I was scanning the faces in the crowd, trying to pick their reactions, trying to gauge who they were and what their stories might be. Few of them looked much older than me or Matt, a year or two on either side of 20. I imagine most of them had stories similar to those poor bastards trapped behind the wire at Puckapunyal. Working class, straight to the Army after high school – if they even finished high school – straight into infantry, and assigned to some far-off base on the other side of the country. Then when the dead rose they were stuck there guarding some military asset, maybe saving the locals up in Darwin or Cairns or wherever the fuck, wondering what was happening to their own families back in Victoria or Tasmania or New South Wales. And then part of the great reshuffle: the government using all its Navy bases and RAAF bases to shift its pieces around. Like those maps of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq – it looks like a big patch of black, but really that’s just desert, really they just held the towns and the highways. All the government holds now is an archipelago of airfields and Army bases, with legions of the undead hammering at the gates.
Anyway. They didn’t look suspicious. They didn’t look dangerous. They didn’t look anything like the men at Puckapunyal. They looked excited. Awed. Impressed. It’s not every day you get to see an alien spaceship.
Still, as their ranks broke and they came towards the campfire, I went inside the Endeavour. I don’t know. I still feel uneasy about it all. I could sense Matt talking to some of them, could hear Tobias and Llewellyn showing Sanders and his sergeant through the Endeavour. I sat in my cabin. It felt odd, after all this time, to suddenly have a platoon full of strangers here in Jagungal.
July 12
Morning revealed a new landscape. The soldiers brought tents with them – not comfortable sleeping in the Endeavour, maybe, or maybe it’s just protocol. There’s a dozen big olive Army tents scattered past the Endeavour’s port bow now, and other campfires to boot. By the time I got up they were already cooking and eating around them.
I wasn’t sure I liked that, sitting around our old campfire by the Grand Entrance, watching Simon and Andy warm up yet more oatmeal. Segregation. A house divided. But then, what is it? Either welcome them or don’t. I have to make my mind up.
In the afternoon Sergeant Blake called us up towards the snow gum forest for physical training. He invited some of the newly-arrived Army privates along as well. I had an inkling that this was the first attempt at breaking the ice with us – though if anybody had told them what the connection Matt and I had was, I didn’t know. Well. I could guess. They were looking at us funny.
“Knifeplay,” Blake said. He produced a six-inch knife from his backpack, and then drove it into his palm. I wasn’t the only one to flinch – but it was a stage knife, the plastic blade snapping back inside the hilt as it pressed into his skin. “Doesn’t matter if you’re an Average Joe or if you’re in the SAS: if you’re unarmed, and somebody pulls a knife on you, your chances of survival go down dramatically. Your immediate focus should be on either muffling the blade, or neutralising the arm that’s holding it.”
He passed out a few more training knives – fuck knows where he got them, I guess they were in the supply drop – and paired us up with each other. I ended up with a teenage private, the name Rickenbacker stencilled on his breast. Yeah, there was no question they knew what we were. Seeds, half-aliens, whatever they’re calling us. I could see it in his eyes.
The ten of us spent the morning grappling and struggling with each other in the snow – me and Matt and Simon and Jonas and Andy, plus five of the Army soldiers. Rahvi limped up at some point to watch us, conversing with Sergeant Blake beyond my line of hearing. I could grasp the theory, but I still found it hard to put one over on Rickenbacker, or any of the other soldiers, who’d all gone through basic training while us civilians hadn’t. It was like training with the Endeavour: both Matt and I were frustrated not to show an aptitude for it straight away.
“You need to keep at it,” Sergeant Blake chided us as we took a breather. “Typical bloody millennials. You want everything right now for no effort.”
“We’re not millennials,” Matt said. “Fucking… Rahvi’s a millennial, Simon’s a millennial.”
“You’re kids, you must be millennials,” Blake objected.
“Nah, he’s right,” I said. “We’re the next one after millennials. Whatever that is.”
“Bloody hell,” Blake said. “I must be getting old.”
“How old are you?” I asked, curious. All of the SAS are in peak condition but I can definitely tell that Blake and Tobias are older than Rahvi, who I know is 30.
“47,” Blake said. “I’m the old fart of the group.”
“How old’s Tobias, then?”
“Few years younger than me. 42 or 43 or something.”
“But he’s the captain,” I said, genuinely puzzled and not very tactfully.
Blake glanced at me. “I was never interested in being an officer, mate. Not for all the money in the world.” We glanced over the eastern ridge, where Tobias was yet again on the satellite phone to Christmas Island.
“What do you reckon they talk about all the time?” Matt asked.
“We have a global assault on machine ground stations to plan for,” Blake said. “If that slipped your mind. Never mind trying to get in touch with ten or twenty other militaries, or governments, or what’s left of them – getting our hands on nuclear warheads isn’t the easiest thing in the world.”
“How is that our problem?” Matt said. “I mean, if we’re all in this together, can’t the American divvy theirs up and give us some?”
“Oh, sure, Matt. They can FedEx them out.”
We went back to training. It felt a little odd, doing that, while looking at Tobias up on the hill speaking to distant Christmas Island, who were in turn talking to Chinese air force bases or French submarine commanders or Russian navy chiefs. Distant, tattered remnants of the world’s militaries, survivors like the rest of us, fled to Arctic islands or trapped by thousands of dead inside derelict airfields, suspicious and mistrusting of these Australian voices coming down the radio waves, trying to muster us all together because we claim to have found a friendly representative from space.
That was the real work. And then there was us, down in the snow, trying to judo flip each other. And I’m not even getting good at it. All day long and Blake could still get me on my ass in two seconds flat. Some of the ordinary enlisted guys, closer to five seconds. I guess I shouldn’t gripe about not being able to outfight an SAS soldier with thirty years of military experience, but I feel a bit miffed about not doing better than guys a couple years older than me who only went through basic. Maybe close combat will never really be my forte.
July 14
I was standing in one of the corridors of the Endeavour, holding a rifle in my hands. There were other people around that I could make out indistinctly – people screaming and shouting, flashlights waving around. It was blurry. I was dreaming.
Dreaming, but it didn’t feel like dreaming.
Andy was sitting against the wall nearby, slumped with his back against it, his head lolling forward. His Akubra was pulled low and blood was running down from beneath it, streaking across his shirt, flowing freely.
“Andy?” I said uncertainly.
He lifted his head, revealing a gaping bloody mess on the right-hand side of his face. One of his eyes had been torn out, a horrible jagged gash running across his face. “You should see the other guy,” he whispered, grinning.
I turned, stumbling away, the corridor spiralling around me…
…and I woke up, sitting upright, sweating and breathing heavily.
Aaron? the Endeavour said. Are you all right?
“I’m fine,” I said, fumbling for the bottle of water by my sleeping pad. “I’m, uh… it was just a bad dream.”
Your heart rate is extremely high.
“Like I said, I was just having a nightmare. I’m fine.”
The ship said
nothing further. I lay back down and tried to sleep, but couldn’t.
It hadn’t been a regular nightmare. It had felt real. The last time I’d had a dream that felt real, they’d been the ones beckoning us to come to the Snowy Mountains. Those had come true. Granted, I’d done everything I could to make them come true, but…
After an hour of tossing and turning I decided there was no point keeping it to myself. “Endeavour? Are you awake?”
You know I always am, Aaron.
“You said… you see and hear everything in this valley, right?”
Yes.
“You can’t read minds. But you can listen to every conversation?”
I won’t read minds, the Endeavour corrected me – not “can’t”. But, yes, I hear every conversation. It’s impossible for me not to.
“Have any…” I hesitated. It’s been two days since the platoon arrived in Jagungal, and they’re fine. Not friendly, but not unfriendly either. A little bit in awe of the Endeavour, maybe. “What are the soldiers saying about you? About us?”
They are a little intimidated, naturally. Most of them, I would say, are probably happier than not about the situation. I am not a psychologist, least of all a human psychologist, but surely it would be preferable to be reassigned here, rather than remaining in their previous situation, which was not very different from what you saw at Puckapunyal.
“What are they doing right now?”
They are asleep, Aaron. It is three o’clock in the morning.
“All of them?”
Three privates and a corporal are on sentry duty, although I’ve told Captain Tobias and Captain Sanders that this isn’t necessary, since – as I’ve told you – I can detect any movement within two kilometres.
For some reason I couldn’t shake the notion that we couldn’t quite trust the soldiers. A legacy of what happened at Puckapunyal, I know – everything everybody else had told me made sense. But I had visions of clandestine meetings, of Sanders and his men hiding inside tents by lamplight and plotting to attack us in the middle of the night.
“You can definitely overhear any conversations?” I said. “Even if they were whispering inside a tent?”
Aaron, the Endeavour said drily. I don’t want to downplay your own species’ technological achievements, but my audio sensors are most certainly capable of penetrating a few millimetres of tent canvas.
“Right,” I said. “I just… no, it’s stupid.”
Is something else bothering you?
So I ended up telling it about the dream – about the clamour, the shouting, about Andy’s hideous injury and the very clear gut feeling I had that we’d been attacked. “And it was like the dreams I had about you,” I said miserably. “It wasn’t a normal dream. It felt like… like something that was going to come true.”
The Endeavour digested that for a moment. We should certainly tell Captain Tobias. But I don’t think you need to assume an attack is going to come from J Company. It could come from anywhere. And your previous dreams were triggered by my own distress calls. You were seeing, in a sense, what I see: these valleys and mountains. It is quite a jump to go from that to pure clairvoyance.
“I think something’s going to happen,” I said. “Something bad.”
One of the only certainties in this troubled world. But even if we assume the worst: it was four months from your first dream of me, to your actual arrival. If something is going to happen, it is not necessarily going to happen soon. Talk to Captain Tobias.
“I think it is going to happen,” I persisted. “Why would I have a dream like that if not? I mean, a dream dream, like the others? What would be the point of it?”
Perhaps to prevent it from happening.
“Not a lot to go on,” I said. “What are we going to do, kill all the soldiers in their sleep?”
Aaron!
“Well, that’s what I mean! That’s crazy! Off a dream! But…”
Aaron, the Endeavour said firmly, there are a thousand threats in this world. There are a thousand ways we could come under attack. These mountains are no special sanctuary: they are largely free of the undead because they had a low population in the first place and the terrain is rough, and largely free of other survivors because of the harsh environment. That may well change in the summer.
You are wary of the soldiers here because you had a bad experience at Puckapunyal. That is all. Consider this: if we can’t trust them, who can we trust? If we can’t trust them, who could we possibly expect to fight off?
I didn’t feel convinced. But I felt better for talking to the ship about the dream, and better knowing I should tell Tobias.
Around the campfire the next morning Andy was cooking up breakfast as hale and hearty as ever, and I slopped some porridge into my bowl while looking at him uneasily. I should probably tell him, too, depending on what Tobias thinks. Matt was sitting on one of the logs talking to Simon and Rahvi; he hadn’t had the dream, not like before, when we’d both dreamed of the Endeavour at exactly the same time every time it happened. Somehow I’d already known that.
It took some time to find Tobias. He’d gone on a morning patrol with some of the other soldiers, out to the north – happy to confine me and Matt to the valley, but fine for him to stretch his own itchy feet, apparently. It was nearly noon by the time they returned, and I waited for him to make a report to Christmas Island before trudging up the snowy slope to talk to him.
“Something on your mind?” he said, slapping the antenna on the satellite phone down.
“Yeah,” I said. I told him about what I’d dreamed, and what the Endeavour said. “Maybe it’s stupid,” I said, when I was finished. Tobias was standing there tapping the phone against his palm, looking at me seriously. “I mean, I know it’s just a dream. But they were just dreams about the Endeavour, too. And here we are.”
“Endeavour,” Tobias said. “This… seeing the future, prophecy, whatever you call it. Is there precedent for that? Can you do it?”
No, the Endeavour said, almost sounding amused by the idea. It has been known. It is exceedingly rare. But there have been cases in history, yes.
“Of actual people seeing the future?” Tobias said. “Telepaths seeing the future? Because there are humans who think that too, but they’re all shysters or nutcases.”
When I say exceedingly rare, I mean there have been a handful of individuals in recorded history. Their visions have, like Aaron’s, always been vague.
“But have they come true?” I pressed.
I am not a historian, the Endeavour said, but generally… yes, I think they generally did. One way or another.
“Hmm,” Tobias said. “Well, that’s a bit fucked.” He looked out across the valley. Breakfast was over and people were going to work – soldiers climbing the western slope to head out on patrol, soldiers digging latrine pits, soldiers chopping firewood in the snow gum forest. “Being a soldier, I’m good at that. Being an officer, I’m good at that too, or I like to think I am, anyway. Being in charge of making first contact with an alien species – okay, that was a bit of a stretch, but I took it in my stride, and we seem to be getting along so far. But speculating about free will, destiny, and what to do about Aaron’s visions of the future? Hmm.”
“It’s not funny,” I said hollowly. “Do you want to tell Andy he’s going to get one of his eyes ripped out?”
“I didn’t say it was funny,” Tobias said. “Just bloody weird, that’s all.”
He didn’t get it. I could see that. He hadn’t stood there in the corridor and seen it happen, the same way I’d come across the ridge and seen the Endeavour lying in the snow – months before I actually did it for real.
“You trust these soldiers?” I said quietly.
Aaron… the Endeavour said.
“Yes, I do,” Tobias said. “I know you think about Puckapunyal a lot, but it’s not the same, Aaron, it’s not the same at all. I don’t blame the men at Puckapunyal. I’m sorry we had to kill them – it was self-defence, I d
on’t regret it, but I’m still sorry it happened. But it wasn’t the first time I’ve seen desperate people do desperate things.” He nodded down at the valley. “These guys – and the rest of them waiting at Wagga, we’ve got more coming in soon – they’ve been drawn from a few different bases. They would have been sitting around waiting to die just like those guys at Puckapunyal. Now they have a purpose. Now they have something to live for. Now they don’t feel trapped. Same people, different situation.”
“Saying they’re the same people doesn’t fill me with relief,” I said.
“Why not?” Tobias said, looking askance at me. “There are no bad people, Aaron. Well, some, but they’re pretty rare. Most people are ordinary decent folk who do bad things when they get pushed. Don’t tell me nobody’s ever called you a murderer or a thief or whatever since all this started.”
I thought of Angus – thought of the sheer fury he’d brought to Eucla, the conviction that Matt and I had kidnapped and murdered his people. Convinced to the end that he was the good guy. But he’d been crazy.
“You said you’re drawing these troops from different bases,” I said. “Not Puckapunyal, are you? There were men still alive there when we left.”
“No,” Tobias said. “Not Puckapunyal.”
“So it’s not any different, then, is it?” I said, probing his hypocrisy. “If they were just doing something shit because of the situation they were in…”
“We’re not bringing anybody from Puckapunyal because there’s nobody left alive at Puckapunyal,” Tobias said. “It went radio silent after the night we stopped there. Satellite photos suggest a zombie outbreak, which was probably caused because we had to shoot a dozen of the fucking idiots. So no more Puckapunyal.”
End Times Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 82