by Shane Carrow
I still hated him, even though he was dead. I wanted to mash his body into a pulp. I looked over the room and saw that Rahvi’s man was dead, too, a piece of jagged glass from the shattered TV screen lodged in his throat. It gave me a deep, deep pleasure to see that. Rahvi was clutching the shotgun with bleeding hands. Behind us, Sergeant Blake had taken the opportunity to rip the curtain railing from the wall, and was now searching the body of Rahvi’s adversary for the keys to his handcuffs.
“I hate him,” I growled, but Rahvi was already turning away from me, walking out of the room, off to hunt down Kocol and the smoker. That sounded like a plan to me, and I reached forward to pick up my own guard’s Steyr – but Blake got there first, his hands free now. We stared at each other for a moment, before he handed me back my Browning, grip-first. I holstered it wordlessly, picked up the Steyr, and followed Blake out into the kitchen.
Rahvi was standing by the sink, smashing glass out of the window before taking aim with his shotgun. He fired two rounds, before pulling it back and staring. Blake and I joined him at the window. The smoker was lying in the road at the edge of the forest, nearly fifty metres away. He’d been fleeing. “You hit him from there with a shotgun?” I said.
“No,” Rahvi said. “That wasn’t me….”
Zhou emerged from the trees, holding his Steyr Aug, and started approaching the mill. The three of us pulled away from window, out of sight. We didn’t need him mistaking us for enemies and taking a shot at us. “Where’s the fourth man?” Blake asked urgently.
“Dead,” Rahvi replied. “Ran out into the fields and hit a Claymore.”
Blake breathed a sigh of relief. “All right. Go out there and get Zhou in here – make sure he doesn’t fucking shoot you.” Rahvi nodded, and ducked off down the hallway. “Matt. Go get the PAL codebook.”
“My pleasure,” I said. I headed back into the living room, and opened the doorway that led down into the basement. There was a flashlight hidden above the doorframe, just where I’d left it. I flicked it on and descended the stairs.
The basement was mostly empty; a few plastic chairs stacked in one corner, some rusty machinery, and a couple of old wooden barrels dating back to the time when the building was actually a mill. I hurried over to a far corner and carefully dug my fingers underneath one of the planks in the floor. It lifted straight out, along with two others, leaving a space about a foot wide. Below was the dark soil of the crawlspace, and I began to dig with my bare hands.
Only a foot deep, and I’d uncovered the old biscuit tin I’d buried. For a terrible moment, as I lifted it out of the hole, I was sure it would be empty.
It wasn’t. Inside, wrapped in its waterproof bag, was the beautiful little blue book, the proud American eagle resplendent on the cover. I could have kissed it. Instead, I tucked it into my pocket and dashed back up the stairs.
Blake, Rahvi and Zhou were in the living room. Blake and Rahvi were gathering the weapons we now had – between us, it came to six Steyr Augs, eight Brownings, and the Remington shotgun – while Zhou was babbling on about something.
“...whole fucking town. How does a whole fucking town go down like that so quickly? There were some guys on the perimeter watchtowers taking pot-shots at them, but they were surrounded, those guys are definitely fucking dead by now. And they were all that was left. And that smoke on the horizon. That was coming from Armidale, I fucking guarantee it.”
“Ran into a few problems, huh?” I asked.
Zhou looked at me bleakly. “We’re all about to.”
“For us it’s a good thing,” Blake said, shoving a fresh magazine into his rifle. “If New England was running at full capacity we wouldn’t stand a chance. As it is, we should be able to slip through the gaps and get the hell out of here. Now, Matt – please tell me, for God’s sake, that you have the codebook.”
I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up in front of him. He nodded curtly, and I tucked it away again. For a moment he seemed to be about to say something – he wanted to carry it himself, I guess – but he let it slide.
“We’ve got the keys to the Range Rover,” Rahvi said. “What are we waiting for?”
Five minutes later we were sitting in the four-wheel drive as it left the mill behind. The smoker’s corpse was still lying in the driveway; out in the field, I could see crows gathering over one spot, presumably where Kocol had met his maker in the minefield. I thought of the other kid’s body lying in the fireplace, his face a ragged mess.
Nope. Still didn’t care. Still didn’t feel anything other than glad.
Sergeant Blake was driving, Rahvi was riding shotgun, and Zhou and I were in the backseat. We’d shoved the excess firearms in the boot. We didn’t have enough ammo for them, but it’s a shame to leave behind good weapons. Blake drove us along back-trails and country roads, through forests and farms, while Rahvi scanned the radio hoping to pick up some transmissions. A handful of typical distress signals and warnings; nothing about us having been briefly captured. No helicopters in the sky. Once we passed another vehicle, a ute with a pair of civilians in the cab. They didn’t give us a second glance.
“Hey, sarge,” I said. “You’re going to want to head a little more to the north-east, or we’re going to hit the highway before we get to Rocky River.”
Blake said nothing.
“Sarge?”
“We’re not going back to Rocky River,” he said. “It’s in the wrong direction and we do not have time to waste. We have the codebook. We’re heading south. Now.”
“Uh, no, see, we’re not,” I said. “We’re going to Rocky River to get the others.”
“Don’t argue with me, Matt,” Blake said wearily. “I am really not in the mood.”
“No!” I said, raising my voice. “You do not get to pull that shit! We are not leaving them behind!”
Blake said nothing, and kept driving. We were coming up to a T-junction, surrounded by forested hills. “Fine,” I said. “You’ve got the codebook now, so you don’t need me.” I pulled it from my pocket and reached forward to drop it in his lap. “See you in Jagungal.” As he slowed down to turn, I opened my door and jumped from the car, stumbling a little, but it had been slow enough that I caught myself, picked myself up, started walking.
I went north, leaving the road, heading into the trees. I could tell that the car was still at the junction, and though the engine was still running I heard doors open and close. Blake and Rahvi were both calling my name.
Blake caught up to me as I was just a stone’s throw into the trees and forcibly turned me around. “I still need you,” he said firmly. “You’re our communications link with Jagungal. I can’t let you go off on your own, Matt, as much as I fucking wish I could.”
“Then stay with me, and we’ll go back to Rocky River together,” I said simply.
“Why do you have to make this so difficult?” Blake hissed. “We have a thousand kilometres of hostile territory to cover! We cannot afford to be dragging a teenage girl and a man suffering from PTSD with us!”
“Jess knows how to handle herself and Jones will be fine,” I snarled. “I can’t believe you! You’d just leave them there to die?”
“Why do you think I left Cavalli with them?” Blake said. “He’s a good soldier. He knows his shit, and he’ll take care of them. Jones will, too.”
He stared at me angrily. Rahvi and Zhou were lingering just behind the sergeant, mixed expressions on their faces.
“We killed that girl’s family,” I said. “She had a safe place, she had people to take care of her, and now she doesn’t. That’s on me. That’s on Rahvi. We need to get here somewhere safe. There is no universe in which I’m just leaving her out here on her own, while New England goes to shit. I’m definitely not doing that just because it makes things easier for you. And if you try to take me south against my will, without her, I will be kicking and screaming all the way.”
Blake kept staring at me. I could tell it wasn’t an easy decision for him, but I didn�
��t have much sympathy. For me, it wasn’t a decision at all.
“Sergeant Blake,” Rahvi said quietly. “You’re my sarge, and we’ve been through a lot of shit together, and I respect you, and I trust you. But right now? I really, really agree with Matt.”
There was a long pause. Finally, Blake said: “Fucking guilty consciences. Jesus Christ. Fine. We’ll go back to Rocky River.”
We got back in the car, and took the road to the north.
9.00pm
After putting a safe distance between ourselves and the mill, we returned to Thunderbolt’s Way, a major tributary of the New England Highway. Two other vehicles passed us while we were on that road – a Toyota Camry with a lone civilian behind the wheel, and Bushmaster. Neither seemed to care about us, although watching the Bushmaster roaring along the road towards us with its gun barrel pointed dead ahead gave me a strong urge to bail out of the moving car.
We arrived back at the farmhouse in mid-afternoon and Cavalli met us at the door. “You got the codes?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Any trouble?”
“Yes,” Sergeant Blake said. “Get the shit in the car, we’re leaving this place in sixty seconds.”
There was a bustle of activity as we grabbed all of our supplies – food, water, weapons – and started moving them out of the basement, into the Range Rover. I did my best to walk alongside Jess in the yard. “You guys have any problems while we were gone?” I asked. “Or was it all quiet?”
She ignored me.
We pulled out of the farmhouse’s driveway about three minutes after we’d pulled in. It was a tight fit in the Range Rover with all seven of us. Blake was driving, with Rahvi in the passenger seat; me, Jess, and Zhou in the back seat; Cavalli and Jones crammed into the back with all our gear. “Alright,” Blake said as we headed south on a dirt road, through patchwork fields and past distant homesteads. “We’ll follow the back roads until we can link up with the highway again south of Uralla.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I said. “Everything’s going to shit. We should keep away from the highway, that’s where all the soldiers are going to be.”
“Everything’s dangerous,” Blake said tersely. “And we need to get the hell out of here as fast as we can. Going through fields and back roads, that’ll take us days. On the highway we could be out of New England in a few hours.”
“Assuming we don’t run into soldiers still loyal to Draeger,” Zhou said. “Or soldiers who aren’t loyal to Draeger. Or bandits. Or zombies...”
“Look, would you shut up?” Blake said. “It’s going to be risky no matter what we do.” He was tense, and frankly I couldn’t blame him. I was feeling as jittery as he was, stuffed into a car with five other men holding rifles, and one woman who hated my guts.
We relinked with the highway further south from Uralla, the depot town. A few plumes of thick black smoke were rising up over the treetops from that direction. Fragments of statuc-riddled radio conversations crackled over our set; it sounded like a battle was being fought in Uralla.
Whatever was happening, we soon saw the effects. Traffic heading south along the highway was thick. There were always vehicles in front of and behind us, ranging from civilian hatchbacks to huge, heavy Army trucks. Along the sides of the road were people fleeing on foot, on horseback or even on bicycle. Some were sitting by the edge of the road, looking exhausted, or talking with other refugees. Helicopters thundered overhead, heading both north and south. At one point we came to a jam, actual bumper-to-bumper traffic, and realised that there had been a zombie attack at the side of the road. A handful of corpses were scattered across the gravel shoulder, with soldiers waving vehicles past and other armed men standing around, gripping rifles and staring into the bush that lined the road on both sides.
It was very, very nerve-wracking to suddenly be surrounded by so many people, even if they were sealed in other cars. We were used to having the road to ourselves. Now we were completely in the midst of the enemy, who had no idea who we were. Thank Christ that carrying a rifle everywhere you go in New England is par for the course.
It also gave me flashbacks to the early days after the collapse, when Aaron and I were travelling together through the forests of WA’s south-west, and there had been people everywhere. Strange and distant days. It stirred up a lot of odd emotions.
Two hours later, as the sun was starting to wander down towards the western horizon, we were beginning to approach the depot town of Bendeemer, close to the quarry where the old rendezvous point had been. More memories, though a lot more recent. “What are we going to do?” Rahvi asked, eyeing the traffic ahead of us, which had thickened considerably as we headed further south, slowing our pace to only thirty kilometres an hour with regular stops.
“We’ll have to go around,” Blake said. “If traffic’s moving this slow they must be running it through a checkpoint. That’s bad enough, but it means Bendeemer’s still functioning okay. So a higher chance the Army here’s still looking for us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s get the fuck off the highway.”
As we continued south, another road branched off to the south-east, running through fields of wheat and green paddocks. Blake left the queue of cars and turned onto it. Nobody else was leaving the main road for it, which gave me a bad feeling. It looked suspicious.
Sure enough, we were soon being followed by a silver Holden Commodore which had peeled away from the traffic, the driver’s window down with an arm motioning for us to pull over. Blake indicated, and moved on over to the edge of the road. “What the fuck are you doing?” Rahvi hissed.
“Everybody shut up,” Blake said, switching the car’s engine off. “Just shut up and stay calm.”
I turned in my seat to watch the Holden. The driver’s door opened, and a middle-aged man emerged, wearing faded jeans and a grey polo shirt, a glossy ID card on a lanyard around his neck. There was a holstered Glock clipped to his belt. He walked up to the car with one hand on his gun. Blake wound his window down.
I took another glance back, past the tinted windows of the Commodore, trying to see if there was anybody else in the car – and how far we’d come from the road. I could just barely make out the traffic back there. Hopefully that meant we weren’t too visible in return.
“Lieutenant Harper, Army Intelligence,” the man said, identifying himself as he arrived at the window. “Mind telling me where you’re going, sergeant?”
“Special assignment,” Blake said. “Heading south to reinforce the surveillance team at the Bendeemer Quarry, where King was captured. In case he heads back there.”
Harper peered in at the car’s interior. Every one of us was completely silent. Every one of was still wearing an Army uniform, holding a military-issue rifle.
Except for Jess, dressed in jeans and a hoody.
“And who’s the girl?” Harper asked.
“My daughter,” Blake said in a low voice. “Look, I know... I just, I didn’t want to leave her in Armidale, you know? Not with things the way they were.”
Harper took a long look at Blake. He looked around the car at all of us again. I looked right back at him; avoiding his gaze would only seem suspicious.
“All right,” he eventually said. “Just don’t...”
Blake shoved the door open suddenly, knocking him backwards, and was immediately out of the car. Even as Harper stumbled backwards onto the bitumen he’d pulled his handgun out, but Blake knocked it away with one swipe of his left hand, drawing his own sidearm with his right. By the time I’d unbuckled my seatbelt and pushed open my door, Blake had shot Harper through the chest and his body was falling into the ditch at the side of the road.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed. “What the hell did you do that for? He was going to let us go!”
“We killed the soldiers at the mill three hours ago,” Blake hissed, kneeling down to check the body. “You really think...”
Both our heads whipped around as we heard a sound behin
d us. The Holden Commodore’s engine had started, and it reversed backwards in a quick turn, gravel spraying from the tyres, taking off back towards the highway.
My heart froze. There’d been someone else in the car after all.
My Steyr Aug was still sitting in the Range Rover’s backseat, and I grabbed it and dashed forward a few steps, hearing the other doors open as Rahvi and Cavalli and Jones spilled out of the car. Then I was dropping down onto my belly, peering through the scope, taking aim at the Holden’s tyres.
All of us started firing at more or less the same time. The Holden’s back windshield shattered, bullet holes popped up all over its rear bumper, and one of the tyres burst, sending it skidding off into the ditch on the southern side of the road. It had made it all of thirty metres.
We started running towards it, gripping our rifles. Cavalli reached it first, slowing down into a steady stalk, gun aimed squarely at the driver’s side. He reached out with one hand and pulled opened the door. I was right behind him. The car’s second occupant, who must have wriggled over into the driver’s seat when he saw his partner get killed, was lying slumped over the wheel with his brains sprayed over the windshield. One of us had gotten a lucky shot. In his left hand he clasped a radio handset. It was still crackling with a woman’s voice: “Captain Tyler, are you there? Please respond. Captain Tyler?”
“Fuck,” Rahvi said. “Fuck!”
“Back to the car,” Sergeant Blake shouted. “Go, go, move it!”
We raced back to the Range Rover and piled inside, Blake firing the engine up and taking off before the last door was even shut. The mood inside the car was drenched with adrenaline. We all knew what the situation was. We were about to find out exactly how good New England’s response time was, now that it was facing a civil war and a zombie outbreak.
“We need to change vehicles,” I said, as we roared down the country road to the east. We were in a flat, open landscape, nothing but fields and farmhouses, useless for cover. My kingdom for a forest. “We need to change vehicles now.”