Dead Kelly (The Afterblight Chronicles)

by C. B. Harvey

  When they’d done, McGuire looked up to see Baxter watching, stubby fag in mouth, his face expressionless. McGuire scowled and Baxter staggered backward across the sand-dunes to the rest of the gang, like a scared dog.

  “WHAT THE FUCK are you doing?” McGuire had pushed open the door to find Cho Hee bent double by the bed, hands clasped together. Lindsay lay curled on the mattress, semi-conscious, wrapped in a sweat-stained sheet. On the way back from Spider’s subterranean base he’d noticed her clutching at her swollen belly. She did the same now, her grey face contorting with pain. Rain thrummed inexorably against the window, rattling the peeling casement. The storm had well and truly come.

  Cho Hee turned, smiled, and stood. “Asking for God’s love.”

  “God’s playing pool down the corridor,” muttered McGuire sardonically. “You could ask Him in person if you wanted.”

  Cho Hee continued smiling, bowed, and departed. She had to sidle past the doctor who’d entered behind McGuire and was now kneeling beside Lindsay, checking her pulse. McGuire looked over at Baxter, sat in the corner of the wood-panelled room nursing the baby, an expression of delight playing across his swarthy features. To give him his due, this was nothing more than he’d asked of him, and at least it gave the simpering, arse-licking toad another focus.

  “How is she?”

  The woman didn’t look up, but instead rummaged in a cracked plastic case rather like a mechanic’s toolset. She sighed. “Her body’s gone into shock. She’s malnourished, and gave birth without any medical assistance. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “So she needs a transfusion?” demanded McGuire.

  The quack stared at him, her hair wild and her eyes bloodshot. “We need a means of giving her a transfusion.”

  “Baxter will get you what you need.”

  Baxter looked up, surprised. “Boss?”

  “Put the baby in the crib,” instructed McGuire.

  “Yeah, sure, Boss. Will do.” Baxter hastily stood and gently laid the baby in an ancient-looking wooden crib before turning expectantly toward the doctor.

  Two burly figures had appeared in the doorway, arms folded.

  “Trex wants you,” said one of the men.

  McGuire inhaled. “Yeah. Sure he does.”

  “GOOD MAN,” ACKNOWLEDGED Trex as McGuire entered the room, looking up only momentarily from the pool table. “I hear you stamped on our arachnid friend good and proper. Fuckin’-A.” McGuire didn’t reply, his attention captivated by the red and black oil painting of the magpie on the far wall. It smelled strange; he wondered what kind of paint the artist had employed.

  “Cool picture, eh?” Trex’s rumbled. “Vivid, uh, colours. Exchanged a crate of wine for it. Really makes the place come alive, don’t yer reckon?”

  McGuire grunted sceptically, turning to see Trex smacking the cue ball into a cluster of stripes. The rest of the balls spiralled around the table, but nothing was potted. Trex scowled good-naturedly as a bearded biker in wrap-around shades and a bandana stepped in to take his shot.

  “Heard you found Lindsay, too. And a surprise something else to boot.” He hobbled toward McGuire using his cue as an improvised walking stick, pulling a cigar from out of his shirt pocket. “Congratulations—I’m sure you’ll make a magnificent daddy. The McGuire dynasty continues, eh?”

  McGuire waved away the offering. “Whatever, Trex. Now you and me can go our separate ways.”

  Trex shrugged and thrust the cigar back in his pocket. He leaned on the cue and peered at McGuire. “That what you want?”

  McGuire shrugged. “I got what I wanted. So did you.”

  Trex shook his head in disbelief. “Fuck me, Kelly. What about your revenge? You’re not telling me you’ve gone soft? That you’re gonna go grow melons or some shit like that?”

  McGuire sighed impatiently. “I’m all about the revenge, don’t get me wrong. But Ritzo is dead, Spider’s been flushed away. You say you didn’t betray me and I believe you. The Cull dealt with everyone else. There’s only two people left I need to sort.”

  Trex frowned. “Two people? Who’s that, then, fella?”

  “Who’d you think? The fuckin’ Kendalls.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Trex, thoughtfully. “The Kendalls. Right fuckin’ weirdos, the pair of ’em. Not seen hide nor hair of ’em for a long time. I told you, they skipped town.”

  McGuire nodded. “Yeah, I heard that too. But I’ll find ’em. Once Lindsay’s well enough to travel.”

  Trex clicked his tongue. “Big country, mate,” he observed. “Sure you don’t want some help?”

  McGuire arched an eyebrow. “In return for what?”

  Trex beamed. “Remember those canisters back at the military compound? What d’you reckon would happen if we hit ’em?”

  “You wanna bring it to a head?”

  “Fuckin’ yeah. We need to clear this town out, make it obvious who’s in charge, yeah?”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  Trex cocked his head to one side, staring wistfully into the middle distance. “Those Abrams, mate! Imagine what you could do with those tanks.”

  “So you blow up the canisters. Then what?”

  Trex laughed again. “That oughta do it, don’t you reckon? Get ’em on the run, straight into our guns.”

  McGuire shrugged. “Could work.” He was vaguely aware of a commotion in the corridor outside.

  “Yeah, couldn’t it just?” Trex puffed out his chest proudly. “I got the idea from World War One.”

  “Great precedent.”

  “So you’ll do it, yeah?”

  McGuire viewed him doubtfully, “Maybe. And in exchange you’ll help me track down the Kendall twins?”

  Trex nodded, “You got it. We’ll be waiting in the streets all around. Just chase ’em into us and we’ll do the rest.”

  “Okay,” said McGuire, licking his lips. “But I wanna choose my own people. None of your fuckin’ religious fruitcakes. I want gang types. Hardcore.”

  Trex extended his lower lip reflectively, “Yeah, okay. Maybe we can do a deal. Who’ve you got in mind?”

  The door was flung open, and McGuire turned to see Nancy the Nun entering, struggling free of two of Trex’s beefier henchmen, one of them sporting a fresh bite mark on his cheek. Nancy was drenched, strands of her swept-back hair falling in bangs around her dripping face. Her scowl transformed into a lopsided smile upon seeing McGuire.

  “She’s one,” said McGuire.

  “HOW IS SHE?”

  The doctor turned around dazedly. “A little better, maybe. She needs to rest.” Lindsay still lay curled on the bed, but she seemed to have drifted into a deep sleep. Her face, though, was cast in a seemingly perpetual, pained frown. A winding plastic tube extended from her arm to a bag of blood hanging from a metal pole that quivered every time she moved.

  “She can’t.”

  “What do you mean, she can’t?”

  McGuire shook his head. “She can’t rest. It’s not safe here.”

  “What’s up, Boss?” Baxter had turned away from the baby. A stubby fag hung out the side of his mouth.

  “Keep your fuckin’ fag away from the baby,” snapped McGuire.

  “Sorry, Boss.” Baxter ineffectually tried to conceal the cigarette before finally giving up and dropping it to the floor, mashing it into the carpet with his colossal boot.

  “Trex wants a big push against the military. We’re going to attack the compound.”

  “Right.” Baxter looked at him expectantly.

  McGuire sighed. “So we need to move Lindsay and the baby.”

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah.” Baxter nodded.

  The doctor looked outraged, at least as far as her exhaustion would allow. “I don’t advise it. I’m telling you, this woman really needs to rest and recuperate.”

  McGuire towered over her. “Yeah, well, if the soldiers get their shit together and get this far it’ll be fuckin’ bad, trust me. She has to be moved somewhere safe, and so does the baby. It�
��s a precaution.”

  “I know somewhere,” said Baxter momentarily. “I mean, it’s temporary, right, Boss?”

  THERE WERE TWELVE of them in total, including McGuire. He and Nancy the Nun were the only ones lacking the lizard-scale tattoos. Most of them McGuire knew from the gang days, some very well, others only vaguely. The few exceptions included Cho Hee, who Trex had insisted join them on the mission. She was completely committed to Trex; McGuire figured she was besotted with him. He found her annoying, but he had seen her in combat and the woman had rescued him, so she clearly had some fire in her belly. Each of them carried a battered walkie-talkie, although some were little more than children’s toys. It was a tribute to the importance of the mission that Trex had authorised the issue of the batteries, an increasingly rare commodity in the post-Cull world. They’d also been given gas masks, which hung from their necks, in anticipation of the release of the lethal gas once the canisters were blown.

  McGuire had meanwhile instructed Baxter to take Lindsay and the baby to the safe-house Baxter had picked and to stay with them at all costs. The ‘safe-house’ turned out to be a container at the port, but Baxter was adamant he could defend it against any attack. His fawning earnestness made McGuire’s skin crawl, but truth was, Baxter was the nearest McGuire had to someone he could trust. McGuire had insisted the exhausted doctor join them too.

  The storm had lasted a few hours, but the familiar azure sky was gradually breaking through. They plunged through the puddles, McGuire letting Cho Hee lead them a circuitous route through crumbling buildings and away from the main thoroughfares, lest one of the military’s frequent patrols spot them. This had been Trex’s idea, but McGuire agreed with it, even though it effectively doubled what would have been a twenty-minute journey. McGuire’s experience of Bennett and his tin-pot soldiers was that they were paranoid in the extreme, determined to defend their space rather than enlarge it. That was what the patrols were about, spotting and neutralising potential threats instead of extending the military’s sphere of influence.

  They ascended a pile of rubble and the compound rose into view. Cho Hee motioned for them to take cover. The squad sank behind a further pile of smashed bricks, Cho Hee pulling out a pair of cracked binoculars. McGuire lowered his clanking backpack to the ground.

  “They’ve upped the number of guards since our last visit,” she said, excitedly. “Seven by the front gate, all with machine guns. More along the perimeter, too.”

  McGuire accepted the binoculars from her. She’d missed out a detail. “Tanks,” said McGuire, sniffing. “The couple that are left—they’ve positioned them to repel an attack.”

  “You think they know we’re coming?” asked Mikey, a wiry kid with a vicious-looking scar running from ear to nose. McGuire had remembered him from the original raid on the military compound and asked for him specifically. He clung to his sniper rifle like it was a cherished toy. He could have been clutching a teddy bear, he was so fucking young.

  McGuire shook his head. “I don’t think they know about this attack, if that’s what you mean. But these fuckers are afraid of us. In fact, they’re afraid of everyone.”

  “But they’re the military,” said Cho Hee incredulously.

  McGuire shrugged. “There’s a few professionals in there, but the bulk of them are just stiffs in uniforms with minimal training.”

  “Then this should be easy,” said one of the other gang members, a shaven-headed black guy called Wilcox. Like Nancy he’d been one of Lenny the Fish’s people. McGuire had spotted him wandering around the cathedral and renewed their acquaintanceship. McGuire recalled him being a bit of a whizz with machinery, which he thought might come in handy.

  McGuire rubbed his chin reflectively. “Yeah, except they’re still wandering around with automatic weapons and grenades and shit. And being scared and paranoid means they’re also fuckin’ unpredictable.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Nancy the Nun distractedly, sharpening her meat cleaver with a rounded stone she carried with her. The sound it made was very close to being fucking annoying.

  McGuire lifted the binoculars to his eyes again. “The cylinders are stowed beside the dormitory building.”

  “That’s it, then,” said Nancy, looking up and grinning. “Bung in a couple of grenades, ‘bang’ goes the canisters, and all Hell breaks loose. Then we can herd them out the front gate into Trex’s waiting arms. Fuckin’-A.”

  “Sure, that’s the plan,” McGuire said, thoughtfully, “but if they get those Abrams moving, we’re fucked. I totalled one of ’em but they’ve still got two to play with. Make no mistake, those two are gonna be primed and ready for action. After last time, they’re liable to be a bit more protective of them, too.”

  “Imagine if we brought a tank back to the cathedral,” said Cho Hee cheerfully. “Imagine how pleased our Lord would be.”

  “Yeah,” said McGuire. His mocking eyes connected with Wilcox, who flashed him a smirking look of disdain.

  “What do we do then?” asked another one of Trex’s men, an older bloke called Rudy. He carried a bizarre-looking weapon, hooked up by tubes to a pair of canisters on his back. It looked to McGuire like he’d cannibalised a flamethrower from the ex-military lorry back at Trex’s compound. A pervading smell of petrol accompanied him wherever he went; Rudy was clearly the ‘useful pyromaniac’ Trex had mentioned.

  “First of all, we need to take out those canisters from out here,” said McGuire.

  “The boy here is the best shot I’ve ever seen,” observed Wilcox, clasping Mikey on the shoulder.

  “Too right,” said McGuire. “That’s why I chose the fucker.”

  The youngster looked sheepish, his cheeks colouring slightly. “Yeah, I’m pretty good,” he said, his hand playing distractedly with the strap of the rifle. “Actually, fuck that—I’m shit hot.” He smirked at Wilcox, who nodded encouragingly.

  “Good.” McGuire nodded. “As soon as they realise you’re trying to hit the canisters, they’re liable to come after you big time. You’re gonna need to be somewhere you can get off repeated shots without them instantly fucking you over. You get it?”

  Mikey nodded, looking around. He pointed to a tall, partially-redeveloped building a little way off, the yawning windows at its base smashed to buggery but the rest of the edifice largely intact.

  “First floor,” said Mikey.

  “Cool,” said McGuire. “Keep low, wait for our signal. As soon as the canisters go up, we’ll make our move.”

  Mikey nodded his assent and took off back the way they had come, dodging from cover to cover.

  “What about us?” said Nancy.

  “I think you’re right,” said McGuire grimly. “As soon as those canisters are hit, chaos will break out. As soon as it does, start taking out the guards on the gate.”

  “We still need a way through the gate,” objected Wilcox, who’d taken the binoculars. “Look at all that crap behind it.” He was right: the military had piled car wrecks two and three high, along with girders and piles of bricks. Bennett’s response to Trex’s previous incursion: dig in. Blinky Bill was more paranoid than ever.

  McGuire rose to his feet, slinging his backpack over his shoulders. “Stay here,” he said suddenly, and then he ran.

  HE ARRIVED, HEAVING for breath, to find that the driver was still in situ. Perhaps he’d been trying to escape the city when the virus had overtaken him, perhaps he’d just clambered into the driver’s seat in sheer delirium. Fucking whatever. McGuire heaved at the mummified remains, which eventually came free with an extraordinary tearing noise, leaving the man’s leathery hands steadfastly attached to the steering wheel. McGuire was forced to smash them off with the butt of his rifle. The key was still in the ignition; the engine erupted fitfully before petering out. A wavering needle on the dash confirmed what McGuire had already suspected.

  He found some fuel, to his mild surprise, in the overturned ambulance a short distance up La Trobe. The looters must have been more in
terested in drugs. Using a discarded bucket and some indeterminate piece of medical apparatus he was able to siphon off the petrol and transfer it. On the third turn of the key, the engine sprang into life and the machine shot forward, evidently still in gear, tipping dramatically as it did so. He wrenched on the brake and picked up his walkie-talkie.

  “I have a way into the compound,” he announced as he grabbed his canvas backpack from where he’d slung it in the rear of the driver’s cabin, over the colossal din of the engine. He began extracting the armour. “But I’m not exactly discreet. Mikey, when I give you the nod, take out those canisters. I’ll be a few minutes. Over.”

  The walkie-talkie hissed with Mikey’s reply. “No worries, over.”

  “Ready and waiting, over,” came Cho Hee’s voice.

  “Over and fuckin’ out,” said McGuire. Once he’d pulled on the bulk of the armour and a pair of leather gloves, he paused, momentarily, to turn the helmet around in his hands. Baxter had done just as he’d been instructed. The iron helmet now featured a fetching skull and crossbones, rendered haphazardly but effectively in white paint. McGuire nodded to himself, satisfied, and lowered it over his head.

  The bulldozer trundled down La Trobe, then on to King Street. McGuire shrieked with joy inside his helmet; he fucking loved bulldozers. Moments later he was on Spencer Street and approaching the compound. “Okay, Mikey. Take a shot at those fuckin’ canisters. And for fuck’s sake, make it count.” He had to bellow at the walkie-talkie to be heard.

  “Will do, over.”

  By now McGuire could see both the compound and the building opposite, where Mikey was ensconced. He watched as a shot zipped across the street. Immediately there were shouts and hectic activity from the compound.

  “I hit it!” screeched Mikey over the walkie-talkie, barely discernible through the static and above the bulldozer’s engine. “I fuckin’ hit it!”

  “Nothing happened!” crackled Cho Hee.