, finishing off a math lesson. No doubt that was because the weather was threatening rain. Maybe they were
in the small classroom inside the homestead. Slinging his bow, he thought briefly about stopping by to say hello. Briefly. It was a dumbass idea. The days he could have a conversation with Lewis were long gone.

  "Most are at dinner," said Dave One and pointed the lamp at nearby empty bowls and then the car engine. "We ate here so we could finish this."

  Dave Two wiped his hands on a rag and added, "Nance and Woodsy are walking the fence."

  That put Woodsy as far away as possible. That was very good.

  "How about Faye?" he asked.

  The friends exchanged a glance. Dave One said, "Infirmary."

  The transportable classroom-turned-sickbay had been dumped in the paddock directly behind the sheep sheds in the main Yard. Elliot took two steps in that direction and Dave One stepped out to intercept him, his expression apologetic.

  "You can't go there."

  "Off limits," said Dave Two.

  Jesus. "It's got that bad?"

  The two men nodded back at him.

  "How many?"

  Dave Two held up nine greasy fingers, wincing. "Not good."

  "Well, I'd say that's a goddamn understatement." Three people had come down with flu symptoms the day he'd left. Only three. "Claire there, too?"

  "Nope, she's at dinner."

  Elliot turned an about-face and left the garage.

  "Good stew tonight!" Dave Two called after him. "They caught ten trevally this morning!"

  "They were all bream, you tool," Dave One corrected him.

  Their argument over fish species faded as Elliot marched across the Yard's turning circle then hooked around the barn toward "Main Street".