End Times V: Kingdom of Hell

by Shane Carrow

I’m not sure how much time passed – probably very little – before I realised Rahvi was squatting in the tray beside me. He’d crawled out the shattered rear windshield as soon as he could, the ute still speeding along the highway. For the first time I’d ever seen, he seemed to have absolutely no control over the situation. He was as shocked by the Blake’s sudden, unexpected death as I was. For a moment we both sat there in utter disbelief, as the Holden roared down a long and winding forest road, staring at the dead eyes of somebody both of us had thought was invulnerable.

  I glanced up at the ruined back windshield of the Holden. Zhou and Jones were staring out at us with an equal measure of disbelief. “Anybody hurt?” I yelled over the wind. Zhou shook his head. The sniper’s second shot had gone right through the car and out the front windshield, leaving a neat little hole.

  After we’d been driving for maybe ten minutes, putting a healthy amount of kilometres between ourselves and Nundle, Cavalli pulled the Crewman over onto the shoulder of the road and turned the engine off. The others piled out of the car, and I too found myself jumping out of the back of the ute, desperate to get away from the bloody, broken object that had once been Sergeant Blake. I took a few paces away from the car and sat down on my haunches, running my good hand through my sweaty hair, squeezing my eyes shut. I realised that something on my face felt wet, and when I put a hand up to touch my cheek it came away covered in blood. I suddenly felt like vomiting.

  “Matt?” Jess called out. “You okay?”

  I turned back to look at her. She was shaking slightly, as upset about Blake’s death as the rest of us. I took a few deep breaths, wiped the blood off my face with the sleeves of my Army jacket, and stood up. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  Rahvi was still squatting on his feet in the back of the ute, staring down at Blake’s face. Cavalli was standing next to it, gripping the tray. He whirled around to face me as I approached. “Did you see anything?” he demanded. “A sniper? Scavengers, soldiers? Anything?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “We were there all day, we searched half the fucking town! It just... it came out of nowhere. Nothing.”

  Zhou chewed his tongue nervously. “We need to get out of here. Whoever it was, there could be more of them and they could be coming after us. We need to dump the body and go.”

  I turned angrily towards him – but before I could speak, Rahvi did. “We’re not ‘dumping’ his body,” he said in low tones. “We’re burying him.”

  “Not here,” Cavalli said. “We’ll bury him, but the kid’s right, we’ve got to keep moving.”

  Rahvi nodded. The others, still in a shocked daze, started climbing back into the car. I was about to get into the back seat with Zhou and Jones, but I paused, and climbed into the tray of the ute again instead. Cavalli gunned the engine, and we took off again down the road.

  Rahvi and I stared at Blake’s body in silence for the duration of the ride. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. Neither of us made any move to cover his face or close his eyes, because both of us were so stunned by what we were seeing. We shouldn’t have been. We’d both been around the block enough times by now. We both knew that death could come for anybody, at any time.

  But this was Sergeant Blake, who’d led us through hell and back. The only one of us who hadn’t been captured by the Republic. The man who’d risked everything to break us out of our living hell of torture, locked in bare cells under Draeger’s headquarters. The man who had never lost control, never lost a fight, never seemed vulnerable to anything. Resolute, down to earth, and unfailingly capable.

  And now he was dead. Killed by an unseen sniper in some flyspeck town in the middle of nowhere.

  I’m not sure how long it had been when we stopped again – maybe twenty minutes, maybe an hour. The road was climbing steadily into the mountains, and between the occasional gaps in the trees we could see the last pastoral valleys laid out to the east behind us. Ahead was nothing but more rugged mountains, covered in endless eucalyptus forest. We were well and truly out of New England now.

  Cavalli stopped the car at a point where the road cut along the south flank of a mountain. To our left the ground rose steeply, covered in thick bush; to our right it slowly sloped down into foothills, covered in pine forest. A large plantation, with clear firebreaks and roads running through it in the small valley to our south. Where the hills and mountains resumed on the other side it was eucalyptus again, with the occasional road or field, but it seemed to be mostly wilderness around here.

  The others gathered around the edge of the ute, where Rahvi and I were still looking at the body. It was still motionless; I guess the bullet really did sever the brain stem, which was lucky for us. I hadn’t even stopped to consider the possibility that Blake might turn. The idea of him being dead was bizarre enough. The idea of him rising as one of the undead was so far off the charts it didn’t even register.

  Rahvi and I lifted him carefully out of the ute, and carried him to the edge of the pine forest. Silently, we began to dig the best grave we could with our bare hands. The others gathered stones to make a cairn. Nobody said anything until we were ready to bury him. Rahvi and I were sweaty and out of breath, dirt caking our hands. Carefully, we lowered him into the shallow grave. I reached out with one hand and closed his eyes.

  Almost as an afterthought, I reached into his breast pocket and removed the PAL codebook.

  “Anybody going to say anything?” I asked quietly.

  There was too much to say. His death had hit everybody hard. We’d been through a lot since escaping Armidale – the fight at the watermill where I’d hidden the codebook, the carnage at the airstrip, and the long horrible night defending a farmhouse against a slavering swarm of zombies. But none of us had even been injured, let alone killed. We’d fallen into the old trap, that soft pink cloud of certainty, where you foolishly believe that there’s something special about you, something special about your friends – some invisible hand protecting you from harm. I’d been stupid enough to fall for that myth before, and it had been shattered when Dad had died on the wharf at Albany. I shouldn’t have been stupid enough to fall for it again.

  Knowing that didn’t make it any easier. Far from it. For me and Rahvi it was especially hard. I’d been with Sergeant Blake almost constantly since we’d met on the HMAS Canberra, surging through the Great Australian Bight on approach to Melbourne; Rahvi had been with him since they’d fled Darwin, ferrying surviving MPs to sanctuary on Christmas Island. A handful of months is worth a lifetime of friendship in this world.

  “He was a good man,” Rahvi said, breaking the silence. The wind whispered through the pine leaves, and a raven croaked somewhere in the distance. “A good soldier, a good sergeant, a good man. His wife died a long time ago, but he had a daughter in Brisbane, I know that. She was at university when things fell apart. He could have left his post, pulled some strings, made his way to Brisbane to find her. He could have deserted. A lot of people did. But he didn’t. He stayed in Canberra and did his duty. He always did his duty.”

  I thought about how he’d rescued us from General Draeger. I’d been the only person who knew where the PAL codebook was. Was that why he did it? Would he have still done it if he’d had the codebook himself?

  Not the kind of thoughts I should be having at a burial. I know what I would have done if the situation had been reversed, if it had been Aaron or Rahvi or Blake getting tortured in a cell, and I’d been safe on the outside with the codebook. I would have taken it back to Jagungal.

  But I would have come back afterwards. So would Blake.

  “Goodbye, sergeant,” Rahvi said, releasing a handful of dirt into the grave. “Qui audet adipiscitur.”

  He saluted. Jones, Cavalli and myself joined in. I’m not a soldier. But Sergeant Blake did his best to make me one.

  We buried him, pushing the dirt back into the grave, covering up his blood-spackled face. The stones went on top, forming an jumbled oblong cairn. Rahvi carved his name into the pine tree at the
head of the grave with his combat knife: ANTHONY BLAKE. SPECIAL AIR SERVICE. “No ‘sergeant’?” I said.

  “Never any ranks on a military grave,” Rahvi said. “Everybody’s equal in death.”

  We started walking back up the slope towards the Holden, the sun dropping down towards the mountain peaks above us.

  “So what now?” Jones asked wearily.

  “Same as before,” Cavalli said firmly. “The plan hasn’t changed. We take the road into the mountains, keep going as far south as we can to get an extraction.” He glanced over at me, and held his hand out. “Matt, give me the codebook.”

  “Why?” I asked, without the slightest inkling of what this would erupt into.

  “Because I’m in charge now,” he said.

  I stopped walking, and within a few steps everybody else did too. “No you’re not,” I said.

  “Oh? Then who is?” Cavalli said.

  I glanced over his shoulder. Rahvi was standing with his head cocked curiously to one side, an eyebrow raised, one hand on his rifle’s shoulder strap. “He is,” I said.

  Cavalli sighed. “There’s a clear chain of command. I’m the ranking officer.”

  I nodded at Rahvi. “He’s in the SAS. You’re not.”

  Cavalli frowned. “I’m a Navy Clearance Diver in TAG East.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Well, it doesn’t fucking matter what you don’t know, Matt,” Cavalli said. “I’m in charge. Give me the codebook.”

  “I can’t fucking believe you’re doing this now, of all times…” I began, but Rahvi cut me off.

  “Cavalli,” he said. “Just let him hang on to it. It doesn’t matter who carries it.”

  Cavalli turned to face Rahvi. “You may not think so, corporal, but I do. This is still a military operation, even if we’re carting a bunch of civilians along.”

  “Let him keep it,” Rahvi repeated. “He parachuted out of the Globemaster for it. He got tortured for it. I think he’s proven himself capable of taking care of it.”

  “If we’re going to take votes, I vote for Rahvi,” Zhou said.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Cavalli said. “Nobody asked you.”

  “Well, I’m telling you,” Zhou said. “You think any of this matters? Chain of command? Dick swinging? Who cares who carries your stupid fucking codebook? We’re a thousand fucking miles from anywhere safe…”

  “Yeah, and if we want to get somewhere safe, we need a clear leader,” Cavalli said.

  I’d ignored him, walked past him, walking to the ute. I wasn’t going to give him the codebook. “Don’t you fucking walk away from me,” Cavalli growled, like he was my dad, and put a hand on my shoulder as I passed. I grabbed it and pushed him away, darting back when he made a move at me. “Don’t touch me!” I yelled. “Don’t you fucking touch me!” Cavalli was yelling back at me, stabbing a finger in the air, as Rahvi tried to move between us to break it up…

  And then a high velocity gunshot cracked out, echoing across the valley. Cavalli’s head snapped to the side with an awful wet sound, blood and gristle spilling out onto the pine needles, and his body crumpled after it.

  For a split second I stood there in shock, specks of Cavalli’s blood splashed across my face. He’d only been a foot away when it happened. But then Rahvi was shoving me towards the Holden, pushing me down behind cover. Jess had already ducked down by one of the rear tyres. Zhou, a few paces away, had dropped below a granite boulder at the edge of the road.

  Jones was screaming. Standing by Cavalli’s body and just flat out shrieking, hyperventilating, completely losing his shit, right out in the open. After a split second he turned and bolted, dashing down the road, seized with panic. We screamed at him to come back, but a second later there was another gunshot and he went tumbling down onto the asphalt with blood erupting from his stomach.

  I lay there with my back against the tyre next to Jess, adrenaline soaking my system, feeling the quick sharp movement of her breath next to me. Rahvi and I both had our Steyr Augs on our backs when we buried Blake, and now I tried to awkwardly pull it out from behind me without moving or exposing myself too much.

  Jones was screaming. He was lying curled up on the side of the road, clutching at his ruined stomach, twisted and kicking in agony. The bullet had torn right through his guts. Barely intelligible pleas for help came through the screaming. “Oh, Jesus,” Jess whispered.

  Rahvi was holding his rifle, and with a bitter look on his face he chambered a round and took aim. Another bullet rang out, drilling through Jones’ head. The screaming stopped.

  “What the fuck!” Jess screamed. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

  “Because he was already fucked!” Rahvi yelled back. “This fucking piece of shit was trying to draw us out.” He glanced above him, into the Holden’s wing mirror, breathing steadily.

  “This is the same guy,” I said, rifle off my back, flicking the safety off. “This has got to be the same fucking guy.”

  “So what do we do now?” Zhou called out, a trembling in his voice. He was a little further from the rest of us, his back up against the boulder, gripping his Steyr with both hands.

  “Just don’t move!” Rahvi ordered. “Everybody stay behind cover and nobody fucking move! He’s somewhere on the slope above us. Just... just stay behind cover.”

  “How the hell do we take this guy out?” I hissed.

  “We can’t,” he said, still peering at the mirror above him, angling his head. “Not here. We need to get away.”

  I tried to catch a glimpse in the wing mirror myself, but all I could see was the bright glare of the setting sun. “We need to wait a few minutes,” Rahvi said. “Just a few minutes, till the sun’s behind the mountains, then it won’t be so fucking blinding.”

  “You’re still trying to pick a shooter out on all that mountainside,” I said. The flanks of trees were very close – he was probably within a few hundred metres of us – but how the hell were we supposed to find him in the gloom?

  There was a gunshot, and a hiss of escaping air. Another shot a few seconds later. The Holden began to lurch down on one side. The sniper had shot out the two tyres on his side of the car.

  “We’re going to have to forget the car and make a break for it on foot,” Rahvi said.

  “Do you think we can get any of our stuff out of the tray?” I said. We had no food or water on us, and Rahvi and I had only our rifles, sidearms and an extra magazine or two. Zhou had his Steyr as well, and Jess was unarmed. I could see Cavalli’s Browning still strapped to his thigh, but his body was well out in the open.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Rahvi said. “He’ll blow your hand off.”

  We had so many more guns and so much more ammo in the tray – a jumble of handguns, rifles, the dead farmer’s shotgun – just a few feet away. Yet utterly unreachable.

  “Can’t we just wait for night?” Jess asked, trying to breathe slowly through her teeth.

  “No,” Rahvi said. “We can’t wait too long. All he has to do is move a hundred metres to either side and he’ll have a new angle on us. We need to...”

  He broke off suddenly without warning, whipping up from cover to rest his rifle on the bonnet of the Holden, firing a quick burst up into the trees. Another, and another, and another. Then he was back under the cover of the tyre, quickly swapping magazines.

  “Got him,” he said breathlessly. “Think I got his position, I mean – run – all of you, run, downhill, now, go!”

  Zhou didn’t wait. He took off at a fast dash downslope, into the pine plantation. A bullet whined out and slammed into a pine tree near him, exploding in a shower of bark. Rahvi popped his head up again and fired another quick burst at the trees above us.

  Jess scrambled to her feet and ran after Zhou, not wanting to wait here a second longer. I was torn between chasing after them and staying here alongside Rahvi. I stood up, levelled my rifle at the trees, and fired blindly at the spot I thought Rahvi was shooting a
t.

  “Get the fuck out of here, Matt!” Rahvi screamed, the butt of his Steyr pressed against his shoulder. He sprang to his feet, darted towards the boulder Zhou had vacated, skidded to a halt and then poked out again and shot up at the slopes above us. “Go! I’ll hold him off! Get the codebook back to Jagungal! Run!”

  I hesitated.

  “Damn it, Matt, RUN!”

  I ran.

  Turned and sprinted, leaping clear over Cavalli’s body, his blood a sticky pool on the asphalt. A bullet cracked past me and whistled off through the pine trees. I could hear Rahvi shooting, quick bursts, the clatter of his Steyr. Jess and Zhou had covered a surprisingly large amount of ground, hurling themselves down the slope, a flat-out sprint driven by terror and adrenaline. Zhou was cutting off to the left, to the east. Jess was heading in a more south-westerly direction, about fifty metres ahead of me.

  I glanced over my shoulder, trying to make out the battle site, already obscured behind the gathering trees in my wake. I caught a glimpse of Rahvi, still crouching behind the boulder, reloading his Steyr. A minute later there was another high velocity crack of the sniper rifle, and I looked back again, heart freezing. I couldn’t see the site at all anymore; pine trees blocked my view. I felt relief as I heard another burst of fire from his Steyr. Rahvi was still alive. For now.

  I caught up to Jess as the slope began to level off, coming down into the valley. It was still pine plantation as far as the eye could see, long rows of trees across a brown carpet of needles, punctuated with the occasional fallen tree, a huge long mass of mouldering branches and pine needles, one end a tangled cluster of roots and uptorn earth. She’d tripped over near one of these fallen trees, and was clambering to her feet, gasping for breath. I grabbed her and dragged her behind it.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped. “We have to get out of here!”

  “I know,” I said. “Just wait a second.” I peered over the top of the fallen tree. Zhou had disappeared somewhere off into the forest to the east; probably better for us to split up anyway. I could no longer see the gunfight uphill, but I could still hear the faint crackle of Rahvi’s gunfire, coming once every thirty seconds or so.