by Pete Aldin
Patience. You've come this far. Do it careful and do it right.
The enemy were out in the open. His team were relatively sheltered with overlapping fields of fire. They had this.
Footsteps!
He braced. One of the men was headed for the barn—he could see the boots moving.
But the other man wasn't.
Not easy, then.
The first SERP—not Kyle!—stepped out of cover, wisecracking over his shoulder. Elliot had no choice but to fire on him before losing him inside the barn. Mindful of the enemy's ballistic vest, he fired at knee level. The contact's legs buckled under him. Elliot added a few more rounds as the man hit the ground. Blood spattered up into the air along with chunks of dirt and what Elliot hoped was brain and skull.
And then another plan went to hell.
Gruff cursing came from behind the cars. Feet moved, but quickly disappeared behind wheels. He kept the rifle trained that way, half his attention on the downed man. If Kyle came back this way, Elliot might hit him, and if he ran for the homestead or gate, Sturgis and Rit were awaiting him.
Instead of either of those happening as he expected, a car door creaked open. The Audi.
"Great."
Movement right: Rit breaking cover, fast-walking across the Yard with his weapon up. He fired a three-round burst. Clumsy grip: the recoil pushed his muzzle up so the rounds missed the car and punched through the barn's tin siding. "Damn." He adjusted his hold, rifle stock firmly against his shoulder.
Elliot got up into a crouch.
The engine turned over, then started. Rit fired a second burst, then a third. The car revved, wheels crunching on gravel as it started off. Sturgis fired a single round from the sheep sheds. Rit fired a fourth burst, then lowered his weapon as the car fishtailed around in a long and shallow U, coming to rest with its driver's side toward the smokehouse near the gate.
Sturgis was sliding out from the sheep run. Rit kept on walking but his rifle drooped groundward.
Elliot shouted, "Weapon up!" and kept his own rifle trained on the man fallen by the barn, advancing on him and shifting his selector to single fire.
Shots came from the car by the smokehouse, a pistol. Rit and Sturgis hit the dirt, fast. Wounded? Elliot wondered. Rit got his weapon up and fired another burst, the weapon bobbing in his hands. He got it firmer against his shoulder and fired another. The rounds made tinking sounds as they punched through the smokehouse walls and kicked up debris from the production line set up outside it.
Sturgis was belly-crawling hurriedly into the cover of a Rover, rifle scraping along beside him.
A shadow bolted between stalled car and smokehouse door. Elliot squeezed off a round, missed. The smokehouse door slammed closed.
"Shit," he and Rit said in unison.
Sturgis peeked over the front of the Rover. "He got inside?"
Elliot reached the other end of the same Rover. The hostile he'd shot was one hundred percent dead. One down and one sheltering in a wooden building with one door and no windows. "Cover that door," he told them. He bent and slipped the flashbang off the dead man's vest, then checked inside the back of the Rover. Grunting in satisfaction at what he'd seen, he clipped the grenade to his belt and told Sturgis to toss him his flashbang, too. Once that was also on his belt, he swung the rifle to his back and reached into the Rover's cargo area for two of the four-litre jugs of kerosene in there.
"Watch that door," he repeated and marched across the open Yard to Kyle's stalled car. He crouched and put the kerosene jugs beside him in the lee of a wheel.
There'd been no activity from the smokehouse: Kyle could be wounded, dead, radioing for help, thinking up options. Elliot had one of the SERP's knives from Jericho. He used it to punch a hole in the lid of each jug, then tossed one underhand to land at the end of the building furthest from the door. Clear fluid began to spill against the wooden wall and across the concrete foundation-slab beneath it.
"Come on out, Kyle," he called.
Silence.
Was the man dead? Looking for another way out?
Then Kyle called back. "You're a dogged sonofabitch, Elliot. I knew we had someone special with you. Sure you don't want to join us? " He was in the middle of the building, no doubt crouched like Elliot behind something to protect against gunfire.
"Join you? I'm not the one holed up in a wooden building with no way out." He took a flashbang from his belt.
"That's true. But you're the one without a prayer of getting his friends back unless he plays by our rules."
"Not so sure about that," Elliot said and pulled the pin on the grenade.
Where it landed, he didn't see. He was hunkered down with his fingers in his ears, his eyes closed and his mouth open to protect against the pressure wave as the grenade detonated. He peeked over to see flames spreading through spilled kerosene before the bottle itself exploded against the wall.
"All right," Sturgis exclaimed. He hadn't changed position. Rit had shifted across the Yard toward the homestead, perhaps for a different angle.
Within the smokehouse, something metallic banged—Kyle wrestling with a fire extinguisher. There'd be no flames inside yet, but the smoke must have been showing.
"You can do that," Elliot called. "But there's only two extinguishers in there. And your MOPP hood's out here. We'll keep adding more fuel until you're overcome."
"If it's the waiting game you want to play, Elliot, you do that." Kyle had changed position inside, but Elliot wasn't sure enough of it to waste bullets. Besides, he didn't need to.
"Waiting game, huh?" he called.
"Let's see what happens first. You smoking me out. Or my guys coming back here."
"If you had guys coming back here, you wouldn't tell me."
Another series of heavy clunks from within. Kyle might have been trying to batter palings from the opposite wall; he'd find the building too sturdily built for that. And then two gunshots. Kyle still had his handgun. No fresh holes appeared Elliot's side of the building so no doubt the SERP was punching breathing holes elsewhere.
"How's the air in there?" he taunted.
The next two shots did come through his side, then. One was low, kicking up dirt to the side of the Audi. The other shattered one of its side windows.
Elliot pulled his head down, cursing quietly. He could spray bullets in return, but he wanted those rounds. He reached for the second kerosene jug, stuck a couple more holes in it and tossed it onto the roof, following it immediately with the second flashbang. Moments later, flames spread and crackled across the wooden slatted ceiling.
And finally Kyle had had enough. "Coming out! Coming out, Elliot! Chucking my weapon first."
The door opened. A handgun landed on the dirt beyond the fire. Kyle came out in a fast walk with hands raised. Elliot fully expected one of the others to fire on him. They didn't. He didn't.
First, he made Kyle kneel and put his hands behind his head.
And then he came forward with his own handgun holstered and his rifle slung.
And he used his fist to break Kyle's nose.
⁓
Two other bodies lay on the ground: Kim and Dylan had been shoved over by a rectangle of straight fence poles. It was an area of the Yard where farmers had once piled dead stock for later disposal. The dark irony didn't escape Elliot and he gave the handcuffed Kyle an extra kick in the back as he stowed him in the back of a Land Rover.
Sturgis had told him that when the SERPs gained access to the Yard claiming to represent the new government—after they'd gathered everyone into the turning circle on the pretense of inoculating them, and after they'd then revealed their true intent—Kim and Dylan had tried wrestling a rifle from one of them. The two men had paid the ultimate price for it.
Kim.
Dylan.
A brave father and a young man Elliot had never thought of as brave before today.
He felt someone at his shoulder as he slammed the door and avoided looking at the bleeding SERP insi
de in case he killed him.
"I can't go over there," Rit said. "I know I should. That's my brother-in-law lying where this bastard tossed him like ... like a sack of garbage. But I can't go look."
Inside the cargo space of the Rover, Kyle shifted, trying to get comfortable. Elliot resisted the urge to put a round through his head. Not yet.
"You don't need to," Sturgis said from nearby. "If we had time, Elliot and I would bury them, properly. But we don't have time and they'd understand that."
"Yeah," Rit sighed. "They would."
Sturgis turned to Elliot. "I'll go check the sick."
"We both will." He turned to Rit first. "There's empty water bottles in the barn. Fill as many as you can and strap them on top." He patted the Land Rover that Kyle was bound and gagged inside.
To himself he said, Get these guys moving, get the dogs, get them all to a safehouse, then get after Angie. A hell of a lot of time had passed since she'd gone. A hell of a lot. But he had to try.
Rit adjusted his baseball cap. He hadn't moved an inch toward the barn. "Elliot, I told you before we came here. I got other things on my mind. My kids and Kim's kids are out there. I helped you. I have cars available. I want to go find them."
Rit and Sturgis had explained that the kids—being quarantined on the far northern boundary of the property—had escaped initial detection by the invaders. And by the time the SERPs had gone looking, Krystal had led them all out another bolt hole, heading for one of the other safe houses they'd established. Meanwhile, Lewis had stayed in their hut in case he was needed to stall and delay the SERPs. Which was exactly what he'd done. While the kids got away, Lewis was taken to the truck.
You heroic little bastard.
The SERPs had arrived a little after nine a.m., Krystal taking the kids soon after that. Elliot imagined a bunch of children traipsing over hills and through native forest between Settlers Downs and the closest safehouse that side of the property. They'd had enough time to make it there if they navigated correctly. Of course, there were other dangers out there besides SERPs.
"Elliot," Rit said, insistent.
Shit.
If Rit went, if Rit took off on his own, that only left Sturgis to manage one vehicle for the three women, plus watch those two prisoners. Sturgis would need Elliot's help. And Elliot wanted to chase after Angie. That was selfish. There were people here who needed resettling before he headed out on another wild goose chase. What was it Angie had said in the truck before they met the Vikes? I can live with a lot of things on my conscience, Elliot, but not with knowing I got good people killed.
"Wait a second," he said to Rit and bent to pick two walkies from the pile of equipment he'd stripped from both SERPs. He selected a frequency and passed one to Rit, pointed his one at the minibus across the Yard. "Take that. You find them, you don't find them, you buzz me. Don't mention specific locations, but use references I'd know. We'll find each other."
Rit nodded his thanks and started toward the garage. "Tell Chariya where I'm going."
He hooked the walkie onto his waistband. "Of course, pal. Godspeed."
With Kyle securely trussed up in back of the Rover, he handed Sturgis a MOPP hood and followed him back through the sheep shed toward the Infirmary. For protection against infection, they put on the hoods as they reached the three front steps.
The door was wide open; he hadn't noticed that when they'd first passed by.
It meant he saw what he saw before he reached the top step and moved inside.
And he'd half-expected it.
But it took his breath away, all the same.
Back in Al-Kasrah, when the relief had finally arrived, they'd brought medics. Too late for the boy who'd lost his arm; Elliot hadn't been able to keep him alive long enough. Doing penance, Elliot had helped bag pieces of his team before finally allowing the medics to take him away. As he'd left the town, the local survivors had been arranging their own bodies in lines. The boy's had been closest to the market entrance.
Rows of bodies.
The Settlers Downs Infirmary held twelve beds, six either side of a walkway down the middle.
Rows of bodies.
The closest bed to the door held a boy.
Elliot smelled copper and smoke. Smelled the phantom rot of deaders. Felt the heat coming off the bright lights above Jericho's Night Court. Watched dusty Syrian air creating a haze in the gloom of an Australian late-afternoon. Saw two boys in the bed near the door, one superimposed upon another, one with one arm, one with both.
He blinked it away, only to see a hospital tent, hastily erected in Libya this time, dead and living bodies of soldiers filling the cots. The ghosts of medics and nurses rushed between them. He stepped aside to let one leave as she raced out for a fresh IV, then realized that she wasn't there. Neither was he. He was here. He was now.
Sturgis was outside on the steps, puking beside his discarded MOPP hood.
Elliot's pulse raced. His ears rang with tinnitus. He tasted stomach acid, glad he hadn't eaten for a long time, nothing to puke. He was going to get through this. He made himself focus on each of the ten people in the Infirmary, murdered by gunfire. He said their names in his head, remembering them.
Macca. Farmer.
Piers. Gardener.
Raj. Di's husband.
Tony. Little Ben's father.
Garry. Tony's friend who'd saved father and son in the early days of the Collapse.
Ilse. Sturgis's sister-in-law.
Little—
He had to stop a moment. Had to swallow hard on the emotion rising like reflux and force himself to keep on.
Little Abby. Three years old. Sturgis's niece. Ilse's daughter.
Ben. A six-year-old boy. Tony's son. Goddamnit.
He hurried on, eyes ranging up the rows, feet anchored by the door.
Jen. Cook. Seamstress. She'd had a crush on Elliot. She'd made him a sweater. And Elliot had never given her so much as a smile.
Faye. Nurse. Claire's mentor and friend. Elliot's friend.
Elliot's friends.
Elliot's family.
He pulled the door closed, tossed the SERP MOPP hood into Sturgis's pile of puke. Sturgis was still bent double, ribs heaving. The vomit was all Elliot could smell now. The tinnitus was fading.
He put a hand to the back of Sturgis's neck and squeezed gently. "More to do, buddy."
Sturgis got out the word, "Yeah" before heaving again.
When he was done, Elliot said simply, "I'll meet you by the rain tanks. If we're gonna hide at a safehouse, we'll need water."
Sturgis straightened a little, wiping at his face. "Okay. Right. Okay." He didn't move any further, though, his breath coming hard.
Elliot said. "Just meet me there when you're ready."
"Okay."
"Okay," said Elliot with a last glance at the Infirmary door. Then he set off in a run. The water was important, but first he needed to go for his dogs.
⁓
Fido and Wilma followed him eagerly, healthy, alive, and anxious.
The dogs in the pens were all dead.
⁓
Sturgis was filling one of two ten-litre water bottles at the rainwater tanks when he got back. The navy man's face was pale, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. He maneuvered the second water bottle under another water tank spigot and said, "Holy shit, Elliot. They shot them all. Women, kids ..."
Elliot signaled the dogs to sit and keep watch. He said nothing, wondering if Sturgis had been over to take it out on Kyle.
Well, if he had, if he'd killed Kyle early, then so be it.
Sturgis opened the spigot, locked it in place and straightened as the bottle started filling. Then he punched the plastic wall of the tank. "They shot them! Abby and Ben—they were just children. They shot children."
"I know, bud, I know." Children shot and blown apart and torn apart: of all the twisted shit he had seen in his life—and he'd seen plenty—they were always the worst. Always.
Sturgis ground the h
eel of a hand into one eye. "I started to ask myself, how can people do that? These people were cops. And then I remembered. I was just as bad."
"No, man. I've told you before—"
"I've tried to tell you before. This time you'll let me finish, damn it. I stood on that dock beside Meg when you came to us for help three years ago. You and a boy and an old man. And we turned you away. I know you've forgiven that—"
"You've made up for it, Sturgis."
"—but I'll never forgive myself. And I never ... I mean I've been scared. But I haven't felt like this, like you guys must've felt. My little son's out there in the bush with only a teenager looking after him. My wife's on that truck. And I can't..." He put both hands to his mouth as if he'd puke again.
Elliot flashed to a landing field in Turkey, Radler with hands cupped to his mouth, facing a nearby group of Marines and serenading them with his rendition of Anything you can do while Mac and Eames attempted the worst harmonies in history.
He said to Sturgis, "Whatever the rest of that sentence is, it's not true. You can do it. We can. We will get 'em back."
Hooah, said McGovern's ghost.
Elliot shut off the first spigot, screwed the cap back on the bottle. Sturgis could take care of the second when it was full; it would keep him busy. Elliot reached out and grabbed his wrist, tightening his grip until Sturgis gasped and pulled free. "Do not do this to yourself."
"You don't think I should feel like shit?" Sturgis demanded.
Elliot had beaten himself up a lot over the years. A lot. This week was teaching him that sometimes it didn't matter how well you trained or planned or armed yourself. It didn't matter whether your head was on a swivel or stuck in the sand. Didn't matter what decision you made. Didn't matter how much you concentrated. Shit was going to happen.
"Are any of the rest of you sick?" he asked. "The people in that removals truck? No? That figures. See, I could now say that everything we did was for nothing. No one else got sick and we put everybody in harm's way trying to get meds we didn't need."