by Shane Carrow
I ducked back under the log. “I want you to go,” I said. “We have to get out of here real fast. This is open pine forest and that’s real bad when you’re being fucking sniped. Keep heading south, try to get out of the valley. Once we’re in proper bushland again he’ll have no visibility, we’ll be fine. Just keeping heading south.”
“What the fuck are you going to do?” she said.
I glanced up the slope. “I don’t know. Wait a few more minutes, see if Rahvi kills him.” I handed my sidearm out to her, Draeger’s nickel-plated Browning, and she took it. “Just... fuck,” I said. “Fuck, where can we regroup?” I scanned through my mental map of the region and found that I had nothing. From the look on Jess’ face, I could see she was drawing a blank too. Our minds were still soaked in adrenaline, reeling from what had just happened, thoughts incoherent and every instinct screaming at us to just run away. It wasn’t a good time for planning.
I glanced up the slope again. The gunfire had stopped, both Steyr automatic and high velocity rifle.
And I wasn’t sure which one I’d heard last.
“Cloud Mountain,” I said. “The observatory, where they’re holed up with the nuke. It’s not too far, is it? Wollemi National Park. Try to get there. That’s where they’ll end up sending choppers, that’s where we can get extracted. Try to find a map and head there. If you can’t get there, just...”
Make for Jagungal, or Wagga Wagga. It sounded ridiculous. Jess was no pushover, but she was a teenage girl with her arm in a cast and I was telling her to head for the fucking Snowy Mountains on foot. I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to do that.
“Just try to make it to the observatory,” I said. “Don’t hang around here. Just don’t. We need to get out of this pine forest.”
“Then why the fuck don’t you come with me?” she hissed.
I glanced up the slope again. Thought of Blake’s fresh grave, of Cavalli and Jones’ bodies. Maybe Rahvi’s body, too.
“I can’t,” I said. “Not yet. Please, Jess. Just run.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” she said. Then she turned and ran, sprinting off through the trees with the Browning in her good hand.
I peered over the top of the log again. The sun had sunk well below the mountains now, and the pine plantation was cast in the dusky shadow of late afternoon. The wind whispered through the treetops – but beyond that there was no sound, not even birdsong. If Rahvi had beaten the sniper, he should have come running down to tell us it was safe before we all scattered.
Unless he’d reached an impasse. Unless they were silently stalking each other. I couldn’t imagine how he could have gotten out from behind that scant bit of cover we had on the edge of the road, but if anyone could do it, it was Rahvi.
I wriggled down along the fallen tree, searching for a peephole or crack, and eventually came to the tangled cluster of roots at the end. I poked my rifle barrel through the roots and squinted down the scope, scanning the trees upslope. Like I’d said to Jess, this pine forest was a sniper’s delight – visibility for a hundred metres, and almost nowhere to hide – but that went both ways.
The problem was the light. The forest was getting darker with every passing second. It had been a half moon last night, but I had no idea when it was supposed to rise tonight, and that wouldn’t do me much good anyway. For all I knew the sniper had night-vision goggles.
I thought about who he – or they – could be, while I kept an eagle eye on the upper slopes. I didn’t think it was just a scavenger or survivor, not anymore. Why would they follow us out of Nundle? This was the Republic, the dying gasp of Draeger’s obsession. No doubt in my mind.
The last pursuer we’d seen had been Major D’Costa, in the chopper we shot down. I’d seen his handiwork with a sniper rifle before. But could he have survived? I cast my memory back over that night, the Black Hawk in the cone of the car headlights, the explosion from the LAWs, the chopper spinning out of control somewhere beyond the tree line. I hadn’t heard an explosion…
It didn’t matter who it was. It was someone. Someone with a rifle who’d killed my friends. That was all.
Things seemed calm now, but I was still shocked and horrified over what had happened. Three of us dead in the space of a few hours. Maybe four. The rest of us scattered and terrified. Our equipment lost, back in the truck – I didn’t even have a water canteen. Half of me still couldn’t believe Cavalli and Jones were dead, let alone Sergeant Blake. The other half believed it, though, and that half was consumed by a furious rage. That half wanted to storm back up through the pine forest, find the sniper and beat him to death with his own rifle.
I was finding it very hard to control that half of myself. It wasn’t just the rage – it was Rahvi. I had no idea what had happened to him, whether he was alive or dead. And I didn’t want to leave him behind. He’d put his neck on the line for me more times than I could count. He’d saved my life more times than I could count. I couldn’t just run away and leave him.
He stayed behind so you could escape, my logical half insisted. He wants you to get the codebook out of here. You’re betraying him by not running.
I wriggled around a little, trying to find a better line of sight through the roots. My skin was crawling, my ghost fingers itching like crazy. Snipers are immensely unsettling. It’s like knowing there’s a snake in the yard, but not being sure exactly where. You can’t tell whether you’re safely behind cover, or whether he’s circled around you and is adjusting his crosshairs over your skull while he gauges the wind speed. It keeps your nerves constantly on edge.
Night was coming on. I was still torn. I wanted to go up the slope and see what had happened to Rahvi. I wanted to go up the slope and murder the fuck out of the sniper. I wanted to go down the slope and find Jess. I wanted to down the slope and take the codebook to safety.
I thought about what Sergeant Blake would do.
Goddamn it. It was dark now, real dark, only the faintest glimmer of grey still clinging to the western mountains. I got into a crouch, scanned the landscape to the south of me. Across level ground, now, the valley floor. There was another fallen tree, a low and bulky shape covered in moss and mushrooms and clumps of pine needles. It was maybe sixty metres away. I slung the Steyr over my shoulder, took a deep breath, and sprinted.
My feet crunching across the ground sounded awfully, terribly loud to me in the silence of the forest. But I made it. No gunshots. I skidded to a halt with my back up against the bark, breathing heavily, straining my ears for the sound of anyone else.
Nothing.
I took off again, legs pounding, blood throbbing. I leaped across a thin ribbon of a creek and kept sprinting, Steyr Aug bouncing up and down on my back. The ground began to slope upwards, as I left the valley floor and made my way up the southern hillside. I stopped after about fifteen minutes and crouched behind another fallen tree, catching my breath and scanning the slope downhill.
That was when I heard the gunshots – the sniper’s gunshots, three of them. Each less than two seconds apart. It was hard to judge, but they were coming from somewhere in the valley, somewhere to the east.
He was in the pine plantation. Not shooting at me, but shooting at somebody. Rahvi, still? Or Jess or Zhou? I didn’t hear any retaliatory gunfire.
My instinct was to head towards the gunshots. Track the motherfucker down, put a bullet in his head. But I knew that would be a mistake. It was very dark and I had no idea who I was looking for. Maybe I would get lucky and spot him before he spotted me. Or maybe not.
I took off again, heading south-west, up out of the valley and away from the gunfire. I was still harbouring ideas of finding Jess, and hoped she’d be doing the same. I thought that maybe she’d ignored my instructions to keep moving, that maybe she’d stayed up here, lurking, waiting for me to cross the valley and come after her. I didn’t see a sign of her, and I knew that I couldn’t afford to spend any time looking for her. I’d made my decision, just as Sergeant Blake would have. I ha
d to get the codebook out of there.
Halfway up the slope the pine plantation ended, coming to an abrupt halt on an unpaved road. On the other side was bushland – sweet, dense, beautiful Australian bushland. Visibility of three or four metres at the most, grass trees and banksia and ironbarks, crowding in to shelter and protect. I plunged into that bush like it was a swimming pool on a hot summer day.
I stopped a few metres in and paused to catch my breath, peering out through the leaves at the pine plantation. It was completely still and silent. I felt my nerves begin to calm a little now that I was in a safer place, and was suddenly struck with the urge to plunge deeper in, to get as far away from the fucking pine forest as I could. Quickly, quickly! something screamed inside me. He’s coming for you!
I hope the sniper doesn’t track as well as he shoots, because I probably left a pretty easy trail to follow, charging through that thick growth. I was still headed uphill, and it was hard going. By the time I reached the ridge at the top of the mountain, I was covered in sweat, scratches and cuts. But I was alive.
I headed on south for a few more hours, in the dark, hearing nothing from the sniper and reasonably convinced that I’d lost him. I went over several more valleys, and tried to follow the contour lines more naturally, not exactly sure where I was heading or even which direction south was. It didn’t matter, as long as I got as far away from that pine plantation as possible. Whenever I came to a creek or a road I’d follow it for a good hundred metres or so, stumbling wearily through the night, hoping to throw any pursuers off a direct trail before bush-bashing my way through thick growth again.
It was just after midnight when I came to a ranger station. I guess I’m in a national park. It’s a single-room building sitting at the edge of a small creek, with a dirt trail leading off through the bush. No vehicles, no sign that anybody’s been here for a while. Spiderwebs on the radio equipment, filthy windows, filing cabinets and storage cupboards empty. Somebody must have set up here in the past because there’s a single camp bed in the corner – though I won’t be sleeping in it. I’ve piled a few odds and ends underneath a blanket, and have curled up underneath the ranger’s desk with the rifle. Anybody comes in and tries to murder me in my sleep, they’ll be getting some lead in the shins.
I called Aaron and told him what had happened. I think it was then, when I was finally calm and collected, that it really hit me and I broke down into a flood of grief and terror and misery, sobbing to my brother for a long time. You’re okay, Aaron reassured me. You made it out alive and okay and you’re going to come home, understand? We’re so close to getting choppers, Matt, so close! Just hang in there and keep heading south and I promise you we’ll bring you home..
I could tell he was shocked, too – he’d believed in Blake’s invulnerability as much as I had – but he went on like that for a while, doing his best to comfort me. I appreciated the sentiment, but there’s not much he could do to make me feel better. My time in Draeger’s jail cell is lost in a scrambled mess of bizarre memories and mind games, but I don’t think I felt this bad even then. There’s nothing quite as bad as knowing that you’re alone. That your friends are dead and there’s nobody else around for hundreds of miles except their murderer.
Except Jess. Maybe. And Zhou, maybe. And if I get really stupidly optimistic, Rahvi. Maybe.
But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not likely to run into any of them again. We’re scattered to the wind. From this point on, it’s every man for himself, until we get back to Jagungal.
6.00pm
When I woke up in the morning I had that brief, beautiful moment of not remembering. Then it all came flooding back to me – Blake dead, Cavalli dead, Jones dead, Rahvi probably dead too. God only knew where Jess and Zhou were. My friends were all dead or missing and I was on my own.
I slid out from underneath the desk, muscles aching. Dawn light was filtering in through the broken windows. My stomach was growling, but I had no food. A quick check of my possessions: Steyr Aug, with a single mostly-full magazine. Army boots and uniform. Nuclear PAL codebook. Drager’s personal handgun gone – I gave it to Jess before she ran off into the forest.
That was it. No food, no water, no medical supplies, no radio, no flares, no fresh clothes and no extra ammunition. Not even a fucking knife.
Sitting around in an empty ranger station wasn’t going to help me get any of these things. Time to head south.
I had a sudden tingling when I put my hand on the doorknob. A bad feeling in my gut. It sounds stupid, but I was convinced the sniper was out there, that he’d somehow followed me through the mountains in the night and was waiting patiently for me to emerge from the station. There’s nothing like knowing a sniper’s in the area to put a tense, itchy, could-get-my-head-blown-off-any-second feeling into you. I’d had it all yesterday evening.
But I was well out of that now. Wasn’t I?
I gripped the doorknob and swung the door open, but rather than stepping outside, I followed the door back as it swung inside and pressed myself against the wall.
No gunshot. Just the gurgling of the creek, and an early morning kookaburra laughing somewhere nearby.
Maybe he wasn’t out there. Or maybe he was smart enough to suppress his instincts and not shoot until he had a clear view.
That’s another thing I hate about snipers: you try to put yourselves in their shoes, like you would with any combatant, and you have no idea if you’re right. You don’t know where they are, what they look like or what they’re thinking. You don’t even know if they’re there at all.
“Fuck this,” I said. I pushed the door shut again, went across the floor of the ranger station and clambered out the empty windowframe. Outside I splashed across the creek and disappeared into the bush on the other side.
I paused in the cover of the trees. Again, no gunshots. Was it all in my head?
Either way, no sense hanging around. Without waiting to catch my breath, I took off uphill.
Thus sparked another hard, gruelling day of travel. I thought moving through New England was hard, but that was a fucking pleasure stroll compared to this. Open fields, farms with food to steal, orchards, light hills? What the fuck is that compared to thick forest, bushland and steep mountains?
I was hungry. That was the biggest problem. I managed to find the occasional piece of edible food, racking my brains for the bush tucker lessons Sergeant Blake had given us in Jagungal. I found some currant berries, and native cherries. None of these were enough to sustain an eight hour trek across rough terrain.
In the early afternoon I came across a pair of ducks at another creek and shot one with my Steyr. Would have shot the other, too, but the bastard flew off. Didn’t risk a fire to cook it; ate it raw, probably adding some more tapeworms and parasites to my collection. It tasted awful, but it’s surprising what you can choke down when you’re starving.
I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m being followed, that a sniper is gazing at me through his crosshairs even as I prepare to try and sleep for the night, sitting with my back to an ironbark tree. Ridiculous. He’d shoot me as soon as he saw me. I’m well clear of him. I must be.
I almost wish I wasn’t. I want to kill the fucker.
Light’s failing. Time to try and rest.
October 11
Another long day, dawn to dusk, and I didn’t see a single human soul. Just surged on through the bush, up and down hillsides, across gullies. Thank Christ it’s springtime and I’m in a relatively green part of the country – there are plenty of streams and creeks, even if I can’t find anything to fucking eat apart from a few bits of bush tucker. If I was lost in WA during the summer it’d be a different story. I’d probably be dead from dehydration by now. God knows Aaron and I came close enough, back in the day.
Not a single other person, though. Nobody. Even in New England I’d spy a farmer from afar, or see choppers in the distance. I don’t think I ever went through a whole day from beginning to end without seeing any
body else, or any sign of human civilisation. It could be a thousand years ago and this landscape would be unchanged.
I’m never truly alone, of course. Aaron speaks to me through the day, when I stop and rest. Urges me to keep going, tells me the best way to avenge the others is to get the codebook back home safely. But he still can’t promise me an extraction. I suppose even if he could, right now, I don’t even know where I am.
I stopped talking to him as much. He was beginning to annoy me. It bothers me, deep down inside, that he’s been safe and sound in Jagungal all this time while I’ve gone through everything that’s happened up here. We were together all the way, through everything that happened, right by each other’s side. And now we’re apart.
I know that’s stupid. I know it’s not his fault, I know it was the entire point, I know it’s an unfair and cruel and nasty feeling that comes from a place I don’t like.
But I feel it still.
October 12
Couldn’t find food today either. Rough country, hard going, and I’m starting to feel weak. Mountains and cliffs and gullies, all covered in thick bush and undergrowth. My left hand is starting to smell, wrapped in a foul package of filthy bandages, ghost fingers constantly aching in terrible pain.
I need civilisation. I need farms and highways and buildings. I don’t care if there are zombies, I don’t care if there are other people. I have a rifle, I can survive that. I can’t survive starvation. There’s nothing out here, not even a scrap of rubbish, not even national park signs. It’s like floating in a raft at sea. I’m losing strength. I need food.
I wish I wasn’t alone.
October 13
I could barely sleep last night. I haven’t exactly been getting a healthy eight hours in anyway, stretched out on the dirt, but I’d usually been exhausted enough to doze in fits and starts. Last night the hunger was too much, the cramps and pains in my stomach, the general nausea. My phantom fingers were throbbing away worse than ever.