Forager - the Complete Trilogy (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Trilogy)

by Peter R Stone

  Reina assured us the Skel besieging Newhome would not hinder our attempt to return home. After that, she had looked at me with a peculiar expression, wished us all good luck, and drove away.

  "Let's get out of here," David suggested nervously.

  I looked at the hundred-year-old decaying buildings that surrounded us, and the trees, shrubs and wild grass that were attempting to reclaim the sidewalks and cracked asphalt road. I took Nanako's hands in mine and searched her eyes. I found it irresistibly cute the way she didn't lift her head to look up at me, only her eyes.

  "You ready for this?" I asked.

  "Wherever you go, I go," she said. "Besides, we don't really have a choice, do we?"

  I shook my head sadly and kissed her on the forehead. "Not really."

  We had only one block to navigate to reach the no-man's land surrounding Newhome, but all the same, I shouted out ultrasonically as we went, looking into every shadow and darkened window, illuminating them as though they were in sunlight. It was so good to be able to echolocate again. I’d felt blind and helpless when the headache and fever had prevented me from using my ability.

  "Can you see any Skel?" Nanako whispered as she walked alongside me.

  "No, either they're not here or they're lying low," I whispered back.

  "I can't believe the Rangers let us go," she added, speaking normally this time.

  "I know, right? Does it make sense to you?" I asked. I feared the Rangers would betray us at the last moment, so this felt like a dream.

  "You were one of them before you were injured, and the Rangers are a tight knit bunch," she replied.

  "Tight enough to let a bunch of 'wanted terrorists' go without even questioning them?"

  "There's no love lost between the Rangers and the Militia," she explained. "The Militia say the Rangers are a bunch of elitists, while the Rangers say the Militia are nothing but a bunch of weekend warriors. Besides, I'm not really surprised they let us go, since you were so close to the colonel and all."

  Our conversation petered out when we turned the corner and saw before us Newhome's twelve-foot tall, convex concrete walls. Walls topped with spikes and barbed wire.

  "Well, this is it, guys, remember what we discussed, and stick to it no matter what. Don't let the Custodians bully or trick you into saying anything else, ok? If one of us cracks, we all go down," I said sternly.

  "Okay," David agreed, his eyes wide with fear.

  "Yes, pops," Shorty teased.

  "It looks like a prison," Nanako mused as she stared at Newhome's inhospitable walls.

  "And yet we're gonna walk back in there like sheep led to the slaughter. How stupid are we?" Shorty asked with a chortle.

  "It's our home, and our families are there," I replied, but I knew what he meant. If it wasn't for the stupid conflict between Newhome and Hamamachi, we wouldn't have come back here. Ever.

  "Wait!" my wife said suddenly. "Can't have you walking in there with a clean dressing on your head, Ethan, it's not gonna fit our story." She quickly removed the dressing and smudged dirt all around the wound so that the skin there matched the rest of my dishevelled appearance.

  We hesitated a moment more and then jogged past the remaining buildings and into no-man's land. Spotting the tall metal gates of Newhome's eastern-gatehouse, we hurried towards them. We glanced frequently behind us as though Skel could pop out of the derelict buildings behind us at any moment.

  When we got to about a dozen meters from the high metal doors, the voice of a Custodian boomed out from one of the adjoining guard towers. We couldn't see him since the tower was encircled by one-way glass.

  "Halt or we will shoot!"

  We skidded to a stop and I saw the ugly black muzzle of a machine gun point down at us.

  "I am Ethan Jones, Metals-Forager," I shouted up at the tower. "We are the only survivors of the trade expedition sent to Hamamachi."

  There was a pause, and then a more authoritative voice boomed out. "Where are Lieutenant King and the Custodian squad that accompanied you?"

  "We were ambushed by Skel on the way back. The lieutenant, his squad, and two of my foragers were killed," I had to choke back a tear at this admission as memories of Michal's passing flashed through my mind. Although Leigh was severely wounded, not killed, I wasn’t going to tell them that. They’d freak if they knew he had been taken prisoner.

  The great metal doors cracked open and a squad of four Custodians wearing bulletproof armoured vests over their camouflage fatigues rushed out with their assault-rifles aimed at us.

  "Put your hands on your heads and walk slowly inside, if you fail to comply with these instructions, you will be shot!" bellowed one of the Custodians.

  Chapter Six

  That wasn't quite the reception I'd been hoping for, but I quickly put my hands on my head since Custodians were not known for their patience. "Sir, we only just escaped with our lives," I protested as strongly as I dared. "It's taken us three nights and two days to get back here."

  "Until we have verified what has happened to Lieutenant King, you will be detained on the suspicion of desertion, and will be treated as such." The Custodian strode closer, his weapon still pointed at us. "Now step through the gates – slowly."

  "Nice to see you too, boys," Shorty muttered under his breath as we trooped in single file slowly through the doors.

  "What happened to innocent until proven guilty?" Nanako whispered to me.

  I risked a glance behind. "It's guilty until proven innocent here."

  "Silence!" bellowed the Custodian.

  The metal doors closed behind us with an ominous boom and I wondered if I'd ever see them open again. I looked into Nanako's deep brown eyes and saw the worry there. I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but the attempt fell flat. If the Custodians didn't buy our cock-and-bull story of what went down in Hamamachi and charged us with desertion, we'd never see the light of day again. This was the one scenario I hadn't seen coming.

  "Stand apart and do not move!" the Custodian sergeant shouted. We did so and two privates patted us down thoroughly, which turned out to be a pointless exercise, since all of our pockets were empty.

  The sergeant stepped aside and reported the situation to Custodian Command, who told him to keep us where we were and that a vehicle would be sent to pick us up.

  We didn't have to wait long either. A Bushmaster Armoured Mobility Vehicle roared up to the gates ten minutes later and we were bundled inside.

  * * *

  After spending an hour in a solitary cell in Custodian Headquarters, I was taken to an interrogation room on the third floor. We were split up upon arrival, so I didn't know where they had taken Nanako and they refused to answer any of my questions about her. The only humane thing they did was to treat my wound, washing it and applying a new bandage.

  I sat behind a wide plastic table in the interrogation room. Two windows with partially shuttered venetian blinds were to my left, though conspicuously absent was the mandatory one-way observation window found in most interrogation rooms.

  The door swept open and two people strode in and sat stiffly in the seats on the other side of the table. The first was a Custodian colonel, an Asian man with a full head of greying hair and an extremely angular face. That they had sent such a high-ranking officer to interview and interrogate me was enough to set my nerves on edge, but it was his companion that sent my pulse racing. She was a young woman around my age! She wore a Custodian uniform, though with an ankle length skirt in place of trousers. Her skin was quite dark and I guessed her to be of Indian heritage.

  I had never, ever heard of female Custodians. For starters, women were not permitted to work in Newhome. So why was this girl an exception to the rules? She wasn't carrying writing implements so she wasn't here to record the conversation. And her face. I had never seen such a deadpan, expressionless face in my life. She appeared to be looking right through me with her eyes focused on the wall behind me.

  "Ethan Jones," the colonel began, s
peaking with a deep, baritone voice, "I am Colonel Kim. You are suspected of having deserted Lieutenant King and abandoning your responsibilities in regards to leading the trade delegation to Hamamachi and back. But before we begin, Mr. Jones, may I introduce you to my associate, Custodian Consultant Singhe. She is here due to her unique ability that lets her detect whether someone is telling the truth or lying. And with one hundred percent accuracy, I might add."

  I think my heart missed a beat in response to that statement. We were undone! Everything I had planned to say was a lie. There was no way I could tell the colonel what had actually gone down. They'd lock us away in solitary confinement for the rest of our lives to stop the rest of the populace from learning the truth.

  "Do you understand what I just said, Mr. Jones?" the colonel said when I failed to respond to his previous statement.

  "Yes sir," I replied, glancing quickly at the Indian girl, who continued to ignore me.

  "Right, let us begin," the colonel said. "Mr. Jones, did you and your team of foragers accompany the trade delegation that was sent to Hamamachi last Friday, under the command of Custodian Lieutenant King?"

  I opened my mouth to reply but had to fake a coughing fit to cover the massive shock that permeated every fibre of my being when Custodian Consultant Singhe fixed her eyes on me and began singing at an ultrasonic pitch. Well, perhaps singing wasn't quite accurate, but instead of shouting ultrasonically like I did, she projected her voice in short, ultrasonically pitched, musical notes.

  And I wasn't the only one to be shocked. She immediately "saw" the biologically engineered abnormalities in my throat that allowed me to echolocate as well. Echolocation not only allowed us to see in the dark, but also see into or through many materials to some degree. For example, I could see someone’s heart beating in their chest if I shouted loudly enough. Her eyes opened so wide I thought they'd pop out of her head.

  I held up my hand in apology and tried to get the coughing fit under control. My mind was swamped with a myriad of thoughts. The Indian girl was an echolocater like me! But how could that be possible? The strange old Chinese man who accosted me at the age of five told me that people like me were dissected if captured.

  My next thought, though, was one of absolute terror – she was going to tell the colonel what I was, and that would be the end of me.

  "If you're quite finished, Mr Jones?" the colonel prompted, somewhat irritated.

  "Sorry about that, sir. To answer your question, yes, my foragers and I joined the delegation sent to Hamamachi. King requested us personally due to our knowledge of the eastern suburbs," I answered as I glanced at Consultant Singhe. For some inexplicable reason, she continued to sing ultrasonically but didn't turn me in. Maybe the Custodians didn't know she was an echolocater either.

  "Did you and your foragers accompany the convoy all the way to Hamamachi?" the colonel asked.

  "Yes sir. We got to Hamamachi without incident, and then unloaded the trade goods we brought with us and loaded up the goods Hamamachi prepared for us to bring back," I replied.

  And to my astonishment, while the colonel jotted notes in a small notebook he brought, Consultant Singhe whispered to me beneath her breath with an absolute minimum of lip movement. "You are wondering why I did not turn you in, are you not?" she asked.

  "The thought crossed my mind," I breath-whispered back.

  Completely oblivious to this secret conversation occurring under his nose, the colonel leaned forward. "Were there any problems with the unloading of our trade samples?"

  What, like, did the Japanese realise the refrigeration-maturation device you sent them was actually a hydrogen bomb in disguise? That's the answer I wanted to give, but I shook my head instead and said, "No, sir."

  "What happened after you loaded Hamamachi's trade goods onto your vehicles?" the colonel asked, leaning forward to hear my answer.

  "It was very late afternoon by this time, sir, and the Japanese invited us to remain for the night and set off in the morning. But King refused their invitation and insisted we leave at once, even though I strongly advised against it." Man, it was hard to concentrate with Consultant Singhe echolocating every time I spoke.

  "I have not turned you in because I am not the loyal little Custodian they think I am," Consultant Singhe informed me as the colonel jotted down more notes.

  "How come they haven't realised you can echolocate?" I asked.

  "Oh, they know," she whispered back. "I was caught echolocating when I was five and taken to the genetic-engineering facility in North End."

  "And they didn't dissect or kill you?" I asked.

  "They only dissected the boys they caught, and only at first. They euthanized the ones they caught later," she said, her face impassive.

  "Why?" I asked, stricken by this horrific testament to wanton murder of children.

  "The geneticist who created us destroyed his work and committed suicide, and the other geneticists were desperate to reverse engineer his work so they could duplicate it and control who received it."

  "That doesn't answer my question. Why did they kill the male echolocaters but not the females?"

  "The male echolocaters were considered uncontrollable and a threat. Female echolocaters were considered malleable so were put to use as spies and whatnot."

  "Did you leave at once as Lieutenant King insisted?" the colonel asked, interrupting the conversation we were carrying on below his hearing range.

  "Yes sir. As soon as we loaded the Japanese trade goods we bade them farewell and set off."

  "Did you witness anything strange or out of the ordinary on your return journey, Mr. Jones?"

  "Sir?" He was trying to find out if we noticed a nuclear explosion. Maybe Newhome was too far away from Hamamachi to have been able to see the mushroom cloud.

  "Never mind. Tell me what happened next."

  "When we reached Mitcham, sir, Lieutenant King told us to pull off the road and rest for the night. I advised against it but he overruled me again."

  "You're lying," Consultant Singhe whispered, interrupting her ultrasonic song.

  "I have to," I replied, trusting she wouldn't report it.

  "And what happened after that?" the colonel asked while he made more notes in his book. I tried to read what he was writing, but he wrote with strange characters – Korean, perhaps?

  "We were hit by Skel in the middle of the night, sir. They must have stuck a bomb or something under the Bushmaster. We woke at the explosion that blew off the front of the vehicle. The Custodians and Leigh Williams, one of my foragers, were in the Bushmaster, but only King and two Custodians escaped through the rear door. We tried to go to their aid, but the Skel attacked us in waves, and they were cut down. The G-Wagon was hit with a Molotov and I was..."

  "Sir," Consultant Singhe said, interrupting me.

  "Yes, Consultant?" the colonel asked.

  "Everything Mr. Jones has said since he mentioned they arrived at Hamamachi has been a falsehood," she said in a monotone voice.

  I looked at her incredulously. I thought she was on my side!

  She stared back at me impassively.

  The colonel was not impressed. "Care to revise your statement, Mr. Jones? Or would you like me to introduce you to more persuasive methods of making you tell me what happened?"

  Chapter Seven

  They trapped me, good and proper. I glanced at the consultant. She’d done a right number on me, that's for sure. I turned back to the colonel, and the anger that had burned in my heart against the Custodians ever since King pulled that stunt over in Hamamachi suddenly exploded from me.

  I jumped to my feet and slapped the table with my right hand. "Colonel, did you honestly think you could smuggle a nuclear bomb into Hamamachi without them noticing? It was detected as soon as it was unloaded from the stupid trailer! And thanks to you Custodians, the Japanese now have in their possession a nuclear bomb they can use against us. Well done, sir, well done!"

  "Are you finished?" the colonel asked emo
tionlessly.

  "No!" I practically shouted back, bashing over my chair to pace the length of the room as I continued venting my anger. "King and the Custodians went mad as soon as the bomb was detected. They opened fire on everyone in the delivery dock. They must have slaughtered over two dozen Japanese Militia and innocent dock workers so that King could stuff around with the bomb, trying to change the timer so it would go off straight away."

  The colonel glanced at Consultant Singhe.

  "He is telling the truth now, sir," she assured him.

  "Mr. Jones, sit down or I will have you restrained," the colonel said.

  Still shaking, I righted my chair and sat.

  "Continue," the colonel ordered.

  "In the crossfire that ensued between the Custodians and the Japanese, I was shot in the head and two of my foragers, Michal Petrovic and Leigh Williams, were killed. But there were too many Militia, and Lieutenant King and his men were killed too."

  "There are elements of falsehood in that statement, Ethan Jones," the consultant whispered.

  "Look, go ahead and blow the whistle on me if you want, but they'll execute me and my companions if you do," I shot back at her.

  "Why?"

  "Trust me, they will."

  "And the bomb?" the colonel asked anxiously.

  "The bomb was disarmed, sir."

  "So it is in Hamamachi's possession?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Tell me how you and your three companions came to be outside Newhome's gates today, three days after the events you have described," the colonel demanded suspiciously.

  "We were arrested and thrown into prison in Hamamachi, but Councillor Okada broke us out in the middle of the night and arranged for us to be dropped us off outside Melbourne. But my wound got infected so we had to shack up while I recovered. After that we walked here."

  "I see. One last question, Mr. Jones. Why did you come back?"