"How you gonna make that call if you're dead, Jap?" Ram-Horns threatened as he lifted his crossbow and aimed it at the sergeant. The rest of Skel aimed their crossbows and bolt-action rifles, or gripped their clubs and prepared to charge.
In response, the four supporting Rangers couched their Austeyr assault-rifles to their shoulders and sighted them at the Skel.
"This is going to get really ugly, really quickly, so get ready to duck," I whispered. My companions nodded their understanding.
Chapter Four
The Ranger sergeant suddenly lowered his gun and asked calmly, "Okay, what do you want for them?"
Ram-Horns didn't miss a beat. "Your assault-rifle."
"Try again," the sergeant replied just as quickly.
"Your pistol then."
The sergeant shrugged in agreement, slung his assault-rifle over his back, released his pistol belt, which contained the holstered sidearm and three clips of ammo, and then handed it to the Skel.
Ram-Horns gave his crossbow to a comrade and took the gun-belt, turning it over in his hands, clearly pleased with the trade. He flicked his head towards us without even glancing in our direction. "Take 'em."
"Right, you four, get in the car," the sergeant ordered us sternly.
"We're not going back to Hamamachi, Sergeant Tamura," Nanako declared. I was surprised they knew each other, but I guess I shouldn't have been. Hamamachi was a much smaller town than Newhome.
"I didn't say you had to, Nanako. Now come on, get in the car," the sergeant replied.
Nanako glanced up at me in concern.
"From the look of him, Ethan needs medical attention. We have a medkit in the car," he said. "So get in and let us treat him."
"Okay! We'll come," Nanako replied.
Not wanting to go with the Rangers, but wanting to be slaves far less, we hurried to the car under the baleful glare of the Skel. We crammed into the back seat of the large 4WD and the sergeant and a female corporal – the driver – got into the front. The other three Rangers jumped onto the large rear bumper and held onto the roof rack.
I sank into the comfortable leather seat and exhaled deeply. I was so glad to be off my feet finally. Still, what I really wanted to do was lie down.
The corporal turned the car around and drove slowly back the way we had come.
"We were told to keep a look out for you four after you escaped from lock-up," the sergeant explained, twisting around in his seat to talk to us. He was studying me intently as he spoke. "I have to say, though, that a Skel settlement was the last place I expected you to pop up."
"Our car ran out of petrol outside Lilydale and we were ambushed by Skel," Nanako answered brusquely.
"Okay, but who busted Jones and the other two out of lock-up?" the sergeant asked.
"I did," she replied.
"With whose help?" he pressed.
"I did it alone," she lied, covering for Councillor Okada. "I went to Militia headquarters around midnight to see if they'd let me check on Ethan, and found the place abandoned and all the doors open."
"Oh, come on."
"I know you don't believe me, but that's what happened," she insisted.
"We'll get back to this later, Nanako – I know you could not have busted them out by yourself – and you will tell me who helped you." He turned his piercing gaze to me. "You still suffer from amnesia, Jones?"
"I don't remember anything from my time in Hamamachi, if that's what you're asking," I replied through clattering teeth.
"So you don't recognise me or the others?"
I shook my head, "Sorry, no."
The corporal driving the car turned and glanced at me then, clearly troubled. She was an attractive woman in her own way, with an angular face, small eyes, and black hair tied back in a short ponytail. I must have known her too, perhaps as a friend. Blast my stupid mind and its selective amnesia. The memories were there, so why couldn’t I access them? I wanted them back, no – I needed them back.
"That's a major inconvenience, we've got a ton of unanswered questions about when you and your squad were shot two years ago," the sergeant said.
"Look, can we keep this question and answer time for when Ethan's feeling better?" Nanako interrupted. "His wound's infected and he's burning with fever."
"We'll get to that shortly, Nanako, we just need to put some distance between us and the Skel first. They're like wild dogs; they'll lick your hand one minute and bite it off the next."
"The Skel are the common enemies of all free peoples, so how come you've shacked up with them?" I asked none too kindly.
"We've come to a beneficial arrangement."
"Which is what, exactly? What do you give them in return for them keeping off Hamamachi lands?"
"Sorry, that’s confidential," the sergeant replied nervously. Was he afraid I'd remember something incriminating of this deal?
The corporal turned off the highway and entered a side street. She took two more turns and then entered the ruins of an early twenty-first century industrial complex, where the factory and warehouses were constructed from prefab concrete walls. She drove into one of the warehouses, driving over chunks of concrete and the remains of sheet-aluminium and plastic roof sections littering the warehouse floor.
The corporal parked the vehicle and turned to face us. "Right, everyone but Ethan out, I need to see to his wound."
David and Shorty clambered out their respective doors immediately while the corporal fetched the medkit from the front passenger door.
Remaining in the car, Nanako held out her hand for the medkit. "I'll treat him," she said.
The corporal seemed hurt. "What's all this animosity, Nana-chan?"
"Oh spare me, Reina, you expect me to treat you civilly after we find you in bed with the Skel?"
"Our deal with the Skel was arranged to protect our town and its citizens," the corporal said. "Now, if you don’t mind?"
"I said I'll treat him," Nanako snapped, refusing to budge an inch.
Sergeant Tamura stuck his head in the car, interrupting the girls' argument. "Nanako, can you step out of the vehicle please? I want you to fill me in on what happened in Hamamachi yesterday. Don't worry about Ethan; Corporal Sato is more than qualified to tend to his medical needs."
I squeezed Nanako's hand, "Go on, I'll be fine."
Nanako frowned but hopped out of the large 4WD and went with the sergeant.
The corporal popped through the gap between the car's front seats and sat beside me in the back. She opened the medkit, donned sterile gloves, and carefully unwound the soiled bandage from my head. She was a lot younger than I thought, perhaps no more than a year or two older than me.
"You don’t remember me, do you?" she asked while she worked.
"No. Should I?"
"We did a few missions together. I'm Reina Sato."
"Sorry, that whole year's one big blank," I told her as she cleaned the wound with an antiseptic lotion and put on clean dressings.
"And yet you've been re-united with Nanako, I see," she commented with what appeared to be disapproval or disappointment, or both. She rolled up my right sleeve, swabbed the skin and gave me a shot of antibiotics. After that came an oral dose of painkillers to lower the fever.
"Nanako and Councillor Okada came to Newhome to broker a trade agreement. That's when we got back together."
"She certainly moves fast, that Nanako," she said as she rolled my sleeve back down.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" I asked, annoyed.
She sighed. "Look, don't take this the wrong way, but out of all the girls in Hamamachi who had the hots for you, I could never figure out why you chose her. And then married her so quickly."
"What are you talking about? She's the most amazing and wonderful person I've ever met," I snapped.
"And you've known her, what, a whole two weeks? You know, because of your amnesia and all."
Although I took offence to her attack on Nanako, there was something in her gaze that led me
to wonder if she was one of those girls in Hamamachi who had the “hots” for me. I could have told her I remembered the first time I met Nanako, but I'd told her I wouldn't tell anyone my memories were returning. "You can learn a lot about someone in two weeks," I said.
Reina grabbed a blanket from behind the back seat and wrapped it around me.
"She hasn't told you, has she?" she asked softly.
"Told me what?"
"What happened to her after the Custodians dumped her back in Hamamachi two years ago."
"She said she couldn’t get another lift back to Newhome until two weeks ago."
She shook her head. "I'm not talking about that."
"Then what are you talking about?"
She lowered her gaze.
"Just come out and say it already," I insisted.
"Sorry," she said sadly as she met my piercing gaze and held up her hands. "I shouldn’t be the one to tell you."
I glared at her. What on earth could she be referring to? What had happened to Nanako that was so bad she wouldn't tell me about it? But then I remembered Councillor Okada's parting words to me, to take good care of Nanako because she wasn't as tough as she seemed. But whatever it was, Nanako would tell me about it when she was ready.
"Look, sorry if I spoke out of turn, but it's something you need to know, and I had this sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t have told you, that's all. But enough of that. Have a drink to rehydrate yourself and then get some sleep. We need to break that fever, okay?"
I wasn't sure if she was genuinely sorry or was just trying to placate me after planting such destructive thoughts in my head. At any rate, there was something else I needed to know, so I reached out and touched her sleeve, delaying her departure. "I want to ask you something."
"Go ahead."
"What's this deal you've made with the Skel?"
"Sorry, I'm not at liberty to discuss it."
"Really? Then who is? And who made the deal? Was it the Hamamachi Council or just the Rangers?"
"They're not as bad as you think, you know," she said defensively.
"Who, the Skel? Or the fools in Hamamachi who made this deal with them?" I asked, trying to goad her.
"The Skel," she answered. "Did you know that upon reaching the age of eighteen, their children have to pass a gruelling, painful initiation ritual to be allowed to join one of their tribes, which they call chapters, by the way. If they fail the ritual they are expelled from the chapter for good?"
"You think that's good?"
"It's all about the survival of the fittest – each chapter wants to be as strong as it can be, which means they can't afford to allow the weak to pull the chapter down."
"It's barbaric, Corporal. Humans are not animals who abandon their weak and sick. All humans are all of equal value."
"That kind of thinking will just get you killed out here in the ruins, Ethan. And yes, I see how they seem barbaric to you, but when you get to know them, you learn to respect them. Did you know that after they accept a new Skel warrior into a chapter, he spends the next couple of years making his body armour from two or three human skeletons? They even have a factory that hardens the bones by treating them with a resin that makes them bulletproof."
"None of that changes the fact that they are psychotic murderers and slavers," I said, appalled that Reina – that anyone – could respect the Skel so.
"Didn't think I would get through to you, but it was worth a shot," she said with a weak smile. "Now seriously, get some sleep – you need to beat this infection."
"Why, so you can take us back to Hamamachi when I’ve recovered?"
"Don’t worry about that now."
I wanted to talk more, but I was so sleepy that I couldn't think clearly. I glugged down the offered bottle of water, lay down on the back seat and was soon lost in nightmares from a shallow, feverish sleep.
Sometime later I became aware of Nanako sitting beside me and holding my hand. I tried to ask her what the sergeant wanted to talk to her about, but I couldn’t get the words out.
I had a temporal lobe seizure during the night too, mixed somewhere amongst the nightmares. The image from memory that accompanied the seizure was of me with a group of Japanese young men and woman in a crowded restaurant. Nanako wasn't there, but Reina Sato was, although she was not in uniform. However, something about the memory troubled me, and there were traces of anger associated with it.
Great. Another memory fragment from a puzzle that was missing most of its pieces. It did confirm, however, what Reina had said. We knew each other when I was in Hamamachi.
Chapter Five
The fever broke sometime in the early morning hours, after which I got a couple of hours of deep sleep that were not plagued by nightmares of twisted, dark ruins haunted by Skel.
When I woke, Nanako was beside me. "You're looking a bit better," she said with a smile as she handed me a bottle of water.
"About time too," I said and then sculled the drink. My muscles ached all over, especially in my back. The good news, however, was that the bullet wound in my head no longer burned and the headache was gone. I pushed myself slowly upright.
"We're still in the warehouse." I remarked with surprise as I looked out the car window. "I thought they'd have taken us to Hamamachi by now."
"The sergeant's been talking to Yamada Kenji, the Ranger colonel, but he wouldn't tell us what they’ve decided to do with us until you woke up."
" I see. Did I know this colonel well?"
"You were his protégé. He was so impressed with you that he was teaching you everything he knew. He was devastated when you were shot. He never stopped pestering me when you were in hospital, hoping you'd remembered something about who shot you."
The car door wrenched open and Sergeant Tamura stuck his head in. "Feeling better, I see."
"A lot better than yesterday," I assured him. "Can you please tell me what's going to happen to us?"
"We're going to take you four back to Newhome," he said, as though it was the only option.
"You what?" both Nanako and I exclaimed together.
"I've been on the phone with Colonel Yamada, and he seems to think the sun rises and sets in your behind, Jones. He's told us to restore you to health and then take you lot back home. I presume that's where you were headed."
"It was," I replied, "But aren't we supposed to be fugitives wanted for acts of terrorism or something similarly absurd?"
"By the Militia, yes, but they're a bunch of morons who couldn’t see their own faces in a mirror. You four are heroes, not terrorists." The Militia were Hamamachi citizens conscripted to serve as soldiers for one month each year as the town’s defence force. The Rangers were an elite Hamamachi unit specialised in blunting Skel incursions and retrieving livestock and goods stolen by raiders.
"So you know it was us who took down the Custodians and disarmed the nuke?" I asked.
"The Colonel briefed me on what had happened, and Nanako filled me in on the rest of it while you were sleeping. So yes, I know what you lot did to save Hamamachi, and for that you have my eternal gratitude. Now, eat up and get your strength back so we can take you home. Playing nursemaid is not why I joined the Rangers."
And with that, he was gone.
As I'd been cooped up in the car too long, I stepped out and into the dilapidated warehouse.
Shorty and David bounded over as soon as they saw me.
"Good to see you up and about again, Jones," David said, smiling broadly.
"And give the poor guy his jacket back, he griped all night about how cold he was," Shorty added.
I laughed, peeled off David's jacket and handed it back to him. He clipped Shorty over the top of the head but put the jacket back on straight away anyway.
Nanako clambered out of the car too but stiffened when Corporal Sato came over and handed me several ration bars. "They taste like seasoned cardboard but they're good for you."
"Joy," I said as I accepted them.
The corporal glanc
ed at Nanako hesitantly and then made her exit.
"There some kind of history between you two?" I asked between mouthfuls of what really was like eating deliciously flavoured cardboard.
Nanako looked up at me from beneath her dark-pink bangs but quickly broke eye contact. "Nope. She's just a jerk, like most of the Rangers."
"I guess you'd expect that from an elitist unit," I said, wondering what Nanako was hiding. I realised I really didn't know a lot about her, but I wasn’t concerned. She was the most courageous person I'd ever met. She’d been through an unbelievably painful trial but had come through it shining like gold. That a woman such as her should love me boggled my mind.
"I never could work out why you volunteered to join the Rangers," Nanako said suddenly.
"I volunteered? I thought I was asked to join them."
"I've no doubt the invitation would have come eventually. You made quite a name for yourself when you saved your Militia squad from a Skel ambush on your first tour. But yeah, you volunteered to join the Rangers out of the blue."
"Weird." That didn't sound like the kind of thing I'd do. I usually tried to stay under the radar so no one would notice my strange ability.
"I know, right?" Sorrow filled her eyes. That decision caused us over two years of terrible grief, not to mention my continuing amnesia and seizures. If only I could go back in time...
All attempts to get either the sergeant or the corporal to tell us about Hamamachi's agreement with the Skel fell flat. It was all hush-hush and that really worried me. It seemed King was right in his guess that the Japanese were behind the Skel attacks on Newhome. But why? What possible reason could the Japanese have for destroying Newhome?
Later, the corporal declared me fit enough to travel, so the sergeant ordered her to take us back to Newhome. Finally.
* * *
It was late morning when Corporal Reina dropped us off in Kensington just out of view of Newhome's walls. We had spent the three-hour drive going over the story we'd spin to the Custodians, approaching it from all angles.
Forager - the Complete Trilogy (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Trilogy) Page 25