“Tobias,” I said, standing across the fire from him.
He broke off from his mental conversation. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I know. But you know what he’s like to deal with. A pain in the fucking ass.”
“If you ever hit my brother again,” I said, “I’ll kill you.”
It had sounded a lot better in my head. In my mouth it sounded childish and feeble. I almost expected him to laugh at me, but instead he just frowned, his face shrouded by the shifting shadows around the fire.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I’m sorry. I lost my cool.”
“Don’t be like that, OK?” I said. “Please. Don’t turn this into that kind of place. You’re in charge here. You’re the absolute authority. Do you know what it feels like? To stand there with a bunch of soldiers who are under your command, and watch you punch my brother?”
“What it feels like for you?” Tobias asked softly. “Or what it feels like for him?”
“Oh, Jesus,” I said. That hadn’t even occurred to me.
“Like I said, I shouldn’t have done it. He’ll carry Draeger around with him for the rest of his life. I shouldn’t have done it.”
The concept of Tobias making the wrong decision was strange and worrying. “Why did you, then?”
He shrugged. “Lost my temper. No point stressing over it now. I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Hopefully we can get him to be reasonable, get him uncuffed.” He stared back down into the glowing embers. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Aaron.”
“Goodnight.”
I trudged back up into the ship. Matt had stopped screaming, but there was a low-level pulsing against my mind, like moth’s wings flapping against your skin. “Endeavour,” I asked suspiciously. “Is Matt trying to talk to me?”
Yes. I have implemented a buffer.
“What? Why?”
Would you like to go back to sleep or not?
I stopped at the Grand Entrance. I could either go back to the medical bay and talk to Matt – which wouldn’t really be talking, it would be exchanging screams – or I could go back to bed.
I went back to bed.
He will be better tomorrow, the Endeavour said. Let him sleep it off.
I’ve been sitting here for nearly half an hour now. I can still feel Matt’s muffled mind brushing against mine. I have no doubt that if the Endeavour’s mind-wall wasn’t there, he’d grip my head and start screaming into my brain.
I don’t know if it’s right – ethically, morally – for the Endeavour to block him off like that.
I’m glad it made the decision for me.
November 8
People keep telling me to go see Matt. Go talk to him, go reason with him, go connect with some brotherly love and understanding. I’m starting to see why he hates this place. Everyone’s got a fucking opinion. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood.
He’s stopped screaming, at least. He’s stopped lashing out at people. Jonas says he’s accepting food and even talking to people a bit. He’s still handcuffed to the bed. Tobias refuses to release him. He says Matt’s mentally unstable. I can’t say I disagree.
The low-level pulsing, the constant mental probing, has disappeared. I didn’t ask the Endeavour why. Matt’s stopped trying to talk to me, even though we’re living aboard the same ship, even though I pass within ten feet of him every day. He doesn’t want to talk to me. Maybe I don’t want to talk to him. I lost count of the number of times he shut me out during that long, lonely trek down from New England. How many nights I sat there for hours, willing myself against his mental minefields, knowing damn well that he wasn’t busy or travelling or unavailable – that he just didn’t feel like talking to me.
I guess I should go see him.
November 9
5.00am
I went to see my brother. It was mostly because I couldn’t sleep. I guess that’s selfish; maybe he was slumbering away like a log, and I woke him up because of my own anxieties. I was tossing and turning in my cabin, remembering the better days, remembering when we’d been riding a motorcycle through the south-west, or fighting zombies in the police station in Eucla, or hiking through the snow to find the Endeavour.
The funny thing was, I didn’t have any memories like that before the fall. Before this year, we’d never been that close, despite being twins and brothers. We’d moved through different social circles at school, drifting along in different ways, not really connecting much. The rise of the undead had brought us closer, united us, made us work as brothers. But now that had changed.
Anyway. That was the kind of thing that was stopping me from sleeping – had been stopping me from sleeping for months. The last good memories I had of my brother were when he’d been aboard the HMAS Canberra in Moreton Bay. Since then it had been one long trek of fear and misery and depression. Something had changed irrevocably since he was under Draeger’s fucked up power in Armidale. He’d become a different person, and a gulf had widened between us.
I wanted it gone. I wanted us to be brothers again, or separated forever. One or the other. So in the middle of the night, sometime past midnight, I got out of bed, got dressed and went down to the medical bay.
The Endeavour was watching, I knew that. It doesn’t sleep. I imagine that it was watching my movements with some interest, though it knew better than to pry. It’s irritating to have a guardian angel questioning you about any unusual nocturnal movements, no matter how mundane they might be, and I’d made that clear a long time ago.
I made my way down through the corridors, flashlight in hand, and came to the medical bay. There was a guard outside, but he’d fallen asleep. Matt was asleep too, in the hospital stretcher with a single wrist handcuffed to the rail. The stretcher was on wheels, but I suppose nobody thought he would make it far through the mountains dragging that behind him. There was a clutter of IV stands and medical kits and trunks stored in the corners, but apart from that, the room was empty of other patients.
I went and stood over Matt’s bed, looking down at him sleep, snorting air in through torn nostrils in his ruined face. After a moment his breathing slowed, his eyelids flickered, and I knew that he was awake. Maybe he could sense me.
He opened his eyes. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked.
I choked back a laugh, and then – realising he wasn’t joking – felt immensely, unexpectedly sad. “Why would I do that?”
“Because you want me gone.”
He’d genuinely thought I might kill him. Trust and love and family meant nothing to him anymore. Draeger had ruined him.
“You want yourself gone,” I said wearily. “I’m here to talk to you, Matt.”
“Been busy?”
“I’ve been... I don’t know.” Not scared. “Putting it off. You’re a little hard to talk to these days.”
He rolled over on his side, facing away from me, and didn’t say anything.
“You keep telling me that I don’t understand, that I don’t get it,” I said. “Well, why don’t you tell me? Why don’t you explain to me?”
Matt rolled over again, and looked me in the eye. “It’s hard,” he said. “It’s just... you haven’t done anything wrong, you know? I know that. It’s just that you were here, and I was there. And I had to be by myself. And...”
“And what?”
He looked horribly forlorn. “I just feel like I shouldn’t be here. That this isn’t the place for me.”
“Where else could the place for you be?”
“Out there,” he said. He wasn’t motioning or pointing, but I knew what he meant. Out there meant anywhere that wasn’t Jagungal – this tiny, fragile sphere of light and safety.
“Matt,” I said. “Look. We’re... this is bigger than us, right? We’re a big part of it, but this is bigger than us. We have a duty and a role to play...”
Matt barked out a laugh. “You’ve been spending a lot of time around the captain.”
That irritated me. “It’s true. Do I need to remind you why we came here in th
e first place?”
Matt narrowed his eyes. “We came here because of your fucked up dreams...”
“Our dreams! You had them too. And we found the most important discovery of our lives. Of anybody’s lives! What would have happened if we stayed back on Reeve Island like you wanted to??”
“You always thought you were special, didn’t you?” he said. “Always thought...”
“I am!” I yelled. “I mean, we are! Both of us! Why can’t you grasp that?”
“We’re not, Aaron, we don’t matter. None of this will make a difference, we’re all going to die anyway…”
“For fuck’s sake, Matt…”
Our slanging match was going on like that for maybe a few minutes when suddenly the Endeavour cut into our thoughts, stronger and shriller than I’d ever heard it. ATTACK! it shrieked. ATTACK! ATTACK! WAKE UP! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!
Our argument ended instantly. The Endeavour wasn’t just talking to me and Matt – it was a broad-spectrum mental alert to everyone in the valley. I was about to sprint off to see what the hell was happening when Matt rattled his handcuff against the bedrail. “The keys!” he yelled. “Find the fucking keys!”
I ran outside. The snoozing medical bay had scrambled awake, jumped to his feet and was already running down the corridor, disappearing around the bend towards the Grand Entrance. I caught him just as he was moving out, almost tackling him into the wall. “Keys!” I screamed. “Matt’s handcuff keys!” He tossed an entire ring at me, and then ducked out into the night, pulling his rifle off his back and flicking the safety off. Through the huge crack in the hull, out past the tents and campfires and star-spangled sky, I could see hear the crackle of automatic gunfire, distant shouts and screams.
I ran back to the medical bay, fumbled to unlock the cuffs and helped Matt stumble off the bed. His left leg had healed incredibly, given that it had been just over a week since his kneecap was blown out (thank you, Telepath technology, once again) but he couldn’t yet bend it – so couldn’t run properly. I helped him along for the first dozen steps and then he managed to hobble, at a decent pace, on his own. “Armoury,” I said.
The armoury is really just a random cabin that Tobias had selected to be a magazine and weapon storage facility. The Endeavour was screaming out commands to the entire valley as we approached it. IRA COLE! ROBERT HANSON! JAMES SPENCER! Western flank! Move! Secure the supply tents! It was as jumbled and confused as we were, and I could still hear the distant crackle of gunfire. Endeavour, what the fuck is happening? I asked. But it was too preoccupied to answer me.
The armoury was stocked with automatic weapons, ammunition and accessories. Not six months ago, Matt and I would have been slavering like kids in a candy store, but now it was quick business. We both put on kevlar body armour, and then buckled on as many weapons as we could, a battle between the urge to go outside and help, and the urge to be as well-equipped as possible before we did. Matt grabbed the only M4 in the room, and myself one of the two dozen Steyr Augs. We shoved magazines and clips into our belts. My trusty Glock was, as always, in its thigh holster.
Northern flank, northern flank! Guard the storage tents! They’re going for the nuke! the Endeavour shouted. THEY’RE GOING FOR THE NUKE!
Jonas, Simon and Andy burst into the armoury just as we were leaving. We’re the only five people who sleep aboard the Endeavour, and evidently they’d had the same idea. Jonas shouted an inaudible question and tried to grab us as we left, but we didn’t stop. We were needed outside.
We stumbled out through the Grand Entrance into a frosty high-altitude night, the camp lit up with gunfire and screaming. It was a scene of utter confusion. A pair of men sprinted past and I had to clamp down on the urge to shoot at anything that moved. Some children ran past as well, behind us, into the relative safety of the Endeavour. “What’s going on?” Matt screamed at the ship. “What’s happening?”
We received no reply, except - The nuke! The nuke! Get to the northern supply tents, they’re taking the nuke!
We ran north through the camp, past deserted campfires and fleeing civilians, past wounded bodies and corpses. We were late to the party. I saw soldiers lying in the muddy slush with their blood pouring out, people screaming in pain with their fingers blown off, parents screaming for their children. We ran.
Up ahead, near the cluster of northern supply tents – where, I presumed, we’d been storing the nuke – there was a firefight going on between some of the soldiers and a more distant, shadowy group of figures. Matt and I scrambled for cover alongside them. I ended up next to Sergeant McNeil, who was resting his Steyr Aug against one of the storage boxes, firing off periodic bursts at the attackers. They were lugging something heavy towards the chopper – the Black Hawk, our only helicopter, the one we’d brought Matt south in. “Is that the nuke?” I screamed.
“Yes!” McNeil yelled back. “So fucking shoot them!”
I opened fire in sporadic bursts, squeezing shots off at the figures that were darting between the tents. The Black Hawk’s rotors were slowly beginning to power up. “Don’t shoot the chopper!” someone screamed. “Don’t shoot the chopper, we need that chopper!”
“Flank them!” someone else yelled, and I realised it was Matt. “We need to get around and flank them!”
I followed his lead – about the only one, in the confusion of battle, who did. We hurried around the edge of the supply tents, bullets kicking up dirt and snow at our feet. I still wasn’t entirely sure who we were shooting at, who the enemy was – I don’t know everyone in Jagungal these days, and I didn’t want to kill some innocent sap because I thought they were an interloper. We rounded the edge of a demountable and almost ran smack bang into someone. I was about to squeeze the trigger when I realised it was somebody I did know – Dermot Sandilands, a refugee from Canberra I’d gone on patrol with a few times.
He swung his rifle butt at me. I barely dodged, and it still clipped the edge of my temple. I collapsed into a pile of snow as Matt tackled him in the side. The stars above us spun. I could hear a terrible thundering noise, and panicked as I thought Dermot had done me some brain injury, before I saw the chopper rising above us. Flashing lights and pumping noise. A vessel lifting itself into the dark, just as we’d lifted Matt away from that flowery field littered with corpses.
Matt was standing above me. “Wake up!” he yelled, and slapped me. “Get it together!”
I stumbled to my feet, vision still reeling, and Matt grabbed me by the shoulder. “Come on!” he yelled. “One of them’s getting away!”
I staggered to my feet, past Dermot’s body, blood congealing in the snow around him. Frosty white now tinged with pink. Had Matt been carrying a knife? I hadn’t even noticed.
Gunfire was still clattering all around us, bullets whizzing around our heads. The gap left by the departed Black Hawk in our improvised chopper bay was painfully obvious. Matt pulled me past it, through the battle, to the ranks of vehicles. A few of them were roaring away across the hills. The ATVs were all gone, but Matt dragged me to a snowmobile and planted himself behind the controls. We always leave the keys in the ignition. Who’d steal them?
I sat on the back, looped one arm around Matt’s waist as he fired up the engine and we roared off. Rattling gunfire was still bouncing around the valley, a running gun battle against God knows who. I was thinking about the look on Dermot’s face as he swung his rifle butt at me. It hadn’t been a case of mistaken identity. He’d seen me. And he wanted to hurt me.
This wasn’t an outside incursion. The Endeavour would have detected that long before it had entered the valley. It was an inside job. We’d had traitors living among us.
We swerved around sprinting soldiers and fleeing civilians, kicking up rooster tails of snow. Matt had set his sights on another snowmobile, cutting along the edge of the valley, beyond the outermost supply tents and campfires. We passed more scenes of chaos, dark figures with guns diving for cover, people performing CPR, civilians fleeing for the forest. Som
ewhere in the distance I heard a grenade explode. The Endeavour was still shouting scattered, confusing mental commands at people. In a few moments we’d left the camp and were plunging into the snow gums at the edge of the valley. I caught a glimpse of the Black Hawk’s distant lights as it trailed off above us, and saw a flickering star rise up to greet it – some idiot had fired off an RPG. The chopper dropped a sudden burst of flares, and the missile went skittering off into a mountainside, detonating with a distant dull boom – and a good thing, too, or we might all have been vapourised. Or maybe not – else why did we need the PAL codes?
My head was still reeling from Dermot’s sledgehammer blow, only just starting to come to its senses, and for a moment I thought we were trying to chase the Black Hawk. But it was bearing off to the north, and we were going south, looping around the valley and cutting across the slopes. We were chasing a dark figure on the back of his own snowmobile, gunning away from us. Maybe not everyone had been able to fit on the chopper, and some of the attackers were fleeing in other ways; Matt had seen an opportunity to give chase. I glanced over my shoulder, but the camp was still embroiled in chaos; no back-up was coming after us. We were on our own.
It had been a cold winter, and the recent unseasonal snowfall had helped, but the fact was that it was still late spring and we’d been on the verge of mothballing the snowmobiles. The snow clung in trails to the shadows and edges of streams and folds in the landscape. We were mostly following the fleeing man’s tracks, knowing that if he’d made it we could too, but that often meant grinding across patches of dirt or shallow snow. So much for the Polaris warranty.
We crested a ridge, took some air, narrowly avoided clotheslining ourselves on a tree branch. Matt was shouting something but I couldn’t make out what. I’d looped my left arm up around his chest, unholstered my Glock, and fired a few quick rounds after the fugitive. “Aaron!” Matt screamed. “That’s right in my ear! Don’t do that!” I had some witty retort lined up, but lost it as he spun and swerved on a gravelly patch of snow and I was almost thrown off the back. He revved it up the next slope again, and I holstered the Glock and clung on with both hands.
End Times Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 156