by Shane Carrow
“There’s a soldier up on the hillside,” Rahvi whispered.
Suddenly I was wide awake. I scrambled up onto my feet in a crouch, reaching for my Steyr Aug. Rahvi pulled me back slightly, edging both of us underneath the shelter of the hanging vines, as I shaded my eyes and scanned the ground above us for the hidden menace.
I spotted the horse, first – then the boot-filled stirrups, baggy camouflage pants, and the waist with a holstered revolver. He was much closer than I’d thought, almost right on top of our gully. He had a grizzly red beard, and the stripes of a sergeant on his arm. He hadn’t seen us. He was looking past the gully, at something else. After a moment he flicked the reigns and the horse trotted off out of our field of view.
Something about his manner told me that he was an experienced soldier, a veteran – not one of the conscripts from back in Bundarra.
“There’s more of them further up the gully,” Rahvi whispered. “We need to clear out.”
“Lead the way,” I said quietly.
We headed downstream, staying under the shadow of the overhanging granite. The creek must be a lot stronger, usually; it had eroded a path right through the bedrock, with the walls too sheer for us to climb. The gully was maybe two or three metres wide, and several times our height, with a mess of overhanging foliage and ferns peeking over the lips above us. Like any waterway, it twisted and turned frequently, making it impossible to see more than a few metres ahead. If any soldiers were coming in the other direction we’d be walking into a very quick and brutal gunfight. Both of us kept our rifles pointed forward, and made sure we didn’t step into each other’s line of fire.
After a few minutes Rahvi paused, and I nearly walked into the back of him. “What’s up?” I asked, but he pressed a finger to his lips.
From further upstream, behind us, I could make out voices. And they were getting closer.
We picked up the pace, splashing down the stream, sometimes knee deep, the rock face growing narrower and pressing around us on both sides. I kept glancing upwards, expecting to see a soldier’s face peering over the edge of the cliffs at any second, mowing us down in a wave of gunfire. Even with a fresh wound to his leg, Rahvi was outstripping me, and kept glancing back to make sure I was keeping up.
Finally we came to a spot where there had been a rockfall. A slanted jumble of boulders and dirt sloughed down into the creek, the water bubbling around the bottom, new plants and ferns sprouting from the cracks. Rahvi slung his rifle over his back and started scrambling up it, and I followed him.
We emerged onto a wooded hillside, ducking into the undergrowth immediately. I could almost hear my heart beating in the silence. There were no soldiers visible, but it was a huge environment, and after the repetitive monotony at the bottom of the gully, it threw my senses into disarray. Not to mention that the soldiers were wearing camouflage, and we weren’t.
Rahvi pointed silently through the trees. Further up a hill on the other side of the bank was another soldier, a fresh young face, and after a moment I spotted another one just behind him. Both of them were armed only with handguns, just as the horseback sergeant had been, which gave me a spark of hope. Weapons shortage down at the local barracks, boys? That’s a shame.
“They know we’re around here somewhere,” Rahvi said under his breath, peering at them through his Steyr’s scope.
“How do you know?”
“They’re too alert. They look scared.” He glanced down at me, then cast another quick glare across the hillsides. He was operating in full SAS mode again, making decisions before I could even react to what was going on. “Follow me.”
We ducked off through the trees, staying as low as we could while still moving fast, keeping the sunset to our backs. My heart was fluttering. I hate being hunted. At any second a sharpshooter could put a bullet through my back and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it. I wouldn’t even see it coming.
And, as if to rub salt into that wound, we suddenly heard a very familiar and terrible sound.
The helicopter swooped past the blinding glare of the sun, casting a long shadow across us, wheeling around again far above the treetops. For a terrible moment I thought it had spotted us, but no, it was moving off a little further to the north, sniffing around, hunting. It was a sleek red and white model, presumably some tourist joy-flight thing that had been among all the other aircraft commandeered by the Republic.
“Bell Jet Ranger,” Rahvi said, urging me forward again. “Civilian chopper. Probably doesn’t have infra-red.”
We went on a little further, ducking behind trees now and then, scanning the area every few dozen metres to ensure we didn’t run headlong into a soldier. The helicopter buzzed a little further away, and the sun was glaring down through the tree trunks, almost level with us.
And then the trees began to thin, and the ground levelled out. We ran through a patch of bushland, low shrubs and scraggly gum trees, and came to the edge of a plain of grass. We crouched down in the dirt, both gripping our rifles, and surveyed the area ahead.
The grassy meadow was about the size of a football field, a hundred metres across. I don’t know why there were no trees there – just grass and a few wildflowers, swaying in the evening breeze, with a single lightning-blackened tree stump near the middle. At the other end of the field was a pine forest, trees growing in perfect ranks, which confused me for a second before I realised it was a plantation.
The forest was dark and quiet. With the sun almost down, only the highest tips of the pine trees were still bronzed with the day’s last light, waving gently in the wind. Behind the forest was a higher range of hills, also covered in pine trees. Rahvi glanced behind us, to the west and the setting sun, where the helicopter was still hovering around.
“Are we going to go this way?” I asked.
“We can’t exactly go the other way,” he murmured, eyes scanning the trees. “But it’s going to be a long dash across open ground.”
“Sooner the better, then?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Agreed.”
He stood up slightly, still by the cover of a banksia tree, casting a glance around. Everything was quiet, except for the wind rustling the leaves, and the distant throbbing of the Jet Ranger somewhere behind us.
“Where’s the codebook?” he asked.
I tapped my jeans pocket. “You want it?”
“No,” he said. “I just want to know where it is if you get shot and I have to grab it in a hurry. If I get shot, don’t stop running. Understood? Just keep moving.”
I nodded, and he clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go,” he whispered.
And he sprinted. I was right on his heels.
The ground under the ankle-high grass was sandy, hard to run through. I peeled off from Rahvi to the right, and found a trail through the grass, an old motocross track maybe. It provided firmer ground. I didn’t seem to need it. Even with my adrenaline pumping and my lungs burning, expecting at any second to have a bullet rip my intestines out into the open air, nothing happened. They had no eyes on us – they were still back there in the forest, searching for us along the gully. I let a smile break across my face as we kept on sprinting.
Then there was a clatter of gunfire, and the grass between Rahvi and myself was ripped to shreds.
Rahvi slung his rifle around in to his arms in one smooth motion as he sprinted, and twisted as he ran to lay down covering fire. “Keep running!” he screamed at me, as I hesitated and lagged, wondering if I should follow his lead. “Go, go, run!”
I kept sprinting, flat out, my sides burning and my breath ragged. Bullets kicked up fountains of sand around me. I had no idea where the gunfire was coming from, or how many soldiers were shooting at us. I just kept my head down and ran for all I was worth.
I passed the blackened tree stump, the halfway mark, and risked a glance behind me. The chopper had shown up now, hovering low above the field, sending downwash patterns surging across the grass like crop circles. Rahvi was t
railing behind slightly as he fired quick bursts off towards the scrub. “Fucking run!” he yelled.
The pine trees grew closer, and no more bullets were thudding into the dirt around me. Either I was too far away, or Rahvi was drawing their fire. Finally I hit the treeline, diving forward and staggering into a rough, scented carpet of pine cones and needles. I twisted around and unslung my rifle, fumbling for the safety, bringing it up to cover Rahvi.
He was only just past the tree stump, a good fifty metres away, but he was covering the distance fast. The rifle was hanging over his back again and he was taking huge, sprinting strides, hair and jacket rippling under the chopper’s downdraft. From the scrub on the other side of the field, the soldiers were emerging, six or seven of them, most with handguns rather than rifles. Some dropped into a crouching stance and took pot-shots at him, while others kept running in pursuit. They weren’t firing much, and I realised then that they were still trying to take us alive – injured, maybe, but alive. That was the edge we had, if we could exploit it.
I scrambled up onto my feet, in a crouching position, ready to run again as soon as Rahvi reached me. He was waving and shouting, angrily telling me to get moving already, but I wasn’t about to leave him out in the open.
The chopper hovered even lower in the middle of the field, only five metres above the ground. One of the doors slid open, and a man stuck his legs out over the side, clutching a rifle. He wasn’t wearing military fatigues – he jeans and sneakers on, and a kevlar vest over a white-collared business shirt, some kind of ID badge hanging on a tag around his neck and placed in the breast pocket. My breath caught as he lifted the scope up to his eye and took aim. It happened too quickly for me to even think about shooting at him.
The rifle was silenced; there was no noise except for the roar of the chopper. Rahvi just ploughed forward, collapsed into the grass, lay motionless with blood splattered across his cheek.
I stared at the scene in pure shock, my body trembling. The chopper hovered there in the centre of the field. The soldiers were running towards Rahvi, shouting, distant but drawing closer. The sun had sunk below the distant hills, and the tops of the pine trees swayed violently in the wind of the helicopter, twigs and pine needles raining down on me. I didn’t take any of it in. My eyes were fixed on Rahvi.
And then he moved, clawing his way up onto his hands and knees, grabbing for something in his neck and yanking it out. He gripped it in his fist, staring at it in woozy disbelief. I was close enough to make it out. A dart. A tranquiliser. I was relieved that it hadn’t been a bullet, relieved beyond belief, but at the same time the notion I had that a tranquiliser dart is a humane weapon was erased. It’s a syringe, fired at high velocity from the barrel of a rifle. It had stabbed right into his neck, ripping a chunk of skin clean off. Blood was pouring freely down his neck, staining his jacket, dripping into the grass.
Rahvi looked up, and met my stare. There was a groggy anger in his eyes. He was on his hands and knees, lost and helpless, sedatives coursing through his veins. Thoroughly defeated. Go, he mouthed at me, and then slumped down into the sand.
My body wanted to run out and grab him, drag him into the safety of the trees, rescue him somehow. But I didn’t move. I could feel the codebook in the pocket of my jeans. That was why we were here. That was why our friends had died, and why the rest of us were being hunted down like rabbits. That was why Rahvi was lying motionless on the ground in the first place. I couldn’t go out and help him. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to just run away, either.
I glanced up at the chopper in time to see the sniper chambering a fresh round and raising his rifle again, aimed at me this time, and that snapped me out of it. I recoiled from the tree I’d been squatting next to just as the dart or tranq or whatever it was ripped into the bark and shattered in a cloud of dust and broken plastic. I scrambled to my feet and ran, casting a glance over my shoulder at Rahvi. He was lying facedown in the grass, and the forerunner of the soldiers had reached him, kneeling over him, zip-tying his wrists together.
Then I turned to face ahead again, fighting down the urge to turn back and shoot wildly at every soldier I saw.
I dashed through the pine forest, up and down the slopes, terrifyingly aware of how easy it would be for them to follow me. The bushland we’d been in before had been choked with shrubs and ferns and undergrowth, easy enough to hide in. But in the pine plantation, through these steady columns of carefully planted trees, you could see for a hundred metres in every direction.
My sides were aching, but I kept sprinting, crunching pine cones underfoot and constantly looking back over my shoulder. I couldn’t hear the chopper anymore; it must have stayed behind in the meadow, either to take Rahvi onboard or to disgorge the sniper, since he wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot through the forest canopy. That was good. But it would be after me again before long.
The noise of hoofbeats came from behind me, and I turned to see the red-bearded sergeant from the gully bearing down on me, gripping his revolver in one hand and the reins of his horse in the other. Before he could run me down I dived over a fallen log, landing in clumps of rotten bark on the other side, fumbling for my rifle. The rider galloped straight past, and as he wheeled to turn around again I sat up and fired a quick burst at him. The horse shrieked and reared, and the soldier lost his grip and tumbled off the back with an expression of shock and dismay.
I staggered to my feet and sprinted up to where the he lay, as his horse bolted off through the trees. No loss – I have no idea how to ride anyway. Blood was seeping through the sergeant’s uniform, and I realised that I’d shot him in the chest. Sheer luck. He groaned and made a weak attempt at reaching for his revolver, lying in the pine needles a few feet away. I didn’t even bother kicking it away. I just shot him in the head.
He was wearing a utility belt of some kind, and I quickly unbuckled it, glancing back to the west. I could hear vague and distant shouts, but no more soldiers on horseback were approaching. Hopefully there were none – just the foot pursuit. The belt had a bulky water canteen, an empty holster, a pair of grenades, a flashlight and a radio. It was too big for my waist, so I slung it bandolier fashion, scooped up the revolver, and started running again.
I was starting to feel cornered. The radio crackled out communications between the pursuing soldiers, giving me some sense of how many there were chasing me – at least thirty, now, with more on the way. The Jet Ranger arrived, and buzzed over the treetops above me. I fired a few rounds from the Steyr at it, but then it was empty, and Rahvi had been carrying the extra magazines. The helicopter backed off, went higher, but it followed me still.
My sides were burning, my breath ragged. I found myself sprinting uphill, entering the mountain foothills behind the plantation, but they were still covered in pine trees, terrible for cover. I could run, but I couldn’t hide. Over the radio, I heard the other soldiers discover the sergeant’s corpse – complete with panic and gunfire, since he’d reanimated. Serves them right. As soon as they realised I’d taken his radio they switched frequencies. I was running in silence again, except for the ever-present scream of the helicopter blades. I glanced up at it as I ran, wondering if Rahvi was inside it, unconscious and restrained.
Dusk gathered quickly. The Jet Ranger had no spotlight or infra-red, apparently, because it flew in widening circles, apparently having lost me in the gloom. Occasionally I could see flashlight beams coming through the forest a few hundred metres behind me, the soldiers still hot on my trail. I knew I didn’t have much time. There would be more helicopters on the way, military standard, equipped with spotlights and thermal equipment. They’d be able to pick out my body heat and lead the soldiers right to me, or maybe even just watch me from the sky until I dropped from exhaustion. I accepted that it was a question of when they caught me, not if, and became determined to make it difficult for them.
And then I came to the mine.
It was in a rugged area of the forest, where the hills and ridges were
merging into cliffs and rockslides. Night had completely fallen, and I was stumbling along in the cloud-damped moonlight. I’d taken a flashlight from the dead soldier, but using it would be like lighting up a signal flare for my pursuers. So I discovered the mine entrance by stumbling blindly into it and nearly breaking my ankle.
There was a ramp sloping downwards, at the bottom of a short cliff, surrounded by moss-covered walls and the rusty hulks of burnt-out vehicles. At first I thought it was the scars of the apocalypse, before realising that it this place had been abandoned decades ago. There was a deep carpet of dead pine needles over everything, and in any case, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a modern mine in this country that wasn’t open-cut.
The ramp led down into a gaping hole in the cliffside, large enough to drive a truck through. I stood at the opening, and turned back to look at the forest. The chopper was throbbing away somewhere to my north, alone and frustrated, but not for much longer. I couldn’t hear any shouts of pursuing soldiers, or hoofbeats in the earth. Just the wind, and the pine branches scraping against each other.
The soldiers would find the mine entrance, without a doubt. And they’d follow me in. It could be a dead end. It could collapse on me. There could be zombies lurking in there. It might not have another exit. There were a thousand things that made this a bad idea.
But it would shield me from infrared pursuit. I had a better chance down there than I did up in the forest.
So I took the flashlight out, switched it on, and went down the ramp.
The opening tunnel only went for fifty metres or so, gently sloping down into the earth. The distant noise of the chopper was muffled out almost instantly, and I was left only with my own footsteps and laboured breathing. The flashlight beam glided across the floor and walls, and I found my suspicions about the mine correct. The buttresses were rotten, most of them long ago turned to termite mulch, and there were tree roots bursting through the ceiling. I soon came to a tunnel collapse - earth had poured in through the ceiling, leaving a mound of sand with only a tiny gap at the top. I clambered up it, wriggled through, scraping some earth away to enlarge the gap, and came tumbling down onto the other side. The tunnel stretched ahead again, into the inky darkness.